Making Sense of Diverging Security Visions among Global Powers
By THO Contributor, Tarik Oguzlu
As the bonds between the two shores of the
trans-Atlantic alliance weaken, Russia and China are asserting themselves more
confidently in global politics. Traces of Cold War-like polarizations and
geopolitical competitions are now being more evident in the post Covid-19 era.
It is now high time to offer a comparative analysis of the security visions of
the major global powers, for the future stability of mankind is at stake.
Since its foundation, U.S. leaders have not
shown strong enthusiasm to pursue ambitious policies abroad to institutionalize
American dominance unless other continents, most notably Europe and Asia, came
under the domination of anti-American power blocks or any global power
threatened U.S. national interests by trying to take a strong presence in
America's "near" abroad. The default position of the American people
has been that the U.S. should not engage in entangled alliances and go abroad
in search for monsters. However, since the early years of the Cold War era, the
U.S. has shifted towards an internationalist mentality and put the containment
of its geopolitical rivals and the promotion of its values to other places at
the center of its foreign policy engagements. Despite the fact that
"realists" and "isolationists" have traditionally abhorred
adventures abroad and argued against the use of force unless vital national
interests were at stake, they have nevertheless sided with liberal
internationalists in defining the U.S as an exceptional country in terms of its
norms and values. Pursuing liberal hegemony through the employment of various
hard and soft power instruments and shouldering the responsibility of
maintaining liberal international order have become uncontested foreign policy
options for about twenty years since the early days of the post-Cold war
era.
However, the steady increase in material
and ideational power capabilities of non-Western powers, the abject failure of
American nation-building projects across the globe and the economic crisis that
hit the Western world severely in late 2008 have led Americans to go through a
soul-searching process over the last decade. Both Obama and Trump
administrations have recognized that the U.S. should no longer play the role of
global hegemon in maintaining peace and security. The main message given by
Washington over the last decade is that American support to the security
interests of traditional European and Asian allies should be earned, rather
than taken for granted.
With Obama and Trump, the focus has changed
to great power politics and competition. Dealing with China and Russia now
appears to be more important than focusing on humanitarian interventions,
counterterrorism and democracy promotion exercises. The latest National
Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, adopted in late 2017 and early
2018, respectively, testify to this new mentality. Reverting from national
building exercises abroad towards offshore balancing and adopting a more
skeptical approach towards globalization process while prioritizing traditional
great power relations seem to have strengthened the realist, pragmatic and
isolationist tendencies in U.S foreign policy. Such trends will likely
strengthen in the post Covid-19 era as the growing tension in American-Chinese
relations demonstrates.
Americans appear to have rediscovered that
their nation is now more an Indo-Pacific than a trans-Atlantic one. Whereas
today's America seems to adopt a mixture of containment and engagement
strategies vis-à-vis China, Putin's Russia is viewed more as an anti-American headache
than an existential global security threat. Americans do not put Russia on an
equal footing with China. Russia is a regional power in decay, whereas China is
a global power on the rise.
On the other hand, the EU of today is far
away from fulfilling the desired goals that its founders set decades ago. At
stake now is the EU's ability to deal with emerging modern challenges while
remaining true to its post-modern aspirations. The European dream has been that
the post-modern values of cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, secular
universalism, multiple interdependencies and soft-power oriented policies
abroad would gradually transcend modern practices of balance of power politics,
realpolitik security strategies, self-vs-other distinctions and the prioritization
of hard power instruments in interstate relations. Yet, Russian actions in
Ukraine, Syria and Eastern Europe do now confirm that geopolitical
confrontations still haunt Europe and the constitutive principles of the
post-Cold war era security order in Europe are now on shaky grounds. The
growing chaos and anarchy in the Middle East and North Africa also presents the
EU with very serious strategic challenges, the least of which is migration.
Recent years have also witnessed the rise
of illiberal, populist, anti-integrationist, anti-immigrant and anti-globalist
parties across the European continent. The EU's post-modern integration process
seems now to be on life support. The United Kingdom leaving the EU is a fatal
blow to the EU's credibility and its ability to act strategically on a global
level. Neither Germany nor France can lead the European ship in the uncharted
waters of the emerging century. The idea of European integration being based on
common identities, social policies and the legitimacy of Brussels-based
institutions might further erode in the years to come should centrist
politicians in key EU member states fail to provide solutions to the daily
problems of their people and continue to lose elections against fringe parties.
Far from having established itself as a
credible actor speaking with one voice, the EU now appears as a weak
geopolitical actor in the eyes of other global actors. The United States,
Russia and China continue to employ the time-tested strategy of divide-and-rule
in their relations with EU members. Each sees the EU as a playground in their
geopolitical games. At stake for the EU is that should EU continue to remain as
a herbivorous power - long on civilian and soft power capabilities yet short on
hard power capabilities -, its ability to help shape the key tenets of the
emerging world order will remain limited, for in its current form it cannot
compete with such carnivorous powers the U.S., China and Russia.
