Russia’s new power

Civil war in Syria, new governments in North Africa, Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, the surging fortunes of the Afghan Taliban and war-weariness in the US – what is the meaning of these developments? That is the question examined by the Center for Security Studies (CSS) in its Strategic Trends report. In the fifth annual report, the CSS analyses the significance of recent events for the immediate future.

Russia’s imperialist behaviour

The report dedicates an entire chapter to Russia’s new geopolitical ambitions. The country is back on the world stage and is actively opposing the West, writes author Jonas Grätz. Russia’s global political clout was recently on display in the Syrian conflict. It prevailed at the UN with its policy of non-interference, extended a supporting hand to Bashar al-Assad and scored a diplomatic success by negotiating an agreement that secured the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. As Grätz explains, Russia is leveraging its numerous cultural and economic relationships with countries in the post-Soviet sphere to renew its imperialist identity. In this world view, economically strong, independent states are regarded as threats.

With the military annexation of Crimea, Grätz’s analysis has already been overtaken by events. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, Russia quite simply did not develop into the ‘normal’ democratic state hoped for by the West. Indeed, as Grätz notes, Russia has in recent years pursued an active anti-West foreign policy. In times of economic stagnation, this has become an important means of diverting attention away from domestic problems.

Under ‘Putinism‘, as Grätz dubs its current political model, Russia has two aces up its sleeve as it pursues its geopolitical aspirations: with its continuously updated arsenal of more than 1,800 nuclear weapons, it remains the only true military threat to the US. And it has a wealth of natural resources, in particular natural gas. This in turn ties the country to the European Union, which is the largest customer of Russian natural gas. Putin has already demonstrated his willingness to exploit this economic weapon by shutting off gas shipments to Ukraine in 2006 and 2009.

Domestic priorities dominate in the US

Russia’s geopolitical power play is also related to a new foreign policy orientation in the US. As Martin Zapfe shows in his contribution, the Obama administration is currently focusing on domestic issues. Obama manifests a certain aversion to the sort of grand strategies pursued by his predecessor George W. Bush in his ‘war on terror’ and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US, in Zapfe’s words, has entered a phase of “strategic pragmatism” that is likely to last some time. In his view, all decisions taken by the president are currently determined by three parameters: the after-effects of the financial crisis, the war-weariness of the American people (13 years on, Afghanistan is already the longest war in US history) and the current shale gas and oil revolution. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), shale oil deposits tapped using fracking technology could make the US the world’s largest oil producer as early as 2015. Such forecasts, says Zapfe, have fuelled hopes of energy independence and strengthened opposition to an activist foreign policy.

The dwindling geopolitical supremacy of the US is also due to another factor, as Michael Haas writes in his article: the operational benefits of the largest and most expensive military in the world are slowly but surely eroding. This is due in part to a shrinking US military budget, but also to the fact that new, ambitious powers have access to high-tech equipment. In China, for example, increased military spending has already manifested itself in the form of a new assertiveness along its periphery. “Cracks are appearing in the foundation of the US-sponsored global security system,” writes Haas.

The trend is being driven by the “Talibanisation of uprisings”, as Prem Mahadevan explains in his piece. According to Mahadevan, the Taliban was able to bolster its military, psychological and economic influence after the US intervention – and other groups are now copying its methods. He also sees signs of the failure of western counter-insurgency in Iraq, where a decade of western intervention has failed to secure any long-term results. Groups allied with al-Qaeda have regained control of some of the most important Iraqi cities. Suicide attacks in Mali and tactical innovations by jihadist groups in Syria are, the author notes, evidence that the Taliban’s experience has expanded rapidly through a global network.

European winter after the Arab spring

According to the CSS report, not only the US but also the European Union has lost its geopolitical clout. Lisa Watanabe diagnoses a cooling in relations between the EU and its southern neighbours, including Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia; she points to the lack of a coherent strategic orientation in the EU’s foreign policy towards the North African states in spite of their vital importance to the EU, in particular in terms of energy supplies, security and immigration. The vacuum, says Watanabe, is being filled by those powers with cultural and religious similarities to the region, primarily the Gulf states and Turkey.

After reading the five chapters of the report, there can be little doubt that the West will continue to see its geopolitical influence diminish, while the ascendant East will act with ever-greater political confidence on the world stage. Just how pronounced these trends prove to be will depend not least on the outcome of the current crisis in Crimea.

Strategic Trends 2014 can be downloaded free of charge.