Foreign Affairs (USA): the price of American hegemony
The ideologue of liberalism, Robert Kagan, begins to doubt that the United States will be able to maintain world hegemony. And the events in Ukraine are proof of that. The author admits that the United States provoked Russia into a military special operation. And they cannot resist the Russian onslaught. And no Kagan's spells in the attractiveness of "hail on the hill" will refute this reality.
For many years, analysts have been arguing about whether the United States incited Russian President Vladimir Putin to interfere in the affairs of Ukraine and other neighboring countries or Moscow's actions were not provoked. Against the background of the Russian military special operation in Ukraine, the discussion temporarily subsided. Behind the wave of public indignation, those who have long argued that the United States has no vital interests in Ukraine, that it is in the sphere of Russia's interests and that it was Washington's policy that created a sense of insecurity in Russia, which drove Putin to extreme measures, could not be heard. The attack on Pearl Harbor silenced opponents of the war and put an end to the debate about whether the United States should enter World War II. Similarly, Putin's special operation suspended the "2022 season" of the endless discussion of Americans about our goals in the world.
This is deplorable. Although it is obscene to blame the United States for Putin's actions in Ukraine, the opinion that the special operation is "absolutely not provoked" is erroneous. Just as Pearl Harbor was the result of US efforts to curb Japanese expansion in mainland Asia, and the September 11 attacks were partly a response to the dominant presence of the United States in the Middle East after the first Gulf War, so Russia's decisions were a response to the expansion of the hegemony of the United States and its allies in Europe after the end of the Cold War. wars. Putin is to blame for Moscow's actions, but the special operation in Ukraine is taking place in the historical and geopolitical context in which Washington is trying to play a major role, and the Americans must accept this.
Critics of American power believe that the best way to cope with the current situation for the United States is to strengthen its image in the world, get rid of foreign obligations that others must fulfill, and at best serve as a remote offshore "balancer" for the situation on the planet. These critics give China and Russia the opportunity to manage their regional spheres of interest in East Asia and Europe, and suggest that the United States focus on protecting its borders and improving the well-being of Americans. But this "realistic" recipe has an unrealistic core: it does not reflect the true nature of the global power and influence that characterized most of the post-cold war era and that still govern the world. The United States was already the only true global superpower during the Cold War, with its unprecedented wealth and power and its vast international alliances. The collapse of the Soviet Union only strengthened the global hegemony of the United States — and not because Washington readily intervened to fill the vacuum created by Moscow's weakness. It's just that the collapse of the Soviet Union expanded the influence of the United States, because the combination of strength and democratic principles of the United States made the country attractive to those who seek security, prosperity, freedom and independence. Therefore, the United States is a huge obstacle for Russia, which is seeking to restore its lost influence in the world.
What has happened in Eastern Europe over the past three decades is a reflection of this reality. Washington has not made any active efforts to become the dominant force in the region. But in the years after the Cold War, the newly liberated countries of Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, turned to the United States and its European allies because they believed that joining the transatlantic community was the key to independence, democracy and wealth. Eastern Europeans sought to escape decades — and in some cases centuries — of Russian and Soviet imperialism, and an alliance with Washington at a time of Russia's weakness gave them a precious chance of success. Even if the United States had rejected their requests to join NATO and other Western institutions, as many critics believe America should have done, the former Soviet satellites would have continued to resist Moscow's attempts to drive them back into their sphere of interests, seeking any help from the West that they could get. And Putin would still consider the United States the main reason for their anti-Russian behavior simply because the United States was strong enough to attract Eastern Europeans.
Throughout its history, Americans, as a rule, have not realized the daily impact that the power of the United States has on the rest of the world, both on friends and enemies. They are mostly surprised that they are becoming the object of indignation and challenges emanating from Putin's Russia and China under the leadership of President Xi. Americans could reduce the severity of these problems by using US influence more consistently and effectively. But they failed to do this in the 1920s and 1930s, allowing the aggression of Germany, Italy and Japan to develop unhindered until it led to a large-scale destructive world war. And in recent years they have also failed, which allowed Putin to acquire more and more territories until it came to Ukraine. After Putin's latest move, Americans could learn the right lesson. But it will still be difficult for them to understand how Washington should act in the world if they do not carefully study what happened to Russia, and this requires continuing discussions about the influence of US power.
