Prepare for the Rise of Eurasia
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What have I been up to lately? Thanks for asking; I’ve been reading, mostly non-fiction books and news articles, and formulating informal theories about the evolution of the global power structure and its effects on U.S. dominance and economics. Oh, you’d like to hear more on that? Well, here we go!
Not to be an alarmist, but (ring-a-ling-a-ling) I’ve been weighing current events against historical evidence and it looks like global domination by the United States-NATO alliance of the 20th century could be on its way into the history books. While the evidence is significant, I have only a few exhibits at hand, and I acknowledge it is early in the century. A lot can change — history shows that even a single bullet can catapult a tenuously-balanced world order into intercontinental warfare — so only time will tell, but I’ll lay out the case for a potential Eurasian-dominated 21st century as the situation currently stands, and as I interpret it.
The Russia-China connection
When speaking of the potential for Eurasian domination in the 21st century, Russia and China are the primary game-changers, but at the tip of their spear is North Korea. More on North Korea later, but through a combination of lawful economic activity, politics as usual, and controversial espionage, our communist rivals are engaged in a concerted effort to wrest control of the world stage back from U.S.-European interests. That’s not new by any means, but it does seem, from a layman’s perspective, to be increasing in its impactfulness.
The under-informed might pompously assume that neither Russia nor China could hope to eclipse the U.S. in its greatness — speciously, some might even rest their confidence on the U.S.’s military prowess or nuclear arsenal alone — but those who heed history and accept the dynamic nature of world affairs will allow that China, once and for a long time, the greatest empire on earth, is working toward reclaiming global influence, and that Russia, the largest country in area, has long been a dominant factor from the Baltic to the Black Sea, from Kamchatka to Korea. Neither country, historically or otherwise, is willing to rest on the laurels of their current geographic footprint, and I’ll tell you why.
One of the many reasons is that both countries have an overriding interest in suppressing U.S. influence abroad. The U.S. has long held itself up as the world’s most prominent defense against Communism, a controversial philosophy of governance and wealth-sharing that flies in the face of Western capitalism, AKA “unhindered money-grubbing.” Yes, I acknowledge the rebuttal that Communism itself supports a full complement of corrupt, cash-grabbing hypocrites, but there is literally no human form of government or ideology that corrupt self-promoters dare not infest. There is no way, given humanity’s current breadth and depth of awful, selfish people, to insure against corruption. So given the context of Russia and China’s population compositions, geography, and histories, Communism as an economic and social philosophy — not in its corrupted reality — can seem, in some ways like the rational evolution of Confucianist bureaucracy with both countries’ historically communal cultural values.
Just because Communism hasn’t yielded the utopian societies intended doesn’t make the idea bad; it’s just that many a dishonest human in every culture will pick away at any or every chip in the paint for personal gain. Having the U.S. ride in on its NATO horse and declare the whole structure to be anathema to Western values only foments antipathy. But let’s get specific; what am I taking for evidence that Russia and China have a medium-range shot at overthrowing Western dominance?
For starters, there’s …
The New Silk Road
Economics has always played a monumental role in regional power structures. The original Silk Road, expanded by the Han Dynasty around 114 BCE, refers to a series of trade routes throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. Per Wikipedia, “Trade on the Silk Road played a significant role in the development of the civilizations of China,” as well as the Eurasian and African regions it touched. But note that, according to the article, 19th century historians ensured the very name of the route, the Silk Road, denoted the trade in Chinese silk, thereby connoting China’s influence and impact on global economics during its use. Mind you, I’m not arguing that the Silk Road existed entirely at the discretion of, and for the sole empowerment of China, but I am pointing to its historical significance on the development of Chinese civilization, the spread of Chinese culture (and plague!), and Chinese political influence throughout the ancient world. From there, I draw a direct parallel to the potentially vast role China stands to assume from recreating that Silk Road-style network today.
