Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order 3031186583, 9783031186585

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PSIR · PALGRAVE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order

Gerlinde Groitl

Palgrave Studies in International Relations

Series Editors Knud Erik Jørgensen, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark J. Marshall Beier, Political Science, McMaster University, Milton, ON, Canada

Palgrave Studies in International Relations provides scholars with the best theoretically-informed scholarship on the global issues of our time. The series includes cutting-edge monographs and edited collections which bridge schools of thought and cross the boundaries of conventional fields of study. Knud Erik Jørgensen is Professor of International Relations at Aarhus University, Denmark, and at Ya¸sar University, Izmir, Turkey.

Gerlinde Groitl

Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order

Gerlinde Groitl University of Regensburg Regensburg, Germany

Palgrave Studies in International Relations ISBN 978-3-031-18658-5 ISBN 978-3-031-18659-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18659-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Andy Sacks/The Image Bank/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

Writing a book is a lonely job, but one that still depends on many supporters along the way. I cordially thank Stephan Bierling, Reinhard Meier-Walser, Volker Depkat (all University of Regensburg), and Beate Neuss (TU Chemnitz) for their tremendously helpful comments, feedback, and continued encouragement in various stages of the project. The University of Regensburg and its Institute of Political Science offered me a wonderful academic home to pursue my research. My work also benefited greatly from insights and opportunities provided by colleagues and institutions abroad. A cordial thank-you to Daniel S. Hamilton and the (then) Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins University, the German Marshall Fund of the US and the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies in Washington, DC, the London School of Economics and Political Science’s LSE IDEAS think tank as well as the library of the European University Institute in Florence. Above all, however, I thank my husband Peter. Für alles, wie immer.

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Contents

Part I Introduction 1

Enduring Rivals: The Return of Great Power Politics Between Russia, China, and the West

Part II 2 3

5 6

Theory of International Order Building and Revisionism

Falling Short: International Order and Revisionism in IR Theory

39

Strategic Choices: Neoclassical Realist Model of Order and Revisionism

79

Part III 4

3

Western Triumph and Non-Western Accommodation in the 1990s

False History: Globalization of the US-Led Liberal West and Its Delusions

127

Russia’s Fall: Resentful Accommodation to Grim Post-Cold War Realities

173

China’s Rise: Strategic Accommodation to Post-Cold War Opportunities

223

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CONTENTS

Part IV 7 8 9

Western Crisis and Anti-Western Revisionism from the Late 2000s

Return of History: Outgrowth Amidst Erosion of the US-Led Liberal Order

275

Russia’s Nightmare: Destructive Revisionism for Great Power Survival

315

China’s Dream: Constructive Revisionism for Great Rejuvenation

371

Part V Conclusion 10

Geopolitical Realities: The Case for Neo-Containment Against Russia and China

Index

431 455

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 10.1

Characterization of revisionist states: revisionist intent and revisionist practice (Source Own illustration) Revisionist ideal types (Source Own illustration) IR grand theories on international order and revisionism (Source Own illustration) Schematic depiction of statehood (Source Own illustration) State security needs and opportunities in the international system (Source Own illustration) Strategic responses toward the (hegemonic) international order (Source Own illustration) Destructive versus constructive revisionism (Source Own illustration) Summary of the theoretical argument (Source Own illustration) US-led Western liberal international order (Source Own illustration) Summary of findings

50 51 60 88 93 105 110 114 142 442

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PART I

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

Enduring Rivals: The Return of Great Power Politics Between Russia, China, and the West

The Puzzle: Great Power Politics in a Globalized World Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 took many by surprise. Political leaders and citizens in Europe were shell-shocked. “The twentyfourth of February 2022 marks a watershed in the history of our continent,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz remarked in a landmark speech a few days into the war. We are living through a watershed era. And that means that the world afterwards will no longer be the same as the world before. The issue at the heart of this is whether power is allowed to prevail over the law. Whether we permit Putin to turn back the clock to the nineteenth century and the age of the great powers. Or whether we have it in us to keep warmongers like Putin in check.1

Moscow is bent on destroying the Ukrainian state and nation at all costs while targeting much more than its immediate neighbor. It is the liberal West, the attractiveness of its model of order, Russia is up against.2 The 1 Scholz (2022). 2 See, e.g., Kagan (2022).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Groitl, Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18659-2_1

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war against Ukrainian sovereignty and self-determination is the latest reiteration and escalation of Russia’s anti-Western revanchism of the past 15 years. In Asia, tensions are building as well. In August 2022, China held unprecedented live-fire exercises around Taiwan, using a congressional delegation visit from the United States as a pretext for flexing its muscles. Politico-economic bullying and military threats against Taiwan have reached new heights in recent years.3 With the Russian invasion of Ukraine before our eyes, exploring options to deter Beijing, support Taipei, and respond in a worst-case scenario received new urgency on both sides of the Atlantic.4 Similar to the Russian case, China wants to alter more than just the status quo of its neighborhood. It is in sustained conflict with the liberal West and the international order of its making, and its rhetoric and posturing against the United States and the West has become ever more vitriolic over the past one and a half decades. There is no denying that the brute realities of geopolitical contest and conquest, once believed to have faded into a distant past, are back on the top of the agenda in the twenty-first century. Great powers are the dominant forces shaping the course of world events and international orders to their liking.5 If they are benign, they can provide for the common good and emerge as forces for political, economic, social, and broader human progress. Predatory or imperial ones, however, can turn into sources of plight, as seen so often in the past. If relations among peer great powers are amicable, they can join forces to manage collective problems. If they are adversaries, they will adversely affect the lives of peoples and nations well beyond their own borders. Repeatedly, great power politics has escalated to disastrous wars, leading to the destruction and recreation of order in the international arena. This is what is at stake today. It is a rude awakening from the holiday from history many in the West had mistaken as the new normal in international affairs in the post-Cold War era. Russia, China, and the West—meaning the United States and its like-minded allies—are the dominant geopolitical actors in the modern world. During the Cold War, their relationship was ripe with conflict

3 See CSIS (2022a). 4 See The Economist (2022). 5 See Bisley (2012).

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and sustained, yet managed confrontation. Bipolarity and the competition between two vastly different models of domestic and international order characterized the standoff between the Soviet Union and the West. China, a staunch and revolutionary ally of the Soviet Union from Mao Zedong’s proclamation of the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 to the 1960s, compounded the strategic challenge to policymakers in Washington. While Sino-American tensions were curbed by the realpolitik rapprochement of the 1970s, systemic competition, USSoviet tensions, and fears of a breakdown of deterrence between the two blocs persisted. All of this seemingly changed with the end of the Cold War in the short period between 1989 to 1991. It was perceived not only as the end of a decades-long ideological and power political struggle, but as an opportunity for a fundamental restructuring of the dynamics of international politics. Even the cautious and realpolitik-minded administration of US President George H. W. Bush suggested that a cooperative world order based on rules and shared interests was finally in reach: Out of these troubled times, […] a new world order […] can emerge: a new era—freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony. A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor. Today that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we’ve known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.6

Political scientist Francis Fukuyama even mused that the end of the Cold War could amount to the “end of history.” The Western liberal model had triumphed over communism as over all other alternative pathways to modernity before.7 Hopes were high that the peaceful resolution of past East–West confrontations had changed the dynamics of world politics for good.

6 Bush (1990). 7 See Fukuyama (1989, 1992).

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The dominant grand strategic theme of the post-Cold War period in the United States and Europe was that it may finally be possible to create an inclusive, rules- and institutions-based global order. It was meant to be an order that would no longer be based on a balance of power logic, on containment, exclusion, or deterrence, but rest on an expanded sphere of liberal prosperity, peace, and cooperative global governance. Economic globalization was expected to play a pivotal role in the progressive transformation of world politics. Timothy Snyder characterizes this as “politics of inevitability,” the belief of policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic that “the future is just more of the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing really had to be done.”8 Similarly, Thomas Wright with the luxury of hindsight spoke of “the convergence myth,” the (flawed) belief in an inevitable harmonization of interests between the great powers.9 But in the 1990s, the United States and European allies indeed hoped to integrate Russia and China politically and economically and envisioned a consensual international order of win–win cooperation. Amicable relations seemed within reach as both sought association with the West and joined international institutions. The “Charter of Paris” of November 1990 laid out the joint vision of a united Europe.10 All parties appeared committed to building a “common European house,” as Mikhail Gorbachev had described it.11 After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and Europe supported post-Soviet Russia with political recognition, cooperation offers in areas of joint concern, institutional integration opportunities, and generous aid packages during its economic free-fall in the 1990s. Already in 1992, the Russian Federation joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as the World Bank and received international aid. Germany emerged as one of Moscow’s most committed supporters and provided a helping hand, both politically and economically.12 The G7, the world’s economic heavyweights, accepted Russia in their midst in 1998 and henceforth met as the G8 despite the country’s economic weakness. In 2012, Moscow finally 8 Snyder (2018, p. 7). 9 Wright (2018, Chapter 1). 10 See Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (1990). 11 See Schmemann (1990). 12 See Bierling (1998, 2014, pp. 60–64) and Groitl (2016).

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became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) after almost two decades of negotiations. Western security policy was also guided by this overall theme of association. In July 1990, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) suggested a joint declaration with the Warsaw Pact to put an end to adversarial relations, which both alliances put forth in November 1990.13 After the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, NATO reached out to states in Central and Eastern Europe, offered multilateral consultation forums (e.g., North Atlantic Cooperation Council 1991, later Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council 1997) and bilateral agreements through the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program from 1994 onward. The NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 seemingly created the framework for a stable relationship.14 The establishment of the NATO-Russia Council in 2002 was meant to take relations to a new level.15 Beginning in 1991, the United States also provided funds and assistance to help Moscow secure nuclear weapons and materials dispersed on former Soviet territory.16 Russia received support for reclaiming nuclear weapons from post-Soviet states, such as 1,900 nuclear warheads from Ukraine, as agreed in the Budapest Memorandum from 1994, which in turn offered Kyiv guarantees that its independence, sovereignty, and existing borders would be respected.17 Despite a history of great power rivalry and animosity, post-Cold War Russian–Western relations seemed headed toward cooperation and a joint commitment to an international order of Western designs. As Andrei Kozyrev, Russia’s foreign minister under President Boris Yeltsin, put it in a contribution to Foreign Affairs magazine in the 1990s: “Indeed, partnership is the best strategic choice for Russia and the United States.”18 Western–Chinese relations showed remarkable similarities. In contrast to Russia, the processes of association and integration had already begun in the 1970s as the People’s Republic distanced itself from Mao’s revolutionary course and gradually opened up to the world. In 1971, the PRC 13 NATO (1990a, 1990b). 14 NATO and the Russian Federation (1997). 15 See NATO and the Russian Federation (2002) and NATO (2022). 16 See Bernstein and Wood (2010). 17 Number from Pifer (2019). 18 Kozyrev (1994, p. 59).

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took over the Chinese permanent seat at the UN Security Council from the Republic of China (Taiwan), from 1977 to 1984 it acceded to eight other international institutions, among them the IMF, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), all of which were characterized by Western leadership.19 Beijing’s violent crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and continued tensions over the status of Taiwan (e.g., Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995–1996), strained relations. But American and European post-Cold War China policy consistently pursued the path of engagement, hoping to further integrate China economically and politically. More than ever before, China appeared ready to embrace and join the US-led international order in the 1990s. One of the major developments in China’s foreign relations was its integration into the institutional structure of the international system. As David Shambaugh details, the PRC was a member to only 21 international organizations in 1977, the number rose to 29 by 1984, jumped to 51 by the mid1990s and to 130 by 2008. Its cooperation with institutions like the World Bank and the ADB reached impressive levels, as China became the largest recipient of development grants and loans, totaling more than 65 billion USD until the late 2000s. By 2008 it had signed more than 300 multilateral treaties and was firmly embedded in the world’s institutional architecture.20 Realists had long been skeptical of such visions of transformative politics and the pacifying effects of international institutions.21 Recently they provided scathing assessments of US and allied post-Cold War foreign policy elites, doctrines, and policy records.22 But the dominant trends in international relations theorizing supported hopes for a peaceful, institutionalized, rules-based international order. Research on global governance, the waning relevance of military power, the decline of the nation-state, the proliferation of international norms, and economic interdependence rose to prominence. While theories of interdependence have already emerged in the 1970s, it was the post-Cold War context that led to a tremendous upswing of global governance approaches that

19 Shambaugh (2013, p. 134). 20 Shambaugh (2013, pp. 134, 136). 21 See Mearsheimer (1995). 22 See Mearsheimer (2018), Walt (2018), and Masala (2016).

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suggested the authority of behavioral norms as well as the benefits of institutions and mutual economic gains would shape future world politics.23 Realist warnings from the early 1990s that the world was headed for a new era of geopolitics looked staggeringly outdated.24 Theoretical arguments aside, Moscow and Beijing even seemed to have powerful political incentives to refrain from any form of revisionism. Economic weakness contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union and has proven to be a key liability for Russia’s prospects as a great power ever since. The single best way for Moscow to bounce back was an economic modernization in partnership with the West. China’s rise has taken place in close conjunction with, not against the West. Association with the West and integration in Western institutions, especially the accession to the WTO in 2001, proved to be the engine for Beijing’s success. The Chinese economy multiplied more than 11-fold from 2001 to 2020, maturing into the world’s second-largest economy with a GDP of close to 20 trillion USD today.25 Without the West, Beijing would not be where it is now. Revisionism seemed no plausible policy option under these circumstances. Indeed, both states initially came across as satisfied status quo powers. China has long reassured its Asian neighbors and the world that its ascendance would never lead to confrontation. Talk of a “peaceful rise” soon made way for the language of “peaceful development,” downplaying notions of a “rising” China—which was, in fact, returning rather than emerging as a great power. A 2005 white paper plainly stated that peaceful development was the “inevitable way for China’s modernization.”26 Talk of “win–win cooperation” and a “harmonious world” were ingrained in the Chinese foreign policy discourse.27 Russia, despite recurring tensions over NATO policies in the 1990s, suggested even in the 2000s that amicable relations were in reach. In his 2001 address to the German parliament, President Vladimir Putin pledged that Russia was contributing

23 See, e.g., Terhalle (2015). 24 See Mearsheimer (1990), Mearsheimer (1995), and Layne (1993). 25 IMF (2022). Data from 2022 in current USD. 26 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2005). 27 On the concept of the “harmonious world” see Shambaugh (2013, briefly on p. 25;

more extensively on (competing) foreign policy discourses and roles pp. 1–44).

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to the “construction of the European house” and was ready for a “fullfledged cooperation and partnership.”28 Prior to a 2001 meeting with US President George W. Bush, Putin spoke favorably about the bilateral relationship, suggesting both sides were “willing to dismantle, once and for all, the legacy of the Cold War and begin fashioning a strategic partnership for the long-term.”29 Despite ups and downs, there was seemingly no systemic conflict line dividing the two countries. When terrorist attacks and fragile statehood emerged as prime challenges in the 1990s and early 2000s, even some in the military and strategic communities mused that great power conflict might be a thing of the past.30 In reality, however, great power rivalries have returned with a vengeance—with Russia and China as the main casts. Both states actively, intentionally, and single-mindedly challenge the United States, its power, its interests, and key elements of the US-led international order.31 The 2017 US national security strategy acknowledged this in unequivocal terms: China and Russia want to shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests. China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor. Russia seeks to restore its great power status and establish spheres of influence near its borders.32

The EU, though more circumspect in its rhetoric and less consequential in its actions, painted a similar picture in its 2016 Global Strategy.33 In 2019 it labeled China a “systemic rival.”34 It has become obvious that US and European policies have not been able to transform the dynamic of the international system.

28 Putin (2001). Own translations. 29 Vladimir Putin, quoted from Legvold (2016, p. 103). 30 On the evolution of post-Cold War military demands see Groitl (2015). For an

(updated) critical discussion of the flawed post-great power conflict-discourse see Forsyth and Mezzell (2019). 31 See, e.g., Wright (2018) and Kagan (2018). 32 Trump (2017, p. 25). 33 See European Union (2016). 34 European Commission (2019).

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The return of great power politics has manifested itself for more than a decade. Russia has behaved in an increasingly audacious and aggressive manner against its neighbors and the West. Vladimir Putin’s speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, in which he lambasted US hegemony as a threat to world peace, can be viewed as a caesura. The same goes for Moscow’s military intervention in Georgia in 2008. Both signaled Russia’s discontent with the regional and global order—and its newfound willingness to pursue confrontation to overturn them. Over the course of the last decade, Russia has systematically worked to consolidate its influence in its neighborhood and position itself as a regional pole. It sought to create and build alternative political, economic, and military structures with Moscow at their core (e.g., Eurasian Economic Union; Collective Security Treaty Organization) to roll back the influence of Western institutions like the EU or NATO. In a similar vein, Moscow supports forums and organizations that define themselves as distinctly non- or anti-Western (e.g., BRICS; Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and cultivates ties with antagonists of the West (e.g., Venezuela; Iran).35 Russia has repeatedly resorted to violence to pursue its interests in the so-called “near abroad” and has created and kept alive “frozen conflicts.”36 With the illegal annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in Ukraine, Russia has shattered the European security architecture in 2014.37 Ever since, it has projected power with air and naval forces, reckless flight maneuvers, and violations of NATO airspace— triggering 800 quick reaction alerts by NATO forces in 2016 alone.38 Even nuclear threats were not off-limits.39 In October 2015 Russia launched its first military intervention beyond the post-Soviet space in Syria, signaling its ambitions to shape developments beyond its immediate neighborhood.40 Anti-Western rhetoric has become an essential part of the Kremlin’s public narrative and media propaganda. Its reckless disinformation campaigns and election meddling efforts in the United

35 See, e.g., Salzman (2019) and Stronski and Sokolski (2020). 36 See Ohanyan (2018) and Klein (2018). 37 See Mankoff (2014). 38 Ridgwell (2017). 39 See Braw (2015). 40 See Klein (2016).

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States and beyond hit the West ill-prepared.41 Moscow even engages in a “culture war,” painting itself as a righteous nation of conservative values as opposed to a decaying, decadent, and liberal West.42 In this sense, the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is the tip of the iceberg and shattered all that had been left of Russian-Western relations. Outright confrontation, sanctions, energy decoupling, and military deterrence promise to be central features for years to come. Similar troubles are looming in the Far East. China has not turned into a “responsible stakeholder” of the international order, but into a “post-responsible power.”43 Behind a facade of reassurances, promises of win–win cooperation, and lofty rhetoric about a harmonious world, China has single-mindedly focused on translating its growing economic power into political clout and military might. The shifting power balance in and by itself spurs fears among China’s neighbors who cannot keep up with the arms race.44 What makes these even more acute is that Beijing, like Moscow, is increasingly prepared to coerce others. China has pursued an expansionist course both in the East China Sea and the South China Sea for more than a decade. It declares islands, rocks, and waters its own, irrespective of international law and neighboring countries’ objections. In November 2013 Chinese authorities unilaterally established an “air defense identification zone” (ADIZ) over vast parts of the East China Sea, demanding prior notice and requests for approval from everybody entering the ADIZ. Even more, tensions flared up in the South China Sea, where Beijing builds and militarizes islands to push its expansive claims.45 China simply ignores the court ruling that rejected its claims in 2016, blatantly disrespecting international law.46 In addition, it uses its economic strength to bully others into submission, be it on matters of Taiwan, Tibet or else, and expands its political influence through investment programs like the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) or the former 41 The EU monitors and counters Russian propaganda at https://euvsdisinfo.eu. On Russian election meddling see The Economist (2018); on its information warfare campaign see Ajir and Vailliant (2018). 42 See Snyder (2018). 43 Deng (2015). 44 See SIPRI (2022). 45 For a detailed record of China’s creation of artificial islands in the South China Sea

see CSIS (2022b). 46 See Hayton (2018) and CSIS (2019).

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17+1 format addressing Central and Eastern European EU and non-EU members. Furthermore, Beijing invests in alternative institutions, from the BRICS New Development Bank to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).47 The notion of universal values, such as the concept of individual human rights, is systematically targeted.48 Meanwhile, the Communist Party strikes a nationalist tone to rally domestic support—and perpetuates the narrative of a peace-loving China which has been treated unfairly by Western powers in the past and seeks only what is legitimately hers.49 In an astounding twist of history, Russia and China, who had once been adamant adversaries and fought a shooting war in 1969, have joined forces against the US-led international order. Small steps toward rapprochement were initiated in the 1980s already, but their relations truly took a new turn in the 1990s as both sorted out their relations with each other and the world under post-Cold War conditions. Moscow and Beijing, among others, agreed on a military cooperation pact in 1993 (renewed multiple times thereafter), a non aggression agreement in 1994, in 1996 they committed to building a “strategic partnership,” and in 2001 they agreed on a “Treaty on Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation.” But it was in recent years that their relationship tightened markedly, ranging from political support and gestures of respect to growing trade ties, joint military maneuvers, combined efforts at revisionist history, mutual support in international fora to further their common goal of a “multipolar world” and strengthen (albeit selectively) the principles of state sovereignty and non interference. Despite their strategic differences, Russia and China have both come to openly oppose the US, the liberal West, and the international order of its making.50 The Russian invasion of Ukraine clarified the new fronts even further. Shortly before the invasion, Beijing and Moscow signed a landmark statement, pledging a friendship with “no limits” and support for each other’s interests. They jointly lambasted NATO enlargement in Europe as an impediment to Russian security, while Moscow affirmed Chinese views

47 See Rudolf et al. (2014). 48 See Kinzelbach (2018). 49 See, e.g., Wong (2014). On nationalism in China see also Johnston (2016/2017). 50 On Russia–China relations and cooperation see Lo (2008), Wright (2018), and

Shambaugh (2013, pp. 78–86).

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on Taiwan. While they painted the US security presence in Europa and Asia as a source of conflict, they vowed to jointly work toward a new world order.51 Tellingly, China also refuses to condemn Russia’s attack on Ukraine, amplifies Russian propaganda narratives, and criticizes Western sanctions as illegal, while still trying to avoid punishment for venturing too far on the Russian side. As China expert Mikko Huotari of the Berlinbased MERICS Institute put it: “The fronts are becoming clear. And China is on the other side.”52 It adds up to a holistic revisionist agenda that is directed against core elements of the US-led international order and stands in stark contrast to both political hopes and academic expectations of the defining features of the post-Cold War era. Both Russia, the fallen superpower of the twentieth century, and China, the rising superpower of the twenty-first century, have shed their prior inhibitions and assert their interests vehemently and at times violently in the international system. The key question is why both Russia and China have turned into revisionists toward the Western liberal international order? Russia’s and China’s newfound appetite for confrontation forces the academic and policy communities to reassess some of their core assumptions and approaches. Geopolitics has made a brutal return on the world stage. Obviously, the West’s strategy of association, engagement, and enlargement has not done the trick to prevent it and expectations of an end of history and cooperative global governance were premature. Only if we understand current international dynamics theoretically can we hope to explain them empirically and find political answers. Finding ways to constrain and contain Russia and China without unnecessarily escalating tensions is key. It is no exaggeration to claim that the choices US and European policymakers take now set the stage for the future world order. While other scholars are called upon to analyze how the West could have gotten Russia and China so wrong, this study seeks to contribute insights into what explains revisionism as a strategic choice, specifically with regard to Russian and Chinese behavior toward the international order. This requires a solid understanding of the dynamics of order building and contestation in theoretical terms in order to be able to shed light on the complex relationship between Russia, China, and the West.

51 Putin and Xi (2022). 52 Mikko Huotari, quoted from Sahay and Strittmatter (2022). Own translation.

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The State of the Debate: Literature Review The literature on the new geopolitics between Russia, China, and the West as well as international order building and contestation is extensive. It does not, however, offer satisfying answers why it has come so far in both cases, neither theoretically nor empirically. As Germany is grappling with the need to implement a “Zeitenwende,” a fundamental change in its foreign policy in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, it is worthwhile to begin here. Speaking very broadly, German political science and international relations scholarship has largely disengaged from the analysis of great power rivalries and geopolitics. It helps explain why the country was taken by surprise on February 24. Many academics have long been predisposed toward the agenda and approaches of peace and conflict research with its critique of the arms race, its focus on arms control, norms and regimes, peace-building, and cooperative conflict resolution processes. Theoretically, constructivist and global governance analyses have come to dominate the discipline in Germany over the past 20–30 years—at the expense of realist scholarship. The research focused heavily on intergovernmental or supranational integration and modes of regional and global governance in multi-level contexts.53 Policy relevance is viewed in many quarters not as an asset but as a liability.54 This stands in stark contrast to the growing need for strategic expertise in a world that forces Germany to step up and respond to power shifts, great power bullying as well as the erosion of established alliances and multilateral processes. This study hopes to contribute its share to policy-relevant research in security and strategy. Internationally, great power rivalries, power shifts, conflicting interests, strategy, and security issues have always been core research elements and receive widespread attention as the geopolitical contest between Russia, China, and the West moved into the public sphere in 2022. Despite the meanwhile vast number of publications, the literature relevant to this study has shortcomings. It can be clustered into three groups: (1) literature on Russian and/or Chinese foreign policies, (2) literature on the nature, evolution, and erosion of the (liberal) international order, and (3) theoretical works on order building and contestation. Each of these three fields has merits and problems. 53 For a critique see Terhalle (2015). 54 See Terhalle (2016) and Rosert (2019).

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First, there is a rich body of literature on the challenge Russia and China pose to the West and the US-led international order, but it is also fragmented and incoherent. A large part of the literature on Moscow’s and Beijing’s current courses are policy analyses as produced by the think tank community in Washington, DC, and European capitals. They are of tremendous value and provide timely, strategy-minded assessments. What stands out is the recurring argument that US and Western disunity and lack of resolve offer “windows of opportunities” that Russia and China gladly used in the past.55 Due to the demands of the think tank world, many such analyses are fast-paced, issue-specific, and not embedded in a larger theoretical framework. However, the emergence of Russian and Chinese revisionism against the US-led international order deserves a coherent conceptual baseline. Though sizable in quantity, academic research does not fill the gaps. Many excellent studies have shed light on the foreign policies of Russia and China individually or their respective relationship with the United States or the West in recent years.56 The format of single case studies provides deep insights, but at the expense of links between them. Explanatory frames used to make sense of Russian and Chinese foreign policy range from individual leaders like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, to authoritarian political structures within, political cultures, historical grievances and traditions, imperial ambitions, status concerns, or changed relative capabilities. While journal articles are more likely to utilize theoretical lenses to analyze Russian or Chinese foreign policy and posture toward the international order, few monographs do so.57 Moreover, the need for a new theoretical synthesis has been identified as a research desire.58 Interestingly, a sizable share of the literature on Russia attributes Moscow’s revisionism to its domestic politics and imperial great power identity,59 while some blame Western policies (e.g., NATO enlargement, labeled as “NATO expansion”) and propose to accommodate Russia.60

55 See, e.g., Duchâtel and Godement (2016). 56 On the China challenge see, e.g., Sutter (2016, 2015) and Allison (2017). On Russia

see Lo (2015) and Stent (2015, 2019). 57 For an exception see, e.g., Harnisch et al. (2015). 58 See Götz (2017). 59 See for the former, e.g., Meister (2015, 2017); for the latter, e.g., Kotkin (2016). 60 See Mearsheimer (2014) and O’Hanlon (2017, pp. 7–34).

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With regard to China, analyses reflect a mixture of awe and alarmism, particularly among those written for a wider audience.61 The power shifts argument is the dominant interpretation of China’s revisionist policies, suggesting that ambitions grow with capacity. Interestingly, few scholars call for a policy of accommodation, while most works discuss the need and ways to counter Chinese revisionism.62 Such different assessments make the combined analysis of both cases even more interesting. After all, both engage in revisionism, even though Russia is struggling and China rising, and the question of how internal and external drivers of revisionism interoperate forces itself upon any observer. Triangular works on Russia, China, and the West are of particular interest to this study but limited in number. Increasingly, publications analyze the latest rapprochement in the Russian-Chinese relationship and emphasize either the astounding level of cooperation or the latent potential for conflict between the two.63 Works on Russia’s and China’s visions of order, their discontents, and strategic outlooks summarize their views of the world. Respective journal articles, book chapters, or think tank studies, though enlightening, remain necessarily limited in scope and often zoom in on just one of the two countries.64 But especially those works seeking to truly portray the world “as seen” from Moscow or Beijing offer valuable contributions.65 Others tell the story of Moscow’s and Beijing’s dissatisfaction with the established order in a more essayistic style.66 Some edited volumes have enriched the field in recent years, seeking to track the geopolitical changes in the international order.67 Yet here the triangular view is still lacking. Overall, despite a great research density, there are only few works that systematically contextualize Russia, China, and the West as well as their strategic interaction over the future of the international order.68 What is missing is an empirically dense 61 See, e.g., Frankopan (2018) and Jacques (2012). 62 See for the former Layne (2015); for the latter Ratner (2017) and Holmes and

Yoshihara (2017). 63 See, e.g., Blank et al. (2015) and Lo (2008). 64 See, e.g., Johnston (2019) and Radin and Reach (2017). 65 See, e.g., Lukyanov (2016), Hamilton and Meister (2018), and Shambaugh (2013). 66 See, e.g., Schmitt (2018) and Schoen and Kaylan (2015). 67 See, e.g., Biba and Wolf (2021) and Tunsjø et al. (2021). 68 See, e.g., Smith (2013) and Bolt and Cross (2018).

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research monograph to analyze Russian and Chinese revisionism against the liberal West from the baseline of an overarching conceptual model of international order contestation. The second set of relevant publications addresses the (liberal) international order empirically. Their number is equally vast and their foci are diverse, but they can be clustered in two subgroups. The first subgroup highlights the nature and effects of (material) power shifts. Many works stand in the tradition of American declinist literature and focus on the contraction of US power, proclaiming the end of the “Pax Americana” in world affairs.69 Though the view that US power was declining is common, it is not unchallenged. In fact, prominent scholars point toward the specific qualities that make US primacy particularly durable.70 Other works look at the “rising rest” instead of the United States or the West. They tend to reflect postcolonial interpretations and applaud the coming equity for emerging powers in world affairs.71 New non-Western forums for cooperation, such as the BRICS, also received wide academic attention.72 Yet again others expect a more fundamental restructuring of international order: as power was not just shifting between states but away from them; as change occurred ever more rapidly and increased the level of unpredictability in the international system; as networked interaction dynamics necessitated new policy approaches.73 The second subgroup concentrates on liberalism and its defects, pondering the homegrown crisis of the so-called liberal international order. The interest lies in the development trajectories of political systems, the erosion of liberalism and democracy in the West and beyond, the rise of anti-globalist populism and how autocratic powers found their own way to economic prosperity without political liberalization.74 After the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s electoral success in the 2016

69 See Layne (1993, 2006a, 2012, 2018). 70 See Brooks and Wohlforth (2008, 2015/2016). For an innovative argument of how

“underlying” global political structures and trends influence power shares see Brands (2016). 71 See, e.g., Stuenkel (2016), Acharya (2014), and Khanna (2019). 72 See Thies and Nieman (2017). 73 See Haass (2008), Schweller (2014), and Slaughter (2017). 74 See, e.g., Niblett (2017), Boyle (2016), Kupchan (2012), and Gat (2007).

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US presidential election, the inner flaws of the liberal international order, the United States’ changing global posture as well as the potential selfdestruction of the Western world order came to dominate the discourse.75 Others, however, point to the endurance of the forces of liberalism in the long run.76 Pieces on the domestic cleavages of the Western international order are particularly helpful in that they make clear that the domestic and international levels are intricately linked. They also dismantled earlier teleological notions about the inevitable expansion of politico-economic liberalism worldwide. Yet taken together the empirical literature on the development and future prospects of the (liberal) international order raises more questions than it answers. Claims that “the international order” is eroding or that we are faced with a significant degree of “disorder” are commonly made in current commentary and analysis. They are also inherently imprecise, as few address systematically how to define “international order,” what made it stable, and why it is eroding. It suggests that there was one liberal international order which had global reach and was now under stress. But there has never been a liberal world order. The oft-repeated notion that the world had enjoyed a rules-based liberal international order since World War II must be called intellectually lazy and politically preposterous. The global competition between the Western and the Soviet models of order divided the world in two blocs for decades. Similarly, the discourse about shifting powers (or rather changes in relative capabilities) echoes teleological accounts of where the world is headed, but it tells us little about the meaning of power: what states use their capabilities for, what kind of orders they seek to build or rally against—and why. The third area of research relevant to this study is theoretical works on international order and contestation. Unfortunately, these themes have not received the attention they deserve. Research foci tend to be heavily dependent on the politics of the day and have largely been driven by US foreign policy priorities. In the 1990s, fragile statehood, state collapse, humanitarian intervention, and peace-building were the core themes. Post 2001, research on terrorism, Islamism, counterterrorism, and counterinsurgency spiked. When US President Barack Obama launched the

75 See, e.g., the first four issues of Foreign Affairs in 2017 (96.1–4/2017) as well as Ikenberry et al. (2018). 76 See Miller (2018).

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“pivot to Asia,” research on China’s rise, the American response, and the potential for conflict between the two countries surged. When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, it, too, became “en vogue” again as an object of study. Paul J. Bolt and Sharyl N. Cross are right to criticize that “US academic and policy communities have been so consumed over the past decade with issues in the Middle East and countering terrorism that we have neglected to devote sufficient attention to assessing the strategic significance, challenges, and opportunities presented by the evolving Sino-Russian relationship.”77 Today, great power relations and the state of the international order are at the center of attention. But there is a dire need to catch up in basic research and unpack Russian and Chinese revisionism as well as their causal drivers. The theoretical chapter will show that there is no generally accepted model of revisionism. In fact, revisionism tends to be employed as a loose catchphrase, not as a precise behavioral category. It is clear that revisionism is a relative term. Its exact meaning depends on its counterpart, namely the international order as the status quo in world affairs. If one wants to go beyond explanatory ad hocery, a theoretical model of revisionism has to be based on a theory of international order. Theoretical pluralism notwithstanding, debates about international order are wedded to structuralist interpretations of international politics. The two dominant lenses still are neorealism and institutionalism, both of which emerged in the 1970s. Newer constructivist angles rose to prominence in the 1990s, but they do not resolve the underlying problems. First, grand theories of IR provide a strikingly compartmentalized view of what international order is—and, by implication, what revisionism entails. Second, they cling to a mechanistic understanding of the emergence, evolution, or erosion of international order. Neorealists assume that states coexist as unitary, rational actors in an anarchic international system full of dangers and conflict, where all are forced to fend for themselves and accumulate power for the sake of security. Since all states have a strong incentive to balance dominant powers, neorealists expect a never-ending cycle of the rise and fall of powers in the international system.78 Revisionism then is the eternal quest to change the distribution of power in one’s own favor for the sake of security. This

77 Bolt and Cross (2018, p. vii). 78 See, e.g., Waltz (1979) and Gilpin (1981).

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view is not wrong. But it leaves crucial questions unanswered. If states are relentless balancers and fear cooperation, how come we live in a globalized world of complex interdependence? Neorealism is unable to explain the West’s world-ordering policies of the past decades. Similarly, reaching out to potential rivals politically and economically appears like folly turned policy. Though neorealism’s insights have merits, it provides a simplistic understanding of order and revisionism. The major alternative is institutionalism.79 Institutionalists assume that states cooperate for their own gain and build institutions to facilitate it. Since states are embedded in ever closer political and economic networks, confrontational behavior no longer pays off in a world of complex interdependence. International order in this sense is an institutionalized order of shared stakeholders with mutually agreed upon principles, norms, rules and procedures in various regions and policy fields. Institutionalists have, as late as a few years ago, strongly rejected the idea that a return of geopolitical antagonism would be possible in today’s globalized world.80 Their optimism has been challenged empirically. The same empirical deficit plagues newer constructivist works. They emphasize the immaterial, perceptual, and social dimensions of international relations. Though disagreeing with the utilitarian logic of rational institutionalists, constructivists sympathize with their conclusion, namely that durable cooperation is feasible. Norm diffusion and socialization processes can help turn the world of anarchy into an international community. At the same time it remains an open question when or why normative socialization works or fails. In sum, while realists convey a sense of perpetual conflict and revisionism, institutionalists and constructivists tend to expect convergence. Neither account captures the complexity of reality. Order all too often is understood as a condition, a state of being, defined either by the distribution of material capabilities, as realists assume, by institutional arrangements, as institutionalists postulate, or by mental maps and norms, as constructivists hold. This suggests that the international order inevitably evolves along predetermined pathways. Yet order is actively created, reproduced, defended, challenged, or undermined, and it takes capability and intent to engage in revisionist policies. The international system provides an arena for strategic interaction and

79 See, e.g., Keohane (1984), Baldwin (1993), and Jervis (1999). 80 See Ikenberry (2014, 2011a, 2011b).

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competition about how the world ought to be ordered. The study of international order would profit tremendously from such an interaction-based understanding, zeroing in on the determinants and dynamics of order building and contestation. In the process, it is the great powers that play a major role. They set up the rules of the game, manage the resultant order, and seek to defend or revise it. It takes new models to theorize great power relations and the stability of the global order, models that focus both on international structure as well as state agency. Agency—the ability of states to make choices within the structural context of the international system—needs to be factored in. If we accept the premise that international order is created, reproduced and contested through individual foreign policy choices, it warrants a model of international order that is tied back to foreign policy analysis and strategic choice. After all, the relative distribution of power does not tell us to which ends power is used and how available resources are employed. Hence, the relative distribution of power alone neither sheds light on the substance and durability of the international order nor does it help us understand the potential and practice of revisionism by competing states. An insightful array of works on (grand) strategy, the process of strategic assessment, and strategic decision-making offer new angles.81 A sizeable number of them implicitly or explicitly subscribe to a neoclassical realist interpretation of foreign policymaking.82 It is high time to make use of them to understand the strategic and interactive dimensions of international order creation, defense, and contestation theoretically—to make sense of Russia’s and China’s revisionism against elements of the US-led international order empirically.

The Road Ahead: Research Design This study seeks to fill the gaps outlined above. On the one hand, it aspires to formulate a novel theoretical model to advance our understanding of international order building and revisionism. On the other hand, it empirically seeks to shed light on Russia’s and China’s revisionism toward the US-led Western international order by testing the theoretically

81 On strategy in general see Freedman (2013) and Luttwak (2001). On grand strategy and competing strategic options see Art (2009). 82 See, e.g., Kitchen (2010), Dueck (2006), and Layne (2006b).

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derived propositions. To do so, it traces the strategic views of Moscow and Beijing what the US-led liberal West does for and to them and what they deem appropriate responses to produce a world more in line with their interests. The research interest focuses on the post-Cold War period, zooming in on Western order building and Russian and Chinese opposition against it. While their revisionist turn can be dated roughly to the late 2000s, the analysis has to look at events in a wider timeframe. Though many IR theories are agnostic about the temporal dimension, historically grown structures and grievances are relevant. The shapes of domestic and international orders as well as the concerns of revisionist powers do not emerge out of the blue. Looking at the last decade only would provide a snapshot view instead of yielding insights into relative continuities or changes over time. However, it is these trajectories that are of utmost importance for our analytical understanding of the (in)evitability of revisionism, its significance, and political implications. Therefore, the study takes into account the legacies of times past that cast their shadows over the post-Cold War era as well as the accommodation phase of the 1990s and early 2000s that preceded the turn toward revisionism in the late 2000s. While Russian and Chinese policy is largely framed and defined in opposition to the United States, this study uses “the West” as a point of departure. Despite its lack of definitional rigor and the criticism thereof, the term is commonly used in political and analytical parlance and comes with a general understanding of who this entails and what it stands for. There is no doubt that the United States has been a crucial player, both in shaping the current international order and in sustaining the West as a political community. Consequently, the United States is the key reference point for all revisionist challengers and this study. But Washington has practiced order building in concert with its like-minded partners in Europe and Asia. In addition, Russia and China define themselves not only as opposed to the United States but to the broader West. The study thus uses the terms US-led and Western international order interchangeably. The book is divided into three broad sections, beginning with the theory of international order and revisionism. This work is a theory-based analysis of Russian and Chinese opposition to the US-led international order in the tradition of deductive IR scholarship. The hypothesis will be derived from a theoretical model outlining cause and effect and then

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be tested empirically.83 To be able to do so systematically, the dependent and the independent variables need to be solidly explained. One of the core difficulties of this study is that key concepts and terms, like revisionism and international order, are underdeveloped theoretically despite their academic and political centrality. Hence, the study draws on existing literature to show the conceptual gaps of the theoretical status quo in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 brings in the literature on grand strategic analysis and strategic choice. The study develops a neoclassical realist model of great power conflict and international order contestation that bridges the gap between the international and national level of analysis. Neoclassical realists have emerged as a lead faction within realist theory-building. Their approach has proven useful and fruitful for three reasons. First, it combines system-level variables with sub-systemic, process-level variables to explain what states do and why they do it. Second, it forgoes the determinism inherent in purely structural models like neorealism, but still acknowledges the utter importance of the structural conditions of the international system. Third, though neoclassical realism started out as an approach of foreign policy analysis, current research acknowledges its wider value to explain systemic outcomes. Neoclassical realism’s ability to connect the domestic to the international level as well as the procedural to the structural dimension of international affairs makes it particularly well suited to serve as an analytical tool for looking at the stability of the international order and the occurrence of revisionism. The theoretical model stands in the causal-analytical tradition of theory-building (as opposed to normative or descriptive models) and identifies causes and effects, pointing to the strategic constraints that emanate from the US-led international order as well as Russia’s and China’s strategic needs and opportunities to revise it.84 The theoretical section provides crucial insights. First, it shows that the structures of the international order are much more closely intertwined with domestic ordering structures than commonly acknowledged. Whether states emerge as stakeholders or challengers of the international order does not merely depend on their relative position of power. It matters whether international structures aid or threaten their domestic

83 On deductive research designs see Stykow et al. (2010, p. 150). 84 On causal-analytical, normative, and descriptive theories see Stykow et al. (2010,

pp. 152–154).

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needs. Second, it becomes obvious that ends and means are closely linked to determine the stability of the international order. The analysis of power relations alone tells us little about the threats of revisionism in the international system. After all, committed revisionists may opt for high-risk and confrontational policies to resolve the pressures of an unfavorable international status quo even from a position of weakness. Third, strategies employed are expected to vary depending on the capabilities mix a country possesses. Rising states likely employ the full range of their growing capabilities and engage in constructive alternative order building to expand their power, influence, and interests. Struggling or outright declining states with a contracting resource base and a narrowing set of options probably resort to destructive means to undermine an existing order and safeguard their own power, influence, and interests. Colloquially speaking, it will be shown that Russia and China have turned into revisionists because they want and can under the conditions of the US-led international order. These components build upon and modify traditional neorealist insights. First, neorealism suggests that the distribution of capabilities shapes interaction dynamics. Neoclassical realism counters that it is the interests and influence of great powers that produce international order—and form the constraints others are subject to. Such great power orders can generate even more immediate and intrusive pressures than raw anarchy. Second, neorealism’s claim that states fear for their survival is predisposed toward threats to the physical existence of a state. In fact, survival concerns are not limited to physical threats to one’s territorial integrity. States want to protect their territory and extraterritorial influence claims, their regime type, economic well-being, and normative consensus. The vision of order that benefits one state may endanger core national interests, potentially even the regime stability of another. Third, neorealism tends to overemphasize the stability of international orders, as changes in the polarity of the system are rare. Neoclassical realism focuses on processes of strategy-making and suggests that windows of opportunities are enough to challenge a status quo order. Drawing from these theoretical considerations, the study posits that Russia and China have turned to revisionism because they regard core elements of the Western international order as threats to their own vital security needs, ranging from the ontological, territorial, political, economic to the normative realm. Besides, they have opportunities to counter the elements of the international status quo they deem unbearable. As will be shown, Russia and China resist an order that privileges

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liberal principles, challenges their historically grown selves as imperial and authoritarian great powers, and limits their ability to serve as independent poles of the international system. The empirical analysis is divided into two phases. Chapters 4–6 deal with the post-Cold War era of the 1990s and 2000s, which constitutes a phase of Russian and Chinese accommodation to Western liberal order building. Chapter 4 sketches the genesis and enlargement of the West’s liberal international order and the false hopes of global ideational convergence that led policymakers at the time. Strategies of engagement were thought to be benign instruments of mutual benefit. Viewed from Russia and China, however, they appeared increasingly antithetical to regime needs. As Chapter 5 details, Russia could not manage the dual transformation to democracy and the free market and increasingly felt marginalized and deprived of what it viewed as its legitimate great power grandeur. Yet its material weakness and political instability allowed for nothing but a course of “resentful accommodation” at the time. Chapter 6 explores China’s posturing. While Beijing was hostile to any notion of political liberalization, it opted for a controlled integration into the liberal international order as the only plausible pathway toward development and prosperity. Though Beijing resented the central features of the US-led international order, it practiced a policy of “strategic accommodation” to lie low, safeguard the Communist Party’s power monopoly at home and gain strength in an era of globalization. By the late 2000s, the situation had changed significantly, as Chapters 7–9 show. Not only had the vital needs of both countries diverged even further from the realities of the US-led international order, but the crisis of the liberal West paired with their own relative gains opened up windows of opportunity for revisionism. Chapter 7 focuses on the expansion amidst erosion that characterized the US-led international order from the 2000s onward. The constraints placed on Russia and China grew, be it through the unabashed appeal of the Western model, particularly in the post-Soviet space, or through Western policies seeking to ingrain liberal norms even deeper into the international system. At the same time, however, the crisis of the West—spurred by material power shifts, a flawed US war on terror post 2001, the financial and economic crisis 2008/2009 and the rise of populism in the 2010s—provided opportunities for contestation. Chapter 8 outlines that Russia has since practiced “destructive revisionism” to undermine the US-led liberal order and prevent what it views as the nightmarish prospect of losing its great power status. Rising

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China, as Chapter 9 details, has seen its power base widen by the year and engages in “constructive revisionism”—understood not in a normative, but an analytical sense as the effort to build an alternative Sino-centric order meant to replace the Western liberal one. The empirical analysis subscribes to a historicizing, interpretive approach and seeks to trace the causal mechanisms that explain Russian and Chinese revisionism. While analyzing capabilities and interests casts light on what a state might want and be able to do, it does not tell us what is actually being done. Instead, the translation of power and interests into policy matters. This pertains to Western international order building as well as Russian and Chinese revisionism. To make sense of the stimulus of international order, the practice of US and Western world ordering must be taken into account. To explain Russian and Chinese responses, their grown national selves, their assessments of the status quo, their domestic propensity to adapt, and their opportunities to thwart the US-led international order must be traced. Such an interpretive approach avoids the trap of inferred causalities. In terms of empirical sources, the study relies on a broad mosaic. To sketch strategic thinking in Washington, Brussels, Moscow, and Beijing with first-hand sources, the study utilizes policy and strategy documents (e.g., white papers, security strategies, foreign policy concepts, military doctrines) as well as leader pronouncements (speeches, communiqués). Archived governmental papers and meeting notes between US and foreign leaders provide valuable insights, too. Though access to strategy deliberations through governmental sources is limited in the Russian and Chinese cases, information is more than ample to reconstruct interests, worldviews, and strategic decision-making. In addition, journalistic reporting and scholarly secondary sources shed light on views, issues, and narratives, while US government documents also represent Russian and Chinese takes in memos and briefing notes. Moreover, leaked documents as well as translated edited volumes of original sources offer firsthand accounts of how Moscow and Beijing view the global order and their strategic options. Autobiographies and memoires enhance our understanding as well. In addition to the plethora of available scholarly literature on the subject, think tank analyses provide valuable policy- and strategyminded insights. Particularly noteworthy are the Berlin-based Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik with its excellent Russia/Eurasia section, MERICS as a leading China-focused research institution, the European

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Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which is a key source of information on maritime Asia, as well as the US Council on Foreign Relations. The Economist, as well as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung provide indispensable insights through their reporting on all relevant actors. To assess power metrics both quantitatively and qualitatively, the study utilizes relevant databases, indices, and analyses provided by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the World Bank, the IMF or the US Department of Defense. Overall, it adds up to a comprehensive picture. Research on Russia, China, and the West as well as the use of literature in English and German warrants a note on language, terminology, and spelling. All relevant Chinese and Russian primary sources, governmental documents, speeches, and else are available in English, mostly as official English translations that are accessible online. Other relevant primary sources are available as translations in other formats (e.g., published readers; digital archives). Some works, such as leader memoirs, were used in their German editions. Names and terms with different spellings are used in a common English variant throughout (e.g., CCP instead of CPC for the Communist Party of China; Gorbachev; Yeltsin) even if a referenced source uses alternative orthography. Direct quotes and the list of works cited retain the original spelling. Chapter 10 concludes the study with politically relevant insights regarding the theory and practice of international order building and revisionism. Among others, a key takeaway is that states can feel threatened by international orders even if there is not the slightest danger of a direct military encounter. Also, states have a variety of means at their disposal to challenge the international status quo. They can undermine existing structures by questioning their legitimacy, functionality, and enforcement or engage in alternative order building. The empirical analysis shows that Russia and China pursue similar goals, but they utilize different means. While conventional wisdom and IR scholarship tend to look at rising powers as the greatest danger to international stability, declining powers are likely more conflict-prone in the short-term since they are running out of time to leave their imprint on regional or global political structures. This is highly destabilizing and creates disruption in the international system. Based on its theoretical and empirical insights, the study recommends a vigilant and self-defensive policy of neo-containment to cope with Russia

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and China. Unfortunately, one cannot but conclude that a cooperative liberal order as once envisioned has never been a real option, whereas the attempts to globalize the liberal West paradoxically led to a less liberal West and a less Western world. In the end, however, stands a note of hope, not one of despair. While authoritarian great powers like Russia and China may have the appearance of strength and self-confidence, they are plagued by weakness within. It is the fear of their own citizens and the appeal of freedom that incentivizes aggression at home and abroad. It is their demand for subservience that may thwart their international ambitions as rule-makers before they come to fruition. And it is their inability to admit past mistakes that paves the way for future failure. Russia’s bloody—and botched—invasion of Ukraine reinvigorated the liberal West to a degree unimaginable just a few years earlier, while Chinese malpractice in trade, diplomacy, and else has led to international disillusionment and an unprecedented degree of transatlantic cooperation. Hence, the return of history may be a passing phase, after all.

Works Cited Acharya, A. (2014). The End of the American World Order. Polity Press. Ajir, M., & Vailliant, B. (2018). Russian Information Warfare: Implications for Deterrence Theory. Strategic Studies Quarterly, 12(3), 70–89. Allison, G. (2017). Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Art, R. J. (2009). America’s Grand Strategy in World Politics. Routledge. Baldwin, D. A. (Ed.). (1993). Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate. Columbia University Press. Bernstein, P. I., & Wood, J. D. (2010). The Origins of the Nunn-Lugar and Cooperative Threat Reduction (Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction/Case Study 3). National Defense University Press. Bierling, S. (1998). Wirtschaftshilfe für Moskau: Motive und Strategien der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der USA von 1990 bis 1996. Schöningh. Bierling, S. (2014). Vormacht wider Willen: Deutsche Außenpolitik von der Wiedervereinigung bis zur Gegenwart. C.H. Beck. Bisley, N. (2012). Great Powers in the Changing International Order. Lynne Rienner Publishers. Blank, S., Lukin, A., & Rozman, G. (2015). Uneasy Triangle: China, Russia, and the United States in the New Global Order. Center on Global Interests. Bolt, P. J., & Cross, S. N. (2018). China, Russia, and Twenty-First Century Global Geopolitics. Oxford University Press.

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Salzman, R. S. (2019). Russia, BRICS, and the Disruption of Global Order. Georgetown University Press. Schmemann, S. (1990, July 22). The World: Gorbachev Rings the Doorbell of the ‘Common European House’. New York Times. Schmitt, G. J. (Ed.). (2018). Rise of the Revisionists: Russia, China, and Iran. The AEI Press. Schoen, D. E., & Kaylan, M. (2015). Return to Winter: Russia, China and the New Cold War Against America (First paperback ed.). Encounter Books. Scholz, O. (2022, February 27). Policy Statement by Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and Member of the German Bundestag. www.bundesregierung.de/breg-en/search/policy-statement-by-olaf-scholzchancellor-of-the-federal-republic-of-germany-and-member-of-the-germanbundestag-27-february-2022-in-berlin-2008378 Schweller, R. L. (2014). Maxwell’s Demon and the Golden Apple: Global Discord in the New Millennium. Johns Hopkins University Press. Shambaugh, D. (2013). China Goes Global: The Partial Power. Oxford University Press. SIPRI. (2022). SIPRI Military Expenditure Database. Continuously updated. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://milex.sipri.org/sipri Slaughter, A.-M. (2017). The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World. Yale University Press. Smith, M. A. (2013). Power in the Changing Global Order: The US, Russia and China. Polity Press. Snyder, T. (2018). The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America. Tim Duggan Books. Stent, A. E. (2015). The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Paperback ed.). Princeton University Press. Stent, A. E. (2019). Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest. Twelve Books. Stronski, P., & Sokolski, R. (2020). Multipolarity in Practice: Understanding Russia’s Engagement with Regional Institutions (The Return of Global Russia Series/Paper January 2020). Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Stuenkel, O. (2016). Post-Western World. Polity Press. Stykow, P., Daase, C., Mackenzie, J., & Moosauer, N. (2010). Politikwissenschaftliche Arbeitstechniken (2nd ed.). UTB. Sutter, R. G. (2015). The United States and Asia. Rowman & Littlefield. Sutter, R. G. (2016). Chinese Foreign Policy since the Cold War (4th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. Terhalle, M. (2015). Warum das Governance-Axiom gescheitert ist—eine notwendige Kritik. Zeitschrift für Politik ZfP, 62(3), 263–288. Terhalle, M. (2016). IB-Professionalität als Praxisferne? Ein Plädoyer für Wandel. Zeitschrift für Außen-und Sicherheitspolitik, 9(1), 121–138.

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The Economist. (2018, February 22). How Putin Meddles in Western Democracies. And Why the West’s Response is Inadequate. The Economist. The Economist. (2022, April 23). How to deter China from attacking Taiwan: What Taiwan can learn from Ukraine about resisting invasion. The Economist. Thies, C. G., & Nieman, M. D. (2017). Rising Powers & Foreign Policy Revisionism: Understanding BRICS Identity and Behavior Through Time. University of Michigan Press. Trump, D. J. (2017). National Security Strategy of the United States of America. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/ 2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905-2.pdf Walt, S. (2018). The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Waltz, K. N. (1979). Theory of International Politics. McGraw-Hill. Wong, E. (2014, November 11). In New China, ‘Hostile’ West is Still Derided. New York Times. Wright, T. J. (2018). All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the Twenty-First Century and the Future of American Power (Paperback ed.). Yale University Press.

