S400 (photo: Wikipedia)
Contrary to the Fukuyama’s hopes, the history had not come to its end. Tensions related to the events of the last 25 years are likely to pale in comparison with potential results of intensifying competition between the United States of America – acting as a guardian of the world system on one part and the rising power of aspiring continental nations of China and Russia situated in key geopolitical areas of Eurasia – on other part. This competition is unfolding every day before our very eyes.
All of this is of existential importance to Poland, a NATO member state, a close ally to the seapower of United States, a geographical neighbour to a revisionist landpower of Russia and a key large country on the flat and wide Northern European Plain that places constraints on Russia’s strategic drive into the European Rimland. In addition to that, Poland is situated along the course of the Chinese Belt &Road Initiative that is to connect new trade corridors from Asia to the Atlantic Ocean and European Rimland countries, anchoring its European terminus via the Baltic Sea.
For all those reasons in this new era of competition Poland will always be a variable to be calculated into balancing game played in Eurasia by competing powers – even without Poland’s will to do so.
The global system underpinned by the US military power still exists but according to some it is becoming weaker and its survival is not certain. The key components of the fundamental global system i.e.: the capability of the US to project power in an unimpeded manner in the high seas and oceans around Eurasia as well as in Eurasia’s Rimland, a military access to distant allies, economic power of the United States as well as America’s trade dominance in the world are now being contested by the growing economic power of China, its key position in the world economy and by growing sophistication of China’s and Russia’s A2AD (Anti-Access/ Area Denial) systems.
(Photo: Openphoto.net)
The political leaders of the US allies may come to a conclusion that the United States or NATO will not be interested or will not be able to come to their assistance in the event of a crisis, and a lack of a grand American or NATO strategy that would cohesively respond to the most urgent challenges could lead them to such conclusion. A cascade of individual calculations of the nations could lead to major changes in the existing international order and could bring an end to functioning of the Bretton Woods system that emerged from the ashes of the II World War,with all its institutional architecture, financial mechanisms, leading role of the US Dollar in the international economy that has constituted a backbone of the globalisation era and magnified the pacifying effect of the Atlantic security architecture.
The decline of a leader is a primary incentive for the rising powers “testing policy”. That will be the primary challenge for Poland in the nearest future: how to adjust to the new reality, how to respond, what is a proper mix of allied and national response, how to modernize its forces, to hedge or to deter, and how does it all translate to real decisions that will inevitable need to be taken?
The leadership of the rising power may have a serious dilemma to solve: while they are aware of relative decline of the USA and are striving to gain as much vacated strategic space as possible, they are not willing to run excessive risks of confrontation. They want to alter the existing system, but they are unable to unambiguously assess how weak the USA has become, or from the other perspective – how strong the USA still remains. A bad judgment may lead to a strategic blunder, escalation of tensions or direct war of domination. But still, the new policy of a rising power may turn out to be overly risky as even despite severe cuts in US DoD’s expenditures, sequestration, reduction of the land forces and, in the aspect of technological influence on the warfare – the advent of symmetrical battlefield where the war will be fought between more or less equivalent adversaries, the United States still objectively enjoys domination in many aspects of the military domain such as ability to sustain forward presence of its ships and naval bases, battle proven military, the global reach of the strategic air force or its sophisticated and battle network system.
For now ll this still may seem for now to sufficiently reassure America’s old allies in key areas of Western Pacific and Eurasia, including Central Europe as to being covered by the US effective power projection range. Therefore, both China and Russia strive to alter the global system slowly, gradually, step by step, without any unnecessary risk, and certainly without taking a completely insane risk of waging a direct and full-blown war. Instead a gradual probing and testing of the USA’s strength is likely to bring a far more reliable assessment as to the actual balance of powers.
Historically, rising powers were facing a serious dilemma – that is – what sort of means they should apply in order to test the real strength of the leader and how far they could move the ever fluid balance of power in international relations until they encounter a ferocious and firm response from the hitherto dominating power. The “probing strategy” of the leader’s strength carries a temptation to test the leader in distant, forward strategic positions of US presence in Eurasia, which in turn is supposed to allow to assess the power and obtain concessions at the leader’s expense with fairly limited risk of escalation. The probe should take place somewhere in highly challenging positions for US from the military point of view, at the very end of stretched out strategic lines of communications, but still in areas where the US leader has committed itself to provide military presence and support to the ally.
