The Geopolitics of China

By George Friedman

Chinese President Hu Jintao visited
Washington last week for a meeting that diplomatically might be called
"nonproductive" -- or, realistically, "disastrous." Not only was nothing
settled, but a series of incidents -- ranging from a reporter shouting
insults at Hu and being permitted to continue doing so for three minutes, to
an announcement that the national anthem of "The Republic of China" (also
known as Taiwan) was being played -- marred the visit, to say the least.


It is hard for us to believe that the admission of a Falun Gong
member to the White House press pool would go unnoticed by the White House
staff, or that it would take three full minutes to silence her. We are, sad
to say, cynical people, and it is plausible that the insults were
deliberate. The American side had been leaking for weeks that Hu would try
to use the visit for his own political ends in China, and wanted to be
granted every honor conceivable during the trip. The White House appeared
irritated by this hubris, although it would, on the surface, appear quite
natural for the United States and China to exchange full diplomatic
courtesies.

Obviously, something serious is going on in Sino-U.S.
relations. The United States has openly discussed a hedge strategy on China,
under which economic relations would proceed while the United States
increased its military presence in the region as a hedge against future
trouble. China, for its part, has been more than a little troublesome in
areas where the United States does not want it to be, particularly during
the current confrontation with Iran.

China and the United States are
bound together economically. That is one of the major problems, since they
need very different things. The Chinese economy,
as we have argued in the past, is not doing nearly as well as its growth
rate would indicate. We won't rehash our views on that. However, the
economic reality creates an obvious tension.
Chinese exports are surging at very low or nonexistent profit margins in
order to sustain a financial system that has accrued a nonperforming loan
burden that is, by some measures, as high as 60 percent of gross domestic
product. The United States is addicted to Chinese imports, and China is
addicted to exporting to the United States. The United States wants China to
revalue the yuan in order to raise the price of Chinese exports. The Chinese,
eager to maintain and increase exports, have no intention of allowing a
meaningful rise in the yuan.

There are other forces binding the two
countries together as well. The most important is Chinese money -- which is
flowing out to other countries precisely because China is no longer a
particularly attractive place for Chinese investment. There is serious
capital flight under way, as money is redeployed to safer havens. The safest
haven from the Chinese point of view is the United States -- thus, Chinese
investment there is surging. And the United States needs this money. In this
sense, both countries are in a death-lock. There is no other economy that is
as large, liquid and safe as the American economy. Chinese investors need
their funds to be in the United States. And there is no larger pool of cash
than China's to finance U.S. debt.

This means that there is no
divorce looming in Sino-U.S. relations. But at the same time, it must be
noted that, despite very close connections between China and Japan,
Sino-Japanese relations have deteriorated remarkably -- and it is China that
has driven the estrangement. The reasons are political: China's government
has domestic problems, and patriotic fervor will tend to buttress Beijing's
power. Japan is still deeply hated for its behavior in World War II, and
attacking Japanese behavior is good politics. The Chinese have strained
relations with Japan nearly to the breaking point.

What is important
here is this: It must not be assumed that China is driven purely by economic
considerations. In the case of Japan, Beijing clearly has subordinated the
economic advantage of having smooth relations with Tokyo to its own domestic
considerations. Now, Japan is not the United States -- it is a significant
country for China, but not economically decisive in the way that the United
States is. The Chinese have more room for maneuver there. At the same time,
it must be understood that China is playing a complex game, and while making
money is up there on the priority list, it is not the only thing up there.
Preserving national unity in the face of centrifugal forces and foreign
power also matters a great deal to the Chinese.

It is therefore time
to stop to consider China's national strategy in the long run, and
therefore, to consider China's geopolitics.

The Geography
Factor

Beginning, as is necessary, with the outlines of China's
national boundaries, we are immediately struck by the fact that China is, in
many ways, an island. To the east are the South and East China Seas. To the
northeast is Siberia, thinly inhabited and to a great extent uninhabitable.
Some limited military expansion in that direction is possible, but a large
population could not be sustained. To the direct north is Mongolia --
occasionally part of China, occasionally the ruler of China, but currently a
fairly unimportant area, not worth projecting force into. To the southwest
are the Himalayas. There is frequent talk of India as balancing China, but
this is, in fact, meaningless.
They are as much separated as if there were a wall. There can be skirmishes
along the dividing line in the Himalayas, but no massive movement of armies.


In the southeast, there is Indochina. China could expand there, but
the last time there were land-based skirmishes, in 1979, Vietnam beat the
Chinese soundly (though both sides claimed victory). Jungles and mountains
stretching from eastern India to the South China Sea make that region
impassable, even without the need for self-defense. Finally, there are the
western approaches into Central Asia, through Kazakhstan. This has been the
traditional, and in some ways only, route for Chinese aggression. China is
certainly deeply involved in Central Asia, but its own region of Xinjiang is
both Muslim and hostile to Beijing. It does not provide a base for launching
invasions, even if one was wanted.

For these reasons, China must be
viewed as one of the most insular great powers in the world. It has occupied
most of the terrain that is accessible to it; what remains is either
inaccessible, undesirable or quite able to defend itself. China's great
interest, therefore, should be the oceans. Over the past 20 years, China has
become a major exporter and thus should have a great interest in securing its
sea lanes. But China's coastal waters are effectively controlled by the U.S.
7th Fleet. Constructing a navy that could challenge the U.S. Navy would take
a fortune, which China probably has, but also one or two generations would be
needed -- not only for construction, but for establishing a military culture
suitable for an aggressive naval force.

