Symmetrical

We have returned to the geopolitics of the Cold War. It has become fashionable once more to speak in terms of “containment” and “deterrence.”

The first Cold War ended when the Soviet Union broke up. After that cataclysmic event, the West celebrated the emergence of the unipolar world. Liberal democracy has triumphed – or so we all thought. Political theorists spoke of “the end of history” with optimism.

It was in such a celebratory climate that the West, in the nineties, encouraged Ukraine to turn over its rather substantial nuclear force back to Russia. The old superpower, after all, seemed to be moving towards some form of democratization and some degree of modernity. This was all before Putin happened and the romanticization of the old Russian empire was reborn.

The optimism, it turns out, was not very well founded. Despite some significant gains in nuclear disarmament negotiations, Russia continued developing its first-strike nuclear weapons capability. Moscow continued to think in terms of maintaining a buffer zone of contiguous countries that the Kremlin wants to remain submissive to Russian dictate.

While the triumphalist West pursued a strategy of inclusion and cooptation towards the former Soviet republics, Moscow seethed over the fact that NATO was moving closer to its borders. The Russian mind feels naked without surrounding itself with acquiescent countries.

When Russia attacked Georgia, annexed a large part of its territory and ensured a submissive regime there, the West did not take this as a signal of renewed expansionism. In 2014, Russia annexed parts of Ukraine, including Crimea, in a disguised military maneuver.

Most of Europe, however, continued reducing military forces. They imagined this was the peace dividend they earned by winning the Cold War. The US has to keep pressuring the Europeans to keep their military spending at two percent of GDP.

Then in February 2022, a large Russian military force assembled on the border under the guise of “military exercises” and invaded Ukraine. The invasion force managed to overrun large parts of the country, including the suburbs of Kiev, before being turned back by Ukrainian resistance. About a fifth of Ukraine, however, remains under Russian occupation.

The NATO countries were unable to respond in adequate force, given that most European countries had been keeping their militaries lean. Instead, the West imposed layers of economic sanctions against Russia for this act of aggression, hoping that economic isolation would break Moscow’s expansionist will. Russia is now investing about seven percent of its GDP in military spending – and this will soon tell on its ability to meet her people’s needs.

The West took the same attitude towards China. With its spectacular economic growth, Western analysts believed that a burgeoning middle class will create fertile ground for some form of democratic political order.

This expectation, it turns out, was unfounded. Under the grip of the Communist Party, China maintained tight social controls even as it allowed a free-wheeling economy. Strict censorship was maintained. A comprehensive surveillance apparatus was put in place as digital technologies evolved.

Moreover, China was spending lavishly in building its own military prowess. Not only does it have the world’s largest standing army, its naval force should now have overshadowed the US Navy. The armed forces of China are well-trained and well-equipped. It has progressed far over the army that saw action in the Korean War, reliant on human wave tactics in the battlefield.

Together, Russia and China are capable of challenging the global political order that the West imagined had become unipolar after 1990. Both are nuclear powers maintaining large conventional forces. Both, in alliance, seek to redefine the global geopolitical order according to their own terms.

It took a while for the Western powers to shed their delusions about a unipolar world. Today, they are scrambling to contain the expansionist tendencies of both Russia and China.

The expansionist tendencies of both Russia and China are almost symmetrical. Russia is pushing westward towards the original NATO borders. China is pushing eastward towards Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Russia, by itself, does not have the industrial capacity to match its grand vision of rebuilding the old empire. It is China that provides the economic muscle for this partnership. Short of a total financial collapse owing to over-investment in an overheated property sector, China will continue to provide for the technological needs of this partnership.

In the coming period, all the major trade and investment policies of the West will be governed by the dynamics of the new Cold War. We see that in the constraints imposed by the US on leading Chinese high-tech companies. It is nearly certain, regardless of the outcomes of the presidential elections in the US, that tariffs on Chinese exports will be raised. To contain China’s expansionist impulses, her economic prowess will have to be tamed.

The symmetrical equivalent of Ukraine in the east is Taiwan. The self-governing island nation is claimed as a province by China even if it was never governed by her in all of recent history. Beijing has been threatening to invade Taiwan for years.

Unfortunately, the Philippines is caught up in the revival of Cold War geopolitics. We are at the receiving end of Beijing’s consolidation of control over the South China Sea. We are part of the “first island chain” that is essential to deterring Chinese expansionism.

This is the reason Manila has been receiving such global attention lately.