Return to Winter: Russia, China, and the New Cold War Against America (41 page)

       
In a statistical analysis of all nuclear-armed countries from 1945 to 2001, I found that the state with more warheads was only one-third as likely to be challenged militarily by other countries and more than 10 times more likely to prevail in a crisis—that is, to achieve its basic political goals—when it was challenged. Moreover, I found that the size of this advantage increased along with the margin of superiority. States with vastly more nukes (95 percent of the two countries’ total warheads) were more than 17 times more likely to win. These findings held even after accounting for disparities in conventional military power, political stakes, geographical proximity, type of political system, population, territorial size, history of past disputes, and other factors that could have influenced the outcomes.
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Kroenig goes on to point out that when the U.S. stood at the peak of its nuclear armaments in the middle of the Cold War, it significantly deterred Soviet adventurism. For instance, the U.S. succeeded in stopping the Soviets from constructing a nuclear-submarine base in Cuba in 1970 and forced the Russians to limit their support for the Arab countries that opposed Israel during the 1967 and 1973 wars.

Today, more of America’s geopolitical foes, including Iran and North Korea, have some nuclear component. The contentious relationship between India and Pakistan is shadowed by the two rivals’ nuclear capabilities. We are living in an unprecedented period of nuclear proliferation, but we’re the only nation scaling back. With fewer nukes, we won’t have enough weapons to cover military targets in Russia, China, and elsewhere.
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To preserve our nuclear advantage—as well as our general military advantage—we have to look at making cuts elsewhere and raising revenue from other sources. None of this means that there aren’t useful and cost-efficient changes that we can make to our nuclear program. For instance, the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory could cease its nuclear activities entirely and focus on other areas of research. The work at the Los Alamos lab is sufficient to support the American nuclear effort and maintain our state-of-the-art capabilities. Planned upgrades for weapons such as the B61 nuclear bomb could be scaled back while the D5 missile could be terminated, saving billions without harming capabilities.
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Recent Obama-induced setbacks in the missile-interceptor program do not belie the immense strategic importance of that program. It will probably require the arrival of a new president, but the U.S. should retract its cancellation of Phase IV of the NATO defense shield in Eastern Europe. Basing interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic was always a sensible response to Russian radars and interceptors in St. Petersburg, southern Russia, and, most worryingly, in Kaliningrad.
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Continued Russian cooperation with Iran’s nuclear program and Russia’s advances in Ukraine make clear that Moscow intends to keep the pressure on; it’s hardly the time for the United States to be making such dangerous cuts.

Meanwhile, the United States’ recent augmentation of missile defenses on the West Coast should be mirrored on the East Coast,
precisely because Obama has retreated on NATO’s European missile shield. An East Coast missile-defense site could be operable before 2020.
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We should make sure that it is.

ALLIANCES

The weakened state of the American-centered alliance system is clear evidence that the way we approach foreign relations needs to change, and soon. Look no further than David Cameron’s fiasco before the British Parliament, in which the lawmakers denied his request for authorization to join the U.S. effort against Assad. Of the Western European allies, only France was prepared to stand with the U.S.—a truly remarkable turn of events. In the Middle East, defenders of Israel have worried for years that the U.S. is far too restrained in its support for its ally, especially as regards the ongoing standoff with Iran.

Everywhere we look, America can and should be doing more to support its allies and formulate more cohesive regional strategies. We should fast-track the proposed Transatlantic Free Trade Area between the United States and European Union. Should Ukraine survive Russia’s purposeful destabilization, America and the EU must be prepared to integrate it into Western institutions, just as we did former Warsaw Pact states in the 1990s. Even former Soviet states such as Azerbaijan are open to a better relationship with Washington. Yet many of these East European states are unconvinced that Western Europe is willing or able to protect them from Russian aggression. The 2008 Georgian war and the 2014 Ukraine crisis only confirmed this instinct. We should offer them a real opportunity to participate in the global democratic project. Embracing the dynamism of New Europe means following through on missile defense, expanding military cooperation,
and letting the Eastern Europeans know that we are committed to a genuine partnership.

