Strategic games powers play

Columnist MB NAQVI has a look at the machinations of big powers.

Everyone seems to begin to describe today’s strategic situation with the decision by the Bush administration of embarking on the various schemes associated with NMD (National Missile Defence). This has proved to be a cat among the pigeons. A clear-cut controversy has emerged in which all major powers have disassociated themselves from the American initiative; not even Britain firmly and officially supports it, though they are trying to convince the Americans that Great Britain is not among the critics and the opponents of the plans. And yet it fails to uphold the ideas underlying in the schemes. But in a surprise move India promptly supported the NMD scheme and an Indo-American friendship that has sent a significant signal to Pakistan and China. Even so, this may not be the best starting point. We should in fact begin with the demise of the cold war and of Soviet Union and see what was the lay of the land, say in 1990s. First after the Paris Summit (1990) that finally pronounced the era of east-west cold war dead and looked forward to a new Europe —- and a new world —- free of conflict, devoted to making progress and increasing harmony based on observation of human rights by and democracy for all. That seemed like a grand new beginning, for a brief moment, akin to what the world had felt in 1945 after the end of the Second World War.  There were then hopes that a new United Nations Organisations is going to be built to keep peace and security for all and no one would go to war or face unwarranted aggression. We now know what happened after 1945. The very next year was characterised by the start of the great east-west cold war and all the promises of peace that the UN embodied were dissipated quickly enough. The point being made is that in 1990 many people thought here was another historic moment, a watershed in international affairs, for making a new beginning. But then the story of what has happened after the cold war’s end follows.

It is a story of the beginning of a new cold war. Some call this incipient cold war —- yet sans firms adversaries to the US led west. Some think it will be mainly against Russia. Others assign this honour to be the main antagonist of the west to China —- to its horror. Both quasi cold wars are in fact in unavowed progress, with all sides denying their existence. While it certainly did not begin on the Russian side. Early 1990s saw the final collapse of the Soviet Union that came rather suddenly following the process of general unwinding or falling apart that was symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Everything seemed to be collapsing for the communists both in the Soviet Union and in eastern Europe. All communist states did collapse as did the communist system as such. The new Russian state emerged along with 15 other republics that were mainly anxious to be taken into the fold of the western world. They wanted more than anything else that they be accepted as such in the west. Russians were particularly anxious for a friendly partnership with the great Americans. A sort of spell had been cast on them by what might be termed the American dream. They all wanted rather childlishly to create or bring back capitalism pronto so that they could be like another America. They were quite willing to give up their militarism and their old power system for the sake of being associated with the US. Together they would make a grand new beginning. What happened was a trifle different. The Americans and the West Germans, particularly Chancellor Helmet Kohl, treated the new Russians with some sympathy but basically as a business proposition. The Germans in particular did open their purse-string so that the Russians can rebuild their economy. But the collapse of the Soviet system and its state structures meant the rise of criminals and robbers. In fact there was no alternative intelligentsia; the old communist one was dispirited, disillusioned and downhearted. The new Russian leaders or oligarchs that emerged in the economic field were in fact card sharpers and cheats. They cornered what they could in the disinvestment programme. Robbing was easy in a disinvestment in Russia because there was no regulatory mechanisms in place and the state structure itself was in a state of collapse. There was no traditions of the rule of law or a business class with accumulated capital and experience with a capitalist system’s soul: private and efficient banking system. Even now, after 12 years, the economy and the state structures are not quite stable or firm enough. The Russian economy by virtually being a sort of sieve, the upshot was that while the western world went on pouring in good money, nothing was going up in the real factories, mills, workshops or fields. Foreign money was finding its way into private bank accounts. New racketeers emerged rather than capitalists. At length the Germans and the other governments, as well as the IMF, got tired and they began asking searching questions about accountability and returns. One of the unfortunate thing that happened —- one does not attribute motives here —- was that IMF was chosen as the lead agency by the west for converting Russia and other republics as also eastern Europe into democratic and capitalist societies. It imposed its standard economic restructuring programmes. It simply ignored the ground reality that there was no accumulated capital in the hands of a business class. In fact there was no business class other than the Russian state aparatchiks who worked the command system of planning. The new capitalists were not reared in the capitalism’s work ethic or thrift.

They were not a class with traditions of its own such as hard work, saving habits and a penchant for buying cheap and selling dear. They were racketeers who took the assets of the Soviet state for a song and made themselves millionaires and billionaires virtually overnight through what amounted to simple embezzlements. The result is that although the Russian economy has started to stabilise in recent years, it is still way behind producing as much as the Soviet Union did towards its end. And that holds good for all the other former Soviet republics also. No one is producing optimally even today —- compared to the last years of the Soviet Union.

