Just a month earlier, the current President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, had for Europe’s “Independence moment,” warning: “Battle lines for a new world order based on power are being drawn right now.” Yet when the EU looks squarely into the geopolitical mirror it so often avoids, what does it see? How does it measure up against the great powers shaping the twenty-first century, the United States, China, Russia and India?

In the year marking the centenary of visionary European architect Jacques Delors, the answer is stark. The numbers are unambiguous, and what they reveal is sobering: Europe’s share of global power has long been in decline, and it continues to shrink rapidly. 

Europe’s decline relative to China, Russia and India

When Delors became President of the European Commission in 1985, the combined Gross National Product of the European Community was around ten times larger than China’s. Today, the two economies are roughly equal in size, and within the next 25 years, Europe’s economy is to be only half the size of China’s. 

This is not merely the story of an “old economy” losing ground; it reflects profound transformations in regulatory agility, innovations, digital sovereignty and the very architecture of the global order. Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore’s veteran diplomat, scholar and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, it an unprecedented structural shift, something the world has not witnessed in 2,000 years.

Russia tells a different but equally revealing story. Its economy cannot be compared to the European economy as a whole; it is roughly equivalent to a single major European economy, such as Italy. Yet long-term dynamics are not promising for the EU either. 

In 2000, Italy’s nominal GDP was four times larger than ��ܲ�������’s. Today, they are neck and neck. Even more concerning is that European defense capabilities are falling behind those of Russia. Russian military expenditure is rising so rapidly that, when measured in purchasing power parity terms, it now the combined defense spending of all European countries, despite their efforts to boost budgets and rearm.

The troubling dynamics of the EU’s relative decline are equally apparent with India. In 2000, France’s economy ($1.36 trillion) was three times larger than India’s ($468 billion). Today, it is smaller. The economy of the United Kingdom, then still a member of the EU, was nearly four times larger than India’s, but it has now fallen behind. 

In just a quarter-century, India has overtaken both France and the UK — a worrying trend for two permanent members of the UN Security Council. This raises an increasingly pressing question: as their relative power declines, how much longer can France and the United Kingdom retain their privileged status in the UN?

Across Southeast Asia, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc of ten countries has set itself up to become the world’s economy, driven by integration, demographics and trade agility. In 2000, Germany’s economy was three times larger than ASEAN’s; today, they are roughly the same size, and by 2050, Germany is expected to be only half as large. 

The projected growth for ASEAN in 2024 is , significantly outpacing the EU’s growth rate. If the current trends continue, their economies could be on par within the next 40 years. Ironically, Europe, once the model of regional integration, is now watching others perfect its own idea.

In America’s shadow

The story of the EU–US relationship is one of symbols and numbers, of political dependence and growing economic imbalance. They enjoy a special political and security relationship, yet they remain economic competitors. In that competition, the EU once held the upper hand: in 2008, its economy was nearly $2 trillion than the US’s. Today, the EU’s economy has shrunk to roughly two-thirds the size of America’s, with the US now boasting a nominal GDP around $10 trillion higher. 

On a per capita basis, Europeans now produce roughly half as much as Americans ($46,000 versus $89,000). Europe’s defense industry, too, heavily on American technology and equipment. Nearly 80% of European military procurement goes to foreign suppliers, with EU countries still relying on the US for software, strategic enablers and major platforms.

The imbalance is not only material but symbolic. In what many described as an display of subservience, European leaders, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary-General Mark Rutte, sat around US President Donald Trump in the White House “like schoolchildren.” 

Even Arab and Muslim states reportedly avoided such optics during Gaza truce negotiations. The Independent called it an image of “,” while American commentator Benny Johnson it “the single most powerful image of 2025.” To cap it all, NATO’s Secretary-General reportedly referred to Trump as “.”

And now, “daddy” has imposed a transactional strategy for Europe and Ukraine — no more aid, only arms sales. European allies are now expected to buy arms from the US to sustain Ukraine’s defense. From Berlin to Tallinn, capitals are purchases. Cynics could argue that Washington’s strategy risks not only fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian, but also draining Europe to the last euro.

Searching for a new Delors

Three decades after Jacques Delors defined Europe’s purpose, that purpose is faltering. The United States sets its security agenda. China and India define the scale of global growth. Russia dictates the pace of rearmament and challenges the European security order. ASEAN demonstrates what dynamic regionalism can achieve.

In the current digital realm, China commands WeChat, TikTok and a market of over three billion users in Asia, while the United States leverages Silicon Valley, Elon Musk and unmatched global reach. Overregulated Europe, by contrast, has little digital sovereignty and struggles to turn regulation into global innovation.

Reversing this decline will require greater European sovereignty, stronger leadership and a rediscovery of Europe’s soul. Mario Draghi, former Italian Prime Minister and former President of the European Central Bank, warns in his that the EU must increase annual investments by €800 billion ($930.9 billion), reduce bureaucracy and curb its digital dependence. 

Delors guided, strengthened and united Europe as the world shifted from a bipolar to a unipolar order. But who, today, in Europe, can navigate the rougher seas of an emerging multipolar world?

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Europe’s Ambitions vs. Sobering Reality: What the Numbers Reveal appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Second, the Iranian Revolution overthrew the Shah. This marked a change in the relationship between Israel and Iran. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini established “Quds Day” as an annual event to express opposition to the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem and other Palestinian territories, including Gaza. (Quds is the Islamic name for Jerusalem.)

These events had a profound regional impact, shaping politics and conflicts from the 1980s onward. Israel had defeated its Arab neighbors in several wars (1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973), but now militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas took their place. Backed by the US, Israel has in its favor a greater disparity in military power than history has ever seen. In conflicts with these militants (1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s), the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) won every battle. Despite this, Israel has never been able to secure a strategic victory. Each time, Hezbollah and Hamas emerged stronger and more determined in their resistance. With Israel engaged in another war against Hamas in Gaza, we are seeing the same conflict play out once again.

Israel’s failed occupation of Lebanon

Over the past 40 years, Israel has demonstrated time and again that it cannot win wars against Hezbollah or end them by military means.

On June 6, 1982, the IDF crossed into southern Lebanon and quickly advanced to the outskirts of Beirut. However, the war that Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon believed would last for just few days turned into Israel’s version of Vietnam. By the end of the war, Israeli totaled 455 dead and 2,460 wounded.

Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim militia, formed during this war. It forced the IDF to retreat 30 kilometers south of Beirut, a major setback for Israel.

Faced with growing public pressure, Begin resigned on September 28, 1983. The new Israeli government, led by Shimon Peres, faced the same challenges as before and eventually withdrew to a self-declared security buffer zone in southern Lebanon on January 14, 1985. This move set a precedent for future Israeli withdrawals from occupied territories without negotiated agreements with opposing sides.

Israel left the battlefield to Hezbollah, which became a prominent actor in Lebanon and it solidified its presence and influence in the following years. 

Israeli dissatisfaction with the occupation of a buffer zone grew during the 1990s. It escalated following a 1997 in which 73 Israeli soldiers were killed.

Ultimately, on May 23, 2000, the Israeli army executed the third and final withdrawal of Israeli forces. The IDF pulled out of southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, effectively ending the 22-year occupation. It was the second Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories in Lebanon without a negotiated agreement, marking another strategic setback for Israel. 

After the withdrawal, the border with Lebanon remained unstable. Hezbollah expanded its missile and military capabilities in the area, and a new conflict erupted in the region only six years later. Although the Israeli army destroyed Lebanon’s infrastructure in the 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah was not defeated. Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah called the war a “.” For Israel, the conflict was a military failure. The conduct of the war discredited Israel’s leadership, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s approval rating soon fell to . 

From Hezbollah to Hamas

Israel has demonstrated time and again that it cannot win wars against Hamas, either, or end them by military means.

Israeli security forces have many leaders from the military and political wings of Hamas. In 2004, they Hamas’s founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Yasin. In the same year, they one of the co-founders of Hamas, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi. Despite these targeted killings, Hamas has demonstrated the ability to rebuild its leadership, increase its popularity and act effectively as a political organization. It the plurality of the vote in the 2006 Palestinian legislative election. 

Some argue that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu carried out a strategy designed to weaken the power of the Palestinian Authority, the governing body led by President Mahmoud Abbas, by allowing Hamas to retain control over Gaza. One of Netanyahu’s associates, Major General Gershon Hacohen, , “We need to tell the truth. Netanyahu’s strategy is to prevent the option of two-states, so he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.”

Whatever the truth, Hamas maintained its presence in Gaza. Despite facing conflicts with Israel in 2008-09 (Operation Cast Lead), 2012 (Operation Pillar of Defense), 2014 (Operation Protective Edge), 2018 (Gaza Border Protests) and 2021 (Israel-Gaza Conflict), Hamas survived with support coming from regional actors like Iran, Qatar and Turkey. While Israel won each battle, Hamas, after suffering casualties and infrastructure damage, consistently demonstrated resilience. Following each conflict, Hamas rebuilt infrastructure, adapted new tactics, and refined strategies.

On October 7, Hamas executed a swift and coordinated action by land, sea and air, resulting in the deaths of around people, including at least 846 civilians, 278 soldiers and 44 police. Hamas also took an estimated 239 hostages. This unexpected move disrupted the status quo, altering dynamics in the Middle East. Journalist Alon Pinkas Hamas’s incursion as an “epic Israeli debacle.”

Israel’s mission impossible

Given the historical patterns of conflict between the Israel Defense Forces and non-state actors like Hezbollah and Hamas over the past 40 years, we can predict how this present conflict will evolve. Israel’s chances of winning the war against Hamas are slim. Netanyahu painted himself into a corner with “destroy Hamas” as an objective, just asBegin and Olmert painted themselves into corners with “destroy PLO” or “destroy Hezbollah.” Both of them won their battles but eventually lost their wars, withdrawing from the fight without achieving their declared objectives. 

