NATO’s decision to freeze relations with Moscow and Washington’s inept handling of Pakistan are strategic foreign policy mistakes.
They are interlinked and give cause for celebration to al Qaeda and other rabid anti-Americans. The Western allies may regret them in coming years.
The mistakes stem from a conceit among US leaders including Barack Obama and John McCain that America is much more important for Russia than Russia is for the US. This should be reviewed seriously and with an open mind before it is too late.
At this time, the US needs partnership with Russia more than Moscow needs it. The Russians need only to do more business with the US and Europe, while Washington needs much more from Moscow.
A hostile Moscow can prevent the US from achieving the key foreign policy goal of promoting friendly democracies outside Western and Central Europe. It can delay stability in Kosovo, the Caucasus, Central Asia or the Middle East. It can also lay stumbling blocks to American access to energy sources outside the Middle East and Europe.
Worse, nuclear non-proliferation will be almost impossible making Israel’s long-term security unachievable.
If Europe disdains Moscow, Russia’s geography allows it to more easily turn to China, India, Iran and the Middle East for business and trade. In this sense, Moscow is not a demandeur at Europe’s door.
Instead, Europe needs access to Russia’s increasingly wealthy markets stretching from the North Sea to the Pacific for a vast variety of goods and services. Russia has less need for the full depth of European markets because it sells only oil and gas.
Currently it supplies 25% – 40% of Europe’s needs but in less than 10 years, it could divert much of this to the East. That would also impoverish transit countries like Poland and Ukraine, placing a bigger burden on Western taxpayers to aid them.
Some hardliner US analysts pretend that in a crunch London, New York and Frankfurt could freeze Russian state and private financial assets to coerce good political behavior by Moscow. This is summer silly season talk.
There will be panic if Washington uses American banking giants to punish Russia, because almost all do 45% – 60% of their business outside the US and have major foreign sovereign wealth funds as shareholders. All investors from the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere would lose trust immediately, causing an economic depression in the US and Europe beyond anything imaginable.
In contrast, the wider world may not care if Moscow temporarily punishes Europe by turning off oil and gas because no one else depends so heavily on it.
Now, Washington wants to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO although Russia’s main naval warships are harbored in Crimean ports, which are under nominal Ukrainian sovereignty. This is a formula for war and not just Cold War.
Escalating US-Russia tensions will be a boon for al Qaeda, Taliban and other terrorists. They are already building strong foundations of power because of Washington’s other strategic mistake.
That mistake is the abandonment of Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf. This correspondent wrote before the Pakistani elections that Musharraf’s departure would give al Qaeda and Taliban acolytes the opportunity to destabilize and grab Pakistan.
This has started. Musharraf tricked Washington into forking over $10 billion in military and other aid. But he was not an Islamic obscurantist like current leader Nawaz Sharif or corrupt like Asif Ali Zardari, who leads Pakistan’s largest party.
At least, he had some control over the heavily Islamized army and intelligence services. His quarrelsome “democratic” successors have no power at all.
Pakistan has suffered over 100 very violent attacks all across its territory in just seven months. It is already slipping into the hands of fanatical anti-Americans hiding within the army and the political parties of Sharif and Zardari.
Lethal attacks on American and NATO forces in Afghanistan have also multiplied, causing more Western fatalities this year than ever before. Their technical sophistication has increased manifold.
Against this backdrop, further isolating Moscow might tempt it to cozy up to radical anti-Americans across Asia. There are many precedents for this. Then, the results of these two strategic mistakes may become unmanageable.