Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power

America’s global standing in the decades ahead will depend on its successful implementation of purposeful efforts to overcome its drift toward a socioeconomic obsolescence and to shape a new and stable geopolitical equilibrium on the world’s most important continent by far, Eurasia.

The key to America’s future is thus in the hands of the American people. America can significantly upgrade its domestic condition and redefine its central international role in keeping with the new objective and subjective conditions of the twenty-first century. In order to achieve this, it is essential that America undertake a national effort to enhance the public’s understanding of America’s changing, and potentially dangerous, global circumstances. America’s inherent assets, as discussed previously, still justify cautious optimism that such a renewal can refute the prognoses of America’s irreversible decline and global irrelevance, but public ignorance of the growing overall vulnerability of America’s domestic and foreign standing must be tackled deliberately, head-on, and from the top down.

Democracy is simultaneously one of America’s greatest strengths and one of the central sources of its current predicament. America’s founders designed its constitutional system so that most decisions could only be made incrementally. Therefore, truly comprehensive national decisions require a unique degree of consensus, generated by dramatic and socially compelling circumstances (such as, at their extreme, a great financial crisis or an imminent external threat) and/or propelled by the persuasive impact of determined national leadership. And since in America only the President has a voice that resonates nationally, the President must drive America’s renewal forward.

As both candidate and President, Barack Obama has delivered several remarkable speeches. He has spoken directly and in a historically sensitive manner to Europeans, Middle Easterners, Muslims, and Asians, addressing the necessarily changing relationship of America to their concerns. In particular, President Obama’s speeches in Prague and Cairo raised the world’s expectations regarding the orientation of America’s future foreign policy. International public opinion polls showed an almost immediate and positive reaction in the world’s perception of America as a whole because of President Obama’s image and rhetoric. Yet he has failed to speak directly to the American people about America’s changing role in the world, its implications, and its demands.

The tragedy of September 11, 2001, fundamentally altered America’s own view of its global purpose. Building off of the public’s basic ignorance of world history and geography, profit-motivated mass media exploited public fears allowing for the demagogically inclined Bush administration to spend eight years remaking the United States into a crusader state. The “war on terror” became synonymous with foreign policy and the United States, for the most part, neglected to build a strategy that addressed its long-term interests in an evolving geopolitical environment. Thus, America was left unprepared—thanks to the confluence of the above—to face the novel challenges of the twenty-first century.

America and its leaders need to understand the new strategic landscape so that they can embrace a domestic and foreign renewal aimed at revitalizing America’s global role. What follows addresses the demands of the evolving geopolitical conditions and provides, in response, the outline of a timely vision for US foreign policy.

1: EURASIA’S GEOPOLITICAL VOLATILITY

Both the most immediate foreign policy threat to America’s global status and the longer-range challenge to global geopolitical stability arise on the Eurasian continent. The immediate threat is currently located in the region east of Egypt’s Suez Canal, west of China’s Xinjiang Province, south of Russia’s post-Soviet frontiers in the Caucasus and with the new central Asian states. The longer-range challenge to global stability arises out of the still-continuing and consequentially unpredictable shift in the global center of gravity from the West to the East (or from Europe to Asia and perhaps even from America to China).

America, more than any other power, has become directly involved in a series of conflicts within Eurasia. It is a telling fact that regional powers potentially more directly affected by the consequences of what happens in that volatile area—such as India, Russia, and China—have stayed carefully away from any direct participation in America’s painful (at times, inept) efforts to cope with the region’s slide into escalating ethnic and religious conflict.

Ultimately, any constructive solution to the Afghan conflict has to combine an internal political accommodation between the government in Kabul and rival Afghan factions within an external regional framework in which Afghanistan’s principal neighbors assume a major role in contributing to the country’s stability. As argued earlier, protracted and largely American military involvement is neither the solution to the Afghan tragedy initiated by the Soviet invasion of the country nor is it likely to provide regional stability. Similarly, the regional challenge posed by Iran can be resolved neither by an Israeli nor by an American military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities now under construction. Such actions would simply fuse Iranian nationalism with belligerent fundamentalism, producing a protracted conflict with highly destabilizing consequences for the few still pro-Western Arab regimes of the Middle East. In the long run, Iran also has to be assimilated into a process of regional accommodation.

In any case, America can still contain a nuclear Iran. In the past, America had successfully deterred the use of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union and China—despite at times extreme belligerence by both countries—and eventually produced conditions favorable to an American-Russian as well as an American-Chinese accommodation. America, moreover, has the capacity to provide an effective nuclear shield for all of the Middle East in the event that it becomes evident that Iran is actually acquiring nuclear weapons. Hence, if Iran does not reach an acceptable accommodation with the world community, providing credible assurances that its nuclear program does not contain a secret nuclear weapons component, the United States should make a public commitment to consider any Iranian attempt at intimidating or threatening its Middle Eastern neighbors as a threat against the United States.

In that context, if it becomes clear that Iran is actually in the process of acquiring nuclear weapons, America could also seek commitments from other nuclear powers to participate in the collective enforcement of a UN resolution to disarm Iran, by compulsion if necessary. But it must be stressed: such enforcement would have to be collective and involve also Russia and China. America can provide a nuclear umbrella for the region by itself, but it should not engage in a solitary military action against Iran or just in cooperation with Israel, for that would plunge America into a wider, again lonely, and eventually self-destructive conflict.

Of equal importance to the problems of Afghanistan and Iran is America’s stake in a constructive resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This conflict poisons the atmosphere of the Middle East, contributes to Muslim extremism, and is directly damaging to American national interests. A positive outcome would greatly contribute to stability in the Middle East. Otherwise, American interests in the region will suffer, and eventually Israel’s fate in such a hostile international environment will be in doubt.

These three interrelated issues are the most urgent items on America’s current geopolitical agenda because of the immediacy of their potential impact. But the far-reaching changes in the distribution of global power signal the historic need—the foregoing crises aside—for the United States also to pursue a longer-term strategic vision of more stable and cooperative Eurasian geopolitics. At this stage, only America is in the position to promote the needed transcontinental equilibrium without which the percolating conflicts on this huge and now politically activated continent will dangerously escalate. Europe, alas, is looking inward, Russia still at its recent past, China to its own future, and India enviously at China.

Such a longer-term geostrategic effort has to focus on Eurasia as a whole. Its combination of competitive geopolitical motivations, political might, and economic dynamism make that huge trans-Eurasian continent the central arena of world affairs.^{5} America—after its emergence in 1991 as the world’s only superpower—had a unique opportunity to play an active role in helping to develop Eurasia’s new international architecture in order to fill the void created by the disappearance of the once continentally dominant Sino-Soviet bloc. That opportunity was wasted, and so now the task has to be undertaken in circumstances considerably more challenging for America.

Eurasia, in the two decades since the end of the Cold War, has drifted. Europe has become less, not more, politically united, while in the meantime Turkey and Russia have both remained on the uncertain periphery of the Western community. In the East, China has grown in economic, political, and military might, creating anxiety in a region already beset with historic rivalries. America must fashion a policy relevant to the challenges on both sides of Eurasia in order to ensure the stability of the continent as a whole.

In the West, the European Union failed to use the years of “Europe whole and free” to make Europe truly whole and its freedom firmly secure. A monetary union is not a substitute for real political unity, not to mention that a monetary union based on very unequal national resources and obligations could not foster a binding sense of transnational unity. Concurrent economic tribulations, which magnified after 2007 particularly in southern Europe, made the notion of Europe as a political and military heavyweight increasingly illusory. Europe, once the center of the West, became an extension of a West whose defining player is America.

However, the unity of that currently America-dominated West should not be taken for granted. Not only do the members of the EU lack a genuinely shared transnational political identity—not to mention a common global role—but also they are potentially vulnerable to deepening geostrategic cleavages. Great Britain clings to its special attachment to the United States and to a special status in the EU. France, envious of Germany’s rising stature as the prime power of the EU, keeps seeking a preeminent role for itself by periodic overtures for shared leadership with America, Russia, or Germany, not to mention leadership of the amorphous Mediterranean Union. Germany increasingly toys with Bismarckian notions of a special relationship with Russia, which inevitably frightens some Central Europeans into pleading for ever-closer security links with the United States.

All European countries, moreover, are opting out of any serious commitment to their own, or even to NATO-based, collective security. In different ways, its rapidly aging population as well as its youth care far more for their social security than for their national security. Basically, the United States is increasingly left with the ultimate responsibility for Europe’s security, in the reassuring hope that America will remain committed to preserving the frontiers of “Europe whole and free.” But these boundaries could be leapfrogged by the emerging German-Russian special relationship, driven on Germany’s side by the irresistible attraction to its business elite (as well as to the Italian and some others) of the commercial prospects of a modernizing Russia. The European Union thus faces the prospect of deepening geostrategic divisions, with some key states tempted by the option of a privileged business as well as political relationship with Russia.

The foregoing is particularly a cause both for regret and concern because the European enterprise holds great and already demonstrated potential for the democratic and social transformation of the European east. The enlargement of the EU to Central Europe (which during the Cold War was usually referred to as Eastern Europe) has already generated far-reaching institutional and infrastructural reforms in the region, most significantly in Poland, providing an example that is becoming increasingly attractive to the peoples of the adjoining Ukraine and Belarus. In time, Europe’s example could become a truly compelling transformative influence on both Turkey and Russia, especially if a geopolitically more active Europe, together with America, were guided by a shared long-term goal to engage them in a larger and more vital Western community.

That requires, however, a long-term vision and an equally long-term strategy for executing it. But today’s Europe—along with America—lacks both. It is ironic that even in the geographically distant Korea the country’s leading newspaper published in the fall of 2010 an apt indictment of Europe’s strategic self-indulgence, bluntly stating that:

So, the question “where Europe will be forty years from now?” is directly germane in geopolitical terms to the future of Europe’s relationship with its geographic east, and that should be of equal concern both to Europe and to America. What should be the eastern boundary of a larger Europe and thus of the West? What roles could Turkey and Russia play were they truly to become part of a larger West? Conversely, what would be the consequences for Europe and America were Turkey and Russia to remain—in part because of European prejudice and American passivity—outside of Europe and thus also outside of the West?