Most important, challenging
the U.S. Navy with a Chinese navy cannot be done regionally. The United
States has fleets other than the 7th Fleet, and if the U.S. Navy were
concentrated against China, the Chinese could not fight a defensive battle.
They would have to take the fight to the Americans, and that would mean
fielding a global naval force. China might one day have that, but they do
not have it now. In this sense, the standard concerns about a Chinese
invasion of Taiwan are not realistic. China does not have a naval force
capable of taking control of the Taiwan Strait, nor the amphibious force
needed to gain significant lodgment in Taiwan, nor therefore -- and this is
the key -- the ability to sustain a multidivisional force in
Taiwan.

The Internal Divide

China does not have many
regional options with conventional forces nor, for that matter, does it face
a conventional threat from within the region. China's primary geopolitical
problem, and thus its chief military mission, is domestic. China is a highly
diverse and fragmented country; maintaining control of the current extent of
the country is the major strategic problem. Unlike most nations, whose
external geopolitical problems define their military thinking, China's
internal geopolitical problems drive its military planning.

There
are two dimensions to these problems. The first is ethnic: China occupies
areas like Xinjiang, Tibet and Manchuria that are ethnically distinct and
sometimes restive. The other and deeper problem, however, is not ethnic but
regional. China has a large coastal plain. It also has a vast interior that
is mountainous. The tension between those two regions historically has been
a great challenge that China has faced.

The interior is heavily
driven by agriculture -- subsistence agriculture. It is extraordinarily
poor, and arable land is minimal. The coastal regions are relatively better
off, to the extent to which they conduct international trade through coastal
ports. Thus, China has had two realities. In one, the coastal regions were
cut off from the rest of the world, and there was a rough equality between
the regions. Until the British showed up in the 19th century, for example,
trading with foreigners had been illegal. After the British forced China
open, the coastal regions boomed, and the country fragmented; the coastal
regions, manipulated by foreigners who were in turn manipulated, turned
outward to the ocean, while the interior stagnated. Mao tried to create a
revolution in Shanghai and failed. Instead, he went on his Long March to
Yenan in the interior, raised a peasant army from there, and came back to
conquer the coast. He also closed off China from the world, creating poverty
but relative unity.

Deng gambled with the idea that he would be able
to have his cake and eat it too. He opened China to the world, thereby
enriching the coastal regions and recreating the tension that Mao had sought
to abolish. For 30 years, Deng's gamble worked. Now it is breaking down.
Beijing is urgently trying to shift resources from the wealthy coastal
regions to the restive interior. The coastal provinces naturally are
resisting. The great question is whether Beijing will be able to juggle the
two realities, whether China will again turn inward to maintain geopolitical
integrity or if it will fragment further into warring
regions.

Balancing the two indefinitely is the least likely outcome.
But China does have one other card to play, which is patriotism. The
Communist Party has little legitimacy at this point, but the idea of China
-- particularly among ethnic Chinese of whatever region -- is not a trivial
driver. In order to generate patriotic fervor, however, there must be a
threat and an enemy. At this point, the Chinese are using the Japanese in
order to sustain patriotism. Reclaiming Taiwan would stir the spirits and
reduce regional tensions, but this, as we have pointed out, would be
militarily difficult in any conventional way. Moreover, it would bring a
confrontation with the United States.

Priorities and
Options

If we accept the idea that maintaining the territorial
integrity of China is its greatest geopolitical imperative and that regional
prosperity comes second for Beijing, it follows that the government will
attempt to impose its will on the coast, and trade and economic concerns
will come second. Beijing's interest in having smooth trade relations wanes,
both because the wealth gap exacerbates tensions between the regions and
because the interest runs counter to its need for external confrontation. It
follows from this that China's primary interest -- and ability -- would be to
maintain security in China, and that foreign adventures would be avoided
except under circumstances in which they would have a high probability of
success and would serve internal political interests.

A secondary
goal would be to protect China's coast from foreign encroachment. Imagine
the following scenario: Business and Party interests in the coastal region
are resisting Beijing's efforts to bring them under control and impose
taxes. The situation becomes unstable, and Western interests, investments
and the expatriate community living there are jeopardized. Through some
political contrivance, these local leaders position themselves as the
regional authority and ask for American intervention. The United States
decides to intervene. Given that this is roughly what happened in the late
19th and early 20th centuries in China -- during which time there was a
major American presence in Shanghai -- it is not as far-fetched as it might
seem.

Under these circumstances, the government in Beijing would be
forced to resist or abdicate. So, if the primary interest of China is the
maintenance of internal security, a secondary interest would be deterring
foreign interventions in the event of instability. The tertiary interest
would be some form of force projection in the region, particularly against
Taiwan -- which not only could be regarded as an internal security matter
but would provide the regime with patriotic credibility.

If we accept
the premises that China's major resources will go to the army for security
purposes, and that China is at least a generation away from having a
significant naval force, then what military options do the Chinese have?
Obviously, one is its nuclear force. That is a serious deterrent; nations
have attacked nuclear powers (Egypt and Syria against Israel in 1973) but
not for the fairly marginal reasons the United States might have to get
involved in China at some hypothetical future date. But given that
deterrence runs both ways, nuclear stalemate always leaves opportunities for
subnuclear threats.

