Introduction
We are living in very turbulent times for the international system as a whole. Late in the year 32 of the so-called post-Cold War, it can be seen how this definition is compromised, drowned in the continuous armed conflagrations that have been generated and continue to exist. A scientific inquiry into the matter considers the main factor around which the dynamics of conflict are known to revolve and interact. The global hegemony imposed by the United States after World War II entered the post-Cold War period trying to heal the wounds it suffered after exercising its leadership for decades. The realities of that burden were too obvious not to be detected; above all when a new global geostrategic board is being created with actors such as Russia and China challenging US hegemony.
While it is true that the United States emerged as the great victor of the Cold War, the enormous costs it has had to pay in all aspects cannot be hidden, not least for its economy. Let us remember that this hegemonic project of the United States was based on the gradual construction of an enormous international superstructure, to sustain or support all the powers that the nation had to exercise. Its hegemonic system was structured by interweaving and articulating mechanisms to control the main spheres of international relations, namely, the economy, finance, trade, diplomacy and military alliances. And of course, the “American way of life” was also exported and promoted around the world. But a classic Cold War protagonist like George Kennan wrote:
No one won the Cold War. It was a protracted and costly political rivalry, stoked on both sides by unrealistic and exaggerated estimates of the other side’s intentions and strength. That rivalry greatly depleted the economic resources of both countries, leaving them both, in the late 1980s, confronted with heavy financial, social, and – in the case of the Russians – political problems that they had not foreseen and for which neither was fully prepared. (Kennan 1998: 210–1)
Kennan noted the existence of very real problems with the costs that the United States had to pay to “win the Cold War”.
The United States emerged into the post-Cold War period with public debt and fiscal deficit. The information offered by the Spanish researcher Saturnino Aguado allows us to visualise the evolutionary trends of both problems. After 1986 the United States became a debtor nation with long-term negative consequences (Saturnino Aguado 1990: 215).
In 1990 Stanley Hoffmann provided a more comprehensive and severe diagnosis of the general situation of the US economy. For Hoffmann, the economic power to be exercised as a fundamental part of American foreign policy had declined, and the country was increasingly dependent on external sources for the production of important technologies. The author identified significant domestic problems in terms of energy infrastructure, insufficient productive investments and loss of leadership skills in increasingly essential sectors of the national economy. Hoffman’s foresight in his critical analysis is striking – he focused on the error of privileging businesses with short-term profits, a poor technical education system and, above all, a lack of capacity to mobilise tangible and intangible resources which was the result of the poor state of American infrastructure (especially urban). He also discussed the expected popular reactions that in one way or another would ensue (Hoffman 1990: 115–22).
Let’s add a sharp comment by Luis Maira, not without irony. Paraphrasing Richard Barnet, Maira, starting from the formidable economic recovery they achieved, reminded us that “the great defeated of the Second World War, Germany and Japan, emerged as great victors in the world of the Post-Cold War” (Maira 1991: 17).
How could the US compensate for these fissures in its economy and keep its global hegemonic project operational and successful? Its eyes turned to review the economic sectors that had been most successful during the hard years of the Cold War. That was not enough, however. It was also necessary to appeal to the most dynamic and profitable sectors in the short term, and the answer was found in the powerful military-industrial complex. Remember that the United States is the world’s leading arms producer and exporter. The economics of war were seen as the answer, and the evidence for this is uncontrollable military budgets. US military budgets are only part of the picture. Equally important was the expansion of NATO, as those countries now purchased their military hardware from the US, not the former USSR. Smaller, but also important, was the emphasis post-9/11/2001 on US military alliances in Latin America that come with increased purchases of US equipment (Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, etc.). Also, it should be stated that the increased US military budgets were in large part effected to carry out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The current example of this process is the massive spending on weapons for the Ukraine war by the United States and its European allies.
Thus, we have on the one hand the need to convince the allies that the United States continued to be the undisputed leader of the Western world. On the other hand, it was necessary to exercise that leadership and defend that hegemony under the new historical conditions. In response to the alarms raised by scholars (Klare 2003), a vital reason was imposed, the need to control non-renewable natural resources. Oil occupied a logical first place, and the control of the oil fields of the Middle East received top attention. New wars came in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. These wars lasted for years and caused tens of thousands of US casualties and more than one trillion dollars in costs. These realities combined to convince many in the American populace that these were burdens too large to bear, given the many challenges within the American homeland.
