We have another entry in the "blame America" genre of foreign policy thought about our new age of great power competition. The idea that it challenges conventional wisdom is laughable given that the charge is the ultimate in conventional wisdom.
Sakwa has challenged conventional wisdom? Please. It is the most conventional of conventional wisdom to blame America for our current challenges. And it has been that way all my politically aware life over the last five decades. No other actor has agency, in that remarkably enduring view. All actors base their decisions on what America does in that view. Or what America doesn't do. So I call bullshit on this:
Writers who challenge the conventional wisdom about history and current events are usually interesting and provocative; Richard Sakwa, professor emeritus of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent, is both. In The Lost Peace, Sakwa contends that the West—mainly the United States—is largely to blame for the new Cold War with Russia and China. He is half right.
Sakwa believes that the West had an opportunity to forge an enduring great power peace at the end of the Cold War. Instead, the United States sought to maintain its “unipolar moment” by extending its “hegemony” to Russia’s borders in Europe with NATO enlargement and trying to prevent China’s rise in the Asia-Pacific.
America sought to revive Russia's economy and help democracy replace communism. And America sought to supercharge China's economy for decades. How much more "restraint" was America supposed to show to these problematic countries?
It is not America's fault that newly free vassals of post-Soviet Russia knew first hand the perils of letting Russia return. There is no way Russia would have allowed a vacuum of influence between Classic NATO frozen in 1991 and the the shrunken Russian empire to continue. Were we to let Russia re-absorb those states suddenly freed from the Soviet gulag and hope this time Russian domination would be kinder and gentler?
Good God, what was the point of a long Cold War struggle between a free West and a dictatorial, aggressive, and evil communist world if in the end we just threw the former victims to the new wolves?
And China--although the reviewer denies we are at fault for that problem--used its growing economic strength to pressure existing neighbors into accepting China's increasingly forceful expansive claims to match that power. It should be no surprise that those neighbors reject that kind of claim and pressure. Should America have told our friends and allies that China had a really good point and that maybe they should talk to China about what to give up? That would not work out well for America.
Honestly, in some ways America is just too big to ignore. Although our friends and allies managed not to turn against us militarily to balance us as classic balance-of-power theory would hold. Free democracies have limits on what they worry about, I guess.
But for less savory nations, that acceptance isn't easy. Despite our benign neglect of China and Russia during that so-called "unipolar moment," confirmed by the slow slide of our military power during the 1990s "peace dividend"--and in the rest of NATO, virtual elimination of it--Russia and China knew we could revive that power. And direct it at them. It's really the foundation of our security.
And so China and Russia became frenemies with benefits to help their territorial ambitions without being left as the last one standing when the music stopped in a game of Musical Rogue State Chairs.
But what was America supposed to do? Accept their hegemony over unwilling subjects and hope for a good outcome?
Bah. That path to peace for our time is an illusion. And blaming America has a long pedigree in the Western academic echelon above reality.
But I can kind of--if I turn the lights down, squint, and perhaps take mushrooms--see the logic for the urge to blame America. If it is America's fault and not our powerful enemies' fault, all we have to do to fix it is change our policies enough! Then those poor misjudged and good-intentioned lambs would relax and reciprocate with peace for all times!
I mean, the alternative would be that the West a lot of hard work and sacrifice ahead of us to stop actors with evil intent who would threaten our prosperity and freedom. That would suck, right?
And it's not like America will blow a gasket if it is blamed for our dangerous era. Many Americans expect to be blamed! And agree with the charge. So America is a much safer target. It's not like Biden will send an assassin with Polonium 210-laced tea to exact revenge, right? No, lucrative speaking deals in American colleges and universities are the reward for that kind of conventional wisdom-busting analysis!
Half right? More like half-wit.
This age of "great power competition" is on Russia, China, and their minor power Axis of Weasels.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
