The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives

1

Donald Puchala. “The History of the Future of International Relations,” Ethics and International Affairs 8 (1994):183.

2

From his paper “Creating Liberal Order: The Origins and Persistence of the Postwar Western Settlement,” University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, November 1995.

1

Samuel P. Huntington. “Why International Primacy Matters,” International Security (Spring 1993):83.

2

Roy Denman, Missed Chances (London: Cassell, 1996).

3

In Robert Skidelsky’s contribution on “Great Britain and the New Europe,” in From the Atlantic to the Urals, ed. David P. Calleo and Philip H. Gordon (Arlington, Va.: 1992), p. 145.

4

A. Bogaturov and V. Kremenyuk (both senior scholars in the Institute of the United States and Canada), in “Current Relations and Prospects for Interaction Between Russia and the United States,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta, June 28, 1996.

1

For example, as a percentage of overall budget, Germany accounts for EU: 28.5 percent; NATO: 22.8 percent; UN 8.93 percent, in addition to being the largest shareholder in the World Bank and the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development).

2

As quoted by Le Nouvel Observateur, August 12, 1996.

3

Cf. his History of Europe, from the Pyrenean Peace to the Death of Louis XIV.

4

Politiken Sondag, August 2, 1996, italics added.

5

It is noteworthy that influential voices both in Finland and in Sweden have began to discuss the possibility of association with NATO. In May 1996, the commander of the Finnish Defense Forces was reported by the Swedish media to have raised the possibility of some NATO deployments on Nordic soil, and in August 1996, the Swedish Parliament’s Defense Committee, in an action symptomatic of a gradual drift toward closer security cooperation with NATO, recommended that Sweden join the Western European Armaments Group (WEAG) to which only NATO members belong.

1

In “Our Security Predicament,” Foreign Policy 88 (Fall 1992):60.

2

Aleksandr Prokhanov. “Tragedy of Centralism,” Literaturnaya Rossiya, January 1990, pp. 4–5.

3

Interview in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, January 12, 1992.

4

A. Bogaturov and V. Kremenyuk (both senior scholars in the Institute of the United States and Canada), in “The Americans Themselves Will Never Stop,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta, June 28, 1996.

5

For example, even Yeltsin’s top adviser, Dmitryi Ryurikov, was quoted by Interfax (November 20, 1996) as considering Ukraine to be “a temporary phenomenon,” while Moscow’s Obshchaya Gazeta (December 10, 1996) reported that “in the foreseeable future events in eastern Ukraine may confront Russia with a very difficult problem. Mass manifestations of discontent… will be accompanied by appeals to Russia, or even demands, to take over the region. Quite a few people in Moscow would be ready to support such plans.” Western concerns regarding Russian intentions were certainly not eased by Russian demands for Crimea and Sevastopol, nor by such provocative acts as the deliberate inclusion in late 1996 of Sevastopol in Russian public television’s nightly weather forecasts for Russian cities.

6

N. S. Trubetzkoy. “The Legacy of Genghis Khan,” Cross Currents 9 (1990):68.

7

Interview with L’Espresso (Rome), July 15, 1994.

8

Aleksei Bogaturov. “Current Relations and Prospects for Interaction Between Russia and the United States,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta, June 28, 1996.

9

In early 1996, General Aleksandr Lebed published a remarkable article (“The Fading of Empire or the Rebirth of Russia,” Segodnya, April 26, 1996) that went a long way toward making that case.

1

Zavtra 28 (June 1996).

2

“What Russia Wants in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta, January 24, 1995.

1

“Official Document Anticipates Disorder During the Post-Deng Period,” Cheng Ming (Hong Kong), February 1, 1995, provides a detailed summary of two analyses prepared for the Party leadership concerning various forms of potential unrest. A Western perspective on the same topic is contained in Richard Baum, “China After Deng: Ten Scenarios in Search of Reality,” China Quarterly (March 1996).

2

In the somewhat optimistic report titled “China’s Economy Toward the 21st Century” (Zou xiang 21 shi ji de Zhongguo jinji), issued in 1996 by the Chinese Institute for Quantitative Economic and Technological Studies, it was estimated that the per capita income in China in 2010 will be approximately $735, or less than $30 higher than the World Bank definition of a lowincome country.

3

According to Yazhou Zhoukan (Asiaweek), September 25, 1994, the aggregate assets of the 500 leading Chinese-owned companies in Southeast Asia totaled about $540 billion. Other estimates are even higher: International Economy, November/December 1996, reported that the annual income of the 50 million overseas Chinese was approximately the above amount and thus roughly equal to the GDP of China’s mainland. The overseas Chinese were said to control about 90 percent of Indonesia’s economy, 75 percent of Thailand’s, 50–60 percent of Malaysia’s, and the whole economy in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Concern over this condition even led a former Indonesian ambassador to Japan to warn publicly of a “Chinese economic intervention in the region,” which might not only exploit such Chinese presence but which could even lead to Chinese-sponsored “puppet governments” (Saydiman Suryohadiprojo, “How to Deal with China and Taiwan,” Asahi Shimbun [Tokyo], September 23, 1996).

4

Symptomatic in that regard was the report published in the Bangkok English-language daily, The Nation (March 31, 1997), on the visit to Beijing by the Thai Prime Minister, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh. The purpose of the visit was defined as establishing a firm strategic alliance with “Greater China.” The Thai leadership was said to have “recognized China as a superpower that has a global role,” and as wishing to serve as “a bridge between China and ASEAN.” Singapore has gone even farther in stressing its identification with China.