Hegemony and power are inextricably intertwined categories. A hegemonic position cannot be achieved without having sufficient capacities of power. And the post-Cold War also brought new approaches from the thought of Joseph Nye. In the days of euphoria over the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, Nye developed his ideas about the architecture of power, which should have contributed to understanding the strengths and limitations of American hegemony. Concerning Nye’s theory of power, Cesar B. Aguirre Zamora wrote:
For Nye there are three main types of powers: hard power, based on military and economic resources; soft power, based on factors such as institutions, ideas, values, culture and legitimacy of actions; and smart power, integration of diplomacy, defense, development and other tools of the other two types of powers. In this regard he points out that the ideal situation for any country is the strategic combination of the three, although clearly not all countries have sources of power, such as military and economic resources. Not all the resources of power of a country are effective at all times, and their accumulation is of no great use if the results of its actions do not correspond to the objectives set. (Aguirre Zamora 2012: 206) 1
Nye’s perspective on power is interesting and important because the ideas significantly influenced the foreign policies of the Obama administration, but they must be seen as limited in understanding the ongoing power dynamics in the post-Cold War world. The category of power has a long presence in international theoretical debates. Alberto Montbrund frees us from engaging in a detailed exposition on the subject with the following thoughts. None of the well-known definitions of power can evade the mention of the existence of asymmetrical relations between the nations that make up the international system. One or more nations, making use of the quotas of power they hold, come to impose a dynamic of relations between dominators and dominated that opens a permanent process of negotiations to maximise autonomies and relativise dependencies. Obviously, this is so with a very closed equation when it comes to disproportionate arms powers and nuclear weapons.
The nature of power is changeable and finite, with hegemony being its practical manifestation. But a decisive truth pointed out by Montbrund is recovered:
It is with Marxism that power begins to be visualized as a systemic or structural phenomenon – not as something merely interpersonal – that is reproduced and internalized within the social fabric or the system of social relations. In the specific case of Marx, the author argues that power derives from the social relations of production, and that its division into economic, political, ideological, etc., is analytical and not in the nature of things. (Montbrund 2010: 6)
The necessary periodisation of the post-Cold War
All periodisation is conventional and subject to the criteria of the author who proposes it, but it is a strictly necessary tool for research to advance. Sergio Bagú said:
we cannot stop periodizing, because the kind of knowledge that we build in the social sciences obliges us, inescapably, to an order in time. We cannot narrate without a beginning or end; just as we will not understand the deep meaning of an organizational type as long as we cannot genetically relate it to others. (Bagú 1980: 10)
Periodisation is an essential methodological resource within the universe of social sciences. It is a topic that validates the necessary multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives for any research. Thus, we recover from the thought of a renowned scholar of international relations, Rafael Calduch, the following reflection:
It is interesting to note that in none of the works considered classic in international relations, a specific reference is made to the need to carry out a temporal division, a periodization of international processes and phenomena, as an essential methodological element to give rigor to the studies carried out. However, it is evident that the consideration of the time factor as one of the essential coordinates, together with the space factor, in which international relations are incardinated leads, inexorably, to the need to establish periodization criteria that guide the theoretical work. (Calduch 1991: 14)
There is sufficient consensus among post-Cold War scholars to describe the period between 1990 and September 1, 2001, as “transitional” within the post-Cold War period. Pay attention to the following reflections written by Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State during the George W. Bush administrations (2001–2008):
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the World Trade Centre were the parentheses that close a long period of transition. During this period, those of us who are engaged in foreign policy as a means of livelihood looked for a theory or a general conceptual framework that would describe the new threats and the appropriate response that should be given to them. There were those who claimed that nations and their military forces had ceased to have relevance, that only world markets linked by new technologies counted. Others envisioned a future dominated by ethnic conflicts. And some even believed that, in the future, the energy of the US military would be used primarily in civilian conflict control and humanitarian assistance. (Rice 2002: 1)
Rice presents the policy debates of the early post-Cold War period, where in reality the use of military options had become more frequent than ever before in the 1990s and then worsened with the US-led anti-terrorist crusade as a reaction to 9/11/2001. Note that President George H. W. Bush (1989–1993), in his four years in office, ordered two major military operations. First was Operation Just Cause in Panama, December 1989, in which about 24,000 soldiers were employed, the largest operation in the Western Hemisphere since the 40,000 Marines sent to Santo Domingo in 1965. Second was Operation Desert Storm against Iraq (1990–1), which inaugurated the new pattern of military intervention of the post-Cold War, a coalition with 38 countries participating, led by tens of thousands of US military personnel.
In a period of just under 15 years, the United States prepared large-scale military operations, plus others of various scales, and sent troops abroad and intervened militarily in more countries than in any other period in its history. It should be noted the failure of the US mission in Somalia 1992–3 was an early indicator of the limitations of US military power to resolve all conflicts, a lesson that would be learned more painfully in Afghanistan and Iraq. The reality was that the United States, acting as a unipolar power, developed a military strategy based primarily on counterterrorism that mainly ignored the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia.