PART II

Theory of International Order Building and Revisionism

CHAPTER 2

Falling Short: International Order and Revisionism in IR Theory

What is international order? What explains its emergence and decline? And why do states engage in revisionism? These questions are of utmost importance for our understanding of war and peace in world affairs. This study develops a neoclassical realist model of great power politics and international order contestation to provide a new angle. It helps bridge the theoretical gaps between the analysis of foreign policy, strategy, and international order. Although power, order, and revisionism are central concepts in international affairs, they have a certain theoretical fuzziness to them. The literature is full of disclaimers and complaints about the lack of a clear and generally accepted understanding. It is not that previous scholars have not tried. Acknowledging both the inherent challenges of theorizing on such grand terms and the merits of previous works, this chapter will make the case that existing theoretical debates inhibit our understanding of revisionism as a policy phenomenon. The argument is presented in three steps. First, the chapter looks at existing research on revisionism to clarify the dependent variable. Generally speaking, revisionism even in academic discourse is mostly used as an intuitive term. Second, a review of grand theories of international relations shows that they do not suffice to explain revisionism. Unitlevel theories like liberalism focus on domestic preference formation without regard to the nature, quality, and effects of international orders. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Groitl, Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18659-2_2

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System-level theories like neorealism and institutionalism as well as newer constructivist views do theorize on international orders. But they are too structuralist to adequately capture the dynamics of international order building and contestation. Third, this study makes the case for realism as the overarching paradigm, but demands it must be made more realistic by overcoming the statism inherent in neorealist theorizing. Remarkably, literature on international politics and order is largely disconnected from the literature on (grand) strategy, which is conscious of the non-linear nature of power and the strategic competition over national interests.

Dependent Variable: Revisionism “Revisionism” by any of the major great powers in the international system can be deeply troubling and a grave threat to international stability. It certainly is a troubling scholarly concept. Though no fringe theme, revisionism is, as colleagues have pointed out, grossly undertheorized and underconceptualized.1 The same is true for its intellectual counterpart, the international status quo that is commonly referred to as the “international order.”2 It is frequently inferred that the international order was eroding or that countries turned revisionist, yet there is no consensus on the manifestations of revisionist behavior or its driving forces. Randall Schweller traces this deficit to the inherent challenges of explaining interaction dynamics: The question of how international order emerges and changes over time has received inadequate treatment in the study of international relations. The most important reason for this pattern of neglect is that efforts to uncover laws of change require the study of dynamics, which presents a formidable challenge to the still relatively young field of political science.3

Though it is challenging to get an analytical handle on it, it is this dynamic interaction between order builders, defenders, and contenders that shapes the international system at any given time. What complicates matters, even more, is that international order and revisionism are loaded terms. States use and abuse them for political ends. 1 See Ward (2017, pp. 1–2; 10–11), Jaschob et al. (2016), and Krickovic (2022). 2 See Anter (2007). 3 Schweller (2001, p. 164).

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While order possesses a positive connotation, revisionism has a negative ring. Calling another state “revisionist” implies that the respective state recklessly endangers international peace and security. Emphasizing one’s own commitment to the “rules-based international order,” in turn, characterizes oneself as a responsible member of the international community. It is not surprising that even the staunchest revisionists may self-characterize as steadfast defenders of the international order. It goes without saying that international order and revisionism should be used as neutral analytical terms in academic contexts. Specific international orders can provide collective goods. But international orders can also be deeply unjust, real-life manifestations of the most outrageous ideologies. In short: International order building by no means resolves the brutal uncertainty of anarchy. It is neither automatically just nor benign nor does it serve the well-being of all. Understood this way, revisionism is not in and by itself a despicable policy behavior. There may be many, even excellent reasons to seek adjustments to the international rules of the game. Revisionism can be progressive and benign or regressive and suppressive. As analytical terms, international order and revisionism refer to an existing status quo or attempts to change it respectively, both of which can be good or bad in a normative sense. Abstract ponderance of what is meant by revisionism is relatively rare in international relations scholarship. The concept of revisionism has been most present in the realist school of thought, particularly in the works of classical realists of the mid-twentieth century and recent neoclassical realists.4 But in a thorough literature review Jaschob et al. found that revisionism is mostly inferred from empirical contexts and used almost as a “colloquial concept” without explication.5 Similarly, Steven Ward argues that revisionism “often serves as little more than an ad hoc explanation for otherwise inexplicably aggressive behavior”—despite its importance for our understanding of great power relations in general and power transitions in particular.6 In the most general sense revisionism denotes the aim or effort to change (aspects of) the international status quo. Hence, revisionists are

4 See, e.g., Morgenthau (1948/2006). For newer neoclassical realist takes see Schweller (1998) and Davidson (2006). 5 See Jaschob et al. (2016, pp. 4–5; quote from p. 5). Own translation. 6 Ward (2017, p. 1).

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generally considered “anti-actors,” up against something they dislike.7 As Jason Davidson posits: “Whereas revisionists seek to change the way things are in international politics, status-quo seekers strive to preserve things as they are.”8 Barry Buzan distinguishes status quo and revisionist powers by their security interests for “stability” or “change.”9 Labels used to describe revisionist actors generally range from “frustrated” to “dissatisfied” to “insatiated;” revisionists are characterized as “have-nots,” “profit-seekers,” as “imperialistic,” or even as “revolutionary” powers.10 Those states that do not engage in revisionism are generally referred to as status quo powers, satisfied or satiated powers; most recently the term “affirmation” was introduced to describe a supportive attitude toward the international order.11 Schweller and Pu contrast revisionist states with “supporters” of an existing order.12 Using the propensity and level of association with a given order as a metric, Jeffrey Legro distinguishes “revisionist” from “separatist” and “integrationist” states.13 Implicit in works on revisionism is a cost–benefit calculus and an orientation toward the future. According to Randall Schweller, revisionist states value what they could have more than what they possess and are willing to bear the costs to get whatever they desire.14 In terms of how revisionist powers operate, it is generally suggested that aggression, in particular the use of force, plays a major role, though of course other, softer forms are conceivable and possibly even more important in day-to-day interstate arm-twisting.15 Though helpful as a first approximation, the abovementioned aspects do not provide a precise definition. Steven Ward summarizes the overall 7 Jaschob et al. (2016, p. 4). Own translation. 8 Davidson (2006, p. 1); see also Davidson (2002). 9 Buzan (1991/2016, p. 241). 10 A concise summary of terminology and term pairs used in classical realist research

is offered by Schweller (1998, p. 20) and Schweller and Priess (1997, p. 11). See also Jaschob et al. (2016) and Schweller (1994). 11 Jaschob et al. (2016, p. 12). 12 See Schweller and Pu (2011). 13 Legro (2005, p. 10). 14 See Schweller (1998, p. 46). 15 See, e.g., Schweller (1998). Use of force appears as a common strategy of revisionists

in Schweller’s entire narrative. See as an illustration the passage on systems with one revisionist pole on p. 48.

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dilemma of revisionism research: “While analysts broadly agree that it [revisionism] refers to dissatisfaction, there is little further consensus. The term captures, in different formulations, anything from a willingness to pay more to change than defend the status quo to a commitment to bringing about a revolution in the international system. There is accordingly little agreement on questions about how to measure or explain dissatisfaction.”16 The lack of coherent definitions is detrimental to a better understanding of revisionism as a phenomenon. It is hard to explain what one cannot define. But the deficit of analytical rigor has been a trademark of revisionism research from the very beginning. Classical realists in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s devoted a lot of attention to the phenomenon. Indeed, they had witnessed violent revisionism and the dual catastrophic breakdown of order in two world wars. Hans Morgenthau suggested distinguishing imperialist states, as he called them, from status quo seekers by whether they attempted to change the existing distribution of power in their favor.17 Arnold Wolfers on the other hand argued that some states pursue “goals of national self-extension,” meaning “all policy objectives expressing a demand for values not already enjoyed, and thus a demand for a change of the status quo.” This entailed a diverse set of ambitions: “The aim may be more ‘power as an end in itself’ or domination over other peoples or territorial expansion; but it may also represent a quest for the return of lost territory, or the redress of legitimate grievances, such as termination of unjust discriminations, the emancipation from foreign control or imposition on others of an ideology or way of life[…] .”18 In this sense, revisionism is about much more than power. It is about desired goods, and power is a means to an end. Similarly, in his 1957 classic on the European great power concert, Henry Kissinger made clear that the great powers create an order based upon their interests and interactions, the stability of which depends on whether the consequential actors view it as legitimate. This entailed an “agreement on the nature of workable arrangements and legitimate foreign policy goals and methods.”19 If an existing order is deemed legitimate, conflicts are fought “in the name of

16 Ward (2017, p. 10). 17 See Morgenthau (1948/2006, pp. 50–82). 18 All previous quotes Wolfers (1951/2011, p. 46). 19 Kissinger (1957/1991, p. 7). Own translation.

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an existing structure,” not against it. “Once a power disputes the international order or its legitimacy, relations between her and other powers turn revolutionary. In this case it is not about the resolution of differences within a given system, but it is about the system as such.”20 These early writers understood international orders (or, used synonymously, international systems) as products of great power capabilities, interests, and strategic interactions. Such an order can only be stable if an equilibrium exists between the great powers. Once one or more of them turn against the established status quo, it is unlikely to hold. Early realists also made clear that revisionism can be distinguished by the magnitude of revisionist intent and practice. While some states seek to modify elements of an existing order, others revolt against the basic rules of the system. Obviously, it makes a crucial difference whether—to take dynastic Europe as an example—monarchs and emperors compete for spheres of influence among each other and adhere to the rules of diplomatic practice in doing so, or whether actors seek to overthrow the dynastic order. Classical realist notions of the relevance of great powers, national interests, and strategic practice as well as their focus on the crafting and collapse of great power equilibria pointed to key dynamics of international politics. Nonetheless, criticism on realism’s anthropological foundations (tracing interstate power struggles to human nature) and neorealism’s subsequent meteoric rise put a premature end to classical realist ponderance of power, interests, order, and revisionism. Recent literature has taken up revisionism as a theme of research but degraded it to a catch-all phrase. Randall Schweller, among the leading scholars of revisionism, randomly mentions different kinds of grievances without adhering to any theoretical orthodoxy or, vice versa, without weaving them into a systematic framework. Revisionists allegedly desire more power, more prestige, a “place in the sun,” an (in their view) deserved “place at the table,” a “New Order” (whatever this entails) and seek to “increase their values and to improve their position in the system.”21 In another passage Schweller describes revisionists as resourcemaximizers, as opposed to security-maximizers; shortly thereafter he posits they were characterized by a “common desire to overturn the

20 Kissinger (1957/1991, p. 8). Own translation. 21 Schweller (1998, p. 21).

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status quo order—the prestige, resources, and principles of the system.”22 Yet again later revisionists are portrayed as states seeking “territorial and institutional adjustments.”23 It remains unclear what revisionists are truly after. This is symptomatic of much of the current literature in the field. To go beyond such intuitive approaches, one needs metrics to conceptualize revisionism. First, revisionist policies may be dissected by issue area. Jason Davidson, for example, holds that revisionism was about “valued or desired things,” particularly “five such things” referred to as “goods” in his book: “territory, status, markets, ideology, and the creation or change of international law and international institutions.”24 How and why these five essential goods were selected and why other goods are ignored, remains in the dark. Other works similarly point to a set of rising (revisionist) power desires—for “raw materials, markets, living space, religious converts, military or naval bases, or simply adventure.”25 One way to resolve this would be to deduct such goods from a broader theory of international politics and order. But defining international order is just as hard and controversial. Nonetheless, viewing revisionism along sectoral lines—as well as in geographical scales and by their centrality for world politics—is a valuable first step to classify revisionist behavior. Disaggregating revisionism into its specific parts makes clear that it is by no means a dyadic matter. Revisionist attitudes and behaviors exist in shades. If revisionism is analyzed sectorally, it may well be that states seek adjustments in just one or several of those areas, while supporting the status quo in others.26 Similarly, Randall Schweller leaves dyadic notions behind when he identifies five categories of states: “[…] (1) unlimited-aims revisionists, (2) limited-aims revisionists, (3) indifferent towards the status quo, (4) status quo but willing to accept peaceful and limited change, and (5) staunchly status quo and unwilling to accept change of any kind.”27 What separates them is how much they want

22 Schweller (1998, p. 24). 23 Schweller (1998, p. 60). For criticism on Schweller’s eclectic approach see also

Jaschob et al. (2016, pp. 5–7). 24 Davidson (2006, p. 13). 25 Set of desires based on Nazli Choucri and Robert North, quoted from Schweller

(1999, p. 3). 26 See Davidson (2006, p. 15). 27 Schweller (1998, p. 10).

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to change the international system and what they are prepared to do for it, though Schweller does not provide specific metrics to distinguish “unlimited-aims” from “limited-aims” revisionists.28 This leads to a second criterion, namely the degree of aspired change. Revisionists may seek adjustments of varying quality and consequence. Barry Buzan distinguishes orthodox, radical, and revolutionary revisionists. Orthodox revisionists, he postulates, challenge the distribution of power in the system. By definition, this was about status and hierarchy, but not the normative substance of an order. Radical revisionists on the other hand want to alter the operating principles of an order and “reform the system.” Revolutionary revisionists, by contrast, seek fundamental changes to the “organizing principles of the dominant status quo,” which includes “not only the distribution of power, but also the domestic values and structures of all states associated with the prevailing status quo.”29 Similarly, Steven Ward posits that besides distributional revisionism, where states compete for a larger share of specific resources, another form was normative in nature and expressed dissatisfaction with the status quo of the existing social order: its norms, rules, and institutions.30 Alexander Cooley, Daniel Nexon, and Steven Ward’s typology of status quo and revisionist states asks whether they seek to alter or defend the balance of military power and/or other elements of the international order, loosely defined.31 Hence revisionist practice can also be differentiated by the degree of change that is desired. In the light of previous debates, it is reasonable to distinguish three degrees of revisionism as broad-brushed ideal types. States may aim at changing their own relative influence in or share of a given area (distributional revisionism), they may seek to change the operating principles or rules of the game in a given area (substantive revisionism) or they may seek to change the game altogether (foundational, game-changing or revolutionary revisionism). To illustrate the point: A state that seeks more relative weight in international governance tries to improve its position within a given order; a state that wants to change the rules by which interstate interaction in a given field operates is a revisionist of a

28 See Schweller (1998, pp. 19–26). 29 Buzan (1991/2016, pp. 242–245; quotes from pp. 244; 242; 243). 30 See Ward (2017, pp. 10–21). 31 See Cooley et al. (2019).

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different quality; yet an actor that seeks to abolish the state-based international system wants to change the game. Certainly, such ideal types are neither clear-cut nor mutually exclusive, but they can serve as helpful approximations to capture the severity of revisionist practice.32 Third, in addition to the width and depth of revisionism, methods matter. Classical realists distinguished the status quo from revisionist states by their propensity to use force.33 Jaschob et al. recently focused on this aspect in more detail. They use an instructive example: An opposition party as well as a military junta, a buyer and a thief, an anti-globalization protester and a leftist guerrilla group all seek to modify the status quo, but they employ fundamentally different means. The point is that there are legitimate and illegitimate ways to bring about change, namely according to the rules or by breaking the rules.34 Referencing earlier work by Christopher Daase and Nicole Deitelhoff, Jaschob et al. suggest that rule-abiding revisionism can be labeled “opposition,” while rule-breaking revisionism can be called “dissidence.”35 Differentiating further, they argue that both opposing and dissident actors may vary in their degree of revisionism, which depended upon the breadth and depth of their revisionist goals and their revisionist commitment.36 The work of Jaschob et al. forces us to ponder the difference between revisionists and reformers, a trend in current research. After all, evolutionary change and adaptation processes are an integral part of the functioning of any international order.37 The distinction between opposition and dissidence also hints at the strategic dimension of revisionism. Revisionist states differ in their means and the degree of international disruption they create. However, Jaschob et al.’s model suggests that revisionists opt for rule-conformant opposition or rule-breaking dissidence. This is an anti-septic view of the messy world of international politics. 32 This echoes Buzan’s (1991/2016, p. 242) distinction between orthodox, radical, and revolutionary revisionism and seems to reflect prevailing views. Krickovic (2022, p. 625), recently put forth a similar three-tiered conceptualization of revisionist aims, differentiating between attempts to alter international hierarchies, normative orders, or both. 33 See Wolfers (1962/1991, pp. 125–126). Wolfers even characterizes states attempting to bring about change by non-military means as status quo powers. 34 Example according to Jaschob et al. (2016, p. 14). 35 Jaschob et al. (2016, pp. 14–15). 36 See the visualization in Jaschob et al. (2016, p. 16). 37 See, e.g., Ward (2017, pp. 16–17).

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Revisionists can be rule-followers and rule-breakers at the same time. It is likely they use existing rules to their benefit and break them when it suits them. We might also add other binaries. States use symmetric and asymmetric strategies, military and non-military methods, open and concealed efforts of international order contestation. Also, power relations and the effects of international orders, which are absent in Jaschob et al.’s model, certainly play a role. In sum, their conceptualization is overly complex and reductionist at the same time. Krickovic recently echoed the need to take the means states use into account and proposed the willingness to use force as the decisive criterion to distinguish reformers from revisionists. Though the metric promises clarity, it also misses too much. No shots need to be fired for revisionism to occur. A state that seeks to radically alter the international order and utilizes the full spectrum of coercive leverage other than war is certainly no reformer.38 Though revisionism has been present in international relations research since the inception of the discipline, no commonly shared definition or sophisticated model is readily available. The needs are twofold. First, any study on revisionism has to define the phenomenon in descriptive terms to classify it as a type of actor behavior. Second, a meaningful explanatory model for revisionism must go beyond description and offer causalities. Unless we operationalize revisionism in an ad hoc fashion, it is intricately tied to the broader status quo of the so-called international order. Hence, to explain revisionism as a policy choice, it must be embedded in a general model of international order building and contestation. This is a tough call. Andreas Anter questions whether defining order was possible at all since the term is inherently context-specific.39 Tellingly, substantive works on international orders often take the shape of periodizing historical analyses.40 Conscious of these challenges, this study operationalizes the dependent variable as follows: It understands revisionism as all actions directed against the established international status quo. Hence, revisionism must be visible in typical behaviors to be classified as such. Of course, the revisionist potential may be much higher than the amount of revisionism that

38 See Krickovic (2022, pp. 622–630). 39 See Anter (2007, pp. 5–6). 40 See Kocs (2019).

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is manifest in world affairs at any given point. Some may dislike the international status quo but are either unwilling or incapable of doing anything about it—after all, disturbing the status quo comes at a cost, at worst the cost of military punishment. Such latent or potential revisionists may hope that others do the bidding for them.41 Visible attempts to challenge the international status quo are sufficient to warrant the label revisionist, it does not depend on their success. This study’s subject matter is the reasons for revisionism, not its effects. In processual terminology: Revisionism as a policy behavior is an “output” of what states do, while the success or failure would require an analysis of international “outcomes.”42 Building on the preceding literature review, this study classifies revisionists descriptively by the width, depth, and methods of their actions. To assess the width of revisionism toward the international order, it is helpful to ponder the number of functional issue areas (from no to single-issue, multi-issue, or across-the-board grievances), their centrality for world politics (from irrelevant to peripheral to central issues of international order) as well as their geographical scale (local, regional, or global). The depth of revisionism can be approximated by the degree of (dis)agreement with the organizing principles of a given ordering structure, the consistency of revisionist intent as well as the degree of change sought (distributional, substantive, or foundational). The methods of revisionist practice can be classified by looking at the level of costtolerance, the primary modes (e.g., rule-abiding vs. rule-breaking) as well as the tools used to follow through on revisionist intentions. These metrics allow us to characterize revisionist states more transparently. They can be clustered into factors that shed light on (a) the level of dissatisfaction a revisionist holds toward a given status quo as well as (b) the modalities of revisionist practice. Categorizing states based on their level of dissatisfaction and their modes of behavior allows us to distinguish ideal types. The classification below reflects that this study is not analyzing one specific subsystem of international order (e.g., nuclear order), but the general attitude of two major powers toward the status quo international order at large.43 Of course, ideal types serve only as broad-brushed 41 See, e.g., “buck-passing” in Mearsheimer (2014, pp. 157–162); also Buzan (1991/2016, pp. 241–242). 42 For an introduction to policy processes see Heywood (2007). 43 If the subject was one specific ordering structure, the factor “width” would only be

used as a qualifier to assess the relevance of the case study.

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approximations. But for the sake of parsimony, it is a compromise worth accepting (see Figs. 2.1 and 2.2). Russia and China can be labeled “hard revisionists” by this metric. They both engage in revisionist practices in key areas of the international order, namely the territorial, political, economic, and normative realms, both regionally and globally. In these fields, they seek substantive changes in the structures and processes that guide interstate relations. They are both unsatisfied with the core elements of the US-led international order, but not radically opposed to the overall setup of the

status quo power

REVISIONIST INTENT

number of issues

revisionist power

none

few

select

multiple

many / all

issue centrality

insignificant

peripheral

mixed

central

foundational

geographic scale

insignificant

local / regional

regional

regional / global

global

none

hardly

somewhat

largely

absolutely

consistency of revisionist intent

insignificant

low

mixed

high

extreme

degree of change kind of revisionism

insignificant none

low distributional

medium distr. / subst.

high substantial

extreme foundational

overall

very satisfied

satisfied

partially (un)satisfied

unsatisfied

very unsatisfied

disagreement over principles

REVISINOIST PRACTICE

status quo power

revisionist power

cost tolerance

none

low

issue-specific

high

extreme

geographic reach

none

likely local

local / regional

regional / global

likely global

modes of action

ruleenforcement

reformist rule-abiding

selective rule-stretching

spoiling rule-breaking rule-making

complete defiance rule ignorance rule creation

diplomacy, economy, military, etc.

none conformist

selective consensual

issue-specific determined

various confrontational

all no limits

overall

insignificant

low

significant

high

extreme

tools used

Fig. 2.1 Characterization of revisionist states: revisionist intent and revisionist practice (Source Own illustration)

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REVISIONIST INTENT REVISIONIST PRACTICE

insignificant

very unsatisfied

low

high

latent revolutionary

extreme revolutionary revisionist

underperforming revisionist

unsatisfied partially (un)satisfied

hard revisionist single issue revisionist

satisfied

very satisfied

significant

reformer committed status quo power

---

---

Fig. 2.2 Revisionist ideal types (Source Own illustration)

state-based international system or the post-World War II institutional architecture. Both support the UN and other institutions and engage in international diplomacy, but both also seek to change existing institutions, alter established rules, and create new institutions themselves. In doing so, Russia and China use a broad array of methods, ranging from symmetric to asymmetric political, economic, and military approaches to revise elements of the US-led international order within their own neighborhoods and beyond. Interestingly, both place growing emphasis on hybrid means, that is tools from a principally civilian tool kit (i.e., information campaigns, state media, cultural diplomacy) that are employed by state entities to pursue strategic ends. Both countries also conceptualize such hybrid efforts as an integral part of a hot conflict with the West. This erodes the dividing line between war and peace and challenges one of the foundational norms of international law. But their revisionist practice also differs. Russia focuses more on military coercion to the point of outright intervention and spoiling, while China places greater emphasis on economic tools, suasion, and alternative order building. Having established what revisionism entails and how Russia’s and China’s behavior fits in, we can now turn to why they do what they do.

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International Order and Revisionism: State of the Debate in IR Theory This study seeks to shed light on why states turn against the established international status quo, zeroing in on Russian and Chinese revisionism against the US-led international order. Over the past ten-plus years, both have emerged as “hard revisionists.” The crucial question is: Why? Some claim that it was impossible to create an explanatory model of revisionism since it was such a multifaceted phenomenon. As Ward posits: “States likely pursue different kinds of revisionist policy combinations for many reasons, and trying to capture these in a single theoretical framework would be futile.”44 Though demanding, an explanation of revisionism must flow from a general model of international politics and order. The grand theories of international politics are the natural first candidates in the search for answers. An obvious initial step is to distinguish unit-level from system-level theorizing. While the former locates the sources for state behavior and interstate interaction at the national, “unit”-level, the latter points to the international system. Simply put, unit-level approaches explain international political dynamics “bottom-up” with the internal features of individual states, while systemic theories argue that the incentives, pressures, and constraints of the international system drive state behavior “top-down.” The classic bottom-up theory is liberalism in its various shapes and forms.45 Unlike its intellectual predecessor—democratic peace theory, which searched for generalizable patterns of behavior of and among democracies—modern liberal theory focuses on preference formation within states. According to Andrew Moravcsik’s new liberalism, the state does not exist as an autonomous actor in its own right, but is a mere “transmission belt:” an institutional structure which translates the preferences of the most assertive individuals and groups in society into policy. Hence, individuals and groups within a polity are viewed as the most important political actors, and they all try to push through their own parochial interests.46 In recent years, constructivists have enriched the

44 Ward (2017, p. 21). 45 See Krell and Schlotter (2018, pp. 175–224) and Hasenclever (2010, pp. 76–101). 46 See Moravcsik (1997).

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field, suggesting that it was the cultural, ideational, emotional, perceptual, or discursive lenses of domestic agents, not material interests, that shape preferences.47 The corollary from bottom-up theorizing is that states neither act as coherent units nor as outward-oriented strategic actors. Foreign policy appears as the outgrowth of domestic actor preferences and their competitive negotiation processes, not as a response to international givens. Theorizing on revisionism and international order, however, presupposes the existence of a specific international status quo that guides, shapes, or ties single-state behavior—and triggers targeted responses. This is antithetical to modern liberalism’s causal model. System-level theories provide valuable alternatives. Their logical starting points are the features of the international system, which make up the external context and supreme reference point for all state action in foreign policy and international affairs. In Kenneth Waltz’s words: “Systems theories, […], are theories that explain how the organization of a realm acts as a constraining and disposing force on the interacting units within it. Such theories tell us about the forces the units are subject to.”48 The two most prominent systemic theories are neorealism and institutionalism, both of which emerged in the 1970s. From the 1990s onward, constructivists opened up new perspectives on the social foundations of the international system. Due to systemic theories’ affinity to questions of international order, they seem particularly well suited to explain revisionism. Kenneth Waltz’s neorealism argues that international politics was driven by the structure of the international system, which was defined by three elements. First, the ordering principle, which is anarchy in the international system. Second, the functional characteristics of the interacting units. All coexist in a state of perpetual insecurity and are, out of necessity, “functionally alike,” having to fight for their own survival. Third, the distribution of capabilities in the international system. States differ in the capabilities they possess, which places each in a distinct position relative to others in a regional subsystem or the global system.49 Waltz defines capabilities as “size of population and territory, resource 47 Constructivists agree that the world is socially constructed and driven by non material forces, but there is no consensus about the proper level of analysis, relevant actors, or structures. See Risse (2003, spec. pp. 101–102). 48 Waltz (1979, p. 72). 49 For a summary see Waltz (1979, pp. 79–101).

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endowment, economic capability, military strength, political stability and competence.”50 Following his argument, the distribution of capabilities in the anarchic self-help system forces states to respond. The distribution of capabilities in the international system can be uni-, bi-, or multipolar, depending upon the number of significant power centers (poles). States abhor power imbalances and fear their own relative inferiority, since the only way to survive is to prepare for war and deter others. In Waltz’s depiction, the use of force is all too common: “In international politics force serves, not only as the ultima ratio, but indeed as the first and constant one.”51 Processes of internal or external “balancing” against dominant powers, that is investments in one’s own defense or alliances with others, are automated survival strategies and omnipresent facts of life. If states are too weak to balance, they may, out of necessity, “bandwagon” with the dominant power. Since such behavior puts any state at the mercy of the strong, Waltz considers balancing with weaker states the favored option because it guarantees relative superiority and thus a maximum degree of sovereignty over one’s own decisions.52 In general, states only cooperate against existential threats and fear their partners might profit more in relative terms.53 Parent and Rosato even claim that states are relentless internal balancers to avoid reliance on others.54 All in all, there is a strong structural determinism: States do not do what they want in world politics, they do what they must. In line with this sparse model, international order is generally viewed as synonymous with the polarity of the international system.55 Neorealist research is heavily biased toward the analysis of great powers, as they are the most consequential members of the international system.56 However, since all states are modeled as “like units,” neorealism assumes that great powers and hegemons all follow the same behavioral patterns.

50 Waltz (1979, p. 131, 1993a, p. 50). 51 Waltz (1979, p. 113). Italics in original. 52 On balancing and bandwagoning see Waltz (1979, pp. 102–128). 53 See Waltz (1979, pp. 104–107). 54 See Parent and Rosato (2015). 55 “Structure defines the arrangement, or the ordering, of the parts of a system.”

Waltz (1979, p. 81). The structure of the international system, in turn, is defined by the distribution of capabilities and hence its polarity. 56 See, e.g., Waltz (1979, pp. 72; 131).

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They demand, they impose, they coerce, they exploit, and they threaten the survival of lesser states.57 Thucydides’s warning that the strong do what they want and the weak suffer what they must thus remains relevant through the ages. The order is expected to be stable as long as there is no significant change in the polarity of the international system.58 Waltz posits that a bipolar order with its dyadic balance of power was particularly stable and peace-prone, especially under the conditions of nuclear deterrence.59 From a neorealist logic, balancing efforts are revisionist practices, since states seek to alter the power political order to their benefit.60 While a balance of power provides a degree of stability, unipolarity is seen as short-lived: “the response of other countries to one among them seeking or gaining preponderant power is to try to balance against it. Hegemony leads to balance, which is easy to see historically and to understand theoretically.”61 Following Waltz, though, hardly ever will it come so far given that states gang up on would-be hegemons early on. All great powers or hegemons will eventually fall, because they cannot keep up the competition forever and overextend.62 Often such power shifts lead to war. In fact, devastating great power wars are considered the most likely mode of power transition. World history then is a never-ending story of rising and declining great powers, the self-centered, coercive orders of their making, and the relentless balancing efforts of lesser states.63

57 Waltz concedes that great powers take on managerial roles and may even provide public goods, but they tend to define their own narrow interests as universal and interfere in the affairs of less powerful states, thereby threatening the autonomy and survival of others. On the management of international relations see Waltz (1979, pp. 194–210). 58 See Waltz (1979, pp. 135; 161–162). 59 See, e.g., Waltz (1964, 1990). 60 For a critique of this view see Schweller and Pu (2011). They make clear that efforts to change the balance of power do not necessarily mean that states want to change the rules. 61 Waltz (1993a, p. 77). 62 See, e.g., Waltz (2000, pp. 27–28) and Robert J. Art in Art et al. (2005/2006,

pp. 177–185). 63 See Gilpin (1981) and Allison (2017).

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This cyclical, pessimistic view is opposed by institutionalists.64 Institutionalists dispute both the notion of absolute anarchy as well as state autonomy in the international system, which, they argue, is limited by complex interdependence on the one hand as well as institutions on the other. It follows that states have the luxury to care about more than their survival. At the same time, they need each other to realize their interests— from security to prosperity to welfare and else. Instead of continuously looking for ways to deter one another, they are greatly interested in cooperating with each other to everybody’s benefit.65 To overcome the barriers to meaningful cooperation, states turn to institutions and regimes—understood as “sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations.”66 While neorealists are wedded to zero-sum thinking, institutionalists see win–win situations, which induce ever more cooperation, more linkages and a more complex division of labor on the international level. Institutionalists believe in voluntary, enduring, self-regulating, and selfenforcing forms of cooperation based on common interests.67 Indeed, the school originated in the 1970s when scholars pondered why international economic and financial cooperation endured despite the decline of US hegemony.68 One of its founders, Robert O. Keohane, criticized that realists underestimate the level of international cooperation, because they mistakenly focus on the “supply” of hegemonically induced cooperation and fail to recognize the widespread “demand” for regimes.69 Since cooperation is not forced upon states and possesses a degree of independence from underlying power structures, it can be expected to be relatively durable and to outlast power shifts.70 In addition, institutions

64 For a comparison of neo realist and institutionalist assumptions see Baldwin (1993), Jervis (1999), and Brecher and Harvey (2002). 65 See Keohane and Nye (1977/2012). 66 Krasner (1983a, p. 2); see also Keohane (1989, p. 163). 67 See Jervis (1999). 68 See Keohane (1984). 69 See Keohane (1983). 70 Institutional theory acknowledges the existence of imposed regimes and orders, but

views them as one among other forms of cooperation, such as spontaneous or negotiated orders. See Young (1983, pp. 97–101).

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evolve and adapt, leading to changes in regimes and changes of regimes over time, as Krasner makes clear.71 Though commonalities of interests are key to understand the forms and fields of interstate cooperation, institutionalism is unspecific about what these interests are and where they come from. The baseline is that states care about much more than their own survival and cooperate for absolute gains, traditionally understood in material terms.72 The school’s focus lies on matters beyond the national interest, though: the creation, evolution, and collapse of institutions; the conditions enabling cooperation, such as the quality of information or the reduction of transaction costs; and the specific cooperation formats in various policy fields (e.g., nonproliferation; climate policy).73 According to institutionalist thinking, the international order is defined by the institutions and regimes that help states reap collective gains. In Robert O. Keohane’s words: “We study international regimes because we are interested in understanding order in world politics.”74 Institutions and institutionalized orders are understood as issue-specific and multi-layered. Though obscured by talk about “world order” or “international order,” the logic of institutionalist and regime theoretic research suggests that multiple orders coexist and overlap in the world at any given point.75 In addition, an institutionalized order limits the effects of power discrepancies, as the same rules apply for the strong and the weak. Under the conditions of complex interdependence, military force loses much of its relevance anyway.76 All in all, interdependence and institutions are expected to encourage restraint. Since states depend upon one another in recurring decision-making settings, rational, cost-sensitive actors should be wary of future ramifications of confrontational behavior as well as the

71 See Krasner (1983a, pp. 2–5). 72 Early institutional theory was largely utilitarian. Scholars assumed that states build

regimes to pursue their own material interests and assessed regimes based on costs and benefits. See, e.g., Krasner (1983a, pp. 11–12). Later on, theory building acknowledged the role of ideas, beliefs, and immaterial rewards. See, e.g., Goldstein and Keohane (1993). 73 See, e.g., Müller (1993), Krasner (1983b), and Keohane (2002). 74 Keohane (1983, p. 141). 75 This understanding is reflected in current works on the international order, even without specific reference to institutionalism. See, e.g., Patrick (2016). 76 See Keohane and Nye (1977/2012).

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negative spillover effects into other policy areas.77 Since the international order is highly institutionalized and upheld by many stakeholders who benefit from it, institutionalists do not even fear power shifts. Though institutional decay and collapse is a possibility—and revisionism is the attempt to accelerate that outcome—it is not the most likely scenario due to the costs involved.78 In the 1990s constructivism rose to prominence and provided yet another angle. Due to the wide variety and divergent assumptions of constructivist approaches, it is impossible to present one coherent model. A key point made by Alexander Wendt is that “anarchy is what states make of it.”79 Constructivists dispute that fear and conflict were inevitable in international affairs. Instead of power asymmetries or material gain, it is the social structures, identities, ideas, knowledge, norms as well as roles that color the perceptions and shape the behaviors of states. States, as all social actors, are expected to be socialized into normative communities and behave according to a logic of appropriateness. Since social actors and structures are constructed and upheld by reproduction, constructivism is sensitive toward cognitive factors, discourse, narratives, frames, myths, rituals, and performances. Along these lines, social authority and legitimacy are crucial power resources. Drawing freely from constructivist literature, international order can be understood in multiple ways, yet always as a reflection of the social reality of international society. It may be (shared) state identities that structure interaction patterns and order.80 World order can also be viewed as formed on the basis of a collective and evolving “understanding of what constitutes a legitimate international order.”81 In his recent work on “world ordering” Emanuel Adler posited that world order was not a fact but a process. Actors follow performative scripts, which are products of cognitive processes and evolve in social interactions.82 Viewed

77 See Axelrod (1984) and Oye (1986, esp. ch.1). 78 See Ikenberry (2011a). For an opposing view see Mearsheimer (1995). Institution-

alists concede, though, that power shifts impact regime evolution and likely endanger imposed regimes. See Young (1983, pp. 108–110). 79 Wendt (1992, 1999). 80 See, e.g., Bially Mattern (2005) and Adler and Barnett (1998). 81 Barnett (2017, p. 153). 82 See Adler (2019).

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this way, the international order is characterized by socially constructed patterns of thought and behavior, their continuous reproduction as well as socialization processes that transform actor thinking and behavior.83 Constructivism parts ways with neorealism and institutionalism on the chances for global amity. While the former fear unresolvable conflicts due to international anarchy and power disparities and the latter hope for rule-abiding cooperation based on collective gains, constructivists raise the possibility of reflexive cooperation and norm-conformity—because it is the right thing to do. From a constructivist point of view, revisionism means challenging dominant narratives and norms of international society by delegitimizing the status quo through discourse, protest or the like. At first glance, the assumption of norm diffusion and socialization seems to contradict the notion of normative revisionism. But constructivists point to the mutually constitutive nature of actors and structures. Since structures exist through actor reproduction, they evolve in an evolutionary manner—and can be challenged by agents of change or norm entrepreneurs. Revisionists then are those who break out of socially accepted conventions and seek to redefine the normative baseline of international society. Norm-compliance and adherence to a logic of appropriateness should be common behavioral patterns, though, as “social shaming” and reputational costs go along with norm-breaking. A different but increasingly visible strain of research focuses on status and prestige as drivers of state behavior and revisionism.84 All system-level theories offer their own views on what the international order is made up of—the distribution of capabilities, the multiplicity of cooperative institutions, or normative social structures—and provide hypotheses on Russia’s and China’s revisionism (see Fig. 2.3). For neorealists, revisionism is balancing by another name. States seek to counteract an asymmetric distribution of capabilities to safeguard their own survival in an anarchic world. Along these lines, neorealists consider Russia’s and China’s anti-Western assertiveness to be the logical reaction against the superior capabilities of the United States and its allies. They suspect that Russia and China, as all other countries, have always wanted to balance the United States, and that their relative ascendance

83 Briefly on norm diffusion and socialization see Barnett (2017, pp. 153–156). 84 See Paul et al. (2014), Ward (2017), and Murray (2019).

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BASIC ASSUMPTIONS ON

IR GRAND THEORIES neorealism

institutionalism

constructivism

composition of international system

anarchy

interdependence

international society

essence of international order

power polarity

institutions

norms, social rules

driving factor for state action

fear

gain

appropriateness recognition

great powers in international order

essential

indeterminate

irrelevant

manifestation of revisionism

power revisionism

institutional revisionism

normative / status revisionism

reasons for revisionism

power imbalance

lack of absolute gains

failed socialization status concerns

certain & eternal

unlikely

unlikely

(unless deterred by countervailing power)

(fear of material losses)

(fear of social “shaming” and exclusion)

likelihood of revisionism

Fig. 2.3 IR grand theories on international order and revisionism (Source Own illustration)

allows them to adopt a more confrontational posture. Current dynamics then represent the inevitable return of geopolitics under the conditions of power shifts.85 Some even view armed conflict, including a disastrous great power war, as a likely, though not inevitable scenario.86 In line with the theory’s basic assumptions, neorealists view rising China as the real challenge. Russia’s ambitions are considered greater than its capabilities, which will eventually marginalize Moscow and degrade it to a secondary

85 See, e.g., Layne (2006a, 2012, 2018). 86 See Mearsheimer (2014) and Allison (2017).

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power.87 Waltz has long made the argument that Russia was a “lopsided great power” due to its economic and technological weakness, but one which compensated with nuclear might to uphold its great power status.88 He expected, however, that this severe shortcoming would lead to political restraint: “It has defensive and deterrent capability, but not the ability to project and sustain power abroad on land and on sea.”89 Institutionalists have long appeased concerns of new rivalries between the great powers. They assumed that not even power shifts would endanger the stability of the rules-based international order in a highly interdependent world. Indeed, the material gains—already realized or expected in the future—are significant. Prominent institutionalists made it explicitly clear even as late as a few years ago that the globalized world would not see a return of outdated geopolitics and revisionism.90 Obviously, they were wrong, overestimating the ties that bind. States at times opt against cooperation even if they lose wealth or stable relations with the outside world. They disrupt institutional architectures and embrace conflict, though it hurts their material interests. The Donald J. Trump administration’s policies showed that even the lead power may turn against the order of its own making.91 Institutionalists find themselves standing in the rain as the relationship between Russia, China, and the West has become confrontational despite the unprecedented degree of interdependence in a globalized world. Constructivists are facing similar troubles the more reality challenges notions of socialization and norm diffusion. Of course, misperceptions and distrust, incompatible group identities, or competing normative frames may account for great power rivalries between Russia, China, and the West. Yet animosities and conflicts are not forced upon contending states by a law of nature, constructivists are convinced. Tensions can be resolved through discourse and trust-building. This view leaves questions unanswered, however. Dialogue and mutual understanding were elements

87 The level of attention devoted to China over Russia in neorealist research is a telling indicator. 88 Waltz (1993a, pp. 50–52). 89 Waltz (1993b, p. 191). 90 See Ikenberry (2010, 2014, 2011a, 2011b). 91 See Böller and Werner (2021), Ikenberry (2017), Cohen (2017), and The Economist

(2018).

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of Western engagement policies with Russia and China in the post-Cold War era. Also, it is a remarkable coincidence that anti-US and antiWestern revisionist attitudes emerged both in Russia and in China and at about the same time, despite their differences and previous attempts to emulate the West. In addition, if states are expected to stay within the normative bounds out of a logic of appropriateness, why are Russia and China seemingly immune to such socialization? With instances of forceful territorial expansionism in their neighborhoods, they even regress behind previously accepted norms. Both do not relent despite criticism, international “shaming” and punitive measures of varying intensity. Despite their differences, neorealist, institutionalist, and constructivist interpretations are strikingly teleological. While neorealists see conflict as inevitable, institutionalists and constructivists believe in the civilizing power of institutions and socialization. While neorealists assume that the power-based international order is always subject to change, even though the underlying dynamics never change, institutionalists and constructivists firmly believe in the progressiveness of international politics and the durability of institutional and normative orders. This leads to competing yet still overly structuralist interpretations. While realists postulate that Russia, China, the West, and all others are doomed to clash, institutionalists and constructivists assume that the potential for conflict has been reduced by joint stakes in international institutions or the norms of international society. In sum, they largely neglect countries’ agency, substantive interests, and strategies. In fact, neither of the schools incorporates a clear conception of national interests and strategic action, even though this is what it takes to understand how states respond to systemic incentives and constraints—be they power political, institutional, or normative in nature. Systemic theorizing alone cannot explain the presence or absence of revisionism, because revisionism is a policy choice, not a natural law. The empirical record of the past decade attests to the enduring relevance of realist theorizing. States reassert themselves in world politics and opt for conflict despite the costs involved; they break formal rules as well as informal behavioral norms; multilateralism is in crisis and coercion experiences a forceful comeback. It is no surprise that realist analyses feature prominently today with a “we told you so” attitude, as the postCold War hopes for political “convergence” and functioning “global

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governance” have been shattered.92 This study shares the view that the realist school of thought offers the best baseline to understand world politics. It agrees with the notion that interstate relations are competitive and conflict-prone in an anarchic self-help system. It is the great powers that are the most consequential actors in world affairs, and they, to a considerable degree, shape international interaction dynamics and political outcomes. Competition, conflict, and even war over shapes and forms of world order are regular features of international life. Nonetheless, neorealism possesses too many inherent contradictions and shortcomings to be able to convincingly explain Russian and Chinese revisionism. The world we live in today is nothing like the world modeled by Kenneth Waltz in the 1970s. Though anarchic, it is marked by an astounding degree of interdependence, close trade ties, and networked interaction. The power centers of the globe are closely entangled, they are partners and rivals at the same time. If neorealism were right, it never should have come so far. We need a more sophisticated understanding of the dynamics at play to explain US-led international order building and Russia’s and China’s anti-Western revisionism. Neorealism is not realistic enough.

Neorealist Voids, Realist Opportunities Neorealism is a valuable starting point, but it does not suffice to explain strategic rivalry and international order contestation among the great powers. A convincing realist model must offer a remedy for three problems. First, on the notion of power: Neorealism places all its bets on the distribution of material capabilities among states in the anarchic international system to explain international politics. Neorealist literature has spent much energy on the operationalization of capabilities and their aggregation to define the polarity of the system.93 Nonetheless, scholarship is full of contradictory assessments. In the 1990s, neorealists disagreed heavily on whether bipolarity had given way to unipolarity, multipolarity, or something in between (“uni-multipolarity”), and how 92 For critiques on the “convergence” and “global governance” paradigms see Wright (2018) and Terhalle (2015). 93 See the critical reflections in Brooks and Wohlforth (2015/2016) and Beckley (2018).

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durable it would be.94 In the early 2000s, many argued that the United States had acquired the qualities of an empire, yet when the United States got bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq a few years later, scholars and publicists mused about the country’s imminent downfall.95 Others even proclaimed a new age of “nonpolarity” in the sense of a world without meaningful power centers.96 Yet again others suggested viewing polarity like a three-dimensional chess-board, where the configuration of power in the military, the economic, and the socio-political realms needed to be analyzed independently.97 While most diagnose a fundamental power shift away from the West, some posit that US dominance is stable and the world is still unipolar today.98 When a theory alleges that the objectively discernable distribution of capabilities was the driver of interaction dynamics, such cleavages threaten the entire argument. Lengthy polarity debates may even distract attention from more consequential matters, namely the effects capabilities create in the international system. Neorealism is deliberately noninteractive in this regard. Power is understood in terms of the material capabilities a state holds, based on the argument that a) states can never be sure about others’ intentions, hence the destructive capabilities are enough to induce fear; and b) that resources can be measured, while outcomes can only be assessed after the fact.99 This is a pragmatic approach, but it is fair to say that the polarity of the international system tells little about what the distribution of capabilities means in practice. By contrast, Max Weber, Robert Dahl, and others viewed power in terms of influence, as the ability to get actors to do something they otherwise would not have done. Obviously, there is a difference between the capabilities a state possesses and the effects they create.100 States see what others do with their capabilities and what 94 For a discussion of three conceivable realist scenarios (geoeconomic competition, multipolar balance of power, unipolar US-led system) see Mastanduno (1999). See further Wohlforth (1999), Layne (1993), and Huntington (1999). 95 On empire and US dominance see Münkler (2008) and Joffe (2006); for the renewed declinism debate see Layne (2006a, 2012). 96 See Haass (2008). 97 See Nye (2008). 98 See Brooks and Wohlforth (2008, 2015/2016). 99 For both Mearsheimer (2014, pp. 31; 60). 100 For a brief overview of the “power-as-resources” and the “power-as-outcomes”debate see Baldwin (2013). See also Heywood (2011) and Beckley (2018, pp. 11–14).

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this does to them. Indeed, threat levels in the international system are inextricably linked to the use of capabilities. In addition, how (well) capabilities are used is the domain of strategy. States can waste resources or employ them smartly. They can pursue their goals with determination or half-heartedly. Even the most capable states may lose wars against inferior opponents, while relatively weak actors may manage to punch beyond their weight class.101 None of this can be captured by the statist neorealist notion of polarity, but all of it matters for the ordering of the real world. Though the distribution of capabilities gives us a sense of who the great powers are, it neither tells us how power is employed nor how it is felt in the international system—or whether and why it triggers revisionist responses of rival great powers. Second, regarding interests and behavioral variance: Since neorealists model all states as “like units,” the concept of the national interest is devoid of substantive meaning. Allegedly, capabilities define the international order, all states in a comparable position of power behave alike, and balancing processes are eternal facts of life. But capabilities are means to an end, and power needs a purpose to give it meaning. To echo strategic terminology, strategy is about aligning ends and means. What these ends are, cannot be inferred from a state’s relative position of power. While neorealism tries to capture the structural constraints that arise from uni-, multi-, or bipolar orders, this is of limited value if the unitlevel characteristics of the poles are ignored. Jeffrey Legro reminds us that “the character of unipolarity depends on the purpose of the unipole. What the unipole wants and is likely to do in a world it has more of a free will to shape will affect that world.”102 Obviously, the substance and organizational logic of unipolar systems can vary significantly. Martha Finnemore makes the case bluntly: “One would expect a US unipolar system to look different from a Nazi unipolar system or a Soviet one; the purposes to which those three states would use preponderant power are very different.”103

Waltz rejected an interactional definition of power-as-outcomes. See Waltz (1979, pp. 191–192). 101 See, e.g., Record (2005/2006), Arreguín-Toft (2005), Mazarr (2008, 2010), Gentile (2009), and Barno (2006). 102 Legro (2011, p. 186). 103 Finnemore (2011, p. 68).

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It does not take much historical inquiry to see that states do not follow a standard neorealist script. The United States, the most powerful, system-shaping actor of the past 75 years, has long practiced a form of liberal internationalism at odds with neorealist realpolitik.104 Its support for democracy, rule of law, free trade, and individual freedom is, from a neorealist point of view, irrational. But it made the US an “exceptional superpower.”105 Behavioral variance also occurs among weak powers, rising powers, and declining powers. The history of the transatlantic partnership, for instance, is one of willful dependence. Not only has Europe not balanced against the United States after the Cold War.106 European states have even reduced their own military capabilities and have become utterly dependent on Washington for their own security.107 Some states fail to balance in the face of evident external threats.108 Others fall prey to “imperial myths” and overextend.109 While many rising powers, like China, turn revisionist, others, like Germany, do not.110 While some declining powers, like Great Britain in the twentieth century, retreat cooperatively, others go down fighting devastating wars.111 The structure of the international system, understood in terms of the distribution of capabilities alone, cannot shed light on such differences. Neorealism has long struggled with the vast empirical evidence of behavioral variance and tried to explain away irregularities. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt for example claimed that the exceptional conditions of unipolarity and the failings of the foreign policy elite led the United States on a self-defeating path of liberal hegemony.112 However, 104 On neorealist expectations of realpolitik see Waltz (1979, p. 117): “Realpolitik indicates the methods by which foreign policy is conducted and provides a rationale for them. Structural constraints explain why the methods are repeatedly used despite differences in the persons and states who use them.” Italics in original. 105 Terminology modeled after Brands (2017/2018) who argues Donald Trump’s “America First” broke with past traditions, turning the US into a self-interested “unexceptional superpower.” 106 See Wivel (2008). 107 See Groitl (2017). 108 See Schweller (2006). 109 See Snyder (1991). 110 See Bierling (2014). On earlier neorealist assumptions see Mearsheimer (1990). 111 See Allison (2017). 112 See Mearsheimer (2018) and Walt (2018).

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either states are conceived as “like units” and “black boxes” or not. Why would the foreign policy elite “distort” policy sometimes but not always? Other realists like Christopher Layne have bemoaned the liberal twist in US foreign policy well before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the unipolar moment of the 1990s.113 Similarly, neorealists also showed remarkable creativity to make sense of the uneven record of balancing against the United States in the post-Cold War period. Waltz suggested that balancing would set in with a time-lag: Of necessity, realist theory is better at saying what will happen than in saying when it will happen. Theory cannot say when “tomorrow” will come because international political theory deals with the pressures of structure on states and not with how states will respond to the pressures.114

Others pointed to the mix of capabilities a hegemon possesses and employs, suggesting that maritime power is less threatening than landbased hegemony,115 that offshore powers provoke little counterreaction,116 or that the command of the global commons made US dominance particularly durable.117 Others shifted attention from the capacity to the behavior of the dominant power. “For the balance-of-power machinery to crank up, it makes a difference whether the others face a usually placid elephant or an aggressive T. rex. Rapacious powers are more likely to trigger hostile coalitions than nations that contain themselves, so to speak,” as Josef Joffe put it.118 Yet again others pointed to the risks involved in balancing a unipole.119 Some explored the durability of US dominance.120 All in all, debates about hard, soft, asymmetric, or

113 See Layne (2006b). 114 Waltz (2000, p. 27). 115 See Levy and Thompson (2010). 116 See Mearsheimer and Walt (2016). 117 See Posen (2003). 118 Joffe (2002, p. 169). 119 On soft balancing see Pape (2005) and Paul (2005); similarly see Walt (2005). For a critical view on the explanatory power and occurrence of (soft) balancing against the US see Brooks and Wohlforth (2005) and Lieber and Alexander (2005). 120 See Wohlforth (1999), Brooks and Wohlforth (2008), Ikenberry et al. (2009), and Jervis (2009).

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nonbalancing inspired an in-depth discussion of balance of power theory, balances of power, and balancing processes.121 Loopholes are deeply ingrained in neorealist theory. Stephen Walt challenged Waltz’s assumption that states balance against capabilities. His “balance-of-threat” theory contends that aggregate capabilities, geographical proximity, offensive capacity and aggressive intent explain why states balance against some capabilities but not others.122 That balancing may not be provoked by capabilities but by perceived threats or the threatening policies of powerful states has meanwhile become a common line of reasoning in neorealist research.123 It lacks a theoretical basis, though. Similar contradictions were brought to light by the debate between offensive and defensive realists. Waltz himself suggested that states are “unitary actors who, at a minimum, seek their own preservation and, at a maximum, drive for universal domination.”124 As long as unit-level characteristics are purposively excluded, it is a matter of belief whether to assume that states (all in general or specific ones in particular) either seek to defend their positional status quo (defensive realism) or to maximize their relative power (offensive realism).125 Under these conditions, any neorealist inquiry into the sources of Russia’s and China’s revisionism becomes an exercise in educated guessing. Is their revisionism inevitable, because they—like some but unlike other states—were “born” as power maximizers? Or was their revisionism triggered by Western weakness and appeasement? Or was it rather Western dominance and overreach? Are their actions designed to counter the (rising) capabilities of the US and its Western partners? Is it a reaction to specific kinds of capabilities, like offensive or onshore military ones? Is their revisionism to be interpreted as balancing against threats? If so, what are they threatened by? Is it capabilities or policies? Or has a failing foreign policy “blob” led Russia and China astray, like it purportedly did in the United States?

121 See Nexon (2009) and Parent and Rosato (2015). 122 See Walt (1987). 123 See as an example the exchange on definitions of and explanations for balancing in Art et al. (2005/2006). The neorealist argument is that uncertainty about intent forces states to balance against capabilities. See Parent and Rosato (2015, p. 55). 124 Waltz (1979, p. 118). 125 On offensive realism see Mearsheimer (2014).