If Netanyahu aims to “destroy Hamas,” he would have to wage a protracted and bloody urban war, similar to what Begin faced. The question arises: Is Israel prepared for a prolonged war on multiple fronts against highly motivated militias entrenched for over a decade? Will the Israeli public tolerate significant IDF casualties? Even if the IDF incapacitates Hamas in Gaza, as it did with the PLO in Lebanon in 1982–83, merely destroying infrastructure will not eradicate its ideology. As Ami Ayalon, Gilead Sher and Orni Petruschka , Hamas is an idea, and it will persist among Palestinians as long as there is no real peace option to which they can attach their hopes.

Moreover, Tel Aviv is unlikely to bring the 2 million Palestinians in an occupied Gaza to submission. More likely, considering history, we will witness the IDF leaving Gaza, leaving destruction in its wake, similar to its compelled withdrawal from Lebanon. Hamas would claim a victory because it, or at least its ideology, wasn’t completely destroyed.

New trends in the Middle East

Netanyahu has said he will “change the Middle East,” establishing a regional order aligning with Israel’s interests. However, his actions following October 7 have had the opposite effect. The region has undergone drastic changes: have erupted in major Arab capitals, leading to the of normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia and forcing Cairo, Amman and Riyadh to change their official narrative. Israel’s relations with Turkey are strained, and Iran’s proxies have Israel, as well as in Iraq and Syria, with missiles and drones.

A sustained ground operation by Israel could result in tens of thousands of casualties, heighten the risk of a broader regional conflict and destabilize governments in multiple Arab countries. Iran has also that it would not allow Hamas to lose without escalating the conflict.

Internationally, Israel’s maneuvering space is narrowing, as public opinion increasingly rejects the dehumanization of the Palestinian people. The voices supporting Palestinians resonate from London to Madrid to Washington. The United States, once the primary force in the Middle East, is no longer the sole or main authority. We live in a multipolar world. Muslim-majority states in the Middle East are demonstrating greater independence and a willingness to establish strategic partnerships with different global powers, including BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in 2011 and Afghanistan in 2021 serve as poignant reminders of evolving regional realities.

Prime Minister Netanyahu presented himself as a master statesman who could do the impossible for Israel. In addition to killing two-state solution, his plan involved normalizing relations with all Arab states, and treating Palestinians as a security concern to be managed indefinitely. But everything Netanyahu has built for decades crashed in a matter of hours. The political grave he dug for the two-state solution may now become his own, and like Menachem Begin four decades earlier, he and his unpopular ministers may retire from politics.

The recent conflict and devastation in Gaza might sow the seeds for a new order, challenging the existing structure of the occupation of Palestine, which, in turn, contains the seeds for more wars that Israel cannot win and cannot end. The two-state solution is the only thing that can fix this system. Ending what UN Secretary-General António Guterres “56 years of suffocating occupation” is the only reasonable option for any future Israeli government. This is the only victory Israel could make.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

FO° Exclusive: Big Trouble in Israel and Gaza

Saudi Arabia And Israel Drive A Hard Bargain For Normalization

Popular Support of the Palestinians Is a Problem for MBS

The post Defeating Hamas Is a Challenge Israel Cannot Overcome appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Muslim-majority states “de-westernize” their international affairs and establish strategic partnerships with other great powers while reducing their dependence on arms suppliers from the US. They also avoid interstate rivalry and interference in domestic affairs of fellow Muslim-majority states, or other authoritarian great powers.

This article analyzes the foreign affairs of Muslim-majority states through two prisms, descriptive and explanatory. The descriptive section highlights observable data, such as their foreign policy views, commitments, or actions that demonstrate their balanced approach to international affairs. The explanatory section questions the nature of their actions: Why, for example, do Muslim-majority states diversify their relationships beyond Western partnerships, including their increased arms supply from Russia?

A Beacon of Neutrality 

Muslim-majority states maintain a “practical”, “cautious” or “uneasy” neutrality over the Russia-Ukraine War. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan this position by stating, “We cannot hold sides. We cannot take sides. And it wouldn’t be right for us to do that.” 

Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan, emulated Erdoğan when he refused to blame Russia for the war. He , “countries like Pakistan should not pass any value and moral judgment on this” and they should be “nonaligned, neutral, and friendly to both.” Malaysia has similarly committed to .

Saudi Arabia, like other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), generally the war “as a complicated European conflict.” The GCC leaders see no reason for Arab states “to stand against Vladimir Putin’s government.” Egypt’s foreign ministry released a affirming the importance of “dialogue and diplomatic solutions”. This reluctance to blame and antagonize Russia triggered prompt expressions of frustration from Kyiv’s embassy in Cairo.

Currently, it is difficult to find any statement by Muslim-majority states that supports either the West or Russia. These states have remained studiously neutral. Syrian President Bashar Al Assad is an to this phenomenon.

It’s Not Personal, It’s Policy

The Muslim world’s approach to the invasion reflects their readiness to establish political, economic and security partnerships with multiple players in the international system. They are not choosing alliances with a single power. This is what contemporary Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin and late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington posited when they spoke about Islamic-Orthodox or Islamic-Confucian alliances. Muslim-majority states prefer constructive engagements with various great powers based solely on their commercial, security or geopolitical interests. 

Turkey, for example, sees Russia as an important partner for energy, tourism and regional security. At the same time, as a member of , Ankara is allied with the US and European powers for its security. China has now become Saudi Arabia’s biggest trading partner. The US still remains the Kingdom’s most important security partner though. Since choosing one relationship over the other would be costly, Turkey and Saudi Arabia tend to pursue multi-directional foreign policies. Abu Dhabi, Cairo, Jakarta, Islamabad, and Doha also respect the US as a great power, while maintaining relationships with other great powers.

Muslim-majority states are forging relationships with non-Western groups, such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (). Both groups approach international affairs in a multipolar manner, and act as an alternative to the US-led order. In the Middle East alone, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States Emirates (UAE) are current or prospective dialogue partners of the. All medium-sized Muslim-majority countries, such as Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, look positively to BRICS. The same holds for other parts of the Muslim world, specifically Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the UAE, Senegal, Algeria, Uzbekistan and Malaysia. All prefer to participate in remaking the rules of the international system, a process that is now underway. 

More consequential commitments from Muslim-majority states at the multilateral level are found within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (). Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they calls from the US to pump more crude as prices of oil rallied to multi-year highs. In October 2022, Muslim-majority member states within OPEC+ decided to cut crude production by two million barrels a day, a move that benefitted not only Russia, but also themselves. On April 2, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC+ oil producers announced further oil of around 1.16 million barrels per day. For these states, staying friendly with the US is subordinate to pursuing their national economic goals.

Muslim-majority states are also generally reluctant to interfere in the domestic affairs of fellow Muslim states, including on issues of serious human rights violations. In the UN Human Rights Council, no Muslim-majority state member voted for the international fact-finding to independently investigate alleged human rights violations in Iran. Tehran had cracked down on protests that began on September 16, 2022 after the death in police custody of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini.

Muslim-majority states also ignore the domestic affairs of other great powers, including serious human rights violations of Muslim minorities. This behavior of their political leaders, including their state religious bodies, is striking. They have remained silent on the massive detention and forced re-education of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in Northwest China. In July 2019, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, and other Muslim-majority states helped to a Western motion at the United Nations calling for China to allow “independent international observers” into the Xinjiang region. 

This year, a delegation from The World Muslim Communities Council (), which comprises 14 Muslim-majority states, visited Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. According to its , TWMCC “hailed the efforts of the Chinese authorities in combating terrorism in Xinjiang”. As prime minister, Khan also that hardly any Muslim country, with the exception of Turkey, stands with Pakistan on the rights of the Kashmiri people.

Fighter Jets and Possible Peace

Neutrality in the exercise of international affairs generally does not come cheap. It is important to note that many Muslim-majority states take appropriate measures to protect and pay for their stances. According to a fact sheet of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (), 14 Muslim-majority states are listed among the top 30 largest importers of arms, accounting for 38.8% of the total volume of arms imports from 2017 to 2021. 

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Pakistan and the UAE are listed among the top 10 largest importers of arms. This illustrates that weapon imports from Russia are the most important driver of relations between Muslim-majority states and Moscow. According to , Russia was the largest arms supplier for Egypt, Algeria, Iraq and Pakistan from 2017 to 2021. It was the second and third largest supplier for Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, Pakistan and the UAE. Moreover, half of the top Russian weapons importers are Muslim-majority states. At the regional level, the Middle East and North African (MENA) region was the most lucrative for Russian arms sales between 2009 and 2018. 

In recent years, ��ܲ�������’s share of MENA’s defense market has doubled, as arms deliveries by 125% from 1999-2008 to 2009-2018. In 2009-18, Russia weapons to 14 countries in the region, which accounted for 26% of the total volume of ��ܲ�������’s arms exports. In 1999-2008 this figure was only 14%. As arms imports from Russia increased, imports from the US . They went down from 47% in 2012-16 to 43% in 2017-21. 

Continuing this trend, arms exports from the US to the UAE fell by 36% between 2016 and 2020. The UAE was the second largest recipient of US arms in 2012–16 but fell to the eighth largest in 2017–21. For the same period, arms exports to Turkey fell by 81% as they went from the third largest recipient of US arms exports in 2011–15 to the 19th largest in 2016–20. 

In 2022, Erdoğan that his country is no longer dependent on the US. Facing problems with importing fighter jets, he said, “If we can’t get the results out of the United States about the F-16s, what are we going to do? Of course, we’re going to take care of our own selves”.

The generalization of the Muslim world versus others ignores the important issue of interstate relations between Muslim-majority states. What happens between rival Muslim-majority states in a world that is no longer unipolar? 

Data on civil, proxy, or interstate wars suggest that rival Muslim states compete far less today than in the past. States with previously strained relations, made bilateral U-turns in recent years. Turkey and Saudi Arabia established military collaborations and Erdoğan Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). The Turkish defense minister his Syrian counterpart in Moscow. Saudi Arabia a consulate in Iraq and pledged $1 billion in aid. Additionally, there was a in Yemen and even the civil war in Syria has subsided. 