Another area to explore is the role of the so-called military-industrial complex in the US economy and the perception – erroneous but real – that it could function as the resource to revive the national economy. We recall that the United States is the leading producer and exporter of arms worldwide, a reality that emerged throughout the 20th century and was in place as the post-Cold War world emerged in 1992. The industry moved to protect itself from the potential cutback in US sales given the new situation that Russia was no longer the enemy of the US requiring an ongoing military buildup. Ultimately, however, the industry profited from the myriad of conflicts that emerged in the new century, and it remains a factor in US foreign policy decision-making.
In identifying these problem areas for study, the figure of institutional actors who come to occupy decisive roles within US military operations in the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq must be added. We refer to the representations, in the field of war, of the corporations in charge of the control and exploitation of the occupied natural resources. When the structure of these corporate institutions is reviewed, some meet better conditions as a whole than many of the small, lesser developed countries that exist today. They have significant savings in meeting the costs of new operations in the field, such as in recruiting security personnel who, in practice, constitute real armies; they pay intelligence services comparable – or superior – to many small states; they exert notable influence over Washington politicians, through their lobbying systems and well-known campaign donations. All of this is so without even delving into the realistic fiction of American television series.
As part of these new physiognomies there was a kind of metamorphosis in the historical figure of the mercenary, under the label of private contractor. Beyond the historical attributes that mercenaries will carry, these private contractors come from elite troops and special intelligence services, generally. They are hired for private missions or with fixed positions. But above all, they replace the elite troops of the US military and become the first to risk their lives in the most dangerous special operations, while at the same time replacing the patriotism and altruism of those warriors with the power of money. The US turned in part to such elements when strong antiwar sentiment in the US from 2005–8 against the death of US soldiers in Iraq and to a degree in Afghanistan forced the US into a major withdrawal of regular troops from the region by 2008.
Another crucial issue remains to be commented on. The confrontation between East and West of the Cold War demanded the existence of a strategic-military institutionalism that focused on the figures of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. When the Warsaw Pact was dissolved on 1 July 1991, it should have been assumed that the same decision would be taken on NATO in the West, but this was not the case. There may be many reasons for this, but let’s evaluate some of the most important.
The global hegemony of the United States was not structured solely against the USSR and its allies. American global architecture sought to maintain the predominant position which had an East-West axis under the Cold War conflict. It is understandable within the rearrangements that this global architecture should or had to suffer, and under known conditions that will be briefly analysed, NATO, far from being extinguished, was, and continues to be, resized. Because the United States had many interests to defend, US leaders focused on repurposing NATO. The first act was its expansion to include the willing East European countries. That alone, however, did not justify its existence, given that the Russia of Boris Yeltsin sought cooperative relations with the West and that the Warsaw Pact was dissolved. Since US military strategy post-9/11/2001 focused on counterterrorism, the organisation of the military operation in Afghanistan was a logical part of US attempts to maintain its global dominance, and it gave NATO a new life when its usefulness may have been doubted.
In addition, NATO’s involvement helped to share the enormous costs of the new wars, and thus alleviate the economic burdens that the United States was carrying. Another very important reason was the political-diplomatic strategy that resized NATO, protected if not mandated by the UN, to carry out major military operations. Already in Operation Desert Storm, the first Gulf War (1990–1) against Iraq, a huge international coalition led by the United States was invoked. The military arm of US hegemony was endorsed by the majority of the international community. The Afghan War, while not a formal UN operation, had widespread international support given the direct attack on the United States. It is important to note that the second Iraq War was not fought under the auspices of NATO as several key members, including Germany and France, did not support the war, forcing the US and a few close allies to share the costs of that expensive war.
In search of enemies
US foreign policy, and more properly its National Security Doctrine, presupposes the existence of permanent threats against which it must react to protect the nation. Because America’s interests are global, the defence of its national security took on a global character early on, a point argued by both US and Cuban scholars (Waltz and Martinez 1987: 180–1).