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The first two points, namely neorealism’s noninteractive understanding of power and its negligence of state purpose and agency, add up to a third: Neorealism provides only a limited understanding of the essence, emergence, stability, and potential erosion of the international order. Great powers’ differing visions and practices of international order building matter. What power is used for and how it is employed helps us understand what other states are up against. Whether states balance or bandwagon depends on how they define their national interests and relate to the interests and actions of others. It is safe to assume that not capabilities as such but the substantive effects they create in the international system help explain why some emerge as status quo powers and others as revisionists. As Randall Schweller made clear, how states interact with one another does not depend solely on the distribution of capabilities between them. What matters is the compatibility of their interests.126 While neorealism simplifies the origins of revisionism, it underestimates its pathways. The general view is that challengers need to balance a dominant power symmetrically and surpass it to change the polarity of the international system and hence the international order.127 This suggests that poles have no reason to worry as long as they hold a comparative advantage in capabilities. Viewed this way, balancing is all about adding might to a state’s balance sheet. Selectively, neorealists take into account strategies like “bloodletting” or “bait and bleed,” indicating that states may attempt to improve their own relative position by efforts to weaken rival great powers.128 Similarly, Walt pointed, among others, to strategies of “binding” or “delegitimation” to limit others’ freedom of action.129 Compared to “positive balancing” (i.e., adding to one’s own power base), however, “negative balancing” (i.e., depleting the power of rivals or denying them their will) does not feature prominently in neorealist works. In fact, nontraditional strategies are often viewed as a

126 See Schweller (1998). 127 Brooks and Wohlforth (2015/2016) make the case, for example, that the effects of

China’s rise on the polarity of the system is overstated. 128 See Mearsheimer (2014, pp. 153–155). 129 See Walt (2005).

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lesser, softer, not-so-serious kind of balancing.130 These views are unsurprising from a theoretical logic, where only those who are able to catch up capability-wise can overturn the polarity of the international system. It is intellectually misleading and outright dangerous as political guidance, though. Even the most powerful state can never be sure to be able to set and enforce rules to its liking, as competitors have many avenues to delegitimize, challenge, undermine, and spoil international ordering structures. Even a secondary power can hope to derail the rules of the game to render them ineffective, dysfunctional, or illegitimate. In fact, a declining power may even be more dangerous, possibly even war-prone, than a rising one, because its chances for shaping international outcomes wither away. Hence, acting reckless today may be more attractive than cautiously waiting for tomorrow. All of this means that an established order may erode even if the polarity is seemingly unchanged. Where does this leave us theoretically? Despite neorealism’s theoretical merits, it sets up a statist, structuralist corset that simplifies the balance of power, pays too little attention to the balance of interests, and lacks an appreciation of the balance of outcomes in the international system.131 Classical realist literature paid close attention to national interests and the practice of diplomacy and strategy as a means of order building and contestation. Neorealism sought to get over its anthropological assumptions and historicizing approach. Waltz’s model is intentionally mechanistic, pushing the human decision-maker and national needs aside. But states are neither like units in an absolute sense nor are they unitary actors nor do they react to given international pressures on autopilot. State leaders make strategic choices in response to the external status quo. What is needed is a model that understands states as strategic actors in an anarchic world and acknowledges both international systemic stimuli and unit-level processes for their behavior—such as international order building and revisionism. While Morgenthau posited that international politics is a struggle for power and Waltz argued it was a struggle for survival, this study suspects it is a struggle for favorable external orders. It is not capabilities states are after per se, as power is not an end in itself. It is 130 See Pape (2005) and Paul (2005). 131 The term “balance of interest” or “distribution of interests” (i.e., how state interests

relate to one another) has been used before. Most prominently see Schweller (1994) and Legro (2011). The author is not aware of prior uses of the term “balance of outcomes” (i.e., the effects of competing state interests and policies).

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a tool for other ends. States strive for power to fight for the kind of international order that benefits them—and they will turn against ordering structures they deem disadvantageous, maybe even existential threats for themselves, using the tools they have available. Neoclassical realism helps us frame a model to explain Russian and Chinese revisionism toward the US-led international order—enriching neorealism’s structuralist core with strategic agency.

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Keohane, R. O. (2002). Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World. Routledge. Kissinger, H. A. (1991). Das Gleichgewicht der Grossmächte: Metternich, Castlereagh und die Neuordnung Europas 1812–1822 (New ed.). ECON Verlag (Original work published 1957). Kocs, S. A. (2019). International Order: A Political History. Lynne Rienner Publishers. Krasner, S. D. (1983a). Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables. In S. D. Krasner (Ed.), International Regimes (pp. 1– 21). Cornell University Press. Krasner, S. D. (Ed.). (1983b). International Regimes. Cornell University Press. Krell, G., & Schlotter, P. (2018). Weltbilder und Weltordnung: Einführung in die Theorie der Internationalen Beziehungen (5th, rev. and updated ed.). Nomos. Krickovic, A. (2022). Revisionism Revisited: Developing a Typology for Classifying Russia and Other Revisionist Powers. International Politics, 59, 616–639. Layne, C. (1993). The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise. International Security, 17 (4), 5–51. Layne, C. (2006a). The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming End of the United States’ Unipolar Moment. International Security, 31(2), 7–41. Layne, C. (2006b). The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present. Cornell University Press. Layne, C. (2012). This Time It’s Real: The End of Unipolarity and the Pax Americana. International Studies Quarterly, 56(1), 203–213. Layne, C. (2018). The US-Chinese Power Shift and the End of the Pax Americana. International Affairs, 94(1), 89–111. Legro, J. W. (2005). Rethinking the World: Great Power Strategies and International Order. Cornell University Press. Legro, J. W. (2011). The Mix that Makes Unipolarity: Hegemonic Purpose and International Constraints. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 24(2), 185–199. Levy, J. S., & Thompson, W. R. (2010). Balancing on Land and at Sea: Do States Ally against the Leading Global Power? International Security, 35(1), 7–43. Lieber, K. A., & Alexander, G. (2005). Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not Pushing Back. International Security, 30(1), 109–139. Mastanduno, M. (1999). A Realist View: Three Images of the Coming International Order. In T. V. Paul & J. A. Hall (Eds.), International Order and the Future of World Politics (pp. 19–40). Cambridge University Press. Mazarr, M. J. (2008). The Folly of ‘Asymmetric War.’ The Washington Quarterly, 31(3), 33–53.

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Mazarr, M. J. (2010). Doomed to Repeat? Review Essay. Survival, 52(3), 179– 200. Mearsheimer, J. J. (1990). Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War. International Security, 15(4), 5–56. Mearsheimer, J. J. (1995). The False Promise of International Institutions. International Security, 19(3), 5–49. Mearsheimer, J. J. (2014). The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. (Updated ed.). Norton Paperback. Mearsheimer, J. J. (2018). The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities. Yale University Press. Mearsheimer, J. J., & Walt, S. M. (2016). The Case for Offshore Balancing: A Superior U.S. Grand Strategy. Foreign Affairs, 95(4), 70–83. Moravcsik, A. (1997). Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics. International Organization, 51(4), 513–553. Morgenthau, H. J. (2006). Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. Revised by K. W. Thompson & W. D. Clinton (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill (Original work published 1948). Müller, H. (1993). Die Chance der Kooperation: Regime in den internationalen Beziehungen. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Münkler, H. (2008). Imperien: Die Logik der Weltherrschaft – vom Alten Rom bis zu den Vereinigten Staaten (2nd ed.). Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag. Murray, M. (2019). The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations: Status, Revisionism and Rising Powers. Oxford University Press. Nexon, D. (2009). The Balance of Power in the Balance. World Politics, 61(2), 330–359. Nye, J. S., Jr. (2008). Recovering American Leadership. Survival, 50(1), 55–68. Oye, K. A. (Ed.). (1986). Cooperation under Anarchy. Princeton University Press. Pape, R. A. (2005). Soft Balancing against the United States. International Security, 30(1), 7–45. Parent, J. M., & Rosato, S. (2015). Balancing in Neorealism. International Security, 40(2), 51–86. Patrick, S. (2016). World Order: What, Exactly, are the Rules? The Washington Quarterly, 39(1), 7–27. Paul, T. V. (2005). Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy. International Security, 30(1), 46–71. Paul, T. V., Welch Larson, D., & Wohlforth, W. C. (Eds.). (2014). Status in World Politics. Cambridge University Press. Posen, B. R. (2003). Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony. International Security, 28(1), 5–46. Record, J. (2005/2006). Why the Strong Lose. Parameters, 35(4), 16–31.

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Risse, T. (2003). Konstruktivismus, Rationalismus und Theorien internationaler Beziehungen: Warum empirisch nichts so heiß gegessen wird, wie es theoretisch gekocht wurde. In G. Hellmann, K. D. Wolf, & M. Zürn (Eds.), Die neuen Internationalen Beziehungen: Forschungsstand und Perspektiven in Deutschland (pp. 99–132). Nomos. Schweller, R. L. (1994). Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In. International Security, 19(1), 72–107. Schweller, R. L. (1998). Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest. Columbia University Press. Schweller, R. L. (1999). Managing the Rise of Great Powers: History and Theory. In A. I. Johnston & R. S. Ross (Eds.), Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power (pp. 1–31). Routledge. Schweller, R. L. (2001). The Problem of International Order Revisited: A Review Essay. International Security, 26(1), 161–186. Schweller, R. L. (2006). Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power. Princeton University Press. Schweller, R. L., & Priess, D. (1997). A Tale of Two Realisms: Expanding the Institutions Debate. Mershon International Studies Review, 41(1), 1–32. Schweller, R. L., & Pu, X. (2011). After Unipolarity: China’s Visions of International Order in an Era of U.S. Decline. International Security, 36(1), 41–72. Snyder, J. (1991). Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition. Cornell University Press. Terhalle, M. (2015). Warum das Governance-Axiom gescheitert ist—eine notwendige Kritik. Zeitschrift für Politik ZfP, 62(3), 263–288. The Economist. (2018, June 9). Donald Trump and the World: Present at the Destruction. The Economist, 20–23. Walt, S. M. (1987). The Origins of Alliances. Cornell University Press. Walt, S. M. (2005). Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy. W.W. Norton & Company. Walt, S. M. (2018). The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Waltz, K. N. (1964). The Stability of a Bipolar World. Daedalus, 93(3), 881– 909. Waltz, K. N. (1979). Theory of International Politics. McGraw-Hill. Waltz, K. N. (1990). Nuclear Myths and Political Realities. American Political Science Review, 84(3), 731–745. Waltz, K. N. (1993a). The Emerging Structure of International Politics. International Security, 18(2), 44–79. Waltz, K. N. (1993b). The New World Order. Millennium—Journal of International Studies, 22(2), 187–195.

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Waltz, K. N. (2000). Structural Realism after the Cold War. International Security, 25(1), 5–41. Ward, S. (2017). Status and the Challenge of Rising Powers. Cambridge University Press. Wendt, A. (1992). Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics. International Organization, 46(2), 391–425. Wendt, A. (1999). A Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge University Press. Wivel, A. (2008). Balancing against Threats or Bandwagoning with Power? Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship after the Cold War. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 21(3), 289–305. Wohlforth, W. C. (1999). The Stability of a Unipolar World. International Security, 24(1), 5–41. Wolfers, A. (1951). The Pole of Power and the Pole of Indifference. World Politics, 4(1), 39–63. Repr. In W. Carlsnaes & S. Guzzini (Eds.) (2011). Foreign Policy Analysis (Vol. I, pp. 39–57). Sage. Wolfers, A. (1991). The Balance of Power in Theory and Practice. In A. Wolfers (Ed.), Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (9th reprint, pp. 117–131). Johns Hopkins University Press (Original work published 1962). Wright, T. J. (2018). All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the Twenty-First Century and the Future of American Power (Paperback ed.). Yale University Press. Young, O. R. (1983). Regime Dynamics: The Rise and Fall of International Regimes. In S. D. Krasner (Ed.), International Regimes (pp. 93–113). Cornell University Press.

CHAPTER 3

Strategic Choices: Neoclassical Realist Model of Order and Revisionism

The study posits that neoclassical realism offers a valuable alternative to explain international order and revisionism. After sketching its basic assumptions, the chapter spells out the crucial links between power, national interests, international order, and strategic choice. The visions of order great powers pursue internationally are intricately tied to their domestic needs. After all, states strive for a benign external environment to survive as substantive entities in an anarchic international system. The theoretical chapter concludes with a hypothesis for Russian and Chinese anti-Western revisionism that focuses on their will and their ability for revisionism. As authoritarian and imperial great powers, they both feel threatened by the very nature of the US-led liberal international order and seize their strategic opportunities to rebel against it. In doing so, revisionists utilize the capabilities and opportunities they possess, resorting to “destructive revisionism” to lessen the effects of the detested status quo or, preferably, practicing “constructive revisionism” to build an alternative order instead.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Groitl, Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18659-2_3

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Assumptions of Neoclassical Realism Neoclassical realism, the latest refinement of realist thought, combines the best of two worlds. It links the international and the national level of analysis and focuses on the decision-making process, national interests, and strategic choices. The term “neoclassical realism” was coined in the late 1990s by Gideon Rose in what is now considered a landmark article on a set of publications that share neorealism’s core convictions, yet refute the idea that states were “black boxes” that respond to international pressures on autopilot.1 The common denominator of early works that came to be labeled “neoclassical realist” was that they looked at policy decisions that did not conform to neorealist expectations. Why do not all states exert the kind of power internationally that is commensurate with their actual weight?2 Why do states fail to balance in the face of clear and present dangers?3 Why do states bandwagon with great powers instead of balancing against them?4 Why are states at times not ready to stand up to foreign policy challenges, and how do they mobilize the public and extract the resources needed?5 Neoclassical realism concurs with other realist variants that states cannot escape the demands of their external environment. It agrees that the international system is anarchic, dangerous, and full of friction between the interacting units. It shares the concern for security, survival, and power imbalances. The level of resources a state possesses as well as the distribution of capabilities between states gives us a rough understanding of what states can do—both for themselves and to others. Neoclassical realists also suspect that states prefer having more power to less because it endows them with greater opportunities to protect themselves and their interests in an anarchic world. More capabilities may not guarantee security and desired outcomes, but they certainly provide more options and better chances to prevail. Rising powers can be expected to reassess their ambitions as they become stronger and gain opportunities

1 See Rose (1998). 2 See Zakaria (1999). 3 See Schweller (2006). 4 See Schweller (1994). 5 See Christensen (1996) and Taliaferro (2006).

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to make their voices heard. Declining powers most likely try to mitigate, slow, or reverse their losses. Yet neoclassical realists do not believe that the distribution of capabilities in the international system is the only relevant factor. International incentives and constraints serve as independent variables, pushing and pulling states, but they do not trigger automated policy responses or determine policy. What states do is decided at the unit level, where external stimuli (“input”) are translated into policy by decision-makers under the conditions of a national decision-making context (“throughput”). After all, states are led by political leaders who assess the external environment, define the national interest, ponder options, make choices, and implement strategies. According to neoclassical realism, it is this combination of international-level inputs as well as intervening variables in the national process that explains foreign policy “output.”6 Whether policies produce the desired results at the international level (“outcome”) is another matter, of course.7 Neoclassical realism’s two-step model should not be mistaken as backdoor liberalism, but as the logical evolution of realist thought. It views the relatively narrow circle of decision-makers—in theoretical terminology: the foreign policy executive—as the relevant figures who translate external stimuli into policies. They act on behalf of the state and interpret the national interest in response to international incentives and constraints. State organs and leaders are not, as liberals suggest, understood as a mere “transmission belt” for the parochial preferences of individuals and societal groups, but as the key decision-makers mediating between what they deem necessary for the state internationally and what is possible domestically. Hence, neoclassical realism is reminiscent of classical realists’ focus on statesmen and their role as definers of the national interest, but refrains from anthropological speculations about man’s lust for power. At the same time, it complements neorealism’s mechanistic view of world affairs with a decision-making angle: “The overall mission of […] neoclassical realism, therefore, is to add explanatory power to a structural realist skeleton by incorporating domestic political and perceptual intervening

6 For introductions to neoclassical realism see, e.g., Rose (1998), Lobell et al. (2009) and Ripsman et al. (2016). 7 For policy processes and the respective terminology see Heywood (2007).

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processes that can more fully and accurately account for state choices.”8 In essence, neoclassical realism helps explain the behavioral variations neorealist writers have long grappled with, yet could not account for. The policy process can be divided into distinct phases for analytical purposes. The first stage is the assessment of what the international system looks like at any given time. What incentives and constraints does it offer? How obvious are threats? How do one’s own capabilities and interests relate to international challenges? The second step is the decision-making as such. It is up to those in relevant positions of power to draw up plans, evaluate them, and have the final word. The third step is the implementation of policy and strategy.9 Intervening variables are at work in all of these phases of the unit-level process. Gideon Rose’s foundational review essay identified two sets of intervening variables: decision-maker perceptions (echoing constructivist insights) and the domestic political dynamics of policy-making (reflecting liberal assumptions).10 The field has expanded ever since. Potential intervening variables range from political culture, ideas, (mis)perceptions, analogies, organizational cultures, and national identities to mobilization deficits, domestic cleavages, and socio-political constraints hampering the ability of policymakers to respond adequately to international problems.11 Most recently, Ripsman, Taliaferro, and Lobell have clustered the commonly used intervening variables into four sets: leader images, strategic culture, state-society-relations, and domestic institutions.12 Neoclassical realism’s pluralism is an asset as well as a liability. It provides an array of potential pathways for explanation, but also runs the risk of eclecticism.13 The ambition of neoclassical realist research has expanded over the past two decades. It started out as an explanation of last resort when

8 Ripsman et al. (2016, p. 31). See also Schweller (2003). 9 See graphs in Ripsman et al. (2016, p. 31; 59). 10 See Rose (1998). 11 On culture and ideas see Dueck (2006) and Layne (2006); on perception see Maier

(2007); on (strategic) ideas see Trubowitz et al. (1999) and Groitl (2015); for national identities see Hadfield-Amkhan (2010); on domestic cleavages and partisanship see Groitl (2017a) and Trubowitz (2011). 12 See Ripsman, Taliaferro, and Lobell (2016, pp. 58–79). 13 For a critique of the latest branch of realist theorizing see Narizny (2017).

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neorealism failed. Hence the national decision-making process was originally conceptualized as a source of friction that interferes with the optimal translation of systemic stimuli into policy. Soon, neoclassical realism developed into a model of foreign policy analysis in its own right. The unit-level process was no longer viewed as a mere disturbant, but as an inevitable interlocutor between international stimuli and national responses. Most recently, neoclassical realism morphed from an approach in foreign policy analysis into a theory of international politics to shed light on the dynamics and driving forces of interstate interaction.14 Neoclassical realism offers two pathways into the analysis of international politics. The first looks at relational dyads. Its causal logic lends itself to the analysis of alliances. For example, if the foreign policy executives of two or more states view each other as useful partners in the absence of an external threat, we may see more cooperation than neorealism would deem plausible. From a neoclassical realist standpoint, cooperation is by no means a survival strategy of last resort. States cooperate against common enemies, but also for common goals, making it an instrumental strategy to achieve desired ends. Cooperation may endure even if an existential threat relaxes, as was the case with the transatlantic partnership in the post-Cold War era. Crisis sets in when the modes and merits of the partnership are questioned.15 Likewise, when international stimuli are translated into conflicting policies at the unit-level, alliances struggle.16 The second neoclassical realist pathway into the analysis of international politics, explored in these pages, is outcome-oriented. Neorealists assume that states are caught in a never-ending struggle for survival and balancing. They must cope with the dangers of anarchy and power imbalances but cannot escape them. All they can hope for is to create favorable balances of power to deter attacks. Neoclassical realism on the other hand acknowledges feedback loops between the international and the national level of analysis in a broader sense. States are not passive victims of their external surroundings, but shapers of their own destiny.

14 On the three “types” of neoclassical realism see Ripsman et al. (2016, pp. 25–31; 80–98). 15 This theme is explored in the doctoral dissertation of Alexander Schuster, work in progress at Regensburg University. 16 See Groitl (2017b).

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Neoclassical realist research has always been invested in the analysis of grand strategies and strategic choice.17 What strategic studies make abundantly clear is that states do grand strategy for a reason: to make life in the anarchic international system more bearable, at least from their own point of view. The development of grand strategy is closely related to international order building. Decision-makers craft visions of order, ponder their implementation, and try to make ends, ways, and means meet. The successful application of grand strategy is, of course, not guaranteed. Strategy is an interactive endeavor and other actors, path dependencies, and even chance and luck contribute their share to international results.18 But the pursuit of grand strategic schemes does leave a mark. If successful, states can change their regional or global operating environment.19 The output and outcomes of state action in international affairs are the international stimuli others (are forced to) respond to. Thinking about international politics as the strategic interaction of grand strategic schemes and their effects introduces a timeline in our thinking about world affairs. What states are confronted with today is not simply the persistent and never-changing demands of anarchy. Instead, they operate in the worlds the most powerful actors have created. The quest to build a benign environment is a systemic imperative in an anarchic international system. But while lesser powers have only limited means to shape their external environment—and, in turn, may be shaped by it—the great powers can hope to leave their imprint on the international system with orders that suit their unit-level needs. These are not necessarily in lockstep. Order building under the conditions of anarchy then is, at heart, a strategic competition between states’ visions for order. The strategic choices states make shed light on their ends, ways, and means. Neoclassical realism lends itself to the analysis of such order building processes—and revisionism as the countervailing move.

17 See as selective examples Kitchen (2010), Dueck (2006), and Layne (2006). 18 On the interactive quality of strategy see Luttwak (2001). 19 See Taliaferro (2012, p. 80).

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Power, National Interests, and International Order Power and interests are the baselines of realist theorizing. Based on the preceding discussions in Chapters 2 and 3, a neoclassical realist model is wedded to a multidimensional and interactive understanding of power. The power a state can bring to bear rests a) on its power resources (capabilities), but the degree to which these are operational depends b) on the unit-level capacity to employ them. Since the application of power is a strategic domain, the use of capabilities is c) subject to feasible strategic options. Hence, taking stock of material resources is the first step, but political capacity and available options matter as well to discern opportunities to apply power and achieve desired results. The influence a state can bring to bear is measured against its ability to attain its own goals. The application of power for the sake of interests is the eternal feature of political life. The key question is what defines them. Classical realists understood national interests primarily in terms of the omnipresent quest for power, inspired by man’s insatiable lust to dominate, but also saw power as a means to (unspecified) other ends. Neorealists point to security and survival. It is certainly correct to assume that the basic principle of international politics in an anarchic setting is to take care of yourself. But it is by no means clear what the security imperative entails. Waltz himself acknowledged as much: I assume that states seek to ensure their survival. The assumption is a radical simplification made for the sake of constructing a theory. […] Beyond the survival motive, the aims of states may be endlessly varied; they may range from the ambition to conquer the world to the desire merely to be left alone. Survival is a prerequisite to achieving any goals that states may have, other than the goal of promoting their own disappearance as political entities. The survival motive is taken as the ground of action in a world where the security of states is not assured, rather than as a realistic description of the impulse that lies behind every act of state.20

The relevant passage shows that survival is a “blank” for whatever specific security interests states pursue in international affairs.

20 Waltz (1979, pp. 91–92).

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Neorealist research tends to assume that the survival imperative was to be taken literally. The bare physical survival of states was seemingly constantly on the line since the use of military force is considered a regular tool of policy under anarchy. Waltz argued that military force was not a tool of last resort in international politics, but a commonly used instrument.21 John Mearsheimer agrees that even the great powers have to worry for their own physical existence as long as there are peer competitors or superior powers in the system: “Great powers of all persuasions care deeply about their survival, and there is always the danger in a bipolar or a multipolar system that they will be attacked by another great power.”22 Stephen Walt concurs. He analyzed when states feel threatened by the capabilities of others and pointed to geographic proximity, offensive capabilities and aggressive intent—conceptualizing threats as the possibility of catastrophic physical attacks.23 Thus, from a neorealist standpoint, anarchy forces states to constantly fear military conquest, and the quest for survival is about the continued existence of the state as a territorial entity. The reality is, though, that deterrence of military attack and territorial conquest is a very narrow definition of what states need to survive. It places the bar too low. First, military conquest and state death are relatively rare empirical phenomena in international politics. Indeed, not state death but state birth has been the dominant trend of the past century as the number of states multiplied, from roughly 50 in 1945 to more than 160 in 1970 to close to 200 by the end of the twentieth century.24 Second and even more importantly, states need more than their territorial persistence within defined borders to survive. For starters, the survival impetus must include the protection of political sovereignty.25 Even states with intact territorial borders may experience severe arm-twisting. While inviolate borders may give the appearance of sovereignty, it does not mean that states indeed survive as

21 See Waltz (1979, p. 113). 22 Mearsheimer (2018, pp. 1–2). 23 See Walt (1987). 24 Numbers from Jackson and Sørensen (2016, p. 19). The UN counts 193 sovereign

states today. On the global rise of the nation-state see also Wimmer and Feinstein (2010). 25 Neorealists acknowledge this fact, but it plays little role in their theorizing. See Waltz (1979, pp. 95–96; 104) and Mearsheimer (2014, p. 31).

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sovereign entities. As Stephan Krasner has pointed out, the implementation of sovereignty norms amounts to “organized hypocrisy,” as powerful states infringe the sovereignty of those incapable of fending them off.26 However, survival as an independent entity requires political sovereignty on top of territorial integrity.27 In fact, relatively few states have to fight off greedy neighbors seeking to enlarge their own territory by force or rob resources these days. As an empirical phenomenon, while existent, violent conquest of foreign territory and occupation of foreign lands are not daily occurrences. Whereas few states have to fear for their physical survival on a daily basis, most see their freedom of action constrained. Unlike territorial integrity, which is an either-or proposition, political sovereignty ranges across a spectrum. States can have little or lots of it, it may vary over time and depend upon the issue area. But it is never a given and never absolute, not even for the most powerful states in the international system. While the need for political sovereignty and territorial integrity can be deducted as an abstract proposition of an anarchic international system, systemic theorizing deprives security and threat assessments of their substantive meaning. What do states need political sovereignty for? What is it they seek to protect? And what exactly threatens their security and survival? Neoclassical realists open up the “black box” and acknowledge the differentiation of states at the unit level. States are subject to like pressures from the international system, but they are not like units. They have their own domestic characteristics—be it in political, economic, normative, historical, cultural, ideological, or institutional terms—and need political sovereignty to protect these against international odds. Classical realist and security studies literature has long reflected a broader understanding of security and survival needs than neorealism, one informed by unit-level characteristics. A research note from the mid-1960s on the growing field of security studies remarked that national security was essentially about “the ability of a nation to protect its internal values from external threats”28 States need power to protect the “internal values” they hold dear, which means that their concrete security needs are inextricably linked to their domestic features.

26 Krasner (1999). 27 On the historical evolution of sovereignty as a concept see Jackson (2007). 28 Bock and Berkowitz (1966, p. 134). Quoted without emphasis in italics from

original. Similarly see Wolfers (1962/1991a). See also Schmidt (2016, p. 213).

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Opening up the black box potentially opens Pandora’s box. Sorting neoclassical realist approaches in the most rigid way still leaves us with two main strands, which in turn contain a great degree of explanatory variety. Writers sympathetic to constructivist-type ideational intervening variables focus on world views, threat perceptions, status concerns, ideas, or strategic cultures that function as “lenses” through which decisionmakers interpret the world and develop policies. Those scholars who follow the domestic politics line of reasoning point to decision-making procedures, elite consensus, resource extraction capacity, or societal mobilization. Indeed, decision-making takes place within a domestic ideational and structural setting. In order to use neoclassical realism as a theory of international politics, however, we need to think in broader and more abstract terms about unit-level security needs (see Fig. 3.1).

STATE Society

Economy

Individual

Fig. 3.1 Schematic depiction of statehood (Source Own illustration)

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As a category of actors, states are defined by their territory, people, and government.29 At the most basic level, (functioning) states provide answers to foundational questions of human existence: how to organize security and governance in social collectives, produce wealth, and secure justice for those living within its sphere of jurisdiction. The ideas and structures manifest in these domestic orders are the results of continuous struggles, evolutionary development processes, negotiations and renegotiations, reforms, and at times revolutionary clashes. Their sheer existence says nothing about their quality or desirability. Relevant for the purpose of this study is that states at any point in their history possess an established status quo of how their domestic order is set up. It is the domestic status quo that helps us understand what states need and what they stand up against.30 Territory as the geographical delineation of formal political control is the most obvious feature of domestic order, separating unit-level hierarchical governance from system-level anarchy. It is reasonable to assume that states want to protect the integrity and sovereignty of their territory. However, terminology introduces a status quo bias in our thinking. Notions of security and survival imply purely defensive motivations— inferring that all states want nothing but to protect their own political control within established territorial boundaries. The territorial ordering of the world into independent states, which orders the world into formally demarcated zones of exclusive political control, reflects the status quo at a given time. It is not immune to change. While most governments may be satiated with the geographical reach of their formal zone of sovereign 29 See Siedschlag (2007, p. 81). 30 The definition of the basic features of domestic state order via territory/reach of

political control, extraterritorial influence/foreign policy role, political, economic, and values systems is inspired by three types of literature. First, it echoes basic insights of the Westphalian state system. Westphalia established an international system that codified states as territorial entities and with full sovereignty over their internal affairs and autonomy from one another. Hence, states are viewed as “autonomous containers of political, social, and economic activity - fixed borders separate the domestic sphere from the world outside.” McGrew (2017, p. 24). Second, works on political orders and their development are loose sources of inspiration. Fukuyama for example, points to the relevance of economic growth, social mobilization, and ideas/legitimacy for political development, which he disaggregates into three basic political institutions, namely the state, rule of law, and democracy/accountable government. See figure in Fukuyama (2015, p. 43); also Fukuyama (2012). Third, literature on changing models and notions of statehood provided valuable insights. See, e.g., Micklethwait and Woolridge (2014).

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control, some define the national interest in more expansive terms, namely as the enlargement of territory—be it to rectify historical grievances of previously lost territory, provide for nationals abroad, enlarge their wealth, improve their security or else. Even without expansionist territorial claims, states tend to aspire to a degree of political influence beyond their borders, condensed in foreign policy roles. Some claim for themselves a degree of formal control beyond their own border, defining “spheres of influence” or “zones of privileged interest.” This implies exclusivity and extended sovereignty rights over others in formalized or informal ways. States that claim extended sovereignty rights deny sovereignty to neighboring states in—what they deem—their legitimate area of prerogatives. More broadly, this refers to the self-understanding of a state’s proper international role, for example as a leading great power. Framed in most general terms, ideas and structures at the unit level shed light on states’ understanding of the rightful reach of their political control at a given time, which entails territorial security as well as ontological security, defined here as claimed extraterritorial role and influence.31 In addition to the geographical and imagined reaches of sovereign governance, it is the relationships between state authorities and society, the economy, and the individual that characterize them as substantive entities with political, economic, and values systems within. Regime security is a crucially important interest, whatever state–society relations and political systems look like in a specific case. It is a matter of survival indeed. States plunged into turmoil with fraying governance structures have no chance of fending for themselves in an anarchic world.32 States also need economic security. They vary in their economic systems, their modes of creating and administering wealth, their relative strengths and weaknesses, and else. They can be expected to have a vital interest in preserving a strong economy that works for them, as economic success is the precondition for power. Lastly, normative security comes into play. States possess an understanding of how the individual relates to 31 The term ontological security stems from constructivist research and denotes security of one’s own meaning, role, self-understanding, or essence. See, e.g., Philips (2011, pp. 16–17). 32 The centrality of regime security is supported by Davidson. Yet he operationalizes it differently, suggesting that government officials pursue revisionist policy to satisfy the demands of mighty domestic groups. See Davidson (2006, p. 2).

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the collective, what rights authorities have vis-à-vis the individual, and what individuals owe the state. Protecting one’s own historically grown, possibly hard-fought or violently enforced equilibrium is imperative. These elements of domestic order are interlinked and sometimes hard to reconcile. First, regime security is, of necessity, a priority. Only if the domestic political system is stable and functional can the state hope to operate as a sovereign actor in an anarchic world.33 Second, domestic orders must deliver and produce the political competence, wealth, and social cohesion necessary. Though there are vested interests in preserving a given status quo, reform needs for the sake of competitiveness are omnipresent and states are under pressure to copy the most successful ones.34 Third, the elements of domestic order form an interwoven system. The ways societies govern themselves are tied to their economic orders and the modalities for human justice. Economic orders, in turn, can help strengthen or undermine political orders or human justice. Lastly, notions of human justice, ranging from individualism to collectivism, factor into the broader economic and political orders. In this sense, for example, economic liberalism and political illiberalism are hard to reconcile as the former threatens the latter. These contours of domestic order make clear that states are not only threatened by the prospect of territorial conquest (territorial security), but also by anything that endangers their self-defined extraterritorial influence and roles (ontological security), their political stability (regime security), economic well-being (economic security) and domestic status quo of state-society relations (normative security).35 If we acknowledge that the survival needs of states as substantive units in a self-help system are this complex, the international system is an even more dangerous place than

33 Along these lines, Waltz rightfully included “political competence” as a key element for state capability, which has received relatively little attention as a metric of power. 34 Waltz (1979, p. 128) posits: “The close juxtaposition of states promotes their sameness through the disadvantages that arise from a failure to conform to successful practices. It is this ‘sameness,’ an effect of the system, that is so often attributed to the acceptance of so-called rules of state behavior.” 35 Challenges to domestic orders do not come solely from rival states. Non-state actors and small wars also tend to undermine the cohesion and functionality (“Sozialintegration”) of states, as Daase (1999) pointed out.

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generally thought. It holds more threats to security and survival than military attack and conquest, namely everything that puts in jeopardy the domestic status quo or chances to do well under given conditions.36 What one state desperately needs to thrive may be detrimental to the well-being of another. The level of disagreement in terms of their national interests impacts interaction dynamics at the international level. Classical realist Raymond Aron aptly spoke of the level of homogeneity or heterogeneity of the international system at any given time to describe the degree of interest divergence.37 If the international system is filled with great powers who possess thoroughly different national interests, we can expect more conflict than when great powers have compatible needs. The balance of interests is as important for our understanding of international affairs as relative power shares.38 In fact, when states use their power for the sake of interests, they create the real structural constraint in the international system. The foreign policy executive (FPE) is the decision-makers that define and pursue national interests in response to and toward the outer world. It is the decision-makers at the helm of the state who assess what the international environment at any given time does, whether it aids or undermines what is crucial for their own state’s well-being, and how to respond foreign policy-wise. The pressure to take action depends on the degree of interest divergence over core security needs and the immediacy of the “malign effects” created by others. Their strategic opportunity to react is conditioned by the availability of capabilities, capacities, and options to project influence themselves. The strategies used show how state leaders try to make ends and means meet (see Fig. 3.2). Having established that power includes more than capabilities and that security entails more than physical survival, we have to look at the structural constraints that emanate from the international system. First, the international system may incentivize states to prop up their defenses, but it does not determine shapes and forms. If it were, it would be 36 This broader understanding of security needs echoes Buzan (1991/2016) but offers

more specificity. 37 Aron (1963, pp. 123–124): “Homogen nenne ich Systeme, in denen die Staaten zum gleichen Typus gehören und der gleichen politischen Konzeption folgen. Heterogen dagegen nenne ich Systeme, in denen die Staaten nach verschiedenen Prinzipien organisiert sind und sich auf widersprechende Werte berufen.” 38 See Schweller (1998), Buzan (1991/2016), and Brands (2018).

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Fig. 3.2 State security needs and opportunities in the international system (Source Own illustration)

full of functioning, capable states. Yet it is not.39 While war-making had consolidating effects on statehood, as Charles Tilly analyzed, international anarchy produces no linear effects.40 All states have to cultivate political capacity, reconcile competing demands, mobilize support, and extract resources for foreign policy, and the degree to which they succeed varies.41 Indeed, even the most powerful states in the international system do not conform to realist expectations, as research on their armed forces, military doctrines and reform processes demonstrates.42 They respond to external constraints within the bounds of what is feasible domestically. If all states responded solely to external security demands, at least some of them would lose exactly what they seek to protect, namely democracy, prosperity, and freedom. Anarchy forces states to fend for themselves. But there are internal filters for what works domestically.

39 See Chowdhury (2018). 40 See Tilly (1975). 41 See Schweller (2004). 42 See Kier (1997) and Farrell and Terriff (2002).

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Second, while neorealism assumes that a stable balance of power to deter attack is the best states can hope for, neoclassical realism suggests they use power to create self-serving orders. Neoclassical realism has risen to prominence over the study of grand strategy. Grand strategy can be understood as “the overall vision of a state’s national security goals and a determination of the most appropriate means by which to achieve these goals.”43 Hal Brands defines it as the “intellectual architecture that gives form and structure to foreign policy.” In this sense, “[…] a grand strategy is a purposeful and coherent set of ideas about what a nation seeks to accomplish in the world, and how it should go about doing so.”44 Similarly, Barry Posen views grand strategy as “a political-military, meansends chain, a state’s theory about how it can best ‘cause’ security for itself.”45 Grand strategy seeks to align ends, ways, and means to change the dynamics of the international environment to one’s own benefit. Those who do not muster the capabilities, capacity, and strategic wit to do so are forced to live with the consequences. To rephrase Alexander Wendt’s famous dictum, anarchy then is what the great powers make of it. Thus, shaping a benign external environment is among the most basic incentives states have in an anarchic world out of self-interest.46 Order building is not only a systemic imperative but also a strategic demand. Strategy is about aligning ends and means. Relentless balancing and deterrence may help states deal with some challenges. However, it does not suffice to protect their multifaceted security needs. Balancing and deterrence, if successful, prevent others from unwanted action— they preserve a given status quo. But states also want to incentivize and compel—to change the way things are—to protect their interests and allow themselves to thrive.47 Also, deterring others and coercing them into submission by threats or use of force on a case by case basis would be astoundingly inefficient. It is a strange notion to assume that costsensitive actors, whose means and domestic resource extraction capacities

43 Schmidt (2016, p. 215). 44 Brands (2014, p. 3). 45 Posen (1984, p. 13). 46 On the essence, difficulties, and limits of grand strategy see, e.g., Brands (2014,

pp. 1–16). 47 For an in-depth discussion of deterrence, compellence, and coercion as strategic options see Freedman (2004) and Art and Greenhill (2018).

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are limited, would be content with wasting their capabilities for fleeting situational victories. States have incentives to practice a more systematic form of international arm-twisting: to change the operating environment and thereby improve chances to protect their own vital interests at the expense of others under the conditions of anarchy. In more mundane parlance: States try to rig the system in their favor. Viewed this way, order building is a strategy to improve the conditions for one’s own security and survival in a holistic sense. States desire an international system that works for them. It must safeguard what they define as their proper zone of territorial political control (which may transgress the status quo of their formal territory), their extraterritorial influence and roles, their political, economic, and normative system within, and their competitiveness abroad, which is needed to preserve all of the above. This by no means implies that states try to replicate their domestic orders worldwide. Yet the continued pressure to compete with others demands an environment that is benign—or at least not hostile to their national needs and well-being. In this sense, order building and revisionism are two sides of the same coin. Both reflect states’ efforts to shape an external environment in line with their substantive security needs. International order building then is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.48 While order building is a strategy, international order as its product is also an outcome. Order means a specific “patterned, stable arrangement of things.”49 International order denotes the dominant interaction logics and patterns in the international system at a given time. International orders vary greatly in substance, functional logic, depth, and reach, yet all alter the external environment for the foreign policy decision-making of others.50 Often, international order is interpreted as a consensual system of rules. English School theoretician Hedley Bull, for example, posited that states form a society under anarchy due to a commonality of needs. All want an appreciation of their own sovereignty, and all want to be able

48 Glaser (2019) aptly criticized that debates on the “liberal international order” conflate order as a means and order as an end. 49 Gianfranco Poggi, quoted from Anter (2007, p. 37). Without italics from original. 50 See Patrick (2016) and Ikenberry (2014a).

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to rely on agreements.51 G. John Ikenberry points to the quasi constitutionalized nature of (initially US-led) order building, which seemingly had developed into a self-enforcing and self-perpetuating rules-based system of order.52 Similar notions of consensus and reciprocity are present in a variety of works on international order.53 From a realist point of view, the existence of an order does not presuppose consensus, formal institutions, a constitutionalized setup, or active stakeholdership. As Schweller highlighted, even if no great power imposed organizing principles, an international order of a specific kind would still exist: the raw world of anarchy, self-help, and balance of power.54 It is the great powers that shape international orders to their liking based on their interests and by virtue of their influence. Agreements on the ground rules of order may be desirable for the sake of stability and peace or necessary when no power can dominate. But order building stems from the desire to support one’s own needs.55 International orders from a neoclassical realist point of view are tied to the great powers that sustain them. After all, power provides the baseline of order, and every order is characterized and upheld by power relations, no matter how obvious or subtle they may be.56 International orders are thus characterized by a degree of hierarchy. IR theory acknowledges that even the anarchic world of international affairs contains many elements of hierarchy.57 International orders as understood here are systems of hierarchical rule, shaped by the needs of the lead state(s). This is in tune with older literature on hegemonic stability and power transition.58 It is the great powers that fill these hierarchical relationships with life in their own distinct way. Great powers and hegemons shape the world around them,

51 See Bull (1977/2002). 52 See Ikenberry (2001) and Ikenberry (2011). 53 See Kocs (2019). 54 See Schweller (2001). 55 For insightful critiques on flawed understandings of international order see Schweller

(2001) and Glaser (2019); for a rebuttal of consensual notions of world order see Mearsheimer (2014, pp. 48–51). 56 See Anter (2007, pp. 95–124). 57 See Lake (2009). 58 On hegemonic stability and power transition theory see Organski (1958), Organski

and Kugler (1981), Tammen (2000), and Gilpin (1981).

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but they build fundamentally different kinds of worlds.59 The specific features of hegemonic orders, their substance as well as organizational logic, depend upon unit-level characteristics and decisions of those who make and uphold the rules.60 The degree to which they can build the worlds they prefer is decided in a game of strategic interaction with other great powers. States need a broad array of power resources, the political capacity to use them, as well as a refined strategic repertoire to persuade and incentivize, demand and compel, prevent and deter, punish and coerce. As Hal Brands emphasizes, “grand strategy is obsessed with the relationship between means and ends, objectives and capabilities.” Since power is “multidimensional,” strategy is about utilizing the tools to get the job done.61 There is no reason to assume that states would only use the military hammer in the toolbox. Changing the interaction dynamics of the international system requires the full spectrum of power projection means, ranging from soft forms of exerting power through suasion to hard forms of punishment and coercion.62 While technological progress as well as the networked and connected nature of a globalized world alters the modes of interaction, the overall dynamic does not change.

International Order as Systemic Constraint, Revisionism as Strategic Choice What effects do international orders have on the units exposed to their reach? And why do some emerge as revisionists? A neoclassical realist model of international order building and contestation assumes that great powers have incentives and means to bring the anarchic international system (more) in line with their national interests. It requires the ability to control events beyond one’s own borders, which means that international orders introduce elements of hierarchy within anarchy. Ordering powers set rules and, if need be, enforce them. International orders reflect the

59 This formulation echoes Kagan (2012). 60 See, e.g., Ikenberry (2001) and Kupchan (2014). 61 Brands (2014, p. 4). 62 For a compelling classic discussion of the tools of power and influence see Wolfers (1962/1991b).

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national interests and influence of their creator(s) and form the incentives and constraints of the international system for those within their reach. International orders are not static. Orders exist only as long as their organizing principles structure interstate interaction and are reproduced, yet they fray once rule-breaking or -redefinition becomes the new normal and goes unpunished. Thus, international order as an outcome and order building as policy outputs are tightly interwoven. It takes the continuous support and defense of ordering principles and corresponding structures to uphold an existing order. Occasional instances of rule-breaking are inevitable in any order, and survival depends on its overall resilience.63 In this sense, as Foot and Walter pointed out, order can be viewed “as dynamic and as a matter of degree.”64 But if nonconformance becomes the rule, orders wither. International orders are always subject to change and vulnerable to revisionism. Given this interactive strategic logic of international orders, they are not identical with polarity. Notions of uni-, bi-, or multipolarity provide a rough understanding of the great powers in the international system or regional subsystem. Polarity tells us who the units with the most capabilities are, but nothing about the substance of their interests or the reach of their influence. While polarity is wedded to a positional view regarding the distribution of capabilities, order takes a relational view of behavioral patterns.65 Orders may be challenged and erode even if the polarity still holds, namely when operating principles are no longer reproduced in political behaviors, when rule-breaking is neither deterred nor punished—be it because the hegemon reassesses the cost–benefit ratio of its efforts or is incapable of translating capabilities into influence. Alternatively, orders can persist despite power shifts—if stakeholders stick to the rules voluntarily. But a leadership vacuum (“hegemonic vacancy”) tends

63 See Anter (2007, p. 55). 64 Foot and Walter (2011, p. 2). 65 The former is best explained by Waltz (1979, p. 80): “To define a structure requires

ignoring how units relate with one another (how they interact) and concentrating on how they stand in relation to one another (how they are arranged or positioned).” For the relational view of order see Anter (2007, pp. 37–40).

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to have corrosive effects.66 International orders don’t collapse or transition with one big bang, yet fray gradually in substance, geographical reach, and depth.67 Though polarity and order are not identical, polarity gives clues on the types of orders that are feasible. First, if there are multiple competing great powers with overlapping zones of operation, it incentivizes the development of “thin” but joint orders that reflect a minimal consensus and a degree of great power managerialism among them. European great power politics—the competition of multiple great powers in a narrow region—has seen the repeated crafting and breakdown of such equilibria. In this sense, the Westphalian state system with its norms of sovereignty and nonintervention was an order shaped by the realities of European multi-power competition. No European state was able to impose its will on others, while the costs of perpetual wars of religion were devastating, and the resultant system of thin secular governance offered a way out. The nineteenth century European great power concert is yet another example. Such “light” orders may not reflect the national interests of their shapers to their fullest, but allow them to coexist.68 If there is just one great power in the system or if multiple great powers exist geographically apart and/or with clearly delineated zones of influence, deeper orders are feasible. Under these conditions, international orders will reflect the lead state’s needs of how the world ought to be ordered more ideally. The rules of a “deep” order tend to be more intrusive toward those within its reach, not only with regards to how they behave foreign policy-wise, but also regarding their domestic orders. This can range from matters of territorial control and acceptable influence, to proper political governance models between and within states, to how to organize economic systems, international trade, and finance, and to normative claims about how states ought to behave toward one another and their own citizens. Such deep orders with an extensive set of rules can emerge in a unipolar, but also in a multi- or bipolar setting if the great powers have enough leeway from each other.

66 Böller and Werner (2021, p. 291) diagnose a “hegemonic vacancy” for the current US-led liberal order. 67 This echoes literature on imperial decline. See, e.g., Münkler (2008). 68 Henry Kissinger (2014, p. 3) aptly called the Westphalian peace “a practical

accommodation to reality, not a unique moral insight.”

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Deep orders created by an overbearing power are the types of orders of interest for those who study empires and hegemony.69 Hegemons, the undisputed leaders of a regional or international system at a given time, build orders to their liking. Two of the most prominent works emphasize the relevance of economics for these processes. It is those with the competitive economic advantage that rise, translate economic might in other forms of power, and build a world that allows them to profit even more.70 Other substantive interests are implanted within the reach of their influence, too. The principle features of hegemonic orders—political, economic, or societal norms—as well as the processes of hegemonic rule differ significantly. Kupchan identifies the “geopolitical logic,” “socioeconomic logic,” “cultural logic,” and “commercial logic,” for example, all of which depend on the characteristics and interests of the lead state.71 While some great powers rule with brute force, others incentivize cooperation through benefits or persuasion. While some create structures of suppression and exploitation, others offer collective goods and develop into genuine managers of progress. Hegemonic stability theory generally suggests that hegemony benefits subordinate states more than it threatens them and thus, as Levy and others pointed out, turns the neorealist argument on its head.72 Second, how polarity and orders evolve over time affects interaction patterns. Any established system of order can be challenged from within or without. A challenger can rise within a hegemonic order and seek to alter the rules it has formerly been subject to. Challengers can also exist without, seeking to expand the reach of their own system of rules at the expense of another in a multi-order world. While both types of revisionism promise conflict, they have different dynamics. Revisionism from within a hegemonic order (unipolar system with a deep order turning bior multipolar) disrupts the underlying bargains and facilitates its breakdown. External revisionism may help consolidate the rules and interaction

69 On hegemonic stability and power transition theory see Organski (1958), Organski and Kugler (1981), Tammen (2000), Gilpin (1981), and Ikenberry (2001, 2011, 2014b). 70 See Gilpin (1981) and Kennedy (1989). 71 Kupchan (2014, p. 22). 72 See Levy (1998, p. 148).

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patterns as supporters gear up for their defense (deterrence or even “roll back” of a competing system of order in a bi- or multipolar word).73 Lastly, the dynamics of order building and contestation depend on the status quo ante. If an order exists, any challenger faces deterrence and punishment constraints. If a functional system of order has persisted for decades, we can expect that established modes of cooperation will endure, deepen, and widen if an opportunity arises. If, however, old orders and their shapers have collapsed in devastating wars, newly dominant powers possess a relatively free hand to build a novel order from the ashes of an old one. But even then, legacy concepts create path dependencies, suggesting “a sort of contingent evolutionary logic” of international order(s).74 Hence, while the systemic constraints of international orders depend upon the relative interests and influence of their shapers, development trajectories help us make sense of their specific shapes and forms in the present. Assuming a great power manages to build a deep (hegemonic) order— and the US-led, Western international order amounts to just that—what are its effects in the international system? What such orders do is to modify the structural incentives and constraints in the international system. Though the effects of anarchy are toned down, it is the ordering powers and the rules of their making that push and pull states within their reach. The pressure hegemonic powers put on subordinate ones is even stronger than that emanating from anarchy. After all, the insecurity of anarchy is replaced with the certainty and resolve of (partial) hierarchy. First, ignoring the demands of anarchy increases the level of risk. Hardly ever does it have immediate effects, though. Not all states that fail to invest adequately in their defense suffer a catastrophic attack, and rarely do they do so immediately. Even an anarchic system provides a degree of slack. Hegemonic powers, on the other hand, punish noncompliance quick and hard. Second, while anarchy forces states to be vigilant about their defenses, hegemonic influence is more intrusive. Hegemons adapt the international system to their own national needs. They tend to define not only how others ought to behave foreign policy-wise, but

73 The implicit assumption in the literature seems to be that challengers always rise within a hegemonic order. See as examples Allison (2017) and Kupchan et al. (2001). 74 Ikenberry (2014a, p. 95).

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also how they should modify their domestic orders. The resultant adaptations can stem from persuasion, enticement, conditionality, threats, or punishment imposed by the hegemon as well as from the more informal pressures to imitate a successful state or conform to international standards. Hegemonic rule thus potentially infringes the sovereignty of others in the most far-reaching ways, targeting both their foreign policy outputs and their domestic orders. In other words, hegemons may change not only what others do, but also who they are.75 The degree to which hegemony provokes pushback depends upon the balance of interests and influence at a given time. A neoclassical realist model shares the view that the stability of an international order depends upon the ability to uphold the rules as well as the willingness of others to follow.76 These are two sides of the same coin. Even if ordering principles were rejected by all states affected by them, they would still hold if the ordering power enforces compliance by coercive means. Yet orders are not necessarily imposed against the will of all those affected by them. Organizing principles and corresponding structures may possess a high degree of functionality, not only for their creator but also for others, helping them to protect their substantive security needs and thrive. They can also possess a high degree of legitimacy and generate followership through their righteousness. International orders thus tend to rest on a combination of the three: their enforceability (compliance through coercion by the ruler), their functionality (compliance through benefits), and their legitimacy (compliance as the right thing to do).77 Since international orders rest on a combination of coercive power to enforce, functional benefits that incentivize, and normative claims that legitimize a specific type of order, norm entrepreneurship and

75 For a theoretical discussion of practices of domination and the production of discipline in hierarchical international settings see Lake (2009, pp. 63–174) and Schweller and Priess (1997). 76 On the interactive nature of hegemony and the connections between leaders and followers see Böller and Werner (2021), Jesse et al. (2012), and Clark (2009). 77 Though terminology varies, this triade is commonly used in theorizing on interna-

tional order. Ikenberry (2014a, p. 84) speaks of the “configuration of power,” “legitimacy to the rules and institutions that mark the order,” and “functional returns to participating states.” Maull (2020, p. 6) points to “authority,” “legitimacy,” and “effectiveness.” Others speak of power, institutions, and values/norms as core elements of a stable order. See Sørensen (2019, p. 58).

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persuasion, institution building and the crafting of win–win cooperation are by no means outside the realist paradigm. They are integral elements to perpetuate hierarchies of power and interests in the international system.78 While grand theories of IR present these as mutually exclusive—neorealism focuses on power and force, institutionalism on institutions and rewards, constructivism on norms and legitimacy to conceptualize international order—a neoclassical realist model rejects such as a compartmentalization. Enforceability, functionality, and legitimacy are complementary and interwoven. “Lopsided” orders that rest on just one or two pillars are inherently unstable. Orders upheld solely by brute force drain resources and trigger backlash through the constant policing, coercing, and punishing involved. Orders with highly uneven reward structures will likely suffer from enforcement and legitimacy dilemmas. Orders that rest on shared principles yet lack enforcement mechanisms, may have a high degree of legitimacy, but are vulnerable to revisionist challengers. Orders that combine all three features can hope for long life. Revisionism then is both a policy output and a strategic choice. Decision-makers at the helm of the state assess what the status quo order does to their national interests. Whether it supports or hurts vital needs is the key determinant for revisionist impulses. It should not come as a surprise, as Buzan emphasizes: “The point is that revisionist states also have legitimate national security interests. For them, the prevailing system is a threat to their security, and sometimes even to their domestic legitimacy.”79 Even if no traditional military danger is on the horizon, states can be imperiled by orders that challenge their holistic security needs: their understanding of how far their political control ought to reach, territorially and influence-wise; their form of governance; their economic system; and their domestic normative bargains. With such assessments in mind, decision-makers select their response on the basis of opportunity structures—the realities of power and influence—to support, accommodate, resist, or revise the international status quo.80 Geography matters in this regard. The logic and terminology of “geopolitics” and “geoeconomics” reflect the spatiality of strategic 78 See Wivel and Paul (2019) and Schweller and Priess (1997). 79 Buzan (1991/2016, p. 239). 80 That strategic assesements over goals and means drive behavior is a core tenet of strategic studies. See, e.g., Joshua Shifrinson’s “predatory theory” of rising powers’ behavior. Shifrinson (2018).