The prime military lever within China's reach is
not sea-lane control, but rather sea-lane denial. Using anti-ship missiles,
the Chinese could impose heavy attrition on the sea-lanes leading to Taiwan
and even potentially interdict Japan's sea-lanes. This would not guarantee
China control of the sea-lanes, and that is a problem if China is importing
oil by sea. However, in extremis, it would hurt Taiwan and Japan more than
China. And if the Chinese had systems that could threaten to overload U.S.
Aegis and follow-on systems designed to protect warships, then it could
force the 7th Fleet to retreat as well. The tactic would serve as a
deterrent against intervention and as a suitable secondary system to
supplement the army. It would also serve as a threat to the interests, if
not the survival, of Taiwan.

All of this is of course hypothetical
and speculative. It assumes that the current trends in Chinese relations
with Japan and the United States are merely road bumps rather than
fundamental shifts in China's pattern. But given that China does shift its
pattern every 30 years or so, and that the stresses on China make it
reasonable to expect some shift -- and finally, given that there is a trend
toward increased tensions in play -- it is not unreasonable to think of
China in a different way than has been customary. China has been seen by
Americans as a giant money factory. It is that, but it is both less than
that and more. It is a great power facing other great powers, and a
superpower. And while the scenarios here are extreme, thinking about the
extremes can be useful.

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

The Shiite Schisms

By Kamran Bokhari

Highly anticipated public talks between the
United States and Iran over the future of Iraq have been lagging behind
schedule, while the rhetorical exchanges between Tehran and Washington over
Iran's nuclear program have been gaining volume. To our minds, the
escalation on the nuclear issue -- which can be viewed as a lever rather
than an end in itself for Tehran -- is a sign that a deal might be in the
making in other channels. But there is a sticking point that must be
resolved before public talks can take place, and that is the political
impasse that has delayed the formation of a permanent government in
Baghdad.

Despite the fact that Iraq's national election results were
finalized nearly three months ago, there has been no agreement on the
selection of a new prime minister. The interim prime minister, Ibrahim
Jaafari, has been nominated to return to that position, but his nomination
has been vehemently opposed by other political parties and even Shiite
factions within his own United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) coalition. The
situation, which appears to be worsening by the day, is born partly from
serious disagreements among the four major blocs in parliament; perhaps even
more significantly, it stems from schisms within Iraq's majority Shiite
community.

Those schisms for some time have been exploited by
others. The United States and Iran, of course, are the most critical players
at the table, and the Iraqi Shia have been integral to the
strategies of both. Thus far, Washington and Tehran have been exploiting
the internal differences of the ethnic majority in order to secure their own
interests in Iraq. However, managing the Shia has become a tremendous
challenge for both Washington and Tehran, who now need to help repair the
rifts in order to move toward their own larger goals in the region.


In short, understanding Iraq's Shiite factions -- and the interplay
between them -- is critical to understanding Iran's future course and its
implications for the region.

A Fractured Community

The
Shia are acutely aware of their own divisions and the risk to their
political power within Iraq. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani -- the most important
religious leader for the Iraqi Shia -- has said that the unity of the Shiite
political alliance must be upheld at all costs.

Al-Sistani's
political influence has its limits, but it is not
inconsiderable.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraq's
Shiite community has been held together by three forces: the dominant
political trend of Islamism, the clerical establishment based in An Najaf,
and Iran, which has varying degrees of influence with nearly every
significant Shiite leader or group. Together, these three forces have
prevented the rise of a viable secular political group among the Shia.


Thus, when what is now the main Shiite political coalition -- the
UIA -- was formed, it was put together with the blessings of the religious
establishment, which is led by al-Sistani. The UIA is an Islamist-leaning
political bloc, but beyond that common thread, it would be difficult to
refer to the coalition as "united." There are significant tensions and
rivalries between each of its three main components -- Hizb al-Dawah (HD),
the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Muqtada
al-Sadr's movement. All three groups are offshoots of the original Hizb
al-Dawah, which was founded in the 1950s by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr -- a
leading Shiite Islamist ideologue and the uncle of Muqtada
al-Sadr.



The
al-Sadrites are a fairly new addition to the UIA. When he first emerged on
the political scene, Muqtada al-Sadr was widely regarded as an upstart.
However, given his family connections -- not only was his uncle well-known,
but his father was a grand ayatollah who was killed by agents of Saddam
Hussein -- he has been able to build a large following among the poorer
Shiite classes.

That following became important to the UIA during
the campaign season leading up to Iraq's Dec. 15 vote. The alliance already
had been weakened by disappointment with Jaafari's political leadership and
the departure of several groups, including a faction led by secular figure
Ahmed Chalabi and a part of Iraqi Hezbollah. Moreover, with Sunni parties
agreeing to participate in the election, the UIA knew it would need the
votes of al-Sadr's followers in order to maintain its parliamentary
majority. Thus, the "upstart" leader joined the ruling coalition -- and it
has been a marriage of strange bedfellows indeed.

For one thing, the
al-Sadrites have never gotten along well with SCIRI, which is led by Abdel
Aziz al-Hakim (currently the president of the UIA). SCIRI was founded in
Tehran in 1982 by Shiite exiles from Iraq who wanted to install an Islamist
regime in Baghdad. It is still viewed as the Iraqi Shiite group with the
closest political ties to Tehran. Both SCIRI and the al-Sadr movement have
militias of their own -- the Badr Organization and the Mehdi Army -- and
their clashes between April 2003 and late 2005 were what helped to clinch
the prime ministerial nomination for
the controversial Jaafari.

