neutrality

Middle Powers, Small States, and Neutrality in a Multi-Polar World

/ geotrickster / 2 Comments
Garni Temple, for the cult of Mithra, built by Tiridates I in the 1rst Century CE. During this period Armenia was a mostly neutral buffer state precariously balanced between Rome and Parthia. The royal family came from the Parthian Dynasty but the succession had to be approved by Rome.

I just came back from a trip to Armenia to present at the Yerevan Dialogues, a conference about the changing nature of foreign policy in a post-unipolar moment. I had prepared these following remarks, which I ended up not using because they overlapped too much with another presenters topic. Rather than force everyone through repeats, I elected to just wing something else instead. But I am going to put my original prepared remarks here anyway so they don’t go to waste.

The general trend of our work at The Institute for Peace and Diplomacy has been to prepare people for the inevitable reality of the return of the multipolar world. This world is a return to normality to over 99% of human history, so why does it require so much effort to conceptualize?

The answer is that it does not- for most people around the world, who have lived in a reality of hard-nosed great power politics continuously. Nearer the imperial core of the North Atlantic, however, those of us who still see this reality remain a minority, however, albeit a growing one.

This creates a disconnect with many weighty states on the world stage living in a nostalgic fever-dream, albeit one they seem to be ever-so-fitfully awakening from. In the meanwhile, we are constantly subjected to narratives about the ‘New Cold War’ or other obsolete reference points to periods of history irrelevant to the current realignment.

One of the largest trends which we at IPD have identified has been the rise of the Middle Powers. In a world where there are basically three global powers of diminished capacity and increasing capability for regionally anchored middle-tier nations, the name of the game is polycentrism. This is the opposite of hegemony and far from anything resembling the Cold War. Stronger countries with regional-but not fully global- ambitions will become the equals of the superpowers within the realm of their own near-abroad. This restricts the sway of the global powers, locking them out of regional domination

To many around the world who tire of American hubris or the globalization of conflict, this sounds like a welcome improvement. It will be- for some. But the smaller states located in less geopolitically stable regions now face possibly heightened dangers. A regionally dominant middle power, or even worse, multiple regionally potent countries vying for dominance over their near abroad, could spell an increase in danger for these smaller countries whose core imperative is to survive before any other concern.

This is especially true in West Asia, a region prone to so much conflict and great power rivalry. What possible path could the more vulnerable countries of this region take in order to maximalize their chances of avoiding conflict with their sovereignty intact? I would argue that while we are far away from it right now, the only direction with any long term feasibility is one of neutrality and nonalignment between regional and global powers alike, where the declining influence of the globals is leveraged against the rising influence of the locals. The superpowers may yet have a constructive role to play in the saga of small states- and in doing so they can retain some credibility in a world of resurgent middle powers.

Balance of Threat for the smaller states

This brings me to the other side of the polycentric world, the one that both accepts the reality of the rise of the Middle Powers while also understanding the security concerns of the smaller states around them. What path forward is there for states who fear the growing influence of their regional powers? One path stands out to me, a neutralist accommodation occupying a guaranteed space between both the regional and the global powers.

Global powers might be consumed with concerns over the Balance of Power, but the smaller a nation’s world profile it is, the less relevant this concern becomes. What matters more to the smaller nations of the world is Balance of Threat. Rather than looking at a state’s overall potential for danger, balance of threat theory dictates that a country will seek to balance its security against other nations whose potential for revisionist behavior directly affects them, regardless of how powerful those nations may or may not be on the world stage. With the declining ability for great powers to directly intervene, smaller states should not plan on being able to rely on alliance style security guarantees from outside nations, however. This poses the question of what kind of policy to pursue.

The global powers may no longer have hegemony over entire regions outside of their neighborhood, but they are still the world’s most important actors. Smaller states now have an opportunity to engage in sovereignty-affirming balancing behavior. The idea should be to become useful business partners in a way that does not threaten the regional powers nor requires the traditional subordination of smaller states to the great powers.

A hypothetical example of how this would work would be as follows:

1. A small state in a region of high competition between regional powers makes clear its intention to seek neutrality between all parties. It does this by simultaneously appealing to the region and the relevant global powers.

2. In order to gain the regional leverage needed to have its position respected, the smaller state prioritizes the global power’s recognition for this new stance. It can do this by appealing to the global power as being a secure and reliable trade, regional resource, or finance hub partner that would be politically oblivious to regional-power-imposed sanctions and hardened against external disruptions. A country that is always open for business is a country that can maintain relationships with distant nations.

3. The smaller country’s military is only for defense, and it disavows joining large global alliance networks. It does, however, maintain a strong enough military to serve as deterrence to conventional attack by revisionist regional powers. By maintaining friendly if unaligned relations with the great powers, it also increases its options to introduce qualitative advantages to its forces. This can be done without formal security arrangements.