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competition. Systems of order can be distinguished by their reach, they can be regional or global. At the same time, global international orders always have regional consequences. States are naturally most affected by the effects of hegemony in their neighborhoods. The emergence of a globalized world has not changed this. Political, economic, and societal relations tend to be most intense with nearby countries. If a state becomes an isolated outlier in the regional subsystem, its chances to do well shrink. Also, no state can hope to shape global events if it is incapable to exert leverage close by.81 Of course, not only interests but also the means to exert influence have a spatial dimension. Wielding power close to home is easier than projecting power across the globe. This holds true in the military domain, where deploying and sustaining troops in far-away places requires capabilities most do not possess, as much as in the political and economic realms. Revisionism as a policy choice is explained by strategic needs and opportunity structures and has to be viewed within the full menu of strategic options—alongside the alternatives: stakeholdership, accommodation, and resistance (see Fig. 3.3). If an international order protects the vital needs of subordinate states, we can expect them to embrace it as an opportunity to thrive. Hegemons may provide exactly the kind of leadership others need and seek, to the point of forming an “‘empire’ by invitation.”82 The elements of hierarchy ingrained in a hegemonic order may minimize or resolve security concerns and collective action problems. National interests may be protected much better than small or middle powers could ever do on their own, and gains may exceed anything states could reap under the raw conditions of anarchy. Hegemons may provide a much-desired level of security, political stability, economic prosperity, and progressive development. Truly successful hegemons exercise restraint and inspire followership, which gives subordinate states leverage to shape the choices of the dominant power.83 Supporters of a given order can be expected to remain “stakeholders” even if their relative power increases. They may free-ride or use their widening strategic opportunities to defend or even expand and deepen the status quo order. There is no plausible reason to assume that a rising power would turn against

81 See Mearsheimer (2014). 82 Lundestad (2005). 83 See Ikenberry (2001) and Williams et al. (2012).

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Fig. 3.3 Strategic responses toward the (hegemonic) international order (Source Own illustration)

an order it considers beneficial and benign. Hence, contrary to neorealist assumptions, peaceful transitions of power are possible.84 If an international order hurts the domestic needs of states, friction results. It can be resolved by unit-level or system-level change. If units are exposed to the constraints of an hegemonic order, strong pressures to adapt result. In order to avoid punishment and do well, states will need to play by the rules of the leading power(s). They are expected to abide by the rules internationally and, if need be, even alter the ideas and structures prevalent in their domestic orders. This includes, for example, accepting territorial loss, foreswearing imperial claims, conforming with hegemonic notions of how states ought to govern themselves and interact with others, deferring to normative standards not previously internalized, or implementing economic reforms to be able to prosper under the system set up by the hegemon. If states accommodate to a given international order by changing their policy behavior and possibly even their domestic setup, we can speak of a transformation (or socialization) within that order. Such adaptations may happen voluntarily. Decision-makers may conclude it is the self-serving best choice, as mimicry of successful practices and developmental models are omnipresent phenomena in

84 The phenomenon is explored in depth in Kupchan et al. (2001).

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international affairs.85 To support transformation processes, political or economic incentives, promises of reward, or conditionalized cooperation formats are used.86 Nevertheless, hegemons may also impose changes in policy and polity. Those unwilling to adapt yet unable to stand up for themselves may lose their sovereignty and survival as substantive political entities—suffering intervention in their internal affairs or even regime change.87 Not all states give in to the pressures to conform to the rules of international order. The domestic barriers may be too high.88 After all, the external status quo may threaten the very existence of the state as a substantive actor, be it in terms of regime security or else. Resistance to adaptation and emulation leads to a sustained disconnect with and a potentially costly defiance of the established rules. Without the ability to challenge the corset of external constraints, respective states are forced to endure unfavorable conditions. This entails the persistent threat of punishment for nonconformist behavior. It is a negative form of accommodation, where states have no choice but to endure an unhappy fate. Depending on how vehemently hegemons put pressure on them, they potentially receive the full-fledged “rogue states” treatment of diplomatic isolation, sanctions, shaming, and potentially even intervention.89 Those who resist a given order and possess defensive capabilities may hope to protect a competing system of order that can coexist. This variant resembles the Cold War with its bipolar standoff between incompatible liberal and communist orders. Its plausibility depends on development trajectories. If two competing systems of order emerge side by side (as it was the case when the two blocs formed after World War II), they can learn to coexist peacefully with mutually exclusive reaches and a stable

85 Neorealism views mimicry of the most successful states as a systemic imperative. See Waltz (1979, p. 118; 128) and Nexon (2009, pp. 336–337). But the term lends itself to a broader understanding to include adaptation processes regarding governance modes, economic models, and normative frames. This equals the policy response Krastev and Holmes (2019) call “imitation.” 86 On the EU’s adoption and use of conditionality mechanisms to support reforms see, e.g., Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier (2004) and Jacoby and Hopkin (2020). 87 On regime change as an element in US grand strategy see, e.g., Litwak (2007). 88 The limits of the EU’s transformation strategy can serve as an example. See Bendiek

(2017). 89 For a theoretically rich discussion of the “rogue states” concept see Saunders (2006).

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system of containment and deterrence between them. If an entangled competitor rises within a given order, an extensive degree of decoupling is necessary before competing orders can come to fruition.90 Cutting back the depth and reach of a previously more expansive order demands hegemonic loss tolerance.91 States who have conflicting interests with little propensity to adapt but the means to fight back will seek to free themselves of the “yoke” of unwanted external demands. This latter policy choice is revisionism. Revisionists have a structural incentive and opportunity to bring the international environment in line with their needs. Once revisionist practices add up to a sustained, multifaceted, and systematic challenge to multiple central fields of a given international order, it amounts to “hard revisionism.” We can expect to see it if an existing international order places significant constraints upon a state, particularly in its home region, that are incompatible with its own security needs and with no plausible pathway to adapt domestically. To turn revisionist potential into hard revisionist practice, there must be a strategic opportunity to stand up against (elements of) the detested status quo. Strategic opportunities reflect the interactive dimension of order building and contestation. Changes in the relative distribution of capabilities open up windows of opportunity and may allow revisionists to follow through on a long-held desire for change. After all, revisionist policies require the means to pursue them, possibly against the threat of coercive pushback. While capabilities are a baseline, it takes political capacity and plausible strategic options to exert influence abroad. Though not all rising powers turn revisionist, they are prime candidates due to the widening of their opportunities relative to others in the system. But also those potential revisionists whose capabilities are not increasing significantly or across the board may encounter growing opportunities. The analysis of opportunity structures must also take into account the relative strength of the defenders of an existing order. Changing assessments of the functionality and legitimacy of an order—both of its creator and stakeholders—as well as decreases in the hegemon’s propensity or ability to enforce rules alter the opportunity structures for order 90 Current US decoupling efforts from China foreshadow this and illustrate the ramifications for third parties. See, e.g., Smith and Taussig (2019). 91 This equals a policy of accommodation by the challenged hegemon. See, e.g., Layne (2015) and Glaser (2015).

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contestation.92 Since the persistence of international order depends upon continued rule conformance, challenging order tends to be easier than building and upholding it from a strategic point of view. After all, efforts to delegitimize, undermine, and spoil existing ordering structures are easy pathways into revisionist practice. Revisionists can hope that self-doubts and diminishing returns will fracture a given international order from within.93 The spectrum of revisionist strategic options is rich and diverse. Since functioning orders rest on a mix of enforceability, functionality, and legitimacy, contenders can target all three. They can make the case that a given order is deeply unjust, while advocating for an alternative, presumably fairer and better order that benefits more than just a select few. They can provoke an institutional crisis and deny benefits through their own actions. They can subvert rule enforcement through formal or informal vetos and attempts to offset counterreactions. In all of these domains, revisionists can utilize the entire spectrum of power, ranging from diplomatic to institutional to economic to informational to military assets, and they can employ them in varying intensities. They can act as spoilers and attempt to sow discord among stakeholders. They can self-identify as revisionists or operate from the shadows. The strategic view underlines there are many pathways for revisionist practice, and states will use their own strengths and exploit the weaknesses of others. If great powers are in the revisionist mode, they will find a way to try.94 The strategic responses to a given (hegemonic) international order are theoretical ideal types. In practice, a fluid combination of support,

92 Krauthammer (1990/1991) and Kupchan (2001, pp. 4–6), for example, pointed out long ago that a decline in America’s internationalist commitment, not a shift in capabilities, may eventually endanger US unipolarity and hegemony. See Böller and Werner (2021) for the effects of the Trump era on the international order. 93 That revisionist opportunities depend upon the relative balance between stakeholders and competitors is a widely shared thought, yet operationalized in different ways. See, e.g., Davidson (2002, pp 131–132). 94 There are competing assessments to what degree revisionism depends on the

(perceived) chances for success as a precondition for trying. Some allege that revisionism is incentivized if a challenger catches up significantly in material terms, but there is no agreement on the specific metric or threshold. See, e.g., Tammen (2000) and Kupchan (2001, pp. 11–12). Others emphasize decision-makers’ confidence and perceptions of opportunities. See, e.g., Davidson (2002, p. 131).

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accommodation, resistance, and revisionism is likely. States with revisionist grievances may opt for (partial) accommodation as long as the benefits outweigh the costs (e.g., economic participation; security).95 At the same time, they will try to resist and shield themselves from those pressures they cannot adapt to (e.g., political liberalization). Temporary and partial accommodation strategies may help states gain strength and deflect punishment for noncompliance in the present to accumulate the strength needed to practice full-fledged revisionism in the future. Randall Schweller pointed out that states are “bandwagoning for profit.” Jumping on the bandwagon of the dominant power is not a survival strategy of last resort. Instead, it may be a plausible strategic move to benefit from the most capable state.96 In a unipolar setting, gaming a hegemon’s order generally is the only way to change it down the road. Windows of opportunities may be desperately awaited, but actors with revisionist grievances seek to widen them by carefully navigating their external environment before the time is right for a grand strategic adjustment to revisionism. Even once states go (hard) revisionst, they do not act alike. Depending upon the availability of strategic opportunities, revisionists either undermine an existing order to rid themselves of unwanted constraints or build alternative ordering structures more to their liking. The two ideal types differ in their focus and ambition. While the former places its bets on spoiling the legitimacy, functionality, and enforceability of an existing order, the latter is more far-reaching. It requires states to put forth their own visions of order and invest resources to craft, build, and maintain them. Efforts to undermine an existing order can be disguised easily. States may rhetorically adhere to but substantially erode an existing order, hoping to get away with it unpunished. Acts of unconcealed revisionism to promote alternative ordering structures are of a different quality. Since adapting orders to one’s own needs to thrive is the ultimate goal, we can expect the more capable challengers to practice “constructive revisionism” in the form of alternative order building, while those great powers with less sway may be forced to limit themselves to “destructive revisionism” (see Fig. 3.4).

95 See, e.g., Shifrinson (2018). 96 Schweller (1994).

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MODE OF REVISIONISM

POLICY PATTERN

strategic need for revisionism

narrow wide

strategic opportunities for revisionism

high

destructive revisionism order subversion

Efforts to disrupt enforceability, functionality, and legitimacy of existing order, such as: disrupt order building narrative dispute legitimacy and merits of status quo sow and exploit divisions spoil collective goods and rule enforcement to destroy status quo

constructive revisionism alternative order building

Efforts to build own order on top of derailing the existing order, such as: change narrative of order (deficits of status quo; merits of alternative one) formulate and project alternative principles divide stakeholders and rally supporters sway, entice, or coerce others to defer and subscribe to alternative order

Fig. 3.4 Destructive versus constructive revisionism (Source Own illustration)

It is the international orders great powers make that push and pull states within their reach to embrace, accept, resist, or revise them. Revisionism thus results from actor choices under the conditions of structural constraint. States that assess the international status quo is detrimental to their own holistic security needs and have the wherewithal to fight back will seek to adapt the international environment to their needs—rather than be transformed by it.

Hypothesis: Russian and Chinese Revisionism Toward the US-Led Order Russia’s and China’s behavior can be classified as hard revisionism. This is characterized by consistent grievances toward multiple central areas of

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the established international order and a committed, cost-accepting type of revisionist practice. They pursue their revisionist goals with a broad variety of tools (diplomatic, political, economic, military, informational, hybrid, and cyber). The neoclassical realist model of international order building and contestation allows deducting a hypothesis for Moscow’s and Beijing’s behavior. Their kind of hard revisionism presupposes a firmly entrenched revisionist intent and a solid level of opportunity. Colloquially speaking, then, Russia and China emerged as revisionists toward the USled international order because they want and because they can. But why is that the case? A neoclassical realist explanation for revisionism is a two-step model. To explain revisionism as a foreign policy output, we have to zoom in on the system-level input as well as the unit-level assessment and decision-making processes. The neoclassical realist model suggests that the international order as a systemic constraint is causally prior to unitlevel processes. The latter translates international stimuli into policy. The international order is shaped, first and foremost, by the interests and influence of the most capable actors. The organizing principles pushed by the dominant states circumscribe what all states within their reach are confronted with. The constraints emanating from a “deep” hegemonic order tend to be more intrusive, more direct, and immediate than those from a more limited, “thin” multi-power order, at least for other great powers in the system. When the Cold War ended, US-led unipolarity set the stage for a system of order that promised to be deep, liberal, and global. The USled Western liberal international order had been established, nurtured, and sustained for decades in a bipolar Cold War setting. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the United States emerged as the sole remaining superpower, Washington not only stood atop a unipolar world, but also presided over a fully-fledged system of order with established operating principles and institutions that had proven legitimate, functional, and enforceable for decades. This by historical standards utterly exceptional condition paved the way for a potential globalization of the US-led system of order with little need to compromise with other great powers. While true global hegemony is an unlikely proposition, the structural status quo in the early 1990s allowed for a tremendous expansion of the reaches of US hegemony, making it more universal than any other hegemonic order before.

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While the balance of influence sheds light on hegemonic leadership, the hegemon’s unit-level essence helps understand the substance of the post-Cold War order. As outlined above, order building serves domestic needs as states attempt to rig the international system in their favor. Seen through Western eyes, the globalization of one’s own model of order promoted a more benign international environment. It was liberal answers that primed the principles of national self-determination, representative political governance, market economics and free trade as well as individual freedom and security. From a theoretical point of view, anything but a quest to globalize the liberal international order was highly improbable without external constraints. At the same time, US-led efforts in the postCold War era likely put substantial pressure on others to transform and adjust to the standards of the Western liberal international order—in terms of foreign policy behavior and domestic setup. Such a situation creates a high level of structural constraint. How threatening a given international order is, is decided at the unit level. The theoretical section established that states need more than security from military attacks to survive as substantive entities in a self-help world. All states possess a domestic status quo of ideas and structures regarding their territorial, ontological, political, economic, and normative security. The degree to which an international order benefits or threatens a state depends on its congruence with or divergence from basic domestic needs. If a hegemonic order supports the basic needs of a given state, it is reasonable to expect its embrace. If, however, an international order endangers vital security needs, holistically understood as territorial, ontological, political, economic, and normative security, states have good reason to push back. A mediating factor is the propensity as well as the ability to adjust domestically to international standards. If there is no pathway for adaptation, however, a high level of revisionist potential exists. If a potential revisionist possesses the means to challenge an international status quo—a chance to transform the international order rather than be transformed by it—revisionism is the logical strategic choice. The window of opportunity that makes revisionism a plausible political course depends not only on a revisionist’s own capabilities, political capacity, and strategic options to challenge the status quo, but also on the status quo powers’ ability to dissuade, deter, and, if need be, punish rule-breakers. After all, seen from the status quo powers, revisionism amounts to rulebreaking. If it goes unpunished, it can erode the principles and/or ambit

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of a given international order, thereby altering the stimuli of the international system going forward. Neoclassical realism’s logic of strategic interaction strongly suggests that a creative mix of (seeming) support and accommodation as well as elements of resistance will precede revisionist practice and may continue to be employed side by side with hard revisionism to deflect punishment. At the same time, revisionists have may inroads—assaulting the enforceabiliby, functionality, and legitimacy of the status quo order. Summing up, revisionism as a strategic choice is the result of a high degree of systemic pressure on the prospective revisionist to change its behavior, possibly even its domestic setup. It translates into action at the unit level if it there is an unreconcilable conflict with national strategic needs as well as a window of opportunity to force international change. Hence, we can deduct the following hypothesis on revisionism as a strategic choice: H 1.1 If the international order, which reflects the interests and influence of its shaper(s), pressures units to conform, H 1.2 which is incompatible and irreconcilable with unit-level strategic needs, H 1.3 they will use any window of strategic opportunity in the relative balance of influence, Output to seek to revise the international order in accordance with their own interests (see Fig. 3.5 for a summary).

Russia’s and China’s revisionism, the neoclassical realist model suggests, can be explained by this very dynamic. What needs to be investigated to verify or falsify the hypothesis empirically? First, the international stimulus which is the status quo order comes into focus. Since revisionism is a response to a given international order, the latter has to be analyzed first to identify its shapes and effects—its development trajectory, guiding principles, specific depth, geographical reach, and operational mode, all of which shed light on the incentives and constraints it places on others. In the specific case, it is necessary to identify the defining features and consequences of the US-led, Western international order. H 1.1 is validated if the US-led order (building) has placed visible constraints on Russia and China to conform to a specific set of ordering principles—be it by pressuring them to change their foreign policy or, most intrusive, by pressuring them to change their domestic orders along the way. Should both

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CAUSAL CHAIN

CAUSAL MODEL RESPONSE TO INTERNATOINAL ORDER

NEOCLASSICAL REALIST

systemic input

international order

REVISIONISM

CAUSAL CHAIN

˃

interests and influence of its shapers

1 systemic pressure

foreign policy executive assessment and decision-making

foreign policy output

˃

strategic needs and opportunities

˃

on units to modify policies or even their domestic order to conform to status quo international order

2 strategic need for order revisionism degree of divergence from unit-level needs ↕ will and pathway for unitlevel adaptation

strategic response

policies toward international order

˃

4 strategic output support accommodation resistance revisionism

3 strategic opportunity for order revisionism capabilities, capacities, and strategic options

1 systemic pressure: high

HYPOTHESIS

unit-level process

to change policies and domestic orders

˃

2 strategic need: high divergence between national needs and international order, no unit-level adaptation

˃

4 strategic output: revisionism destructive constructive

3 strategic opportunity: high window of opportunity in balance of influence H 1.1 ˃ H 1.2 ˃ Output If the international order, which is incompatible and to seek to revise the which reflects the interests irreconcilable with unit-level international order in and influence of its shaper(s), strategic needs, accordance with their own pressures units to conform, interests. H 1.3 they will use any window of strategic opportunity in the relative balance of influence,

Fig. 3.5 Summary of the theoretical argument (Source Own illustration)

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have been largely untouched by US-led international order building, we would have to conclude that there is no international stimulus of note to encourage revisionism on their part. The second step is to analyze national interests and propensity to adapt at the unit level. This pertains to (a) territorial security, acknowledging that the imagined reach of formal political control may go beyond actual territorial size, (b) ontological security, understood as the self-defined role and influence claims; (c) regime security, which is the prerequisite for all political sovereignty; (d) economic security, which depends upon the opportunities that can be seized in a given economic environment; d) normative security, which pertains to the relationship between individuals and the state. While states have all reason to be supportive of an order that allows them to thrive, there is a high propensity for opposition should the international status quo undermine their domestically conditioned vital needs. Conflict potential can be resolved through a propensity to adapt to the international status quo. H 1.2 will be validated if the empirical analysis shows a meaningful divergence of Russia’s and China’s own vital needs from the principles ingrained in the international order as well as grave hurdles or even an aversion to domestic reform. This is, of course, not an either-or proposition. Revisionist grievances can also pertain to select elements of the international order. Third, opportunity structures come into view. They may give potential revisionists a chance to effect system-level change. The empirical analysis has to assess action corridors. Revisionism becomes a plausible policy choice when those unhappy with a given order see strategic opportunities to change the way things are. The analysis of such a window of opportunity must include the relative changes in Russia’s and China’s capabilities, political capacities, and strategic options. H 1.3 will be verified if the empirical analysis detects a meaningful shift in the opportunity structure to the revisionist’s benefit, that is, if its power and influence increases and/or the deterrence and punishment potential of the United States and its allies decreases. In line with a strategy-minded power-asinfluence approach, we should not expect that balancing out a hegemon is the prerequisite for a strategic window of opportunity. In this sense, crisis situations in the international order can serve as important caesuras that trigger grand strategic adjustments.97 97 While crises may alter the material balance of power in a relatively short period of time, they are as important in a psychological sense, changing assessments of opportunities

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If both strategic needs and strategic opportunities pave the way for revisionism, Russia and China will put it into practice either by undermining the established order or by creating new ones of their own designs. Which they choose depends upon what is feasible. Hard revisionists with wide strategic opportunities will practice constructive revisionism, trying to build alternative ordering structures. Those hard revisionists with limited strategic opportunities may practice destructive revisionism, subverting an existing order to free themselves of its detrimental effects, but without being able to shape a new one in line with their own interests. It goes without saying that for a true order transition to take place, a revisionist needs to build a viable counter-order. The timeframe of the empirical analysis has to go beyond the narrow occurrence of revisionism. There are two reasons. First, the neoclassical realist model of international order building and revisionism introduces a timeline in our thinking. International orders are not built in a day. Their evolutionary trajectory explains their shape and form. Similarly, states’ vital security needs—their territorial reach, self-image, regime type, economic system, and normative compass—can only be grasped as historically grown. Understanding present-day international order and revisionist practice requires us to be mindful of legacy features and development trajectories. Second, if the hypothesis is correct, we should expect to see the incompatibility of Russia’s and China’s needs with the US-led international order before they turned revisionists. They just may not have had a plausible window of opportunity earlier. The prelude to their revisionist assaults helps us fully grasp their depth and (in)evitability. Both may have sought to protect their interests with a mix of supportive, accommodating, and resisting strategies at first. If they showed a distinct aversion to full integration into a US-led international order all along, the West’s engagement policy never had a chance. The empirical analysis is divided into two sections then, one focusing on the 1990s and early 2000s as a period of relative accommodation, the other on the period from the late 2000s to the present, which saw Moscow’s and Beijing’s revisionist revival. In three chapters each, the analysis focuses on the nature of the stimulus of the US-led international order as well as Russia’s and China’s strategic needs, propensity to adapt, and opportunity structures to respond respectively. While the study and threats. On the relevance of shocks for “rethinking” the world see Legro (2005, particularly pp. 13–17).

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triangulates Russia, China, and the West, it looks at Russian and Chinese revisionist needs and practices separately. At the heart of the endeavor of this study is the question of why both states turned revisionist vis-à-vis the US-led order, not why or how they work together in doing so. While their cooperation and like-mindedness will come up in the analysis, it is not its thrust. Looking at them separately, yet in parallel terms, provides helpful insights into the similarities and differences between these two revisionist challenges. In line with the logic of a neoclassical realist model and relevant experts’ assessments, the empirical analysis is rooted in qualitative, interpretive research. This study is convinced that this is the way to go to study Russia’s and China’s revisionism and the strategic interaction over the future of the international order.98 The following chapters on the incentives and constraints of the US-led international order as well as Russia’s and China’s strategic needs and opportunities to respond will do just that to explain their grand strategic adjustment to hard revisionism.

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Krastev, I., & Holmes, S. (2019). The Light that Failed: A Reckoning. Penguin Books. Krauthammer, C. (1990/1991). The Unipolar Moment. Foreign Affairs, 70(1), 23–33. Kupchan, C. A. (2001). Introduction: Explaining Peaceful Power Transitions. In C. A. Kupchan et al., Power in Transition: The Peaceful Change of International Order (pp. 1–17). United Nations University Press. Kupchan, C. A. (2014). Unpacking Hegemony: The Social Foundations of Hierarchical Order. In G. J. Ikenberry (Ed.), Power, Order, and Change in World Politics (pp. 19–59). Cambridge University Press. Kupchan, C. A., Adler, E., Coicaud, J. M., Khong, Y. F., Davidson, J., & Sucharov, M. (2001). Power in Transition: The Peaceful Change of International Order. United Nations University Press. Lake, D. A. (2009). Hierarchy in International Relations. Cornell University Press. Layne, C. (2006). The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present. Cornell University Press. Layne, C. (2015). Avoiding a Sino-American Confrontation: Why the US Should Accommodate a Rising China. Atlantisch Perspectief , 39(4), 3–8. Legro, J. W. (2005). Rethinking the World: Great Power Strategies and International Order. Cornell University Press. Levy, J. S. (1998). The Causes of War and the Conditions of Peace. Annual Review of Political Science, 1, 139–165. Litwak, R. S. (2007). Regime Change: U.S. Strategy through the Prism of 9/11. Woodrow Wilson Center Press. Lobell, S. E., Ripsman, N. M., & Taliaferro, J. W., (Eds.). (2009). Neoclassical Realism, the State, and Foreign Policy. Cambridge University Press. Lundestad, Geir. (2005). The United States and Western Europe Since 1945: From “Empire” by Invitation to Transatlantic Drift (Paperback ed.). Oxford University Press. Luttwak, E. N. (2001). Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Rev. and enlarged ed.). The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Maier, H. (2007). Massenvernichtungswaffen und Weltordnung: Der Wandel der Nichtverbreitungspolitik der USA seit dem Ende des Ost-West-Konflikts. Verlag Dr. Kovaˇc. Mastanduno, M. (2014). Order and Change in World Politics: The Financial Crisis and the Breakdown of the US-China Grand Bargain. In G. J. Ikenberry (Ed.), Power, Order, and Change in World Politics (pp. 162–191). Cambridge University Press. Maull, H. W. (2020). Die internationale Ordnung: Bestandsaufnahme und Ausblick. SIRIUS – Zeitschrift für strategische Analysen, 4(1), 3–23.

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McGrew, A. (2017). Globalization and Global Politics. In J. Baylis, S. Smith, & P. Owens (Eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (7th ed., pp. 15–32). Oxford University Press. Mearsheimer, J. J. (2014). The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (Updated ed.). Norton Paperback. Mearsheimer, J. J. (2018). The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities. Yale University Press. Micklethwait, J., & Woolridge, A. (2014). The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State. Penguin Books. Münkler, H. (2008). Imperien: Die Logik der Weltherrschaft—vom Alten Rom bis zu den Vereinigten Staaten (2nd ed.). Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag. Narizny, K. (2017). On Systemic Paradigms and Domestic Politics: A Critique of the Newest Realism. International Security, 42(2), 155–190. Nexon, D. (2009). The Balance of Power in the Balance. World Politics, 61(2), 330–359. Nye, J. S. (2016/2017). Deterrence and Dissuasion in Cyberspace. International Security, 41(3), 44–71. Organski, A. F. K. (1958). World Politics. Knopf. Organski, A. F. K., & Kugler, J. (1981). The War Ledger (Rev. ed.). University of Chicago Press. Patrick, S. (2016). World Order: What, Exactly, are the Rules? The Washington Quarterly, 39(1), 7–27. Philips, A. (2011). War, Religion and Empire: The Transformation of International Orders. Cambridge University Press. Posen, B. (1984). The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars. Cornell University Press. Ripsman, N. M., Taliaferro, J. W., & Lobell, S. E. (2016). Neoclassical Realist Theory of International Politics. Oxford University Press. Rose, G. (1998). Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy. World Politics, 51(1), 144–172. Saunders, E. N. (2006). Setting Boundaries: Can International Society Exclude “Rogue States”? International Studies Review, 8(1), 23–53. Schimmelfennig, F., & Sedelmeier, U. (2004). Governance by Conditionality: EU Rule Transfer to the Candidate Countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Journal of European Public Policy, 11(4), 669–687. Schmidt, B. C. (2016). The Primacy of National Security. In S. Smith, A. Hadfield, & T. Dunne (Eds.). Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, and Cases (3rd ed., pp. 206–221). Oxford University Press. Schweller, R. L. (1994). Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In. International Security, 19(1), 72–107. Schweller, R. L. (1998). Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest. Columbia University Press.

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Williams, K. P., Lobell, S. E., & Jesse, N. G., (Eds.). (2012). Beyond Great Powers and Hegemons: Why Secondary States Support, Follow, or Challenge. Stanford University Press. Wimmer, A., & Feinstein, Y. (2010). The Rise of the Nation-State across the World, 1816–2001. American Sociological Review, 75(5), 764–790. Wivel, A., & Paul, T. V., (Eds.). (2019). International Institutions and Power Politics: Bridging the Divide. Georgetown University Press. Wolfers, A. (1991a). National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol. Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (9th reprint, pp. 147–165). Johns Hopkins University Press. (Original work published 1962). Wolfers, A. (1991b). Power and Influence: The Means of Foreign Policy. Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (9th reprint, pp. 103–115). Johns Hopkins University Press. (Original work published 1962). Zakaria, F. (1999). From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role (First paperback ed.). Princeton University Press.

PART III

Western Triumph and Non-Western Accommodation in the 1990s

CHAPTER 4

False History: Globalization of the US-Led Liberal West and Its Delusions

Historical Legacies and Trajectories The international order Russia and China are up against is an order of Western and specifically American making. The US-led international order has emerged in stages over the course of the twentieth century, with World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and its end as important caesuras. From the beginning, it rested upon Washington’s material superiority and ability to mobilize allies. In terms of its organizing principles, the US-led Western international order is one of a distinctly liberal type. It comes by different names: While some in the realist tradition speak of the “Pax Americana” and emphasize the pacifying effects of material primacy, others focus on the order’s substantive characteristics and prefer the term “liberal international order.”1 Yet again others zoom in on its shapers and characterize the period from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century as the “transatlantic century” in world affairs.2 Others speak of the “Atlantic world,” “Pax Democratica,” the “free world,” and else.3 To make sense of the stimulus of Western international order building as well

1 See, e.g., Layne (2018) and Ikenberry (2018). 2 See Nolan (2012). 3 For these and other terms used see Ikenberry (2011, p. 35).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Groitl, Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18659-2_4

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as Russia’s and China’s revisionism in the post-Cold War era, one must take historical legacies and trajectories into account. The foundations of modern international order, namely as a global and state-based system, emerged from the fifteenth century onward. A global international system requires sustained, systematic interactions between its individual parts, which were fostered in the era of global expeditions, while true, real-time globality only became possible in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The emergence of a state-based international system is dated to the peace of Westphalia in 1648, which codified states as secular, territorially defined entities with full sovereignty over domestic affairs but no higher authority above them. The Westphalian state system was by no means the inevitable baseline of international affairs but reflected European patterns of statehood and power. However, it globalized. The division of the entire world in close to 200 territorially bounded states and the proliferation of diplomatic protocol and rules by which they interact have become basic facts of political life.4 Key features of Westphalia remain ingrained in the DNA of the current international system, and the US-led, Western international order is an evolutionary variant thereof.5 Western liberalism has been a force of incoherent progressiveness in modifying domestic as well as international Westphalian notions of order. As Heinrich August Winkler details, the political, economic, and normative beliefs generally described as “Western” form a body of coherent political thought centered around individual liberty and freedom. Democratic governance, free markets, individual rights, and national selfdetermination—principles that empower societies, economic actors, and individuals vis-à-vis the state and nations vis-à-vis their environment—are core elements of Western liberalism. But despite the Atlantic revolutions of 1776 and 1789, truly liberal domestic, let alone liberal international orders were far off. Waves of democratic revolutionary struggles tried to make governing authorities accountable to their own citizens, but the

4 On the evolution of the modern state system and sovereignty see Jackson (2007) and Jackson and Sørensen (2016, pp. 3–29). On Westphalia as a system of order compared to ordering traditions of other regions and cultures see Kissinger (2014). The presence of multiple great powers in a limited geographical and land-based theater with a distinct disinclination to accept hegemonic bids may be more Euro-centric than previously recognized. For such arguments see Friedberg (2000) and Kang (2003). 5 See Ikenberry (2011, p. 21).

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forces of restoration and dynastic governance prevailed in most of Europe into the early twentieth century. Even where liberal ideals took hold, political practice was full of double-standards and exclusion. Hence, the history of the liberal West is full of contradictions.6 Europe’s regional and European-dominated global orders in the nineteenth and early twentieth century stuck to the logic of the great power politics of the Westphalian system. The Congress of Vienna 1814/1815 established a multipolar concert of competing great powers, created a hierarchy between great and lesser powers and took their rivalries global with imperial colonialism. After the horrors of World War I, revolutions swept across the continent and dealt a death blow to the old order: Tsarist rule in Russia, the German Reich, the Habsburg monarchy, and the Ottoman empire all collapsed, while others like the UK and France came out bruised. This ushered in a period of profound political turmoil and sweeping change.7 European powers declined as predominant shapers of global order. It was the beginning of the American era in world affairs, after the United States had risen to power but, as Paul Kennedy observed, not been “part of the Great Power system” before.8 Liberal progressives, leading among them President Woodrow Wilson, made the case for active international order building over World War I. If the United States did not shape the global environment, it would, time and again, be forced to respond to the detrimental choices of others. The international system needed structures that allowed liberal democracies like the United States to prosper and flourish, structures that neither existed by law of nature nor by the design of other powers. Wilson’s vision of a liberal international order was antithetical to the logic of European-style Westphalianism, which was agnostic about domestic affairs and wedded to notions of absolute sovereignty; it was equally

6 For an extensive history of “the West” see Winkler (2016); more briefly Winkler (2019). On the intellectual marriage between liberalism and democracy see Smith (2012, pp. 3–33). On the dichotomies of American political history see Lepore (2018) and Meacham (2018). 7 For the classic power political account of the interwar years see Carr (1939/2001); with an emphasis on socio-economic history see Nolan (2012, pp. 76–153). 8 Kennedy (1989, p. 320). On the dualism between isolationism and internationalism see Zakaria (1999), Bierling (2007, pp. 73–80), and Koschut and Kutz (2012, pp. 31– 38). For an illustration of US strength see Kennedy (1989, pp. 249–321) and Nolan (2012, pp. 10–51).

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incompatible with imperial domineering and exclusive spheres of influence. Instead, Wilson’s vision focused on national self-determination, democracy promotion, socially embedded free market economics, and an institutionalized, rules-based setup of the international system to allow democratic and free trading states to flourish.9 But it would take another World War and the menace of Soviet communism before the United States finally embraced the role of a global power. At the end of World War II, the United States was an unequivocal superpower. The United States had suffered relatively modest losses compared to other warring parties. Its GDP amounted to about 40% of world GDP in 1950. In 1945, the production output of the United States was about equal to that of the rest of the world combined. Its technological superiority was overwhelming, and living standard was highest in global comparison. Militarily, the United States was not only the sole nuclear power by the end of the war, but it also came out second to none with an Air Force and a Navy capable of projecting power globally.10 Equally important was the political conversion. After World War II the United States possessed the capabilities as well as the will for sustained international activism. The alternative to international order building was to surrender to the facts created by others.11 The order the United States envisioned was one of a liberal internationalist kind. Already in the early 1940s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made clear that American well-being at home depended upon benign conditions abroad: “No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion – or even good business.”12 The 1941 British-American Atlantic Charter outlined the principle ideals of a postwar order and was multilateralized in the Declaration by the United Nations in 1942. It included a rejection of territorial aggrandizement and forced changes to the territorial status quo; a commitment to national self-determination and the right of peoples to select a government of their choosing; an endorsement of free trade paired

9 See Smith (2017). 10 See Lundestad (2005, pp. 27–28; 30–31), Kennedy (1989, pp. 461–462), and

Ferguson (2005, pp. 65–66). 11 See Ambrose (1993). 12 Roosevelt (1941, p. 6).

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with efforts to foster labor rights; economic advancement and social security; hopes for a sustainable, positive peace; a commitment to freedom of the seas; and a call to rein in wars.13 As an ideal type, the US vision of order rested on the premise that security, prosperity, and justice do not depend, first and foremost, on a stable balance of power, but on reliable patterns of behavior that allow democracy, the free market economy, and individual freedom to flourish. The establishment of the United Nations in 1945 was a foundational moment. Set up as a collective security organization, the UN constitutionalized international affairs to an unprecedented degree and defined rules for how states ought to behave—toward one another, but also within their own borders. While earlier Wilsonianism was heavy on principles, the Roosevelt administration was aware that liberal aspirations had to be balanced with realism and pragmatism.14 The UN system reflected tradeoffs between liberal ideals and realpolitik realities as well as between Westphalian state-prerogatives and Western liberal notions of the rights of individuals, peoples, and nations. Though it conceded the necessity of great power managerialism, as the veto privileges of five permanent Security Council members show, power-based domineering should make way for rules-based interactions. The UN Charter bans force as a tool of policy with narrowly circumscribed exceptions, which was a first in human history. It codified the principles of sovereign equality and nonintervention as protections for all states, mighty or weak. But it also emphasized the rights of peoples and nations as well as the political, economic, and social development of humankind. This clearly had an American and Western handwriting.15 The crafting of a liberal economic order was another core US concern. The 1944 Bretton Woods conference set up a global monetary system, which rested upon the US dollar as a lead currency. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was created to support states in case of balance-of-payment deficits. Complementing the IMF, the World Bank was established as a development organ. The International Labor Organization (ILO), set up in the wake of World War I, became the UN’s first special agency in 1946 and sought to promote social justice by

13 The Atlantic Charter (1941) and United Nations (2022a). 14 See Gaddis (1997, pp. 12–13) and Smith (2012, pp. 118–123). 15 See United Nations (1945). For an introduction to the UN see Fasulo (2004).

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harmonizing labor rights and standards. Taken together, the system was designed to extend reliable, free, and reciprocal trade relations and contribute to prosperity and development alike. Normatively, the United States worked to enshrine individual rights and freedoms as universal. The foundational document was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948, which affirms that all humans possess unalienable rights and freedoms, irrespective of, among others, where they were born, what citizenship they hold, under which states’ jurisdiction they live. These inalienable rights and freedoms include the “right to life, liberty and security of person,” freedom of movement, a decent standard of living, equality before the law and equal protection of the law, property rights, privacy rights and else. The Declaration even states: “Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.”16 This was a transformative call to action, although its operationalization in form of the International Covenants on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as well as on Civil and Political Rights took until 1976.17 Taken together, the US-led liberal international order was transformational by design, intended to modify earlier Westphalian notions of order. It was soon evident that such an inclusive liberal world order would be thwarted by a new type of conflict, a Cold War pitting East against West. The Soviet Union was the only serious peer competitor in terms of its ability to exert power internationally. It had long been a lopsided power—militarily strong, yet economically impoverished—and World War II magnified it, as Paul Kennedy observed. Even with severe cuts at the war’s end, the Red Army continued to be the world’s largest military with 175 divisions, 25,000 tanks, and 19,000 aircraft.18 What made this power structure truly problematic was the ideological cleavage. The United States and the communist Soviet Union held fundamentally different views regarding political, economic, and societal models of order and, relatedly, disagreed fundamentally what postwar Europe, Asia, and the international system at large should look like. In a world whose old order

16 United Nations (1948). 17 See Fasulo (2004, pp. 14–16). 18 Kennedy (1989, pp. 467–468).

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lay in ruins and the future one was up for grabs, US-Soviet ideological tensions became the defining feature. With the two major global powers pursuing competing visions of order, the stage was set for the emergence of a two-dimensional international order. Designs for a cooperative global order under UN auspices gave way for the formation of two antagonistic blocs and a policy of “containment.” As the National Security Council report NSC 68, the defining document for the United States’ Cold War posture, outlined in 1950, the overall goal was to “create conditions under which our free and democratic system can live and prosper.”19 This necessitated to stand up for liberal ideals where feasible and live up to realpolitik realities where necessary. To the degree it was viable, the United States sought to set up a liberal international order (projecting power as a security shield over third countries, promoting democracy, market economics and free trade as well as human rights) to support its own national well-being, and the rivalry with the Soviet Union injected a sense of urgency. Beyond, the logic of deterrence and power balancing prevailed.20 The transatlantic space was the nucleus of the emerging US-led liberal order, and America’s “deep engagement” in Europe stood out as exceptional in global comparison.21 Blessed with hands-on American support, initiatives like the Marshall Plan and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and security guarantees in NATO, Western Europe transformed into a community of liberal market democracies that integrated economically and politically from the 1950s onward. European integration was a novel model of organizing regional order. The United States was intricately involved in the process. From an American point of view, an integrated Western Europe promised to incorporate West Germany into a larger European community, which in turn would be embedded in an overarching Atlantic framework safeguarding US interests and leadership. Beate Neuss rightfully characterized the United States as Europe’s “midwife” for its crucial role in those early years.22 Despite the vast intellectual roots of Western liberalism, the liberal West as the

19 US National Security Council (1950, II). 20 On Cold War dynamics see Gaddis (1997, spec. pp. 26–53; 189–259) and Westad

(2018); on US liberal order building see Ikenberry (2011). 21 On “deep engagement” see Brooks and Wohlforth (2016, spec. pp. 73–87). 22 Neuss (2000). Own translation.

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political community of likeminded states it is understood today was forged under these circumstances.23 It would turn out to be of lasting importance.24 The transformations that defined the post-World War II liberal order were not of American making only, but the United States was, as Ikenberry described, its “first citizen” and hegemonic enabler.25 It all depended upon the capacity to contain Soviet communism in the global geopolitical “outside order” to allow a liberal international “inside order” to flourish.26 Among the ingredients of the success of American order building was its restraint on raw power.27 But it also provided an appealing model of development and order. Inspired by its own unitlevel strategic needs, the rules-based, US-led liberal international order proved to be beneficial for a wide community of states across the globe. Indeed, US leadership was exactly what many states and regions needed and desired. Since it created followership through mutual benefits, not coercion, the US-led international order was characterized as a “benevolent empire,” “a new kind of empire—a democratic empire,” and an “empire by invitation.”28 Beyond the liberal West, the Cold War’s overarching global order rested on a logic of containment, deterrence, and balance of power. The self-declared goal of the United States was to prevent that any of the three vital regions Europe, Asia, and the Middle East fell under the control of a hostile hegemonic power. This necessitated vigilant balancing, not least when China turned communist in 1949 and significantly changed the calculus for Asia’s future. Though democracy, liberal economics, and human rights were core American interests in principle, realpolitik needs appeared overwhelming in the post-war period. Democracy had a home in Western Europe, yet things looked vastly different in Asia or the Middle East. The United States worked with or supported repressive

23 See Winkler (2019). 24 On the transatlantic partnership under early Cold War conditions and Europe’s rele-

vance in US strategic designs see Lundestad (2005, pp. 37; 63–110), Nolan (2012, pp. 154–229), Ikenberry (2011), and Krause (2020). 25 Ikenberry (2018, p. 7). 26 Terminology from Ikenberry (2011, p. 161). 27 See Ikenberry (2001). 28 Kagan (1998), Gaddis (1997, p. 289), and Lundestad (2005).

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regimes for the sake of anti-communist containment. What was chastised as a double-standard was considered a necessary tradeoff.29 By the 1960s, the bipolar configuration of power and its two competing systems of order were fully fledged. Two clearly defined, relatively static blocs with defined reaches, members, and separate institutions coexisted side by side. Tensions between East and West were kept in check by a balance of power as well as conventional and nuclear deterrence that promised mutually assured destruction in case of war. Though both superpowers engaged in an enduring and holistic rivalry, the bipolar bloc structure and nuclear deterrence introduced an element of stability and discipline on both sides. Under these conditions, the liberal international order of US making and the communist international order of Soviet origins coexisted in geographically bounded spheres under the Damocles sword of nuclear deterrence and annihilation. It was this equilibrium that contributed to the Cold War’s “long peace.”30 While US power and order building efforts seemingly plunged into crisis in the 1970s, it was the beginning of eventual triumph.31 The underlying currents of global developments favored the United States and its model of order. The multilateralization of economic governance had limited geopolitical effects, while the West’s economic lead over the East multiplied. Strategically, the United States was doing well with its new all-volunteer military, its ability to sustain favorable power balances, and its unmatched network of allies and bases.32 The escalation of SinoSoviet conflicts offered an opportunity to split the communist world, which matched China’s interest to free itself of a dual confrontation with Moscow and Washington.33 Politically and normatively, democracy and 29 Smith (2012, p. 181) speaks of “selective liberal democratic internationalism” and “realistic liberals ” (italics in original) in this context. On the dichotomies of early US Cold War policy in general see Smith (2012, pp. 179–213). On postwar US expectations and realities in Asia and early Sino-American clashes of interests see Sutter (2015, pp. 20–21; 29–32). 30 Gaddis (1986). 31 On the period of crisis see Lundestad (2005, pp. 168–200) and Nolan (2012,

pp. 267–303). 32 In 1945 the US had 21 allied partners, understood as states with defensive obligations toward one another; in 1956 the number was to 42, by 1986 it had risen to 52. China and the Soviet Union had one and nine respectively in 1986. Numbers from Ikenberry (2011, p. 239). 33 See Kissinger (2012, pp. 202–293).

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freedom gained ground. The Helsinki process between East and West included humanitarian affairs and helped undermine Soviet communism from within. When the third wave of democratization swept across the globe in the 1970s and 1980s, the world seemingly moved West. Even the US alliance system would become more liberal when key partners in Europa and Asia eventually democratized.34 By the mid-to-late 1980s, it was evident that Western-Soviet relations as well as the inner dynamics of the Eastern bloc were changing fast. The United States and its allies had outperformed their communist rivals, and after decades of hostile standoff, the liberal international order triumphed over its communist alternative. Material superiority alone was not the point, though. It was the holistic set of political, normative, economic, and military-strategic strengths that led to success. The West prevailed in the competition of rival systems because it was open and liberal. Even US President George H. W. Bush, who managed the end of the Cold War with restraint, was convinced that the future was going to belong to America and its system of order: We live in a time when we are witnessing the end of an idea: the final chapter of the Communist experiment. Communism is now recognized, even by many within the Communist world itself, as a failed system […]. But the eclipse of communism is only half of the story of our time. The other is the ascendancy of the democratic idea. Never before has the idea of freedom so captured the imaginations of men and women the world over […]. Everywhere, those voices are speaking the language of democracy and freedom. And we hear them, and the world hears them. And America will do all it can to encourage them.35

With communism, so it seemed, failed Washington’s prior great power rivals the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, whereas the liberal Western model of domestic and international order appeared as the only game in town.36

34 That underlying trends strengthened America’s position despite its seeming weakness from the 1970s is explored by Brands (2016a). On the human rights turn in US foreign policy see Smith (2012, pp. 239–307). 35 Bush (1989a). 36 See Spohr (2019) for a dense historical account how Washington, Moscow and

Beijing chartered contrarian paths into the post-Cold War world.

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Post-Cold War Globalization of the US-Led Liberal West Against the backdrop of the Cold War and its end, the evolution and aspired globalization of the US-led liberal West had an element of inevitability to it. The United States emerged from the Cold War as the sole remaining superpower with a vast advantage in all relevant metrics. It played a dominant role in essentially all international institutions, all regions, and all issue areas. It was the largest economy, a driver and shaper of economic globalization, and a leader in technology and innovation. Its military superiority was unparalleled, as the 1991 Gulf War impressively demonstrated. What came to be known as the “revolution in military affairs” (RMA), which promised that future wars could be fought from afar with high-tech superiority and more efficiently and effectively than ever, would even increase its lead over the course of the 1990s. Describing the lack of external constraints in hindsight, the 2018 national defense strategy reported: “For decades the United States has enjoyed uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain. We could generally deploy our forces when we wanted, assemble them where we wanted, and operate how we wanted.”37 Among allies in Western Europe and Asia the United States stood as tall as ever. None of them came close to US overall might or questioned American leadership. Ambitions to empower Europe in the post-Cold War era grew, but they reflected concerns of an eventual American disengagement, not attempts to accelerate that outcome. US support was cherished. Debates about Germany’s unification reflected just how important Washington continued to be for Europe’s internal stability, let alone its capacity to deal with external threats and challenges. As Lundestad observed, it was astounding “how little” the American role in Europe changed despite radically altered systemic conditions.38 The same was true for Asia, where US hegemony had produced regional stability, tamed legacy conflicts, and allowed the region to flourish. Westad concurred that “American foreign policy rolled on, unperturbed by any

37 US Department of Defense (2018, p. 3). 38 Lundestad (2005, p. 249). Emphasis in original. On Europe’s post-Cold War posture

vis-à-vis the US see also Wivel (2008).

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significant adjustments in strategic vision or political aims” after the Cold War.39 Viewed collectively the United States and its democratic Western allies were unrivaled in power political terms. They were the world’s advanced economies and accounted for close to 80% of world GDP in 1990. A decade later, despite growth in emerging markets and developing economies, the relative balance had hardly changed.40 Aggregated post-Cold War military spending in North America and Western Europe dwarfed spending levels in all other regions despite budget contractions. In 1992 the transatlantic West accounted for more than 70% of global defense spending, by 2000 it was still 65%.41 Beyond material capabilities, it was the model of order the liberal West stood for that seemed to reign supreme. Democratic governance paired with free market capitalism was widely considered the only pathway to prosperity after the utter failure of socialist alternatives. Normatively, inalienable individual rights had won out over repressive and communitarian interpretations. Ivan Krastev’s summary of the sentiment at the time is on point: “The Western model was the only (i)deal in town.”42 The world seemed to embrace it. George H. W. Bush was convinced that regional developments in Europe as well as in Asia reflected the ideational victory of the United States and the West. His first trip to Japan, China, and South Korea in early 1989 had reinforced his conviction that the world—and Asia in specific—was moving closer to the United States and its ideational example: The world looks to America for leadership not just because we’re militarily strong, not just because we have the world’s largest economy, but because the ideas we have championed are now dominant. Freedom and democracy, openness, and the prosperity that derives from individual initiatives in the free marketplace -- these ideas, once thought to be strictly American, have now become the goals of mankind all over Asia.43

39 Westad (2018, p. 617). 40 IMF (2022). Data from 1990 and 2000 for world, advanced economies, emerging

market and developing economies. 41 SIPRI (2022). Regional data for 1992 and 2000. 42 Krastev (2016, p. 6). 43 Bush (1989b).

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The same spirit of a convergence underlay assessments of late US-Soviet and then US-Russian relations. Bush suggested that an integration of Moscow into a shared world order was feasible: We seek the integration of the Soviet Union into the community of nations. And as the Soviet Union itself moves toward greater openness and democratization, as they meet the challenge of responsible international behavior, we will match their steps with steps of our own. Ultimately, our objective is to welcome the Soviet Union back into the world order.44

This belief was premised upon the alleged triumph of liberalism. The human desire for freedom, it appeared to policymakers at the time, had won: “Human rights and respect for all it entails – freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and other individual liberties, including property rights, free elections, multiparty systems – these fundamental rights are gaining ground the whole world over […].”45 Indeed, Moscow signed on to a European order based on the sovereign independence of its former satellites, democracy, free markets, and human rights in the 1990 Charter of Paris.46 American efforts to widen the liberal international order seemed to blend in with demands. Refuting realist warnings of renewed great power conflict, James Goldgeier and Michael McFaul proposed a dualistic conception of the post-Cold War international system. They identified a liberal core order, which included the major powers and was marked by consensus over liberal market economics and democracy, while states in the periphery still operated under balance of power dynamics and had incentives to adapt to gain wealth.47 Others desired to emulate the Western model and wanted to join Western institutions. Logically, the United States and its allies viewed such institutional openness as an ideal tool to shape the emerging world. As Tony Smith summarized: “The world of the mid-1990s therefore seemed to be asking for much the

44 Bush (1989c). 45 Bush (1990b). 46 See Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (1990). For a summary of Bush’s views and the sentiments of convergence see also Spohr (2019, pp. 39–42). 47 See Goldgeier and McFaul (1992).

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kind of global order that the United States has been proposing for threequarters of a century (if not virtually since its Revolution).”48 The United States was ready to deliver. Despite talk about a peace dividend, the internationalist consensus in the United States was unwavering. Even without a peer rival Washington felt the need to lock in gains and shape future developments. The assumption was that if the US retreated, the world would quickly fall back into the destructive dynamics of earlier times, which would erode American well-being. In the words of President George H. W. Bush: We cannot and we need not allow this to happen. Our objective must be to exploit the unparalleled opportunity presented by the cold war’s end to work toward transforming this new world into a new world order, one of governments that are democratic, tolerant, and economically free at home and committed abroad to settling inevitable differences peacefully, without the threat or use of force.49

The grand strategic paradigm was ready for application. It was the US-led order that had allowed the West to prevail in the Cold War, as Bush made clear: The Soviet Union did not simply lose the cold war; the Western democracies won it. I say this not to gloat but to make a key point. The qualities that enabled us to triumph in that struggle, faith, strength, unity, and above all, American leadership, are those we must call upon now to win the peace.50

The commitment to serve as producer, shaper, and enforcer of liberal order was born of self-interest. As the 1991 national security strategy pointed out, national interests were “best served” in a “stable and secure world, where political and economic freedom, human rights and democratic institutions flourish.”51 All indicators pointed in the same direction, namely that the post-Cold War world was destined to be US-led, Western, and liberal. 48 Smith (2012, p. 7). 49 Bush (1993a). 50 Bush (1992c). 51 Bush (1991a, p. 4). Quote without bold print from original. Similarly Bush (1993b).

