Critics of the Biden administration last summer said the withdrawal from Afghanistan would destroy American credibility and encourage America’s rivals to take bolder actions that would challenge America and its friends. Is reduced American credibility the reason for new tensions in Ukraine and Taiwan?
My short answer is no. If Russia only invades its neighbors when America is weak, then why did Putin invade Georgia in 2008? No one would say that America was retreating then after we had increased our military presence in Iraq and George W Bush was president.
Instead, Russia has had interests in neighboring countries like Georgia and Ukraine for hundreds of years. Russia will exert pressure on its neighbors without regards to who is sitting in the Oval Office. Russia will choose consider which kinds of pressure to use after considering domestic and international political reactions but the core Russian national interest in friendly neighboring states doesn’t change.
Biden has promised that he will not send American soldiers to Ukraine. Especially in neighboring countries, we should expect that an American military intervention, even an indirect intervention such as sending weapons, will provoke a Russian military escalation in response.
Is Ukraine important enough to American national security to justify a big American escalation in response to Russian actions? Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union for 70 years and despite the Soviet control of Ukraine American national security was safe. When one Republican senator suggested America might use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, there was an embarrassed silence from all the other Republicans. Biden understands there is no public support for a big intervention in a Ukraine war, and therefore he is trying to steer Putin onto a diplomatic path. So far, and unlike 2014, Putin has not invaded and at the same time Biden has made no concessions on the principles regarding Ukraine’s independence.
Washington analysts and officials are more worried about China. American diplomat George Kennan predicted in his famous “long telegram” in 1946 that the Soviet Union would sooner or later collapse from internal problems. No one in Washington expects the collapse of China. Unlike the Soviet Union China has a big economy and important trade relations around the world, including the United States. And Washington understands that it needs to work with China on issues like global warming. This is not a new cold war, therefore. Instead, Washington aims at a strategic competition. It acknowledges that it must coexist with China but it aims to deter China from ignoring rules about trade and international security.
For example, Biden’s team is building economic alliances that will block Chinese access to markets unless China accepts international trade rules. And on the military side, the Biden administration aims to create a military framework that will confirm a balance of power in the western Pacific and deter China from trying to control maritime passages or attacking American allies.
The American military withdrawal from Afghanistan is not causing problems for the American effort to create that military framework. For example, Australia abandoned its agreement to buy French submarines to acquire American submarines instead. Perhaps more importantly, in this multipolar world system, the Taliban victory in Afghanistan means that United States no longer needs close relations with India’s long-time rival Pakistan. This removes a major obstacle to closer ties between Washington and New Delhi. Moreover, Chinese attacks on the Indian border in the Himalayan mountains over the past years convinced India that cooperation with the Americans is useful. And Russian President Putin’s relations to the Taliban, whom India distrusts, and Putin’s relations with China - India’s biggest adversary - also encourages India to move closer to the United States.
India’s Foreign Minister Jaishankar told an Australian journalist in September that America returned strong after the withdrawal from Vietnam in the 1970s and he expects it will do so again after the Afghanistan withdrawal. In the past year India has clearly moved into a coalition that includes Australia, Japan and the United States called the four-way security dialogue to balance Chinese power. Washington is happy to build closer relations with India: Secretary of State Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin have frequent conversations with their Indian counterparts. In addition to the India track, the Biden administration’s hosting a summit of democracies aimed at encouraging democratic states like India to cooperate against authoritarian states like Russia and China. The angry Chinese criticism indicated China’s understanding that bad international reactions to Chinese aggressive (“wolf-warrior”) diplomacy are helping the Americans build international groupings to resist China.
The most urgent question is Taiwan.
Here I must admit that I am nervous. Long before the Americans withdrew from Afghanistan Chinese leaders have promised that China will reunite Taiwan with the mainland. President Xi emphasized this policy on October 9. Chinese officials also warn the Americans not to encourage Taiwan to seek independence, but Biden in October promised the US would defend Taiwan from Chinese attack. I do not remember an American president saying this publicly before. Then the top Pentagon official for Asia, Assistant Secretary of Defense Ely Ratner, told the Congress on December 8 that strengthening Taiwan’s military to deter China is vital to American national security.
So, tensions are increasing. Chinese warplanes often fly near Taiwan in order to intimidate the Taiwanese and Taiwanese warplanes watch them carefully. What if a pilot on one side or the other makes a mistake and open fire? During the Cold War with the Soviet Union there were special crisis communication systems between Moscow and Washington. The American and Soviet leaders quietly found ways to stop a slide towards military confrontation in the 1962 Cuba missile crisis and again in the American-Soviet nuclear alert during the 1973 Middle East war. No special communication mechanism exists between Beijing and Washington. It is worth noting that Defense Secretary Austin said last summer that the Chinese defense minister refused to speak with him. Thus, it was a positive step that Biden and Chinese President Xi in November video meeting both called for stability in relations. They agreed that their defense officials would meet soon and in addition, last week, the American Senate finally agreed to send experienced American diplomat Nicholas Burns to Beijing as the new ambassador.
I will be watching in the coming weeks to see if the two governments can establish special communications channels and whether they can begin talks on difficult files such as nuclear weapons. Steps to improve the diplomatic process between Washington and Moscow and between Washington and Beijing are vital when we understand that in 2022, we could see a major crisis in Taiwan or Ukraine or, of course, Iran.
