P1: FCW 0521857449c10 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 5, 2006 14:1 Geopolitical Aspirations of the Nations 199 campaign funds. A respected former federal judge was selected to investi- gate the matter, and accepted the position, but the investigation was never funded. There are continuing reports of Chinese efforts to obtain licenses for export from America to China of parts of supercomputers, presumably to be used at some point for missile targeting. Meanwhile, the Chinese are moving ahead rapidly in computer hardware manufacturing. “Huawei’s [a Chinese created and owned router manufac- turer for telecoms, like Cisco] rapid expansion has brought it plaudits from China’s top leaders, who are eager for the country to establish itself as a high-technology power and not just a factory floor for the world.” 40 WILL CHINA BE AN ENEMY? It would be a great tragedy if America and China stumbled into an armed conflict. Today the Chinese are at long last making significant economic progress and there is at least some greater degree of personal freedom than before. To see all this lost would be extremely unfortunate. At the start of this chapter, we quoted Henry Kissinger to the point that China need not be America’s enemy – that such a result is not foreordained. Then we discussed the trends in Chinese politics and economics and concluded that they point to a high likelihood of enmity between the two powers as Chinese strength grows. Now we turn to the issue of overt conflict – how might it occur? Essentially the Chinese are likely to view America as strong but lacking the will to use force with a will to win, if losses are imposed on America. They may consider us unlikely to use force to support an ally, but willing to use force to support our economic interest. In this case, their strategy at this stage is clear: to acquiescence in trade agreements that embody America’s major economic aims; and to press us to hard choices in the geopolitical realm. The pressing has already started. To day in the Far East there is unceasing elbowing between China and the United States. Hardly a day goes by that some Chinese civilian or military official does not warn the United States and its allies about their supposed hostility toward China, and hardly a day passes without a response from the American military or civilian leadership. In 2001, for example, the Secre- taries of State and Defense of the United States invited Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia to join in a more formal military alliance; and China quickly warned the four Asian countries not to toe the American line. China then began the largest military maneuvers in its history, directly P1: FCW 0521857449c10 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 5, 2006 14:1 200 The Reconfiguration of National Wealth and Power opposite Taiwan. A defector from the Chinese embassy in Australia reported knowing of a thousand Chinese spies in Australia. China conducts tests of long-range ballistic missiles frequently. It recently fired from a submarine a missile believed to have a range of about six thou- sand miles, which could reach U.S. territory from the western Pacific. The system isn’t yet operational, but may be in a few years. It marks a major advance of China’s strategic weaponry. 41 In Asia and Australia papers follow the almost daily elbowing of the Americans and the Chinese – statements by the civilian governments, or by military leadership, directed at the other and at other countries; the Americans proposing new security discussions and arrangements by China’s neighbors; China warning those so contacted not to follow the American line. The America media rarely report such matters, since they do not fit in with the general story – the development of trade between America and China, the loss of American jobs to China, and the increasing liberalization (it is said) of Chinese politics. The elbowing between China and America can be followed in specialized reporting services both in print and online), however. The Chinese interest in Taiwan goes beyond nationalism, though it is nationalism that excites the Chinese public. In fact, Taiwan is today one of the world’s most strategic spots, equivalent to what Gibraltar used to be. This is because Taiwan sits astride the sea routes by which Japan receives almost all its raw materials, including oil from the Middle East and coal and iron ore from Australia. Whoever controls Taiwan has a stranglehold on Japan’s economy, and were China to obtain that, the balance of world power would shift. This the United States cannot permit. The current great game in east Asia (including, for example, the elbowing between China and the United States over the Straits of Malacca, and the public relations furor in east Asia about Japan’s prime minister visiting war cemeteries) is in large part about who has a solid grip on Japan’s throat. But, we might ask, why does that matter? Japan isn’t armed. Why is China so interested? The broad answer is power. Strangleholds can be used for a spectrum of goals from influence, to intimidation and extortion. The Chinese Commu- nist leadership may not have thought the matter through, and it might not have an endgame in mind, but the party will test the possibilities. Ta iwan is a key to strategic power. It’s like a huge unsinkable airfield, army base and missile station which overlooks the connection between the South China Sea and the Sea of Japan – through which much of Japan’s trade, including especially its oil, must pass. So