Let's Get Our Superpowers Straight by Fareed Zakaria

March 26,1997

Let's Get Our Superpowers Straight
By Fareed Zakaria

Two simple facts define the geopolitical landscape today -- Russian weakness and Chinese strength. In the North Atlantic, across Eurasia, in East Asia, these two realities form the backdrop against which daily events occur, from the chaos in Albania to the cautiousness in Hong Kong. Yet increasingly the Clinton Administration's foreign policy looks as if it were intended to meet precisely the opposite challenges.

As Russia continues its political bumbling, economic muddling and military retrenchment, the Administration is spending vast amounts of time, energy, money and political capital to deter it from launching an invasion of Central Europe.

China, on the other hand, is surging economically, bulking up its armed forces and becoming more assertive by the day. Yet the United States has scaled back its military capability in the region, relying instead on good will and engagement with Beijing.

The diplomatic excursions of the last week perfectly symbolized the Administration's outlook: No sooner did President Clinton return from Helsinki, having informed Boris Yeltsin that NATO would expand whatever the outcome of their talks, than Vice President Al Gore was off on his trip to Beijing, toasting business deals.

Russia today is not a great power, but a great power vacuum. Its economy is half the size of what the Soviet Union's was, and it has declined continuously now for five years. Political instability in Moscow and the regions persists, and the present state of the Russian army, warns a recent report by a private Moscow think tank, "can only be described as a catastrophe."

Those who always worry about Russia reflexively insist that these crises are temporary, that Russia will return as a great power, as it always has. But has it? Czarist Russia was never an economic powerhouse, either agriculturally or industrially. And, other than World War II, Russia's record in power politics is one of failure followed by failure: the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, World War I and the cold war.

Today Russia's borders are farther away from Central Europe than they have been for centuries. Even if we were to see the renewal of Russian expansionism in the next decade, the countries being considered for first-tier membership in NATO would not be vulnerable to attack. Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states are at greater risk, but no one really expects them to become NATO members in the foreseeable future. Indeed, it is unlikely that they will ever be made members precisely because they may face a real threat.

The historian A. J. P. Taylor said the Treaty of Locarno of 1925, in which Britain and Italy promised to defend France and Belgium, "rested on the assumption that the promises made in it would never have to be made good -- otherwise the British Government would not have made them."

NATO is now willing to make a similar guarantee to Hungary only because it, too, is assumed to be totally unnecessary. That is why Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott can assert that the movement closer to Russia's borders of the most powerful military alliance in the world does not actually threaten Russia. As Tweedledee says, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be: but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."

Our problems with Russia all stem from its weakness: the danger of chaos within Russia and on its Central Asian borders; the fear of its losing control of its nuclear arsenal; a breakdown in relations between the military and the Government. President Clinton has been able to bully the Russians into accepting NATO expansion only because they are too weak even to maintain the rhetoric of obstruction. This, of course, raises the question of why they need to be contained in the first place.

All the while, of course, China continues its relentless economic march. In the last five years growth has averaged almost 12 percent, with exports rising even faster. Much of this expansion is in low-cost, labor-intensive goods, but increasingly China is gaining access to high technology, often aided by the Chinese diaspora in East Asia.

The Chinese military, too, is a growth industry. The People's Liberation Army is the largest in the world; it boasts the third-largest nuclear arsenal in terms of delivery vehicles. China's defense budget, a subject of great speculation, is probably around $30 billion and growing by 10 percent each year. The army's rapid reaction force has increased tenfold, to 200,000 troops. These trends are likely to continue because keeping the military happy is an important way to maintain power in Beijing, as Prime Minister Jiang Zemin has readily recognized.

This economic and military expansion is occurring in a region where other countries' economies and militaries are already bursting with growth. (Indonesia, for one, is building up its armed forces at a steeper rate than China.) Beijing has troubled relations with many of its neighbors; of the 14 with whom it shares land borders, four have disputed boundaries: Russia, North Korea, Tajikistan and India. Additionally, as the China scholars Andrew Nathan of Columbia University and Robert Ross of Boston College have written, "China's territorial interests overlap with those of 24 other countries."

American problems with China all relate to Chinese strength: the military buildup, increasing chauvinism, mercantilist economic policies, refusal to sign international agreements on proliferation. If a great power's potential for trouble is judged on the basis of a combination of its capabilities and intentions, China can only be rated a graver threat than Russia.

China is not a rogue superpower, mainly because it is not -- and is unlikely to become -- a superpower. Thus a policy of containment would be premature and unworkable. But the United States must increase its military presence to stabilize East Asia. This is the surest way to deter China from attempts at expansionism such as a military takeover of Taiwan.

Yet the Administration seems to assume that talking with Beijing can produce results on issues from trade to human rights, even as it whittles down our military deterrent. The United States has virtually no military forces left in the Philippines and has reduced its presence in Japan. Washington diplomats have already begun murmuring that if and when Korean unification takes place, American troops will not be able to stay in Korea, since China will object.

Thus if the Clinton Administration's policies are successful, 10 years from now a large, well-equipped American-led force will be in place on the central plains of Europe, fully capable of deterring a paralyzed Russia. Meanwhile, American military power and political influence will have been steadily shrunk in East Asia, the site of the rise of the world's next great power. Perhaps each policy on its own terms might seem plausible, but taken together the two add up to a global grand strategy that is topsy-turvy.