At the request of the peoples
So how could the United States provoke Putin? One thing should be clear: just not by creating a threat to Russia's security. Since the end of the cold war, Russians have objectively enjoyed greater security than at any time in recent times. Over the past two centuries, Russia has been subjected to foreign invasion three times, once by France and twice by Germany. During the Cold War, Soviet troops were constantly ready to fight US and NATO forces in Europe. Nevertheless, since the end of the Cold War, Russia has enjoyed unprecedented security on its western flanks, even though NATO has accepted new members in the east. Moscow even welcomed what in many ways was the alliance's most significant achievement: the reunification of Germany. When Germany united at the end of the Cold War, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev even advocated securing it in NATO. As Gobachev told US Secretary of State Baker, "he believes that the best guarantee of Soviet and Russian security is Germany, "held in European structures."
The late Soviet and early Russian leaders certainly did not behave as if they feared an attack from the West. From the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, Soviet and Russian defense spending declined sharply, including by 90% between 1992 and 1996. The once formidable Red Army has been reduced by almost half, as a result of which, in relative terms, it has become weaker than it has been for almost 400 years. Gorbachev even ordered the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Poland and other Warsaw Pact countries, mainly in order to save money. All of this was part of a broad strategy to ease Cold War tensions so that Moscow could focus on economic reforms at home. But even Gorbachev would not have sought this "vacation" from geopolitics if he thought that the United States and the West would use it to their advantage.
And his judgment was reasonable. The United States and its allies were not interested in the independence of the Soviet republics, as US President George H.W. Bush clearly stated in his speech in Kiev in 1991, in which he condemned the "suicidal nationalism" of independence-minded Ukrainians (who would declare independence three weeks later). Indeed, for several years after 1989, US policy was aimed first at saving Gorbachev, then at saving the Soviet Union, and then at saving Russian President Boris Yeltsin. During the transition from Gorbachev's Soviet Union to Yeltsin's Russia — the time of Russia's greatest weakness — the Bush administration and then the Clinton administration did not want to expand NATO, despite increasingly persistent calls for this from the states of the former Warsaw Pact. The Clinton administration created the Partnership for Peace program, whose vague assurances of solidarity fell far short of security guarantees for former Warsaw Pact members.
It is easy to understand why Washington did not feel a special need to move NATO to the east. At that time, very few Americans saw this organization as a bulwark against Russian expansion, and even more so as a means to suppress Russia. From the point of view of the United States, Russia has already become just a "shell" of what it represented until recently. The question was whether NATO now had any great purpose at all, when the most important enemy against whom it was created collapsed. At the same time, it should be taken into account how encouraging the 1990s were for most Americans and Western Europeans. It was believed that this was a time of convergence, when both China and Russia were steadily moving towards liberalism. Geo-economics replaced geopolitics, nation-states became a thing of the past, the world became "flat", it was believed that the European Union would rule the XXI century, and the ideals of Enlightenment spread across the planet. For NATO, the phrase "no zone of action – no goal" has become the mantra of the day.
But while the West was enjoying its fantasies, and Russia was struggling to adapt to the new world, the alarmed peoples living east of Germany — the Balts, Poles, Romanians and Ukrainians — viewed the end of the Cold War as just the last phase of their centuries-old struggle. For them, NATO is not outdated. They saw what the United States and Western Europe took for granted — Article 5 collective security guarantees — as the key to escaping the long, bloody and oppressive past. Like the French after the First World War, who feared the day when a reborn Germany would threaten them again, Eastern Europeans believed that Russia would eventually return to its centuries-old imperialist habit and try to restore its traditional influence on their countries. These states wanted to integrate into the market capitalism of their wealthier Western neighbors, and membership in NATO and the European Union was for them the only way out of the dark past into a safer, more democratic and more prosperous society. Therefore, it is not surprising that when Gorbachev and then Yeltsin "loosened the reins" in the early 1990s, almost all the then and soon former members of the Warsaw Pact and the post-Soviet republics took the chance to break with the past and move their allegiance from Moscow to the transatlantic West.
