Georges Fried­man of Strat­for checks in on the impli­ca­tions of the Geor­gian con­flict. It’s becom­ing clear that the Rus­sians shifted their pol­icy and decided to act on a large scale. Time will tell if the Amer­i­cans will also shift their views. In any events, the geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion is much more unsta­ble now than it was before the con­fronta­tion. This is a long-term fact to take into account for any scenario.

THE MEDVEDEV DOCTRINE AND AMERICAN STRATEGY

By George Friedman

The United States has been fight­ing a war in the Islamic world since 2001. Its main the­aters of oper­a­tion are in Afghanistan and Iraq, but its politico-military focus spreads through­out the Islamic world, from Min­danao to Morocco. The sit­u­a­tion on Aug. 7, 2008, was as follows:

The war in Iraq was mov­ing toward an accept­able but not opti­mal solu­tion. The gov­ern­ment in Bagh­dad was not pro-American, but nei­ther was it an Iran­ian pup­pet, and that was the best that could be hoped for. The United States antic­i­pated pulling out troops, but not in a dis­or­derly fashion.

The war in Afghanistan was dete­ri­o­rat­ing for the United States and NATO forces. The Tal­iban was increas­ingly effec­tive, and large areas of the coun­try were falling to its con­trol. Force in Afghanistan was insuf­fi­cient, and any troops with­drawn from Iraq would have to be deployed to Afghanistan to sta­bi­lize the sit­u­a­tion. Polit­i­cal con­di­tions in neigh­bor­ing Pak­istan were dete­ri­o­rat­ing, and that dete­ri­o­ra­tion inevitably affected Afghanistan.

The United States had been locked in a con­fronta­tion with Iran over its nuclear pro­gram, demand­ing that Tehran halt enrich­ment of ura­nium or face U.S. action. The United States had assem­bled a group of six coun­tries (the per­ma­nent mem­bers of the U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil plus Ger­many) that agreed with the U.S. goal, was engaged in nego­ti­a­tions with Iran, and had agreed at some point to impose sanc­tions on Iran if Tehran failed to com­ply. The United States was also leak­ing sto­ries about impend­ing air attacks on Iran by Israel or the United States if Tehran didn’t aban­don its enrich­ment pro­gram. The United States had the implicit agree­ment of the group of six not to sell arms to Tehran, cre­at­ing a real sense of iso­la­tion in Iran.

In short, the United States remained heav­ily com­mit­ted to a region stretch­ing from Iraq to Pak­istan, with main force com­mit­ted to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the pos­si­bil­ity of com­mit­ments to Pak­istan (and above all to Iran) on the table. U.S. ground forces were stretched to the limit, and U.S. air­power, naval and land-based forces had to stand by for the pos­si­bil­ity of an air cam­paign in Iran — regard­less of whether the U.S. planned an attack, since the cred­i­bil­ity of a bluff depended on the avail­abil­ity of force.

The sit­u­a­tion in this region actu­ally was improv­ing, but the United States had to remain com­mit­ted there. It was there­fore no acci­dent that the Rus­sians invaded Geor­gia on Aug. 8 fol­low­ing a Geor­gian attack on South Osse­tia. For­get­ting the details of who did what to whom, the United States had cre­ated a mas­sive win­dow of oppor­tu­nity for the Rus­sians: For the fore­see­able future, the United States had no sig­nif­i­cant forces to spare to deploy else­where in the world, nor the abil­ity to sus­tain them in extended com­bat. More­over, the United States was rely­ing on Russ­ian coop­er­a­tion both against Iran and poten­tially in Afghanistan, where Moscow’s influ­ence with some fac­tions remains sub­stan­tial. The United States needed the Rus­sians and couldn’t block the Rus­sians. There­fore, the Rus­sians inevitably chose this moment to strike.