Chinese president Xi Jinping’s administration is currently working toward the development of a new, $900 billion Silk Road revival, intended to span from the Atlantic to eastern central China over land, and from Venice to southeast China by sea, with stops throughout the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Virtually the only major economic regions the “Belt and Road Initiative,” as it’s named, skips are the Americas and Australia.
As part of the initiative, China plans to lend up to $8 trillion in infrastructure assistance to 68 countries, impacting 60% of the world’s population. This South China Morning Post opinion piece argues that the recipient countries’ presumed inability to repay these “loans” is part of a plan to effectively create modern tributary states, noting, “But it is as much a matter of self-interest — part of China’s overall strategy of peripheral diplomacy — as it is about regional stability and development. As such, some argue that since these projects are motivated more by political factors than real economic rationale, there is a significant risk that they will fail to deliver the expected returns.”
Even if the assumed risk of expected default isn’t a card in China’s hand, financial assistance can create favorable conditions for China’s increasing influence in these regions. In the meantime, the U.S. has the Orange Tornado, Trump, withdrawing and threatening to withdraw aid and funding to countries and institutions all around the world, from global women’s health initiatives, to AIDs prevention, to NATO itself and to adopt an “America First” (or perhaps “Only in America”) economic policy that threatens to harm our interests in the global market. In fact, China has stepped in to fill the gap in aid to Pakistan that Trump recently withdrew. (Not that withdrawal wasn’t appropriate, given Pakistan’s harboring of terrorists.) So in addition to the potential trillions of dollars China hopes to reap by opening up new markets, that’s a whopping public relations win for the Communist-Capitalist country’s global trade council at our expense.
For further evidence of China’s already increasing influence, see the very recent signing of a trade deal between France’s Emmanuel Macron (who threw Trump an eye-popping military parade fit for an infantile king, but hasn’t signed any trade deals with Trump’s administration) and Mr. Jinping.
Where does that leave the United States? Basically, no longer a dominant economic or moral force in Europe, east Africa, and the Asia-Pacific regions. We stand to lose money, goodwill, and influence. But I’m just speculating, like any investor in my country’s future.
And the new Silk Road isn’t the only route to knee-capping the U.S.’s global influence …
Russia’s long history of geopolitical gaming
In his broad-stroke history book, Russia and the Russians: A History, Geoffrey Hosking argues that because of it’s nebulous boundaries, undefined by natural topographical boundaries, and its multi-ethnic, multi-religious citizenry, Russia has always played the meddler to maintain its regional power. As Hosking writes, “[Russia] dealt with threatening vacuums on its frontiers by exploiting the relative weakness of disorganized nomadic clans and tribes, and even of larger ethnic groups, to invade and absorb their territories — only to go through periods of overreach, when it imploded, leaving its borderlands vulnerable and once again in the hands of others. In that respect the period since 1989 is not an aberration, but a resumption of a historically typical pattern.”
So through its use of diplomats, spies, and political meddling, Russia has long kept rival states at bay by exploiting its neighbors’ inner conflicts, and thanks now to the internet, Russia’s provoking reach is much longer.
Our trust in our election system, our democracy, and the presidency itself has been thrown into question by the 2016 presidential election and evidence that Russia may have acted to influence the outcome of the election process, to gain access to voting systems for potential fraud, and to lure Trump campaign operatives into compromising interactions meant to discredit Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. Why would Russia care? Because despite what you’ve read about the Obama administration selling uranium mining rights to Uranium One, a Canadian company owned by Gazprom, a Russian entity with ties to the Kremlin, supposedly — but not directly — with Clinton’s approval, Clinton has a history of enforcing sanctions against Russia for the sake of U.S. and NATO interests. Russian president ’til question mark, Vladimir Putin, bears a well-known disdain of Clinton and knew that her ascendancy would guarantee more sanctions against Russia, while Donald Trump, Jr. offered the reversal of these sanctions in return for “dirt” on Clinton.
