The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives

FOR AMERICA, THE CHIEF geopolitical prize is Eurasia. For half a millennium, world affairs were dominated by Eurasian powers and peoples who fought with one another for regional domination and reached out for global power. Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia—and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.

Obviously, that condition is temporary. But its duration, and what follows it, is of critical importance not only to America’s well-being but more generally to international peace. The sudden emergence of the first and only global power has created a situation in which an equally quick end to its supremacy—either because of America’s withdrawal from the world or because of the sudden emergence of a successful rival—would produce massive international instability. In effect, it would prompt global anarchy. The Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington is right in boldly asserting:

In that context, how America “manages” Eurasia is critical. Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent (see map on page 32). About 75 percent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about 60 percent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources (see tables on page 33).

Eurasia is also the location of most of the world’s politically assertive and dynamic states. After the United States, the next six largest economies and the next six biggest spenders on military weaponry are located in Eurasia. All but one of the world’s overt nuclear powers and all but one of the covert ones are located in Eurasia. The world’s two most populous aspirants to regional hegemony and global influence are Eurasian. All of the potential political and/or economic challengers to American primacy are Eurasian. Cumulatively, Eurasia’s power vastly overshadows America’s. Fortunately for America, Eurasia is too big to be politically one.

Eurasia is thus the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played. Although geostrategy—the strategic management of geopolitical interests—may be compared to chess, the somewhat oval-shaped Eurasian chessboard engages not just two but several players, each possessing differing amounts of power. The key players are located on the chessboard’s west, east, center, and south. Both the western and the eastern extremities of the chessboard contain densely populated regions, organized on relatively congested space into several powerful states. In the case of Eurasia’s small western periphery, American power is deployed directly on it. The far eastern mainland is the seat of an increasingly powerful and independent player, controlling an enormous population, while the territory of its energetic rival—confined on several nearby islands—and half of a small far-eastern peninsula provide a perch for American power.

Stretching between the western and eastern extremities is a sparsely populated and currently politically fluid and organizationally fragmented vast middle space that was formerly occupied by a powerful rival to U.S. preeminence—a rival that was once committed to the goal of pushing America out of Eurasia. To the south of that large central Eurasian plateau lies a politically anarchic but energy-rich region of potentially great importance to both the western and the eastern Eurasian states, including in the southernmost area a highly populated aspirant to regional hegemony.

This huge, oddly shaped Eurasian chessboard—extending from Lisbon to Vladivostok—provides the setting for “the game.” If the middle space can be drawn increasingly into the expanding orbit of the West (where America preponderates), if the southern region is not subjected to domination by a single player, and if the East is not unified in a manner that prompts the expulsion of America from its offshore bases, America can then be said to prevail. But if the middle space rebuffs the West, becomes an assertive single entity, and either gains control over the South or forms an alliance with the major Eastern actor, then America’s primacy in Eurasia shrinks dramatically. The same would be the case if the two major Eastern players were somehow to unite. Finally, any ejection of America by its Western partners from its perch on the western periphery would automatically spell the end of America’s participation in the game on the Eurasian chessboard, even though that would probably also mean the eventual subordination of the western extremity to a revived player occupying the middle space.

The scope of America’s global hegemony is admittedly great, but its depth is shallow, limited by both domestic and external restraints. American hegemony involves the exercise of decisive influence but, unlike the empires of the past, not of direct control. The very scale and diversity of Eurasia, as well as the power of some of its states, limits the depth of American influence and the scope of control over the course of events. That megacontinent is just too large, too populous, culturally too varied, and composed of too many historically ambitious and politically energetic states to be compliant toward even the most economically successful and politically preeminent global power. This condition places a premium on geostrategic skill, on the careful, selective, and very deliberate deployment of America’s resources on the huge Eurasian chessboard.

It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America’s power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public’s sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization.

Moreover, most Americans by and large do not derive any special gratification from their country’s new status as the sole global superpower. Political “triumphalism” connected with America’s victory in the Cold War has generally tended to receive a cold reception and has been the object of some derision on the part of the more liberal-minded commentators. If anything, two rather varying views of the implications for America of its historic success in the competition with the former Soviet Union have been politically more appealing: on the one hand, there is the view that the end of the Cold War justifies a significant reduction in America’s global engagement, irrespective of the consequences for America’s global standing; and on the other hand, there is the perspective that the time has come for genuine international multilateralism, to which America should even yield some of its sovereignty. Both schools of thought have commanded the loyalty of committed constituencies.