The strategic vacuum left to the United States with the absence of the USSR created many opportunities for US foreign policy, but also many costs. The need to identify credible enemies in order to convince the American public to act against them, while also responding to all the domestic needs already mentioned, was urgent. The first case was Saddam Hussein, on which Horacio Cagni comments:
Saddam Hussein was created and armed by the West as a retaining wall against the Islamic revolution in Iran. For years he fought the regime of the ayatollahs, using with ease the chemical weapons that the democratic West supplied him. After the Kuwait adventure, he served – knowingly or unknowingly – as a challenger to the US-led coalition. He was destroyed militarily (in the Gulf War) because Iraq threatened Western geostrategic and geoeconomic interests, but he was not overthrown because reason of state prevailed, and it was better for the Iraqi leader to crush the Kurds and Shiites than for a Kurdish or Shiite rebellion to be triumphant. (Cagni 1998: 74)
In 2003, immersed in the global crusade against terrorism, the Second Gulf War took place. That second military operation against Iraq required a credible issue of national consensus in the United States and internationally to assemble a coalition that would fight in the Persian Gulf again. Thus, was born the issue of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein never had, but which was the focus of the speeches of George W Bush and his main ally, the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
In short, Saddam Hussein served as the ideal “enemy” of the moment to rehearse the new patterns of military intervention of the post-Cold War period. This would be definitively designed with the crusade initiated against terrorism as a result of the attacks of September 11, a situation that decreed the definitive elimination of the Iraqi ruler.
The second comment would logically be about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. We find bin Laden’s origin in the context of the ideological vacuum left by the Arab nationalist experiences (Egypt, Syria, Libya) of the 1960s and 1970s, which fought Israel and could not defeat it. His first known war experience was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan with US support.
A scholar of Islamic movements, Maria Manassero, has observed:
It is in this context that the emergence of ‘Al Qaeda’ must be understood, an origin that does not necessarily have to do with Soviet imperialism, but against all kinds of imperialism. In the words of Osama bin Laden – a figure and spiritual leader of the organization – he makes this situation very clear, saying He who has helped us survive the Soviet invasion can again protect us and allow us to defeat America … that is the will of Allah. Therefore, we believe that the defeat of America is possible, if Allah wants it. (Manassero 2010)
Beginning with the September 2001 attacks in the United States, bin Laden and al-Qaeda, an organisation of which he was not the only leader, became the main enemies of that country, its government and its people. The form of struggle chosen by bin Laden, the use of terror victimising the lives of innocent civilians, generated unprecedented international rejection. Even with the death of bin Laden in May 2011, al-Qaeda showed the strength and development it had achieved, because we are talking about an organisation that has not been annihilated. It was considered by scholar Gema Medero as a:
global jihadist movement, decentralized and structured in multidimensional networks, which revolves around three operational axes: Al Qaeda and its global infrastructure of local cells and individual agents; affiliated terrorist groups, which maintain a certain operational independence, although they receive spiritual and even material support from the organization; and, finally, the grassroots jihadist groups, whose members do not formally belong to the hierarchical structure of the organization, but accept the strategic objectives of the movement … (Sanchez Madero 2009: 192)
In the context of inter-ethnic conflicts between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, in the post-Saddam Hussein world another current of struggle against the West was brewing, the so-called Islamic State. The propitious moment of its great public demonstration came with the outbreak of war in Syria in 2011, a conflict that intermingled great internal problems of the country – amid the effervescence of the Arab Spring – with the strategic and geopolitical confrontation between the United States and Russia (Maris Shmite et al. 2016). In the ensuing decade the Islamic State would temporarily control vast swathes of land in both Syria and Iraq, while it simultaneously carried out major terror through attacks in Europe and the United States and linked with similarly minded armed Islamic groups in Africa and Asia. Only after five years of bloody fighting in both Syria and Iraq involving NATO troops, Russia, and Iranian militias, was the territorial footprint of the Islamic State eliminated in 2019. However, it continues to have thousands of followers in the region and carries out acts of terror against the civilian population. Its emulators in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Somalia continue to carry out significant armed actions.
The battles for the establishment of international multipolarity
In the context of the fateful 11 September 2001, the new directions taken by two indisputable powers of the system, Russia and China, must be recognised as having an imprint on international relations and in general on world geopolitics. The following ideas seek to delineate a framework for understanding the role of the rising actors in creating a multipolar world in which the former United States hegemony is continually declining.
The Russia of the 1990s existed under the government of Boris Yeltsin (1991–9). These were years of the definitive dismantling of the USSR, with the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) more a compensation for the superpower longings of the past than any serious attempt to maintain connections between the former Soviet states. But they were also years of gestation of the changes that occurred with the dawn of the new century.
In 1996, Yevgeny Primakov replaced Andrei Kozyrev as Foreign Minister. He defended a political philosophy opposed to his predecessor’s, in which he emphasised the need for an international balance between the powers and the strengthening of multipolarism. Primakov did not break cooperation with the West, but he did slow down a process that had already placed Russia at a strategic disadvantage following the demise of the Warsaw Pact and the entry into NATO of former socialist countries in Eastern Europe. The curtains were drawn for Putin to make his entrance into the scene.
