America Unplugged

By Peter Zeihan

The presidency of George W. Bush is
failing.

Love him or hate him, Bush has had the most dramatic
international impact of any U.S. president in a generation. But as Bush's
fortunes ebb, his ability to control events in Washington and much further
afield are fading as well. Geopolitics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, and
there is no shortage of players hoping to profit from the political
equivalent of U.S. self-flagellation.

American Paralysis


In August, we wrote that the United States was beginning to move "Beyond
the War on Terrorism." We argued that the United States had achieved the
bulk of what it had set out to do in first containing, and then pursuing and
dismantling, al Qaeda.

We put forward that Iraq was a central
feature of that plan, and that despite the ongoing horrors there, the broad
strategic goals that the United States set out to achieve had indeed been
accomplished. Saudi Arabia, Syria and -- to a lesser extent -- Iran were all
cooperating with the United States in destroying al Qaeda as a strategic
threat. The organization's offensive abilities degraded, from the ability to
pull off a Sept. 11, 2001, attack that reshaped the world, to a series of
metro bombings in London that did not even produce a glimmer of
consideration within the U.K. government that policy should change.
Terrorism, of course, continued to occur around the world, but its ability
to dictate U.S. foreign policy had largely evaporated. All that was left was
some hardly insignificant cleanup, and the United States could then get
around to the serious work of dealing with the real issues: boxing in China
and boxing up Russia.

But Iraq has not flowed gently into epilogue,
and the final agreements that seemed so tantalizingly close in August remain
elusive. In the interim, the American citizenry has grown weary of the
conflict -- in which the number of American dead has now passed 2100 -- and
Bush's popularity has suffered as a result.

But the real inflection
point of this presidency was not Iraq; rather, it was Hurricane
Katrina. Rightly or wrongly, Bush was perceived not just as unprepared
for a major hurricane strike, but also as oblivious to the seriousness of
the humanitarian disaster in New Orleans. This perception solidified the
opposition of the U.S. left, denied the president any help from the American
center and cracked the heretofore unified American right. The result was a
president in danger of losing his core supporters, without whom no president
can effectively rule. Similar circumstances condemned past statesmen such as
Wilson, Truman, Johnson and Nixon into the unenviable company of failed
presidents.

Since Katrina, the Bush administration's fortunes have
only slid further, with three critical defeats standing out most glaringly.
First, its primary congressional ally, former House Majority Leader Tom
DeLay, has been indicted for fundraising improprieties. Second, the
administration's efforts to shuttle Harriet Miers into the Supreme Court
resulted in a break within the Republican Party. Third, the vice president's
chief of staff -- Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- has been indicted for disclosing
the status of undercover intelligence officers to the press, a charge that
may well be pressed against political mastermind Karl Rove, and perhaps even
the vice president himself.

What this amounts to is that the Bush
administration has alienated the Republican Party's religious wing and those
who value national defense above all else. Between that and the loss of
DeLay, the president's star has fallen so far that he can no longer demand
meetings with key legislators; he must negotiate for them. His foreign
policy agenda is weighed down by the albatross of Iraq, and since
congressional Republican leadership is keeping its distance from the
president, his legislative agenda has not so much as budged in months.


Even if Bush manages to recover, we are eyeing what will be at least six
months of extreme administration weakness. If Bush does not recover,
however, stretch that out to until Jan. 20, 2009. A lot can happen in three
years.

And, as chance would have it, the United States is not the
only power currently facing a crisis of confidence and capabilities.


European Paralysis

The failure of the Dutch and French
referendums on the EU constitution during the early summer was more than
simply the failure of a vote; it signaled a failure of the very idea of
Europe as a supranational entity. Ultimately, the European Union
institutions as we know them today are a result of France's efforts to
transform the countries of Europe into a platform over which it could rule
and from which it could project power. France has always wanted to be able
to punch above its weight in the international arena, and Europe was to be
its vehicle for achieving that goal.

Yet in May, the French rejected
the EU constitution -- and with it, the French
vision for Europe.