Jaafari's HD party is divided as well, into
two factions. The main grouping has been led by Jaafari since his
predecessor, Izz al-Deen Saleem, was killed by suicide bombers in May 2004.
This faction spent time in exile in Europe and Syria. A smaller faction,
known as Hizb al-Dawah-Tandheem al-Iraq, splintered from the main party in
the 1980s. It has been more closely aligned with Tehran and was based in
Iran during the period of exile.

Although these three groups are the
primary players within the UIA, there also are several independents who are
influential. These include Hussein Shahristani, a former nuclear physicist
who is deputy speaker in the interim parliament. Shahristani is believed to
be al-Sistani's most trusted political ally. Another key player is Muwaffaq
al-Rubaie, who serves as national security adviser under the current interim
government -- a position he also held under the previous Coalition
Provisional Authority.

The Trouble With Jaafari

Were
it not for political needs and pragmatic opportunism, it would be difficult
to understand how such a diverse grouping ever could agree on their
leadership under a united political banner. Needless to say, that process --
for the interim government that took power in spring 2005 -- was a
hard-fought battle. Ultimately, the competition was between Jaafari and
Chalabi, with the latter withdrawing his nomination under pressure from
senior alliance members.

Jaafari won out and served one term as
interim prime minister. However, by the time national elections to install a
permanent government in Baghdad were held in December 2005, public opinion of
Jaafari's administration had soured among all of Iraq's ethnic groups and in
Washington, for various reasons. That has led to serious infighting in the
UIA since the beginning of this year -- and the fissures have only widened
in recent weeks as the Bush administration, the Sunnis, the Kurds and the
secular nationalists have played their hands.

After weeks of
deliberation designed to build consensus on a prime minister nominee, the
matter went to a vote. Deputies from the alliance's member parties had to
choose between Jaafari and Adel Abdel-Mahdi, a senior leader of SCIRI.
Jaafari got the nomination by one vote, but the widespread opposition to his
leadership has led to calls, even within the UIA, for his nomination to be
scrapped in favor of another candidate, and several names have been floated.
Jaafari, of course, has refused to relinquish his position and he still has
the backing of some political allies -- even though another HD member, Ali
al-Adeeb, recently has been suggested as a replacement.

The UIA's
leadership must proceed carefully on this matter. Recognizing that too much
pressure against Jaafari could lead to the collapse of the Shiite alliance,
they have sought out al-Sistani -- who, again, is one of the few unifying
forces for the Iraqi Shiite community. The ayatollah has urged the Shiite
factions to sort out their differences but has refrained from endorsing
Jaafari or any alternative candidates.

The Shia have not yet found a
solution to the Jaafari problem, but they have bought some time through a
neat political maneuver. The UIA has made any agreement on its part to
nominate another candidate as prime minister contingent upon a deal to
revisit choices for other coveted posts: president, vice-president, speaker
of parliament, interior, defense, and oil ministries. They also have tried
to mitigate the pressure on the UIA by finding fault with a Sunni, Tariq
al-Hashmi, who was nominated as speaker of parliament. And there have been
attempts to create a National Security Council as a power-sharing mechanism.


But as yet, there is no end to the political infighting in sight.


The Influence of al-Sistani

The fact that all the
parties within the Shiite bloc have sought al-Sistani's assistance
underscores the political influence of the grand ayatollah -- perhaps more
so than the religious establishment as a whole.

There are three
other grand ayatollahs in Iraq: Muhammad Fayyad, an Afghan; Hussein Bashir
al-Najafi, from Pakistan; and Muhammad Said al-Hakim, an Iraqi. These three
men are all of equal stature. Al-Sistani outranks them all, and the Shiite
political factions are increasingly dependent upon him in the role of
kingmaker.

But it is important to note that neither al-Sistani's
interests, nor those of the Iraqi Shia as a whole, are synonymous with those
of their religious brethren in Tehran.

The clerical establishments in
Iraq and Iran certainly have common ties; Al-Sistani, for example, was born
in Iran, and Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini -- founder of the Islamic regime in
Tehran -- studied at the seminary in An Najaf. But there is a significant
rivalry within the Shiite world as well, characterized by the Najaf and Qom
schools of thought. The Najaf school -- so called after the Iraqi city that
has been a major religious center since the Shiite sect emerged in the early
8th century -- adheres to a "quietist" approach in politics, meaning that the
ulema do not hold office directly but exercise a great deal of influence and
oversight in governance. The Qom school -- named after the Iranian religious
center, which gained prominence in the early 16th century after the rise of
the Safavid Empire -- has favored a direct role for the ulema in politics.


Thus, the Iranian regime -- heirs of Khomeini and the Qom school --
has its differences with al-Sistani, who follows the quietist approach of
the Najaf factions. Those differences also can be seen, in varying degrees,
with Iraqi groups strongly influenced by Iran.

For the time being,
al-Sistani still is able to exert influence as a spiritual leader to help
bind the various Shiite factions together. But given his age (76), previous
threats to his life and other factors, one must consider what it would mean
if he were to die or become incapacitated.

There certainly could be
opportunities for some Shiite groups in Iraq if al-Sistani were to leave a
power vacuum. The al-Sadrites, for example, harbor no great love for the
cleric for numerous reasons, including personal histories: The Hussein
regime tolerated al-Sistani and his quietist approach but tortured and
killed al-Sadr's father (rival cleric Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq
al-Sadr) and several of his brothers in the late 1990s. Moreover, the
departure of the powerful grand ayatollah could allow figures like al-Sadr,
who is not a cleric, to gain more personal clout. SCIRI, too -- as a
creation of the Iranians -- has found al-Sistani's influence as a limitation
to its own power.

