Geopolitics (2)

Win today’s wars first

A chastened Pentagon emphasises soft power and partnerships over military force

Even big guys need friends

CHINA is rising, while Russia is becoming worryingly assertive. But for the foreseeable future, America’s Department of Defence says, America’s biggest worry will be small messy wars, fought with messy alliances with messy outcomes; more Iraqs, Afghanistans and campaigns against the likes of al-Qaeda.

The Pentagon now calls this the “Long War against violent extremist movements” (dropping the old appellation of the “Global War on Terrorism”). Military force is no longer the only, or even the primary tool. Soft power rather than hard power is given priority: less emphasis on the need to capture and kill terrorists, and more on winning the allegiance of indigenous populations for their local governments. The most important military task, says the new National Defence Strategy, released by the Pentagon on August 1st, “is not the fighting we do ourselves, but how well we help prepare our partners to defend and govern themselves.”

This sums up much of what Robert Gates, the defence secretary, has been saying of late. Yet the strategy is unusual in that it was issued in the dying months of the administration of George Bush. A new president will no doubt order a rethink. Plainly Mr Gates wants to pass on the lessons America has learnt the hard way, and bequeath a military machine pointing firmly (though reluctantly) in the direction of counter-insurgency and not just big conventional wars. Indeed, some wonder whether Mr Gates himself might not stay on under a new president. Moreover, he has told subordinates not to leave if asked to facilitate America’s first “wartime” transition since the Vietnam war.

Mr Gates’s strategy is a world away from the last one, produced under Donald Rumsfeld in 2005. Gone is the hubristic talk of defeating “adversaries at the time, place and in the manner of our choosing”, as is the warning that state sovereignty is no protection for rogue states and the unilateral idea of working with allies only “when we can”.

Mr Gates’s view is more humble, seeing a complex world where American power is curtailed, and military action must give way to diplomacy, as well as economic and other civilian levers. The system of international rules is less a constraint on America, more a vital element of its security; allies are assets who “often possess capabilities, skills and knowledge we cannot duplicate”.

Dealing with ungoverned space where terrorists may thrive is not just a matter of being able to insert military forces, but of “working with and through local actors whenever possible” to help them extend their writ. The paper’s view of “victory” is nuanced; it will involve “discrediting extremist ideology, creating fissures between and among extremist groups and reducing them to the level of nuisance groups.”

All this is not to say that America ignores other geostrategic problems. The Pentagon says it must retain the ability to defeat “rogue states” such as Iran and North Korea. America must also “hedge” against big powers, particularly China’s growing economic and military power.

The strategy expresses strong concern about Russia’s “retreat from openness and democracy” and more assertive stance—not least its claims to parts of the Arctic, the bullying of neighbours and the resumption of long-distance bomber flights. “We do not expect Russia to revert to outright global military confrontation, but the risk of miscalculation or conflict arising out of economic coercion has increased,” it says.

America retains the world’s pre-eminent military force, spending almost as much on defence as all other countries together. But precisely because of this military prowess, enemies will seek “asymmetric” means to counter it. That means America must “display a mastery of irregular warfare” rather than wish it away.

The document says little about the structure of America’s armed forces, or its spending priorities. But it points to supporting the army at the expense of the navy and the air force, which argue that the threat of China requires more spending on advanced aircraft, ships and space assets. Mr Gates regards such thinking as a dangerous disease—“next war-itis”, he calls it. His strategy is to dedicate “substantial but not infinite” resources to keep an advantage over China. But the priority is to try to win today’s wars.

Geopolitics (1)

A bowl of thin alphabet soup

The Kremlin wants a new security club for Europe and Asia. Can it work? And should it worry America, which is relearning to love its allies?

WHETHER the story is Muslim separatists killing Chinese policemen, Iran threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz to Western oil tankers, lethal fighting in a breakaway province of Georgia or Russia planning to put nuclear bombers in Cuba in retaliation for perceived American adventurism in Europe—just to take news items from the past few days—it is easy to see why officials in Moscow, Beijing and elsewhere think the security of the Eurasian land mass could be in better hands. Old alliances such as NATO, and looser outfits such as the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), do not seem to fit the bill. They are, critics say, too narrow in their membership, legally flimsy and too old-fashioned in their scope. High time, so it would seem, for something better.

