The Saudi battle with Iran is fundamentally unequal because Iran brings assets to the table that Saudi Arabia lacks.
Those assets, no matter how degraded, include a large population, an industrial base, resources, a battle-hardened military, a deep-rooted culture, a history of empire and a geography that makes it a crossroads.
Saudi Arabia’s traditional assets – including custodianship of the Muslim holy cities, Mecca and Medina, and money — will in the middle and long term not be able to compete.
Iran as an OBOR pivot point
Iran’s strategic advantage is nowhere more evident than in global competition to shape the future architecture of Eurasia’s energy landscape.
Energy scholar Micha’el Tanchum argues that Iran is pivotal to the success of China’s trans-continental, infrastructure-focused One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative in ways that Saudi Arabia is not.
In a study published in 2015, Mr. Tanchum suggested that it would be gas supplies from Iran and Turkmenistan, two Caspian Sea states, rather than Saudi oil that would determine which way the future Eurasian energy architecture tilts: Will it be in the direction of China, the world’s third-largest LNG importer, or in that of Europe?
Iran will choose its buyers
In that context, it matters greatly to China that Iran has the ability to capitalize on the fact that it boasts the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves and its fourth-largest oil reserves was significantly enhanced with the lifting in 2015 of international sanctions.
“Iran, within five years, will likely have 24.6 billion cubic meters of natural gas available for annual piped gas exports beyond its current supply commitments.”
“Not enough to supply all major markets, Tehran will face a crucial geopolitical choice for the destination of its piped exports.”
Further, he says Iran will be able to export piped gas to two of the following three markets:
1. European Union (EU)/ Turkey via the Southern Gas Corridor centering on the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP)
2. India via an Iran-Oman-India pipeline, or
3. China via either Turkmenistan or Pakistan.
“The degree to which the system of energy relationships in Eurasia will be more oriented toward the European Union or China will depend on the extent to which each secures Caspian piped gas exports through pipeline infrastructure directed to its respective markets.”
In other words, Mr. Tanchum argued that to determine the balance of power in Eurasian energy and establish One Belt, One Road as the key determinant of Eurasia’s energy architecture, China would need to position itself as the main recipient of Iranian and Turkmen gas.
China as a natural partner
That, in turn, would enhance China’s growing economic influence in Central Asia, and further extend it to the Caucasus and the eastern Mediterranean.
China has already many of the building blocks needed to make that a reality:
close and long-standing relations with Iran
significant investment in Turkmen gas production and pipeline infrastructure
the construction of Pakistan’s section of the Iran-Pakistan pipeline.
Hooking the pipeline to One Belt, One Road would allow China to receive Iranian gas not only by sea on its eastern seaboard, but also in its land-locked, troubled north-western province Xinjiang.
However, Iran’s geo-political strengths are however not wholly dependent on aligning the Islamic republic with China.
Other friends keep the competition lively
With the development of Iran’s Indian-built Chabahar port and the undersea Iran-Oman-India pipeline that would potentially create an alternative Asia-to-Europe energy corridor, Iran is, according to Mr. Tanchum, well-positioned to play both ends against the middle.
In addition, it can adopt a key role in the trans-Atlantic community’s effort to strengthen relations with India as an antidote to the rise of China.
Iran’s surprisingly strong gas leverage
Iran’s geopolitical significance is further enhanced by the fact that competition for Iranian gas is very real and offers leverage.
Contrary to some assumptions, Iranian cooperation with Russia in Syria and elsewhere is opportunistic and unlikely to prove sustainable, rather than a sure thing Russia can count on for preferential economic treatment:
– Iranian-Russian competition is already visible in the Caucasus and Central Asia, which ironically mitigates in Europe’s rather than China’s favor.
– Iran is likely to deepen energy cooperation with Turkey. The intent here is two-fold: First, it is a bid to enhance its influence in that country
Second, it would help curtail Russian inroads in the Islamic republic’s northern neighbors – Azerbaijan; Turkmenistan, which is China’s principle gas supplier as well as Armenia (where Russia’s state-owned Gazprom has invested in an Iran-Armenia gas pipeline).
