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Power Game in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Implications for the U.S.

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By Sena Namlu

The John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group and Abraham Lincoln Strike group conduct operations at sea
(The Abraham Lincoln and John C. Stennis carrier strike groups are conducting carrier strike force operations in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of responsibility. Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jeremiah Bartelt/U.S.)

“Each of the carriers operating in the Mediterranean as this time represent 100,000 tons of international diplomacy,” – Jon Huntsman, Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia

Sitting at the junction of three continents and main international trade routes, the Mediterranean Sea has been of capital importance for both littoral states and international powers. The name of Mediterranean itself, originating from the Latin term (mediues terra) and meaning “the sea in the middle of the earth,” illustrates its significant place in international affairs. While for regional powers, such as Italy, Greece, and Turkey, the Mediterranean Sea determines their national security and prosperity, it equally has strategic implications for states outside of the basin with regards to furthering influence over different regions and connection with other parts of the world.

The United States has been engaged in the region since the 19th century. America’s involvement reached its apogee during the Cold War; a time when two superpowers vied for control over the Mediterranean region, encompassing an immense maritime zone between the Straits of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles and the Suez Canal. The Mediterranean Sea has witnessed many examples of coercive naval diplomacy, historically known as Gunboat Diplomacy, which involves the application of naval forces to compel or deter a state. By the end of the Cold War, the United States had achieved unity in the Mediterranean, for the first time since ancient Rome, through bilateral and multilateral political arrangements; transforming the Sea into an almost a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) lake or a Mare Nostrum for the Alliance. 

The emerging threats and complex regional challenges of the post-Cold War era brought renewed attention to the Mediterranean and forced states to engage in the region, notwithstanding the United States’ gradual retreatment. The American policy of withdrawal was initiated with the Obama Administration, but was taken further in the Trump era. Rising regional and international powers are eager to fill this expanding void left in America’s wake, seeking to gain as much control as they can in such a promising maritime area. 

Russia, which has historically had strong incentives to access the warm watersof the Mediterranean, has successfully exploited the long-lasting conflicts in the Mediterranean as well as the current power gap, leading to the establishment of a permanent presence through heavy investments in the Syrian Port of Tarsus, where now it has both an air base and naval facility. 

China has adopted a relatively peaceful method of further its influence in the Mediterranean through weaponization of its global supply chain. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), of which the Mediterranean is a crucial part, led to the country investing in the high-tech industries of Europe such as aerospace and artificial intelligence, and connecting said ventures through an immense supply chain comprised of many Mediterranean ports in which Chinese state-owned companies have significant holdings. Following the acquisitions of ports in several coastal states such as Italy, Malta and Greece, Chinese state firms now have significant influence in one-tenth of all European port capacity. Beijing is orchestrating every instrument at its disposal, including political, economic, and security creating a symphony in the words of Chinese Foreign Minister, in order to expand Chinese influence and presence around the world. One of the major concerns is of the possibility that China may not hesitate to use its civilian port facilities to the military end as it has done so in the past. Furthermore, Beijing’s previous experience of dispatching one of its most impressive-looking warships, the 689-foot-long amphibious transport dock Jinggangshan to Syria” to participate in Russian coercive diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean, makes the menace even greater for Europe and the United States.

Turkish claims based on the Blue Homeland doctrine and enforced through the dispatch of the seismic research vessel Oruç Reis raised the unresolved issues in the Mediterranean relating to maritime delimitation and jurisdiction in the Eastern Mediterranean. As the country with the longest coastline in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, Turkey regards drilling activities on the continental shelf as its fundamental right and disregards any solution that “confines Turkey to the shores.” Turkish foreign policy objectives relate the region directly to national security, rights, and interests. Additionally, Turkey’s perception of being left out in the Eastern Mediterranean based on the regional cooperation efforts excluding Turkey such as EastMed Gas Forum aggravates the tension and induces Ankara to resort more to coercive naval diplomacy. The successful outcome of natural gas reserve exploration in the Black Sea also strengthened Turkey’s commitment towards drilling operations in the Mediterranean. 