In the meantime, independent Russian media, which Putin has sought to silence through Machiavellian means, found its own evidence of these claims that Russia manipulated American sentiments in an effort to deter Clinton’s election. To wit: The Atlantic article describes reports that Putin himself ordered an “attack” on the election in the form of Kremlin-supported “troll factories” that targeted voters with fake news and slobbering Trumpism, as well as hacking attacks on U.S. voting systems.
Okay, so you’ll say that maybe Clinton hasn’t been above board with every little step throughout her legal and political career, either, but at the moment, she’s not president and the guy we have is virulently, slavishly pro-Russia. What does that mean?
Deconstructing U.S. global influence from home: America-first and pro-Putin policies
Trump’s embarrassing sycophantism for Putin and his head-in-the-sand acceptance that if Putin says nothing happened, then nothing happened, allows Russia to expand on its goals unchecked. Goals like meddling in U.S. elections, sowing distrust in the election process and our news media, the annexation of Crimea, running military drills on Poland’s doorstep like a brooding ex-boyfriend who keeps taking his jog near your apartment just to see if you’re still coming home alone, and prowling around the undersea cables that provide internet to the world in the Arctic.
Whose side is the president of the United States on?
The Trumpian position seems to support Russia’s ambitions for global dominance, not those of the United States. Advocates of America First policy might find it an investment in U.S.-based interests, but I posit that it has been the U.S.’s dominance on the global stage that led to much of our prosperity and the peace that a country enjoys when it is appropriately wary of sabotage and undermining by its political enemies. Our geopolitical dominance also keeps the U.S. first because we can continue to shape our own policy and determine our own involvement and responses to world events; if we relinquish global power, we may fall victim to Russia or China’s demands on our resources. Chinese and Russia entities already own property and resource rights in the United States. How much of the U.S. will foreign entities own, and to what detriment to U.S. citizens, when and if our political and economic sway over other countries diminishes? We might find that America First means foreign occupation, financially and politically.
Trump versus the world
In addition to making excuses for Russia’s behavior, Trump’s first year in the Oval Office has been a year-long campaign to sour the U.S.’s longstanding alliances with other NATO countries, whom he accuses of doing too little to help in the common cause. To demand that our partners put more skin in the game is entirely fair — although the U.S. is a global leader and militarily the mightiest, we must also look out for our own self-interests — but does Trump even believe in the common cause or does he believe in Russia’s right to expand?
NATO’s purpose is to protect and defend NATO countries from conflict, both political and military. Specifically, NATO is an alliance of countries that signed a mutual defense treaty in 1949, designed to bolster defense capabilities in the face of threats from the Soviet Union, which was moving in on Berlin and other Eastern-bloc countries following World War II. The United States’ interest in protecting Europe was, and is, our very real financial and political relationships with European powers, which are worth protecting, as well as our interest in supporting democratic governments — which Russia and other communist sympathizers, in Italy after World War II, as well as in China, North Korea, Cuba, and elsewhere since then, have sought to smother.
Smothering democracy smothers people’s rights to choose their leaders, to have visibility into their government, to freely speak on the performance of the government, and to ensure that no totalitarian can assume control unhindered. Surely the goals of NATO and our participation in the alliance are valuable and valid causes that can only ensure America and its people come first, both at home and as champions of free citizens in the world, empowered by democratic rights.
Provoking North Korea, the Chinese and Russian vanguard
Steve Bannon’s brand of inevitable doomsday-ism seems to be a case of the self-styled oracle pressing for the fulfillment of his own “prophecy,” but he found an active promoter of this desire to rekindle the Cold War in his candidate. In spite of Trump’s desire to befriend, flatter, and lay out a red carpet of overt obsequiousness for Putin, his apparent Cold War revivalist policies were likely inspired by Bannon, quoted in Fire and Fury as saying, “It was Cold War stuff … it was during the Cold War that time and circumstance gave the United States its greatest global advantage.” Trump and Bannon apparently view another Cold War as “just good business,” politically and otherwise.
