Red Square in Moscow, Russia, December 4, 2010 (Darius Kuzmickas)

Whenever Moscow asserts itself forcefully these days, Cold War paradigms and old stereotypes are usually quickly resurrected to interpret Russian behavior even if, in today’s multipolar environment, its motives are probably no different from other greater powers. No matter Western fears of a “resurgent” Russia seeking to project power abroad, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country has pursued a fairly rational foreign policy that is grounded in self preservation.

NATO’s expansion into Central and Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War continues to shape Moscow’s strategic thinking today. While Russia was attempting recover from its unexpected retrogression, it believed that the West had pledged not to take advantage of its weakness and annex its European buffer zone. When the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined the Atlantic alliance just before the turn of the century nevertheless, it naturally compelled the Kremlin to look after its interests more carefully.

If it was ever under the impression that the end of the Cold War had heralded a new era of honest and peaceful cooperation among civilized nations, by the beginning of the 2000s, Moscow realized perfectly well that in the West, it continued to be regarded as a potential adversary. That thinking necessitated a preemptive containment strategy that robbed Russia of its ability to seriously menace Western Europe with the inclusion of former Soviet satellite states in NATO and the EU.

Twice during the twentieth century had Russia been invaded from the west. Stalin’s sovietization of Eastern Europe after World War II was largely a defensive policy that enabled him to rebuild Russia while anticipating renewed German aggression. (West Germany’s NATO membership was similarly aimed at preventing the nation from resurging as a continental power.) Surrounded by allies and puppet regimes, Russia was arguably safe until nuclear weapons upset the familiar balance of power.

Whereas a limited use of nuclear weapons was seriously considered during the early days of the Cold War, nowadays, they are deemed a last resort at best. The specter of atomic war has almost disappeared so the need for traditional strategic depth is back.

Wikistrat‘s Thomas Barnett reminds readers of Russian fears of encirclement in his latest World Politics Review column. After shrugging off its empire in 1991, Russia was denied a “sense of belonging,” Barnett notes, when Europe and the United States refused to consider Russia’s entry to NATO. Instead, America moved in militarily from the south as part of its global War on Terror while China progressively encroached, in an economic sense, on Russia’s “near abroad” in Central Asia and the Far East.

Russia has been remarkably reluctant to counter these infringements. Although nearly all former Warsaw Pact members belong to the European Union now, it has made only halfhearted attempts to regain a semblance of hegemony on its western border. Old Eastern Bloc nations may still worry about Russian antagonism, especially if Germany, which is so dependent on Russian gas imports, won’t truly protect them in the EU (which is why they expect security from the United States in NATO)—the likelihood of Moscow deploying force against Poland, Lithuania or even the Ukraine is close to zero.

In other parts of its former empire, too, Russia is far from belligerent. Although vying for influence there with nearby greater powers, Russia has refrained from policing Central Asia in Soviet style despite the alluring natural resources that the region possesses. When Kyrgyzstan asked for a Russian troop presence last year to quell political unrest, the Kremlin balked at the request. It had no desire to become entangled in the internal power struggles of its former client state.

Russian cultural and political influence pervades especially in the northernmost of former socialist republics in Central Asia but Chinese, Iranian and Turkish attempts at fostering stable relations in the area could set the stage for a greater power confrontation, one from which Moscow stands nothing to gain.

Russian governors in the Far East occasionally raise the specter of the “yellow menace” and talk of the danger posed to their underpopulated provinces by unregulated Chinese labor migrants but as Dmitry Gorenburg pointed out here last year, “this kind of talk rarely emanates from Moscow and certainly does not affect troop positioning.”

Indeed, “it is stunning how little trouble Moscow has fomented” since the demise of the Soviet Union, writes Barnett, “all while engineering arguably the greatest military demobilization in human history, going from more than two hundred army divisions to less than one hundred brigades.”

Russia plans no wars with either Europe or “rising” China [and] welcomes the rising influence of Turkey and India to its south. Yes, Russia is effectively shut out of Europe for the first time in three centuries but it seeks no territorial conquest, only soft domination of the sort America pursues throughout much of the planet. All that, with the only cost being the admittedly bloody dissolution of the Balkans and some nasty guerrilla warfare in the Caucasus.

Russia will seek to defend what it perceives to be its interests, in the Arctic for instance, which holds the promise of attaining access to vast untapped hydrocarbon resources which its economy so relies upon. And it will do so with regular salvos of nationalist bombast that the Russian electorate is susceptible to. Russian bomber planes and submarines will occasionally penetrate European airspace and harass their allied counterparts but militarily, the “petro dinosaur” is largely irrelevant except for its nuclear weapons arsenal—which it has been willing to reduce in negotiations with the Americans.

It would seem that reports of Russia’s resurgence have been greatly exaggerated.

Mullen, who is expected to retire later this year, was critical of both American and Chinese officials for failing to maintain a permanent security dialogue. “Our military relations have only recently begun to thaw, but China’s government still uses them as a sort of thermostat to communicate displeasure,” he wrote.

When they don’t like something we do, they cut off ties. That can’t be the model anymore. Nor can we, for our part, swing between engagement and overreaction.

The United States have witnesses several events which to overreact about during the past year. As China is rising, it is becoming more assertive. Conflict has been brewing in the South China Sea especially where China’s revisionist stance on maritime borders has frustrated Southeast Asian neighbors and the United States alike.