On Sun­day, Russ­ian Prime Min­is­ter Dmitri Medvedev in effect ran up the Jolly Roger. What­ever the United States thought it was deal­ing with in Rus­sia, Medvedev made the Russ­ian posi­tion very clear. He stated Russ­ian for­eign pol­icy in five suc­cinct points, which we can think of as the Medvedev Doc­trine (and which we see fit to quote here):

First, Rus­sia rec­og­nizes the pri­macy of the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of inter­na­tional law, which define the rela­tions between civ­i­lized peo­ples. We will build our rela­tions with other coun­tries within the frame­work of these prin­ci­ples and this con­cept of inter­na­tional law.

Sec­ond, the world should be mul­ti­po­lar. A single-pole world is unac­cept­able. Dom­i­na­tion is some­thing we can­not allow. We can­not accept a world order in which one coun­try makes all the deci­sions, even as seri­ous and influ­en­tial a coun­try as the United States of Amer­ica. Such a world is unsta­ble and threat­ened by conflict.

Third, Rus­sia does not want con­fronta­tion with any other coun­try. Rus­sia has no inten­tion of iso­lat­ing itself. We will develop friendly rela­tions with Europe, the United States, and other coun­tries, as much as is possible.

Fourth, pro­tect­ing the lives and dig­nity of our cit­i­zens, wher­ever they may be, is an unques­tion­able pri­or­ity for our coun­try. Our for­eign pol­icy deci­sions will be based on this need. We will also pro­tect the inter­ests of our busi­ness com­mu­nity abroad. It should be clear to all that we will respond to any aggres­sive acts com­mit­ted against us.

Finally, fifth, as is the case of other coun­tries, there are regions in which Rus­sia has priv­i­leged inter­ests. These regions are home to coun­tries with which we share spe­cial his­tor­i­cal rela­tions and are bound together as friends and good neigh­bors. We will pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to our work in these regions and build friendly ties with these coun­tries, our close neighbors.

Medvedev con­cluded, “These are the prin­ci­ples I will fol­low in car­ry­ing out our for­eign pol­icy. As for the future, it depends not only on us but also on our friends and part­ners in the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity. They have a choice.”

The sec­ond point in this doc­trine states that Rus­sia does not accept the pri­macy of the United States in the inter­na­tional sys­tem. Accord­ing to the third point, while Rus­sia wants good rela­tions with the United States and Europe, this depends on their behav­ior toward Rus­sia and not just on Russia’s behav­ior. The fourth point states that Rus­sia will pro­tect the inter­ests of Rus­sians wher­ever they are — even if they live in the Baltic states or in Geor­gia, for exam­ple. This pro­vides a doc­tri­nal basis for inter­ven­tion in such coun­tries if Rus­sia finds it necessary.

The fifth point is the crit­i­cal one: “As is the case of other coun­tries, there are regions in which Rus­sia has priv­i­leged inter­ests.” In other words, the Rus­sians have spe­cial inter­ests in the for­mer Soviet Union and in friendly rela­tions with these states. Intru­sions by oth­ers into these regions that under­mine pro-Russian regimes will be regarded as a threat to Russia’s “spe­cial interests.”

Thus, the Geor­gian con­flict was not an iso­lated event — rather, Medvedev is say­ing that Rus­sia is engaged in a gen­eral rede­f­i­n­i­tion of the regional and global sys­tem. Locally, it would not be cor­rect to say that Rus­sia is try­ing to res­ur­rect the Soviet Union or the Russ­ian empire. It would be cor­rect to say that Rus­sia is cre­at­ing a new struc­ture of rela­tions in the geog­ra­phy of its pre­de­ces­sors, with a new insti­tu­tional struc­ture with Moscow at its cen­ter. Glob­ally, the Rus­sians want to use this new regional power — and sub­stan­tial Russ­ian nuclear assets — to be part of a global sys­tem in which the United States loses its primacy.

