International Security Course–Fall  2020

The End of an Era

The leading role of a great power does not last forever.  For over a century, the U.S. has been the world’s leading economic power. After WW II it became also the international political power. Looking at China it was already once the dominant empire at least in the eastern part of the world for a thousand years. The Roman Empire disintegrated but parts of it remained centers of power. The Nazi “Drittes Reich” could not make it for two decades. Also, it is rather rare that one single power is emerging. So, chances are that more centers of powers are coexistent. I was an excited reader of Huntington; I am not a great fan of him. Still, the rise (or resurgence?) of China into the leading power of the Eastern World alongside the United States as the leading power of the Western World could make sense.

While earlier it was the trade, later the industry, nowadays it is the technology and knowledge-based sectors which define economic leadership. Developing technology comes at a significant cost, but whoever succeeds to take the lead in this competition can set the direction for the future. China is focusing on IT, automation, aircraft, electrical equipment, energy-saving vehicles, biomedicine which is also declared in its technology strategy. Achieving leadership by the set deadline would make China from the workbench to the technology leader of the world as soon as 2025. 5G plays an important role as the knowledge-based world needs that technology. Therefore, without attacking or defending the China policy of the USA, there was some logic in the government actions to protect American IP against Chinese espionage and buyouts.

However, how can a shrinking and protectionist US economy, a country loaded with social tensions compete with China and keep high import tariffs? It is also no secret that the Chinese economy was sturdier than the American during the pandemic and COVID could be a game-changer for China. An IMF comparison of the GDP growth statistics gives a clear picture[1]

GDP Growth of Selected Power Centers. Source: IMF

While the influence of partisanship on the foreign policy of the USA is also represented in the hiccups with international conventions (Bush: No to Kyoto. Obama: Yes to Paris. Trump: No to Paris), and the protectionist, separatist line would most likely continue if Trump wins, I am not sure that at least some parts of it would not infiltrate into Biden´s more conciliatory foreign policy. Whoever makes the run, he must find an answer on how to answer the Chinese challenge and maintain America’s leadership in the world. A brief answer to the Shifrinson piece “Should the United States Fear China’s Rise?”[2] would be: Yes and No. Yes, it could disrupt the American Dream about what the world makes go round. No, because it is the nature of the power that it comes and goes. And China comes again.

Trump, China, Pandemic. We live in times, we could not have imagined some years ago.  As Heinz Alfred (Henry) Kissinger told the Financial Times in Manhattan two years ago[3]

I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretenses. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows this, or that he is considering any great alternative. It could just be an accident.

[1]https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDP_RPCH@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD/CHN/RUS/EU/USA

[2] Joshua Shifrinson, “Should the United States Fear China’s Rise?,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 65-83

[3] https://www.ft.com/content/926a66b0-8b49-11e8-bf9e-8771d5404543

56-68-80

In the part of Europe where I grew up, there was a bitter joke about the Soviet armed forces in the 80s of the past century, which were ubiquitous in all Warsaw Pact countries. It went like this: How often does the Red Army get a leave from their camps in Europe? The answer: Every 12 years. 1956 to Budapest (suppression of the Hungarian uprising), 1968 to Prague (intervention of the Prague Spring), and 1980 to Gdansk (suppression of Solidarnosc and the Polish uprising). The joke about the joke was that everyone knew: it wasn’t a joke.

My generation (born in 1968) was perhaps the last to experience one or more of this demonstration of Soviet power – so far, the censored state media has allowed. (The Yugoslav war in 1991 did not fit into this line, nor were the interventionist the same or did they come at the right time.) Reading the Toal piece “Why Does Russia Invade Its Neighbors?”[1] this joke came into my mind.  But while the Soviet Union as a quasi-colonizer of the Eastern Block´s countries ruled with an iron fist to keep the status quo, Russia, is trying to recover it´s “lost world”. Quoting Toal:

Many groups experienced the collapse of the Soviet Union as liberation, but for others, it was a disaster of violence, displacement, and economic ruin.