All of this positions Iran to be a very choosy supplier and negotiator.
In Beijing and beyond, Saudi Arabia might make a few friends for now, but in the longer run, Iran still holds far more of the good cards.
Anyone already aligned with Iran or considering such an alliance will think twice before walking away from the Islamic republic to back the kingdom.
JOSEPH S. NYE JR. is University Distinguished Service Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the author of Is the American Century Over?
During the nineteenth century[1], the United States played a minor role in the global balance of power. The country did not maintain a large standing army, and as late as the 1870s, the U.S. Navy was smaller than the navy of Chile. Americans had no problems using force to acquire land or resources (as Mexico and the Native American nations could attest), but for the most part, both the U.S. government and the American public opposed significant involvement in international affairs outside the Western Hemisphere[2].
A flirtation with imperialism at the end of the century drew U.S. attention outward, as did the growing U.S. role in the world economy, paving the way for President Woodrow Wilson[3] to take the United States into World War I. But the costs of the war and the failure of Wilson’s ambitious attempt to reform international politics afterward turned U.S. attention inward once again during the 1920s and 1930s, leading to the strange situation of an increasingly great power holding itself aloof from an increasingly turbulent world.
Like their counterparts elsewhere, U.S. policymakers sought to advance their country’s national interests, usually in straightforward, narrowly defined ways. They saw international politics and economics as an intense competition among states constantly jockeying for position and advantage. When the Great Depression hit, therefore, U.S. officials, like others, raced to protect their domestic economy as quickly and fully as possible, adopting beggar-thy-neighbor tariffs and deepening the crisis in the process. And a few years later, when aggressive dictatorships emerged and threatened peace, they and their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere did something similar in the security sphere, trying to ignore the growing dangers, pass the buck, or defer conflict through appeasement. By this point, the United States had become the world’s strongest power, but it saw no value in devoting resources or attention to providing global public goods such as an open economy or international security. There was no U.S.-led liberal order in the 1930s, and the result was a “low dishonest decade,” in the words of W. H. Auden, of depression, tyranny, war, and genocide.
With their countries drawn into the conflagration despite their efforts to avoid it, Western officials spent the first half of the 1940s trying to defeat the Axis powers while working to construct a different and better world for afterward. Rather than continue to see economic and security issues as solely national concerns, they now sought to cooperate with one another, devising a rules-based system that in theory would allow like-minded nations to enjoy peace and prosperity in common.
The liberal international order that emerged after 1945 was a loose array of multilateral institutions in which the United States provided global public goods such as freer trade and freedom of the seas and weaker states were given institutional access to the exercise of U.S. power. The Bretton Woods institutions were set up while the war was still in progress. When other countries proved too poor or weak to fend for themselves afterward, the Truman administration decided to break with U.S. tradition and make open-ended alliances, provide substantial aid to other countries, and deploy U.S. military forces abroad. Washington gave the United Kingdom a major loan in 1946, took responsibility for supporting pro-Western governments in Greece and Turkey in 1947, invested heavily in European recovery with the Marshall Plan in 1948, created NATO in 1949, led a military coalition to protect South Korea from invasion in 1950, and signed a new security treaty with Japan in 1960.
These and other actions both bolstered the order and contained Soviet power. As the American diplomat George Kennan and others noted, there were five crucial areas of industrial productivity and strength in the postwar world: the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and Northeast Asia. To protect itself and prevent a third world war, Washington chose to isolate the Soviet Union and bind itself tightly to the other three, and U.S. troops remain in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere to this day. And within this framework, global economic, social, and ecological interdependence grew. By 1970, economic globalization had recovered to the level it had reached before being disrupted by World War I in 1914.
The mythology that has grown up around the order can be exaggerated. Washington may have displayed a general preference for democracy and openness, but it frequently supported dictators or made cynical self-interested moves along the way. In its first decades, the postwar system was largely limited to a group of like-minded states centered on the Atlantic littoral; it did not include many large countries such as China, India, and the Soviet bloc states, and it did not always have benign effects on nonmembers. In global military terms, the United States was not hegemonic, because the Soviet Union balanced U.S. power. And even when its power was greatest, Washington could not prevent the “loss” of China, the partition of Germany and Berlin, a draw in Korea, Soviet suppression of insurrections within its own bloc, the creation and survival of a communist regime in Cuba, and failure in Vietnam.