Compounding the dilemmas facing the American leadership are the changes in the character of the global situation itself: the direct use of power now tends to be more constrained than was the case in the past. Nuclear weapons have dramatically reduced the utility of war as a tool of policy or even as a threat. The growing economic interdependence among nations is making the political exploitation of economic blackmail less compelling. Thus maneuver, diplomacy, coalition building, co-optation, and the very deliberate deployment of one’s political assets have become the key ingredients of the successful exercise of geostrategic power on the Eurasian chessboard.

GEOPOLITICS AND GEOSTRATEGY

The exercise of American global primacy must be sensitive to the fact that political geography remains a critical consideration in international affairs. Napoleon reportedly once said that to know a nation’s geography was to know its foreign policy. Our understanding of the importance of political geography, however, must adapt to the new realities of power.

For most of the history of international affairs, territorial control was the focus of political conflict. Either national self-gratification over the acquisition of larger territory or the sense of national deprivation over the loss of “sacred” land has been the cause of most of the bloody wars fought since the rise of nationalism. It is no exaggeration to say that the territorial imperative has been the main impulse driving the aggressive behavior of nation-states. Empires were also built through the careful seizure and retention of vital geographic assets, such as Gibraltar or the Suez Canal or Singapore, which served as key choke points or linchpins in a system of imperial control.

The most extreme manifestation of the linkage between nationalism and territorial possession was provided by Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. The effort to build the “one-thousand-year Reich” went far beyond the goal of reuniting all German-speaking peoples under one political roof and focused also on the desire to control “the granaries” of Ukraine as well as other Slavic lands, whose populations were to provide cheap slave labor for the imperial domain. The Japanese were similarly fixated on the notion that direct territorial possession of Manchuria, and later of the important oil-producing Dutch East Indies, was essential to the fulfillment of the Japanese quest for national power and global status. In a similar vein, for centuries the definition of Russian national greatness was equated with the acquisition of territory, and even at the end of the twentieth century, the Russian insistence on retaining control over such non-Russian people as the Chechens, who live around a vital oil pipeline, has been justified by the claim that such control is essential to Russia’s status as a great power.

Nation-states continue to be the basic units of the world system. Although the decline in big-power nationalism and the fading of ideology has reduced the emotional content of global politics—while nuclear weapons have introduced major restraints on the use of force—competition based on territory still dominates world affairs, even if its forms currently tend to be more civil. In that competition, geographic location is still the point of departure for the definition of a nation-state’s external priorities, and the size of national territory also remains one of the major criteria of status and power.

However, for most nation-states, the issue of territorial possession has lately been waning in salience. To the extent that territorial disputes are still important in shaping the foreign policy of some states, they are more a matter of resentment over the denial of self-determination to ethnic brethren said to be deprived of the right to join the “motherland” or a grievance over alleged mistreatment by a neighbor of ethnic minorities than they are a quest for enhanced national status through territorial enlargement.

Increasingly, the ruling national elites have come to recognize that factors other than territory are more crucial in determining the international status of a state or the degree of its international influence. Economic prowess, and its translation into technological innovation, can also be a key criterion of power. Japan provides the supreme example. Nonetheless, geographic location still tends to determine the immediate priorities of a state—and the greater its military, economic, and political power, the greater the radius, beyond its immediate neighbors, of that state’s vital geopolitical interests, influence, and involvement.

Until recently, the leading analysts of geopolitics have debated whether land power was more significant than sea power and what specific region of Eurasia is vital to gain control over the entire continent. One of the most prominent, Harold Mackinder, pioneered the discussion early in this century with his successive concepts of the Eurasian “pivot area” (which was said to include all of Siberia and much of Central Asia) and, later, of the Central–East European “heartland” as the vital springboards for the attainment of continental domination. He popularized his heartland concept by the famous dictum:

Geopolitics was also invoked by some leading German political geographers to justify their country’s “Drang nach Osten,” notably with Karl Haushofer adapting Mackinder’s concept to Germany’s strategic needs. Its much-vulgarized echo could also be heard in Adolf Hitler’s emphasis on the German people’s need for “Lebensraum.” Other European thinkers of the first half of this century anticipated an eastward shift in the geopolitical center of gravity, with the Pacific region—and specifically America and Japan—becoming the likely inheritors of Europe’s fading domination. To forestall such a shift, the French political geographer Paul Demangeon, as well as other French geopoliticians, advocated greater unity among the European states even before World War II.

