World Affairs
Vol. 3, Number 2 (Apr.–Jun. 1999)

Alliances and Strategy: Rethinking Security
By Alvin Z. Rubinstein

 

With the arrival of the new millennium the era of classical alliances is receding, rendered obsolete by the nuclear age.

Alliances are as old as recorded history. Ancient statesmen knew the value of coalitions and the treaties that served as their cohesive. Treaties dealt with economic, legal, and political aspects of the relationship, but focused primarily on matters of mutual defense. According to Jeffrey Tigay, a Biblical scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, ‘many treaties contained a solidarity clause which declared, “You must be an enemy to my enemy and ally to my ally”, and they were made for various purposes, including uniting against a common enemy and formalising a balance of power’. He goes on to observe that in the thirteenth century BC for example, Egypt and the Hittite Kingdom of the Anatolian Plain divided the Levant between them not simply to end their costly rivalry but also in order to require mutual assistance in the event of attack from a common enemy—the peoples ‘migrating aggressively into the near east’ from the Aegean region of the Eastern Mediterranean. Recently deciphered Assyrian records in Akkadian etched in cuneiform on clay tables tell us of wars waged by competing alliances in the period between the 900 BC and the early 700 BC. And in a third century BC, there was a Hindu classic, Artha Shastra (Treatise on Material Gain, antedating Niccolo Machiavelli, circa early sixteenth century), attributed to Kautiliya, a high-ranking official intent on providing political guidelines for ruling and retaining power. He writes as follows:

The theory of the circles of states and that of the six-fold interstate policy, as formulated by the political theorists of ancient India, may appear rather doctrinaire, but they clearly involve certain principles which must have been derived from practical political experience. The normal state of affairs is seen as a balance of power among the various states, but the ruler is impressed with the need for always remaining on his guard, for tactfully watching the situation, and whenever an opportunity offers itself, for acting as a hammer unto others lest he himself be turned into an anvil. However, then as now, the decline of an imperial system’s fortunes was due more to domestic politics and weak rulers than failed military campaigns.

 

The US-USSR Cold War

The cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1945-1991 period developed into a global phenomenon. Its particular danger to the international system inhered in the advent of nuclear weapons and the impossibility of stymieing existing delivery systems with any degree of reliability. The risk of war was real, despite revisionist assessments that it was exaggerated. In retrospect, we can see that an unusual concatenation of circumstances acted to neutralise ideological militancy and to institutionalise prudent behavior by the leadership of both blocs.

First, the Soviet rivalry was not impelled by a competitive quest for territory. Each superpower was territorially satisfied, and each was concerned with strategic denial more than strategic advantages, that is, each moved abroad in response to an opportunity to frustrate the other rather than to gain a marked advantage for itself. Moscow’s attempt to implant nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba in the fall of 1962 was the notable exception. Second, the rivalry was never economic in character. The Soviet Union was at no time a credible competitor in foreign trade, investment, or overseas markets; and, notwithstanding alarmist US scenarios, it did not pose a realistic threat to the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf-Saudi Arabian Peninsula. The western powers in the 1970s and 1980s were eager to sell the Soviet bloc technology and equipment of a non-military character. The problem was Moscow’s insular approach to the international economic system until the late 1980s, by which time internal dilemmas overwhelmed Soviet leaders; inefficiencies and deadening bureaucratic interests foreclosed desperately needed efforts to reform the system; and more than $100 billion was squandered on uneconomic showpiece projects and corrupt clients in the Third World. Third, both superpowers were manipulated in regional disputes by their prime local clients, but skilfully managed to keep their nuclear and conventional forces under tight control in touchy situations. Occasionally the two were brought into a state of heightened tension, as in the sprint of 1970 when Moscow deployed Soviet pilots and missiles crews in Egypt to counter Israeli air attacks on the Egyptian heartland; and in October 1973 when the United States, in the midst of a domestic crisis involving the President, moved to a heightened nuclear alert status fearing that Moscow intended to intervene directly in the fighting between Egyptians and the Israelis. But prudence and restraint prevailed.

