FreeAsia2000
Junior Member
Well I've just been reading the rather gloomy perspective from Richard Fishers
website.
It seems that Hezbullah's unexpected effectiveness has really cast a cloud over people of a certain mindset.
The best they could come up with was some rather wishful hope's about
China and Russia getting their comeuppance at some future date.
Either that or somebody is trying to create a new 'missile gap' scare not to mention
sounding very much like the 'who lost china' scares of the 1950's which led to
the McCarthyist tendency.
Nations do pursue their own best interests. To conclude that Russia and China
are being irrational by cultivating alliances with nations that the US does not like is well...rather a strange way of looking at the world
website.
It seems that Hezbullah's unexpected effectiveness has really cast a cloud over people of a certain mindset.
The best they could come up with was some rather wishful hope's about
China and Russia getting their comeuppance at some future date.
Either that or somebody is trying to create a new 'missile gap' scare not to mention
sounding very much like the 'who lost china' scares of the 1950's which led to
the McCarthyist tendency.
Nations do pursue their own best interests. To conclude that Russia and China
are being irrational by cultivating alliances with nations that the US does not like is well...rather a strange way of looking at the world
The Unexpected New World: Russia and China against America
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by Arthur Waldron, Ph.D
Published on August 25th, 2006
ARTICLES
In the aftermath of the recent Middle East war, it is not difficult to imagine that the map of the recent world, but after the Lebanon war, has, like an undeveloped photographic print, just been dipped into a pan of solution, and we are watching as an image emerges before our eyes. That image is very different both to what we have known and what we have expected.
The new map, now out of the developer and drying, shows new problems and new international configurations that will pose serious issues for the United States, her democratic allies, and even her undemocratic allies.
Above all we see the two powers that we have tried hardest of all to befriend over past decades, China and Russia, working actively against us, strategically and militarily, and not just in the Middle East, but effectively everywhere.
Advanced weaponry was the key to Hezbollah’s undoubted psychological and partial military victory over Israel—that in addition to training, discipline, and strategy. Where did these advanced
weapons come from? The answer is above all Russia and China. This fact throws into question the whole international strategy pursued by the United States for almost forty years.
1979 was the year that Washington placed some very serious bets on China. The ostensible goal was to secure Beijing as a counterweight to the USSR. But the authors of the policy had more than that in mind. They hoped and expected that China would align herself with the United States or at least cooperate, and that the benign influences of trade would lead Beijing greatly to liberalize her regime.
Similar bets were laid on Mr Gorbachev and on the new Russia from about 1989. President Bush has been most cordial with Mr. Putin.
Now it is clear, however, that China and Russia have been supplying advanced weapons and military technologies to Iran, among other states, and that these weapons—anti-ship missiles, for example—exacted a bloody and unexpected cost from the Israelis.
Nor is China’s alignment with Iran simply a whim. The sheer amount of concrete and steel that China has put into developing secure land links to Iran, inland and beyond the range of carrier-based aircraft, suggests a strategic decision.
The same is true for her alignment with Russia, and Russia’s with Beijing. This is well thought out, though the reasons may seem obscure to us.
Beijing has decided to back Iran in current Middle East politics, and is delivering the goods both directly and indirectly. Reports placed Iranian scientists in Korea, observing Pyongyang’s latest missile test. How did they get there? Not, one suspects, on British Airways or even Cathay Pacific. Their trip was clandestine and would have been impossible without active Chinese (or possibly Russian) cooperation.
Significant historical Israeli military cooperation with China has not constrained her in the least.
Chinese backing is not trivial. Beijing has nearly a trillion dollars in foreign exchange, an ever increasing range of high performance weaponry, excellent intelligence capabilities, good diplomats, strategic vision, and a very useful veto in the UN Security Council.
