Chapter 3 Geopolitics versus GlobalizationDouglas E. Streusand In the company of such contemporary buzzwords as globalization, the word geopolitics seems an anachronism. It brings to mind the era of coaling stations and colonization or the nightmare of Nazi expansionism, not the turbulent and complex realities of our time. One observer, Brian Blouet, goes so far as to define the two concepts as polar opposites in policy: “Geopolitical policies seek to establish national or imperial control over space and the resources, routeways, industrial capacity and population the territory contains,” but “[g]lobalization is the opening of national space to the free flow of goods, capital, and ideas. Globalization removes obstructions to movement and creates conditions in which international trade in goods and services can expand.”1 This chapter denies the opposition between geopolitics and globalization, both as historical forces and as policy alternatives. It contends that the era of globalization has not ended the need for geopolitical analysis and that the policy imperatives that geopolitical analysis generates do not contradict the principles of globalization. Despite the absence of a coherent global threat such as the Axis powers or the Soviet Union, and the development of significant nonstate adversaries like al Qaeda, geopolitical analysis offers vital insights for development of U.S. grand strategy, military strategy, and military forces for the coming decades. This chapter has four parts: a brief exposition of the concept and principles of geopolitics, a review of the notion of globalization, an examination of the arguments that geopolitical analysis is no longer relevant and does not fit contemporary realities, and several suggested insights that geopolitics offers for American policy. What Is Geopolitics?Geopolitics has a simple definition but a series of complex and controversial connotations. Geoffrey Parker defines it as “the study of international relations from a spatial or geographic perspective.”2 Some writers, including Thomas Friedman, the most fluent and influential student of globalization, use the term not for an academic discipline or a particular approach to international politics but for the reality of power politics, the striving of state against state for power, wealth, and influence.3 This broad usage strips the term of its focus on geographic factors. In contrast, the seminal authors on geopolitics, such as Rudolph Kjellen, Friedrich Ratzel, and Halford Mackinder, propound geographic determinism in world politics. Mackinder’s oft-quoted dictum expresses this determinism:
Mackinder intended this epigram as prediction and as policy guidance for the Allied negotiators at the Versailles conference. Unlike much of academic political science, geopolitics has always addressed policy issues. During World War II and the Cold War, numerous authors, most notably Mackinder, Nicholas Spykman, Robert Strausz-Hupé, and Colin Gray, described the geographic underpinnings of Western grand strategy.5 All these geopolitical thinkers have a common theme: the prevention of the emergence of a global hegemon. All believed that any single power capable of dominating Eurasia would become one. Though George Kennan and the other architects of containment did not acknowledge the debt explicitly, the doctrine of containment reflected the views of Mackinder and Spykman.6 Since the end of the Cold War, several thinkers, notably Saul Cohen and Mackubin Owens, have sought to define the geopolitics of the contemporary era.7 The idea of geopolitical analysis does not, however, require either determinism or a set of permanent geographic definitions, such as the Heartland. Each era has its own geopolitics. The discipline of geography, after all, encompasses political, social, cultural, and economic factors as well as spatial and topographic ones.8 Because populations, economies, and cultures change, geopolitical patterns change. The Geopolitics of GlobalizationA much newer word than geopolitics, globalization also has a more variable definition. Thomas Friedman describes globalization as “the defining international system” of the time, comparable in significance to the Cold War between 1945 and 1991. The Cold War meant global division and bipolar competition between ponderous adversaries; globalization means global integration and dynamic competition among a changing array of rivals. The military stalemate between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War meant a divided world; the status of the United States as the sole superpower forms the foundation of globalization.9 Stephen Flanagan and Ellen Frost both define globalization as a process. Flanagan calls it a “long-term process of change....The central features of globalization are the rapid, growing, and uneven cross-border flow of goods, services, people, money, technology, information, ideas, culture, crime, and weapons.”10 Frost adds that globalization implies a transition toward “‘globality,’ a more interconnected world system in which independent networks and flows surmount traditional boundaries (or make them irrelevant).” The surmounting of traditional boundaries implies a transformation in the concept of sovereignty.11 Frost contends that globalization has transformed the strategic environment radically. She calls for a “globalization-infused strategy,” the protection and fostering of U.S. interests by shaping globalization.12 This assertion implies that globalization has made geopolitics irrelevant; Frost excludes geography from the “holistic” thinking that she advocates in the formation of national security policy:
