Zones of Conflict: US Foreign Policy in the Balkans and the Greater Middle East - Softcover

Fouskas, Vassilis K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745320295 ISBN 13: 9780745320298

Verlag: Pluto Press, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

The US has several major interests in the Balkans, the Greater Middle East and the wide Eurasian zone, which determine its political and military strategies in the region. What are these interests, and what strategies are used to ensure that they are maintained? Examining the balance of power between the US, the EU and key EU states in the region, Vassilis Fouskas offers a sustained critique of US foreign policy and its underlying motivations. Fouskas argues that the major US objectives include control over gas and oil producing zones; safe transportation of energy to Western markets at stable prices; and the elimination, but not destruction, of America's Eurasian competitors. He asserts that US foreign policy is therefore driven by the desire to maintain a strategic partnership with key EU states, while preventing the emergence of an alternative coalition in Eurasia capable of challenging US supremacy. How does the US manage its interests in Eurasia and what are the particular strategies the EU has elaborated so far to deal with America's supremacy? Has US foreign policy undergone a dramatic U-turn after the end of the Cold War or, for that matter, after September 11th? What are the roles of Germany, France, Britain and Turkey, and how do EU- Cyprus relations affect the balance of power? This book tackles these questions and argues that the emergence of a social democratic administration in Eurasia is a feasible alternative to American unilateralism. "Thanks to the 'Zones of Conflict' we have a refreshing new interpretation of post-Cold War American foreign policy that challenges basic assumptions of the American foreign policy establishment." Van Coufoudakis, Rector Intercollege, Nicosia, Cyprus "Finally, an excellent counterblast to Zbigniew Brzezinski, written with verve and intelligence." Donald Sassoon, Professor of Comparative European History, Queen Mary, University of London

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Vassilis Fouskas is Senior Research Fellow in European and International Studies and a Leverhulme Fellow (2002-03) at Kingston University. He is the editor of the Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans and the author of Italy, Europe and the Left (1998).

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Zones of Conflict

US Foreign Policy in the Balkans and the Greater Middle East

By Vassilis K. Fouskas

Pluto Press

Copyright © 2003 Vassilis Fouskas
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7453-2029-8

Contents

Acknowledgements, ix, 
List of Abbreviations, xi, 
1. Introduction, 1, 
2. The New Geo-politics of Gas and Oil, 11, 
3. Scarface Politics, 34, 
4. Near and Middle Eastern Dilemmas, 63, 
5. Turkish Questions for the West, 81, 
6. Eurasian Gambles over Cyprus' EU Prospects, 99, 
7. Conclusion, 116, 
Notes, 129, 
Bibliography, 157, 
Index, 169, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The Realist Chessboard

'Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago,' Zbigniew Brzezinski notes in the opening lines of The Grand Chessboard, 'Eurasia has been the centre of world power'. Russia, Austro-Hungary, France, the Ottoman Empire, Britain and Germany all wanted to dominate this bizarre landscape ranging from the French shores of the Atlantic down to the Persian Gulf, and from the Chinese land mass to Central Asia, the Black Sea, the Turkish Straits and the Suez. Brzezinski observes that all of the powers claiming mastery over Eurasia in the past were part of its landscape, but now 'for the first time ever, a non Eurasian power has emerged, not only as the key arbiter of Eurasian power relations, but also as the world's paramount power'. America is indeed the sole world superpower after the fall of 'really existing socialism' and has taken a firm grip of a great part of the economic and political resources of the vast Eurasian continent.

In the midst of the great debates about the future of NATO and the EU, Brzezinski, like many other Anglo-Saxon analysts, attempts to elaborate a comprehensive strategy for America, so as to make impossible the emergence of any other challenger capable of thwarting America's primacy in Eurasia. Quite rightly, he argues that 'Eurasia is the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played, and that strategy involves geo-strategy – the management of geo-political interests.' In other words, if America lacks the proper strategy to streamline the development of key Eurasian actors according to her national interests, then Eurasia will be lost and America's primacy in world politics will wither away too.