In Turkey, its ongoing but unfinished transformation has in fact been modeled from its very start on Europe, with the announcement in 1921 by Ataturk (Mustafa Kemal), the leader of the “Young Turks” movement, of the decision to transform the Turkish ethnic core of the fallen and dismembered Ottoman Empire into a modern European-type secular nation-state, to be known henceforth as Turkey. In more recent times, its modernization evolved into democratization, a process to a significant degree driven by Turkey’s interest in becoming more explicitly a part of the unifying Europe. The Turkish aspiration was encouraged as early as the 1960s by the Europeans themselves, and it resulted in Turkey’s official application for membership in 1987. In turn, that action led to the EU’s decision in 2005 to start formal negotiations. And despite the recent hesitations of some members of the EU—particularly France and Germany—regarding Turkish membership, it is a geopolitical reality that a genuinely Western-type Turkish democracy, if solidly anchored in the West through more than just NATO, could be Europe’s shield protecting it from the restless Middle East.

The case regarding Russia is more problematical in the short run, but in the longer term the pursuit of a similarly positive and far-reaching strategic engagement is becoming historically timely. Admittedly, Russia, twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, still remains undecided about its identity, nostalgic about its past, and simultaneously overreaching in some of its aspirations. Its efforts to create “a common economic space” (under the aegis of the Kremlin) in the area of the former Soviet Union naturally worry the newly independent post-Soviet states. The dominant elements in its power elite still maneuver to dilute transatlantic links, and they still resent Central Europe’s desire for deep integration within the European Union and its defensive membership in NATO, even while also worrying about China’s growing power on the very edge of Russia’s mineral-rich and sparsely populated Far East.

At the same time, however, the increasingly politically important Russian middle class is evidently adopting the life-styles of the West while a growing number of Russia’s intellectual community speak more openly of their desire for Russia to be a part of the modern West. The fundamental question “what is the right relationship between modernization and democratization?” has started to permeate informal debates within the country’s upper strata, including even some segments of the top political elite entrenched in the Kremlin. A growing number of Russians are beginning to realize that a fundamental change in Russia’s relationship with the West may be in the country’s vital long-range interest.

Simultaneously, uncertainty regarding Asia’s geopolitical stability is rising in the eastern half of Eurasia. Unless deliberately constrained, the competitive geopolitics of the newly energized Asia could become ominously reminiscent of conflicts in the West over the last two hundred years. China’s ambitions are beginning to surface more openly, with nationalistic assertiveness increasingly undermining the carefully cultivated veil of official modesty, national moderation, and historic patience. Its competition for regional preeminence with Japan and with India is still primarily in the diplomatic and economic realms, but the availability of effective military power—and perhaps the willingness to use it—is becoming a relevant consideration in respective geopolitical calculations. Any use of force could become especially ominous in the rivalry between the nuclear-armed China and India, especially over the also nuclear-armed Pakistan. The rising new East could then, indeed, become quite turbulent, just as the old West once was.

As noted earlier, the southwest region of the awakened eastern part of Eurasia is already in a potentially contagious crisis. The new “Global Balkans”[18] embracing the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—where the United States is the only major external power to have become militarily involved—risks expanding to Central Asia, with violence already intensifying in parts of Russia’s Muslim-inhabited North Caucasus. Every one of the new Central Asian states is potentially vulnerable to internal violence, each of them is insecure, and all of them desire more direct access to the outside world while seeking to avoid either Russian or Chinese domination. The now politically awakened Eurasia as a whole thus lacks a shared framework and its geopolitical stability is questionable.

Over one hundred years ago the path-breaking geopolitical thinker, Harold Mackinder, identified Eurasia as the key “world-island” and concluded that “who rules the world-island, commands the world.” In all of world history, only three ruthless heads of powerful military machines came even close to achieving such “rule.” Genghis Khan almost did so by relying on his remarkable military skills, but his conquest of the “world-island” ended on the edge of Central Europe. He could not overcome the consequences of distance and of numbers, and consequently the numerically thin Mongol veneer of his “empire” was assimilated before long into the initially conquered populations.

Hitler, having conquered Europe, also came close to achieving from the opposite direction a similar outcome, and might have won if the Nazi invasion of Russia had been accompanied by a Japanese attack on Russia from the East. Then, after Hitler’s defeat, with Soviet forces entrenched west of Berlin in the center of Europe, Stalin actually came the closest when his trans-Eurasian Sino-Soviet bloc, which emerged as a result of Communist victory in China, attempted to drive America out of Korea. However, the possibility of Communist control over the “world-island” faded rapidly as NATO was organized in the West and as the Sino-Soviet bloc in the East split after Stalin’s death in a bitter and divisive feud.

Given the rise of the newly dynamic but also internationally complex and politically awakened Asia, the new reality is that no one power can any longer seek—in Mackinder’s words—to “rule” Eurasia and thus to “command” the world. America’s role, especially after having wasted twenty years, now has to be both subtler and more responsive to Eurasia’s new realities of power. Domination by a single state, no matter how powerful, is no longer possible, especially given the emergence of new regional players. Accordingly, the timely and needed objective of a deliberate longer-term effort by America should be broad geopolitical trans-Eurasian stability based on increasing accommodation among the old powers of the West and the new powers of the East.

In essence, the pursuit of the foregoing objective will require US engagement in shaping a more vital and larger West while helping to balance the emerging rivalry in the rising and restless East. This complex undertaking will call for a sustained effort over the next several decades to connect, in transformative ways, through institutions like the EU and NATO, both Russia and Turkey with a West that already embraces both the EU and the United States. Steady but genuine progress along that axis could infuse a sense of strategic purpose into a Europe increasingly threatened by a slide into destabilizing and divisive geopolitical irrelevance. At the same time, America’s strategic engagement in Asia should entail a carefully calibrated effort to nurture a cooperative partnership with China while deliberately promoting reconciliation between China and US-allied Japan, in addition to expanding friendly relations with such key states as India and Indonesia. Otherwise, Asian rivalries in general or fear of a dominant China in particular could undermine both Asia’s new potential world role and its regional stability. The task ahead is to translate a long-term geopolitical vision into a historically sound and politically attractive strategy that promotes realistically the revival of the West and facilitates the stabilization of the East within a wider cooperative framework.

2: A LARGER AND VITAL WEST

The earlier discussions of “The Receding West ” and of “The Waning of the American Dream” were not exercises in historical inevitability. A renewal of American domestic dynamism is possible, while America, by working purposefully with Europe, can shape a larger and more vital West. The point of departure for such a long-term effort is recognition of the historical reality that the Europe of today is still unfinished business. And it will remain so until the West in a strategically sober and prudent fashion embraces Turkey on more equal terms and engages Russia politically as well as economically. Such an expanded West can help anchor the stability of an evolving Eurasia, as well as revitalize its own historic legacy.

The dividing line between Europe on the one hand and Russia and Turkey on the other is a geographical abstraction. Neither the rivers Bug (separating Poland from Belarus) nor Prut (separating Romania from Ukraine) nor Narva (separating Estonia from Russia) define the natural geographic and cultural outer limits of Europe’s East. Nor, for that matter, do the Ural Mountains located deep within Russia, customarily cited in geography books as delineating Europe from Asia. Even less meaningful in that regard is the Strait of Bosporus, which links the Mediterranean and Black Seas, with the Turkish metropolis Istanbul said to be located in “Europe” but with the city’s extension across the narrow passage of seawater (as well as the main part of Turkey’s territory) said to be in “Asia.”^{6}

More misleading still are the conventional notions of the cultural boundaries of Europe. In terms of lifestyle, architecture, and social habits, Vladivostok in Russia’s far east is more European than Kazan (the capital of Tatarstan) located thousands of miles west of Vladivostok in the “European” part of the Russian Federation. Ankara, the capital of Turkey located on the Anatolian Plain and thus geographically in Asia, is as thoroughly a European city as Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, located more than half a thousand miles further east but said to be in Europe.

Ultimately, contemporary Russia and, to a lesser degree, Turkey are separated from Europe neither by geography nor by lifestyle but rather by an ambivalence—difficult to define precisely—regarding what is politically and culturally distinctive to the current postimperial West: its shared combination of residual spiritual beliefs and philosophical principles, especially in regard to the sanctity of the individual, combined with widely accepted notions of civil rights enshrined in an explicit commitment to the rule of law in constitutionally defined democratic states. The Russians profess to share these values but their political system does not reflect them. The Turks for the most part already practice them, and both assert categorically that they already are “European” culturally and socially. Each minimizes the residual impact of their once more distinctive oriental despotisms. The Turks point to the institutionalized separation of religion and state in their own modernized and increasingly democratic Turkey. The Russians stress that as far back as under Peter the Great Russia was deliberately Europeanizing itself, that the recent Communist era was essentially an aberration, and that their Russian Orthodox traditions are an integral part of European Christendom.

Nonetheless, it is true that both Russia and Turkey are inheritors, though in different ways, of culturally distinctive imperial pasts that continue to blend with their contemporary “Europeanism.” Both countries attained greatness apart from, and often against, Europe. And both subsequently experienced a deep fall. During the nineteenth century, Turkey was labeled “the sick man of Europe.” In the course of the twentieth century, Russia was seen as such twice, first before the Bolshevik Revolution and then after the fall of Soviet Communism. Both have repudiated their respective imperial pasts but they cannot entirely erase them from either their geopolitical ambitions or from their historical consciousness as they deliberately and insistently redefine themselves.

During the twentieth century, Turkey proved more successful in transforming itself than Communist Russia. Ataturk’s sweeping reforms, which were abruptly imposed on Turkey in 1924 (three years after its proclamation as a postimperial state), produced dramatic and remarkably successful changes. The country broke with its Arab-Islamic connection, it suddenly (literally overnight) adopted the Western alphabet in place of the Arabic script, it removed religious elements from its state institutions, and it even changed the people’s dress code. In subsequent decades, it has progressively institutionalized in a determined fashion an increasingly democratic process within a firmly defined secular state.

Unlike Russia, at no time did Turkey either plunge into a Manichean orgy of internal killing or degenerate into totalitarianism. The ambitious nationalist mystique of Ataturk was contagious among fervent younger Turks, but it was not imposed by sustained, brutalizing, and lethal terror. There was no Gulag; nor was there any claim that what the Turks were doing domestically was universally applicable and historically inevitable. The Turkish experiment, in effect, was less globally ambitious than the Soviet but more nationally successful.

It is noteworthy that Turkey managed in an impressive fashion to shed its imperial ambitions and to redirect its national energy toward internal social modernization. In firmly promoting it, Ataturk was guided by a historic vision in which means were in balance with ends, thus avoiding the Stalinist excesses of Leninist utopianism and universalism. His vision also facilitated Turkey’s remarkably realistic accommodation to its new postimperial status, especially in contrast to the still-lingering nostalgia among some portions of the Russian elite for its recently lost multinational empire.

