The Return of Geopolitics

Introduction

The debate about the “return to geopolitics” is in essence a debate about whether the distribution of power leftover from the end of the Cold War, the US dominated liberal world order, is being challenged or whether this is even possible.  The status quo imposed by the victors has since been taken so for granted in the West that the current world order is viewed by the some neoliberal scholars as axiomatic and geopolitical challenges are but a thing of history. For scholars such as Francis Fukuyama or John Ikenberry, the gravity of this liberal capitalist world order is so great that it will inevitably consume any would-be challenger’s futile ambitions. As Ikenberry put it, “In the age of liberal order, revisionist struggles are a fool’s errand.” Neorealists such as Walter Russell Mead counter that this belief that the liberal world order is self perpetuating and a foregone conclusion is a dangerous and naive assertion, for while, “Chinese, Iranian, and Russian revanchism haven’t overturned the post–Cold War settlement in Eurasia yet, and may never do so, but they have converted an uncontested status quo into a contested one.” As futile as Russia’s gambit in Ukraine or China’s provocations towards its neighbors may prove, it remains essential to prepare for the ambitions of actors who seek to contest the status quo when it infringes on what they perceive as rightfully theirs.

Geopolitics: A Conceptual Clarification

The term “geopolitics” dates back to 1900 when it was coined by the Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén who used the term “geopolitk” in his book Introduction to Swedish Geography to describe simply the effects of geography on the politics of the state. It has since evolved the relatively neutral meaning of, “the effect of geography on the international politics of a state.” In modern usage the term geopolitics has become interchangeable with the broader concepts of “foreign affairs” and “international relations.” But in the context of Russian actions in Ukraine, the term “geopolitics” and the return thereof, has taken on a much darker implicit meaning of reverting back to a time when international politics was an unending Hobbesian series of brutal, cutthroat zero sum competitions over the relative balance of power. This return of balance of power games have been characterized by the aggressive use of hard power, both overtly and covertly, to carve out or maintain spheres of influence in pursuit of regional hegemony by powers such as Russia, China, and Iran. These so-called “revisionist” states seek to contest the status quo left over from the end of the Cold War and undermine US hegemony in the international system, shifting it away from unipolar domination to a multipolar concert of powers. This emerging concert of powers would ideally enable states such as Russia, China, and Iran to challenge, balance, or otherwise curtail the hitherto unrestrained  global power of the United States by establishing themselves as indispensable players in their respective spheres of influence.

Post-Cold War Order: End of History?

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States emerged as the unrivaled world superpower by any conventional measure. The United States used its dominant position to “lock in” democratic gains across former Soviet republics by expanding NATO and integrating as many states as possible into the liberal free market capitalist model organized under the WTO. The rhetoric of the Clinton administration during this time reflected deep faith and optimism in the central tenets of the liberal thesis of international affairs which were dominant at the time. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott argued that, “With the end of the cold war, it has become possible to construct a Europe that is increasingly united by a shared commitment to open societies and open markets.” Clinton himself defended for the inevitable eastward march of NATO as a means of, “locking in democracy’s gains in eastern Europe [because] democracies solve their differences peacefully.” As Secretary of State Madeline Albright preached, “[NATO’s] basic achievement was to begin the construction of the… network of rule-based institutions and arrangements that keep the peace.”

The end of the Cold War and the liberal world order which it ushered in was supposed to be the end of “geopolitics” as we knew them, marking the “end of history.” This supposedly would be the end of a human history dominated by bloody confrontations over relative power and competing influence over world affairs. These competitions which had plagued Europe for centuries were believed to have finally been swept away in the rubble of the Berlin Wall. Immanuel Kant’s perpetual peace was finally upon us where nations no longer had to go to war with one another to settle disputes because a positive sum “international community” based on shared liberal norms of behavior finally had rendered such barbaric duels “obsolete.” The disputes of the world could move from violent confrontations over arms build ups, territorial boundaries, and influence to peaceful topics like trade liberalization, nonproliferation, and the environment.