Countries opposed to Turkey’s actions in the region gathered around France, whose expectations for further political and military supports towards the European Union and NATO remain unmet, have agreed on seeking regional cooperation. France that has been the most vocal European power in opposing Turkey’s regional claims so far, backed by Greece and Cyprus with joint military drilling operations and deployment of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Eastern Mediterranean. France’s President, Emmanuel Macron seems quite determined to resist resurgent Turkish moves in the Mediterranean and has closed the ranks with its regional partners at all costs as being lacked of concrete support from the European Union and NATO members in its battling with Turkey. 

Meanwhile, Turkey similarly seeks to strengthen its hand through bilateral arrangements with another regional actor. Ankara signed two memoranda of understanding with Libya’s United Nations-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), one of which regulates maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean Sea in line with the Turkish claims and the other envisaging further security and military cooperation. These agreements are followed by a similar deal between Greece and Egypt. 

In pursuit of the Greece-Egypt deal, Prime Minister of Greece Mitsotakis and the President of Egypt Sisi reflected their expectation of more decisive U.S. involvement in the region under a Biden Administration. Nevertheless, given the other prominent challenges facing America such as extreme domestic polarization and the rising Chinese threat in the Pacific region, it is hard to predict whether the election of “Joe Bidenopoulos”, as he introduced himself to a group of Greek Americans will result in a rotation of American attention towards the region and to what extent this shift will change the course in the Mediterranean. Biden will likely give more weight to international organizations, beginning with enhancement of the EU and NATO’s downsized role in the region. However, geopolitical challenges require further engagements. Besides Russia’s permanent return to the area, China’s rapprochement with America’s most important strategic partner in the region, Israel puts American regional and international interests at higher risk. Similarly, Huawei’s expansion based on the Digital Silk Road Initiative accordingly to ports-buying strategy raise the caveat of filching data from NATO allies and friends in the region. 

There is little doubt that the President-elect Biden will find himself in the middle of various complex and entrenched issues related to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea once he takes the oval office. It is clear that defusing tensions, restoring once-existing U.S. and NATO’s influence, and countering the rise of Russia and China as the alternative strategic partners for the region will occupy the top of the lists of American policies in the area. Any help and support provided by the regional partners will be beneficial for the United States. Although the hard task of gathering regional NATO allies France, Greece and Turkey, around a table has become more challenging than it has been before, Biden Administration can bring a breath of fresh air in relations and create incentives for each party to bolster dialogue. Depending on the new American leader’s ability to manage sensitive and tangled regional relations and find a common ground among highly divided and determined actors, it will soon be seen whether this glimmer of hope may blaze out or rapidly fade away.

 

Sena Namlu is a youth and women’s right activist. She has actively partaken in social profit organizations working on particularly girls and youth empowerment — their inclusion in policy-making, conflict resolution, and peace-building processes, and initiated social projects. She is a board member of YCDC, the representative institution of Youth 20 in Turkey, and attended the Y20 Summit in Argentina and G(irls)20 Summit in Japan as Turkey’s delegate. She is also a fellow of the Women in Conflict 1325 Fellowship Programme. After graduation, she worked within Doctors of World Turkey Office as a Grant Officer. Sena is currently a graduate student in the Intelligence and International Security MA Program at the War Studies Department of KCL. Her research interests include processes of foreign policy-making, providing and analyzing information for decision-makers, as well as the role of women and non-governmental actors in conflict resolution and peace-building.

Capturing the humanity of the Cold War

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By James Brown

A picture taken by renowned Czech photographer Viktor Kolar; his work captured the everyday experience in Ostrava, an important industrial town in communist Czechoslovakia. (Image: Viktor Kolar/Monovisions)

The history of the Cold War has a rich scholarship. The field encompasses International Relations studies, economic history, and, increasingly, cultural approaches, exploring the imprint of the conflict on art, film, and everyday life. Interest in books on the Cold War will likely increase this year as we approach the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And while narrative histories of high politics and culture no doubt assist in improving our understanding of the Cold War, the works which will be most important as we reflect on the conflict’s legacy are those dealing explicitly with the psychology and human impact of the Cold War. With the rise of China and continuing instability following the COVID-19 pandemic leading to repeated suggestions of the potential for a Second Cold War, most important in our engagement with the Cold War is appreciating the human mindsets which created that conflict, and those which it created amongst people in turn. We need to ask ourselves what led the world to be so divided for nearly half a century, and then how to avoid the same happening again.