The recent deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran marks a dramatic departure from years of open hostility. Perhaps even more unexpectedly, Turkey began a with Syria. While the rivalry between Muslim-majority states will not cease completely in the emerging multipolar world, old differences are shrinking considerably.

Assertively Moving from the Periphery 

Leaders in the West might wonder why many Muslim-majority states are reluctant to embrace the Western narrative about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This might come across as surprising given that some of these states host US military troops. To make sense of what is going on, a closer examination of the Muslim world is necessary.

Both the Russian Dugin and the American Huntington depicted a unitary nature of the Muslim world. They generalized Islamic civilization as a single variable or meta-force in international affairs. This has provoked serious and never-ending debate. However, religion has never been the central defining element for Muslim-majority states. Furthermore, Dugin and Huntington did not examine the relationship between Islam and forms of government in Muslim-majority countries. The reality is complex.

Our assumption at the international level is that Muslim-majority states resent the liberal international order and the threat that it poses to their political societies. Their political elites do generally dislike what John Mearsheimer calls “a liberal unipole” in which the US, as the sole superpower in the international system, pursues a policy of “liberal hegemony.” They do not want the liberal American elites to reshape Muslim-majority states in their own image. Indeed, there is a problem in the Muslim world with accepting the universality and superiority of liberal ideology. The liberal political elite in the West believes in democracy and free markets, and wants to impose this on others. Muslim-majority states distrust this Western, especially American, article of faith. They see recent military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as disasters. 

Therefore, Muslim-majority states prefer multipolarity in the international system. In this system, their voices can be heard and they can move from the periphery to the center of international politics. Many Muslim-majority states have progressed from dependent status, serving foreign policy objectives of other great powers, to push for what Pakistani Khan calls “more dignity”, “self-respect” and “independence” in international affairs.

Turkey, for example, has gradually moved from a peripheral state, or as Huntington describes a “torn state”, in the Western block to a core state in its regional sub-system. Turkey’s recent stand on Ukraine or Saudi Arabia’s strategic partnership with China underlines an important shift. A new world order has emerged where China and Russia have become important, and are now challenging the US. 

Michael Singh has how medium-sized states are “eschewing both alignment with a single power and nonalignment, and instead choosing omni-alignment: participation in the multilateral institutions led by the United States and those spearheaded by its rivals.” He argues that “omni-alignment also serves as a hedge against the unpredictability of great-power behavior”. This hedging is most clearly seen in the Middle East, where the future of both US and Chinese engagement remains unclear.

Muslim-majority states view liberal ideology as a threat to their political systems. They prefer strong, sovereign and authoritarian states. The Muslim world still remains unfriendly to liberal democracy, irrespective of variations in faith practices, ideologies, regime characteristics or elite interests. Muslim-majority states are either non-democratic or have no functional democracy by Western standards. Those few Muslim countries that hold regular elections, such as Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia, have not reached the status of “consolidated democracy” according to .

Data on individual freedoms reveals that Muslim-majority states score poorly on the right to vote, freedom of expression and equality before the law. Of all Muslim-majority states that are members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (), not one scored enough to be given the status of a free state. The majority are considered not free, with the rest deemed partially free. Given their opposition to the liberal order, contemporary Muslim kings, presidents, and prime ministers built stronger partnerships with Donald Trump, a like-minded American president. He railed against the liberal order and supported strongmen around the world such as Erdoğan, MBS and Mohamed bin Zayed. In turn, they prefer Trump to Biden.

Shared opposition by Muslim-majority states to the international liberal order is allied to their opposition to liberal norms at the national level. Today, Muslim-majority states and their leaders are aiming to move to a post-liberal, new global order where the East balances the West and where they are no longer “client”, “torn”, “vassal”, or “periphery” states.

It remains to be seen how the push for increased centrality within their regional sub-systems will play out for Muslim-majority states. This new assertive foreign policy of the Muslim world will certainly strengthen multipolarity. It suits China and Russia. However, Muslim-majoirty states will not become part of what Huntington defined as the Islamic-Confucian alliance or what Dugin proposed as a common front of Islamic-Orthodox civilisations against the liberal West.

They will continue to establish political, economic or security partnerships with different players in the international system. Muslim states may even contribute to stability in an anarchic and more complex multipolar system by offering mediation in conflict zones that involve opposing great powers. The future will be very different to the present and Muslim-majority states will become bigger players in the international system.

[edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post A Timely Analysis: The Foreign Policy Trends of Muslim-Majority States appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Riyadh seemed to look for opportunities to pass the buck: get its more powerful ally to do the heavy lifting in order to contain the threat from Tehran. But the US did not “cut off the head of the [Iranian] snake” and Saudis were largely alone in their unfriendly business with Iran. Until they decided otherwise in March 2023. The subject of recent Saudi-Iranian détente as well as the likely prospects for their bilateral ties has attracted increasing attention lately. However, most policy experts rarely analyze their earlier rapprochements, why each friendly period in nearly 100 years of their diplomatic history lasted for so long, and when and why things changed. This article addresses this lacuna.

History that projects their trajectory

The in-depth historical account of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia since the 1920s points to a systemic recurrence of friendlier behavior. In my earlier writings on the subject, separate and relatively friendly periods were identified, the first of which evolved in the multipolar world in late 1920s and early 1930s, the second in the bipolar world from 1946 to 1979, and a third which recurred during the unipolar moment – more specifically their détente from 1991 to 1997, and subsequent rapprochement from 1997 to 2007.

In the first friendly phase, Iran and Saudi Arabia were largely associated with a single great power in a multipolar world, the United Kingdom. Their threat environment and corresponding threat perception limited their rivalry. After their initial contacts were established in the mid-1920s two states (at that time, the Kingdom of Persia and the Kingdom of Hejaz, Najd and its Dependencies) concluded and signed the Friendship Treaty in Tehran in 1929. In the aftermath of the treaty, their diplomatic envoys also accorded reciprocal treatment in accordance with the rules of international law. Historians of Saudi-Iranian relations also documented that the Saudi government and city residents warmly welcomed a naval ship from Persia that docked at Jeddah port.  

Throughout this phase, the British regional dominance and common identity of Iran and Saudi Arabia with the British pole reduced the phenomenon of cross-cutting relationships among different axes of conflict that usually exist in the multipolar system. As other great powers played a secondary role in the Persian Gulf, the number of great-great power dyads was reduced, which generally represented a more stable situation for Iran and Saudi Arabia. Any attempt to break this continuity would have resulted in serious trouble. The case of Nazi Germany is illustrative in this regard. Berlin made limited but successful attempts to increase power projection in Iran in the late 1930s and early 1940s. As expected, this gave rise to security tensions, which resulted in the forced abdication of Reza Shah, the swift occupation of Iran by British and Russian troops, and inactive relations with Riyadh.

In the second friendly phase, Iran and Saudi Arabia shared their alliance with a common great power in a bipolar system, the United States, and the tightness of the system made it difficult for them to oppose each other. The in-depth historical account of their diplomatic relations since the 1950s points to a systemic recurrence of friendlier behavior for three subsequent decades. The strength of their collaboration in 1950s was expressed in different arenas, such as converging Saudi-Iranian interests in Egypt after Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew King Farouk in the socialist-republican coup; joint support for Jordan when revolts threatened the continuity of the Hashemite monarchy; and preventing a socialist coup in Lebanon. 

In the 1960s, Iran supported Saudi Arabia in a proxy war against Egypt in Northern Yemen. Two friendly states also signed the Agreement over the Islands of al-‘Arabiya and Farsi, while in the 1970s, Iran and Saudi Arabia were twin pillars of the US axis and were the closest of allies. That relationship was so close that Iran declared a week of mourning when King Faisal was assassinated in 1975.The dominant structural force that prevailed through the three decades or so of close bilateral ties is the bipolar world order of the time, and the fact that both sides allied themselves with the United States. It also explains why Iran and Saudi Arabia feared other revolutionary states that identified themselves with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). 

This fear was great enough that it not only drew Saudi Arabia, a Wahhabi Islamist state, and Iran, then a nationalist and pro-secular Shia state, together, but also made them more receptive to Islamic political movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Tehran’s departure from the US-led pole in 1979. generated an enormous amount of pressure on both states to significantly alter their behavior. Iran abandoned friendly connections with Saudi Arabia, which maintained an active and strategic relationship with the US, while the Saudis limited friendly connections with Iran because of its messianic refusal to abide by the existing order. New structural realities led to the creation of the Gulf Cooperation Council in January 1981 and Iraq-Iran War in the 1980s.

Shared threat perception from American unipolarity

In the third friendly phase, a sole superpower in a unipolar world was not restrained from the Middle East and Persian Gulf region in the 1990s and early 2000s. Spreading democracy abroad was a high-priority goal for two successive US administrations since the end of the Cold War. In his 1992 campaign Bill Clinton frequently insisted that the promotion of democracy would be a top priority of his foreign policy. His assistant for national security defined the central theme of Clinton foreign policy as the “enlargement of democracy”. President George W. Bush used military might to try to turn Afghanistan and Iraq to begin with, and later even other states across the Middle East into liberal democracies. He said: “By the resolve and purpose of America, and of our friends and allies, we will make this an age of progress and liberty. Free people will set the course of history, and free people will keep the peace of the world.”

However, political elites in Iran and Saudi Arabia generally disliked what John Mearsheimer calls “a liberal unipole” in which the United States pursues a policy of “liberal hegemony” – making Muslim-majority states in the image of liberal elites in the US. Indeed, there is a problem in Iran and Saudi Arabia with accepting the universality and superiority of liberal ideology that is pursued by the political liberal elite in the West. Additional systemic reason for their relatively constructive relations during this period was unrivaled US hegemony. Iran and Saudi Arabia were fearful and resistant to this pressure from the US in different ways. Not surprisingly, they have pursued a policy of détente from 1991 to 1997 and closer diplomatic ties from late 1990s to mid-2000s.