That said, these factions -- and outside players
like the United States and Iran -- still need him, for the time being, to
bring what cohesion he can to the Shiite community.

The United
States is not overly concerned with the unity of the Shia per se, but the
Bush administration certainly would oppose any political moves that would
bring further disintegration to the Shiite bloc and potentially derail the
political process, which is critical to plans for a military drawdown and --
of course -- to public talks with Iran. Tehran, which has degrees of leverage
with practically all of the Iraqi Shiite factions, likely could tolerate any
candidate put forward as prime minister by the Shiite bloc. On the other
hand, it doesn't want the UIA alliance to collapse, since that would
translate into an aggregate loss of influence for Tehran in Iraq.

The
paradox by now should be clear: Most of the players -- both within Iraq and
in the region -- view a robust and united Shiite majority as a threat to
their interests, but the divisions among the Shia have reached such a
critical juncture that there are very real concerns about the overall level
of stability in the country. The one thing that everyone can agree on is
that achieving a balance somewhere in the middle would be the best outcome.
And this is nothing short of a Herculean task, given the political
landscape.

The two chief actors, as we have stated previously, are
Iran and the United States. And while they agree on the need for a certain
level of stability, they differ in their views of just how cohesive the
Iraqi Shia should be. Washington wants a sectarian faction that hangs
together well enough to act as a counterbalance to the Sunnis, Kurds and
other factions and to contain the jihadists. Tehran, of course, wants as
strong a Shiite community as possible -- and, ideally, a government in
Baghdad that will allow Iran to catapult to regional hegemony.

The
current deadlock over Jaafari and the prime ministership eventually will be
resolved, but the structural reality among the Shia is not likely to change.
The internal divisions within Iraq's majority community will continue to be
significant -- in Baghdad and far beyond -- for quite some time to come.

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

Idealism, Realism and U.S. Foreign Policy

By George Friedman

Iran says it has enriched uranium. Hosni
Mubarak is claiming that Shia in Sunni states are traitors to their
countries. The French are in political and economic gridlock. With all these
urgent things going on, it seems to us that it is time to talk of something
important, something that has driven and divided American politics for
centuries and will continue to do so: the argument between those who have
been called idealists and those who have been labeled realists in U.S.
foreign policy.

When the United States was in its infancy, France
experienced a revolution that was in many ways similar to the American
Revolution. Some Americans wanted to support the French revolutionaries,
arguing that the United States had to pursue its moral ideals and stand by
its moral partner. Others pointed out that the American economy was heavily
dependent on Britain, the major market for American goods. Moreover, the
young country relied on its ability to send exports to Europe, and the
waters were controlled by Britain. Whatever moral inclinations the Americans
might have had toward France, prudence required that they not take on
Britain. The idealists tried to frame their arguments strategically and the
realists tried to create a moral cast for their argument, but the problem,
in the end, was simple: America's survival depended on not alienating a
country that was everything the colonists had fought against.

This
argument has constantly torn apart American thinking about foreign policy.
Consider this example from the more recent past: In World War II, the United
States was allied with the Soviet Union, which was ruled by a genocidal
maniac, Josef Stalin. At the time that the United States allied with Stalin,
Adolf Hitler was only beginning to climb into Stalin's class of killer. There
were those who argued that the alliance with Stalin was a betrayal of every
principle Americans stood for. Others, like Franklin Roosevelt, recognized
that unless the United States allied with Stalin, Hitler likely would win
the war. Those who opposed an alliance with Stalin based on moral ideals
certainly had an excellent point -- but those who argued that, apart from an
alliance with the devil, the Republic might not survive, also had an
excellent point.

Consider a final example. In 1972, the United States
appeared to be a declining power. It was losing the war in Vietnam, and its
position globally appeared to be deteriorating. The Soviet Union had split
from China years before, and their confrontation along their frontier had,
on occasion, been bloody. War was possible. Richard Nixon created an entente
with the Chinese that was designed to encircle the Soviet Union. In
retrospect, the strategy worked. However, in establishing relations with
Mao's China, the United States once again aligned itself with a murderous
regime. The alternative was an unstoppable Soviet regime.

In each of
these cases, the United States confronted this dilemma. On one side was the
argument that unless the United States stood for its moral ideals, it would
survive but lose its soul. Siding with Britain, Stalin or Mao might have
been prudent, but it was a shallow prudence that would eliminate the raison
d'etre for the American regime. On the other side was the argument that
there could be no moral regime unless there was a regime. The United States
did not have the strength to resist, on its own, Britain, Nazi Germany or
the Soviet Union. Without such questionable allies, the moral project would
be impossible because the United States either would not survive, or would
survive as a spent force.

It is important to note that these
arguments cut across political and even ideological grounds. In 1972, people
on the left celebrated Nixon's alliance with Mao, and it was the right wing
that raised moral doubts. Of course, many on the right supported Nixon and
some on the left, not taken by the romance of Maoism, were appalled at the
alignment. Similarly, it was the left in World War II that wanted an
alliance with the Soviets, and Winston Churchill -- far from a leftist --
stood with them. In other words, the debate has never been an ideologically
coherent argument. It has been all over the place.

The current
incarnation of this argument concerns the U.S.-jihadist war, and the
ideological complexity shows itself quickly.

There are two flavors
of idealists here. First, there are those who argue that in waging its war
against the jihadists, the United States should never do anything that would
violate basic principles of human rights -- and that it should avoid
alliances with states that are themselves oppressive. So, for example, some
argue that working closely with Saudi Arabia, a kingdom they regard as
antithetical to American moral standards, is unacceptable.