Interrogating this aspect of Cold War history is indeed difficult and few authors truly succeed in illustrating the psychology of the era without resorting to cliche. The Cold War was a conflict defined by high politics and domineering ideologies of capitalism versus communism. Writers, especially academics, have found it hard to move beyond these abstractions to capture the human experience of the Cold War.

In this regard, it has been authors of fiction who have often been more successful. The works of the late great John le Carré endure in the popular imagination as among the most defining portraits of the moral compromises forced on individuals by the ideological restraints of the Cold War. Meanwhile, Francis Spufford’s fact-based novel, Red Plenty, gives insight into how Soviet citizens genuinely began to believe that communism’s material promises would be realised under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev (1956-64). In writing Red Plenty, Spufford, himself acknowledged the difficulties non-fiction authors face in trying to capture the essence of the Cold War’s ideas and their impact on people. He explains how his initial attempts to tell the tale of Red Plenty as a piece of non-fiction fell short and demanded he shift the book to the ‘border between fiction and non-fiction.’

Other Cold War authors, meanwhile, have successfully managed to bridge this gap between storytelling and fact while remaining truer to the latter. Among the most significant are Anna Funder, principally for her renowned book Stasiland, and the 2015 Nobel Literature Laureate, Svetlana Alexievich. These two authors are already widely acclaimed but it feels necessary to revisit their work as we approach the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the USSR, as they capture better than most the human impact of the Cold War, especially east of the Iron Curtain.

Funder’s brilliant Stasiland has been described variously as a personal history and a ‘journalist’s first-person narrative’ that can ‘read like a novel’. The book, through a series interviews intertwined with Funder’s own narrative, captures how the state ideology of the German Democratic Republic created an alternate, corrupt moral reality for its subjects and those who defended it: the notorious Ministry for State Security or Stasi. Funder, however, is not exclusively condemnatory of the former watchmen of state socialism. Her interviews are occasionally sympathetic with former Stasi employees, though without ever failing to address the violations they committed. On the other hand, Funder gives voice to those who resisted the regime and put themselves in extreme danger in desperate attempts to escape to the West. Funder’s main achievement is to shine a light on a society where ideology reigned supreme in a way it rarely does now, while still keeping the human experience firmly at the forefront of her prose.

Alexievich’s works, meanwhile, are less about how people were driven to extremes by ideology, and more about the everyday lives continuing in spite of or in accommodation with ideology. Alexievich’s method sees her conduct interviews with hundreds of witnesses to life in the USSR, focusing on formative events like the Great Patriotic War (1941-45), the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-89), the Chernobyl Disaster (1986), and the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991). Her excellent Secondhand Time tells the story of the end of communism in the USSR and the responses of its citizens. Alexievich lets her subjects speak for themselves, sympathising with them. What emerges is a portrait of how the Soviet people inhabited a distinct culture of their own in the USSR and that while the political reality of the Soviet Union may have ended in 1991, left behind were millions of Homo-Sovieticus traumatised by the sudden collapse of their generations-old everyday reality.   

If history is about authentically recreating the unique conditions of an era or culture, both Funder’s and Alexievich’s books stand as among the most accomplished studies of the Cold War, even though neither author may be exclusively considered a historian; two other worthy examples are Donald J. Raleigh’s Soviet Baby Boomers and Bridgett Kendall’s The Cold War. Furthermore, both women’s books hold relevance in understanding pertinent contemporary issues in international politics, especially Putin’s Russia and the historical factors which drive Russian foreign policy. 

Modern Russia cannot be understood without an appreciation of the impact on Russian leaders of the loss of superpower status conferred by the USSR’s collapse. Nor can the contemporary rise of the far-right in the east of Germany be understood without knowledge of East German history. Throughout the 2010s, and now in the first years of the 2020s, observers have continued to speculate whether we have entered a new Cold War-style period of international relations. Understanding the human experience of the original Cold War seems a more important exercise than ever as we prepare ourselves for the new era, whatever it brings, and Funder and Alexievich offer the best place to start.

 

James Brown is a PhD candidate in history at Northumbria University. His focus is on Soviet dissidents and their use in the politics and international relations of the Cold War. He previously studied at Glasgow University, doing a Master’s in East European, Russian, and Eurasian studies. During this time he studied Russian and wrote his thesis, ‘Returning to Machiavelli: Giving Belarus-Russia relations the Original Realist Treatment’, which received the prize for best dissertation from the Centre for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at Glasgow.