It is not difficult to find historical validation for this argument. Riyadh and Tehran were exceptionally close between 1997 and 2001. This was the most constructive period of Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, during which the Cooperation Agreement and Security Accord were concluded in 1998 and 2001, respectively. At the peak of their collaboration in 2000, the Iranian Minister of Defense, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, new arrangements for collective security in the Persian Gulf that excluded the United States, including the creation of a joint army “for the defense of the Muslim world”. “The sky’s the limit for Iranian–Saudi Arabian relations and co-operation, as the whole of Islamic Iran’s military might is in the service of our Saudi and Muslim brothers,” he said. 

Unsurprisingly, the Saudis balked. They were not ready to sacrifice a long-term security arrangement with the US. Doing so would be akin to Japan entering into a security pact with China while exiting its defense treaty with the US. This also explains why Saudi Arabia signed an agreement with Iran on internal security matters in 2001 that excluded military collaboration. The massive American military presence in the region essentially acted as a stabilizer for Saudi–Iran ties. That it took a scant three weeks for the US to pummel the Iraqi army and overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime did not go unnoticed in Tehran. 

With one side cowed and the other reassured by American military might, Iran and Saudi Arabia pursued cautious policies and preserved dialogue at a high-level. Ali Larijani alone paid four official visits to Saudi Arabia for consultations with Prince Bandar and King Abdullah. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was accorded red carpet treatment and was greeted by the Saudi King at the airport when he arrived in Riyadh in March 2007. The Saudi press hailed Ahmadinejad’s visit as another sign of deepening ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and referred to the two countries as “brotherly nations.”

However, Saudi Arabia was getting more fearful from the new American posture in the Middle East than from its promotion of liberal democracy. With a pending American exit from Iraq by 2011., Tehran was assured of having more space to expand its influence and growing proxy network. Iraq was no longer an occupied, neutral or buffer state between Riyadh and Tehran. Instead, it tilted towards Iran on all major regional issues. Iraqi Shia militia groups also grew bolder, and were free to carry out mortar attacks across the border with Saudi Arabia. 

Hence, the exit of Saudi Arabia’s security blanket left them worried about American commitment to maintaining the regional order. That worry amplified when President Barack Obama announced a new East Asia Strategy—also known as the Asia Pivot—in 2012. With this shift, the central role of the US in the Middle East was additionally marginalized. Iran and Saudi Arabia were left to fill the vacuum. While Saudi Arabia felt more vulnerable with the Arab Spring in Bahrain and Yemen, Iranian interests in Syria were under threat. It was a perfect setting for them to return to hostile relations.

Shared preference of pluralization and multipolarity

With changing international order, two regional rivals found themselves in matching mode again in the 2020s. In addition to what they commonly opposed in late 1990s and early 2000s, there is an alternative order for Iran and Saudi Arabia that better fits their international ambitions today. It is about their shared preference for polarization and multipolarity of the international system where their voices can be heard or where they can move from the “periphery” of international politics to the “center”. 

Iran has decided to pursue more independent foreign policy more than four decades ago. Saudi Arabia has chosen a similar path only recently. Although Riyad has long been a US ally, its neutral stance on the crisis in Ukraine, strategic partnership with China, close relations with Russia, exposure to BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, underlines an important shift to new balancing behavior in a new world order where Russia—and China—are equally important. 

Moreover, beyond a neutral stance on the war in Ukraine or a closer partnership with Beijing and Moscow, there emerge other assertive foreign policy paradigms with broader regional implications. Among others, Saudi special relations with the US have grown colder. Iran’s long-held official view that collaboration with Saudi Arabia is subject to new arrangements in the Persian Gulf that exclude the US or reduce Saudi dependency on Washington have not changed. This gives Tehran a reason to engage with Riyadh. Given their newly born mutual preference for multipolarity, including their common objection to liberal international order in previous phases, conditions for a Saudi-Iran rapprochement were already set.

Their matching polarity with great power(s) has accurately foreshadowed the friendly course of Iran–Saudi ties over the past 100 years. The nature of this relationship is likely to follow the same pattern in the future as well.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Saudi-Iranian Rapprochements Are Not New: Here’s a History appeared first on 51�Թ�.

25 Years On, The Dayton Peace Agreement Is a Ticking Time Bomb

READ MORE

The Russian president has already  numerous official consultations with Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, the latest one taking place in December 2021. During his  consecutive meeting with Putin in the midst of the 2014 Ukraine crisis, Dodik shared his unequivocal affiliation with Moscow, saying: “Naturally, there is no question that we support Russia. We may be a small and modest community, but our voice is loud.” As ��ܲ�������’s current military intervention progressed in Ukraine, Dodik also  to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about the “implementation of agreements” reached during the last meeting with Putin.  

Putin’s Proxy in Bosnia

In the quarter of a century since the signing of the Dayton Accords, Bosnia and Herzegovina has been the site of occasional political crises but has never come close to military conflict. In recent months, however, Dodik has doubled down on his efforts to tear apart the postwar constitutional order of the country’s two constitutive entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska. Emboldened by the resurrection of ��ܲ�������’s power, he pressed ahead with his nationalist political agenda aimed at dismantling institutional arrangements that have gradually restored peace and security over the last 25 years. As a result, Dodik was blacklisted by the US government in January this year.

In December 2021, lawmakers loyal to Dodik advanced their secession bid and voted  in favor of starting a procedure for Republika Srpska to withdraw from central government mechanisms such as common defense, judiciary and intelligence, to name a few. They have also decided that within , the government in Banja Luka must recreate its own legislation governing such institutions. 

To show it means business, Republika Srpska paraded paramilitary forces on January 9 in a nationalist celebration declared illegal by the constitutional court of Bosnia and Herzegovina; among the participants were the Night Wolves, a black-uniformed group of Russian nationalist pro-Kremlin bikers. On February 10, Republika Srpska’s national assembly adopted the draft version of a law to create a separate judicial system from the rest of the state. Regarding his future plans, Dodik  he won’t be daunted by opposition from the Western centers of power, suggesting that Moscow and Beijing will help if the West imposes sanctions. 

Notwithstanding ��ܲ�������’s local proxy, fanning existing flames in Bosnia and Herzegovina could be a rational adventure from Putin’s viewpoint for additional reasons. First, Serbian and Turkish reactions could fit the wider Russian agenda if this trajectory with opposing power dyads within the Bosnian state takes a turning point. 

Second, Putin is aware of the EU’s record of conflict management in ex-Yugoslavia, and Bosnia in particular, in the early 1990s. It failed miserably to secure the peace in the heart of Europe, when the EU was a rising star and Russia was at its weakest point. Third, extending the current  peace mission in Bosnia may be vetoed by Russia at the UN Security Council in November. 

It is worth remembering that Bosnia and Herzegovina doesn’t have NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense guarantee to fall back on, and that President Joe Biden’s promise to defend every inch of NATO is meaningless for Sarajevo. Washington’s official position on protecting the parameters of the Dayton Agreement is as vague as its strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan.  

Serbia and Turkey in the Bosnian Theater

President Putin has many good reasons to count on Serbia to exploit Bosnia and Herzegovina‘s internal weakness. Belgrade largely relies on Russian weaponry and strong nationalist sentiments with the secessionist movement in Republika Srpska. Serbia’s national defense , officially promoted in late 2019, transcends national boundaries in its content, marking a shift from defensive sovereignty to a more offensive approach. 

Serbia’s home minister, Aleksandar Vulin, the former defense minister who officially promoted this strategy, often exudes self-congratulatory confidence that the Western Balkans region is there for Serbia’s taking. At the ruling Serbian Progressive Party congress in July last year that took place a few months before the joint Serbian-Russian “Slavic Shield” military exercise, Vulin forcefully  that “Creating the Serbian World, where the Serbs would live and be united, is the task of this generation of politicians.”

Serbia has also accelerated military spending at a faster rate for several years now for no rational reason except regional supremacy. According to , its current defense budget is almost twice that of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Northern Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo combined. Serbia’s reliance on Russian and Chinese military support has also been reinforced. In 2019, it received donations of fighter jets, tanks and armored vehicles from Russia. In 2020, it  CH92-A drones and FK-3 surface-to-air missiles from China and then , at Putin’s suggestion, the Pantsir S-1 air defense system. 

It is critical to understand why Serbia is arming so fast: From a realist perspective, its behavior could only become assertive, and more so if ��ܲ�������’s military intervention in Ukraine succeeds.

Turkey is probably the second regional contender to be caught in the Bosnian fire for both domestic and external factors. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ankara has been projecting soft power throughout the Balkans, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, relying on historical, cultural and economic ties. Turkey has also actively participated in all three peacebuilding missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina: IFOR (1995-97), SFOR (1997-2004) and is currently among EUFOR’s 20 contributing countries. 

However, in case of conflict, Ankara represents an imraportant geopolitical substitute should EUFOR abandon its commitments or if Russia vetoes its mandate at the Security Council. Western powers have for far too long watched from the sidelines and have practically allowed this trajectory with opposing power dyads within the Bosnian state to take root. Hence, Turkey won’t shy away from using its military clout in the region.

The conventional logic of Turkish enmity with Serbia sets Ankara and Moscow on a collision course because Vladimir Putin perceives Republika Srpska and Serbia as natural, historic and strategic allies. However, Russia would not necessarily oppose a Turkish role in the Balkans as long as Ankara’s move triggers some cracks within the Euro-Atlantic alliance. It also seems plausible for Turkey and Russia — historically perceived as brothers by the two confronting parties in the Bosnian theater — to test their mediating capacity modeled after the Astana format launched after the Russian and Turkish interventions in Syria. 

Given their animosity with Russia or Turkey, some European powers would expectedly oppose their interference in Bosnia and Herzegovina on geopolitical grounds, while the more liberal ones will raise ideological concerns. Speaking on the subject of the priorities of the French presidency of the EU that began on January 1, President Emmanuel Macron  that the Western Balkans “is going through new tensions today. History is coming back. Sometimes tragedy is coming back.” 