There are
also those who argue that the primary reason for going to war in the Middle
East is to create democracies there. There are two sorts of idealists here.
There are the neoconservatives -- some of whom sincerely believe the
prodemocracy argument, and others who have adopted it as a justification for
military campaigns they supported for other reasons. But alongside the
neoconservatives, there are liberals who argue that the protection of "human
rights" -- often used interchangeably with "democracy" -- should be the
primary justification for any war. Recall liberal support for the Kosovo war
as an example.

On the other side of the rhetorical divide are those
who make two arguments. The first is that -- as in the historical cases
involving Britain, the Soviet Union and China -- the practical reality is
that the United States must always work with allies when fighting in the
Eastern Hemisphere, and that those allies frequently will be morally
repugnant to Americans. In other words, whatever you may think of the
Saudis' view of women, an alliance with Saudi Arabia has been indispensable
for fighting the war against al Qaeda, regardless of whether the later Iraq
campaign was justified. In other words, the argument for alliance in the
past remains valid today.

This is extended to the argument that the
United States should have as its goal the creation of democracy in the
Middle East. The counterargument goes like this: Democracy in the Middle
East may be, in some moral sense, a good idea, but American power -- though
enormous -- is not infinite. The jihadists in Iraq and elsewhere have not
been crushed, and the United States needs regional allies. The Americans,
the logic goes, cannot simultaneously seek alliance and try to overthrow
regimes.

The idealist argument -- that a country that pursues only
its physical and economic security will lose its moral foundation -- is not
a frivolous argument. At a certain point, the pursuit of security requires
the pursuit of power, and the pursuit of power is corrupting. At the same
time, pursuing justice without a sufficiently large sword will get you
whipped. And staying out of the fight does not mean that the fight won't
come to you. The American moral project can be lost in two ways: through
opportunistic corruption or through annihilation.

Politicians do not
have the luxury of contemplating the paradox of being. They must make
decisions, and inaction is very much a decision. George Washington decided
that safety trumped political principle and broadly steered clear of the
French revolutionary regime. Franklin Roosevelt saw the path to preserving
democracy through alliance with Stalin. Nixon swallowed political principle
by flying to Beijing. In retrospect, it is very difficult to see how any of
them could have chosen differently. A doctrine emerges in looking at these
three examples: the pursuit of political principles is possible only when
one is willing to look at the long term; the near term requires ruthless and
unsentimental compromise.

Had the idealist demand that the United
States never work with oppressive nations been honored, Hitler well might
have won World War II. The pursuit of democracy that forces the United
States beyond its military and political resources ultimately will weaken
democracy. Moral demands that are not rooted in political and military
reality achieve the opposite of the desired end. But the realist position
also has its weakness. Sometimes being ruthless becomes an end in itself.
Sometimes the defense of the national interest becomes a justification for
defending one's own interest.

These are not simple matters but, as
noted, politicians do not have time to contemplate them for very long. Their
natural inclination is to act, and the action they gravitate toward is the
pursuit of power. It is interesting to note that the president most often
associated with the pursuit of human rights, Abraham Lincoln, was -- in the
course of its pursuit -- a ruthless violator of those rights. No one
violated constitutional protections more systematically than Lincoln, and no
one was more dedicated to those protections. The paradox, however, is simply
solved: The path from Point A to Point B is almost never a straight line.
Anyone who heads in a straight line will fail. This is a lesson that is
equally applicable to the neoconservatives and Amnesty
International.

This discussion becomes important now because the
United States is pirouetting between factions in the Islamic world. The
United States won World War II by pragmatically taking advantage of the
totalitarian states and allying with Stalin. The United States won the Cold
War by taking advantage of a split between Communist states and allying with
China. And viewed from a high level, the United States is in the process of
trying to win the jihadist war by taking advantage of the split between
Sunnis and Shia and allying with Iran.

There are excellent moral
arguments in favor of fighting a war to bring democracy to Iraq. There are
excellent moral arguments for never having gotten involved in Iraq in the
first place. There are excellent moral arguments for not having gotten into
Desert Storm -- against having based troops in Saudi Arabia and getting al
Qaeda furious at the United States in the first place. From all directions,
the world is filled with outstanding moral arguments, and they have their
place.

But first there is the reality that exists now. The United
States has too many enemies and too few forces through which to impose its
will. As in World War II and the Cold War, splitting the enemy is a
practical imperative that precedes all moral imperatives. In this case, that
means playing off the various factions within the Muslim world and making the
best deal possible with one power or another. In any deal, the United States
will wind up allied with someone that the Americans disapprove of, much as
their future ally will disapprove of them.

The United States may
well wind up making a deal with Iran over Iraq. Alternatively, a Sunni
coalition led by Saudi Arabia might give Washington the opportunity to
negotiate with the Baathist guerrillas in the Sunni Triangle. Whichever path
is followed, it will be condemned by both left and right for dozens of
excellent moral reasons.

Bush has been pursuing the path of
pragmatism, however clumsily or adroitly, for months now. He will make a
deal with someone because going it alone is not an option. The current
situation in Iraq cannot be sustained, and all presidents ultimately respond
to reality. Bush might have to eat some words about democracy and the United
States' commitment thereto, but if Roosevelt could speak of the Four
Freedoms while working with Josef Stalin, all things are possible.