In large part, the French rejected that
vision because they realized it had become unachievable. The other European
states were not willing to become French vassals, and once the French
realized that they were merely another member in -- and therefore merely
another subject of -- European institutions, French nationalism trumped the
French desire for French Europeanism. As the union expanded, part of being
European came to mean that France does not always get its way. Ultimately,
that is something that the French found unacceptable.

And this was
hardly the limit of what has gone wrong in Europe recently.

The
British enjoy a rebate from the EU budget for the years in which they
contribute more to the EU than they receive back (which is every year). The
French, who convinced the Germans to back them, are guaranteed a full
quarter of all EU agricultural subsidies even though they are among the
union's richest members. With the addition of 10 new -- poorer -- states
into the EU in 2004, the two standing policies are now in direct financial
conflict.

Put another way, for the French to continue to enjoy their
gravy train, either the British have to give up their rebate or all those new
poor states need to give up some of the EU development funds -- the one part
of the EU budget that is actually productive. Family spats over money are
always the most vitriolic, and this one has reopened issues about the
fundamental nature of the EU as well as discussion over the benefits and
problems of enlargements, both past and future.

With the very idea
of a European entity with a global reach DOA, the ability of "Europe" to act
abroad becomes limited to the capabilities of its constituent powers. And in
addition to these powers' lacking Washington's normal reach, they are nearly
as politically truncated as the United States.

As France reels from
the EU constitution defeat, it now also has to deal with the cultural,
political and economic aftermath of three weeks of race
riots. The United Kingdom's position on reducing the EU budget has
radically reduced its influence within Europe. But more importantly, the
Blair government recently
lost its first Parliament vote -- typically an early sign that a prime
minister is about to attach an "ex-" to his title.

Finally, there
is Germany, where Chancellor
Angela Merkel has just wrapped up her first full week on the job. The new
chancellor has more of a chance than any other European leader to get a fresh
start, by seeking a rapprochement with Europe's smaller states as well as the
United States. Yet even if she is wildly successful in her foreign relations,
and even if her awkward left-right coalition is not sunk by inter- and
intra-party bickering, this will still take a great deal of time. No, Europe
is as out of the international picture as the United States is for the
moment.

Of Absent Cats and Busy, Busy Mice

The result
is an unfettered international system.

The world has been gradually
sliding toward true unipolarity for the past 15 years. France's view of the
European Union was one attempt to stem that evolution, as are China and
Russia's on-again, off-again attempts to forge an unwieldy coalition of
powers that contains states such as Brazil, India or Iran. Ultimately,
however, geographic location dictates that all such attempts will fail.


The European Union could never be a political superpower because the
British, Irish, Spanish, Portuguese, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians,
Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Romanians, Bulgarians, Greeks,
Italians, Dutch, Danes, Swedes and Finns really see no point to letting Paris
or Berlin dictate their domestic economic or foreign security policies. The
idea of a multipolar world is similarly unworkable. Adjacent land powers are
only able to ally when both face imminent destruction or one is in a clearly
subordinate position -- something that makes us watch Chinese-Russian
relations with increasing interest -- while a quick glance at the trade
flows of states like Brazil and India clearly show that any political
ambitions for setting up an anti-American alliance are limited predominantly
to rhetoric. It often does not take a great deal of effort for the United
States to use these characteristics to prevent such alliances -- geographic
features alone nearly assure an American preponderance of power -- and so,
since the end of the Soviet Union, U.S. power has increased step by step
relative to other powers.

But what happens when that dominant power
finds itself engrossed by internal developments? When this happened to
Russia during President Vladimir Putin's first term, Central Europe was
swallowed by NATO and the European Union; the United States moved troops
into Central Asia; China -- not Russia -- got its fingers into Kazakhstan's
energy resources and encouraged a thousand migrant feet to bloom in Siberia;
and color revolutions broke Moscow's grip on Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and
Georgia.

But now the United States -- indeed the entire West -- is
in a world of its own.