At Northumbria, he is a member of several research groups, including the Conflict & Society and Histories of Activism groups. James also has a keen interest in literature, especially Czech writers, and had a poem on Jan Palach published in Edge Magazine. Additionally, he remains interested in the Chernobyl disaster, on which he wrote his undergraduate thesis, ‘A Long Half-Life: Responses to Chernobyl in Soviet and Post-Soviet Society’.

U.S. Energy, Placing Strategy ahead of Policy

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by Benjamin Flosi

Conceptual photo of energy sources. Source: LovetoKnow

U.S. Energy Production – Politics vs. Strategy

U.S. energy policy is U.S. energy politics. The fight for energy-producing states this election season demonstrated this feature. President Trump made a calculated all-out blitz for these politically essential states in 2016 and 2020 by targeting his messaging of unrestricted energy production policies to critical constituents. [i] The Democrat Party, always in a more precarious political position due to a broader base, attempted to thread the needle, moving between abruptly ending the fossil fuel industry and gently progressing away. Finally, deciding on $2T in spending as a middle ground between its constituents.

This phenomenon deviates from U.S. energy policy’s historical role, where political leadership from both parties would equate energy policy with national security. President Nixon declared an emergency after the oil embargo and increased domestic production programmes. President Carter looked to secure supplies by removing pricing controls, establishing a strategic reserve, and initiated the U.S. military’s force increase in the Gulf region.[ii] The first war in Iraq was partially justified as preventing Saddam Hussein from controlling an even greater share of the global oil supply. Similarly, the reactivation of the fifth fleet and regional basing and partnerships stem from these strategic calculations. Even as recently as President Obama, achieving energy independence from international vagaries was a central talking point of his clean and renewable energy policies. Despite different political bases and inherent beliefs, each approached energy policy from the point of strategic national benefit.

Overton Window

When tackling climate change, America would be wise not to put policy goals before a strategic approach, as demonstrated in the U.S. removal of Saddam Hussain. Here, a rush to achieve a “safer world” through removing several threats and the spread of democracy, all in one swift policy, demonstrates that having a policy goal of global change without a feasible and sustainable strategy to reach that goal can invite catastrophe.

Fortunately, the U.S. energy-producing states’ current importance to any presidential bid, the 50/50 divided in domestic politics, and a split congress offer the opportunity to implement an energy strategy over an energy policy. This is due to the current political conditions preventing either side from implementing a strictly partisan policy. Furthermore, the diverse options under any multifaceted and long-term strategy allow political actors from all sides to claim a moral victory and deliver results to their constituents.

Strategic Dilemma

 Climate change is real. Unfortunately, so is Chinese and Russian aggression. The kernel of this strategic dilemma is that most U.S. steps to reduce carbon use also reduces U.S. and global security. While climate change will continue to impose itself on the word with strategic repercussions, so will Russia and China. China’s ability to use threats about trade to compel the E.U. in times of stress was successful, as the E.U. backed down in its reporting on China’s response to COVID. China also produced similar threats to cut off medical and pharmaceutical supplies to the U.S. Furthermore, their use of salami tactics to control trade routes, energy sources, and commercial fishing in national territory and control pieces of Europe will continue independent of climate change.

Decarbonization will be costly to the U.S. Every effort to impose restrictions will decrease the strategic risk of climate change but will increase the strategic risk imposed by China and Russia due to reduced U.S. economic capacity, global economic influence, energy independence, and reduce the energy independence of its allies and partners. There is also no guarantee that enduring these costs will achieve the objectives of ending or significantly reducing global warming due to China’s continual expansion of coal power plants and occupation of oil and gas fields in the South China Sea for potential exploitation. Furthermore, projected growth across India and Asia could additionally counter any feasible reductions in the U.S.

Strategic Opportunities

Advantages of the Status Quo: In 2019, the U.S. attained a greater degree of energy independence as it transitioned from being a net importer to a net exporter of crude and refined petroleum products. This accomplishment provides an economic advantage in revenue derived through market share, integration of world-class U.S. corporations into economies around the world, sustains a robust and dynamic economy that absorbs millions of immigrants and develops everything from the P.C. to one of the first the COVID-19 vaccine, and fuels a military that maintains global security. It also provides a hedge in the event of a great power or sustained conflict. Similarly, U.S. production capacity secures European economies and militaries as it allows for an alternative to global supply chains and dependence on Russia’s energy exports.[iii] Since oil and gas trade in USD, current arrangements help solidify the USD’s strategic advantage as the reserve currency and global finance provider. This latter fact is beneficial for countering an economically ambitious China attempting to ensnare smaller countries, as revealed in Sri Lanka’s loss of Hambantota Port, by creating new trade routes and an alternate reserve currency and financing opportunities.

