Containing Super-Powers

Otto Von Bismarck and Henry Kissinger were obsessed with it… keeping their biggest international threats busy dealing with realignments, treaties and perceptions. Today, the biggest super-powers with sufficient military capacity to cause World War III remain the United States, China and Russia. If the European Union weren’t so fractious, it would have been added to the list. Sure, an Iranian nuclear capacity, a North Korean mishap or a war between India and Pakistan could ignite the world in a nuclear holocaust, but those are still considered regional issues from local powers.

The big game is to keep the big players off balance with shifting sands and constant hidden messages and realignments. You contain China with treaties with Asian countries, and between Japan and South Korea, the U.S. has some serious treaties. China’s been roaming around the region, claiming resource-rich waters and islands, flexing her muscle. The U.S. had engaged in some naval exercises to suggest that China does not have the free rein she believes. The U.S. also  just indicted five well-placed PRC military officers for industrial espionage (remote computer hacking).

We used to have talks with Russia and Putin to throw China off on the other side of her borders, but now that little game is being used against us. With positioning over the Syrian Assad regime pitting the U.S. and Europe on one side (in the U.N.), and Russia and China on the other, the sands of containment were now focused on the West.

And as Putin is wreaking havoc in his CIS bloc by annexing Crimea and destabilizing Ukraine… sending uncomfortable shivers down the spines of regional leaders who really do not like Russia’s aspirations to be the dominant power (sphere of influence or more) in that CIS universe, Russia needs some global balance against the European and American push-back. Where else can Putin go but China, of course.

Looking a lot like pre-WWII Hitler, who annexed part of Czechoslovakia in 1938 to protect “ethnic Germans” living in the Sudetenland, Putin’s regional ambitions for the region are anything but subtle. His neighbors truly wish they didn’t have any ethic Russians living within their borders. But given Putin’s overly aggressive moves around Ukraine’s back door, China would be a tad less willing to be seen aligning with an ogre… hurting China’s own relations with these countries. Russia had to make a gesture to protect China in that respect. Complicated, huh?

Well, as Putin visits China, he needed to give Xi Jinping an excuse to give Russia that friendly squeeze he is looking for. So he ordered his troops, poised on Ukraine’s eastern border, to withdraw and return to barracks. It’s not a conciliatory gesture for Europe or the U.S…. just a nice move to get a smile and a hug from China. For China, cozying up to Russia is an act of containment against the United States and her allies for all the reasons noted above. Not to mention how yummy all of Russia’s oil and gas reserves look to an energy-absorbing-starved and overly polluted China. Whew!

“Putin has stressed repeatedly in recent weeks that Russia sees its economic future with China, noting that its Asian neighbor was on track to surpass the United States as the leading global economic power. A tilt to the East is also in keeping with Mr. Putin’s recent turn to a conservative nationalist ideology, emphasizing religion, family values and patriotism in contrast to what he sees as the increasingly godless, relativist and decadent West.

“‘Today, Russia firmly places China at the top of its foreign trade partners,’ Mr. Putin said in an interview with Chinese journalists on the eve of his visit, according to a transcript released Monday by the Kremlin. ‘In the context of turbulent global economy, the strengthening of mutually beneficial trade and economic ties, as well as the increase of investment flows between Russia and China, are of paramount importance.’…

“Russia and China, which share a border of more than 2,600 miles, have long had uneasy relations. Russia, wary about the economic gorilla along its southern borders, blocked Chinese investment, particularly in fields considered strategic like energy, except for two small deals. Mr. Putin on Monday clearly enunciated a more welcoming message.

‘That is a big shift,’ said Clifford Gaddy, of the Brookings Institution in Washington and the author of a book on Mr. Putin, ‘and indicates how serious they are in taking a step toward China.’.. Mr. Gaddy added, ‘It is a shift in rhetoric, and we will see if it is followed up with a shift in action.’” New York Times, May 19th.

And just like pre-WWII with lots of Hilter-fans around the world, the aggressor country has its share of secret admirers in the right wing factions of Europe: “While the European Union has joined Washington in denouncing Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the chaos stirred by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, Europe’s right-wing populists have been gripped by a contrarian fever of enthusiasm for Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin.

“‘Russian influence in the affairs of the far right is a phenomenon seen all over Europe,’ said a study by the Political Capital Institute, a Hungarian research group. It predicted that far-right parties, ‘spearheaded by the French National Front,’ could form a pro-Russian bloc in the European Parliament or, at the very least, amplify previously marginal pro-Russian voices.

“Pro-Russian sentiment remains largely confined to the fringes of European politics, though Mr. Putin also has more mainstream admirers and allies on both the right and the left, including Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, and Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor.” New York Times, May 20th. Dangerous shifting sands, but a game that will shift again when the big powers need to send a message. But is this just history repeating itself with some newer players playing some older but terrifying games?

I’m Peter Dekom, and these are big games with even bigger consequences.