Much has been made of the lack of insight of the Russian president going to war in Ukraine, and of the geopolitical embarrassment of the Chinese president caught between commitments to global trade and the shared interests of authoritarian regimes
Making short shrift of the initial Western cautionary response to the Russian invasion, and policy reversals in the face of Ukraine’s determined act of resistance to Russian aggression, such a reading has solely the benefit of hindsight
The entire geopolitical scene has genuinely been upended in a three-corner gamesmanship between Russia, the US and China
National policies, weighed down by decades of institutional thinking, are predictable and remain fundamentally incompatible
In the end, the more flexible of the three behemoths can be expected to win the day
Europe, which is not truly an actor in the tragedy of Russian warfare, may seize the opportunity by building on strategic insights, probing a rich seam of geopolitical engagements on the frontline from the Baltics to the Black Sea
...if and only if the members of the European Union shed the inward-looking impulse of (for the better part) affluent nations
Possibly....
Russia’s zero-sum game
There is little doubt that Mr. Putin's perspective is one of hard power, reminiscent of the 20th century assertions of strength – I will impose my will because I am ready to go all the way – and finding its justification in defending a zone of influence, all in the name of balance harking back to the 19th century Congress system
Ingrained in the Russian worldview, the exercise of power in defense of its self-assigned zone of influence is supposed to address the sense of insecurity of the sprawling empire, never feeling safe behind borders abutting non-Russian, minority populated, hinterlands
It can be assumed – bearing history to witness – that the conflation of Russian influence, West, East and South, achieves just the opposite of secure balance – insecurity writ large
Just as surely, however, it can be asserted that Mr. Putin hardly ‘lacked insight’ by remaining true to the endless quest for ‘safety’ dictated by Russia's worldview
The former Soviet State's sense of immutability and infallibility will not be shed heedlessly, if ever...
The rigidly confident replay of 20th century military ventures on the European theater bedded on a rock-solid faith in the State, is reenacted in a tragic manner in Ukraine but will be, inevitably, in Russia as well
The Russian regime, grasping at straws after having utterly ransacked the country’s economic potential, is out of breath and out of ideas, dramatically out of step with citizens alive with 21st century hopes and expectations, in Ukraine but also in Byelorussia, in Kazakhstan, all across Central Asia and – not least – in Russia itself
Departures in large numbers - by young, mostly highly educated Russians leaving the Motherland - are frontrunners of the mounting challenges confronting the Russian society
Bearing the full weight of history, more hostage to tradition than fine-tuned to circumstances, the country's leadership still resonates with the deeply held beliefs of Russia’s manifest destiny
A high price to pay and probably also a moment of maximum danger...
China – yesterday’s superpower
The immensity of China is a world of its own and the Chinese president Xi remains hostage to his country’s very much inward-looking traditions
Success in the never-ending challenge of control over the country’s teeming masses always seems to be taken for granted in the West – and China’s troubled history over millennia has been putting such light-hearted assumptions to test, again and again
China’s shadowy presence in borderlands is a reflection of the country’s overbearing weight, taking the shape of a tributary system entailing recognition of China’s preeminence by ‘foreign’ (non-Chinese) countries in carefully choreographed ceremonies showing off the ‘Celest Empire’ at its most united (which, in truth, it rarely was…)
Exposing China’s internal frailty in the mid-19th century, the Western powers, Great Britain followed in lock-step by their European (and American) competitors, took ruthless advantage of their military and economic advantage, shattering social coherence by encouraging opium addiction, plundering (or destroying) an immense cultural heritage and robbing China of its identity
Amongst the 'Unequal Treaties' dictated by the West and rightly despised by China, solely the agreements imposed by Russia in the unholy scramble are still enforced and alive to this day
The Treaty of Aigun in 1858 and the Beijing Convention of 1860, involving the transfer of the maritime provinces to Russia…not to mention the hard bargains Stalin drove in 1950, a time of maximum danger for Mao’s Communist Party...have given rise to long-standing territorial claims by China, to be revived in their own sweet time...