Advantages of Opportunity: While the U.S. does maintain a current strategic advantage in the extraction-based world, this does not mean that a future of transition is devoid of similar strategic opportunities. The U.S. possesses several inherent strategic advantages, which it can lever in the quest to develop an answer to these problems. These include its capacity for research and development through its universities, defence and federal government initiatives, and iconic inventors in their garages. It also includes its business culture, cutting edge firm practices, entrepreneurship, and its flexible and dynamic investing ecosystem. Therefore, any path towards decarbonization can maintain some of the current advantages if it applies these strengths.

Strategic Pillars

Treat Decarbonization like Disarmament: To prevent a strategic nadir, the U.S. can treat decarbonization like disarmament. Agreements such as the Paris Climate Accords, on their own, will only hurt compliers while increasing relative gains of countries savvy or cynical enough to join and evade or ignore commitments. While Xi Jinping was producing statement after statement about reducing greenhouse emissions, his party brought more new coal plants into existence, nationally and internationally, than the accords can potentially overcome. Alternately, as U.S. efforts to decarbonize increase consumers’ and exporters’ costs, reduce U.S. multinational firms’ capacity, and reduce core industrial capability and small businesses vitality, America’s rivals continue to decrease energy production and consumption costs.

Therefore, as the Biden administration starts to adjust the Trump trade war, realigns relations with China, and builds U.S. manufacturing and the post-COVID economy, an opportunity exists to create agreements that can balance these concerns and embed reciprocal actions over blanket U.S. reductions.

Secure Supply Lines: Long-term movement away from carbon dependence requires a move towards reliance on rare earth elements. While the federal government has taken steps to increase its reserves of these elements, no efforts exist to secure continued supply, especially in a national emergency or sustained conflict. The fact that Russia and China together can possess or control up to 90% of global supply, depending on the specific element, adds another security challenge that requires a solution before relying on renewables.

Fortunately, the potential for new exploration exists in the U.S., Australia, Africa, and Latin America. Similarly, other Asian countries besides China can provide a low-cost option in making these materials usable. Malaysia being one, where China’s attempt to dominate its port facilities and transportation infrastructure demonstrates the need to secure these chains. Ambitious exploration and exploitation can reduce the costs of extraction and open new supplies. Part of securing this access, against China’s attempts, could include setting up ventures between U.S. and host nation companies to address the exploration, mining, extraction, and transportation required to bring these items to market while keeping the process partly in U.S. hands. As any return on investment would be long-term and risky, the U.S. Government would need to play a role in funding, guaranteeing profits, and technology exchange. This model could also deliver structured and spill-over entrepreneurial, technology, and educational benefits to local businesses and populations through additional loans, infrastructure development, educational opportunities, and access to both global and U.S. markets and companies. It could provide a local and grassroots development model and an alternate approach to China’s state-centered and state empowering One Belt One Road initiative. [iv]

Develop Comparative Advantages at Home: Within the U.S., opportunities exist that play to America’s strength and ensure that decarbonization supports U.S. economic advancement. As renewables and batteries depend on a significant amount of rare earth elements and minerals, the government can use U.S. universities to start programs that will create technology that can extract minerals with cheaper methods. The government can also promote STEM education in these fields through subsiding education. The importance of the production of these components to national security provides an opportunity to bring advanced manufacturing back to the U.S. Although, achieving this remains complicated as production in the U.S. is more expensive than in Asia. Still, the government should examine expenses, including the cost of not controlling production, including diplomatic and military, associated with securing overseas supplies and use them in a calculation on onshoring.[v]

Conclusion

In the U.S., the election cycle, which seemingly is an almost continuous street brawl these days, limits politicians’ ability to implement longer-term and incremental solutions. Instead, they must execute the immediate option to meet their short-term political demands. Although, as the President and Congress wade through a divided government and country, the opportunity exists to trade short-term paralysis for a long-term strategy and implement a far-sighted approach to battling climate change.