Frost does not assert that globalization has already produced a world free of conflict but says that “external threats have increasingly assumed transnational forms.”14 It is notable that the sober and insightful survey of the future security environment presented in chapter 2 of this volume appears to reflect no such profound alteration in that environment (beyond the rise and fall of individual actors, both state and nonstate). The authors contend that the “world will revert to traditional power dynamics with untraditional players,” that “internetted economics and culture” have not squelched the “resilience of international power politics” in “a world that classic realists will readily recognize.” This vision of the “globalized” world differs from the world of the classic realists, however, because it does not include a geopolitical dimension. As Mackubin Owens points outs, most, though not all, realists incorporate geopolitics in some form into their doctrine.15 Though Hoffman and Tangredi do not deny the possibility of conflict among states, they emphasize the probability of asymmetric warfare and terrorism, more likely to involve “highly diverse transnational networks” than states. Friedman, writing well before September 11, 2001, characterizes this type of threat effectively:
The current war against al Qaeda lends credence to the perspectives of Hoffman, Tangredi, and Frost. Since the September 11 attacks, the United States has assembled and led a coalition that includes, albeit at different levels of commitment, all the major military and economic powers of the world, against a transnational network. Al Qaeda controlled the Taliban government of Afghanistan and has (or at least had) other state connections but no territorial identity or coherence. The reality of nonspatial global conflict, however, does not automatically mean an end to spatial conflict. Globalization and ConflictThe belief that globalization has made interstate conflict highly unlikely rests on three propositions: that economic interdependence among states has made war too costly to contemplate; that cultural and interpersonal interaction will reduce the misperceptions and misunderstandings that have produced conflict in the past; and that the spread of democracy and the changes in governance necessary for states to participate in the global system will produce open, honest, and representative governments unlikely to fight each other. Each proposition has merit; each has its limitations. Before evaluating the propositions, we must consider the standard of proof for such an evaluation. Because the stakes at hand are the highest—the national security of the United States and global order—and because the propositions contend that a fundamental change in the nature of human affairs has occurred, the propositions must meet the highest possible standard of proof. Like guilt in a criminal case, the irrelevance of geopolitics must be proven beyond doubt to become a standing assumption of national security policy. As Friedman contends, the argument that commerce should produce peace is nothing new.17The Baron de Montesquieu contended that “peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations which traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent.”18 Norman Angell repeats this argument: “The capitalist has no country, and he knows that arms and conquests and juggling frontiers serve no ends of his and may well defeat them.”19 The clear-eyed sage of the 18th century and the doomed prophet of peace of the early 20th each wrote shortly before a war that set new standards for violence and waste. Friedman contends that Montesquieu and Angell argue correctly that the value of commerce raises the economic cost of war but err in assuming that that cost would end war. He himself does not contend that it will, but that “today’s version of globalization significantly raises the costs of countries using war as a means to pursue honor, react to fears, or advance their interests.” But “people are still attached to their culture, their language, and a place called home. And they will sing for home, cry for home, fight for home, and die for home. Which is why globalization does not, and will not, end geopolitics.”20 Friedman’s remarks refer to Thucydides’ list of “three of the strongest motives, fear, honor, and interest.”21 He might more effectively have argued that because globalization has made war obviously more costly, that governments will rarely find it in their interests to fight even for honor or out of fear. If commerce and capitalism militate against war, foreign direct investment—ownership of assets in the territory of potential adversaries—does even more so. Friedman himself considers this change only a matter of probability; he does not believe that globalization as a system will prevent conflict by itself. His argument alone creates sufficient doubt to leave the first proposition unproven. The second proposition, that cultural and personal interaction will reduce misperceptions and misunderstandings that lead to conflict, appears convincing at first glance, but not in the light of history. There was no misunderstanding or lack of acquaintance between Athens and Sparta. The governing elites of the European powers who made the decisions to go war in 1914 knew each other well. Globalization’s increase in the cross-border flow of information does not inevitably mean a growth in mutual understanding and amity. In the words of Michael Vlahos, “What is important is not the rate of flow, but how it is received; and all must pass culture-customs through highly controlled ports of entry.”22 Samuel Huntington’s contention that cultural conflict will dominate the future challenges the second proposition.23 Huntington wrote before globalization became a buzzword; today, cultural conflict takes the form of, or at least is interpreted as, opposition to globalization rather than conflict between cultures. Opposition to globalization is a cross-cultural, transnational phenomenon. Friedman calls the opponents fundamentalists; he speaks of the “backlash of all those millions of people who detest the way globalization homogenizes people...brings strangers into your home with strange ways, erases the distinctiveness of cultures, and mercilessly uproots the olive trees that locate and anchor you in your world.”24 Scott Macdonald uses the term Neo-Luddites, emphasizing opposition to modernity in general rather than to Western or American culture specifically.25 Whatever the designation, the opponents of modernity constitute the main nonspatial