Finally, the Soviet-American cold war was carried on in an international system that was essentially bipolar. At the heart of each bloc there was a hegemonic power following a strategy of nuclear deterrence. Containment worked because it was backed by nuclear weapons. In such circumstances, no other powers were then remotely capable of directly challenging or opposing either superpower. Nuclear weapons; two opposing, geographically coherent alliances in Europe; antithetical ideologies; and an emphasis on strengthening their core constituencies resulted in the two superpowers being focused on one another and endlessly draining their resources on acquiring influence and advantage in marginal areas. Decolonisation, nation-building, and efforts to promote modernisation impelled regional clients (Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Cuba, and so forth), none of whom could be regarded as a rival to either Moscow or Washington. Thus the bipolar world was remarkably stable: there were no major wars, and relatively few civil wars and internation conflicts.

The superpowers’ alliance systems defined the parameters of the distribution of world power. In the 1945-1991 period, the United States maintained eight alliances, commonly referred to as collective defence arrangements: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) established in April 1949); ANZUS (Australia-New Zealand-United States); US-Philippines treaty; SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation); US-Republic of China (Taiwan and the Pescadores); US-Japan treaty; US-ROK (Republic of Korea; and the Rio Pact, (the 22 nations of the Western Hemisphere). Although instrumental in the creation of Baghdad Pact, as the defence treaty signed on February 24, 1955 between Iraq and Turkey was commonly known and to which Britain, Iran, and Pakistan also acceded, the United States never joined. Nor did it do so when the alliance was renamed CENTO (Central Treaty Organisation) in 1959, soon after a military coup toppled the pro-Western Hashemite monarchy and ushered in a succession of anti-American regimes in Iraq.

The Soviet Union had two primary alliances during this period: the Warsaw Treaty Organisation, established in May 1955, which included the communist countries of Eastern Europe; and the Sino-Soviet alliance, signed in Moscow in February 1950. Moscow also had an alliance with North Korea.

Each superpower suffered setbacks in its alliances, but on the whole US collective defence arrangements proved more durable. SEATO was allowed to expire on June 30, 1977, the North Vietnamese having overrun South Vietnam two years earlier, thereby vitiating whatever strategic rationale the alliance had; and France and Pakistan, for different reasons, ended their participation. The second major change in a US treaty relationship involved Taiwan and brought significant strategic advantages. The Nixon administration in 1971, and later the Carter administration, moved toward establishing diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and recognising it as the government of all China. At Beijing’s insistence, the United States ‘derecognised’ Taiwan and terminated the 1954 defence treaty. Strong sentiment in Congress, however, promoted passage of the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. Under its provisions, the US government agreed to sell Taiwan defensive weapons and expressed its strong and continuing interest in a peaceful resolution of the discussions between the PRC and Taiwan concerning Taiwan’s status and relationship to the mainland. The US commitment to come to the assistance of Taiwan in the event of ‘an armed attack’ is weaker than under the 1954 defence treaty. Still, it is by no means devoid of conviction or clout, as was apparent in the spring of 1996 when PRC missile-rattling in the Taiwan Straits resulted in the deployment of the US Seventh Fleet—just in case Beijing had military action in mind. With the warming of US-PRC relations in the 1980s, the US position in East Asia improved enormously relative to its primary adversary, the Soviet Union.

A very different situation confronted Moscow where the loss of an alliance was costly. After more than two decades of ideological and military tensions, the Sino-Soviet alliance deteriorated beyond repair. Indeed, the two countries came close to war in 1969. Nixon’s opening to China in February 1972 worried Moscow, but not enough for it to make concessions that might have placed the US-Soviet détente on a sound basis. The death of Mao Zedong in September 1976 failed to bridge the rift between the colossi of communism, much to Moscow’s disappointment. On April 3, 1979, Beijing informed Moscow that the 1950 defence treaty would not be renewed. For the remainder of the cold war, Moscow was forced to sustain heavy defence expenditures in the Soviet Far East; and it was odd capital out in Asia, where trade, investment, and the momentum of modernisation were taking on a dynamic, transformative character. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, relations between the Soviet Union and the PRC slowly improved, but not enough to alter Moscow’s weakening strategic position in East Asia.