Eventually the period of inattentiveness will
end, even if it takes until the next election, so time is a precious
commodity. The question dominating the thoughts of national leaders who
often find themselves at loggerheads with Washington is: How do I maximize
my position before Washington stops staring at its own navel?

Down
in Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez has always done his best to take
advantage of Washington's short attention span, and the next few months will
be no exception. For him the mode is the Bolivarian Revolution -- and using
his ample oil revenues to extend his political reach by manipulating
elections in Bolivia and Honduras, supporting indigenous movements in
Ecuador, and likely funding Colombia's new united left wing, the Democratic
Alternative Pole. Across the border in Brazil, President Luiz Inacio "Lula"
da Silva is far less ambitious, but he is certainly reaping the rewards in
terms of public popularity by killing U.S. efforts to create a Western
Hemispheric free trade area -- the keystone of Washington's Latin American
policy.

In Asia, Pyongyang has got to be wallowing in glee. Anytime
the United States is distracted, North Korea tends to be able to foment
crises that get concessions from its neighbors. Beijing, while undoubtedly
equally happy, will be far more circumspect in its efforts. For China, a
U.S. disengagement allows it more time to whip its economy into shape. That
means slowing efforts to amend its currency policy; the yuan
peg will remain, and China need not worry overmuch about the United
States taking advantage of the social unrest that Beijing's softly-softly
economic reforms trigger.

Across the Middle East, where U.S. foreign
policy has been most active since the Sept. 11 attacks, the effect will be
far more noticeable among enemies and allies alike.

Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon will have no reason to do more than give the
occasional polite nod to American requests, allowing him to impose his
own version of a final settlement on the Palestinians; it will be one
they do not much care for. Pressure on Saudi Arabia and Egypt to amend their
political systems will either evaporate or be waved away. Syria has just
gotten the diplomatic equivalent of a get-out-of-jail-free card (and thus
has largely gotten away with the assassination of former Lebanese Prime
Minister Rafik al-Hariri and the maintenance of its position of superiority
in Lebanon). And if you thought the Iranian nuclear program issue was
agonizingly annoying before, just wait.

There is the very deadly
possibility that Iraq will go from bad to worse. With American pressure
ignorable, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran have little reason to cajole groups
to come to the table and every reason to manipulate events to their own
likings -- which, in all cases, involves making the American experience
miserable. U.S. power can no longer guarantee that the Kurds, Shia and
Sunnis will meet, much less hammer out a workable power-sharing accord,
leaving Washington -- still -- holding the bag and handing out concessions
to prevent the situation from degrading further still. And of course, Iraqi
guerrillas are hardly finished.

Although it may be out of the
headlines, the United States is still pursuing the al Qaeda leadership in
the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, which is extremely
difficult without the active participation of Pakistani forces -- forces
that in the best of circumstances need to have their feet held to the fire
to ensure cooperation. Without some robust American arm twisting, Pakistani
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has little incentive to pursue a policy that
could well bring his government down around him -- not to mention put a
bullet in his head.

The Russian Moment

But by far
the country with the most pressing need to act -- and coincidentally, the
most room to act -- is the one that the United States has been pressing the
hardest: Russia.

Unlike U.S. efforts to contain Venezuela or block
a rising China, with Russia the United States is playing for keeps. The
Soviet Union was one of only three states that have ever directly threatened
the United States -- the other two being the British Empire and Mexico. The
Soviet Union also came as close as any power ever has to uniting Eurasia
into a single integrated, continental power -- the only external development
that might be able to end the United States' superpowership. These little
factoids are items that policymakers neither forget nor take lightly. So
while U.S. policy toward China is to delay its rise, and U.S. policy toward
Venezuela is geared toward containment, U.S. policy toward Russia is a
simple as it is final: dissolution. Ergo Russia's
string of deep and rapid defeats.

But suddenly, the pressure has
evaporated.