In the course of the last two decades, Turkey has moved steadily forward in its consolidation of a genuinely functioning constitutional democracy, driven by its desire to join the EU—having been invited several decades ago to do so by the Europeans, but on the specific condition that Turkey would satisfy Europe’s democratic standards. More importantly, however, Turkey’s steady democratization has been a reflection of its growing acceptance of democracy as a way of life. Though its democracy is still vulnerable, especially in the area of press freedom, the fact that the Turkish military has had to acquiesce to electoral outcomes and constitutional changes it did not like is a testimonial to the vitality of Turkey’s ongoing democracy. In that respect, Turkey is also clearly ahead of Russia.

Continued secularization will be critical to Turkey’s democratic progress. Because Ataturk imposed secularization from above in 1924, many Europeans and even some Turks now fear that with the onset and subsequent acceleration in recent decades of Turkey’s democratization, greater political openness could lead to the resurgence of more extreme manifestations of religious primacy in social affairs and even to the primacy of religious identity over national identity. That, so far at least, has not happened and some indications suggest that a more robust Turkish democracy gradually reduces the appeal of religious fundamentalism. For example, according to a Turkish university survey, between 1999 and 2009, public support for the adoption of sharia laws declined from over 25% to about 10%. Closer ties with Europe would be likely to favor the further social acceptance of a secular and national Turkish state.

It is also important to recognize that Turkey is already broadly connected in important ways to the West in general and to Europe specifically. It has been a stalwart member of NATO since its inception, more willing to help the Alliance in actual combat than some other European allies, and it has the second-largest standing armed force in NATO. It also maintained comprehensive and sensitive security links with the United States throughout the Cold War. For years it has been engaged in the tedious but necessary process of making its domestic law and constitutional practices compatible with EU standards. Thus de facto, though not yet as a legal fact, Turkey is in some significant ways already an informal extension of Europe and thus also of the West.

On the international arena, the increasingly modern and basically secular Turkey of today is beginning to attain a regional preeminence geographically derived from its imperial Ottoman past. Turkey’s new foreign policy, shaped by its geopolitically minded Foreign Minister (Ahmet Davutoglu, the author of the concept of “Strategic Depth”), is premised on the notion that Turkey is a regional leader in the areas once part of the Ottoman Empire, including the Levant, North Africa, and Mesopotamia. This approach is not driven by religious considerations but has a historical-geopolitical motivation. Based on the reasonable premise that good relations with neighbors are preferable to hostile ones, Davutoglu’s plan posits that Turkey should exploit its current socioeconomic dynamism—in 2010 it ranked as the world’s seventeenth-largest economy—to rebuild relationships that existed historically but faded during the twentieth century because of Kemalist concentration on internal secularization and inculcation of a specifically Turkish nationalism.

Moreover, in the wake of the Soviet Union’s dissolution and beyond the boundaries of the former Ottoman Empire, the newly independent Central Asia, largely Turkic in its cultural heritage, now beckons. Turkey’s more active commercial and cultural outreach is a potential reinforcement for the modernization, secularization, and eventual democratization of this energy-rich but geopolitically inchoate region. It is also relevant to note that since Russia seeks to monopolize direct foreign access to Central Asian energy exports, Turkey’s increasing regional role can facilitate—in joint collaboration with Azerbaijan and Georgia—Europe’s unimpeded access across the Caspian Sea to Central Asia’s oil and gas.

Turkey’s increasingly promising transformation into a modern and secular state—in spite of some persisting retardation in some social aspects including press freedom, education, and human development (see comparative Turkey-Russia tables on p. 142–143)—invests its citizens with a patriotic self-confidence that could turn into enduring anti-Western animus if Turkey were to feel itself permanently rejected by Europe. Forces within Europe—predominately in France and Germany—continue to deny Turkish aspirations because of an ambiguous belief that Turkey is an alien culture that represents an intrusion rather than a partnership. Thus, eighty-five years after the initiation of their unprecedented effort at social modernization and cultural transformation based on the European example, the Turks are now becoming resentful of their continuing exclusion. And that contributes to the risk that if the democratic experiment in Turkey were to fail, Turkey could turn back toward a more assertive Islamic political identity or succumb to some form of nondemocratic military regimentation. In either case, Turkey, instead of shielding Europe from the problems and passions of the Middle East, would amplify those challenges through the Balkans into Europe.

That eventuality could become especially threatening in the event of a continued failure by America and Europe to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace of genuine accommodation, and/or if America plunges into a direct conflict with Iran. The former—resulting very likely in intensified extremism in the Middle East—would indirectly but still quite adversely influence Turkish attitudes toward the West; the latter would threaten Turkish security, especially if the conflict were to ignite a wider Kurdish insurgency and again destabilize Iraq. The Turks would resent the fact that their national interests were not only being ignored but also jeopardized by the West.

A prolonged separation from Europe morphing into hostility could generate a political retrogression and a fundamentalist revival that could then halt Turkey’s march to modernity. In a worst-case scenario, reminiscent of the consequences for Iran of the Shah’s overthrow in 1978, such separation could even undermine Ataturk’s remarkable legacy. That would be historically and geopolitically unfortunate for three fundamental reasons. First, Turkey’s internal democratization and spreading modernization is evidence that neither democratization nor modernization are incompatible with Islamic religious traditions. Such a demonstration is of great importance to the political future of the Islamic world as well as to global stability. Second, Turkey’s commitment to peaceful cooperation with its Middle Eastern neighbors, a region of Turkey’s historic preeminence, is consistent with the security interests of the West in that region. Third, a Turkey that is increasingly Western, secular, and yet also Islamic—and that exploits its territorial and cultural connection with the peoples of the old Ottoman Empire and the post-Soviet Central Asian states—could be a Turkey that undermines the appeal of Islamic extremism and enhances regional stability in Central Asia not only to its own benefit but also to that of Europe and Russia.

In contrast to Turkey, Russia’s relationship with Europe is ambivalent. Its political elite proclaims that it desires closer links with the EU and NATO, but it is unwilling at this stage to adopt the reforms that would facilitate such linkage. Its social, political, and economic programs lack focus and their prospects remain relatively uncertain. Nevertheless, it is essential, for America, Europe, and Russia, that Russia forges a partnership with the West rooted in a commitment to shared political as well as economic values. The next two decades are likely to be critical for Russia in determining its prospects for greater—and politically genuine—collaboration with the West.

Historically, Russia considers itself to be too powerful to be satisfied with being merely a normal European state and yet has been too weak to permanently dominate Europe. It is noteworthy in this connection that its greatest military triumphs—notably, Alexander’s victorious entry into Paris in 1815 and Stalin’s celebratory dinner in Potsdam in mid-1945—were more the byproducts of the folly of Russia’s enemies than the consequence of enduringly successful Russian statesmanship. Had Napoleon not attacked Russia in 1812, it is doubtful that Russian troops would have marched into Paris in 1815. For within less than five decades of Alexander’s triumph, Russia was defeated in the Crimean War by an Anglo-French expeditionary force deployed from afar by sea. Five decades later in 1905, it was crushed in the Far East by the Japanese army and navy. In World War I, Russia was decisively defeated by a Germany that was fighting a prolonged two-front war. Stalin’s victory in the middle of the twentieth century, precipitated by Hitler’s folly, gained Russia political control over Eastern Europe and extended into the very heart of Europe. But within five decades of that triumph both the Soviet-controlled bloc of Communist states as well as the historic Russian empire itself disintegrated due to exhaustion resulting from the Cold War with America.

Nonetheless, the contemporary postimperial Russia—because of the wealth of its sparsely populated but vast territory rich in natural resources—is destined to play a significant role on the world arena. Yet historically, as a major international player, Russia has not displayed the diplomatic finesse of Great Britain, or the commercial acumen of the democratically appealing America, or the patient self-control of the historically self-confident China. It has failed to pursue consistently a state policy that prudently exploits its natural resources, extraordinary space, and impressive social talent to rise steadily while setting an international example of successful social development. Rather, Russia has tended to engage in bursts of triumphant and rather messianic self-assertion followed by plunges into lethargic morass.

Moreover, though Russia’s territorial size automatically defines it as a great power, the socioeconomic condition of its people is detrimental to Russia’s global standing. Widespread global awareness of Russia’s social liabilities and relatively modest standard of living discredits its international aspirations. Its grave demographic crisis—a negative population growth marked by high death rates—is a testimonial to social failure, with the relatively short life span of its males being the consequence of widespread alcoholism and its resulting demoralization. At the same time, the growing uncertainties regarding rising Islamic unrest along its new southern borders and Russia’s barely hidden anxieties regarding its increasingly powerful and densely populated Chinese neighbor, situated next to Russia’s empty east, collide with Moscow’s great power hubris.

In comparison to Turkey, Russia’s social performance ratings—despite the fact that it ranks overall number one in territory, number nine in population, and number two in the number of its nuclear weapons—are actually somewhat worse and can be considered at best only middling in a worldwide comparison. In the area of longevity and population growth, Russia’s numbers are disturbingly low. Cumulatively, Russia’s and Turkey’s ratings dramatize the dialectical reality that both are simultaneously in some respects advanced industrial countries and yet still somewhat underdeveloped societies, with Russia specifically handicapped by its nondemocratic and corruption-ridden political system. The comparisons with other countries ranked immediately above or below Turkey and Russia respectively are especially telling. Russia’s demographic crisis, political corruption, outdated and resource-driven economic model, and social retardation pose especially serious obstacles to a genuine fulfillment of the understandable ambitions of its talented but often misruled people. The following tables (see Figure 4.1 on pp. 142–143) reinforce the proposition that both nations would benefit greatly from a genuinely transformative relationship with a Europe that is able to reach out confidently to the East because of its ongoing links to America.

Moreover, the persisting disregard specifically in Russia for the rule of law is perhaps its greatest impediment to a philosophical embrace with the West. Without an institutionalized supremacy of law, the adoption of a Western-type democracy in Russia has so far been no more than a superficial imitation. That reality encourages and perpetuates corruption as well as the abuse of civil rights, a tradition deeply embedded in the historically prolonged subordination of Russian society to the state.

Complicating matters further, the current geopolitical orientation of Russia’s foreign policy elite, unlike Turkey’s, is quite conflicted and in some respects escapist. At this time—and also in contrast to Turkey—full-fledged membership in the Atlantic community through eventual membership in its economic as well as political and security institutions is not yet Russia’s explicit and dominant aspiration. In fact, there exist within Russia’s political and business elites multiple interpretations of Russia’s appropriate global role. Many wealthy Russian businessmen (especially in St. Petersburg and Moscow) would like Russia to be a modern, European-type society because of the resulting economic advantages. Meanwhile, many in the political elite desire Russia to be the dominant European power in a Europe detached from America, or even to be a world power on par with America. And still other Russians toy with the seemingly captivating notions of “Eurasianism,” of Slavic Union, or even of an anti-Western alliance with the Chinese.