When Putin assumed the presidency in 2000, he found a country mired in the economic crisis unleashed in 1998. The economy was fragmented, devoid of state control and in the hands of the well-known “oligarchs” who had taken over key economic lines, creating a conglomerate of large companies that controlled the country. Therefore, the first major strategic objective revealed by his presidential administration was the recomposition of the state, as an essential factor to be able to seek, next, an international repositioning of the Russian Federation.
Authors such as Diego Leiva Van de Maele divide Putin’s management of the country’s foreign policy into three stages. The first extends from 2000 to 2007, which the author considers pragmatic because of the management of good relations with the West. A second stage extends from 2007 to 2013, where the author appreciates a “turning point towards a more active, and even aggressive and/or confrontational foreign policy, until the conflict in Ukraine”. The third stage extends from then to the present, has at its center the Crimean Peninsula, and shows a country that has managed to consolidate “the new Russian position in the regional and global structure of power” (Leiva Van de Maele 2017: 12).
In this search to rebuild the national interests of the country and recover its national sovereignty by a recomposition of the state and the immediate establishment of an autonomous platform of the nation at the global level, the Eurasian identity of the nation was recovered and resized in an evident resurrection of what had been Soviet geopolitics. Recall that the former USSR included the current republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. And specifically, within Primakov’s geopolitical constructions the strategic repositioning of Russia was privileged over the former Eurasian Soviet republics.
The interesting thing is that, far from generating conflicts, the convergence became evident of Russian and Chinese interests under the new logic of cooperation and the visions on international security that both powers understood for the New World Order. With a thick underlining, the levels of influence, presence and ascendancy of Russia and China over Eurasia were far ahead of those that the United States and the West could have achieved.
On the other hand, Russia’s views of Eurasia were not based only on geopolitical visions. They were based on historical, cultural and even inter-ethnic heritages, as Ana Teresa Gutiérrez del Cid explains when she states that,
the Eurasian tendency that Putin’s government represents has a root in the social consciousness of the country, which explains why the multinational and multicultural reality of Russia poses that different path, which defines it as a bridge country between Europe and Asia and makes it unique and unrepeatable in the concert of nations. (Gutierrez del Cid 2005: 69)
For China, another great historical protagonist in the area of Central Asia, this tends to be associated more with the theme of the ancient Silk Road, which has been revitalised under the geoeconomic logic of the present, involving various geographical areas of the world and renamed as the Belt and Road Initiative.
China, under Deng Xiaoping, had been engaged in major economic reform that reinserted the Chinese economy into the world economy, but he always held open the re-establishment of Russian Chinese relations that had been ruptured in the 1960s. Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing in June 1989 had as its main result the full normalisation of Sino-Soviet relations. As part of China’s immersion in the new international reality that was opening up, economic reforms continued to be deepened, but always being careful not to drift towards Gorbachev’s political directions. The border dispute with Russia began to be handled with bilateral diplomacy, and normal relations were defined both with Mongolia and with the ex-Soviet republics of Central Asia.
The new geopolitics applied by both Russia and China since the beginning of the 21st century has led to the consolidation of a logic of alliances, which gives greater strength and advantages to both in their relations with the United States and the West. In this regard, Sunamis Fabelo Concepcion wrote:
Moreover, the Western-imposed arms embargo (on China) had a counterproductive effect for the United States and its allies: it contributed to greater closeness between Beijing and Moscow, by tilting China toward the arms market of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In 1992, the summit held in Beijing inaugurated in bilateral relations a language marked by the condemnation of unipolarity in the international system, the need to carry out concerted actions against US hegemonism, the condemnation of the expansion of NATO towards Eastern Europe and the rejection of the Atlantic alliance, considering it devoid of content in the context of the post-Cold War period. (Fabelo Concepcion 2018: 204)
A decisive turning point in the process of building such a bilateral strategic alliance occurred on 16 July 2001, when Vladimir Putin and Jiang Zemin signed the Treaty of Goodwill, Friendship and Cooperation between China and Russia. This functioned as the closing of a process of recomposition of relations which had opened a decade earlier, ending the chapters of bilateral confrontation of the Cold War. A key issue for this was the conceptions of international security which both leaders brought to the negotiating table: The defence of a multipolar world with capabilities to defend the strategic balance between the powers and reaffirmation of the role of the UN Security Council, visions affirmed by Primakov, were combined with a multidimensional Chinese interpretation of security – military, economic, cultural, environmental – and the “adoption by Jiang of a concept of ‘cooperative security’, open to the establishment of a multilateral dialogue based on the principles of peaceful coexistence defended by their country” (Morales 2004: 2).
