Russian Power in the 21st Century: Regional Hegemon and Alliance Formations

Ever since September 11th 2001, there has been a large shift in the flavor of United States foreign policy. While the Bush Administration was originally formed with the mindset of approaching matters of International Relations from a largely classical realist perspective, meaning only using the U.S. military against clearly defined enemies for clearly defined purposes and ignoring such issues as nation building, democratic peace theory and complex interdependence theory, the so called Neo-Conservatives have largely taken over post 9-11. What most people in the United States fail to realize is that the original mindset of the Bush Administration was to strenuously AVOID the precise type of military engagement we are presently involved with in Iraq. In fact, in early 2000 Condaleeza Rice wrote in Foreign Affairs Journal the Republican party Foreign Policy strategy, in which she decried foreign policy meddling. She stated: "The job of the 82nd Airborne Division is not to escort kids to school." Yet here we are six years later, and quite literally the 82nd Airborne's job is practically to escort kids to school in Iraq.

In my opinion, the paradigm shift came post 9-11 when an inexperienced President Bush turned to his closest advisor Dick Cheney, who recommended the Neo-Conservative Foreign Policy shift. The idea was that democracy could be forced militarily around the world, forcing open markets and increasing liberalization abroud, increasing freedom, etc.

Unfortunatley, this has not gone well. The cost of the Iraq War for the United States will easily top the 400 billion dollar mark within one year, and several thousand lives have been lost. Strategically speaking, Iraq is quite simply not worth that much.

Incidentally, over the last several years another force has been emerging, that of the regional hegemonic alliance formation of Russia and China. After the Cold War, it was believed Russia would slowly integrate with the West, economically liberalizing their economy and increasing democratic participation. Unfortunately, this has not happened. As energy costs increased, Russia's economy has rebounded over the past several years, as Russia is a massive oil and natural gas exporter. Russia has paid off it's international debts early, and rather than follow a path of international subserviance to Europe and the United States, is experiencing a massive uptick in national pride, and is now intentionally moving away from the West by decreasing democratic participation, government transparancy and corporate accountability. (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060701faessay85407/dmitri-trenin/russia-leaves-the-west.html) While all of this has been known to the west, what has been amazing is the lack of apathy the American and European public have towards this resurgant Russian power. America has become so paranoid dealing with Islamic Fundamentalism that old fashioned balance of power global politicking has gone by the popular conscious wayside. Currently, Russia's gameplan is quite simple, it recognizes that in terms of wealth and technology it is too far behind the United States to directly compete against us. Rather, they realize they now have two options, they can either be comparable to a state like Brazil, or they can be comparable to a state like China. They would rather be comparable to China, and that means flexing some military might and exerting pressure on their regional neighbors to establish themselves as the 'regional hegemon' to quote University of Chicago political scientist John J. Mearshimer. In order to do this, Russia has begun to increase economic and military cooperation with regional neighbor China. Last August, Russia and China even participated in their first ever joint war games exercise, an event of mammoth significance in International Relations relative to the United States security, but one largely ignored by the US media, though several prominent articles did elaborate quite extensively on the developments, such as in this article from the Washington Times. (http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050817-122515-2218r.htm)

The very fact that the United States was not invited to observe these war games is a clear tactical signal being sent by the United States and China. Essentially, both of these states are uncomfortable with the current states of global geo-politics. In the post Cold War world we are living in either a uni-polar world or a multi-polar world, depending on one's perception of relative United States power and our ability to project that power globally. Russia and China are leary of a world where the United States goes unchallenged in terms of real power, and they wish to establish an alliance structure which would essentially create a true multi-polar world, where instead of one hegemon there would exist in fact regional hegemons. (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics - John Mearshimer)

The United States has likewise responded to this move by Russia and China by increasing our alliance with a far east friend, India. In a fairly controversial move, in early 2006 the US Government signed an agreement with India basically giving them the tools, money and permission to develop whatever nuclear capabilities they could, both for domestic energy consumption as well as for military technology. (http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2006/07/03/trade_plan_would_allow_nuclear_sales_to_india/) What makes this plan so unique and potentially controversial is that we are allowing India unfetterred access to nuclear technology without forcing them to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Essentially, the United States recognizes a slowly developing threat coming from the Sino-Russian alliance {Sino means Chinese} and the United States gameplan is a classic play from the offensive realist textbook, we seek to de-stabilize and undermine a regional hegemon by increasing our own ties in the region, thereby increasing a wedge. This is analogous to Cold War policies of fighting proxy wars. The implications of militarily or economically confronting China or Russia regarding their alliance could be disastrous in terms of escalation, so instead we fund proxy allies and use them as tools to calm or if necessary de-stabilize the region. (see Stephen Walt's essay on Bandwagon alliance formations, he is a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School)

The title of this post was 'Russian Power in the 21st Century: Regional Hegemon and Alliance Formations. What the American public should come to realize is that while fighting gloabal Islamic radicalism is important, it may ultimately prove a distant secondary objective when compared to good old fashioned balance of power International Relations. It would not take much to pull the American military out of Iraq and into the far east. While "winning" the Iraq War is a noble goal, it is truly problematic at this point. First and foremost, it is now largely a definitional issue in the hands of opportunistic politicians. Secondly, short of providing oil to the international markets, a stable Iraq government would strategically provide very little benefit to the United States. While it is true that the United States is currently building several permanent military installations in Iraq which would be used as launching pads for future offensive strikes against other regimes in the region, namely against Iran in the case of nuclear escalation there, or against Saudi Arabia in the case of a radical coup overthrowing the royal family which would be disastrous for world oil markets, the end result of a stable Iraq is strategically somewhat moot at this point. Currently according to many estimates, the price of oil has a built in price premium of $15-25 dollars a barrel accounting for the Iraq / Iran problem. Hence, even if we pulled out of Iraq and the oil exploration / exporting from the country substantially increased, that would do very little to actually decrease the price of oil, since we are currently paying an "Iraq" premium for the oil we are getting now! (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/01/11/iraq_cost/index_np.html)

In conclusion, while fighting global radical Islam is a serious threat, the realities of global geopolitics and the balance of power may quickly turn the United States attention to what may actually be a much more serious problem, the resurgant and ever increasing Sino-Russian alliance formation.

-- Please feel free to comment on this post or my sourcing --