Washington has included Iran in the "Axis of Evil." Studies have been made of how Israeli or American air-strikes might destroy Iran’s growing nuclear capability. Special munitions have been developed for such a mission. But the idea is a dangerous fantasy. Iran is an immense country: at 626,000 square miles she is three times the size of France, the largest state in Europe. Her population of over 69,000,000 includes many highly educated people: scientists, diplomats, strategists, and so forth, as well as passionate Shi’ia militants.
Iran possesses the military capability to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which pass oil exports from Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates as well as Saudi Arabia, whose oil fields and export terminals are almost entirely on her east coast.
Above all, Iran has a very powerful ally in China. An ally, mind you. China is no more likely to permit real action against Iran than she is against North Korea, whatever some of her diplomats say and some of ours profess to believe.
Some concern has been felt about the Iranian-Chinese connection since the 1990s, when attempts were made to sanction China. But even the Israelis seem not to have been overly concerned. For decades they have been a major supplier of arms and expertise to China, so that many of today’s advanced Chinese weapon systems contain a significant Israeli component. China now turns out to have been exporting many of her advanced systems to Iran and other states, which have in turn provided them to radical Islamic organizations. In the weeks and months ahead we will learn how much or how little Israeli technology has been incorporated in the Iranian and Chinese weapons provided to Hezbollah, as well as American and other technology passed on by Israel and other states. The reported Hezbollah drone, for example, may draw on the Israeli "Harpy," which has been supplied to China in spite of U.S. protests. The American TOW anti-tank missile is widely believed to have been made available to China.
Less attention has been paid to Russian supplies of weapons to the Middle East, although Syria’s air defense system is Russian as are components of Iran’s nuclear program. The United States has effectively done nothing to prevent the transfer of a range of critical ex-Soviet military technologies to China. So perhaps it is not surprising that some high quality Russian anti-tank missiles going to Hezbollah were not noticed at all.
Not noticed, that is, until the appearance of Russian (and other) advanced anti-tank weapons, such as the Kornet, the Sagger wire guided anti tank missile and the RPG-29, which uses a second warhead to defeat the reactive armor with which modern tanks are equipped. These weapons and perhaps others took a still-undisclosed toll on the superb Israeli Merkava tank, and her crews, some of whom seem to have been incinerated inside, behind its tons of advanced armor. The near silence of the Israeli press on this crucial issue speaks volumes.
So we face, it would seem, an immense setback and disappointment: a failure of our general grand strategy, admittedly in only a small corner of the world, but diagnostic nonetheless.
As with China since the 1970s, since 1989 and the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union, the United States has sought a closer and more cordial relationship with Moscow. So has Europe. Such a relationship would furthermore seem to be in Russia’s interest.
But such is not the reality visible on the just-developed new map of power. That shows a Russia actively involved in arming enemies of the United States and other free countries, and dragging its feet so much diplomatically as to prevent any coordinated action.
Not only that, Russia and China appear to be cooperating, not only on military sales and technology, but also on diplomacy—at least to the extent that diplomacy harms the United States.
This is not a scenario or hypothesis any longer. The sharp newly developed photograph with which we began shows an undeniable reality, Based on the evidence of the recent war it is a substantial one and one that looks likely to be with us for some time to come. Soviet Chinese intelligence cooperation is increasing. And from Moscow, the United States continues to be viewed as the glavnii vrag—the chief enemy, in the aftermath of the humiliation many Russians felt when the Soviet Union collapsed. What are we to do about it?
The answer is that no one gave much thought to the possibility of such a situation so we have few ideas to go one. A few years ago an expert on both China and Russia told me that, based on his judgment, they were going to cooperate against the United States (Remember the Sino-Soviet dispute, and the fact, as we were told, over determined by thousands of years of history and culture, that the two states could never cooperate? How times change!). No one would listen to him. He was dismissed as a crank and received no support.
Meanwhile the foreign policy establishment was grinding out paper after paper, pamphlet after pamphlet, and even the occasional collection of printed pages between hard covers, mostly explaining how the United States could draw closer to both Russia and China, engage them, trade with them, listen to them, accommodate them, and make them, in the memorable words of former Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, responsible "stakeholders" in the world.