4. Should a country be successful in achieving the above deterrence, its odds of having its desired status of achieving neutrality greatly increase. Should this happen, the ability to attract investment from multiple regional powers could further bolster the country’s status and security.

Neutral and Buffer States

Buffer states are often famous for when they fail, such as Belgium in 1914, but there are many success stories too, including Belgium itself for generations before that fateful date. Some other examples exploited natural geography to further reinforce the natural borders already in place. Nepal, between the British and Qing empires and now modern China and India, is an example of this. Austria in the Cold War, with the victorious powers of World War II all agreeing to a mutual military withdrawal, is another. Perhaps the longest and most surprising of such states to modern observers is that of late-nineteenth through mid-twentieth-century Afghanistan. Not wanting to rule the unprofitable and warlike territory itself, the British Raj nevertheless was consumed by the specter of a Russian invasion through the territory during the height of Anglo-Russian rivalry in Central Asia, often referred to as “The Great Game.” After a succession of fruitless wars there, it was agreed to draw the boundaries of Afghanistan in such a way that Russian and British imperial interests would not directly collide with each other. The arrangement would bring a surprising amount of stability for the tribalistic nation, and only collapse when a series of coups and internal upheavals opened the way for a Soviet invasion in 1979 and subsequent Pakistani and U.S. intervention.

Lest it be assumed that a long-term successful stint as a buffer nation can only come about from circumstances of comparative stability, the experience of Uruguay offers one of the more remarkable transformations from instability to long-term success. Contested for centuries between the Portuguese and Spanish empires, the early independence of Uruguay was rocked with trouble. Both Argentina and Brazil attempted to dominate the country, and internal factions fought each other on the domestic front, sometimes in open civil war. These contests even helped spark South America’s deadliest war, the War of the Triple Alliance, which further seemed to relegate the region’s smaller countries to domination by their larger neighbors. And yet it was the cost of that war, coupled with the desire to maintain some kind of balance in the region, that ensured Uruguay would be able to harness its natural agrarian bounty and access to ports in order to become one of the most developed and, eventually, peaceful Latin American countries. When Brazil and Argentina could both openly admit that they feared the space between them being dominated by the other, it became possible for them to mutually agree that neither would absorb the country into its security arrangements.

The Two Big Boys of Western Asia

Now let’s look a bit closer in space to where we presently occupy, West Asia. Ever since the fall of the Achaemenid Persian Empire and the subsequent collapse of the Alexandrian and Seleucid Empires that toppled it, the region’s history has been dominated by perpetual great power rivalry from a state based in Anatolia and a state based in the Iranian plateau. Rome and Parthia, Rome and Sassanids, Rome and the Caliphate. The subdivision of the Seljuks of Rum with the rest of their empire, the Ak Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu Empires, Ottomans vs Timurids, Safavids, and Nader Shah. And today, Turkey and Iran.

Then a third player entered the game. The political falling out of the Golden Horde with the Ilkhanate in the late 13th Century in a battle over grazing lands in modern day Azerbaijan was a precursor to Russia’s entry into regions south of its homeland. It would eventually be this new player, starting in the 18th Century and culminating in the global power projection of the Soviet Union, that would turn a two player game into a three player one. For a time, Russia was by far the biggest player of all of these, but what we are seeing now is a proportional reversion back to the traditional Anatolian and Iranian regional powerhouses- just with the addition of Russia. Moscow as a global power, Ankara and Tehran as growing regional powers.

For now, the dynamic is that Turkey is allied to the NATO bloc and Iran is allied to Russia. This seems to replicate the traditional Cold War alliance structure that I spoke of as obsolete before…but we are in a time of rapid transition. Russia and Iran share mutual enemies, but not many constructive interests outside of Syria and some defense cooperation. Russia still has many dealings with Israel and across the Gulf region. Turkey, meanwhile, has taken the most independent of NATO course possible in regard to both Ukraine and the Red Sea, positioning itself as a pivot power that has the protection of the North Atlantic alliance while also acting blatantly in its own interests.

There is thus no inevitability to smaller nations being perpetually subordinated in this fluid situation, but I do think there are a few different factors at play today that could bode well for attempts to move in a neutralist direction. Colonialism is out these days, and not primarily because it is ‘wrong from a moral perspective’ but rather because it no longer pays. An intractable occupation of a people with their own culture and loyalties is expensive and inefficient. Trade can be a much better and cheaper method of achieving similar goals. Most importantly, great power allies can no longer trust the subservience of their regional power partnerships, and so need to diversify their investments. Smaller countries provide this failsafe.