Not until the 1989-1991 interregnum, however, did the changes in the alliances of the United States and the Soviet Union affect the fundamental strategy pursued by each toward the other. Then Gorbachev agreed to German reunification; accepted the fall from power of pro-Muscovite oligarchs in Eastern Europe and the termination of the Soviet imperium in the region, including the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact; and he cooperated with the United States against Iraq, a prime Soviet client, to reverse Saddam Hussein’s aggression against Kuwait. Gorbachev’s aspiration—it was far too vague to be called a strategy—aimed to enlist Western economic assistance in reforming the USSR and bringing it into the international economic system. He hoped to create a “common European home”, draw closer to France, ensure a united Germany would not again emerge as a threat to its neighbours or the USSR, and weaken the USA’s role in Europe. Whatever strategic assumptions underlay his policies, time ran out before he could accomplish his aims.

 

From Bipolarity to Evanescent Unipolarity

When the cold war ended, the alliances that had been created after 1945 no longer had any compelling purpose. A changed geo-strategic climate had overtaken the past configuration of global threat and counter-threat. The need had passed, or so it was widely assumed, for ideological alliances seeking deterrence, defence cooperation against a specific state or group of states, stabilisation and strengthening of congenial alignments of power, coalition instruments for fostering internal security, and containment of a rival coalition. A reading of the historical record suggests that in the absence of a shared perception of common threat, alliances disband or fall into desuetude.

The international situation in the early 1990s more nearly resembled that of the 1920s than the 1950s: the absence of a serious military threat to any of the major powers, the lack of a polarising ideological adversary, uncertainty in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East in the wake of collapsed empires, and the impulse of the major powers to look inward to domestic challenges, with an attendant downgrading of foreign policy. Cold war alignments had to be reassessed as ambivalence entered into once firm relationships.

The post-cold war international system is unlike any we have heretofore known, in great measure because of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) spawned by the disequilibrating advent of cyberspace and information technology, and the proliferation of low-cost, easily produced weapons of mass destruction that give the weaker countries potential weapons to keep the strong at bay. It is of course true that globalisation is helping to shape the sea change underway in how governments relate to one another in the international system. But the RMA may prove a more accurate explanation of the tectonic shift that is in motion from a bipolar world to an acentric world. An acentric world would differ from the familiar multipolar world in that each centre in an acentric world would be characterised by possession of a credible nuclear deterrent. Such a deterrent would preclude the need for alliances and would rest on a strategy of nuclear deterrence.

The multipolar system that came to dominate the world from the middle of the fifteenth century until 1945 appeared with the emergence of the nation-state as the key political actor of international relations and was characterised by shifting coalitions of nation-states eager to preserve a balance of power situation. This era was followed by the short-lived era of the bipolar world of the cold war (1945 to 1991). Dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union, this bipolar world avoided a big war, but did make possible, however reluctantly or inadvertently at times, local wars in the Third World. In the Middle East, for example, Soviet arms and logistical assistance were critical for Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s intervention in North Yemen from 1962 to 1967; and Soviet and American involvement were in different ways integral factors in the 1967, 1970 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, and in the two Gulf wars in the 1980-1991 period. With the end of the cold war, however, formerly important Third World clients lost their strategic significance and their hunting licence to pursue regional ambitions, no longer secure in the belief that their superpower patron would protect them from defeat at the hands of a regional rival backed by the other superpowers. Thus, for this failure to understand the implications of the dramatic improvement in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1989 to 1991 period, Saddam Hussein paid a crippling price.

In the early post-cold war setting, exultant American analysts hailed the advent of a unipolar world, of America’s global hegemony. Multilateralism and multipolarity are ‘pious nonsense’, asserted Charles Kruthammer. He set the tone, arguing that the United States finds itself the undisputed, albeit reluctant, hegemony in a ‘unipolar world’. In February 1992, a draft Pentagon planning document went even further. It stipulated the primary need “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival... that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union”, and it called for a “new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests”. As the transitional decade of the 1990s draws to a close, both postulates concerning US policy have proved to be mistaken: political hegemony is not necessarily a concomitant of military supremacy. Nothing is as ephemeral as victory without purpose or power without strategy.