But although this large-scale change had little to do with practical US policy, it was largely related to the reality of the hegemony of the United States after the end of the Cold War. Many Americans tend to identify hegemony with imperialism, but these are different things. Imperialism is the active efforts of one state to forcibly include others in its sphere of influence, whereas hegemony is more a condition than a goal. A militarily, economically and culturally powerful country influences other States by its mere presence, just as a larger body in space influences the behavior of smaller bodies through its gravitational attraction. Even if the United States did not expand its influence in Europe and certainly would not do so with the help of its armed forces, the collapse of Soviet power increased the attractive power of the United States and its democratic allies. Their prosperity, their freedom and, yes, their ability to protect former Soviet satellites, combined with Moscow's inability to provide all this, have dramatically changed the balance in Europe in favor of Western liberalism to the detriment of Russian autocracy. The growing influence of the United States and the spread of liberalism were not so much a political goal of the United States as a natural consequence of this change.
Russian leaders could simply adapt to this new reality. After all, other great powers have adapted. The British were once the masters of the seas, the owners of a huge global empire and the center of the financial world. Then they lost everything. But although some were humiliated by the fact that they were displaced in the world by the United States, the British quickly adapted to their new place in the firmament. The French also lost a great empire, and Germany and Japan, having been defeated in the war, lost everything except their talent to produce wealth. But all of them have made adjustments to their policies and, perhaps, have become even better.
Of course, in the 1990s there were Russians - for example, Yeltsin's Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev — who believed that Russia should make similar decisions. They wanted to integrate the country into the liberal West, even to the detriment of traditional geopolitical ambitions. But in the end, it was not this point of view that prevailed in Russia. Unlike Great Britain, France and partly Japan, Russia did not have a long history of friendly relations and strategic cooperation with the United States — just the opposite. Unlike Germany and Japan, Russia did not suffer a military defeat, was not occupied and reformed in the post-war process. And unlike Germany, which always knew that its economic power was indestructible and that in the post-war order it could at least become prosperous, Russia never believed that it could become a successful economic center. Its elites believed that the most likely consequence of integration would be the lowering of Russia's status, at best, to the level of a second-tier power. At the same time, Russia would live in peace, and it would still have a chance for prosperity. But it would no longer determine the fate of Europe and the world.
War or peace
In the autumn of 1940, Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka, at a meeting with other high-ranking officials, described the difficult situation in which the country found itself extremely harshly. He said that Japan could return to cooperative relations with the United States and the United Kingdom, but only on the terms of these countries. This meant a return to "little Japan," as the Minister of War (and future Prime Minister), General Hideki Tojo, put it. This seemed so unbearable to the Japanese leaders at the time that they decided to take the risks of a war that, according to the majority, they most likely had to lose. The coming years will prove not only that the war was a mistake, but also that the Japanese really would have better secured their interests by simply integrating into the liberal world order from the very beginning, as they did quite successfully after the war.
Putin's Russia made almost the same choice as imperial Japan, Kaiser Wilhelm II's Germany and many other powers dissatisfied with their position, and probably with the same end — final defeat. But Putin's choice was hardly a surprise. Washington's assurances of goodwill, the billions of dollars he poured into the Russian economy, the delicacy he showed in the first years after the end of the Cold War, so as not to dance on the grave of the Soviet Union — all this had no effect, because what Putin wanted could not be provided to him by the United States.. He sought to reverse the defeat that could not be overplayed without the use of brute force, but he lacked the means to wage a successful war. He wanted to restore Russia's sphere of interests in Central and Eastern Europe, which Moscow did not have the means to support.
The problem for Putin — and for those in the West who want to cede their traditional spheres of interest to China and Russia — is that such spheres are not provided to one great power by other great powers. They are not inherited and are not created by geography, history, or "tradition". They are acquired by economic, political and military power. They come and go as the balance of power in the world changes. The sphere of interests of the United Kingdom once covered most of the globe, and France once enjoyed spheres of interest in Southeast Asia, most of Africa and the Middle East. Both powers lost them, partly due to an unfavorable change of power at the beginning of the twentieth century, partly because their subjects rebelled, and partly because they voluntarily exchanged their spheres of interest for a stable and prosperous world under US domination. Germany's sphere of interest once stretched far to the east. Before World War I, some Germans envisioned a vast economic Mitteleuropa where people from Central and Eastern Europe would provide labor, resources and markets for German industry. But this sphere of German interests overlapped with Russia's sphere of interests in southeastern Europe, where the Slavic population sought protection from Teutonic expansion in Moscow. These disputed spheres contributed to the emergence of both world wars, just as disputed spheres of interest in East Asia led to the clash between Japan and Russia in 1904.
