"Upgrade the West, Manage the East"

Brzezinski's Strategic Vision

“Balancing the East, Upgrading the West”—that’s the most succinct summation of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s new articulation of U.S. grand strategy, Strategic Vision.  In a wide-ranging 192 pages expounding on U.S. interests in the world’s most strategically relevant nations, Brzezinski seeks to present a new blueprint for continued American relevance in a world whose center of gravity is shifting toward the east. Eastern Europe and Asia Minor are the fulcrum of this new center of world power, and strengthening Western power here will provide us the leverage to ensure that democracy, human rights, and rule of law remain vital to the liberal international order. In this essay I’ll show why the Western relationship with Russia and Turkey will perhaps be the defining arena for the global politics in the next decade.

Brzezinski recalls the early 20^th century geopolitical strategist Halford Mackinder, who argued in a 1904 paper before Britain’s Royal Geographic Society that Eurasia would constitute the crucial “pivot area” of geostrategy, an emerging discipline of world politics as defined by control of economic resources.  By 1919, Mackinder would summarize his theory thus:

"Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;

who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;

who rules the World-Island controls the world."

Granted the father of modern geopolitics could not have predicted the primacy of Middle East oil, the rise of China, and the emergence of asymmetric warfare as key alternatives to his favored “pivot” point in geostrategy, but it’s nonetheless difficult not to acknowledge his prescience in emphasizing Eurasia which extends to even contemporary policy-making.

Eastern Europe is crucial not only to Mackinder in the early 20^th century and Brzezinski today, but also in Napoleon’s attempts to take Russia in the early 19^th century. Also, in the 1930s and 1940s Mackinder’s theories influenced a generation of “organic state” geo-strategists upon which were based Nazi expansionist efforts to move into Eastern Europe and eventually take Russia. The emphasis on Eastern Europe also dominated much of Cold War containment policy, and Brzezinski has devoted much of his career to realizing Mackinder’s original vision that whoever controls Eastern Europe can essentially make a claim on world hegemony. His 1950 Masters thesis at McGill University focused on nationalities within the Soviet Union. As President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Brzezinski highlighted the importance of bolstering Soviet dissidents in Eastern Europe, many of them leading nationalist movements. In 1988, Brzezinski correctly argued that the Soviet Union would eventually fracture in Eastern Europe along lines of nationality, directly recalling his original Masters thesis nearly forty years before and his work as Carter’s National Security Advisor.

As Mackinder did, Brzezinski strongly emphasized Eurasia in his more broad and well-known 1997 book The Grand Chessboard. With the more programmatic Strategic Vision of 2012, Brzezinski gives country-by-country instructions for continued American influence during the next 25 years. With little emphasis on South America, Africa, or Australia, Strategic Vision focuses in on Europe and Asia, but even Europe is mostly assumed away as part of the West. The true focus, aside from how to repair America domestically, is almost exclusively on Asia. This is naturally in step with much of current American policy, as exemplified, for instance, in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent essay in Foreign Policy, “America’s Pacific Century:”

The Asia-Pacific has become a key driver of global politics. Stretching from the Indian subcontinent to the western shores of the Americas, the region spans two oceans -- the Pacific and the Indian -- that are increasingly linked by shipping and strategy. It boasts almost half the world's population. It includes many of the key engines of the global economy, as well as the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. It is home to several of our key allies and important emerging powers like China, India, and Indonesia.

In order for our Asia policy to succeed, however, we’ll need to focus much of our resources on “upgrading the West” in order that we may “manage the East.” Brzezinski devotes many pages to how America can repair itself domestically (by addressing issues like income inequality, gridlocked politics, decaying infrastructure, and national debt), but those can be addressed in another essay. Likewise, much weight can also be put on partnering with China in a strategic dialogue and fostering pro-American values of human rights, free and fair elections, and the rule of law there. However, that too is a subject for another essay-length examination needed to tease out the many complexities lying in store in Brzezinski’s thin, but dense volume.