We must commit especially to those countries that identify with the West or are seeking to become more Westernized. The fight to once again liberate Eastern Europe must return as a U.S. priority. Moscow is taking back its former empire in parts of Central and Eastern Europe. As the U.S. and Europe have an increasingly unfocused sense of cultural identity, the West’s unity—our sense of belonging to an age-old, distinct, and coherent civilization—diminishes. And Moscow is winning the war of ideas. Country after country in the old Eastern Bloc has opted to reject the West in order to remain more distinctly themselves. We must meet this challenge, not only by allowing countries such as Georgia and Moldova to join the EU and NATO more quickly but also by showing that we support their national identities.

We must, above all, reinforce our commitments to those countries we consider closest to our own traditions, even at the risk of inciting cries of elitism, racism, and the like. The UK and Europe were part of America’s genesis and the source of the West’s deepest values and beliefs. If we cannot unify and save that once-coherent tradition, we certainly cannot offer any message of salvation to countries in the Middle East, Africa, or Asia. We must begin with what we can win.

Our Pacific allies need more reassurance that America remains capable of advancing its strategic agenda in the region; and here, at least, there are some positive signs. Washington has gotten behind Shinzo Abe’s push to rearm Japan and assume more responsibility in East Asia.
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In October 2013, the U.S. and Japan signed an agreement broadening their security alliance. Under the agreement’s terms, surveillance drones would be introduced in Japan, buttressing American efforts to contain Chinese and North Korean challenges. Japan and
the United States, the agreement said, would be ready to respond to “coercive and destabilizing behaviors.” To that end, the drones would be augmented by Navy reconnaissance planes being stationed outside the U.S. for the first time; in tandem, the drones and planes would patrol regional waters, including those around the island chain that has caused tension between China and Japan in recent years.
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The U.S. should continue to strengthen its ties with Japan while seeking to build as large a coalition as possible to counteract China’s influence. (We have diplomatic work to do in ensuring that South Korea, the Philippines, and other Pacific allies are not threatened by Japan’s new role in the region.) Up to now, Washington’s halfhearted and underfunded “pivot” to Asia has not done nearly enough to position America favorably for the “Pacific Century.” Furthermore, the U.S. should work to encourage countries bordering the South China Sea to settle their maritime disputes. In August, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China would be willing to discuss a code of conduct to help nations peacefully address competing claims. But he also suggested that China was in no hurry to have this happen—another delaying tactic.

In each region, including Eastern Europe, the U.S. should pick a linchpin partner to empower, a true believer in the struggle for democracy and openness, one that will export the democratic message and set an example. That country need not always have a fully developed economy such as that of Japan or Germany or even Australia, strong allies during the Cold War years and today. Rather, we should look toward aspirational up-and-comers that have a potential for growth and development, such as Poland in the West or the Philippines or Thailand in the East. The U.S. should encourage its more established allies to collaborate in the strengthening of that country economically and militarily. Countries such as India, South Korea, and Japan are
essential partners in their regions, but their influence has limits. We need newer strategic partners with fresh ambitions.