Speaking of the occupied nations like the above-mentioned ones it was a liberation for sure. The problematic part was that the West (like these days again) was not able to understand the needs of a disintegrating great power and the consequences, and also ignored the advances made by Putin in his earlier years. The West has also failed in offering a functioning social model and a sustainable partnership. A vacuum of ideals and forces has arisen. Nature doesn’t like the vacuum, politics even less. Quoting Putin Trenin describes it in his piece about “Russia´s Breakout from the Post-Cold War System”:

Post-Christian Europeans embraced equality of good and evil, and they distinguished themselves by moral relativism, a very vague sense of identity, and excessive political correctness. European countries have begun renouncing their roots, including Christian values, which underlie Western civilization.[2]

Governing conservative parties in the Central and Eastern parts of Europe follow the same pattern, not without success while keeping up religious values and condemning political correctness as the reason for laming governance and an increasingly apolitical and disinterested population in the west.[3] Creating a modern Russian nation and identity after 70 years of the totalitarian ruling is not something that can be completed overnight and needs an ideological filling.

At this point, I wanted to quote Stephen F. Cohen. We should remember him, one of the best experts on Russia. Far better than me in his book “Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia” (2000) he describes exactly the role and the blame of the United States on the destabilization of post-communist Russia. Prof. Cohen died with 81 this Friday in New York[4]. RIP.

[1] Toal, Gerard. “Why Does Russia Invade Its Neighbors?” Near Abroad: Putin, the West, and the Contest Over Ukraine and the Caucasus. Oxford UP, 2017, pp. 17-54.

[2] Trenin, Dmitri. Russia’s Breakout from the Post-Cold War System: The Drivers of Putin’s Course. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – Moscow Center, 2014, pp. 1-22. ProQuest.

[3] During a meeting with Hungary´s PM Orbán President Putin put it in simple words: “We are not talking about agreements, you just need to help save, restore shrines and parishes” (Pеч не идет о соглашеиях нужно просто пoмоч сохраниться, востановить святыни и приходы) Russkaja Gazeta, 10.30.2019

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/books/stephen-cohen-dead.html

Deep Fake, Deep State, and Sovereignty

For a passionate newspaper reader (for me, newspapers are still paper and reading is when there is a bit of printing ink left on the fingers), you don’t even have to bother to form an opinion these days: it is served ready. From digital media, TV, news portals, government releases, and many more. And several versions, so that you can believe whatever you want. The very first time for me I thought I was a victim of fake-news was these days, just 19 years ago, sitting not far from my office in Pozsony (Bratislava, Slovakia) and seeing the Twin Towers collapse. They weren’t fake news…

As a news consumer, it is very “practical”, because depending on which political direction you feel closer you get text, pictures, and also a film that matches the version of the truth you want to believe. Very aptly described in a Chesney et al piece:

Thanks to the rise of deep fakes—highly realistic and difficult-to-detect digital manipulations of audio or video—it is becoming easier than ever to portray someone saying or doing something he or she never said or did.[1]

And if the truth should seem too unpleasant, you can always resort to good old-world methods: switch off the news source. Interestingly, not only the trolls of the would-be superpower Russia deal with disinformation but also high-ranking officials of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) enjoy it. This is what happened to Brian Murphy.[2] Murphy who is the former head of DHS’s intelligence division happened to say that his bosses were

Warping the agency around President Trump’s political interests.

Without wanting to go on length, his „failure“ was to produce reports on the violent white supremacy and Russian election interference. More exactly he should not report on the deep-fakes from Russia and concentrate among others more on left-wing anarchos. According to the New York Times, and unfortunately for Murphy´s career, he did not think to do so, that is why he has been removed from his position, like many other specialists of the so-called Deep State. But is the specification of guidelines in a security agency or exchanging staff something special? I do not think so. After each election, posts are discussed and new priorities are set. The special thing about Murphy is that the DHS, which was intended to guard the sovereignty of the USA, as the anti-terrorist organization, was converted into a tool for immigration policies and made into an election vehicle.