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It was largely preordained that the established institutional architecture of Western design moved center stage in the process. The one universal institution at the time was the UN. As outlined, it contained liberal and realpolitik elements and provided an inclusive structure that gave post-Soviet Russia and the PRC a say as permanent members of the Security Council. With ideological cleavages out of the way, hopes were high the UN would prove functional to deal with post-Cold War challenges, leading toward a “new world order” in which “the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle,” as Bush described collective efforts to repel Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.52 Of course, this presupposed a convergence of interests among the great powers, namely one largely in line with Western views. Other institutions were even more clearly geared toward the primacy of Western principles, rules, and decision-making authority, such as the World Bank, the IMF, the Asian Development Bank as well as Europe’s architecture of NATO and the European Community, which would soon morph into the European Union. The institutions the West had forged during the Cold War were functional and in place to deal with hopes and challenges of the post-Cold War world. In the years to come the United States and its allies built on their power, appeal, and existing institutions to widen and potentially globalize the liberal international order (see Fig. 4.1). While its nucleus existed in the Euro-Atlantic West, with additional outpost allies like Japan, the assumption was that liberal ideals and ordering structures could be enlarged to encompass ever more states. The principles of the liberal West, namely cooperative security relations, democracy, market economics and free trade as well as individual freedom and universal human rights would gain ever wider geographical sway. Hence, post-Cold War liberal internationalism subscribed to a transformative vision. The liberal West was open to new members and welcomed former outsiders in, but the joiners were expected to sign on to Western principles and adapt their policies and polities. This incentives-based model of spurring convergence received its signature label in Bill Clinton’s 1994 national security strategy: democratic “engagement and enlargement.”53 It aimed not only at altering

52 Bush (1990a). 53 Clinton (1994).

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Security Self-determination

Market Economy

Western

Democracy

Free Trade

Liberal Order

Rule of Law

Individual Freedom Human Rights

Fig. 4.1 US-led Western liberal international order (Source Own illustration)

foreign policy patterns, but at harmonizing interests through domestic transformation.54 One core ingredient of the grand strategic design of an enlarging liberal international order was the continued commitment of the United States to its role as a security provider. Though not interested in territorial aggrandizement and not threatened by a geopolitical rival, the United States defined its security interests globally. A global posture had been required under Cold War conditions to contain Soviet influence. Now it was mandated by the uncertainty about future crises that might need to be deterred or resolved, as national security documents made clear.55 As Bush put it early on, there was no other power to build this new, more benign, cooperative post-Cold War order: 54 For a general study of liberal internationalism and its manifestations see Jahn (2013). 55 See US Department of Defense (1992).

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No, the United States should not seek to be the world’s policeman. […] But in the wake of the cold war, in a world where we are the only remaining superpower, it is the role of the United States to marshal its moral and material resources to promote a democratic peace. It is our responsibility, it is our opportunity to lead. There is no one else.56

Though adjusting its force posture, the United States upheld its global network of formal allies, partners, bases, and forward deployments; continued to protect favorable power balances in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East; and affirmed its security guarantees. It remained committed to deterring and if necessary winning regional wars and involved itself in the management of security issues worldwide. This included the protection of collective goods, among them open access to the global commons and nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Taken together, the post-Cold War era was defined by American global (military) primacy, which guaranteed an “American peace” in key regions. In hindsight, many criticize the expansive nature of US security interests and commitments. Indeed, the notion of accepting rival powers’ spheres of influence or practicing functional or geographic restraint was soon superseded by a posture of global primacy.57 Under the conditions of unipolarity this was not surprising. After all, ignoring crises despite a preponderance of power would erode a hegemon’s influence. Geographically, there was no externally set limit anymore to where the United States could involve itself diplomatically or even militarily. To pacify an international system which no longer faced the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation, but the sustained danger of disruptive violence, the United States saw itself inevitably in the lead. As President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously described it in the 1990s, the United States was the “indispensable nation.”58 Michael Mandelbaum characterized such latitude under hegemony as the “difficult-to-reach kingdom of choice.”59 In Europe, post-Cold War security continued to center around NATO. The alliance was considered the single best option to keep the peace also under changed conditions. It helped resolve inner-European security 56 Bush (1993a). 57 See Allison (2020) and Glaser (2018). 58 Dobbs and Goshko (1996) and Clinton (1997a). 59 Mandelbaum (2016, p. 368).

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dilemmas accentuated by German reunification and preserved US influence. At the same time, the prospect of NATO membership provided orientation to Central and Eastern European states yearning for security and sovereign independence, which Moscow had denied them for so long. Accession requests came early and with urgency. Observers assessed that NATO would find “itself having to deter a stampede from the newly liberated nations of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, which want to join the Western military alliance.”60 NATO enlargement quickly became a matter of when, not if.61 Sorting out relations with Russia was a major issue along the way. Eventually, the preferred solution was a partnership agreement in the form of the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 and the institutionalization of a consultative mechanism. This Joint Permanent Council (JPC) would evolve into the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) in 2002. Since then, NATO has matured from an alliance of 16 to one of 30 (and soon to be 32) members.62 In Asia, the United States similarly opted for continuity, stuck to its role as a regional pacifier, and upheld established partnerships and defense promises. As President Clinton put it: Three times this century, Americans have fought and died in Asian wars— 37,000 Americans still patrol the Cold War’s last frontier, on the Korean DMZ. Territorial disputes that could flair in the crises affecting America require us to maintain a strong American security presence in Asia.63

The United States kept roughly 100,000 troops in Asia intended to “give confidence to all that the potential threats to Asia’s security will remain just that – potential – and that America remains committed to being involved with Asia and to Asia’s stability.”64 Among the specificities of the region were unresolved legacy issues, even among US allies, and the limited degree of multilateral institutionalization. The US security posture was designed to project stability, deter regional flashpoints, reassure allies, and hedge against threats. Partnerships with Japan, South

60 Friedman (1995). 61 See Goldgeier (1999). 62 See Meier-Walser (2018) on NATO’s evolution. 63 Clinton (1997b). 64 White House (1999).

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Korea, and other regional allies in its “hub-and-spokes” alliance structure were upheld and adapted, while the US dealt with North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions, China’s military threats in the Taiwan Strait in 1995–1996, and else. As in Europe, the United States protected the peaceful status quo in Asia, which allowed the region to thrive.65 At the same time, new types of challenges took center stage, such as fragile statehood, state collapse, and inner-state conflicts. While the security environment of the Cold War had centered on deterrence and collective defense (preventing an adversary from changing the status quo to keep the peace), the post-Cold War era increasingly demanded the coercive resolution of conflicts (compelling a third party, state or nonstate, to alter its behavior in order to restore peace).66 Operations of compellence, difficult as they are, would oftentimes be just the first step with lengthy state-, nation-, and peace-building missions in the aftermath. State failure in Somalia, the genocide in Rwanda, or the violent break-up of Yugoslavia illustrated the demanding nature of these new missions and the horrors of failure. Reflecting both the increased level of conflict worldwide and the liberation of the UN Security Council from gridlock, there was a massive expansion of peacemaking efforts. While the UN Security Council produced an average of 15 resolutions per year in Cold War days, the number jumped to roughly 60 per year in the post-Cold War era. From 1946 to 1987, there were 13 binding resolutions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, from 1988 to 1997 the number was 112. Most of the 42 peacekeeping operations until the end of the century dated from the 1990s and dealt with intra-state violence.67 The United States and the liberal West played a crucial role in the process. The transformation of NATO into a pacifier in “out of area” missions was the logical consequence. Western policy at first oscillated between the perceived need to intervene and a reluctance to do so. But driven by external demands, the United States and its allies settled into “operations other than (major power) war”—ranging from humanitarian intervention, peaceenforcement, and peacekeeping to nation- and state-building. Operations in Bosnia and Kosovo forced NATO into its new role for

65 See Lieber (2005) and Auslin (2014). 66 See Art and Greenhill (2018). 67 Numbers from Hurrell (2007, p. 172).

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good. While the United States took on a clear leadership role, the adaptation testified to the strength of the transatlantic partnership and the shared vision for a post-Cold War order. Overall, it meant that European security remained a transatlantic affair in the post-Cold War era, while transatlantic debates foreshadowed future pressures on Europeans to go global to support the US-led international security management efforts. NATO’s new strategic concept of 1999 affirmed the changing character of the alliance.68 The expanding security agenda was tied to ambitions to create a positive, liberal peace. Hence, another core element of the enlargement of the liberal international order was an emphasis on democracy promotion and universal human rights. On the one hand, democracy was seemingly on the march like an irresistible force of nature. From 1973 to 1980, the share of democracies worldwide rose from a quarter to a third of all states; post 1989, the trend magnified.69 In the 1980s and into the 1990s, roughly 100 countries chartered their paths toward political liberalization.70 On the other hand, Western leaders were convinced of the roles they had to play to nurture freedom and democracy. Democratization successes in Asia and beyond in the 1970s and 1980s were linked to US support, power, and example.71 In the post-Cold War world, the United States and its allies understood the need to support the transformations in Central and Eastern Europe. As President Bush declared in 1990, the United States should “not make the mistake of thinking that our work is now over.”72 That the failure of communism would lead to a united, free, democratic, prosperous, and stable Europe was not preordained. Among the threats was a rollback of the democratic spirit or the emergence of dysfunctional polities at peace neither with themselves nor with one another, making support for “stability and economic and political reform in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union […] our

68 See NATO (1999). On the post-Cold War adaptation of the transatlantic alliance see Groitl (2017). 69 See Diamond (2008, pp. 39–55). 70 Number from Carothers (2000, p. 6). 71 See Sutter (2015, p. 43). 72 Bush (1990b).

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number-one foreign policy priority today,” as the 1993 national security strategy articulated.73 Support for democracy, open markets, and liberal values in broader view was at the heart of Western interpretations of how to create a more benign international environment. While norms and security interests had often collided before—when authoritarian governments were supported for anti-communist sakes—norms and security interests seemed to converge after the Cold War. As the 1994 national security strategy made clear, assisting democracy, market economies, and human rights was no luxury add-on, but a core element of US post-Cold War national security policy: “All of America’s strategic interests – from promoting prosperity at home to checking global threats abroad before they threaten our territory – are served by enlarging the community of democratic and free market nations.” At the same time, there were no illusions about remodeling the world. Policies were directed to those regions where the United States had key stakes and chances to make a difference.74 But the absence of a geopolitical peer competitor allowed to place more emphasis on governance and norms even in the realist periphery. The Clinton administration institutionalized support for democracy, freedom, and human rights worldwide as policy priorities in the National Security Council, the State Department, and the development agency USAID with new offices and jobs; only the Defense Department resisted such reforms.75 Funds allocated for democracy promotion increased significantly, from roughly 100 million USD in 1990 to over 700 million USD by the end of the decade. The State Department tasked its missions abroad to ponder democracy promotion strategies on a continuous basis, and a growing number of government-led, -sponsored or -associated projects, groups, and NGOs focused on nurturing civil society, the free press, the rule of law, and institutions. By the end of the 1990s, democracy promotion initiatives were active in about 100 countries worldwide.76 In 2000, the so-called Community of Democracies, an intergovernmental coalition of global reach, was launched upon the initiative of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her Polish

73 Bush (1993b, p. 6). Quote without bold print from original. 74 Clinton (1994, pp. 18–19). 75 See Dalpino (2000). 76 Examples and numbers from Carothers (2000, p. 4).

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peer. It was kicked off with 106 signatories from across the globe who committed to (widening the ambit of) democracy and freedom.77 In the same year the UN Human Rights Commission proclaimed democracy a “fundamental human right.”78 As Hobson and Kurki assess, democracy promotion has turned into a “linchpin of liberal world ordering” and has “become ‘mainstreamed’ into a variety of different policy areas, such as security sector reform and development aid.”79 The level and coherence of democracy promotion efforts varied by region. They were most intense where prospects for democracy and freedom were best, namely in Europe. European integration had already created a tight network of democratic, rules-based, intergovernmental, and supranational governance. In 1993, the creation of the European Union (EU) led it to the next level. Together, the EU and the United States undertook a wholehearted effort to transform Central and Eastern Europe and enlarge the zone of the deep liberal peace eastward. The prospect of EU membership unleashed tremendous reform potential. Candidate countries adapted their domestic political, bureaucratic, judicial, economic, and social systems. Since accession was the prize after the completion of reforms, it was no fast-track approach. Yet it guaranteed a certain homogeneity that is required to keep the EU as a deeply integrated institution functional. In fact, it was not before 2004 that states from the former “East” would join the EU. NATO membership complemented European integration. Those favoring fast enlargement made the case early on that NATO had a crucial role to play to achieve American political goals, as a State Department strategy memo to Secretary Warren Christopher on NATO expansion and transformation pointed out in 1993: Our goals in Europe are to ensure the successful transition to democracy and economic development in the East and to support the deepening and broadening of political and economic integration to prevent the return of dangerous nationalisms and conflicts throughout the continent. These have not changed with the end of the Cold War. What has changed is the very real prospect of success in both goals.80 77 See Community of Democracies (2022). 78 Dalpino (2000). 79 Hobson and Kurki (2013, p. 195; 200). 80 US Department of State (1993a).

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Indeed, NATO and EU enlargement extended the zone of the deep liberal peace eastward. In Asia, though not as immediate and far-reaching as in Europe, emphasis on democracy was growing as well. With the ongoing democratization of the US alliance system, from long-time success Japan to South Korea to Taiwan and beyond, the liberal baseline of shared principles rose in relative importance. Alliances that had started out against common threats matured into cooperative arrangements for shared goals. Taiwan’s fledgling democracy appeared in ever more positive light in Washington, particularly against the backdrop of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre in Beijing. Relations between Washington and Taipei tightened despite the constraints of the One-China-policy in the 1990s.81 To support regional democratization, the Clinton administration launched Radio Free Asia (RFA) in 1996—modeled after Radio Free Europe— with the explicit attempt to provide access to independent news for those societies denied this basic right by their governments. RFA’s program in Mandarin was its first to air, before operations expanded to programs in other languages.82 Closely interlinked were attempts to widen the ambit and canon of universal human rights norms. It became costlier in material and reputational terms to violate basic rights and freedoms, while the leeway to punish violators increased. This went hand in hand with a reinterpretation of the norms of state sovereignty. First, events led to a redefinition of what constituted a threat to or breach of peace to encompass intrastate conflicts in fragile or collapsed states in the early 1990s. Increasingly, however, the rights and duties of functioning states came into focus. When Serbia resorted to ethnic cleansing against the Albanian population in Kosovo in 1998/1999, NATO under US leadership was determined to put an end to the violence. Russia and China shielded Belgrade in the Security Council, arguing that events in Kosovo were an internal matter and Serbia’s sovereignty needed to be respected. NATO intervened without UN mandate because it saw the need to do so and because it could. Those that threatened the prospects of a deep liberal peace would

81 On post-Cold War Asia policy and China/Taiwan relations in specific see Sutter (2015, pp. 43–54). 82 See Radio Free Asia (2021a, 2021b).

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be subject to diplomatic pressures, sanctions, and potentially even the use of force.83 Widening the frame of reference from states to individuals as subjects of international security and law and tying state sovereignty to normconformance within were major developments. On the one hand, it was driven by Western policies of humanitarian intervention and the surrounding arguments. On the other, notions of conditionalized sovereignty were gaining ground in the United Nations in a wider sense. One of the driving forces was UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who famously explained: “No government has the right to hide behind national sovereignty in order to violate the human rights or fundamental freedoms of its peoples,” suggesting that “an international norm against the violent repression of minorities […] will and must take precedence over concerns of State sovereignty.”84 It reached a climax with the adoption of the “responsibility to protect” (R2) norm in 2005, which holds the international community responsible to prevent mass atrocities if a government is incapable or unwilling to do so within its sphere of jurisdiction.85 Though human rights violations continued to occur and were neither prevented nor punished in every case, the latitude to commit atrocities shrunk. NATO’s operations and developments leading to the R2P norm made two extraordinary points. Human rights violators could not hold up the principle of national sovereignty as a protective shield any longer. Moreover, they could not even feel secure if they enjoyed the support of other great powers. The West was powerful enough in the late 1990s to define norms and intervene militarily even against the express will of Russia and China. Human rights promotion and defense by no means turned into single-issue matters in the post-Cold War world. Enforcing human rights, by use of force as the ultimate tool, was most likely when in blended with strategic interests, as it was the case over Kosovo.86 83 On humanitarian intervention and the growing relevance of human rights norms see Münkler and Malowitz (2009), Dunne (2013), and Hurrell (2007, pp. 143–164). The American stance was inconsistent, however. While supporting the conditionalization of sovereignty in some fields, the US vehemently resisted in others, as debates on the International Criminal Court showed. See briefly Fasulo (2004, pp. 100–104). 84 Kofi Annan, quoted from United Nations (1999). See also Fasulo (2004, pp. 23–28). 85 See United Nations (2022b). 86 See Goldgeier and McFaul (2004, pp. 238–239).

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Despite the advancement of democratic governance and human rights in the international order, their depth and reach remained uneven. The element of the liberal international order that globalized at a maximum was the free trade order. Dynamics had already been changing since the 1970s. The growth of container shipping, progress in telecommunications and else facilitated the creation of complex global supply, value, and trade chains. The end of the bipolar bloc confrontation and the information and communication revolutions multiplied opportunities. Institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, and GATT provided the baselines of the economic, financial, and trading systems, and new members joined to gain prosperity. The creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, which built on and expanded the GATT regime, revolutionized global trade and interdependence. Taken together, the post-Cold War liberal international economic order saw a growing membership, widening geographical reach and skyrocketing numbers in terms of volumes of foreign direct investments, trade, complexity of supply chains, and else. Preferential trade relations and institutional access became increasingly blind to regime differences. Economic ties were viewed as an instrument to incentivize reforms, meaning that economic relations were considered door openers for democratic reforms along the lines of “change through trade”—instead of viewing opportunities for market access, investment, and trade as the prize to be reaped after political change. A similar dualism existed in institutional dynamics. While deep institutions like the EU preconditioned membership on domestic transformations, others like the WTO invited states of all regime types in as long as they were willing to abide by defined trade rules. It set the stage for the corruption of liberal institutions. But as Bill Clinton reminded the audience at the 2000 World Economic Forum, international inequality, radicalism, and regional instability in far-away places had global ramifications in an interconnected world. Economic openness and trade, the argument went, would enhance development and good governance at the state-level as well as the inter-state cooperation needed to deal with the frictions of globality.87 Trade appeared to be the best pacifier for a globalized world. The globalizing liberal economic order was characterized not only by growth and hopes for positive side effects, but also by changes in its core

87 See, e.g., Clinton (2000).

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principles. Economic globalization as it unfolded after the Cold War was shaped by neoliberal ideas, which took hold in the United States and other Western democracies from the 1980s. Neoliberalism’s core tenet was that the state should play as little of a role as possible. The mantra of the small state, the promise of “trickle down” economics, and trust in markets to regulate themselves became dominant narratives. Deregulation and privatization turned into new ideals, whereas older notions of a socially embedded market liberalism were largely dismissed. Neoliberal ideas influenced Western domestic economic and social policies in varying degrees as well as international finance and development. The “Washington Consensus” of the 1990s, which primed macro-economic stabilization, austerity, the small state, and market freedoms, came to serve as a blueprint for politico-economic reforms.88 While the multidimensional enlargement of the liberal international order rested upon US power political superiority and will, it tied the transatlantic partners firmly together. The EU has become the embodiment of a transformational foreign policy logic on the European continent. EU documents and its enlargement policies reflect a firm belief in the potential of the liberal West to inspire deep-seated adaptations in the policies and polities of prospective members to mold them into a tightly knit, secure, rules-based community of likeminded liberal market democracies. Europe’s regional order as it evolved into the 1990 and 2000s was the ultimate expression of a deep liberal peace. As the 2003 EU security strategy analyzed, Europe had “never been so prosperous, so secure nor so free.”89 Capitalizing on these successes, replicating transformation even further outward became its core foreign policy strategy and made the EU into a grand strategic actor of a different kind.90 A decade into the post-Cold War period, the record seemed impressive. Not only had the United States and its allies in Western Europe and Asia prospered massively throughout the 1990s, adapted to new conditions, and found a way to export and project transformational incentives beyond their borders. But the world appeared to move exactly in the

88 For an excellent analysis of neoliberalism and the transformation of post-Cold War Europe see Ther (2018); more briefly and with a focus on ensuing political ramifications see Ther (2020); in global terms see Jahn (2013, pp. 101–134). 89 European Union (2003, p. 1). 90 See Smith (2011).

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direction which had been envisioned: it became more open, more democratic, more economically liberal and interconnected, and more attentive to universal human rights. All the while, relative US and allied power in political, economic, military, and normative terms grew just further over the course of the decade, while their influence and the reach of the postCold War liberal international order building project was felt virtually worldwide.91 Critics already foreshadowed that it might be Pyrrhic victories. They warned that globalization and cross-border openness produced vulnerabilities, that liberal internationalism overburdened the West and antagonized others, that real priorities moved out of sight. The US practiced “foreign policy as social work,” Michael Mandelbaum suggested provocatively.92 For the moment, however, the liberal West ingrained its own principles and preferences into the DNA of the international system to an unprecedented degree. There was not one coherent, all-encompassing liberal international order with universal reach; its functional elements were not equally strong; and not all world regions were equally affected. But neither the West’s underlying power base nor the ordering principles and structures of its design were seriously challenged at the time. While those states in line with or moving toward democratic governance, open markets, and universal human rights could grasp expanding cooperative opportunities, those that did not, could not, or would not want to conform to the Western model faced an uncomfortable lot. Whereas the notion of an enlarging liberal West rested on the assumption of mutual benefits, shared interests, and a benign common good, it de facto placed significant strains on ideational outsiders to either fall in line or suffer the consequences.

Constraints on Russia and China Russia and China felt the constraints of American power and Western liberal hegemony. Both lived in regions that were undeniably shaped by American and allied influence and ideas. The United States continued

91 See, e.g., Brands (2016b) and Berger (2000). 92 Mandelbaum (1996). See also critiques in Mandelbaum (2016), Chollet and

Goldgeier (2008), and Bacevich (2002).

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to define Europe and Asia as vital regions, maintained its alliances, security commitments and military presence, and adapted partnerships for the new era. It cemented and protected the (territorial) status quo in both regions. In addition, Western political, economic and normative influence and initiatives just continued to grow out. Russia and China were confronted with the fact that liberal values were increasingly implanted onto the international system, the UN, and else. The degree to which Moscow and Beijing would sign on to US leadership and Western liberalism would be a key metric for their level of convergence or disagreement with the post-Cold War order. Beyond such regional and global megatrends, Western policies addressed Russia and China specifically with the same transformational logic as others, namely with a policy of engagement designed to bring about foreign policy and domestic change. Samuel Berger, National Security Advisor during President Clinton’s second term, deemed the United States particularly well-placed in the post-Cold War era to steer third countries in the desired direction—for their own material self-interest: In this era, more and more nations are striving to join global networks of information, commerce, and cooperative security—because their economic well-being and national survival increasingly depend on it. America in many ways is the gatekeeper of those networks, and thus we have influence over the choices nations make.93

Washington also saw a particular stake in bringing Russia and China into the liberal international order. It was considered imperative to avert the danger of a future great power war and to build opportunities for a positive great power peace: But the way these countries manage their challenges at home is just as important as the way they relate to the world. No event in the last halfcentury has done more to advance our security than Russia’s democratic revolution. If both Russia and China become stable, pluralistic, prosperous societies, the world will be safer still. […] An effective way to minimize both external and internal dangers is to seize on the desire of both

93 Berger (2000, p. 24).

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Russia and China to participate in the global economy and global institutions, insisting that they accept the obligations as well as the benefits of integration.94

It amounts to the single best summary of (misguided) American expectations to turn Russia and China into liberal polities at home and stakeholders in a liberal order of US designs abroad through engagement. Russia under Boris Yeltsin had rhetorically signed on to liberalization and Westernization, so a policy of engagement seemed to blend in neatly with post-Soviet Russian needs and desires. The United States was adamant to support this westward course by strengthening and reassuring Yeltsin wherever possible. So did Europeans, particularly Germany under Helmut Kohl’s leadership. The West provided financial assistance, political recognition, and support, and was circumspect to offer political integration opportunities and wins, such as Russia’s acceptance amidst the G7 in 1998. All the while, political mechanisms were tailored to and premised upon continued domestic reform in Moscow. The 1997 EU–Russia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, for example, meant to set up a framework for increased cooperation and integration in multiple domains. It pledged support for Russia’s transformation to democracy and the free market and rested upon the assumption of principled convergence: “Respect for democratic principles and human rights […] underpins the internal and external policies of the Parties and constitutes an essential element of partnership and of this Agreement.”95 The 1999 Common Strategy of the European Union on Russia affirmed the EU’s commitment “to support a successful political and economic transformation in Russia.”96 China was still in the grips of Communist Party dictatorship. The Tiananmen massacre was a major caesura, which would lead to immediate punitive measures and long-terms effects. Repeatedly, Western leaders would remind a global audience of the Tiananmen crackdown: “The brutal and arbitrary use of deadly force against the peaceably demonstrating people of China can never be forgotten.”97 Similarly, open

94 Berger (2000, p. 27). 95 European Union and Russian Federation (1997). 96 Council of the European Union (1999, p. 7). 97 Bush (1991b).

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criticism of China even from the highest levels of government was a persistent feature in US and Western policies, be it over repression and human rights, Tibet, support for dissidents, meetings with the Dalai Lama, diplomatic efforts to condemn Chinese behaviors in the UN, or demands for true political and economic liberalization. According to Robert Sutter’s assessment, the political climate in the US offered easy gratification for those criticizing Beijing, which meant that many did so and did so publicly.98 While both Russia and China were confronted with Western demands for foreign policy adaptation and domestic change, political practice was characterized by a high level of leniency nonetheless. This is particularly true for Sino-American and Sino-Western relations, which evolved pragmatically throughout the decade. Though the Tiananmen massacre provoked outrage and the United States responded with a weapons embargo and symbolic gestures of reprisal, President George H. W. Bush reached out to Deng Xiaoping in a personal letter, asking him for “help in preserving this relationship that we both think is very important.”99 Bush even sent National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft on two secret missions to Beijing in the weeks and months after Tiananmen, which met a hostile reaction in the US Congress and the public once it became public.100 But the Bush administration was convinced of the need to keep relations on an even keel. With a world in flux in Eastern Europe, it did not want to press for anything that could bring the Chinese regime to the brink of collapse, which would become a persistent concern in US national security deliberations.101 Washington also saw sober relations with Beijing as strategically important. As Secretary of State James Baker summed up, “China was too important to our global interest to try to isolate. […] China is not Cuba.”102 While rhetorically prodding China to change, it was assumed that this was best done by comprehensive engagement through trade. Bush assessed after Tiananmen: “I happen to believe that the commercial

98 For the dynamics of US-China relations in the 1990s see Sutter (2015, pp. 49–54). 99 Bush (1989d). 100 See, e.g., New York Times (1989) and Mann (2000, pp. 204–225). 101 See Mann (2000, pp. 228–229) and Pillsbury (2016, pp. 9–10). 102 On assessments and Sino-American relations after Tiananmen see Spohr (2019, pp. 557–575; James Baker quoted from p. 564) and Sarotte (2012, pp. 175–180).

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contacts have led, in essence, to this quest for more freedom. I think as people have commercial incentive, whether it’s in China or in other totalitarian systems, the move to democracy becomes more inexorable.”103 This had to do with the firm belief that the Western model was triumphant: “I am committed to the concept that the world is moving […] our way in terms of freedom and democracy. And I believe that contact is the way to go about doing this.”104 It was specifically also applied to China: “Engagement through our democratic, economic, and educational institutions instead of confrontation offers the best hope for reform in China.”105 The Bush administration even twice vetoed legislation from a hostile Congress that demanded continued preferential trade relations be tied to domestic change in China, among others on the human rights front.106 Bill Clinton initially vowed to put an end to Bush’s short-on-values approach.107 The envisioned linkage between human rights and trade, however, did not come to pass. Clinton put China on notice in 1993 that the annual extension of most-favored nation (MFN) trade status would be conditioned upon “overall, significant progress” on human rights by spring 1994. However, Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s first visit to China in March that year made clear that linkage was not going anywhere. Not only did the Chinese arrest a number of regime critics in a symbolic act of defiance, but the talks were also “rough, somber, sometimes bordering on the insolent,” as Christopher reported. With business interests heavily in favor of extended Sino-American trade opportunities, the Chinese unwilling to move, and Clinton disinclined to escalate tensions, the idea of linking political reform to trade was dead by 1994. Reportedly, Clinton himself vented in frustration: “I hate our China policy! […] I mean, we give them MFN and we change our commercial policy and what has it changed?”108 Like his predecessor, Clinton

103 Bush (1989e), see also Bush (1989f). 104 Bush (1990c). 105 Bush (1992a). 106 See Bush (1992a, 1992b). On Bush’s take see also Mann (2007, pp. 77–81). 107 See, e.g., Bush and Clinton (1992). 108 All quotes from Gellman (1998). On the failed attempt to link trade and human rights see also Foot (2000, pp. 158–165) and Mandelbaum (2016, pp. 18–38).

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embraced the change through trade logic instead.109 For lack of a better alternative, Western policies placed their bets on economic engagement to spark soft change. Another major point of contention was Taiwan. In the 1990s Washington strengthened relations with Taipei and went ahead with new defensive arms sales. In 1995, Congress pressured President Clinton to allow Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui to visit his alma mater in the US, which enraged Beijing. The PRC responded with a months-long escalation, the military show of force, and live-fire around Taiwan. Tensions were only reined in when the United States dispatched two aircraft carrier groups and successfully deterred the Chinese. The Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995–1996 highlighted the escalatory potential of Taiwan as a flashpoint as well as China’s military inferiority against the United States at the time. Still, in its wake the Clinton administration “sought to avoid future confrontation and worked hard to positively engage theretofore alienated China.”110 Samuel Berger later summarized that the challenge was to “steer between the extremes of uncritical engagement and untenable confrontation.”111 A sense of inevitability permeated thinking in Washington, namely that the PRC would have to come around politically eventually because authoritarian governance was overtaken by events. As National Security Advisor Anthony Lake reportedly reminded a senior Chinese official in a backchannel exchange on the Taiwan Strait crisis: “We’re going to talk about human rights because that’s who we are, but frankly I don’t have to convince you of democracy because history will take care of that.”112 When Bill Clinton and others called upon China “to move politically as well as economically into the twenty-first century” through liberalization, it implied that dictatorship was of the past and had no future.113 Upon welcoming China’s Jiang Zemin in Washington in November 1997 for

109 That trade would be the best opener for political and human rights reform, while pressure and sanctions were counterproductive, was widely shared in US diplomatic circles. See, e.g., the assessment of Clinton’s MFN decision in Christensen (2015, pp. 179–181). 110 Sutter (2015, p. 6; also 52). 111 Berger (2000, p. 28). 112 Anthony Lake, quoted from Gellman (1998). 113 Clinton (1997b).

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the first state visit after Tiananmen, Clinton reminded his guest that China was “on the wrong side of history.”114 The overall trendline in Sino-American relations was thus one of criticism paired with opportunities for Beijing. It culminated in the agreement which brought China into the WTO in 2001.115 WTO membership was hailed as a means to alleviate trade concerns revolving around nonreciprocal market access and the growing US trade deficit. In addition, hopes were high to accelerate the country’s move toward democracy, human rights, and international convergence, seemingly solving multiple issues at once. Among the key assumptions was that the PRC would take the road regional neighbors like South Korea or Taiwan had gone before, liberalizing economically before liberalizing politically. “By joining the WTO, China is not simply agreeing to import more of our products, it is agreeing to import one of democracy’s most cherished values, economic freedom,” Bill Clinton encapsulated American expectations. “When individuals have the power not just to dream, but to realize their dreams, they will demand a greater say.”116 The United States left no doubt that this was the ultimate goal. The policy of engagement rested on specific assumptions about politico-economic trends as well as confidence the United States could shape developments and afford patience. As Clinton put it in 1999: Our long-term strategy must be to encourage the right kind of development in China […] But we have every reason to approach our challenges with confidence and with patience. Our country, after all, now, is at the height of its power and the peak of its prosperity. Democratic values are ascendant throughout much of the world. And while we cannot know where China is heading for sure, the forces pulling China toward integration and openness are more powerful today than ever before.117

Should China accommodate the US-led order and integrate fully, the vision pointed to a peaceful, mutually beneficial future. Should China

114 Bill Clinton, quoted from Nelan (1997). 115 See Sutter (2015, pp. 50–54). 116 Bill Clinton in March 2000, quoted from Davis (2018). See also White House (1999) and Lardy (2001). 117 White House (1999).

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decide to break out and challenge the regional status quo or key principles of the international order, the United States was confident it could impose limits on Beijing.118 While Europeans were not invested in the latter, they fully bought into the former. As Pascal Lamy, at the time EU Commissioner for Trade, put it: “The fundamental WTO principles of transparency, non-discrimination, administrative independence and independent judicial review, which the WTO holds up, will contribute to the positive evolution of China’s economic, legal and social systems.”119 Critics like James Mann rebuked this “inevitability” narrative and the lack of conditionality vis-à-vis a then relatively weak China. Indeed, he points to the core flaw of a strategy of engagement: it is inherently process-focused instead of outcome-oriented. Engagement does not set targets for behavioral change or define conditions and benchmarks. In the world of engagement keeping in touch is an end in itself, letting the addressee get away with almost anything.120 While the United States at least hedged in regional security terms, the EU neither built strategic leverage nor adjusted policies to real-world developments. In hindsight, John Fox and François Godement critically labeled this approach “unconditional engagement,” meaning “a policy that gives China access to all the economic and other benefits of cooperation with Europe while asking for little in return.”121 There were some similarities, but also key differences in the Russian case. Russia entered the post-Cold War world with a tumultuous phase and pressing reform needs. Russia’s future course, its domestic weakness, and the international legacies of the Soviet collapse were of utmost concern for the West. Russian-Western cooperation was imperative to resolve hard security issues in Europe and beyond. This included the repatriation of Red army contingents stationed abroad, which was a drawn-out, multiyear process; trust-building and arms control mechanisms; and reclaiming and safeguarding nuclear weapons and materiel scattered throughout former Soviet territory. US policy and funding

118 See Campbell and Ratner (2018). 119 Pascal Lamy, quoted from Algieri (2008, p. 74). 120 See Mann (2007, p. 79). 121 Fox and Godement (2009, p. 2). Quote without bold print from original.

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priorities tilted to hard national security issues of securing Soviet remnant WMD stockpiles, equipment, and infrastructure.122 The West also saw a unique opportunity in Russia’s reform drive to build democracy and a free market system. The United States and European partners vowed to aid these transformation processes that were very much in their own interest. But while the Russian leadership around President Boris Yeltsin pledged to align with the West, it was by no means the new consensus in the domestic political sphere. Complicating matters was that reforms faced many domestic legacy hurdles, such as authoritarian traditions, vested interests, and power structures. Lastly, the wider ramifications of the Soviet collapse did not allow the West to focus exclusively on Russia. Instead, it needed to formulate a course also toward the newly independent, finally sovereign, and transforming states in Central and Eastern Europe. Policies toward them and Russia had to be balanced out, which contributed to the uneven quality of post-Cold War Russian-Western relations.123 Difficult tradeoffs became necessary from the beginning. The regional development of post-Cold War Europe was by and large shaped according to Western designs. EU and NATO partnerships, associations, and eventual enlargements were the most visible manifestations. But all rested on Moscow’s signing on to the Western model and regional integration schemes, which was crucially important for the future prospects of Europe’s regional order. If it didn’t, Russia would neither have an independent role nor a clear place in a regional order characterized by the enlarging ambit of cooperative security, democracy, market economics, and liberal norms. On route, Western policy was de facto characterized by leniency and accommodation even when vitally important reforms in Russia were lagging. Despite domestic turbulences and defects, like the tug-of-war between the Russian president and parliament (which remained in its Soviet-era shape until 1993) as well as the emergence of an oligarchic economic system under his watch, Boris Yeltsin appeared as the guarantor of a proWestern course. The United States and its partners supported Yeltsin in his conflict with a reform-resistant legislature, which he sidelined before 122 See Lapidus (2002, pp. 104–105). 123 Stent (2015) and others point to the cyclical nature of post-Cold War US-

Russian relations. High hopes for a new beginning tended to be paired with difficulties that limited partnership prospects.

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dissolving and eventually shelling parliament in the constitutional crisis of summer 1993.124 Since Yeltsin was considered the single best bulwark against authoritarian restoration, it was recommended to let the Russians “know that the U.S. is actively promoting Russia’s complete reintegration into the family of Western states,” and that the 1993 crisis had not decreased support for Yeltsin.125 It was a pattern that persisted not only in the political but also in the financial and economic realms. Bilateral aid notwithstanding, Western leaders preferred a conditionalized approach under the auspices of the IMF to support Russia’s post-communist transformation. Until September 1998, the IMF provided loans totaling more than 22.2 billion USD, the World Bank assisted with 7.5 billion USD in projects related to agriculture, energy, infrastructure, and social security.126 It was evidently clear that Russia desperately needed structural reforms and reliable institutions. At the same time, however, it was politically imperative to support Yeltsin. Overall, this led to a softening of conditionalities for political reasons, dwindling IMF influence, and acquiescence to Yeltsin’s centralization of power and informal power structures.127 Even as Russia engaged in a bloody war in Chechnya from 1994 to 1996, Western responses mirrored competing pressures. Though the United States would come to chastise Russian actions as “indiscriminate killing,” “terrible,” and “misguided,” the Clinton administration clung to its support for Yeltsin. Continued financial and other aid was rationalized as the best way to keep the country on a democratic reform path. As Bill Clinton articulated in 1995: “If the forces of reform are embattled, we must renew – not retreat from – our support for them.”128 Indeed, US intelligence assessed that the war in Chechnya reflected Yeltsin’s lack of leadership, while an anti-democratic “old-think inner circle” drove it 124 See, e.g., US Department of State (1993b, 1993c, 1993d). Yeltsin reports he had spoken to Chancellor Kohl in early 1993 to anticipate Western responses and was reassured of Western support. See Yeltsin (1995, p. 135). 125 US Department of State (1993e, p. 11). 126 IMF and World Bank data quoted from Lapidus (2002, p. 110). 127 On the IMF’s dealings with Russia and the countervailing political and economic

pressures see Odling-Smee (2004, pp. 6–15), Lapidus (2002, pp. 119–123), and Shevtsova (2010, pp. 18–31). 128 Quotes from administration officials and President Clinton, quoted from Jehl (1995). See also Greenhouse (1995).

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and there was “much to be concerned about in Moscow.”129 Hence, despite calling upon Russia to end its military operations and abide by international behavioral norms, there was no strident pressure on Moscow.130 Even though Russian reforms toward democracy, market economics, and liberal norms had stalled and Yeltsin’s leadership compounded many of the problems, Western leaders would still go out of their way to strengthen him for fear of any of the alternatives. Considering Russia’s nuclear strength, post-Cold War proliferation concerns, wars on the Balkans, and pending NATO enlargement, to name just a few, it was critically important to preserve a constructive partnership with Russia. As the Economist recapped the dilemma in 1997: “There is a strong disposition, even now, among western leaders to see Mr Yeltsin as Russia’s one sure bulwark against communism and chaos, and to do anything they reasonably can to make him comfy.”131 At the same time and without any better alternative, Western leaders hoped for the best as Russia ventured ever further from a realistic pathway toward liberal market democracy. Overall, the international stimulus created by the US-led international order then was multidimensional. Under the conditions of unipolarity and Western normative hegemony the liberal international order enlarged and globalized to an unprecedented degree. Russia, China, and others were invited to join and benefit from it, while adaptations on Moscow’s and Beijing’s part were expected—not only in their foreign policy preferences, but also in their domestic setup. In short, the post-Cold War order was going to be one of Western design, not one renegotiated under post-Cold War terms between the major powers of the international system. This was not surprising given the conditions at the time. Moscow and Beijing would either have to transform and blend in or be left behind while the world moved West. Correspondingly, both states were persistently addressed with reform needs, demands, and criticism for their failures. Though this created clear and present pressures, Western policies toward both countries were nonetheless characterized by a degree of leniency. This was intimately tied to the sense of Western triumph and strength, but also to a lack of good alternatives and the belief in the

129 CIA report, quoted from Sciolino (1995). 130 See, e.g., Weiner (1996). 131 The Economist (1997).

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merits of engagement to spur soft, nondisruptive change. This provided them breathing room to evade change, while the West considered itself on route to a post-Cold War peace on Western terms: one where the ambit of cooperative security, democracy, market economics, and human freedom would steadily widen in the world.

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Goldgeier, J. M., & McFaul, M. (2004). Russians as Joiners: Realist and Liberal Conceptions of Postcommunist Europe. In M. McFaul & K. Stoner-Weiss (Eds.), After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transition (pp. 232–256). Cambridge University Press. Greenhouse, S. (1995, April 12). U.S. Sharply Rebukes Russia for Its Offensive in Chechnya. New York Times. Groitl, G. (2017). Bündnisverteidigung in Europa mit und ohne die USA – Chancen und Risiken. In U. Hartmann & C. v. Rosen (Eds.), Jahrbuch Innere Führung 2017: Die Wiederkehr der Verteidigung in Europa und die Zukunft der Bundeswehr (pp. 25–40). Miles Verlag. Hobson, C., & Kurki, M. (2013). Democracy Promotion as a Practice of Liberal World Order. In T. Dunne & T. Flockhart (Eds.), Liberal World Orders (pp. 193–210). Oxford University Press. Hurrell, A. (2007). On Global Order: Power, Values, and the Constitution of International Society. Oxford University Press. Ikenberry, G. J. (2001). After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars. Princeton University Press. Ikenberry, G. J. (2011). Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton University Press. Ikenberry, G. J. (2018). The End of the Liberal International Order? International Affairs, 94(1), 7–23. IMF. (2022). IMF DataMapper. Continuously updated. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDP_RPCH @WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD Jackson, R. (2007). Sovereignty: Evolution of an Idea. Polity Press. Jackson, R., & Sørensen, G. (2016). Introduction to International Relations: Theories and Approaches (6th ed.). Oxford University Press. Jahn, B. (2013). Liberal Internationalism: Theory, History, Practice. Palgrave Macmillan. Jehl, D. (1995, January 14). Struggle in Russia: In the U.S.; Clinton Exhorts Russians to Halt War in Chechnya. New York Times. Kagan, R. (1998). The Benevolent Empire. Foreign Policy, 111, 24–35. Kang, D. C. (2003). Getting Asia Wrong: The Need for New Analytical Frameworks. International Security, 27 (4), 57–85. Kennedy, P. (1989). The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. Fontana Press. Kissinger, H. (2012). On China. Penguin Books. Kissinger, H. (2014). World Order. Penguin Books. Koschut, S., & Kutz, M.-S. (2012). Die Außenpolitik der USA: Theorie – Prozess – Politikfelder – Regionen. Verlag Barbara Budrich. Krastev, I. (2016). The Unraveling of the Post-1989 Order. Journal of Democracy, 27 (4), 5–15.

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Krause, J. (2020). Wie das Unmögliche möglich wurde – Die erfolgreiche Schaffung einer funktionierenden internationalen Ordnung nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. SIRIUS—Zeitschrift für strategische Analysen, 4(1), 24–50. Lapidus, G. W. (2002). Transforming Russia: American Policy in the 1990s. In R. J. Lieber (Ed.), Eagle Rules? Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the Twenty-First Century (pp. 97–132). Prentice Hall. Lardy, N. R. (2001, April 25). Testimony: U.S.-China Economic Relations: Implications for U.S. Policy. Brookings Institution. www.brookings.edu/tes timonies/u-s-china-economic-relations-implications-for-u-s-policy/ Layne, C. (2018). The US-Chinese Power Shift and the End of the Pax Americana. International Affairs, 94(1), 89–111. Lepore, J. (2018). These Truths: A History of the United States. W.W. Norton & Company. Lieber, R. J. (2005). Asia’s American Pacifier. The American Era: Power and Strategy For the 21st Century (pp. 157–175). Cambridge University Press. Lundestad, G. (2005). The United States and Western Europe Since 1945: From “Empire” by Invitation to Transatlantic Drift (Paperback ed.). Oxford University Press. Mandelbaum, M. (1996). Foreign Policy as Social Work. Foreign Affairs, 75(1), 16–32. Mandelbaum, M. (2016). Mission Failure: America and the World in the PostCold War Era. Oxford University Press. Mann, J. (2000). About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton (First Vintage Books ed.). Vintage Books. Mann, J. (2007). The China Fantasy: Why Capitalism Will Not Bring Democracy to China. Penguin Books. Meacham, J. (2018). The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels. Random House. Meier-Walser, R. (2018). Die NATO im Funktions- und Bedeutungswandel: Veränderungen und Perspektiven transatlantischer Sicherheit. Springer VS. Münkler, H., & Malowitz, K. (Eds.). (2009). Humanitäre Intervention: Ein Instrument außenpolitischer Konfliktbearbeitung. Grundlagen und Diskussion. Springer VS. NATO. (1999). The Alliance’s Strategic Concept. www.nato.int/cps/en/nat olive/official_texts_htm Nelan, B. W. (1997, November 10). What They Said in Private: Even Before the Official Summit Began, Clinton Tutored China’s President Jiang on American Values. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/11/03/ time/jiang.html Nolan, M. (2012). The Transatlantic Century: Europe and America, 1890–2010. Cambridge University Press.

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Neuss, B. (2000). Geburtshelfer Europas? Die Rolle der Vereinigten Staaten im europäischen Integrationsprozeß 1945–1958. Nomos. New York Times. (1989, December 12). Hailing the Butchers of Beijing. Opinion. New York Times. Odling-Smee, J. (2004). The IMF and Russia in the 1990s (IMF Working Paper WP/04/155). International Monetary Fund. www.imf.org/external/pubs/ ft/wp/2004/wp04155.pdf Pillsbury, M. (2016). The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. St. Martin’s Griffin. Radio Free Asia. (2021a). History. Retrieved January 12, 2021, from www.rfa. org/about/info/history-04202007142923.html Radio Free Asia. (2021b). Mission. Retrieved January 12, 2021, from www.rfa. org/about/info/mission.html Roosevelt, F. D. (1941, January 6). Message to Congress—The State of the Union. Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum. www.fdrlibrary.marist. edu/_resources/images/msf/msf01407 Sarotte, M. E. (2012). China’s Fear of Contagion: Tiananmen Square and the Power of the European Example. International Security, 37 (2), 156–182. Sciolino, E. (1995, January 6). U.S. and Allies to Press Russia for Chechnya Peace Settlement. New York Times. Shevtsova, L. (2010). Lonely Power: Why Russia Has Failed to Become the West and the West Is Weary of Russia. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. SIPRI. (2022). SIPRI Military Expenditure Database. Continuously updated. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://milex.sipri.org/sipri Smith, M. E. (2011). A Liberal Grand Strategy in a Realist World? Power, Purpose and the EU’s Changing Global Role. Journal of European Public Policy, 18(2), 144–163. Smith, T. (2012). America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy (Expanded ed.). Princeton University Press. Smith, T. (2017). Why Wilson Matters: The Origin of American Liberal Internationalism and Its Crisis Today. Princeton University Press. Spohr, K. (2019). Post Wall, Post Square: How Bush, Gorbachev, Kohl, and Deng Shaped the World After 1989. Yale University Press. Stent, A. E. (2015). The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Paperback ed.). Princeton University Press. Sutter, R. G. (2015). The United States and Asia: Regional Dynamics and Twenty-First-Century Relations. Rowman & Littlefield. The Atlantic Charter. (1941). Retrieved October 14, 2022, from https://usa. usembassy.de/etexts/democrac/53.htm The Economist. (1997, October 30). Mainly friendly Russia. The Economist. Ther, P. (2018). Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Kontinent: Eine Geschichte des neoliberalen Europa (Licensed ed.). Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung.

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Ther, P. (2020). Das andere Ende der Geschichte: Über die Große Transformation (3rd ed.). Suhrkamp Verlag. United Nations. (1945). United Nations Charter. https://www.un.org/en/ about-us/un-charter United Nations. (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. https://www. un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights United Nations. (1999, April 7). Secretary-General Calls for Renewed Commitment in New Century to Protect Rights of Man, Woman, Child—Regardless of Ethnic, National Belonging [Press release]. www.un.org/press/en/1999/ 19990407.sgsm6949.html United Nations. (2022a). Milestones in UN History 1941–1950. Retrieved October 14, 2022, from https://www.un.org/en/about-us/history-of-theun/1941-1950 United Nations. (2022b). Responsibility to Protect. Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/about-responsibility-to-protect.shtml US Department of Defense. (1992). National Military Strategy of the United States. https://history.defense.gov/Historical-Sources/National-Military-Str ategy/ US Department of Defense. (2018). Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of The United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge. https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/ pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf US Department of State. (1993a, September 7). Strategy for NATO’s Expansion and Transformation. National Security Archive, The George Washington University. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/doc uments/4390816/Document-02-Strategy-for-NATO-s-Expansion-and.pdf US Department of State. (1993b, July 10). Cable from White House Washington DC to American Embassy Moscow. Memorandum of Conversation: Memcon with President Boris Yeltsin of Russia, Tokyo. National Security Archive, The George Washington University. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=495 4100-Document-02-Cable-from-White-House-Washington-DC US Department of State. (1993c, September 21). Memorandum of Telephone Conversation: Telcon with President Boris Yeltsin of Russian Federation. National Security Archive, The George Washington University. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.hmtl?doc=4954101-Document-03-Mem orandum-of-Telephone-Conversation US Department of State. (1993d, October 5). Memorandum of Telephone Conversation: Telcon with President Boris Yeltsin of Russian Federation. National Security Archive, The George Washington University. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.hmtl?doc=4954103-Document-05-Mem orandum-of-Telephone-Conversation

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US Department of State. (1993e, October 20). Cable from American Embassy Moscow to Secretary of State: Your October 21–23 Visit to MoscowKey Foreign Policy Issues. National Security Archive, The George Washington University. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16850-document08-cable-american-embassy-moscow US National Security Council. (1950, April 14). NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nschst/nsc-68.htm Weiner, T. (1996, January 18). U.S. Officials Muffle Criticism of Russian Attack. New York Times. Westad, O. A. (2018). The Cold War: A World History. Penguin Books. White House. (1999, April 7). Remarks by the President in Foreign Policy Speech. https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/WH/New/html/199 90407-2873.html Winkler, H. A. (2016). Geschichte des Westens (5th rev. ed.). C.H. Beck. Winkler, H. A. (2019). Werte und Mächte: Eine Geschichte der westlichen Welt. C.H. Beck. Wivel, A. (2008). Balancing Against Threats or Bandwagoning with Power? Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship after the Cold War. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 21(3), 289–305. Yeltsin, B. (1995). The Struggle for Russia (Paperback ed.). Times Books. Zakaria, F. (1999). From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role (First paperback ed.). Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 5

Russia’s Fall: Resentful Accommodation to Grim Post-Cold War Realities

Historical Legacies Russia’s integration into a post-Cold War liberal order of Western design was anything but preordained. To the contrary, the odds were stacked against it, and historical legacies of Russian imperialism, autocratic rule, and the very nature of the Soviet collapse played important roles in it. Russia had been a fully integrated member of the European dynastic and diplomatic scene from the eighteenth century playing by Westphalian rules. Philipp Ther makes clear that even though its territory reaches from Europe to Asia, Russia belongs to Europe in a political sense.1 However, Russia has never been a Western power. The ideas of the enlightenment and individual freedom, which constituted an “intellectual revolution” in Western Europe and across the Atlantic in the eighteenth century and developed into the core of Western political identity, never took hold.2 Instead, Russian imperial history is one of a centuries-long experience of overbearing statehood and autocratic rule. Its type of governance ties in with its relative economic weakness. Tsarist Russia repeatedly failed to modernize despite its professed desire to emulate the advances of the 1 See Ther (2020, p. 149). 2 See Winkler (2019, pp. 29–43; on Russia and China pp. 38–39; quote from

p. 34). Own translation.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Groitl, Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18659-2_5

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industrializing Atlantic world in the nineteenth century, and the realities of autocratic regime perseverance had a major part in it. What emerged as continuities in Russia’s experience were its expansive imperial character without, its autocratic traditions within, and its lopsidedness as a great power.3 In the early twentieth century the country underwent revolutionary change. Despite efforts to modernize, Russia had been stuck with an overbearing state in the hands of an aristocratic elite dominating the mass of impoverished, disenfranchised people. The eventual collapse of the Tsarist empire in the wake of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution did not challenge but solidify Moscow’s repressive governance within and its regional status claims without. They were just rationalized anew. Communism’s declared aim was to provide an alternative, superior model of development and social justice to liberate the have-nots from their earlier yoke. Ideologically, it was bent on world revolution. To coordinate and aid activities of communist parties elsewhere, the communist international was set up in 1919. In 1922 the Soviet Union was born. Starting out as a federative union of four socialist republics, the Soviet Union grew to 11 by 1936 and 15 after the World War II and restored Moscow-based repressive governance over Eastern Europe with socialist designs.4 Josef Stalin became the defining figure for the Soviet Union from the 1920s. Though the Soviet Union substantially increased industrial output, it was lopsided toward heavy industry and born by hardship. The collectivization of agriculture led, as elsewhere, to a brutalization of the people and horrendous famines killing millions in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Centralizing power within from party to personalized dictatorship, Stalin pursued massive purges in what came to be known as the terror years in the 1930s. With an iron grip on the country he looked to expand Soviet influence without. As Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis formulated it, “Stalin’s fusion of Marxist internationalism with tsarist imperialism could only reinforce his tendency, in place well before World War II, to equate the advance of world revolution with the expanding influence

3 See Kappeler (2016). 4 See Kappeler (2016, pp. 25–39), Altrichter and Bernecker (2004, pp. 31–34; 145–

150), and Altrichter (2007, pp. 39–63).

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of the Soviet state.”5 The great power bargain with Nazi Germany in 1939 to divide up the lands in between the two dictatorships collapsed when the Third Reich attacked the Soviet Union in a war of annihilation. The war inflicted enormous costs on the Soviet Union, but victory over national socialism contributed to its political consolidation within, increased leverage without, and a personality cult of Stalin’s despite the horrors of his totalitarian regime.6 In fact, Stalin’s reign had already cost between 17 and 22 million lives before World War II even began.7 Between 1929 until his death in 1953, 20–30 million people were thrown in jail or the notorious gulag labor camps.8 Stalin’s Soviet Union came out of the war as the dominant power in Eastern Europe and, with its conventional military superiority and global ambitions, as the only peer competitor for the United States. Within, however, the country was “destroyed, even devastated:” 20–30 million people lost their lives during the war, 25 million had no homes, industrial policies remained preoccupied with heavy industries, while food shortages led to yet another dreadful famine by 1946.9 Yet Stalin was larger than life at the time. As Ann Applebaum summarized succinctly, “Stalinism—and Stalin—was fortuitously rescued by World War II.”10 His consolidated position of power at home allowed the Soviet Union to reach beyond its borders. Indeed, Stalin summarized political dynamics in April 1945 as follows: “This war is unlike past wars; whoever occupies territory installs one’s own social system. Everyone introduces one’s own system, as far as one’s army can reach. There is no other way.”11 These trends went well beyond the regional neighborhood. The Soviet Union stood tall as the beacon for socialist modernity and was bent on a global ideological fight. Stunningly, socialist modernization and development promises found widespread appeal despite the brutalization they rested upon.12 5 Gaddis (1997, p. 29). 6 On Stalin’s reign see Kappeler (2016, pp. 39–42) and Altrichter (2007, pp. 64–114). 7 Gaddis (1997, p. 8.) 8 Number from Scherrer (2020, p. 26). 9 See Altrichter (2007, pp. 117–120; quote from p. 117). Own translation. 10 Applebaum (2013, p. xxvi). 11 Josef Stalin in April 1945, quoted from Altrichter and Bernecker (2004, p. 258). Own translation. 12 On the Soviet rise to world power status see Altrichter (2007, pp. 115–130).

