Comparing US, Russia over geopolitical insecurities

There is similarity in how the US handled its geopolitical insecurities when it overtook and replaced Britain

China’s role in the current Russia-Ukraine war is under debate and the western media continues to refer to President Xi much in line with how it is addressing President Putin of Russia — an authoritarian leader with imperialistic tendencies.

War in Ukraine has opened the floodgates of historical comparisons in what the US did in the past as a global hegemon and yet got away with, but Russia and China cannot do the same to address their geopolitical insecurities despite being the resurgent and rising powers of the world. There is a lot of similarity in how the US handled its geopolitical insecurities when it overtook and replaced Britain as the world’s hegemon and how what both Russia and China are now doing.

Nearing the end of the 19^th century, the greatest geopolitical threat that the US faced was from Spain and the response to that threat was an armed conflict between the US and Spain in 1898. The US victory in the war ensured that Spain not only relinquished claims on Cuba but also ceded sovereignty over Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to the US. It was also during this conflict that the US annexed Hawaii which was located in the centre of the Pacific. The monarchy there was overthrown and its annexation as US territory resulted in Hawaii being admitted as the 50^th state of the American union.

What was annexed at the end of 19^th century ended up playing a major role as the base of operations for the three wars that the US fought in the 20^th century — Second World War, Korean War and Vietnam War. Even today over 300,000 US military personnel and their families are stationed there as the place headquarters the United States Pacific Command (USPACOM) that includes large US army, navy and air force components. The US policy of pivoting Asia-Pacific and its security partnership such as NATO, Quad and AUKUS to compete with and contain China add renewed strategic significance to this US military outpost in the middle of the Pacific. Let me culminate this American annexation and war with Spain at the end of the 19^th century by referring to why this war was fought in the first place. Many reasons can be found if we try to dig them out but history qualifies two reasons as the most phenomenal and they were — America’s support for ongoing Cuban and Filipino struggle against the Spanish rule.

Given this historical context, why can’t Russia do everything that it can to prevent Ukrainian ambitions of joining the European Union and contain NATO’s expansion eastwards that encroaches its borders? Under AUKUS — which is a trilateral pact between Australia, the UK and the US that emerged in 2021 — both the UK and the US will help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines yet if China extends any help or military support to Russia it will face US sanctions. What is evident here is the double standards of the western world under which it can go ahead and do whatever it wants to address its geopolitical and security concerns but if Russia and China do the same, they are treated as rebels out of the international system and outcasts. The western assumption that the Russian and Chinese imperialist tendencies will endanger the world whereas their imperialist and colonial practices in the past did not is a wrong assumption. Given that the world is transiting from unipolarity to multipolarity in which the deck of the balance of power cards is being reshuffled and the rising powers are addressing their existing geopolitical insecurities, there is no reason to term these actions otherwise i.e. imperialist.

If the US took over every military base in the western hemisphere as it entered the great war, why does it reflect down narrowly now on the acquisition on lease by China of ports of some countries in the eastern hemisphere? Why was it right for the US to execute its Marshall plan against the communist Soviet Union as part of its grand strategy of containment but wrong for Russia to do anything to contain the US, Europe and NATOs push eastwards?

When US President James Monroe, in Dec 1823, warned and threatened the European nations that the US would no more tolerate further colonisation or puppet monarchs he was right, but when Putin uses a similar language against the US and its western partners he is termed wrong and viewed as a dictator that threatens the world security. Even today the Monroe doctrine and its concepts are taught all over the universities in the world to emphasise the three main concepts that this doctrine laid out in clarity — separate spheres of influence for the Americans and Europe; non-colonisation; and non-interference. What is it that President Putin has been asking the world for the last two decades? The same things — respect the Russian sphere of influence, stop NATO’s and European Union Colonisation of its former republics, and non-intervention in its strategically important buffer states. Would we teach 21^st century Putin’s doctrine at power with the Monroe doctrine of the 19^th century? How could one leader be right in what he advocated and became acceptable and the other wrong and condemned? Was Monroe more nationalist and patriotic and Putin is not? Can we have two scales to determine the stands that the world leaders take to safeguard their geopolitical insecurities and drive their national aspirations?

Monroe was taking a clear stand in how he looked at the emergence of the new world and new order against what existed as the autocratic world and disorderly order projected by European powers. What is wrong if President Putin is making the same assessment now? Doesn’t his stand signify how his worldview is about the lost opportunities of the gone-by decades in which the US as a world hegemon fought unnecessary wars at great cost to the welfare and wellbeing of the entire world? Could the US have become a great power without subjugating and dominating the Caribbean and Latin American countries? If the US could promise Europe that it will stay out of its business if Europeans stayed out of western hemisphere business, why can’t Putin do the same today — ask the US and West to stay out and not carry out encroachment near its borders and frontiers? Is Putin wrong when he says if you don’t mess with me, I will not mess with you.

The US is calling President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine his greatest foreign policy blunder. Seen in the historical context, it seems less as a blunder and more as essentiality to address Russia’s geopolitical insecurities and something that the US has been doing regularly in the past.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 20^th, 2022.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.