Americans have had bitter debates and partisan differences over military interventions and other foreign policy issues over the years, and they have often grumbled about paying for the defense of other rich countries. Still, the demonstrable success of the order in helping secure and stabilize the world over the past seven decades has led to a strong consensus that defending, deepening, and extending this system has been and continues to be the central task of U.S. foreign policy.
Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin and the Yalta Conference, 1945
Until now, that is—for recently, the desirability and sustainability of the order have been called into question as never before. Some critics, such as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, have argued that the costs of maintaining the order outweigh its benefits and that Washington would be better off handling its interactions with other countries on a case-by-case transactional basis, making sure it “wins” rather than “loses” on each deal or commitment. Others claim that the foundations of the order are eroding because of a long-term global power transition involving the dramatic rise of Asian economies such as China and India. And still others see it as threatened by a broader diffusion of power from governments to nonstate actors thanks to ongoing changes in politics, society, and technology. The order, in short, is facing its greatest challenges in generations. Can it survive, and will it?
POWER CHALLENGED AND DIFFUSED
Public goods are benefits that apply to everyone and are denied to no one. At the national level, governments provide many of these to their citizens: safety for people and property, economic infrastructure, a clean environment. In the absence of international government, global public goods—a clean climate or financial stability or freedom of the seas—have sometimes been provided by coalitions led by the largest power, which benefits the most from these goods and can afford to pay for them. When the strongest powers fail to appreciate this dynamic, global public goods are underproduced and everybody suffers. The mythology that has grown up around the order can be exaggerated. Some observers see the main threat to the current liberal order coming from the rapid rise of a China that does not always appear to appreciate that great power carries with it great responsibilities. They worry that China is about to pass the United States in power and that when it does, it will not uphold the current order because it views it as an external imposition reflecting others’ interests more than its own. This concern is misguided, however, for two reasons: because China is unlikely to surpass the United States in power anytime soon and because it understands and appreciates the order more than is commonly realized.
Contrary to the current conventional wisdom, China is not about to replace the United States as the world’s dominant country. Power involves the ability to get what you want from others, and it can involve payment, coercion, or attraction. China’s economy has grown dramatically in recent decades, but it is still only 61 percent of the size of the U.S. economy, and its rate of growth is slowing. And even if China does surpass the United States in total economic size some decades from now, economic might is just part of the geopolitical equation. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the United States spends four times as much on its military as does China, and although Chinese capabilities have been increasing in recent years, serious observers think that China will not be able to exclude the United States from the western Pacific, much less exercise global military hegemony. And as for soft power, the ability to attract others, a recent index published by Portland, a London consultancy, ranks the United States first and China 28th. And as China tries to catch up, the United States will not be standing still. It has favorable demographics, increasingly cheap energy, and the world’s leading universities and technology companies.
Moreover, China benefits from and appreciates the existing international order more than it sometimes acknowledges. It is one of only five countries with a veto in the UN Security Council and has gained from liberal economic institutions, such as the World Trade Organization (where it accepts dispute-settlement judgments that go against it) and the International Monetary Fund (where its voting rights have increased and it fills an important deputy director position). China is now the second-largest funder of UN peacekeeping forces and has participated in UN programs related to Ebola and climate change. In 2015, Beijing joined with Washington in developing new norms for dealing with climate change and conflicts in cyberspace. On balance, China has tried not to overthrow the current order but rather to increase its influence within it. The order is facing its greatest challenges in generations. The order will inevitably look somewhat different as the twenty-first century progresses. China, India, and other economies will continue to grow, and the U.S. share of the world economy will drop. But no other country, including China, is poised to displace the United States from its dominant position. Even so, the order may still be threatened by a general diffusion of power away from governments toward nonstate actors. The information revolution is putting a number of transnational issues, such as financial stability, climate change, terrorism, pandemics, and cybersecurity, on the global agenda at the same time as it is weakening the ability of all governments to respond.
