News analysis by Marcus Papadopoulos
AUGUST 2008 will be regarded in history as the month which marked the beginning of the forging of a new world order, as Russia set about restoring its dominance in the post-Soviet space by the use of force and by declaring that it was prepared to engage in a new cold war with the West in defence of its national interests.
In 1992, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, US State Department official Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History, in which he predicted that the world would embrace Western liberalism. He said: “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War… but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
The collapse of Soviet communism was supposed to mark the beginning of a new, peaceful dawn in relations between the world’s great powers. However, history has shown that it is easier to dismantle existing orders than to build new ones. Commentators such as Fukuyama underestimated the lengths to which Washington was prepared to go to establish American global supremacy.
The Pentagon’s Defence Planning Guidance of 1992 – also known as as the
Wolfowitz Doctrine after its supervisor Paul Wolfowitz – highlighted the necessity of American unilateralism and urged the use of pre-emptive military action to ensure Washington’s global hegemony after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
It said: “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat of the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.”
The doctrine cited the Russian Federation as the potential future principal threat to Pax Americana: “Despite its current travails, Russia will remain the strongest military power in Eurasia and the only power in the world with the capability of destroying the United States.”
With Russia on its knees, Nato, under Washington’s leadership, began in the late 1990s to expand into countries which had formerly been part of the Warsaw Pact, in order to contain a potentially resurgent Russian state. Moving eastwards was something that President George Bush senior had assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 Nato would not do in return for the Soviets signing the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany.
Moscow was humiliated as it was forced to watch Nato advance to Russia’s doorstep. The Kremlin perceives this as a menace to Russian security, and this fear has been compounded by American plans to grant Nato membership to Georgia and Ukraine, which would virtually complete the encirclement of Russia.
However, in August 2008, Russia, now buoyed by massive oil and gas revenues, demonstrated to the world that not only had it regained much of its lost superpower status, but also that military force would be used to repel American influence in the post-Soviet territory, or what Russians call “the near abroad”.
The Russian military’s intervention in South Ossetia and the Kremlin’s recognition of South Ossetia and Georgia’s other rebel region of Abkhazia as independent states, were a caveat to the West, in particular the US, that former Soviet republics will remain within Moscow’s orbit and that American interference will be met with the sword.
The Ancient Greek historian Thucydides argued that countries fight wars because of “honour, fear and interest”. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin once stated that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the century”.
Both statements explain why Russia is now intent on reshaping the world’s geopolitical landscape.