Today, the geopolitical issue is no longer what geographic part of Eurasia is the point of departure for continental domination, nor whether land power is more significant than sea power. Geopolitics has moved from the regional to the global dimension, with preponderance over the entire Eurasian continent serving as the central basis for global primacy. The United States, a non-Eurasian power, now enjoys international primacy, with its power directly deployed on three peripheries of the Eurasian continent, from which it exercises a powerful influence on the states occupying the Eurasian hinterland. But it is on the globe’s most important playing field—Eurasia—that a potential rival to America might at some point arise. Thus, focusing on the key players and properly assessing the terrain has to be the point of departure for the formulation of American geostrategy for the long-term management of America’s Eurasian geopolitical interests.

Two basic steps are thus required:

• first, to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the power to cause a potentially important shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their seeking to attain them; and to pinpoint the geopolitically critical Eurasian states whose location and/or existence have catalytic effects either on the more active geostrategic players or on regional conditions;

• second, to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above, so as to preserve and promote vital U.S. interests, and to conceptualize a more comprehensive geostrategy that establishes on a global scale the interconnection between the more specific U.S. policies.

In brief, for the United States, Eurasian geostrategy involves the purposeful management of geostrategically dynamic states and the careful handling of geopolitically catalytic states, in keeping with the twin interests of America in the short-term preservation of its unique global power and in the long-run transformation of it into increasingly institutionalized global cooperation. To put it in a terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.

GEOSTRATEGIC PLAYERS AND GEOPOLITICAL PIVOTS

Active geostrategic players are the states that have the capacity and the national will to exercise power or influence beyond their borders in order to alter—to a degree that affects America’s interests—the existing geopolitical state of affairs. They have the potential and/or the predisposition to be geopolitically volatile. For whatever reason—the quest for national grandeur, ideological fulfillment, religious messianism, or economic aggrandizement—some states do seek to attain regional domination or global standing. They are driven by deeply rooted and complex motivations, best explained by Robert Browning’s phrase: “…a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” They thus take careful stock of America’s power, determine the extent to which their interests overlap or collide with America, and shape their own more limited Eurasian objectives, sometimes in collusion but sometimes in conflict with America’s policies. To the Eurasian states so driven, the United States must pay special attention.

Geopolitical pivots are the states whose importance is derived not from their power and motivation but rather from their sensitive location and from the consequences of their potentially vulnerable condition for the behavior of geostrategic players. Most often, geopolitical pivots are determined by their geography, which in some cases gives them a special role either in defining access to important areas or in denying resources to a significant player. In some cases, a geopolitical pivot may act as a defensive shield for a vital state or even a region. Sometimes, the very existence of a geopolitical pivot can be said to have very significant political and cultural consequences for a more active neighboring geostrategic player. The identification of the post–Cold War key Eurasian geopolitical pivots, and protecting them, is thus also a crucial aspect of America’s global geostrategy.

It should also be noted at the outset that although all geostrategic players tend to be important and powerful countries, not all important and powerful countries are automatically geostrategic players. Thus, while the identification of the geostrategic players is thus relatively easy, the omission from the list that follows of some obviously important countries may require more justification.

In the current global circumstances, at least five key geostrategic players and five geopolitical pivots (with two of the latter perhaps also partially qualifying as players) can be identified on Eurasia’s new political map. France, Germany, Russia, China, and India are major and active players, whereas Great Britain, Japan, and Indonesia, while admittedly very important countries, do not so qualify. Ukraine, Azerbaijan, South Korea, Turkey, and Iran play the role of critically important geopolitical pivots, though both Turkey and Iran are to some extent—within their more limited capabilities—also geostrategically active. More will be said about each in subsequent chapters.

At this stage, suffice it to say that in the western extremity of Eurasia the key and dynamic geostrategic players are France and Germany. Both of them are motivated by a vision of a united Europe, though they differ on how much and in what fashion such a Europe should remain linked to America. But both want to shape something ambitiously new in Europe, thus altering the status quo. France in particular has its own geostrategic concept of Europe, one that differs in some significant respects from that of the United States, and is inclined to engage in tactical maneuvers designed to play off Russia against America and Great Britain against Germany, even while relying on the Franco-German alliance to offset its own relative weakness.