Regional and great powers alike fear more relative loss to other powers, rather than the autonomy of smaller states. A small state, using the Westphalian system of sovereignty that we have decided to conduct most international relations within the present is much better at keeping foreign domination at bay so long as it can balance the regional powers enough that all except the neutral country as a buffer and reliable nonpartisan meeting point. Due to the variety of deeply held territorial disputes and grievances in this region, especially those held between smaller neighbors, the odds of being sucked into a regional power alliance network are high. But all this just means to me that if there is any region that needs to explore small state neutrality and the potential windfall it can offer, it is here. If it can work in this region, it can work anywhere.

The danger I see here is not that the smaller countries won’t see this opportunity, I am sure most do. Nor is it even so much the inevitability of power politics between Ankara and Tehran over places like Lebanon, Syria, and other parts of their near-abroad. No, what I see as the first problem comes from my side of the ocean- the inability of Washington DC and perhaps also Moscow to recognize that neutral buffer states are in its own interests. Failed attempts to enact regime change in Syria and Libya have greatly destabilized the region, while the flexible nonalignment of many members of the Gulf Cooperation Council show the first stirrings of moving away from global binaries (and perhaps global oil price stabilization). Should the opportunity ever arise for Lebanon to become a fully sovereign and neutral state, it would be better for everyone save perhaps Israel if it did so. Iranian and Russian influence over countries like Syria and Iraq has only grown due to the aggressive and Manichean nature of US policy towards those countries. Meanwhile, false narratives of ‘the west’ vs the rest, or ‘axis of authoritarianism’ prevent North Atlantic policymakers from recognizing that rather than supporting maximization of their own influence in each and ever country, they should be working towards helping countries opt out of alliance networks entirely, creating a far more stable web of non-aligned nations whose business is open to all and whose sovereignty is open to none.

The interesting thing is that China seems to get this on a level the other world powers do not. There is no political engineering there so far, only a desire to do business. As of this moment, they have the advantage in courting the smaller states. They would be wise to keep up this approach, as it is the sober statecraft of the polycentric future.

The middle powers, likewise, must recognize that they are in a bidding war, and will be looked at more favorably by their neighbors if they can reign in the revisionism towards smaller countries. The first middle power to offer a more benevolent offer to its near abroad is the one who receives more trade opportunities and constructive engagement in turn.

So we have two dynamics here: the middle power who can get along with smaller countries makes more friends at home, and the great power who in turn can tolerate the rise of the middle power prevents the unchecked growth of other rival great powers abroad. This is a model for potential future stability, and it could start in regions where the smaller countries are looking for opportunities in a dangerous multipolar world. While distant from today’s immediate reality, it also represents a possibility for greater regional stability in West Asia.

The Washington Treaty of 1871 and Sovereignty Today

/ geotrickster / 1 Comment

kearsarge vs alabama

USS Kearsarge sinks CSS Alabama off the coast of Cherbourg, France in 1864

There is the temptation among American Civil War buffs to view that conflict as a purely American affair. Brother fought brother and everyone was American, etc. But this assumption is just as wrong as if you to assume that the Syrian or Congolese Civil Wars have little outside involvement.

From the beginning, the governments of Britain and France pulled heavily for the Confederacy. They saw the emerging industrial and commercial might of the United States as a grave threat to their Atlantic supremacy and the order they had barely established after the Crimean War with Russia. With the US distracted by what would become the bloodiest conflict in all of its history, France seized the opportunity to install a puppet regime in Mexico. After the Trent Affair in 1861 (when British ships were boarded and Confederate agents on them arrested in international waters) Britain upped the ante, sending threatening noises of war and violating neutrality by building blockade runners stocked with weapons shipments which would slip into Gulf ports such as Mobile Bay and New Orleans. This in turn would shape the Union naval strategy for the rest of the war, with David Farragut’s famous battles being the actions to close those ports.

Despite Gladstone’s and Queen Victoria’s southern sympathies, once the Emancipation Proclamation was declared after the Union victory at Antietam in 1862, general British public opinion turned against the south. But the rich business of economically and logistically aiding the Confederacy continued among the entrepreneurs of the Liverpool dockyards. Confederate agents remained extremely active in Canada, and even planned (though did not execute) a biological warfare attack by infecting New York City army hospitals with Yellow Fever.

In light of this dangerous situation, only one power expressed open support for the Union cause. The navy of the Russian Empire sent squadrons of warships to dock in both east and west coast ports of the United States should Britain or France get any ideas about attacking the strung out Union blockade. Sealed orders on board the Russian flagship contained instructions that should any outside power attack the United States during the war against secession, the Russian fleet was to sail and engage said power’s naval forces. Tsar Alexander II was not about to let Anglo-French meddling deprive him of potential allies all around the world.