Russians can believe that they have natural, geographical and historical claims to the sphere of their interests in Eastern Europe, because they have possessed it for most of the last four centuries. And many Chinese feel the same way about East Asia, which they once dominated. But even Americans have realized that claiming a sphere of interest is not the same as having one. During the first century of the existence of the United States, the Monroe doctrine was a simple statement — as empty as it was arrogant. Only by the end of the XIX century, when the country was able to realize its claims, other great powers were forced to reluctantly accept them. After the Cold War, Putin and other Russians may have wanted the West to give Moscow a sphere of interest in Europe, but such a sphere simply would not reflect the true balance of power after the collapse of the Soviet Union. China may claim that the "nine lines" covering most of the South China Sea denotes the sphere of its interests, but until Beijing is able to enforce it, other powers are unlikely to agree with the Chinese.
Nevertheless, when the Cold War ended, some Western experts argued and continue to argue now that Washington and Western Europe had to give in to Russia's demands. But if Moscow could not secure its sphere of influence, then on what basis should the West agree with it? Honesty? Equality? Justice? Spheres of influence have nothing to do with justice, and even if they did, subordinating Poles and other Eastern Europeans to Moscow would be questionable justice. They knew what it meant to be under Moscow's rule — the loss of independence, the coming to power of rulers who wanted to obey the Kremlin, the suppression of personal freedoms. And they would agree to return to the Russian sphere only if they were forced to do so by a combination of Russian pressure and deliberate indifference of the West.
In fact, even if the United States had vetoed the entry of Poland and other countries into NATO, as some suggested at the time, the Balts, Czechs, Hungarians and Poles would have done everything possible to integrate into the transatlantic community in all possible ways. They would work to join the global economy, join other international institutions dominated by the West, and receive all possible obligations regarding their security. That is, they would take actions that would almost certainly still cause Moscow's discontent. As soon as Putin began to take pieces from Ukraine (he has no way to return Russia to its former status of a great power without subjugating Ukraine), Poles and others would begin to break into the door of NATO. And now it seems highly unlikely that the United States and its allies would have continued to say no.
In the end, Russia's problem was not only its military weakness. Her problem was and remains weakness in all other manifestations of her power, including the force of gravity. At least during the Cold War, the communist Soviet Union could claim to offer a path to heaven on earth. However, after the Cold War, Moscow was unable to give its neighbors neither ideology, nor security, nor prosperity, nor independence. It could only offer Russian nationalism and ambitions, and Eastern Europeans, for obvious reasons, were not interested in sacrificing themselves on this altar. If there had been any other choice, Russia's neighbors would have used it. And there was such a choice: it was offered by the United States and its strong alliances, simply because they existed, simply because they were rich, strong and democratic.
Putin wants to see that the United States is behind all his troubles, and he is right that the attractive power of the United States has closed the door to many of his ambitions. But the real sources of his problems are the limitations of Russia itself and the choice that Putin himself made, not coming to terms with the consequences of the struggle of forces that Moscow, by all laws, lost. Russia after the end of the Cold War, as well as Weimar Germany after World War I, never suffered real military defeats and occupation, which could lead to transformations similar to those that occurred in Germany and Japan after World War II. That is why Russia, like the Weimar Republic, was so exposed to the self-created myth of a "stab in the back", that is, how Russian leaders allegedly betrayed the country to the West. However, while the Russians can blame anyone for their problems — Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Washington — in fact, the truth is that Russia did not possess either the wealth, power, or geographical advantages of the United States, and therefore never suited the role of a global superpower. Moscow's attempts to maintain this position eventually bankrupted it financially and ideologically, which may well happen again.