threat to global order and to the United States. Not all of them are religious extremists, or to use alternative language, cultural particularists; the opponents of global capitalism, animal rights extremists, and environmental extremists also fit into the category. All these positions have widespread appeal throughout much of the world and will not go away, but such groups have rarely been able to gain and hold political power. The Islamic Republic of Iran, the short-lived Taliban regime in most of Afghanistan, and the embattled National Islamic Front government in the Sudan, which has shown some signs of turning away from Islamism, come to mind.26 The Bharatiya Janata Party, which has governed India in coalition since 1998, is a Hindu extremist organization in origin and partisan ideology but has not governed as one.27 Although neither the Taliban nor the National Islamic Front government were able to unify their countries and the Islamic Revolution in Iran took place under truly unique circumstances, the possibility clearly exists that antimodern movements may take power in major states and form a spatial, and thus geopolitical, threat.28 This possibility ends the validity of the second proposition as an argument against the need for geopolitical strategy. In all probability, however, antimodernist movements will remain in the nonspatial shadows, capable of doing enormous harm (as al Qaeda has done) but not of governing. They will find allies in criminals, grand and petty (as argued in chapter 4), and will take advantage of governmental failures, as the Taliban did in Afghanistan. Robert Kaplan describes a “bifurcated world,” in which sophisticated wealth confronts brutal poverty; the combination of antimodernism and crime makes that the poor side dangerous to the wealthy.29 The third proposition, that the spread of open and representative government will end war, dates back at least to Immanuel Kant. His Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Proposal contends that because the transnational ties among peoples outweigh national loyalties, there would be no motivation for war if citizens rather than monarchs governed.30 This idea has a long history, but Michael Howard offers a withering response to it:
Howard’s rhetoric may be excessive, but his point is hard to dispute. Moreover, democracy does not necessarily equal open, representative government. J.L. Talmon’s distinction between Anglo-Saxon representative democracy and continental totalitarian democracy, though controversial to say the least, also suggests that the spread of democracy does not necessarily mean a benign future.32 A Grand Strategy for Globalization?The unproven status of the three propositions means that we cannot assume that globalization processes themselves will keep peace. The United States must rely on traditional statecraft, including geopolitics, to maintain security and preserve peace. Indeed, Friedman himself contends globalization depends on geopolitics, rather than making it obsolete. Both Friedman and Frost assert that the process of globalization began in the 19th century. Steamships and railways provided reliable long-distance transportation over water and land at a far lower cost than previously; the telegraph, with transoceanic cables, offered rapid global communication. These developments created global financial and commodities markets and permitted an unprecedented degree of economic specialization. The cutting-edge technologies of the 19th century, analog though they were, established globalization. Microchips, fiber optics, and communications satellites are only refinements. This first era of globalization coincided with the Pax Britannica. The technical and institutional advances of the industrial revolution made European expansion possible. Britain’s balance of power policy did not prevent conflict among major European powers, but it did prevent extended struggles from disrupting the process of global integration. Similarly, British financial and military power supported the development of the international legal and financial standards necessary for integrated commerce.33 In the current era of globalization, the United States has done what Britain did in the 19th century. In a sense, this era of globalization began with containment. George Kennan, describing in 1985 the doctrine he had outlined 4 decades earlier, makes no reference whatsoever to geopolitics.34 But the doctrine clearly rested on geopolitical ground:
Three years before Kennan’s 1946 telegram, Spykman gave the lecture that became his last major work. He presented the geopolitical imperative in an epigram of his own: “Who controls the Rimland rules Eurasia; who rules Eurasia rules the world.” He depicts World War II, then at its height, as “a war for control of the rimland littoral of Europe and Asia.” Looking to the future, he contends, “the safety and independence of this country can be preserved only by a foreign policy that will make it impossible for the Eurasian land mass to harbor an overwhelmingly dominant power in Europe and the Far East.”36 Kennan’s containment corresponds to Spykman’s admonition, which meant keeping most of the major economic powers integrated into an American-dominated political and economic structure. The success of containment, the end of the Cold War, permitted the expansion of that system to include the entire world. Geopolitics thus underlay the policies that made globalization possible. The role of geopolitics in the formation of the global order that permitted the current phase of globalization does not mean that globalization necessarily requires a geopolitical substructure to continue. But to assume that it does not would require the same assumptions that are necessary to prove that national security policy can depend on globalization rather than traditional means—deterrence and defense—to ensure the safety of the United States. We have already seen that those assumptions are at best unproven and thus unreliable. Friedman argues that “the globalization system cannot hold together without an activist and generous American foreign