its
governing institutions, have no say in the
decisions of those institutions and do not see
themselves as having any real stake in that
liberal order, and they are actively reverting to
the rigid bilateral long-term supply contract in
their energy dealings across the globe, This locks
up (and makes inaccessible to the US-led liberal
order) a increasing portion of global supply and
reserves.
The liberal order the US
absolutely relies on for its strategic energy
security is already being circumvented and
undermined for the sake of the private and
ever-more frantic energy security interests of the
rising economies of the East. As experts are
increasingly warning in their
testimonies before the US Congress, the US is
racing along the trajectory toward less energy
security in the near future than it had in the
1970s. There are no exits for the US from that
entirely ominous trajectory.
By the latest figures,
the West's oil majors control less than 10% of all
global oil reserves, while the vast majority (over
70%) of those reserves is controlled by state oil
companies within regimes that place US interests
literally at the bottom of their priorities.
Additionally, ever deeper cross-investment and
political-diplomatic agreements between those
regimes, and between those regimes and the rising
economies of the East, place the US ever more
fully outside a new, durable and exclusive circle
of energy security centered around the East. This
is an entirely new development that the US did not
face in the 1970s.
During the 1970s, the US
dollar was not under any tangible threat of losing
its international role and dominance. Today, the
opposite is true. Other currencies continue to
chip away at dollar dominance while the enormous
reserves of the rising East are progressively but
rapidly re-balanced out of the dollar.
The
globe's oil and gas producers and the key
economies of Europe and the Americas continue to
pursue ever more determined "Look East" policies.
Additionally, new oil-and-gas bourses denominated
in currencies other than US dollars are opening
and will continue to open in 2007, further
undermining global dollar dominance. These and
other developments represent real and mounting
threats to the dollar and to the US economy as the
global economic center continues to shift to the
East.
During the 1970s, the US
was the largest creditor nation in the world and
thereby enjoyed the maximum of economic and
political independence and a resulting massive
degree of leverage against both friends and rivals
alike.
While the US was apparently
recovering completely from its Vietnam/OPEC
embargo era troubles, it was simultaneously buying
that apparent recovery at the incalculable expense
of forfeiting completely its economic and
political independence and the massive global
leverage that accompanied them, becoming the
largest debtor nation in the world. The US relies
massively on foreign cash inflows and financing to
keep the economy solvent. This development has
severely limited its leverage, both economically
and politically, against friend and foe alike.
Already colossal and
rapidly mounting US public and private debt has
pushed the US deeply into a genuine impasse. If it
attempts to resolve its debt through devaluation
of the dollar it seriously risks alienating the
foreign economies that are crucial to keeping it
afloat, and risks a concerted global exit from the
dollar and a resulting US economic crash. If it
continues to do little or nothing to resolve its
worsening debt, deficits and imbalances it risks
an eventual loss of international confidence in
its economy and currency and all the negative
repercussions that would accompany that
eventuality. The US was in no such impasse in the
1970s.
The consequential but
temporary decline of US leverage on the world
stage in the 1970s did not create a power vacuum
that could readily be occupied by its rivals for
even the medium term. Why not? In the aftermath of
the Vietnam quagmire and US economic troubles of
the 1970s, the Soviets attempted to fill the
vacuum by making one-dimensional hard power moves
such as invading Afghanistan in 1979.
That
amounted to Soviet over-reach and resulted in a
costly quagmire, with US help. It was a
short-sighted and stupid move for the Soviets,
who, along with the mounting economic over-reach
resulting from the arms race (also with US help),
were dooming their empire to early collapse.
Therefore, the US was not
facing a smart rival in the 1970s and 1980s, one
that understood how to adroitly, asymmetrically
ply its strengths in multiple dimensions
simultaneously, and multi-laterally along with its
key allies, against US vulnerabilities, to curb US
power at little cost to itself but simultaneously
at great cost to the US. The US is facing such a
rival presently in the East, one that is actively
and resiliently filling the vacuum left by the
contraction of US global leverage, very smartly
capitalizing on US troubles. Conversely, US
leaders continue to display a shocking degree of
short-sightedness, unrestrained tendencies toward
one-dimensional, unilateralist, overly-muscular
thinking and rank stupidity, with no relief on the
horizon.
