STRATFOR.COM's Weekly Global Intelligence Update - 6 March 2000 Today's Global Intelligence Update is a special report on an important world issue. If you would like to see the full text, please visit http://www.stratfor.com/SERVICES/giu2000/030600.ASP __________________________________________ By The Internet's Most Intelligent Source of International News & Analysis http://www.stratfor.com/ __________________________________________ Know the every move of your competitors - even before they do. Stratfor Intelligence Services http://www.stratfor.com/services/ __________________________________________ STRATFOR.COM Weekly Global Intelligence Update 6 March 2000 Why It's Not A New Cold War: Secondary Powers and the New Geopolitics Summary On the face of it, the fraying of relations between the United States and governments in China and Russia - over the war in Kosovo last year, the war in Chechnya and foreign policy at large - has suggested a return to the Cold War. Certainly, as we have argued, we are in a period of rising tension between the United States, Russia and China. Yet while tensions are rising, the period ahead is fundamentally different from the Cold War era. The Cold War limited room for maneuver among secondary powers. The new epoch will facilitate them. The case of France is instructive in this regard. Analysis The global geopolitical system appears to be dealing out a three- player game between the United States, China and Russia. Moscow's continued overtures to Beijing, which now appear to be gathering steam, are an excellent example. Superficially, this appears to resemble the makings of a new Cold War. There are, however, fundamental differences. First, Russia in 2000 is enormously weaker than the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It has contracted geographically. During the Cold War, Soviet forces were stationed in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Today, Russia does not even occupy Ukraine. Whatever the orientation of its foreign policy, Moscow must first regain what it has lost - and that will take a generation. The Cold War was a game played at the extremes of power. There was little space for maneuver among great powers and most others were locked into one, or the other, of the alliance systems. Those that weren't - but were of strategic value, like Yugoslavia - were locked into constrained neutrality. Some, like Egypt, could change sides but could not stand free of entanglement. The Third World thought of itself as representing a neutral alternative. But in reality, any nation of strategic interest to the superpowers found itself locked in, formally or informally. But the current global geopolitical situation is fundamentally different. The overwhelming power of the United States allows it to impose its will where it wishes; conversely, the United States is powerful enough to be relatively indifferent to most issues. Washington has no interest in imposing its wishes lock-step upon its allies. Russia, now beginning the search for allies, cannot underwrite the sort of military assistance programs that were key to building ties with countries like Syria and Vietnam during the Cold War. China, frequently mentioned as a peer competitor, is in fact, a country isolated by geography - and a distinct lack of naval power. Beijing's power projection does not measure up to its bombast. As a result, there is more room for maneuver today for the world's secondary powers: France, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and others. New possibilities arise. Secondary powers may in fact become great powers over time, as more opportunity and incentive arises for converting economic power into political power. The fundamental reality is that the vague situation among the great powers creates incentive for secondary powers to protect interests and seize opportunities. The net result will be a three-player game, with a lot of other players jostling elbows. This will make for a more interesting game, but a less stable world. Consider France. France is interesting for three reasons. First, until its defeat by Germany in 1940, France was a great power in its own right, with a global empire. Second, during the Cold War, it was by far the most restive of American allies and sought consistently and intensely to create the kind of room for maneuver for itself that it now actually has. Third, having achieved the room for maneuver it wanted, France, like the other countries in its class, is not quite sure what to do with that power. No two powers are alike, but there is much to learn from the French example - and the dilemma. Although it emerged on the winning side, France was a major loser in World War II. Exhausted by occupation and liberation, its self- confidence shattered, the global empire it had taken centuries to build soon slipped out of its hands. Britain and France occupied similar positions, yet responded in very different ways. Britain accepted its position as a subordinate of the United States in return for being treated as a special subordinate with a special relationship. France, after a little more than a decade of following the British lead, broke the pattern. When Charles De Gaulle became President in 1958, he not only took the decisive steps needed to dissolve the empire but those needed to create a special place for France within the Western alliance system. It was a role that took France as close to neutrality between the United States and Russia as was possible - without actually breaking with the United States. De Gaulle's reading of the international system differed fundamentally from that of other Westerners. De Gaulle's view was that the United States was gaining strength and the Soviet Union, effectively contained, was in danger of collapse. This was particularly De Gaulle's view after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, when the United States blockaded Cuba and forced the Soviet Union to withdraw its missiles. De Gaulle knew as well that the Soviets at the time did not have the ability to strike the United States with a large number of missiles while the United States could devastate the Soviets with Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) in Europe, as well as manned bombers. The reason that the Soviets wanted missiles in Cuba was to brandish a credible threat against the United States. To De Gaulle, the failure of this gambit confirmed the ascendancy of the United States. This posed a terrific dilemma. The French president did not want the United States to overwhelm France militarily, politically or culturally. At the same time, he did not want to wreck the Western alliance. In other words, De Gaulle was trapped in the narrow space provided for France by the geopolitics of the Cold War. He was trapped by an overwhelming and highly focused U.S. power - and by the simultaneous fear of a failure of that power. De Gaulle and his successors have followed two strategies for increasing wiggle room. The first was the European ploy. What France couldn't do alone, it could do in conjunction with the rest of Europe - particularly Germany. As a result, combining economic weight with Germany, the Benelux countries and Italy gives France serious voice. Thus, the European strategy provided France with some room during the Cold War. It could stand apart from the alliance without leaving it, it could influence the United States without alienating it. France used Europe, to the extent possible, to