5

Song Yimin. “A Discussion of the Division and Grouping of Forces in the World After the End of the Cold War,” International Studies (China Institute of International Studies, Beijing) 6–8 (1996):10. That this assessment of America represents the view of China’s top leadership is indicated by the fact that a shorter version of the analysis appeared in the mass-circulation official organ of the Party, Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily), April 29, 1996.

6

An elaborate examination of America’s alleged intent to construct such an anti-China Asian system is contained in Wang Chunyin, “Looking Ahead to Asia-Pacific Security in the Early Twenty-first Century,” Guoji Zhanwang (World Outlook), February 1996.

Another Chinese commentator argued that the American-Japanese security arrangement has been altered from a “shield of defense” aimed at containing Soviet power to a “spear of attack” pointed at China (Yang Baijiang, “Implications of Japan-U.S. Security Declaration Outlined,” Xiandai Guoji Guanxi [Contemporary International Relations], June 20, 1996). On January 31, 1997, the authoritative daily organ of the Chinese Communist Party, Renmin Ribao, published an article entitled “Strengthening Military Alliance Does Not Conform with Trend of the Times,” in which the redefinition of the scope of the U.S.-Japanese military cooperation was denounced as “a dangerous move.”

7

The Japan Digest, February 25, 1997, reported that, according to a governmental poll, only 36 percent of the Japanese felt friendly toward South Korea.

8

For example, the Higuchi Commission, a prime-ministerial advisory board that outlined the “Three Pillars of Japanese Security Policy” in a report issued in the summer of 1994, stressed the primacy of the American-Japanese security ties but also advocated an Asian multilateral security dialogue; the 1994 Ozawa Committee report, “Blueprint for a New Japan”; the Yomiuri Shimbun’s outline for “A Comprehensive Security Policy” of May 1995, advocating among other items the use abroad of the Japanese military for peacekeeping; the April 1996 report of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives (keizai doyukai), prepared with the assistance of the Fuji Bank think tank, urging greater symmetry in the American-Japanese defense system; the report entitled “Possibility and Role of a Security System in the Asian-Pacific Region,” submitted to the prime minister in June 1996 by the Japan Forum on International Affairs; as well as numerous books and articles published over the last several years, often much more polemical and extreme in their recommendations and more often cited by the Western media than the above-mentioned mostly mainstream reports. For example, in 1996 a book edited by a Japanese general evoked widespread press commentaries when it dared to speculate that under some circumstances the United States might fail to protect Japan and hence Japan should augment its national defense capabilities (see General Yasuhiro Morino, ed., Next Generation Ground Self-Defense Force and the commentary on it in “Myths of the U.S. Coming to Our Aid,” Sankei Shimbun, March 4, 1996).

9

Some conservative Japanese have been tempted by the notion of a special Japan-Taiwan connection, and in 1996 a “Japan-Taiwan Parliamentarians’ Association” was formed to promote that goal. The Chinese reaction has been predictably hostile.

10

In a meeting in 1996 with China’s top national security and defense officials, I identified (using occasionally deliberately vague formulations) the following areas of common strategic interest as the basis for such a dialogue: (1) a peaceful Southeast Asia; (2) nonuse of force in the resolution of offshore issues; (3) peaceful reunification of China; (4) stability in Korea; (5) independence of Central Asia; (6) balance between India and Pakistan; (7) an economically dynamic and internationally benign Japan; (8) a stable but not too strong Russia.

11

A strong case for this initiative, pointing out the mutual economic benefits thereof, is made by Kurt Tong, “Revolutionizing America’s Japan Policy,” Foreign Policy (Winter 1996–1997).

1

A number of constructive proposals to that end were advanced at the CSIS (Center for International and Strategic Studies) Conference on America and Europe, held in Brussels in February 1997. They ranged from joint efforts at structural reform, designed to reduce government deficits, to the development of an enhanced European defense industrial base, which would enhance transatlantic defense collaboration and a greater European role in NATO. A useful list of similar and other initiatives, meant to generate a greater European role, is contained in David C. Gompert and F. Stephen Larrabee, eds., America and Europe: A Partnership for a New Era (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1997).

2

It is appropriate to quote here the wise advice offered by my colleague at CSIS, Anthony H. Cordesman (in his paper on “The American Threat to the United States,” February 1997, p. 16, delivered as a speech to the Army War College), who has warned against the American propensity to demonize issues and even nations. As he put it: “Iran, Iraq, and Libya are cases where the U.S. has taken hostile regimes that pose real, but limited threats and ‘demonized’ them without developing any workable mid- to long-term end game for its strategy. U.S. planners cannot hope to totally isolate these states, and it makes no sense to treat them as if they were identical ‘rogue’ or ‘terrorist’ states…. The U.S. lives in a morally gray world and cannot succeed by trying to make it black and white.”

3

“An Emerging Consensus—A Study of American Public Attitudes on America’s Role in the World” (College Park: Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, July 1996). It is noteworthy, but not inconsistent with the foregoing, that studies by the above center, conducted in early 1997 (under principal investigator Steven Kull), also showed a considerable majority in favor of NATO expansion (62 percent in favor, with 27 percent strongly in favor; and only 29 percent against, with 14 percent strongly against).

4

Hans Kohn. The Twentieth Century (New York: 1949), p. 53.

a

Zbigniew Brzezinski acknowledges the helpful contribution of his research assistant Paul Wasserman.

1

Vladimir Putin. Russian Popular Front’s Interregional Forum, Russia, Stavropol, January 25, 2016, Kremlin.ru. Accessed January 28, 2016.

2

Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Grand Chessboard (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1997), 210.