Such positions, mainly from the geographical point of view and due the tyranny of distance are very challenging and require major effort to hold. This in turn constitutes a strategic risk for Poland and for countries of the NATO eastern flank situated at the most forward positions in the direct vicinity of Russian landpower trying to phase out the US seapower from this part of the world.
The crawling confrontation nature resulting from Russia’s probing and testing the leader’s strength strategy may be variable, the particular means may change but the core principle remains the same: avoiding extensive risk of full confrontation with the USA, keeping the rivalry at low intensity level and conducting such competition in the most distant positions from the American point of view, all this dependent upon the everyday refreshed assessment of US strength in the region and globally . Such testing, when crafted wisely, is likely to undermine the American obligations and the US power projection capability being a mainstay of “Pax Americana”, of the Atlantic architecture, and of NATO credibility as effective alliance.
Theoretically we can imagine a situation when, having understood that their situation from the perspective of security has fundamentally changed and with no real perspectives of the US effective assistance and sustainability of the American security warranties, the allies of the USA in Western Pacific and in Europe may decide to accommodate the regional rising powers as is partly seen in the present Middle East reshuffle.
It seems that any such change, if it were to occur in the Western Pacific would signify the end of the current global system because of the region’s importance for the global economy and because China is such an economic behemoth. In case of Central and Eastern Europe such reshuffle would usher in a whole spectrum of behaviours so characteristic of chaotic period distinguished by a lack of perceptible and stabilising role of a dominating power within the system: searching for military autonomy by bigger nations like Poland, forming of the local treaties and alliances resulting in regional arms’ race, “Finlandisation” of certain nations and their direct subjugation to neighbouring power, not to mention the reversals of alliances, bandawagon, reorientations, etc. The stability of the current order would unravel.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
The basic reasons for such strategic change may be simply strategic costs of maintaining the forward military presence framework, costs and efforts necessary to control distant lines of communications to its allies and of political and military supporting the allies. Such shift may be also influenced by Chinese and Russians developing A2AD (anti-access/area denial) capabilities which significantly limit the possibility of the US coming to assist its allies in Western Pacific and in Eurasia. The great balancing within a triangle of US, China and Russia may also trigger the sea power entering into agreements and treaties with powerful contesters above heads of the old allies and at their expense. Unfortunately, rotational as opposed to permanent US military presence in countries on the eastern flank of NATO seems to confirm the America’s allies’ concerns resulting from the above logic. Even worse, this logic may suggest that further rise of China may shift the US policy into containing China at any cost including using Russia as its overt or covert ally balancing the Chinese rising power. Russia seems to understand this game well as it has practiced such policy during Napoleon wars era, during formulation of Great Entente Coalition in the beginning of the XX-th century and during subsequent I World War and II World Wars.
These have been the risks for Poland stemming from “big picture” strategies and great powers rivalry. There are many risks involving the particular strategies and operational decisions in the region that are also difficult to assess and to manage properly given the increasing complexity of possible events.
These are:
– keeping the land lines of communication open from US bases in Western Europe to Poland and to the Baltic States through a narrow and challenging Suwałki Gap,
– keeping the sea communication line open as the Baltic Sea seems to be gravely contested or even denied by the Russian A2AD systems,
– keeping the air lines of communication open as the sophisticated A2AD air defence systems in the Kaliningrad Enclave are dangerously covering the entry and exit points of US systems and reinforcements deployed into Poland,
– direct land threat from Belarussia, 200 km from Warsaw in a good tank terrain, that will always be a primary concern for the Polish military as opposed to the oft-cited Suwałki Gap challenge,
– lack of the support Poland would expect from Western European allies in the face of Russia’s policy towards Ukraine and Baltic States and the Baltic Sea basin that casts doubts as to the NATO’s Art 5 factual credibility and deterrence mechanism.
Autor
Jacek Bartosiak
CEO and Founder of Strategy&Future, author of bestselling books.
Strategy&Future
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