[i] Guliyev, Farid. “Trump’s ‘America first’ energy policy, contingency and the reconfiguration of the global energy order.” Energy Policy, vol. 140, May 2020.

[ii] Painter, David. “Oil and Geopolitics: The Oil Crisis of the 1970s and the Cold War.” Historical and Social Research, vol. 39, no. 4, 2014.

[iii] Henderson J., Mitrova T. (2020) Implications of the Global Energy Transition on Russia. In: Hafner M., Tagliapietra S. (eds) The Geopolitics of the Global Energy Transition. Lecture Notes in Energy, vol 73. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39066-2_5.

[iv] According to ideas proposed during conversations between Benjamin Flosi, Christopher Tynan, and John Huntsman (https://securitystudies.org/) from September-November 2020.

[v] According to ideas proposed during conversations between Benjamin Flosi, Christopher Tynan, and John Huntsman (https://securitystudies.org/)from September-November 2020.

Benjamin Flosi is a first year Ph.D. student at King’s College London and a Copy Editor at Strife.

 

Perceptions of Peaceful Transfer of Power: From the British to the American Empire

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by Mariana Vieira

The Battle of Manila Bay (1898) saw the defeat of the Spanish navy at the hands of the fledging American empire (Image credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

The transition from British to American hegemony, a shift that fundamentally shaped the post-1945 world order, is often characterised as peaceful. This is brought about by the choice of terminology and the analytical slippage between hegemony and empire. While there were no direct hostilities between the UK and the US as the former declined and the latter ascended, the study of empire highlights the conflict and violence of the two key processes of transition: the rise of the United States and the decline of Great Britain. Indeed, terminology matters because it enables scholars to consider the interactions and dynamics between metropole, the core territory around which power is centralised, and the extensive periphery of dominated areas.

The transition from Pax Britannica to Pax Americana did not happen immediately and the building blocks leading to it were hardly peaceful. Special mentions include the Spanish-American War (1898), the wars of decolonisation, and both World Wars. The absence of a typical hegemonic war between the dominant power and the rising challenger led experts to believe that a peaceful transition took place sometime in the early-mid twentieth century.

However, in determining a more precise timestamp, the most persuasive dates do follow a conflict that fits with the other main characteristics of hegemonic war: a total conflict involving major states that is unlimited in terms of political, economic, and ideological significance. Here, the Second World War epitomises the decay of the European international political order and the triumph of American power. Moreover, even proponents of the peaceful transition thesis highlight how the US became committed to enforcing order internationally after the ‘cataclysm’ of the Second World War.

US hegemonic ascendency accelerated after the annexation of overseas territories, the spoils of the American victory in the war of 1898. While these territorial acquisitions were unprecedented, the Spanish-American War and its consequences have been argued to represent a ‘logical culmination’ of the major trends in nineteenth-century US foreign policy. In removing Spain from the Western Hemisphere and increasing American’s reach in East Asia, the war was crucial in advancing the US’ status as a world power and a full-fledged member of the imperial club.

Analysing America’s colonial experience during the earlier period of transition as an empire, as opposed to as a hegemon allows for a more complex image that highlights the violence and day-to-day coercion intrinsic to how the American empire was built. Whereas hegemons are strictly concerned with influence over foreign affairs, empires seek to exert control over the political regime of the periphery, thereby encompassing both domestic and foreign policy spheres. As an empire, the US proceeded to transform Cuba into a neo-colonial economy built around cash-crops and closely tied to the US market, while the Philippines witnessed an especially brutal war of ‘benevolent assimilation’ furthered by ideologies of racial difference.

The following period of US hegemonic maturity and UK hegemonic decline was partly engendered by significant changes in the international context. As the US entered a global field that was already mostly colonized, it seemingly maintained international peace – or the existing level of colonial violence – by supporting its European allies and outsourcing territorial control. However, the emergence and proliferation of anticolonial nationalism in the periphery changed the global landscape. As the First World War brought to a boil the decades long-simmering tensions of militarism, alliances, imperialism, and nationalism, its aftermath witnessed the break-up of several empires on the losing side, the weakening of the victorious’ hold on their colonial possessions, and the widespread circulation of President Wilson’s Fourteen Points.