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

Borderlands and Immigrants

By George Friedman



The United States has returned to its recurring debate over immigration.
This edition of the debate, focused intensely on the question of illegal
immigration from Mexico, is phrased in a very traditional way. One side
argues that illegal migration from Mexico threatens both American economic
interests and security. The other side argues that the United States
historically has thrived on immigration, and that this wave of migration is
no different.



As is frequently the case, the policy debate fails to take fundamental
geopolitical realities into account.



To begin with, it is absolutely true that the United States has always been
an immigrant society. Even the first settlers in the United States -- the
American Indian tribes -- were migrants. Certainly, since the first
settlements were established, successive waves of immigration have both
driven the American economy and terrified those who were already living in
the country. When the Scots-Irish began arriving in the late 1700s, the
English settlers of all social classes thought that their arrival would
place enormous pressure on existing economic processes, as well as bring
crime and immorality to the United States.



The Scots-Irish were dramatically different culturally, and their arrival
certainly generated stress. However, they proved crucial for populating the
continent west of the Alleghenies. The Scots-Irish solved a demographic
problem that was at the core of the United States: Given its population at
that time, there simply were not enough Americans to expand settlements west
of the mountains -- and this posed a security threat. If the U.S. population
remained clustered in a long, thin line along the Atlantic sea board, with
poor lines of communication running north-south, the country would be
vulnerable to European, and especially British, attack. The United States
had to expand westward, and it lacked the population to do so. The Americans
needed the Scots-Irish.



Successive waves of immigrants came to the United States over the next 200
years. In each case, they came looking for economic opportunity. In each
case, there was massive anxiety that the arrival of these migrants would
crowd the job market, driving down wages, and that the heterogeneous
cultures would create massive social stress. The Irish immigration of the
1840s, the migrations from eastern and southern Europe in the 1880s -- all
triggered the same concerns. Nevertheless, without those waves of
immigration, the United States would not have been able to populate the
continent, to industrialize or to field the mass armies of the 20th century
that established the nation as a global power.



Population Density and Economic Returns



Logic would have it that immigration should undermine the economic
well-being of those who already live in the United States. But this logic
assumes that there is a zero-sum game. That may be true in Europe or Asia.
It has not been true in the United States. The key is population density:
The density of the United States, excluding Alaska, is 34 people per square
kilometer. By comparison, the population density in the United Kingdom is
247 per square kilometer, 231 in Germany and 337 in Japan. The European
Union, taken as a whole, has a population density of 115. If the United
States were to equal the United Kingdom in terms of density, it would have a
population of about 2 billion people.



Even accepting the premise that some parts of the United States are
uninhabitable and that the United Kingdom is over-inhabited, the point is
that the United States' population is still small relative to available
land. That means that it has not come even close to diminishing economic
returns. To the extent to which the population-to-land ratio determines
productivity -- and this, in our view, is the critical variable -- the
United States still can utilize population increases. At a time when
population growth from native births is quite low, this means that the
United States still can metabolize immigrants. It is, therefore, no accident
that over the past 40 years, the United States has absorbed a massive influx
of Asian immigrants who have been net producers over time. It's a big
country, and much of it is barely inhabited.



On this level, the immigration issue poses no significant questions. It is a
replay of a debate that has been ongoing since the founding of the country.
Those who have predicted social and economic disaster as a result of
immigration have been consistently wrong. Those who have predicted growing
prosperity have been right. Those who have said that the national character
of the United States would change dramatically have been somewhat right;
core values have remained in place, but the Anglo-Protestant ethnicity
represented at the founding has certainly been transformed. How one feels
about this transformation depends on ideology and taste. But the simple fact
is this: The United States not only would not have become a trans-continental
power without immigration; it would not have industrialized. Masses of
immigrants formed the armies of workers that drove industrialism and made
the United States into a significant world power. No immigration, no United
States.



Geography: The Difference With Mexico



Now, it would seem at first glance that the current surge of Mexican
migration should be understood in this context and, as such, simply
welcomed. If immigration is good, then why wouldn't immigration from Mexico
be good? Certainly, there is no cultural argument against it; if the United
States could assimilate Ukrainian Jews, Sicilians and Pakistanis, there is
no self-evident reason why it could not absorb Mexicans. The argument
against the Mexican migration would seem on its face to be simply a repeat
of old, failed arguments against past migrations.



But Mexican migration should not be viewed in the same way as other
migrations. When a Ukrainian Jew or a Sicilian or an Indian came to the
United States, their arrival represented a sharp geographical event;
whatever memories they might have of their birthplace, whatever cultural
values they might bring with them, the geographical milieu was being
abandoned. And with that, so were the geopolitical consequences of their
migration. Sicilians might remember Sicily, they might harbor a cultural
commitment to its values and they might even have a sense of residual
loyalty to Sicily or to Italy -- but Italy was thousands of miles away. The
Italian government could neither control nor exploit the migrant's presence
in the United States. Simply put, these immigrants did not represent a
geopolitical threat; even if they did not assimilate to American culture --
remaining huddled together in their "little Italys" -- they did not threaten
the United States in any way. Their strength was in the country they had
left, and that country was far away. That is why, in the end, these
immigrants assimilated, or their children did. Without assimilation, they
were adrift.







The Mexican situation is different. When a Mexican comes to the United
States, there is frequently no geographical split. There is geographical
continuity. His roots are just across the land border. Therefore, the entire
immigration dynamic shifts. An Italian, a Jew, an Indian can return to his
home country, but only with great effort and disruption. A Mexican can and
does return with considerable ease. He can, if he chooses, live his life in
a perpetual ambiguity.