 The United States has conducted itself in the 21st century assuming that its greatest threats were from pesky rogue states and religious extremists. It presumed that the liberal world order it constructed over 70 years since the end of World War 2 was now so interwoven into the fabric of international relations that order itself was essentially immune. This ordering of international politics, however, is entirely predicated upon the American power which forged it into existence. This unrivaled American power was built upon numerous geopolitical arrangements in each major region of US interest which came together for a brief time to provide the United Stated unparalleled freedom of action around the world. A strong unified Germany (and later European Union) overshadowed a broken Soviet Union and its successor states. Iran and Iraq were surrounded by strong Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt which checked their respective regional ambitions. China was surrounded by US allies Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Twenty-five years later, these delicate power balances, and by extension American power, are being challenged on all fronts as Iran, Russia, and China seek to revise the Cold War status quo for their own purposes and maximize their influence in their respective neighborhoods.

Ayatollahs and Revolution: The Islamic Republic of Iran

The radical hardliners which would go on to found the Islamic Republic of Iran rode to power amidst revolutionary fervor incensed by decades of tyrannical rule by the Western backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In his pronouncement of the Islamic Republic, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sought not to just secure strict Islamic governance within Iran but to export his Islamic revolution globally, for, “it is the duty of all of us to overthrow the taghut; i.e., the illegitimate political powers that now rule the entire Islamic world.” In the view of Khomeini, the political map of the Middle East needed to be overthrown because it was an artificial abomination created by imperialists which divided the Islamic Ummah for their own gain. In this respect, the Ayallatolh became not just the chief political authority in Iran but a global figure cast as the “Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution” leading the charge against Western domination of the Muslim world. The divinely ordained mission of Iran was therefore to liberate the oppressed Ummah from the hands of such tyrants and establish a new order based on the rightly guided principles of Allah and his Prophet.

This creed of exporting the Islamic revolution and confrontation with the West has served as a central pillar to the Islamic Republic’s conduct on the world stage. Iran has built up a number of alliances with states similarly disenfranchised by the United States like North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba. Iran has also reached across the Sunni-Shiite divide as it has proven advantageous to its larger anti-West/Zionist/American campaign by arming the Sunni Palestinian terrorist group HAMAS in the Gaza Strip and even providing shelter to high level al-Qaeda commanders directly after 9/11. But those Sunni states who allied themselves with the “Great Satan” against the “Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution” are considered heretical traitors who must be undermined and where possible confronted for the Islamic Revolution, and thus Tehran’s influence, must progress unabated across the Ummah.

The 2003 US invasion of Iraq proved to be a geopolitical godsend for Iran because it removed Iran’s arch-rival Saddam Hussein who waged an brutal war against the Islamic Republic for eight years with American assistance. With the old Cold War balance of power disrupted, Iran was now free to expand its influence dramatically into the Shiite majority country with the assistance of numerous armed proxies such Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. The Shiite politician Nouri al-Maliki, who spent decades in exile in Iran and Syria fleeing Saddam’s brutality, would rise to become Prime Minister under the American occupation. Steeped in the Shiite fundamentalism from his time in exile, Maliki would become infamous for his campaign of alienating and outright retribution against Iraq’s Sunni tribes in Anbar province. When American forces left Iraq in December 2011, Iran’s last barrier to projecting itself was removed and Iran now enjoyed a dominating sphere of influence stretching from Basra to Baghdad, across to Damascus and down the Bekkaa valley in Lebanon with Hezbollah and its March 8 political coalition firmly in control in Beirut. Iran, for a brief time, acquired a level of regional hegemony for itself not seen since the days of the Persian empire with Tehran’s will forming a broad crescent across from its border with Afghanistan all the way to the mediterranean on the Lebanese coast. 

Iran’s geopolitical quest for regional hegemony was abruptly halted with the outbreak of civil war in Syria which pitted Iran’s longtime ally Assad against various rebel groups seeking his ouster. The war quickly devolved along sectarian fault lines in which Sunni Arab militias battled against government forces belonging to Assad’s Allawite clan which is considered a heretical offshoot by Salafi Sunni fundamentalists. Syria and later Iraq would become the front lines in an ongoing brutal sectarian civil war at the heart of the Islamic world. The Sunni powers of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey seek to spoil Iran’s larger geopolitical agenda by unseating his primary ally in region by supporting proxy armies of religious fanatics such as Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS. Iran has responded by committing its own ideological shock troops such as Hezbollah into Syria and reactivating its Shiite militias to safeguard its interests in Baghdad.