We are sure to see much more traditional Russian thinking
in efforts to construct a multipolar world: attempts at hiving France and
Germany away from the rest of Europe; heavy diplomatic engagement with
would-be powers like India, China and Venezuela; a resumption of technical
efforts with Iran's nuclear power program; reinsertion of Russian influence
into North Korea and Syria. But ultimately all of these strategies represent
old thinking. What concrete results does Russia really get from having a
"strategic partnership" with India, aside from some arms sales? Political
hegemony in places like Syria reduces Russian strategy to the diplomatic
equivalent of a monkey wrench. The threat to Russia is far deeper, and so if
Russia is to use its breathing room to achieve anything of lasting use, it
needs a change of mind-set -- and that is precisely what is under way.


On Nov. 14 two men -- Dmitry
Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov -- were promoted to deputy prime
ministerships. Both are extremely canny politicians and have repeatedly
demonstrated the ability to think outside of traditional Russian paradigms.
For them, the pre-eminent concern is forestalling further Russian losses and
resurging Russian power. Stymieing U.S. initiatives -- the default position
for most Russian authorities who have been in positions of power since
Soviet days -- is only of high priority when those initiatives actually
affect Russia.

Put another way, the new deputy prime ministers
think that Russian policy should be a bit more thought-out than simply
shouting "nyet" whenever the Americans are up to something. For them issues
such as North Korea, Syria, India, Brazil and even Iran are of much lower
priority. The real issues are items closer to home: Uzbekistan, Ukraine, the
Baltics. It is less about attempting to maintain the long-outdated
international balance of the Cold War that Russia's nationalists crave, and
more about more traditional Russian concerns of securing the borders by
expanding them -- or at minimum expanding Russia's "zones of comfort."


And so it is in these borderlands where Russian efforts will intensify
in the months to come. A key tool in the Russian advance will be Gazprom,
the state natural gas monopoly, which incidentally boasts one Mr. Medvedev
as its chairman of the board. On Nov. 29, Gazprom's deputy CEO announced
sharp price increases for a range of former Soviet states, including the
Baltics, Ukraine and Georgia. In the case of Kiev, such hikes will likely
rip the bottom out of the Ukrainian basket.

A number of politicians
throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States are in the process of
discovering that not only is the Bear not asleep, but the Eagle is too
preoccupied to help shield them from its prowling. In some places -- such as
Poland and the Baltics -- where progress away from Russia is an established
fact, this will only deepen animosity toward Russia. But in others where the
situation is much more tenuous -- most notably Ukraine -- it is leading to
efforts at accommodation and will result in a resurgence of Russian
influence.

While the economic stick is the order of the day in the
western reaches of the former Soviet Union, the southern flank is seeing
primarily the military carrot. Central Asian states are many things, but
"stable" and "politically inclusive" are certainly not on that list. In a
region where Islam is the dominant religion and Afghanistan is but a short
walk -- literally -- away, the result has been a government demonizing of
militant Islam as a justification for authoritarianism.

Yet efforts
to maintain authoritarian control have reduced the options of any opposition
forces to one: operating outside the system. Imagine the shock in Central
Asian capitals when their policies gave life to the fears buried within
their rhetoric. Islam is now a bastion of political -- and sometimes
militant -- opposition, and a few sporadic Islamism-inspired attacks have
shaken Central Asian political establishments to their core. Suddenly the
United States' "revolution" efforts have gone from being perceived as an
interesting side note to a deadly threat, and Russia is happy to pick up the
pieces of Washington's post-Sept. 11 Central Asia security policies for
itself. U.S. forces have already been ushered out of Uzbekistan, and a U.S.
diplomatic and economic presence is really only welcome in Kazakhstan -- and
even there only on specific terms.

What is particularly notable about
this renewed Russian push is how much room there is for progress. American
policy in Russia's near abroad has largely been dependent upon the border
states' natural antipathy toward Moscow, and not on building stable
institutions or links between these regions and the wider world. This makes
vast tracts of territory easily accessible to the Russians, whose
infrastructure remains hardwired into the entire border region. Without
consistent Western attention, geographic realities can easily reassert.
Ukraine -- unlike Romania -- is simply on the wrong side of the Carpathians
for it to be otherwise.

Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.