In the 1970s the US was
not facing the virtual abandonment of its key
allies around the globe in order to ally more
closely with the East. Today, the US is facing
global realignment wherein it has trashed and/or
severely neglected its key global alliances
resulting in its crucial allies in Latin America,
Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia
and Southeast Asia progressively but rapidly
realigning with the rising East in the key spheres
of the economy, energy, security and diplomacy.
The US gets only shallow
cooperation around the globe these days. This
further undermines already declining US global
leverage and helps assure the collapse of that
leverage will be virtually permanent.
For
all the irrefutable reasons above, and much more,
the current global situation and deepening US
troubles are fundamentally different, and far
worse, than those of the 1970s. They bespeak an
already consequential and largely non-recoverable
loss of US global leverage, and the impending loss
of much more of that leverage along with the
severe weakening of the very underpinnings of its
position of global dominance.
Distorted perception is not
reality
Even those
who passionately disdain US-led unipolarity have
generally fallen victim to the fog-inducing
effects of the increasingly irrelevant new
theories discussed earlier and have (erroneously)
resigned themselves to live under US-led
unipolarity for the foreseeable future.
They
tend to "see" the US as virtually invincible, or
at least as still towering almost irreversibly far
above all other powers. They erroneously assume
any credible challenge to US global dominance must
come from a power (or powers) of nearly equal or
greater size as compared to the US itself. Hence,
laboring in that fog, the majority of observers
"see" the possibility of the arising of a new Cold
War between East and West as largely irrelevant
for the simple reason that the East is not yet
"seen" even remotely as a real match for the size
and power of the US global hegemon and for the
West in general.
Why would the East,
possessing comparatively mini-sized global power,
be so foolish as to embark on the
"self-destructive" course of opposing the West in
a new Cold War? Most persons have tended to
conclude that it would not embark on such a futile
course and that it is not now doing so.
Fog in place of clarity To illustrate the
proven effect of the new theories in fogging up
the ability to see and think clearly about the
real meaning and significance of global
developments, consider the fact that only of late
(generally only in the past several months) has it
finally been discerned across the globe that a
renewed Great Game over control of strategic
global resources is in fact being played out
between East and West.
This
is despite the handwriting on the wall clearly
proving the existence of that renewed Great Game
in 2001/2002, when the US began an accelerated
program of proliferating its military bases
throughout resource-rich regions of the world.
Largely due to the effects of
the new theories that disdain the supposedly
"simplistic" and "Cold War" logic of a renewed
fundamental East-West rivalry, the world at large
usually doesn't "get it" with respect to the
fundamental meaning of global developments until
some lone but dramatic event occurs which finally
shocks the world out of its theory-induced
idealistic bubble back into stark reality. Yet,
for those who cared to look starkly with their own
eyes at the entire picture as it was and is, not
as they might wish it were, the real meaning of
ongoing developments is clear long before that
lone but dramatic event occurs.
The
same is true with respect to Russia's mounting
global energy leverage - that wasn't understood or
accepted by the world at large until the
"shocking" event of the cutting off by Russia of
Ukraine's gas in December/January, 2005/2006. In
fact, before that dramatic event the majority
tended to ridicule the idea of growing Russian
global energy leverage as largely a "conspiracy
theory". Yet, a relative handful of us have been
documenting and warning of Russia's mounting
global energy leverage, based completely on
verifiable facts, since before 1999.
Consequently, the track
record for accurate analysis and forecasting on
the part of those holding to the new theories is
largely an ignominious one, worthy mostly of
ridicule. They utterly failed to predict, or even
to recognize as it was occurring, the renewed
Great Game between East and West over strategic
resources, Russia's great advancement and
advantage in that game, its ongoing and alarming
energy-based rise, the likelihood of the very
multi-dimensional global over-reach and
unprecedented isolation the US finds itself in
currently.
They also missed the falling
of the vast majority of the world's energy
resources under the control of increasingly
anti-US authoritarian regimes, and many other
developments of great consequence as regards
sharply declining US power and the rising leverage
of the East on the global stage. Not only did they
fail to predict or even see these developments as
they actually unfolded, but by and large they were
caught predicting and asserting the precise
opposite than what has actually occurred.
