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Helsinki Talks – How Trump Tries To Rebalance The Global Triangle
The reactions of the U.S. polite to yesterday's press conference of Pgresident Trump and President Putin are highly amusing. The media are losing their mind. Apparently it was Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin and 9/11 all in one day. War will commence tomorrow. But against whom?
Behind the panic lie competing views of Grand Strategy.
Rereading the transcript of the 45 minutes long press conference (vid) I find it rather boring. Trump did not say anything that he had not said before. There was little mention of what the two presidents had really talked about and what they agreed upon. Later on Putin said that the meeting was more substantive than he expected. As the two spoke alone there will be few if any leaks. To understand what happened we will have to wait and see how the situations in the various conflict areas, in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere, will now develop.
The 'liberal' side of the U.S. did its best to prevent the summit. The recent Mueller indictment was timed to sabotage the talks. Before the meeting in Helsinki the New York Times retweeted its three weeks old homophobic comic flick that shows Trump and Putin as lovers. It is truly a disgrace for the Grey Lady to publish such trash, but it set the tone others would follow. After the press conference the usual anti-Trump operatives went ballistic:
John O. Brennan @JohnBrennan – 15:52 UTC – 16 Jul 2018
Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???
Senator John McCain released a scathing statement:
… “No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are—a republic of free people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad. …
These imbeciles do not understand the realism behind Trump's grand policy. Trump knows the heartland theory of Halford John Mackinder. He understands that Russia is the core of the Eurasian landmass. That landmass, when politically united, can rule the world. A naval power, the U.S. now as the UK before it, can never defeat it. Trump's opponents do not get what Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor of President Carter, said in his book The Grand Chessboard (pdf) about a Chinese-Russian alliance. They do not understand why Henry Kissinger advised Trump to let go of Crimea.
Trump himself professed his view (vid) of the big picture and of relations with Russia in a 2015 press conference:
"… Putin has no respect for President Obama. Big Problem, big problem. And you know Russia has been driven – you know I always heard, for years I have heard – one of the worst things that can happen to our country, is when Russia ever gets driven to China. We have driven them together – with the big oil deals that are being made. We have driven them together. That's a horrible thing for this country. We have made them friends because of incompetent leadership. I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin- okay? And I mean where we have the strength. I don't think we need the sanctions. I think that we would get along very, very well. I really believe that. I think we would get along with a lot of countries that we don't get along with today. And that we would be a lot richer for it than we are today.
There are three great geographic power-centers in the world. The Anglo-American/transatlantic one which is often called 'the west'. Mackinder's heartland, which is essentially Russia as the core of the Eurasian landmass, and China, which historically rules over Asia. Any alliance of two of those power-centers can determine the fate of the world.
Kissinger's and Nixon's biggest political success was to separate China from the Soviet Union. That did not make China an ally of the United States, but it broke the Chinese-Soviet alliance. It put the U.S. into a premier position, a first among equals. But even then Kissinger already foresaw the need to balance back to Russia:
On Feb. 14, 1972, President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger met to discuss Nixon’s upcoming trip to China. Kissinger, who had already taken his secret trip to China to begin Nixon’s historic opening to Beijing, expressed the view that compared with the Russians, the Chinese were “just as dangerous. In fact, they’re more dangerous over a historical period.”
Kissinger then observed that “in 20 years your successor, if he’s as wise as you, will wind up leaning towards the Russians against the Chinese.” He argued that the United States, as it sought to profit from the enmity between Moscow and Beijing, needed “to play this balance-of-power game totally unemotionally. Right now, we need the Chinese to correct the Russians and to discipline the Russians.” But in the future, it would be the other way around.
It took 45 years, not 20 as Kissinger foresaw, to rebalance the U.S. position.
After the Cold War the U.S. thought it had won the big ideological competition of the twentieth century. In its exuberance of the 'unilateral moment' it did everything possible to antagonize Russia. Against its promises it extended NATO to Russia's border. It wanted to be the peerless supreme power of the world. At the same time it invited China into the World Trade Organisation and thereby enabled its explosive economic growth. This unbalanced policy took its toll. The U.S. lost industrial capacity to China and at the same time drove Russia into China's hands. Playing the global hegemon turned out to be very expensive. It led to the 2006 crash of the U.S. economy and its people have seen little to no gains from it. Trump wants to revert this situation by rebalancing towards Russia while opposing China's growing might.