By now it is clear that there is no US hegemony, and no unipolar world. More and more, the United States, unchallenged military power that it remains, is finding its options constrained and limited. Far from overseeing ‘a new world order’, it is increasingly frustrated in efforts to manage balky actors—North Korea, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Bosnia, to say nothing of China, Russia, India.

US global hegemony is unattainable for at least four reasons. First, in the absence of a threat that can mobilise a consensus of political elites and the electorate, policy initiatives are more often than not declaratory rather than programmatic. Traditionally, hemispheric defence, freedom of the seas, and commerce were the sinews of a national strategy. More recently, asseverative attachments to human rights and the promotion of democracy have served as substitutes for a strategy grounded in power and shaped by concrete interests. This has created a sharp discrepancy between deeds and declarations; or to put the matter somewhat less critically, it has given rise to a policy of double standards. Thus, the Clinton administration’s policy towards China is driven by commercialism and unashamedly downplays human rights; but its policy towards democratic India more often resembles relations with an ideological adversary. Cuba has been treated more harshly than North Korea; and North Korea is placated and promised nuclear power reactors that Washington opposes Russia’s selling Iran.

Second, virtually all key US foreign policy initiatives since the end of the cold war have been primarily the result of domestic considerations having little or nothing to do with global strategy. Clinton’s peremptorily upgrading the UN’s mission in Somalia in 1993 from preventing starvation to promoting democracy; his unwillingness to support the Vance-Owens Plan, which stood an excellent chance of settling the Bosnian conflict in 1993, because it was too much a product of UN and West European inputs, and he did not want to appear to be following their lead; the opening of America’s technology tap to China in order to obtain business for hard-pressed defence industries; the confused handling of Boris Yeltsin, at a time when the orientation in Moscow was more Western-oriented than at any time in Russian history; the preoccuptation with punishing Iraq and isolating Iran at a time when engaging North Korea was being promoted—with no rationale offered for the seeming contradictions inherent therein; the administration’s espousal of vastly expanded UN peackeeping operations but its inability to obtain the necessary funding from the Congress out of fear of alienating domestic constituencies favouring planned parenthood programmes; the failure to persuade India and Pakistan to accede to the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty, in part because of Congressional legislation and Congress’s lack of interest in the subcontinent—the list goes on.

Foreign analysts trying to understand the mainsprings of US foreign policy should keep in mind, always, the quip of Tip O’Neill, the former Democratic Party’s Speaker of the House of Representatives, “All politics is local”. This is especially true in an era without a unifying external enemy.

A third constraint on America’s ability to control a putatively unipolar world is a risk-averse defence establishment which is still configured primarily to fight a global adversary or conventional war involving large armies and masses of armour and aircraft. Efforts by the military to alter significantly the mix of weapons being purchased for use in possible future conflicts come a cropper in the Congress. Key legislators insist on appropriating money for weapons the Pentagon does not want but has to accept, such as additional B-2 Stealth bombers, C-130s transports, and nuclear submarines. Most of the projected increases in defence spending over the next five years will be eaten up in salary increases, replacement of equipment that has been prematurely worn out by costly deployments to and from the Persian Gulf in response to cat-and-mouse challenges from Saddam Hussein; and in emergency appropriations to meet the unplanned costs of extended operations in Bosnia, East Asia, and the Persian Gulf. At the end of 1998, US military spending of $258 billion as a percentage of the Federal budget was “as low as it has been since the end of World War II”. The ‘peace dividend’ took the form of a reduction in military personnel from 2.4 million in 1991 to 1.4 million in 1998, and a deferral of the acquisition of new major weapons. In a recent memorandum, Army General David A Bramlett declared: “We cannot operate within current funding levels and have the viable fighting force we want to project into the next century”.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, the United States is risk-averse; its leadership has an extremely low tolerance for casualties. The electorate’s indifference in a period of domestic prosperity to extensive foreign policy involvements could run quickly to opposition if American personnel, in harm’s way, were killed. This, in turn, stems from the growing disconnect in foreign policy between the Washington political elite and the rest of the country. In early 1998, for example, when the White House sent top foreign policy officials to explain its Iraq policy on a nationally broadcast Town Hall Meeting in the midwest, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Defence William Cohen, and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger encountered a barrage of intense questioning that left them looking foolish and uninformed. Global hegemony ill-suits a cautious, confrontation-shy power.