REAFFIRMING AMERICAN VALUES

“Sergei Magnitsky wasn’t a human-rights activist,” wrote John McCain in his
Pravda.ru
op-ed. “He was an accountant at a Moscow law firm. He was an ordinary Russian who did an extraordinary thing. He exposed one of the largest state thefts of private assets in Russian history. He cared about the rule of law and believed no one should be above it. For his beliefs and his courage, he was held in Butyrka prison without trial, where he was beaten, became ill, and died. After his death, he was given a show trial reminiscent of the Stalin era and was, of course, found guilty. That wasn’t only a crime against Sergei Magnitsky. It was a crime against the Russian people and your right to an honest government—a government worthy of Sergei Magnitsky and of you.”
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McCain’s words strike at the heart of what the Magnitsky Bill is about. As we noted in our “Intelligence Wars” chapter, Congress passed the Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act in 2012 to punish Russian officials thought to be responsible for Magnitsky’s death; the bill prohibited these individuals from traveling to the U.S., owning property here, or using U.S. banks. This was a deft use of policy to support American values and punish regimes that fail to honor human rights. Directing policy in this way can make clear that abuse of human rights and basic liberties will not go unpunished, even when we have no jurisdiction in the regions where such abuse takes place. But we have to hold firm on these policies, not backslide like we already have on Magnitsky. The stakes are too high. The U.S. must lead the way on human rights regularly, not just occasionally.

Even while a broad spirit of decline grips the West, it remains true that to be excluded from the Western world carries an enormous stigma. We still represent the respectable half of the globe. Well-intentioned oligarchs (and those not so well-intentioned), foreign mafia chiefs, and political bosses all send their children to the West to be educated because that is where strong ideals and the rule of law abide. Understandably, when it comes to the younger generation of the Axis elite, we prefer to expose as many of them as possible to our way of life, hoping that they will go home and spread enlightenment around them. But we can be more selective in bestowing the privilege of access to the West’s benefits.

At present, our approach seems amoral, to say the least. The right of Bo Xilai’s son to study and live in the West was never questioned, even while his mother was prosecuted for the murder of a British businessman and while his father, a top Politburo member, was facing trial for corrupting entire regions of China. No one could have believed that it was clean money that their son spent to attend Harvard College and Cambridge University—and Bo Guagua was well known for his extravagant international lifestyle. It is time to get unsentimental on this issue. Money and power should not overcome all other criteria. The exclusion of entry, the refusal of a visa: These are among the simplest, cheapest, and most effective tools in our arsenal, and often the least utilized.

More broadly, democracy promotion should be a priority for every American presidential administration. It draws sharp lines between the U.S. system and despotic governments; it offers support for our allies and the populations of undemocratic countries striving to gain liberty; and it clarifies and reinforces our own mission at home and abroad. Many liberals and some conservatives blanche at the concept of energetic democracy promotion. Conservatives associate it with misguided foreign adventures à la Woodrow Wilson; leftists
link it with George W. Bush’s Bush Doctrine, a mandate its critics saw as limitless. The truth is that democracy promotion often does not involve explicit military force. We must increase American support for civil-society organizations—NGOs, charities, environmental organizations, foundations, independent political parties, nonprofits, cultural groups—that will help foster democracy and diversification in countries like China and North Korea, but also in countries with poorly functioning democracies, such as Russia and Iran.

We need to challenge more forcefully China’s blocking of human-rights protections in North Korea. While the United States cannot intervene everywhere, recent years have given us stark reminders that democracy and human rights are under constant assault worldwide: the massacres and atrocities across Africa and the Middle East; the election rigging, corruption, and violence by government forces against civilians in Venezuela, torture of prisoners in Brazil, and authoritarian control of media in Bolivia, among other problems in Latin America.
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These crimes demand a coherent and vigorous response from Washington—rhetorically, diplomatically, and otherwise. There are many tools short of military force that we don’t use adequately—visa restrictions for high-ranking officials, for example. We can be more aggressive in freezing international bank accounts for elite adversaries and imposing tighter economic limitations on cooperation (up to and including sanctions) with repressive governments.

Above all, we can no longer afford to “lead from behind,” and in fact we never could. Even the Obama administration must recognize this by now; its destructive dithering on Syria, for instance, only allowed an open field for the Assad regime to commit more atrocities while weakening the democratic opposition. The Syrian experience ought to remind us that the United States must stand at the forefront in the defense of democracy around the world. But to do so requires leaders who embrace America’s governing ideals without ambivalence—something that the
Obama administration seems unwilling or unable to do. If we are not committed to our own values, we cannot expect to defend them, let alone spread them.