Moreover, both France and Germany are powerful enough and assertive enough to exercise influence within a wider regional radius. France not only seeks a central political role in a unifying Europe but also sees itself as the nucleus of a Mediterranean–North African cluster of states that share common concerns. Germany is increasingly conscious of its special status as Europe’s most important state—as the area’s economic locomotive and the emerging leader of the European Union (EU). Germany feels it has a special responsibility for the newly emancipated Central Europe, in a manner vaguely reminiscent of earlier notions of a German-led Mitteleuropa. Moreover, both France and Germany consider themselves entitled to represent European interests in dealings with Russia, and Germany even retains, because of its geographic location, at least theoretically, the grand option of a special bilateral accommodation with Russia.

In contrast, Great Britain is not a geostrategic player. It has fewer major options, it entertains no ambitious vision of Europe’s future, and its relative decline has also reduced its capacity to play the traditional role of the European balancer. Its ambivalence regarding European unification and its attachment to a waning special relationship with America have made Great Britain increasingly irrelevant insofar as the major choices confronting Europe’s future are concerned. London has largely dealt itself out of the European game.

Sir Roy Denman, a former British senior official in the European Commission, recalls in his memoirs that as early as the 1955 conference in Messina, which previewed the formation of a European Union, the official spokesman for Britain flatly asserted to the assembled would-be architects of Europe:

More than forty years later, the above dictum remains essentially the definition of the basic British attitude toward the construction of a genuinely united Europe. Britain’s reluctance to participate in the Economic and Monetary Union, targeted for January 1999, reflects the country’s unwillingness to identify British destiny with that of Europe. The substance of that attitude was well summarized in the early 1990s as follows:

• Britain rejects the goal of political unification.

• Britain favors a model of economic integration based on free trade.

• Britain prefers foreign policy, security, and defense coordination outside the EC [European Community] framework.

• Britain has rarely maximized its influence with the EC.[3]

Great Britain, to be sure, still remains important to America. It continues to wield some degree of global influence through the Commonwealth, but it is neither a restless major power nor is it motivated by an ambitious vision. It is America’s key supporter, a very loyal ally, a vital military base, and a close partner in critically important intelligence activities. Its friendship needs to be nourished, but its policies do not call for sustained attention. It is a retired geostrategic player, resting on its splendid laurels, largely disengaged from the great European adventure in which France and Germany are the principal actors.

The other medium-sized European states, with most being members of NATO and/or the European Union, either follow America’s lead or quietly line up behind Germany or France. Their policies do not have a wider regional impact, and they are not in a position to alter their basic alignments. At this stage, they are neither geostrategic players nor geopolitical pivots. The same is true of the most important potential Central European member of NATO and the EU, namely, Poland. Poland is too weak to be a geostrategic player, and it has only one option: to become integrated into the West. Moreover, the disappearance of the old Russian Empire and Poland’s deepening ties with both the Atlantic alliance and the emerging Europe increasingly give Poland historically unprecedented security, while confining its strategic choices.

Russia, it hardly needs saying, remains a major geostrategic player, in spite of its weakened state and probably prolonged malaise. Its very presence impacts massively on the newly independent states within the vast Eurasian space of the former Soviet Union. It entertains ambitious geopolitical objectives, which it increasingly proclaims openly. Once it has recovered its strength, it will also impact significantly on its western and eastern neighbors. Moreover, Russia has still to make its fundamental geostrategic choice regarding its relationship with America: is it a friend or foe? It may well feel that it has major options on the Eurasian continent in that regard. Much depends on how its internal politics evolve and especially on whether Russia becomes a European democracy or a Eurasian empire again. In any case, it clearly remains a player, even though it has lost some of its “pieces,” as well as some key spaces on the Eurasian chessboard.

Similarly, it hardly needs arguing that China is a major player. China is already a significant regional power and is likely to entertain wider aspirations, given its history as a major power and its view of the Chinese state as the global center. The choices China makes are already beginning to affect the geopolitical distribution of power in Asia, while its economic momentum is bound to give it both greater physical power and increasing ambitions. The rise of a “Greater China” will not leave the Taiwan issue dormant, and that will inevitably impact on the American position in the Far East. The dismantling of the Soviet Union has also created on the western edge of China a series of states, regarding which the Chinese leaders cannot be indifferent. Thus, Russia will also be much affected by China’s more active emergence on the world scene.

