28-6-24
Dear Partners in Thought,
Many of you expected me to give you an Interlude on what is happening in France with the dissolution of the National Assembly by President Macron and the new legislative elections that will take place in the aftermath of the European parliamentary elections. Given the importance of the moment for France and Europe and the constant flow of news, I will send you an interlude right after the final results in the week of 8th July so as to provide a calm explanation of what happened and is to be expected—hoping that the center may still “hold” even if the polls are not reassuring, given the odd electoral set-up that has unfolded.
I would like now to cover another, admittedly very long, book (hence the extensive Book Note) on our new challenging geopolitical times that naturally focuses on China’s rise and Russia’s invasion, both main features of “New Cold Wars” (“and America’s struggle to defend the West”, a key sub-heading), the latest book from David Sanger, the well-known New York Times journalist and CNN contributor. In doing so I realize that this is yet another book on our current geopolitics, but this author goes deeply into the roots of what is happening today, linking history to our current times. The new cold wars are naturally those dealing with Russia and China in the 2020s. Russia, which was the old Cold War superpower, nemesis of the West gradually slid into irrelevance, leading to an aggressive existential search for a deemed lost glorious past. China, that was irrelevant economically and geopolitically to the West at the beginning of the new century, grew into an aspiring world leader, even if struggling demographically and economically in recent years. The two countries at times aligning their diverging interests against the West, whilst not yet creating an axis, while their respective relationship positions changing from senior to junior would-be partner, this to the likely dismay of Putin. “New Cold Wars” is very detailed and full of personal accounts, each chapter a potential book of its own, but also making for an amazing puzzle with all its pieces put together uniquely describing US foreign policy and its struggles in an increasingly-new era of post-old Cold War 21st century.
As I write these lines, and feel the link between past and present (as seen with the return of history), I have to mention the recent D-Day 80th anniversary celebrations in Normandy, where we saw the emotional event combining veterans in their nineties and sometimes older with young men and women in their late teens singing liberation songs. Those young singers were of the same age as that of the veterans who started saving democracy on Omaha Beach and at the Pointe du Hoc in early June 1944. It was the most vivid demonstration of what matters in an amazingly emotional way. It was also a message for those who favor an ill-fated and self-harming isolationism of the 1930s type in America, while reminding us in Europe that Ukraine matters, and existential revanchist powers lost in searching for their imperial past should be fought without question. This picture was all the more relevant when so many populist and far right political parties have increased their positions among European electorates, at times threatening to destroy the social and economic stability of key countries like France, on the back of easy answers to complex issues, vote grabbing initiatives, and a challenging era when many voters have become lost, not helped by the rise of social media and the growing inability to understand what matters in our societies.
As Sanger stresses, there is no doubt that at the beginning of the new century, and a decade away from the end of the Cold War, there was a clear feeling that a democratic (even if chaotic) Russia, and a rapidly growing China could be part of the Western-led order for everybody’s benefit. It was a time when George W. Bush could see into Putin’s soul and the latter would sing with Oscar ceremony attendees. 9-11 helped the US and Russia get closer, but as terrorism and the war in Iraq consumed the former, the latter showed it would ultimately play its traditional game which was not a peaceful one, as seen with the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and before, in 2007, the massive hacking campaign against Tallinn that we almost forgot. Fiona Hill, who was working at the White House under Trump before being a key critic like many of her former colleagues, had a very thorough take on Putin, stressing his anger at the former Soviet leaders who had destroyed the Russian empire of the Tsars, and could not keep the ill-conceived Soviet Union thriving while destroying the very essence of Russia as a nation.
Sanger stresses the need for the West’s willingness to integrate Russia in its fold, which Putin was seemingly not opposed to in his initial years as trade and globalization were helping. However, Putin felt that the West was not playing a fair game, feeling that Russia was losing its former status, all while NATO was expanding its membership to its very borders. NATO expansion, which was more an integration move focused on former Soviet states and allies than a hostile drive against Russia, became a focal point for Putin, leading eventually to strange statements that NATO was about to invade Russia in early 2022, hence “officially” the reason behind move against Ukraine. As Sanger describes it, the key turn in the Russian-Western dialogue happened at a Munich security conference in the Spring of 2007 where Putin, to the surprise of all attendees, started to voice strongly unheard resentments against a West aiming to marginalize a Russia which was only still heard out of courtesy as it was a nuclear power. We then go through the almost amusing Putin-Medvedev show of switching from President and Prime Minister in 2008-2012 only to get to a time of the first major demonstrations in large Russian cities, leading to a liberal Boris Nemtsov and then (initially controversial) Alexei Navalny taking key opposition roles, only to meet terrible fates later.