As part of the strategic bilateral relationship being built, a shared Sino-Russian vision of Central Asia was agreed on. The defence of a multilateral New World Order and the rejection of US unilateralism remained a central axis in the strategic partnership that both countries wove. The potential threats coming from the United States and the need to work for the establishment of a multipolar international balance in order to advance their national and international projects cemented this pact. As Martinez and Elizando observe:
Within the framework of the “new concept of security”, the pre-eminence of strategic partnerships and the “doctrine of peaceful ascent” highlight the principles of: 1) non-aggression, 2) non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries, 3) equality between sovereign States, 4) non-confrontation and 5) non-alignment. In this way, China has deployed an Asian strategy that seeks to build trust among its neighbors, through high-level political meetings, participation in regional partnerships, regional economic consultation and cooperation mechanisms, and elements of cooperation in the military field. (Martinez Alvarez and Garza Elizondo 2011: 636)
Within Russian geostrategic interests, the development of its economy occupied a central place, based on its historical production of gas and oil. While Russia sought to build a stable and lasting relationship with the European Union, which would make it a key customer for its gas production, China was becoming the most important consumer to develop in the East. On oil and gas consumption in China, Kenia María Ramírez Meda wrote:
In 2010, energy consumption in China grew by 11.2% compared to 2009, which places this country as the first consumer of energy worldwide, already surpassing the United States.
By 2035 … China will remain the largest consumer of energy in Asia and the world; its weight will be located at 25%; on the other hand, that of the United States will be located at 15%. By that same year, China’s energy consumption will be 68% higher than America’s (International Energy Outlook, 2011). (Ramirez Meda 2012: 87)
An additional event in this second moment, which also involves both Russia and China and promotes multipolarity as an alternative to US unipolarism, was the creation of the BRIC Group (Brazil, Russia, India and China). This grouping was supported by relevant figures, constituting 42 percent of the planet’s population, 22 percent of the earth’s surface, 40 percent of its natural resources and 30 percent of the Global Gross Domestic Product. Then at the beginning of 2011 at the behest of China, South Africa (49 million inhabitants and a GDP of $527,000 million in 2010) was incorporated, and it renamed itself the BRICS Group. According to figures from the International Monetary Fund, between 2000 and 2010 the original four BRIC members contributed about 50 percent of world economic growth (Turzi 2011: 91).
However, as Turzi has noted, the BRICS is a project susceptible to internal confrontations, because Russia, China and India share contiguous geopolitical spaces and a history of border conflicts (Turzi 2011: 98–9). But it also has undoubted strengths, in particular its national economic strategies, which have allowed its members to reduce the impact on themselves of the deep multidimensional crisis that has hit the planet since 2008.
The brief exposition of this period cannot be closed without mentioning the configuration of dangerous scenarios of conflict between Russia and China, on the one hand, and the United States and the West – more properly NATO – on the other. We are talking about differentiated conflicts. Consider as a first example Syria. The conflict in that country erupted in March 2011. Everything indicates that the process of action-reaction also made Syria a victim. A demonstration which was attacked by the government in the midst of the effervescence of the so-called Arab Spring (Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen) set in motion a civil conflict that has lasted for a decade and killed more than 500,000 people. In a few months in 2011 the conflict was internationalised by the confluence of various local actors opposed to the government, jihadist inclined towards the creation of a faction of the so-called Islamic State and the direct and indirect involvement of powers such as Russia, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United States (Gutierrez Espada 2015: 99–131, Duro Ridruejo 2017: 213–28).
The second conflict to consider is the one that has led Russia and Ukraine to war today, embedded in multiple historical, cultural, ethnic, geographical, political and economic factors. We can address a number of questions to that conflict today. Could Russia and Ukraine, without the interference of other parties, have reached a definitive negotiated solution? Second, was Russia looking for the military option? Finally, how much did the United States and NATO contribute to make this armed conflict a fact? The complex possible responses obviously go beyond the objectives of this article.
The third conflict to consider is located in the strategic area of the South China Sea. As Ulises Granados Quiroz has observed:
There are four archipelagic groupings here: the Paracel Islands, the Spratly Islands, the Macclesfield Bank and the Pratas Reef. Currently the Paracel are claimed by Vietnam, Taiwan and China (and occupied by the latter country in its entirety), the Macclesfield bank is claimed entirely by China and Taiwan and a part by the Philippines, while the Spratly are claimed entirely by China, Taiwan and Vietnam, and a part by the Philippines and Malaysia (Brunei only claims maritime space within that archipelago). (Granados Quiroz 2016: 51)
Keep in mind that, while there is a legal framework with claims of sovereignty and maritime jurisdiction, it is not only navigation and fishing that have exacerbated the historical differences today. Oil and gas deposits have been identified in many of these island formations, which further complicates the network of demands and claims and the controversies around the extension and rights within the so-called Exclusive Economic Zones claimed by China (Rios 2013: 139–67).
