Part One: U.S. strategy in the 21st century: leadership through hegemony
Chapter II: Role and Place of the USA in the Twenty-first Century in the Research of American Political Scientists and Scholars of International Affairs
Condoleezza Rice: Geostrategy Without Illusions
I think the Americans got lucky. The position of national security adviser is currently occupied by Condoleezza “Condi” Rice, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of political science at Stanford University. It appears to me that she is the one who formulated the most optimal variant of Washington’s foreign policy, corresponding to U.S. national interests. (I emphasize U.S. interests, not those of, say, Russia or China.) A detailed exposition of her views was published in Foreign Affairs before she assumed her important government post.46
At first sight, it would appear that she lists the same U.S. “interests” that were included in the “interest list” of the Clinton administration. But close comparison shows that Rice’s list does not include “humanitarian issues” (human rights, democracy, etc.). The military aspect features more strongly. Finally, she emphasizes interaction with the big powers like Russia and China first, rather than the entire “world community.”
This approach, theoretically derived from different concepts of power, is based on the realities of the geostrategic situation in the world, rather than on ideological differences between states. Rice justifiably believes that Americans should first defend the national interests of the USA, not “humanitarian causes” or the interests of “the international community” (as the Clinton administration was in the habit of doing). Rice qualifies her statement, saying that these latter interests, of course, should not be discounted absolutely. She simply emphasizes that they are realized through the process of securing national interests within the framework of a geostrategic (power) approach. In this connection, she cites the eloquent example of Russia. The introduction of democracy in the USSR (a favorite topic of Jimmy Carter) was accomplished thanks to Reagan’s geostrategic pressure. The Soviets lost the power struggle, and right away they embraced democracy and other freedoms. This accomplishment was the result of harsh play on the geostrategic field.
Equally deserved is her criticism of the Clinton administration for signing different multilateral agreements she claims are useless for at least two reasons: Either they do not involve some states on which the functioning of the agreement depends, or the fulfillment of the agreement’s terms cannot be controlled. The Kyoto treaty on global warming is of the first kind because it does not include China and a number of underdeveloped states that do considerable damage to the environment on the global scale. The second kind includes, for example, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
In general, Rice is skeptical (I am entirely in agreement with her on this point) about all kinds of “norms” of international behavior. They are nothing but illusions. “Norms” are defined by the interests of great powers, not by abstract notions of justice or other humanitarian considerations. She is absolutely right when she says: “The reality is that a few big powers can radically affect international peace, stability, and prosperity.” Norms, values, democracy, and so on may be good topics for discussion in academic circles, but not in real politics. Proceeding from this assumption, Rice strongly promotes the idea that it is necessary for the USA to be strong, first of all in the military sense. This military strength must be used to attain geostrategic goals, not for “realization of our values,” say, in the framework of a “humanitarian intervention,” though even these cannot be ruled out a priori. (In this regard, she criticizes U.S. interventions in Haiti and Somali.)
Rice disapproves of the Clinton administration’s excessive attention to “humanitarian” aspects in its policy toward China. She believes these issues should be resolved through other, non-intrusive methods (student exchanges, support of private enterprise, etc.). However, her main point is something different: “This means that China is not a ‘status quo’ power but one that would like to alter Asia’s balance of power in its own favor. That alone makes it a strategic competitor, not the ‘strategic partner’ the Clinton administration once called it.” She suggests: “U.S. policy toward China requires nuance and balance. It is important to promote China’s internal transition through economic interaction while containing Chinese power and security ambitions. Cooperation should be pursued, but we should never be afraid to confront Beijing when our interests collide.”
One may disagree with such forcefulness, but this approach stems from the laws of international relations, where power rules rather than good intentions.
Please note how clearly Rice ties real national interests of the USA with its security policy. Politics is money, and money should be spent on real interests rather than imaginary or ill-defined ones. If the declared goal is the accomplishment of real interests, one must go all the way, using military means if needed, instead of sticking to empty rhetoric about “peace in the entire world.” That is the main thrust of the political realist Condi Rice.
Rice is considered an expert on Russia. Indeed, she has studied the military policy of USSR/Russia for a long time. This proved to be insufficient, though, to properly evaluate the prospects of the domestic political and economic situation in Russia. In this area, she makes the same mistake as almost all U.S. political scientists. She describes the current situation in critical tones, calling Russia’s economy a “mutant” with “leftovers of the Middle Ages.” She is also critical of the IMF loans to Russia, the quality of the country’s leadership, and other negative things. In this area, her evaluations coincide word for word with those of the Heritage Foundation. But it seems to her that to overcome these negatives, what is needed is time and the advent of a new generation; then everything will be okay, like in the West. All these Russia experts do not understand that Russia will never digest capitalism of the Western type, nor will it ever have democracy or markets in the Western sense. No American expert will ever understand this—never. That is their strategic mistake about Russia.
Nonetheless, Rice believes there is no need to pay much attention to all these things; one must proceed from the knowledge that Russia “still has many of the attributes of a great power: a large population, vast territory, and military potential.” She takes leave of logic at this point because only a page earlier she wrote that “India is not a great power yet, but it has the potential to emerge as one.” But she ought to know that India’s population is almost seven times greater than Russia’s, and its territory is pretty big, too. It follows that Russia only has one attribute of a great power: strategic nuclear might.
So what is to be done about Russia? Rice suggests concentrating first on security problems. She writes: “First, it must recognize that American security is threatened less by Russia’s strength than by its weakness and incoherence.” The subtext is that a weak Russia may be unable to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons and military technologies. In this connection, she appeals for a full-scale realization of the Nunn-Lugar program (funding for the implementation of the SALT-2 Treaty). Second, it is necessary to concentrate on negotiations about nuclear threats. In her opinion, Russian military leaders started paying too much attention to nuclear weapons because of the shrinking of their conventional arsenal. “The Russian deterrent is more than adequate against the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and vice versa.” Her idea is that it needs to be reduced. This is followed by a noteworthy but: “But that fact need no longer be enshrined in a treaty that is almost thirty years old and is a relic of a profoundly adversarial relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.”
She means the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. It should be scrapped because new nuclear threats exist now (for example, North Korea and Iran), as does the possibility of proliferation of nuclear technologies from Russia and their falling into bad hands. Therefore: “It would be foolish in the extreme to share defenses with Moscow if it either leaks or deliberately transfers weapons technologies to the very states against which America is defending.” In other words, the USA must rely on itself and not have its hands tied by the ABM Treaty because Russia continues to cooperate with “rogue states.”
“Finally, the United States needs to recognize that Russia is a great power, and that we will always have interests that conflict as well as coincide.”
In my opinion, Rice is justified when she suggests scrapping the ABM Treaty of 1972 because it was signed in a different historical situation, when the arrangement of geostrategic forces was different. Everything has changed since then; therefore, treaties should be changed or renewed—especially because any international document only reflects the real balance of powers in the world without changing it. I think Russia’s leaders will be forced to put up with the United States’s rejection of the ABM Treaty, just as the Soviet Union’s leaders put up with the violation of the Yalta system proclaiming the inviolability of borders in Europe. The events of the late 1980s and early 1990s showed that borders can indeed be violated.
On the whole, one has to admit that Condi Rice has logically formulated certain principles and foundations of the current Republican administration’s foreign policy, suggesting a more optimal way of realizing national interests than the Clinton administration.
46 Condoleezza Rice, “Campaign 2000: Promoting the National Interests,” Foreign Affairs (January/February 2001); Internet.
The 21st Century: The World Without Russia
(Philosophical-sociological Essay)