The eastern periphery of Eurasia poses a paradox. Japan is clearly a major power in world affairs, and the American-Japanese alliance has often—and correctly—been defined as America’s most important bilateral relationship. As one of the very top economic powers in the world, Japan clearly possesses the potential for the exercise of first-class political power. Yet it does not act on this, eschewing any aspirations for regional domination and preferring instead to operate under American protection. Like Great Britain in the case of Europe, Japan prefers not to become engaged in the politics of the Asian mainland, though at least a partial reason for this is the continued hostility of many fellow Asians to any Japanese quest for a regionally preeminent political role.

This self-restrained Japanese political profile in turn permits the United States to play a central security role in the Far East. Japan is thus not a geostrategic player, though its obvious potential for quickly becoming one—especially if either China or America were suddenly to alter its current policies—imposes on the United States a special obligation to carefully nurture the American-Japanese relationship. It is not Japanese foreign policy that America must watch, but it is Japan’s self-restraint that America must very subtly cultivate. Any significant reduction in American-Japanese political ties would impact directly on the region’s stability.

The case for not listing Indonesia as a dynamic geostrategic player is easier to make. In Southeast Asia, Indonesia is the most important country, but even in the region itself, its capacity for projecting significant influence is limited by the relatively underdeveloped state of the Indonesian economy, its continued internal political uncertainties, its dispersed archipelago, and its susceptibility to ethnic conflicts that are exacerbated by the central role exercised in its internal financial affairs by the Chinese minority. At some point, Indonesia could become an important obstacle to Chinese southward aspirations. That eventuality has already been recognized by Australia, which once feared Indonesian expansionism but lately has begun to favor closer Australian-Indonesian security cooperation. But a period of political consolidation and continued economic success is needed before Indonesia can be viewed as the regionally dominant actor.

In contrast, India is in the process of establishing itself as a regional power and views itself as potentially a major global player as well. It also sees itself as a rival to China. That may be a matter of overestimating its own long-term capabilities, but India is unquestionably the most powerful South Asian state, a regional hegemon of sorts. It is also a semisecret nuclear power, and it became one not only in order to intimidate Pakistan but especially to balance China’s possession of a nuclear arsenal. India has a geostrategic vision of its regional role, both vis-à-vis its neighbors and in the Indian Ocean. However, its ambitions at this stage only peripherally intrude on America’s Eurasian interests, and thus, as a geostrategic player, India is not—at least, not to the same degree as either Russia or China—a source of geopolitical concern.

Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire. Russia without Ukraine can still strive for imperial status, but it would then become a predominantly Asian imperial state, more likely to be drawn into debilitating conflicts with aroused Central Asians, who would then be resentful of the loss of their recent independence and would be supported by their fellow Islamic states to the south. China would also be likely to oppose any restoration of Russian domination over Central Asia, given its increasing interest in the newly independent states there. However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as its access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia. Ukraine’s loss of independence would have immediate consequences for Central Europe, transforming Poland into the geopolitical pivot on the eastern frontier of a united Europe.

Despite its limited size and small population, Azerbaijan, with its vast energy resources, is also geopolitically critical. It is the cork in the bottle containing the riches of the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia. The independence of the Central Asian states can be rendered nearly meaningless if Azerbaijan becomes fully subordinated to Moscow’s control. Azerbaijan’s own and very significant oil resources can also be subjected to Russian control, once Azerbaijan’s independence has been nullified. An independent Azerbaijan, linked to Western markets by pipelines that do not pass through Russian-controlled territory, also becomes a major avenue of access from the advanced and energy-consuming economies to the energy rich Central Asian republics. Almost as much as in the case of Ukraine, the future of Azerbaijan and Central Asia is also crucial in defining what Russia might or might not become.

Turkey and Iran are engaged in establishing some degree of influence in the Caspian Sea–Central Asia region, exploiting the retraction of Russian power. For that reason, they might be considered as geostrategic players. However, both states confront serious domestic problems, and their capacity for effecting major regional shifts in the distribution of power is limited. They are also rivals and thus tend to negate each other’s influence. For example, in Azerbaijan, where Turkey has gained an influential role, the Iranian posture (arising out of concern over possible Azeri national stirrings within Iran itself) has been more helpful to the Russians.