The “Eurasianists,” mesmerized by the sheer geographic size of Russia, see it as a mighty Eurasian power, neither strictly European nor Asian, and destined to play a coequal role with America and China. They fail to realize that with their trans-Eurasian space largely empty and still underdeveloped, such a strategy is an illusion. A variant of this notion, the idea of a Russo-Chinese alliance presumably directed against America, also represents an escape from reality. The fact of the matter, painful for many Russians to acknowledge, is that in such a Russo-Chinese alliance—assuming that the Chinese would want it—Russia would be the junior partner, with potentially negative territorial consequences eventually for Russia itself.

Still other Russians cherish dreams of a Slavic Union under the aegis of the Kremlin, involving Ukraine and Belarus and enjoying “a privileged role” in the space of the former Russian empire and of the Soviet Union. They underestimate in that context the contagious appeal of nationalism, especially among the younger Ukrainians and Belarusians who have recently savored their new sovereign status. Notions of a “common economic space” with a dominant Russia cannot hide the fact that its hypothetical economic benefits cannot override the proud feelings of distinctive national identity and political independence. Efforts to pressure Ukraine or Belarus into a Slavic “union” thus risk entangling Russia in prolonged conflicts with its immediate neighbors.

FIGURE 4.1 GLOBAL PERFORMANCE RANKINGS AND GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHIC RANKINGS FOR TURKEY AND RUSSIA

Finally, Moscow’s relationship with the West is still burdened by Russia’s ambiguous relationship with its Stalinist past. Unlike Germany, which has repudiated in toto the Nazi chapter of its history, Russia has both officially denounced and yet still respects the individuals most directly responsible for some of history’s most bloody crimes. Lenin’s embalmed remains continue to be honored in a mausoleum that overlooks the Red Square in Moscow and Stalin’s ashes are installed in the nearby Kremlin wall. (Anything similar for Hitler in Berlin would surely discredit Germany’s democratic credentials.) An unresolved ambiguity thus persists, reflected in the absence of a clear-cut indictment of Lenin’s and Stalin’s regimes in officially approved history schoolbooks. Official unwillingness to fully confront head-on the ugly Soviet past, epitomized in Putin’s own equivocations on this subject and his nostalgia for Soviet grandeur, has obstructed Russia’s progress toward democracy while burdening Russia’s relations with its most immediate Western neighbors.

Therefore, a Russia left to its own devices, and not deliberately drawn into a larger democratically transformative framework, could again become a source of tension and occasionally even a security threat to some of its neighbors.^{7} Lacking leadership with the strength and the will to modernize, increasingly aware of its relative social retardation (with only Moscow and St. Petersburg regions matching the West’s standards of living), still uneasy regarding China’s growing global power, resentful of America’s continuing worldwide preeminence, proud of its vast and resource-rich territory, anxious over the depopulation of its far east and its general demographic crisis, and alert to the growing cultural and religious alienation of its Muslim population, Russia remains unable to define for itself a stable role that strikes a realistic balance between its ambitions and its actual potential.

Thus, in the short run, the currently entrenched Russian power elites—connected with the traditional coercive institutions of the state, nostalgic for the imperial past, and appealing to nationalistic notions deeply entrenched in the public—are an impediment to pro-Western gravitation. In fact, Putin—who could replace Medvedev as President in 2012, or in the least restrict Medvedev’s more ambitious democratic desires—has been quite frank that in his view Russia’s needed modernization should be a joint Russian-European project, to the exclusion of America and unrelated to democratization. Appealing directly to German business interests (in a personal message alluringly entitled “An Economic Community from Lisbon to Vladivostok,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 25, 2010), Putin made it clear—in contrast to Medvedev’s emphasis on democratization—that in his view Europe’s, and especially Germany’s, involvement in Russia’s modernization would be profitable for the Europeans but it would not be premised on Russia’s political Westernization.

Given the urgency of Russia’s internal problems and depending on what choice Russia makes, the next decade—as already noted—could be decisive for Russia’s future and, indirectly, for the prospects of a more vital and larger democratic West. Unfortunately, Putin’s vision of that future is a backward-looking combination of assertive nationalism, thinly veiled hostility toward America for its victory in the Cold War, and nostalgia for both modernity and superpower status (financed, he hopes, by Europe). The state he wishes to shape bears a striking resemblance to Italy’s experiment with Fascism: a highly authoritarian (but not totalitarian) state involving a symbiotic relationship between its power elite and its business oligarchy, with its ideology based on thinly disguised and bombastic chauvinism.

Coolheaded realism, therefore, dictates caution regarding the declarations of some Russian policy advocates who publicly proclaim a desire for closer ties even with NATO. Private conversations with Moscow’s “think tankers” confirm that such advocacy is often guided by the reasonable assumption that any prompt movement in such direction would in fact advance the more familiar Russian objective of rendering NATO largely impotent. A more vulnerable Europe would then be easier to pick apart and its internal diversity exploited to the advantage of Russia’s more traditional national interests.

It follows from the foregoing that the argument made by some Europeans (often connected with commercial circles in Germany and Italy) that a prompt enlargement of NATO to include Russia would provide a shortcut to a grand accommodation is misguided. It would most likely produce the reverse. Russia’s entry, in its current authoritarian as well as highly corrupted political condition and with its military’s obsessively secretive mindset, would simply mean the end of NATO as an integrated alliance of democratic states. Much the same could be said if Russia were to become a part of the EU without first undergoing the required vigorous constitutional adaptation to Europe’s democratic standards that Turkey is currently trying to satisfy. Genuinely closer relations are not likely to be achieved by a commercial stampede driven by Western European businessmen (not to mention some former statesmen), anxious to capitalize on Russia’s resources while indifferent to the importance of shared values in developing a lasting relationship.

There are, however, also some hopeful signs that the needed and potentially historic geopolitical reorientation regarding Russia’s long-term future is incubating among its upper strata. Russia’s domestic retardation increasingly validates the anxieties of the Russian Westernizers, located mainly in Moscow’s increasingly numerous think tanks and its mass media, that Russia is falling behind. Spreading awareness of that retardation increases Russia’s potential susceptibility to a historically visionary but strategically prudent long-term Western outreach.

The unexpected surfacing in late 2009 of Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s handpicked replacement, as the most prominent spokesman for the modernization=democratization school of thought signaled the growing legitimacy of such views in Russia’s evolving political spectrum. Views that hitherto were confined to mostly intellectual dissenters thus began to percolate at the highest levels. Even if it eventually turns out that Putin reclaims the presidency, or that Medvedev ceases to press his case in the political arena, the very fact that the President of Russia could declare that in his view Western-type modernization of Russia (which he strongly advocates) inherently requires democratization was a milestone in Russia’s political evolution. In October 2010, during his private exchange of views in Moscow with this writer, Medvedev was even more outspoken.

It is now evident that there is in today’s Russia a growing constituency of people—admittedly, still mainly in the elites of the key urban centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg—who are attracted to Medvedev’s vision of modernization. They include not only the intellectuals, but also the growing thousands of graduates of Western institutions of higher learning, the millions who travel to the West, and the increasing number of entrepreneurs with ties and interests involving the West. Moreover, the Russian mass media, especially TV, both in mass entertainment and in more serious programs, now project the Western life-style as the norm. Last but by no means least, the daily press is generally nonideological, though Russia’s wounded imperial hubris more than occasionally slants news reportage about America.

Ultimately, it is up to the Russians to decide whether they wish to take advantage of their territorial and cultural proximity with the West, and their oft-noted social affinity for America, to link deliberately their efforts at social modernization with genuine Western-type political democratization. Russia’s intellectual elite increasingly recognizes the interdependence of these two processes; its business elite has belatedly become more aware of it after the financial crisis of 2007, while its power elite is increasingly worried that Russia’s development lags dramatically behind that of the emerging global colossus to its east. The gradually spreading Russian consensus regarding the cumulatively negative implications of the foregoing thus justifies cautious optimism concerning the longer-term prospects of a more stable and increasingly binding East-West relationship even in the face of Russia’s still-unsettled internal political power dynamics.

Accordingly, if it can be said that Europe is still unfinished business without a deeper and more extensive relationship with Russia, it can also be said that Russia will lack a secure geopolitical future as well as a self-satisfying modern and democratic identity without a closer connection with the West in general and with Europe specifically. Without a confidence-building and increasingly transformative accommodation with the West, Russia is likely to remain too weak internally and too conflicted in its external ambitions to become a truly successful democratic state. The September 2009 statement by Medvedev thus was not only a timely and stark warning to his countrymen; it was also a definition of the only real option open to Russia: “Our current domestic, financial, and technological capabilities are not sufficient for a qualitative improvement in the quality of life. We need money and technology from Europe, America, and Asia. In turn, these countries need the opportunities that Russia offers. We are very interested in the rapprochement and interpenetration of our culture and economies.”

A partnership both stimulated and facilitated by Russia’s political modernization offers the best hope for genuine collaboration. That is more likely to happen if the West also sustains its transatlantic unity and on that basis pursues a long-term policy characterized by strategic clarity and historic outreach to Russia. Strategic clarity means nothing less than a realistic assessment as to what kind of Russia would enhance—and not divide—the West. Historic outreach means that the process of the West and of Russia growing together has to be pursued both patiently and persistently if it is to become truly enduring. The cardinal principle of a strategically minded and historically prudent policy has to be that only a Europe linked to America can confidently reach eastward to embrace Russia in a historically binding relationship.

A congruence of external interests and a commitment to shared values within the framework of a constitutional democracy between the West and Russia are both required. A progressive adoption by Russia of universal democratic standards (pursued through the “interpenetration”—to use Medvedev’s word—of a common culture) would entail a gradually deepening transformation of Russia’s internal political arrangements over time. And externally, it would facilitate a steady expansion of social, economic, and eventually political ties with the West. A free trade zone, freedom of travel throughout Europe, and, eventually, open opportunities for personal resettlement whenever a legitimate economic interest beckons, could catalyze changes within Russia compatible with deeper political and security links to the West.

In order to speculate how long it would take Russia to evolve into a seamless part of the West, it is useful to bear in mind the dramatic transformation of global geopolitical realities that has occurred in just the last forty years and the fact that we live in a time characterized by the dramatic acceleration of history. (Figure 4.2 provides a highly capsulated summary of the sweeping geopolitical changes that have occurred in the course of only forty years, between 1970 and 2010.)