The book is clearly focused on both Russia and China, peppered by Sanger’s personal stories and dealings with key players over the last 30 years. We see Robert Rubin, the Clinton Treasury Secretary and ex-Goldman Sachs leader, who went to Beijing for the first time only in 1997, as China had not been that relevant to the world order or American interests (and indeed Wall Street) before then. It is interesting to see how one man, Zhu Rongji, now forgotten, who was a former Mayor of Shanghai and head of the People’s Bank of China, was the driving force in the late 1990s in the economic and trade opening of China, to the point of marketing key US business leaders across America to ensure they would lobby the Clinton White House and Congress to make sure what we would vividly see then as globalization, or peace through trade and investments. One of the key features of Sanger’s focus on China at the time is that, while the US wanted to integrate it in the global economy (also as it served its own interests) the country already started its hacking and proprietary theft campaigns under the George W. Bush era, well before the start of the 2012 Xi leadership that became known for a more assertive, if not aggressive, approach to bilateral relations and positions on key matters like Taiwan (even before the famed Nancy Pelosi visit in the summer of 2022 that triggered, or actually facilitated, expected self-serving reactions from Beijing looking for strategic contention). Sanger devotes a full chapter about the various phases of the Pelosi visit and its impact, as well as a history of the US-China and US-Taiwan relations, making us remember, as many of us forgot or did not know, that China was only diplomatically recognized as the sole Chinese country by the Carter administration in 1979.
As Sanger points out, and looking back at Russia since the end of last century, one could be forgiven for seeing Putin suffering from a seven-year itch from Chechnya in 1999-2000, Georgia in 2007, Crimea and Donbas in 2014 and finally the whole of Ukraine in 2022. All while the US and the West did not really see a Russian return to existential imperialism, as shown with how US administrations did not want to re-engage in a fight with Moscow, this until February 2022, also as the main issue in Washington was “China-China-China” and how to contain its fast rise and less than acceptable ways of asserting it. By clearly crossing the line in February 2022 Putin ensured that the West, led by the US even if not at its best of domestic political times, would focus on Moscow again. There was no clear willingness on the part of most of the Obama administration to confront Russia, partly as the Iraq and Afghanistan experiences had left some tough marks, but also as not many thought Putin would ever go further than Crimea, which many in Russia and indeed Crimea felt was Russian. And then there were economic imperatives with Chancellor Merkel leading to the Nord Stream 2 oil pipeline project that would see Germany and Europe getting more energy and as she hoped would ensure a more rational Putin (Germans were always very pragmatic in dealings with Putin’s Russia as shown with Gerhard Schroeder negotiating the Nord Stream 1 agreement and then going to the board of Rosneft as he left his premiership, enjoying “extravagant” remunerations). One of America’s key challenges at the time stressed by Sanger was its inability to shift from an understandably long focus on counter-terrorism and its associated wars in Afghanistan and Iraq post-9-11, to return efficiently to face a mix of direct superpower competition with an ever-rising and aggressive China and an “existentially hostile” Russia as gradually seen from the early 2010s.
One of the key early mistakes of President Trump and most of his team was to concentrate on trade relations with, and imposing huge tariffs on, China while not seeing Beijing’s core focus on technology and military dominance in Asia and more globally. China was undertaking many aggressive below-the-radar initiatives via its intelligence services that were dismissed by the White House as minor demonstrations of a rising power that was trying harder to exist. The “Trump” section covering his presidency is full of anecdotes, often new ones, showing the man reacting to world events in ways that can be expected. One of the main stories is his dealing with newly elected President Zelensky and his firm belief that Ukraine belongs to Russia with a leader he liked, while Kyiv was responsible for the 2016 interferences in US elections (and not Russia as it will be proved later), which will also ultimately lead to Trump’s first impeachment that will be voted down by all GOP Senators but an ever-righteous Mitt Romney. Sanger describes a chaotic four-year term peppered with never-seen-before presidential behavioral features, even if many Americans feel today that it was a sound economic period compared with that of the current Biden term—even if macro-economic data would suggest otherwise. Sanger provides many anecdotes regarding the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol (including Russian and Chinese comments on the clear weaknesses of American “democracy”) and the unusual lack of institutional willingness on the part of the Trump team to operate a smooth transition with the incoming Biden team (Trump would not even be present at Biden’s inauguration in a locked-down DC, like Andrew Johnson had done for Ulysses Grant 150 years earlier in post-civil war traumatic times). In January 2021 as America was leaving the “differentiated” Trump era and style, the focus was not yet on the hardening of its Southern borders or a return of a new and hotter, multiple, Cold War.