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The ideological cleavage between the Soviet Union and the West led to irreconcilable views on how the world ought to be ordered—in Europe and beyond. The Soviet Union, for example, envisioned the UN as an intergovernmental body strictly subject to great power interests; similarly, there was a “peculiar duality” in Moscow’s take on sovereignty, combining a non-negotiable insistence on its own absolute sovereignty from external interference with a natural denial thereof to its neighbors.13 The drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights illustrated that Western notions of what Patenaude calls “negative” rights, namely “rights of individuals against the government,” clashed with Soviet views on “positive” rights, namely “rights from government” in terms of social and economic welfare for the working class. When the Declaration was accepted, the Soviet Union and its satellites did not sign on.14 Universal human rights as promoted by the West were incompatible with the Soviet domestic order and its international manifestations.15 Instead, the Soviet Union expanded and formalized its empire in Eastern Europe as an exclusive sphere of influence and built its own institutions like the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) or the Warsaw Pact.16 While things looked promising for Moscow in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Soviet Union did reasonably well economically, made technological advances, and appealed to the developing world with the promise of socialist modernization, its Potemkin qualities soon became clear. The clear and present alternative to the Western rules-based liberal system of order was the Soviet model, which rested on limited sovereignty of states in Moscow’s orbit, communist party dictatorship, command economies, and a notion of collectivized human rights of the proletarian revolution. While the United States presided over a self-perpetuating, informal empire of voluntary cooperation, Soviet rule rested on formal centralization, communist cooptation, and repression.17 While the Western alliance yielded mutual gains of growing prosperity, the Soviet order

13 See MacFarlane (2003, pp. 190–191; 188). 14 Patenaude (2012, p. 1). Italics added. 15 See MacFarlane (2003, pp. 193–194). 16 On the crafting of the Soviet sphere in Eastern Europe see Applebaum (2013)

and Altrichter and Bernecker (2004, pp. 258–294). 17 On the key differences in US and Soviet “empire” see Gaddis (1997, pp. 27–53; 284–286; 288–289).

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was a material drain on Moscow. Put bluntly, the East bloc’s trading system “functioned only with massive Soviet subsidy and in worthless soft currencies.”18 The Soviet economy depended upon revenues from natural resources, overinvested in heavy industry and the defense sector, and fell behind in technology and innovation. By 1989, income per capita stood at less than half of what it was in Western Europe.19 The multiple dysfunctions of the Soviet system added up to an existential crisis in the 1980s. While Moscow’s economic and financial situation was grim, the demands of the arms race and power projection took up ever larger shares of the budget. Military expenditures were at an unsustainable level of about 25% of GDP by the late 1980s.20 Its vast military capabilities notwithstanding, the Soviet Union was not up for competition any longer. Indeed, its militarized nature had contributed to the lack of economic competitiveness and social responsiveness.21 Politically bankrupt and economically dysfunctional communist dictatorship within and Soviet repression without had become illegitimate and hard to enforce. Normatively, socialist ideals like social justice, solidarity, equality, and the empowerment of the working class over repressive, self-enriching old elites had more than a hollow ring after decades of repression and nomenclature privileges. When Mikhail Gorbachev took over in Moscow, he wanted to implement reforms to get the stumbling Soviet Union and socialism back on track. As Altrichter and Bernecker put it, it is “trivia, but requires a reminder” that Gorbachev wanted to “strengthen and revitalize socialism, not abolish it.”22 At the international level, the core baseline of his reform drive was labeled “new thinking.” It was about questioning earlier assumptions of the primacy of international conflict and the merits of an economy geared to military-industrial needs. Convinced that the perpetual arms race was unsustainable and not necessary to deal with the West, Gorbachev set out to reduce the centrality of military competition. With his ambitions for reforms of Glasnost and Perestroika, he aspired to

18 The Economist (2009). 19 Number from Mounk and Foa (2018, p. 34). See also Shleifer and Treisman (2014),

Kennedy (1989, pp. 468; 555–557), and Nolan (2012, pp. 319–322). 20 Number from Shleifer and Treisman (2014). 21 See Odom (1998). 22 Altrichter and Bernecker (2004, p. 364). Own translation.

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get the Soviet Union on a path to political, economic, and social renewal to give socialism a “new, humane and democratic face.”23 The Gorbachev reform period was fraud with false hopes and misunderstandings. Efforts to reform the Soviet command economy did little to kick-start growth. As Minxin Pei analyzed, the availability versus lack of foreign support and investments was a key difference between the successful Chinese reform period from the late 1970s and the failed Gorbachev era attempts to modernize the Soviet economy. Political uncertainty and less attractive market conditions aggravated the problem.24 Furthermore, the Soviet Union was stumbling politically, and Gorbachev’s reforms did not diminish but magnify centrifugal forces. Gorbachev wanted to redefine how the party related to the state and the people, and how the Soviet center related to the republics, hoping to increase authority by persuasion, not force.25 When Moscow relaxed the reins, however, demands for freedom and independence between and within the Soviet republics accelerated. A few short years into Gorbachev’s reform period, the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of collapse in the early 1990s. Two aspects are crucially important, however. First, Gorbachev did not relinquish the Soviet Union’s role as a peer superpower. Gorbachev faced the dysfunctionality of the Soviet system and material constraints. He refuted notions of an inevitability of violent struggle between East and West, redefined the relative role of military competition and focused on “humankind” interests instead. But Moscow’s changing foreign and security policy posture, which led to a collapse of the Eastern bloc, was neither designed nor forethought but evolved on the go and was rationalized ex post.26 Deborah Welsh Larson and Alexei Shevchenko interpret Gorbachev’s new thinking even as a status-focused “shortcut to greatness:” an effort to present a novel model of international order which would secure the Soviet Union’s great power status and leadership despite its material weakness.27 Second, it was misleading to interpret the end of the Cold War as Moscow’s embrace of the West. Gorbachev 23 Gorbatschow (1988b, p. 352). Own translation. 24 See Pei (1994). 25 See, e.g., Gorbatschow (1988b) and Kommunistische Partei der Sowjetunion (1988). 26 See Wettig (1991). 27 Welch Larson and Shevchenko (2003).

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never supposed a one-sided concession. The common European home he spoke of was one in which both sides have a place they are comfortable with. His starting point was that “every country has its own problems and wants to protect its sovereignty and follow its own traditions.” In a common European home, then, “every family has an own apartment, and the house also has different entrances,” but “only together, jointly, […] can the Europeans protect their common home from fire and other catastrophes.”28 Boris Yeltsin, a rival of Gorbachev’s, emerged as an energetic liberal leader when centrifugal forces challenged the Soviet Union’s very existence. Unlike Gorbachev, Yeltsin wanted to put an end to communism and Soviet rule. In June 1991, he was elected president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in its first-ever free elections. In July 1991, Yeltsin banned communist groups from operating in state offices, enterprises, and other institutions to break their power.29 In August 1991, he rallied the public to thwart a coup by communist hardliners against Gorbachev.30 In December, he together with the presidents of Ukraine and Belarus presented the Belavezha Accords that declared the end of the Soviet Union and the creation of a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In late December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist and fifteen independent post-Soviet states were born.31 Hopes were high that Moscow’s future lay within the family of European and Atlantic nations and values. But doubts were in order. Legacy forces would not easily be overcome in the post-Cold War era. After all, Russia lacked any liberal or democratic traditions to lean on. As Alexander Yakovlev, an architect of Gorbachev’s reform efforts, aptly analyzed in 1985: “For a thousand years we have been ruled by people and not by laws… What we are talking about is not the dismantling of Stalinism but a replacement of a 1,000-year old model of statehood.”32 Gorbachev himself confided that the “totalitarian heritage sat very deep in the traditions, minds, and customs, that it permeated all pores of

28 Gorbatschow (1988a, p. 253). Own translation. 29 See Fein (1991). 30 See Berger (2007). 31 On the end of the Soviet Union see Altrichter (2007, pp. 172–202) and Altrichter

and Bernecker (2004, pp. 364–373). 32 Alexander Yakovlev, quoted from The Economist (2016).

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our body politic.”33 Quick changes to long grown domestic structures were unlikely, not least since the dismantling of the Soviet Union and communism was by no means a consensual enterprise. The same goes for the imperial mentality which was deeply ingrained in the history and practice of Moscow’s politics and a line of continuity from the Russian Tsarist to the Soviet era. It seemed certain that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the birth of post-Soviet Russia, which was the collapse of a political entity and its recreation anew in a significantly diminished and altered shape, would set the stage for difficult processes of state-, nation-, and region-building, all of which would take place under the shadows of the past. Though post-Soviet realities were up for grabs, there was certainly a widely shared sense that Russia had a special role. It was one of the things Gorbachev emphasized in a press briefing on his last day in the Kremlin: “Russia’s role must be great—and responsible.”34 Lastly, the failure of Soviet communism by no means presupposed an end of Moscow’s order building claims or its transformation from a failed “rule-maker” into an acquiescent “rule-taker.” A resolution adopted at the 1988 party conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) mused that the Soviet Union needed reforms to enable it to “live up to the role which history ascribed it to protect the survival of mankind and its future progress.”35 Such notions of exceptionalism are sticky. The very way the Cold War eventually ended played a role as well. Through the Soviet communist model of order came crashing down, it did so with political agency in Moscow. Soviet influence could not be retained as envisioned, but Gorbachev was actively negotiating the way out of the Cold War with the West. Similarly, the dismantling of the Soviet Union was not forced by military defeat from without, but occurred with agency from within. Though the collapse of the Soviet empire was caused by internal defects, it left those in charge with a sense of victory amidst defeat: for ending the Cold War peacefully and defeating Soviet communism. Gorbachev reflected in one of his later books:

33 Gorbatschow (2015, p. 47). Own translation. 34 Quoted from Gorbatschow (2015, p. 44). Own translation. 35 Kommunistische Partei der Sowjetunion (1988, p. 366). Own translation.

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Irrespective of the mistakes that we have made, we did manage to successfully lead the country out of a historic dead-end. We gave the people a first glimpse of freedom, liberated them from their chains, gave them the opportunity to live as they desire. We have ended the Cold War, the arms race.36

Nothing indicated that Moscow would suddenly relinquish its sense of centrality. In addition, leaders in Moscow by no means embraced Western liberalism or notions of order. Not only did Gorbachev envision to revitalize socialism, as he formulated it in 1987, but he also wanted to engage in a new type of systemic rivalry: “The Americans shall live in their country as they want, and we will live in the Soviet Union as we desire.” All the while, difference could be put to productive use: “We want the peaceful competition between different social systems to unfold unhindered to promote mutually beneficial cooperation, not confrontation and the arms race.”37 That it was up to the Soviet Union to change its ways and adopt the Western model was rejected wholeheartedly. As Gorbachev recalls in his memoires: Many in the West, however, who were advocates for the foundational transformation of Europe believed the way it ought to go was on the basis of an adoption of the Western values system. […] ‘In order to go jointly in the desired direction, Western Europe will have to change many a thing. We should not pretend that it is only up to the East to change.’38

Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev remained convinced that socialism had not failed, but merely the Stalinist system had, as he remarked to journalists in late December 1991: “Mankind will continue its search [for justice, freedom, and democracy]. Different schools of thought contribute to it, and they adhere to different ideals.”39

36 Gorbatschow (2015, p. 27). Own translation. 37 Gorbatschow (1988a, pp. 332; 335). Own translation. 38 Gorbatschow (1996, p. 659). Own translation. 39 Quoted from Gorbatschow (2015, pp. 45–46). Own translation.

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In 1992 he explicitly refuted “end of history” notions of “liberal democracy” as the universal and definite answer to the political organization of public life.40 Though Gorbachev was a polarizing figure in post-Soviet Russia, these assessments were no fringe takes. Taken together, a foundational misunderstanding seemed ingrained in Russian-Western relations from the beginning. As seen from Moscow, the post-Cold War international order would have to be one renegotiated between itself and the West on an equal footing, not one of the West’s making and Russia’s taking. As seen from the West, Moscow’s bid for international order building had failed, while the liberal West stood tall triumphant.

National Interests and Propensity to Adapt After the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, post-Soviet Russia was on its knees. Though the Russian Federation was acknowledged as the Soviet Union’s successor state with corresponding privileges like the permanent UN Security Council seat, it was in for a sustained period of struggles over its future territorial, political, economic, and social shape and form. What Moscow was dealing with, after all, was a fully-fledged and comprehensive state collapse. It was, Angela Stent points out, a quadruple transformation that Russia would be undergoing: “from totalitarianism to democracy, from centrally planned to market economy, from imperial to postimperial state, and from a unitary to a federal state.”41 The end of the Soviet Union chipped way 25% of the landmass and 50% of the populations previously governed from Moscow. Moscow lost its Eastern European empire, its acknowledged sphere of privileged interest as well as its regional and global influence. Soviet history had been one of multi-ethnic and multi-national empire, replete with (forced) resettlement programs, territorial reassignments among fellow Soviet republics (such as Crimea, given from Russia to Ukraine in 1954), and complex relationships between the imperial center and periphery. Unsurprisingly, the birth of 15 independent states raised a plethora of difficult questions. Among them were territorial issues, the status of ethnic Russians in newly

40 Quoted from Gorbatschow (2015, p. 202). Own translation. 41 Stent (1999, pp. 186–187).

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independent states, and challenges to the Russian Federation’s territorial integrity. Traditional power metrics painted a bleak picture. Militarily, Russia was a shadow of its former Soviet self. It lost a significant portion of its power projection capabilities in terms of allies and bases. Hardware and materiel, including nuclear weapons, were dispersed in the post-Soviet space, and the Soviet Red Army was in for a process of reorganization into separate national armies.42 Economically, the situation looked dire. Decades of communist mismanagement and the costly perpetuation of the Soviet imperial project had taken a toll on Russia. Inflation as well as capital flight were excessive in the early 1990s, while the country’s industrial capacity essentially collapsed and GDP contracted by double-digit rates. State finances were in shambles. Russia inherited about 66 billion USD of external debt from Soviet times, whereas its Central Bank held a meager 2 billion USD in gold and currencies.43 Beyond the hard metrics, Russia had no model of domestic and international order and no narrative about itself, its past, and future readily available. The post-Soviet Russian state had to be reinvented after the Soviet communist failure. Russia’s core needs at the time were thus defined by a daunting laundry list of essential basics. Leaders in Moscow had to come to terms with their share of the post-Soviet divorce intellectually and practically. They had to resolve lingering questions regarding territorial borders and compatriots in newly independent countries; build a political system and governance structures that are functional and accountable, legitimate and enforceable; redefine the bureaucracy to support the new Russian state; kick-start the economy and manage the necessary post-communist economic transformation; build a national identity narrative to make sense of the post-Soviet self and how it relates to the past; come to terms with the Soviet past and the injustices inflicted upon individuals and society; and define anew how the individual relates to the collective. Boris Yeltsin was the central figure from Russia’s birth as a sovereign state in December 1991 until his resignation on December 31, 1999. The short answer to what Russia desired and needed was to do well and thrive. As Yeltsin put it: “I want their [the Russian peoples’] lives

42 See Odom (1998). 43 Boughton (2012, p. 287).

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to improve before my own eyes.”44 This would ultimately be the metric of success. He espoused the core conviction that adaptation to the principles of Western liberalism as well as integration in the Western liberal international order would best serve Russia’s vital needs and well-being. Committed to a radical break with the Soviet past, Yeltsin professed his will to institutionalize democratic governance, rule of law, a market economic system, and the liberal norms of a free and open society. To get there, he explicitly looked West. Indeed, as was observed in the Western press, Yeltsin’s “frame of reference is not Lenin, but Japan, Western Europe and the United States.”45 As he had declared in one of his speeches in 1990: “So what must be done? Denationalization of property, decentralization of everything—politics, economics, culture, everything.”46 Russia, the message was, sought to emulate liberal principles to get ahead. The initial years were characterized by an enthusiastic, albeit shortlived, embrace of the West in what is commonly called the “romantic” or “honeymoon” period in Russian-Western relations. Russia’s self-defined goal was to become a full member of the European political scene, which was regarded as the standard Russia should aspire to. A core pro-Western ally of Yeltsin’s was Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, who explained in Foreign Affairs magazine in 1992: Active participation in the European process and the use of the standards and expertise accumulated within its framework will be of real help in solving Russia’s internal problems and those of other ex-Soviet republics, as well as in the civilized development of the Commonwealth in harmonious interaction with regional and global structures and mechanisms for security, cooperation and partnership.47

Russia was seemingly on a reform course aimed at imitating and emulating the West.48 In December 1991, even before the Soviet Union formally ceased to exist, Yeltsin had outlined the vision of Russia joining NATO 44 Boris Yeltsin, quoted from Berger (2007). 45 Keller (1990). 46 Boris Yeltsin, quoted from Keller (1990). 47 Kozyrev (1992, p. 11). 48 The thesis of Russian imitation and a later break is elaborated in Krastev and Holmes (2019).

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at some point in a letter to the alliance.49 Foreign Minister Kozyrev described NATO “as one of the mechanisms of stability in Europe and in the world as a whole. Our desire to cooperate […] and to join it is therefore natural.” He envisioned a “zone of security and cooperation from Vancouver to Vladivostok” with NATO playing “a role that is positive and by no means insignificant.”50 In addition, Russian leaders professed interest in joining the European Community and the Council of Europe.51 Such bold aspirations were not grounded in any realistic assessment of the necessary reforms to meet membership criteria, but reflected a sentimental desire for inclusion. Nevertheless, rhetoric suggested a convergence was in the making. Participating in the UN Security Council for the first time in January 1992, Yeltsin vowed a wholehearted embrace of liberal principles. He committed to democracy and rule of law in Russia as well as to universal principles of individual human rights: “Our top priority is to guarantee all human rights and freedoms in their entirety, including political and civil rights and decent socio-economic and environmental living standards.” Not only should governments be held accountable by their citizens, but Yeltsin also explicitly pointed to international norms and responsibilities: “I believe that these questions are not an internal matter of States, but rather their obligations under the United Nations Charter, international covenants and conventions,” which meant that “the Security Council is called upon to underscore the civilized world’s collective responsibility for the protection of human rights and freedoms.” Going forward, he welcomed the UN as a tool to “build a new democratic world order,” asserted that Russia viewed “the United States and the West not as mere partners but rather as allies,” and envisioned “a revolution in peaceful cooperation between progressive nations.”52 Seemingly, the country was on a course toward Westernization. Yeltsin had emerged as a proponent of decentralized, federal political structures in post-Soviet Russia. “Take as much sovereignty as you can digest,” he

49 Boris Yeltsin, quoted from Friedman (1995). 50 Andrei Kozyrev on December 23, 1991, quoted from Adomeit (2007, p. 4). 51 For a summary of this “romantic period” of Russian-Western relations see Mommsen

(2003, pp. 136–145). 52 All previous quotes from Boris Yeltsin, quoted from UN Security Council (1992, pp. 42–48).

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proclaimed on a trip to Tatarstan in 1990.53 The March 1992 Federation treaty codified relations between the then 89 regional entities. Economically, Yeltsin advocated for neoliberal “shock therapy”—the attempt to switch to market economic principles immediately and non-evolutionarily. The calculus was that a radical break would lead to severe yet temporary adjustment pains and a rapid path to growth, prosperity, and democracy. Also, intent on erecting safeguards against political restoration, full-scale economic liberalization was considered the best opening move “to make reform irreversible.”54 Yeltsin worked closely with a cadre of liberal economic reformers such as Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais, who shaped administration policies in various functions.55 They in turn were in close contact with a group of primarily US-based liberal economists who offered advice and facilitated relevant networks.56 The embrace of the West and the US-led liberal international order was tied to a clear-eyed assessment of the failures of the Soviet Union. Kozyrev, dwelling on Russian history, its autocratic traditions, and the suffering of the Russian people under Tsarist and communist rule, diagnosed: “The Soviet system simply proved unable to cope with the breathtaking pace of history and suffered a crushing defeat in an open contest with the civilized world.”57 With Western help Russia now aspired to change both its internal makeup and external behavior to claim its place “as a reliable partner in the community of civilized states.”58 The goal was to “create a society that would abide by the same universal human laws as the civilized world.”59 In other words, modernity seemed to be Western and liberal, and so was Russia’s future. Western integration would, Kozyrev argued, turn Russia from an imperial entity, repressive

53 Boris Yeltsin, quoted from Halbach (2018, p. 7). 54 Yeltsin (1995, p. 146). 55 See Lloyd (1999) and Odling-Smee (2004, p. 4). 56 The role of Western advisors in Russia’s bogged economic and political liberalization

was hotly debated later on. See, e.g., the exchange between Wedel (2000) and Sachs et al. (2000). 57 Kozyrev (1992, p. 4). 58 Kozyrev (1992, p. 9). 59 Kozyrev (1992, p. 16).

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toward its people and dangerous for its neighbors, to a “normal great power” committed to established rules.60 The collapse of Moscow’s empire, however, did not do away with its sense of deserved great power status. Russia still considered itself to be a viable and legitimate major power with leadership prerogatives in its regional surroundings and the wider world. Yeltsin’s West-leaning course may have appeared as the antithesis of the kind of great power visions communists, nationalists, and so-called Eurasianists held. They demanded, with different emphases and nuances, a proud and independent Russia, an exceptional great power with its own distinct cultural, historical, ideational, and political trajectory, and lambasted Yeltsin for allegedly selling out Russian interests to the West.61 But even pro-Western reformers were convinced that Russia could not be anything else than a preeminent power. As Yeltsin put it in 1992: “Russia was and continues to be a great world power,” and it should not “shy away from defending our own interests” even if others would reproach it as “imperialist.”62 In this sense, the viability of its alignment with the West depended upon whether this produced the stability, prosperity, and well-being Russia needed as well as the kind of great power co-leadership Moscow deemed legitimate. Kozyrev made this explicit in 1994: The majority of Russian political forces wants a strong, independent and prosperous Russia. From this fundamental fact it follows that the only policy with any chance of success is one that recognizes the equal rights and mutual benefit of partnership for both Russia and the West, as well as the status and significance of Russia as a world power. […] If Russian democrats fail to achieve it, they will be swept away by a wave of aggressive nationalism, which is now exploiting the need for national and state selfassertion.63

60 Kozyrev (1992, p. 10). 61 For a description of dominant schools of thought see Light and Allison (2006,

pp. 12–13) and Mommsen (2003, pp. 148–154). Commonly, (liberal) westernizers are distinguished from (pragmatic) nationalists and eurasianists. Tsygankov (2016) distinguishes westernizers, statists, and civilizationalists as dominant schools. 62 Boris Yeltsin in speeches to officials at the defense ministry (November 25, 1992) and the foreign ministry (October 28, 1992), quoted from Adomeit (2007, pp. 5–6). 63 Kozyrev (1994, p. 61).

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Kozyrev warned the West of “paternalism” and any notion of “assumed inequality.” Temporary difficulties would not change the fact that “Russia is predestined to be a great power.”64 The collapse of the Soviet Union had contradictory effects, oscillating between sentiments and narratives of defeat and triumph. But both reinforced Russia’s great power identity as an unconditional given. As Bobo Lo points out, the failure of the Soviet Union shattered elites and the general public alike: “[…] the real disaster was the transformation of the world’s second superpower into an impotent also-ran. Virtually overnight everything they had taken for granted had been turned on its head and invalidated.”65 Angela Stent concurs that it left many Russians “feel humiliated and diminished.”66 As Margareta Mommsen details, the domestic political, economic, and societal hardships made Russia’s status claims even more important as the “shining light of a virtual great power” for domestic purposes.67 But the Soviet failure was also interpreted as a Russian win, as Kozyrev reminded: It is not the Russian people but the totalitarian communist regime that wasted the nation’s intellectual and spiritual powers in senseless arms races and military adventures […]. And it was not the Russians but the communist system that lost the Cold War. But it was the people who destroyed the system, not a foreign savior. This is important to remember because it sets the collapse of Soviet communism apart from, say, the fall of German Nazism or Japanese militarism.68

In this sense, post-Soviet Russia as a co-winner over Soviet communism deserved treatment on par with the West, not least since the post-Cold War material weakness was merely considered a temporary setback in what Moscow regarded as its predestined fate. Hence, though a narrative of defeat and one of victory coexisted, they both reinforced Russia’s great power identity and its demand for status and respect—be it to compensate for hardship or as a reward for achievements.

64 Kozyrev (1994, p. 62). 65 Lo (2015, p. 19). For a similar assessment see Westad (2018, p. 622). 66 Stent (1999, p. 187). 67 Mommsen (2003, p. 164). Own translation. 68 Kozyrev (1994, p. 62).

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Russian views of the post-Cold War world were shaped by such sentiments. Yeltsin and his associates looked West with an ambition to emulate Western liberalism because they hoped that this would provide Russia with what it needed. But they also looked West with assumptions of deservedness. For example, “Russian governments thought that the West should be prepared to make available large sums of money without difficult policy conditions attached. This was a small price to pay for ensuring that Russia never returned to communism or confrontation with the West,” an IMF analysis assessed.69 As seen from Moscow, Russia was entitled to have access to formats like the G7 and be treated as a peer and a pole with equal rights in the future multipolar world order. As Kozyrev wrote in Foreign Affairs with a tense undertone: “One thing is sufficiently clear: the international order in the twenty-first century will not be Pax Americana or any other version of unipolar or bipolar dominance.”70 While Russia demanded to be taken seriously as a peer by the West, the post-Soviet space was the first front. The dissolution of the Soviet Union led to the emergence of 15 independent states and the formation of the so-called Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in December 1991, bringing together all former Soviet republics with the exception of the Baltic states. From the get-go, Moscow launched initiatives to reintegrate the area with itself in a lead role. On the anniversary of the CIS’s founding, which affirmed the sovereignty of all newly independent states, Foreign Minister Kozyrev applauded it as a means to retain “some sort of single space.”71 Yeltsin rationalized Russian efforts as benign moves akin to European integration: “We have now had the experience of living in separate quarters. It does not feel very good. Russia is leading this process of integration […]. We have in mind something similar to the EU.”72 De facto, Russian policy aimed at retaining hegemony. As a Russian political scientist aptly analyzed, “the Russian political class is incapable of taking the independence of CIS countries seriously”73 The concept of a “near abroad” as well as the administrative

69 Odling-Smee (2004, p. 13). On such “grand bargain” proposals of the early 1990s and responses see Bierling (1998, spec. pp. 117–124). 70 Kozyrev (1994, p. 63). 71 Andrei Kozyrev, quoted from Allison (2013, p. 122). 72 Boris Yeltsin, quoted from White House (1996, pp. 3–4). 73 Andrei Piontkovsky, quoted from The Economist (1997a).

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decision to place relations with post-Soviet states under the auspices of the Kremlin, while the Foreign Ministry was responsible for states beyond, were early indicators.74 Russia’s claimed guardian role for Russians abroad and its involvement in armed conflicts in the region, as in Moldova 1992, Tajikistan 1992, and Georgia from 1992 to 1994, came to define policy. Moscow sought international recognition of its role as an exclusive guarantor of regional order as no one else “can replace our peace-making efforts in this specific post-Soviet space,” yet to no avail.75 A 1995 presidential decree unequivocally stated that the CIS region was “first of all Russia’s sphere of influence.”76 Though Russia struggled to define its overall new role in the 1990s, it clearly viewed the post-Soviet space as an exclusive zone of influence where the sovereign rights of other states were conditioned on its own national interests.77 Russia’s take on regional order foreshadowed future troubles. Moscow aimed at limiting its neighbors’ sovereignty. This was incompatible with Western principles of sovereign independence. Washington from the beginning rejected the Commonwealth of Independent States as frame of reference, conceptualized the area as the Newly Independent States (NIS), opened embassies, and offered assistance with institutional reform processes.78 Post-Soviet states themselves also viewed Russian efforts to exert and formalize prerogatives with increasing dismay.79 Seen from Moscow, however, Western outreach initiatives to the states in its neighborhood were undue interferences in its area of privileged interests. In the words of a Russian commentator, the United States was “actively creating centres of power blocking and opposing Russia … [which] is a sick man and its heritage is being divided like that of the Ottoman empire.”80 In the immediate post-Cold War period, reclaiming legacy Soviet WMD stocks was a key priority, which meant that Western policy toward the

74 See Aust (2019, p. 120). 75 Andrei Kozyrev at the UN in 1993, quoted from Williams (1993). See also Litera

(1994/95, p. 50) and Renz (2018, pp. 126–127). 76 Quoted from Stent (2019, p. 186). 77 See Renz (2018, pp. 36–40; 124–134), Hill and Jewett (1994), Litera (1994/95),

Allison (2013, pp. 120–149), and Light (2003). 78 See Stent (2015, pp. 18–19). 79 See e.g. The Economist (1997a). 80 Quoted from The Economist (1998a).

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post-Soviet space was still heavily contingent on relations with Russia.81 Yet the more Western order building would encroach on Russia’s claimed sphere of influence, the more difficult relations promised to get. The same was true for Russia’s quest to be recognized as a leading power in Europe. It would quickly become clear that NATO’s post-Cold War transformation and development trajectory was seriously at odds with Moscow’s self-defined core needs. NATO responded to the end of Cold War hostilities with the creation of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council in 1991 as an inclusive dialogue and cooperation mechanism. Sooner rather than later, however, NATO enlargement became a pressing issue. The worst-case scenario from the Russian point of view was one in which Moscow ended up sidelined and isolated in the post-Cold War regional order. But when Yeltsin visited Poland for the first time as president in summer 1993, he seemingly okayed NATO accession visions.82 Kozyrev seconded by declaring that it was “up to Poland to decide and up to NATO to decide.”83 But almost instantaneously Russian officials backpedaled under pressure from opposition critics.84 In September 1993 Boris Yeltsin addressed Russian discontents with potential NATO enlargement in a letter to Bill Clinton. He reaffirmed a core point of the 1990 Charter of Paris, namely that all European states are sovereign and free to make their own choices, and was sensitive to the “by no means nostalgic sentiments of the East Europeans toward past ‘cooperation’ within the framework of the Warsaw Pact.” Yet Yeltsin posited that a “pan-European security system” would create indivisible security, while any continuation of NATO would perpetuate a bloc constellation with insiders and outsiders, which would be seen “as a sort of neo-isolation of our country in diametric opposition to its natural admission into Euro-Atlantic space.” He also alleged that enlargement was contrary to the “spirit” of the 2+4 treaty on German unification. Besides, he argued that Russia should have a special, privileged relationship with NATO, while Eastern European affairs could be sorted out jointly:

81 See Lapidus (2002, pp. 128–129). 82 See Perlez (1993). 83 Andrei Kozyrev, quoted from Perlez (1993). 84 See Cohen (1993).

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In general, we advocate that relations between our country and NATO be a few degrees warmer than those between the Alliance and Eastern Europe. Russia-NATO rapprochement, including through cooperation in the area of peacemaking, should proceed at a faster rate. It would be possible to involve the East Europeans in this process as well.

Though he professed openness that “it should probably not be ruled out that even we would join NATO” at some point, for the moment the goal was to avert NATO enlargement.85 For obvious reasons, a Russian-NATO bilateral grand bargain that put the ambitions and needs of Central and Eastern Europeans on the back burner was inacceptable from a Western point of view. It would have sent the wrong signal to those states in the midst of a far-reaching transformation who deserved support. It addition, the proposal ignored time constraints and was at odds with the Western vision of a Europe whole and free. Despite Yeltsin’s prior promise that Russia would not block membership of former Warsaw Pact states, US diplomats in Moscow assessed that it was a “neuralgic” matter for the Russians: “They expect to end up on the wrong side of a new division of Europe if any decision is made quickly.”86 Obviously, there was no easy way out. At the end of the day, Moscow’s metric to measure the success of its westward reform course was whether it helped post-Soviet Russia to become the stable, prosperous, modern, successful, and respected great power it desired to be. It did not take long to see that things were going in the wrong direction. Russia struggled territorially, politically, economically, socially, and ontologically as a great power. Despite an initial enthusiasm for adapting to and joining the liberal West, Moscow eventually grudgingly accommodated to an expanding US-led Western international order. Russia did not get back on its feet in power political terms in the 1990s, and its options to prevent developments it considered detrimental to its interests shrunk even further. By the end of the decade it had become clear that alignment with the West had not provided the spoils and great power status Moscow had envisioned, while the US-led liberal international order appeared antithetical to Russia’s vital needs. But all Moscow could do at the time was to accommodate with resentment.

85 All quotes from US Department of State (1993a). 86 US Department of State (1993b, p. 4).

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Opportunity Structure and Strategic Response Russia was undergoing a dual transformation of its political and economic system, yet struggling to get ahead as hoped and envisioned. Despite the professed intent to turn to market economics and democracy, neither materialized. Post-Soviet Russia chartered its course into the 1990s without democratic traditions to lean on, without a firm reformist consensus across the political spectrum, and without an adequate constitutional baseline. This burdened its future development. Not receiving the necessary support for his economic and political reforms, Yeltsin in September 1993 dissolved parliament and decreed a constitutional referendum as well as parliamentary elections. The tug-of-war between the executive and the legislature led to violence and the siege and shelling of parliament. The crisis ended with the arrests of opposing lawmakers, while Yeltsin remained in power without being held to account.87 In December 1993 Russians accepted the new constitution and elected their new parliament with the Duma and the Federation Council as its two chambers, yet the stage was set for persistent executive-legislative conflicts and an ongoing presidential power grab. “Hardware” deficits of weak institutions were compounded by “software” problems, such as the lack of a democratic mindset among political elites and the lack of respect for the rule of law. Informal power structures of Soviet elites translated into a post-Soviet political and economic oligarchy; Boris Yeltsin’s political style aggravated the situation. The so-called Kremlin-family network including Yeltsin’s daughter and close aides was at the helm of power.88 It was not only the establishment of law-based democratic governance that proved challenging from the get-go, but also the creation and management of a functional federative state. Chechnya was as a major flashpoint from the early 1990s. After a history of forced integration in the Russian empire and large-scale brutalization under Stalin, the collapse of the Soviet Union breathed new life into Chechen struggles for independence. Unable to resolve the matter politically, Yeltsin decided to crush local pro-independence forces militarily, preempt other secessionist impulses, and defend Russia’s territorial status quo in 1994. The Kremlin viewed Chechen separatism as a threat to the very existence of the entire 87 See Sokolov and Kirilenko (2013). 88 For an excellent analysis of Russia’s troubled political reform path in the 1990s see

Mommsen (2003).

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Russian Federation.89 What was expected to be a brief campaign to bring an unruly region in line turned into a brutal, drawn-out war. It highlighted Russia’s manifold weaknesses and humiliated both the military and the state. The Russian military employed large-scale violence and scorched-earth tactics, leading to the deaths of an estimated 30,000 to 100,000 civilians.90 Though the Chechen capital Grozny was destroyed in a merciless war of attrition, Russia could not impose itself politically. In 1996, with no other face-saving exit in sight, a peace deal was sealed that postponed the resolution of the Russian-Chechen conflict and granted maximum autonomy. In effect, Chechnya remained “a part of Russia in name only” when the Russian army retreated in defeat.91 Warfighting in Chechnya both laid bare and aggravated Russia’s weakness in military and political terms. Demoralized and ill-treated conscripts faced the unhappy lot of military service with insufficient housing, low and delayed pay, malnutrition, equipment shortages, and poor leadership; suicide rates and defections skyrocketed. After the cease-fire in Chechnya, which de facto sealed Russia’s defeat, many soldiers came back traumatized and devastated from the horrors of a brutal war to the frosty welcome of peacetime desperation in Russia. As the New York Times accurately put it at the time, the Russian military was among the victims of the First Chechen War: “Once the invincible protector of the mighty Soviet Union, Russia’s military has become the atrophied symbol of its loss and shame.”92 Even Russia’s defense minister assessed that not “a single other army in the world is in such a catastrophic state.”93 Russia’s military capabilities were in horrific shape indeed. Though defense spending as a percentage of GDP ranged broadly between 3 and 4% per year during the 1990s, funding decreased massively due to GDP contraction. In absolute numbers, defense spending dropped from 43.6 billion USD in 1992 to 23.7 billion in 1995 to a historic low of 14.5 billion in 1998.94 Procurement spending shrank by about 90% over the

89 See Jelzin (2000, pp. 58–60). 90 Number from Higgins (2019). 91 Specter (1996). On the Russian-Chechen conflict see Halbach (2018). 92 Specter (1997). 93 Pavel Grachev, quoted from Erlanger (1994). 94 SIPRI (2022). Russian military spending in constant 2020 USD.

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course of the 1990s.95 In addition, the Russian military had to come to grips with post-Soviet realities. This included securing dispersed (nuclear) material, re-integrating units returning from duty in Eastern Europe, and divorcing the Soviet Red Army into national military structures. The turmoil of post-Soviet adaptation left its marks on the Russian military, which was broken in organizational terms with readiness deficits, low morale, depleted units, an outdated force structure, and an overblown officer corps.96 Moscow’s prior military might was no more. The war also highlighted political shortcomings. The threat of secessionism and the use of massive violence to quell it underlined the political vulnerability and integrative weakness of the Russian state. That Moscow could neither settle the conflict politically nor impose itself militarily reflected its atrophied strength. Taken together, the war led to maximum humiliation amidst Russia’s efforts to redefine itself as a functional, capable, unitary post-Soviet state. “Few great powers have ever looked as helpless as Russia does today in Chechnya,” as an op-ed captured the sentiment.97 While violence over Chechnya was the most visible crisis of Russian statehood, many more played out at the federal level. Under Yeltsin governance was “characterized by a sometimes chaotic process of decentralization and a ‘sovereignty parade’ of autonomous republics and autonomous regional entities,” eroding Moscow’s authority in the country.98 Moreover, the weakness of the central government came at a time of fundamental economic and social change. Authorities in the regions ignored or counteracted laws and regulations from Moscow and took matters in their own hands to deal with economic and social issues, for example. Some regions withheld their tax contributions to the federal budget on grounds that they would not receive resources from the central government either. As Kathryn Stoner-Weiss shows, regional freewheeling worsened over the

95 Number from Shleifer and Treisman (2005, p. 153). 96 For a summary of post-Cold War challenges see US Defense Intelligence Agency

(2017, pp. 9–13). 97 New York Times (1996). 98 Halbach (2018, p. 7).

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course of the 1990s and proved to be a massive impediment for economic reforms and the creation of a functional Russian state.99 Russia’s aspired economic transformation from communism to capitalism took place in this very context. A quick and radical “shock therapy” approach was hoped to unleash economic potential quickly and flank the development of democracy. Others had cautioned that solid institutions needed to be built first, but the opposite view won the day. Capitalism and private enterprise would come first, and reliable institutions would be built along the way.100 It turned out as a highly problematic approach. The privatization of state-owned enterprises under political conditions defined by lawlessness and informal power structures led to the plundering of wealth by old elites. A new class of oligarchs emerged who secured control of former state-owned companies for a fraction of their real value. Soon they would also wield significant political power in postSoviet Russia. Hence, economic liberalization did not create a functioning free market economy, but an oligarchic system that yielded immense riches for former cadres, stifled structural reforms, and deprived the vast majority of Russians of opportunities. Marshall I. Goldman describes the self-enrichment of the well-connected few as the “piratization of Russia.”101 Philipp Ther speaks of a “privatization of privatization” with oligarchs in charge.102 For Odd Arne Westad it was the “raid of the century.”103 The confluence of weak political and judicial institutions and an oligarchic economic system reinforced one another. When the Yeltsin administration put forth a “loans-for-shares” program for the next phase of privatization in 1995, it was rigged in favor of Kremlin-linked banks who secured assets for below-market price and allowed the oligarchs expand their grip.104 In return, they helped secure Yeltsin’s reelection bid. Afterward, the political influence of the oligarchs was a pervasive, 99 See Stoner-Weiss (2004, pp. 130–172). See also European Parliament Secretariat’s Task Force on Enlargement (1999, p. 7). 100 On these debates, shock therapy reforms, and their implications see Lloyd (1999). For Yeltsin’s view on shock therapy reforms and the forces of restoration see Yeltsin (1995, pp. 145–181). 101 Goldman (2003). 102 Ther (2018, p. 102; 113). Own translation. 103 Westad (2018, p. 622). 104 See Stanley (1996).

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non-negotiable factor in Russian politics: they crafted benign legislation, sponsored parliamentarians and administration officials, pushed self-serving tax deals, and protected themselves from competition. The group of most influential oligarchs, commonly known as the “seven bank barons,” even self-characterized as the “new ‘Politburo’” during the reign of an increasingly weak and illness-stricken Yeltsin.105 A push to reinvigorate Russia’s liberal economic reform agenda from 1997 did not yield success. In fact, the country was caught in a vicious cycle, as an IMF analysis assessed. Oligarchic capitalism was made possible by the weakness of the Russian institutions, reinforced deficits in governance and regulation, and incentivized ever more oligarchic predatory practices.106 Russia turned into one of the most unequal societies worldwide under these conditions. On the one hand, it generated fantastic riches for a select few.107 On the other, the Russian economy and average Russians encountered serious and sustained hardship. GDP plummeted over the course of the 1990s from 517.96 billion USD in 1991 to 195.91 billion USD in 1999. GDP decline was particularly harsh in the early years, with −14.5% in 1992, −8.7% in 1993, and −12.6% in 1994. With the exception of modest growth in 1997, Russia saw negative growth until 1999. In 1999, Russia’s economy was smaller than Austria’s.108 In August 1998, Russia experienced a severe financial crisis, which led to yet another collapse of the ruble and a partial default. The Economist described this as a “financial Chernobyl.”109 From December 1991 to December 2001, the Russian ruble lost 99% of its value against the US dollar.110

105 See Mommsen (2003, pp. 56–70; quote from p. 68). Own translation. See also Lloyd (1999). 106 See Odling-Smee (2004, pp. 5–6). For details on the various types of oligarchs, their predatory practices, and the criminalization of the Russian economy see Goldman (2003) and Galeotti (2019). 107 See Novokmet et al. (2018). For an analysis of the dysfunctionality and effects of Russia’s double transformation of politics and economics and comparisons with other countries see Ther (2018, pp. 86–175). 108 World Bank (2022). GDP in current USD. 109 The Economist (1998b). On the Russian financial crisis see also The Economist

(1998c); on the enduring difficulties of Russia’s banking system see The Economist (2000a). 110 Shleifer and Treisman (2005, pp. 158–159).

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For the population at large, the 1990s were a period of upheaval and hardship. Unemployment and poverty were major issues. Per capita GDP dropped 40% from 1992 to the end of 1998 and stood at roughly 20% of the EU average.111 Hyperinflation destroyed savings and consumption opportunities. A basket of goods worth 100 rubles in December 1990 cost 1,602,658 rubles nine years later.112 Life expectancy declined from a high point of 69 years in 1988 to a record low of about 64 in 1994, and it would take until 2011 to bounce back to the 1988 level. While the death rate spiked in the first half of the 1990s, birth rates fell by more than 50% between 1987 and 1999 before a trend reversal set in.113 There were severe obstacles for market economic reform and holistic recovery. A 1999 briefing for the European parliament spoke of an “intimidating list” of factors that hampered Russia’s prospects in the foreseeable future: The most commonly cited problems are chronic macroeconomic instability, poor corporate governance, lack of effective and independent legal infrastructure, lack of clear property rights, rampant corruption and increasingly powerful organized crime, poor infrastructure, prevalence of non-cash transactions, bankrupt banks, absence of land code, red tape and inadequate management skills.114

Since Russia had struggled with structural economic reforms throughout the decade and not lived up to IMF commitments before, negotiations over new financial assistance became even more delicate and reform needs even more painful. Prior goodwill had been exhausted, and the IMF was adamant to enforce strict conditionalities for appropriated funds.115 While other transforming countries enjoyed economic success, Russia did not get ahead. Russian politics was persistently on the verge of crisis and Yeltsin compounded it. On the one hand, this had to do with executive-legislative wrangling, informal power networks, and the succession of political 111 European Parliament Secretariat’s Task Force on Enlargement (1999, p. 8). 112 Goldman (2003, p. 14). 113 World Bank (2022). 114 European Parliament Secretariat’s Task Force on Enlargement (1999, p. 9). 115 On structural reform deficits and IMF’s posture toward Russia see European

Parliament Secretariat’s Task Force on Enlargement (1999, pp. 9–10; 12–13).

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upheavals escalating in the late 1990s.116 As the Economist commented when Yevgeny Primakov took over as the third prime minister in 1998: Russia was politically “shipwrecked,” yet the new prime minister was “at least a presentable face for Russia: neither drunk, nor ill, nor a political amateur, and with a modicum of administrative ability.”117 On the other hand, democratic processes increasingly became exercises in makebelieve. Yeltsin installed Vladimir Putin as prime minister in 1999 and handed off the presidency just a few months later. A massive campaign to rally the public for Putin as presidential material and the newly founded, Kremlin-devised party (which would morph into “United Russia”) in the December 1999 Duma elections paved the way. It catapulted Putin from an unknown KGB apparatchik to a figure with majority public support and political weight.118 By the end of the decade, there were few illusions left that Russia was joining the liberal West. The country had not moved toward democracy and market economics in the 1990s, but to a curious mixture of unaccountable presidential power wielding, weak statehood, oligarchic predatory capitalism, informal power structures, and an increasingly managed public opinion. Having started out with hopes to shoot Russia to a prosperous and democratic future, Yeltsin’s record was one of failure.119 In his autobiography Yeltsin recollected what the 1990s looked like for Russians: “They expected paradise on earth, […] but instead they got inflation, unemployment, economic shock and political crisis.”120 It showed in his approval ratings, which collapsed from 81% in 1991 to a meager 8% when he stepped down in December 1999.121 More problematic was that the experience of the 1990s gave democracy and market economics a bad name in Russia, even though objectively the country had neither. The 1990s were a decade of multiple traumatic losses for Russia. With the country’s domestic order in continuous turmoil, its basic functionality as a federation and state at the brink, its military in shambles, its economy in tatters, and society exhausted from a decade of shattered 116 See Mommsen (2003, pp. 74–86) and The Economist (1999a). 117 The Economist (1998d). 118 On Putin’s managed rise to the presidency see Mommsen (2003, pp. 86–106). 119 See The Economist (2000b). 120 Boris Yeltsin, quoted from Berger (2007). 121 Numbers from Treisman (2011, p. 590).

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hopes and dreams, international power projection capabilities had atrophied. While Moscow had been at the helm of the international system with only the United States as a peer competitor for decades during the Cold War, post-Soviet Russia had no functioning developmental model at hand. The country found itself at the receiving end of Western aid and advice, yet still stuck in a persistent state of hardship. It did not fit into the mold of a stakeholder in the emerging liberal international order but could not escape it either. The most immediate discontent surrounded NATO enlargement. Moscow had made clear early on that it objected the alliance’s growth, after all. To reconcile the perceived need to signal openness to countries in transition with the desire to reduce pressure, Western leaders came up with the “Partnership for Peace” (PfP) program. The PfP was open to all states in Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia, and was designed as a format to foster cooperation between NATO and partner countries. When US Secretary of State Warren Christopher briefed Boris Yeltsin in October 1993 on the proposal that would postpone enlargement decisions, Yeltsin was enthusiastic. He emphatically applauded the “idea of partnership for all and not new membership for some,” the US briefing notes summarize, which would guarantee that Russia did not find itself “in a second class status.”122 The step did not resolve the matter, however. At its summit in Brussels in early 1994, NATO affirmed its openness for new members and introduced the PfP program. This would serve as an interlude to give all involved time to devise a process and work out issues. While the PfP was designed as an inclusive cooperation format, Russia hesitated to sign on. Though demanding an inclusive architecture, Russia specifically envisioned an exclusive arrangement with special recognition for itself, not equal treatment as one among all other Central and Eastern European countries. The June 1994 negotiations between Foreign Minister Kozyrev and NATO foreign ministers made clear that Russia would only join the PfP if granted exclusive special relations with NATO.123 But resentment built, as evidenced by tense exchanges at a December 1994 summit of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Yeltsin warned that Russian-Western relations were headed for a “cold peace”

122 US Department of State (1993c, p. 9). 123 See Stent (1999, pp. 214–216).

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due to NATO enlargement, whereas Clinton characterized NATO as the cornerstone of European security, affirmed the alliance’s openness, and denied any outside country a veto over its future course.124 Russian-NATO relations were addressed in several high-level meetings in 1995 and 1996. When US President Clinton was in Moscow in 1995, Yeltsin reiterated Russian concerns regarding NATO enlargement, claiming to “see nothing but humiliation for Russia if you proceed. […] It’s a new form of encirclement if the one surviving Cold War bloc expands right up to the borders of Russia.”125 Yeltsin suggested to postpone enlargement questions until 1999 or 2000 and called for a pan-European security structure. He insinuated that the United States was the source of all troubles and the instigator of NATO enlargement plans: France was against it, Yeltsin claimed, while Germany and Great Britain were “under your influence” so that Helmut Kohl and John Major tried to sell US plans to him.126 It reflected a long-held and increasingly prominent belief among Russian elites, namely that the United States was denying Russia its “rightful” place, while (Western) Europeans would be more sympathetic and accommodating. Another misconception was that Russia deemed itself in a position to authorize or veto enlargement plans. “But for me to agree to the borders of NATO expanding toward those of Russia—that would constitute a betrayal on my part of the Russian people,” Yeltsin told Clinton.127 Though the US and NATO allies tried hard to reach a consensual approach, they could not and would not infringe the sovereignty of the Central and Eastern Europeans. NATO enlargement depended on the openness of the alliance for new members and the choices of candidates, not Russian authorization. Yet such rhetoric reflected Russia’s self-image as a rule-maker and explains a pattern that shaped Russian-Western relations over the 1990s: Russia saw the West obliged to compensate it for agreeing to matters it had no prerogatives in.128

124 Sciolino (1994) and Williams (1994). 125 Unspecified US Government Agency (1995, p. 6). 126 Unspecified US Government Agency (1995, pp. 6–7). 127 Unspecified US Government Agency (1995, p. 7). 128 For summary analyses of European/transatlantic and Russian views on NATO’s

post-Cold War development and purposes see, e.g., Stent (1999, pp. 212–232) and Smith (2008).

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Clinton worked Yeltsin to get the relationship on a constructive track. At their meeting in May 1995 he made clear that NATO enlargement was basically a done deal, but that a discussion process well into 1996 would allow NATO and Russia to reach an understanding. NATO set up the PfP as an inclusive instrument to integrate Russia and others in a permanent dialogue and cooperation scheme. At the same time, it gave the alliance time to reflect on the “how” and “why” questions for enlargement, as Clinton explained, before turning to matters of “who” and “when” later. Seen from the US, there were no policies designed to exclude Russia. However, Russia stood on the sidelines and would not embrace the opportunities laid out for it. As Clinton emphasized: “I want a clear partnership for you with the West that protects the rightful role of Russia and respects your security. […] And I want the U.S. to make sure all the doors are open to you. But you have to walk through the doors that we open for you.”129 Russian misgivings would not change NATO’s general openness to new members or the gradual process designed for orderly enlargement, as Clinton pointed out: “Let me be clear, Boris: I’m not bargaining with you. […] You can say you don’t want it [NATO enlargement] speeded up—I’ve told you we’re not going to do that—but don’t ask us to slow down either, or we’ll just have to keep saying no.”130 The evolutionary road to enlargement was a rather short detour, and the West would not give Russia a veto over its outcome. Disagreements increased even further as NATO transitioned into peacemaking and peacekeeping roles. For Russia an enlarged NATO was acceptable if it lost its qualities as a military alliance. Yeltsin thus emphasized a preference for the OSCE to serve as “the principal mechanism for developing a new security order in Europe,” while “NATO should evolve into a political organization.”131 In reality, the violent collapse of Yugoslavia pushed the Atlantic Alliance in the opposite direction, moving from collective defense to “out of area” missions. While the war in Bosnia had cast shadows over post-Cold War Europe since 1992, the United States and NATO stepped up their involvement after the massacre of Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serbs killed more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in a so-called UN safe haven in July 1995.

129 Unspecified US Government Agency (1995, pp. 7–9; quote from p. 9). 130 Unspecified US Government Agency (1995, p. 10). 131 US Department of State (1995, p. 5).

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NATO’s reinvention as an operational military alliance triggered harsh yet contradictory responses in Moscow. Foreign Minister Kozyrev took a combative stance vis-à-vis Strobe Talbott, a leading US State Department official, to repudiate notions of shared interests: “its’s bad enough you people tell us what you’re going to do whether we like it or not. Don’t add insult to injury by telling us that it’s in our interests to obey your orders.”132 Yeltsin described NATO airstrikes in September 1995 on Bosnian Serbs—undertaken in response to attacks on UN safe havens— fact-free as “genocide against the Serbs,” although Russia contributed to NATO peacekeeping after the Dayton Agreement ended the war in December 1995.133 But Yeltsin was pounded by communists and nationalists at home who lamented a sell-out of national interests.134 Overall, Russia’s posture reflected competing sentiments ranging from the desire to play an active role as a major power to antipathy to NATO’s engagement. Misgivings about NATO’s rebirth as a warfighting alliance aside, Russia’s parallel campaign in Chechnya (1994–1996) highlighted the divergence between the two in terms of values and operating logic. While the West supported an evolutionary reinterpretation of international law to upgrade human rights, Russia viewed state sovereignty as a shield against outside interventions of any kind. While the United States and others had stuck to the line that Chechnya was a Russian internal affair early in the conflict, public rebukes did become louder over time.135 In March 1995, the EU postponed its Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with Russia due to human rights concerns, but overall the West held back for fear of undermining the pro-Western leadership in Moscow at home.136 Elaine Sciolino summed up the political dilemma succinctly: “The underlying message is this: If not the Yeltsin-Kozyrev team, then what?”137 A European diplomat characterized the situation in

132 Andrei Kozyrev in conversation with Strobe Talbott, quoted from Stent (2015, p. 42). Italics in original. 133 Boris Yeltsin, quoted from Adomeit (2007, pp. 6–7). 134 See Stevenson (1995). 135 See Gordon (1994) and Greenhouse (1995). 136 For Western responses see Erlanger (1995). 137 Sciolino (1995a).

