The Ukraine disaster has unequivocally highlighted a trend that had been taking shape for some time: the division of the world into rival blocs. Confrontations (of political and economic interests, as well as cultural values) have largely taken place within societies and countries. However, those clashes have sparked harsher alignments between the states. What were once called the forces of the movement and the forces of order clash in almost every major country. Liberalism and anti-liberalism may continue to be used to justify such divisions, but they are not (nor are they likely to be) their main cause. Its origin is more related to tribal identity and identities of other types that, under stress, are easily confused with geopolitical chauvinism.
During the Cold War, the bloc was strategically clear, even though it often seemed operationally and tactically imprecise. It was a collective unit dedicated to a clear objective: survival. Today, that combination has been reversed. States promote or attempt to break alignments in the most basic (and even rudimentary) ways. But neither its justification nor its general strategic objectives are clear. This is because the block concept is not well understood. The bloc means more than just an alliance or a quasi-imperial unit. It is no longer just an ideological, territorial and fixed unit, but transactional, extraterritorial and variable. Countries like India and Israel, for example, which may be highly aligned with the West in some circumstances, are less so in others, as is the case today in relation to Ukraine.
The concept is also less regionally based than in the past: the current blocs, starting with the West, are both intraregional and interregional; that is, they are instrumental rather than essential in terms of geography. They are defined territorially, but they are also virtual, and many of them overlap. There are blocks related to currencies, languages, legal systems and even gastronomy.
Describing that environment as a confrontation or competition of discrete geopolitical entities and ideologies may not be the most helpful way of addressing the problems and challenges facing the world today. Nor is it possible to say whether or for how long this situation will persist. So it is important to temporarily understand that the world's major powers (the G-7 and the BRICS) are not settling into a direct confrontation, but rather something like a proxy rivalry of invented partnerships. The meaning of these associations is not easy to pin down for now: they resemble early modern European leagues in that they are not entirely alliances, but rather informal alignments because they are at once exclusive, fluctuating, and competitive. They are therefore very unstable.
In response to strategic uncertainty, there has been a predictable call for geopolitical concepts that are easy to understand and therefore easy to sell. For example, Eurasianism is spoken of as the ideology that motivates Vladimir Putin. In effect, this ideology assumes that Russia intends to create a bloc made up of all the states of the Asian continent that once made up the Russian empire or the Soviet Union, and possibly other nearby ones. Moscow, of course, would dominate that bloc, thus reviving its natural role of running an empire based on the value system that guides authoritarian rule and is seen as the norm in Central Asia. If there is one thing to be sure of, it is that the goal of the United States and other Western powers must be a Europe to which a democratic Russia can belong, and it should be whole, free, and at peace. Thus, Atlanticism and Eurasianism are mutually exclusive ideologies.
As for Europe itself, strategic clarity is the ironic term that some observers have applied to the effect of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the thinking of other governments; above all, in Russia's European neighbors. Its use in that context is appropriate, but subsequent discussions of the term have greatly expanded its meaning. There is no doubt that Putin's decision has sent a message to all the governments of the world. The message is that Russia is now ready to use force majeure to achieve its goals, and that those goals include ending the national sovereignty of its neighbors and erasing internationally recognized borders.
For Russia's European neighbors, it has been a shocking and unexpected revelation. Most of the countries that lived through the horrors of World War II had come to believe that such a war would never again devastate the European lands. In large measure, such a mentality was a tribute to NATO's success in providing peace of mind to allied countries. For many, that conclusion stemmed from the belief that the advent of nuclear weapons had turned war in Europe into a self-destructive enterprise that no rational leader would risk. It has been a shock to the people of Europe to discover that there is among them a leader considered to be in possession of a cold and calculating rationality who, after massing troops on the border of a neighboring independent state and denying that Russia intended to invade the Ukraine, has undertaken a major invasion aimed at seizing Ukrainian territory and ending that country's independence. Putting aside what NATO has managed to do, that action represents a major failure of Western diplomacy.
Adding to the shock of that act was Putin's warning that he would use nuclear weapons against any country that tried to thwart his ambitions. That message has generated strategic clarity in European states that had cooperated with NATO, but had geographical and historical reasons for not taking the step of joining.
In the case of Finland, which had fought two wars to prevent Russia from reinstating its land or part of it into the Russian state and which had exercised masterful diplomacy to avoid becoming a satellite of Moscow during the cold war, the message was clear. The time had come to throw in her lot with that of the US and Western Europe.
For Sweden, which had been a great European power but had lost that position in the great Northern War (1700-1721) after military defeats by Peter the Great of Russia, the message was also clear. She had been able to maintain neutrality for two hundred years and exercised her sovereignty over the Finnish lands for seven hundred years.
The two countries were linked historically and geographically, so what affected Finland's security affected Sweden's as well. Finnish governments had long ago come to the conclusion that Finland should consider NATO membership only together with Sweden. In Sweden, there was strong opposition on the left wing of the political spectrum to the country applying for NATO membership; However, after Finland made it clear that its version of strategic clarity called for NATO membership in 2022, the Swedish government joined Finland and decided to apply as well.