policy.”37 If the grand strategies, British and then American, that underlay the evolution of globalization both had geopolitical roots, we may prudently assume that the next grand strategy should as well. This realization is more profound than it appears. It eliminates the polarity between globalization and geopolitics and the hard distinction between a “globalization-infused strategy” and a conventional grand strategy. A distinction certainly exists, since a significant school of thought holds that globalization itself threatens the interests of the United States.38 But in practice, the measures taken to protect American security foster globalization and vice versa. What guidance, then, does spatial analysis of the world offer for grand strategy in the coming decades? Much has changed in the five and a half decades since the idea of containment took shape, but much remains the same. Industry—which includes, after all, the production of software in all its ramifications as well as hardware—and the resources necessary to support it remain the foundation of both wealth and power. Both industry and resources are distributed unevenly through the world. That unevenness forms the root of the geopolitical component of grand strategy. Of the 5 great centers of industry in 1946, only North America remains unaltered. Though the future of European integration remains uncertain, from a broad spatial perspective Britain, Germany, and the other industrial powers of Europe have coalesced into the European Union. Eleven of the world’s 25 largest economies are located in Europe west of Russia. Of the other 14, 3 are in North America (including Mexico, which had the 11th largest economy in the world in 2000), 8 in Asia and the Pacific Rim, and 2 in Latin America. Russia and Turkey are the odd men out.39 Gross national product figures do not, of course, tell the whole story. Examination of the rates of growth in output and population draws attention to Asia and the Pacific Rim. The Population Reference Bureau projects a 9-percent decrease in the population of Europe, including Russia and Ukraine, by 2050. Of the 11 European states among the 25 largest economies, 6 are projected to shrink. In contrast, the Bureau predicts that only one Asian country, Japan, will lose population between now and 2050. The other large Asian economies are projected to grow significantly in population. China, after decades of population control efforts, will grow only 8 percent between 2001 and 2050; India, growing by 58 percent, will surpass China in population. Though some of the Pacific Rim countries, such as South Korea, will grow slowly (5 percent), others, such as Singapore (151 percent) and Malaysia (94 percent), will soar.40 For several decades, the notion of overpopulation as an ecological danger has led most observers to neglect the strategic value of a large and growing population. Today, the correlation between population and military power is certainly less direct than ën the past because the size of military forces matters less than their technical sophistication. But it is still difficult to imagine that countries with shrinking populations will be able to retain their political and economic power.41 Russia’s demographic prospects, even more than its economic and environmental woes, make its future as even a regional power dubious; its population is projected to shrink by 14 percent by 2050. Demographic realities compel us to focus on Asia and the Pacific Rim. Whatever its origin, the term Pacific Rim resembles Nicholas Spykman’s term Rimland. Spykman drew attention to the importance of the outer tier of the Eurasian land mass. His definition of Rimland includes Europe, Anatolia, the Arabian Peninsula, the Iranian plateau, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, China (the Huang-He and Chang Jiang valleys), and the Korean Peninsula. In Spykman’s terms, the policy of containment prevented the continental Eurasian power from dominating the Rimland, and thus the world. It began in Europe because Europe had the greatest economic potential in the postwar years and was most vulnerable to Soviet power. Colin Gray describes the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as “organizing the Rimland.”42 Although there was no comparable comprehensive organization in the Pacific, the bilateral U.S. relationships with the Republic of Korea, Japan, the Republic of China, the Philippines, and eventually the Association of Southeast Asian Nations served the same purpose. There was less need for formal military arrangements because neither the Soviet Union nor China could project power at sea. Ultimately, the Seventh Fleet and forward-deployed U.S. air and ground forces organized the Pacific Rim. Rise of a Regional HegemonThe collapse of the Soviet Union and the separation of Ukraine and the Central Asian republics from Russia make the emergence of a Eurasian power, as Mackinder and Spykman envision one, unlikely in the coming decades. But even a regional hegemon could disrupt the global balance of power. China, a Rimland state in the Spykman universe, has the potential to become a regional hegemon in East Asia and the Pacific Rim. Spykman’s Rimland does not include the offshore islands, such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan, but they clearly form a rim. Mackinder’s and Spykman’s principle of preventing an inland power from dominating its outer rim and becoming a regional hegemon applies in this case. As Ross Munro and Richard Bernstein state:
