hatred nourished by Vladimir Putin toward current Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, whose removal from power has become something of an obsession for the Russian leader.
A further consideration motivating Russia could be the fact that the United States sponsored the development through Georgia of the southern corridor of energy supply to Europe, especially the existing Baku- Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline that is eventually going to reach Europe through Turkey. Russia would reap an enormous geopolitical as well as economic benefit from reclaiming its near monopoly over energy routes to Europe if the US ties to Georgia were severed.
Georgia’s subordination to Russia would likely lead to a domino effect on Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is the key supplier to the southern corridor and thus to Europe’s energy diversification, which indirectly limits Russian political influence in European affairs. Thus in the case of an American decline, Russia, particularly if emboldened by a successful effort to control Georgia, would most likely use its greater freedom of action to intimidate Azerbaijan. And in such circumstances, Azerbaijan would not be inclined to defy a reinvigorated Russia. Europe at large would thus be under greater pressure to accommodate Russia’s political agenda.
Since 1972, the United States has formally accepted the PRC’s “one China” postulate, as outlined in three Sino-American communiques (1972, 1979, and 1982), while maintaining that neither side shall alter the status quo by force. A peaceful “status quo” has been the basis for American cross-straits policy, since a relationship both with a growing China and an increasingly democratic and free market–oriented Taiwan is beneficial to a strong US presence in the Pacific and to American business interests in the Far East.
The United States justifies its continued arms sales to Taiwan by stating that it is part of its status quo policy, confirmed in 1979 at the time of the US-China normalization of diplomatic relations, and that updated Taiwanese defense capabilities are necessary for the protection of Taiwan’s autonomy until such time as the issue of Taiwan is resolved peacefully. China rejects that position and reserves on the grounds of sovereignty the right to use force. However, in the meantime it has been increasingly pursuing a policy of cross-straits accommodation. In recent years, Taiwan and China have been improving their relationship, signing the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) on relatively equal terms in the summer of 2010.
America’s decline would obviously increase Taiwan’s vulnerability. Decision makers in Taipei could then neither ignore direct Chinese pressure nor the sheer attraction of an economically successful China. That, at the very least, would speed up the timetable for cross-straits reunification, but on unequal terms favoring the mainland. And if America’s decline in the meantime adversely affected the strategic connection between the United States and Japan, China could even be tempted—especially given the depth of Chinese national feelings about the matter —to reinforce its pressures on Taiwan with the threat to use force in order to effect the “one China” that the United States accepted as a political reality back in 1972. A politically successful threat to that effect could prompt a general crisis of confidence in Japan and South Korea regarding the reliability of existing American commitments.
The United States signed a Mutual Defense Pact with South Korea in 1953 and has been the guarantor of South Korea’s security ever since the 1950 attack on it by North Korea, with Soviet and Chinese collusion. Additionally, South Korea’s remarkable economic takeoff and democratic political system has been a testimonial to the success of US engagement in South Korea. But over the years, the North Korean regime has staged a number of provocations against South Korea, ranging from assassinations of its cabinet members to attempts to kill the South Korean president. In 2010, the North Koreans sank a South Korean warship, the
North Korea has also been altering its military strategy to emphasize the possibility of asymmetrical warfare against South Korea, based on its development of short-range ballistic missiles, long-range artillery, and nuclear weapons. South Korea has the means to resist a conventional attack from North Korea, but it is heavily reliant on its alliance with the United States to deter and defend against a comprehensive attack.
A US decline would confront South Korea with painful choices: either to accept Chinese regional dominance and rely further on China to act as the guarantor of security in East Asia, or to seek a much stronger, though historically unpopular, relationship with Japan, because of their shared democratic values and fear of aggression from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or China. But Japan’s inclination to stand up to China without strong US backing is problematical at best. Thus South Korea could face a military or political threat on its own, if US security commitments in East Asia became less credible.
Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Belarus remains politically and economically dependent on Russia. One-third of all its exports go to Russia while Belarus is almost entirely dependent on Russia for its energy needs. Moreover, a majority of Belarus’s 9.6 million people speak Russian, Belarus as a national state has been independent only since 1991, and the depth of its people’s national identity has not been tested—all of which are factors that preserve Moscow’s influence. For example, in 2009, the Russian army held major maneuvers (with Belarusian participation) in Belarus designated as Zapad (i.e., “the West ”) in which it repelled a hypothetical Western attack, culminating with a simulated Russian nuclear attack on the capital of a bordering Western (i.e., NATO) state.
Nonetheless, Belarus’s dependent relationship with Russia has not been without conflict. Belarus has not recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states (which Moscow established after its clash in 2008 with Georgia) despite open pressures by Putin. At the same time, its lack of a democratic process, as manifested in the seventeen-year-long dictatorship exercised by President Lukashenko, has stood in the way of any meaningful relations with the West. Poland, Sweden, and Lithuania have been trying to develop some civic connections between Belarus and the EU, but with very limited progress.
Consequently, a marked decline by America would give Russia a largely riskless opportunity to absorb Belarus, with at most a minimal use of force, and with little other cost beyond its reputation as a responsible regional power. Unlike the case of Georgia, Belarus would have neither Western arms nor enjoy the West’s political sympathy. The EU would be unlikely to respond in the absence of American support, and some Western European countries would likely be indifferent to the cause of Belarus. The UN, in such circumstances, would be largely passive. The Central European states, all too aware of the dangers of an emboldened Russia, might demand a common NATO response, but with America in decline it is unlikely that they could muster a collective and forceful reaction.
Russia’s absorption of Belarus, without too much cost or pain, would jeopardize the future of Ukraine as a genuinely sovereign state. Ukraine’s relationship with Russia, since gaining its independence in 1991, has been as prone to tension as its relationship with the West has been prone to indecision. Russia has repeatedly tried to coerce Ukraine into adopting policies beneficial to Russia, using energy as a political tool. In 2005, 2007, and 2009, Russia has either threatened or actually stopped oil and gas flow to Ukraine because of price issues and Ukraine’s outstanding energy debt. In the summer of 2010, Ukraine’s President Yanukovych was pressured to agree to an extension of Russia’s lease of a naval base in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Sevastopol for another twenty-five years in exchange for a preferential pricing of Russian energy deliveries to Ukraine.
Ukraine is a significant European state of some 45 million people, with a strong industry and potentially very productive agriculture. A union with Russia would both enrich Russia and represent a giant step toward the restoration of its imperial sphere, a matter of much nostalgia to some of its leaders. Hence it is likely that the Kremlin will continue to press Ukraine to join a “common economic space” with Russia, gradually stripping Ukraine of direct control over its major industrial assets through mergers and takeovers by Russian firms. At the same time, quiet efforts will go on to infiltrate the Ukrainian security services and military command, in order to weaken Ukraine’s ability to protect, when need be, its sovereignty.
Eventually—assuming America’s decline—a passive European response to the absorption of Belarus, not to