This body of water, through which passes a third of all commercial maritime traffic worldwide and half of the hydrocarbons destined for Japan, the Korean Peninsula and northeast China, is of immense strategic importance to the Chinese but similarly vital to the continental Asian countries as Thailand and Vietnam as well as Indonesia.

China has complained of an American shadow over the South China Sea while observers in the United States are worried about Chinese naval ambitions. The country is both modernizing and expanding its fleet even if “in terms of global seapower,” as James Pritchett noted last year, China is likely to remain “in the second band of naval powers for some time to come.”

Washington’s closeness to New Delhi has prompted the Chinese to intensify their own relations with Pakistan, India’s western neighbor and foe. Their apparent lack of concern over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and November’s shelling of a South Korean island fueled American apprehension about China’s policy on the peninsula meanwhile. An improved military relationship could mend part of that mutual mistrust.

Military and political leaders of both nations announced to convene regularly for security summits in May but apparently no further meaningful steps have been taken to put in place a policy of “strategic reassurance,” which is how the Obama Administration dubbed its China approach two years ago.

When the Americans were accommodating, it seemed only to exacerbate Chinese antagonism. They expanded their claims in the South China Sea, engaged in a major spat with Google over Internet freedom, played an obstructionist role at the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, criticized American economic leadership and sought to water down sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program at the United Nations Security Council. Strategic reassurance didn’t seem to be working for either side. Were the Chinese interpreting Washington’s willingness to compromise as weakness?

Perhaps. More likely though is that China is sending mixed messages because it has mixed feelings about the United States and their leadership role in East Asia.

There is a divide in China’s military and foreign policy establishment. On the one side are hardliners who occupy prominent posts in the military and at Communist Party schools who feel that the Americans are conniving to deceive China and keep it poor; on the other are more cosmopolitan foreign ministry bureaucrats and bankers who want to maintain peaceful ties with the West.

Just as Washington can’t decide whether to treat China as a friend or foe, so the power brokers in Beijing are ambivalent about their relationship with the United States.

It is why Wikistrat‘s Thomas Barnett argues in his Equire column that there is plenty of blame to go around in the Sino-American dynamic. While Mullen chastised “those spying, secretive, bullying and increasingly well armed Chinese” for upsetting the regional peace, America is selling weapons “at a record pace to every neighboring state, conducting joint naval exercises right off China’s coast, and, you know, openly planning to bomb the breadth and length of the Middle Kingdom.”

According to Barnett, the United States don’t need a “containment” strategy for China. It is setting one in motion all by itself.

Every time Beijing starts bullying its smaller neighbors with its unreasonable claims on the South China Sea, you can just hear the West’s military-industrial complex’s cash registers start ka-chinging. China’s neighbors have collectively doubled their arms purchases in the last half decade—a totally delightful tonic for an American defense industry facing tighter Pentagon budgets.

Washington has worked to improve ties with Southeast Asian nations, even declaring stability around the South China Sea to be of “national interest” to the United States last year. It has a commitment to allies like Australia, the Philippines and Taiwan and a clear strategic interest in balancing against Chinese encroachment by supporting Thai and Vietnamese claims but this is a precarious balancing act at the same time. If China and the United States are to enhance mutual trust, the latter can’t go behind Beijing’s back and undermine its position in Southeast Asia. So for lack of a better strategy, America can only continue to aim for strategic reassurance.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greets President Hu Jintao of China following a bilateral meeting during the Nuclear Security Summit at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington DC, April 12, 2010

Chinese President Hu Jintao arrives in Washington DC today. His state visit comes at a time of considerable tension in Sino-American relations. Even as the two powers are heavily interdependent economically, discord has emerged on monetary and climate policy. With America mired in recession, protectionism rears its ugly head once more while China, still rising, has become more assertive.

Washington’s newfound closeness to New Delhi meanwhile has prompted the Chinese to intensify their own relations with Pakistan, India’s western neighbor and foe.

China’s seeming lack of concern over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and November’s shelling of a South Korean island fueled American apprehension about China’s policy on the peninsula last year. China’s revisionist posturing in the South China Sea moreover has antagonized neighbors in Southeast Asia and strengthened the belief that China stopped rising peacefully.

It is all the more reason for the two nations to build a “positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship,” as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it last week. Hu’s state visit should be a step in that direction.

Rebalancing of trade

China last year surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy and will likely continue to grow at a staggering pace in the years to come.

In 2010, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Friday, American exports to China amounted to more than $100 billion. “They’re growing at about twice the pace of our exports to the rest of the world,” he added which means that the country is set to become America’s largest trading partner by the end of this decade.

There is an imbalance in the relationship however in that China sells almost three times as much to the United States as the United States sell to China. It is why, at the G20 summit in November, American President Barack Obama suggested that the world’s surplus economies should submit to a rebalancing of global trade. China and Germany, both heavily dependent on exports, resisted and the plan failed. From the Chinese perspective, there is nothing fair about such efforts.

International relations analyst Thomas Barnett previously explained what is driving China’s “seemingly selfish economic strategy.” He predicted in December that China, “already losing its cheap labor advantage right now,” is set to stockpile elders from here on out at a pace never witnessed before.

By the middle of this century, more than four hundred million Chinese are expected to have retired—more than America’s total projected population by that time.