As in Europe during the Cold War, domination would not require a conquest. If China gained sufficient leverage over the Pacific Rim countries to control their political and economic policies, as the Soviets did in Finland, it would become an effective hegemon without the overt use of force. China’s proximity and huge population give it major advantages over the United States in the Pacific Rim. Tokyo is 4,000 miles further from San Francisco than from Shanghai. China does not require forward bases or intercontinental aircraft and missiles to project power in the Pacific Rim. As China’s population becomes wealthier, it will become a larger market for the Pacific Rim economies and will gain leverage as a result. These advantages create the fundamental strategic problem in Asia for the United States. The Cold War offers a useful analogy. Although the Soviet Union extended from the Baltic to the Pacific, it was oriented toward Europe. Europe’s industrial capability was far more valuable and accessible to the Soviet Union than any other possible conquest. Like China in East Asia, the Soviet Union had the advantages of mass and proximity. The United States overcame those advantages through nuclear deterrence and basing U.S. forces in Europe. On the Pacific Rim, there is no major land frontier. The Taiwan Strait has replaced the Fulda Gap. This fact has two obvious corollaries. First, there can be no doubt that from a strictly geopolitical perspective without reference to any historical, political, or cultural considerations, having an independent Taiwan on poor terms with mainland China serves the interests of the United States. A Taiwan under Chinese control would put China astride the sea lines of communication of Japan and South Korea. Second, the task of counterbalancing Chinese power and influence must depend primarily on maritime forces, including air and space assets, rather than ground forces. To explain a complex sequence of events in a few words, NATO succeeded because of the linkage between conventional forces on the ground in Europe and the American nuclear deterrent. This linkage, which included the forward deployment of U.S. ground forces, formed the keystone of the arch of containment. Will such an arch succeed in the 21st century? More concretely put, will the Pacific Rim countries regard the threat of American retaliation as sufficient to protect them from the threat of Chinese nuclear weapons? Or will the possibility of Chinese nuclear attack on American cities make the Pacific Rim countries doubt the reliability of American guarantees against the possibility of Chinese aggression, even when American forces are present? The answer to this question must determine much of U.S. grand strategy in the coming decades, and not only in the Pacific. A definitive answer will of course be possible only in retrospect; a systematic examination is beyond the scope of this chapter. There is, however, substantial doubt that the strategic linkage that worked in NATO will work in the Pacific Rim. Europeans often doubted that an American President would place his cities at risk to defend Berlin or Paris; Asians are even more likely to be doubtful. Ballistic missile defenses, for both the continental United States and the Pacific Rim countries, would make U.S. commitments to support and protect the Pacific Rim countries from China far more credible. From the perspective of global geopolitics, this requirement creates the primary justification for ballistic missile defenses for the United States in the coming decades, even though a ballistic missile attack from a rogue state or nonstate entity appears more likely than an attack from China. (Implications for a naval role in missile defense are discussed in chapter 24.) Oil as the Driving ImperativeAll the world’s industrial economies depend on fossil fuels, especially petroleum. Because petroleum is a fungible commodity—as is pointed out in chapter 6—there is a single world market in it. All oil consumers depend on all oil producers, regardless of where they actually obtain their oil. And the world oil market, of course, means the Persian Gulf region, with almost two-thirds of the world’s reserves.44 As is extensively detailed in chapter 10, because both population and economic output will grow far more rapidly in Asia than in the rest of the world in the coming decades, energy consumption will grow fastest there. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), Asia (not including the Middle East) currently consumes nearly 100 quadrillion British thermal units of energy, roughly as much as the United States does. By 2020, Asian energy consumption will double, while U.S. consumption will increase by only 25 percent. This increase in consumption will include all sources of energy, but only the increase in petroleum and natural gas consumption will have a geopolitical impact. Asia is nearly self-sufficient in coal but imports huge amounts of oil and natural gas. Asian oil imports will increase by about 12 million barrels a day by 2020, roughly doubling current imports. Asia will become the primary market from Persian Gulf petroleum, supplanting Europe and North America. EIA projects that Asian consumption of natural gas will increase from 9.6 trillion cubic feet in 1999 to 26.6 trillion cubic feet in 2020. Most of that supply will have to come from outside the region, either from the Middle East or from Russia and Central Asia. Asia, in the EIA categories, includes both China and the Pacific Rim. As also concluded in chapter 10, the Asian dependence on energy supplies from outside the region creates a geopolitical opportunity for the United States.45 At present, the United States guarantees free and safe access to petroleum and natural gas from the Persian Gulf through our presence in the Persian Gulf and our unchallenged global maritime supremacy. For this reason, Asia, including China, depends on the United States, not merely on the actual sellers of the petroleum and natural gas, for its energy and thus for its economic prosperity and growth. The leverage of energy access control can counterbalance the leverage of China’s size and proximity on the Pacific Rim. It also offers significant leverage over China itself. From this perspective, the U.S. commitments in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean protect not only our own energy supplies but also our status as a global power. Since we are currently engaged in a war against Osama bin Laden, who claims the American presence in Saudi Arabia as the principle justification for his hostility, there is no doubt that the U.S. presence in the Gulf brings painfully expensive baggage. But it is an essential component of the