Complexity is growing, and world politics will soon not be the sole province of governments. Individuals and private organizations—from corporations and nongovernmental organizations to terrorists and social movements—are being empowered, and informal networks will undercut the monopoly on power of traditional bureaucracies. Governments will continue to possess power and resources, but the stage on which they play will become ever more crowded, and they will have less ability to direct the action. Even if the United States remains the largest power, accordingly, it will not be able to achieve many of its international goals acting alone. For example, international financial stability is vital to the prosperity of Americans, but the United States needs the cooperation of others to ensure it. Global climate change and rising sea levels will affect the quality of life, but Americans cannot manage these problems by themselves. And in a world where borders are becoming more porous, letting in everything from drugs to infectious diseases to terrorism, nations must use soft power to develop networks and build institutions to address shared threats and challenges. China is unlikely to surpass the United States in power anytime soon. Washington can provide some important global public goods largely by itself. The U.S. Navy is crucial when it comes to policing the law of the seas and defending freedom of navigation, and the U.S. Federal Reserve undergirds international financial stability by serving as a lender of last resort. On the new transnational issues, however, success will require the cooperation of others—and thus empowering others can help the United States accomplish its own goals. In this sense, power becomes a positive-sum game: one needs to think of not just the United States’ power over others but also the power to solve problems that the United States can acquire by working with others. In such a world, the ability to connect with others becomes a major source of power, and here, too, the United States leads the pack. The United States comes first in the Lowy Institute’s ranking of nations by number of embassies, consulates, and missions. It has some 60 treaty allies, and The Economist estimates that nearly 100 of the 150 largest countries lean toward it, while only 21 lean against it.
Increasingly, however, the openness that enables the United States to build networks, maintain institutions, and sustain alliances is itself under siege. This is why the most important challenge to the provision of world order in the twenty-first century comes not from without but from within. POPULISM VS. GLOBALIZATION
Even if the United States continues to possess more military, economic, and soft-power resources than any other country, it may choose not to use those resources to provide public goods for the international system at large. It did so during the interwar years, after all, and in the wake of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, a 2013 poll found that 52 percent of Americans believed that “the U.S. should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.”
The 2016 presidential election was marked by populist reactions to globalization and trade agreements in both major parties, and the liberal international order is a project of just the sort of cosmopolitan elites whom populists see as the enemy. The roots of populist reactions are both economic and cultural. Areas that have lost jobs to foreign competition appear to have tended to support Trump, but so did older white males who have lost status with the rise in power of other demographic groups. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that in less than three decades, whites will no longer be a racial majority in the United States, precipitating the anxiety and fear that contributed to Trump’s appeal, and such trends suggest that populist passions will outlast Trump’s campaign.
It has become almost conventional wisdom to argue that the populist surge in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere marks the beginning of the end of the contemporary era of globalization and that turbulence may follow in its wake, as happened after the end of an earlier period of globalization a century ago. But circumstances are so different today that the analogy doesn’t hold up. There are so many buffers against turbulence now, at both the domestic and the international level, that a descent into economic and geopolitical chaos, as in the 1930s, is not in the cards. Discontent and frustration are likely to continue, and the election of Trump and the British vote to leave the EU demonstrate that populist reactions are common to many Western democracies. Policy elites who want to support globalization and an open economy will clearly need to pay more attention to economic inequality, help those disrupted by change, and stimulate broad-based economic growth.
It would be a mistake to read too much about long-term trends in U.S. public opinion from the heated rhetoric of the recent election. The prospects for elaborate trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership have suffered, but there is not likely to be a reversion to protectionism on the scale of the 1930s. A June 2016 poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, for example, found that 65 percent of Americans thought that globalization was mostly good for the United States, despite concerns about a loss of jobs. And campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, in a 2015 Pew survey, 51 percent of respondents said that immigrants strengthened the country. World politics will soon not be the sole province of governments. Nor will the United States lose the ability to afford to sustain the order. Washington currently spends less than four percent of its GDP on defense and foreign affairs. That is less than half the share that it spent at the height of the Cold War. Alliances are not significant economic burdens, and in some cases, such as that of Japan, it is cheaper to station troops overseas than at home. The problem is not guns versus butter but guns versus butter versus taxes. Because of a desire to avoid raising taxes or further increasing the national debt, the U.S. national security budget is currently locked in a zero-sum tradeoff with domestic expenditures on education, infrastructure, and research and development. Politics, not absolute economic constraints, will determine how much is spent on what.
