Whereas love is an issue that is highly complex and unintelligible yet happens to be the most important issue of all, foreign policy is the opposite. Foreign policy and foreign policy strategy are actually quite simple and straightforward and constant and incorrigible, despite the brain fog and confusion that prevails in terms of this issue. My specialty or my specialization is actually foreign policy, despite dabbling in a variety of other issues and subjects in recent years. But as a result of all the dabbling and mental meandering, I can now perhaps claim that I have become an expert or a specialist in more than just one subject.
Foreign policy and foreign policy strategy, per the “Triangular Relationship” that was invented during the Cold War by the likes of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, consists of inducing a split between China and Russia at its core and heart. The basic concept is quite simple: if both China and Russia forge a bond or an alliance and team up against America, China and Russia will take over the entire geopolitical chessboard together. America cannot contain both China and Russia at the same time. Each of them alone is bigger than America. However, if America can induce a split between China and Russia, then at the bare minimum, America can contain Russia with China’s help while allowing China to expand. In essence, a painful choice and tradeoff has to be made by Washington. You contain one by letting go of the other one and letting the other one free. And it is more important to contain Russia than to contain China from a traditional and historic and Cold War American perspective and standpoint.
To borrow from Kissinger: “The argument that China and the United States are condemned to collision assumes that they deal with each other as competing blocs across the Pacific. But this is the road to disaster for both sides.” Why this is a disaster for the United States has now been made clear, given that it is a requirement for America to contain Russia. It is essential for America to contain Russia. But if China is pinned to the side of Russia, then it becomes difficult for the United States to contain Russia. One way for the United States to improve its relationship with China, and as Kissinger suggested, is to forge a “Pacific Community” alongside China. To borrow from Kissinger yet again:
“An aspect of strategic tension in the current world situation resides in the Chinese fear that America is seeking to contain China – paralleled by the American concern that China is seeking to expel the United States from Asia. The concept of a Pacific Community – a region to which the United States, China, and other states all belong and in whose peaceful development all participate – could ease both fears. It would make the United States and China part of a common enterprise. Shared purposes – and the elaboration of them – would replace strategic uneasiness to some extent.”
Moreover, the forging of a “Pacific Community” is an enterprise which would benefit everyone in Asia, not just the United States and China. As Kissinger noted: “It would enable other major countries such as Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, and Australia to participate in the construction of a system perceived as joint rather than polarized between ‘Chinese’ and ‘American’ blocs. Such an effort could be meaningful only if it engaged the full attention, and above all the conviction, of the leaders concerned.”
If the United States forged an “Atlantic Community” with Europe to contain Russia, then the United States can surely forge a “Pacific Community” which involves China to contain Russia as well. Arguably, the containment of Russia now translates into peace and stability, given that Russia has unleashed conflict and war on several fronts both directly and through proxy, including in Europe and the Middle East. When the mysterious and unexplainable balance of power between America and Russia shifted in favor of Russia recently, conflict and war broke out on several fronts, and now, conflict and war have no end in sight. In turn, peace and stability can come about either “by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice.” And as Kissinger wisely noted: “We are at such a juncture.”
Adam A. Azim 