maintenance of global order. According to Thomas P.M. Barnett, “Our forward presence [in East Asia] both reassures local governments and obviates their need for larger military hedges.”46 But this statement does not go far enough, in two senses. First, our guarantee of energy access, not merely our forward presence on the Pacific Rim itself, provides that reassurance. Second, the reassurance must counterbalance China’s size, proximity, and growing military and economic power. Balancing Disruptive Regional HegemonsLooking at the Pacific Rim geopolitically draws attention to Vietnam. Vietnam has the seventh largest population in Asia (after China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Japan), a long history of antipathy toward China, and a pivotal position. History and ideology aside, the United States and Vietnam have common concerns neither country can ignore. China is not the only emerging regional hegemon in Asia. The United States began to take India seriously as a strategic power only after the 1998 nuclear tests, but there is good reason to do so. India’s population, already over a billion, is growing far faster than China’s (by 58 percent from 2001 to 2050, as opposed to China’s 8 percent) and India will pass China in population before 2050. Although India’s economy is growing more slowly than China’s, both overall and in industrial output, it has made enormous economic strides in the last decade, especially in software exports. Extraordinary regional disparities within the country obscure pockets of rapid growth.47 Since the end of the Cold War, and especially since September 11, many observers and policymakers have regarded the United States and India as natural partners, both democracies, both confronting Islamist terrorism, both concerned about the growth of Chinese power and influence. The countries have these things in common, and the potential for cooperation certainly exists. India’s support for the U.S. decision to deploy ballistic missile defenses and cooperation since September 11 shows that a new era of relations has begun.48 But India’s agenda for cooperation includes a call for American recognition of India’s “strategic interests not just in South Asia, but along an arc from the Suez Canal to the Straits of Malacca.” Though entirely rational from the Indian perspective, this proposition clashes with the American geopolitical imperative to retain control—the ability to use and to deny use—of the sea line of communications between the Middle East and East Asia. 49 Beyond this substantive point of tension, many Indians view the United States with considerable suspicion. The Hindu nationalist movement (in which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has its roots), though eager to make the United States an ally against Islam, does not love the United States.50 ConclusionsThough cursory and incomplete, this inquiry has drawn some clear conclusions for American national security policy.51 It demonstrates, most importantly, that despite the manifestation of intense nonspatial/nonlinear threats, American grand strategy cannot assume that the era of spatial threats, and thus of geopolitics, has ended. Looking at the coming decades through a geopolitical lens requires that we focus on Asia, especially the Pacific Rim, because of the combination of growing population and growing economic capacity in that region. Even though the Pacific Rim countries have not yet become as productive, either in absolute terms or per capita, as the leading economies of Western Europe, their continued growth gives them greater weight in the shaping of the global future. With Russia’s economic and demographic decline and massive loss of territory, Europe no longer faces a potential hegemon on its eastern frontier, at least not for a generation. Europe’s aging and, over the next 50 years, shrinking population makes the Continent an unlikely hegemon, even if European integration proceeds apace. The dynamism and uncertainty of the prospects of Asia, especially the Pacific Rim, give it the greatest weight in the future of the world. It must receive similar weight in the grand strategy of the United States. To prevent China from Finlandizing the Pacific Rim, the United States must counterbalance the leverage China has in the region because of its proximity and size. To borrow Gray’s words, the United States must organize the Pacific Rim as we did the Rimland during the Cold War. But it must do so, in all probability, without the benefit of an overall alliance like NATO, and probably in most cases without bilateral treaties beyond those that already exist with Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Australia. For this reason, the existing bases in the region, in South Korea, Japan, Okinawa, Guam, and Diego Garcia, are extremely important. The unfortunate loss of the bases in the Philippines makes the task significantly harder.52 The paucity of bases puts a premium on forces capable of operating without them: long-range bombers and maritime forces, the same assets that have made the operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban possible. Ballistic missile defense—for both the United States and the Pacific Rim countries—will be necessary to offset the threat of Chinese theater ballistic missiles and make a U.S. response to the possibility of Chinese aggression credible in the face of the Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile threat to the continental United States. Such defenses, as well as conventional military operations, require space assets; the extreme importance of space assets will require positive space control, and perhaps space denial as well. This partial sketch of a grand strategy appears far from the world of globalization, focused on the potential for conflict rather than the prospect of cooperation and interdependence. But if a geopolitically oriented grand strategy functions to prevent conflict in the most rapidly growing regions of the world, it will in fact foster, not impede, globalization. In this sense, there is no opposition between globalization and geopolitics.