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emphatic terms: “It’s hate the sin but love the sinner.”138 On the Russian side misgivings about any form of criticism grew nonetheless. Kozyrev in 1995 lambasted the EU “unjustifiably dragged out” trade matters over Chechnya, which Russia deemed a separate matter and none of the West’s business.139 Going forward, similar Russian-Western tensions were programmed to resurface. Reaching a consensus over NATO enlargement would not become easier under such conditions but more pressing. Demands from Central and Eastern Europe for integration into Western institutions just became louder in 1994 and 1995,140 while negotiations for a new security architecture between Russia and the West dragged on in 1996 and 1997. Russian Defense Minister Igor Rodionov rebuked NATO enlargement plans on grounds they would “sharply change the geopolitical situation in Europe” and that it was “very difficult to convince our public that NATO is a peaceful organization with good purposes only” in September 1996.141 The core point, however, was not fears of an enlarged NATO in traditional military terms, but zero-sum-game thinking on the part of Russian elites. According to the understanding that dominated in Moscow, “a bigger NATO must inevitably mean a diminished Russia,” and Yeltsin reproached the alliance for alleged efforts to “squeeze Russia out of Europe.”142 The tone in the enlargement debate became more edgy after Yevgeny Primakov succeeded Kozyrev as foreign minister in early 1996. Primakov made the “broken promise” argument a central line in his dealings with the West. He had the foreign ministry compile archival material on meeting notes with Western leaders from US Secretary of State James Baker to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to British Prime Minister John Major as ammunition against NATO enlargement.143 Potential perceptions or assumptions aside, no promise or legal commitment was made to rule out NATO enlargement.144 Gorbachev confirmed it. He even called 138 Sciolino (1995b). 139 Andrei Kozyrev, quoted from Erlanger (1995). 140 See Perlez (1995). 141 Igor Rodionov, quoted from Shenon (1996). 142 The Economist (1997b). 143 See Primakov (2015). 144 See Kramer (2009).

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it “totally absurd” to suggest he should have elicited a no-enlargement pledge from NATO at a time when the Warsaw Pact still existed, though he still described the alliance’s openness to new members as a violation of the “spirit” of these negotiations.145 On the Russian side resentment and suspicion took hold, suggesting that the West had tricked Moscow, would disregard Russia’s “legitimate” interests, and take advantage of its temporary weakness. Despite the bitterness, Russia could not prevent NATO enlargement and opted for grudging accommodation. As Yeltsin explicated in a meeting with President Clinton in Helsinki in March 1997: Our position has not changed. It remains a mistake for NATO to move eastward. But I need to take steps to alleviate the negative consequences of this for Russia. I am prepared to enter into an agreement with NATO not because I want to but because it is a forced step. There is no other solution for today.146

As yet another tell-all sign of the Russian-Western disconnect, Yeltsin proposed to Clinton to at least strike a secret “verbal, gentlemen’s agreement” that post-Soviet states would be off-limits for any future NATO enlargement.147 Clinton rejected the proposal and explained its flaws. Though Russia desired veto rights or self-binding commitments by the US, any such move, as Clinton put it, would “violate the whole spirit of NATO” and totally upend “the vision that I think you and I share of an undivided Europe with Russia as a major part of it.”148 Though Clinton posited that Yeltsin accidently invoked imperial claims, it was no mistake: Russia insisted on a great power role in Europe and saw itself as the exclusive shaper of the post-Soviet space. Negotiations for the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act reflected Moscow’s effort to make the best of a weak hand. With openness to new members a non-negotiable given, Foreign Minister Primakov’s goals were, put bluntly, “to neuter NATO as a defence alliance and win veto rights, in practice if not in name, over its decisions and membership.”149 145 Gorbatschow (2015, pp. 371–372). Own translation. 146 Boris Yeltsin, quoted from White House (1997, p. 2). 147 Boris Yeltsin, quoted from White House (1997, p. 3). 148 Bill Clinton, quoted from White House (1997, p. 6; for details see pp. 3–7). 149 The Economist (1997b).

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It was an impossible proposition. The May 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act acknowledged Russian interests without constraining the alliance. NATO would not forward deploy nuclear weapons and not station sizable combat troops in the new member states on a permanent basis. The document also pointed to adapting the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which was in Russia’s interest. Yet the alliance did not commit to anything that would hamper political unity or military effectiveness. The new NATO-Russia Joint Permanent Council gave Moscow privileged diplomatic access but no veto. In addition, the Founding Act reiterated commitments to international norms in line with the UN Charter and OSCE documents, particularly respect for all states’ sovereignty and independence to make their own security choices.150 It was clear the Founding Act would not be the end of RussianWestern tensions over the future of the alliance. The Economist assessed that “[s]wallowing NATO’s plans for expansion […] left Russia with new moral credit in the eyes of the West for having manfully if grudgingly suffered the inconvenience.”151 At home, however, Yeltsin faced harsh criticism. Communist leader Gennadi Zyuganov slandered the Founding Act as “the treaty of Versailles” and reproached the President had “betrayed Russia’s national interest.”152 But even Western observers conceded that NATO essentially got all it wanted: It is Russia’s second surrender. Seven years ago the then Soviet Union admitted that it could no longer dominate Eastern Europe. This week Russia admitted that several countries once in its sphere of influence could join what had been for a half-century a hostile coalition, the West’s NATO alliance.153

Seen from the West, everything was done to balance out Russia’s legitimate interests with those of the other sovereign states in Central and Eastern Europe. Moscow viewed things differently. Margareta Mommsen notes that hostility to NATO enlargement solidified into a “patriotic consensus” of all political factions in Russia, which had not existed

150 See NATO (1997) and NATO and the Russian Federation (1997). 151 The Economist (1997a). 152 Gennadi Zyuganov, quoted from Stanley (1997). 153 The Economist (1997c).

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before.154 As Joseph Black details in an extensive survey of the Russian discourse, opposition to NATO enlargement went well beyond political elites.155 Overall, it was seen as a major defeat that had been years in the making and sowed the seeds for enduring anti-Western resentment.156 When the first enlargement finally happened in 1999, NATO-Russian relations were mired in yet another and even more corrosive crisis over peacemaking in Kosovo. NATO set out to stop violence by the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic against the majority Albanian population of the semi-autonomous region of Kosovo. Seen from Moscow, the Kosovo campaign added insult to prior injuries. Russia’s insistence on special consultation mechanisms with NATO turned out as ineffective to shape the course of the alliance. Even worse was that NATO chose to use force without a UN mandate. In doing so, the West deprived Russia of the one formal pathway it had to forestall a NATO intervention, namely its veto right in the Security Council. De facto, Moscow was incapable to deter or prevent Western military action even against one of its traditional allies. Kosovo exposed Russia’s waning influence, and angry nationalists depicted it as a dangerous precedent for US and NATO power wielding.157 As seen from the West, Milosevic’s aggression in Kosovo had to be dealt with and Russia was “chronically nonconstructive” in the effort, as a White House official described it.158 Russian officials were furious, but their gestures highlighted helplessness. Then Prime Minister Primakov aborted a scheduled trip to Washington over the Atlantic when NATO launched military strikes against Serbia—a trip to discuss, among others, Russia’s dire financial situation. The same can be said about the bellicose rhetoric coming from Moscow over Kosovo.159 Russia’s tremendous influence in the old days had been replaced by nostalgia for its lost great power stature and anger toward the West. As Russian officials viewed it, the war over Kosovo had nothing to do with human rights. Instead, Yeltsin described it as “an opportunity for the Americans to steer North-Atlantic solidarity in 154 Mommsen (2003, p. 155). Own translation. 155 See Black (2000). 156 See Plekhanov (1999). 157 See Light et al. (2000, pp. 79–81). 158 Quoted from Norris (2005, p. 15; in broader terms see pp. 1–23). 159 See, e.g., Broder (1999), Lippman (1999), and The Economist (1999b).

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their preferred direction” and isolate Russia, which before had enjoyed ever warmer relations with France and Germany.160 He charged that “the US worried about human rights, democracy and freedom” only because “they feared Europeans’ growing autonomy in economic, political, and moral terms.”161 Furthermore, he claimed that “the entire postwar order collapsed” due to NATO’s war against Serbia, which “broke all norms of international law.”162 Despite such grievances, Russia acquiesced soon thereafter. Unable to prevent NATO’s intervention, it came around to supporting the postconflict stabilization mission. To make a point about its own independent role, Russian forces seized Pristina airport ahead of schedule and without consultation with NATO forces in summer 1999.163 But even such a stunt just underlined the country’s overall weakness. It was orchestrated by the armed forces and authorized by Boris Yeltsin “as a clear gesture of independence” in the face of “total obstruction” Russia had faced in his view.164 But Russia was mired in too many crises and saw pragmatism as best option to deal with the West, even if it felt shunned and increasingly blamed the West for its loss of influence in Europe and the world.165 Russian-Western conflicts over Kosovo also accentuated another unpleasant fact, namely that not only Western actions, but also UN deliberations increasingly tied state sovereignty to domestic humanitarian concerns. Such a conditionalization of sovereignty was anathema to Russia, which viewed state rights as absolute.166 Having fought a brutal war in Chechnya in the mid-1990s—as it was interpreted in Moscow: for the survival of the state—made notions of conditionalized sovereignty acute concerns, not least since Russia got involved in a second round of fighting in Chechnya in 1999. Some of the most fiery responses to NATO’s Kosovo campaign only become explicable in this light. Boris Fyodorov for example, who had served as finance minister from 1993 to 1994, insisted that the intervention in Kosovo was “a preparation for a 160 Jelzin (2000, pp. 108–115; quote from p. 114). Own translation. 161 Jelzin (2000, pp. 246–247). Own translation. 162 Jelzin (2000, p. 243; on Kosovo overall see pp. 243–256). Own translation. 163 See Lloyd (1999). 164 Jelzin (2000, p. 256). Own translation. 165 See Smith (2008, pp. 4–5). 166 See MacFarlane (2003, pp. 200–203).

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NATO raid on Russia.”167 “Today Yugoslavia and tomorrow Russia!” was how Yeltsin described the outrage of some in Russia, meaning that his administration’s openness to the United States and the West was seen as foolish.168 Yeltsin rejected that human rights norms could take precedence over state rights and vowed to steer clear of any “guilt syndrome” the West tried to impose on Russia for legitimate self-defense needs in Chechnya.169 Russia could not prevent NATO enlargement but clearly resented it; Russia rejected NATO’s transformation into an operational military alliance but had no means to thwart it; Russia despised NATO’s military roles in Bosnia and, above all, Kosovo but could not stop it despite formal veto powers in the UN Security Council. As Yeltsin assessed in hindsight, to become an equal peer shaper of the European security order Russia would have to join NATO, which was not feasible any longer. Alternatively, it would have to build up a strong defense system of its own, which was inhibited by American and NATO attempts to “undermine” Russia’s influence even in its neighborhood. He left it to his successor in the Kremlin to solve the problem.170 Seen from Moscow, the postCold War European security architecture was nothing like the one Russia wanted, needed, and thought it deserved. Russia also found no satisfactory place for itself in the global political and economic orders. It kept invoking a multipolar world. Under Foreign Minister Primakov, Moscow tried to resuscitate great power, multivector diplomacy, and engage with non-European powers like China, Iraq, or Iran. But instead of aiding multipolarity, Russian diplomacy served economic ends by promoting sales of weapons or nuclear technology and was of limited success to grow Russian influence. Russia repeatedly came under pressure by the United States and the West for arms sales and siding with rogue states.171 Yeltsin reproached that the United States attempted

167 Boris Fyodorov, quoted from Lloyd (1999). 168 Jelzin (2000, pp. 247–249; quote from p. 247). Own translation. 169 Jelzin (2000, pp. 255–256; 324–325). On the Russian-Western disconnect over

humanitarian intervention and Kosovo see Allison (2013, pp. 44–70). 170 See Jelzin (2000, pp. 338–339). 171 See Lapidus (2002, p. 127) and Stent (2015, p. 30–34).

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to thwart Russian successes as a competitor.172 To contest Western hegemony Moscow committed to a strategic partnership with China in 1996. The 2001 Treaty of Good Neighborly Friendship and Cooperation and the formation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization were additional initiatives to build agency.173 Yet a multipolar system was not on the horizon. The world was US-led, Western, and defined by the growth of the liberal order. Russia also felt kept at arms-length in formats such as the G7, the world’s leading industrial powers. Yeltsin wanted membership on the grounds that it was warranted despite economic weakness. He made clear that Russia sought full recognition, not a “7+1” option which was incompatible with its status: “You have to keep in mind that we are a great power, which affects how people think about this.”174 Yeltsin’s reflections in his memoires are instructive: “I sensed that some were ok with the ‘7+1’ formula. It allowed to create a political alignment with Russia and at the same time convey the sense she was a student in an exam.” He rejected this as inacceptable for his country.175 Eventually, accession came in 1998 with strong support from the Clinton administration. In the West the decision was seen as a sign of political goodwill. Yeltsin, however, described G8 membership as deserved based on Russia’s qualities as a great power and his firm bargaining over NATO enlargement, while he demanded unconditional recognition as an equal peer in the group and even saw himself in a leadership role after German chancellor Helmut Kohl left as the most senior “informal first man.”176 Bad feelings also grew vis-à-vis the IMF and Western financial assistance over the course of the 1990s in Moscow. In hindsight, the West hotly debated the politically mandated leniency in the all-out effort to support Yeltsin. Jeffrey Sachs, once an advisor for economic reforms in Russia, later lambasted the lack of reform zeal as well as the unabated

172 See Jelzin (2000, p. 136). 173 On the Russian-Chinese rapprochement in the 1990s see Belopolsky (2009, pp. 65–

96) and Lukin (2017, pp. 198–199). 174 Boris Yeltsin, quoted from White House (1996, p. 6). 175 Jelzin (2000, p. 128). Own translation. 176 On G7/G8 see Jelzin (2000, pp. 127–142; quote from p. 142). Own translation.

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flow of international money into a corrupt and dysfunctional politicoeconomic system for political reasons.177 Vice versa, a vocal opposition in Russia denounced the IMF as a threat to the country’s sovereignty and resented the alleged diktat from abroad. Though Yeltsin acknowledged internal problems, he assessed retrospectively that international financial aid was not sufficient to help Russia to get back on its feet economically.178 Another issue was WTO membership, where accession proved hard even though Russia had applied early on in 1993. There was, as the Economist put it, “no shortage of goodwill – nor of obstacles.”179 Russia’s politico-economic system of the 1990s presented hurdles. Negotiators even seemed to misunderstand the kind of rules-based organization the WTO was and reacted allergic to notions of advice on legislative reforms. While accession is largely a technical process of adjusting one’s politico-economic environment to established standards, Russia viewed it in political terms. What irked Moscow as much as its own problems was that former Soviet republics like Georgia or Moldova concluded their own accession processes in a matter of a few years; even Ukraine seemed on track in the 2000s.180 Bobo Lo summarized that the Kremlin viewed WTO membership as “a right rather than a privilege” and was convinced that “the organization needed Russia more than the other way around.”181 The hopes for deeper ties with Europe would soon be dashed, too. Europe was seen as “the good West,” as Pavel Palazchenko analyzed in the late 1990s, while “only marginal politicians dare say a good word about America in public.”182 But it soon became clear that opportunities were limited in this regard as well. The functional logic of European integration was alien to Moscow. The Kremlin sought to build relations with France and Germany in 1998. As was noted at the time, its approach 177 See Sachs (1998). 178 See Jelzin (2000, pp. 132–133). On the evolution of the IMF’s role in Russia see

Gould-Davies and Woods (1999). On the Russian-Western disconnect in assessments see also Shevtsova (2010, pp. 28–31). 179 The Economist (2001a). 180 See The Economist (2001a); also The Economist (2001b) and The Economist

(2006). 181 Lo (2015, p. 83). 182 Pavel Palazchenko, quoted from The Economist (1998a).

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reflected an understanding of European politics as if Russia “were relying on diplomatic textbooks from the nineteenth century” where the big powers would manage continental affairs, strike bargains, and make all others go along.183 Yeltsin saw these meetings as a way to build an “axis Moscow-Berlin-Paris” and to “think about a conception of ‘GreaterEurope’ […] as a space for a totally new European order,” in which Russia was fully integrated and the United States (which he described as a force isolating Russia and dividing the continent through NATO enlargement) had less of a role.184 But Europe’s order was neither conducive to great power managerialism nor did Russian-European views on the US align. The Russian-EU disconnect extended further. Though Moscow welcomed a more powerful EU at the time, it presupposed Brussels would respect Russia’s self-defined sphere of privileged interest. The 1999 Medium-Term Strategy for the Development of Relations Between the Russian Federation and the European Union (2000–2010) showed that Moscow saw itself as “Europe’s gateway to the former Soviet Union,” as Lynch summarized. The document expressly posited that “the development of partnership with the EU should contribute to consolidating Russia’s role as a leading power in shaping up [sic] a new system of interstate political and economic relations in the CIS area.”185 This was incompatible with European views. Similarly, Moscow praised nascent EU initiatives in foreign affairs, security, and defense as a potential counterweight to “the United States and NATO and their dominance on the continent” and as a means “to counterbalance NATO-centrism in Europe.”186 Yet the EU’s goal was not to break with the United States or replace NATO, but to complement transatlantic security efforts.187 Russia was stuck between a rock and a hard place domestically and internationally. The degree of upheaval and resentment that built was 183 The Economist (1998a). 184 Jelzin (2000, pp. 110–111). Own translation. 185 Lynch (2004, p. 104). The document is no longer accessible online and hence

quoted from published works. 186 Russian Federation. Medium-Term Strategy for the Development of Relations Between the Russian Federation and the European Union (2000–2010), quoted from Adomeit (2007, p. 8). The document is no longer accessible online and hence quoted from published works. 187 For Russia’s views of and (dashed) hopes regarding the EU’s security and defense policy in the late 1990s and early 2000s see Lynch (2004, pp. 106–111).

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not fully understood in the West. While the Russian view was that it had deserved support, respect, reward, and gains, the omnipresent experience was the opposite. In his 1999 resignation speech Yeltsin didn’t mince words: I want to ask your forgiveness – for the dreams that have not come true, and for the things that seemed easy but turned out to be so excruciatingly difficult. I am asking your forgiveness for failing to justify the hopes of those who believed me when I said that we would leap from the grey, stagnating totalitarian past into a bright, prosperous and civilized future. I believed in that dream, I believed that we would cover the distance in one leap. We didn’t.188

The US-led international order came to be seen as a liability that rigged the international system against Russian needs. Moscow grudgingly accommodated time and again because its overall weakness did not offer windows of opportunity to turn things around. But as Mark Leonard and Ivan Krastev correctly pointed out, the West misinterpreted what was going on: “Russia’s weakness to prevent a new Western order was mistaken for an agreement and change of heart.”189 Similarly, Dmitri Trenin assessed that the West believed “Russia had no option but to take the world as it is, and adjust to it, by bandwagoning on the West.”190 Russia blamed the hardships of the 1990s and the discontent with the post-Cold War order, first and foremost, on the US. Vladimir Lukin, former Russian ambassador to the United States and prominent figure in the Duma, offered a telling assessment in the late 1990s: We were naive to believe what we heard, and what we heard was, ‘Drop Communism, and the United States, the West, will come forward to help you pave the way toward a bright future for Russia.’ And this is what we were all sort of led to believe. This line was continued under President Bush and President Clinton, but as it turned out, we were quite a bit misled on that.191

188 Yeltsin (1999). 189 Krastev and Leonhard (2015, p. 44). Own translation. 190 Trenin (2016, p. 13). 191 Vladimir Lukin, quoted from Plekhanov (1999, p. 176).

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A foreign ministry official also described the prevalent view with extreme wording: “The United States treated Russia like a colony, not as an equal.”192 The anti-US and anti-Western resentment was by no means an elite view only. When Putin took over the baton in Moscow in 1999/2000, 55% of Russians envisaged their new president to “return Russia to the status of a great and respected derzhava, which most Russians equate with ‘fear of their country.’” No more than a small minority of 8% expected closer relations with the West.193 Leonard and Krastev blame that “Europeans lost their curiosity on how Russia sees the world and its place in it after 1989. They did not understand how disgruntled Russia was over the new European order driven by the West. They preferred to understand Russian-European relations as a win–win situation.”194 Such charges are cheap in hindsight. Western leaders were aware of Russian sensitivities and tried to heed them where possible. But while domestic politico-economic defects within were of Russia’s own making, shaped by many of the legacies of the Soviet era and beyond the purview of Western influence, granting Moscow the kind of order it envisioned without would have preemptively buried hopes for a Europe whole and free, democratic, prosperous, and at peace in unity. Though developments in Russia over the course of the decade raised doubts, many still concluded that Russia was a willing “joiner” of the US-led order, after all.195 On part of the West, there was no real alternative to trying to bring Russia in. As US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott put it at the end of the decade: “Our policy toward Russia must be that of a lighthouse, because Russia is going through a very rough sea. They can locate themselves against this light.”196 The image of a lighthouse is apt. In Moscow, all eyes were on the West and the United States in the 1990s. Their lights shone too bright for anyone to ignore. But as Russia resentfully accommodated the post-Cold War US-led international order, it saw

192 Quoted from Stent (2015, p. 25). 193 The Economist (2016). Italics in original. 194 Krastev and Leonhard (2015, p. 43). Own translation. For a similar assessment see Ther (2020, pp. 158–159). 195 See Goldgeier and McFaul (2004, pp. 232–256). 196 Strobe Talbott, quoted from Lloyd (1999).

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the Western lights no longer as guideposts to move toward. The conviction grew that following the Western lead would sink the Russian ship. Though incapable of standing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, adaptation to and integration with the US-led international order moved out of sight as a workable option.

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CHAPTER 6

China’s Rise: Strategic Accommodation to Post-Cold War Opportunities

Historical Legacies The past was a powerful prologue for China’s response to US-led liberal order building in the post-Cold War period. As Odd Arne Westad puts it: “The past is inscribed in China’s mental terrain in a calligraphy so powerful that it determines most of its approaches to the present.”1 Historically, the Chinese had defined their place in the world in exceptional terms. The Chinese empire did not conceive of itself as a state in a Westphalian sense, which rests on the premise that multiple, principally equal (though unequally powerful) actors coexist. It understood itself as a unique civilizational entity which compared to none and stood atop a hierarchical order. The “Middle Kingdom” had no peers, and no wall of separation existed between the domestic and the international arena as “borders between China and the surrounding peoples were not so much political and territorial demarcations as cultural differentiations.”2 All were expected to accept the superiority of the Chinese emperor, state, and culture through symbols and gestures, like the kowtow of emissaries and tributary gifts. From the Chinese point of view, such sinocentrism

1 Westad (2013, p. 2). 2 Kissinger (2012, p. 10).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Groitl, Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18659-2_6

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was the natural order of divine origins uniting “all under the heavens.”3 Of course, China’s Asia was itself an imperial project that reflected the regional power balance and ideas about proper order. By the mideighteenth century, the Chinese empire had consolidated its maximum reach after a period of conquest.4 External and internal challenges contributed to China’s decline from the mid-nineteenth century. The Chinese empire suffered of overstretch, internal stasis, economic and technological backwardness, and political fissures in an era of rapid change, while Western powers leaped ahead as power centers in Asia and the wider world. The Opium Wars of 1839–1842 and 1856 set the stage for “unequal treaties” with China. Europeans pursued their commercial interests and tsarist Russia enlarged its continental empire in the Far East and Central Asia. Industrializing Japan eventually redrew Asia’s political map. After its defeat in the SinoJapanese war of 1894–1895, the Chinese empire was forced to accept Korean independence and lost control of Taiwan and parts of Manchuria. This ushered in an era of Japanese dominance and expansionism that lasted until Tokyo’s defeat in World War II. The international order the People’s Republic of China was born into as an impoverished and wartorn-country in 1949 had no semblance with Chinese notions of ideal order.5 Nevertheless, recollecting China’s fate as one of fractured statehood inflicted by foreign powers in a “century of humiliation” until the country “stood up” unter communist leadership in 1949 does not do justice to history. Demand for reforms had grown within imperial China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. When the empire collapsed and the Republic of China was created in 1911/1912, democratic reformers, warlords, and nationalists rivaled with one another. The foundation of the Communist Party of China (CCP) in 1921 introduced another party in the mix. The nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek at first prevailed and led the Republic of China from 1928. But hopes to modernize the country were soon set back by 3 On the singularity of ancient China see Kissinger (2012, pp. 5–32). On the Chinese notion of order see French (2017, spec. pp. 3–12). 4 See Westad (2013, p. 6). 5 See Kissinger (2012, pp. 33–90), Klein (2009, pp. 31–54; 292–334), and Schuman

(2020). On the relative economic decline of China and Asia see Friedberg (2011, pp. 9– 27).

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Japanese incursions into China in 1937. At the end of World War II, the ROC under Chiang’s leadership represented China internationally, was acknowledged as victor, and recognized with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. But the Chinese civil war between communists and nationalists reignited in 1946. The Kuomintang was eventually forced to retreat to Taiwan as the last bastion of ROC governance, while Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China in Beijing in 1949.6 The Communist Party cultivated an image of itself as the savior of a battered people from foreign oppression, allegedly restoring political agency, territorial integrity, sovereignty, and pride. Rejecting modernization along Western lines, Mao was looking to Moscow for advice, assistance, and support to fast-track China’s agricultural society into a beacon of socialist development and reclaim the country’s place as a great power. Development and modernization was what China desperately needed. In 1949, the literacy rate was 20% in a predominantly rural, agrarian society where only 13% lived in cities and GDP per capita was merely 50 USD.7 While the Chinese economy had accounted for more than 30% of global GDP in 1820, its share had fallen to a meager 5% by 1952.8 Sino-American relations were quickly locked in confrontation under Cold War conditions. The United States had supported the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek during World War II and the Chinese civil war. The shock of the Korean War entrenched conflict lines for good. When the communist North attacked the South with Mao’s support, it fully convinced Washington to stand firmly at the ROC’s side and isolate the communist regime in Beijing. Vice versa, Mao defined his movement as anti-Western and viewed the United States as the prime security threat. Going forward, China pursued a policy it labeled “anti-imperialist” with

6 That simplistic history is a problem for understanding China—and encouraged by

the CCP—is one of the points made by Pillsbury (2016, p. 5). For Chinese history from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries see Fairbank (1988) and Westad (2013); more briefly Brown (2020); with particular attention to Chinese imperial history Schuman (2020); on the ancient Tianxia system and its contemporary effects see French (2017). 7 Brown (2020, p. 19). 8 Friedberg (2011, p. 27).

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Beijing-sponsored communist insurgencies across Asia. “War and revolution” were the catchwords of Mao’s foreign policy, which was designed to overturn a hostile, US-centric regional and international system.9 The PRC was born as an imperial and revanchist state. Beijing sought to restore what it viewed as legitimate territorial reach, which was modeled after the Chinese empire in the era of the Qing dynasty. The most obvious and contentious point was the status of Taiwan. The fact that the government of the Republic of China was holding out there created a persistent sense of vulnerability. While the 1950s saw multiple military escalations between the PRC and the ROC (including the conquest of formerly ROC-controlled Hainan in 1950 and attacks in the Taiwan Strait in 1954–1955 and 1958), US defense commitments to Taiwan led to an uneasy stalemate.10 Unable to change the status quo by force, the PRC insisted that its territorial integrity was violated as long as the Republic of China on Taiwan existed as a separate entity, playing to powerful historical grievances of fractured national unity. Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is a renegade province is thus both a myth—the People’s Republic has never exercised control over Taiwan—and a foundational narrative at the same time. Moreover, it is intertwined with anti-American resentment. After all, the United States has stood in the way of Beijing’s key goal from the beginning.11 China’s territorial irredentism went well beyond Taiwan. In 1951 the PRC annexed Tibet, which had gained independence during the fall of the Chinese empire. Beyond, Beijing has territorial conflicts with virtually all of its neighbors. Tensions have repeatedly escalated to the use of force. The Sino-Indian border war in 1962 or the Sino-Soviet border dispute in 1969 are just two examples. In maritime Asia, already the ROC government claimed sovereignty over the South China Sea within an “eleven-dash line” in 1947. In 1953, the PRC revised it to the socalled “nine-dash-line,” which still includes almost the entire South China Sea and conflicts with all maritime neighbors.12 Still, the PRC’s demands were more modest in the 1950s than today. In the 1958 “Declaration on 9 On the foundation of the PRC, Sino-American tensions and Mao’s revolutionary course see Friedberg (2011, pp. 58–70), Nathan and Ross (1998, pp. 56–64), Ripley et al. (2002, pp. 121–143), Klein (2009, pp. 334–345), and Westad (2013, pp. 285–363). 10 See US Department of State (2017). 11 See Nathan and Ross (1998, pp. 203–211) and Hayton (2022). 12 See Council on Foreign Relations (2022a).

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the Territorial Sea,” Beijing laid claim to the islands in the South China Sea and adjacent waters, not the entire maritime space as such.13 Conflicts also existed in the East China Sea over uninhabited islands called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, which Japan had taken control of in 1895. While interest was marginal in the 1950s, Beijing came forth with sovereignty claims when the news of hydrocarbon reserves broke in the late 1960s.14 Before, even Chinese government publications had depicted the Senkakus as Japanese.15 The PRC has also from the beginning seen itself as a destined leader and opposed the hegemony of any rival power. This self-image did not match the reality, though. China and the CCP were heavily dependent on the Soviet Union. Soviet aid from 1946 to 1960 was needed for the military, education, urban planning, and other sectors and added up to roughly 25 billion USD (current prices), dwarfing even the US-sponsored Marshall Plan for postwar European reconstruction. This came on top of nonmonetary aid like technological support, Soviet advisors, or grants for Chinese students. Nonetheless, Sino-Soviet relations were marked by Mao’s demand for recognition as at least an equal to Stalin. The overarching goal was to recreate China as a great power. Mao was convinced that sheer willpower and radical steps would allow the country to progress at warp speed. Sino-Soviet tensions rose as Mao’s policies of domestic and international revolution were increasingly out of touch with post-Stalinist sentiments for domestic thawing and peaceful coexistence.16 The first successful test of a nuclear weapon in 1964—developed with earlier Soviet aid but finalized after Moscow had withdrawn—was seen as a landmark step for China’s rebirth as a great power.17 This sense of centrality that permeated Chinese thinking had the paradoxical effect of instilling fear. In the late 1940s, Mao was keen on forging an alliance with the Soviet Union because he worried the US might intervene directly in the Chinese civil war. As Gaddis analyzed:

13 See Roy (2019, p. 62). 14 See Lee (2002, spec. pp. 66; 88–91) and Council on Foreign Relations (2022a). 15 See Roy (2019, p. 62) and Dittmer (2018, p. 128). 16 On the PRC’s rejuvenation goals and the changing Sino-Soviet relationship see Westad (2018, pp. 233–259; Soviet aid figures quoted from p. 237), Nathan and Ross (1998, pp. 26–46), Westad (2013, pp. 285–363), and Dikötter (2014, pp. 33–47). 17 See Brown (2020, pp. 47–48).

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“The idea that China could be a peripheral and not a vital concern for anyone was difficult for him to grasp.”18 The same kind of self-ascribed centrality let Beijing fear an imminent Soviet attack from the 1960s, as Westad concurred: “Having put China and its revolution squarely at the center of world history, as the envy of all peoples, it was only logical that their enemies should try to destroy them through military force.”19 The PRC also suffered of an acute sense of vulnerable sovereignty for more tangible reasons. The Republic of China on Taiwan and not the PRC held the Chinese seat at the United Nations. By the end of 1949, the PRC had only won the recognition of 12 states, over the next decade another 22 would follow.20 Also, Mao’s policies isolated the country. Having cut ties with the Western world early on, the PRC was increasingly at odds with the Soviet Union and other fellow communist regimes over the proper level of revolutionary recklessness. Still, the PRC claimed a leadership role for the communist as well as the developing world to oppose US-led “imperialism” and Soviet-led “socialist imperialism.”21 Even North Korea decried Beijing’s “superpower chauvinism,” while third world allies resented Mao’s “know-it-all attitude.”22 Yet Beijing’s self-image as a deserving great power peer and spearhead of the developing world remained a core element of its foreign policy identity. While Mao isolated the PRC without, he created havoc within. By the end of the 1950s, the CCP had violently consolidated its power, radicalized in mass campaigns, and succumbed to personalized dictatorship. Mao envisioned rapid agricultural production growth through collectivization and fast-track industrialization through decentralized steel production. The so-called “Great Leap Forward” from 1958 to 1962 led to a horrendous famine and caused an estimated 45 million victims.23 It was the most massive man-made famine ever, inflicted upon the Chinese people despite Soviet warnings. In addition, the purge known as the “Great Proletarian

18 Gaddis (1997, p. 64). 19 Westad (2013, p. 360). 20 Numbers from Brown (2020, p. 31). 21 Deng Xiaoping at the UN General Assembly on April 10, 1974, quoted from

Dittmer (2018, p. 66). 22 Quoted from Westad (2013, pp. 350–351). 23 Dikötter (2014, p. 421).

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Cultural Revolution” from 1966 to 1976 brought the country to the brink of collapse. The declared goal was to tear down all remnants of “old China,” cleanse party and society of alleged “revisionist” elements, and reengineer a new socialist society from its ashes to restore the country’s deserved greatness. The Cultural Revolution cost roughly 1.5 million lives, in addition to an estimated 1 million deaths of earlier purges.24 Despite this horrific record, the Communist Party managed to hold on to power. Externally, diplomatic opportunities arose when the UN General Assembly expelled Taiwan in 1971 and accepted the PRC as Chinese representation. The realpolitik rapprochement of the NixonMao years brought the United States and the PRC into a pragmatic alignment under Cold War conditions. Washington broke off diplomatic relations with Taiwan and recognized the PRC in 1979 but nonetheless continued to protect Taiwan’s de facto independence.25 Domestically, the CCP changed the tune after Mao’s death. The file was declared closed with a 1981 party resolution which admitted “serious mistakes” but still applauded Mao as “respected and beloved great leader and teacher” while congratulating itself: “Once again history has proved […] that our Party and socialist system have enormous vitality.”26 The famine that cost dozens of millions of lives came to be referred to as “three years of national disasters” or “three years of difficulty,” diluting any Maoist or CCP responsibility.27 The Cultural Revolution was soon covered in silence. The party line would become that it was the Mao years that paved the way for the reform era under Deng Xiaoping that led China on the road to prosperity. It has worked out. “Mao defeated the enemies of the nation, Deng made it rich, and Xi now makes it strong,” is a common truism in today’s China.28 In the late 1970s, the CCP under Deng Xiaoping set a new course for modernization and development. The core aim was to secure the rise of 24 Number from Johnson (2018). On Maoism, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution see Westad (2013, pp. 285–363), Fairbank (1988, pp. 273–341), and Brown (2020, pp. 26–30; 51–69). 25 See Sutter (2015, pp. 32–38). On the two-phased Sino-American alignment (1969– 1979/1979–1989) see Friedberg (2011, pp. 70–87). 26 CCP (1981, pp. 47; 48; 49). 27 Johnson (2018) and McGregor (2012, pp. 234; 244–245). 28 Strittmatter (2020, p. 15). Own translation. See also McGregor (2017, pp. 293–294)

and Miller (2017, pp. 33–34).

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the PRC under communist rule in what was described as a “new Long March to make China a modern, powerful socialist country before the end of this century.”29 The way to do this was one unconceivable just a few years earlier, namely by working with the United States. There was just no plausible alternative. As Michael Schuman summarized: “If China could not beat the West, it had to join the West.”30 The CCP pragmatically embraced capitalism, private initiative, and foreign investments. China created special economic zones and offered extremely attractive conditions, including free land, generous tax provisions, and low wages, for seemingly easy returns: durable investments, jobs, and training as well as the provision of knowledge and technology. That progress in transportation and communication revolutionized global trade at the time and companies were looking to outsource production was a favorable coincidence.31 The security dimension was equally important. While the PRC needed prosperity for the sake of CCP regime survival and national rejuvenation, it also needed military power to prop up its defenses—against the Soviet Union, which it now viewed as the most severe security threat. China found opportunities to tap the United States as a source of military empowerment. After initial sales of civilian dual-use items—from helicopters to turbines for naval modernization, for example—the Reagan administration in 1984 suggested that arms sales to China “strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace” and pushed ahead.32 Sino-American conflicts were kept in check by realpolitik pragmatism. Cooperation did not rest on ideational convergence but aligned interests. Richard Nixon had expressed this to Mao: “What brings us together is a recognition of a new situation in the world and a recognition on our part that what is important is not a nation’s internal philosophy. What is important is its policy toward the rest of the world and toward us.”33 29 CCP (1978, p. 23). 30 Schuman (2020, p. 297). 31 On the Deng reform period and changing Sino-American relations see Nathan and Ross (1998, pp. 158–177), Westad (2013, pp. 365–386, 2018, pp. 553–563), Brown (2020, pp. 73–87), Schuman (2020, pp. 295–304), and Church (1986). 32 Ronald Reagan, quoted from Ottaway 1985. On Sino-American defense cooperation see Friedberg (2011, pp. 70–87) and Pillsbury (2016, pp. 72–78). 33 Richard Nixon, quoted from Mann (2000, p. 236). Without italics from Mann.

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Seen from Washington, anything that helped undermine Soviet power was in the US interest. While this meant isolating Beijing from the late 1940s into the 1970s, it meant supporting China’s development in the 1980s. Vice versa, China’s core goal was to reemerge as a great power under CCP rule. As it had (mistakenly) relied on the Soviet Union and Maoism before, it now turned to alignment with the United States and the wider Western world for the same purpose. Switching from “war and revolution” to “peace and development” was a paradigm shift.34 While Beijing remained allergic to any notions of ceding control over parts of PRC-controlled or -claimed territory, it sought to avoid squabbles. The PRC turned to a “don’t-rock-anyboats policy.”35 In addition to changing Sino-American relations, it was the cooperation with Japan that proved to be an engine for China’s rise. Japanese investments, development aid, infrastructure construction, and trade were instrumental for China’s development. Conflicts over unresolved territorial issues and the lack of postwar reconciliation were toned down. Overall, the 1980s became the “golden years” of Sino-Japanese relations.36 Such radical swings were made possible by China’s unaccountable political system with a massive propaganda apparatus, which allowed Beijing to “turn Russia from big brother to enemy, the United States from foe to friend, Japan from bogeyman to aid donor, South Korea from imperialist lackey to friendly neighbor.”37 This is exactly what the CCP did. Despite its accommodating postures to sustain development, a strident “anti-hegemonism” constituted the second pillar of Chinese foreign relations during the reform era. Among the declared principles were independence, sovereignty, and a hostility toward alliances from the 1970s onward.38 The goal was to keep both superpowers at bay, even though the Soviet Union was interpreted as the immediate military threat. The country rejected multilateral arms control and non-proliferation regimes in the 1970s and 1980s, arguing they were hegemonic powers’ attempts

34 See Noesselt (2010, p. 176) and Ripley et al. (2002). 35 Term from Church (1986). 36 See McGregor (2017, pp. 55–74; 77–97). 37 Nathan and Ross (1998, p. 15). 38 See Noesselt (2010, p. 176).

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to lock in their advantages at the expense of emerging powers.39 In the UN, Beijing opposed peacekeeping as an instrument to infringe the sovereignty of others.40 Its anti-hegemonic rhetoric, however, stood in stark contrast to its own hegemonic ambitions. After all, China wanted to reclaim its own great power status, had no qualms about subjugating peoples and territories, and used force when it suited its interests. Though committing to reforms, the CCP did not seek fundamental changes. Certainly, Deng’s reign ushered in a sea change compared to Mao’s. The Party institutionalized a system of collective rule as well as term limits to safeguard against erratic one-man rule. While Mao had rejected international agreements, Deng appeared more open. When China joined the UN in 1971, it declared “illegal and null and void” all commitments the Republic of China had made. Under Deng’s leadership China integrated back into the various UN bodies and fora, such as the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1982.41 From 1971 to 1987, the number of international conventions signed by the PRC rose to 103.42 While the CCP welcomed whatever would help “rejuvenate” the Chinese nation, it was hostile to anything that could challenge CCP rule. Immediately after taking up diplomatic relations with the United States in 1979, Deng ordered a crackdown on so-called Democracy Wall activists who expressed themselves politically.43 In 1983, a campaign against “spiritual pollution”—outside influences allegedly corrupting Chinese society—got under way. Deng offered a telling explanation of his views in the mid-1980s: “There are those who say we should not open our windows, because open windows let in flies and other insects. […] They want the windows to stay closed, so we all expire from lack of air. But we say, ‘Open the windows, breathe the fresh air and at the same time fight the flies and insects.’”44 Deng repeatedly propagated the need to struggle against what he called “bourgeois liberalism,” which

39 See Friedberg (2011, p. 146). 40 See Harnisch (2016, p. 44). 41 See Sceats and Breslin (2012, pp. 3–4; quote from p. 3). 42 Number from Klein (2009, p. 343). 43 See Schell (1988, pp. 162–163). 44 Deng Xiaoping, quoted from Church (1986).

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would endanger the regime, while CCP dictatorship would safeguard the country’s well-being.45 When the Cold War drew to a close in the late 1980s, the PRC took a different turn than the Soviet Union. Calls for freedom also emerged in China, and the debates about political liberalization even reverberated in the upper ranks of the Communist Party. Deng Xiaoping confided to US President George H. W. Bush during the latter’s visit in Beijing in February 1989 that stability maintenance was an overbearing demand, however: “Without stability, everything will be gone, even accomplishments will be ruined.”46 In his May 1989 conversation with Mikhail Gorbachev in Beijing, General Secretary Zhao Ziyang emphasized socialist reform needs, but he rejected that the CCP would and could ever relinquish power: “no party is capable of replacing the CCP.”47 As Marie Elise Sarotte details, leaders in Beijing followed events in Eastern Europe with utmost care and feared “contagion” effects that might spin out of control.48 Deng Xiaoping thus ousted leading reformists in the CCP and defined an uncompromising way forward. Beijing cracked down militarily on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, which Deng branded as “counterrevolutionary riots” and “rebellion.” An editorial in the party newspaper People’s Daily in April 1989, which echoed his views, lambasted the demonstrations as “organized conspiracy to sow chaos” and an effort “to poison minds, create national turmoil, and sabotage the nation’s political stability.”49 Declassified British cables suggest an overall death toll of about 10,000 in the Tiananmen massacre, which was considered an existential threat to the regime’s survival.50 When Deng applaudingly addressed the troops afterward, he purported that “reactionaries” were “attempting to subvert our state and overthrow the Communist party” in

45 Deng (1986). 46 Deng Xiaoping, quoted from White House (1989b). 47 Zhao Ziyang, quoted from Gorbachev and Zhao (1989). 48 Sarotte (2012). 49 Editorial from People’s Daily, April 27, 1989, quoted from Schell (1989, p. 188).

See also Nathan and Link (2001, p. 161). 50 BBC (2017).

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order to “establish a bourgeois republic totally dependent on the West.”51 The CCP was intent on holding on to power, by force if need be.52 Such ominous signs notwithstanding, the sentiment in the West remained stunningly optimistic. When the Cold War was coming to an end, it appeared as if communism had failed for good as the main ideological alternative to Western liberalism. Economically, the PRC had already abandoned the communist camp. Confidence was high that an ensuing political opening was just a matter of time. US President George H. W. Bush spoke of the “inexorable march of democracy in China” in 1989.53 The Tiananmen massacre was viewed as an unfortunate but ultimately temporary setback in China’s and the wider world’s convergence on democracy, market economics, and human freedom. The CCP obviously held different plans.

National Interests and Propensity to Adapt Unlike Russia, China entered the post-Cold War period with functional statehood and, at long last, an upward development trajectory. But while the West indulged “end of history” notions of US unipolarity, democracy, free markets, and universal freedoms, the People’s Republic of China was horrified by events in those fateful years 1989 to 1991. Regime stability under the conditions of opening up had been a major theme in CCP deliberations throughout the 1980s. On the one hand, fears grew that ties with the outside world might “infect” the country with dangerous ideas that could threaten the regime. On the other hand, trading in relative autarky for growing prosperity gave the developed nations, first and foremost the US, Japan, and Western Europeans, leverage over the PRC.54 After crushing peaceful protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the CCP’s key takeaways reflected those long-held concerns. First, the CCP mischaracterized the Tiananmen protests as sponsored from the outside and insisted they were a matter of infringed sovereignty

51 Deng (1989, p. 97). 52 On Tiananmen and Chinese leader views see also Spohr (2019, pp. 47–59) and

Buckley (2019). For an extensive account of CCP deliberations see Nathan and Link (2001); briefly Kristof (1989). 53 White House (1989a). 54 See Nathan and Ross (1998, pp. 158–177).

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and “spiritual pollution” instead of one of domestic political dissatisfaction.55 Discussing Tiananmen with members of the Politburo Standing Committee, Deng Xiaoping alleged that the entire episode was instigated from abroad: “The Western world, particularly the USA, has used its entire propaganda machinery for agitation and has massively encouraged and supported so-called democrats or the opposition in China—people who actually are the scum of the Chinese nation.” Deng described an alleged Western practice of “sowing uprisings in other countries” as a form of “power politics” and a hegemonic bid to gain control over other countries; human rights and governance norms in this sense are merely tools to subvert the sovereignty of others.56 Accordingly, references to “hostile forces” engaged in ideological subversion spiked to new heights in propaganda outlets like the People’s Daily and the Liberation Army Daily between 1988 and 1992.57 Second, the international punishment post-Tiananmen showed the PRC’s vulnerability to external pressure. In the military domain, the United States suspended military-to-military contacts with Beijing and imposed an arms embargo. European allies followed suit. This meant that China was deprived of expertise and equipment it desperately needed to build strength. Economically, the United States moved to block lending via the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank; Japan also retracted planned projects. The G7 issued a joint statement announcing the suspension of high-level meetings and other restrictions. China depended on foreign capital, foreign know-how, and export-based growth. Though the tangible consequences would turn out to be relatively modest and shortlived, the post-Tiananmen fallout was a caesura for the PRC, which had received a splendid welcome in the world economy since the late 1970s. In the UN, China was criticized by the Secretary General, in the General Assembly, and by the Commission on Human Rights; the relevant SubCommission targeted China’s abysmal human rights record. Beijing could

55 The best illustration is the CCP’s Tiananmen report published by Xinhua in July 1989. See Chen (1989). 56 Deng Xiaoping in a meeting with the Politburo Standing Committee on June 2, 1989, quoted from Nathan and Link (2001, p. 568). Own translations. Similarly also Brown (2020, pp. 94–95). 57 Johnston (2016/2017, pp. 36–37).

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no longer take acquiescence on its internal affairs for granted as Cold War strategic demands relaxed.58 The end of the Cold War promised to make matters worse. On the one hand, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 shook the Chinese leadership to the core. Though Sino-Soviet relations had been tense since the 1960s, the fellow Communist Party’s loss of control and the unraveling of the Soviet empire came as a shock. Going forward, analyses of and analogies with the fate of the Soviet Union have become an integral part of Chinese post-Cold War political thinking. The CCP vowed not to make the same mistakes.59 On the other hand, it was the prospect of US unipolarity that instilled fear. As Beijing read events, American ideological infiltration had contributed to the Soviet collapse. Moreover, with the Soviet Union unraveled the existing strategic framework for SinoAmerican cooperation. Since Russia and other post-communist states in Eastern Europe embraced the West, Beijing feared to move into the spotlight as the remnant communist renegade. The CCP interpreted the new times as an existential threat.60 All in all, China and the West entered the post-Cold War period with absolutely contrarian mindsets. The West saw the 1990s as a benign phase without great power rivalries. It promised to be an era of convergence, of democracy, market economics, individual freedoms, and universal human rights. The perception in Beijing, however, was that the Cold War had entered a new and more daunting phase. As scholar Jean-Pierre Cabestan judged: “The view that China, and to be more specific and accurate the Chinese Communist Party, is surrounded by enemies has been dominant since 1989.”61 In a world characterized by US dominance and liberal triumph, the odds seemed stacked against communist regime survival. As seen from Beijing, the Cold War never ended.62

58 On the Tiananmen fallout and post-Cold War conditions see Foot (2000, pp. 113– 149), Mann (2000, pp. 194–209), Sutter (2015, pp. 43–54), and Nathan and Ross (1998, pp. 186–191). 59 Palmer (2016) describes that the CCP produced “tens of thousands of internal papers, roundtables and even documentaries” on the matter. 60 See Westad (2018, p. 625). 61 Jean-Pierre Cabestan, quoted from Buckley (2019). 62 See Friedman (2002) and Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020, pp. 17; 23; 27–32).

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Regime survival was and continues to be the key interest that guides the CCP’s domestic and international actions, even though it is interwoven with other interests. As Nele Noesselt analyzed, the PRC’s definition of its security interests in the 1990s blended domestic and international concerns and included the protection of national unity, deterrence of invasion, the defense of political sovereignty, territorial integrity, and maritime rights, but also a stable and sustainable economic development as well as the maintenance of societal stability.63 According to the interpretation of leaders in Beijing, all of the above requires CCP rule, while all of it is also assessed from a party survival standpoint. To quote Richard McGregor: “State sovereignty, territorial integrity and economic development, the priorities of any state, all are subordinate to the need to keep the Party in power.”64 Seen through CCP eyes, everything else hinges on itself. As Deng put it in a speech in 1986: “Without leadership by the Communist Party and without socialism, there is no future for China.”65 The CCP attempted to square the circle: opting for continued economic opening and cooperation with the West, while protecting the CCP-led domestic political order against it. The “Dengist paradigm,” as Kerry Brown labels it, would not lose any of its importance: “economic improvements would make China strong and powerful again, but that could only happen under the Chinese Communist Party.”66 At the 14th Party Congress of 1992, the CCP committed to building “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” which included continued economic reforms toward a “socialist market economic system.” The pledge was even included in the constitution. Economic opening was combined, however, with a reaffirmation of the CCP’s monopoly on domestic political power. The main features of this socialism with Chinese characteristics thus were the professed commitment to market reforms and openness in economic terms and stern opposition to political reform. China thereby rejected an adaptation to a Western model but laid the basis for its economic rise within a liberal world.67 63 See Noesselt (2010, p. 177). 64 McGregor (2012, p. xviii). 65 Deng (1986, p. 184). 66 Brown (2017, p. 85). 67 See Saich (1992) and Spohr (2019, pp. 572–573).

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The PRC has always been and continues to be a party-state. The Party is the decisive political force in the country. While the nominal description of the PRC’s domestic system resembles other countries with an executive, a legislative body, a judiciary, media outlets, research institutes, state-owned and private enterprises, and else, it is not. The CCP is in charge and above it all. The Party determines policy; it dominates state institutions, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and elite recruitment; it controls education, academia, the press and thereby the construction of its own version of history and truth. While it stands above the law, the CCP since the 1980s has nurtured its ability to rule by law, using and abusing the legal system to exert control, which has no semblance with the rule of law. Political leaders are chosen by the Party. The PLA is not the nation’s army but the Party’s armed force, whose first mission is “to keep the Party in power.”68 The Chinese state, the public, and citizens are all subject to what the CCP needs, wants, and decides. Its main goal in the 1990s was to keep it this way.69 Under these conditions, post-Cold War Western liberal international order building and US-led policies of engagement came across as clear and omnipresent threats. One of the key catchwords that underlines how far Western views on the benign nature of engagement were from the CCP’s view is “peaceful evolution.” Before the Sino-American rapprochement, Mao had suggested that any cooperation offered by the Americans was a dirty trick—an attempt to lure the PRC into the capitalist, democratic camp and to undermine CCP rule through “peaceful evolution” within: “[…] the United States is [still] attempting to be aggressive and expansionist with a much more deceptive tactic. … In other words, it wants to keep its order and change our system. It wants to corrupt us through peaceful evolution.”70 These sentiments saw a forceful comeback, particularly after 1989. Deng warned that the “imperialists are pushing for peaceful evolution towards capitalism in China, placing their hopes on the generations that will come after us.”71

68 McGregor (2012, p. 105). 69 On the political system and the role of the CCP see McGregor (2012, pp. 1–33)

and Noesselt (2018, pp. 54–73). 70 Mao Zedong in 1959, quoted from Westad (2013, p. 325). 71 Deng Xiaoping 1992, quoted from Westad (2013, p. 384).

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Viewed in this light, containment and engagement are just two strategic pathways to one and the same goal, namely to bring down the Chinese communist regime, either by depriving it of development opportunities or by undermining CCP rule from within. Having endured hard-nosed containment in the 1950s and 1960s, the CCP now feared that the United States and its Western allies would threaten its grip on power with smiles on their faces. Mann sums up its views succinctly: According to this theory […], the United States was trying to overthrow Communism not by military means but through softer methods, such as economic, educational and cultural interchanges. Paradoxically, then, the Chinese sometimes seemed less threatened by their toughest critics in the United States than by their supposed American friends—who were preaching conciliation but also proclaiming that their policies were a more sophisticated way of bringing about the eventual downfall of Chinese Communism.72

As seen from Beijing, the United States went all in on its efforts of ideological infiltration in the post-Cold War world. Interestingly, it was academic literature that came to be viewed as the ultimate proof of America’s ideological geopolitics: Joseph Nye’s works on “soft power” and US leadership were interpreted as blueprints for action and received much attention in China.73 “Peaceful evolution” condensed in one term the West’s wishful thinking and the CCP’s worst nightmare. Chinese leaders were right that a gradual relaxation of one-party dictatorship was the ultimate goal of engagement. American and European officials repeated this relentlessly without hesitation or reproach. Seen through Western eyes, it boiled down to a benign, cooperative policy. It was even presented in altruistic terms as offering a helping hand to speed up China’s progress.74 For the CCP, this was not only a nuisance but an existential threat. The more the United States and its allies would manage to ingrain democratic norms

72 Mann (2000, p. 236). 73 See Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020, pp. 30–31). 74 The interpretation that a well-meaning US had offered a helping hand but was taken

advantage of by a CCP-led PRC gained prominence under the Trump administration. See Pompeo (2020).