Not everyone shares that perspective. As security advisor to Jimmy Carter Brzezinski continued the Nixon/Kissinger policy towards China. The 'one China policy', disregarding Taiwan for better relations with Beijing, was his work. His view is still that the U.S. should ally with China against Russia:
"It is not in our interest to antagonize Beijing. It is much better for American interests to have the Chinese work closely with us, thereby forcing the Russians to follow suit if they don’t want to be left out in the cold. That constellation gives the U.S. the unique ability to reach out across the world with collective political influence."
But why would China join such a scheme? How would Russia be 'forced'? What costs would the U.S. have to endure by following such a course? (Brzezinski's view of Russia was always clouded. His family of minor nobles has its roots in Galicia, now in west Ukraine. They were driven from Poland when the Soviets extended their realm into the middle of the European continent. To him Russia will always be the antagonist.)
Kissinger's view is more realistic. He sees that the U.S. can not rule alone and must be more balanced in its relations:
[I]n the emerging multipolar order, Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any new global equilibrium, not primarily as a threat to the United States.
Kissinger is again working to divide Russia and China. But this time around it is Russia that needs to be elevated, that needs to become a friend.
Trump is following Kissinger's view. He wants good relations with Russia to separate Russia from China. He (rightly) sees China as the bigger long term (economic) danger to the United States. That is the reason why he, immediately after his election, started to beef up the relations with Taiwan and continues to do so. (Listen to Peter Lee for the details). That is the reason why he tries to snatch North Korea from China's hands. That is the reason why he makes nice with Putin.
It is not likely that Trump will manage to pull Russia out of its profitable alliance with China. It is true that China's activities, especially in the Central Asian -stans, are a long term danger to Russia. China's demographic and economic power is far greater than Russia's. But the U.S. has never been faithful in its relations with Russia. It would take decades to regain its trust. China on the other hand stands to its commitments. China is not interested in conquering the 'heartland'. It has bigger fish to fry in south-east Asia, Africa and elsewhere. It is not in its interest to antagonize a militarily superior Russia.
The maximum Trump can possibly achieve is to neutralize Russia while he attempts to tackle China's growing economic might via tariffs, sanctions and by cuddling Taiwan, Japan and other countries with anti-Chinese agendas.
The U.S. blew its 'unilateral moment'. Instead of making friends with Russia it drove it into China's hands. Hegemonic globalization and unilateral wars proved to be too expensive. The U.S. people received no gains from them. That is why they elected Trump.
Trump is doing his best to correct the situation. For the foreseeable future the world will end up with three power centers. Anglo-America, Russia and China. (An aging and disunited Europe will flap in the winds.) These power centers will never wage direct war against each other, but will tussle at the peripheries. Korea, Iran and the Ukraine will be centers of these conflicts. Interests in Central Asia, South America and Africa will also play a role.
Trump understands the big picture. To 'Make America Great Again' he needs to tackle China and to prevent a deeper Chinese-Russian alliance. It's the neo-conservatives and neo-liberals who do not get it. They are still stuck in Brzezinski's Cold War view of Russia. They still believe that economic globalization, which helped China to regain its historic might, is the one and true path to follow. They do not perceive all the damage they have done to 90% of the American electorate.
For now Trump's view is winning. But the lunatic reactions to the press conference show that the powers against him are still strong. They will sabotage him wherever possible. The big danger for now is that their view of the world might again raise to power.
I would not see “aging and disunited Europe” as less relevant although it is certainly true that EU countries are disunited. Economically, there are three main economic powers of a similar size, China (which will probably soon be first in absolute terms), the US, and the European Union. Russia is certainly an important country, as well, but economically, it is behind these powers.
