[Re: Romney’s stand on Russia as Foe Number 1] Comment on John Arquilla JRL #179

Mit Romney file photo

From: Jake Kipp <jacobkipp@cs.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2012
Subject: Comment on John Arquilla JRL #179

[DJ: Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Kansas, former Deputy Director, School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth]

I just read John Arquilla’s piece applauding Romney’s stand on Russia as Foe Number 1. Although I am a great admirer of his work on cyber war, I must take issue with his analysis on this issue.  The two areas that he cites as reasons for conflict with Russia  are Russia’s positions on Syria and Iran. Has he checked lately where the People’s Republic of China stands on these two issues? For a good period of time Moscow and Beijing have been coordinating their diplomacy on these issues. Neither supports military intervention to resolve either crisis.

Picking on Russia in this case, amounts to going after the weaker partner, under the assumption that it has no diplomatic options but to give in and sanction another Western “humanitarian intervention.” We seem to forget that Putin came to power in the aftermath of the NATO Humanitarian Intervention in Kosovo, which effectively marked the end of US-NATO cooperation for a significant period of time. Putin’s geo-strategic response was a coup de main military assault in response to renewed insurgency in Chechnya.

Romney’s picking Russia as enemy number one is a simple case of myopic nostalgia. It can be very comforting until you have to admit that renewed Cold War would mean renewed nuclear confrontation.  Perhaps no one has told Romney that all the investment in ABM defense since Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative has reduced US vulnerability o counter value strikes by Russia.  One assumes President Romney’s first brief on the SIOP will make these matters clear.

Professor Aquila suggests that Romney does not like Obama’s pivot to the Pacific and implies this means China has become foe number one for this administration. I see no evidence of that. Indeed, I see a sober awareness of the mutual entanglements of the US and PRC economies, which make such geopolitical definition of opponents worse than silly. Mr. Romney has promised to talk tough to China on currency issues when he come into the White House. If after that touch talk, at the first sale of US treasury bonds that China does not buy will mean that President Romney will face catastrophic inflation at home. Put this into the looming fiscal cliff we already face, and the Republican candidate can put us all back to a global mess worse than that which followed Kreditanstalt collapse in 1931. But even outside of that, does Mr. Romney understand that driving Russia into isolation could create the incentive for a Sino-Russian geopolitical understanding? That would effectively put the Eurasian heartland under the geostrategic control of that axis. In that case, the projection of power would not be maritime but would require ground power. The extraction of NATO forces from Afghanistan might prove even more complex than the mess it already looks like. Of course, the world call always intervene. Some of us remember the geo-strategic re-orientation that Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld had in mind before 9/11. It looked very much like a pivot to the Pacific.

Finally, when  Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about the coming Russian -American contest in 1835, China was an object of imperial intervention by Western Powers.  The world of the 21st century has changed.  We need  a vision for a new century, not an American century, or a Chinese century, but a global century.

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