Both Turkey and Iran, however, are primarily important geopolitical pivots. Turkey stabilizes the Black Sea region, controls access from it to the Mediterranean Sea, balances Russia in the Caucasus, still offers an antidote to Muslim fundamentalism, and serves as the southern anchor for NATO. A destabilized Turkey would be likely to unleash more violence in the southern Balkans, while facilitating the reimposition of Russian control over the newly independent states of the Caucasus. Iran, despite the ambiguity of its attitude toward Azerbaijan, similarly provides stabilizing support for the new political diversity of Central Asia. It dominates the eastern shoreline of the Persian Gulf, while its independence, irrespective of current Iranian hostility toward the United States, acts as a barrier to any long-term Russian threat to American interests in the Persian Gulf region.

Finally, South Korea is a Far Eastern geopolitical pivot. Its close links to the United States enable America to shield Japan and thereby to keep Japan from becoming an independent and major military power, without an overbearing American presence within Japan itself. Any significant change in South Korea’s status, either through unification and/or through a shift into an expanding Chinese sphere of influence, would necessarily alter dramatically America’s role in the Far East, thus altering Japan’s as well. In addition, South Korea’s growing economic power also makes it a more important “space” in its own right, control over which becomes increasingly valuable.

The above list of geostrategic players and geopolitical pivots is neither permanent nor fixed. At times, some states might have to be added or subtracted. Certainly, in some respects, the case could be made that Taiwan, or Thailand, or Pakistan, or perhaps Kazakstan or Uzbekistan should also be included in the latter category. However, at this stage, the case for none of the above seems compelling. Changes in the status of any of them would represent major events and involve some shifts in the distribution of power, but it is doubtful that the catalytic consequences would be far-reaching. The only exception might involve the issue of Taiwan, if one chooses to view it apart from China. Even then, that issue would only arise if China were to use major force to conquer the island, in successful defiance of the United States, thereby threatening more generally America’s political credibility in the Far East. The probability of such a course of events seems low, but that consideration still has to be kept in mind when framing U.S. policy toward China.

CRITICAL CHOICES AND POTENTIAL CHALLENGES

The identification of the central players and key pivots helps to define America’s grand policy dilemmas and to anticipate the potential major challenges on the Eurasian supercontinent. These can be summarized, before more comprehensive discussion in subsequent chapters, as involving five broad issues:

• What kind of Europe should America prefer and hence promote?

• What kind of Russia is in America’s interest, and what and how much can America do about it?

• What are the prospects for the emergence in Central Eurasia of a new “Balkans,” and what should America do to minimize the resulting risks?

• What role should China be encouraged to assume in the Far East, and what are the implications of the foregoing not only for the United States but also for Japan?

• What new Eurasian coalitions are possible, which might be most dangerous to U.S. interests, and what needs to be done to preclude them?

The United States has always professed its fidelity to the cause of a united Europe. Ever since the days of the Kennedy administration, the standard invocation has been that of “equal partnership.” Official Washington has consistently proclaimed its desire to see Europe emerge as a single entity, powerful enough to share with America both the responsibilities and the burdens of global leadership.

That has been the established rhetoric on the subject. But in practice, the United States has been less clear and less consistent. Does Washington truly desire a Europe that is a genuinely equal partner in world affairs, or does it prefer an unequal alliance? For example, is the United States prepared to share leadership with Europe in the Middle East, a region not only much closer geographically to Europe than to America but also one in which several European states have long-standing interests? The issue of Israel instantly comes to mind. U.S.-European differences over Iran and Iraq have also been treated by the United States not as an issue between equals but as a matter of insubordination.

Ambiguity regarding the degree of American support for European unity also extends to the issue of how European unity is to be defined, especially concerning which country, if any, should lead a united Europe. Washington has not discouraged London’s divisive posture regarding Europe’s integration, though Washington has also shown a clear preference for German—rather than French—leadership in Europe. That is understandable, given the traditional thrust of French policy, but the preference has also had the effect of encouraging the occasional appearance of a tactical Franco-British entente in order to thwart Germany, as well as periodic French flirtation with Moscow in order to offset the American-German coalition.

