OPINION — “It is not your enmity that harms us so much as your friendship, which would be interpreted as evidence of our weakness, while your hatred is, for those we rule, proof of our strength.” (Thucydides, Histories)
“My idea of American policy towards the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic. It is this: We win, they lose.” (Ronald Reagan, 1977).
In some ways, nothing has changed in the last 2,500 years regarding relations between states, whether in the era of the Peloponnesian War, as with Athens and Melos, during the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, or the tensions that exist today between the U.S. and China.
According to one predominant academic theory, relations between states are a zero-sum game. This is the school of Structural Realism, and whether this is defensive realism (Kenneth Waltz) or the offensive variety (John Mearsheimer) it cannot be adequately analyzed and defended in such a short space. Many scholars believed that with the fall of the Berlin Wall the “End of History” had arrived (Francis Fukuyama); this proved to be naive, because the powerful will always seek to expand their power.
The United States cannot, due to its global position, shed its own nature, as Thucydides himself might have surmised. The fundamental tenet in play is that in international relations the strong and their national interest prevail, within an anarchic international environment (see Hedley Bull’s 1977 seminal book on that). And today’s global environment is as anarchic as it has ever been since the 1930’s.
In the view of this author, over the past 30 years, the U.S. has pursued policies that have undermined the European Union, or at least made it more difficult for the EU to move smoothly towards political and military unification. President Trump simply stipulates in the open what some U.S. national security and state department bureaucracies have done for years, under previous Presidents.
They did it by systematically targeting the Union’s weaknesses in the political-military field (“why field an army of your own? NATO is here” – see the mid-2000’s discussion on European Security and Defense Policy – ESDP). Of course, Europe itself bears responsibility for its complacency, but this is a matter for another analysis. At least now it has demonstrated great reflexes in deciding to invest nearly a trillion euro in defense procurements – in addition to Germany’s half-trillion euro pledge in procurements. Most of these funds will probably go to U.S. defense manufacturers.
In the coming years, Europe will re-arm itself and give weight to what had previously been an American-designed strategy of military containment of Russia, for fear of (a hypothetical) further Russian expansionism to the west. Although with the current state of the Russian defense industry and economy, one is hard-pressed to imagine dozens of mechanized divisions running through the Fulda Gap towards Frankfurt.
This European rearmament program is taking place due to a fear that the U.S. might pull out of NATO (it should be noted that a U.S. withdrawal from NATO requires 67 “Yes” votes in the Senate, but this does not mean that the U.S. is obligated to maintain such a strong military presence in the continent as they have until now).
The EU will therefore probably experience another period of economic stagnation due to the above geopolitical priorities, with a significant percentage of GDP being spent on armaments, while at the same time, it will be unable to formulate its own, independent, foreign policy based on its own interests. And I’m not entirely persuaded this isn’t in the U.S. interest. In other words: such inter-European discord will suit the U.S. just fine.
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The U.S. has a long history of using its power even against its allies: The joint communiqué (Atlantic Charter) of August 14, 1941 between the US and Great Britain, for example, signed during the summit of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill off the shores of Canada, mentions – among its 8 Principles – the commitment of the parties to allow (after the end of World War II) “… all peoples to choose their own form of government,” a phrase that ensured that the British Empire would grant the right of self-determination to its colonies, effectively putting an end to Great Britain’s role as a leading power and cementing the new role of the U.S. in the emerging bipolar U.S.-Soviet world.
Whether the American plan – long before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – was to use Europe as a bulwark against Russia, so that the U.S. could implement its long-delayed pivot to the Indo-Pacific region, planned since 2011, will be studied by historians of the future. I believe that the populations and leaders of Europe have become too soft after a long period of prosperity. As Thucydides would have said, international relations are governed by the law of the strong – now more than ever. Messrs. Trump and Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping (and the Saudi leader Mohammed Bin Salman and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu) have made this clear.
Who can guarantee anything today, with a highly unpredictable Mr. Trump in the Oval Office, whether the question involves aid for Ukraine or support for Europe or even about the prospects of a U.S.-Russia rapprochement? Or, for that matter, the glaring geopolitical realities in the South China Sea?
As much as Mr. Trump wishes the U.S.-Russia rapprochement to materialize – and even if Mr. Putin wishes for it as well (in my opinion, he does not), it’s not likely to last. Anyone who’s read the history and state of mind of the Russian peoples (long before the coming of the Soviet Union) knows such a proposition is untenable and not in their DNA. All we can hope for is a loose commercial partnership between the U.S. and Russia and some of the (commercial and diplomatic) ties restored, until the U.S. is ready to face China.
When it comes to China, in the words of George Kennan, a strategy of containment (version 2 this time) must be executed. The AUKUS agreement and other arrangements between the EU and India and the US and peripheral players in the Far East, and even between the U.S. and Russia are all part – or should be part – of this strategy. This has nothing to do with Trump, a transient and possibly a lame duck (after January 1st, 2027) President. It goes beyond one person’s ambitions or policies in the Oval Office.
So, we must not lose sight of the long-term threat. And that threat is not Russia, it’s China. The same China that during WWII the U.S. tried to save from Japanese Imperialism by arming it (an impossible task due to the incompetence and corruption of Chiang Kai-shek and his circle – granted, and Mao’s war against the nationalists in the north). The same China to which the U.S. gave Taiwan’s seat of the Permanent Five of the UN Security Council to, throwing Taiwan under the bus in the 1970’s. As I wrote earlier: national interest prevails over everything else. And this is the same China which the U.S. helped through discussions with Deng Xiaoping on how to industrialize its vast state, and the same China that became a member of the World Trade Organization in 2001, with the blessing and support of the United States.
No man is more ungrateful than the one who has been benefited. (Callimachus)
And now it is this China that poses a threat to the U.S. For the next 10-15 years it will remain a regional superpower, but let’s not kid ourselves; Their aim is to dominate worldwide.
And they have the patience to wait.
We can’t.
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