On the surface this is a classic geopolitical game for the Arab powers to contain and undermine Persian ambitions in the region and work to install their own client states. In this respect, the balance of power established by the United States worked as intended. However,  the United States overplayed its hand in assuming that the rivalries it had stoked would naturally balance one another and thus create stability. When the Sunnis went after Assad with prejudice it threw the entire region out balance and turned it into a free for all of security competitions. As dangerous as these geopolitical imbalances are; the sectarian religious undercurrents of this struggle presents a much more primordial threat to the liberal world order. This conflagration consuming the Middle East harkens back to the struggles of pre-Westphalian Europe in which a third of Europe died as Catholics and Protestants dueled for ideological supremacy during the 30 years war. This civil war is upending the Westphalian norms which were supposed to have settled the question of domestic religious affairs nearly 400 years ago. With these norms being eschewed before our eyes, it undermines the potential for any stable sovereign state to form and function in the region. Without this basic Westphalian building block of sovereign states, the world order of liberal, capitalist, democratic states cannot hope to find any fertile ground to take root whilst the desert drowns in the blood of martyrs.

Putin’s Russia: The Last Stand of a Dying Bear

Compared to Iran’s transnational theocratic ambitions for a new grand Islamic Civilization, Putin’s ambitions for Eurasia are far more limited and directly political in nature. Putin who refers to the fall of the Soviet Union as, “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” seeks to reestablish the lost grandeur Russian Empire primarily in its near abroad of former satellite states. The advance of NATO eastward up to the very borders of the Russian Federation is seen as an existential threat which surrounds and strangles Russian freedom of action in its traditional sphere of influence. Thus, in the Kremlin’s view, the recent forceful moves into the Ukraine, and previously in Georgia, represent decisive enforcement of vital national interests in protecting its few remaining bastions of independence from Western domination. 

In the optimistic days just after the end of the Cold War, Russia was viewed as a new partner in the Western liberal world order of promoting peace and prosperity. In this new era, all nations would work together for common good to embrace democracy and accept liberal norms and foreswear anachronistic concepts like spheres of influence or security concepts. In order to cement this new peaceful order, Russia and the majority its former Soviet satellites states were brought into the “Partnership for Peace” with NATO in 1994. In 1997, NATO and Russia signed a memorandum of understanding towards mutual relations and cooperation which would, “build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security.” The memorandum declared NATO’s and Russia’s common interest to, “give concrete substance to their shared commitment to build a stable, peaceful and undivided Europe, whole and free, to the benefit of all its people.” In light of this commitment towards peace and cooperation, Western leaders were aghast when Russia would abrogate the rules based international system and unilaterally use force to settle a border dispute with Georgia on its southern flank in 2008. Then-President George W. Bush derided Moscow’s incursion as the misguided policies of an anachronistic authoritarian government threatened by the spread of democracy and freedom along its periphery.

Unfortunately, Russia has tended to view the expansion of freedom and democracy as a threat to its interests. The opposite is true. Free and prosperous societies on Russia’s borders will advance Russia’s interests by serving as sources of stability and economic opportunity. We hope Russia’s leaders will recognize that a future of cooperation and peace will benefit all parties. The Cold War is over. The days of satellite states and spheres of influence are behind us. A contentious relationship with Russia is not in America’s interests, and a contentious relationship with America is not in Russia’s interests.

Secretary of State John Kerry echoed President Bush six years later in March 2014 when Russia forcefully annexed Crimea. Kerry was “stunned” by this “incredible act of aggression… the willful choice by Putin to invade another country.” Kerry elaborated that, “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text… This does not have to be a zero-sum game.”

Kerry’s ridicule smacks of willful ignorance and hypocrisy to the Kremlin’s ears. Kerry’s charge of using “trumped up pretext” to defend aggressive power grabs could just as easily apply to NATO’s “trumped up pretext” of using the spread of peace and democracy to justify it’s eastward march to within hundreds of miles of Moscow. Moscow asserts that the United States violated its tacit agreement with the ailing Soviet Union not to expand NATO’s border beyond the reunification of Germany.  Secretary of State James Baker apparently promised, “iron-clad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward” to the Soviets in his meeting in 1990 in order to secure Soviet acquiescence of German reunification.