Macron also insisted on the “very special responsibility” toward these countries in terms of fighting external interference. What Macron fears is that extra-regional actors like Russia or Turkey could fill the vacuum, in which case power relations would inevitably become subject to reconfiguration. This scenario is not unfeasible as Russia does not project power in the Balkans for the sake of challenging Turkish interests in the first place. Its prime goal is to replace the existing US-led liberal, institutional and rules-based order with a more anarchic, illiberal and multipolar structure that fits ��ܲ�������’s image. 

A Slippery Slope for the EU and US

At first sight, a local collision in Bosnia and Herzegovina would bear a striking resemblance to what transpired in Ukraine in 2013-14. Without full integration into the EU or NATO, Bosnia and Herzegovina is also a vulnerable target, just like Ukraine has proven to be. Bosnia and Herzegovina is also divided along similar geopolitical and domestic lines, between pro-NATO aspirations in Sarajevo and anti-NATO tendencies in Banja Luka. 

However, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s instability is far more complex than the crisis in Ukraine for one structural reason: It is not in ��ܲ�������’s near abroad but in the European underbelly, which presents both an opportunity and a threat for all opposing sides at the local, regional and international level.

The EU has for some time failed to find a unified response to the Bosnian crisis, let alone taking concrete measures, except increasing EUFOR mission by an additional 500 troops. While some founding member states, including Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, urged sanctions against Milorad Dodik during a recent EU foreign ministers’ debate, newer members like Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia oppose them. In fact, some European populist leaders have been staunch supporters of the Russian proxy in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic stated recently that he was  the EU imposing sanctions against Dodik, saying that “If someone from Croatia votes for those sanctions, for me they will be a traitor.” Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban  €100 million ($110 million) in financial aid to Republika Srpska. Orban also opposed placing EU sanctions on Dodik, signaling an early warning that the EU, as a whole, may be unable to secure a peaceful Bosnia and Herzegovina, which again resonates with the EU’s poor historical record of conflict management in the region.

Hence, one should not exclude a possibility that EUFOR troops could be evacuated from Bosnia and Herzegovina one day altogether, much in the same way the Dutch UNPROFOR battalion was pulled from Srebrenica in July 1995, failing to prevent the Srebrenica genocide from taking place and making a mockery of UN resolutions on safe heavens. Should there be a prospect for this failure being repeated, the EU might decide to pass the buck on to Washington.

Make Sense of the World

Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

I agree to receive emails and other content from 51�Թ�. I understand that I may repeal my consent at any time. You can review our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for further information..

In that case, small-nation turmoil and squabbles among Balkan nations could transform into a great-power rivalry. Will President Biden accept that call given his unreadiness for direct confrontation with Moscow? The US would face a choice between realist logic, which is to revert European security to Europeans, or a more liberal and interventionist approach, which is to prevent ��ܲ�������’s unchecked incursion toward NATO’s eastern border. 

There is still time for the US to deflate Republika Srpska’s rebellion and put it back in the political arena. Former Bosnian presidency member Haris Silajdzic recently placing a small NATO brigade in Brcko, the site of fierce battles during the wars of the 1990s, and a few battalions on the Bosnia and Herzegovina-Serbian border. If the US passes the buck back to the EU — which Russia and Serbia will celebrate — the West needs to fasten its seatbelts and brace for impact. More so than the war in Ukraine, a conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina has the capacity to trigger a regrettable European history.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Is Bosnia-Herzegovina Next on ��ܲ�������’s Radar? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

No Credible Alternative to the US Grand Strategy in Europe

READ MORE

If we are to believe the prevalent narrative that Beijing is Washington’s most dangerous rival, then the US and its allies who fear Russia and are hell-bent on defending Europe from supposed Kremlin interference are misguided — or are they?

Security Dilemma

Much like the tensions around the status of , for instance, Ukraine is a hotspot for the complex power struggle between East and West on the European continent. Ukraine as a sovereign state and Taiwan as a self-governing entity share common features: Both are located in dangerous geopolitical regions on the periphery of the US-led order, and both are increasing their military spending. Furthermore, the US provides no explicit security guarantees for either. In somewhat different ways, both Beijing and Moscow do not think that Taiwan (in case of China) and Ukraine (in case of Russia) have a right to self-determination, especially in the domain of foreign policy.

However, there is a major difference between the two. When it comes to Ukraine, events have probably passed a point of no return, especially with regards to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 in what some argue was a preemptive effort to prevent the peninsula from becoming a potential NATO naval base in the future.

Supposedly defensive moves by Russia to increase its own security in areas along its periphery are perceived by the US and NATO member states as offensive, compelling countervailing actions. These include increased US military presence in the Baltics and elsewhere along NATO’s eastern borders and further expansion into southeastern Europe. The measures, in turn, provoked retaliatory steps from Moscow, such as nuclear military modernization, taking aggressive positions toward neighboring states or the flames of internal crisis in Montenegro in 2015-16 and the Republic of Northern Macedonia in 2017-18. This month, Russia and Serbia launched to coincide with the Defender Europe drills being held in neighboring Balkan states.

The US-Russia dyad in Europe is not only about a . Moscow keeps its adversaries in check with ambiguity as well. For example, Russian President Vladimir Putin has openly warned the West of . He amassed and then begun the withdrawal of more than 100,000 troops from Ukraine’s border to demonstrate ��ܲ�������’s capacity to both escalate and de-escalate the conflict in eastern Ukraine but without revealing Moscow’s strategic plans.

Moscow is on a mission to  “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” as President Putin once described the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia is seriously interested in replacing the existing US-led liberal order, primarily the one extended beyond the Iron Curtain, with favorable and less democratic European regimes that fit ��ܲ�������’s mold. These ideas were widely propagated by ��ܲ�������’s neo-Eurasian movement since the 1990s. Igor Panarin, professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, advocated in favor of a Eurasian Union with four capitals, for example, including one in Belgrade.

More recently, Anton Shekhovtsov, the director of the Centre for Democratic Integrity, has a critically important tendency: the growing links between Russian actors and Western far-right politicians to gain leverage over European politics and undermine the Western liberal order. In so doing, as for RAND, “Russia would seek to divide the [NATO] alliance to the point of dissolving it, break the transatlantic security link, and re-establish itself as the dominant power in Eastern and Central Europe.”

Power Projection

Some may argue that ��ܲ�������’s goals are tangential. What really matters is Moscow’s capability to project hard power across the European continent. In this regard, skeptics largely question ��ܲ�������’s ability to challenge the European nations in a scenario where the US stops extending protection to its European allies. Their typical point of reference is that Russia is but a “” or that its annual GDP is “.” However, what is usually overlooked here is “to destroy the United States — and, not incidentally, its European allies — as a functioning society.” While it is highly unlikely that Moscow will ever resort to such an extreme, the fact that it does have the nuclear option should serve as a reminder of its power potential.

��ܲ�������’s sheer size, vast natural resources and an impressive cyberweapons arsenal have also enabled the Kremlin to punch above its weight and pursue not just defensive policies, as we have seen in Georgia in 2008, and in eastern Ukraine and Crimea in 2014. Russia has sent troops into Syria and mercenaries into Libya, and provided support to Venezuela’s embattled president, Nicolas Maduro. Then there was the alleged in the 2016 US presidential election and the more recent attributed to Russian hackers. Moreover, according to Rand Corporation , Russia could inflict a decisive defeat on NATO forces in the Baltic region and reach the outskirts of Tallinn and Riga within 60 hours.

If the US decided to diminish its presence in the European theater, much like it has done in the Middle East under Donald Trump, Russia would face little pushback to the expansion of its sphere of influence in eastern Europe. The European continent would no longer be unified and free in accordance with collective security and liberal principles. Populist and nationalist governments in central and southeastern Europe would be tempted to seek other security solutions. One can only imagine a European subsystem in ��ܲ�������’s image, divided between European poles trying to balance against each other.

Skirmishes over new borders in the Balkans, for example, recently discussed in a “,” could potentially spin out of control and into new regional wars. America’s allies in western Europe would not only be disappointed but fearful for their own future. Finally, other US allies around the world, especially members of the balancing coalition in Asia Pacific, such as Australia, would also know that they could no longer count on Washington.

So far, no US administration has shown any intention to leave Europe as a vital area of America’s global footprint in which it had invested a vast amount of blood and treasure over the past century. Russia also wants what every nation wants — security and the absence of competition along its borders. This brings us to what the historian Michael Howard once called “the most dangerous of all moods,” in which the US would not accept relegation to the second rank in the European subsystem. Russia would also never tolerate a similar outcome for itself in its own neighborhood.

Thus, Ukraine, which the US is not treaty-bound to defend, will remain a hotspot. The most exposed states — Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — to which the US does have an obligation under NATO’s Article 5, will remain vulnerable largely for reasons of their geography. Other central and eastern European countries, such as Poland, Romania or Bulgaria, will continue to harbor fears of Russian geopolitical ambitions. The only question is how long this strategic rivalry may mitigate the most dangerous outcome and evade a spiral toward a wider European disorder.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post US, NATO and the Question of Russia appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Will Bosnia and Herzegovina Ever Rise Above Its Ethnic Divisions?

READ MORE

Tanovic’s movie also depicts the disheartened departure of a curious TV crew, hungry for breaking news. Unlike the UN peacekeepers, reporters were oblivious to the fate of the soldier left behind in a ditch. In a non-fiction plot, Bosnia and Herzegovina is kept equally alive and motionless with the real ticking time bomb that can explode and blow everything in the vicinity.

Two Paths

For a dozen years now, the Balkan state has been plodding along two gloomy paths, heading for a dangerous collision. On one hand, ��ܲ�������’s collusion with local proxies is destabilizing the liberal vision of collective security within the context of future Euro-Atlantic integration. Russia also continues to be the only state opposing the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and its steering board’s , including the last from June 3 this year.

