To impeach the notion that governments act rationally to maximize their own advantages, one need only look at the U.S. and Russian governments’ reluctance to act concurrently, if not jointly, to contain the biggest geopolitical threat to both: China. By 2020 the relationship between the U.S. and Russia had so deteriorated that it was no longer possible for either rationally to consider what good it could do for itself, if so doing would also benefit the other. So much for “rational actor” theories of international relations. Nevertheless, the common ground on which both could stand to advance their own interest vis-à-vis China remains broad and solid, beckoning both sides to prioritize those interests.
Believing that governments act in their country’s international interest requires overlooking that governments consist of people who usually sacrifice long-range international interests to their own pressing political exigencies as they struggle day to day against one another. Officials may also use what they say or do with regard to a foreign country as a means of managing their own political identity, and as a weapon in partisan struggles. To some extent, all are also captives of habit.
Cold calculations concerning China cannot but chill Russian hearts. China’s GDP of circa $15 trillion is ten times Russia’s. Its 1.4 billion people live next door. Unlike the Russians, they have no issues with alcoholism or with social dissolution. Though the Chinese are racially repulsive to most Russians, such is Russian society’s state that Russian women are taking Chinese husbands. How Russia may contain the ever-strengthening Chinese, or simply get along with them, is by no means clear.
Yet Russian officials grew up disdainful of China and measuring their country’s status against the United States. The strategic forces that still give Russia some claim to world power are designed to fight America. So is Russia’s first-class navy. Russia’s newly professional army, nuclear weapons and all, is stationed in the West and designed against eventual aggression from that quarter. Putin finds it inexpensive and politically enhancing publicly to disparage Americans who, during his time in office, have proved to be pathetic foils. Precisely for that reason, Putin—ever the cold calculator—is unlikely to fear America.
Nevertheless, Putin helps to strengthen China and partners with it against America. Surely, one reason is that U.S. officials have so shaped the relationship as to make any other course unreasonable in the short run.
From the Soviet Union’s founding in 1917 until 2016, America’s body politic was divided on dealing with “the Russians” along unchanging lines. Grosso modo, the establishment—Democrats, the professoriate, the sophisticated, etc.—were first “soft on communism” and then indulgent toward a renascent Russia. They wanted treaties and essentially a kind of global co-dominium with it. America’s conservative side damned communism, forcibly resisted it, and remained skeptical of Russia. The farther Left the official, the more pro-Russian he was likely to be.
That ceased when, in the course of the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump made improving relations with Russia so as to counter China a part of his proposals for reshaping U.S. foreign policy. In July 2016, WikiLeaks’ release of emails from the Democratic National Committee’s server so deeply embarrassed the Democratic presidential candidate that the DNC sought to deflect attention from intra party strife by claiming that the emails had been stolen by “the Russians.” The DNC gave no evidence and denied the FBI investigative access. Why would “the Russians” have done it? Political logic dictated a series of answers. The Russians did it to help Trump because Trump is its agent.
For four years, the U.S. establishment’s energy and the U.S. government’s investigative resources went into spreading this “narrative.” Zero evidence surfaced.
But, in this century, China has substantially undone the position in the Western Pacific that the United States secured in WWII and defended thereafter. China took control of the supply chains for many of America’s manufactured goods, and secured for itself political support within America’s own corporate structure and society. Whereas the United States has no outstanding geopolitical issues vis-à-vis Russia, China openly bids to counter U.S. influence everywhere—above all amongst ourselves.
Nevertheless, anyone in America who advocates common ground with Russia against China might as well spit against gale force winds.
The common international ground exists, and waits only those willing to step out of their domestic not-so-comfortable zones.