The point I want to make here is that we cannot ignore the degree to which we still live in Mackinder’s world, and that in order for America’s example and values to have worldwide power, we must focus on the region of the world that early scholar termed the “heartland.” Eastern Europe has been essential to geostrategy for a century and much of it (the Russian half, at least) remains fiercely independent, ambivalently nostalgic for the grandeur of its Soviet past, reluctant to embrace rule of law and free elections, and somewhat inclined toward a Russo-Sino alliance. Cultivating Russia as a crucial member of the upgraded West is a vital piece of American strategy. Likewise, Turkey is another key nation of the upgrading West, and though it’s not technically part of Eastern Europe, it’s directly adjacent to it. Turkey’s long history of secular modernization in a predominantly Muslim nation makes it as important a member of the greater West as ever before in light of the recent Arab Spring. It began secularization per the European model in 1924 under its first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and we should support efforts for Turkey to satisfy requirements to accede into the European Union within the next decade.

Because Russia and Turkey are vital members of the new West, I want to devote the remainder of the essay to showing how they represent the crucial pivot point in America’s efforts to upgrade the West, manage the East, and to remain the world’s foremost beacon of stability and human prosperity. I’ll look first at Russia, examining the challenges and obstacles for democracy before outlining a plan for American influence there per Brzezinski’s prescription. I’ll then do the same for Turkey, first highlighting the problems we face before showing how we can make the most of the situation.

Russia presents a major long-term strategic challenge over the next quarter-century. Its problems are many. First Brzezinski notes, “Russia’s demographic crisis, political corruption, outdated and resource-driven economic model, and social retardation” are among its greatest issues. However even worse is the “persisting disregard…for the rule of law” which is “perhaps its greatest impediment to a philosophical embrace with the West” (Brzezinski 140). While the strongest inclination toward Europe exists in the Russian business elite, the political elites have expressed more of an inclination toward separation from America or to be an outright rival to America. Other Russian elites eye the vast continental expanse of the nation’s Eurasian breadth as a potential source of power (though the land is largely undeveloped and barren). Still others want to see Russia project its power into a greater “Slavic Union” that gives preferred treatment to the Ukraine and Belarus. And most potent are those who dream of the past Soviet strength, those who don’t question why “Lenin’s embalmed remains continue to be honored in a mausoleum that overlooks the Red Square.” In short, the jury is still out on whether Russia has any desire to even be a part of the West.

            Though there is much reason to fret, we can also be encouraged by the surprising, if short-lived, presidency of Dmitri Medvedev. Brzezinski’s book was released in January, shortly before Putin unsurprisingly won the presidential elections. Therefore Strategic Vision at least held out the possibility that Putin might not regain his authoritarian and anti-Western hold on the country. Yet although Medvedev had been hand-picked for the presidency by Putin, Medvedev had surprised many with his outspoken advocacy for democracy and human rights. His online statements at the official Web portal for the President of Russia impressed Brzezinski so much that the author singled them out for spotlighting in a rare offset text box in the book:

Democracy needs to be protected. The fundamental rights and freedoms of our citizens must be as well. They need to be protected from the sort of corruption the breeds tyranny, lack of freedom, and injustice…Nostalgia should not guide our foreign policy and our strategic long-term goal is Russia’s modernization. [One can only wonder whom Medvedev had in mind when making his pointed reference to “nostalgia in foreign policy.]

              The fact that such sentiments can exist at the top level of Russian government proves that democratic dreams have strong presence in modern post-Soviet Russia even though at present internal chaos breeds the popular notion that Putin’s strongman tactics are necessary for now to hold the nation together. Yet the necessity for short-term authoritarianism does not mean Putinism is a reliable long-term project. Indeed Brzezinski points out major flaws in each of the alternative long-term visions for Russia’s strategic interests that I outlined above. Each approach that does not advocate unity with the West is either unrealistic and unsustainable. Brezisnki argues, as Medvedev does, that Russia’s “only real option” for future prosperity is a future partnership with Europe, Asia, and yes, America.