The disappointing track record of recent U.S. military interventions has also undermined domestic support for an engaged global role. In an age of transnational terrorism and refugee crises, keeping aloof from all intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries is neither possible nor desirable. But regions such as the Middle East are likely to experience turmoil for decades, and Washington will need to be more careful about the tasks it takes on. Invasion and occupation breed resentment and opposition, which in turn raise the costs of intervention while lowering the odds of success, further undermining public support for an engaged foreign policy.
Political fragmentation and demagoguery, finally, pose yet another challenge to the United States’ ability to provide responsible international leadership, and the 2016 election revealed just how fragmented the American electorate is. The U.S. Senate, for example, has failed to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, despite the fact that the country is relying on it to help protect freedom of navigation in the South China Sea against Chinese provocations. Congress failed for five years to fulfill an important U.S. commitment to support the reallocation of International Monetary Fund quotas from Europe to China, even though it would have cost almost nothing to do so. Congress has passed laws violating the international legal principle of sovereign immunity, a principle that protects not just foreign governments but also American diplomatic and military personnel abroad. And domestic resistance to putting a price on carbon emissions makes it hard for the United States to lead the fight against climate change.
The United States will remain the world’s leading military power for decades to come, and military force will remain an important component of U.S. power. A rising China and a declining Russia frighten their neighbors, and U.S. security guarantees in Asia and Europe provide critical reassurance for the stability that underlies the prosperity of the liberal order. Markets depend on a framework of security, and maintaining alliances is an important source of influence for the United States.
At the same time, military force is a blunt instrument unsuited to dealing with many situations. Trying to control the domestic politics of nationalist foreign populations is a recipe for failure, and force has little to offer in addressing issues such as climate change, financial stability, or Internet governance. Maintaining networks, working with other countries and international institutions, and helping establish norms to deal with new transnational issues are crucial. It is a mistake to equate globalization with trade agreements. Even if economic globalization were to slow, technology is creating ecological, political, and social globalization that will all require cooperative responses.
Leadership is not the same as domination, and Washington’s role in helping stabilize the world and underwrite its continued progress may be even more important now than ever. Americans and others may not notice the security and prosperity that the liberal order provides until they are gone—but by then, it may be too late.
Remember the Non-Aligned Movement? It was formed in 1961 by developing nations as a buffer against US-USSR machinations and the legacies of colonialism. Today, Harsh Pant describes how the Movement has metastasized into a forum for troubled states. Worse yet, its aimless agendas are no longer suitable for a multipolar world.
This article was originally published by YaleGlobal Online in September 2016. The once-powerful Non-Aligned Movement’s struggle to remain relevant was evident in failed summit in Venezuela
The 55-year-old Non-Aligned Movement, a once powerful bloc of independent nations, is dying and nobody is sending flowers. Interest has hit a new low with just eight heads of states showing up at Venezuela’s Margarita Island for this year’s summit. The previous summit, held in Iran in 2012, was attended by 35 heads of state from the 120-nation bloc.
The rump group appearing in Venezuela included Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Iran's Hassan Rouhani and Palestine's Mahmoud Abbas along with heads of state of Ecuador and Bolivia, regional allies of Venezuela. The most notable absence was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose august predecessor Jawaharlal Nehru was the leading light of the Non-Aligned Movement.
The summit was a lackluster affair with less than half of the delegations attending, partly due to the domestic political troubles of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The country is on a downward spiral economically with inflation in double digits and chronic shortages of food and other basic supplies and growing demands for a referendum on removing Maduro from office before his term ends in 2019.