According to international law[3]

sovereign states having a permanent population, defined territory, one government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood that a sovereign state is neither dependent on nor subjected to any other power or state.

The last condition seems very important to me: neither dependent on nor subjected to any other power or state. Because the Americans will vote on this too, away from all the campaign noise in 51 days: that the USA, a powerful country and for many still the guarantor of western democracy, remains a sovereign state. So God will.

[1]Chesney, Robert, and Danielle Citron. “Deepfakes and the New Disinformation War: The Coming Age of Post-Truth Geopolitics.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 98, no. 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 147–155. EBSCOhost.

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/us/politics/homeland-security-russia-trump.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_state

The Pandemic: China´s Rise and India´s Fall. Or more?

One man’s joy is another man’s sorrow.  This old saying might prove to be right – as cynical and brutal as that may sound. At least as far as India’s pre-pandemic dreams and the post-pandemic prospects for China are concerned, and related to the consequences of Corona on the power struggle in Asia. From the pen of Jeffrey Gettleman, The New York Times headlines under “Coronavirus shatters India´s big dreams”.  Other media have already dealt extensively with the topic too. Is COVID-19 simply the last coffin nail for India’s earlier overheated and now crashed economy and the icing on the cake for China’s further rise? Or is this crisis a serious hit for the US in re-establishing itself as a global power?

On the one hand, Gettleman did a good job of collecting some facts. Although India is the world’s fifth-largest[1] economy by nominal GDP, it has suffered already in the past years the loss of momentum.[2] With the recent 24% decline,

India´s economy has shrunk faster than any other major nation’s,

according to NYT. The perspective of 200 million people in poverty and the ravaging virus with an estimated 80,000 new cases daily eats up labor and purchasing power. While government debt reaches historic highs, the churn of the market is unsettling investors. All at the same time. The article hints also correctly that China’s economy has recovered and growing again and mentions later the rise of anti-muslim feelings in India. We should go into this later.

On the other hand, the NYT article remains indebted especially to the American reader with an explanation of what this all should mean in the context of the USA. A regional great power with the world’s largest population in four years on the endless southern borders of China as a stabilizing ally and as a market would be of extreme interest to the USA. However, these seem to remain dreams not only in New Delhi but also in Washington DC. A major reason for this is logically the economic breakdown. But even if the two-third hopelessly outdated armament paired with the unbelievable Indian bureaucracy could be replaced overnight by a miracle[3], the inner instability will destroy the fruits. The Indian government has already taken the dangerous route of religious discrimination. While Christians are being persecuted more and more in the Middle East and Africa (with 245 million the most persecuted group in the world), in India the Muslims are the discriminated ones. Inciting religious impatience is in most cases profit-oriented. In the end, however, the suffering of a religious conflict is socialized (loss of human life, existence, cultural heritage) and the profits (seized property, land, political influence, etc.) privatized, while the economy shrinks. Thus, the USA will not only be weakened in the current economic struggle but will also gain another security problem in the form of an unstable regional power. Finally, I have been reminded of a Stephen M. Walt piece[4]: Once weakened and destabilized, which strategy India will choose? Balancing or bandwagoning?

On a personal note:  While India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu just recently confirmed their will to work closely together, the first is blamed for the too strict lockdown which led to economic catastrophe, against the latter thousands demonstrate blaming him acting far too laxly in the pandemic and a second outbreak. Other countries, other customs.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

[2] A few years ago the very profitable diamond business already suffered in India. As a result of corruption and counterfeiting, some producers have shifted their focus.

[3] The blog author’s experience in his previous positions shows that a simple extension of framework agreements with the Indian government can often last 10 years. The danger that with every change of government (whichever contractual partner) everything will be rolled up again is inevitable.

[4] Walt, Stephen M. “Alliances: Balancing and Bandwagoning.” International Politics: Enduring Concepts and Contemporary Issues. 11th ed. Eds. Robert J. Art and Robert Jervis. Pearson, 2013, pp. 125-131.