it’s the key to domination of Japan. P1: FCW 0521857449c10 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 5, 2006 14:1 Geopolitical Aspirations of the Nations 201 Even with Chinese missiles thatcan reach over Formosa to the ocean beyond, Formosa in other hands than those of the Chinese communist government, provides a base from which the missiles can be shot down or their bases destroyed. Itfollows that Formosamay be the single most importantstrategic spot in theworld today. Hencetherivalry between ChinaandAmericaover it. In February 2005, the United States and Japan signed an agreement assert- ing that Taiwan and the Taiwan straits were a mutual concern between both countries. China expressed displeasure at the agreement but met with Japan in April 2005 to discuss Taiwan. China and the United States might at any moment stumble into a con- frontation over Taiwan. China is arming for this by building nuclear-armed missiles able to reach the United States. Already China has some twenty-five such missiles operational, and Chinese military officials have threatened to use them to hit American cities. MajorGeneral ZhuChenghuofChinaspoke at a function for foreign jour- nalists organized by the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry on July 14, 2005. During the function Zhu said: “We willprepare ourselves for the destruc- tion of all of the [Chinese] cities east of Xian. Of course, the Americans will also have to expect that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.” Zhu has previously said that China has the capability to attack the United States with long-range missiles. The general is a professor and dean in China’s National Defense University Strategic Defense Institute which is under the direct leadership of the CCP’s Central Military Committee. The American House of Representatives called for his dismissal, but the Chinese Communist Party did not reject Zhu’s speech nor dismiss him and aspokesperson from the Foreign Affairs Ministry said Zhu’s speech was his ownpersonal opinion. This spokespersondeclined to comment on whether or not the speech represented the government’s view. “A lthough General Zhu emphasized that what he said was his own opin- ion, a Pentagon official, speaking to a reporter at the Washington Times, said that Chinese generals normally express only official positions and that Zhu’s comments represent the views of senior Chinese military officers. ‘These comments are a signal to all of Asia that China does not fear US forces,’ this official said. Professor Tang Ben of the Claremont Institute’s Asian Studies Center published an article in Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao on July 20, in which he asserted that what General Zhu alluded to was actu- ally Beijing’s strategy to deal with current world circumstances, even though Beijing labeled his remarks as “personal opinion.” Professor Tang wrote that people aware of the CCP’s diplomatic history would know that Zhu’s speech was purposely arranged by Beijing and not written by him.” 42 P1: FCW 0521857449c10 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 5, 2006 14:1 202 The Reconfiguration of National Wealth and Power A likely scenario that would lead to a very tough decision for the United States goes as follows: China asserts sovereignty over Taiwan and a determination to occupy the island. Nationalist fervor rises to a boil in China. The United States says no. China asserts a determination to attack and occupy the island. The United States replies, “We’ll stop you.” China replies, “If you intervene against our invasion, we’ll take out your west coast cities with nuclear missiles.” The United States then replies in accordance with the Mutual Assured Destruction Doctrine of the Cold War, “Then we’ll take out all your cities.” Stability during the Cold War between the United States and the USSR rested on the near certainty that neither side would risk destruction to upset the status quo. This was deterrence. But now there is a difference. For, unlike Russia, China is likely to reply, “We’ll risk that. We don’t think the American government and/or the American people will trade Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle even for all our cities.” Faced with this challenge, the United States is likely to back down. China then invades Taiwan, occupies it, and whole strategic position in Far East is altered against the United States and U.S. allies in favor of China. It’s to avoid this result that the United States seeks to build a missile defense shield. This is classic big power politics, and it can happen even in today’s world: China, in pursuit of national unification, or under the cover of nationalism, seeking to obtain Taiwan and thereby strategic control of the connection of north Pacific to south, and thereby the lifeline of Japan; the Americans determinedtopreventthis;theJapanesebecoming very nervousabout seeing their fate possibly pass from the control of the Americans to that of China. To defend Taiwan, the United States must be able to intervene against a Chinese invasion, and to do so must be able to protect U.S. cities from Chinese attack. Against China, unlike against the Soviet Union before 1991, or Russia today, deterrence alone, the threat of mutual assured destruction, is not at all certain to work. Hence the need for a new American defense strategy with which to urge the Chinese toward peaceful integration into the world community. But not all American commentators see it that way. Instead, some limit themselves to urging restraint on the Chinese. Working within the public culture, there is a complete failure to see the broader (or systems) aspect P1: FCW 0521857449c10 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 5, 2006 14:1 Geopolitical Aspirations of the Nations 203 (the interrelationships) of the Formosa situation. “To lock in today’s fragile status quo, Taipei should forgo full independence and Beijing should stop threatening to use force.” 