Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

A lot of people have trouble with my placing Russia inside the Core, much like with China. Its one-party political system, even with the embrace of markets and economic connectivity with the outside world, makes it suspect. Plus there have been all the attempts, some subtle and others not so subtle, to recreate spheres of influence: failing throughout east central Europe, losing out to Western interventions in the Balkans, losing out completely in the Baltics, engaging in a lot of bloody mischief in the Caucasus over the years (including overt support to the two breakaway regions in Georgia), the long-term fight to prevent Chechen independence, and the softer-power push in Central Asia. Basically, the Russians have been going back in time, retracing their imperial growth to the point that they're back to fighting over the bits and pieces tsars once conquered many decades ago.

In sum total, none of this has raised much of a response from the West, because Russia's given up region after region and it's been only recently that the West's integration efforts have gotten inside Russia's tsarist "knickers," so to speak (Ukraine, Georgia considering NATO membership). NATO, being cognizant of where efforts to integrate Russia were stalling, wisely passed on membership for Georgia recently, knowing that the attempt really pissed off Moscow.

You have to suspect that Russia's strong response to Georgia's bold effort to subdue South Ossetia militarily is designed to signal something profound to the West on this overall score.

In effect, Russia has largely acquiesced to all sorts of Western "encroachment" (from their perspective, and let's be honest, that's basically what it is in terms of economic, political and security integration of former satellites and republics) since the end of the Cold War, but now with Moscow feeling a serious resurgence, we're getting into different territory in our relationship--meaning Russia will push back.

The knee jerk here is simply to say, "Let's re-engage in a Cold War-like standoff!" But that's a problematic approach for a number of reasons.

First is the economic connectivity that has ensued in the meantime. Then there's the energy bonds. Finally, there's the lack of enough strategic justification. Georgia going after South Ossetia and Russia retaliating isn't going to elicit a strong response from the West because the West really isn't interested in owning the Caucasus strategically. It's beyond NATO's vision for now, and the U.S. is tied up elsewhere. Russia might acquiesce to Chinese and Turkish economic penetration throughout Central Asia, but with the Caucasus, there you're getting into some old stuff as far as the Russian empire is concerned.

But clearly Russia's transgressing the advanced-country norms, not even bothering to make an international case here (which we always do before invading anybody). This is more like Britain and Argentina going at it over the Falklands: outsiders look at it in amazement, wondering what all the fuss is about, while the participants fight over the "olive tree" grove like divorced parents squabbling over a child's custody (i.e., we simply don't "get" the history--which is long and ugly). We don't expect either a Britain or Argentina to behave like that, so the U.S. tries to smooth things over.

I would expect a similar approach here.

Why not just go ape-shit on Moscow and resurrect all sorts of confrontation?

Again, with the world moving as it is, and everything else on our plate, that just seems like a bad choice. Russia's too much in the club (or Core, as I call it) to make such a divorce anything but highly disruptive to too many economic and investment and network interests, and therein lies my basic position on Russia belonging to the Core. Until it transgresses enough to resurrect itself as a credible direct-threat scenario (meaning we have a reasonable anticipation of possible direct war with Russia), we--along with the rest of the Core--are going to finesse this situation.

Being in the Core doesn't mean never going to war, especially against Gap nations. Indeed, my whole point in making the original delineation was to point out that while intra-Core war becomes an increasingly distant possibility, wars inside the Gap by Core nations will be anything but. Just look at our record since the end of the Cold War.

The notion of the Core doesn't presuppose that only America will have permission to do this sort of thing unilaterally. In fact, in both my books, I cited the danger of other Core powers starting to replicate our example if we weren't careful about embedding our own interventions within an acceptable A-to-Z rule set that the Core as a whole could sign up for, meaning we'd eventually see other Core great powers launching their own efforts inside the Gap--according to their own rules and agendas. To some extent, Russia's kinetic version is as challenging as China's non-kinetic version--say--in Africa.

But make no mistake: the longer the U.S. gives off the vibe that it's a "dangerous chaotic world" where Core great powers do what they must to protect their interests, the more we will see this sort of behavior. If I'm Russia, and I've been watching imperious Washington this past two decades, I feel wholly within my rights in my own neighborhood, because those Americans certainly show themselves to take advantage or do what they feel they must in places all over the world but especially in their own backyard.

Again, this is where the strategic vision "thing" or the lack thereof really hurts. We go off on a strategic bender after 9/11 and start remaking the Middle East as we see fit and we can't expect every other Core great power to simply stand by and see what happens. We set the example, we model the behavior, and we eschew the larger schemes of cooperation as "naive" or "too compromising" or "too distasteful" because "those regimes" aren't democracies like we are, and we're going to find ourselves battling alternative great-power rule sets, which--in effect--Russia is proposing right now regarding the Caucasus.

Again, you can say, "Who the hell are these guys!" But a lot of the world says the same about us regarding Southwest Asia (the Middle East)--a place a lot more important strategically to the entire world than the Caucasus. So go easy on that one.

Also go easy on wanting to ramp up strategic conflict with Russia. It's certainly a familiar emotion for a lot of us over 40, but you have to ask yourself, "Where are we going with this, given everything else we're trying to achieve right now?"

Admittedly, Russia does enough bad stuff and Moscow can certainly get itself right back on top of our strategic planning pile, but we're a long ways from that and I don't anticipate that being the ultimate message that Putin seeks to send here.

Instead, we're going to have to figure out something a whole lot more sophisticated than simply resurrecting the Cold War plot line.

So please, no emails asking me to toss Russia officially out of the Core. My most base definition of membership in the Core is that I consider it extremely unlikely that the United States will ever go to war with that nation, or that the nation in question will ever go to war with a fellow Core state. Russia and Georgia dusting it up over breakaway bits that lie between them isn't enough for me to revise that opinion. Hell, that's my very definition of the Seam in many ways--the tumultuous line between who's in and who's out in terms of plausible war scenarios involving the U.S.

Again, Russia can certainly do enough to change that status, but I don't see that happening as part of this current conflict. Instead I see a negotiating ploy, delivered at a point in time that accurately reflects the state of Russia's uncomfortable fit with the Old Core.

This is where we've let things go, or what our many choices have come to regarding a Russia that's obviously on the great power upswing. The easiest thing is to reach for old images, but I don't think we'll get what we want by doing that, because I don't think most Americans realize how we've jeopardized our own Core status in the eyes of many people around this world these past eight years.

And I gotta admit, it saddens me to say that.

But don't freak out. We're in the doldrums of a very premature post-presidency with Bush, meaning he's been a lame-duck now for a long time (since Katrina, really), so the disrespect we feel right now is about as bad as it will get (from the Chavezes and Ahmadinejads and the Mugabes and the like). Bush himself has begun the correction, suing for peace in all directions and turning over our wars to the generals, but we can't be too surprised to see some opening bids from rising great powers regarding the next hand of poker to begin 20 January.

In fact, from their view, this is the perfect time to be delivering them.