Ultimately, the case against the United States remaining the world’s only superpower and assuming responsibility to prevent war and maintain the peace is lack of strategic vision, an asymmetry between aspirations and commitments, difficulty in forging long-term partnerships with others on a basis of equality, and an abiding reluctance on the part of the electorate to play the role of global policeman. Overwhelming power and underwhelming diplomacy make unipolarity little more than an interesting conceit.

 

Alliances in a Time of Transition

Alone among the principal powers, the United States and Russia have sought to use alliances to adapt to the new strategic environment. Not surprisingly, their reasons differ, but neither is impelled by the transparent aims that impelled them during the cold war era, that is to say, by deterrence, expanded security needs, institution building, or containment. A combination of changed geo-economic and political circumstances and reactive psychological attitudes help explain their aggressive focus on alliances to the detriment of carefully crafted strategies.

The United States never considered terminating its major alliances, notwithstanding the disappearance of the threat that had prompted them. Too much had been invested, too much was uncertain about the future, and too many bureaucratic interests were uninterested in weakening a winning coalition. Washington understood the need for a coherent and credible set of new foreign policy priorities, a ceiling on defence expenditures, and a reformulation of alliance purposes and burden sharing. But this was easier said than operationalised.

The tasks fell to the Clinton administration, and the challenge was especially difficult in Europe. Although absorbed with domestic issues, President Clinton had to respond to developments in Somalia, Bosnia, and Haiti and to the entreaties of East European leaders. In September 1993, in a series of speeches, administration spokespersons dwelt on America’s policy of ‘engagement’—constructive, active, cooperative; ‘containment’, the defining strategy of the cold war era, was being superseded. The administration sought to allay concerns among allies in Western Europe of a possible major US retrenchment; and to reassure the newly independent countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic region against a new redivision of Europe. At a NATO summit meeting in Brussels on 10 and 11 January, 1994, President Clinton proclaimed the Partnership for Peace (PFP) proposal, which held out the prospects of NATO membership for Central Europe, the Baltic states, and the republics of the former Soviet Union (FSU), including Russia. It was simultaneously an invitation to join in the evolutionary process that would culminate in an expanded NATO and, more concretely, a design to dampen unrealistic expectations: the timing and the procedures for eventual admission were purposely left vague.

In reality, PFP did not seriously consider Russia a prospective candidate for NATO membership, and it had a chilling effect on US-Russian relations. Clinton’s resistance to quick fixes and emotional appeals lasted only until the next election. His decision to accelerate the timetable for NATO’s expansion was based neither on strategic logic nor military threat; it was a clever bid for votes among ethnic groups that led him to declare in Detroit on October 22, 1996, in the final two weeks of a closely contested election campaign, that he wanted Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary admitted in 1999 on ‘NATO’s fiftieth anniversary and ten years after the fall of the Berlin wall’. There was no prior consultation with Congressional leaders, let alone with NATO members, and no explanation to the public. (Why did he not include Slovenia, whose geographic position has the merit of strategic logic, which Hungary’s does not? Simply because Washington decided to override Paris’s arguments).

The criteria for admission laid down under PFP were ignored. Not one of the states admitted in the first tranche came anywhere near meeting those criteria, including such an obviously essential requirement as language competency in English so that officers and troops could interact effectively with NATO personnel in the field. What we witnessed was the primacy of Clinton’s electoral needs over consideration of what was the national interest. Indeed, at no time did the President or any member of the administration explain to the country the strategic ‘necessity’ or logic for the enlargement of NATO.

Clinton’s intellectual rationale must be gleaned from periodic snippets in high visibility speeches. The address to the graduating class at West Point on May 31, 1997 is as good a reference point as any. First the President argued that NATO enlargement would not be costly, no more than $150 million to $200 million a year for the first ten years. But even staunch NATO-boosters at the RAND Corporation questioned this minimalist figure. Moreover, Clinton’s estimates of the cost to the United States of deploying troops in Bosnia have only heightened the concerns of skeptics: since his assurances in November 1995 that a limited deployment for one year to help enforce the Dayton Accords would cost only between $1-$1.2 billion, as we enter the fifth year with no end in sight, the average annual outlay has exceeded $2 billion.