A systematically nurtured closer relationship between Russia and the Atlantic West (economically with the EU, and in security matters with NATO and with the United States more generally) could be hastened by gradual Russian acceptance of a truly independent Ukraine, which desires more urgently than Russia to be close to Europe and eventually to be a member of the European Union. Hence the EU was wise in November 2010 to grant Ukraine access to its programs, pointing toward a formal association agreement in 2011. A Ukraine not hostile to Russia but somewhat ahead of it in its access to the West actually helps to encourage Russia’s movement Westward toward a potentially rewarding European future. On the other hand, a Ukraine isolated from the West and increasingly politically subordinated to Russia would encourage Russia’s unwise choice in favor of its imperial past.

The precise nature of the more formal and binding institutional ties between the West and Russia that could evolve over the next several decades is, unavoidably at this stage, a matter largely of speculation. To the extent possible such a process should move forward in a balanced fashion simultaneously on social and economic as well as political and security levels. One can envisage expanding arrangements for social interactions, increasingly similar legal and constitutional arrangements, joint security exercises between NATO and the Russian military, as well as the development of new coordinating policy institutions within such an evolving larger West, all resulting in Russia’s increasing readiness for eventual membership in the EU.

FIGURE 4.2 THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF HISTORICAL DISCOUNTINUITY FROM 1970 TO 2010

But even short of Russia’s actual membership in the EU, the emerging geopolitical community of interest between the United States, Europe, and Russia (from Vancouver eastward to Vladivostok) could in the meantime lead to a formal framework for ongoing consultations regarding common policies. Since any Westward gravitation by Russia would likely be accompanied (or even preceded) by a similar accommodation with Ukraine, the institutional seat of such a collective consultative organ (or perhaps in the meantime the Council of Europe) could be located in Kyiv (the ancient capital of the Kyivan Rus’, which a thousand years ago had regal ties with the West). Its location in Europe’s current east, and just north of Turkey, would symbolize the West’s renewed vitality and enlarging territorial scope.

Looking beyond 2025, it is therefore not unrealistic to conceive of a larger configuration of the West. Turkey could by then already be a full member of the EU, perhaps having moved to that stage by some intermediary arrangements regarding the more difficult requirements of EU membership. But with Europe and America guided by an intelligent and strategically deliberate vision of a larger West, the process of Turkey’s inclusion in Europe should be sustainable even if not rapidly consummated in the short term. It is also reasonable to assume that in the course of the next two or more decades a genuinely cooperative and binding arrangement between the West and Russia could be attained—under optimal circumstances resulting eventually even in Russia’s membership in both the EU and NATO—if in the meantime Russia does embark on a truly comprehensive law-based democratic transformation compatible with EU as well as NATO standards.

For all concerned, that would be a win-win outcome. It would be in keeping with the underlying pressures of history, social change, and modernization. For Turkey, and for Russia more specifically, it would firmly cement their places in the modern democratic world, while Ukraine’s inclusion would ensure its national independence. For today’s Europe, it would offer tempting new vistas of opportunity and adventure. Attracted by open spaces and new entrepreneurial opportunities, Europe’s young would be challenged “to go east,” be it to northeast Siberia or to eastern Anatolia. The uninhibited movement of people and the availability of new challenges could give a lift to Europe’s current vision, which is presently so focused inward on matters pertaining to social security. Modern highways and high-speed rail crisscrossing trans-Eurasia would encourage population shifts, with the declining Russian presence in the Far East reinvigorated by an economically and demographically dynamic inflow from the West. Within a few years, an increasingly cosmopolitan Vladivostok could become a European city without ceasing to be part of Russia.

A larger European framework that involves in varying ways Turkey and Russia would mean that Europe, still allied with America, could become in effect a globally critical player. The resulting bigger West—sharing a common space and common principles—would be better positioned to offset the tendencies in some parts of Eurasia toward religious intolerance, political fanaticism, or rising nationalistic hostility by offering a more attractive economic and political alternative.

However, a larger and more vital West needs to be more than a renewal of historical confidence in the universal relevance of Western democratic values. It must be the result of a deliberate effort by both America and Europe to embrace more formally Turkey as well as Russia in a larger framework of cooperation based on such shared values and on their genuine democratic commitment. Getting there will take time, perseverance, and—in the more complicated and thus more difficult case of Russia—coolheaded realism. It would represent in any case a giant step forward in the historical progression of a continent that in the last century has been the locale for history’s greatest mass slaughters, for debilitating and destructive wars, and for the most organized expressions of mankind’s capacity for cruelty to itself. Considering how dramatically global politics have changed in the course of the last forty years (see Figure 4.2), in the age of historical acceleration such a vision of a geopolitically larger and a more vital West becoming a reality during the second quarter of the twenty-first century could actually turn out to be an overly cautious glimpse into the future.

MAP 4.1 BEYOND 2025: A LARGER WEST—THE CORE OF GLOBAL STABILITY

3: A STABLE AND COOPERATIVE NEW EAST

Given the ongoing shift of global power from the West to the East, will the new Asia of the twenty-first century become like the old Europe of the twentieth, obsessed with interstate rivalry and eventually the victim of self-destruction? If so, the consequences for global peace would be catastrophic. Hence this question has to be asked at the outset, especially since at first glance the similarities between the Asia of today and the Europe of yesterday seem striking.

In the early twentieth century, Europe stood at the apex of its global influence, but within a mere thirty years it self-destructed. The precipitating cause was the difficulty of accommodating the rise of an assertive and increasingly powerful imperial Germany within the existing European system. Thence some similarity to the challenges posed by the rise of contemporary China in today’s new Asia. France, resentful of its defeat by Prussia in 1870, opposed Germany’s rise and was alarmed by it. Some contemporary parallels with India thus come to mind. Offshore, but very influential in Europe, was Great Britain, not directly involved in European affairs but certainly concerned by them. In that regard, some analogy with contemporary Japan also suggests itself. Last but not least, Russia was also involved. Its opposition to Germany’s support of Austria-Hungary against Serbia ignited the First World War in 1914, and its collaboration with Germany in 1939 produced the second and final round in Europe’s self-destruction. Today’s Russia, worried by China, is sympathetic to India as a counterweight to China.

The major impulse for the European catastrophe was the inability of the European interstate system (shaped largely a century earlier by the grand imperial bargain contrived in the Congress of Vienna in 1815) to handle the simultaneous rise of a new imperial power and to satisfy the effervescent aspirations of populist nationalisms throughout Central Europe, which became more intense over the course of the subsequent decades. In today’s world, in which Europe is no longer the center, the issue of Asia’s regional stability is obviously of crucial relevance to global well-being. That is so not only because of China’s climb to international preeminence, but also because of the self-evident importance of Japan, India, Indonesia, and South Korea in the global economic hierarchy, not to mention the cumulative economic weight of the several medium-sized Southeast Asian states. Measured together—even if they do not all act in concert—the Asian states account for 24.7% of global GNP and 54% of global population.

Moreover, as noted in Part 1, the huge Asian portion of the world’s population is now largely politically awakened. Its political awareness is defined and energized by nationalism and/or religion, each infused with varying degrees (depending on specific historical experiences of the individual countries) of lingering anti-Western resentments. The common thread in their respective—if varying—historical narratives is the theme of anti-imperialism, with specific segments of the West held accountable for past real or imagined abuses. In brief, the East is not one—and politically, religiously, culturally, and ethnically it is more diverse than the hesitantly unifying West. The East’s political awakening is more recent and its bitter memories fresher. The East is collectively proud and increasingly rich as well as powerful, but its huge populations are still mostly poor, crowded, and deprived. And many of the countries in the East are hostile toward one another. Their populist energies are volatile while the intensity of their nationalisms is reminiscent of Europe’s during the previous century and a half.

Asian nationalisms, especially if reinforced in some cases by religious fervor, are thus a major threat to the political stability of the region. They could also become a major impediment to the emergence and/or consolidation of genuinely stable democracies, especially if their potentially explosive appeal is triggered by some emotive incidents in interstate relations over a variety of conflicting issues. Unleashed passions, politically ignited by nationalistic slogans, could generate pressures that even the region’s authoritarian regimes could not resist. Still worse, its few existing relatively democratic systems might have no choice but to embrace aroused nationalistic expectations as evidence of their own populist solidarity.

In that potentially menacing context, the possibilities of conflict are many. Some could arise out of intensifying regional power rivalries, with that of China and India being the obvious example. Disputes over water rights or borders could provide both the pretext and the spark. Some—as in the case of Pakistan and India—could be triggered by unresolved and potentially explosive territorial conflicts that could then unleash violent nationalistic and religious hatreds to the point of threatening respective national survival. Some could be the unintended products of lingering historical enmity, as in the case of Japan and China. Some could simply be the by-products of internal instabilities and of human miscalculation at the highest level; clearly the attitude of North Korea toward South Korea comes to mind. Some could also be triggered by overlapping maritime claims, as between China and Japan, as well as between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors next to the South China Sea. In addition, a declining Russia that fails to Westernize and thus to modernize, could also be resentful of the increasingly effective Chinese efforts to expand its access to the natural resources of Mongolia and of the new Central Asian states.

Very serious international tensions could also result from a reciprocal failure by America and China to adjust cooperatively to the changing distribution of political and economic power in their bilateral relationship. Specific precipitating issues—in addition to the obvious economic rivalry and persistent financial disputes—might involve the status of Taiwan, or the extent of the American naval presence in the proximity of Chinese territorial waters, or conflicting interests in a Korean conflict.

Finally, one has to consider the potential impact of nuclear weapons on these regional contests. The new East already includes three overt nuclear powers (China, India, and Pakistan), as well as a less transparent fourth, North Korea, which periodically both postures and threatens as a self-proclaimed nuclear power. If uncertain of American security commitments, Japan could very quickly become a significant nuclear power as well, while on the southwestern fringes of the new Asia, Iran may already be in the process of acquiring nuclear weapons. The absence of any larger framework of collective security in Asia (of the kind that exists in today’s Europe) and the potential of so many possible conflicts erupting in a setting of such volatile nationalistic aspirations justifies concerns that, at some point, an international incident could spark a larger regional outbreak on a scale that—especially if nuclear weapons were employed—could match or even overshadow the horrors that Europe experienced in the previous century.