Memory of these crimes simmer in the background of the Chinese worldview, making President Xi’s common front with Russia an exercise in pragmatism
The boot today is very much on the other foot, China’s foot…to Russia’s unquestionable discomfort
Borrowing extensively from the tributary system, its most accomplished manifest, respect remains part and parcel of China’s sometimes awkward but vocal and insistent tailoring of its mission as the wave of the future
Recast as symbol of China’s preeminence in the 21st century, China’s real economic and social achievements would be made whole by a very public recognition of respect on the world scene, a commitment very few independent nations will make truthfully
Tribute by lesser countries, paid in new forms of weighty symbolism but tribute nonetheless, is aligned with China’s millennia-old worldview but flexible it is not
Flatly out-of-step with 21st century national sensitivities, China is discovering you cannot buy love after all
America, the unintentional hegemon
Ensconced between two oceans, with a wealth of natural resources and agricultural abundance, the U.S. are everything Russia and China are not, drawn into the role of superpower after World War II by accident (for lack of any credible challenger) and reaping the huge benefits ever since
In part chance, in part calculated self-interest, economic preeminence, financial dictate (by way of worldwide dollarization) and – not least – global rule-setting have been, and remain, the pillars of the US hegemon
Influence playing out over so many dimensions, greatly benefitting from the country’s entrepreneurship, technological advance, deep internal markets and legal stability, led coincidentally to incontrovertible worldwide dominance
This is not to downplay US foreign policy centered on the country’s geopolitical ambitions, but for all their impact on pollical response devised in Russia, in China or in Europe, America’s international posture has been hostage to a domestic tug-of-war between the temptation of isolationism and the exhilaration of economic growth without boundaries
Deep down, America may indeed have less at stake in global settlements and the large public following of isolationism finds ample argument in – seemingly costless – withdrawal from geopolitical dogfights
Fundamentally, the confident American perception that life is not a zero-sum game reigns supreme
This appears to be true in the life of each American citizen just as it is in the exercise of US power on the world scene
American aloofness, the smug and overbearing behavior of US big business or the distraction of politicians solely concerned with their local constituencies, while wielding immense power, is ultimately rooted in a shared belief ‘things will turn out all right’, solely because American growth is nowhere near a zero-sum game
Compromise is always assumed to be within reach because all the parties are expected to be winning
This may be true...until it is not
Europe's conundrum
In the triangle shaped by the interaction between Russia, China and America, Europe has no voice because rivalry at the core of international affairs plays out between States alone, leaving out a union of shared interests such as Europe
Nor can Europe erase the fundamental imbalance preordained by fraught triangular relations which the Continent is not part of
The three dominant nations will always expect to thrive on chaos by finding some common ground with one party against the other…presumably leaving Europe on the sidelines
Overriding their enmity and their fierce divergences, Russia, China and America share supreme indifference to the tribulations of all that is foreign
Confident in their own destiny, devoid of any sense of inferiority, these great nations will manage to find common ground opportunistically with diehard opponents, playing for time, again and again…
Such has been the US-China rapprochement since the 1970’s, for the benefit of both nations, but stability on those terms only breeds a sense of permanence for the short-sighted, in a world of forever shifting alliances
In many ways, the travails of the European Union are reminiscent of the patchwork of alliances in the make-up of the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, back in the 19th century
The old Empire projected an impression of stability in a world turned upside down by globalization and industrial revolution (dominated by the British Empire), colonial power (projected by Great Britain and France) and the relentless march of an ambitious upstart (Prussia, soon to be united Germany)
Reigning over 20 per cent of Europe, and 50 million subjects, from Czernowitz (now in Ukraine) to Bregenz (on the shores of Swiss Lac Leman, from Krakau (now in Poland) to Trieste (now in Italy) down along the Adriatic coast to Budua (now in Montenegro), Austria-Hungary was indeed an astonishing geopolitical reality
The apparent stability in the old Empire’s diversity is the leading argument in projecting Europe as powerful proof of peaceful coexistence shared by the most diverse cultures, languages, religions and ideas of nationhood, all in the name of democracy and shared economic advancement
However, the impression of permanence of the Dual Monarchy rested on the fact that none of the national groups – the German-speaking minority, the Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Ruthenes, Slovenes, Serbo-Croats, Italians, Bosnians and Romanians – was large enough to dominate
After the military defeat at the hands of Bismarck’s Prussia (battle of Sadowa in 1866), permanence as foundation of stability became glaringly unreal in Kakania (moniker for the Empire’s ‘K und K’ – (Austrian) Kaiser und (Hungarian) König – painted in broad strokes Robert Musil’s unforgiving and farsighted novel ‘der Mann ohne Eigenschaften’)
Turning inwardly, without national identity, the Habsburg monarchy and Emperor Franz Joseph (1830-1916) represented only an idea of unity, which, in a fast-changing world of national ambitions, industrial revolution, dominant global powers and intellectual effervescence at the turn of the 19th century, would not make do…
Such appears to be Europe’s conundrum, caught between the temptation of an inward turn, an alluring promise of familiar political and economic certainties, and the ambitious assertion of a leading role, squaring the triangular relations between the three leading nations
It is to be hoped that Europe will not share the fate of the Habsburg Monarchy