But in addition, China is now expected to cover the spendthrift West’s need to boost exports while also serving as income elevating engine for the rest of the world’s developing economies—largely through the Middle Kingdom’s ravenous resource demands.

Barnett warned that Beijing interprets attempts to “rebalance” world trade at the cost of Chinese competitiveness as “nothing less than an attempt to destroy the ruling Communist Party’s primary source of political legitimacy—namely, China’s ongoing per capita income expansion.”

Currency appreciation

The United States have been urging China to allow its currency to appreciate at a faster rate, complaining that it keeps Chinese manufacturers artificially underpriced. China won’t move on currency however as long as it has millions still living in poverty and millions more dependent on exports to the West.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao defended China’s monetary policy in Brussels last year. On the whole, China’s economic development “still lacks balance, coordination and sustainability,” he has said. A sudden increase in the yuan‘s value, as the Americans are calling for, would bring “disaster” to China he warned. “Factories will shut down and society will be in turmoil.”

On Friday, Geither pointed out that the value of the Chinese currency alone does not shape the long term investment decisions of American companies. Inflation is another crucial element.

Chinese inflation is much more rapid than the United States now. Chinese inflation is probably going to be more than twice, three times US inflation rates for a long time to come.

As a result, exchange rates, in real terms, are appreciating—”at roughly a pace of about 10 percent a year,” according to the secretary. “And that’s a very substantial material change,” he admitted.

Military expansion and competition

China’s strategy seems aimed, before anything else, at perpetuating the country’s economic growth and ensuring domestic tranquility. Its foreign policy is an expression of these objectives.

Chinese foreign policy makers understand that they cannot ignore what happens outside of China anymore. Their country is a greater power again so they are asserting their claims in the South China Sea, vying for influence in Central Asia, obstructing international climate change legislation at Copenhagen, squabbling with Google over Internet freedom, trying to water down sanctions against Iran and refusing to outright denounce North Korea despite its evermore bellicose rhetoric and destructive behavior.

In order to boost China’s posture and protect its expanding interests around the globe, the People’s Liberation Army is spending many billions of dollars buying equipment (notably from Russia) and developing new technologies.

Reports of carrier killing missiles and stealth fighters are often exaggerated in American analyses as is the expansion and modernization of the country’s naval forces. The United States should not have to worry about China’s navy however, certainly not in the short run. The US Navy will remain paramount in the Asia-Pacific for decades to come.

China will become a maritime power at the same time as its dependence on the imports of raw materials from other parts of the world outside of East Asia increases. In the future, Chinese armed forces may well be called upon to protect the country’s burgeoning international trade which is precisely what the United States have been doing for the last half century.

The United States fear that more Chinese power will effectively amount to less American influence. Especially as both countries cope with upheaval at home, the risk of escalation of otherwise minor disputes is very real. In interviews with The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, President Hu professed this week that China and the United States “should abandon the zero-sum Cold War mentality” but there are hardliners in his own administration and party whose views are no less obsolete.

Strategic reassurance

Approaching international relations as multipolar and assuming that China and the United States shared fundamental threats and interests—ranging from climate change to economic stability to Islamic terrorism—the Obama Administration initiated a policy of strategic reassurance when it come to power. It doesn’t appear to have been working so there is a need for a new framework of Sino-American cooperation.

Former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski proposed that Presidents Hu and Obama use the opportunity of this week’s state visit to lay out a charter that would “provide the framework not only for avoiding what under some circumstances could become a hostile rivalry but also for expanding a realistic collaboration between the United States and China.” Learning from Cold War détente to define alliances and spheres of interest and institutionalize regular high level meetings may be another way to defuse tension.

Despite high hopes and undoubtedly optimistic proclamations of friendship and good will, Hu’s visit doesn’t seem likely to produce the sort of refinement of the Sino-American symbioses that is highly desirable if not outright necessary today. In the absence of formal agreements his state visit is a chance to build trust however and it is a reminder that differences aside, China and the United States realize that they need each other—and will continue to need each other well into this century.

Men stare across the bay of Shanghai, China, April 10, 2010 (Ying Tang)

While especially American commentators fret about the looming superpower of China, Thomas Barnett in Esquire predicts that the “Chinese century” will be the shortest on record. The world shouldn’t worry about a powerful and vindictive China. “We really need to think about China’s liabilities in addition to its strengths,” he said on Fox Business this week; demographics foremost among them.

Barnett previously explained why China has reason to be anxious. “Already losing its cheap labor advantage right now, China is set to stockpile elders from here on out at a pace never before witnessed,” he wrote lost month. By the middle of this century, more than four hundred million Chinese are expected to have retired—more than America’s total projected population by that time. “That should explain what’s driving China’s seemingly selfish economic strategy,” according to Barnett.

But in addition, China is now expected to cover the spendthrift West’s need to boost exports while also serving as income elevating engine for the rest of the world’s developing economies—largely through the Middle Kingdom’s ravenous resource demands.

The United States have been urging Beijing to appreciate its currency and submit to a rebalancing of world trade in order to boost the competitiveness of American exporters at the expense of the Chinese. Barnett warns that China interprets this as “nothing less than an attempt to destroy the ruling Communist Party’s primary source of political legitimacy—namely, China’s ongoing per capita income expansion.” China won’t move on currency as long as it has millions living in poverty and many millions more whose livelihoods depend on exports to the West.