MAP 4;2 POTENTIAL ASIAN CONFLICTS

But, in spite of the multitude of uncertainties and asymmetries in Asia, the arguments in support of the proposition that the new East is doomed to destructive international warfare fall short of being conclusive. Though the similarities with twentieth-century Europe may seem compelling, the differences—derived from the novelty of twenty-first-century global realities and from the unique history of the Asian interstate system—are equally meaningful.

First is the geopolitical fact that—unlike the Europe of the early twentieth century, which was still then the center of world power—Asia currently is not or at least is not yet the center of world military power. That means that any Asian leader, in considering major warfare, has to take into account the possibility of intervention by indirectly affected outside powers. For example, in the case of a truly significant war (and not merely a border skirmish) between India and China, Russia would almost certainly decide to help India in some fashion simply because that would weaken China. America’s reactions would probably be calibrated by concerns that no one power should emerge as the decisive Asian potentate. Hence America, in order to avoid a one-sided outcome, would be likely to strive to reduce the scale of respective war aims as well as the scope and intensity of violence between the protagonists.

Awareness among the ruling Asian elites of the reality of more powerful potential external protagonists may in part be the reason why the military budgets of the Asian countries are relatively low in relationship to their respective GDPs. (According to the Word Bank, China spends 2%, India 3%, and Japan 1% of their GDPs on the military. The United States spends 4.6%.) Even in the cases of China and India, their military spending and their relatively modest nuclear arsenals suggest that neither side is seriously contemplating the possibility of a decisive resolution by the use of force to their existing or potential differences—continuing national suspicions of each other notwithstanding.

Second, contemporary Asia thrives now in a setting of worldwide commercial interdependence, which not only inhibits reliance on unilateral military action but also creates opportunities for alternative sources of self-gratification and of the fulfillment of national aspirations, such as through economic growth spurred by foreign trade, thereby dampening nationalistic extremism. China certainly is aware of the fact that the remarkable thirty-year-long transformation of its domestic socioeconomic conditions has gained it international preeminence as well as remarkable economic-financial standing. And China’s experience is not unique. Other increasingly successful Asian states (notably South Korea and the ASEAN bloc) benefit from a web of connections and relationships that induce some degree of restraint over nationalistic irrationality. Their twenty-first-century middle classes tend to be interconnected with the world, to a degree that their twentieth-century European predecessors never were. Study abroad, frequent travel, business interconnections, shared professional aspirations, and the intimacy of transnational contact through the Internet all contribute to an outlook not immune, to be sure, to nationalistic appeals but nonetheless more conscious of their interdependent self-interest.

Third, the historical contrast between Europe and Asia also deserves recognition. As noted in a remarkable study of China’s emergence, already some centuries ago “the most important states of East Asia—from Japan, Korea, and China to Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Kampuchea . . . had all been linked to one another, directly or through the Chinese center, by trade and diplomatic relations and held together by a shared understanding of the principles, norms, and rules that regulated their mutual interactions.... Long periods of peace among the European powers were the exception rather than the rule.... In sharp contrast . . . the national states of the East Asian system were almost uninterruptedly at peace, not for 100 but 300 years.”[19]

Finally, the motivating impulse of the threats to peace in the Asia of the twenty-first century likewise tends to be different from Europe’s of the twentieth century. In the latter case, much of the impetus for interstate warfare was the product of nationalistically aroused territorial ambitions of nation-states motivated by notions that more territory equals more power equals greater status. In its most extreme rendition, such aspirations were justified by spurious concepts of living space (“lebensraum”) allegedly needed for national survival. In contemporary Asia, internal conflicts derived from ethnic diversity and pre-nation-state tribal loyalties rather than external territorial ambitions are more likely to be the main cause of regional instability. Indeed, with the exception of Pakistan’s fears of India, the preservation of the stability of the existing states rather than concerns over territorial designs from their neighbors may currently be the more serious preoccupation of most of the military commands in the southeast and southwest Asian states.

In the most important case of the very populous India, regional turmoil could ensue from that country’s two potentially disruptive internal contradictions: between the very rich and the extremely poor, with the poverty in India more acute than in China, and from the ethnic-linguistic-religious diversity of Indian society. Unlike China, in which the Han Chinese account for 91.5% of the population, the largest ethnic group in India accounts for about 70%, which means that as many as 300 million people are in effect ethnic minorities. In terms of religion, the Hindus account for around 950 million Indians, with the Muslims numbering approximately 160 million, the Sikhs about 22 million, and others in a larger variety. Less than one-half of the population shares a common language, Hindi. Moreover, literacy levels in India are appallingly low, with the majority of women actually illiterate. Rural unrest is rising and has not been contained in spite of percolating violence for more than a decade.

Moreover, the Indian political system has yet to prove that it can function as “the world’s largest democracy.” That test will take place when its population becomes truly politically awakened and engaged. Given the country’s very high levels of public illiteracy as well as the connection between privilege and wealth at the top of the political establishment, India’s current “democratic” process is rather reminiscent of the British aristocratic “democracy,” prior to the appearance of trade unions, in the second half of the nineteenth century. The operational viability of the existing system will be truly tested when the heterogeneous public at large becomes both politically conscious and assertive. Ethnic, religious, and linguistic differences could then threaten India’s internal cohesion. Should they escalate out of control, the neighboring Pakistan, already challenged by tribal unrest, could also become the geopolitical focus of a broader regional violence.

In that potentially conflicted setting, the stability of Asia will depend in part on how America responds to two overlapping regional triangles centered around China. The first pertains to China, India, and Pakistan. The second pertains to China, Japan, and Korea, with the Southeast Asian states playing a supporting role. In the case of the former, Pakistan could be the major point of contention and the precipitating source of instability. In the case of the latter, Korea (both South and North) and/or possibly also Taiwan could become the foci of insecurity.

In both cases, the United States is still the key player, with the capacity to alter balances and affect outcomes. It therefore needs to be stated at the outset that the United States should be guided by the general principle that any direct US military involvement in conflicts between rival Asian powers should be avoided. No outcome of either a Pakistani-Indian war, or of one also involving China, or even of a strictly Chinese-Indian war is likely to produce consequences more damaging to US interests than a renewed and possibly expanded American military engagement on the Asian mainland. And the latter could even precipitate a wider chain reaction of ethnic and religious instability in Asia.

The above obviously does not apply to existing US treaty obligations to Japan and South Korea, where US forces are actually deployed. Moreover, US noninvolvement in possible conflicts among Asian states themselves should not imply indifference to their potential outcomes. The United States should certainly use its international influence to discourage the outbreak of warfare, to help contain it if it does occur, and to avoid a one-sided outcome as its conclusion. But such efforts should entail the participation of other powers potentially also affected by any major regional instability in Asia. Some of them may even prefer America to become involved while they benefit from remaining on the sidelines. Hence the needed attempts to prevent or to contain the crisis and to impose, if necessary, some costs on the more aggressive party should not be America’s responsibility alone.

The first triangle involves competition for Asian primacy. China and India are already major players on the international scene. India is the world’s most populous country; its economy is on a takeoff; its formal democratic structure and its future viability as a possible alternative to China’s authoritarian model is of special interest to democratic America. China is already the world’s number two economic power, before too long that is likely to be the case (and in some respects it already may be so) with regard to its military capacity, and it is rapidly emerging as an ascending global power. Thus, the Chinese-Indian relationship is inherently competitive and antagonistic, with Pakistan being the regional point of contention.

On India’s side, the existing tensions and reciprocal national animosities are fueled by the relatively uninhibited hostility toward China expressed in India’s uncensored media and in India’s strategic discussions. Invariably, China is presented in them as a threat, most often territorial in nature, and India’s publications frequently make reference to China’s 1962 occupation by force of disputed borderline territories. China’s efforts to establish an economic and political presence in Myanmar’s and in Pakistan’s Indian Ocean ports are presented to the public as a strategic design to encircle India. The Chinese mass media, under official control, are more restrained in their pronouncements but purposefully patronize India as a not-so-serious rival, further inflaming negative Indian sentiments.

To a considerable extent, such Chinese feelings of aloofness toward India are derived from China’s superior societal performance. Its GNP is considerably larger than India’s, its urban modernization and infrastructural innovation are far more advanced, and its population is considerably more literate as well as ethnically and linguistically more homogenous (see Figure 4.3 on pp. 166–167).

In any case, both sides are the strategic captives of their subjective feelings and of their geopolitical contexts. The Indians envy the Chinese economic and infrastructural transformation. The Chinese are contemptuous of India’s relative backwardness (on the social level most dramatically illustrated by asymmetrical levels of literacy of their respective populations) and of its lack of discipline. The Indians fear Chinese-Pakistani collusion; the Chinese feel vulnerable to India’s potential capacity to interfere with Chinese access through the Indian Ocean to the Middle East and Africa. Apart from ritualistic reiteration in diplomatic communiqués of a shared commitment to peace, influential private voices are rarely heard advocating a comprehensive mutual accommodation, and so reciprocal disdain lingers and grows.

America’s role in this rivalry should be cautious and detached. A prudent US policy, especially in regard to an alliance with India, should not however be interpreted as indifference to India’s potential role as an alternative to China’s authoritarian political model. India offers such promise for the future, especially if it succeeds in combining sustained development with more pervasive democracy. Hence cordiality in relations with India is justified, though it should not imply support on such contentious issues as Kashmir, given that India’s record in that instance is open to criticism, nor imply that a cooperative relationship with India is aimed at China.

Given that some policy circles in the United States have started to advocate a formal US-India alliance, presumably against China and in effect also against Pakistan, it also needs to be stated explicitly that any such undertaking would be contrary to US national security interests. It would increase the likelihood of US involvement in potentially prolonged and bitter Asian conflicts. The unwise US decision of 2011 to sell advanced weaponry to India, in contrast to the ongoing embargo on arms sales to China, while also enhancing India’s nuclear programs is already earning the United States the hostility of the Chinese by conveying the impression that America sees China as its enemy even before China itself had decided to be America’s enemy.

Moreover, a US-India alliance would be a gratis favor to Russia without any Russian favor in return. In fact, such an alliance would be inimical in two significant ways to long-term American interests in Eurasia: it would reduce Russian fears of China and thus diminish Russian self-interest in becoming more closely tied to the West, and it would increase Moscow’s temptations to take advantage of a distracted America drawn into wider Asian conflicts to assert Russian imperial interests more firmly in Central Asia and in Central Europe. Prospects for a more vital and larger West would thereby become more remote.