That, roughly, is the thinking in Moscow, where for the first time in years Russia seems to be offering new ideas rather than old grumbles. Fuller details are promised in September. For now, the plan as outlined by President Dmitry Medvedev, and promoted by Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, is to have a big international conference in Moscow next year, attended by all NATO and EU countries, Russia and its ex-Soviet allies, as well as China and (probably) India, to set up a new security organisation to deal with issues such as terrorism and illegal migration. And who could object to that?

So far, the Western response has been muted. Some countries in Europe like the idea of a security structure that would rely less on American hegemony and more on international law. Others are privately sceptical, but think it would be rude to dismiss the plan before hearing it in full.

The idea of security organisations that span Europe and Asia is nothing new. Russia and China set one up by treaty in 1996. In 2001 it became the six-member Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (India and three other countries are observers). This aims to deal with the three big dangers (at least as seen by autocratic multi-ethnic countries): terrorism, separatism and extremism. The outsiders who support Islamist extremists in the North Caucasus are likely to be the same people who back Muslim separatists in China’s far west and insurgents in Uzbekistan’s Fergana Valley—so the thinking goes. The SCO’s chief role is still to swap information and co-ordinate anti-terrorist work.

It has gained weight since then, becoming both a talking-shop for countries twitchy about American dominance and developing a loose military role. Last year member states played war games in Central Asia—the biggest Russian-Chinese shindig of that kind since the Sino-Soviet split half a century ago. That prompted panicky reactions: “OPEC with bombs” or “the WWW” (World Without the West).

Such talk is exaggerated. Bobo Lo, a London-based security pundit and author of a forthcoming book called “Axis of Convenience”, says the SCO’s main aim is to promote Russian and Chinese interests in Central Asia “without spooking the natives”—in other words, smaller countries in the area. If it becomes too controversial, it loses usefulness. A Tajik-backed bid for Iran to get full membership, launched in April, has got nowhere.

One aim of the Russian plan may be to nudge Western countries into taking the SCO more seriously. It would have a seat at the table at the planned conference, ranking alongside international bodies such as NATO. Western nervousness about the SCO and similar bodies risks looking hypocritical: the EU and NATO fume about Russia’s use of “divide and rule” tactics, using bilateral arrangements to undermine multilateral organisations. Yet that is pretty much how the West treats Kremlin-sponsored international organisations.

But the big problem facing any new organisation is not Western fastidiousness but deeper conflicts of values and interests. Even the SCO does not function altogether smoothly. Russia and China are partners on some things, but rivals on others. Arms sales from Russia to China have slumped in the past two years. Russian policymakers realise that a rising China will become a steadily stronger neighbour, keen to redress past injustices. In the long term, says Mr Lo, these may include “red line” issues, such as the territories that a weakened Chinese empire ceded to tsarist Russia. That imbalance seems to be diminishing Russian enthusiasm. Russia is resisting full Chinese membership of the G8. Talk in Moscow of a “multipolar world” has given way to praise for “common European civilisation”. “They are worried that in a multipolar world not all poles are going to be equal,” says Mr Lo.

So how would the new Eurasian security organisation reach agreement? Disputes between pro-Western and pro-Russian states have crippled the consensus-based OSCE, an outfit that was once much liked by Russia as a non-military alternative to NATO. Russia banned OSCE election monitors from recent elections and has sidelined it in escalating conflicts such as Georgia (see article). So the new outfit is unlikely to find agreement more easy.

America and European countries will be encouraged if Russia truly wants to be part of a space that foreign-policy wonks such as Dmitri Trenin at the Carnegie think-tank in Moscow call the “Greater West”. But the problem is that being “Western” is hard to define. Speeches by Russian policymakers seem to reflect a 19th century understanding of Western-ness, based on a mixture of national sovereignty and a common cultural heritage in Christianity.

Those ideas are out of step with the realities of the 21st century. Western countries now sign up to lots of sovereignty-limiting multilateral accords, and try to live up to agreed standards on human rights and political freedom. Such agreements are anathema to many in Russia and other SCO countries, who see them as hypocritical and irrelevant to security.

In practice, it is often either the propagation of common values (in the case of NATO) or common dislike of those values (in the case of the SCO) that provides the sort of glue that can hold an international body together. Is any ideological glue strong enough to fuse the whole of Eurasia into a single unit? On any of the challenges common to all the countries in that vast area—from collective security to energy supplies to minority rights—views diverge. Until that changes, the prospects for the Russian grand design look dim.