super
Jose Miguel Alonso Trabanco: The end of the Cold War was a huge window of opportunity for the US to forge a 'Pax Americana' now that the Soviet Union had collapsed. A vacuum power provided a chance to prolong this 'unipolar moment' long enough to become a 'unipolar era'. This is the geopolitical context in which the Project for a New American Century was born, echoing Henry Luce's appeal to become the world's only and unchallenged superpower.
To fulfill such strategic agenda, American policymakers had to take care of some matters first. Even though the Soviet Union had been split into fifteen Republics, Russia was/is a major cause for concern. During the 90's Russia was economically devastated and its political leadership was too corrupt or too incompetent to heal the country's ailing health. Nonetheless, that did not necessarily mean that someday Moscow could not regain its place as a world-class major power.
Russia inherited a stockpile of nuclear weapons capable of obliterating the United States; it has a competitive military-industrial complex that designs and manufactures state-of-the art products (long-range strategic bombers, fighter aircraft, satellites, tanks, submarines, ICBMs); its huge territory contains large sums of key natural resources (oil, gas, precious metals, iron ore, bauxite, diamonds, fresh water, coal, timber); it possesses the third largest foreign currency reserves; its manpower must not be underestimated because Russia has more college graduates than any other European country. Last but certainly not least, Russian national morale and resilience have always been formidable because both its State and its people have successfully managed to recover from tremendous catastrophes such as the Mongol, Napoleonic and Nazi invasions, which inflicted a great deal of pain on Russia.
Therefore, the West was not willing to share any power with Russia even though Russia's ruling elite, at the time, thought it was possible to build a Northern community from Los Angeles to Vladivostok. The West had different plans; the idea was to gradually disintegrate Russia as a functioning Nation-State once and for all so that it would never reemerge as a strategic challenger. Russia, as suggested by Zbigniew Brzezinski, would be Balkanized into several States (following the Yugoslavian model) to gain access to its abundant natural resources (particularly in the Caspian, the Urals and Siberia), its economy had to be permanently crippled and the country's remaining its pieces could serve as cannon fodder to be used in a potential war against China should the need arise
To fulfill such strategic agenda, American policymakers had to take care of some matters first. Even though the Soviet Union had been split into fifteen Republics, Russia was/is a major cause for concern. During the 90's Russia was economically devastated and its political leadership was too corrupt or too incompetent to heal the country's ailing health. Nonetheless, that did not necessarily mean that someday Moscow could not regain its place as a world-class major power.
Russia inherited a stockpile of nuclear weapons capable of obliterating the United States; it has a competitive military-industrial complex that designs and manufactures state-of-the art products (long-range strategic bombers, fighter aircraft, satellites, tanks, submarines, ICBMs); its huge territory contains large sums of key natural resources (oil, gas, precious metals, iron ore, bauxite, diamonds, fresh water, coal, timber); it possesses the third largest foreign currency reserves; its manpower must not be underestimated because Russia has more college graduates than any other European country. Last but certainly not least, Russian national morale and resilience have always been formidable because both its State and its people have successfully managed to recover from tremendous catastrophes such as the Mongol, Napoleonic and Nazi invasions, which inflicted a great deal of pain on Russia.
Therefore, the West was not willing to share any power with Russia even though Russia's ruling elite, at the time, thought it was possible to build a Northern community from Los Angeles to Vladivostok. The West had different plans; the idea was to gradually disintegrate Russia as a functioning Nation-State once and for all so that it would never reemerge as a strategic challenger. Russia, as suggested by Zbigniew Brzezinski, would be Balkanized into several States (following the Yugoslavian model) to gain access to its abundant natural resources (particularly in the Caspian, the Urals and Siberia), its economy had to be permanently crippled and the country's remaining its pieces could serve as cannon fodder to be used in a potential war against China should the need arise
This entry was posted by Colleen, on
1.20.2009.
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