While Trump mainly focused on trade short of a new overall strategy with China, the new Biden team, notably with Jake Sullivan (I find excellent), realized quickly that the policy of engagement with Beijing had failed as getting closer to and integrating them in a Western, if not American, rules-based international order would never make them change their political system, economy and foreign policy—even if they had played a tactical game for years as they were getting stronger. Old style engagement with China was de facto over. While not old style “containment”, US policy toward China would then be focused on a “state of clear-eyed coexistence on terms favorable to US interests and values”. Areas of conflict became clearer, such as technology (we saw recently with TikTok), territorial ambitions, influence campaigns from Latin America to Europe, and naturally Taiwan—but also Hong Kong in a departure from the times of Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft. This reassessment would lead to a new US focus on Asia and strengthening alliances, at times when Europe was no longer the main center of interest, even if Russia was considered always potentially hostile by Trump’s team, if not the man himself.
This drive was combined with a refocus on the American economy and ensuring China was cut off from US technology sources while spying was better checked across American society. The era of full US-Chinese globalization, once described as the “flat world” in terms of manufacturing, was also largely reduced, if not totally over, in what Xi saw as “containment, encirclement and suppression” even if still officially open to working with US firms as seen with the much-heralded visit of US business leaders in Beijing in late April. While the relationship was changing, the Chinese leadership, via its new ambassador to the US in 2021, made sure to stress in an odd way that it was still a “whole-process democracy,” to answer Biden’s reference to authoritarianism, stressing the interdependency with the West, and that it would never lose a cold war made against it—reflecting Beijing’s self-assurance and making Mao proud in his grave.
As Biden succeeded Trump in the chaotic period we know and even with hopes rising high for better times, a major ransomware attack, targeting the Colonial Pipeline infrastructure and American car drivers, took place in May 2021. While it turned out that the culprit was Russian-based DarkSide and not Russia itself, the US took the right view that Putin was harboring ransomware gangs that were clearly tolerated (and soon encouraged) to act against Western interests. While the Obama administration did not want to trigger clashes over such events, hoping for the best in keeping mending relations, and Trump liked Putin while being focused on Chinese trade, the US under Biden would decide to confront the Kremlin, also gradually feeling that a return to an old imperialistic Russia was on the cards. The Biden team saw a Russia in decline that could take bold steps to reassert itself in the concert of key nations to which it felt it belonged.
Another key feature of the book involves the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan—likely one of the most tragic and worst US foreign policy moves and Biden’s top foreign policy black mark, negating the promises made to women and girls that the school-forbidding Taliban theocracy would never come back. Most, if not all, key Defense and State officials were against a quick withdrawal from Afghanistan, while Biden wanted to stop an admittedly 20-year costly experiment as America faced other strategic and geopolitical challenges. Sanger devotes a full chapter, full of details, to the unfolding tragedy and what could be seen as the betrayal of those Afghans, many of them left behind, who had assisted America in changing their unstable and corrupt country into a democracy. While the roots of the withdrawal are to be found in the original agreement between Trump and the Taliban (the “departure” being a rare point of agreement between the two Presidents), the actual exit and abandonment of local partners who had worked with US forces was horrific (even if 123,000, mostly Americans, were chaotically evacuated from Kabul Airport in 18 days, showing the unexpected pressure due to the unforeseen quick return of the Taliban). This dark episode gave both China and Russia a perfectly good case to stress America’s ineptitude in foreign affairs, this likely leading to more aggressive stances regarding Taiwan and as we would see shortly, Ukraine. If anything, and while America did not want this end result, it showed it could not be efficiently in control of some of its key strategic and tactical decisions at the time giving rivals and enemies the worst kind of advertising possible as to why America was unreliable as an ally.