Finally, an America-India alliance would also be likely to intensify the appeal of anti-American terrorism among Muslims, who would infer that this partnership was implicitly directed against Pakistan. That would be even more likely if in the meantime religious violence between Hindus and Muslims erupted in parts of India. Much of the rest of the Islamic world, be it in nearby southwest Asia or in Central Asia or in the Middle East, would be roused into mounting sympathy and then support for terrorist acts directed at America. In brief, insofar as the first Asian triangle is concerned, the better part of wisdom is abstention from any alliance that could obligate the United States to military involvement in that part of Asia.

The issue is not so clear-cut with regard to the second regional triangle involving China, Japan, South Korea, and to a lesser degree Southeast Asia. More generally, this issue pertains to China’s role as the dominant power on the Asian mainland and to the nature of America’s position in the Pacific. Japan is America’s key political-military ally in the Far East even though its military capabilities are currently self-restrained, a condition that may be fading because of growing concerns over China’s rising power. It is also the world’s number three economic power, having only recently been surpassed by China. South Korea is a burgeoning economic power and longtime American ally that relies on the United States to deter any possible conflict with its estranged northern relative. Southeast Asia has less formal ties to the United States and has a strong regional partnership (ASEAN), but it fears the growth of Chinese power. Most importantly, America and China already have an economic relationship that makes both vulnerable to any reciprocal hostility, while the growth of China’s economic and political power poses a potential future challenge to America’s current global preeminence.

FIGURE 4.3 GLOBAL SYSTEMIC PERFORMANCE RANKINGS FOR CHINA AND INDIA, AND INDICATORS OF DEVELOPMENT FOR CHINA AND INDIA

Given China’s recent performance, as well as its historical accomplishments, it would be rash to assume that the Chinese economy might suddenly grind to a halt. Back in 1995 (in effect, then at the midpoint of China’s now thirty-year-long economic takeoff ), some prominent American economists even suggested that by 2010 China might find itself in the same dire straits as the Soviet Union did some thirty years ago after the phantasmagoric official Soviet claims of the 1960s that by 1980 the Soviet Union would surpass America in economic power. By now, it is evident even to the most skeptical that China’s economic ascent has been real and that it has a good chance of continuing for a while, though probably at declining annual rates.

That is not to deny that China could be adversely affected by an international decline in demand for Chinese manufactured goods or by a worldwide financial crisis. Also, social tensions in China could rise because of widening social disparities. They could generate political restlessness, of which the historic Tiananmen Square events of 1989 could in some respects be a preview. The new Chinese middle class, now amounting by some counts to about 300 million people, may demand more political rights. But none of that would be reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s systemic disaster. China’s influential and rising role in world affairs is a reality to which Americans will have to adjust—instead of either demonizing it or engaging in thinly concealed wishful thinking about its failure.

The more serious danger could come from an altogether different source, less economic and more social-political in character. It could surface as the result of a gradual and initially imperceptible decline in the quality of Chinese leadership or of a more perceptible rise in the intensity of Chinese nationalism. Either of the two, or both combined, could produce policies harmful to China’s international aspirations and/or could prove disruptive to China’s tranquil domestic transformation.

Till now, the performance of the Chinese leadership since the Cultural Revolution has generally been prudent. Deng Xiaoping had vision and determination guided by pragmatic realism. Since Deng, China has gone through three stable leadership renewals thanks, in part, to standardized procedures for firmly scheduled leadership succession. His successors have occasionally differed among themselves (for example, Hu Yaobang, briefly Deng’s heir apparent, advocated more political pluralism than was digestible by his comrades). The Chinese leaders have made efforts to anticipate problems, and even to study jointly pertinent foreign experience in tackling the unavoidable complications of domestic policy successes. (In quite a remarkable exercise, the Chinese politburo periodically convenes to study for a whole day some major external or internal issue in order to draw relevant foreign and historical parallels. The very first session dealt, rather revealingly, with the lessons to be learned from the rise and fall of foreign empires, with the most recent identified as being the American.)

The current generation of leaders, no longer revolutionaries or innovators themselves, have thus matured in an established political setting in which the major issues of national policy have been set on a long-term course. Bureaucratic stability—indeed, centralized control—must seem to them to be the only solid foundation for effective government. But in a highly bureaucratized political setting, conformity, caution, and currying favor with superiors often count for more in advancing a political career than personal courage and individual initiative. Over the longer run, it is questionable whether any political leadership can long remain vital if it is so structured in its personnel policy that it becomes, almost unknowingly, inimical to talent and hostile to innovation. Decay can set in, while the stability of the political system can be endangered if a gap develops between its officially proclaimed orthodoxies and the disparate aspirations of an increasingly politically awakened population.

In the case of China, however, public disaffection is not likely to express itself through a massive quest for democracy but more likely either through social grievances or nationalistic passions. The government is more aware of the former and has been preparing for it. Official planners have even identified publicly and quite frankly the five major threats that in their view could produce mass incidents threatening social stability: (1) disparity between rich and poor, (2) urban unrest and discontent, (3) a culture of corruption, (4) unemployment, and (5) loss of social trust.[20]

The rise of nationalistic passions could prove more difficult to handle. It is already evident, even from officially controlled publications, that intense Chinese nationalism is on the rise. Though the regime in power still advocates caution in the definition of China’s standing and historical goals, by 2009 the more serious Chinese media became permeated by triumphalist assertions of China’s growing eminence, economic might, and its continued ascent to global preeminence. The potential for a sudden rise in populist passions also became evident in outbursts of demonstrative public anger over some relatively minor naval incidents with Japan near disputed islands. The issue of Taiwan could likewise at some point ignite belligerent public passions against America.

Indeed, the paradox of China’s future is that an eventual evolution toward some aspects of democracy may be more feasible under an intelligent but assertive leadership that cautiously channels social pressures for more participation than under an enfeebled leadership that overindulges them. A weakened and gradually more mediocre regime could become tempted by the notion that political unity, as well as its own power, can best be preserved by a policy that embraces the more impatient and more extreme nationalistic definition of China’s future. If a leadership fearful of losing its grip on power and declining in vision were to support the nationalist surge, the result could be a disruption of the so far carefully calculated balance between the promotion of China’s domestic aspirations and prudent pursuit of China’s foreign policy interests.

The foregoing could also precipitate a fundamental change in China’s structure of political power. The Chinese army (the People’s Liberation Army) is the only nationwide organization capable of asserting national control. It is also heavily involved in the direct management of major economic assets. In the event of a serious decline in the vitality of the existing political leadership and of a rise in populist emotions, the military would most likely assume effective control. Paradoxically, the likelihood of such an eventuality is enhanced by the deliberate politicization of the Chinese officer corps. In the top ranks party membership is 100%. And like the CCP itself, party members in the PLA see themselves as being above the state. In the event of a systemic crisis, for the Communist Party members in uniform the assumption of power would thus be the normal thing to do. And political leadership would thus pass into the hands of a highly motivated, very nationalistic, well-organized, but internationally inexperienced leadership.

An intensely nationalist and militaristic China would generate its own self-isolation. It would dissipate the global admiration for China’s modernization and could stimulate residual anti-Chinese public sentiments within the United States, perhaps even with some latent racist overtones. It would be likely to give rise to political pressures for an overly anti-China coalition with whatever Asian nations had become increasingly fearful of Beijing’s ambitions. It could transform China’s immediate geopolitical neighborhood, currently inclined toward a partnership with the economically successful giant next door, into eager supplicants for external reassurance (preferably from America) against what they would construe as an ominously nationalistic and aggressively aroused China.

Since the United States has been militarily deployed on the basis of treaty commitments in Japan and South Korea for several decades, how Beijing conducts itself in its immediate neighborhood will impact directly the overall American-Chinese relationship. Broadly speaking, the current strategic goals of the rising but still cautiously deliberate China appear to be driven by the following six major objectives:

The aforementioned six major strategic goals are a mixture of the country’s geopolitical and economic interests in what some Chinese strategists have described as China’s “Grand Periphery,” but they also reflect China’s historical view of its rightful entitlement to a dominant regional—perhaps eventually global—role. They are not rooted, as was the case with the Soviet Union, in universal ideological aspirations. But they do reflect Chinese pride and presumed desire, disguised for the time being, for China to become again—as it once was—the world’s preeminent power, even replacing America. Indeed, it is already noticeable that China’s intelligently calculated foreign outreach—built around slogans regarding “a harmonious world”—is beginning to intrigue the political imagination of peoples in the world’s less privileged parts. For the many who crave a vision of a more relevant future than offered by the “waning American dream,” China is beginning to offer a new option, that of the rising Chinese dream.

Each of the six Chinese goals can be sought flexibly and patiently, or China can pursue each goal aggressively, in order to undermine America’s position in the East. For example, Japan and South Korea can be partners in an East Asian community that accepts America’s involvement in it, or they can be enticed into one with a united Korea under a Chinese umbrella and a neutral Japan detached from the United States (similarly with the other examples). In essence, the intensity of Chinese nationalism is likely to determine whether the above goals can be assimilated into a pattern of accommodation, largely with the United States, or whether they become objectives to be sought assertively, by a nationalistically aroused China increasingly preoccupied with an antagonistic contestation with the United States.

Which of these two becomes more likely will depend on two fundamental considerations: how America will respond to an ascending China, and how China itself will evolve. The acumen and maturity of both nations are likely to be severely tested in the process, and the stakes for each will be enormous. For America, therefore, the task is to disentangle which aspects of China’s external ambitions are unacceptable and pose a direct threat to vital American interests, and which aspects reflect new historical geopolitical and economic realities that can be accommodated, however reluctantly, without damage to key US interests. In effect, to assess calmly what is not worth a collision with China and where the lines should be drawn so that China itself realizes that going beyond would prove counterproductive to its own interests and/or beyond its means to assert. The ultimate goal, but not at any price, should be a China that is a constructive and major partner in world affairs.

It follows that in seeking to increase the probability that China becomes a major global partner, America should tacitly accept the reality of China’s geopolitical preeminence on the mainland of Asia, as well as China’s ongoing emergence as the predominant Asian economic power. But the prospects of a comprehensive American-Chinese global partnership will actually be enhanced if America at the same time retains a significant geopolitical presence of its own in the Far East, based on its continued ties with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, and Indonesia—and does so whether China approves or not. Such a presence would encourage in general the Asian neighbors of China (including also those not explicitly mentioned) to take advantage of America’s involvement in Asia’s financial and economic structures—as well as of America’s geopolitical presence—to pursue peacefully but with greater self-confidence their own independence and interests in the shadow of a powerful China.

