The US new defence strategy officially pushes the Pentagon into confrontation with China and Russia. It is possible that this will even make some people happy: the Cold War is remembered as a time when everything was quite clear. But history does not repeat itself. Or rather, it is possible to bring back aggression and militarization of that era. But not its orderliness.
The Pentagon’s document accurately reflects the new world outlook symbolised by Trump. The post-Cold War era, when the US unexpectedly became a world hegemon, is over. “For decades the the US has enjoyed uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain. We could generally deploy our forces wherever we wanted, assemble them where we wanted and operate how we wanted. Today, every domain is contested – air, land, sea, space and cyber-space.” And the challenges the US faces today come primarily from competition with major powers, rather than just “pariahs”, terrorists and extremists targeted by the defence strategy of 10 years ago, or global processes, climate, demography and so forth. “Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in US national security.” A return to the classic pattern of international relations and the setting of traditional objectives.
It must be said that liberal world order discourse – a positive sum game which honours interdependence instead of competition, economy above security – has never been taken seriously in Moscow. The “balance of power” idea, the basic realpolitik notion, appears several times in the new US defence strategy. In Russia, it has always been part of the nation’s political thinking and rhetoric, while the West at some point started to view it as an anachronism. Now Russia and the US are once again using the same conceptual language.
The fact that Russia has been clearly identified as a competitor, will come as a surprise to few people. In our country we have never (except for a very short “rosy” period at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s) thought otherwise and have regarded statements to the contrary as hypocrisy. Now rhetoric matches reality. And the strategy’s emphasis on the need for technological rearmament allows Russian generals to demand more funding for similar purposes.
In form, Russian-US relations have returned to the Cold War model: military competition, a potential arms race and deterrence. In reality, the international situation is polycentric, chaotic and diverse. That is why the resurrection of a common language – balance of power, national interests, and so forth – does not mean it is possible to revive the mechanisms of ensuring global stability that worked 40 years ago.
Trump’s America has entered a period of readjusting its position in the world. Time has come for the US to move from global leadership and the role of global regulator to a foreign policy aimed at ensuring concrete national interests. A key element of this transition is the emphasis on power as a means of ensuring not global US leadership, but global superiority and the ability to advance US interests in every way possible. Power means, first and foremost, classic military power and its buildup requires convincing foes. And here Russia is virtually irreplaceable. Both psychologically – the Cold War-era inertia is very strong – and practically, as Russia’s growing military potential makes it a “credible” threat. Thus, competition with Russia is predetermined.
Another aspect is the US sense of vulnerability in the face of globalization threats, its permeability to outside influence. Russia used to accuse the US of interference in its internal affairs, now the US is responding in kind. There is no way the two countries can agree on mutual non-interference, because each understands it differently. What one calls soft power, the other views as an attempt to undermine his state, and vice versa. The Cold War rivals were not so lacking in self-confidence. At least, they assumed that they were able to guarantee control over internal processes. The ideal embodiment of the new threats is “Russian interference” in US internal affairs. A combination of the customary threat (Russia) and the new threat (external influence), which was not so acute previously. In other words, the image of Russia as a universal danger is the sublimation of a new view of the world full of threats rather than opportunities. This view is again fully reflected both in the new defence strategy and the new security strategy. Interestingly, Russia generally shares this view, that threats are everywhere, simply because for Russia, this is not new at all.
The characteristic most often heard mentioned in relation to Donald Trump is unpredictability. This is said by his opponents, US allies are surprised at it, while commentators warn of danger of such behaviour. From where Moscow stands, rebukes of this kind look strange. If you leave aside his style of behaviour, his policy gives the impression of being cohesive. “Being strategically predictable, but operationally unpredictable” – that is how the new US defence strategy formulates its task. Does the supreme commander-in-chief really behave otherwise?
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