The emergence of a truly united Europe—especially if that should occur with constructive American support—will require significant changes in the structure and processes of the NATO alliance, the principal link between America and Europe. NATO provides not only the main mechanism for the exercise of U.S. influence regarding European matters but the basis for the politically critical American military presence in Western Europe. However, European unity will require that structure to adjust to the new reality of an alliance based on two more or less equal partners, instead of an alliance that, to use traditional terminology, involves essentially a hegemon and its vassals. That issue has so far been largely skirted, despite the modest steps taken in 1996 to enhance within NATO the role of the Western European Union (WEU), the military coalition of the Western European states. A real choice in favor of a united Europe will thus compel a far-reaching reordering of NATO, inevitably reducing the American primacy within the alliance.

In brief, a long-range American geostrategy for Europe will have to address explicitly the issues of European unity and real partnership with Europe. An America that truly desires a united and hence also a more independent Europe will have to throw its weight behind those European forces that are genuinely committed to Europe’s political and economic integration. Such a strategy will also mean junking the last vestiges of the once-hallowed U.S.-U.K. special relationship.

A policy for a united Europe will also have to address—though jointly with the Europeans—the highly sensitive issue of Europe’s geographic scope. How far eastward should the European Union extend? And should the eastern limits of the EU be synonymous with the eastern front line of NATO? The former is more a matter for a European decision, but a European decision on that issue will have direct implications for a NATO decision. The latter, however, engages the United States, and the U.S. voice in NATO is still decisive. Given the growing consensus regarding the desirability of admitting the nations of Central Europe into both the EU and NATO, the practical meaning of this question focuses attention on the future status of the Baltic republics and perhaps also that of Ukraine.

There is thus an important overlap between the European dilemma discussed above and the second one pertaining to Russia. It is easy to respond to the question regarding Russia’s future by professing a preference for a democratic Russia, closely linked to Europe. Presumably, a democratic Russia would be more sympathetic to the values shared by America and Europe and hence also more likely to become a junior partner in shaping a more stable and cooperative Eurasia. But Russia’s ambitions may go beyond the attainment of recognition and respect as a democracy. Within the Russian foreign policy establishment (composed largely of former Soviet officials), there still thrives a deeply ingrained desire for a special Eurasian role, one that would consequently entail the subordination to Moscow of the newly independent post-Soviet states.

In that context, even friendly western policy is seen by some influential members of the Russian policy-making community as designed to deny Russia its rightful claim to a global status. As two Russian geopoliticians put it:

The above quotations define well—even though with some animus—the dilemma that the United States faces. To what extent should Russia be helped economically—which inevitably strengthens Russia politically and militarily—and to what extent should the newly independent states be simultaneously assisted in the defense and consolidation of their independence? Can Russia be both powerful and a democracy at the same time? If it becomes powerful again, will it not seek to regain its lost imperial domain, and can it then be both an empire and a democracy?

U.S. policy toward the vital geopolitical pivots of Ukraine and Azerbaijan cannot skirt that issue, and America thus faces a difficult dilemma regarding tactical balance and strategic purpose. Internal Russian recovery is essential to Russia’s democratization and eventual Europeanization. But any recovery of its imperial potential would be inimical to both of these objectives. Moreover, it is over this issue that differences could develop between America and some European states, especially as the EU and NATO expand. Should Russia be considered a candidate for eventual membership in either structure? And what then about Ukraine? The costs of the exclusion of Russia could be high—creating a self-fulfilling prophecy in the Russian mindset—but the results of dilution of either the EU or NATO could also be quite destabilizing.

Another major uncertainty looms in the large and geopolitically fluid space of Central Eurasia, maximized by the potential vulnerability of the Turkish-Iranian pivots. In the area demarcated on the following map from Crimea in the Black Sea directly eastward along the new southern frontiers of Russia, all the way to the Chinese province of Xinjiang, then down to the Indian Ocean and thence westward to the Red Sea, then northward to the eastern Mediterranean Sea and back to Crimea, live about 400 million people, located in some twenty-five states, almost all of them ethnically as well as religiously heterogeneous and practically none of them politically stable. Some of these states may be in the process of acquiring nuclear weapons.

This huge region, torn by volatile hatreds and surrounded by competing powerful neighbors, is likely to be a major battlefield, both for wars among nation-states and, more likely, for protracted ethnic and religious violence. Whether India acts as a restraint or whether it takes advantage of some opportunity to impose its will on Pakistan will greatly affect the regional scope of the likely conflicts. The internal strains within Turkey and Iran are likely not only to get worse but to greatly reduce the stabilizing role these states are capable of playing within this volcanic region. Such developments will in turn make it more difficult to assimilate the new Central Asian states into the international community, while also adversely affecting the American-dominated security of the Persian Gulf region. In any case, both America and the international community may be faced here with a challenge that will dwarf the recent crisis in the former Yugoslavia.