But In 1999, just two years after the NATO-Russian Memorandum of Understanding, NATO  spread into the Warsaw Pact with earnest by acquiring Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Five years later, NATO would expand right up to the Russian border by admitting the Baltic states along with Romania and Bulgaria which encircled the Russian Black Sea Fleet. By 2004, the only states not in NATO on Russia’s periphery were Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova in the west and Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia in the south. In April 2008, at the 20th NATO summit in Bucharest, Ukraine and Georgia entered into Membership Action Plans and “intensified dialogue” leading to their eventual admission into the alliance.

Russia invaded Georgia in August 2008 ostensibly to defend Russian-speaking populations who sought to secede and join Russia in the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia after parliamentary elections in May brought a pro-Western government to power. At a far deeper level, Russia sought to enforce its old sphere of influence in its erstwhile satellite state and keep NATO off its southern flank. Russia also sought to protect its vital oil interests by disrupting the BTC pipeline which would move over a million barrels of oil a day from the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan across Georgia and to Turkey where it would then be shipped to Europe, undermining the Russian near-monopoly on the European energy market.

The February 2014 overthrow of Prime Minister Victor Yanukovych over Ukraine’s ascension to EU membership presented a direct threat to Russia’s continued power. Yanukovych had been Moscow’s man in Kiev since 2010 who had nixed the idea of Ukrainian membership in NATO and fought to stall Ukraine’s marriage with the EU. Without him, Moscow feared that Kiev would fall to their Western rivals and they would lose not only strategic access to the Black Sea to NATO encirclement but  also the deep psychological loss of the birthplace of the Russian Empire. Putin moved swiftly to secure the Black Sea Fleet headquarters at Sevastopol and later annexed all of Crimea ensuring Russia’s continued naval access in the Black Sea and by extension to the Mediterranean.  Russian moves into eastern Ukraine have since been limited to those Russian speaking provinces which naturally lean toward Moscow. Russia’s current ground offensive appears to focus on securing an overland supply route from Donetsk and Luhansk down through Mariupol to the Russian bases on the island of Crimea.  The current aggression in Ukraine as viewed by Putin is only a very limited and wholly necessary defensive action in order to prevent complete encirclement by NATO. According to Putin’s bellicose chest thumping, “[he] could take Kiev in two weeks if [he] wanted.” Putin has further threatened that, "If I wanted, in two days I could have Russian troops not only in Kiev, but also in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw and Bucharest.” Putin has sought to balance NATO’s encroachment by establishing his own “Eurasian Economic Union” amongst former Soviet states Belarus and Kazakhstan. Putin has also been working towards enhancing relations with China in both the Shanghai Cooperation organization and bilaterally. In light of Western sanctions on Russian petroleum exports, Moscow and Beijing have been aggressively advancing a new pipeline linking the two countries. In the aggregate, these moves show that Russia will enforce its interests in its traditional sphere of influence and will actively work to spoil further Western encroachment. The budding relationship with China is a natural and logical geopolitical move as both powers, one falling and one rising, seek to temper American and western global dominance.

China Rising

As Russia fights to defend its last remaining enclaves, China is surging economically and is using its new found power to recoup lost territory and reclaim its dominant position in East Asia. The United States has engaged in a duel track policy towards China in which it has pursued vigorous trade opportunities with what is projected to be the largest economy in the world while simultaneously hedging against broader Chinese power. The US has built a number of security partnerships with regional rivals like Japan and Taiwan during the Cold War and its currently courting emerging powers such as India in an effort to reinforce its position in the region. This current maneuvering to contain China by supporting regional rivals is setting up a volatile security dilemma which may drag the United States unwillingly into a dangerous power struggle as China seeks to revise the status quo to reflect its return to great power status.

The duel between China and Japan for hegemony in East Asia goes back centuries. For over a thousand years, the Chinese empire reigned supreme with numerous vassal states across the region including Korea, Tibet, and most of South East Asia. In what would become known as the “Century of Humiliation” dating from 1839 to 1949, the Chinese empire which had stood for 2000 years crumbled amidst Western imperialism. Contemporaneously, Japan who had recently opened itself up to Western powers embarked on an aggressive modernization program which would lead to its own imperial conquests of Asia during the early 20th century.  In the Chinese collective psyche, the greatest humiliation came as Japan conquered and occupied the Chinese mainland from 1937-1945 and the subsequent massacres which were committed such as the “Rape of Nanking” which have yet to be formally apologized for or even acknowledged by Tokyo.