Let us not forget the intertwining of geopolitical problems, of which this geographical area has been and is the object. Taiwan is a case of permanent tension. On the one hand, China sees Taiwan in the frame of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China of China (ROC) in the frame of “one China, two systems”. On the other hand, the United States maintains its alliance with the island, managing its relations with it based on the Taiwan Relations Act that they approved in the 1970s.
To complete such a tight synthesis, one cannot forget to consider the contiguity of this South China Sea with the Sea of Japan; the inclusion of North Korea in the regional geopolitical chessboard of this contiguous area, with its threatening nuclear tests; and even Australia, involved alongside China in the entire regional geopolitical environment. Specifically, the United States and the United Kingdom have forced a greater involvement by Australia, concerned about the development of their bilateral ties with China. The recent forced creation of AUKUS is an example of this intentionality. AUKUS links the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom in a nuclear submarine deal. Other projects aimed at limiting China’s strategic designs in the region are the “Quad”, a strategic dialogue between the United States, India, Japan and Australia; and the “Five Eyes”, an intelligence alliance between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
How does Cuba fit into an analysis of the post-Cold War world?
Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution more than 60 years ago, the island’s government has been involved in essential issues of global geopolitics. It was highlighted during the Cold War by a strategic triangle – the United States/USSR/Cuba – that remained active until the extinction of the Soviet world. Under no circumstances should Cuba be viewed as a passive actor or subordinate to the dynamics of the triangle. Early on, the revolution defined its project as nationalist and socialist and, in the process, earned the permanent enmity of Washington, making a tactical alliance with the USSR and its allies a practical necessity. That connection with the socialist bloc was deepened after 1970 with the integration of the island’s economics into the Soviet-led Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. However, Cuba’s international relations were not defined exclusively by their relationship with the USSR. As a Third World and Latin American country, Cuba identified with a wide range of anti-colonial struggles and provided assistance to many revolutionary groups in Latin America in the 1960s, often in contradiction to Soviet policy. In the 1970s, with Soviet support, Cuba sent thousands of troops to Angola to help defend the country against attacks from apartheid South Africa. Such leadership in the Third World propelled Cuba to the leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in spite of its close association with the USSR.
The demise of the USSR placed the Cuban revolutionary government on the brink of total collapse. The precipitous fall in its main economic indicators in the wake of the dissolution of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance is well known. However, under the leadership of Fidel Castro, work had been underway from before the fall of the Berlin Wall on a gradual strategy for Cuba’s economic insertion into Latin American and the Caribbean. President Castro had been invited to the inauguration of several Latin American presidents during the decade of the 1980s, and in his speeches, he advocated negotiations to strengthen trade relations with the region. This openness to new relations was extended to other parts of the world and can be seen as a rethinking of the country’s international geopolitics by a country that was universally recognised for its anti-colonial role in Africa.
As the post-Cold War era dawned in the early 1990s two events underscored Cuba’s integration into Latin America. The first was the creation in October 1990 of the Sao Paulo Forum, a gathering of progressive political parties of the region with leadership from both Fidel and Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. It allowed a heterogeneous group of parties to discuss the changing international scene, and to set the stage for the electoral victory of many of them a decade later in what came to be known as the Pink Tide. The second was the visit of newly released Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez to Cuba in November 1994. This visit was followed by Chavez’s rise to the Venezuelan presidency in 1998, beginning an era of Venezuelan-Cuban cooperation that was widened to several other countries with the creation of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) in 2004. Simultaneous to the development of ALBA, Cuba was instrumental in the formation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) as a Latin American organisation that could challenge the US-dominated Organisation of American States (OAS). Latin America’s full integration of Cuba into its hemispheric processes posed a challenge to the United States when, following the US-led Summit of the Americas in 2012 the Latin American countries demanded Cuba’s invitation to the 2015 summit in Panama or the meeting would be universally boycotted. This Latin American challenge, together with other factors, led the Obama administration to begin secret negotiations with Cuba that resulted in a historic December 2014 bilateral agreement that led to the re-establishment of full diplomatic relations between the two countries and the visit of President Obama to Cuba in 2015. In the final two years of the Obama administration US–Cuban relations took on a tone that had not previously existed since the Revolution triumphed in 1959. The economic blockade of Cuba continued, but with many cracks as some US companies were authorised to do business on the island and the number of US travellers to Cuba dramatically increased, including cruise ship passengers. US and Cuban diplomats negotiated 22 bilateral agreements in a range of areas from the environment to law enforcement. The US also removed Cuba from its List of Nations That Sponsor Terrorism and, by doing so, made it easier for Cuba to engage in world commerce. In one of his final acts in office, Obama ended the US programme of enticing Cuban doctors working abroad to defect to the United States.