Brzezinski's account is clear, comprehensive and instructive. The overall message of his book can even be perceived by a tout court reading of it. He makes everybody understand that globalisation via power projection is not an 'illicit' method by which the US may promote its national interests across the globe. What is more, these interests are best served by making realist geo-political use of the power innate in certain Cold War institutions, such as NATO and the IMF, as well as of the US paramount military might per se. Brzezinski suggests not a contraction of American power after the eclipse of the USSR, but an expansion of it.

The second, more specific, message is a direct consequence of the first: there is no such thing as 'ethical foreign policy', or a power projection based on moral and 'human rights' values. 'In Paris in 1998 to promote the French edition of his book', Diana Johnstone acutely observed, 'he was asked about the apparent "paradox" that his book was steeped in Realpolitik whereas, in his days as National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter, Brzezinski had been the "defender of human rights".' But the man waved the 'paradox' aside. 'There is no paradox', he replied. 'I elaborated that doctrine in agreement with President Carter, as it was the best way to destabilise the Soviet Union. And it worked.'

We have come to the crux of the matter. The world we live in is still a realist/neo-realist world dominated by states, national interests, geo-politics and power politics. The more 'globalised' and lopsided it becomes under the sway of the dominant power (i.e. the US) the more the possibilities for conflict, terrorist activities and ethnic and religious wars will be in the ascendant. The zones of conflict and conflicting regional micro-interests multiply, and with them the difficulties and contradictions of world-rule policies grow inexorably. The collapse of the USSR opened up new peripheral corridors and regions for US hegemonic engagement, but this US engagement proved to be not entirely problem-free. After all, not everything that happens in the world and which affects US interests is predicted by US strategic and contingency planning. The US engagement policies are, at times, reactive rather than proactive. This is due in part to pressure exercised by domestic political factors, such as public opinion, ethnic lobbies, legislative institutions, state departments and other organised class and corporate interests. This overall set of vicissitudes of US policy for world domination is the overarching theme that runs through the pages of this book, a theme that Brzezinski and the majority of US policy-makers fail to address critically. How do we explore and infuse that theme in the present discussion and what is the key set of arguments developed here?

My first objective is to present the ways in which the US has attempted to hold sway in Western Eurasia since the collapse of the USSR and its satellite states. Some of the vicissitudes of US policy necessarily take the form of contradictions inherent in the very process of formulation and implementation of US policy per se. Others pertain to the differences between peripheral states and regions that the US wants to engage and lead in a direction that serves its own national interest: not always coinciding, however, with the interests of those regional/peripheral powers. This overall nexus of contradictions, inherent in the politics of globalisation and world domination, is the explosive material that leads to conflicts and wars, rather than to peace and security. The EU, which has achieved a remarkable degree of economic prosperity and political security since the Second World War, finds itself in an awkward dilemma. It can either stand up to global challenges engaging itself with or without the US, with or against the US; or, alternatively, adopt a pacifist and democratic position, while making sure that it is able to defend and spread such a position around the globe. The fundamental prerequisite for each option is for Europe to produce a coherent federal polity, thus becoming an independent actor in world politics.

Brzezinski is against this reasoning. He wants the EU to expand eastwards, but not to deepen its political integration as this might challenge America's supremacy, particularly in the Middle East:

A larger Europe will expand the range of American influence – and through the admission of new Central European members, also increase in the European councils the number of states with a pro-American proclivity – without simultaneously creating a Europe politically so integrated that it could soon challenge the United States on geo-political matters of high importance to America elsewhere, particularly in the Middle East.

We now arrive at the second major objective of this book, which is to examine the potential of the EU to become an independent political actor in world affairs. This potential is limited because the US–EU partnership goes back a long way, as the hegemony of the US over EU political affairs was established during the Cold War and is thus very well embedded. Yet the evidence we possess to date shows that the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pluto Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0745320295
• ISBN 13: 9780745320298
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 192
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar