The US in Eurasia: More Competitors & Troubles

Op-Ed

After World War II, the US shared world dominance with its major competitor, the Soviet Union. Despite numerous local conflicts which took place in the 40 or so years prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union, both powers’ relatively equal strength made the world pretty much stable geopolitically, though Washington had to spend a lot of money and military strength to contain the Sino-Soviet bloc, as much of Eurasia was under communist control.

The fundamental principle of the then American strategy was based on military and economic containment. Washington was unable to defeat the Soviet Union militarily and that encouraged the Americans develop a new strategy to check it. Thence came the spread of the US influence to parts of Europe, Iran and the Asia-Pacific. The Soviets’ strategy was to outmaneuver the US containment strategy by instigating insurgencies in the US neighborhood.

This led to a common perception that after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the US became so powerful that it could hardly be challenged by any other power. Since 1991, for the first time in history, there was a sole power with essentially unlimited global military as well as economic reach. Neither the Roman Empire in antiquity nor the British one in the late 19th - early 20th century equaled the capabilities the US possessed.

However, this had largely changed by the second decade of the 21st century. The United States remains enormously powerful and able to wage wars on several fronts simultaneously. However, this is very different from previous US omnipotence. Politicians as well as analysts sometimes believe that the US power has no limits, but there are always limits, and such a global state as the US can only remain powerful and survive by knowing and respecting them.

The primary limit of American is the same as that of the Roman or British empires: demography. In Eurasia-Asia and Europe together, the Americans are outnumbered from the moment they set foot on the ground. The US military is built around force multipliers, weapons that can destroy the enemy before the enemy destroys the relatively small force deployed. Sometimes this strategy works. There are simply so many potential US enemies that the US striking forces could easily be absorbed and attrition would be near.

Thus, the deployment of a major US force in Eurasia is unsupportable except in special cases where an overwhelming power is necessary to win a major battle (Iraq and Afghanistan come to mind).

However, the Eurasian landmass is also going through deep geopolitical changes. On the surface, one might say that it is easier nowadays for the US to manage a divided Eurasia where there are numerous regional powers competing, as opposed to the stable era of the Cold War. The modern-day Eurasia is more chaotic, and this unpredictability creates a definite break with what the US had to cope with in previous decades. In the predictable world of the Cold War era, geopolitics was important, but it was more hidden under various democratic and idealistic premises.

In the modern Eurasia, though, there is a clear shift towards a new more untenable “world order”. Take the example of the new US national security document (signed under Trump). It has now formally ushered in the end of ethical and moral premises in international relations and heralded the return of geopolitics; an expected step and one rooted in the experience of past generations.

This thinking is well summarized in the following quote from the document, which notes increased unpredictability and competition among various powers in Eurasia: “These competitions require the United States to rethink the policies of the past two decades, policies based on the assumption that engagement with rivals and their inclusion in international institutions and global commerce would turn them into benign actors and trustworthy partners. For the most part, this premise turned out to be false.”

The more chaotic Eurasia will be also more difficult for the US to contain. Where previously there was only a powerful Soviet Union, nowadays the US faces Russia, China, Iran and a destabilized Middle East. Moreover, terrorism as well as cyber security issues are piling up on the desks of the US foreign policy makers. This versatility gradually makes the US rebalance its strategy. Numerous indications in the US foreign policy towards Ukraine, Georgia, Israel and Japan in the Asia-Pacific show that Washington now understands increasingly more and more that it can no longer afford to be directly involved in a number of conflicts around the world or specifically in Eurasia. It would simply be exhausted rapidly. The US thus would slowly shift towards creating more regional and global balances based on wide financial and military support, be it Ukraine and Georgia in the former Soviet space against Russia, or Israel and others in the Middle East against Iran.

Beyond the immediate Russian security threat to eastern Europe, are China and Iran which aspire towards changing the existing political power of balance in their immediate neighborhoods. China’s economic rise, coupled with military development, has poised the country to become a powerful world player in international politics. More importantly, China’s strategic imperatives clash with those of the US: China needs to be more secure in procuring necessary oil and gas resources which are currently mostly available through the Malakka Strait. In the age of US naval dominance, the Chinese imperative is to redirect its economy’s dependence as well as supply routes elsewhere from the Malakka Strait. Thus, comes the famous almost trillion Dollar Belt and Road Initiative to reconnect the Asia-Pacific with Europe through Russia, the Middle East and Central Asia. At the same time, Chinese naval ambitions are on the rise to thwart the US dominance close to its shores. Since domination in the oceans is at the heart of the US global power and insecurity of the Chinese economy, mutual suspicions between Beijing and Moscow are bound to increase over the next years. In the long run, this is more dangerous for the US than was the Soviet threat in the Cold War. The Soviets were competing militarily: nowadays, China is economically predominant.

The issue of the future US global power potential is a large subject, but one thing is clear: in the coming years, we will likely see an America which will become less directly involved in various theaters across Eurasia, but will support various states to keep Russia and China at bay.

By Emil Avdaliani