Japan is a crucial ally for the United States in its effort to develop a stable American-Chinese partnership. Its ties with America underline the fact that America is a Pacific Ocean power, just as America’s ties with Great Britain confirm the reality of America being also an Atlantic Ocean power. Both sets of ties make possible America’s variable partnerships with Europe and China respectively. Progressive and deepening reconciliation between China and Japan is, in the above context, also a major American interest. The American presence in Japan, and especially the security links between the two countries, should facilitate such a reconciliation. That would be especially so if it is sought in the context of a serious effort by America and China to deepen and expand the scope of their own bilateral cooperation.

At the same time, an internationally more active and militarily more capable Japan would also be a more positive contributor to global stability. Some prominent Japanese have even been urging that Japan joins the nascent Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), favored by the United States, which aims at free trade between the states located on the rim of the Pacific Ocean (and denounced by Chinese experts as a plot against the East Asian community). Japan would still lack the power to threaten China, but it could contribute more to international peace enforcement and generally act more in keeping with its significant economic status. Issues between it and China pertaining to the potentially oil-rich islands claimed by both of them could then be resolved more easily by following established procedures for international mediation and adjudication.

South Korea, as long as it remains potentially threatened and with the peninsula divided, has no choice but to depend on America’s security commitments—with those in turn dependent for their effectiveness on America’s continued presence in Japan. Despite extensive trade relations, the historic enmity between Korea and Japan has so far prevented any close military cooperation even though it is in the evident security interest of both. The more secure South Korea is, the less likely there is to be some unexpected assault from the North. Eventually, the issue of peaceful reunification may become timely, and at that moment China’s role may be crucial in facilitating perhaps a reunification by stages. Should that happen, the South Koreans may decide to reassess the degree to which some reduction in their security ties with the United States and especially with Japan might become acceptable as a trade-off for Chinese-assisted national reunification.

Closer US political and commercial ties with Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the maintenance of the historical US connection with the Philippines would also enhance the prospects for Asian support for direct US participation in the expanding architecture of regional interstate cooperation. The interests of each of these states in such a relationship with the United States would also have the effect of generating greater Chinese understanding that America’s Pacific Ocean strategy is not meant to contain China but rather to engage it in a larger web of cooperative relationships that indirectly will also help to shape the bilateral US-Chinese global partnership.

In that larger context of economic and political cooperation, three sensitive US-Chinese issues will have to be peacefully resolved, the first of them probably in the near future, the second in the course of the next several years, and the third within a decade or so, assuming continued constructive development of the bilateral American-Chinese relationship within wider Asian regional cooperation.

The first of these sensitive issues pertains to the American reconnaissance operations on the edges of Chinese territorial waters (six miles from shore) as well as periodic American naval patrols within international waters that also happen to be part of the Chinese economic zone. These activities understandably are provocative to the Chinese, and there is little doubt that the American public would be aroused if China was to reciprocate in kind. Moreover, the air reconnaissance poses serious risks of unintentional collisions, since the Chinese usually respond to such US air reconnaissance by sending up their fighter planes for up-close inspection and perhaps even harassment.

Some accommodation regarding the foregoing could be furthered by addressing on a more systematic basis the second increasingly contentious issue, namely the relationship between the military buildups undertaken by both states. The American defense budget and the scale of the American arms program are infinitely larger, in part because America is engaged currently in warfare and in part because of its global commitments. At this stage, China’s response is primarily regional, but it does directly affect American security concerns as well as America’s commitments to its Asian allies. A systematic effort by the two states, therefore, to reach some sort of agreement regarding longer-range military plans and measures of reciprocal reassurance is certainly a necessary component of any longer-term US-Chinese partnership as well as a source of reassurance to Japan and South Korea. The absence of any such accommodation will almost inevitably become an insurmountable obstacle, gradually not only undermining the existing cooperation but also potentially creating a serious arms race.

The third long-term geopolitical problem is ultimately the most difficult, but its resolution could be facilitated by progress in regard to the aforementioned first two. It pertains to the future status of Taiwan. The United States no longer recognizes Taiwan as a sovereign state and acknowledges the Chinese view that China and Taiwan are part of a single nation. A long-term US-Chinese accommodation at some point will have to address the fact that a separate Taiwan cannot be protected by American arms sales without provoking Chinese enmity, and that a Chinese-type resolution along the lines of Deng Xiaoping’s longstanding formula of “one China, two systems,” provides an elastic formula for both unification and yet distinct political, social, and even separate military arrangements. (Hence it should be redefined as “one China, several systems.”)

The “one China, two systems” formula, in its narrower form, has been tested in Hong Kong since the extension of Chinese sovereignty to that former British colony. Its internal autonomy, including democracy, has proven viable even though the PLA (the Chinese army) has been deployed there. And given China’s growing status, it is doubtful that Taiwan can reject indefinitely its inclusion in China on the basis of a more flexible interpretation of the “one China, several systems” formula, therefore not including a PLA presence on the island. Obviously, the willingness of China and America to reach an accommodation on this politically and morally sensitive issue will depend on the nature of the overall relationship between the two countries. The resolution of the first two issues would eliminate the most likely sources of geopolitical hostility in the near term. In the longer run, failure to address the third one could produce a truly serious rupture in the relationship, especially since the United States conceded already under President Nixon its acceptance of the principle shared by both China and Taiwan that there is only one China.

Ultimately, as noted earlier, a great deal will depend also on the internal condition of both countries. An America that renews its infrastructure, that reenergizes its technological innovation, that regains its sense of historical optimism, and that overcomes its paralyzing political gridlock will be an America that can more confidently adjust to, and cope with, a rising China. Such an America will be likely to have a clearer, less Manichean view of the world, and thus would be better able to face a world in which its political preeminence has to be in some degree shared.

Likewise, much depends on how China continues to evolve. Its last two hundred years have been turbulent and disruptive. Its contemporary stability and progress are only thirty years old. Its nineteenth century was one of disruption, decay, and violent foreign military interventions as well as humiliating foreign “concessions.” Its twentieth century was one of almost continuous strife in the context of national awakening. Sun Yat-sen and later Chiang Kai-shek were China’s failed equivalents of Turkey’s successful Ataturk. Mao Zedong was a self-destructive equivalent of Russia’s equally brutal Stalin. Only Deng Xiaoping accomplished what Gorbachev failed to do in the Soviet Union: to set China on a so-far-successful course of domestic transformation by tapping simultaneously the personal aspirations of the Chinese people as well as their aroused national ambitions.

Assuming continued domestic success, it is unlikely that China will experience in the relatively near future—say by 2030—what many in the West hope: the emergence of a middle-class-based constitutional democracy of the American-European variety. (Note that it took Taiwan approximately sixty years to evolve—with sympathetic and influential US encouragement—from authoritarianism to constitutional democracy.) Retaining national unity in the context of modernity—increasing access to the outside world, expanding interactions via the Internet, and rising but unequal standards of living—is thus more likely to involve two basic alternatives, but with neither being an imitation of a multiparty Western-type pluralist democracy. The dangerous one has already been discussed: a modernizing China that is assertive, impatient, triumphalist, and aggressively nationalistic in which the PLA is the source of authority and action. Such a China would endanger not only the outside world, but also itself.

A less internationally troubling alternative to a nationalistic China motivated by twentieth-century European-style chauvinism could be the emergence of what might be called a Confucian China with modern characteristics. China’s political culture has deep roots, and it is suffused with its own distinctive philosophical concepts of life, of hierarchy, and of authority. The notion of domestic “harmony,” in which unity asserted by an authoritarian framework is said to originate from a generalized philosophical consensus, in which leadership emerges through meritocratic selection but not open political contestation, and in which policy is derived from “facts” but is not dogmatized is deeply rooted in China’s long past. It is noteworthy that Deng Xiaoping repeatedly cited the phrase “seek truth from facts,” pointedly echoing Confucius.

China’s leadership is also profoundly conscious of the “fact” that its vast numbers of increasingly elderly citizens will be imposing greater strains on social cohesion—thus threatening the Confucian notion of “harmony.” (President Jiang Zemin was once asked by this author what his main domestic problem was, and he instantly replied with just three words: “Too many Chinese.”) Chinese officials have also publicly acknowledged the growing risks inherent in their country’s increasingly evident social disparities and in the persisting reality of hundreds of millions of Chinese still not benefiting from China’s ongoing transformation. That, too, makes coping with these domestic risks to internal “harmony” more important than projecting a universal doctrine.

In any case, the notion of harmony is the message that China is increasingly and deliberately attempting to convey about itself to the world at large. Ruled by an officialdom that calls itself the Communist Party, China in its global outreach does not identify itself with the class struggle nor with an eventual world revolution (on the Soviet mode) but relates itself more to its Confucian past and its Buddhist roots. Symptomatically, China’s main vehicle for an international dialogue about itself are the several hundred Confucius Institutes actively being established around the world, modeled on the French Alliance Française and the UK’s British Councils. In addition to acquainting outsiders with Confucius’ teachings, China’s Buddhist heritage (shared with its neighbors) is now also publicly acknowledged. That message, as a practical matter, does not offer much guidance regarding China’s global intentions and strategy. But its emphasis on “peaceful rising” and global harmony does allow at least for a dialogue and for China’s comprehensive integration into the international system.

In that setting and in the longer run, it is doubtful that China could make itself permanently impermeable to pressures from an increasingly interdependent and interconnected world from which it could perhaps only isolate itself at great cost. The cumulative consequences of the emergence of an internationally aware middle class, the countless Chinese who will have studied abroad, the inevitably growing appeal to millions of university students of democracy as a way of life as well as the expression of their personal dignity, the sheer inability in the age of interactive communications of even a determined political elite to impose on society airtight ideological isolation, all argue for the proposition that an eventually modern and more prosperous China, too, will become more inclined to join the democratic mainstream.

The fact that by 2050 China will be a relatively middle-aged society, somewhat like today’s Japan—currently 22% of the latter’s population is aged sixty-five or older, and projections indicate that by midcentury so will be 25% of China’s—also justifies the hypothesis that such a change may not come as abruptly as in the case of societies with potentially explosive demographic youth bulges. Indeed, the changing demographic profile of a more middle-aged as well as middle-class China is likely to facilitate a more evolutionary adoption of political pluralism as a normal progression toward a more refined political culture, compatible with China’s traditions.

In that evolving historical context, America’s geopolitical role in the new East will have to be fundamentally different from its direct involvement in the renewal of the West. There, America is the essential source of the needed stimulus for geopolitical renovation and even territorial outreach. In Asia, an America cooperatively engaged in multilateral structures, cautiously supportive of India’s development, solidly tied to Japan and South Korea, and patiently expanding both bilateral as well as global cooperation with China is the best source of the balancing leverage needed for sustaining stability in the globally rising new East.