This approach—or should we call it a hope that springs eternal?-- of course reflects a deep seated American conviction that nations act in rational ways, serving their economic and other interests, though much historical evidence suggest miscalculation, passions, ambitions, jealousies, and so forth have been at least as important.
Given the powerful inertia of American thought about foreign policy, we may expect in the weeks and months ahead many articles explaining that the way to eliminate the new Sino-Russian position in the Middle East (and elsewhere, as will be seen) is to continue to engage them, perhaps make some concessions to them, and so forth. Most assuredly that will not work. Both states have long since learned to pocket Western concessions and continue on course. But equally assuredly, that position will be advocated with great tenacity.
If more of the same—goodwill gestures, trade, engagement, and so forth-- won’t work, what will? The sad fact is that no easy answer, or answer at all, presents itself. We have nothing to offer the world in trade that cannot be obtained in some form elsewhere. We run trade deficits. Nor, as Iraq demonstrates, are we as proficient militarily as we imagined. The United States is not what she was globally in the post World War II period. So, the new pair of powers will grow in strength as US influence and power wane.
One may doubt whether an international UN force will disarm Hezbollah, something the Israelis tried and failed to do, at the cost of casualties that, measured against their population of perhaps six million, are large indeed.
Neither Syria nor Iran will disarm. This has been a victory for them and their prestige has been enhanced at the expense of the weaker and more "reasonable" states such as Jordan and Egypt. Lebanon is likely to emerge with its Shi’ite majority finally in power—and don’t be surprised if she acquires some effective radars and anti-aircraft defenses as well.
The American effort in Iraq is likely to prove a casualty. The situation gave little cause for hope before the recent war, though one could still envision then the outcome that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis want: namely, peace and freedom. Now the violent opposition to that goal has been strengthened. An American defeat in Iraq, now a real possibility, will be an earthquake, not just for the Middle East, but for the American position world wide, and the many countries that ally with us, cooperate with us, and even free ride.
If Iraq survives as a unified state, she is likely to have a more powerfully Islamic regime, and increased prestige in the region. If she collapses into a three sided civil war of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiia, remember that she lies between Saudi Arabia and Iran with Turkey to the north. Each of these powers will want to secure a buffer zone against the others by creating her own sphere of influence and military force in what remains of Iraq.
Israel is likely to find herself bounded by a dangerous Lebanon, a hostile Syria, an unstable Jordan, and an Egypt whose future is up in the air. She will be without the seemingly effortless military superiority she enjoyed until recently. And vulnerable to a variety of attacks, not least by missiles, which, as the war has shown, cannot be stopped.
"Moderates" throughout the Islamic world should be on warning. King Feisal of Iraq was murdered, and later his family, as was King Abdullah of Jordan, arguably because of feared willingness to compromise, So was President Sadat of Egypt. The remaining Hashemite in Jordan must be concerned. The success of violence tells us very little about actual popular opinion: the IRA was never very large, but it kept Ireland in agony for decades. The well-trained and well-equipped cells of the various Islamists in the Middle East can certainly do the same. This will be particularly true as patron Iran emerges—as I am well-nigh certain she will—as a nuclear power. No one will want to tangle with her protégés.
(Iran will not be the only new nuclear power, however. The long history of Turkish-Iranian rivalry, since the Iranian Safavid dynasty of the sixteenth century faced the Sublime Porte, suggests that Turkey will respond in kind.)
But let us not limit our focus to the Middle East. What we are talking about is a world in which two countries—China and Russia—that Washington had assumed would be at worst acquiescent in American policies and at best positively cooperative---a world in which those two countries work against us, at least on military and strategic fronts. (I doubt that oil sales, trade, and so forth will be affected).
One might say that by supplying Iran and other states with weapons even while pursuing good relations with Washington, Beijing and Moscow would sooner or later force Washington to choose. Either they stop those activities, or we cease to cooperate with them.