Second, Clinton said that the admission of new members will strengthen the alliance and that “gains decisively outweigh the burdens”. In the absence of corroborative evidence from history, it is hard to understand the strategic logic that says an alliance can strengthen itself by embracing weak, financially-strapped, resource-poor, geographically vulnerable new members, none of whom is in danger of attack by any power. Thomas Friedman of The New York Times acerbically noted that ‘the Clinton team chose to trade Russia’s immediate ratification of Start 2 for NATO expansion. That’s right, they traded the elimination of 3,000 Russian warheads for the Polish Air Force and the Czech Navy!”

Clinton’s third point was that NATO enlargement will foster democracy in Eastern Europe, encourage the peaceful resolution of disputes, and help build a peaceful, undivided Europe. He rejected the argument that enlargement would make dealing with Russia much more difficult and create a new fault line in Europe. And if democracy was to be promoted, one wonders why he did not push the West European members of NATO to admit the three countries to the European Union (EU) at the same time.

Nor, it must be noted, was the US Senate’s ‘Great Debate’ on NATO’s expansion, which was spaced out over April and May 1998, any more than proforma, prepackaged reiterations of set views. Ultimately, phobias counted more than facts. Cold war attitudes held sway, notwithstanding Russia’s changed geopolitical situation, diminished military capability, and continually declining economy. Anti-Russianism thrives in a mindset that sees, in Madeleine Albright’s words, America as the world’s ‘indispensable nation’. Yet none of this is very helpful in fashioning a coherent strategy for coping with terrorism, drugs, illegal immigration, and weapons of mass destruction.

In East Asia, the US-Japan and US-Republic of Korea (ROK) relationships are long overdue for revision to make them reflect the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the much greater economic capabilities of the Asian Partners. Burden-sharing, decision-making and specialisation of functions are all in need of restructuring. As always, the security aspect of the alliance relationships is the most sensitive. However, dissonances in the realms of trade, culture, and regional issues abound. Moreover, of growing importance in all of these matters is the emergence of a new generation, with very different views, interests, and aspirations. Cold war outlooks may not be as frozen in Tokyo and Seoul as they are in Washington.

Like the United States, Russia has been assiduously cultivating alliances, though with less success. Its aim is to buttress its new situation in the transformed Eurasian geopolitical environment. The targets are former Soviet republics, now independent, albeit weak, vulnerable, with limited opportunities for political manoeuvring. With the exception of Belarus, they seek to exploit the Russian bear, while doing everything to avoid an independent-crushing embrace: they seek economic support, acceptance of their sovereignty and a residual Russian military presence as protection against internal challenges to their rule.

On the other hand, Russia’s aims are a muddled, varied mix of imperial nostalgia, confederational integration and cooperation, strategic denial, and security concerns. The maximalists hope for a voluntary reconstitution of most of the former Soviet republics into a congenial and interdependent commonwealth whose substantive content is far from being clear, in part because of Russia’s parlous internal condition, in part because of the growing reserve of most of the countries who signed defence treaties with Russia in the early 1990s including Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan. Belarus epitomises the mood of the maximalists. In October 1998, the Russian Duma unanimously ratified agreements that establish a Russian-Belarus alliance and that acknowledge their union as a ‘common strategic space’. Like former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who was in the forefront of those pushing for the formal reintegration of Belarus and Russia, Russian nationalists see this as both a symbolic and a military response to NATO enlargement.

The minimalists have more modest expectations. They seek to foster friendly relations, safeguard the interests of ethnic Russians, encourage stability, and prevent hostile elements (domestic or foreign) from threatening Russia. In 1994, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev stated Moscow’s national interest: “We must not abandon those regions that have for centuries been spheres of Russian interests. And we must not be afraid to say so”. He arrogated a ‘special role’ for Russia that sounded very much like an attempt to establish a sphere of influence. Most of the defence treaties signed, for example, those between the Russian Federation of Tajikistan on May 25, 1993, Turkmenistan on July 31, 1992, Uzbekistan on May 30, 1992 and Azerbaijan on July 3, 1997, have clauses that provide Russia with multiple opportunities for intrusive, cooperative, but non-hegemonial activities. In the Russia-Tajikistan Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, Article IV stipulates:

In case of inception of a situation which in the opinion of one High Contracting Party, constitutes a threat to peace, violating peace in the Eurasian region or violating substantive interests of its security, the Parties will set in motion the mechanism of joint consultation with intent to coordinate their position and take measures to eliminate the threat that has arisen.

