BOOK
REVIEW Epitaph to
unipolarity Russian
Rubicon: Impending Checkmate of the West
by Joseph Stroupe
Reviewed by
Sreeram Chaulia
Since the fall of the
Soviet Union, Russia's potential to regain genuine
global power has been discounted by many as a
conspiracy theory or a remnant of Cold War
mentality. With world leaders transfixed on the
rise of China, Russia has been relegated
to
the category of a spent force.
Strategic-forecasting expert and Asia
Times Online contributor Joseph Stroupe's new book
goes against the tide of Western smugness and
makes a brilliant case for sitting up and
taking notice of how the Russian bear is
opportunistically wrestling to divest the United
States of its world hegemony.
Notwithstanding disarming public
proclamations, Russia is cutting into US interests
around the planet, rolling back "color
revolutions" in the post-Soviet space and allying
with key powers in Asia, Europe and the Americas
that are inimical to Washington. Using the "energy
trump card", Moscow is constructing a dense
network of like-minded states that is coalescing
into a rival pole to counterbalance the US.
Stroupe begins with the realist views of
history that unipolarity is a "passing anomaly",
an aberration that cannot be sustained by the
international system. The "Anglo-American Empire"
is partly strong and partly weak, "a mixture of
iron and clay". (p 24) Dissenting liberal
ideologies such as democracy and human rights
prevent Pax Americana from following in the
footsteps of earlier empires and imposing outright
conservative colonial domination.
Moreover, Stroupe maintains, Russia was
only temporarily thwarted in 1991 and is now
mounting a second challenge as the US stock of
global goodwill declines swiftly. "Since the
Serbia air campaign in 1999, the gap between
America's image of power and real power has become
a chasm, providing opportunity for rivals to
displace it from the geopolitical center." (p 44)
Russia's organization of the anti-Iraq-war
bloc in 2003 is one manifestation of the new
"complex lopsided bipolarity", with the US on one
side and a "rising multifarious East" with Russia
as the core on the other. "Thinking Russia" is
attempting neither to re-create the Soviet Empire
nor to threaten its neighbors with military
intervention. Instead, it is weaving around itself
a collective power bloc "of truly unprecedented
structure, proportions and influence". (p 50) This
bloc will end US hegemony by multi-layered
economic and diplomatic means in the arena of
competition for control over strategic resources.
Stroupe discerns a clear pattern in
Russia's recent diplomacy whereby crude oil, gas
or other strategic minerals play a central role in
every relationship it cultivates. This applies to
thickening ties with China, Venezuela, Germany,
France, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Spain, Algeria,
Turkey, South Africa and the Central Asian states.
To scatter and disintegrate Russia's bloc, the US
attempts "democratization" (alias pro-Western
regime changes).
However, the color
revolutions are backfiring, and the "China model"
of rapid economic growth without political
freedoms is becoming the norm among energy-rich
states of the world. In spite of the 2003 "Rose
Revolution" in Georgia, Moscow still dictates to
Tbilisi through its gas monopoly. Ukraine's
"Orange Revolution" failed to stem Kiev's return
to Russia's yard owing to Moscow's oil-and-gas
leverage. To battle the United States' economic
pressures, Russia's central bank has diversified
50% of its foreign-exchange reserves to non-dollar
denominations and set the example for other states
to desert the US dollar.
Stroupe insists
that "multipolarity" in the international system
is a misnomer because lesser poles tend to align
with or orbit greater ones, causing power to
converge around two principal poles only. The
result is a complex circumambulation of lesser
powers around the "Russia-China axis" that will
soon outdo but not annihilate the Anglo-American
pole. Moscow and Beijing's joint efforts to gather
around themselves key global exporters of
minerals, oil and gas are leading the world to
"uneven bipolarity". (p 82)
In the
security sphere, Russia has developed a wide array
of sophisticated weapons systems that are
relatively inexpensive but "smart" enough to
withstand a US military onslaught. Supersonic
land-attack and anti-ship cruise missiles,
laser-guided anti-tank weapons, nuclear-capable
torpedoes, ultra-quiet submarines and other
strategic arms that can dodge Washington's
anti-ballistic-missile shield are already in
Russia's arsenal.
They "limit US ability
to project military power in various places in the
event of a crisis" (p 97) and have been proving
effective in the Iraqi resistance since 2003. The
Sunni-dominated Iraqi insurgency against the US
occupation is equipped with Russian arms
technologies funneled through Syria and Iran.
Diplomatically, Russia leads a host of
like-minded states at the United Nations in
opposing unilateralism and preventing the
formation of pro-US "coalitions of the willing"
that can share costs of invasion and occupation
with Washington. The subsequent failure of the
United States in Iraq has increased international
reluctance to be a deep strategic partner with
Washington. Contraction of US influence leaves a
vacuum that Russia and its partners are filling.
Fatal weaknesses in the US economy - deep
indebtedness, deficits, slowing growth, plunging
currency and real-estate bubbles - are
transferring massive wealth to powerful economies
in Asia through high energy prices and cheap
exports. "The world is no longer forced to look
for its fortunes within the old US-centric order."
(p 181)
Central banks around the world are
accumulating reserves in euros and precious metals
and abstaining from buying US dollars. Diminishing
US access to oil and gas contrasts with a
bewildering web of Russian agreements with
energy-producing countries that aims to achieve an
"economic encirclement of the West." (p 131) The
fundamental decay in the US economy is expediting
the ascendance of the Russian-led bloc.