As if demographics weren’t enough of a challenge, the country has to cope clean water and resource shortages that could hamper its economic growth in the near future. “Most of China’s biggest cities already face significant water shortages,” according to Barnett, “and the majority of the country’s surface water is considered too dirty for consumption and, in some cases, even industrial use.” Chinese authorities admit that pollution costs their economy 3 to 4 percent in GDP annually but Western observers put the number closer to 10 percent.

It may slow China down but it won’t stop it from marching ahead which means that its dependence on the imports of natural resources will only increase.

Globalization increasingly wears a Chinese face, meaning—over time—China will be the first one to get sucker punched by every violent extremist out there. And not all of them will be satisfied with a red envelope stuffed with renminbi.

Until now, China has managed to free ride on American power and prevent being dragged into conflict zones around the world where it pays to build infrastructure and extract resources. It is simultaneously becoming more assertive in East Asia where its bilateral diplomacy is bothered by interference from the United States. This is not a situation that will last. “American blood for Chinese oil” hasn’t appeared on protest placards yet, “but it should,” writes Barnett, “and will eventually.”

A final element that will prevent China from ruling the world is its mounting public discontent. Urban Chinese are cautiously starting to ask for more political freedoms already and their calls will grow louder. “As the nation’s huge middle class continues to emerge over the next couple of decades, China’s single party system will fail—time and time again—to protect it from the future, which cannot be commanded,” Barnett predicts.

Thus, by the time post-Mao China hits the half century mark, when democratization will kick in for real, the country will have become a superpower no less captured by special interests at home and abroad than the United States is today.

Analysts who still worry should consider the other side of the population problem. Some Western demographers have posited that due to China’s female shortage, created by the one child policy, it will soon be able to field an enormous army of wifeless men who will gladly wage wars around the planet to burn off all those unrequited hormones. Barnett’s guess is that mama’s only boy, “as overweight as he’s fast becoming, will be looking for a cushier route to rid himself of all those ancestral expectations.”

Workers in Beijing, China, March 20, 2008 (Arjun Purkayastha)

Even if China has now the world’s second largest economy which continues to grow almost unhampered by the global downturn, the country’s leadership has reason to be anxious about the future. With labor costs on the rise while several hundreds of millions of Chinese remain impoverished, it is imperative that they simultaneously ensure cheap exports and invest in the development of a modern services based economy. In sheer numbers, no nation in history has ever faced a challenge as daunting as China’s.

For years, China was booming. Companies outsourced manufacturing to China because labor was cheap and the undervalued renminbi made exports even cheaper. But during the past ten years, wages have tripled while the pattern of demand in the West often makes it more attractive for companies to relocate production closer to home. European multinationals are setting up shop in Central Europe and Turkey while Mexico and other countries in Latin America are more practical bases of production from the American perspective than East Asia.

There is competition from other parts of the region as well. Wages in Indonesia and Vietnam remain low while countries as Malaysia and Thailand are rapidly catching up compared with Japan, Singapore and South Korea where labor costs are high but so are education standards and productivity rates.

Southeast Asia is attractive because of its relatively lax regulatory regimes moreover. Obtaining a business license in China can be an arduous process. Legal protection is scarce but corruption rampant. Brand names, copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets are routinely stolen while investment is many sectors of the economy is either restricted or prohibited altogether. In the ASEAN countries, business freedom is generally greater while foreign companies and investment are welcomed.

As though the necessity of reform in this area weren’t intimidating enough for a country that has so accustomed to state control, China’s demographic clock is ticking like no other nation’s in history. “Already losing its cheap labor advantage right now, China is set to stockpile elders from here on out at a pace never before witnessed,” observed Thomas Barnett at World Politics Review last month. By the middle of this century, more than four hundred million Chinese are expected to have retired—more than America’s total projected population by that time. “That should explain what’s driving China’s seemingly selfish economic strategy,” according to Barnett.

But in addition, China is now expected to cover the spendthrift West’s need to boost exports while also serving as income elevating engine for the rest of the world’s developing economies—largely through the Middle Kingdom’s ravenous resource demands.

The United States have been urging Beijing to appreciate its currency and submit to a rebalancing of world trade in order to boost the competitiveness of American exporters at the expense of the Chinese. Barnett warns that China interprets this as “nothing less than an attempt to destroy the ruling Communist Party’s primary source of political legitimacy—namely, China’s ongoing per capita income expansion.” China won’t move on currency as long as it has millions living in poverty and many millions more whose livelihoods depend on exports to the West.

In the last three decades, as China carefully liberalized its market, it has always professed a “peaceful rise” on the world stage. But China is a greater power now, one that has to transform into a mature, industrial economy—in just one generation. Its strategy, like any other nation’s, is grounded in self preservation and this will become increasingly evident as China scrambles for resources and investment overseas. The Chinese century has only just begun.

Istanbul, Turkey, July 8, 2007 (Hüseyin Atilla)

In a referendum held last Sunday, a majority of Turks voted to enact a series of constitutional amendments that will reform the country’s judiciary and limit the influence of the military in the legal sphere. The vote is being hailed as a victory for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling AKP which claim to champion modernization and liberalization along Western lines.

