Brzezinski, Zbigniew - The Geostrategic Triad, Living with China Europe and Russia (2000).pdf - Zbigniew Brzeziński - philosophia

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

1 LIVING WITH CHINA

2 LIVING WITH A NEW EUROPE

3 LIVING WITH RUSSIA

NOTES

GEOPOLITICAL REALITIES

STRATEGIC PRIORITIES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FOREWORD

HOW SHOULD THE UNITED STATES DEFINE ITS INTERNATIONAL engagement with the rest

of the world? More than a decade after the abrupt collapse of the Soviet Union, and more than a decade after

the renunciation of authoritarian political systems and statist economic policies in key developing countries, a

national consensus on how the United States as "hyperpower" should navigate in the world is as elusive as ever.

How can we explain the irony that the United States, at the moment of uncontested geostrategic

preponderance, has no comprehensive basis for engaging the rest of the world?

There are a number of reasons. First, much of the public debate on American international engagement is cast

in iconic terms that may satisfy embedded political interests but do little for positioning the United States to

capitalize on a dynamic global environment. In the post-Cold War period, the critical issues have become

increasingly complex. New challenges have been superimposed on traditional issues. A constellation of global

forces is calling long-standing sovereign prerogatives and capabilities into question. All this defies bumper-

sticker articulation.

Second, the absence of a broad consensus has provided a greater opportunity for special interest groups to

impose their priorities on the policymaking process. The result is a centrifugal process that cuts into the

capacity of leaders to formulate and carry out balanced and consistent policies.

Third, in the context of today's real-time news culture, political leaders are confronted with making

complicated decisions based on a multitude of factors in ever shorter time frames. The "CNN effect" makes

crises across the world immediately relevant to leaders who in the past would not have been affected by those

developments. The pressure for instant policy declarations and formulation has grown tremendously. As a

consequence, leaders have less time to think carefully about longer-range trends, confer with knowledgeable

individuals, and contemplate approaches that are longer term and integrated in nature.

Fourth, the organizational "stovepipe" phenomenon of specialized jurisdictions, competencies, and interests

across the U.S. government (as well as other governments) is creating increasingly segmented analyses of

developments across the world. It is also generating turf battles and gridlock, infighting and paralysis, and lack

of constancy of purpose. The constraints created by these organizational rigidities certainly apply to the range

of traditional national security and foreign policy issues confronting the United States. But they are most

pronounced when it comes to crosscutting global issues such as globalization, proliferation of weapons of mass

destruction, HIV/AIDS and the cross-border movement of other infectious diseases, and other similar forces.

Fifth and last, the debate in both academia and the public policy community on how to position the United

States relative to the rest of the world has been no more productive. Despite Herculean attempts to identify

paradigms for U.S. engagement within a broader strategic framework, no overarching theory has emerged, no

comprehensive strategy has succeeded in attracting political consensus, and no approach has enabled the

systematic prioritization of American interests and objectives.

Together, these five elements have limited the capacity of leaders to think in "strategic" terms—to assess

relations with key states in a comprehensive fashion, weigh both primary and derivative effects of proposed

policies, cast relations in a long-term time frame, and develop nn integrated approach to how Washington can

and should define its relations with the world. The challenge is clear: American leaders must weigh all

dimensions of complex relationships, assign priorities to highly complex and sometimes competing objectives,

and fashion a strategy through which those priorities can be achieved.

For these reasons, Zbigniew Brzezinski's unique geopolitical insight is all the more valuable. Over the course

of his remarkable career in government and the public policy arena, Dr. Brzezinski has consistently

distinguished himself as a truly strategic thinker by grounding his analysis in historical understanding,

exploring how sets of relations between countries can and should be calibrated with other sets of relationships,

advancing conclusions that are global in scope, and focusing on longer-range developments and trends. In

addition, he has consistently attacked the questionable assumptions and iconic thinking that have characterized

public debate on some of the big issues of our times.

Dr. Brzezinski's analysis is testament to the fact that even in today's real-time decisionmaking environment, it

is possible to formulate and prosecute a strategy based on a forward-looking, interdisciplinary approach.

This monograph captures such an approach. The conceptual staging point for the analysis that follows is that

the success of U.S. international engagement in the early twenty-first century will be conditioned largely by the

United States' relations with Eurasia—the world's central arena of world affairs—and in particular with China,

Japan, Russia, and Europe. In short, Dr. Brzezinski asserts, the United States needs a well-defined

transcontinental strategy to maneuver effectively in the twenty-first century. More specifically, he points to two

"Eurasian power triangles" that Washington must develop as an organizing structure for its future engagement:

the first between the United States and the European Union and Russia, and the second between the United

States and Japan and China.

