By Omar Nur
The United States and its allies in Europe can no longer stay divorced from events and trends occurring in Eurasia. In about a decade, three of the five biggest economies in the world will be in Eurasia, namely China, India, and Japan. Europe and the United States during the 20th century focused primarily on the European continent and the threat from the Soviet Union. Broader Asia and the near East was relegated to a field of exploitation and proxy wars by the Soviets and the United States. Countries such as China, Turkey, Iran, and India weren’t viewed as separate entities with historical significance, but as political pawns in a greater struggle against Soviet communism. Ironically, within the past 20 years, these countries have paved their own path, garnered significant military capabilities, and acquired regional influence. The “rise of the rest,” so to speak, occurred due to a generous liberal world order anchored by US military power. This order allowed countries to grow their wealth if they bought into, or at least deferred to, Western liberal values and market-capitalism. Many states democratized briefly, East European countries joined NATO, globalization was on the march connecting everyone and everything around the world, and the United States was the preeminent great power. With the relative decline of US power, however, the liberal order is fading away. This phenomenon should not be an alarming surprise, or provoke futile attempts of reversal. The collapse of previous world orders always gives way to new ones; this is the tale of history.
The European order went through several iterations after the peace of Westphalia in 1648 following the Thirty Years War, which established the modern nation-state system and the concept of sovereignty. Both orders had one common denominator, namely a guarantor of the order. The French, British, and Russians all had their time in the sun. However, a permanent hegemon was never sustainable, so these orders altered in tandem with a shift in the balance of power. States rise, previous hegemons decline, and systems subsequently change. The world never has and never will remain static, and history will never end. Change and dynamism is the only constant. The United States should welcome this and avoid stringency.
“Eurasia,” not only as a geographic entity, but as an idea will be the defining organizing principle of global politics, and the United States should reorient its foreign policy to this vast geographical entity and age-old idea. Now, what exactly is “Eurasia?”
Eurasia is a term to describe both a geographical landmass and an idea about international politics. The term was first used by Austrian geologist Edward Suess to describe a geographical entity that encompassed everything between western Europe and east Asia. Suess pointed out that Eurasia is home to the overwhelming majority of humanity and history. Eurasia as a term to describe international politics and history was used by various European political scientists, such as Halford Mackinder, for essentialist ends in the late 19th and early 20th century rendering anything east of Europe as a single homogenous unit; therefore, the term served as a justification for colonial exploitation. However, in the contemporary era, Eurasia, as political philosopher and travel writer, Bruno Maçães states, is the phenomenon when “borders become increasingly diffuse but cultural and civilizational differences do not, giving rise to a permanently unstable compound of heterogeneous elements.” See, the idea of “Eurasia” goes further than simply describing a multi-polar world.
Political scientist Charles Kupchan makes this point quite succinctly when he suggests that “due to the onset of global interdependence, it will be the first time that such a diverse set of orders intensely and continuously interact with each other.” Additionally, the shift toward global pluralism, which is not necessarily simple multi-polarity, is the idea that the balance of power will be multi-polar in nature but also culturally so as well. The 21st century is the first time in human history where various states hold great-power positions, are inter-connected with each other, and are culturally distinct. These states will maintain their cultural heritages and operating principles. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi proclaims this phenomenon clearly, when he says India “needs modernization, not westernization.” This should not be an instinctual synonym for great-power conflict as some folks assume.
China, Turkey, India, and Iran all have histories of foreign policy that addressed the cultural pluralism of the Eurasian landmass. Ideas of universality, which Europeans and Americans have maintained throughout their history, were ineffective for countries in Eurasia because of the diversity of regional orders; despite the immediate proximity of these countries and regions to each other they had, and still have, vastly different modus operandi. These states that inhabit the Eurasian landmass and the empires that preceded them were met with resistance and ultimately war if they attempted to center their foreign policies on ideas of universality.