Why
should that miserable track record continue to
command respect as regards the issues discussed
here, namely whether or not a new Cold War is now
arising and whether or not the rising East can
successfully shift the US out of its global
position of dominance via exploitation of key US
strategic vulnerabilities?
If
your characteristically upbeat doctor had
repeatedly either misdiagnosed as minor
conditions, or entirely missed a string of
potentially fatal illnesses over the preceding
seven years, including cancer and heart disease,
why would you continue to trust his habitually
rosy prognosis for the coming months and years?
Why keep trusting the in-denial, fanciful analysis
of those who have repeatedly proven they possess
little understanding of the genuine meaning and
trajectory of world events?
Wide
acceptance of the new theories of how the world
supposedly works since 1991 has only fogged the
view and clouded the fundamental,
below-the-surface issues and forces that continue
to drive events now just as they did during the
old Cold War. As the fashionable theories come and
go, one thing remains the same: global
developments continue to move in the direction of
East-West re-polarization with control over energy
as the catalyst accelerating the division.
Whoever controls the
resources controls everything in this highly
industrialized world. Hence, two main geopolitical
poles have once again become locked into a contest
for that control. Many assume the US cannot really
lose the game any time soon.
But
is the possibility of shifting the US colossus out
of its global position of dominance truly
unfeasible, or nearly as thorny a task as it is
generally assumed to be?
US power: Image vs reality? It is entirely
appropriate at this juncture to ask a series of
questions designed to re-calibrate our thinking to
be more in line with the reality of the current
global situation:
What if US-led
unipolarity turns out to be a mere temporary
aberration, not the new entrenched reality
asserted by the new theories? What if US troubles
on the world stage actually do signify, not merely
a temporary downturn, but rather a strategic loss
of global power, an ongoing, largely self-induced
multi-dimensional (economic, political, military,
diplomatic, ideological, moral) over-reach and a
resulting irretrievable forfeiture of a
consequential sum of its global leverage, as
detailed here?
Could such ongoing,
deepening US troubles, coupled with certain
clever, opportunistic and insidious asymmetric
strategies hatched in the East and expertly
directed against US strategic vulnerabilities,
catch the US colossus massively off guard,
resulting in the ability of a rising multifarious
East to push the colossus past the tipping point
as respects a loss of its global dominance?
Increasing numbers of
informed leaders and experts who are charged with
oversight and protection of US national security
are using such terms as "economic catastrophe" and
are sounding an ever louder alarm about the
increasing exploitation and the potential
exploitation by the East of key US
vulnerabilities, such as its huge foreign energy
dependence, its gigantic foreign cash and
financing dependence and its massive dependence on
high-tech computers, networks and satellites.
During the old Cold War the
West was united against a common foe, but when the
Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Cold War
was won, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
and the West went looking for a new foe and a
reason to remain united as "The West".
It
didn't find a sufficiently threatening,
galvanizing foe, and the naturally varied
interests, goals and approaches to the world's
problems between the US and its traditional allies
began to surface. Additionally, the US itself
became the problem, from the viewpoint of Europe,
Asia, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America as
it pursued its self-serving, increasingly
unilateralist and overly-muscular foreign, and
short-sighted domestic economic polices. Lacking a
common galvanizing foe and being handed instead a
new and divisive foe (the US itself), the West
began to fracture and its key states began to
realign toward the rising East, to such an extent
that at present the US enjoys only a very short
list of determined, loyal allies.
Hence, this can be called the
neo-West - much reduced in net size and power as
compared to before, much more fractious, enjoying
far less independent economic and political power
and inordinately energy-dependent and
cash-dependent on the rising East.
Additionally, the rising East
is playing its energy, economic, ideological,
diplomatic and geopolitical cards very smartly,
gathering to itself strategic partners of key
importance around the globe, spreading its
influence deep into the realm of the old West.
Consequently, this can be called the neo-East, the
rising multifarious East. In any renewed contest
(a neo-Cold War) between the neo-West and the
multifarious East, the equations describing the
genuine global leverage of each contestant have
radically changed - this time around the pertinent
question would be whether the neo-West has any
real chance to win against the multifarious East.
Next:
Asymmetric challenge to the US colossus
W
Joseph Stroupe is author of the new book
entitled Russian Rubicon: Impending Checkmate
of the West
and editor of
Global Events Magazine online at
www.GeoStrategyMap.com.
