The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives

In the conclusion of The Grand Chessboard, I warned that the United States would not be the sole global superpower forever. The United States was the leader of an unstable world order, in which, for the first time in history, one country was dominant. However, for both domestic and external reasons, the moment would prove to be fleeting.

The majority of Americans are largely skeptical of US involvement in world affairs. The public reacts only when it perceives a direct threat on its homeland—for example, Pearl Harbor or the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, its ability to form a consensus on foreign-policy decisions is weakened and there is unlikely to be a united American response such as there was during World War II and the Cold War.

As it emerged as the sole superpower twenty-five years ago, the United States should have crafted a geostrategy that accounted for the inevitable attrition of its power. The United States might have accomplished this by averting global anarchy and preventing the emergence of a significant power rival.

Yet today, America is perceived, both at home and abroad, as weakened, unwilling, and increasingly unable to act as the world’s politically, economically, and militarily most powerful country.

THE CHANGING STRATEGIC SCENE

The shift of global power eastward has intensified the instability of contemporary international relations. Europe, still important in some areas, has come to play a diminished role while Russia seeks to remain in the forefront of world affairs as it struggles to redefine itself.

Europe has a prominent global role to play, but it is not, and is not likely again to be, a global power. Nonetheless, Europe can take the lead in regards to a number of transnational non-political threats to global stability, such as climate change. Moreover, without Europe’s steadfast opposition to Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, the situation could worsen.

Meanwhile, Russia, led by a financially thirsty leader, seeks to regain its global prestige. However, in its effort, Russia ignores the reality that it can no longer lead a non-Russian empire. Initially, the Russian Empire derived its legitimacy and power from its huge territory as it thrust eastward and southward. Russian peasants, politically ignorant and overwhelmingly illiterate, were nonetheless connected to the Russian Empire through their deep religiosity and deference to the tsar. Following World War I, the Russian Empire evolved dramatically. The creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) meant that, for the first time, the non-Russian portions of the USSR were given quasi-formal status and had nominal institutions of government and statehood. While these “republics” were in reality subordinated to and controlled by the Politburo, the nearly seventy-year existence of the USSR unintentionally nurtured nationalistic sentiments in those republics. In a January 2016 speech, Putin, referring to the creation of ethnically based republics, blamed Lenin for the “time bomb that was planted under the structure of [Russia’s] statehood.”[1]

As Putin tries to recreate the importance, size, and relevance of the earlier tsarist Russia, the affected post-Soviet states have cautiously resisted. Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev publically opposed Putin’s proposal of a Eurasian Union, which many Central Asian leaders interpreted as Russia’s attempt to recreate its former Soviet influence. By emphasizing the economic sphere of the new Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), Nazarbayev was able to water down Russia’s control of Central Asian affairs. Additionally, Putin’s effort to regain Russia’s imperial status was further weakened by the loss of Ukraine.

As China’s influence grows, the competition for security and economic advantages increases the potential for miscalculation and conflict. Russia’s primacy within the EAEU and in Central Asia is being more broadly diminished by China’s increasing economic involvement in the region. Part of China’s ambitious One Belt, One Road initiative seeks to reestablish the ancient Silk Roads to the West through Chinese construction and investment in Central Asian land routes. China provides the Central Asian countries with an alternative to Russia, which allows the countries more maneuverability between the two.

China’s economic expansion not only impacts Central Asia. With its extensive economic interests throughout the Middle East—for its oil, export markets, and infrastructure projects—China has a vested interest in the region’s stability. Given the economic importance of the region and the proximity of its religious extremism to China’s own restive minority, China cannot afford to remain on the sidelines as the Middle East is torn apart by sectarian violence.

China is currently the world’s emerging power. It has risen steadily, both economically and geopolitically, as it strives to match and perhaps surpass America. However, it is careful to avoid an overt geopolitical confrontation with the United States. The challenge for Washington is how to responsibly draw Beijing into a greater role in maintaining world order, not just in the Pacific, but also in the Middle East and Central Asia.

LOOKING BEYOND

Faced with an evolving global structure, America must work to draw Russia into a larger West and simultaneously pursue a long-term geopolitical vision that includes cooperation between the United States, China, and Russia.

A national Russia, without its former non-Russian subjects, faces the reality that its future lies in the West. Its waning influence in Central Asia notwithstanding, Russia’s size and geographical location enables it to potentially emerge as a prominent European state, despite its weaker economic clout and current lack of respect for human rights and law. Russia’s movement westward can be hastened and facilitated by China’s outreach to Europe and an arrangement between China and Russia of de facto shared influence in Central Asia.

This lengthy process rests largely on how Russia—too important to be ignored—is able to relate itself to the West; chiefly with Europe and with the principal international sponsor of the European Union—the United States—and how it copes with the delegitimation of its corrupt leadership. The two options are stark: either Russia fails dramatically and further destabilizes world order, or it successfully transitions into a stable country and responsible international actor. The latter, clearly preferable, depends largely on Russia’s ability to discontinue its destabilizing supra-nationalistic endeavors.

In the short term, China should be encouraged to pursue a geostrategic outlook that favors stability over conflict as it embarks on its One Belt, One Road program. To increase the stability that it seeks, China can no longer afford to remain publically neutral on significant global issues. And that requires a geopolitically global American-Chinese accommodation.

An increasingly complex Middle East, where the spread of conflict has been precipitated more by the rise of religious sectarianism and long-repressed memories of colonial brutality than by American involvement, impacts all global actors. Competition over the geopolitical and economic influence of regional countries such as Egypt, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey will serve as the future arena for China, Russia, and the United States.

Short-term solutions or politically expedient talking points will not solve today’s problems. Instead, a framework of cooperation and pressure is needed in order to promote long-term collaboration between all three sides: China, the problem of the future; Russia, the disrupter of the present; and the United States, the aging superpower caught in the vice of history.

As I concluded in the original edition of The Grand Chessboard, “In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last.”[2]

These words were a warning, but not a forecast. America’s relative decline and the events that followed were not inevitable. Today, the world still needs not an America content to engage in unilateral wars but a global superpower that recognizes the fleeting nature of its unique preeminence and thus seeks to develop a more multipolar world order. While the landscape has changed, the United States still has a strategic mission.