The Nordic bloc, as the Danes have already called the five Nordic countries that will be members of NATO as soon as Finland and Sweden accede to it, will exercise its influence in NATO's decision-making and will act as a bloc when it deems appropriate, but more often its components will behave like geographically disparate states with their own sets of interests. Norway already has a status that prevents the stationing of nuclear weapons and the acceptance of foreign bases on its territory in peacetime. It can be assumed that all the Nordic countries will favor negotiations with Russia on arms control when it becomes a practical matter, but NATO commitments do not oblige the three nuclear-armed members (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) to follow the wishes of the other members on such matters.
Also, in NATO consultations on when and how to resume normal relations with Moscow, some members will support moves in that direction earlier than others. One issue that will likely remain controversial (although not because of the addition of new Nordic members to the Alliance) is that of sanctions. The economic pressures as a consequence of the effects of the sanctions on the energy supply are already visible. Another set of issues that have not had the same intensity as others are those related to the Arctic. The region has been growing in importance in recent years and involves Russia as a security issue, so it will be a net benefit for the new Nordic members to bring Arctic issues and Arctic cooperation into NATO consultations, This will have the added benefit of creating another link between NATO and the European Union.
So far, the two main institutions trying to integrate European and Euro-Atlantic interests in such a way that member states act in solidarity with each other have managed to collaborate quite effectively; above all, during the crises engendered by Putin's war in Ukraine. This situation may not last. Multilateral organizations often generate their own internal blocs to become negotiating vehicles, which is generally a useful tool to expedite policy making. However, if the way to reach agreements is to dilute positions, the usefulness of the process will be destroyed. Covert membership in NATO and the EU will help prevent differences from becoming uncontrollable. However, any friction between these two key organizations will also have a negative effect on public and parliamentary support for them. Therefore, to the extent that it divides the two organizations with their different missions, strategic clarity will have a detrimental impact, starting with public opinion.
In Asia, strategic clarity, in the sense of a reaction to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine that stimulates political, economic, or military action to resist it or similar violations of well-established norms, is virtually non-existent. And that absence has until recently had little effect on transatlantic relations. The leaders of China and Russia signed a joint statement on February 4 pledging to cooperate "without limits." In essence, China has followed the Moscow line and blamed the war on the US for its expansion of NATO. Beijing has avoided strategic clarity, while generally complying with the sanctions. Other Asian and Middle Eastern countries, such as India and Saudi Arabia, have pursued ambiguous policies and evaded strategic clarity.
Ukraine war aside, is strategic clarity helpful in describing the reaction of Asian countries to calls by the US and Europe for their friends to accept that we are all in a zero-sum competition with China? ? Only Japan has responded in a way that indicates the emergence of strategic clarity. For other countries, the strategic ambiguity, especially over Taiwan, remains attractive. Although Joe Biden has declared that the US will come to the defense of Taiwan if it comes under attack, the White House has made it clear that strategic ambiguity still has its uses in Asia, even if it is withering away in Europe.
In contrast, the Biden government shares with that of its predecessor a predilection not for strategic clarity, but for tactical clarity. Unlike his predecessor, he uses the positive rhetoric of regional integration; but, in practice, the definition of such integration does not resemble the idea of the regional security community developed during the 20th century in the Western Hemisphere and Western Europe so much as it resembles an older – and again more rudimentary – form. of power politics. Members of the Government have recycled the language of the cold war (situations of force) to describe what such regional integration entails. That is, it is nothing more than a temporary accumulation of power against a supposed regional hegemon, be it China, Russia or Iran. The objective of diplomacy in this sense is to reinforce the cushion around said hegemons; in other words, contain the exercise of its power, both regionally and globally.
The regional buffer strategy, for lack of a better term, is as unlikely to succeed as externally driven tilt strategies have in the past; first of all, because they are not really strategies, but rather simplistic means for an unclear objective. In addition, the hegemons they are targeting are also unlikely to behave in the way outside agents expect or demand. Meanwhile the world has witnessed Putin's threats about the use of nuclear weapons if Russia's war in Ukraine leads to excessive intervention by countries determined to prevent him from achieving his goals. Such threats have made images of a nuclear Armageddon appear again among the population.
This fear should provide new energy for non-proliferation efforts and the resumption of US-Russian nuclear reduction negotiations. There are only a few years left to negotiate a treaty to replace New START. Negotiations with China on nuclear and conventional arms control have become urgent as that country has embarked on an increase in its nuclear forces, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Bilateral talks with China must not be hampered by the February 4 Russia-China agreements, nor by China's subsequent silence on the Kremlin's flagrant violations of universal norms of behavior between states. Strategic clarity should not have the effect of further uniting Russia and China against the US and its allies.
Bilateral negotiations between Moscow and Washington, as well as with China, will be nearly impossible as long as strategic clarity about the Kremlin's intentions dictates confrontational policies. The situation is made more thorny by the degree to which the confrontation has been personalized, to the extent that the blocs have tended to be treated as ends in themselves. Technical-level talks may be possible, and multilateral fora such as the UN and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) could provide a vehicle for negotiations. If that encourages some twisting of the rules of strategic clarity, the price paid will be small if it prevents a nuclear holocaust.
A blocky world doesn't have to be unpeaceful. Diplomats must adapt to it by using the blocs' inherent lack of clarity to their advantage: probing the boundaries, tempering the use of geopolitical rhetoric, and enhancing transactional flexibility so that the blocs come together by aligning their operational and then strategic interests. .
James E. Goodby has been the US ambassador to Finland and head of the US delegation to the Stockholm Conference on Confidence and Security Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe. Ken Weisbrode is a writer and historian.