Members of the opposition—and many Westerners with them—fret about the country’s supposed Islamification meanwhile, alleging that Erdoğan is attempting to turn Turkey into a full fledged Islamic state. Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Robert Pollock forcefully characterizes recent developments in Turkey as nothing short of “a national decline into madness.” The AKP, he believes, has “traded on America and Israel hatred” while Turkey’s foreign policy is now aimed as loosening ties with the West and seeking its “own sphere of influence to the east.”

In Turkey, which has witnessed three separate intervals of military dictatorship since 1960, democracy may be relatively untested but it’s hardly precarious. For decades, the country has been enacting reform after reform in order to quality for European Union membership only to realize today that it will probably never be admitted into this continental club of wealthy nations.

Turkey’s secular establishment, still gazing across the Bosporus with high hopes, is terrified at the prospect of a conservative Muslim majority, supportive of Prime Minister Erdoğan, becoming more assertive. The AKP government may have only partly succeeded in repealing a ban on women wearing headscarfs in public spaces but its intentions are clear. The ruling party pretends to uphold religious freedoms; the opposition sees signs of orthodox Islamism. Whatever Erdoğan’s agenda, he has profoundly shifted Turkey’s outlook.

Ankara is turning eastward, intensifying trade relations with neighboring Lebanon, Syria and Iraq; enacting partnerships across the region with Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf Cooperation Council states; negotiating a nuclear fuel exchange agreement with Iran and cozying up with Russia. Turkey is, in short, awakening as a regional power.

The country’s rhetoric has changed simultaneously. Erdoğan and his government pretended to be outraged when Israel attacked a small fleet of blockade runners headed for Gaza this summer. After decades of maintaining stable relations with the Jewish state, it appeared as though Turkey were suddenly in the Islamic camp, lambasting the country for its suppression of Palestinians in their own territories. Pictures of Erdoğan embracing Iranian Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran and describing him as a “good friend” have only added to mounting concern in Europe and the United States about Turkey’s newfound allegiances.

To the ignorant observer, it may seem as though Turkey is moving down the path of radical Islamism, hijacked by a party of conservative Muslims dedicated to shaping a formerly moderate and secular society in their own image. Reality, as is so often the case, is rather more complicated.

Turkey is frustrated that after years of dancing to Europe’s tunes, even the Union’s two most powerful national leaders—German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy—now take issue with the notion of Turkish membership. Turkey is finding a place for itself in a region that embraces it instead. But no matter its policy of “zero problems” with neighbors, Turkey’s active diplomacy is redefining the Middle East.

Critics may point to Ankara’s bellicosity toward Israel but as Thomas Barnett explains in his World Politics Review column, there is good reason for the Turks to suddenly appear to stand up to Israel and the United States. After all, if it simply “fell in line” with American foreign policy, the country would lack credibility among Muslim nations. The ideal Western ally in the region should be “just Islamist enough to be seen as preserving the nation’s religious and cultural identity, even as it aggressively modernized its society and connected its economy to the larger world.”

It would have an activist foreign policy that emphasized diplomacy, multilateralism and regional stability, while also maintaining sufficient independence from America to demonstrate that it was not Washington’s proxy, but rather a confident great power navigating the currents of history. In sum, it would serve as an example to its coreligionists of how a Muslim state can progressively improve itself amid globalization’s deepening embrace—while remaining a Muslim state.

According to Barnett, with every step it has taken in recent years toward enhancing its engagement with the Middle East—which was made possible by the demise of Egyptian and Iraqi influence and prestige—Turkey has improved its ability to serve as a gateway between East and West. Many Arabs see Turkey as both a moderate counterweight to Iran and as a window to the West while it has proven itself quite capable of operating as intermediary between Western interests and those of regional power brokers in negotiations with Tehran.

Sadly, Barnett notes, “officials and experts on both sides of this longtime military alliance describe America’s current relationship with Turkey as suffering serious decline and even suppressed hostility.” Washington was outraged when Turkey voted against renewed United Nations sanctions on Iran after its own negotiation efforts had been dismissed by the Americans.

Now, the White House is threatening to punish Ankara for the infamous “Gaza peace flotilla” dust-up with Israel—and its lingering aftermath—by downsizing our historically strong bilateral military cooperation, in particular by torpedoing promised arms sales and boycotting Turkey’s biggest annual military exercise. Stunningly enough, while perennially double-dealing Pakistan is rewarded with blank checks by the Pentagon, Turkey is taken to the woodshed.

The Obama Administration shouldn’t maintain such an incomprehensible double standard nor fret too much about Turkey’s choices. Its strategic redefining is an opportunity to reshape the Middle East altogether into a safer, more coherent region.

For one thing, while America is about to abandon Iraq, neighbors, Turkey included, are left to live with the consequences. In anticipation, it is gradually increasing defense spending, planning to acquire, among other things, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, attack helicopters, tanks and four submarines. That is, unless Washington makes a fuss and forgets that Turkey is still a committed member of NATO with the third largest air force in the alliance.

On another front, Turkey is expecting Iran to eventually acquire the bomb. Unless that prompts an immediate war with Israel, what will follow, Barnett predicts, is a new security architecture for the entire Middle East. “The advent of nuclear rivalries in the region—first Israel-Iran, then Iran-Turkey, and possibly Iran-Saudi Arabia—will incentivize the world’s energy dependent great powers to force just such a diplomatic accommodation on the region’s capitals.”