Notes1 Brian Blouet, Globalization and Geopolitics (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), 1.BACK 2 Geoffrey Parker, Geopolitics: Past, Present, and Future (London: Pinter, 1998), 5. This Geoffrey Parker, author of a series of books on geopolitics, is not the same man as the distinguished military historian.BACK 3 Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, rev. ed. (New York: Anchor Books, 2000), 250. BACK 4 Parker, 10–43, 98–118. Parker quotes Mackinder’s dictum on 105; it originally appeared in Halford Mackinder, Democratic Ideas and Reality (London: Henry Holt, 1919). National Defense University Press published a reprint of MacKinder’s great work in 1996 with an introduction by Stephen V. Mladineo. The dictum appears in that edition on page 106.BACK 5 Parker, 95–139. For specific examples of this literature other than Mackinder, see Nicholas Spykman, The Geography of Peace (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1944); Robert Strausz-Hupé, Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1942); Colin S. Gray, The Geopolitics of the Nuclear Era: Heartland, Rimlands, and the Technological Revolution (New York: Crane, Russak, 1977), and Colin S. Gray, The Geopolitics of Superpower (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1988). BACK 6 Gray, Geopolitics of Superpower, 4. BACK 7 Saul B. Cohen, “Geopolitics in the New World Era: A New Perspective on an Old Discipline,” in Reordering the World: Geopolitical Perspectives on the 21st Century, 2d ed., ed. George J. Demko and William B. Wood (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999), 40–68; and Mackubin Thomas Owens, “In Defense of Classical Geopolitics,” Naval War College Review (Autumn 1999), 59–77. BACK 8 On the reach of geography, see William B. Wood and George J. Demko, “Introduction: Political Geography for the Next Millennium,” in Demko and Wood, 3–4. BACK 9 Friedman, 7–14; the quote is from page 7. BACK 10 Stephen Flanagan, “Meeting the Challenges of the Global Century,” in Global Century: Globalization and National Security, ed. Richard L. Kugler and Ellen Frost (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2001), 9. BACK 11 Ellen L. Frost, “Globalization and National Security,” in Global Century, 37. BACK 12 Ibid., 36. BACK 13 Ibid BACK 14 Ibid., 57. BACK 15 Owens, 3, 12. BACK 16 Friedman, 398; the discussion of super-empowered individuals continues to page 405. BACK 17 Ibid., 249–250. BACK 18 Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, trans. Thomas Nugent, rev. J.V. Prichard, vol. 35 of The Great Books of the Western World, ed. Mortimer Adler (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990), 146. BACK 19 Norman Angell, The Great Illusion (London: W. Heinemann, 1913), 309, quoted in Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 70. BACK 20 Friedman, 250. BACK 21 Robert R. Strassler and Victor Davis Hanson, The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War (New York: Free Press, 1996), 43. BACK 22 U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Institute, Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs, Thinking About World Change (Washington, DC, 1990), 123. Page 2 of the report indicates that Vlahos drafted the report; page 3 lists the 40 individuals who participated in the working group that produced it. BACK 23 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). BACK 24Friedman, 344; he discusses the backlash against globalization on pages 327–347. On fundamentalism as a cross-cultural phenomenon, see Bruce B. Lawrence, Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolts Against the Modern Age (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989). BACK 25 Scott B. Macdonald, “The New Bad Guys: Exploring the Parameters of the Violent New World Order,” in Gray Area Phenomena: Confronting the New World Disorder, ed. Max G. Manwaring (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 38. BACK 26 For a brief explanation of the National Islamic Front’s rise and fall from power, see “Turabi Down But Not Out,” The Economist (August 17, 2000). BACK 27 On the history of the Bharatiya Janata Party, see Yogendra Malik and V.B. Singh, Hindus Nationalists in India: Rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994). BACK 28 I find no single account of the Iranian Revolution satisfactory, but several give a sense of the uniqueness of the circumstances: Mohsen M. Milani, The Making of Iran’s Islamic Revolution: From Monarchy to Islamic Republic (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988); Jerrold M. Green, Revolution in Iran: The Politics of Countermobilization (New York: Praeger, 1982); Gholam R. Afkhami, The Iranian Revolution: Thanatos on a National Scale (Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 1985). BACK 29 Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War (New York: Vintage, 2000), 24. The essay “The Coming Anarchy,” from which the quotation comes, was originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1994. The essay as a whole supports the argument made in this paragraph. BACK 30 Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay, trans. M. Campbell Smith (New York: Garland, 1972). BACK 31 Howard, 137. BACK 32 J.L. Talmon, Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York: Norton, 1970); see also Claes G. Ryn, The New Jacobinism: Can Democracy Survive (Washington, DC: National Humanities Institute, 1991). BACK 33 Friedman, xvi–xviii, 467–468; Frost, “Globalization,” 38–39. Frost does not discuss the British role and emphasizes the “significant, relentless, and irreversible difference in kind” between contemporary globalization and its predecessor. She recognizes the reality of the earlier globalization nonetheless. BACK 34 George F. Kennan, “The Origins of Containment,” in Containment: Concept and Policy, ed. Terry L. Deibel and John Lewis Gaddis (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1985), 23–31. BACK 35 Steven W. Hook and John Spanier, American Foreign Policy Since World War II, 15th ed. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2000), 44. See also Gray, 4–5. BACK 36 Nicholas Spykman, The Geography of the Peace, ed. Helen R. Nicholl, introduction by Frederick Sherwood Dunn (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1944), 43–44, 45, 58–60. BACK 37 Friedman, 467–468. BACK 38 See, for example, Alan Tonelson, The Race to the Bottom: Why a Worldwide Worker Surplus and Uncontrolled Free Trade Are Sinking American Living Standards (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000); and Pat Buchanan, The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1998). BACK 39 2000 gross national product in current dollars accessed at <http: www.scaruffi.com/politics/gnp.html>. BACK 40 This reference, and all subsequent from the Population Reference Bureau’s World Population Data Sheet, accessed at <www.prb.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Other/2001_World_Population_Data_Sheet.html>. BACK 41 For an antique but extremely valuable discussion of population from a strategic perspective, see Robert Strausz-Hupé, “Population as an Element of National Power,” in Foundations of National Power: Readings in World Politics and American Security, 2d ed., ed. Harold and Margaret Sprout (New York: Van Nostrand, 1951), 111–116. The essay is an excerpt from Strausz-Hupé’s The Balance of Tomorrow (New York: Putnam, 1945). BACK 42 Gray, 75. BACK 43 Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, The Coming Conflict with China (New York: Random House, 1998), vii. BACK 44 Energy Information Administration, International Energy Annual 1999, accessed at <www.eia.doe.gov/ emeu/iea/table91.html>. BACK 45 All energy production and consumption projects are from the Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, International Energy Outlook 2001, DOE/EIA-0484 (2001), accessed at <www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ ieo/index.html>. Chapter 10 of this volume by Thomas P.M. Barnett interprets the EIA figures in the Asian context. Barnett’s work provided much of the inspiration for my own chapter. BACK 46 Thomas P.M. Barnett, “Asia: The Military-Market Link,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 128, no. 1 (January 2002), 55. BACK 47 For a convenient survey of recent developments in the Indian economy, see “Survey: Indian Economy, The Plot Thickens,” The Economist (May 31, 2001). BACK 48 See, for example, Rahul Bedi, “Bush Clears Sale of 20 Military Items to India,” Jane’s Defence Weekly (February 13, 2002), 3. BACK 49 Former Indian Minister of External Affairs Jaswant Singh has articulated four principles of cooperation with the United States, summarized in the Center for Strategic and International Studies South Asia Monitor as follows: “First, India sees itself as a powerful individual player in international politics. Second, it seeks a positive and equal relationship with the United States, not a traditional alliance. Third, India wants the United States to take account of its strategic interests not just in South Asia, but along an arc from the Suez Canal to the Straits of Malacca. Fourth, India will continue to buy most of its military hardware from Russia ...Implicit in this outline is a fifth principle: that India would prefer a multipolar world to a bipolar or unipolar one.” From South Asia Monitor 34 (June 1, 2001). BACK 50 For an example of Hindu nationalist suspicion of the United States, see, “What Hindus Should Do–Part I,” accessed at <www.hinduunity.org/articles/hindutva/ whathindusshould1.html>. According to the site: “America learnt a big lesson from the Vietnam war: do not fight directly on the alien soil; rather wreck it from within as it did in the case of Russia. It is trying to disintegrate India through a long-term conspiracy. America is not a friend of India, and wants India to remain limited by the size of American designs by all means.” Friedman describes a conversation in which an Indian teenager told a group of visiting academics: “China is our biggest neighbor and we had a war with China, but China stands up for weaker nations and we have no problem with China [but the United States is] a bully, it elbows everybody and thinks only of itself” (Friedman, 391). BACK 51 Part of the incompleteness, of course, consists of the failure to discuss Latin American and sub-Saharan Africa at all. I do not address these regions because of the extraordinary unlikelihood that they could produce a dangerous regional hegemon, not because I consider them unimportant from other perspectives. See Owens, 9; Cohen, 52–53. BACK 52 Drew A. Bennett, “Military Presence in Asia is Key,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 128, no. 1 (January 2002), 57–60. Some would view U.S. support for Philippine counterterrorism as reestablishing a “base” in the Philippines. BACK
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