- Eight months into the Obama Presidency the outlines of
Administration foreign policy are becoming very clear and what is emerging
is a foreign policy establishment flying blind on automatic pilot, evidently
unable to make the fundamental policy changes required of its new geopolitical
and economic position in the world since the collapse of the Greenspan
"revolution in finance" September 2008. For the first time since
it emerged as the world's dominant power after 1945 the US policy establishment
is unable to combine its military "stick" with any economic "carrot."
The Obama effort marks the end of an era of geopolitics. Latest reports
that Obama has decided to cancel US plans for an anti-nuclear missile defense
in Poland and the Czech Republic suggest that a major internal battle is
underway among US policy elites over what has clearly been a failed US
foreign policy strategy.
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- Nowhere has the deficit in creative new strategic thinking
been evident than in Washington policy towards the three pivot powers of
the Eurasian continent-China, Russia and Iran. The recent calculated affront
to Russia by Vice President Joe Biden was typical of the impotence of recent
US foreign policy to regain American advantage across the strategic expanse
of Eurasia-the undisputed "key" to world hegemony.
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- White the Obama Administration has made big fanfare about
a so-called "reset" of US-Russian relations, it is clear the
reset intended is back to the disastrous (for Russia) Yeltsin era of chaos
and collapse of Russian state power in the early 1990's. What is ignored
are the clear strategic-based reasons for the dramatic deterioration in
US-Russian relations-Washington and Washington-led NATO have posed an existential
challenge to the very survival of Russia as a nation by Washington's series
of power coups or "color revolutions," most clearly the 2003-2004
revolutions in Ukraine and in Georgia which placed pro-NATO de facto puppet
regimes in power on Moscow's most strategic periphery.
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- The strategic significance of "missile defense"
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- Adding to the appearance as seen from Moscow that US
intent is to ultimately destroy Russia was the US insistence, until now
endorsed by Obama, to place highly offensive missile and radar installations
into Poland and the Czech Republic, the mis-named US "ballistic missile
defense." As former US military experts have put it, missile defense
is the key to nuclear first strike. Whether or not Obama definitively cancels
the missile defense plans will be a decisive indication if serious US rethinking
is possible or not.
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- Rather than take steps to reduce the danger of nuclear
pre-emptive war by miscalculation, a danger which the Bush-Rumsfeld missile
defense policy has created with Russia, the Obama foreign policy has been
drafted by an outmoded Clinton-era policy group whose calculations are
based on a triumphal US sole superpower able to dictate terms to Russia
and the rest of the world.
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- This was most clear in the ill-conceived Biden interview
with the neo-conservative Wall Street Journal at end of July during a visit
to Georgia and Ukraine. He proclaimed that Russia had "a shrinking
population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector
and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years,
they're in a situation where the world is changing before them and they're
clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable." It might
as well have been describing the United States but for the population base.
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- Vice President Biden's recent Ukraine trip where he denigrated
Russia was clearly a strategic blunder
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- The comments of the US Vice President, clearly approved
beforehand by the White House, are read in Moscow as a US policy affirmation
of crushing what remains of Russia. Even if there were some truth in the
Biden coment, it far from defines the reality of Eurasian geopolitics today.
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- The fact that after Obama's July meeting with Medvedev
and Putin, Obama sent Biden on the provocative tour of Ukraine and Georgia
made clear to Russia what Washington policy offers: nothing but negative
consequences for Russia. Obama policy towards Russia was clearly nothing
fundamentally different from Bush policy. As seen then in Moscow, it was
a bankrupt US strategic policy, one on "automatic pilot."
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- That policy, it was clear, would produce significant
reactions globally that Washington was and is ill-prepared to counter,
further underscoring the impotence of the United States as the global superpower.
By declaring openly that Russia is not taken seriously by Washington, Biden
and the Obama Administration revealed an arrogance not backed by strength
in their own economic power. Russia has significant options to undercut
America's geopolitical strategy of divide-and-rule over Eurasia. Key are
Russian relations with Iran, Afghanistan and China.
