The Drunk Diplomat

Obama is in Russia this week negotiating with Medvedev and ole Vladimir about a pretty large range of issues:

1) Iran
2) North Korea
3) Georgia
3) Russia’s WTO membership
4) Economic / Financial Crisis
5) Cyberwarfare
6) Nuclear Disarmament (START treaty, etc.)
7) European Missile Shield

Wow what an agenda! And those are just the issues that I can think of of the top of my head; not to mention each one has a million nuances to them, but on the last point about the European Missile Shield is where I will focus today.

After the invasion of Georgia by the Russians the Czech Parliament ratified the missile shield radar to be placed in the country – kind of a knee jerk reaction to the Russian invasion, but definitely not what the Russians were expecting! I think part of the motivation to attack Georgia was to intimidate other former Soviet satellite states, and of course, Kosovo declaring independence with Western support in spite of vocal Serbian and Russian opposition. Georgia, the Russians thought, would be an example, as if the Russians were saying, we’re back, respect us!! Of course, this did not work, and here we are with Nicaragua and Russia as the only two countries in the world that recognize Abkhazia and South Ossestia as a sovereign states.

So here we find ourselves, the Eastern European countries have ratified documents allowing the installation of a missile shield, but the Russians are adamantly opposed to it. If the Obama administration goes forward with the proposed missile installations in Poland the radar station in Czech Republic are all other possible agreements with the Russians or help with Iran/NK/etc off the table? Would the Russians actually help the US with other geopolitical hot spots if the US agreed to forget about the shield? The shield’s installation would be largely symbolic, the Russian missile arsenal would have no problem overwhelming the installations – and that’s assuming the shield was installed to counter the Russians in the first place – the official line is that it is being built to counter future Iranian missiles headed to Europe.

I think Obama probably understands that as much as the US would like to separate the panoply of issues facing the two countries – the Russians will not. The missile shield is a sticking point because it is a baby step, in Russian opinion, to a larger missile defense apparatus in Europe – changing the geopolitical balance. Furthermore, the Russians feel betrayed by the US for expanding the NATO alliance into former Soviet client states and the construction of these sites would be akin to “twisting the knife” in a very prideful and hurt Russian people.

The United States does not need a missile shield in Europe.

1) “If you build a higher wall, I will build a higher ladder” – the missile shield is only as good as the current missile technology, if we really want to encourage the Russians to build better, and more novel ways, of delivering nuclear warheads a missile shield would be the way to go.
2) The Bush administration pulled out of the ABM treaty with Russia to build his missile shield because of the threat coming from rogue nations. As discussed earlier, no Rogue nation would dare launch a missile from its soil a at Europe or the US because the retaliation would be devastating, thereby, ending the regime. Considering most rogue nations main goal is the preservation of the regime, launching a preemtive attack on the US or its allies would be mean doom for the existing regime. The threat coming from rogue nations is fictional and Iran will not fire a missile at Western Europe.
3) The US has poured billions of dollars into a system that has only proven itself effective a handful of times. Shooting down a missile, with another missile, is like shooting one bullet with another. There are much better, cheaper, more efficient, more diplomatic ways of reducing the threat of a rogue missile attack.
4) If the Obama administration wants to accomplish anything further with the Russians they will figure out a way to diplomatically stop construction of the missile shield. I understand this will anger the Poles and Czechs because they stuck their necks out for the US, but the cons outweigh the pros in this situation. Russia is still an important power that needs to at least be neutral towards the US and not hostile. The Czechs and the Poles should still receive the vast majority of military support offered to them even though the missile shield will not be built.
5) The missile shield idea is not popular in Europe, if the Europeans don’t think they need it, why should we impose it on them? We already pay for the vast majority of the worlds security.

It’s to early to tell what the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will evolve into. The SCO was founded in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan as a security organization to fight extremism in the region. However, I could envision a time when the SCO evolves into something similar to OPEC for natural gas, or the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) for mutual economic development, or even a military organization to counter NATO. Maybe it will be a hybrid of all of these models.

The ECSC, founded in 1957, was the precursor of the European Union. The organization was created to unite the Western European powers against the Soviet Union and create common markets for Western Europe. There were visions of what the ECSC would evolve into, if it would evolve at all, but I doubt that many foresaw the breadth of integration the Maastricht Treaty would bring in 1992 to create the European Union, a short 35 years. Furthermore, the Schengen Agreement signed in 1985 provided the rights for Western European citizens free movement across borders without passports.

Could the Schengen Agreement be something of a precursor for the status of Eastern Russia and Siberia? Russia is in the midst of a massive demographic decline, especially in the East. With such vast sparsely populated areas, the general decline in population of the entire country, and the declining power of their conventional military – is it really a stretch to see Russia, China, and the Stans create some kind of free movement treaty in 30 years? There are three factors beyond Russia’s demographic and military decline that lead me to believe the SCO will provide the framework for some kind of freedom of movement to the Chinese in Siberia.

The first is the enormous amounts of pollution, garbage, and toxic waste the Chinese are producing and will produce at an ever accelerting pace the next 30 years. There are estimates that China, alone, will produce as much greenhouse gases that the entire world produces today by 2050. That’s a lot of smog and health problems. The climate change caused by China’s greenhouse gas emissions alone may force massive migrations to areas that have clean water and away from the polluted mess that China’s mainland may become.

The second is the emerging middle class in China. The demand for natural resources, land, food, and water may not be sustainable when China has a middle class parrellel in wealth to the US. Imagine 300 million (possibly more out of 1.5 billion) more people on the planet living like the average US consumer, in China alone. Their demands may eventually push the Chinese government to create some kind of access to the verdant lands in the North.

The third is that Chinese immigration to Russia is the fastest it’s been in recent history. Since the fall of the Soviet Union Chinese laborers and traders have been flooding into Siberia and the Far East. Also, an ultimatum the Chinese have issued to Russia in regards to it’s WTO bid is that it must allow Chinese laborers into Russia at some pace.

In my opinion something like a Schengen Treaty is really for the SCO is not that far fetched in the future. It’s difficult to keep 300 million Chinese crammed together in Northern China while there are millions of empty acres of land to the North. Russia may decide it cannot fight history any more and create some kind of agreement through the SCO so the Chinese can have access to their far East before they loose it completely.