It seemed to some that a post-Cold War era had finally come to US–Cuban relations more than 20 years after the fall of the USSR. However, that optimism was quickly dashed when Donald Trump assumed the White House in 2017. Within months he reversed many of the openings to Cuba that had been put in place by his predecessor, and in some areas went further than recent Republican presidents had done in sanctioning the island. Cruise ship travel was banned and the number of authorised flights to the island was sharply reduced, dramatically reducing the number of US travellers to the island. While none of the 22 negotiated agreements were abrogated, the Trump administration ended any serious contacts between the two countries even as diplomatic relations were maintained. One of Trump’s final actions was to again place Cuba on the terrorism list, severely hampering Cuba’s international commerce. The Trump administration made clear that, from its perspective, the Monroe Doctrine was alive and well, and that Cuba, together with Venezuela and Nicaragua, were targets for regime change. The Trump policies revealed that Obama’s opening to Cuba did not represent a consensus in the US elites that regime change should be taken off the table.
This reality was underscored when the Biden administration took office and has largely kept in place all of the negative measures deployed by his predecessor, in spite of campaign promises to return to the policies of the administration in which he was vice president. In keeping with the theme of this article, US policy toward Cuba has reflected the wider foreign policy approach of the new administration that seeks to divide the world between its perception of democratic and authoritarian states. It has classified Cuba, together with Russia, China and Iran in the latter category, relegating it to be actively opposed in the international arena.
Some final notes on the new geopolitical scenario that is observed today
In the military-naval history of the USSR the Black Sea has always had a vital strategic importance, and these geopolitical visions remain fully valid with Russia. The Russian Black Sea Fleet is based on the Crimean Peninsula. In addition, the Black Sea constitutes a strategic access route from Russia to the Middle East and the Caucasus. Because of this situation, after the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych (2010–14) in the Ukraine, Russia decided to support a referendum for the population of the Crimea to vote on whether to continue belonging to Ukraine or to return to the current Russian Federation. The result was that 97 percent of the population voted in favour of rejoining Russia, a crucial step to ensure their national security, as observed by Anna Gutierrez (Gutierrez del Cid 2017: 356–88). The recovery of Crimea defined a “Russian containment and security line” with Western Europe, and with NATO’s greater rapprochement with the incorporation of former socialist allies.
This situation, however, has been exploited and exacerbated after the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Behind that conflict lie great US geo-economic interests, due to Washington’s concern about the European dependence on Russian gas and oil, which ultimately implies a strengthening of ties between them.
Let us close these inquiries with a suggestive comparison between the two conflicts that in recent times are trapped by these dangerous geopolitical intertwining that we know. We are talking about Syria and Ukraine. Both have been victims of internal confrontations of varying magnitude. Syria was victimised by a civil war, while in the Ukraine the conflict between the central government and the self-proclaimed Republics of the Donbas broke out more than eight years ago and has now escalated into a major war. Both confrontations lost their internal character due to the involvement of actors such as the United States and Russia. Both Syria and the Ukraine live under geopolitical inspection that make them targets of interest to the aforementioned powers, with grave consequences for both. This external presence has generated obvious geographical divisions in these countries. Syria is a clear example of the US strategy of stimulating and exacerbating conflicts with genuine internal national roots and content, in this case developing following the so-called Arab Spring, in countries it targets for regime change. On the other hand, the Ukraine is an indispensable factor for Russian national security, and the United States and the West know and exploited that issue. Notwithstanding their years of lip-service to using the Minsk agreements as a basis on which to build a real negotiated agreement, the West never manifested any serious will, or even genuine desire, to actually do so.
How different, how dangerous it is to think that an escalation of the United States towards geopolitical scenarios of greater confrontation with Russia – and China – is what will be generated for the case of Ukraine. It is really a myth, an old legend, to continue clinging to the idea that the “Cold Wars” belong to the past. Let us accept that just as today’s wars are described with different generations, or reality is closer when talking about hybrid wars, the conflict in Ukraine is dangerously different, because the United States and NATO only have a direct military participation left to make the “hot war” a fact, for the barrage of sanctions and anti-Russian policies are already at an unprecedented level. The confrontation between Russia and the United States carries grave dangers for Cuba. The Cuban government has been careful to not endorse the Russian invasion but has placed primary blame for the crisis on the policies of the US and NATO. Such a stance keeps its links with Russia in place but makes better relations with the United States very difficult to achieve. Any further escalation of the conflict would only place Cuba in a more dangerous situation.