Yet Maduro spent more than $120 million on the summit, leading his political opponents to suggest that Venezuelans' money was spent for the “government's ego.” Maduro faces isolation in his own backyard as the Organization of American States has termed his government “repressive and autocratic” and members of the Southern Common Market, or Mercosur, have come together to oppose Venezuela’s assumption of the group’s presidency.
In the midst of his growing regional and global isolation, Maduro had hoped to use the summit to bolster his domestic legitimacy. Instead, he became the butt of ridicule.
Beyond Venezuela, the growing irrelevance of an ideology that had emerged during the height of the Cold War is a broader issue. Founded in 1961, in now defunct Yugoslavia, the Non-Aligned Movement was an attempt by newly independent nations to preserve their strategic autonomy by not getting entangled in the East-West rivalry shaping global politics. Co-founders were Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno; Egypt’s second president, Gamal Abdel Nasser; Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah; and Yugoslavia’s president, Josip Broz Tito. In theory, the idea was excellent, but in reality, the group soon developed strong anti-West orientation and statist economic policies. More often not, member nations failed to develop an action-oriented agenda. The result was that nations continued to take positions based on narrow self-interests rather than supporting other members in their times of need.
With the end of the Cold War, bloc-politics petered out, but members of NAM continued to insist on the relevance of non-alignment. The most vociferous of these voices was from India, which made the continuation of non-alignment almost an issue of national identity. Even as India grew closer to the United States on strategic issues, the Congress Party, which has ruled for the country for the better part of the last six decades and whose leader, Nehru, was among the original founders of the Non-Alignment Movement, used the bloc to take on critics accusing the party of moving the country into the American camp.
The Indian political landscape has been radically altered with Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party coming to power as prime minister in 2014. In a move of great symbolism, Modi did not attend the 17th non-alignment summit despite Venezuela’s repeated attempts to woo him. Instead, he dispatched Vice-President Hamid Ansari. Following Charan Singh in 1979, Modi was the second prime minister to miss the summit since the country had co-founded the movement.
Modi’s shift away from Nehru’s legacy is a significant departure from the traditional foreign policy approach of New Delhi. Indian policymakers’ fixation with non-alignment has remained a central component of Indian identity in global politics. Although India has had to accept help of the two global powers throughout the Cold War – notably from the United States in 1962 against China and from the Soviet Union in 1971 against Pakistan – the country has preserved a façade of non-alignment, at least in rhetoric. The dominance of the Congress Party in Indian polity and intellectual life meant that as late as 2012 Indian strategic thinkers struggled to move beyond approach with the release of Non-alignment 2.0, a policy report that pulled the post-Cold War threads of strategic autonomy into a full revival of Nehru’s non-alignment for modern times.
But New Delhi faces a new set of challenges, in particular the rise of China. Indian policymakers confront a conundrum in calculating the benefits and risks of an increasingly assertive neighbor and a network of alliances with likeminded countries.
Modi, with his center-right political inclinations, does not share ideological attachment to Nehru’s ideas. He has gradually but decisively shifted Indian foreign policy in directions which few would have dared try before. While sections of the Indian intellectual establishment still retain reflexive anti-Americanism, Modi has used his decisive mandate to carve a new partnership with the United States to harness its capital and technology for his domestic development agenda. He is not ambivalent about positioning India as a challenger to China’s growing regional might and assertiveness. With this in mind, he signed the bilateral Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement with the United States for facilitating logistical support, supplies and services between the US and Indian militaries on a reimbursable basis and providing a framework to govern such exchanges. Modi is also busy pursuing strong partnerships with US allies in the region including Japan, Australia and Vietnam. He has taken a strong position on the South China Sea dispute in favor of states such as Vietnam and the Philippines as well as expanded the US-India bilateral naval exercises to include Japan.
The astute politician also recognizes the domestic challenges as he pivots India closer to the United States. So he continues to invest in non-Western platforms such as the BRICS grouping – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Economically the grouping is less attractive, given economic troubles in Russia, Brazil and South Africa. Still, India will host the eighth annual BRICS summit in Goa in October with great fanfare, if only to assuage domestic critics that New Delhi does not intend to put all its eggs in one US basket.
