Graham E. Fuller (bozorgg@aol.com)
6 February 2022
The Biden administration recently issued an incredibly naive statement –rewriting history and the nature of international relations– when Blinken informed Moscow that “spheres of influence should be relegated to the dustbin of history.” So Ukraine can’t possibly lie lie within Russia’s security and influence sphere. Take that, Putin!
This pronunciamento by the State Department sets new records for US chutzpah. The reality is, virtually the entire history of American foreign policy is nothing if not an exercise in exerting its own “spheres of influence.”
Of course it all goes back to1823 when the young republic of the United States proclaimed its “Monroe Doctrine” which declared the entire Western Hemisphere off limits to European colonial projects; any outside intervention into the political affairs in the Western hemisphere would be treated as a direct threat to US interests. For most of the rest of the century Washington continued to expand its “Manifest Destiny” across the country, down into Mexico and invading Canada several times during the war of 1812. US spheres of influence were being clearly set that expanded to Cuba, Central America, later to the Phillipines and the rejection of any Japanese hegemony in the Pacific.
But the real turning point came at the end of World War II when the US found itself the “last man standing” in the postwar global wreckage. Washington then went on to become the de facto hegemon of almost all the rest of the world. Overthrowing regimes the US did not like became a basic tool in the arsenal of US foreign policy. Only here and there in the Cold War did Washington fall into competition with the Soviet Union for spheres of influence around the developing world. In the Middle East we still see long-running US efforts to keep all major foreign powers out (except Israel). Indeed, the main source of American fury against Syria and Iran over long decades has been their open refusal to yield to US pressures and fall into line.
So it is with some astonishment that today we see Washington–a supreme practitioners for over a century of exercising spheres of influence–now denouncing the practice–at least when such spheres are claimed by others. Indeed a key source of US confrontation with China today has been Beijng’s temerity to gradually take steps to develop East Asia as its own de facto sphere of influence, a growing reality–although China would reject the term.
Would that the world was not that way. It would be nice if small countries had just as many rights as large ones. But the quest for hegemony by large and even medium powers is the way of the world.
Indeed we must sympathize with smaller states that suffer from such exercise of hegemonic power by powerful neighbours. A former president of Mexico once remarked, ”Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.” Canada still struggles to develop policies genuinely independent of Washington, economically and internationally.
To be a small country like Nepal or Sri Lanka in the shadow of India is never easy. Nor is it for the many small states in the growing shadow of China. Or for those in the shadow of Russia like the Baltics and Ukraine. All these small countries feel perpetually vulnerable to outside great power pressure. And they are in permanent quest of any external power who might lessen the influence of their Great Power neighbours over them. One can sympathise, but Fate and history placed them where they are and physical geography cannot be changed.The world may not like to formally acknowledge spheres of great power influence, but everyone knows they are there. To declare they “no longer exist” is naive, hypocritical, disingenuous –and, if you really believe it, dangerous.
The nature of Great Power spheres of influence can vary–including total domination to simply a minimal demand that small neighbours be ever mindful of the Great Power’s interests.
International politics can occasionally contest economic spheres of influence. But when it moves into the realm of military contestation or challenge, as the US is doing in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, or the desire to militarily encircle Russia, the game becomes far more dangerous. American spheres of influence are by definition not negotiable, although everyone else’s are. That is today most of what NATO is all about–Europe must have an “Atlanticist” geopolitical vision focused primarily on Washington’s needs, never a European vision. Europeans are sternly lectured if there is any talk of an independent European foreign. American hegemony in Europe is called NATO. And its future in doubt.
Can we imagine how the US would respond if Russia or China sought to establish zones of military power or influence near the US? Yet that was what the Cuban missile crisis was all about. A Chinese military presence in Canada or Mexico would evoke extreme reaction in Washington. Indeed there are hints now that China or Russia might seek to brush back America’s drive to push NATO up to Russia’s very borders. Responses could include exercising greater diplomatic or even armed military presence closer to US borders.Tit for tat.
We would do well to drop the approach to Russia that “what’s mine is mine, but what’s yours is negotiable.” Here the example of Finnish neutrality has served everyone well since the end of World War II. Let Ukraine, that sits on Russia’s very border as the former cultural centre of the ancient Russian state, be hereby defined as neutral, a geopolitical pawn of neither East nor West. We cannot realistically deny a major sphere of influence to Russia there, only to then to seek to place Ukraine under Washington’s own armed sphere of influence.
For Moscow of course all this is not just about theoretical geopolitical concepts of Western threats. Don’t forget Russia has suffered repeated devastating encounters with invading Western armies that laid waste to Russian lands–by Napoleon whose army burned Moscow in 1812. Hitler did much the same in invading Russia in 1943, ultimately leading to the deaths of over 30 million–30 million– Russians in World War II. History is easily forgotten, if ever even learned.
Finally Washington would be well advised to abandon its own ideological crusade against Russia–its cold geopolitical power moves clothed in a ringing call for the “spread of democracy.” “Democratization” becomes a weapon against US enemies. Yet somehow Washington never really seeks to bring democracy to its authoritarian friends.
===================
Graham Fuller is a former CIA operations officer and vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council for long term forecasting.
