The world was always complex but being the biggest kid on the block means a lot of the block just avoids you. Not the best situation but it does simplify matters. Comes in handy when having to help sort out an entire planet but it also makes it pretty easy for us to be blindsided.
I can remember in the Nineties being astonished that some Eastern European country was actually expecting Bob Dole, then candidate for president, to have an opinion about an internal matter of theirs. I get it now; the US can affect any nation-state, sometimes unintentionally. It’s only natural that they want to know what our potential president thinks about them.
But there are 194 of them and only one of us. Even the US doesn’t have the budget it would take to be perfectly informed about every issue in every country. The State Department and the CIA do give it the old college try, but even if they could, a single man couldn’t.
Just keeping all the critical issues – the ones that will tick the country off royally – straight is a full time job for whole agencies of the US government. You wonder why presidents come out with more gray hair than when they went in? This is part of why.
It’s so much easier when we just have to consider China, Europe and occasionally Russia. Sure, we still have little analysts busily tabulating Nigerian population growth, but no one bothers to ask for it. And the more introspective and less assertive Europe is, the better. We love those guys but they can really get on your nerves, you know? Anyway, it’s one less very big set of things to worry about.
Well, it was until Russia decided to invade Ukraine.
If my animation skills were better, you’d be seeing an eagle in a barbeque apron battering its head into a brick wall about now. Basically, our tiny little window of simplicity just broke.
You may not think thirty years is ‘tiny’ but in political terms, it’s a blink of the eye. Well, it was nice while it lasted. Cold War, Round Two, coming up!
You know how crazy those old Bond movies are with all the insane gadgets? Well, the Cold War wasn’t nearly that bad. Us and Europe versus Russia and its sidekick China. Nothing overly complicated, just a lot of melodrama and figuring out what the heck we were supposed to do now. Cold War 2.0 is likely to make those old spy movies look positively sedate and sane in comparison.
Who told Africa they could grow up while we weren’t looking? All of a sudden they are in their development growing pains – weren’t they in their political diapers yesterday? And South America is like taking itself seriously and acting all grown up. Man, you blink for a decade or two…
Point is, there are a LOT of new players on the board. I HATE the ‘sphere of influence’ theory from Realpolitik but even if it had been true back in the day, it ain’t true anymore. The Developing World is not going to sit back and wait its turn again while the US and NATO try to sort out Russia and China. No, thank you, they are going to sit in.
Sure, they aren’t power players but that doesn’t make them and all their little friends unimportant, either. Easiest way to win at Monopoly is to buy out the small fry. International relations are similar only we can’t just buy them out. The little guys often have resources and labor the bigger dogs need. That gives them leverage and many of them seem to have figured it out.
It’s still a big dog game and they can and probably will get hurt. That Belt and Road thing of China’s has disaster written all over it. Still, having to placate Tiny, the Wonder Country while trying to actually enforce sanctions is no one’s idea of fun. Not even Tiny’s.
Should we be concerned about Saudi Arabia’s obvious moves toward China? Sure but probably not as much as we should Iran’s move toward Russia. At some point, assuming the election in June doesn’t take care of the problem, we’re going to have to deal with Turkey. And every nation on the South China Sea.
And even NATO because this expecting the US to pay for everything crap is over. Serbia is still butthurt from the Kosovo conflict in the Nineties and we’re gonna have to help sort that out, too.
Every mess we leave unattended is just an opportunity for our enemies to use against us. A stronger, more confident NATO will help. At least they can better deal with Turkey and Serbia.
We still have to have a heart to heart with Viet Nam. And a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting with India. And we probably should have a sit down with Japan just to be sure we’re still on the same page.
This was so much easier when we could just send James Bond to get the microdot. That’s like a really tiny memory card, you whippersnappers.
Grab a couple – you’ll need them for the scorecard.
