Eftychis John Gregos-Mourginakis:
Washington, D.C., April 13, 2012 - If you believe the pundits over the recent news cycle, Mitt Romney is a political dinosaur thrashing about in some Cold War tar pit. The former Governor made the apparent error of criticizing President Obama’s open microphone faux pas in South Korea, in which the President appeared to promise Russian President Medvedev a conciliatory stance on missile defense issues after the 2012 election. Romney moved aggressively in front of the story. He declared that Russia is “America’s greatest geopolitical foe” and criticized President Obama’s negotiating as shortsighted. By and large, the media, dismissed Governor Romney’s perspective. The Obama administration and its surrogates have mirrored the remarks made by President Medvedev’s who said in response to Governor Romney, “we are in 2012 and not the mid-1970s.”
If we look beyond the veil of Mr. Medvedev’s Statesmanship, as Governor Romney has done, Russia does indeed present itself today as America’s greatest adversary. Since the early 2000s, the Kremlin has been motivated by a neo-mercantilist zero-sum ideology and an associated paranoia that has led it to continually and effectively antagonize the United States and her allies.
Today, Russia presents a relatively unimportant bilateral economic partner for the United States. Indeed, the recent shale gas revolution in the US will likely further decouple North American hydrocarbon commodities from global energy markets over the medium term. This American energy revolution will diminish the importance of Russia’s ‘energy weapons’ in the eyes of American policy makers. Many in DC view Moscow’s remaining influence as little more than the glow from a power for whom the sun has already set. Russia’s growing internal ethnic and political strife, the increasing tensions in its Southern Caucuses, and an ever more uncontrollable border with northern China have made governing an increasingly impossible job for Moscow’s bureaucrats.
The leadership in Moscow, evermore unable to control domestic events beyond the Central Federal District, has become increasingly reactionary and paranoid. The collapse of commodity prices in late 2008 and the associated deflation of United Russia’s political fortunes, has exacerbated the Russian plutocratic worldview that they find themselves encircled by the US, NATO and her Azeri and Georgian allies in a 21st century ‘great game.’
Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s disastrous reset policy was predicated on an inability for seemingly anyone in the White House to empathize the sentiment of the Russian elite. US attempts at reconciliation fail to take into account that Russian diplomats are convinced that the world is a chessboard on which there can be no win-win relationships.
This pervasive ideological temperament of Russian leadership has led to both Russia’s outspoken diplomatic support of and its impressive economic and material support for the totalitarian regimes in Iran and Syria. Both regimes provide important markets for Russia’s defense industry as well as a counterbalance against America’s Arab allies in the region. President Medvedev also must recognize the correlation between his party’s own political fate and the price of world energy prices, the calculation in Moscow to stoke tensions in the Middle East thereby must be a relatively easy one. Indeed, Russian support for the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela, among other things, provides a means for Russian retribution for America’s support for the Republic of Georgia, a classic cold-war era tit for tat.
Perhaps Moscow’s most disturbing current policy is their continuing to stoke ethnic tension in the 20-year-old Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Russian intentions here are clear: by keeping the conflict alive it provides justification for the Russian airbase in Armenia, a valuable flanking asset for the Kremlin’s war-planners should they instigate another war with the Republic of Georgia; the tensions hinder the construction of more direct pipelines from Azerbaijan through Armenia and into Turkey, making vulnerable Georgian territory the only export channel for Caspian energy resources; by keeping the conflict alive, Russia hinders the ability of Turkey to reassert its prominence across the Turkmen populations of the Caspian basin and beyond historical Asia-Minor, a development that would surely effect the balance of power in the region and one which over time could present an existential threat to Russia’s influence over all of the Black Sea, the Southern Caucuses, and the Caspian; should this latter development occur, Gazprom, Russia’s de facto state gas utility would find itself with little future gas supply as Russia’s own domestic fields run dry over the next two decades.
Turkey does not present the only threat to Russia’s economic fortunes. Fear of an expanding Chinese sphere of influence is the impetus behind Putin’s renewed push for a Central Asian Union. Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have historically provided a buffer between Chinese expansionism and Russian territorial integrity, but today these countries increasingly find China as their major trading partner, thanks to China’s insatiable demand for Central Asian hydrocarbon fuels and rare earth metals. The effect of China’s economic coziness with the Central Asian states has been to diminish the influence of their former Russian masters, making more probable the possibility that within a decade, these states will for the first time since the rise of the Russian Empire, have no need for Russia’s transit routes to western markets.
While the intentions and actions of Russia outlined above can be readily gleamed from public sources, the Obama Administration has evidently ignored their development. Instead of working to check Russian actions that raise the price of commodities, hurt American consumers, and impede global economic growth and security, President Obama has been increasingly conciliatory and apologetic toward the Russian regime.
Disturbingly, instead of working with America’s Chinese partners, who too bear the brunt of Russian belligerence, the President has embraced a policy that is now highly antagonistic toward Beijing. The Obama administration began its tenure with a series of encouraging steps toward Chinese engagement. Yet, now, the President’s recent visit to the Korean DMZ and the Department of Defense’s very public force re-posturing toward the Pacific all indicate that Washington is actively pursuing a policy of containment against an expansive China.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration is miscalculating. Indeed, America’s relationship with China is fairly symbiotic, intellectual property issues aside, both nations economic fates are intertwined. While this may change over time, as it is seen today, the relationship between China and the United States is closer to one of competition and cooperation than it is to belligerence.
One key area of cooperation for both countries may be in a shared understanding that their interests are incompatible with those of Moscow.
To that point, policymakers in Beijing and Washington should pay more attention to the constant stream of anti-American rhetoric and Chinese paranoia on display on the Kremlin’s propaganda mouthpiece, Russia Today. The channel espouses an endless stream of misinformation that would make Tokyo Rose blush.
After a thorough review of Moscow’s actions it is plain that Governor Romney is not off base, he is spot on. Indeed, his comments may have indicated an important breakthrough for his political fortunes, from that of Governor and Candidate to that of a true Statesman worthy of the grand geopolitical stage. Governor Romney’s comments, while horrifying for the apologists in the Obama White House, would make President Reagan proud. Governor Romney, as President Reagan did, recognizes that the regime in Russia can only effectively stir the geopolitical pot when the rest of the world legitimizes their behavior and provides them moral equivalency.
Mr. Medvedev, perhaps it is you who should look at his watch, it is 2012, it is time for your government to should stop acting like it is 1973.
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Eftychis John Gregos-Mourginakis is the Executive Director of the Young Transatlantic Conservative Alliance