The Iran-US standoff has great
geopolitical stakes for Russia and China. For
Moscow, "the US must actually be stopped
somewhere, and Iran is the red line". (p 152)
Russian radars, weapon systems and missiles in
Iranian and Syrian possession can complicate any
US or Israeli attack. Iran's leadership claim over
the Middle East is being "sponsored by greater
powers rivaling the US". (p 162) Stroupe predicts
that "if the US militarily strikes Iran,
geopolitical forfeiture to Russia-China would be
the unavoidable result". (p 163) It would trigger
even higher oil and gas prices and hand Moscow a
huge economic windfall.
In East Asia,
ongoing realignments of South Korea and Japan
toward Russia on the basis of energy security and
multilateralism are thinning America's hold.
Stroupe remarks that "axis of evil" crises drive a
wedge between US allies and shift power to the
Russia-China pole. Moscow and Beijing use Iran,
Syria and North Korea as proxies to undermine
US-led unipolarity.
Since 2000, Japanese,
South Korean and Southeast Asian exports to China
have been galloping while those to the US are
stagnating. Two-thirds of China's exports are
heading now to non-US destinations even as
domestic Chinese consumption increases its share
in the country's overall economic growth.
Stroupe sends a chilling message that if
economic warfare ever broke out between the US and
China, the latter could cause an accelerated Asian
exit from the dollar to other currencies while the
former's dependence on cheap imports would leave
it with no ability to retaliate with tariffs or
embargoes on Chinese commodities.
Russia's
core strength lies in its marshaling of oil and
gas alliances. Through state-owned Gazprom and
Transneft, Moscow is extending its sway over
strategic energy resources far beyond its borders
and forming a "de facto multinational
confederation with global reach" that is different
from a typical cartel. The confederation is
cohesive and self-sufficient, comprising both
producer states and consumer states, with Russia
as the underwriter.
The producer countries
in this confederation are "resource-based
corporate states" with domestic political
repression similar to that in Russia and China.
The confederation supports preferred markets and
customers and excludes the liberal West.
Energy-based cross-investment between producer and
consumer states cements the internal unity of the
confederation. For instance, the Russo-German
Baltic Sea pipeline is heavily financed by Berlin,
but Russia also invests in German gas companies.
From Russia's standpoint, the inordinate
advantages afforded to the West in prior energy
agreements with producer states are obsolete. In
President Vladimir Putin's words, "No one-sided
solutions will be accepted." (p 235) For producer
states, the current US-backed global oil-market
arrangement is less preferable to the solid
guarantee of stable and reliable demand offered by
reverting to the pre-1973 state-to-state long-term
supply contracts. Nervous consumer states such as
China and India are also keen on abandoning the
US-benefiting global market and pursuing the
Russian-run assured supply route.
State-to-state energy agreements are
politically hued and help Russia "cheat the
American constellation of its stars". (p 271)
Stroupe credits New Delhi-Beijing energy
cooperation to Moscow's facilitation, as
"deterioration in Sino-Indian relations is a
regional catastrophe for Russia". (p 252)
Significantly, Russia couples arms sales with
energy supplies to clients either to crush
indigenous opposition or to withstand invasion by
the US.
Perched atop the new
confederation, if ever provoked, Russia will be
able to "single out the US for a targeted oil
embargo", devastating the latter's already
emasculated economy. Putin's moves to launch a new
oil-and-mineral bourse denominated in the ruble
will also amplify the dollar's calamitous fall.
Stroupe concludes that reliance on foreign
supply of strategic resources is the Achilles'
heel of the Anglo-American pole as well as the
lever to power for the Russian-led confederation.
Since China-India cooperation is a crucial
requirement for the confederation to stand up to
the US, he reasons that New Delhi's "economic
interests and fortunes lie much more with its
Asian and Russian partners than with the US". (p
308) Washington lacks the cards to lure either
producer states or Asian consumer states such as
India away from the Russian camp. The writing on
the wall is thus an epitaph for unipolarity.
Though logically sound in its thesis,
Stroupe's book could do with some qualifications.
First, the impression that Russia and China have
absolutely no domestic economic flaws that can mar
their march to match the US is erroneous. Russia
still has a huge underclass (more than 20%) of
impoverished people and enormous income
inequalities that threaten social stability.
China's banking system is moribund, and its
regionally unbalanced growth has implosive omens.
Second, how much of the Sino-Indian
strategic rivalry can be subsumed by synergies in
the field of energy? Internal divisions within a
loosely structured "confederation" are bound to
exist, especially due to the abiding grip of
nationalism and differing attitudes toward the US.
The anti-Americanism of some of the
confederation's adherents is evident, but others
such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey could be fifth
columnists of Washington to sabotage the second
pole. Stroupe excels in warning not to
underestimate Russia, but he should not totally
underestimate the defender of unipolarity.
Russian Rubicon: Impending Checkmate of
the West by Joseph Stroupe. Global Events
Magazine, 2006. ISBN: 0-9789068-0-2. Price:
US$21.95, 319 pages.
(Copyright 2006 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and republishing
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sitting up and
taking notice of how the Russian bear is
opportunistically wrestling to divest the United
States of its world hegemony.