In case of commission of an act of aggression against either Party, the High Contracting Parties furnish each other necessary assistance, including military assistance, in the exercise of the right of collective self-defence in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

Over the past six years, this treaty has served as a basis for the presence of Russian military contingents who are there as ‘peacekeepers’ under the aegis of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to try to resolve the conflict between the Tajik government and an opposition Tajik faction. That the government is pro-Moscow, secularist, and receptive to a prolonged Russian involvement, whereas the opposition is heavily Islamist in outlook and subsidised by foreign Muslim countries and groups, accounts for Russia’s commitments. It remains uneasy over the implications for its security of an Islamist coming to power.

Although not facing any realistic threat to its security across the southern rimland of former Soviet space, Russia’s alliance relationships with former Soviet republics in the region do have an underlying strategic rationale. Apart from concern over developments within the region, Moscow views NATO probes under the Partnership for Peace programme as inherently anti-Russian and as antithetical to its security and long-term ambitions in Central Eurasia. The round of defence treaties thus far concluded represents an understandable response of a weak Russia bent, at a minimum, on retaining some semblance of a sphere of influence, a sort of Monroe Doctrine.

On February 2, 1999, Uzbekistan announced that it would not extend its participation in the CIS Collective Security Treaty, due for renewal, very likely because of Russia’s pressure to send a contingent to Tajikistan, and Moscow’s increasing military presence in the CIS countries. Its withdrawal from the multilateral treaty does not, however affect the ongoing bilateral mutal defence relationship.

More specific or informed judgment must wait for the distant future. If Russia revives, it is certain to reassert itself in Transcaucasia and Central Asia, and especially in Kazakhstan. Then and only then will we be able to assess the nature of Russia’s alliances—whether they were appropriate to meeting the concerns of vulnerable states in an era of nation-state transitions, useful mediums for building a more viable CIS, or convenient instruments for intervening in the domestic affairs of legally independent states in order to advance a neo-imperial Russian agenda.

 

Antipathy and Acentrism

In the emerging acentric international order, neither India nor China seeks alliances. Although each retains a residual connection to a former ally, the relationships are much reduced in importance, hence extrapolation from the past is a poor guide to understanding each’s strategic approach. Despite a long-standing discordant relationship, New Delhi and Beijing would probably agree to the following: that neither can look to contiguous countries for reliable clients, much less allies; that a good relationship with an admittedly declining and much-weakened Russia is worth cultivating, but disciplined by modest expectations; that US “hegemonism” is not in their national interest; and that a multifaceted deterrent is essential.

India’s geostrategic situation is the more complex and problematic. Whereas China’s neighbours view it with a mixture of suspicion and respect, India’s neighbours distrust it deeply, Pakistan being an implacable adversary and Sri Lanka deeply aggrieved and alienated because of New Delhi’s responsibility for the ongoing Tamil insurrection. Whereas China’s relations with its neighbours have been steadily improving, India could well be involved in another conflict with one of its neighbours in the coming decade. And whereas China’s nuclear forces are becoming increasingly capable of assuming a deterrent role against all possible threats, India still seems undecided about what kind of nuclear capability to build, notwithstanding its coming out in May 1998 as a country with nuclear weapons.

In the 1970s and 1980s India relied on its Soviet connection for deterrence and provisioning. The centerpiece of its foreign policy was the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation of August 9, 1971. Article 9 calling for ‘mutual consultations’ and ‘appropriate effective measures’ against an attack or the threat of an attack on one of the High Contracting Parties, served to limit China’s active support for Pakistan because of the Soviet Union’s alignment with India. But since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, India has been forced to reassess the relationship with Russia. Economic destabilisation meant that Russia was no longer in a position to extend lavish credits for arms purchases and economic projects. The reliability of deliveries of arms and spare parts decreased considerably. Moreover, given Yeltsin’s overtures and manifest interest in a new strategic relationship with the United States, and China, India knew a restructured relationship was on the cards. Accordingly, when President Boris Yeltsin visited India in January 1993, the two countries signed a new treaty, one with no security clause. Though it continues as an important provider of technology and weaponry, the relationship is more businesslike, and Russia is no longer India’s dependable ally in the event of a regional conflict. Also, quite unmistakably, Russia’s relationship with China in recent years has become far more multifaceted and important.