“When those negotiations,” he writes, “tense as they will be, are finally called to order, America will be glad to see Turkey sitting at the table, balancing both Iran’s fantasies and Israel’s fears”—and possibly, Iraq’s pretensions. To get to that point where it is able to act as regional arbitrator, Ankara will have to distance itself from old friends and allies a bit. Though painful, in the end, it will all be worthwhile.

Australian ISAF forces on the outskirt Hindu Kush mountains near Zabul, Afghanistan, December 10, 2008

Things aren’t looking pretty in Afghanistan. The Taliban are getting stronger, winning support as Hamid Karzai’s government in Kabul remains ineffective and corrupt. NATO allies are increasingly weary about the future of the Afghan mission and President Barack Obama has announced to start withdrawing American forces next year. Can the war still be won?

Writing in November of last year, retired US Army General Barry McCaffrey had some hope. Although the “Taliban believe they are winning” and the Afghan people “do not know who will prevail,” the Afghan National Army, he wrote, “is a growing success story” while “ISAF is reinforcing just in time to rescue the deteriorating tactical situation.” It may not be enough though.

In 2008, McCaffrey also warned that while NATO forces are militarily superior to the insurgents, they “cannot win through a war of attrition.” With the Taliban expecting the West to pull out next year, that is precisely what the war is turning into.

Perhaps hoping to achieve some semblance of success at nation building, the Obama Administration is reportedly considering to start negotiating with elements of the Taliban through third parties.

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, provided the rationale for such a policy in a Newsweek article published last week. According to Haass, the “war of necessity,” which the United States had to wage against Al Qaeda in the wake of 9/11, is over. Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network, he knows, has been decimated. The chance to establish a “functional Afghan state” has passed though, after the Bush Administration refused to commit to nation building for almost eight years. Obama’s approach, to prevent the return of the Taliban altogether, is “hugely expensive” and “highly unlikely to succeed.”

Haass admits that reconciliation—”negotiating a ceasefire with those Taliban leaders willing to stop fighting in exchange for the chance to join Afghanistan’s government”—has little chance of success: “they might decide that time is on their side if they only wait and fight.” He also rejects Robert Blackwill’s proposal. The former US ambassador to India favors a de facto partition of Afghanistan, separating the relatively stable northeast, where nation building appears to be working, from the southeast, dominated by the Pashtun insurgency.

Creating an autonomous “Pashtunistan” was proposed by Thomas Barnett last year. He believes that the attempt to subsume the Pashtuns within a larger Afghanistan “is doomed to fail.” Haass sees several drawbacks however.

A self-governing “Pashtunistan” inside Afghanistan could become a threat to the integrity of Pakistan, whose own 25 million Pashtuns might seek to break free to form a larger Pashtunistan. Any partition would also be resisted by many Afghans, including those Tajik, Baluchi, and Hazara minorities living in demographic “islands” within the mostly Pashtun south, as well as the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and others elsewhere in the country who want to keep Afghanistan free of Taliban influence.

Haass suggests “decentralization” instead. “Under this approach, the United States would provide arms and training to those local Afghan leaders throughout the country who reject Al Qaeda and who do not seek to undermine Pakistan.” The advantage of this option, he believes, “is that it works with and not against the Afghan tradition of a weak ruling center and a strong periphery.”

Under this scenario, “the Taliban would likely return to positions of power in a good many parts of the south,” however. Supposedly, the United States should prevent them from forming an independent nation there but probably won’t. Once US forces pull out, Washington is unlikely to undertake any future counterinsurgency efforts aimed at maintaining the balance of power so preciously attained. It never has. Haass’ “decentralization” scheme would ultimately lead to partition therefore with all the dangers he has identified.

None of the interested powers should welcome partition. Foremost, the United States, which, after almost a decade of war, would leave half of Afghanistan in little better a state than it found it in 2001, still a hotbed for terrorism. India would object for the same reason but also because an independent Pashtunistan would further threatened to undermine the stability of neighboring Pakistan. Part of Pakistan’s leadership, especially its military and intelligence establishment, would rather the Pashtun recapture the whole of Afghanistan, not just the south.

Negotiating with the Taliban would seriously compromise not just the future of Afghanistan but the international position of the United States, according to Thomas Barnett.

Besides signaling surrender, such a move would offend India, already worrying about this administration’s apparent lack of commitment. Barnett stresses that “any deal that sees us choosing fragmented, impoverished Pakistan over rising, increasingly middle-class India is—by definition—strategically unsound.” Fareed Zakaria explained why in December of last year:

Obama must keep in mind that South Asia is a tar pit filled with failed and dysfunctional states, save for one long-established democracy of 1.2 billion people that is the second-fastest-growing major economy in the world, a check on China’s rising ambitions, and a natural ally of the United States. The prize is the relationship with India. The booby prize is governing Afghanistan.

Barnett continues that any deal struck with the Taliban would leave the United States “at the whims of the Saudis and the Chinese.” They are the only greater powers able to exert any control over Islamabad. The Obama Administration has so far failed to get China to help in Pakistan though it is reaping the rewards of America’s sacrifices in Afghanistan, scrambling for natural resources and lucrative contracts.

The alternative? Internationalize Afghanistan. Allow India to commit soldiers besides money and force China to take on some security responsibility in exchange for doing business. And, most importantly, learn from previous counterinsurgencies.