             Though the obstacles for near-term philosophical affinity with Russia appear bleak, Brzezinski offers an important ray of hope, “it is useful to bear in mind the dramatic transformation of global geopolitical realities that has occurred in just the last forty years and the fact that we live in a time characterized by the dramatic acceleration of history.” As new technologies help spur new revolutions in information availability and consequently in political consciousness (with examples from the Gutenberg printing press all the way to the al-Jazeera and the Arab Spring), the progress of strengthening democratic values in Russia might occur far quicker than we might think.

            While Russia is at best ambivalent about joining the West, there is no question that Turkey has already long harbored aspirations of Europeanization. A more European Turkey is as much in the Turkish interest as it is the Western interest. “It is a geopolitical reality,” Brzezinski writes, “that a genuinely Western-type Turkish democracy, if solidly anchored in the West through more than just NATO, could be Europe’s shield protecting it from the restless Middle East” (Brzezinski 128). We can also assume that the demonstration effect of Turkey’s secularization and democratization could influence political consciousness in Tunisia, Egypt, and the rest of the Arab world in a more pro-Western direction. Bolstering Turkey as a regional power and a reliable counterweight to Iranian theocracy is a long-term strategic interest.

While there is a risk of Turkey backsliding toward Islamic theocracy, the nation’s long traditions of modern secular democracy and its affinity for the West make courting it far easier than Russia. The challenges in the Turkish case are much fewer: “some persisting retardation in some social aspects including press freedom, education, and human development” (Brzezinski 137).  The most pressing challenge Brzezinski highlights is Turkey’s continued exclusion from Europe per European anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment as well as EU fears of embracing a poorer country particularly while in the grips of the debt crisis. Add to this the fact that 18 of the 35 chapters of negotiation on Turkey’s accommodation to EU law are currently frozen by France, the EU, or Cyprus, and we see major impediments to bringing Turkey into the fold. If we perpetuate this exclusion, we could be grappling with an increasingly bitter and anti-Western class of poorly educated people for whom Islam will gain credence.

Although Brzezinski’s Strategic Vision is light on programmatic details for how we can include Turkey in the wider West, the recipe is widely available elsewhere. While Turkey has largely expressed an historical desire to become more European and is already a NATO member, the progress of talks to help it gain access to the EU has been stalled for the last several years. By contrast, while Brzezinski could only outline the alignment of interests that might occur for Russia to simply want to one day join NATO or the EU, the biggest issue right now for Turkey is how to progress through the messy negotiation process to actually join the EU. Our embrace with Turkey now only faces practical issues, while with Russia it is still in philosophical doubt. By 2013 it is highly unlikely Turkey will satisfy all 35 areas of EU law that it needs to satisfy for the next round of evaluations. However, 2021 is more realistic target to work through the current stalemate.

Though most commentators and strategists will continue to emphasize China as the most intimidating power rising today, we are wise to remember that China’s rise is not as sure as some make it out to be. The Chinese experience is fraught with many problems, particularly the rising political consciousness in its new middle class and its problem squelching dissidents in the information age. While China is being forced to sort out its internal problems, no one doubts the need for a long-term strategic dialogue between our two countries. But perhaps even more crucial in increasing the American stake in the new global power balance is to focus on Turkey and Russia. Strengthening Western democratic values in these nations will actually directly strengthen democratic values in China. We’ll be wise to remember the world that Mackinder saw more than a century ago.

But even further back than Mackinder’s observations are Brzezinski’s exhortations about the Byzantine experience following the fall of Rome in 476. One of his prevailing themes is that, while Byzantine could insulate itself geographically and politically from the failing Roman Empire, such lucky diplomatic finesse is impossible in the globally interconnected world of 2012. Brzezinski uses this motif as synecdoche for his overall vision of the book that America must carefully manage its relations throughout all of Eurasia because it is impossible to remain a world power in an isolationist context. But the Byzantine example is especially powerful and it’s worth taking the metaphor a couple steps further. Accepting Brzezinski’s point of global interdependence, Byzantium can be a brighter bellwether of modern geostrategy. Whereas 1,500 years ago it was a model of isolation, today the descendents of Byzantium which make up Turkey and parts of Russia could be the perfect symbol for the global appeal of democratic values in the 21^st century.