It would probably be in the interest of China, Russia, and Western Europe to achieve a better Eurasian economic integration and closer political co-operation. This would not have to be a catastrophe for the US – it certainly would further diminish the viability of worldwide imperial aspirations of the US, but the US might be better off without them. However, it seems that hardly any influential circles in the US are ready to agree on a more modest role of the US in the world, neither the neoconservatives with their representatives both in the Democratic and Republican parties nor people around Trump who have somewhat different ideas about how the US should avoid giving up its imperial ambitions.
The conflicting strategies concern both Russia and Western Europe. Of course, if the US wants to uphold worldwide imperial ambitions, it may make sense to attempt to drive a wedge between Russia and China as Nixon did in the Cold War. However, the chances of that succeeding are probably rather slim. Therefore, the main goal of the US seems to be to create conflicts between Western Europe and Russia (and other areas through which One Belt One Road would create closer connections between Europe and China). On that matter, Trump is not really that different from the neoconservatives. The neoconservatives want a more hostile relationship between the US and Russia than Trump does, but both Trump and the neoconservatives seem to agree that they want Western Europe to have hostile relations with Russia (and Trump seems to go even further in his desire to force Western European countries to increase the arms race in a direction that will be seen as hostile by Russia).
In the short term, the US may be quite successful – in many European countries, there are Atlanticists in influential positions in politics and the media who are more oriented towards US interests than European and Eurasian interests. However, in the long run, I doubt that this can succeed. With all the issues on which EU countries are divided (economic questions, migration etc.) hostility towards Russia is probably the one area in which the gulf between European elites and vast majorities of the populations in these European countries is biggest. Of course, the US successfully exploits historical resentments against Russia in Poland and the Baltic states, but these smaller and poorer countries can hardly dominate EU policies in the long run. In countries like Germany, Italy, or France, only a small minority of the population sees Russia as a threat, and, according to surveys, a vast majority wants good relations with Russia. Also, with increasing investments, especially in the East of the EU, the US can hardly get EU countries to support anti-Chinese policies. For the time being, the main goal seems to be to attempt to stoke up conflicts between EU countries and Russia. Since only a small minority of EU citizens agree with the anti-Russian positions of their influential Atlanticist media and governments, but at the same time, the relationship with Russia usually is not the main issue determining people’s voting behavior, this can go on for some time, but probably, in the medium and long term, such an attempt only accelerates the demise of these Atlanticist European elites (and I suppose that many of them will be ready to dump hostility towards Russia when it becomes too obvious that they will lose when they uphold it).
I doubt that much can be expected to change as far as Russian-Chinese relations are concerned. In some areas, of course, Russian and Chinese interests diverge, but on the whole, they are both interested in keeping their good relations and the US does not offer any viable alternative. Where a change is more likely to happen is in Western Europe. Both the neoconservatives and Trump try to incite hostility between Western Europe and Russia, but I think in a few years it will become obvious that this strategy has failed. The question is then whether the US is ready to put up with a somewhat diminished and more modest role of the US in world politics (neither Trump nor the neoconservatives seem to be ready for this, but maybe there will be new forces, possibly someone like Bernie Sanders or a similar politician might be ready to take some steps in such a direction and to agree on at least partially giving up the US’ imperial ambitions) or whether the US will go on stoking up conflicts everywhere in order to hamper Eurasian collaboration.
Posted by: Adrian E. | Jul 17 2018 14:12 utc | 24
I agree with the overall argument (Makinder, Nixon etc. etc.) — but the narrative of this post is wrong because it makes appear the USA has led itself into today’s situation only because people in charge made a series of consecutive mistakes. This is not true, and is part of the “free will illusion” — a bad habit we inherited from ancient Roman historians, a principle which states individual decisions by the elite have decisive and direct macroeconomic and long-term consequences.
After WWII, the USA was both the industrial and the financial superpower. Europe was on its knees, as was Japan; China was in the middle of a devastating civil war and the USSR had just lost 35% of its GDP and 26 million if its people. Put it another way, the USA had both the gold and the excess industrial capacity to reconstruct the world (that’s why the Marshall Plan worked in Europe: it inundated the Peninsula with American Dollars, which could be exchanged only for American products; it was no problem, since the USA had excess industrial capacity).