The United States will do neither. In the eyes of American policy makers and the American public, having nearby greater powers fight alongside US soldiers might be an even greater defeat than leaving Afghanistan to its own devices altogether. The political right is largely in denial about America’s decline while the left is afraid to project weakness to voters.

At the same time has neither the political will to sustain a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan for another decade. Nor has the political leadership enough confidence in commanders on the ground to allow them greater operational freedom. Lastly, the Western public is no longer willing to accept the numbers of civilian and military casualties which a more ruthless campaign, less concerned about winning the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan people, would likely incur. With over 1,100 American fatalities, an historic low for what is now the nation’s longest war, the public’s patience has already worn thin.

So, America will negotiate. It will probably, in the end, allow something of an autonomous Pashtunistan to come into being, controlled by the very Taliban who harbored Al Qaeda and murdered and suppressed their countrymen in the name of Islam. South Asia’s nuclear balance will be left all the more fragile as Pakistan becomes ungovernable while America’s relations with India, by all accounts it natural ally in the region, will be strained for years.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey in Istanbul, June 11, 2011

Immediately after the Israeli Navy intercepted six vessels attempting to circumvent its blockade of the Gaza Strip on Monday and killed at least nine onboard in the onslaught that ensued, Turkey responded with outrage. The country withdrew its ambassador from Israel and pushed the United Nations Security Council to condemn the raid.

The fierce Turkish response stood in stark contrast to its appeasing foreign policy of recent years. The country has tried to position itself as something of a Middle Eastern power broker and with success: together with Brazil it managed to negotiate a nuclear fuel exchange agreement with Iran in late May. Turkish relations with all nearby states have been fairly stable so why this newfound bellicosity toward Israel?

Thomas Barnett may have the answer. Writing for Esquire, he notes that besides the largely self serving concern for the Palestinian people, which it shares with nearly all Arab nations in the region, Turkey, above all, is deeply concerned about Iran’s nuclear program—not just because it doesn’t like the idea of an Iranian Bomb. A nuclear Iran would elevate that regime to greater power status; something Turkey has been pursuing as well.

Barnett is by no means convinced that this week’s events will lead to more than saber-rattling. “Israel’s three-year-old blockade of the Gaza Strip was already preapproved for official UN censure,” he notes, “thanks to last September’s Goldstone Report.”

The next logical step for Israel’s critics was to place it on the international front burner, dislodging the UN Security Council’s regional fixation on Tehran’s nuclear enrichment program. An aid flotilla loaded with one ringer (i.e., the sixth and largest ship populated with committed activists spoiling for a violent—and videotaped—showdown) was a brilliantly timed move of passive-aggression on Turkey’s part. But no fight equals no media coverage, so the flotilla ignored Tel Aviv’s demands that the relief supplies be off-loaded in an Israeli port for inspection and subsequent shipment to Gaza. And while the first five ships submitted peacefully to the boarding inspection parties, the sixth exploded in violent resistance—as planned.

Only for Turkey to react with proper shock, of course. Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç described Israel’s actions as “piracy” and “a dark stain on the history of humanity.” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu compared the attack to 9/11. According to Barnett, the rhetoric is no more than that. What matters is that now, “Ankara has its bloody shirt, which will be used—once Tehran inevitably announces the weaponization of its nukes—to justify Turkey’s rapid reach for the same.”

Last year, The Wall Street Journal already warned that a nuclear arms race may be ahead in the Near East. The paper also noted at the time that Iran’s appeal to “Muslim superpower” status was cause for consternation with Egypt, Saudi Arabia—and Turkey. “In that context, Tehran’s development of long-range missiles and the Muslim world’s first space satellite are considered political coups.”

Turkey’s nuclear desires are part military, part political. And suddenly, “if perhaps on purpose,” writes Barnett, “Turkey can claim that—despite its efforts to broker a non-nuclear peace in the region—it needs its own deterrent against Israel’s nuclear arsenal, too.”

According to a joint declaration released on Monday, Iran pledges to deposit 1,200 kilograms of 3.5 percent enriched uranium in Turkey in exchange for 120 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium to be provided by France, Russia and the United States. Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) may appoint observers to monitor the safekeeping of the materials.

The five nuclear powers and Germany reached a similar nuclear fuel swap agreement last October. Iranian leaders subsequently balked at the terms of the deal however amid political infighting following the country’s disputed presidential elections of 2009.

Turkey announced its willingness to act as intermediary in negotiations with Iran last month. The country’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, stressed at the time that the solution for Iran’s nuclear program was “through negotiations and the diplomatic process”—a tactic that has evidently yielded results after both Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited Tehran over the weekend to speak with their Iranian counterparts, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Both Turkey and Brazil are currently members of the UN Security Council where the United States has been working to pass new sanctions against Iran.

Washington remains skeptical. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reportedly called Davutoğlu last week to express her uncertainty about Iran’s commitment. A State Department spokesman said that in their view, “Iran’s recent diplomacy was an attempt to stop Security Council action without actually taking steps to address international concerns about its nuclear program.” Iran may be trying to split the Council in order to avert a resolution.