If not marginalised, India is strategically in an unenviable position. The obsession with Pakistan and with preventing it from mobilising the Muslim world has left India long on illusion and short on coming to terms with geo-economic and geo-political realities. In important measure as a result of its mistakes, India is relatively neglected by much of Asia, at odds with China, needlessly confrontational with the United States, saddled with a superficial and inevitably unrewarding economic relationship with Russia, and still taking cold comfort from the notion that non-alignment is a force in the world and a strategic asset for a big power.

By contrast, China has played its geostrategic cards well. In the 1970s when the Sino-Soviet alliance was unravelling, Mao moved toward accommodation with the United States, notwithstanding a seemingly insuperable ideological gulf. His successors have built on that legacy. Strategic considerations invariably superseded ideological mantras, and pragmatism reshaped sentiment, rather than the reverse. By the 1990s, China’s annual balance of payments surpluses with the United States alone, ranging from $20 billion to $60 billion, far exceeded India’s total trade with the United States. China has been using these surpluses to import as much dual use high-tech computers, electronic systems, satellite reconnaissance systems, and the like as it can. All of this has driven a major modernisation and expansion of its military capability. It has adroitly exploited the commercialism inherent in the Clinton administration’s policy of strategic engagement to weaken Washington’s ability to conduct a neo-containment strategy.

Unlike India, China persistently courts and encourages expanded ties with former adversaries: thus, there has been a firm though less than cordial reconciliation with Japan; a peaceful reabsorption of Hong Kong; a flexible, diversified outreach to Taiwan; and a stunning embrace of Russia, which, at the April 1966 summit in Beijing, led Yeltsin and China’s President Jiang Zemin to settle Sino-Russian border problems across the sweep of Central Asia, inaugurate confidence-building measures, and reaffirm the continued development of arms sales, energy, and trade.

Alliances are out, although Beijing has not terminated the defence treaty with North Korea originally signed in July 1996, despite the decline in their relationship in recent years. China’s position is that alliances are anachronisms from the cold war era and should be disbanded: from this position, China is able to criticise the United States while at the same time putting itself forth as an advocate of peace and stability in Asia. However, given its increasingly assertive actions in staking out claims to contested islands and reefs in the South China Sea, China’s solemn statements are unlikely to allay the anxieties of skeptical elites in concerned countries, such as the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

 

Concluding Observations

We are leaving an age of alliances. At the dawn of a new century, the lack of interest in alliances by rising powers suggest confidence in the inherent stability of the international system. No power or coalition of powers threatens to trigger wars of aggression or aggrandisement. War by accident cannot, of course, be ruled out, but benefits to the aggressive party are iffy at best, given the diffusion of military power throughout the world, and the costs of sustaining a serious conflict for even a few months.

The newest vintage of US and Russian alliances have a heavy economic component and guarantee junior members modest insurance premiums: both powers plan to assume most of the costs of functioning in the post-cold war environment. Analysts in Western Europe with whom the author spoke in the spring of 1998 believe that the United States was keen on NATO’s enlargement for two reasons: to consolidate the US hegemonic position in Europe and to transform NATO into a malleable military instrument for use in “out-of-area” situations, such as Bosnia and Kosovo. The West Europeans, preoccupied as they are with deepening their economic integration, are generally content to have the Americans in the leadership role, in return for bearing the disproportionate share of the financial and military burden.

Finally, nuclear weapons have rendered alliances if not obsolete then much less essential for security. Any credible nuclear power can rely on a policy of deterrence. In this situation, friendly powers may have even greater utility than formal alliances. The shape of the international system will be determined by the number of countries who decide to develop a credible nuclear capability and pursue a basic strategy that places a premium on the nuclear aspects of military power.