These are ambi­tious goals, to say the least. But the Rus­sians believe that the United States is off bal­ance in the Islamic world and that there is an oppor­tu­nity here, if they move quickly, to cre­ate a new real­ity before the United States is ready to respond. Europe has nei­ther the mil­i­tary weight nor the will to actively resist Rus­sia. More­over, the Euro­peans are heav­ily depen­dent on Russ­ian nat­ural gas sup­plies over the com­ing years, and Rus­sia can sur­vive with­out sell­ing it to them far bet­ter than the Euro­peans can sur­vive with­out buy­ing it. The Euro­peans are not a sub­stan­tial fac­tor in the equa­tion, nor are they likely to become substantial.

This leaves the United States in an extremely dif­fi­cult strate­gic posi­tion. The United States opposed the Soviet Union after 1945 not only for ide­o­log­i­cal rea­sons but also for geopo­lit­i­cal ones. If the Soviet Union had bro­ken out of its encir­clement and dom­i­nated all of Europe, the total eco­nomic power at its dis­posal, cou­pled with its pop­u­la­tion, would have allowed the Sovi­ets to con­struct a navy that could chal­lenge U.S. mar­itime hege­mony and put the con­ti­nen­tal United States in jeop­ardy. It was U.S. pol­icy dur­ing World Wars I and II and the Cold War to act mil­i­tar­ily to pre­vent any power from dom­i­nat­ing the Eurasian land­mass. For the United States, this was the most impor­tant task through­out the 20th century.

The U.S.-jihadist war was waged in a strate­gic frame­work that assumed that the ques­tion of hege­mony over Eura­sia was closed. Germany’s defeat in World War II and the Soviet Union’s defeat in the Cold War meant that there was no claimant to Eura­sia, and the United States was free to focus on what appeared to be the cur­rent pri­or­ity — the defeat of rad­i­cal Islamism. It appeared that the main threat to this strat­egy was the patience of the Amer­i­can pub­lic, not an attempt to res­ur­rect a major Eurasian power.

The United States now faces a mas­sive strate­gic dilemma, and it has lim­ited mil­i­tary options against the Rus­sians. It could choose a naval option, in which it would block the four Russ­ian mar­itime out­lets, the Sea of Japan and the Black, Baltic and Bar­ents seas. The United States has ample mil­i­tary force with which to do this and could poten­tially do so with­out allied coop­er­a­tion, which it would lack. It is extremely unlikely that the NATO coun­cil would unan­i­mously sup­port a block­ade of Rus­sia, which would be an act of war.

But while a block­ade like this would cer­tainly hurt the Rus­sians, Rus­sia is ulti­mately a land power. It is also capa­ble of ship­ping and import­ing through third par­ties, mean­ing it could poten­tially acquire and ship key goods through Euro­pean or Turk­ish ports (or Iran­ian ports, for that mat­ter). The block­ade option is thus more attrac­tive on first glance than on deeper analysis.

More impor­tant, any overt U.S. action against Rus­sia would result in coun­ter­ac­tions. Dur­ing the Cold War, the Sovi­ets attacked Amer­i­can global inter­est not by send­ing Soviet troops, but by sup­port­ing regimes and fac­tions with weapons and eco­nomic aid. Viet­nam was the clas­sic exam­ple: The Rus­sians tied down 500,000 U.S. troops with­out plac­ing major Russ­ian forces at risk. Through­out the world, the Sovi­ets imple­mented pro­grams of sub­ver­sion and aid to friendly regimes, forc­ing the United States either to accept pro-Soviet regimes, as with Cuba, or fight them at dis­pro­por­tion­ate cost.

In the present sit­u­a­tion, the Russ­ian response would strike at the heart of Amer­i­can strat­egy in the Islamic world. In the long run, the Rus­sians have lit­tle inter­est in strength­en­ing the Islamic world — but for the moment, they have sub­stan­tial inter­est in main­tain­ing Amer­i­can imbal­ance and sap­ping U.S. forces. The Rus­sians have a long his­tory of sup­port­ing Mid­dle East­ern regimes with weapons ship­ments, and it is no acci­dent that the first world leader they met with after invad­ing Geor­gia was Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar al Assad. This was a clear sig­nal that if the U.S. responded aggres­sively to Russia’s actions in Geor­gia, Moscow would ship a range of weapons to Syria — and far worse, to Iran. Indeed, Rus­sia could con­ceiv­ably send weapons to fac­tions in Iraq that do not sup­port the cur­rent regime, as well as to groups like Hezbol­lah. Moscow also could encour­age the Ira­ni­ans to with­draw their sup­port for the Iraqi gov­ern­ment and plunge Iraq back into con­flict. Finally, Rus­sia could ship weapons to the Tal­iban and work to fur­ther desta­bi­lize Pakistan.

