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Comparing US, Russia over geopolitical

insecurities | The Express Tribune
Dr Muhammad Ali Ehsan March 20, 2022
7-8 minutes

There is similarity in how the US handled its geopolitical insecurities when it

overtook and replaced Britain
the writer is dean social sciences at garrison university lahore and tweets dr m
ali ehsan
The writer is Dean Social Sciences at Garrison University Lahore and tweets
@Dr M Ali Ehsan

China’s role in the current Russia-Ukraine war is under debate and the western
media continues to refer to President Xi much in line with how it is addressing
President Putin of Russia — an authoritarian leader with imperialistic
tendencies.
War in Ukraine has opened the floodgates of historical comparisons in what
the US did in the past as a global hegemon and yet got away with, but Russia
and China cannot do the same to address their geopolitical insecurities despite
being the resurgent and rising powers of the world. There is a lot of similarity in
how the US handled its geopolitical insecurities when it overtook and replaced
Britain as the world’s hegemon and how what both Russia and China are now
doing.

Nearing the end of the 19th century, the greatest geopolitical threat that the US
faced was from Spain and the response to that threat was an armed conflict
between the US and Spain in 1898. The US victory in the war ensured that
Spain not only relinquished claims on Cuba but also ceded sovereignty over
Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to the US. It was also during this
conflict that the US annexed Hawaii which was located in the centre of the
Pacific. The monarchy there was overthrown and its annexation as US territory
resulted in Hawaii being admitted as the 50th state of the American union.

What was annexed at the end of 19th century ended up playing a major role as
the base of operations for the three wars that the US fought in the 20th century
— Second World War, Korean War and Vietnam War. Even today over 300,000
US military personnel and their families are stationed there as the place
headquarters the United States Pacific Command (USPACOM) that includes
large US army, navy and air force components. The US policy of pivoting Asia-
Pacific and its security partnership such as NATO, Quad and AUKUS to
compete with and contain China add renewed strategic significance to this US
military outpost in the middle of the Pacific. Let me culminate this American
annexation and war with Spain at the end of the 19th century by referring to
why this war was fought in the first place. Many reasons can be found if we try
to dig them out but history qualifies two reasons as the most phenomenal and
they were — America’s support for ongoing Cuban and Filipino struggle
against the Spanish rule.
Given this historical context, why can’t Russia do everything that it can to
prevent Ukrainian ambitions of joining the European Union and contain NATO’s
expansion eastwards that encroaches its borders? Under AUKUS — which is a
trilateral pact between Australia, the UK and the US that emerged in 2021 —
both the UK and the US will help Australia acquire nuclear-powered
submarines yet if China extends any help or military support to Russia it will
face US sanctions. What is evident here is the double standards of the western
world under which it can go ahead and do whatever it wants to address its
geopolitical and security concerns but if Russia and China do the same, they
are treated as rebels out of the international system and outcasts. The western
assumption that the Russian and Chinese imperialist tendencies will endanger
the world whereas their imperialist and colonial practices in the past did not is
a wrong assumption. Given that the world is transiting from unipolarity to
multipolarity in which the deck of the balance of power cards is being
reshuffled and the rising powers are addressing their existing geopolitical
insecurities, there is no reason to term these actions otherwise i.e. imperialist.
If the US took over every military base in the western hemisphere as it entered
the great war, why does it reflect down narrowly now on the acquisition on
lease by China of ports of some countries in the eastern hemisphere? Why
was it right for the US to execute its Marshall plan against the communist
Soviet Union as part of its grand strategy of containment but wrong for Russia
to do anything to contain the US, Europe and NATOs push eastwards?
When US President James Monroe, in Dec 1823, warned and threatened the
European nations that the US would no more tolerate further colonisation or
puppet monarchs he was right, but when Putin uses a similar language against
the US and its western partners he is termed wrong and viewed as a dictator
that threatens the world security. Even today the Monroe doctrine and its
concepts are taught all over the universities in the world to emphasise the
three main concepts that this doctrine laid out in clarity — separate spheres of
influence for the Americans and Europe; non-colonisation; and non-
interference. What is it that President Putin has been asking the world for the
last two decades? The same things — respect the Russian sphere of
influence, stop NATO’s and European Union Colonisation of its former
republics, and non-intervention in its strategically important buffer states.
Would we teach 21st century Putin’s doctrine at power with the Monroe
doctrine of the 19th century? How could one leader be right in what he
advocated and became acceptable and the other wrong and condemned? Was
Monroe more nationalist and patriotic and Putin is not? Can we have two
scales to determine the stands that the world leaders take to safeguard their
geopolitical insecurities and drive their national aspirations?
Monroe was taking a clear stand in how he looked at the emergence of the
new world and new order against what existed as the autocratic world and
disorderly order projected by European powers. What is wrong if President
Putin is making the same assessment now? Doesn’t his stand signify how his
worldview is about the lost opportunities of the gone-by decades in which the
US as a world hegemon fought unnecessary wars at great cost to the welfare
and wellbeing of the entire world? Could the US have become a great power
without subjugating and dominating the Caribbean and Latin American
countries? If the US could promise Europe that it will stay out of its business if
Europeans stayed out of western hemisphere business, why can’t Putin do the
same today — ask the US and West to stay out and not carry out
encroachment near its borders and frontiers? Is Putin wrong when he says if
you don’t mess with me, I will not mess with you.
The US is calling President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine his greatest foreign
policy blunder. Seen in the historical context, it seems less as a blunder and
more as essentiality to address Russia’s geopolitical insecurities and
something that the US has been doing regularly in the past.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 20th, 2022.

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