On the other hand, the Bosnian Serb-majority entity, Republika Srpska, is reversing the peace process while simultaneously Russia as an ally. Its nationalism, kept away like a genie in a bottle due to pressure from the European Union and American unipolar dominance, has managed to free itself from captivity. Thus, the Serb member of the rotating Bosnian presidency, Milorad Dodik, once as a “breath of fresh air” by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, has held at least 10 official consultations with Vladimir Putin over the last several years.

During his consecutive meeting with the Russian president in the midst of the 2014 Ukraine crisis, Dodik shared his unequivocal affiliation with Moscow: “Naturally, there is no question that we support Russia. We may be a small and modest community, but our voice is loud.”

This trajectory with opposing power dyads within the Bosnian state is often lamented as a nightmare for the Dayton Peace Agreement that put an end to the bloody Yugoslav War in 1995 and kept the country in one piece. ; Bosnia and Herzegovina is “” into another Balkan crisis; it is on the ; its president wants to his own country; Bosnia and Herzegovina, welcome Republika Srpska’s exit — these are just some grim headlines that suggest nightmare scenarios.

However, most experts on the subject rarely discuss wider security dilemmas of this critical geopolitical divergence, namely the Bosnian Serbs’ effective breakaway from both Bosnia and Herzegovina and the West. Unlike the two times Russia played a limited hand effectively — and, as some would argue, defensively — in Georgia and Ukraine, the Kremlin’s of Europe’s soft underbelly is essentially an offensive posture that possibly inflicts fatal damage on the already shaken Euro-Atlantic pillars: liberal order, Euro-Atlantic integrity and European security.

Should the EU fail to protect its mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, ensuing turmoil will eventually turn into a great-power rivalry. If the perilous trajectory in Bosnia and Herzegovina is allowed to proceed unrestricted, the West needs to fasten its seatbelts and brace for impact.

Slippery Slope

The Bosnian Serbs’ secessionist direction is not a given, but the slope is a slippery one. A unilateral breakaway would effectively tear apart Bosnia’s postwar constitutional order of two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, and other political and institutional arrangements that have gradually restored peace and security over the last 25 years. The Serb secession would also signal an existential threat to the survival of a multiethnic state and the Bosnian people in particular.

Similar past attempts to impose Serb hegemony over Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s had disastrous consequences and resulted in more than 100,000 deaths, 2.2 million refugees and displaced persons, culminating with genocide in Srebrenica in July 1995. Since pro-Bosnian authorities in Sarajevo want to protect the liberal multicultural order and see the EU and the US as preferred allies, it is only natural for them to expect appropriate reactions from the Euro-Atlantic community.

On the other hand, a secessionist party would also face a critical struggle. Its immediate insecurity stems from the NATO-trained Bosnian army across the Inter-Entity Boundary Line (IEBL) that currently subdivides Bosnia and Herzegovina into two administrative units. As Republika Srpska’s political leadership largely opposes the liberal multicultural order and looks to Russia as a preferred ally, it would also rely on Moscow for political and military support.

Republika Srpska’s collision with a Bosnian-led government would probably escalate from threats and barricades along IEBL to larger-scale clashes that a small number of UN-mandated EUFOR troops will hardly deter. In a vicious cycle, Bosnia could eventually end up in pre-Dayton chaos that, in the early 1990s, also included the Bosnian Croat component and its own secessionist aspirations. 

Serbia, which shares a long border with Bosnia and Herzegovina and nationalist sentiments with the secessionist movement, is probably the first contender to be caught in the Bosnian fire for both internal and external reasons. In its substance, patronizing Bosnian Serbs has continued since the time when Slobodan Milosevic was at the pinnacle of his power in the early 1990s. Patriarch Irinej of the Serbian Orthodox Church, for example, proclaims that borders between Serbia and Republika Srpska . Serbia’s academics also view Serbia’s national borders as .

As Serbia’s confidence grew over time, emboldened by the return of Russia to the Balkan theater and by China’s global rise, Belgrade became more assertive in its behavior. Within months of the joint Serbian-Russian military display in October 2019, Serbia’s defense minister, Alexander Vulin, announced, among other strategic objectives, the intent to the Serb entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Serbia’s new national defense thus transcends national boundaries, marking a shift from defensive sovereignty to a more offensive approach.

At the same time, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is the only politician from the region, if not the whole of Europe, who has held more bilateral consultations with President Putin than Dodik. The Kremlin’s from the last meeting between Vucic and Putin on June 23 exposes Russia’s views that two countries were developing “pragmatic but still very special and very good allied relations.”

Structural Realities

What Serbia does in Bosnia and Herzegovina pales in comparison with a much larger geopolitical dilemma. For Belgrade, now is a turning point to choose a side between the liberal West and the authoritarian East. Its official policy of neutrality and simultaneous flirting with NATO on one hand, and Russia and China on the other, may no longer be sustainable. As the rationale goes, other powers besides the United States, primarily Russia and possibly China (to a lesser extent), will enlarge their soft-power or military footprints in the regional subsystem sooner rather than later.

Other structural realities also encourage a more aggressive trajectory from Belgrade. First, Serbia has accelerated its military build-up at a faster rate than its neighbors. According to , its current defense budget is almost twice that of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Northern Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo combined.

Second, Serbia’s reliance on the Russian and Chinese military to balance neighboring NATO members such as Croatia, Bulgaria or Romania has also been reinforced. In 2019, Serbia Russian donations of MIG-29 fighter jets, T-72 tanks and BRDM-2MS armored vehicles. A short of the S-400 air defense system on Serbian soil also raised American eyebrows. This year, Serbia purchased, at , the Pantsir S-1 air defense system. It also bought and surface-to-air missiles from China and kept talking about new arms.

Third, Serbia can hardly benefit from the liberal European order in the Balkans except through EU membership, which seems to be a third-rate priority at the moment according to some academic voices in Belgrade. By siding with Russia and the Slavic Shield, however, Belgrade still aspires to redefine its borders, reclaim Kosovo (or at least part of it), possibly reestablish preponderance in Montenegro, Northern Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and, eventually, become a Balkan hegemon.

Turkey would also become entangled in the nightmare of a new Bosnian disorder. On one level, the foreign policy objectives of Turkey and other NATO allies are compatible with almost all critical issues in the western Balkans. Turkey maintains its policy that international borders of the newly independent states in the region, following declarations of independence by Montenegro in 2006 and Kosovo in 2008, have become . In Bosnia in particular, Turkey is among 20 contributing countries of EUFOR, providing deterrence and contributing to a safe and secure environment. Ankara is also on the same page with the US and EU members in the PIC and its steering board’s that Russia usually opposes.

On another level, Turkey projects its soft power throughout the Balkans, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, relying on historical, cultural and personal ties. This year, it €30 million ($36 million) to revamp and modernize the Bosnian armed forces. Turkey can also leverage its strategic partnership with Serbia to deter the latter from taking a more belligerent stance.

However, in the event of a collision in Bosnia, having military spending 10 times that of Serbia, Turkey would probably oppose Serbian offensive behavior in the region. Ankara also represents an important geopolitical substitute for the Bosnian people should the EU, EUFOR and NATO decide to abandon their commitments to safeguarding peace, security and liberal order in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their immediate and complete withdrawal from Bosnia, which is less probable, would also invite other extra-regional actors to fill the vacuum, in which case power relations would inevitably become subject to reconfiguration and different visions for both Bosnia and Herzegovina and southeastern Europe would have to emerge.

This scenario could set Turkey and Russia on a collision course because Vladimir Putin perceives Republika Srpska and Serbia as natural, historic and strategic allies. At a minimum, the Turkish double track toward Russia would have to pass an additional test. At the same time, these two countries possess formidable mediation capacity with confronting parties in the Bosnian theater that some European powers would oppose on geopolitical — and the more liberal ones on ideological — grounds.

Our European Home

As Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this summer, “Our common European home needs serious reconstruction if we want all of its residents to live in prosperity.” The Kremlin, so the perception goes, seeks to reshape the liberal Euro-Atlantic order in Russia’s image and for its own benefit. Second, Moscow is also interested in replacing the US-mandated hierarchic order in Europe with an unknown, but certainly more anarchic, multipolar structure. But Bosnia and Herzegovina is not on the Russian border, and its inclusion in the NATO structure does not pose any meaningful threat to Moscow.

However, Republika Srpska’s secession from a country that lacks NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense guarantee presents yet another opportunity for Russia to become more influential on the European stage at the cost of the Euro-Atlantic order.

At first sight, a local collision in Bosnia and Herzegovina would bear a striking resemblance to what transpired in Ukraine in 2013-14. Ukraine was forcefully divided along similar geopolitical and domestic lines between pro-European aspirations in Kyiv on one hand, and secessionist tendencies by the pro-Russian minority in the east on the other. However, Bosnia’s instability is far more dangerous than the crisis in Ukraine for two structural reasons, largely ignored so far. First, in Republika Srpska, Putin’s prospects are of the highest geopolitical value, namely having a loyal proxy ready to do Moscow’s bidding, not in Russia’s near abroad like Ukraine, but deep within the EU’s external borders.

No Credible Alternative to the US Grand Strategy in Europe

READ MORE

Second, Russia’s penetration within NATO’s eastern borders also challenges Pax Americana and a 70-year-old alliance system in Europe. The latter represents a deep incursion into the system protected and deeply rooted in American and European liberal values. In that context, the nature of Russia’s disruptive behavior in Bosnia no longer remains defensive but becomes an offensive act against the West.

Some may argue that Russia’s aims are less relevant. What matters is Moscow’s capability to project soft and hard power. In this regard, skeptical analysts largely question Russia’s ability to challenge the United States in the Balkans. Their typical reference is domestic weakness and Russia’s stagnating economy, with an annual GDP that is smaller than Italy’s. However, other great power credentials such as its sheer size, nuclear weapons capability, vast natural resources and an impressive cyber weapons arsenal enable Russia to punch above its weight on the world arena, keeping Europe and NATO vigilant.