43 Yes, that is all to the good, but largely off the point. China has strategic motives for wanting direct control of Taiwan that goes much beyond national reunification – to get better control of the sea lanes from the middle east to Japan; and to remove what it must consider an American arrow aimed at its heart. These motives cannot be satisfied by better relations within today’s status quo. John Mearsheimer has studied the emerging rivalry between America and China and comes to a very different conclusion. “American policy,” he writes, “has sought to integrate China into the world economy and facilitate its rapid economic development, so that it becomes wealthy and content with its present position in the international system. This policy is misguided. wealthy China would not bea status quo power but an aggres- sive state ”Inconsequence, “a policy of engagement [by the United States with China] is doomed to fail. China and the United States are des- tined to be adversaries.” Instead of engagement and support for Chinese growth, the United States should “do what it can to slow the rise of China.” 44 We think this an unnecessary conclusion at this time, and therefore too risky a policy. America should continue to seek China’s integration into the world community through engagement via trade, investment, cultural exchanges – that is, through a policy of positive engagement. But America must also adopt a defense policy that has two objectives: r to protect our country if the effort at peaceful engagement fails; and r to persuade the Chinese that there is little or no gain from military aggres- sion against us or our allies. MAD is not a viable way to do so. Strategic Independence , including a national missile shield is. The American government has been reluctant to reveal the strategic pur- pose of the missile shield, and has so bungled the matter that it sometimes seems to urge the Chinese to faster construction of missiles able to hit our cities. This is the perverseresultofdishonesty about our objectives combined with the topsy-turvy logic of MAD. The best American policy with respect to China is a vigorous effort to persuade it to further integration into the world economic community, coupled with a strong defensive posture to persuade China against military adventures. P1: FCW 0521857449c10 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 5, 2006 14:1 204 The Reconfiguration of National Wealth and Power REVIVING SUPERPOWER: RUSSIA On April 25, 2005, President Putin said to the Russian Parliament: “The greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century was the break up of the Soviet Union. It left millions of Russians outside their homeland.” 45 The first of his two sentences shows the direction of Putin’s thinking; the second begins setting stage for reassembling the USSR. One can almost hear Hitler speaking of the Germans outside Germany before World War II. American public culture has great difficulty adjusting to the fact that Putin has created an authoritarian martial police state (although it is only euphemistically acknowledged) with nationalist ambitions. Martial denotes areinvigorated structural militarization; police, the central role of the FSB, and siloviki. People in the United States thinking within the public culture seem to believe their mischaracterizations of the Russian situation. It is very dangerous. Russia is still locked in imperial ways, trying to restore its empire, neutralize NATO, and return to a rivalry with the United States, according toastudy by Janusz Bugajski. 46 The odds are very high that America is going to have to deal with a resur- gent and militaristic Russia. Already the country is far better armed than we admit, and it has announceditsintentionto movetoward the fifth generation of nuclear weaponry. It intends to launch a weapons modernization drive at the end of 2005, which seems to be sputtering, but Vitaly Shlykov, for- mer co-chairman of Yeltsin’s defense council, is vetting a scheme that would solve the problem. That Russia has a weak consumer economy matters very little for its military potential in the next two decades. Western leaders have to stop pretending that Russia is a democracy with peaceful intentions, and a market-oriented free enterprise economy operating in accordance with the rule of law. Instead, we must face the possibility of a resurgent Russian superpower and attempt to deal with it openly before it’s too late. There is no other country about which Americans have more miscon- ceptions than Russia – and about which they’ve been more misinformed for decades. It isn’t that the truth about what was happening in Russia isn’t from time to time slipping out via visitors and the news media, it is that opinion makers in America and western Europe were always interpreting Russian and Soviet reality to fit their preconceptions. Basically, most Amer- icans don’t know how the Soviet Union operated, don’t understand why it collapsed, and don’t have a realistic perception of Russia today. Hence, in order to discuss the future of Russia and its potential for becoming