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- Washington strategy backfires
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- Obama strategy has been to re-establish US influence
in parts of Eurasia that suffered dramatic decline during the fiasco of
the Bush-Cheney era. This was evident in Obama plans to significantly pour
more troops into Afghanistan. It was evident in covert US Administration
support for regime change and destabilization of the Ahmedinejad government
after the Iranian elections. There the goal was to weaken Iran influence
in the Middle East as well as its close ties to China and Russia.
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- Were Washington truly able to rethink fundamentals of
its geopolitical power projection it would take very different steps under
the cover of the Obama regime change.
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- Rather than continuing the confrontation with Russia
in its own security sphere of Georgia or Ukraine, it would have to consider
making concessions to Russian security concerns by negotiating an end to
the US missile defense as Obama suggested in the campaign debates. The
fact that the Czech press suggests that has just been decided, indicates
a desperate internal attempt within the US power establishment to rethink
fundamentals of America's global strength. Cancelling missile defense and
easing of NATO support in Ukraine and Georgia would open the door to urgently
needed Russian cooperation for a US policy with Iran and Afghanistan.
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- By being confrontational with Russia, Obama's Administration
had foolishly compounded its problems across Eurasia and beyond. Ironically,
the US Government has just released its latest threat review. The US 2009
National Intelligence Strategy (NIS), a four-year blueprint for the intelligence
services, cites Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as countries that "have
the ability to challenge US interests," not only in traditional ways,
such as military force and espionage, but also in "emerging"
ways, in particular cyber operations. It noted, "Russiamay continue
to seek avenues for reasserting power and influence in ways that complicate
US interests."
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- The Obama Biden policy of denigration and confrontation,
if continued, no matter how weak Russia might appear economically, would
certainly make that challenge to US influence a self-fulfilling prophesy.
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- The fact that Ahmadinejad personally went to the Yekaterinburg,
Russia annual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in
July amid the height of the US-led destabilization of his country, to talk
with Russian and Chinese leaders, indicates the effect of Washington's
bankrupt foreign policy. Iran is the key factor to help politically stabilize
Iraq where some 60% of the population is Shi'ite as in Iran. Russia could
play a key role in stabilizing Iran where Russian technology is building
the Bushehr nuclear power complex. As well, a less confrontational US policy
might win cooperation of Iran in neutralizing problems in Afghanistan.
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- Significantly, only days after the Biden remarks about
Russia, Russian newsmedia reported that Iran would receive an advanced
Russian-made S-300 anti-aircraft system by the year's end that could help
fend off any pre-emptive strikes against its nuclear facilities. The first
deliveries are to begin this month and be completed within 12 months.
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- The announcement so destabilized the Israeli government
of Benjamin Netanyahu that the Prime Minister just made a rush trip to
Moscow to try to stop the sale.
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- Russia's decision to sell advanced anti-aircraft defenses
to Iran may have led to US scrapping of the Polish-Czech missile defense
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- Moscow has been diplomatically and militarily able to
create a serious weakening of US influence in Africa and as well in Latin
America. President Dmitry Medvedev visited four African countries in June
Egypt, Namibia, Nigeria and Angola.
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- As well, Moscow has just agreed with Venezuelan President
Hugh Chavez to provide $2.5 billion line of credit to purchase Russian
armoured vehicles and surface-to-air missiles.
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- Chavez also said he expects arrival of some ''little
rockets'' from Russia, which he said have a range of up to 300 kilometres
and were strictly for defence purposes. Chavez cited recent Colombian government
decision to permit the US military access to seven military bases on its
soil as justification. ''With these rockets, it is going to be very difficult
for them to come and bomb us. If that happens, they should know that we
will soon have these systems installed"
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- Far from being an irrelevant player, as Biden and Obama
were earlier prepared to declare, Russia is a decisive strategic factor
in what is a growing move across the world to lessen dependence on the
United States as "sole superpower." The evident decision by Washington
now to rethink its missile defense provocation of Russia indicates some
in the Administration realize the US military bluff has been called. Now
it remains to be seen if Washington is also willing to roll back its demand
that Ukraine and Georgia join NATO. Were that to happen, it could signal
a major US shift in strategic policy.
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