The diffusion of ideas of national self-determination in European colonies resulted in multiple movements against colonial rule, including in Britain. Crucially, the rise of nationalism and the eruption of conflict furthered the British hegemonic decline. The transition from British to American international systems was consolidating as the USA found other means to exert their – informal – influence, while the British could not meet their economic goals without the colonial – formal – dimension.

Partly distracted with crises in the Middle East, East Asia, and South Africa and partly constrained by the importance of American raw materials and markets, the British did not seek to actively oppose America’s rise in the Western Hemisphere. Arguably, if there was a shift from perceptions of competition to cooperation with the US, it was largely a result of British non-peaceful priorities laying elsewhere. The British operated a trading empire based on the exchange of European manufactured goods for the colonies’ foods and minerals, relying on imperialism to maintain its economic supremacy.

However, as empires became increasingly illegitimate, the cumulative effect of peripheral wars of decolonisation and the deterioration of the British industrial base undermined the productivity on which its power hinged. In the metropole, the devastating impact of the two World Wars added a further dimension of resource erosion, this disrupted the imperialist center and left the British Empire dependent on American economic and military power. Consequently, the British hegemonic decline was accelerated by interacting conflicts in the center and in the periphery.

It was not a white dove that brought about a new imperial center, but rather a murder of crows.

Finally, when contending the emergence of a ‘peaceful’ international order based on the convergence of Anglo-Saxon values, a study of empire may point in other directions. Both empires share similarities, as capitalist nation-states with an impulse to act imperialistically in ordering their respective international systems. The US gunboat diplomacy showcased its contempt for ‘lesser’ peoples, thereby placing America in the mainstream of Western imperialism. Here, the American elite followed the debates on empire in Britain, applying notions of racism and the white man’s burden to US expansionist imperatives. In hailing the intellectual, industrial, and moral superiority of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, the sense of sameness legitimised and fueled more violence towards ‘backward’ people and ‘little brown brothers’ in the periphery during the initial phase of transition.

For centuries, the rise and decline of powerful empires characterised world politics and not the world of nation-states that is taken for granted in International Relations (IR). The perception of a peaceful hegemonic transition is based on the Westphalian terms of reference, but the framework of sovereign states occludes and distorts imperial relations.

Careful consideration of British decline and American rise showcases precisely these two antonyms of peace: war, on a global scale, and conflict, within their respective peripheries. In rendering the violence of the processes behind this ‘peaceful’ transition visible, the study of empire warns against Eurocentric celebrations of a successful model that rising – non-Western – powers should follow. It was not a white dove that brought about a new imperial center, but rather a murder of crows.

Mariana Vieira currently works as an Editorial Assistant for Chatham House’s magazine, The World Today. Her research interests span US foreign policy, critical security studies, and empire. After completing her bachelor’s in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Warwick, she pursued an MS in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation at LSE, followed by an MA in International Peace and Security at KCL’s War Studies department. 

Europe’s Options for the Boogaloo

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by Michael C. Davies

US Civil War redux? (Image credit: The Trumpet)

Moe: ‘Oh ho, an English boy, eh? You know we saved your ass in World War Two.’
Hugh: ‘Yeah, well, we saved your ass in World War Three.’
– ‘Lisa’s Wedding,’ The Simpsons, S6E19.

In the past few weeks, U.S. President Donald J. Trump, and the Republican Party more generally, have made it clear they are willing to do anything to remain in power in the aftermath of the 2020 election, including possibly starting a civil war. Both Trump himself and numerous Republican Party elected officials and apparatchiks have stated they will neither acknowledge the outcome of the election if they lose, an election Trump already decries as illegitimate, nor participate in it fairly. Even more concerning is that a contested result could light a spark many on the American right are hoping for. White supremacists groups have grown exponentially during his Administration, and declare any event other than a Trump victory to be grounds to start the Boogaloo—the white supremacists’ slang term for a second American civil war. The question therefore becomes, what will Europe do if America fractures? Should this happen, Europe, broadly, will have four options to consider.

The roots of a possible second American civil war have been identifiable since the end of the first civil war in 1865. While the Confederacy was military and politically defeated in 1865, it re-emerged soon after and took back control of the South, imposed Jim Crow laws and social regulations, and expanded into the West. Certainly not for the last time, the United States chose white supremacy and strategic failure rather than engaging in effective state-building to achieve a new birth of freedom. This time, with forty years of free-market fundamentalism having stolen $50 trillion from the American people and collapsing the American middle class, the lack of quality health care and student loans collapsing birth rates, and decades of sectarian media blaming it all on ‘others,’ a large percentage of the American populous is armed, ready, and willing to wash the country in a genocidal and politicidal cleansing fire, just as the Confederacy did during the Civil War.