But I suspect that we will not choose. Rather we will pursue a muddled policy that makes half-baked attempts to limit military proliferation, slaps on the occasional sanction, and so forth, but at the same time effectively gives both countries as pass—admitting their good to our markets, their people to our territories, and their leaders to our innermost counsels. That will be the path of least resistance.
The stronger those states become, however, and the clearer we make it that we are either powerless to do very much (as indeed we are) or unwilling to think things through from the start rigorously (which is also true) then the more likely other states of the world are to align with them.
They will not form an ideological alliance or a cohesive and consistent set of international actors. But they will be a major source of trouble for Washington and those countries that have depended on Washington.
What will Europe do as the Middle East develops the ability not only to throw Molotov cocktails at cars in Paris and land thousands of illegal immigrants, many out of sympathy with European values, but also to out gun European fleets in the Mediterranean and threaten European capitals with terrorism or missiles? Traditionally Europe has looked to the United States, but we may be in no condition to help.
What will be the effect on Latin America of renewed Chinese and Russian aid to such anti-American states as Cuba and Venezuela?
What will be the effects of the growing Chinese presence in Africa?
What will Japan do as she watches her American guarantor go down to humiliating defeat in Iraq?
How will the world look from New Delhi?
All these questions must be looked at again, in the grim light of the recent and major shift in the balances of world military power.
In the longer run, I suspect that the God-fearing pork-shunning Muslims will be less than entirely enthralled by the atheistic Chinese regime and the pork-rich Chinese diet. Beijing already has a serious problem with the Turkic Muslims of East Turkestan (Xinjiang) conquered by the Qing empire, as well was with the numerous ethnically Chinese Muslims, or hui. Likewise, Russia may encounter problems as her own Muslims,many of whom were conquered in bloodly nineteenth century wars and were rebelling as early as World War I,become better armed and learn from the example of their neighbors. The two regimes may even collide in West Turkestan, otherwise known as former Soviet Central Asia.
But such long term considerations help us very little now. At the moment, nationalistic aspirations, psychological grievances, and an uncanny sense of American vulnerabilities and how to work them, are creating a large informal collection of states that like nothing better than tripping up Uncle Sam—and have their own views too of how parts of the world should be reorganized: the world of Islam, for example, which has been chopped into more than a dozen states, each relatively weak, since the fall of the Ottoman empire after World War I—and many think should be united.
The surprisingly good showing of Hezbollah against the superb Israeli military had some important consequences, for the Middle East. But even more important, from the American point of view, was what it disclosed.
It disclosed a web of linkages that we had known about but to which we had paid little attention, that in various ways connected North Korean weapons programs, Pakistani nuclear research and development, Chinese infrastructure development to create a secure connection to the Middle East, Russian-Chinese military and strategic cooperation, sleeper cells of terrorists in our own country and Europe, new and unwelcome hands potentially on Gulf oil taps, new political activity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Ironically, this web was woven under the noses of the United States and her allies and their vaunted intelligence apparatuses. When our intelligence agencies and policy thinkers looked at the world, they went nation-state by nation-state, systematically avoiding broad patterns and linkages.
No one took note of the web or considered what it might mean for us in the future. Instead, we counted on a world where we would be militarily peerless, while China and Russia would be willing to work with us. (Remember the "unipolar moment" and the American hyper-puissance? How things change!).
What we see now is that such a world never came into existence, nor will it. We confront a set of unwelcome and extremely difficult issues to which we have never given much thought. No obvious answers present themselves. Securing our country and the free world once again after these setbacks will be a long and difficult process, one that will require from our politicians, intelligence agencies, and foreign policy communities a kind of deep, serious, empirically and culturally informed thought, freed from denial and from the conventional wisdom that has become habitual.
All of this and more will be required if --and I am afraid it is a big if --we choose to make the attempt, something by no means certain.
