European Geostrategy | 0:11, 2 September 2009
By Luis Simón
History tells us that multipolar orders tend to be less stable than unipolar or bipolar ones. Having spent the last sixty years under the blanket of bipolarity and then unipolarity, it is time for Europeans to think about how the coming multipolar international system will affect their geopolitical standing. This post aims to contribute to that.
Geostrategic contingency planning is the art of anticipating a geostrategy in a given geopolitical environment. It therefore projects how the geopolitical environment is likely to evolve; it is contingent in that it must deal with important unknowns. It is, by definition, a speculative exercise, yet a crucial one. Among the most important unknowns we face when trying to predict the geopolitical evolution of the world in the coming decades are, arguably, the pace and nature of China and India’s rise; America’s long term commitment to remain actively engaged globally; the evolution of Russia; and the political take-off of the European integration project – or, for that matter, the demographic sustainability of any potential European global power.
Geostrategic contingency planning contains an important dimension of uncertainty. This said, it is safe to assume that the emerging multipolar system will be roughly quadripolar: the United States, China, India and the European Union. The values and internal workings of each of those power centres will surely present considerable differences. Yet, their behaviour will by and large determine the evolution of the international system.
Three of these powers – China, India and the European Union – are situated in the Eurasian landmass. The other one – the United States – is not. It should therefore follow that the role of ‘offshore balancer’ in the twenty-first century is likely to correspond to the United States, by virtue of geography. This certainly is a causal correlation very much present in the minds of a great deal of American realists. To them, their secure position in the Western Hemisphere, guarded by the two great oceans of the world, makes the United States the natural offshore balancer for Eurasian geopolitics.
But if geography is the most permanent of all factors in international politics, we cannot neglect history or geostrategic and geoideological path dependencies – at play for over six decades. These offer Europeans a fantastic opportunity to occupy the offshore balancer seat themselves. In contrast to the rather inward-looking Europeans, the United States remains presently engaged around the Pacific-Rim –heavily committed to the defence of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, among others. After all, Eastern Eurasia, including China and India, is part of America’s geostrategic neighbourhood.
Yet, out of the four emerging centres of global power, it is the European Union that actually sits furthest away from the Far East, a region likely to experience the highest degree of geopolitical tension in the twenty-first century. This distant proximity does not mean that Europeans should be indifferent to this dynamic region – far from it. The European Union must remain wary of geopolitical events around the Asian rim, and maintain a sufficient degree of forward presence to guarantee the flow of European trade and energy supplies. But it must do this while it simultaneously attempts to avoid taking sides in the emerging struggle involving the United States (and its allies, Japan and South Korea), China and India.
Europeans must remain passively vigilant towards the geopolitical destinies of the East Asia-Pacific zone and make sure they stay clear of the ‘containing China’ bandgwagon. Preventing China or, for that matter, any other power from dominating the resources of Eastern Eurasia is surely in the European interest. Yet, unfolding geopolitical alignments (notably the growing closeness between the United States and India) may suffice in guaranteeing an acceptable balance of power in the region. This geopolitical struggle will sap a great deal of resources from the Americans, Chinese and Indians, which may give the European Union a free ride closer to home, allowing Europeans to consolidate their position in their extended proximal zone.
To be sure, neutrality in East Asia would offer Europeans important advantages, trading and otherwise. For one thing, it would facilitate an understanding with China in those regions where Beijing is propping up its presence and where Europeans have vested interests – namely Africa and the Middle East. For Beijing, securing Europe’s neutrality in East Asia would be an important geopolitical objective in itself. Hence, this offshore status would offer Europeans an advantageous position vis-à-vis China in the regions surrounding the European Union. Further, this balancer status and brokering quality would allow Europeans to help alleviate and downplay potential tensions among the other great powers.
Indeed, the Union could aspire to become the ultimate power broker, the geopolitical arbiter of the twenty-first century. Europeans would be in a fantastic position to co-ordinate efforts aimed at engineering collective solutions to common security concerns (i.e. WMD proliferation, organised crime in any of its forms, climate change, etc.). It would be at the vanguard of most collective enterprises – among them, most notably, the United Nations system. In this sense, the bet on notions such as Effective Multilateralism or peacekeeping is not a necessarily naïve one, provided it is accompanied by a broader sense of geostrategic awareness.
As such, it is of the utmost importance that Europeans do not become entangled into the power games of the three main East Asian powers. For this, the European Union must buffer away Eurasia and consolidate its position in its neighbourhood and near abroad while limiting the influence of the other great powers there.
In this regard, Russia represents a particularly challenging element in the Union’s geopolitical calculations. Some in Europe continue to argue that Russia may eventually be integrated into some sort of European sphere. This is certainly a possibility, even if a long way off in the future. Much ink has also been devoted in the past to the question of the European vocation of Russia. But, leaving aside Moscow’s reticent attitude to joining a political union with Europeans on the basis of equal footing, it is not at all very clear how any sort of political entity stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok would be in the European interest either. For that would effectively make Brussels a direct player in the Far East, throwing the lucrative prospect of offshore balancer down the toilet.
Ironically, it might be in the European interest for Russia to retain an autonomous space of its own in the Eurasian Heartland. This way, Russia can serve as a buffer against any future overspill of insecurity or conflict in Eastern Asia or the Pacific-Rim into the European continent.
In contrast to the passive vigilance that the geopolitical situation in the Asia-Pacific region recommends, the Union should pursue a more robust strategy in its neighbourhood and near abroad just beyond. The expansion of Brussels political influence in its neighbourhood – places such as Ukraine, the Caucasus and North Africa – should be accelerated through a combination of integration and quasi-integration schemes. A maritime ‘forward presence’ will also be required in the Arctic region, an area which will most likely serve as an alternative trading route between Europeans and Asia only a few decades down the line. Also, Europeans must considerably bump-up their influence over their ‘near abroad’ – namely the Sahel belt and Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and, most crucially, the Middle East.
In this regard, bringing Turkey into the Union is a geopolitical must and Europeans should not underestimate the geopolitical importance of this issue. Not only would it become a valuable asset in the Union’s struggle for energy diversification; it would also provide for a stronger European presence in the Caucasus. Perhaps even more importantly, Turkey would make the ideal vehicle for bolstering the Union’s involvement in the Middle East. With Turkey on board, Europeans would more easily downplay the old phantoms of European-Islamic antagonism, to which revisionist power seekers in the region so commonly resort. These phantoms too often stand in the way of better governance, prosperity and stability in the Middle East – three preconditions for European security.
Finally, being as they are in the fine line that separates the European near and further abroad regions, the Indian Ocean and Central Asia will most severely test the Union’s ability to navigate active engagement and passive vigilance within its nascent geostrategic framework. At sea the former, on land the latter, these two areas are of direct geopolitical relevance to Europeans – as well as important scenes for American, Chinese and Indian posturing.
So can Europeans play the role of offshore balancer in the twenty-first century? Only if they begin buffering Eurasia to balance East Asia. This approach should place the European Union in an advantageous position as the geopolitical arbiter of the world, an initiating force for any collective endeavour aimed at addressing common problems and downplaying geopolitical tensions among the other emergent great powers.
• Credit to The Lesson Plan for picture.