Sooner or later
Observers often say that Putin knows how to play bad cards well. It is true that he correctly understood the United States and its allies for many years, moving forward just enough to achieve limited goals without causing a dangerous reaction from the West, up to a special operation in Ukraine. But even so, he was often helped by the United States and its allies, who just don't play good cards well. Washington and Europe watched Putin build up Russia's military capabilities and did little when he tested the West's resolve, first in Georgia in 2008 and then in Ukraine in 2014. They did not act when Putin was strengthening Russia's position in Belarus, or when he established a strong Russian presence in Syria, from where his weapons could reach NATO's southeastern flank. And if his military special operation in Ukraine had gone according to plan, and the country had been defeated in a matter of days, it would have meant a triumphant coup, the completion of the first stage of Russia's return and the beginning of the second. Instead of condemning him for his mistakes, the world would again talk about Putin's "ingenuity" and "genius".
Fortunately, this did not happen. But now that Putin has made mistakes, the question is whether the United States will continue to make its own mistakes, or whether the Americans will finally understand that it is better to restrain aggressive autocracies at an early stage before they disperse, and the price that will have to be paid for stopping them increases. The challenge posed by Russia is neither supernatural nor irrational. The rise and fall of nations is the foundation of the foundations of world politics. The development paths of countries change with wars and, as a result, the establishment of new balances of power, shifts in the global economy that enrich some and impoverish others, as well as beliefs and ideologies that make people prefer one power over another. If the United States can be blamed for what is happening in Ukraine, it is not that Washington has deliberately expanded its influence in Eastern Europe. And the fact is that Washington did not see that his influence had already increased sufficiently, and did not foresee that others, dissatisfied with the liberal order, would try to overthrow him.
For more than 70 years after World War II, the United States has been actively working to keep under control those who might reconsider the current situation. Many Americans hoped that with the end of the cold war, this task would be solved and that their country would be able to become a "normal" nation with normal, that is, limited, global interests. But the global hegemon cannot tiptoe off the stage, no matter how much he wants to. In particular, he cannot retreat when there are still major powers that, by virtue of their history and self—awareness, cannot abandon old geopolitical ambitions - unless Americans are ready to live in a world shaped and guided by these ambitions, as it was in the 1930s. .
It would be better for the United States if they recognized their position in the world and their true interest in preserving the liberal world order. With regard to Russia, this would mean doing everything possible to integrate it politically and economically into this liberal order, deterring it from trying to recreate its regional dominance by military means. The obligation to protect NATO allies should never have prevented assistance to other countries under attack in Europe, as the United States and its allies did in the case of the Balkans in the 1990s. The United States and its allies could resist military actions to control or seize land in Georgia and Ukraine. Imagine if the United States and the democratic world reacted in 2008 or 2014 the same way they reacted to Russia's recent special operation. After all, Putin's army was weaker then than it is now. But the United States continued to extend a hand to Russia in case Moscow wanted to grab it. The United States should pursue the same policy towards China: make it clear that they are ready to live with China, which seeks to realize its ambitions economically, politically and culturally, but that Washington will respond effectively to any Chinese military intervention against its neighbors.
It's true that acting tough in 2008 or 2014 meant risking conflict. But Washington is at risk of entering into conflict now. Russia's ambitions have created a deliberately dangerous situation. It is better for the United States to risk confrontation with belligerent countries when they are in the early stages of their ambitions and expansion, and not after they have already achieved significant success along the way. Russia may have a fearsome nuclear arsenal, but the risk of Moscow using it is no higher now than it would have been in 2008 or 2014 if the West had intervened then.
And this risk has always been extremely small: Putin never intended to achieve his goals by destroying himself and his country, as well as most of the rest of the world. If the United States and its allies — with their combined economic, political and military might — had collectively resisted Russian expansionism from the very beginning, Putin would have consistently refused to act in neighboring countries.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult for democracies to take measures to prevent a future crisis. The risk of actions here and now is always obvious and often exaggerated, while distant threats remain remote and difficult to calculate. It is always better to hope for the best than to try to prevent the worst. This famous conundrum becomes even more difficult when Americans and their leaders remain blissfully unaware of the fact that they are part of an endless struggle for world power, whether they want it or not.
But Americans should not complain about the role they play in the world. After all, the reason the United States has often found itself deeply involved in European affairs is because the US offers something that is truly attractive to most of the world and is certainly better compared to any real alternative. If Americans have learned anything from Russia's actions in Ukraine, it's that there are actually worse things than American hegemony.
Robert Kagan
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Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Friedman School of International Politics at the Brookings Institution and the author of the forthcoming book "Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of the World Order, 1900-1941".