Washington Denies Reality of “Spheres of Influence”–a New Pinnacle of Hypocrisy
February 7, 2022 by Graham E. Fuller • Uncategorized • Tags: China, Russia, Sphere of Influence, Ukraine, US foreign policy •
Graham E. Fuller (bozorgg@aol.com)
6 February 2022
The Biden administration recently issued an incredibly naive statement –rewriting history and the nature of international relations– when Blinken informed Moscow that “spheres of influence should be relegated to the dustbin of history.” So Ukraine can’t possibly lie lie within Russia’s security and influence sphere. Take that, Putin!
This pronunciamento by the State Department sets new records for US chutzpah. The reality is, virtually the entire history of American foreign policy is nothing if not an exercise in exerting its own “spheres of influence.”
Of course it all goes back to1823 when the young republic of the United States proclaimed its “Monroe Doctrine” which declared the entire Western Hemisphere off limits to European colonial projects; any outside intervention into the political affairs in the Western hemisphere would be treated as a direct threat to US interests. For most of the rest of the century Washington continued to expand its “Manifest Destiny” across the country, down into Mexico and invading Canada several times during the war of 1812. US spheres of influence were being clearly set that expanded to Cuba, Central America, later to the Phillipines and the rejection of any Japanese hegemony in the Pacific.
But the real turning point came at the end of World War II when the US found itself the “last man standing” in the postwar global wreckage. Washington then went on to become the de facto hegemon of almost all the rest of the world. Overthrowing regimes the US did not like became a basic tool in the arsenal of US foreign policy. Only here and there in the Cold War did Washington fall into competition with the Soviet Union for spheres of influence around the developing world. In the Middle East we still see long-running US efforts to keep all major foreign powers out (except Israel). Indeed, the main source of American fury against Syria and Iran over long decades has been their open refusal to yield to US pressures and fall into line.
So it is with some astonishment that today we see Washington–a supreme practitioners for over a century of exercising spheres of influence–now denouncing the practice–at least when such spheres are claimed by others. Indeed a key source of US confrontation with China today has been Beijng’s temerity to gradually take steps to develop East Asia as its own de facto sphere of influence, a growing reality–although China would reject the term.
Would that the world was not that way. It would be nice if small countries had just as many rights as large ones. But the quest for hegemony by large and even medium powers is the way of the world.
Indeed we must sympathize with smaller states that suffer from such exercise of hegemonic power by powerful neighbours. A former president of Mexico once remarked, ”Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.” Canada still struggles to develop policies genuinely independent of Washington, economically and internationally.
To be a small country like Nepal or Sri Lanka in the shadow of India is never easy. Nor is it for the many small states in the growing shadow of China. Or for those in the shadow of Russia like the Baltics and Ukraine. All these small countries feel perpetually vulnerable to outside great power pressure. And they are in permanent quest of any external power who might lessen the influence of their Great Power neighbours over them. One can sympathise, but Fate and history placed them where they are and physical geography cannot be changed.The world may not like to formally acknowledge spheres of great power influence, but everyone knows they are there. To declare they “no longer exist” is naive, hypocritical, disingenuous –and, if you really believe it, dangerous.
The nature of Great Power spheres of influence can vary–including total domination to simply a minimal demand that small neighbours be ever mindful of the Great Power’s interests.
International politics can occasionally contest economic spheres of influence. But when it moves into the realm of military contestation or challenge, as the US is doing in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, or the desire to militarily encircle Russia, the game becomes far more dangerous. American spheres of influence are by definition not negotiable, although everyone else’s are. That is today most of what NATO is all about–Europe must have an “Atlanticist” geopolitical vision focused primarily on Washington’s needs, never a European vision. Europeans are sternly lectured if there is any talk of an independent European foreign. American hegemony in Europe is called NATO. And its future in doubt.
Can we imagine how the US would respond if Russia or China sought to establish zones of military power or influence near the US? Yet that was what the Cuban missile crisis was all about. A Chinese military presence in Canada or Mexico would evoke extreme reaction in Washington. Indeed there are hints now that China or Russia might seek to brush back America’s drive to push NATO up to Russia’s very borders. Responses could include exercising greater diplomatic or even armed military presence closer to US borders.Tit for tat.
We would do well to drop the approach to Russia that “what’s mine is mine, but what’s yours is negotiable.” Here the example of Finnish neutrality has served everyone well since the end of World War II. Let Ukraine, that sits on Russia’s very border as the former cultural centre of the ancient Russian state, be hereby defined as neutral, a geopolitical pawn of neither East nor West. We cannot realistically deny a major sphere of influence to Russia there, only to then to seek to place Ukraine under Washington’s own armed sphere of influence.
For Moscow of course all this is not just about theoretical geopolitical concepts of Western threats. Don’t forget Russia has suffered repeated devastating encounters with invading Western armies that laid waste to Russian lands–by Napoleon whose army burned Moscow in 1812. Hitler did much the same in invading Russia in 1943, ultimately leading to the deaths of over 30 million–30 million– Russians in World War II. History is easily forgotten, if ever even learned.
Finally Washington would be well advised to abandon its own ideological crusade against Russia–its cold geopolitical power moves clothed in a ringing call for the “spread of democracy.” “Democratization” becomes a weapon against US enemies. Yet somehow Washington never really seeks to bring democracy to its authoritarian friends.
===================
Graham Fuller is a former CIA operations officer and vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council for long term forecasting.