In the contemporary era, these countries have welcomed the Eurasia concept due to their historical affinity to it. Turkey’s failed coup in 2016, was perpetuated by a faction supporting “Westernization” and in opposition to Erdogan’s disposition to focus on the east and attempts to revive Turkey's Ottoman imperial past. In Tehran, a moderate faction led by former president Rouhani, who was privy to the coming geopolitical landscape, desired to stay in the JCPOA to create economic and political ties with India and Afghanistan. The most obvious case, namely, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, is the foremost example of a comprehensive Eurasian grand strategy, encompassing all the major powers on the geographical landmass with a proclivity towards political agnosticism.
Moreover, the Eurasian pluralism described by Kupchan and Maçães can only be a marker of conflict if states still maintain the supremacy and universality of their ideologies. American and European insistence on the primacy of the liberal order will fall on deaf ears in Beijing, Ankara, and Tehran because in their view, the liberal order is synonymous with continued American and European hegemony. Also, there are countless examples whereby the United States forewent its own rules on national sovereignty and liberal principles of international conduct to pursue its interests. So the idea that countries who were quite powerless at the inception of the liberal order should buy into it at the cost of their own national interest seems extremely naive. China’s political agnosticism towards other countries that have bought into the Belt and Road Initiative, for instance, is their acceptance of Eurasian pluralism. However, China still expects deference when it comes to questions of power. Despite protestations from Western policymakers, China is not exporting a political model or ideology. China simply seeks out and protects its interest regardless of the political make-up of other countries.
The United States and Europe may not be willing to, nor should, adopt political agnosticism. However, a stringent stance on the domestic make-up of countries will prove to be an unsustainable hard-line. The Trump administration’s failed “maximum-pressure” campaign against Iran while simultaneously waging a trade-war and heating up hawkish rhetoric against China, blinded them to obvious solutions to both problems. India, naturally, can serve as a balancing point against China. Iran and India have been constructing a port in Chabahar on the gulf of Oman which allows India to “circumvent Pakistan to trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia.” At the apex of the “maximum-pressure” campaign, the United States denied India’s exemption from sanctions on Iran delaying the construction of the Chabahar port, the buying of Iranian oil, and increased Chinese influence in Iran. This trend to view geopolitical challenges in geographic isolation, hard-line stance, and the imprudent policies which spell up from it must be abandoned.
The United States and Europe’s global appeal has been historically based on the universality of liberal enlightenment principles. The overwhelming dominance of the United States and Europe for the past 100 years has brought ideas of individualism, human rights, and democracy into global consciousness, and has been the most attractive organizing principle of societies around the world. With the 2008 financial crisis, failed efforts of democracy promotion in the Middle East and the rise of China and other regional powers, resulted in the Western model losing its zeal. As previously mentioned, this is no cause for alarm or grave concern in itself. Pluralism, even in a global context, is not synonymous with conflict; a “clash of civilizations” will only occur if policymakers believe it will.
If the United States and Europe wish to have a stake in the Eurasian century, then any universalist vocations should be abandoned. The United States and Europe should track, adapt to, and in some cases mirror the nature of the global order rather than shackle themselves to a universalist liberal order that crystallized in an entirely different historical period. An openness to the Eurasian idea of pluralistic orders is a good first step away from universalist inclinations.
Practically, a strategy of maintaining an open international system whereby the United States and Europe would guarantee the political independence of all states and prevent closed spheres of influence is the defining constructive step away from the previous universalist conception of order. This minimal effort at maintaining an open international system will be a sustainable strategy in the long run, instead of trying to maintain the maximalist policy of upholding the old liberal order.
It does not matter whether a state is liberal or not, only that each state has the ability to make independent decisions. Many states reject liberalism for a plethora of reasons. The idea that liberalism, instead of an acceptance of Eurasian pluralism, should be the organizing principle of a world with multiple great powers seems beyond wishful thinking. The liberal order as we know it is dead. The future contains possibilities of numerous orders, each intersecting, conflicting, and cooperating with one another.
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