In Donald Trump, the Confederate element of American society has found their saviour. Trump’s approval rating has rarely moved regardless of how many more failures pile up exactly because he treats politics as his favourite movie, Bloodsport. He antagonizes large swathes of the populous because they refuse to love him and treat him with the respect he believes he deserves. After all, this was the man who did not really care about the number of COVID-19 deaths until the virus started affecting ‘his’ people—citizens in Republican-leaning states. 225,000+ dead, ever-rising, and he is more than happy to say it ‘affected virtually nobody.’ To Trump, he is only the President of those who love him. And a pox on all others—now, literally.

It is precisely because far right-wing groups praise him that Trump has allowed them to flourish under his Administration and reach the mainstream. Individually and collectively, they all pine for the Boogaloo. Groups like the Oath Keepers, the Boogaloo Boys, the Proud Boys, and now, the incredible rise of the mind-melting QAnon conspiracy, together with the ever-present militia movements that all have their basis in white supremacist violence, give form to the battle lines being drawn. Their goal, broadly, is to impose a right-wing anarcho-capitalist white supremacist state in America using extreme mass violence. Their intentions are so clear even establishment centrists who bemoan any act of revolt against these groups and their political handmaidens have finally begun to see the writing is on the wall.

The question therefore remains, what will Europe do should conflict break out? During the last US Civil War, because of America’s distance and Europe’s own problems, it largely left the war alone, preferring to see who emerged on top. This time, distance and impact are meaningless. Should the US divide into a years-long brawl, Europe’s own security blanket—conventional and nuclear via the NATO alliance—will be torn asunder with it. European states, individually and collectively, therefore have a direct stake in the outcome. The closeness of Trump to Russia, after all, regardless of the causation, is a daily worry for those who share a border with Russia and rely on NATO, especially American, military forces for deterrence. Without it, RAND estimates, they will last barely 60 hours.

Under the worst scenario of a breakout of a new civil war, Europe has four basic options: First, Do nothing. As scholar Edward Luttwak previously suggested, the option always exists to just ‘give war a chance’ and see what happens and adapt to the new circumstances at the end. Second, Lend Lease. As the US did during the Second World War before it engaged, it provided material for the war effort. Third, volunteers. Like the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, Eagle Squadrons of the Second World War, The Crippled Eagles in Rhodesia, or more recently as the ISIS and anti-ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria, Europe could allow its citizens to fight in America. Whether it would allow fighters for both sides is another question altogether, however.

Or, finally, would the satirical epigraph at the start of this post prove prescient—would Europe mobilize to defeat this new Confederacy? Would it make a stand on its own values and strategic interests? Suffering under a long history of continual strategic failure, with Iraq and Afghanistan only being the latest examples, it would take a significant shift in elite, military, and popular imaginations to make this happen. Regardless of what choice could be made, each option comes with its own risks and rewards. But with greater risk comes greater reward. And choosing the lesser options can mean Europe will further erode its ability to secure itself, and perhaps fall (further) into its own pit of darkness once more.

As Cathal Nolan made clear in his estimable history of battle, ‘moral and material attrition’ are the ‘main determinants of outcome in wars among the Great Powers.’ Simply, those who mobilise the most usually win. Without a doubt, the right-wing in the US, both government and non-government, remains the most ready, willing, and able to engage in large-scale violence. But they are also the smallest demographically, weakest economically, and the obedience of large parts of the US Government to Trump can no longer be counted on, let alone in the event of a full outbreak of violence. Thus, the choices Europe makes early on matters. And the decision, to reverse Churchill’s hope, for the Old World to ‘step forth to the rescue and the liberation of the [new]’ might be required if it is to avoid conflagration on its own soil.

Michael C. Davies is a Ph.D. candidate in Defence Studies at King’s College London, focusing on the theory and practice of victory. He previously conducted lessons learned research at the U.S. National Defense University where he co-authored three books on the Wars of 9/11 and is one of the progenitors of the Human Domain doctrinal concept. He is also the Coordinating Editor with the Strife Journal.