Much like India, other countries are recognizing the diminishing returns to being non-aligned in an age when the binaries of East and West, North and South are losing salience. The internal dysfunctionalities of the movement are far too evident today than they were during the Cold War.
Therefore, it’s no surprise that the Venezuela summit was a big failure. Members in attendance could only agree on a statement criticizing the United States for its “interventionism” around the world. As the US continues to retreat from foreign military involvement and embraces an isolationist mood, the Non-Alignment Movement increasingly becomes a moribund organization in need of a decent burial though few member states would dare to call for it openly.
About the Author Harsh V. Pant is a distinguished fellow and head of the Strategic Studies Programme at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, and a professor of international relations at King’s College London.
What is Eurasianism?
Graham E. Fuller (grahamefuller.com)
13 September 2016
You might recall the term “Eurasia” from high school geography classes. The term isn’t used much any more in political discussions in the West, but it should be. That is where the most serious geopolitical action is going to be taking place in the world as we move deeper into the 21st century. The US, focused so intently on “containment” of Russia, ISIS, and China will be missing the bigger Eurasian strategic picture. Eurasia is the greatest landmass of the world, embracing Europe and all of Asia—some of the oldest and greatest centers of human civilization. So what is Eurasianism? It has meant different things at different periods. A century ago, the Kissingers of the time spun theories about a deep and inevitable strategic clash between sea-borne power (UK/US) and continental/land-based powers (Germany, Russia.) “Eurasia” then meant mostly Europe and western Russia. Indeed, what need was there to talk then about Asia itself? Most of Asia was underdeveloped and lay under the control of the British Empire (India, China) or the French (Indo-China) and had no independent will. Japan was the only real “Asian power”—that ironically developed its own imperial designs, mimicking the West, and thus came to clash with American imperial power in the Pacific. Today of course all that is different. Eurasia increasingly means “Asia” in which the “Euro” part figures modestly. Furthermore, China has now become the center of Eurasia as the world’s largest economy. Not surprisingly, China (like the Muslim world) projects a decidedly “anti-imperial” bent based on what it sees as its humiliation at the hands of the West (and Japan) during its two-hundred year eclipse—during one of its dynastic down-cycles. But China is very much back now into a classic “up-cycle” mode of power and influence again and is determined to project its weight and influence. India too now is now a rapidly developing power with regional reach. And Japan, while quiescent, still represents formidable economic power, perhaps to be augmented by greater military regional reach. The significance of the term “Eurasian” has changed a good deal, but it still suggests strategic rivalry. At a time when the US formally declares its intent to militarily dominate the world (“full spectrum dominance” was the official Pentagon doctrine in 2000) the concept of Eurasianism is responding with vigor. And not just in China, but in its new significance for countries like Russia, Iran, even Turkey. It suggests a sense of the eclipse of dominant western power in the face of new Asian power. It’s not all just about military and money. It’s also cultural. Russian culture has for two centuries maintained a lively debate about whether Russia belongs to the West, or embodies a distinctly Eurasian (yevraziiskaya) culture that is separate from the West. Eurasianists represent a significant force within Russian strategic and military thinking (although Putin, interestingly, does not fully embrace this world-view.) The idea is a vague but culturally important one; it grapples with Russian identity. It speaks of a Slavic culture but with deep Eurasian roots even in an old Turkic and Tatar past. Remember that historically it is the modern West that torched Russia twice: witness the invasions of Napoleon and Hitler up to the gates of Moscow. Nato today probes ever more deeply all around the Russian periphery. The Eurasianists are suspicious of, if not hostile to, the West as a permanent threat to “Holy Mother Russia.” “Eurasianism” will always lurk just beneath the surface in the Russian strategic world-view. That is what Russia’s new Eurasian Economic Union is all about, a goal to at least economically unite Belarus, the Central Asian states and others into a greater Eurasian economic whole. (Oil-rich Kazakstan was actually the author of the concept; it will seek to maintain ties with the West; but look at it its place on a world map to see where Kazakstan’s real long-term options lie. Russia may not now be the best economic star to tie one’s future to, but it is just one of many Eurasian vehicles out there and they are not mutually exclusive. Options bring