An important ingredient of the situation is that the Russians have developed a feeling of having been shortchanged. The capitalism that was foisted on their heads was with criminal intent and all of it looks like a criminal conspiracy today that has robbed them of all the benefits that the Soviet system had given in the shape of social services with excellent education, even better medical services and healthcare, jobs and accommodation for all, albeit less than excellent or not even up to the mark from the point of view of western workers. Nevertheless the new system has given them nothing except crime, joblessness, even hunger and disease; most social services have been disrupted and are not within reach of the common people. Everything seems still to be unwinding and the process has not quite stopped, despite progress since. Insofar as the Russia’s yearning for a friendly partnership with the west, particularly with the Americans, is a dream that has gone sour. The Americans have been seen by the Russians as being only interested in what benefits them both in terms of strategic advantage over the Russians in a fiercely competitive, predatory world and in terms of economic and political benefits that day-to-day relationship might offer. The Germans are not seen in quite that light. But they too have not had their say heard either by the Russians who were enamoured with American advice of acting on IMF prescription nor Americans stopped to listen. In any case, the Germans were made to pay for what were basically American schemes. The Germans thus became frustrated both with the Americans and the Russians. They, quite noticeably, have seemed sort of withdrawing into themselves, though their historical interests in the east have not disappeared. But the Germans cannot afford not to be generous to the Russians even today, though their earlier munificence seems to have come to an end.

The trouble is that the strategic story is inextricably mixed with Russia’s still untapped the resources while its remaining military power is disliked and feared. The Russians have looked around and tried to stem the tide of events since the middle 1990s. As their economy began to show first signs of stabilisation, they too found out for themselves that whether or not they became partners of the west they would anyhow remain a major power thanks to their technological skills, the size of their economy —-  no matter in what stage —- and their natural resource base. Their surviving military strength, doubtless hobbled by the economy’s collapse and transformation into an inefficient capitalist one. They had begun to notice that the Americans instead of befriending them and making them partners in a new venture were expanding militarily eastward. American and NATO moves seemed ominous. The Americans had insisted in the early 1990s that no matter what the Commies had done with their Warsaw Pact —- they had disbanded it after the end of the cold war —- the NATO needs has to survive. Despite the fact that there was no cognisable enemy left, NATO was found to be essential for western interests. Why? the Russians began to wonder.

What were the interests for which a purely military alliance that had been built up against the huge might of the Soviet power is now sought to be kept alive even after the disappearance of much of the Soviet power as well as Soviets themselves. The Americans also had ensured that there would be an expansion in the NATO and some of the east European countries, traditionally considered to be vital for Russian and Soviet security, were to be included. The result was an expanded NATO that was menacingly knocking on the doors of the Russian Federation. The Russians are not a lot of uneducated fools. They have their own experts who try and study the trends of opinion in the west. They found that the conservatives in America who had earlier thought of the Star Wars Scheme consciously to bankrupt the Soviets —- and it was quite a deliberate and conscious attempt to make the Soviets spend so much as would bankrupt them and probably make them collapse. This is what happened. But why were they beefing up NATO? Who the new enemy for NATO is seemed no mystery to the new Russians. The latter does not want to be an enemy of the west. But, even if there is no firmness in NATO’s resolve to treat Russia as enemy, the trend of opinion is quite clear. The question of the enemy for the American might as well as that of the NATO as such might, strictly speaking, be open. But the Americans had had a hard time defending their decision of retaining NATO and keeping it up-dated militarily. Initially the people in the western world itself were asking where or who is the enemy?  Why should a military pact with such expensive infrastructure be kept going on such a questionable basis. The answers to that query remain fuzzy to this day. But then what the conservative American thinkers have been saying and doing tells a different story. They find that Russia is still a potential threat because it is supposedly an aggressive expansionist nationalist force.

Russian nationalism had traditionally been regarded as an expansionist force in the Nineteenth Century. The conservative American opinion, best represented by Dr. Henry Kissinger in 1990s, was also under study in some of the Asian chanceries, particularly in India, Japan and China. The only people who seem to have been oblivious of all this are only unconcerned Pakistanis. The Chinese moved rather quickly. They have been talking since 1994 of the urgent need for reducing the role of America in Asia. They first wanted Iran, India and China to coordinate and act as an axis. Later the Chinese discovered that India may not be a reliable partner. They chose the Russians, despite having conducted a bitter cold war with them since 1960s. Beijing has made serious, but realistic efforts at reconciliation with Moscow since the middle of 1990s and the two quickly formed the Shanghai Five embracing Russia, China, Kyrghistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Later they added Uzbekistan to it. Originally it was a grouping aimed at cooperative security with a defensive orientation and was not a military oriented move. Soon it was reoriented to countering the Taliban influence that was seen as a subversive force by all its members.