As the Afghan withdrawal came to a tragic end, US intelligence services were gathering increasing evidence that an invasion of Ukraine was likely to take place. Sanger depicts the ways that agencies were communicating their findings to the White House and were making an increasingly clear case, as of September 2021, in spite of various mild and broad denials from Moscow. An interesting feature was the debate about making some evidence public and breaking the mantra of intelligence agencies which should only work for the President and his senior team. Interestingly, many reporters including Sanger, some of whom close to the likes of CIA head, Bill Burns, were very cautious about this approach, fully remembering the case made public by the George W. Bush administration regarding the roots of the Iraq war in 2003. The case for the invasion of Ukraine had been made clear as of July 2021 (as Washington was quite busy in Kabul) by Putin himself in his seven-thousands word manifesto “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” even if many were not sure what this “roadmap” meant at the time.
Another sign was the “partnership without limits” stated by both Putin and Xi during the summer 2021 Beijing Olympics that seemed to point to new times when old rivalries and even limited conflicts would disappear with a new focus against the West. Based on this key episode, that with hindsight made sense after February 2022, Sanger provides a very detailed account of the challenging relationship between Beijing and Moscow in the years since Stalin and Mao, and the gradual change in the senior and junior partnership roles we could see today (on a light note, many later felt that Xi was very keen on avoiding any invasion during the Beijing Olympics, even if Putin must have remained unclear as to what was an obvious move all intelligence agencies were expecting).
Most of the last third of the book deals, unsurprisingly, with the war in Ukraine. Many interesting points are made, some new for many people. The US had sent four dozen cybersecurity specialists to counter pre-invasion hacking moves from the Russians— showing that the US knew what was coming. While Zelensky had not initially impressed many at home or globally as a born leader, the invasion and his own tenacity in the best role of his career changed minds very quickly, especially as he was determined to stay in Kyiv and lead the fight as the invasion targeted the capital city. The Russians were surprised by the fighting abilities of the Ukrainians in many ways and areas, notably when they could not easily take the Hostomel airport, twenty miles away from Kyiv, which they wanted to use for their early frontline troops, equipment and military hardware. The Russian military showed too-heavily a top-down military machine and command, symptomatic of autocracies, that prevented quick decisions on the battlefield and a weakness in “combined arms operations,” clear facts that nullified all the investments Putin had overseen in securing state-of-the-art military hardware for its forces over recent years.
The unnecessary brutality with which Russia prosecuted the war, with the civilian killings, looting, rapes, missile strikes on apartment buildings and shelters, as well as the deportation of children, strengthened Ukraine’s resolve, giving it a sense of previously unheard-of unity. The Wagner Group and its tested mercenaries, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, seemed to be the only effective force on the ground— and unsurprisingly the most brutal (on a lighter note and back in 2002 Sanger had seen Prigozhin in another role serving dinner to Putin and Bush on the Neva in what were then new times). One clear win for Russia was the early hacking of all the Ukrainian telecommunication satellites system known as Viasat, which only Elon Musk and his Starlink system helped restore, initially free of charge. It is clear that the Russian leadership mismanaged its invasion in sheer and basic military terms to the point they would have received an “F” in any war college. Russian forces were deployed too thinly along five major lines of conflict, without supply lines to back the troops, showing that no major combat operation had been envisaged, hoping for a bloodless takeover, believing that most Ukrainians were on their side, thus only requiring a decapitation strike on the Kyiv leadership and installing a local pro-Russian politician (Yevgeniy Murayev) as President.
The invasion, akin to an intelligence or police operation backed by troops that were not supposed to really fight, reflected the Kremlin’s lack of communication with its own military that had not been privy to any real details of the move against Ukraine. However, as size matters, the Russian forces felt they were making progress (clearly not wanting to admit failure), even if slow, in their invasion plans, hoping that the West would keep uninvolved (not a bad assessment in terms of “direct” reaction as we would see) as it had largely done since Crimea in 2014. One of the key lessons learnt by the West was the military ineptitude of the command and control of the Russian forces in spite of their advanced equipment—a frequent feature of autocratic regimes favoring obedience first—leading to huge losses on the battlefield, this even if a motivated Ukraine (trained by NATO since Crimea) could not likely on its own reverse the course of the war. The poor dynamics of the Ukraine invasion also reminded the world why Russian forces experienced so many losses during the course of history as vividly seen in WW2. It is, of course, hard to believe that Putin and his entourage felt that the operation, which should have taken less than a week, was successful in any way. One wonders about the true feelings about this failed war in the Kremlin two years and four months later. Was it worth it?