This monograph lays out Dr. Brzezinski's thinking on the considerations that should underlie each of these

power triangles. For obvious reasons, each of these relationships involves separate and independent

considerations. But they also share an important characteristic: Of the two countries other than the United

States in each triangle, only one recognizes its stake in international stability. In the United States-Japan-China

triangle, Tokyo clearly is pursuing regional and international policies that reflect an interest in security. Beijing,

however, continues to favor more or less drastic alternations in the geopolitical calculus. The same applies to

Russia in the context of the United States-European Union-Russia triangle. The European Union, conversely,

serves with the United States as the axis of global stability. Also significant, as Dr. Brzezinski notes, is the

important contrast between the two "non-stake" countries in the respective triangles. Beijing's economic

progress suggests an altogether different set of priorities than the dire challenges—ranging from economic to

health and demographic—facing Moscow.

In managing these differing sets of relationships, the challenge to Washington is to fashion a longer-range

vision of its interests and role in Eurasia. That implies, of course, an outward-based strategy building on

relations with our allies in Europe and Japan. In this context, a number of looming policy issues—NATO

expansion, European integration, the development of an autonomous European defense capacity, the balance

between Washington, Tokyo, and Beijing, cross-Strait relations—are likely over time to test traditional

security, political, and economic relations. A longer-range vision also implies detailed and differentiated

strategies for dealing with Russia and China.

What makes Dr. Brzezinski's analysis so significant is the clear and comprehensive conceptual road map he

offers to address these issues. With these essays, he has articulated a strategy for the cornerstone of U.S.

policy—our relations with Eurasia—as we move forward into the millennium. In so doing he has made a

significant contribution at ë significant time, and CSIS is pleased and proud to be able to publish this volume.

The three chapters that make up this volume were first published in successive issues of the National Interest,

and we thank its editor, Owen Harries, who is also a senior associate at CSIS, for permitting us to incorporate

those separate articles into a single volume.

JOHN J. HAMRE

President and CEO, CSIS

January 2001

CHAPTER ONE. LIVING WITH CHINA

EURASIAN POLITICS HAVE REPLACED EUROPEAN

POLITICS AS THE central arena of world affairs. Once European

wars became evidently threatening to America, there was no

choice for America but to inject itself into European politics in

order to prevent new conflicts from erupting or a hostile European

hegemony from emerging. Thus America's engagement in world

affairs was precipitated during the twentieth century by European

politics. Today, it is the interplay of several Eurasian powers that

is critical to global stability. Accordingly, America's policy must

be transcontinental in its design, with specific bilateral Eurasian

relationships woven together into a strategically coherent whole.

It is in this larger Eurasian context that U.S.-China relations

must be managed and their importance correctly assessed. Dealing

with China should rank as one of Washington's four most

important international relationships, alongside Europe, Japan,

and Russia. The U.S.-China relationship is both consequential and

catalytic, beyond its intrinsic bilateral importance. Unlike some

other major bilateral relationships that are either particularly

beneficial or threatening only to the parties directly involved

(America and Mexico, for example), the U.S.-China relationship

impacts significantly on the security and policies of other states,

and it can affect the overall balance of power in Eurasia.

More specifically, peace in Northeast and Southeast Asia remains dependent to a significant degree on the

state of the U.S.-China relationship. That relationship also has enormous implications for U.S.Japan relations

and Japan's definition—for better or worse—of its political and military role in Asia. Last but not least, China's

orientation is likely to influence the extent to which Russia eventually concludes that its national interests

would best be served by a closer connection with an Atlanticist Europe; or whether it is tempted instead by

some sort of an alliance with an anti-American China.

For China, it should be hastily added, the U.S.-China relationship is also of top-rank importance, alongside its

relations with Japan, with Russia, and with India. In fact, for China the Beijing-Washington interaction is

indisputably the most important of the four. It is central to China's future development and well-being. A

breakdown in the relationship would prompt a dramatic decline in China's access to foreign capital and

technology. Chinese leaders must carefully take into account that centrally decisive reality whenever they are

tempted to pursue a more assertive policy on behalf of their national grievances (such as Taiwan) or more

ambitious global aspirations (such as seeking to replace American "hegemony" with "multipolarity").

In essence, then, in the complex American-Chinese equation, Beijing should be prudent lest its larger

ambitions collide with its more immediate interests, while Washington must be careful lest its strategic

Eurasian interests are jeopardized by tactical missteps in its handling of China.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

It follows that the United States, in defining its longer-term China policy and in responding to the more

immediate policy dilemmas, must have a clearly formulated view of what China is, and is not. There is,

unfortunately, enormous confusion in America on that very subject. Allegedly informed writings regarding

China often tend to be quite muddled, occasionally even verging toward the hysterical extremes. As a result, the

image of a malignant China as the inevitably anti-American great power of the 2020s competes in the American

public discourse with glimpses of a benign China gently transformed by U.S. investors into an immense Hong

Kong. Currently, there is no realistic consensus either among the public or in the Congress regarding China.

Brzezinski, Zbigniew - The Geostrategic Triad, Living with China Europe and Russia (2000).pdf

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