create breathing room. France's own independent nuclear strike force was created to help provide some space for French maneuver in the event of crisis. The second strategy was the neo-imperialist strategy. France formally gave up its empire after defeat in Indochina and Algeria, leaving only the holdings in sub-Saharan Africa. However, this masked continued, albeit informal, presence. France continued to dominate its former colonies and does so until this day. French troops are present in many and intervene to impose order. More than that, France still retains economic power. This was a particular irritant to the United States during the Cold War. The Soviet Union had adopted a strategy of undermining Western domination of the Third World. The United States was resisting. The French strategy was to maximize its own influence at the expense of the United States, frequently working with pro-Soviet governments in an effort to use Soviet political influence as a foundation from French economic opportunities. French Europeanism was rooted in a desire to limit American power. French neo-colonialism was rooted in an unwillingness to accept the collapse of French global power and its replacement by the United States. In its operational form, it frequently served to weaken U.S. influence, working in tandem with Soviet interests. France was prepared to work with the Soviets in informal and sometimes cover ways to limit but not shatter U.S. power. Viewed in this way, we can see now that the collapse of the Soviet Union posed mortal threat to France. Without the counterweight of the Soviet Union, France was in danger of being completely overwhelmed by the Americans. The French response was logical. First, it intensified its drive for European integration, extending it from the purely economic, to the political and military. Second, it intensified its drive to maintain influence in its former colonies. For this strategy to work, European integration must work. More precisely, Germany must be willing to throw its economic weight behind French political maneuvers. In addition, Great Britain must be kept out of as many European institutions as possible, or induced to decline membership, since London waters down French influence while, at the same time representing U.S. interests. There is a second critical element here. The resurrection of an aggressive Russia could be the salvation of French power. First, an assertive Russia counterbalances the United States and a balance of power strategy is at the heart of French thinking. Second, an assertive Russia could trigger an overly aggressive American response that unnerves the Germans and drives them into into French arms. French policy appears to Americans to be incoherent. On the one hand France participates in alliance interventions, from the Persian Gulf to Kosovo. At the same time, there is a great deal of unease among policy makers concerning France's commitment to the enterprise. Rumors of French intelligence making side deals from Iraq to Serbia percolate among its allies. True or not, there is a sense of persistent French duplicity, an apparent duplicity that makes little sense when measured against the resources that France has devoted to its strategic participation. This is not a new feeling. Ever since DeGaulle, France has followed a dual policy of alliance membership combined with seeking to maximize France's room for maneuver. France has depended on the alliance yet sought to decrease that dependency. The principles of French policy yielded logical and coherent particulars. France sought to weaken American power without shattering the balance of power. If we recall official French attitude toward the Vietnam war, we can see the implementation of this policy. France has followed a coherent and logical policy since De Gaulle returned to power in 1958. It will continue to follow such a policy. But now the interest in disrupting U.S. power is more intense than before, precisely because U.S. power is greater than before, and the Russian and Chinese threat is less than before This logic has certain consequences. France still needs to create room for maneuver between the great powers, but now there is greater U.S. power than before. France must be more cautious then ever, but the need to build dams against U.S. power is greater than ever. Its ability to act on its own continues to be limited. It needs Germany. It needs Russia. Building an alliance with either, in the long run, is not easy. France and Russia normally ally against Germany, not with Germany. Nevertheless, there are possibilities opening up for France that have not been there since 1933. Thinking about France allows us to begin thinking about the other secondary powers, including emerging powers like India and Turkey. The end of the post-cold war era and its transformation into a three-player game does not recreate the Cold War. It creates a new era in which secondary powers have major threats and real opportunities. It is an era in which secondary powers can become great powers, alone or in coalitions. There is a general tendency on the part of U.S. allies to follow the French path. On the one hand, they badly want the benefits of alliance. On the other hand, they feel increasingly constrained by U.S. power. Japan, Germany and France occupy identical positions. They are American allies and they want to continue to be American allies. They also understand that their value to the United States increases as Russian and Chinese power increases. At the same time, they do not want to be caught in another Cold War. These contradictory desires produce a logic of their own. Given that they have greater room for maneuver than during the Cold War, the secondary powers will try to take advantage of that to carve out systems of relations that are particularly beneficial to them. Unlike the "one size fits all" mentality of the Cold War alliance systems, each country will seek to maximize the benefits derived from its relationship with the United States while constructing a system of alternative relationships. This will create a tremendously complex landscape. This will be particularly true when we consider that the secondary powers are themselves near great powers themselves. Any one of them can make the decision to enter the first rank, behind only the United States, if they choose. That means that as the new epoch matures, the three-player game can rapidly acquire new players. Some of them will not come from the traditional quarters. India or Turkey, for example, might evolve over time. The important point is that the structure of the three-player game increases the incentive for secondary powers to emulate France and in so doing, increases the probability of an increase in the ranks of great powers. That may make for a more unstable world. It will certainly make for a more complex one. What the French example teaches is the critical lesson for the 21st century: nations have neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies - only permanent interests. When we look at France we can see the logic of its position. The same will likely be true of others. In a non-ideological world, power politics will increases in importance, rather than decrease. (c) 2000, Stratfor, Inc. http://www.stratfor.com/ __________________________________________________ Today's Global Intelligence Update is a special report on an important world issue. 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