Clinton hasn’t been able to persuade many of the world’s rising powers to join the American effort however. In March she returned empty handed from Brasília where President Lula declined to support a push for tougher sanctions while China nor Russia seem to worry much about the prospect of a nuclear Iran. In Thomas Barnett’s words, the non-Western power brokers are effectively saying: “We ourselves can and will decide, under what circumstances we’ll collectively self-engineer ourselves—and other rising regional powers like us—into nuclear status.”

Brazil, for one, may have no nuclear ambitions of its own but along with China, is believes very much that countries ought to determine their own destiny, without American interference. To reiterate Barnett once more, “the old-boy nuclear powers club no longer decides.”

Laura Rozen at Politico quotes two particular concerns with the agreement as it rests now. First, compared to October of last year, Iran’s uranium stockpile has grown considerably. Removing 1,200 kilograms of low enriched uranium leaves the country with just enough for a breakout capacity.

Potentially more problematic is that since February, Iran has been higher enriching small quantities of uranium to 20 percent, allegedly for medical needs. It may currently be producing about a single kilogram of the higher enriched uranium a month. In the agreement brokered by Turkey and Brazil, there is no mention of Iran halting its 20 percent higher enrichment however, “even though the deal would make way for the international community to provide Iran with the higher enriched fuel it supposedly requires for nuclear medical purposes.”

Whether the deal holds remains to be seen. The United States and Western allies may object while Iran may turn out to be less than satisfied with a status similar to Japan’s: being capable of producing nuclear weapons but not taking the final step.

Reuters reports on some of the international reactions. Foreign Secretary William Hague of the United Kingdom, newly appointed, stressed that work on a new Security Council resolution must continue. Iran’s move “may just be a delaying tactic,” he said.

France believes the deal does not address core concerns. “Let us not deceive ourselves, a solution to the (fuel) question, if it happens, would do nothing to settle the problem posed by the Iranian nuclear program,” according to a French Foreign Ministry spokesman. The office of European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton in Brussels agreed that the deal “does not answer all of the concerns” raised by Tehran’s nuclear program.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed a similar concern. “One question is: will Iran itself enrich uranium?” If so, “those concerns that the international community had before could remain,” he worried. But Medvedev promised to discuss the issue with his Brazilian counterpart who was part of the agreement.

In Bremmer’s analysis, China could come out of the turmoil in relatively sound conditions because “it didn’t have the banks.” All financial institutions in China are either owned by the state or controlled by the state and that supposedly prevented their meltdown. The market didn’t fail though, he said. The reason Wall Street could drag much of the economy down with it was a lack of oversight on the part of the US Government. And an unregulated market, according to Bremmer, is “not a free market system.” Actually, it is.

“It’s not politically defensible today to go out and support free markets,” said Bremmer which is perfectly true. But his notion of a “regulated free market” is a contradiction in terms that doesn’t help to rehabilitate capitalism at all.

Bremmer is foremost a greater power analyst who writes columns with Foreign Policy magazine and the Financial Times. When he talks about “state capitalism,” it’s really just China that he is referring to. As Bremmer noted, “we’re looking at an environment where the world’s second largest economy, and the fastest growing out of the recession, is one where the state controls the economy. It’s the largest player,” said Bremmer, “there’s no rule of law.”

True, in Russia and some of the Arab oligarchies, “political elites use state owned and politically loyal, privately owned companies to dominate entire economic sectors” as well but the Chinese model hasn’t suddenly become attractive to Europe, Japan and the United States, whatever their financial trouble. Considering China’s emergence as a global player to be reckoned with, it does not necessarily follow that its economic choices are the envy of the world.

If we disregard China for a moment, as Thomas Barnett proposed last week, the globalization counter narrative “boils down to the rise and fall of the world’s resource-rich petrocracies, whose fortunes track with the global economy. Nobody can seriously swallow the notion,” he believed, “that the rulers of Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia somehow represent an improvement on free-market systems—much less the future of global leadership.”

Reviewing Bremmer’s book for World Politics Review, Barnett noted further that the weaknesses that characterize his list of so-called threats posed by state capitalism should only service to energize America’s free marketers.

China drives up global commodity prices by paying above-market prices; Beijing’s desperate race to lock down resources around the planet forces it into patron-client relationships with the world’s most unstable, corrupt and needy regimes; China’s amoral approach to trade and investment helps insulate these bad regimes from Western criticism; and, in its gross inefficiencies, China’s state capitalism might prevent the global economy from reaching its productive potential just as the emerging global middle class needs it most.

And that’s it, was Barnett’s conclusion. “China’s state capitalism risks ghettoizing its economy and beggaring both itself and those regimes it manages to suck into its mercantilist orbit, while making the rest of the world a little bit poorer in the process.”

Bremmer is quick to admit that free market economics haven’t gone with the wind. But things are going to get worse before they get better. “I’d bet confidently on strong state-led Chinese growth over the next decade.”

State capitalism isn’t an ideology. It’s more a set of management principles. It can never match the hold that communism once had on the popular imagination, because it wasn’t born as a response to injustice.

China’s freak capitalism isn’t likely to be copied by rising powers of lesser potential. But it may well drive smaller Asian countries in China’s shadow along with some of the export economies of Africa and Latin America badly in need of friends into Beijing’s camp. “The developed states don’t have much to offer them at the moment that looks attractive for their economic stability.”

It’s not the end of the free market nor globalization as such. But capitalism is under threat in both the developing and in the developed world. In this sense, the battle between “states” and “corporations” is real—and relevant.