A possible challenge to American primacy from Islamic fundamentalism could be part of the problem in this unstable region. By exploiting religious hostility to the American way of life and taking advantage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Islamic fundamentalism could undermine several pro-Western Middle Eastern governments and eventually jeopardize American regional interests, especially in the Persian Gulf. However, without political cohesion and in the absence of a single genuinely powerful Islamic state, a challenge from Islamic fundamentalism would lack a geopolitical core and would thus be more likely to express itself through diffuse violence.

A geostrategic issue of crucial importance is posed by China’s emergence as a major power. The most appealing outcome would be to co-opt a democratizing and free-marketing China into a larger Asian regional framework of cooperation. But suppose China does not democratize but continues to grow in economic and military power? A “Greater China” may be emerging, whatever the desires and calculations of its neighbors, and any effort to prevent that from happening could entail an intensifying conflict with China. Such a conflict could strain American-Japanese relations—for it is far from certain that Japan would want to follow America’s lead in containing China—and could therefore have potentially revolutionary consequences for Tokyo’s definition of Japan’s regional role, perhaps even resulting in the termination of the American presence in the Far East.

However, accommodation with China will also exact its own price. To accept China as a regional power is not a matter of simply endorsing a mere slogan. There will have to be substance to any such regional preeminence. To put it very directly, how large a Chinese sphere of influence, and where, should America be prepared to accept as part of a policy of successfully co-opting China into world affairs? What areas now outside of China’s political radius might have to be conceded to the realm of the reemerging Celestial Empire?

In that context, the retention of the American presence in South Korea becomes especially important. Without it, it is difficult to envisage the American-Japanese defense arrangement continuing in its present form, for Japan would have to become militarily more self-sufficient. But any movement toward Korean reunification is likely to disturb the basis for the continued U.S. military presence in South Korea. A reunified Korea may choose not to perpetuate American military protection; that, indeed, could be the price exacted by China for throwing its decisive weight behind the reunification of the peninsula. In brief, U.S. management of its relationship with China will inevitably have direct consequences for the stability of the American-Japanese-Korean triangular security relationship.

Finally, some possible contingencies involving future political alignments should also be briefly noted, subject to fuller discussion in pertinent chapters. In the past, international affairs were largely dominated by contests among individual states for regional domination. Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America’s status as a global power. However, whether any such coalitions do or do not arise to challenge American primacy will in fact depend to a very large degree on how effectively the United States responds to the major dilemmas identified here.

Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an “antihegemonic” coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower. Averting this contingency, however remote it may be, will require a display of U.S. geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.

A geographically more limited but potentially even more consequential challenge could involve a Sino-Japanese axis, in the wake of a collapse of the American position in the Far East and a revolutionary change in Japan’s world outlook. It would combine the power of two extraordinarily productive peoples, and it could exploit some form of “Asianism” as a unifying anti-American doctrine. However, it does not appear likely that in the foreseeable future China and Japan will form an alliance, given their recent historical experience; and a farsighted American policy in the Far East should certainly be able to prevent this eventuality from occurring.

Also quite remote, but not to be entirely excluded, is the possibility of a grand European realignment, involving either a German-Russian collusion or a Franco-Russian entente. There are obvious historical precedents for both, and either could emerge if European unification were to grind to a halt and if relations between Europe and America were to deteriorate gravely. Indeed, in the latter eventuality, one could imagine a European-Russian accommodation to exclude America from the continent. At this stage, all of these variants seem improbable. They would require not only a massive mishandling by America of its European policy but also a dramatic reorientation on the part of the key European states.

Whatever the future, it is reasonable to conclude that American primacy on the Eurasian continent will be buffeted by turbulence and perhaps at least by sporadic violence. America’s primacy is potentially vulnerable to new challenges, either from regional contenders or novel constellations. The currently dominant American global system, within which “the threat of war is off the table,” is likely to be stable only in those parts of the world in which American primacy, guided by a long-term geostrategy, rests on compatible and congenial sociopolitical systems, linked together by American-dominated multilateral frameworks.