After Gettysburg and Vicksburg the attractiveness of supporting the Confederate cause abroad dried up. And yet those British built commerce raiders with their British cannons continued to wreak havoc on the US whaling and trading ships. The CSS Alabama-the most effective commerce raider in all of history to this day-was a particular sensation in the press. It was finally sunk, as pictured above, by the sloop of war USS Kearsarge after an intensive hunt throughout Europe.

But the end of the war in 1865 did not bring an end to the international repercussions of that conflict. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was ready for another war against Britain on the charges of the immense damage its ships and weapons had done-even if in Confederate hands. He considered the war to have been effectively over more than a year before it finished-and its prolongation a direct result of British interference. Britain, therefore, should pay the costs of the Union for late 1864 and 1865.

Meanwhile, in the now occupied south, US forces under General Sheridan began their own weapon smuggling operation to the forces of Benito Juarez who were fighting the French backed Hapsburg pretender in charge of the occupation of Mexico. The tide had already turned in Mexico’s favor, but the new weapons surely sped things up. Rather than overtly violating neutrality, US forces tended to simply leave weapons stockpiles at certain places on the border and then disappear, expecting that in the night Mexican agents would come, cross the border, and take them without anyone ‘knowing’ otherwise. Two could play at the cloaked interference game.

The French were eventually driven from Mexico. But the economic reparations demanded by the United States on Britain remained, poisoning relations between the two countries, who had remained steady rivals since 1775, with little to no respite even further.

But then came the Franco-Prussian War, the rise of an immensely powerful German state, a major economic and industrial boom in Russia, and several naval arms races between Britain and France. Britain could no longer blithely sit on the top of the world, uncaring as to its relations with other major powers. As the furthest away power, the US represented the safest option to begin a re-orientation of British policy. With the Americans agreeing to drop their more outlandish claims and also paying reparations for events like the Trent Affair, Britain agreed to pay damages and acknowledge guilt related to the neutrality violations of British built commerce raiders. Since then, the two countries have enjoyed quite amicable relations by and large, with the notable exception of a major breakdown in the 20s and early 30s in the aftermath of the failure of Wilsonian idealism.

So, what does the Washington Treaty of 1871 have to do with us today? Well, functionally, quite little. But I would like to float the idea that in the case of the Syrian Civil War the issues of outside backing of internal rebel movements is once again a major issue in great power diplomacy. Russia plays a much more direct role supporting the government, but remains committed to stopping its allies from being overwhelmed by foreign-supported forces. Meanwhile, in the United States and other countries, a backlash is growing in the general public to a policy which is increasingly clear should never interfered in the first place, and failing that, is backing the wrong side. Like the Union, the Syrian government is a flawed but multicultural organization, like the Confederacy the rebellion in Syria belongs overwhelmingly to a much narrower demographic. While the rebellion in Syria is much more justifiable than the southern rebellion was, it has come with time to be if anything even more scary and destabilizing for its region. Meanwhile, the US now plays the role of 19th Century Britain, its people increasingly coming to look with horror over who they are backing while the policy elites blithely continue on an expensive course of confirmed failure. Motivated as much by personal sympathies as strategic concerns, if not more so, as the recently declassified Hillary Clinton emails strongly imply.

In our extremely globalized world, upholding national sovereignty, particularly of small and weak states, seems almost an antiquated idea. But perhaps it is time to realize that quite often it can serve big power interests. I am not so naive to believe that strong countries will not interfere with the internal politics of smaller ones. There are in fact many instances where this serves vital strategic interests. But I do think it is time to make it something people think upon as a dangerous action one should only pursue in extremity-and this means there should be repercussions. Russia is doing to the Ukraine what America, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia do to Syria. It doesn’t like the government so it plays brinksmanship with rebel forces as its allies. Rwanda has decades of experience with similar actions in the Congo. These turn into frozen conflicts that simply drag out suffering on the ground, as per Secretary of War Stanton’s presumption of British actions in the 1860s.

My favorite aspect of Cold War history to study when it comes to diplomacy is the Non-Aligned League. I do wonder if there could be such a small-state-in-hotspot alliance in the future. A league of nations who might share little in the way of domestic structure or big power friends but remain committed to domestic sovereignty against outside interference. The fact remains that nations like Syria and Ukraine could make quite good cases for reparations from other nations for neutrality violations in internal conflicts. Even though the great powers could never be forced to pay, the mere PR of such a move might grant small states a bit of a reprieve in today’s world as journalists picked up on the story. It would certainly make them more sympathetic.

Plus, rather than pay it itself the United States could always split the difference between Saudi Arabia and the Clinton Foundation to get the money for its reparations to Syria.

Anyway, have a musical number. Maybe one day they will write one that replaces Georgia with Donetsk or Raqqa.