greater security. China is moving in stunningly ambitious directions in creating the new Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (that 57 states have signed onto including most European states, Canada and Australia—but conspicuously without Japan so far, or the US.) This creates a new Eurasian-focused central banking instrument with strong Chinese influence. China is also projecting massive new transportation networks (the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road —“One Belt One Road”) across Eurasia to China linking China to Europe, the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and the Far East by rail, road, and sea. China’s “Eurasian strategy” is already a burgeoning reality. Yes, suspicions and rivalries exist between Russia and China and India and Japan. But the strong economic and developmental thrust of these proposals differ markedly from the American more “security” focused organization with its worrisome military implications. Not only has Washington fought these Chinese and Eurasian initiatives unsuccessfully, but it is US policies in particular—that identify both Russia and China as the presumptive enemy—that have helped bring Russia and China together on many issues, linked now by shared distrust of US global military ambitions. Japan, incidentally, before World War II had its own doctrine of “Eurasianism” —an effort to identify with and stir up Asian peoples and territories against western colonial domination; this strategy could have been quite effective had it not been accompanied by Japan’s own brutal military invasions of East Asian countries, destroying the credibility of the Japanese “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.” Today Japan hasn’t moved its location; it will still have to deal with the reality of Chinese power in the East. And what Japanese leader would seriously pursue a long range policy of hostility to China in support of a US Pacific strategy that is inherently designed to bottle up China? Especially when China and Japan are huge mutual trading and investment partners? Iran is keenly interested in balancing against geopolitical pressures from the US and seeks membership in these Russian and Chinese economic development institutions. Iran is a natural “Eurasian “ and “Silk Road” power. Turkey has gotten into the Eurasian game, again. Going back to the early days of Erdogan’s AK Party foreign policy— in the vision of then foreign minister Davutoglu—Turkey was no longer limited to being a western power, but also proclaimed its geopolitical interests (nearly a hundred years after the fall of the Ottoman Empire) in the Middle East, and indeed, Eurasia. (After all, the Turks originally come from Eurasia, having migrated west from Lake Baikal a thousand years ago.) That means serious ties with Russia, combined with deep ethnic, cultural and historical ties with Central Asia, and with China. Turkey (like Iran and Pakistan) seeks to be part of these Russian and Chinese networks. And, among some Turkish nationalist politicians and military officers (including many secular Kemalists) there is strong “Eurasianist” leaning to expand Turkey’s geopolitical options to explore strategic and cultural ties with Eurasia. It also reflects an expression of distrust of western and US efforts to dominate the region. For Turkey this is not an either/or issue. It can seek to be part of Europe (including Nato) but will not relinquish the broad geostrategic alternative options to the East, with its ever greater economic clout, and roads and rails to link it. In short, the new Eurasianism is no longer about nineteenth century land and sea power. It is an acknowledgment that the era of western (and especially US) global dominance is over. Washington can no longer command (or afford) a longer-term bid to dominate Eurasia. In economic terms no state in the region, including Turkey, would be foolish enough to turn its back on this rising “Eurasian” potential that also offers strategic balance and economic options. There are, of course, huge fault-lines across Eurasia—ethnic, economic, strategic, and some degree of rivalry. But the more Washington attempts to contain or throttle Eurasianism as a genuine rising force, the greater will be the determination of states to become part of this rising Eurasian world, even while not rejecting the West. All countries like to have alternatives. They don’t like to lie beholden to a single global power that tries to call the shots. America’s narrative of what the global order is all about is no longer accepted globally. Furthermore it is no longer realistic. It would seem short-sighted for Washington to continue focus upon expanding military alliances while most of the rest of the world is looking to greater prosperity and rising regional clout. (China’s military expenditures are about one quarter of US spending.) Graham E. Fuller is a former senior CIA official, author of numerous books on the Muslim World; his latest book is “Breaking Faith: A novel of espionage and an American’s crisis of conscience in Pakistan.” (Amazon, Kindle) grahamefuller.com
Enlarge Source: International Gas Union
According to Mr. Tanchum:
