Washington Denies Reality of “Spheres of Influence”--a New Pinnacle of Hypocrisy
Graham E. Fuller, February 2022
The
Biden administration recently issued an incredibly naive statement
--rewriting history and the nature of international relations-- when
Blinken informed Moscow that "spheres of influence should be relegated
to the dustbin of history." So Ukraine can’t possibly lie lie within
Russia’s security and influence sphere. Take that, Putin!
This pronunciamento by the State Department sets new records for US chutzpah.
The reality is, virtually the entire history of American foreign policy
is nothing if not an exercise in exerting its own “spheres of
influence.”
Of
course it all goes back to1823 when the young republic of the United
States proclaimed its "Monroe Doctrine" which declared the entire
Western Hemisphere off limits to European colonial projects; any outside
intervention into the political affairs in the Western hemisphere would
be treated as a direct threat to US interests. For most of the rest of
the century Washington continued to expand its "Manifest Destiny”
across the country, down into Mexico and invading Canada several times
during the war of 1812. US spheres of influence were being clearly set
that expanded to Cuba, Central America, later to the Phillipines and the
rejection of any Japanese hegemony in the Pacific.
But
the real turning point came at the end of World War II when the US
found itself the “last man standing” in the postwar global wreckage.
Washington then went on to become the de facto hegemon of almost all
the rest of the world. Overthrowing regimes the US did not like became a
basic tool in the arsenal of US foreign policy. Only here and there in
the Cold War did Washington fall into competition with the Soviet Union
for spheres of influence around the developing world. In the Middle East
we still see long-running US efforts to keep all major foreign powers
out (except Israel). Indeed, the main source of American fury against
Syria and Iran over long decades has been their open refusal to yield to
US pressures and fall into line.
So
it is with some astonishment that today we see Washington--a supreme
practitioners for over a century of exercising spheres of influence--now
denouncing the practice--at least when such spheres are claimed by
others. Indeed a key source of US confrontation with China today has
been Beijng’s temerity to gradually take steps to develop East Asia as
its own de facto sphere of influence, a growing reality--although China
would reject the term.
Would
that the world was not that way. It would be nice if small countries
had just as many rights as large ones. But the quest for hegemony by
large and even medium powers is the way of the world.
Indeed
we must sympathize with smaller states that suffer from such exercise
of hegemonic power by powerful neighbours. A former president of Mexico
once remarked, ”Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United
States." Canada still struggles to develop policies genuinely
independent of Washington, economically and internationally.
To
be a small country like Nepal or Sri Lanka in the shadow of India is
never easy. Nor is it for the many small states in the growing shadow
of China. Or for those in the shadow of Russia like the Baltics and
Ukraine. All these small countries feel perpetually vulnerable to
outside great power pressure. And they are in permanent quest
of any external power who might lessen the influence of their Great
Power neighbours over them. One can sympathise, but Fate and history
placed them where they are and physical geography cannot be changed.The
world may not like to formally acknowledge spheres of great power
influence, but everyone knows they are there. To declare they "no longer
exist" is naive, hypocritical, disingenuous --and, if you really
believe it, dangerous.
The
nature of Great Power spheres of influence can vary--including total
domination to simply a minimal demand that small neighbours be ever
mindful of the Great Power’s interests.
International
politics can occasionally contest economic spheres of influence. But
when it moves into the realm of military contestation or challenge, as
the US is doing in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, or the desire to
militarily encircle Russia, the game becomes far more dangerous.
American spheres of influence are by definition not negotiable, although
everyone else’s are. That is today most of what NATO is all
about--Europe must have an “Atlanticist” geopolitical vision focused
primarily on Washington’s needs, never a European vision. Europeans are
sternly lectured if there is any talk of an independent European
foreign. American hegemony in Europe is called NATO. And its future in
doubt.
Can
we imagine how the US would respond if Russia or China sought to
establish zones of military power or influence near the US? Yet that was
what the Cuban missile crisis was all about. A Chinese military
presence in Canada or Mexico would evoke extreme reaction in
Washington. Indeed there are hints now that China or Russia might seek
to brush back America's drive to push NATO up to Russia’s very borders.
Responses could include exercising greater diplomatic or even armed
military presence closer to US borders.Tit for tat.
We
would do well to drop the approach to Russia that “what's mine is mine,
but what’s yours is negotiable.” Here the example of Finnish neutrality
has served everyone well since the end of World War II. Let Ukraine,
that sits on Russia’s very border as the former cultural centre of the
ancient Russian state, be hereby defined as neutral, a geopolitical pawn
of neither East nor West. We cannot realistically deny a major sphere
of influence to Russia there, only to then seek to place Ukraine
under Washington's own armed sphere of influence.
For
Moscow of course all this is not just about theoretical geopolitical
concepts of Western threats. Don’t forget Russia has suffered repeated
devastating encounters with invading Western armies that laid waste to
Russian lands--by Napoleon whose army burned Moscow in 1812. Hitler did
much the same in invading Russia in 1943, ultimately leading to the
deaths of over 30 million--30 million-- Russians in World War II.
History is easily forgotten, if ever even learned.
Finally
Washington would be well advised to abandon its own ideological crusade
against Russia--its cold geopolitical power moves clothed in a ringing
call for the “spread of democracy.” "Democratization" becomes a weapon
against US enemies. Yet somehow Washington never really seeks to bring
democracy to its authoritarian friends.
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Graham Fuller is a former CIA operations officer and vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council for long term forecasting.