ForeignAffairsMag在2023-03-13~2023-03-19的言论
- 367: The Russia That Might Have Been: How Moscow Squandered Its Power and Influence, submitted on 2023-03-14 05:12:22+08:00.
- 368: How China Became a Peacemaker in the Middle East: Washington’s Missteps Paved the Way for Beijing’s Saudi-Iranian Deal, submitted on 2023-03-15 21:43:13+08:00.
367: The Russia That Might Have Been: How Moscow Squandered Its Power and Influence, submitted on 2023-03-14 05:12:22+08:00.
—– 367.1 —–2023-03-14 05:14:00+08:00:
[SS from the essay by Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Center in Berlin.]
… Around 2003, Russia got lucky. The U.S. invasion of Iraq coupled with China’s spectacular economic boom led to a sharp increase in global commodity prices. The Kremlin’s coffers were suddenly flooded with revenues from the sale of oil, gas, metals, fertilizers, and other products on the global market. This windfall allowed Russia to quickly repay its foreign debts and nearly double its GDP during Putin’s first two presidential terms. Despite mounting corruption, most ordinary Russians found that their incomes were rising. Compared with their troubled imperial and Soviet past, Russians had never been so prosperous and, simultaneously, so free as in the first decade of the twenty-first century. With these strong economic and political foundations, Russia was well positioned to become a global power between East and West—benefiting from its links to both Europe and Asia, and focused on internal development.
Now, Putin has squandered all that. Driven by his growing appetite for power, Russia has been transformed into an authoritarian regime over the past decade, with Russian society and the country’s elite largely unable and unwilling to hinder the process. That transformation is largely responsible for Moscow’s failure to grasp these opportunities and redefine Russia’s world stature. Instead, Putin’s steady accumulation of power transformed a robust foreign-policy-making process, rooted in impartial analysis and interagency deliberations, into an increasingly personalized one. As a result, Putin and his inner circle succumbed to growing paranoia about perceived military threats from the West, and their decisions did not undergo the intellectual and institutional scrutiny they needed. Ultimately, this drove the nation into the strategic and moral catastrophe of its war in Ukraine.
368: How China Became a Peacemaker in the Middle East: Washington’s Missteps Paved the Way for Beijing’s Saudi-Iranian Deal, submitted on 2023-03-15 21:43:13+08:00.
—– 368.1 —–2023-03-15 21:47:44+08:00:
[SS from the essay by Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft; and Khalid Aljabri, an exiled Saudi cardiologist and health-technology entrepreneur.]
While U.S. President Joe Biden’s Middle East team was focused on normalizing Saudi-Israeli relations, China delivered the most significant regional development since the Abraham Accords: a deal to end seven years of Saudi-Iranian estrangement. The normalization agreement signed last week by Riyadh and Tehran is noteworthy not only because of its potential positive repercussions in the region—from Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and Yemen—but also because of China’s leading role, and the United States’ absence, in the diplomacy that led to it.
Washington has long feared growing Chinese influence in the Middle East, imagining that a U.S. military withdrawal would create geopolitical vacuums that China would fill. But the relevant void was not a military one, created by U.S. troop withdrawals; it was the diplomatic vacuum left by a foreign policy that led with the military and made diplomacy all too often an afterthought.
The deal represents a win for Beijing. By mediating de-escalation between two archenemies and major regional oil producers, it has both helped secure the energy supply it needs and burnished its credentials as a trusted broker in a region burdened by conflicts, something Washington couldn’t do. Chinese success was possible largely because of U.S. strategic missteps: a self-defeating policy that paired pressure on Iran with supplication to Saudi Arabia helped China emerge as one of few major powers with clout over and trust with both of these states.
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