Currently, the Sino-Japanese rivalry is focused on the disputed sovereignty of a small group of islands in the East China Sea which to the Chinese are known as the Diaoyu and to the Japanese as the Senkaku. China has moved forcefully in recent years to asserts it sovereignty and secure these rocks which Imperial Japan annexed after its victory during the first Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Aside from nationalistic and historical value, these islands are also known to harbor great petroleum resources which are desperately needed by both countries, wherein Japan must import 90% of its energy and China is projected to have to import 60% by 2020. The PLA Navy has been deploying in force to assert its sovereignty over islands such as the Senkaku/Diaoyu which fall within the “first island chain” in order to establish itself the region’s dominant naval power by 2020. This is part of a  broader modernization effort with the aim of becoming a “blue water navy” capable of global naval operations by 2050 in the view of Admiral Liu Huaqing, the father of China’s modern navy. Given that Japan has only a meager coastal self defense force, this leaves the United States Navy as the principal obstacle in establishing Chinese hegemony in the region.

China’s assertive use of hard power to enforce its territorial claims has led to a predictable response by regional powers who seek to balance and contain China’s regional ambitions. The United States, viewing itself as an indispensable Pacific power, has responded to this challenge of hegemony by “pivoting” half the US Navy’s surface fleet and 60% of its attack submarines to region. The United States has sought to reaffirm its role as “Asia’s security guarantor" by bolstering defense cooperation with China’s rivals. The United States has focused this cooperation primarily with Japan in the form of joint training with an emphasis on amphibious warfare, like that which would be need to take an seize islands in the pacific. The United States also recently signed a defense pact with the Philippines which would allow increased access for US forces along China’s southern flank. The United States has also been sending diplomatic overtures to India, China’s other primary rival. India, like Japan, is deeply concerned about Chinese willingness to unilaterally determine territorial sovereignty through military coercion in its disputed border in the Himalayas.

All of this defense posturing in the region from Beijing’s perspective smacks of Cold War style containment. Just like Russia, China finds itself surrounded by US allies all along its coast from Korea to Japan to Taiwan to the Philippines. There are also talks underway for increased defense coordination with China’s former vassal state, Vietnam. India is also courting Vietnam in a move to contain China, and has just agreed to sell naval vessels to Hanoi in exchange for mineral exploration rights in the South China Sea. China, for its part, has been in talks with South Korea seeking increased ties, banking on mutual historical grievances towards Japan and attempting to unsettle US security dominance in northeast Asia. All of this diplomatic maneuvering is setting up a volatile distribution of power which positions Vietnam to be backed by India while Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines are supported by the United States in an alliance showdown which reeks of 1914. Given the level of tension in the South China Sea, it would appear that the Gulf of Tonkin and the surrounding area could once again serve to be the site of spark which ignites a major regional conflagration.

Conclusions

Geopolitics characterized by conflicting power balances, influences, and interests are an eternal aspect of world affairs. The well intentioned extension of the rules based liberal world order which was designed to promote peace and prosperity in fact encroaches and infringes upon the traditional spheres of influence of regional powers like Russia and China. Taking sides in historic rivalries in the name of preserving the balance of power has fueled volatile security competitions as currently being witnessed across the Middle East and potentially could break out in the East Asian region. The peace and stability of these regions held so long as the powers being contained were too weak or otherwise constrained to contest the balance of power. Today, Russia is fighting back against NATO encirclement, Iran is fighting to preserve its Shiite crescent, and China’s assertiveness in its erstwhile empire is triggering a classical balancing game in its neighborhood. In the aggregate, these events showcase the fact that geopolitics are very much here to stay despite normative hopes to the contrary. Taking this into account, our leaders would do well to decide at what cost they are prepared to back our nominal allies in the name of preserving the current order. Are we willing to double down and continue interjecting our forceful support to interdict conflict and deter future aggression? Or, absent the will to back our covenants with the sword, are we prepared to sacrifice the initiative on the ground to those who may not share our worldview?