Looking to Far East Asia, one can notice
that China has pursued the so-called "peaceful rise/peaceful
development" strategy since the late 1970s. However, China's recent
assertiveness seems to have led both the Obama and Trump administrations to
redefine China as a potential hegemonic threat that needs be contained. Hence the
strategic pivot, rebalancing, Quad and trade tariffs.
While Chinese see their country's efforts
to leave behind the "centuries of humiliation" as China's rightful
return to its glorious days, the majority of Westerners tend to feel skeptical
about the end results of this process. Through such initiatives as "Belt
and Road" and the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank, China is
trying to give the message that there is a mutually constitutive relationship
between its development at home and the development of others abroad. The goal
is to bring into existence more China-friendly regional and global environments
in which China's march to global primacy would not only remain uncontested but
also be accommodated easily. Chinese rulers have never adopted an imperial
mission whose driving logic was to conquer non-Chinese territories and project
Chinese norms and values onto others in a universalistic fashion. Instead,
China has been to trying to midwife an international order in which China
remains at the center of the global cobweb and all road lead to Beijing. China
is now waging a connectivity war against its rivals.
The main characteristic of Chinese foreign
policy, particularly concerning its relations with the U.S., seems to be
avoiding taking clear stances on issues that directly touch upon vital American
interests or global concerns. Traditionally speaking, unless the issues at hand
concern Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, the Uighur region or the islands in the South
and East China Seas, China tends to avoid taking responsibility in global
governance issues. Yet, with Covid-19, Chinese leaders seem to have come to the
conclusion that there now exists a suitable atmosphere for China to assert its
claim to global primacy while the U.S. and many liberal democracies
experiencing strong challenges at home. American abdication from global
leadership seems to have encouraged China to embrace a more assertive and
aggressive foreign policy stance.
Nevertheless, China is not questioning the
Western-led international order in a revolutionary fashion. What it wants is to
see its growing ascendance in the global power hierarchy be accommodated
institutionally and peacefully. In case of Western reluctance to do so, China
does not hesitate to mastermind the establishment of alternative institutional
platforms under its patronage.
Focusing on Russia, one notices that Russia
has witnessed a national revival process following Putin's ascendancy to power
in late 1990s. Yet Russia has lately come under the international spotlight
once again following its annexation of Crimea, the support that it gives to
separatist groups in eastern Ukraine, its military involvement in Syria on the
side of the Assad regime and its continuous political meddling in Western
liberal democracies. The major criticism directed to Russia is that Russia acts
as a typical realpolitik power which deeply believes in the primacy of material
power capabilities, the use of brute military force and commanding spheres of
influence. Russia is believed to have been acting as a nineteenth century power
in the twenty-first century.
Putin's Russia has been striving to help
bring into existence a multipolar world order in which Russia plays a decisive
role. Despite the growing strategic rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing in
recent years, one not should conclude that Russia would act as a fiddle to
China whenever its relations with Western actors deteriorate. In the best of
circumstances China appears to be a trump card for Russia in its dealings with
Western powers.
In Russian strategic thinking, Western
institutions, most notably NATO, should not be the main regional platforms in
which questions of European security are discussed. Putin being no exception,
Russian security elites have been subscribed to the view that Russia has been
deceived by Western powers in that NATO's enlargement occurred to the detriment
of Russia's geopolitical interests and priorities.
Russia offers a textbook example of
traditional nation-states where sovereignty, state survival and territorial
integrity are still the most important security issues. Having the largest
stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world, possessing sophisticated
conventional military capabilities, and sitting on abundant natural resources
and a huge land mass are considered to be the main power resources of Russia.
To Russian rulers, there are no universally agreed human rights and the use of
force in the name of "responsibility to protect" would only mask
Western imperial designs on other places.
Ascribing a messianic mission to Russia,
Russian leaders wish to resurrect the defunct Russian empire in new clothes,
which acts as the protector of traditional Christian values against the
challenges stemming from the post-modern or post-religion societies in the West
and religious fundamentalism in the East and South. Russian elites are very
much obsessed with the ideas that Russia is historically and empirically
entitled to have an equal standing with the West and Russia's greatness and
distinctiveness should be recognized by outside actors. As Westerners question
Russia's equality and continue to lecture Russians on the superiority of
Western values and Russia's shortcomings, Russia tends to define itself in
opposition to the West.
The years ahead will likely see that major global powers will adopt a more realist than liberal foreign policy outlook. The only exception might the European Union. Yet, it remains to be seen how a liberal post-modern EU would survive in the world of emerging realist challenges from all directions.