again a serious danger to our country, we must briefly (for that’s all the space we have) revisit the past. P1: FCW 0521857449c10 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 5, 2006 14:1 Geopolitical Aspirations of the Nations 205 ROSE-COLORED GLASSES ABOUT RUSSIA When our society is fundamentally ignorant of foreign nations (as we cer- tainly are of Russia, China, and Japan), we project our own experience onto them. It is a great paradox that we think Russia, China, and Japan are more like us (though we never say so directly, but our commentary and listen to our media suggest that exactly) than is, for example, Mexico – this is wrong, and occurs because we know enough of Mexico to know how it is different, and know so little of Russia and China and Japan that we presume they are like us. Thus, we defend the Russian oligarchs from their government on the presumption that they are like our businesspeople (which they are not). Russia, China and Japan have always been treated as exotic, yet this is flawlessly juxtaposed in public culture with the idea that they are at bottom the same as us. This is a perfect example of the essence of public culture. People have to be preconditioned to be so purblind. There is a long history of rose-colored projection that leaps without diffi- culty over hurdles of paradox. Western public cultures driven by a mix of lib- eral sympathy and conservative expediency made Moscow over according to their idealist requirements after 1929. The insurrection of a few conspirators in St. Petersburg in 1917 became a revolutionary upheaval. The proletariat of the future substituted for the small number of Russian workers lost in a sea of peasants. Authoritarianism became a vehicle of social progress. Servitude became economic justice; military aggression became national liberation; forced concentration camp labor became progressive reeducation; terror became self-defense (a euphemism that today has been reborn in try- ing to justify terrorist attacks in Palestine and America); and aggressive militarism became an expression of Kremlin fears of attack from the west. The rationalizations continued. Yes, it was argued, Bolsheviks sometimes were unjust, but they were maturing, and a fair society would evolve. “And to be fair,” went the discussion in the West, “there were commendable suc- cesses.” The Soviets were said to have proven that planning could generate rapid industrialization, allowing them to partly close the economic gap with the west, while simultaneously achieving egalitarian objectives. Authori- tarianism, economic illiberality, human rights abuses and obsession with defense were regrettable, but Soviet leaders were reasonable and reason was propelling them to liberalize, democratize, reduce their arsenals, and as Gor- bachev put it as the USSR began to come apart, to return to its common European home. This exercise in a Western equivalent to Soviet speak, calling red white, and white red, overlaid with pious justifications, was embraced by many P1: FCW 0521857449c10 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 5, 2006 14:1 206 The Reconfiguration of National Wealth and Power American leaders from Franklin Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter. In retrospect it should be truly astonishing to us, and hasn’t been substantially altered since the emergence of the new Russia. Western public culture hasn’t recharacter- ized the Soviet experience. It has just developed selective amnesia about the Soviet period, and true to form, opinion makers of various types are now busily sanitizing Putin’s authoritarianism, his media monopoly, and Russia’s reemerging militarization just as for decades previously they disregarded the horrors of Soviet Russia. Why did so many Western governments and leaders so mislead them- selves and others about the Soviet Union? Briefly, at the outset of the Soviet government, Western leaders had to decide how to deal with Lenin and his successors. For a time they chose confrontation, but once they reversed field it became counterproductive to harp on all the negatives, and expedient to defer to Soviet sensibilities. Later, at the time of World War II, there was little to be gained by doggedly calling the Bolshevik coup d’ ´ etat an insurrec- tion when Moscow insisted on characterizing it as a proletarian revolution, or labeling Stalin a despot while he was an comrade in arms against the Nazis. Still later, during the Cold War, there was no mileage in insisting that the Soviet economy was structurally militarized while lobbying the Krem- lin for arms controls, reductions and disarmament. Nor could Moscow be prodded to cooperate on a spectrum of confidence building initiatives, if its purported economic accomplishments were denigrated. And no American administration could develop a coherent engagement policy with the USSR if it allowed other branches of government including the CIA, and DIA to stray far from the party line. Western public culture in this way became biased toward coloring Soviet realities more brightly than they deserved, and for historical reasons this distortion was exacerbated by liberal democratic sentiment in America, and social democratic partisanship on the continent. American policy toward the Soviet Union and its successor states has been surprisingly and disturbingly consistent across administrations since Roosevelt recognized the USSR. Nixon’s science and technology agreement, Reagan’s embrace of Gorbachev shortly after Reagan’s “evil empire” speech, George W. Bush’s looking