Now, while I don’t see in these events an impending showdown between the Anglo-nationalist anachronists and the entire flow of cultural evolution, I do see the now century-old global order adjusting itself to gain its footing in response to the seismic quake set off by the election of an evil, orange dinosaur to the United States presidency, and in his cadre of evil-doers determined to make every living second an I-can’t-breathe fight for basic human decency. As with all shifts in power structures, there’s always a competitor waiting in the wings. China and Russia have never ceased looking for a gap to step back into their historical shoes, in which, as circumstance and Zeitgeist repetitiously turn the world, they step in and out of fashion as the world’s top power.
With that distinction in mind, I give you my final morsel of evidence, that confounding trap called North Korea. Remember how North Korea came to be. After World War II, the Japanese were defeated and America and Russia divided the spoils. America occupied South Korea, and Russia occupied the North. North Korea invaded the South in 1950, igniting the brutal Korean War. The U.S. and NATO intervened on behalf of its interests in the South and China backed up North Korea.
China’s interest in North Korea is not merely to support a fellow Communist nation; it also wants to preserve North Korea as a physical barrier between itself and U.S. incursion from South Korea, where we maintain a heavy military presence. Essentially, South Korea is a vital frontier for China. So it follows that, while North Korea’s development of nuclear missiles damage Sino-American diplomatic relations, China may have had a very keen interest in actually underwriting Kim Jong Un’s nuclear ambitions, hence it’s obstinance to enact UN sanctions until very recently, when the situation reached — pun intended — critical mass.
Henry Kissinger, Jared Kushner’s role model, in his book, “A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh, and the Problems of Peace, 1812–22,” posits that the powers involved in diplomacy must agree on the current global order for negotiation to work. Kissinger wrote:
“Whenever peace — conceived as the avoidance of war — has been the primary objective of a power or a group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless member of the international community. Whenever the international order has acknowledged that certain principles could not be compromised even for the sake of peace, stability based on an equilibrium of forces was at least conceivable. Stability, then, has commonly resulted not from a quest for peace but from a generally accepted legitimacy. ‘Legitimacy’ as here used should not be confused with justice. It means no more than an international agreement about the nature of workable arrangements and about the permissible aims and methods of foreign policy. It implies the acceptance of the framework of the international order by all major powers, at least to the extent that no state is so dissatisfied that, like Germany after the Treaty of Versailles, it expresses its dissatisfaction in a revolutionary foreign policy. A legitimate order does not make conflicts impossible, but it limits their scope. Wars may occur, but they will be fought in the name of the existing structure and the peace which follows will be justified as a better expression of the ‘legitimate’, general consensus. Diplomacy in the classic sense, the adjustment of differences through negotiation, is possible only in ‘legitimate’ international orders.”
Kissinger, Henry. A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh, and the Problems of Peace, 1812–22 (p. 1). Friedland Books. Kindle Edition.
In this case, North Korea doesn’t agree to the current framework, making Trump, regrettably correct in that negotiation won’t work if we continue to demand Kim Jong Un recognize the U.S. as the foremost arbiter of global power dynamics and who can play with the dangerous toys.
However, that doesn’t mean, by any stretch, that we should cease diplomatic attempts to resolve the case of North Korea’s armament. Instead, we need to reframe the current global order; but casting ourselves out of that order by perpetuating the legends of dictators and having a president who acts like a churlish baby whenever he feels insulted by the diplomatic process will ensure that North Korea’s defenders, China and Russia, get to define that new world order, instead of the U.S. Our seat at the table is diminishing, in accordance with Trump’s childlike mentality on geopolitics.
And with that …
Do these events necessarily mean the United State’s star is falling? Only time will tell, but that’s certainly enough to gnaw on for one day. If indeed, the Trump administration is not actively attempting to undermine America’s credibility, impact, and security on the world stage, then I am relieved. But even assuming that isn’t the case, Trump and his ilk are unintentionally giving our most serious competitors one helluva lift.