The inclusion of Uzbekistan signifies that it is far more focused on Taliban —- and indirectly on Pakistan. But the essential ingredient of it is the rapprochement between China and Russia that is enough to make it transcend its temporary focus on Taliban and Pakistan. It is a political and strategic grouping the ultimate aim of which is to become a nucleus of a new and resurgent Asia for putting up a dam against the onrushing waters of the American influence. Beijing and Moscow could only have seen the Indian defences being swept away by those waters. Indeed, India was the first to welcome the NMD scheme. The NMD is seen by the Shanghai Six as a very large and expensive scheme for building new weapon systems. It regards both Russia and China as enemies. It will build new sophisticated missiles for up-dated nuclear weapons —- if they can be developed. There is widespread scepticism that a rocket can be developed which can be fired to accurately hit an incoming rocket in flight. Many believe this is not feasible. And yet several trillions of dollars are scheduled to be spent.  Many critics have concluded that the main intention is to facilitate the American war industries and other allied economic interests in the west to make bigger profits. The quest for building a son of the star wars is controversial among scientists as was the 1980s Star War programme.  The profits for the indicated financial interests seem to be the bottomline. But its adoption the effects will have of putting the security of Russia, China and many others at risk. The Americans would be building many many more missiles. Nuclear weapons would then require to be up-dated. The missile is an expensive thing. In all cases this will be start of ground and new arms race that the Chinese and the Russians would be required to equal, if they want to have their national security interests protected. True, the Chinese and the Russians do not like its prospect. But what they do except to fulfil the role the US strategists want to impose on them. They have, however, tactically picked on the first victim of the NMD: it will kill the 1972 ABM Treaty that the Star Wars capability sought to kill but did not. This treaty protected the security threat to other powers. That treaty will soon be on the scrap heap if NMD goes ahead. That is the fundamental position today.

What the Chinese first priority will be is to ensure that there is no break with the Americans. They are not happy to respond in kind (begin rearming). It would put a stop to their four modernisations programme of 1978 that aims at converting China into a true economic superpower —- that would have the capacity to become a political superpower also, given economic resources. The Russians, too, are not happy to start an arms build up again. An arms race at this stage of their stabilisation would be ruinous for them. It is a fact today that they cannot afford any arms race without sacrificing their present economy. Another arms race would mean that the Russian Federation would go the way of the Soviets quite soon. And yet the Americans are determined. Their strategic drive is relentless and apparently unstoppable.

No NATO partner of America, ranging from Japan or even British (who have often spoken off as the lapdogs of the Americans) to the Germans nobody likes it. The French and the Italians did not like it. The whole NATO and the EU community dislikes it and enlightened American hate it. Nobody in Asia, outside the charmed circle of people around BJP in India, seems to like it. Most powers have disassociated from it. And everyone can see, though not many are saying it, that since it makes Russia and China the enemies the Americans would promote turbulence and instability in Asia. The 1972 ABM Treaty’s end will not serve anyone’s interests. The fact of the matter is that nobody wants another cold war. Disappearance of Russian Federation or the stoppage of China’s progress midway in its economic reconstruction plans would be a tragedy. The struggle in Asia then would be intense and may destabilise many an economy. God knows how many new alignments will have to be made. People will have to spare more resources for war-like purposes. Standards of living, already quite low in Asia, are likely to be depressed further.

One point needs finally to be underlined. Nobody, simply nobody, buys the idea that rogue states —- states like Libya, Iran, Sudan, Taliban’s Afghanistan and even conceivably Pakistan —- can pose a credible threat to any great power. Instead. No such state is able to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, tipped with nuclear or thermonuclear weapons, at Uncle Sam’s cities. It might be simpler for any terrorist state, group or even individual to organise a surreptitious bombing attack mounted on a truck or on a car by exploding it in cities of its choice. The NMD will be totally unable to counter anything of the kind. And no rogue state is so foolish as to build its CMBs for the purpose when it can achieve the same objective more cheaply and effectively. The whole NMD programme is widely seen being misconceived. It would be foolish to build it for variety of reasons were it not for the inner pulls and pushes of the American politics.