Putin in the eye and proclaiming that he can trust him (recall Roosevelt’s infamous assertion about Stalin that “I think we can trust Uncle Joe”), and Bush’s reference in the late summer of 2005 to Putin as “My friend Vladimir,” adding “every time I visit and talk with President Putin, our relationship becomes stronger,” 47 are examples of a failure to recognize an ongoing threat to America and to deal with it realistically. In the fall of 2003, President George W. Bush referred to Russia as “A c ountry in which democracy and freedom and rule of law thrive.” The P1: FCW 0521857449c10 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 5, 2006 14:1 Geopolitical Aspirations of the Nations 207 editorial writers of The Economist magazine quoted the President, then went on to ask, “Was the American president out of his mind?” 48 Russia today is anything but a country in which democracy and freedom and rule of law thrive. It’s instead a new political reality, one which may spread, and which is currently dangerous for Americans because we mistake it for something more familiar. It looks like a democracy, but isn’t. It looks like an open market economy, but isn’t. It looks as though there is pri- vate property protected by a rule of law, but there is not. What there is is more freedom in political discussion. In effect, Russian autocrats, elected by spurious means, have developed a tolerance for pluralistic discussion and debate. The system is a nonrepresentative electoral sham providing a demo- cratic semblance. About Putin’s Russia, Nikita Khruschev’s daughter has written: “Russia’s split personality – symbolized by its tsarist coat of arms, a two-headed eagle – has been on open display recently. Despite his insis- tence on rubbing shoulders with world leaders, and portraying himself as amodernizer, Putin, like his predecessors, is in fact a ruler who believes that only authoritarian rule can protect his country from anarchy and disintegration.” 49 Americans seem to presume that diversity of opinion (which exists in Russia) means that popular will determines political governance. This is incorrect. Modern authoritarians are willing to tolerate diversity of opinion because debate provides information to their policy monopoly. The willing- ness to tolerate diverse opinion also reflects a new maturity in authoritarian regimes. Until recently, authoritarian regimes were so insecure that they felt it necessary to squash all dissent and to win fake elections by 99 per- cent majorities. Now more sophisticated authoritarian regimes (we should no longer call them totalitarian since they do not suppress all dissent, and they hold elections which they win by comfortable but not near unanimous majorities) recognize that they can retain power securely via dominance of modern mass media and of election processes without heavy-handed resort to authoritarian measures. It’s dangerous that we Americans mistake this new political form for our own type of democracy, and apply the same term, “democracy” to it. Democracy should be used to apply only to a system of government in which dissent can lead to changes in political control . WHY THE SOVIET UNION IMPLODED: BACK TO THE FUTURE What is probably the most intriguing historical question of our time is what caused the Soviet Union to come apart? This is one of the most unusual P1: FCW 0521857449c10 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 5, 2006 14:1 208 The Reconfiguration of National Wealth and Power and significant events of our time – a superpower destroyed, not by losing a war, but by dissolving from within! No matter how bad the economic troubles of the USSR, knowledgeable people did not expect it to dissolve. Paul Kennedy, in his book on the rise and fall of great powers, made only one direct prediction: that no great power ever simply collapsed – they all overreached in conflict abroad and only then disintegrated. Yet the USSR did the opposite. How did it happen – and why? Fascinating as the question is, we can only comment on it briefly. The Soviet elite – the apparatachiks and second economy opportunists – grad- ually began to crave affluence, and grew tired of martial regimentation. Mikhail Gorbachev introduced some elements of a market economy. So- called privatization allowedtheKremlin tosteergovernment assets into care- fully chosen private hands without safeguards to prevent diverting resources from productive use in conformance with established goals and incentives. It disorganized the planning and control system, causing the economy to plunge. The USSR’s dissolution was expedited by the conflict of Mikhail Gor- bachev and Boris Yeltsin for power. Yeltsin promoted secession of the var- ious republics of the Soviet Union during the late 1980s as a tactic to oust Gorbachev. The Commonwealth of Independent States (the loose alliance of former Soviet republics that still exists) began in November 1991 as the alliance of the Ukraine, Russia (one ofthe constituent republics of the USSR) and Belorussia against the sovereign authority of the Soviet Union. Then the Soviet economy declined about 9 percent in 1991. A consequence was that Gorbachev decided to abdicate. When Gorbachev resigned, he passed the scepter to this new “union,” which really meant the dissolution of the Soviet empire. Gorbachev had no intention of allowing disunion, but his political position had been so undermined that when he departed, he was unable to keep the USSR together. It is important that had Gobarchev and Yeltsin not destroyed the Soviet Union, and had the Kremlin maintained its armed forces (as it almost cer- tainly would have, with GDP growth being officially registered at 3–4 percent annually), then today it would be the EU, not Russia, that looks in bad shape. Europe’s left would have pressed for EU Sovietization to combat stagnating economies and double-digit unemployment, while pressing for reducing military spending. Instead of posturing as an emergent superpower rival of the United States, the EU todaywould be falling increasinglyunderthe Soviet Union’s sway and appear vulnerable to Soviet expansionism. The Cold War would have intensified. That history took the direction it did beginning in the early 1990s is one of its great surprises. [...]