But, to everyone who knows how the capitalist system works, this situation could not last (see Kiffin paradox). When the USA begun to export dollars in order to estimulate its own industry, osmosis kicked in and it became cheaper to produce abroad. It first begun with Germany and Japan and, later, China. Since it is more advantageous to issue the world fiat currency, the USA transmuted into a uniquely financial superpower, in order to sustain the world capitalist system.
One could argue the USA could have gone to India, but Mao Zedong was correct when he stated that, in its later development stage, capitalism can only do its basic development transformations through a socialist revolutions and reforms, to break its inertia. India never had and still doesn’t have the infrastructure and political security to do an industrial revolution (i.e. population is not enough). The argument is too sophisticated to be written here, but I recommend people here to read his works in order to realise the actual necessity of socialism in the real world.
That is, when Nixon decided to shake hands with Mao Zedong, he had politics in mind, BUT, it only thrived in later decades (long after Nixon died) because, ultimately, it was a question of survival for American capital (the man who competed against Obama in 2012 was Mitt Romney, the face of the American elite who prospered with outsourcing to China). It’s not like the USA had a menu of choices to where it could reliably and cost-effectively outsource its industry, that narrative is false (as is the narrative that the USA could’ve maintained, under capitalism, its industry at home).
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As for Trump’s ideology versus the liberals’.
In contemporary USA, there are three doctrines.
The first one and by far the most dominant (so dominant it doesn’t have a name: people in the USA just call it “common sense”, “being American” or “the Establishment”) is the Wolfowitz Doctrine, also known in far-right circles as “Russophobia”. When he was working with G.H.W. Bush and in the wake of the fall of the USSR, Wolfowitz wrote a paper where he drew the general guidelines for American foreign policy for the forseeable future. This paper is still fully classified (we only know that it exists and its title, date and author), but the document leaked to a NYT journalist in 1992, and he published the general spirit of the document.
Put it simply, the Wolfowitz Doctrine states that, albeit the Russian Federation is not the USSR anymore, it still inherited its nuclear arsenal and a good chunk of its military technology know-how. Besides, it’s still close to 90% of the former USSR territory, and comprised a similar percentage of its population. Therefore, communist or not, Russia would remain the only real existential threat to the USA for the forseeable future. This may be the reason the IMF acted quickly in Russia, trying to sack it the fastest and most savagely possible.
The second doctrine is the “Clash of Civilizations” theory (after Huntington’s book), to which Trump is an adherent. Hegemonic in the American far-right circles, this doctrine states that, after the fall of the USSR, the future conflicts of the world would be cultural. There would be many clashes between many cultures (e.g. against muslims), but, in the long term, the main cultural war would be West vs East, i.e. the Chinese.
This doctrine may seem naive, but it’s important to highlight the fact that it is traditional for the Western far-right since the rise of nazifascism to paint the world as a moral world, i.e. that all problems of the world arise from moral decay (degeneration), not economic factors. That’s why the far-right use an aestheticized, romantic language to describe inherently economic and geopolitical issues: it has a function of deceiving the masses, masking the real interests of the elites. In the “Clash of Civilization”, the “cultural” West vs East narrative merely means that the Cold War goes on, without actually saying it.
The third — by far the most minoritary of the three — is the “Chicom” doctrine.
Restricted in a few military circles, the Chicom doctrine is some kind of an hybrid between the first two. It is very straightforward: it states China is not only the economic and cultural menace, but also the ideological menace. In other words, they are not only Chinese (“Chi”), they are also Communists (“Com”).
The thing with this doctrine is that, albeit very minoritary, it is the dominant doctrine of the most powerful and influential sector of the military: the Pacific forces, specially the Navy and its most powerful official, Gen. Harry Harris (possibly, the most powerful non-gabinet military man alive today).
So, it’s not true Trump’s vision is “so far winning”. The sanctions against Russian not only remain, but were extended. The liberals and the EU and counting the days to 2020 to put another POTUS in power and reverse the clock; China has just grown 6.8% in H1 2018. The long-term prospects of the West are dire, even if they eventually emerge victorious against China.
Posted by: vk | Jul 17 2018 14:32 utc | 28
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