At the moment, the United States faces the strate­gic prob­lem that the Rus­sians have options while the United States does not. Not only does the U.S. com­mit­ment of ground forces in the Islamic world leave the United States with­out strate­gic reserve, but the polit­i­cal arrange­ments under which these troops oper­ate make them highly vul­ner­a­ble to Russ­ian manip­u­la­tion — with few sat­is­fac­tory U.S. counters.

The U.S. gov­ern­ment is try­ing to think through how it can main­tain its com­mit­ment in the Islamic world and resist the Russ­ian reasser­tion of hege­mony in the for­mer Soviet Union. If the United States could very rapidly win its wars in the region, this would be pos­si­ble. But the Rus­sians are in a posi­tion to pro­long these wars, and even with­out such agi­ta­tion, the Amer­i­can abil­ity to close off the con­flicts is severely lim­ited. The United States could mas­sively increase the size of its army and make deploy­ments into the Baltics, Ukraine and Cen­tral Asia to thwart Russ­ian plans, but it would take years to build up these forces and the active coop­er­a­tion of Europe to deploy them. Logis­ti­cally, Euro­pean sup­port would be essen­tial — but the Euro­peans in gen­eral, and the Ger­mans in par­tic­u­lar, have no appetite for this war. Expand­ing the U.S. Army is nec­es­sary, but it does not affect the cur­rent strate­gic reality.

This logis­ti­cal issue might be man­age­able, but the real heart of this prob­lem is not merely the deploy­ment of U.S. forces in the Islamic world — it is the Rus­sians’ abil­ity to use weapons sales and covert means to dete­ri­o­rate con­di­tions dra­mat­i­cally. With active Russ­ian hos­til­ity added to the cur­rent real­ity, the strate­gic sit­u­a­tion in the Islamic world could rapidly spin out of control.

The United States is there­fore trapped by its com­mit­ment to the Islamic world. It does not have suf­fi­cient forces to block Russ­ian hege­mony in the for­mer Soviet Union, and if it tries to block the Rus­sians with naval or air forces, it faces a dan­ger­ous riposte from the Rus­sians in the Islamic world. If it does noth­ing, it cre­ates a strate­gic threat that poten­tially tow­ers over the threat in the Islamic world.

The United States now has to make a fun­da­men­tal strate­gic deci­sion. If it remains com­mit­ted to its cur­rent strat­egy, it can­not respond to the Rus­sians. If it does not respond to the Rus­sians for five or 10 years, the world will look very much like it did from 1945 to 1992. There will be another Cold War at the very least, with a peer power much poorer than the United States but pre­pared to devote huge amounts of money to national defense.

There are four broad U.S. options:

Attempt to make a set­tle­ment with Iran that would guar­an­tee the neu­tral sta­bil­ity of Iraq and per­mit the rapid with­drawal of U.S. forces there. Iran is the key here. The Ira­ni­ans might also mis­trust a re-emergent Rus­sia, and while Tehran might be tempted to work with the Rus­sians against the Amer­i­cans, Iran might con­sider an arrange­ment with the United States — par­tic­u­larly if the United States refo­cuses its atten­tions else­where. On the upside, this would free the U.S. from Iraq. On the down­side, the Ira­ni­ans might not want –or honor — such a deal.