As Sanger stresses, the key aim of Biden was to support Ukraine while stopping short of direct involvement, an approach shared among European partners, even if the stakes were more vivid for them given the geography at stake. Biden apparently grew quite concerned about some leaks that the sinking of the top battleship Moskva in the Black Sea (today hardly a Russian sea) was enabled thanks to US intelligence and technical support, a step drawing the US closer to a state of war with Russia. It was clear that the Biden team spent much time in 2022 between finding a way to support Ukraine while not taunting Putin and get into an undesirable WW3. The nuclear power features of the invasion linked to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant seized by Russian forces, and the always-possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, especially if in challenging battlefield posture, added critical features to the way the US and European allies could react, the latter making many wondering how Russia was left with such an arsenal after losing the Cold War. The discussions between Zelensky and the White House over economic and weapons support, the latter that would keep changing gradually to meet Kyiv’s needs, were at times tough and challenging, while domestic politics and a GOP-controlled and Trump-friendly House of Representatives would not help with timing, as seen recently for many months. Sanger also gives a thorough account of the various sanctions hitting the core Putin team, the key oligarchs and the Russian banks that became deprived of access to SWIFT (combined with decisions to end Nord Stream 2 and gradually reduce European oil and gas purchases) while Russia found ways to go around some of them, at times with the assistance of China and other countries like India that needed cheaper oil access, while playing both camps, depending on the matter at hand.
Sanger’s detailed opus is a work in transition, very much reflecting the world we know. Globalization, and even productive collaboration, as we knew them post-Cold War, seem to be gradually over, with a return to more self-reliance and control of supply chains if not isolationism (one of Trump’s recent ideas—to be checked for accuracy—would be to focus on tariffs while suppressing income tax, showing a combination of new trends linked to cheap populist vote-grabbing). The return of major wars in the heart of Europe and the Middle-East (leading the latter to a resurgence, even if unplanned, of antisemitism), rising tensions in Asia, the prevalence of personal ambitions over rationality (Brexit and then its mismanagement, Netanyahu’s post-dreadful October 7 self-serving horrific drive, Putin’s irrational imperial pursuit, Xi’s unclear master plan), the return of nationalism and populism with its various costly far-left and far-right flavors, added to the gullibility of voters still enjoying democracy, provide us with a dangerous multipolar chessboard at all levels, making it hard to believe in a happy future. As for the US standpoint, Sanger stresses the new existence of Russia and China—also a possible nuclear power axis in a potentially new and dual Cold War scenario—assisted by Iran and North Korea, all working together on often joint tactical issues putting the West in a dangerous position. All at a time when the nature of US leadership is contested from within with the likes of Republican leader (if not hijacker) Trump and his positions regarding Nato or vote-grabbing protectionism from another age—this leading to a potential implosion of the alliance and the weakening risk of a Russia-threatened Europe that needs to (and will) invest more in defense. As Sanger points out, rejection of US interventionism, which was tainted since Vietnam but also Afghanistan and Iraq, due to its huge costs, mismanagement and ultimate results, is also shared by many Democrats, which explains Obama’s reluctance to “lead” forcefully as the US could have in Syria, but also during the invasion of Crimea in his second term. One of Sanger’s last chapters is focused on the digital aspects of warfare, a key feature of the battleground in line with all the developments we know in the technological fields like AI. And obviously October 7 and its ensuing developments in Gaza are treated as part of the new geopolitical world we are into and like in Ukraine, seem to have no end in sight.
As Secretary of State Anthony Blinken (incidentally my high school neighbor in Paris during our teens in the 1970s) said: “This is not the world we wanted, or were trying to shape, after the Cold War.” While US-focused, Blinken’s statement should resonate with all of us in the West, including of course in Europe, especially today with a major war on our doorstep. Sanger’s book is very long and detailed but worth reading, given its well-balanced approach, and as its author personally dealt with the key protagonists on all sides since the Reagan times. It also provides us with links between past and present and reminds us of key events that we often forgot, and which unfolded always too fast in our complex and challenging world.
Warmest regards,
Serge
Desperate Measures 