As Russia has shown with the annexation of Crimea in 2014, it won’t shy away from using its extraordinary military readiness for limited ends without fear of unintended consequences. Eventually, it was effective at projecting military power in areas where the Euro-Atlantic community was reluctant to do so. Bosnia and Herzegovina, vulnerable as it may be, provides an easy target for Russia, offering Moscow the best chance to keep the West in retreat.

Opposing Power Dyads

This trajectory with opposing power dyads within the Bosnian state brings challenging dynamics for the European Union too. From the inside, the EU’s multitasking operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina would have to pass their stress test. From the outside, likely incursions of other illiberal powers in Brussels’ backyard would ostensibly place the two opposing sides on a collision course.

A major dilemma for the EU lies between a strong multilateral reaction to protect a collective peace-building legacy and unilateral moves by individual member states to pursue their national interests. The EU’s first viable option would be to increase EUFOR’s symbolic military mission to protect order and address the grievances of local communities. As Kurt Bassuener in Foreign Affairs last year, the current mission can’t defend itself against any growing uncertainty with “an institutional fig leaf of 600 troops,” “much less fulfill the mandate of the Dayton accords.”

Should the EUFOR contributing states strengthen their capacity and act decisively within NATO’s interoperability mechanisms, the Bosnian crisis would probably not escalate. In this regard, EUFOR’s annual military exercises — which airlift reserve forces and combine them with EUFOR’s permanent troops, armed forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina and local law enforcement agencies — are of critical importance.

An alternative scenario with dire consequences would be to evacuate EUFOR troops from Bosnia altogether. This is what happened when the Dutch battalion, under the jurisdiction of the United Nations Protection Force, pulled out from Srebrenica in July 1995, mocking the UN resolutions on safe heavens and allowing Serb extremists — today convicted war criminals — to proceed unabashedly with genocide. Such a reaction would deprive Bosnia of European military presence and set in motion a rapid geopolitical change, allowing regional and extra-regional actors to take advantage and fill the vacuum.

If that happens, the ability of Brussels to extend stability and project soft power in the region would be severely weakened, if not completely diminished. This prospect, before long, compels particular EU member states that simultaneously live in two parallel worlds — one liberal and one increasingly illiberal — to make their final ideational preference. It also provokes complex and dangerous dynamics given opposing threat perceptions between those member states that border Russia and a few others that explore interest-based partnerships with Moscow.

Undercurrents of this anxiety might have already surfaced when French President Emmanuel Macron of the necessity to reopen “a strategic dialogue” with Russia, that Russia was a “threat” but “no longer an enemy” and “also a partner on certain topics.” Things may get extremely complicated if populist EU leaders choose to decouple from the US and the transatlantic security umbrella. Hungary’s to permit the transit of Russian military equipment to Serbia last year signaled an early warning that some member states are ready to circumvent common rules and jeopardize common security.

Hence, a powerful trigger such as a new Bosnian crisis would elevate Europe’s threat perceptions to such proportions that the United States would have to rescue the alliance and its central position within it. This resonates with the poor historical record of the EU in conflict management in ex-Yugoslavia, despite much more favorable geopolitical realities in the early 1990s. With an exception of a short war in Slovenia, the EU demonstrated neither effectiveness nor capacity in preempting the bloodshed in 1991.

Eventually, European leaders failed miserably in Bosnia, prompting a peace treaty to be negotiated and drafted in the US rather than Europe. Should this failure be repeated, the third consequential choice for the EU will be to pass the buck on to Washington, in which case this regional small-nation turmoil would transform into a great-power rivalry.

Most Dangerous of All Moods

Addressing the US Senate on the American mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the end of 1995, then-Senator Joe Biden made a powerful “Europe cannot stay united without United States. There is no moral center in Europe. When in the last two centuries had the French, or the British or the Germans … moved in a way to unify that continent to stand up to this kind of genocide?” He went on: “I am not here to tell you if we do not act, it will spread tomorrow and cause a war in Europe or next year, but I am here to tell you within the decade, it will cause a spread of war and a cancer and the collapse of Western alliance.”

Human agency aside, structural forces would also be at play and would likely determine Washington’s preferred move. First, the US is still — by all realist and neorealist accounts, such as , , and — more powerful, wealthier and more influential relative to any potential competitor in the international system. Even by the of those who support a more restrained foreign policy, with US primacy still intact in Europe, American policymakers would continue to be attracted to liberal hegemony and more so to the existing grand strategy in the European subsystem where the US is not only unchallenged but is largely accepted as benevolent.

The US is also a rational actor that makes calculations regarding its position in a changing regional and international order. Washington understands well that Russia’s unchecked incursion so close to NATO’s eastern border would damage American-led liberal order and alliance structure and, at the same time, change the regional — and possibly even the European — balance of power to the detriment of the United States.

This brings us to what the historian Michael Howard “the most dangerous of all moods,” in which the US would not accept a relegation “to the second rank” in the European subsystem. So far, no US administration has shown any intention to leave Europe as a vital area of America’s global footprint in which it had invested a vast amount of blood and money over the past century. In reality, US military presence has essentially in Europe in recent years, bringing in more troops, investment and exercises.

The US military also supports the peace-building process in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On this 25^th anniversary of the Dayton Accords, it conducted a air support exercise with Bosnian military forces using two F-16 fighter planes. So, locking, loading and bombing the party that disrupts American-led order in southeastern Europe on Russia’s behalf is not only possible, but could even become probable.

Great powers usually do not show much interest in fighting over the squabbles of small nations. However, history is full of exceptions, when minor disputes over isolated issues have dragged great powers into quagmires. Interestingly enough, such regrettable dynamics are best illustrated in the Balkans. A minor dispute in 435 BC between the city-state of Corinth, allied with Sparta, and the city-state Corcyra, allied with Athens, soon led to a larger conflict, eventually trapping the great powers of Athens and Sparta into the Peloponnesian Wars that devastated the Athenian empire, exhausted Sparta and shattered the cultural landscape of Ancient Greece.

What took place in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, was another striking incident that triggered a chain of adverse reactions that set the whole of Europe, and then the world, on fire. Bosnia and Herzegovina is again a danger zone on the European geopolitical map where competing opponents face the pressures of being bogged down in protracted rivalries due to rapidly shifting power dynamics. Such settings create a space for a modern-day Gavrilo Princip to fire his bullet and trigger a chain of regrettable events.

Hence, not stemming the Serb breakaway from the Dayton mandate, from both Bosnia and Herzegovina and the wider Western liberal order, would be tantamount to allowing a ticking time bomb to go off. Paradoxically, this threat comes at a time when the Balkan region has a good chance to institute a viable order, secure lasting peace and fulfill its Euro-Atlantic aspirations. The decision is there for the taking.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post 25 Years On, The Dayton Peace Agreement Is a Ticking Time Bomb appeared first on 51�Թ�.

First, there are good reasons to think that the unipolar moment is coming to an end. As America’s primacy gradually declines with the rise of China, its grand strategy of liberal hegemony should also dissipate, including its institutional leg of collective security in Europe to which the US has given too much and received too little in return. Second, the Euro-Atlantic liberal order has generated more problems than solutions in the post-Cold War period. NATO expansion beyond the Iron Curtain relations with Russia and unnecessary tensions in Georgia and Ukraine. The United States, so the argument goes, should gradually reduce its military presence in Europe and “NATO over to the Europeans.”

The US Empire’s Quest for Global Hegemony

READ MORE

Third, Russia, in reality, is not as big a as it is generally portrayed and perceived in the US and across Europe, for that matter. Moscow is driven more by defensive aims (or so it claims), so balancing between Russia and the European states on one hand and a restrained US foreign policy on the other is a better way forward for everyone. If we are to assume this logic is correct, then those who still prefer the liberal Euro-Atlantic unipolarity are wrong. Are they? 

No Competitors Yet

On first assumption, the United States is still by all major accounts the top dog on the world stage. It is wealthier, more powerful and more influential relative to any potential competitor in the international system despite an ongoing debate, additionally fueled by global disruptive events such as COVID-19. Its , an often-cited structural advantage, will persist despite the pandemic. While the US is flanked by two enormous oceans and surrounded by much weaker and friendly states, Russia and China, on the other hand, face balancing behavior from powerful regional rivals coupled with having ongoing territorial disputes.

Second, Washington’s is at least twice as much as Moscow’s and Beijing’s — combined. America’s preponderance of power and strategic advance is far more superior considering increased military spending of its formal allies in the European and Indo-Pacific theaters. Out of 15 countries with the largest military spending, 11 are security partners of the United States. Russia and China neither have formal allies among the top 15, nor do any of their allies believe that an attack on one is an attack against all.

Third, the US still boasts the world’s largest economy that can afford to fund the most powerful military in the world despite a disproportionately hard economic downturn triggered by the pandemic. Its global GDP share is still larger than the global GDP share of China and Russia combined, even by factoring in GDP reductions in the US this July. Moreover, the share of the global economic output by NATO members reaches more than 40% in world proportions and roughly 50% if other democratic allies in the Pacific theater are incorporated as well.

America’s geopolitical leverage is even greater considering three additional factors. The of the US dollar has not waned in 2020 just as it had not waned during 2008 financial crisis. The US also rests on capabilities. The top spots in global rankings, such as the , are held by democracies — the United States was in fifth position in 2019. Russia and China are ranked far lower. And third, its population growth rate has also been .

On the other hand, the Russian and Chinese workforce is aging, judging by all available measures. Given all these factors, it seems, as Gregory Mitrovich , “wholly premature, short of a devastating major event, to claim that we are witnessing the end of America’s global dominance.” Equally premature is any call for American withdrawal from Europe, where the US is not only unchallenged but is largely accepted as benevolent.

Whole and Free

On second assumption, from a realist or neorealist perspective, a more powerful country does not necessarily mean a more attractive choice. What makes great powers more appealing, especially in the European theater, rests on an enduring combination of other capabilities grounded in less tangible resources. In other words, dominant powers are to be feared, but no liberal European state in the post-World War II era has ever felt a military threat from American hegemony — as Gilford John Ikenberry put it, “reluctant, open and highly institutionalized — or, in a word, liberal.” Some may correctly argue this was an act of deterrence against the common threat of the Soviet bloc in the bipolar system.

However, when the unipolar era began, America’s liberal primacy has continued to offer system-wide benefits both within Europe’s old and new democracies with lasting and far-reaching consequences for their peace and stability. Its benevolent leadership, for example, stood with the Germans seeking freedom and reunification despite some opposition from Paris and London. Washington also laid out its vision for and sought to keep a reunited Germany in NATO. Without such leadership, France and the United Kingdom would have been more fearful of Germany’s unilateral plans, let alone weaker neighbors that would find new realities difficult to against. As one senior European diplomat , “We can agree on U.S. leadership, but not on one of our own.”

American leadership also persuaded Ukraine — also to a great benefit of ��ܲ�������’s vital interests — to relinquish possession of nuclear arms it had inherited after the dissolution of the USSR. Without such leadership, Ukraine would probably have had second thoughts. As Ukraine’s then-Defense Minister Konstantin Morozov put it, plainly, “Ukraine would have posed no threat to anyone if, hypothetically speaking, it had possessed tactical nuclear weapons.” Had American leadership missed this opportunity, other states in the region would have also regarded their respective security distinctly from each other. Germany, for example, would have also been more tempted to contemplate nuclear deterrence at some point.

To zoom out a little wider, American liberal hegemony in general, and the NATO alliance with its institutional and rules-based order in particular, attracted central, eastern and southeastern European countries — former illiberal states — to choose a common prescription for perennial peace and prosperity in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. New democracies from beyond the Iron Curtain have managed to transform themselves: Their economies have largely prospered, and their political systems liberalized despite recent authoritarian tendencies in Hungary and Poland. While some variation does exist, almost all new NATO members remain “free” according to the 2020 Freedom House . The only exceptions are Hungary, Montenegro and North Macedonia, which are marked as “partially free.”

NATO enlargement has been a on security grounds as well. Europe has peace and stability for the past 30 years. New allies offered themselves as foundational military partners and have willingly chosen to share the security burden to fight alongside the US. This mutual attraction within the Euro-Atlantic alliance has been so overwhelming in historical proportions that structural realists struggle to explain its extended lifespan and recent vitality. This includes the two latest enlargement rounds in southeastern Europe that happened on President Donald Trump’s watch, not sufficient but certainly greater share of collective defense burdens by European member states, regular military deployments and common military exercises all over the continent, as well as effective multilateral aid using NATO capacities during the COVID-19 crisis. This suggests, contrary to many pessimistic views, that American liberal hegemony in Europe is far from being in decline.  

One can only imagine the different scenarios had the US decided to pursue a more restrained foreign policy in the region. Not only supporters but also critics of NATO enlargement also offered the possibility that Euro-Atlantic adversaries, namely Russia, would have been emboldened to expand the Kremlin’s sphere of influence beyond the current lines had any geopolitical vacuum existed in central and eastern Europe. J. J. Mearsheimer, for example, argues in his book that great powers “are always searching for opportunities to gain power over their rivals, with hegemony as their final goal.” Stephen M. Walt also that relations with Moscow, provided Russia regained some of its former strength, “might still have worsened.”

Counterfactuals such as these can hardly be verified. However, ��ܲ�������’s of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine made it very clear what actually happens with states in geopolitical gray areas. , which falls in ��ܲ�������’s sphere of influence, is not happy either.

Net Positive

American liberal hegemony has also been a net positive when it comes to security in the Balkans — if measured by the progress on where Balkan states started from and not their distance from a liberal Western world. US leadership, for example, contained an outbreak of nationalism in the region after the EU demonstrated neither effectiveness nor capacity of preemption in the early 1990s. The Clinton administration successfully brokered the Dayton Peace Agreement in a positive-sum game whereby Republika Srpska received formal recognition as a political entity within the sovereign state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the post-Dayton phase, the liberal-led European order, primarily NATO and the EU, patiently put in place new structures and policies so the country can move forward with the peace process.

Notwithstanding NATO’s intervention in Serbia in 1999 and CIA in 2000, the US and its allies also used an array of softer policy instruments to promote successful democratic change in Serbia. The International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and former activists from new NATO members advised and independent civil organizations and opposition parties in Serbia to replace the “Butcher of the Balkans” Slobodan Milosevic in a democratic election. In recent years, Washington and Brussels also played an role in brokering the Prespa Agreement between Northern Macedonia and Greece. A bilateral deal between two bordering countries in 2018 put an end to the long-standing name dispute on the one hand and unlocked the Euro-Atlantic membership perspective for Northern Macedonia on the other.

Some of these hard-won historical achievements could have not been possible had the US decided to pursue a more restrained foreign policy. In all likelihood, weaker American leadership in Europe in the post-Cold War era would have created more problems, making European states less liberal and more domestically nationalist, rendering the European periphery full of prolonged proxy wars and skirmishes.

Russia would have also had more space to moderate such conflicts with its power-projection capabilities in the region. Likewise, absent integration into Western institutions, would have exposed itself to sudden geopolitical stress bringing different local and regional powers into direct collision.

In ��ܲ�������’s Image

On third assumption, Russian President Vladimir Putin in his speech at the Munich security conference in 2007 that “the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world.” Thirteen years later, speaking at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov endorsed a multipolar concert with new centers of influence at the international level and common geopolitical space from at the wider regional level. Lavrov also that “Our common European home needs serious reconstruction if we want all of its residents to live in prosperity.”

On a mission to “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” — the collapse of the Soviet Union — the Kremlin is practically interested in replacing an existing liberal order, primarily the one extended beyond the Iron Curtain, with favorable and less democratic European regimes that fit ��ܲ�������’s image. Second, it is also interested in replacing the hierarchic order in Europe with some unknown and certainly more anarchic multipolar structure. However, it is not surprising that the Kremlin’s foreign policy attracted limited support from the former Soviet republics and other central and eastern European countries. Most of them continue to fear Russia. Unlike their attraction to the US, their anxiety toward Moscow can be explained from their shared national memory of what can happen under the rule of an illiberal hegemon — or a potential hegemon that is, by the logic of Walt’s , too close, too powerful and too offensive.

So far, all attempts from the Kremlin to impose its own illiberal and structural order in Europe, largely constrained by its limits of hard and soft power, have only made young democracies and vulnerable countries scattered around the European periphery more divided and, eventually, more anarchic. In August 2008, ��ܲ�������’s military intervention in Georgia restored the Kremlin’s geopolitical relevance in the European neighborhood. However, Georgia was divided between Russian-backed self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia on one hand and the rest of Georgia on the other.

This small triumph encouraged Russia to bully again by lopping off Crimea from neighboring Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine was then equally forcefully divided along similar geostrategic and domestic lines between Kyiv’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations and secessionist tendencies by a pro-Russian minority in the east. Some have argued that Moscow’s incursions into Georgia and Ukraine were conducted preemptively and in reaction to perceived NATO enlargement and were therefore defensive in nature. Mearsheimer famously prevailing wisdom in the West that this problem is largely the result of Russian aggression.

Stephen F. Cohen also justified ��ܲ�������’s interest in traditional zones of national security on its borders, including Ukraine. However, Russia marched into Syria, dropping on Aleppo, supported mercenaries in Libya and became increasingly offensive in the Balkans — not ��ܲ�������’s “near abroad” but deep inside NATO and the EU’s eastern borders. The Kremlin has reportedly of internal crisis in Montenegro in 2015-16 and Northern Macedonia in 2017-18. Milorad Dodik, a pro-Russian Serb leader in Bosnia and Herzegovina called his own country “an impossible state.” In February this year, he bluntly : “Goodbye B&H, welcome RSexit.”

Serbia and Russia carried out a joint Slavic Shield military exercise in 2019, including ��ܲ�������’s first use of its advanced S-400 missile defense system abroad. In the meantime, Serbia also Russian donations of MIG-29 fighter jets, T-72 tanks, BRDM-2MS armored vehicles and purchased, at , the Pantsir S-1 air defense system in 2020. ��ܲ�������’s appetite, therefore, goes well beyond its immediate neighborhood. It openly challenges the established liberal order in by taking advantage of tensions between Serbia and Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, and different ethnicities within North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and so on.

This revisionist path doesn’t lead to security in Europe but rather to new skirmishes and security dilemmas in the Balkans, a region divided between rival power dyads, which is at worst all too reminiscent of the 1900s, when unintended consequences of nationalist fervor led to the murder of millions.

Bottom Line

Contrary to claims that the US strategy of liberal hegemony is generally a source of endless trouble, supported by real failures and terrible misadventures of social engineering in Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya, its mission in Europe was historically successful and mutually beneficial both before and after the Cold War. American leadership in Europe has been a net-positive force, essentially without US military casualties, mutually acceptable and institutional — all missing in other troubled areas. It has secured undisrupted peace dividends among major European powers, provided various public goods to newcomers from beyond the Iron Curtain, and eventually brought peace to the Balkans after the international community failed to prevent genocide in Srebrenica.

The United States, which is still the preeminent global power, does not need to reassess this grand strategy in Europe or , an alliance encompassing nearly a billion people and half the world’s military and economic might. Down that road lie many other long-lasting win-win outcomes as well as serious challenges that are better faced collectively.

An alternative order that is promoted by some American realist and neorealist pundits on one side and revisionist challengers in the Kremlin on the other might have different motivations, means and ends. However, their common preference for dissolving NATO or having different poles in the European theater brings, by logic of structural realism, crosscutting relationships among different axes of conflict. That gloomy trajectory, if it ever happens, would make a perfect setting for a 21^st-century Gavrilo Princip to fire his bullet again and trigger a chain of regrettable events here, there and everywhere.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post No Credible Alternative to the US Grand Strategy in Europe appeared first on 51�Թ�.