Enter into nego­ti­a­tions with the Rus­sians, grant­ing them the sphere of influ­ence they want in the for­mer Soviet Union in return for guar­an­tees not to project Russ­ian power into Europe proper. The Rus­sians will be busy con­sol­i­dat­ing their posi­tion for years, giv­ing the U.S. time to re-energize NATO. On the upside, this would free the United States to con­tinue its war in the Islamic world. On the down­side, it would cre­ate a frame­work for the re-emergence of a pow­er­ful Russ­ian empire that would be as dif­fi­cult to con­tain as the Soviet Union.

Refuse to engage the Rus­sians and leave the prob­lem to the Euro­peans. On the upside, this would allow the United States to con­tinue war in the Islamic world and force the Euro­peans to act. On the down­side, the Euro­peans are too divided, depen­dent on Rus­sia and dispir­ited to resist the Rus­sians. This strat­egy could speed up Russia’s re-emergence.

Rapidly dis­en­gage from Iraq, leav­ing a resid­ual force there and in Afghanistan. The upside is that this cre­ates a reserve force to rein­force the Baltics and Ukraine that might restrain Rus­sia in the for­mer Soviet Union. The down­side is that it would cre­ate chaos in the Islamic world, threat­en­ing regimes that have sided with the United States and poten­tially reviv­ing effec­tive inter­con­ti­nen­tal ter­ror­ism. The trade-off is between a hege­monic threat from Eura­sia and insta­bil­ity and a ter­ror threat from the Islamic world.

We are point­ing to very stark strate­gic choices. Con­tin­u­ing the war in the Islamic world has a much higher cost now than it did when it began, and Rus­sia poten­tially poses a far greater threat to the United States than the Islamic world does. What might have been a ratio­nal pol­icy in 2001 or 2003 has now turned into a very dan­ger­ous enter­prise, because a hos­tile major power now has the option of mak­ing the U.S. posi­tion in the Mid­dle East enor­mously more difficult.

If a U.S. set­tle­ment with Iran is impos­si­ble, and a diplo­matic solu­tion with the Rus­sians that would keep them from tak­ing a hege­monic posi­tion in the for­mer Soviet Union can­not be reached, then the United States must con­sider rapidly aban­don­ing its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and rede­ploy­ing its forces to block Russ­ian expan­sion. The threat posed by the Soviet Union dur­ing the Cold War was far graver than the threat posed now by the frag­mented Islamic world. In the end, the nations there will can­cel each other out, and mil­i­tant orga­ni­za­tions will be some­thing the United States sim­ply has to deal with. This is not an ideal solu­tion by any means, but the clock appears to have run out on the Amer­i­can war in the Islamic world.

We do not expect the United States to take this option. It is dif­fi­cult to aban­don a con­flict that has gone on this long when it is not yet crys­tal clear that the Rus­sians will actu­ally be a threat later. (It is far eas­ier for an ana­lyst to make such sug­ges­tions than it is for a pres­i­dent to act on them.) Instead, the United States will attempt to bridge the Russ­ian sit­u­a­tion with ges­tures and half measures.

Nev­er­the­less, Amer­i­can national strat­egy is in cri­sis. The United States has insuf­fi­cient power to cope with two threats and must choose between the two. Con­tin­u­ing the cur­rent strat­egy means choos­ing to deal with the Islamic threat rather than the Russ­ian one, and that is rea­son­able only if the Islamic threat rep­re­sents a greater dan­ger to Amer­i­can inter­ests than the Russ­ian threat does. It is dif­fi­cult to see how the chaos of the Islamic world will cohere to form a global threat. But it is not dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a Rus­sia guided by the Medvedev Doc­trine rapidly becom­ing a global threat and a direct dan­ger to Amer­i­can interests.

We expect no imme­di­ate change in Amer­i­can strate­gic deploy­ments — and we expect this to be regret­ted later. How­ever, given U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney’s trip to the Cau­ca­sus region, now would be the time to see some move­ment in U.S. for­eign pol­icy. If Cheney isn’t going to be talk­ing to the Rus­sians, he needs to be talk­ing to the Ira­ni­ans. Oth­er­wise, he will be writ­ing checks in the region that the U.S. is in no posi­tion to cash.

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