Reading Brzezinski 2

This is the second half of Brzezinski article.

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. 

Reading Brzezinski 1

This is the first half of Brzezinski article. Second half follows soon.

The Prophecy

Zbigniew Brzezinski has been the leader of the Democratic foreign policy department, and is an advisor to President Obama. He published an interesting thesis in 2008. In his The Global Political Awakening, he adumbrated the loss of US leadership and assumed intensified global disagreements on the environment, society and economy. He writes, “For the first time in history, nearly all of humanity become politically active, politically awakened, and politically connected”, “the worldwide political craving for cultural dignities and economic development, suppressed so far by the colonial rule and imperial domination, will rise”, “in the past 500 years, the Atlantic basin was the centre of the world but it will end with the rise of Japan and new China. India and Russia may follow”. The Global Political Awakening (IHT)

Brzezinski has pronounced the phrase “global political awakening” already in his 2003 book ‘The Choice’. Now that he is Obama’s policy advisor, the worldwide political awakening has noticeably intensified. We are witnessing that US hegemony has declined,  the dominance of the West is coming to an end, rise of anti-US movements in the Islamic world and South America, followed by riots in the US and Britain. It seems the global political awakening is real. Unrests in Greece have spread to other European nations such as France, Italy, Spain, Denmark and Sweden. The global financial crisis continues to jeopardise the pension systems in Europe. Generous social security and welfare system that Western Europe has proudly maintained are facing a collapse. Political turbulence in Europe is likely to stay.

Report reveals pension schemes will collapse (Independent.ie)

It is in the New York capital owners’ interest to politically awaken the colonised peoples and create a number of new nation states. The industrial revolution should spread to all corners of the Earth so that the world economy will grow faster. In Brzezinski’s words, the multi-polarisation of the world (as against US’s single hegemony) has its objective in the pursuit of cultural dignity and economic opportunities across the globe. Colonialism has suppressed the liberal development in the industrialising countries. Political awakening would boost nationalism that favours industrial growth. Goldman Sachs has predicted that the world’s middle class population would explode to 2 billion. It is a dream-come-true for international capital owners.

Boom time for global bourgeoisie (The Financial Times)

Multi-polarisation would have another advantage. In the past 50 years, the industrial complex that has supported the alliance between US, Britain and Israel has strived to destabilise many fragile nations. The rise of Russia, China or the Islamic world would counterbalance the destabilising effect of the triple alliance. Without the provocation by the alliance, anti-US Islamism would not have risen.  On a surface level, Brzezinski posits Anglo-centricism or ‘international cooperationism’, which sits in the opposite end of the multi-polarism. According to him, the US must occupy the core of the international system. Only the US is able to lead the world such that the world would be thrown into chaos if the American leadership is lost. His ideology remains arrogant. The same line of argument is observed in the Managing Global Insecurity (MGI) Report, written by Madeleine Albright who was a student of Brzezinski. A new era of international cooperation for a changed world (Brookings Institute)

Both the Brzezinski thesis and the MGI report agree that the world is becoming polycentric. There, he argues that the G8 has become a passé. Cooperation with the G20 or the BRICs will be the future form of global governance, in which leaders from the US, EU, Japan, China, Russia and India must deepen informal dialogues to nurture trust. The incumbent superpower US and the next potential China have to share the responsibility to lead the world. Since his thesis is based on his lecture at the Chatham House (Royal British Institute for International Relations), he described ‘Europe’ as Britain and Germany and France. However, in his 1997 thesis on Foreign Affairs magazine he assumed the players of the European integration were Germany and France.

A geostrategy for Eurasia (Foreign Affairs)

Balkan, the Middle East, and Israel

Phillip Stevens, a columnist for the FT, has also written about the transnational political awakening in the third world, inspired by the internet and satellite broadcasts. He thinks the reason why the world looks chaotic these days is because our (=the West’s) value system is obsolete. Borrowing the words from Brent Scowcroft (Republican strategist), “[P]reviously fragile regions of the Balkans, the Middle East and central Asia have awakened.” Scowcroft participated in the making of the MGI Report. Both Brzezinski and Scowcroft see the emerging world order centred on several regional powers as a positive development.

(A political awakening that recasts the global landscape)

Since Brzezinski is a White House advisor, it is likely that his strategy becomes Obama’s strategy. Brzezinski thesis argues that the US should immediately commence negotiation with Iran, as well as with the moderate faction within the Taliban. Priority is Palestine – US ought to support a new demilitarised Palestinian state, whose borders are protected by the NATO security forces. Israel must accept the division of Jerusalem, while it may keep some of the settlements in the area. Both parties would need to agree on the abandon the refugees’ right to return in exchange of financial compensation.

Effectively, this means Israel’s right to exist will be guaranteed if it accepts to give up some of its occupied territories. Nevertheless, it is unconceivable that European nations would send their battalions as the NATO forces. All over the Middle East, Islamism is on the rise. Europe would not accept a dirty job for Israel. Politically, Israel is losing its joker.