Such a step, formalizing the growing linkage between the two economies, would provide the geopolitical underpinning both for America’s continued presence in the Far East and for Japan’s constructive global engagement.[11]
To conclude: For America, Japan should be its vital and foremost partner in the construction of an increasingly cooperative and pervasive system of global cooperation but not primarily its military ally in any regional arrangement designed to contest China’s regional preeminence. In effect, Japan should be America’s global partner in tackling the new agenda of world affairs. A regionally preeminent China should become America’s Far Eastern anchor in the more traditional domain of power politics, helping thereby to foster a Eurasian balance of power, with Greater China in Eurasia’s East matching in that respect the role of an enlarging Europe in Eurasia’s West.
Chapter 7
Conclusion
THE TIME HAS COME for the United States to formulate and prosecute an integrated, comprehensive, and long-term geostrategy for all of Eurasia. This need arises out of the interaction between two fundamental realities: America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe’s central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy and to America’s historical legacy.
American global primacy is unique in its scope and character. It is a hegemony of a new type that reflects many of the features of the American democratic system: it is pluralistic, permeable, and flexible. Attained in the course of less than a century, the principal geopolitical manifestation of that hegemony is America’s unprecedented role on the Eurasian landmass, hitherto the point of origin of all previous contenders for global power. America is now Eurasia’s arbiter, with no major Eurasian issue soluble without America’s participation or contrary to America’s interests.
How the United States both manipulates and accommodates the principal geostrategic players on the Eurasian chessboard and how it manages Eurasia’s key geopolitical pivots will be critical to the longevity and stability of America’s global primacy. In Europe, the key players will continue to be France and Germany, and America’s central goal should be to consolidate and expand the existing democratic bridgehead on Eurasia’s western periphery. In Eurasia’s Far East, China is likely to be increasingly central, and America will not have a political foothold on the Asian mainland unless an American-Chinese geostrategic consensus is successfully nurtured. In the center of Eurasia, the space between an enlarging Europe and a regionally rising China will remain a geopolitical black hole at least until Russia resolves its inner struggle over its postimperial self-definition, while the region to the south of Russia—the Eurasian Balkans—threatens to become a cauldron of ethnic conflict and great-power rivalry.
In that context, for some time to come—for more than a generation—America’s status as the world’s premier power is unlikely to be contested by any single challenger. No nation-state is likely to match America in the four key dimensions of power (military, economic, technological, and cultural) that cumulatively produce decisive global political clout. Short of a deliberate or unintentional American abdication, the only real alternative to American global leadership in the foreseeable future is international anarchy. In that respect, it is correct to assert that America has become, as President Clinton put it, the world’s “indispensable nation.”
It is important to stress here both the fact of that indispensability and the actuality of the potential for global anarchy. The disruptive consequences of population explosion, poverty-driven migration, radicalizing urbanization, ethnic and religious hostilities, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction would become unmanageable if the existing and underlying nation-state-based framework of even rudimentary geopolitical stability were itself to fragment. Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene. And the possibility of such a fragmentation is inherent in the geopolitical tensions not only of today’s Eurasia but of the world more generally.
The resulting risks to global stability are likely to be further increased by the prospect of a more general degradation of the human condition. Particularly in the poorer countries of the world, the demographic explosion and the simultaneous urbanization of these populations are rapidly generating a congestion not only of the disadvantaged but especially of the hundreds of millions of unemployed and increasingly restless young, whose level of frustration is growing at an exponential rate. Modern communications intensify their rupture with traditional authority, while making them increasingly conscious—and resentful—of global inequality and thus more susceptible to extremist mobilization. On the one hand, the rising phenomenon of global migrations, already reaching into the tens of millions, may act as a temporary safety valve, but on the other hand, it is also likely to serve as a vehicle for the transcontinental conveyance of ethnic and social conflicts.
The global stewardship that America has inherited is hence likely to be buffeted by turbulence, tension, and at least sporadic violence. The new and complex international order, shaped by American hegemony and within which “the threat of war is off the table,” is likely to be restricted to those parts of the world where American power has been reinforced by democratic sociopolitical systems and by elaborate external multilateral—but also American-dominated—frameworks.
An American geostrategy for Eurasia will thus be competing with the forces of turbulence. In Europe, there are signs that the momentum for integration and enlargement is waning and that traditional European nationalisms may reawaken before long. Large-scale unemployment persists even in the most successful European states, breeding xenophobic reactions that could suddenly cause a lurch in French or German politics toward significant political extremism and inward-oriented chauvinism. Indeed, a genuinely prerevolutionary situation could even be in the making. The historical timetable for Europe, outlined in Chapter 3, will be met only if Europe’s aspirations for unity are both encouraged and even prodded by the United States.
The uncertainties regarding Russia’s future are even greater and the prospects for a positive evolution much more tenuous. It is therefore imperative for America to shape a geopolitical context that is congenial to Russia’s assimilation into a larger setting of growing European cooperation and that also fosters the self-reliant independence of its newly sovereign neighbors. Yet the viability of, say, Ukraine or Uzbekistan (not to speak of the ethnically bifurcated Kazakstan) will remain uncertain, especially if American attention becomes diverted by new internal crises in Europe, by a growing gap between Turkey and Europe, or by intensifying hostility in American-Iranian relations.
The potential for an eventual grand accommodation with China could also be aborted by a future crisis over Taiwan; or because internal Chinese political dynamics prompt the emergence of an aggressive and hostile regime; or simply because American-Chinese relations turn sour. China could then become a highly destabilizing force in the world, imposing enormous strains on the American-Japanese relationship and perhaps also generating a disruptive geopolitical disorientation in Japan itself. In that setting, the stability of Southeast Asia would certainly be at risk, and one can only speculate how the confluence of these events would impact on the posture and cohesion of India, a country critical to the stability of South Asia.
These observations serve as a reminder that neither the new global problems that go beyond the scope of the nation-state nor more traditional geopolitical concerns are likely to be resolved, or even contained, if the underlying geopolitical structure of global power begins to crumble. With warning signs on the horizon across Europe and Asia, any successful American policy must focus on Eurasia as a whole and be guided by a geostrategic design.
A GEOSTRATEGY FOR EURASIA
The point of departure for the needed policy has to be hard-nosed recognition of the three unprecedented conditions that currently define the geopolitical state of world affairs: for the first time in history, (1) a single state is a truly global power, (2) a non-Eurasian state is globally the preeminent state, and (3) the globe’s central arena, Eurasia, is dominated by a non-Eurasian power.
However, a comprehensive and integrated geostrategy for Eurasia must also be based on recognition of the limits of America’s effective power and the inevitable attrition over time of its scope. As noted earlier, the very scale and diversity of Eurasia, as well as the potential power of some of its states, limit the depth of American influence and the degree of control over the course of events.
This condition places a premium on geostrategic insight and on the deliberately selective deployment of America’s resources on the huge Eurasian chessboard. And since America’s unprecedented power is bound to diminish over time, the priority must be to manage the rise of other regional powers in ways that do not threaten America’s global primacy.
As in chess, American global planners must think several moves ahead, anticipating possible countermoves.
A sustainable geostrategy must therefore distinguish between the short-run perspective (the next five or so years), the middle term (up to twenty or so years), and the long run (beyond twenty years). Moreover, these phases must be viewed not as watertight compartments but as part of a continuum. The first phase must gradually and consistently lead into the second—indeed, be deliberately pointed toward it—and the second must then lead subsequently into the third.
In the short run, it is in America’s interest to consolidate and perpetuate the
