What about ‘the rise of Japan and new China’?
Another curious perspective that Brzezinski averred is that the 500 years of Atlantic dominance will end as Japan and China rise. Does this mean Sino-Japanese leadership will topple Anglo-American hegemony?
The Japanese government has acted exactly in the opposite direction to Brzezinski’s prophecy. Tokyo wants to maintain its political subordination to the US as long as possible. Even if the US hegemony does collapse, Japan doesn’t seem to contribute to the post-US polycentric world order. Her policies started to become more autarkic in character, as if she just wants to wait for US’s resurrection. In the wake of fiscal disaster in the US, in 2009 Tokyo increased its budget for “cooperation expenditure for US Forces realignment” by 3 folds. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was delighted to contribute more to the US.
Since the 1970s, Brzezinski has looked down on Japan since it “has no mind to participate in international politics but only remain a vassal state of the US”. Japan doesn’t seem to care. Brzezinski’s “Japan and new China” may in fact mean “new China”, such that he may have used “Japan” in order to avoid labelled a Sinophile.
His analysis on East Asia became famous with his article called “Eurasian Geopolitics”, appeared on Foreign Affairs in 1997. (Foreign Affairs) He called the Eurasian continent as a “giant geopolitical chessboard” and adumbrated how the US may rule this vast continent. Many read this article as a belligerent statement for domination, but its true objective was a grand stabilisation strategy by incorporating Russia, China and Japan to the NATO. It was thus crucial that the US cooperates with China. In 1998, Clinton turned this idea into reality when he visited China while skipping Japan – a key ally to the US. After the subsequent Republican administration, the Democratic government would once again rely on Brzezinski, such that this thesis from the 1990s is regaining its validity. A “pan-Eurasian security scheme” is becoming a reality in the form of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation + Six-Party Talks (on North Korea).
Who serves as the bridgehead?
Ruler of Eurasia is the ruler of the world. In this sense, Brzezinski is a typical Cold War strategist, or an underdog of the military-industry complex. However, how he suggests to rule Eurasia is unique. The post-WWII US diplomacy had been based on the strong alliance with Britain (west of Eurasia) and Japan (east of Eurasia), and contain the continent itself. Brzezinski wants to advance the bridgehead toward inland. The new key partners should be the emerging EU (Franco-Germany) and an Asian regional power (China). With the two regional powers on America’s side, the Eurasian continent will be stabilised.
This is particularly daunting to Britain. If the EU grows further, Britain’s influence in Europe will be weakened. Such EU connecting directly with the US would mean even worse. Same can be said to Japan, if the US connects directly with China. Both Britain and Japan are politically Russophobes but the EU and China are much friendlier to Russia. As the US values EU and China more, America’s policy on Russia will inevitably have to become more cooperative. Washington’s global strategy then becomes polycentric.
Brzezinski often speaks against Bush and Chaney. In practice, they ran Brzezinski’s strategy, antagonising the rest of the world. Brzezinski is the mother tree of neoliberal politics that manifests the just military action by Uncle Sam. Its Republican version is the neocon. Brzezinski, Scowcroft, and Kissinger – they all argue similar policies, that US to (over)act strong America which eventually leads the world to politically awaken in an anti-US character.
Currently, policy makers in Washington don’t endeavour to democratise China. They allowed the Olympic Games in Beijing and the World Expo in Shanghai while China kept its communist dictatorship. In the 1970s, Brzezinski was a presidential attaché in the Carter administration, which normalised relationship with China after Nixon’s visit to Beijing. Brzezinski was always behind Carter’s China policy and supported China’s re-entry to the international community, much in the same way that Nixon and Kissinger did. His focus on China is clear. If Japan improves its relation with China and Russia, and adjusts itself to the polycentric new world order, it is Brzezinski’s “the end of Atlantic leadership by the rise of Japan and new China”. If Japan refuses to improve its Chinese relations and stubbornly resorts to the traditional subordination to the US, Obama would overlook Japan and instead emphasise on the G2 with China.