The Borderland Battleground



This has nothing to do with Mexicans as a people, but rather with a
geographical concept called "borderlands." Traveling through Europe, one
will find many borderlands. Alsace-Lorraine is a borderland between Germany
and France; the inhabitants are both French and German, and in some ways
neither. It also is possible to find Hungarians -- living Hungarian lives --
deep inside Slovakia and Romania.



Borderlands can be found throughout the world. They are the places where the
borders have shifted, leaving members of one nation stranded on the other
side of the frontier. In many cases, these people now hold the citizenship
of the countries in which they reside (according to recognized borders), but
they think and speak in the language on the other side of the border. The
border moved, but their homes didn't. There has been no decisive
geographical event; they have not left their homeland. Only the legal
abstraction of a border, and the non-abstract presence of a conquering army,
has changed their reality.



Borderlands sometimes are political flashpoints, when the relative power of
the two countries is shifting and one is reclaiming its old territory, as
Germany did in 1940, or France in 1918. Sometimes the regions are quiet; the
borders that have been imposed remain inviolable, due to the continued power
of the conqueror. Sometimes, populations move back and forth in the
borderland, as politics and economics shift. Borderlands are everywhere.
They are the archaeological remains of history, except that these remains
have a tendency to come back to life.



The U.S.-Mexican frontier is a borderland. The United States, to all intents
and purposes, conquered the region in the period between the Texan revolution
(1835-36) and the Mexican-American war (1846-48). As a result of the war, the
border moved and areas that had been Mexican territory became part of the
United States. There was little ethnic cleansing. American citizens settled
into the territory in increasing numbers over time, but the extant Mexican
culture remained in place. The border was a political dividing line but was
never a physical division; the area north of the border retained a certain
Mexican presence, while the area south of the border became heavily
influenced by American culture. The economic patterns that tied the area
north of the Rio Grande to the area south of it did not disappear. At times
they atrophied; at times they intensified; but the links were always there,
and neither Washington nor Mexico City objected. It was the natural
characteristic of the borderland.



It was not inevitable that the borderland would be held by the United
States. Anyone looking at North America in 1800 might have bet that Mexico,
not the United States, would be the dominant power of the continent. Why
that didn't turn out to be the case is a long story, but by 1846, the
Mexicans had lost direct control of the borderland. They have not regained
it since. But that does not mean that the borderland is unambiguously
American -- and it does not mean that, over the next couple of hundred
years, should Washington's power weaken and Mexico City's increase, the
borders might not shift once again. How many times, after all, have the
Franco-German borders shifted? For the moment, however, Washington is
enormously more powerful than Mexico City, so the borders will stay where
they are.



The Heart of the Matter



We are in a period, as happens with borderlands, when major population
shifts are under way. This should not be understood as immigration. Or more
precisely, these shifts should not be understood as immigration in the same
sense that we talk about immigration from, say, Brazil, where the
geographical relationship between migrant and home country is ruptured. The
immigration from Mexico to the United States is a regional migration within
a borderland between two powers -- powers that have drawn a border based on
military and political history, and in which two very different populations
intermingle. Right now, the United States is economically dynamic relative
to Mexico. Therefore, Mexicans tend to migrate northward, across the
political border, within the geographical definition of the borderland. The
map declares a border. Culture and history, however, take a different
view.



The immigration debate in the U.S. Congress, which conflates Asian
immigrations with Mexican immigrations, is mixing apples and oranges.
Chinese immigration is part of the process of populating the United States
-- a process that has been occurring since the founding of the Republic.
Mexican immigration is, to borrow a term from physics, the Brownian motion
of the borderland. This process is nearly as old as the Republic, but there
is a crucial difference: It is not about populating the continent nearly as
much as it is about the dynamics of the borderland.



One way to lose control of a borderland is by losing control of its
population. In general, most Mexicans cross the border for strictly economic
reasons. Some wish to settle in the United States, some wish to assimilate.
Others intend to be here temporarily. Some intend to cross the border for
economic reasons -- to work -- and remain Mexicans in the full sense of the
word. Now, so long as this migration remains economic and cultural, there is
little concern for the United States. But when this last class of migrants
crosses the border with political aspirations, such as the recovery of lost
Mexican territories from the United States, that is the danger
point.



Americans went to Texas in the 1820s. They entered the borderland. They then
decided to make a political claim against Mexico, demanding a redefinition of
the formal borders between Mexico and the United States. In other words, they
came to make money and stayed to make a revolution. There is little evidence
-- flag-waving notwithstanding -- that there is any practical move afoot now
to reverse the American conquest of Mexican territories. Nevertheless, that
is the danger with all borderlands: that those on the "wrong" side of the
border will take action to move the border back.



For the United States, this makes the question of Mexican immigration within
the borderland different from that of Mexican immigration to places well
removed from it. In fact, it makes the issue of Mexican migration different
from all other immigrations to the United States. The current congressional
debate is about "immigration" as a whole, but that makes little sense. It
needs to be about three different questions:



1. Immigration from other parts of the world to the United States



2. Immigration from Mexico to areas well removed from the southern border
region



3. Immigration from Mexico to areas within the borderlands that were created
by the U.S. conquests



Treating these three issues as if they were the same thing confuses matters.
The issue is not immigration in general, nor even Mexican immigration. It is
about the borderland and its future. The question of legal and illegal
immigration and various solutions to the problems must be addressed in this
context.

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