AMU Homeland Security Opinion

Plenty More Political Unifications Await

By Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security

It looks like the future of the world will be more annexations, reunification and political unions of multiple states. Political competition and natural resources will continue to drive and dictate territorial boundaries and challenge the sovereign state system of the world.

Russia’s advance into Crimea can be seen as outright annexation or reunification with Russia or ethnic Russians. Either perspective illustrates that strategic opportunities are as important as they ever were and larger states will take advantage of weaker ones. Weaker ones are forced to join or create political unions not based on economic opportunity after the collapse of the Soviet Empire, as much as out of political survival.

To maintain more of their political interests and culture, a weaker state will side or form one political union over another, or the joining of, or threat of another state’s hostile expansive actions. This is the case now with the EU and Russia, with Ukraine caught in the middle.

Just today, pro-Russian political riots smashed their way through three Eastern Ukrainian cities: Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv. They are following the same counter-coup tactics already practiced in Kiev by the now reigning pro-Europeans that control most of Ukraine; and the pro-Russian Crimeans, which is now part of Russia.

Ukrainian Acting President Olexander Turchynov canceled a scheduled trip to Lithuania to deal with the security issue. In Donetsk, they targeted the regional government buildings and raise the Russian flag. In Luhansk and Kharkiv, the reports of demonstrations have not been so large either, but a few people can cause a lot of damage; especially if they are backed by Russia.

The fate of the East looks all-too-similar. Russia is likely engineering these growing political rallies and riots in response to loosing Russia and securing its oil, natural gas and people. It might wait until the situation is unstable and then send in its military before the situation gets worse. On the other hand, Ukrainian military may also be on-call and the worst case scenario is a clash of forces which is still a likely scenario if pro-Russian rallies continue to escalate and seize power.

Two key political power spheres now in formation revolve around Eurasia and these two expansive powers: Russia and China.

Russia’s situation has been partly explained, but Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, other parts of Ukraine and other states around Russia’s immediate borders remain in danger of forced or manipulated political unification or reunification.

The use of coercion will be of varying degrees but the expansion of political power and geopolitical interests play the central role over economic interests. Already Russia has proven it can secure these gains in the short term with little cost. They will really pay for them in the long term, but only if the West is united against these actions with counter-actions.

The realist drive works better with an analysis of Russia and Russian policy than it does with China. But China is becoming increasingly more realist and politically assertive in East and South East Asia. While the maritime island disputes are the most popular, there are also Chinese political infiltration to the China-India border that receives less attention or the India Ocean and the Chinese involvement in Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

The basic point is that beyond the immediate East, China is expanding and the idea of political unions are forming around them in defense and in spite of them. These unions are set up by the US and are also economic in nature. Such unions established by Europe, Japan and the US are the drivers of a neo-liberal/globalist international world view and they promise better growth, trade and progress than the authoritarian competition of Russia or China. While the alliances and Trans-Pacific Partnership are not political unions, they are politicizing forces similar to them and that could one day lead to some variant, in addition to the many others on the table.

China’s President Xi Jinping recently reaffirmed his commitment to resist democratic political reform. There was some glimmer of hope of in that he did mention the word [political] reform and does see the necessity of it as well as the success of Western states. The problem is that he President Xi sees many failures too of applied Western models too; and also that he believes that they have failed as minor experiments select locations within China which he claims he has tried.

Xi holds strongly to the notion that immediate political reforms are not possible. But he has not offered any long-term alternatives to the CCP one-party rule system in place other than stressing a greater respect for the constitution and the rule of the law. This is a positive step. The problem is that one party cannot be trusted to rule in the favor of the people unless there was: the political freedom of speech, organization and a more transparent and frequent election system that was open to the masses; or at least the larger part of the one billion Chinese as opposed to the 60 million party members.

So everyone that runs for public office in China could effectively run as the CCP and they would have the CCP in name on the ticket but the Chinese people would determine their political platforms and their work in response to and in direct representation of the people that elected them. They could then respond to the people more efficiently and the crises more transparently. They would be rewarded with the ability to run again maybe one more term and then give up office to another.

In short, China could liberalize without democratizing in the short term. This would help its stability and please the West, gaining greater freedom and recognition in the Pacific affairs.

In effect, it would be possible for China to have it both ways but the real battle of President Xi is not with the beautiful logic listed above or the millions of liberal ideals that he is no doubt aware of, and the simplicity of a workable solution to social problems mounting, but the warring internal factions of conservatives. Xi, as much or being more conservative than many of his comrade counterparts, must resist political reforms while addressing cultural reform, corruption and rule of law—an impossibility without more democratic reform.

Like Putin, Xi lives in an authoritarian state that is growing in nationalism and territorial enlargement. There is also a common set of general domestic political themes within Russia and China: the increase nationalism, the favoring of isolationism over internationalism; the protections of political system and party elites from the outside world; seek selective opportunities; blame the world for humiliation of national and ethnic honor; and lastly stabilize authoritarian and socio-economic failures with promises to undermine and fight foreign corruption and political infiltration.

Other poles that will form political unions will be based on further consolidating regions that are testing the strain of the old sovereign state system. This will be seen in the Middle East, Africa and at some point, possibly Latin America, although the last had been temporarily left in isolation from unification and continues to strongly support sovereign borders with minor exceptions.

 

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