Unipolarity and the Origins of Institutional Overreach and Decay

Day #2 – Returning to posting sections of my “Deconstructing Rivalry” Essay and today the focus is on China and Russia, the first state actors to formally return to a foreign policy centered on multipolarity. The move was made in 1997

And most critically, the move was in direct response to specific policy choices made by the Clinton administration. Choices viewed in Beijing and Moscow as a harbinger of future hegemonic intentions.

The policy choices of the Clinton administration at the time, as they pertain to China, would go on to have disastrous long-term consequences.

To understand today’s geopolitical landscape, it is necessary to objectively appraise how the world has deviated, or perhaps exited, from the unipolar moment. It was a process and, honestly, it was a process which began shortly after it arrived. Not that it was noticed by anyone in Washington. It was, after all, a period described as being “the end of history” and America, in its primacy, sat unchallenged economically, technologically and most crucially, militarily.

The Observable False Claims of the International Rules Base Order

To begin, it is necessary to highlight the point that throughout the entire unipolar era, Washington based its entire, forward projecting, legitimacy on adherence to the “international rules-based order”. America may have been the sole superpower with the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, but Washington would go to great lengths to stress that this newly bequeathed unopposed power would not be abused. Benevolence was to be shown, and any dictatorial tendencies would be checked through the institutional framework established after 1945. Aside from periodic dressing up, the message was consistent. Key here, however, is an understanding that while it was a message conveyed, it was also a message received with the deepest of suspicion.

Over time, what appeared as reassurance to the global community increasingly relied on implicit trust rather than concrete verification. That trust was poorly earned. For China, and Russia for that matter, world history provided all the evidence required: Western hegemonic powers for a half a millennium espoused “good intentions”, but only up to a point. Competition would inevitably arrive and lift the veil to show the hegemon’s underlying priorities. From the perspective of Beijing, and again Moscow, there was no reason to wait and see how the US unipolar moment would unfold. The only unknown variable was timing. When would the day come, or how long with it take, before America would drop the geopolitical charade.

For the purpose of this Essay and the analysis of China’s rise into an American near-peer rival requires that the participation of Russia be included. The rationale for doing so isn’t based upon some nefarious alliance being formed for the expressed purpose of directly undermining American hegemony. That may be the case today, but at the time a relationship was reestablished the two nations simply shared a genuine concern over the issue of sovereignty in a world with a single superpower.

Furthermore, the foundation underlying the current China-Russia bilateral relationship is far more institutionalized than has been reflected in contemporary assessments conducted by the international relations expert community. Instead, what continues to be espoused is a relationship that has formed into an “axis of autocracies” built on the personalities of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin and which operates on a “No Limits” basis. Not only is this perspective woefully incomplete, but it is also dangerously misleading. It is also one of the clearer examples of how an unwillingness to be introspective acts as a disservice to the American foreign policy apparatus.

The American Foreign Policy Errors of the 1990s and the Strategic Consequences

For proper context, the modern Sino-Russian bilateral relationship is the outcome of a process decades in the making, tracing back to a seminal 1997 meeting between then Chinese President Jiang Zemin and his Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin. There, the two leaders signed the “Joint Declaration on a Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order”. As an aside, but of particular interest, take note that the word “rules” is conspicuously missing.

It was an event and agreement which was a very natural outcome, a required response actually, to a series of direct and unilateral actions made by America the previous year. This was a scenario both China and Russia anticipated and manifested itself through this Joint Declaration. It is also rather evident that this seminal event has been lost to history amongst today’s commentarit

In 1996, the year prior to the Jiang-Yeltsin’s Joint Declaration, Russia found itself having to contend with the Clinton Administration and the American Congress formally committing to the enlargement of NATO. Regardless of past assurances from Secretary of State James Baker, “not one inch eastward” or otherwise, an expansion in NATO membership would commence and with it would see the America-led alliance network rapidly press up directly against Russia’s borders.

The entire drive for NATO expansion was approached through the European alliance structure; it would be messy, but manageable. What this then meant, however, is that there was little Russia could directly do in response – there were simply too many opposing players to make counter posturing possible. The country’s leadership was also preoccupied with a host of domestic affairs, primarily an economy still suffering in the post-Soviet era. Russia would be left with no other option than to accept an expanded military block under the rule of American primacy.

In the Pacific, China faced its own strategic challenge from America but one that would go on to have a markedly different outcome.

That same year, China was forced to confront America in what would become known as the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. The entire escalatory episode was initiated when Beijing conducted military exercises in an attempt to directly influence Taiwan’s first universal suffrage election. The US responded unilaterally with the deployment of not one, but two full carrier groups to the region.

Unlike the dynamics facing Russia with the expansion of NATO membership, this entire incident was a uniquely bilateral affair. There was a genuine concern in Washington that events could unravel into a full-blown international incident and for the Clinton administration the timing couldn’t have been worse: it was an election year, and the President was still having to contend with the pressures unleashed by House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” and the resulting loss of Congressional control. President Clinton’s reelection prospects were highly uncertain and domestic issues were proving all consuming. There was no bandwidth for dealing with an escalation of tensions with China and a prompt settlement to the Taiwan crisis was needed. A settlement did quickly materialize – but it would come (unbeknownst to players at the time) at a tremendous, long-term strategic cost to the United States.

The settlement that was agreed to began with China ceasing all military activities within the Taiwan Strait and the American military removing its naval assets from the theater. In return, and in a rather stunning reversal of foreign policy, President Clinton agreed to a series of official visits beginning with Vice President Al Gore traveling to China early in 1997. This would be followed later that same year with President Jiang hosted as a state visit in Washington all then concluding with President Clinton reciprocating in 1998.

From the domestic political vantage point, the solution addressed the immediacy of President Clinton’s election year problem. At the same time, the episode would lay bare to the Chinese that there were quantifiable, if periodic, limits to American political agility. What was made clear to Beijing’s leadership is that domestic considerations during a presidential election year greatly constrained America’s ability to undertake any material projection of power on foreign policy. Unbeknownst to the American political class, the solution to deescalate the Taiwan crisis would fundamentally shift the escalation ladder in China’s favor. There was now a recognized point of pressure at Beijing’s disposal and one which would be artfully applied over the next three decades.

This is not, whatsoever, how Washington policy mandarins viewed the events of 1996 nor that of the Joint Declaration the following year. At the time, the American policy establishment interpreted the rapprochement between China and Russia to be nothing more than posturing. Whatever relationship might have been agreed to, so the thinking went, would be limited in its scope and duration. China and Russia, the expert class consensus would stress (then as well as today), had a long history of bitter rivalry and there remained deeply seeded mistrust between Beijing and Moscow. The Sino-Soviet split would (and remains) often presented in support of the assessment, as would unresolved border issues. This assessment, we can now conclude, was yet another gross miscalculation.

For Beijing and Moscow, the events of 1996 fully validated the suspicions of unipolar overreach. Both would be forced to address the credible threat of future action and, in turn, the need to zealously safeguard against sovereign integrity. Additionally, the “Multipolar World” Joint Declaration, as will be shown in the analysis below, wasn’t simply a symbolic gesture. There had been genuine agreement that an alternative order would need to be created, not as a substitute for the America-led system, at least not initially, rather to provide for optionality to mitigate the risks of potential future American actions.

Finally, no matter the underlying intentions, or posturing for that matter, America’s actions with NATO and in the Taiwan Strait should be viewed as cutting a very straight line to events of the present day.