... Nation-Building on a Super Scale The European Union is involved in the world’s most important effort in nation building – far exceeding the significance of anything being done in Iraq or elsewhere The French and German governments are driving a federalist agenda The significance of European unity for the world of the future is enormous, and how America reacts to it is of the utmost importance In the spring of. .. that often gives it far more in uence than the rest of Europe with Washington But Britain is also part of the European Union As Europe unifies, Britain will be forced into joining or becoming increasingly separate That decision is not yet made – Britain is still on the periphery and being courted by the makers of the new Europe, especially France and Germany This is why meetings between the heads of state... affluent nation To global insecurity caused by its momentum toward becoming a great power, China adds the distinct risk of internal instability The Chinese already have scores of nuclear missiles that they assert can hit America’s West Coast cities The Chinese are rapidly modernizing their nuclear missile capability with the objective of bringing the entire United States into their targeting range America... central instrument of authoritarian power And it is a police state 14:1 P1: FCW 052 1 857 449c10 Printer: cupusbw 212 CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 52 1 857 44 9 November 5, 2006 The Reconfiguration of National Wealth and Power because the FSB (old KGB) is the eyes, ears, and shield of the “president” with immense power, including oversight of the military FSB of cers still have the right to shoot any military of cial... FCW 052 1 857 449c10 Printer: cupusbw 220 CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 52 1 857 44 9 November 5, 2006 The Reconfiguration of National Wealth and Power European yet because its security thinking is based on great power rivalries instead of the concepts of “societies and integration,” the European way It is intriguing that in this point of view what makes a country European or not is a mind-set For the United States,... powerless, and the electorate effectively disenfranchised Under Gorbachev, the title for the head of state was changed to “president.” Yeltsin was elected to the “presidency” of the Russian version of the Supreme Soviet in the heady days of 1996 without even the fiction of party endorsement President Putin, who as head of the secret police acquired incremenating evidence against Yeltsin’s daughter,... Reconfiguration of National Wealth and Power doesn’t have either the insight or the resolve to extricate itself from remilitarization The ceaseless effort to portray the economy as self-healing or self-transforming into democratic free enterprise is unconvincing The counterlogic of the Russian economic system, and the Kremlin’s unwillingness to relinquish targets of opportunity to countervailing American. .. foreseeing a shift in the correlation of global forces against Europe – one that is in fact occurring France and Germany understood that they could not build a military counterforce to the United States and its new allies because of the pronounced tilt of European public opinion toward pacificism Instead, therefore, Europe sought to contain American initiative by seeking to get us included in a multinational... policy, for that’s not the core of the opposition And because we don’t oppose increasing integration 14:1 P1: FCW 052 1 857 449c10 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 52 1 857 44 9 Geopolitical Aspirations of the Nations November 5, 2006 221 of Europe, we should be prepared to let the Europeans use us as a foil, if they think it necessary Carrying European unification forward is not going to be easy for its... unilateralism) are in reality merely different strategies within the arena of geopolitics That is, the Europeans still play the geopolitical game as vigorously as ever, but they have changed tactics, 14:1 P1: FCW 052 1 857 449c10 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 52 1 857 44 9 Geopolitical Aspirations of the Nations November 5, 2006 2 25 preferring not to compete with America in the military sphere, because they are . and thereby the lifeline of Japan; the Americans determinedtopreventthis;theJapanesebecoming very nervousabout seeing their fate possibly pass from the control of the Americans to that of China. To. homeland.” 45 The first of his two sentences shows the direction of Putin’s thinking; the second begins setting stage for reassembling the USSR. One can almost hear Hitler speaking of the Germans. the American line. China then began the largest military maneuvers in its history, directly P1: FCW 052 1 857 449c10 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 52 1 857 44 9 November 5, 2006 14:1 200 The