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and liberal values into the governance matrix of the international system— defining democracy and individual human rights as universal norms to be aspired to and other regime types and practices as aberrations deserving punishment—the more hostile the international order would become for a CCP-led China. As seen from Beijing, the United States was a revisionist power trying to politically turn around the PRC and the wider world for its own advantage.75 While one-party dictatorship was at stake at first glance, Chinese officials framed the danger in grander terms. The United States and the liberal West threatened not only continued CCP rule but the sovereign existence of the PRC. Weakening the Party’s grip to power would allegedly endanger the entire country’s stability and ability to fend for itself. This equated CCP rule to functioning Chinese statehood. The degree to which such rhetoric is instrumental or truly defines the worldview of leading figures is hard to assess. Yet Hamilton and Ohlberg suggest that the CCP came to believe that China was indeed in a “life-and-death fight against hostile Western forces trying to plunge the country into chaos.”76 Leaked party documents on the fourth generation of leaders coming to power in the early 2000s evidenced that they firmly believed in one-party dictatorship as the only thing that guaranteed a sovereign Chinese state.77 In the CCP’s interpretation, efforts to support the “peaceful evolution” of China’s political system were not designed to improve the well-being of China or its citizens. They were regarded as a sinister scheme to weaken the country, bring about political turmoil, and nullify its influence. Viewed this way, a strategy of engagement designed to promote “peaceful evolution” is akin to what could be called negative balancing in neoclassical realist theoretical terms: undermining the cohesion, legitimacy, and functionality of the Chinese regime to render it incapable of pursuing its interests. Or more bluntly: to defeat a rival by triggering state collapse. Sha Qiguang of the Information Office of the State Council, which is effectively the CCP’s international propaganda office, argued that the West waged “a third world war without smoke” against the PRC over the course of the 1990s with its efforts to sway the

75 See Lind (2017). 76 Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020, p. 31). Own translation. 77 See Nathan and Gilley (2003).

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country toward the Western model of order and incapacitate it politically along the way.78 The argument that Western interests and policies constitute a threat to CCP rule and the sovereignty of China extends even further to the territorial integrity of the country. Should CCP-rule ever waver, the narrative goes, the country would disintegrate. There is no plausible evidence for the claim that repressive CCP dictatorship was the sole lifeline for a sovereign, territorially inviolate Chinese state. Unlike other states, however, the PRC has from the beginning embraced an imperial identity, which led to the forced subjugation of regions like Tibet or Xinjiang and the ambition to “unify” Taiwan even against the latter’s will. Had those peoples a chance to determine their own fate freely, they might seek independence indeed. The CCP leadership thus makes the dystopian argument that repressive CCP rule was necessary to uphold a repressive status quo, while anything but repressive CCP rule would endanger the territorial integrity of the PRC.79 In the Party’s interpretation, China’s legitimate territorial reach even extends beyond its current borders. Chinese leaders had no intention of walking back any of the long-established territorial claims. In fact, they doubled down on them. With regard to maritime Asia, Jiang Zemin declared at the 14th Party Congress in 1992 that the country had to “protect the nation’s maritime rights and interests,” which was codified for the first time in a CCP document, as Yoshihara and Holmes point out, and called upon the PLA Navy to “construct the motherland’s great wall at sea.”80 The 1992 “Law on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone” claimed that Chinese territory included the mainland, Taiwan, the contested Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea as well as the Spratly Islands and others in the South China Sea. In 1995, the PRC began militarizing Mischief Reef. In 1998, Beijing laid down its claim to the entire maritime space within the so-called nine-dash line and the resources included in it, which was a significant expansion of what China had claimed for itself before.81 With increasing strength, the mainland would be able to re-collect previously “lost” territories, as the return of

78 Sha Qiguang, quoted from Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020, p. 31). Own translation. 79 On China’s “problems of stateness” see Nathan and Scobell (2012, pp. 195–221). 80 Quoted from Yoshihara and Holmes (2018, p. 109). 81 See Roy (2019, p. 62).

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Hong Kong in 1997 and Macau in 1999 under Beijing’s rule suggested. Any wavering of CCP dictatorship would not only endanger the status quo, but also jeopardize the prospect of ever reclaiming the country’s “legitimate” reach. Beijing also had no intentions to relent on Taiwan. However, the unresolved issue became even more of a problem for the CCP in the 1990s. Taiwan’s continued existence as a de facto independent entity counteracted the CCP’s narrative and ideal of itself as the sole representation of the Chinese people. But the democratization of Taiwan turned it into a severe ideational challenge as well. It allowed Taipei to garner ever more international (especially US) support. In addition, it raised fears that the new generation of leaders would seek independence. Hence, the status quo appeared to fall apart. What emerged as a priority for the PRC was to thwart any path to independence. Tellingly, the Taiwan issue was increasingly redefined and put in one line with postcolonial legacies that needed remedy, like Hong Kong and Macau, although it was a product of the Chinese civil war of the 1940s.82 Another matter was the US military posture in Asia and beyond. China benefited from America’s provision of public goods and role as a regional pacifier, which enabled unprecedented economic growth—not least since China had no maritime capabilities of note in the 1990s and was viewed with suspicion among its neighbors. However, US hegemony went against the grain of what China wanted. Beijing saw itself destined to lead and opposed “hegemonism.” The perpetuation of the US alliance system and the revitalization of the US-Japanese security partnership were viewed as hedges. The negatives of Washington’s support for Taiwan were evident anyway. In this sense, the American military and strategic footprint in Asia was seen as the key constraint that inhibited Chinese ambitions. That the United States embraced coercive military diplomacy as a tool of policy and infringed “sovereign rights” of other states with (military) interventions after the Cold War, was noted with additional dismay.83 In spite of these concerns, Beijing’s security paradigm of the reform era remained valid into the post-Cold War period. The globalizing world was 82 See Friedman (2002, pp. 207–210). On China-Taiwan relations see Sutter (2016, pp. 153–171). 83 See Gill (2005) and Foot (2006). For Chinese views on the US presence and allies in Asia see Goldstein (2005, pp. 102–111).

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viewed as one of economic promise, not one inevitably defined by military conflict or war. The earlier assessment that there was a trend to “peace and development” thus persisted into the 1990s. However, the end of the Cold War heightened the urgency of China’s quest for development. After all, the earlier anti-Soviet realpolitik bargain was no more. Sino-American relations had to be set on a different footing. Unlike before, aiding Chinese development was not a US national security interest any longer, while hampering it might become one. Despite the dangers, there was no alternative route for modernization than partnership with the West. The American and Western lead in the global economy and the technological realm was still close to absolute at the Cold War’s end. The West also dominated the institutional architecture of global trade and development—ranging from the GATT/WTO to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank or the IMF. It meant that China depended upon their goodwill and mutual interests for continued growth opportunities. This sentiment of inevitability even increased with the end of the Cold War. As Odd Arne Westad concisely put it: “If the race to modernize could be better run with Nike trainers, then the Chinese Communists would put them on […].”84 Indeed, joining the GATT had been a core goal since the 1980s and WTO membership was the ultimate prize in the 1990s. Whoever wanted to prosper would have to align with the West. Continued economic rise was critical also as a source of legitimacy for CCP rule. The Tiananmen massacre had shown domestic political fissures and created new needs to legitimize one-party dictatorship. The Party thus drove home the message that it alone was the guarantor of political stability and continued economic success, while any challenge to its rule would thwart peace and prosperity. Its reign thus increasingly rested on a domestic bargain: political acquiescence in return for economic wellbeing. Average citizens would be able to live their private lives largely untouched by direct interference as long as they stayed within the bounds of one-party dictatorship.85 What the CCP desperately needed was a global environment that allowed China to rise, and this objective guided its foreign policy.86

84 Westad (2013, p. 387). 85 See Brown (2020, pp. 99–103) and McGregor (2012, pp. 26–27). 86 See Sutter (2016, pp. 19–35).

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Leaders in Beijing perceived, as Robert Sutter put it, the United States as “China’s greatest threat and its most important partner.”87 The partystate depended upon continued economic engagement with the West to advance. At the same time, officials were anxious to lose control should liberal economics spark demand for liberal politics, norms, and reforms at home. The US, first and foremost, made the challenge even more direct. Washington prodded the communist party-state to respect individual civil and political rights, stood in the way of its territorial ambitions, hemmed in (in Beijing’s eyes) proper Chinese influence, and loomed large as the hegemonic power in Asia and the world. In an international order characterized by American power and liberal ideals, the Damocles sword of punishment is an omnipresent threat for nonconforming regimes. Consequently, the United States was clearly at the center of attention of all CCP deliberations, as Andrew Nathan and Bruce Gilley conclude: “the rest of China’s foreign policy turns on the relationship with the US.”88 A convergence of interests or a wholesale adaptation to the US-led liberal international order was a highly unlikely proposition. China wanted to benefit from the global economy and was willing to adapt. At the same time, China geared up for a sustained ideological contest under the (from its point of view) unfavorable conditions of US unipolarity and liberal hegemony. While the end of the Cold War was seen as the end of systemic rivalry in the West, the Chinese Communist Party disagreed. Viewed from Beijing, the Cold War entered another, more challenging phase. Whereas strategies and tactics had to be adjusted, the fundamental basic needs remained the same. Chinese officials had no interest in reforming away the CCP’s iron grip on power. Instead, they wanted to rejuvenate the PRC to a great power under CCP leadership. Their key challenge was to find a way to do so under the conditions of unipolarity and liberal hegemony.

Opportunity Structure and Strategic Response As seen from Beijing, the post-Cold War world was full of opportunity and danger. The opportunity structure at the time was such that China depended on continued cooperation with the United States and its allies

87 Sutter (2016, p. 20). 88 Nathan and Gilley (2003, p. 232). See also Sutter (2016, pp. 19–35; 37–57).

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for economic gain, technological advancement, and integration in the world economy. As Avery Goldstein observed, despite its qualities as a potential global player, China “remained only a ‘candidate’ great power” until the end of the twentieth century.89 When the Cold War ended, it had limited means to project power, exert influence, and protect its interests. Despite the upward trend since the beginning of the reform period, it was still a developing country, aspiring but developing nonetheless. This had to do with the low level from which China’s ascendance began in the late 1970s. GDP had grown from around 150 billion USD in 1978 to about 360 billion USD in 1990 and would roughly quadruple over the course of the decade to 1.09 trillion USD in 1999. One must not forget, however, that poverty was (still) widespread despite such spectacular growth rates.90 In the early 1990s, when decisions about China’s future course were pending, the economy stagnated and the pressure increased to reignite growth and development fast. Its military was geared to a “people’s war” on land with the Soviet Union and focused on mass mobilization. Technologically, China could not compete with advanced Western standards. The 1991 Gulf War illustrated the US lead. In the Sino-American context, the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait crisis demonstrated Chinese weakness and led leaders to conclude that they urgently needed new capabilities and realistic pathways to prevail in case of a future clash.91 Power projection capacities beyond its borders were severely limited. Although China brought military modernization on the way in the 1990s to prepare for scenarios other than the land-based territorial defense of the mainland, it was, as Goldstein put it, “pockets of excellence” that emerged at the time.92 Similarly, though the country integrated into the institutional architecture of international affairs, it was only beginning to transition into new diplomatic roles. A decade later, David Shambaugh would still describe China as a “partial power.”93 Overall, it was an aspiring country in the 1990s, but massive hurdles had yet to be overcome. China was in no position to play geopolitical hardball. 89 Goldstein (2005, p. 50). 90 World Bank (2022). GDP in current USD. 91 See Nathan and Scobell (2012, p. 279). 92 On the military state of affairs see Goldstein (2005, pp. 54–69; quote from p. 57). 93 Shambaugh (2013).

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From 1979 to 2000, China’s GDP multiplied more than six-fold, and it entered the ranks of the top-10 global exporting nations in 1996 with tremendous growth potential to be realized going forward.94 Not only expanding trade but also development assistance contributed to its success. OECD data shows China’s massive receipt of development assistance from the 1980s through the 2000s. Between 1990 and 1999, it was by far at the top of the list of all Asian recipients (region defined broadly, stretching from the Middle East to Central Asia to East and South East Asia).95 But the country was still a long way from “comprehensive national strength” and far behind the West. China’s economic modernization drive as well as its dependence on technology imports, knowledge transfers, and foreign direct investments remained high by the end of the 1990s. Militarily, the PRC was acutely aware of its relative backwardness and need to catch up. It operated in a relatively benign environment with no immediate threat to its physical security. Beijing wanted to use this opportunity to build strength on the basis of its economic rise. Due to multination weapons embargos imposed after the Tiananmen massacre, its options were limited. Beijing turned to Moscow as a source of modern weaponry and expertise and beefed up its military capabilities in the post-Cold War period, even though Russia hedged its bets and would not sell out its most advanced products.96 While accelerating its military modernization and achieving self-reliance was an attractive vision, the debates in Beijing also revolved around avoiding the “Soviet disease” at home and abroad, meaning that too much defense spending would drain resources, burden development prospects, and provoke counterbalancing coalitions. In the end, it might not improve the PRC’s strategic position but undermine it.97 But beginning in the mid to late-1990s, China launched a determined modernization drive with organizational reforms and increasing investment to build a capable military for the new era.98

94 GDP from World Bank (2022); share of global exports from Nicita and Razo (2021). 95 OECD (2019, p. 7). 96 See Yuan (2010). 97 See Goldstein (2005, pp. 111–113). 98 On military reforms from the 1990s see Nathan and Scobell (2012, pp. 278–317);

in wider perspective see Defense Intelligence Agency (2019, pp. 1–6).

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That it took a calm international environment and undisturbed economic rise for a more comprehensive national empowerment was the baseline of all Chinese policies in the post-Cold War era. The 1998 and 2004 white papers on national defense emphasized that economic and military development were viewed as mutually dependent and closely intertwined. At the same time, China was acutely aware of the need to dispel concerns about its growing stature to make sure the external environment remained benign. The CCP leadership reiterated the peaceful intentions of a rising China while it strove to seize opportunities and accumulate power under favorable conditions.99 The PRC’s grand strategic course into the post-Cold War era was thus, of necessity, one of partial and strategic accommodation. Beijing professed its will to integrate into the US-led international order, but tried to do so on its own terms, with the express attempt to protect its regime security, benefit as much as possible, and increase its leeway in the future.100 Beijing combined a policy of continued economic opening with efforts to ramp up defenses for dictatorship at home and widen the strategic opportunities abroad. Going forward, the CCP turned out to be, as Kai Strittmatter called it, a “miracle creature of phenomenal versatility.”101 Similarly, CCP expert Richard McGregor stresses the Party’s astounding resilience: “Somehow, it has outlasted, outsmarted, outperformed or simply outlawed its critics […].”102 The demands to adapt the Chinese system to the rules of the liberal international order in the economic realm were omnipresent. Beijing had incentives to be responsive, at least partially, out of sheer economic selfinterest. After all, China wanted to be part of a globalizing world. The country was confronted with external pressures to liberalize its economy, open its markets, cut back the state’s role, strengthen the private sector, build up a reliable domestic institutional and judicial system, and abide by the norms of free trade defined on Western terms in the WTO. For 99 See Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (1998) and Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2004). 100 This study takes accommodation to be partial (limited to certain segments) and strategic (temporary; awaiting a future window of opportunity). Hurrell (2006, p. 14) speaks of “pragmatic accommodation.” 101 Strittmatter (2020, p. 10). Own translation. 102 McGregor (2012, p. xx).

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a previously highly centralized, state-led, and cordoned economy, such adaptations presented significant challenges. China did indeed change massively, signaling its willingness to learn and adjust. The emerging economic system was a hybrid which was far from a market economy but seemingly moving toward privatization and openness. As Chin and Thakur assessed: “The high point of its socialization to global practices and norms was in the terms of China’s 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), when it accepted an unprecedented list of international commitments to gain entry into the global trading regime.”103 Outside observers misinterpreted the restructuring of the state sector or other efforts of the new phase of economic liberalization as the onset of a full-fledged transformation to a free market economy, with political liberalization following suit. It was not what was going on in the PRC.104 The precondition for a further economic opening was to shore up defenses for CCP rule, and the Party intertwined several strategies to this end. The primary lesson drawn from the Tiananmen experience was to nip any future protest in the bud. As Deng Xiaoping summarized in 1989: “Yet, in the future, in handling this type of issue, we must take care to prevent a trend from spreading when it first appears.”105 To preclude any public dissent of a similar kind, the CCP brought its repressive machinery up to speed. Organized groups, be they of real, potential, or only suspected political significance, would face the merciless response of the party-state apparatus, as was the case with the Buddhist group Falun Gong in the 1990s.106 The second major conclusion of Tiananmen was that it was a lack of political and ideological zeal that had created an opening for “infiltration,” which Deng called “our big miscalculation.” He posited that “many bad influences of the West inevitably seeped into our country” and that China would have to pay more attention to political education.107 The CCP came out convinced that regime security depended on a reinvigorated campaign of political education and propaganda. To safeguard

103 Chin and Thakur (2010, p. 126). 104 See McGregor (2012, pp. 34–69; spec. pp. 42–44). On negotiations and reforms

before WTO accession see Nathan and Scobell (2012, pp. 254–257). 105 Deng (1989, p. 101). 106 See Brown (2020, pp. 115–118). 107 Deng (1989, p. 100).

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ideological purity within the Party and the party-state, the promotion system was reformed to fill key positions in the media, the educational sector, in government institutions, and state agencies with loyal cadres. Furthermore, the power of the Party expanded in the ministries, the judicial system, and the military, and efforts to monitor, detect, and clamp down on dissent early intensified.108 Third, the CCP sought to engineer legitimacy by corrupting perceptions of reality. It used its extensive propaganda apparatus to fabricate self-serving narratives. Efforts to (re)define events, (re)write history, and (re)construct reality are commonplace under autocratic rule, but China’s CCP has seemingly perfected them. The tools used include censorship to control the flow of information and propaganda in its various forms. The CCP’s strength in this area has to do with the all-encompassing and longterm nature of its propaganda machinery. Its power to construct reality and steer society is underlined by the astonishing U-turns in its storyline, all of which were designed to secure CCP rule in response to the challenges of the day. As Lowell Dittmer put it: “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has consistently placed high priority on molding national identity to sustain its own monopoly on power and mobilize support for whatever policy line it happens to be pushing at the time.”109 Beginning with Deng Xiaoping, the promise of development moved center stage to legitimize authoritarian rule. Equating CCP rule with (the road to) prosperity has become a major narrative. This includes a preposterous rewriting of history. The Chinese Communist Party has presided over decades of economic deprivation and is responsible for the starvation of millions. It is important to remember, as Hamilton and Ohlberg emphasize, that the CCP “kept hundreds of millions of Chinese trapped in poverty for three decades” after it seized power in 1949.110 According to its self-depiction, however, the CCP has done more than anybody else to lift millions out of poverty and single-handedly and straightforwardly led China to economic success: “Over the past 70 years, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the PRC has witnessed profound changes and achieved a miracle of development unprecedented

108 See McGregor (2012, p. 41). 109 Dittmer (2018, p. 21). For overviews of methods and narratives see McGregor

(2012, pp. 229–262) and Strittmatter (2020). 110 Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020, p. 25). Own translation. Italics in original.

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in human history,” a recent white paper states, which compares only metrics from the PRC’s founding period and the present day and makes no mention of the various catastrophies along the way.111 While the CCP seeks to implant a constructed memory of linear success and wise leadership, it is equally ferocious to delete “disturbances.” The death toll of the Great Leap Forward as well as the Cultural Revolution are banned from discourse and memory. The Tiananmen massacre is neither commemorated nor remembered. As Strittmatter recollects, what was initially described as “counterrevolutionary riots” was soon downgraded to “riots” to a “political storm” to a “storm” to an “incident” and eventually faded into complete silence. Foreign journalists were ominously warned by Chinese police to not write “about sensitive matters during sensitive times.”112 When journalist Louisa Lim confronted 100 students from four universities in Beijing with the world-famous picture of a lone man facing tanks at Tiananmen Square roughly two decades after the fact for her book on state-mandated collective amnesia, only 15 even realized it was a scene from Beijing. Confiding to a student she was researching on “June 4,” she encountered no knowledge whatsoever about the events.113 While material development was essential for the CCP’s survival, legitimizing CCP rule with a sanitized account of economic mastery had limits. The turn to capitalist economics undermined the CCP ideologically. Party narratives as traditionally represented in schools, academia, and the media even in the reform era were all about “class struggle and the impending demise of parasitic capitalism.” The ideological disconnect between party rhetoric and the reality of party-driven capitalist modernization became increasingly difficult to bridge.114 Also, the resort to market principles was inevitably hard to square with socialist notions of equality. Deng took a pragmatic stance: “Some people will become prosperous first, and then others will become prosperous later.”115 In

111 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2019, Preface). 112 Strittmatter (2020, pp. 103–104). Own translations. 113 Lim (2015a, 2015b). On policies of forced collective amnesia see also Strittmatter

(2020, pp. 101–120). 114 Lim (2015b, p. 138). 115 Deng Xiaoping, quoted from Church (1986).

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reality, China would evolve into one of the most unequal societies worldwide with huge gaps between rich and poor, rural and urban areas, self-enriching party elites and citizens who were left behind. Already in the 1990s, social justice grievances fueled demands for more political responsiveness and pluralism.116 The Party opted to rely on “patriotism and nationalism” instead of communism as its new baseline for “ideological unity and legitimacy.”117 The narrative of China standing up to a hostile, ill-meaning world has been part and parcel of CCP rhetoric since 1949. But during the Cold War, the CCP had concentrated on its own victories. In the post-Cold War world, China was presented as a persistent victim of foreign powers and the CCP as its savior. As Louisa Lim analyzed: “Class struggle was out; national humiliation was in. China as the victor was out; instead, China was cast as the victim of a century of foreign bullying and semi-colonization, from which only the Communist Party offered deliverance.”118 The change in tune can even be dated. It was Jiang Zemin who in March 1991 notified the education minister that “patriotic education” was necessary and ought to focus on “bullying and humiliation” by foreigners since the Opium Wars.119 When China got ready to internationalize and globalize to an unprecedented degree, the CCP turned to a hostile type of nationalism to protect its rule—unconstrained by truth or independent challengers within. The new nationalism has been crafted in a multidimensional campaign since the 1990s and revolves around anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Japanese tropes. The country saw a rapid increase in “patriotic education bases” and subsidies for “red tourism” to instill the CCPversion of history. Star-cast blockbuster productions contribute their share. Approved anti-Japanese TV productions have gone through the roof. While observers counted 15 TV shows themed on battles with the Japanese in 2004, it was 177 by 2011.120 CCP propaganda suggests that the United States has always been out to undermine China and

116 See Brown (2020, pp. 115–117). 117 Sutter (2016, p. 3). 118 Lim (2015b, p. 137). 119 Jiang Zemin, quoted from McGregor (2017, p. 130). See also Wang (2014). 120 See Lim (2015b, pp. 137–150; numbers from p. 146). See also McGregor (2017,

pp. 130–131; 327–332).

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the well-being of its people. Post-Tiananmen sanctions were redefined as an attempt to keep China down. An anti-American tirade with the title China Can Say No became the bestselling book of the year in 1996, other similar treatises were to follow.121 Paradoxically, the CCP sold the Chinese that the United States was an obstacle to their well-being even though it was instrumental for their rise. Friedman notes: Since the bloody crushing of China’s nationwide democracy movement in 1989, China’s CP has barraged its people incessantly with vicious antiAmerican propaganda, so that most politically conscious Chinese became persuaded that the United States intends to keep China down, foster separation for Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims, and hurt the Chinese economy and spread chaos in China. America is believed to be anti-China despite China’s rise being premised on earnings from huge exports to America and cheap capital from the World Bank, in which America is the major player.122

As former US national security official Michael Pillsbury details based on textbooks and other materials, CCP propaganda alleges that the United States had always been out to harm China.123 In its political reengineering of history and the cultivation of Chinese nationalism to support CCP rule, the Party exhibited, once again, its defining trait: its lack of self-criticism. The CCP presumes for itself and the state it leads a dogmatic righteousness and puts blame for whatever the issue is on others, most likely the United States, which ties in with victimization discourses.124 The PRC is infallible in Chinese propaganda, and the same goes for the CCP. As Kai Strittmatter sums up: “The true, the good, the beautiful is always the Party and its word.”125 In presenting itself as the sole savior of the Chinese nation—always right and always righteous—the CCP shields itself of domestic dissidence 121 On the cultivation of (anti-American, anti-Japanese, and anti-Western) nationalism to protect the regime see Cabestan (2005) and Klein (2009, pp. 437–449). On China Can Say No and the deterioration of the American image in China in the 1990s see Zhang (1999). 122 Friedman (2002, p. 205). 123 See Pillsbury (2016, pp. 99–114). For Chinese worldviews and expert takes see

Sutter (2016, pp. 42–50). 124 See Sutter (2015, pp. 117–118). 125 Strittmatter (2020, p. 32). Own translation.

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(labeling support for the CCP as patriotic, while opponents are portrayed as disloyal puppets of foreign powers) as well as international criticism (by claiming that criticism of CCP policies disparages, humiliates, or angers the Chinese people and nation). As Hamilton and Ohlberg lament, too often the outside world falls for such tricks.126 To protect its rule under all circumstances, the Party asserted its authority over the military in the 1990s. It seemed warranted. There had been unease among some PLA units to raise arms against fellow citizens in 1989. Also, the professionalization of the military could potentially weaken the ideological bonds to the Party. Lastly, the new generation of CCP leaders were technocrats without military experience or revolutionary credentials. Reasserting control over the PLA appeared imperative. While pampering brass was one side of the coin, tightening the reins was the other. An armada of 90,000 party cells within the PLA, a frenzy propaganda campaign, renewed focus on party credentials in personnel management, crack-downs on the PLA’s shadowy business empire, and sizing down its influence in the Politburo and the Standing Committee ought to safeguard military loyalty and subordination.127 The CCP thereby tried to fend off the threats of Westernization and liberalization at home in order to be able to globalize in an increasingly liberal world abroad. And globalize it did. China was committed to seizing the development opportunities the international order offered to build up its political, economic, and military power. Obviously, the country needed a calm international environment and stable relations, first and foremost, with the United States. To avoid arousing US pushback, anti-hegemonic impulses were toned down. According to Robert Sutter, Beijing sought “to persuade Americans that China’s rise would not be a threat to the United States,” reassure neighbors, and uphold the conditions that enabled its continued rise.128 Interestingly, the disconnect between China’s domestic and international narratives remained largely beneath the radar of Western attention. Among the reasons are the relative inaccessibility of Chinese primary sources for

126 See Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020, pp. 13–14). 127 On CCP-PLA relations see McGregor (2012, pp. 104–123). 128 See Sutter (2016, pp. 12–13; quote from p. 13).

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foreign observers as well as the tendency to downplay or disregard the Party’s tropes even in foreign policy and intelligence circles.129 Sino-American foreign relations were certainly not free of conflict. Instead, Beijing played an artful game: pushing back vehemently in areas of vital concern and acting with restraint in others. Reassuring its benign intentions and reform goals, deflecting attention, integrating into the institutional order, and shielding itself of international negatives was the way to go. Even though China’s economic power was still relatively modest in absolute and relative terms in the 1990s, leaders in Beijing employed the lure of the Chinese market as leverage. As Goldstein assessed, China “saw itself in a transition from object to subject in the international economy” and used economic clout to pursue its interests. At the same time, it kept emphasizing its status as a developing nation (not seeking G7 membership despite calls for inclusion, for example) to profit from special concessions and keep a low profile.130 Building on Deng Xiaoping’s dictum to “hide our light and nurture our strength,” Jiang Zemin’s theme was to “increase trust, reduce trouble, develop cooperation, and do not seek confrontation.”131 As an aspiring great power with revisionist potential, the PRC played a clever hand in lying low, holding out, and biding its time while thriving massively. On issues that directly threatened its core needs, China even stood up to the US. When the Clinton administration tried to link most-favorednation trade status, which was an annual decision prior to China’s WTO accession, to human rights in 1993, Beijing was up in arms. The PRC depended vitally on integration into the world economy, which meant specifically: access to the US market, to US investments, and US support for WTO membership. Had the United States made true on its threat, it had the potential to thwart the country’s economic development, the CCP-led regime, or both. David Rothkopf, then an administration official, described the menace of trade sanctions as “the equivalent of holding a gun to your head and threatening to pull the trigger.”132 Beijing tried to preempt any such policy. The message conveyed with diplomatic brashness was that China would not accept the premise that human rights and

129 For such a self-critical assessment see, e.g., Pillsbury (2016, pp. 96–97). 130 See Goldstein (2005, pp. 75–77; quote from p. 77). 131 Quoted from Nathan (2016, p. 23). 132 David Rothkopf, quoted from Gellman (1998).

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trade could be linked and that the United States would suffer greatly if it lost out the race for market access and shares in China. It was a correct reading of the mood in the US: business interests were on China’s side and the administration was not inclined to escalate.133 Taiwan was another red-flag irritant. When the Clinton administration allowed the Taiwanese president to visit his academic alma mater in the United States in 1995, Beijing understood this as a challenge to its One-China principle. The PRC reacted with military escalation to assert its sovereignty claims over Taiwan. A Chinese official even suggested that Beijing could well press ahead over Taiwan since American officials “care more about Los Angeles than they do about Taiwan,” insinuating a nuclear threat.134 The PRC did not stand any chance of successfully waging war, and the US show of force in the Taiwan Strait brought across the point forcefully. Yet its “war-prone chauvinism” signaled red lines which, if crossed, would rift relations.135 The PRC went away both self-assured and bruised. On the one hand, Washington indeed came to conclude that sensitive issues should be handled with utmost care and preferably quietly. When Bill Clinton welcomed Jiang Zemin at the White House in 1997, it was a visit “with no pre-trip dramas involving human rights,” as Richard McGregor put it; in 1998, Clinton announced “three no’s” regarding Taiwan, rejecting any notion of independence, a two-state solution or dual membership in international institutions.136 In more general military-strategic terms, Thomas Christensen pointed out that China was capable of “posing problems without catching up.”137 On the other hand, Beijing’s impulsive saber-rattling appeared strategically inept. Having recalled its ambassador from Washington during the Taiwan crisis, diplomatic relations went back to normal in 1996.138 The escalation over Taiwan had also put China’s

133 See Foot (2000, pp. 158–165) and McGregor (2017, pp. 146–147). 134 Tyler (1996). 135 Friedman (2002, p. 205). On Beijing’s lack of military capability to invade Taiwan at the time see O’Hanlon (2000). For a summary of the Taiwan Strait crisis and its SinoAmerican ramifications see Ross (2000, pp. 87–123). 136 McGregor (2017, p. 160). 137 Christensen (2001). 138 See Council on Foreign Relations (2022b).

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neighbors on guard, which was detrimental to the country’s development goals.139 Hence, as Robert Sutter summarized, Beijing “generally eschewed direct confrontation that would endanger the critically important economic relations with the United States unless China was provoked by U.S., Taiwan, or other actions.”140 To preserve the benign international environment, a core factor was how China responded to Western reform calls. It did with a mixture of reform and reform make-believe. In the economic realm, China was adapting to be able to integrate in the global economy. In negotiations with Washington, Beijing accepted exceptional safeguards and opt-outs to pave the way for its WTO-membership—such as the possibility of unilateral US import restrictions on textiles from China for another four-year period from 2005 to 2008 on top of a quota system up to this point. In addition, Beijing even fulfilled some reform promises of particular concern to the United States and the EU ahead of time. In top, Beijing professed its intention to modify national laws and regulations regarding copyright and patents and improve access for foreign companies in the realms of audiovisuals, retail, or the construction sector.141 But even as the Chinese economy transitioned into capitalist realities, a wholesale retreat of the party-state was an unlikely proposition. It was not the principled belief in the free market that drove Beijing; it was the attempt to get rich fast and preserve CCP rule. In the political and normative realms Beijing employed the language of reform instrumentally. Nonetheless, outsiders were led to believe that China’s domestic politics was changing. When a senior State Department official briefed the public ahead of President Clinton’s trip to China in 1998, he pointed to the “great deal of discourse in China now about the rule of law; that there is some excitement about village elections; that they’re starting to think about environmental problems.” He also mentioned the release of two prominent dissidents and China’s acceptance of a key human rights covenant as evidence of “the progress that

139 See Foot (2006, p. 85). 140 Sutter (2015, p. 50). 141 See Lardy (2001).

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has taken place since the last summit [in 1997]” and as “major breakthroughs.”142 Of course, village elections were tightly regulated and neither a model nor a precedent for a wider political opening. Western complaints about rule of law deficits or the infringement of intellectual property were regularly met with calls for patience and promises of impending reform. As James Mann assessed, Beijing talked the talk but did not walk the walk.143 Leaders in Beijing “endeavored to appear more in line with international norms regarding issues affecting political power and processes in China,” in Robert Sutter’s words.144 But the protection of CCP rule was key. Internationally, China wanted to present itself as a responsible actor. This necessitated a more active diplomacy and improved outward communications. The Information Office of the State Council in 1991 was set up for this purpose. While giving the appearance of a state agency communicating the results of policy decision-making, the Information Office is identical with the External Propaganda Department of the CCP’s Central Committee that has existed since 1980. As Kinzelbach pointed out, such a double designation is not exceptional and aids the dissemination of CCP propaganda since white papers are a “foreign policy instrument of the Chinese party-state.”145 Although they provide insights into party lines, they are first and foremost attempts to present China in a desired light and push back against criticism. Hence, they neither necessarily rest on facts nor are they the baseline for actual policies. While Beijing had been wary of multilateral engagements before and outright hostile toward alliances, in the 1990s it invested heavily in bi- and multilateral diplomacy. This included a special emphasis on critical dyads, like the stabilization of the Sino-American relationship, but also regional diplomatic efforts as well as wider global diplomacy. As Rosemary Foot notes: “The strong ties it has sought to establish around the world help to

142 US Department of State (1998a). For a similar example see US Department of State (1998b). 143 For examples see Mann (2007, pp. 96–100). For a discussion of local democracy

experiments and Chinese takes on “democracy” see Noesselt (2018, pp. 102–107). On the instrumental use of human rights concessions and resistance see Nathan and Ross (1998, pp. 188–191). 144 Sutter (2015, p. 131). 145 Kinzelbach (2016). She speaks specifically about the 1991 white paper on human

rights, but the assessment can be generalized.

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ensure that Cold War-style containment of China simply could not occur in this era of interdependence.”146 Confronted with US unipolarity, a diversified network of partners promised to help China navigate a world where sanctions or political isolation were constant fears and severe threats to its development.147 Institutional integration in treaties and regimes underscored Beijing’s seeming acceptance of the international status quo. Faced with international pushback regarding its role as a weapons proliferator, China in 1995 issued a white paper focused on international arms control and disarmament, presenting itself as a champion thereof.148 By the mid1990s, China had joined 85–90% of all relevant arms control treaties.149 Examples include the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Missile Technology Control Regime in 1992, the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996.150 The United States applauded these steps as own policy successes. “In part, because of our engagement, China has, at best, only marginally increased its deployed nuclear threat in the last 15 years,” declared Bill Clinton when China joined the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.151 Development was the overall goal. China proposed a new understanding of security, which it viewed as a perpetuation of the Five Principles of Coexistence of the mid-1950s: mutual respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity, nonaggression, noninterference in internal affairs, equality and mutually beneficial cooperation, and peaceful coexistence.152 The 1998 white paper on national defense emphasized that the PRC “needs and cherishes dearly an environment of long-term international peace, especially a favorable peripheral environment” in order to pursue its development goals. The document pledged that peace was the country’s avowed intent. “Even when China becomes strong and powerful in the future, it will by no means take to the road

146 Foot (2006, p. 88). 147 See Goldstein (2005, pp. 118–176) and Foot (2006, spec. pp. 84–90). 148 See Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China

(1995). 149 Number from Foot (2000, p. 72). 150 See Friedberg (2011, p. 146). 151 White House (1999). 152 See Brown (2017, pp. 14–15).

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of foreign aggression and expansion,” emphasizing the defensive quality and responsible character of Chinese policy.153 Follow on white papers and the 2002 new security concept expanded on such themes. Beijing posited that peace and development, dialogue, and cooperation were overall international trends and envisioned that “all countries should transcend differences in ideology and social system, discard the mentality of cold war and power politics and refrain from mutual suspicion and hostility.”154 What China proposed was agnosticism about differences in domestic orders and unfettered economic development. Stepping up its regional diplomacy, Beijing strengthened relations with ASEAN, engaged in friendship and confidence-building diplomacy (including the 1997 pledge for “Good-Neighborly Partnership and Mutual Trust”), invested in multilateral regional formats such as the ASEAN+ 1, ASEAN+ 3 (China / China, Japan, South Korea) or APEC, and presented itself as a responsible partner during the Asian financial crisis. Another landmark development was the 2002 “Declaration of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea” with ASEAN members, before China signed on to ASEAN’s “Treaty of Amity and Cooperation” in 2003.155 While unresolved territorial issues were a major source of conflict in the region, all signatories committed to “self-restraint” and “the need to promote a peaceful, friendly and harmonious environment.” The document also affirmed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and envisioned a code of conduct.156 The new security concept of 2002 echoed such hopeful sentiments: “Disputes over territorial land and water are no longer an obstacle for China and its neighbors to develop normal cooperation and good-neighborly relations and jointly build regional security.”157 All of this suggested a constructive way forward. While China was responsive in some areas, it expressly attempted to erect defenses in others. A crucial front was human rights. Its record of repression received increasing international attention from the 1970s.

153 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (1998, Chapter II). 154 People’s Republic of China (2002). 155 See Friedberg (2011, p. 146) and Foot (2006, p. 85). 156 The Economist (2017). 157 People’s Republic of China (2002); also Foot and Walter (2011, p. 46).

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But the shaming and punishment of 1989 was a real caesura, not least since it brought China into the global spotlight as a human rights violator for years to come in the UN. Early in the reform period Beijing had even rejected to discuss human rights concerns as undue interference in domestic affairs. Yet this became an unsustainable posture for a globalizing country which traded autarky for economic prosperity. Clearly, human rights issues were no longer off-limits in China’s interaction with an increasingly liberal world. Under these circumstances, Beijing attempted to play the game of global human rights with its own playbook.158 First, Beijing framed a counternarrative with its first white paper on human rights of 1991. It identified “imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism” as the prime reasons for human rights violations inflicted upon the Chinese people, claiming the record had improved dramatically since the CCP took power. Though the document approvingly references the UN human rights regime, it provides an antithetical interpretation. Recounting the experience of humiliation and exploitation by imperial powers, the white paper points to the protection of sovereignty as one core element of human rights. Satisfying the most elemental human needs, such as food and clothing, was the other. For the sake of a further improvement of human rights in China, the government had to “maintain national stability,” and “boost the national strength,” whereas any “social turmoil” could threaten the development agenda.159 Correspondingly, the nascent Chinese human rights discourse prioritized the right to development as the essence of human rights, while China vehemently rejected political as well as universal definitions.160 Since the white paper placed state authorities on duty to quell dissent for the sake of stability and development if need be, it redefined China’s political repression as a means to protect the human rights of its citizens. Second, China tried to erect defenses in the UN human rights system. The PRC resorted to intense diplomatic efforts to avoid being singledout as a norm-breaker. At the heart of this was a battle for votes in 158 On evolving Chinese human rights postures and the caesura of Tiananmen see Nathan and Ross (1998, pp. 178–192) and Wacker (2013). 159 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (1991, Chapter I). 160 See Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (1991, Chapter X).

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the Human Rights Commission with economic incentives and high-level visits. As Human Rights Watch detailed, Chinese leaders systematically visited countries that served on the body. Examples include the visits by Premier Li Peng to Peru and Mexico in late 1995 and to Brazil and Chile in 1997; senior trade official Wu Yi visited another six Latin American countries that year, five of whom served on the Commission. In 2001, President Jiang Zemin also toured Latin America, and five of the six countries on the itinerary served on the Commission.161 Beijing’s alternative human rights conception was tailored to its own needs, but also targeted commonalities of interest with fellow developing nations, which China tried to rally for a common cause. Though not capable of immunizing itself from criticism, China had significant success. Between 1990 and 2005, China fended off 12 resolutions chastising the human rights situation in the country, among others by resorting to vote-winning diplomacy as well as economic lures and pressure toward members of the UN Commission on Human Rights.162 As Chris Patten, former EU Commissioner for External Relations, admitted, too often even the Europeans fell in line.163 When the defects of the Commission led to the creation of the follow-on UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) with enhanced prerogatives, Beijing initially tried to prevent the reform. Once it appeared inevitable, Beijing sought to fight membership limitations, weaken the mandate of the new body, and prevent single-country-resolutions.164 Third, China tried to control the processes of human rights policy. Beijing sponsored human rights conferences and set up governmental nongovernmental organizations and institutes to inject its own views into the debate, diluting de facto CCP ownership and influence. To give one example: Zhu Muzhi, an established CCP cadre who directed the Information Office of the State Council in 1991 and was responsible for the abovementioned white paper, would move on to head the newly founded Chinese Society for Human Rights Studies, which was an institution under the auspices of the CCP that disguised as a NGO

161 See Human Rights Watch (2001). 162 Piccone (2018, p. 2). 163 See Algieri (2008, p. 77). 164 See Piccone (2018, pp. 2–3).

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and engaged in human rights dialogues with foreign officials.165 The PRC worked to move the debate out of the (potentially painful) multilateral UN setting to (inconsequential) human rights dialogues between sovereign governments and from the public to the private realm.166 While Western governments were interested in dialogue to spark soft change (or, as critics would charge, as fig leave complements to expanding trade relations with a dictatorship), the PRC wanted to ease pressure in order to prevent political change. Lastly, in more general terms, the PRC sought to strengthen the United Nations as the source of international authority—but with an emphasis on its Westphalian principles to protect national sovereignty against liberal hegemony. China joined forces with Russia and called for “pluralism” and a “democratization” of the international system. They used Western rhetoric to challenge Western hegemony. The international environment should become more democratic (meaning: respecting the say of other powers more fully) and more conducive to diversity and pluralism (meaning: tolerant of repressive governments).167 The goal thus was to constrain liberal hegemony and make the world safe for autocracy. At the same time, as Rosemary Foot points out, despite calls for more democratic and inclusive global governance structures, China cherishes the UN precisely because of its undemocratic features. What Beijing treasures is its own preeminent role as one of the P5 in the exclusive hierarchy of the UN Security Council.168 China placed a priority on sovereignty as an absolute, unconditional principle, but acted with restraint. It argued that peacemaking should be narrowly defined and opposed military interventions for humanitarian purposes.169 Though China blocked action against the Sudanese regime over genocide in Darfur in the early to mid-2000s, for example, it took its stances on a case-by-case basis. What drove Chinese policy was not principled firmness but the goal to protect national interests where feasible (oil exports from Sudan) and avoid antagonizing others in all other cases.

165 See Kinzelbach (2016). 166 See Foot (2000, pp. 150–223) and Wacker (2013). 167 See Hart and Johnson (2019) and Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020, p. 24). 168 See Foot (2006, pp. 90–92). 169 See, e.g., Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (1998, Chapter IV).

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From 1990 to 1999, China voted for 91.5% of all Security Council resolutions despite misgivings about Western “hegemonism.”170 When the United States geared up for regime change in Iraq, Beijing decided to “criticize but acquiesce” and left vocal opposition to others.171 Regardless of sovereignty concerns, it even agreed to the R2P resolution at the 2005 UN World Summit.172 While the 1990s and early 2000s were characterized by China’s efforts to protect its regime security, seize economic opportunities, bide its time and rise, it was far from an optimal policy choice. The 1998 defense white paper made clear that China has always seen itself as a prospective leader: “It is the aspiration of the Chinese government and people to lead a peaceful, stable, and prosperous world into the new century.”173 Besides, the longing talk about a multipolarization of the international system just acknowledged the reality of US dominance at the time.174 Desiring a more equitable distribution of international power and leeway for itself, Beijing systematically invested in efforts that would widen its strategic options going forward. As Avery Goldstein posits in his in-depth analysis of China’s post-Cold War strategic deliberations, the country could not rely solely on means with the “negative purpose” of shielding vital interests, but it needed a “positive” trajectory to “engineer the country’s rise to the status of a true great power that can shape, rather than simply respond to, the international system in which it operates.”175 This is exactly what China did. To preempt any counterbalancing that might thwart its goals, CCP leaders tried to reassure the world in the early 2000s. The propaganda apparatus reframed international concerns of a rising China—referred to as “China threat theory”—as baseless US fearmongering.176 The counter 170 Mitter (2003, p. 232). 171 Foot (2006, p. 87). 172 For an analysis of China’s evolving stances on (UN-mandated) use of force and peacekeeping see Foot and Walter (2011, pp. 42–52) and Harnisch (2016, pp. 38–58). 173 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (1998, Foreword). 174 See Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (1998) and Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2004). 175 Goldstein (2005, pp. 23–24; also p. 77). 176 See, e.g., Goldstein (2005, pp. 114–115).

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narrative of theoretician Zheng Bijian was that of a “peaceful rise.” China’s rise would neither lead to any disruptions nor would China behave the way other rising great powers had. From 2003 onward, the term “peaceful rise” entered the CCP lexicon when used by Wen Jiabao and Hu Jintao. Soon thereafter it was replaced with “peaceful development,” which alluded to linear progress rather than cyclical power shifts. The 2004 defense white paper as well as the 2005 “Peaceful Development Road” white paper stressed the defensive character of China’s military modernization and foreign policy goals.177 It was a call upon the outside world to trust China and give the country what it needed: a benign environment that supported its development and rejuvenation.178 As China navigated the post-Cold War period, it was clear that it had a set of well-established, long-held revisionist grievances which revolved around historical legacies as well as its resentment against American hegemony and liberal principles. Beijing preferred a regional order of diminished US status, it held expansive territorial claims, and it outright feared a world order that was tailored to democracy and human rights. Seen from China, US liberal hegemony was a straightjacket which hemmed it in regionally and could strangle it at any time. What China needed was the fresh air of economic modernization and globalization to help loosen the United States’ grip while shielding itself of Westernization at home and the peril of punishment from abroad. Since Beijing was in no position to challenge the international order in the 1990s and benefited from it, it opted for partial, strategic accommodation. As David M. Edelstein explained: “Patience is a virtue for rising powers.”179 Time was not ripe yet for a wider contestation of the Western liberal international order.

Works Cited Algieri, F. (2008). It’s the System That Matters: Institutionalization and Making of EU Policy Toward China. In D. Shambaugh, E. Sandschneider, & H. Zhou

177 See Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China

(2004), Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2005), and Zheng (2005). 178 For an assessment of the short life of peaceful rise terminology see Glaser and Medeiros (2007). 179 Edelstein (2018, p. 158). Also Medeiros (2009) for an analysis how China navigated the existing order to pursue its development goals.

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Klein, T. (2009). Geschichte Chinas: Von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart (2nd ed.). Schöningh UTB. Kristof, N. D. (1989, November 12). China Update: How the Hardliners Won. New York Times Magazine. Lardy, N. R. (2001, April 25). Testimony: U.S.-China Economic Relations: Implications for U.S. Policy. Brookings Institution. www.brookings.edu/tes timonies/u-s-china-economic-relations-implications-for-u-s-policy/ Lee, S. (2002). The 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan and the Territorial Disputes in East Asia. Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, 11(1), 63–146. Lim, L. (2015a, July 21). Louisa Lim: I Wanted to Discover How Chinese People Became Complicit in an Act of Mass Amnesia. The Guardian. Lim, L. (2015b). The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited (First paperback ed.). Oxford University Press. Lind, J. (2017). Asia’s Other Revisionist Power: Why U.S. Grand Strategy Unnerves China. Foreign Affairs, 96(2), 74–82. Mann, J. (2000). About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton (First Vintage Books ed.). Vintage Books. Mann, J. (2007). The China Fantasy: Why Capitalism Will Not Bring Democracy to China. Penguin Books. McGregor, R. (2012). The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rule (Rev. ed.). Penguin Books. McGregor, R. (2017). Asia’s Reckoning: The Struggle for Global Dominance. Penguin Books. Medeiros, E. S. (2009). China’s International Behavior: Activism, Opportunism, and Diversification. RAND Corporation. Miller, T. (2017). China’s Asia Dream: Empire Building Along the New Silk Road. Zed Books. Mitter, R. (2003). An Uneasy Engagement: Chinese Ideas of Global Order and Justice in Historical Perspective. In R. Foot, J. L. Gaddis, & A. Hurrel (Eds.), Order and Justice in International Relations (pp. 207–235). Oxford University Press. Nathan, A. J. (2016). China’s Challenge. In L. Diamond, M. F. Plattner, & C. Walker (Eds.), Authoritarianism Goes Global: The Challenge to Democracy (pp. 23–39). Johns Hopkins University Press. Nathan, A. J., & Gilley, B. (2003). China’s New Rulers: The Secret Files (2nd, rev. ed.). New York Review of Books. Nathan, A. J., & Link, P. (2001). Die Tiananmen-Akte: Die Geheimdokumente der chinesischen Führung zum Massaker am Platz des Himmlischen Friedens. Propyläen. Nathan, A. J., & Ross, R. S. (1998). The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China’s Search for Security (First paperback ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.

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Nathan, A. J., & Scobell, A. (2012). China’s Search for Security. Columbia University Press. Nicita, A., & Razo, C. (2021, April 27). China: The Rise of a Trade Titan. UNCTAD. https://unctad.org/news/china-rise-trade-titan Noesselt, N. (2010). Alternative Weltordnungsmodelle? IB-Diskurse in China. Springer VS. Noesselt, N. (2018). Chinesische Politik: Nationale und Globale Dimension (2nd, updated and rev. ed.). Nomos. OECD. (2019). Development Aid at a Glance: Statistics by Region. 4. Asia. www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-financedata/Asia-Development-Aid-at-a-Glance-2019.pdf O’Hanlon, M. (2000). Why China Cannot Conquer Taiwan. International Security, 25(2), 51–86. Ottaway, D. B. (1985, September 19). Arms Sale to China Near. Washington Post. Palmer, J. (2016, December 24). What China Didn’t Learn from the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Foreign Policy. Pei, M. (1994). From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union. Harvard University Press. People’s Republic of China. (2002). Position Paper on the New Security Concept. www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/ceun/eng/xw/t27742.htm Piccone, T. (2018). China’s Long Game on Human Rights at the United Nations (Report September 2018). Brookings Institution. Pillsbury, M. (2016). The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. St. Martin’s Griffin. Pompeo, M. R. (2020, July 23). Communist China and the Free World’s Future [Speech]. www.state.gov/communist-china-and-the-free-worlds-future/ Ripley, B. (2002). China: Defining Its Role in the Global Community. In R. K. Beasley, J. Kaarbo, J. S. Lantis, & M. T. Snarr (Eds.), Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective: Domestic and International Influences on State Behavior (pp. 121–143). CQ Press. Ross, R. S. (2000). The 1995–96 Taiwan Strait Confrontation: Coercion, Credibility, and the Use of Force. International Security, 25(2), 87–123. Roy, D. (2019). Assertive China: Irredentism or Expansionism. Survival, 61(1), 51–74. Saich, T. (1992). The Fourteenth Party Congress: A Programme for Authoritarian Rule. The China Quarterly, 132, 1136–1160. Sarotte, M. E. (2012). China’s Fear of Contagion: Tiananmen Square and the Power of the European Example. International Security, 37 (2), 156–182. Sceats, S., & Breslin, S. (2012). China and the International Human Rights System. Chatham House.

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Schell, O. (1988). The Democracy Wall Movement. Discos and Democracy: China in the Throes of Reform. Repr. (in excerpts) in O. Schell & D. Shambaugh (Eds.), The China Reader: The Reform Era (1999, pp. 157–165). Vintage Books. Schell, O. (1989, June 29). China’s Spring. New York Review of Books. Repr. (in excerpts) in O. Schell & D. Shambaugh (Eds.), The China Reader: The Reform Era (1999, pp. 186–197). Vintage Books. Schuman, M. (2020). Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World. Public Affairs. Shambaugh, D. (2013). China Goes Global: The Partial Power. Oxford University Press. Spohr, K. (2019). Post Wall, Post Square: How Bush, Gorbachev, Kohl, and Deng Shaped the World After 1989. Yale University Press. Strittmatter, K. (2020). Die Neuerfindung der Diktatur: Wie China den digitalen Überwachungsstaat aufbaut und uns damit herausfordert (Updated paperback ed.). Piper Verlag. Sutter, R. G. (2015). The United States and Asia: Regional Dynamics and Twenty-First-Century Relations. Rowman & Littlefield. Sutter, R. G. (2016). Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy Since the Cold War (4th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. The Economist. (2017, May 30). What a New Agreement Means for the South China Sea. The Economist. Tyler, P. E. (1996, January 24). As China Threatens Taiwan, It Makes Sure U.S. Listens. New York Times. US Department of State. (1998a, June 19). Roth, Stanley O. Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Briefing on the President’s Upcoming Trip to China. https://1997-2001.state.gov/policy_remarks/1998/980619_ roth_china.html US Department of State. (1998b, September 29). Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Foreign Minister Tang of China. Remarks Prior to Meeting. https://1997-2001.state.gov/statements/1998/980929.html US Department of State. (2017). The Taiwan Straits Crises: 1954–55 and 1958. Office of the Historian. Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations (last updated 2017). Retrieved August 30, 2022, from https://history.state. gov/milestones/1953-1960/taiwan-strait-crises Wacker, G. (2013). Norms Without Borders? Human Rights in China. In R. Foot (Ed.), China Across The Divide: The Domestic and Global in Politics and Society (pp. 175–199). Oxford University Press. Wang, Z. (2014). Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations. Columbia University Press. Westad, O. A. (2013). Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750. Vintage Books.

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Westad, O. A. (2018). The Cold War: A World History. Penguin Books. White House. (1989a, May 20). Statement by Press Secretary Fitzwater on the Student Demonstrations in China. George H. W. Bush Presidential Library & Museum. https://bush41library.tamu.edu/archives/public-papers/436 White House. (1989b, February 26). Memorandum of Conversation Between George H. W. Bush and Chairman Deng Xiaoping in Beijing. Wilson Center Digital Archive. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116507 White House. (1999, April 7). Remarks by the President in Foreign Policy Speech. https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/WH/New/html/199 90407-2873.html World Bank. (2022). Database. Continuously updated. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://data.worldbank.org Yoshihara, T., & Holmes, J. R. (2018). Red Star over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy (2nd ed.). Naval Institute Press. Yuan, J. D. (2010). Sino-Russian Defense Ties: The View from Beijing. In J. Bellacqua (Ed.), The Future of China-Russia Relations (pp. 203–229). The University Press of Kentucky. Zhang, M. (1999). Public Images of the United States. In Y. Deng & F.-L. Wang (Eds.), In the Eyes of the Dragon: China Views the World (pp. 141–157). Rowman & Littlefield. Zheng, B. (2005). China’s “Peaceful Rise” to Great-Power Status. Foreign Affairs, 84(5), 18–24.

PART IV

Western Crisis and Anti-Western Revisionism from the Late 2000s

CHAPTER 7

Return of History: Outgrowth Amidst Erosion of the US-Led Liberal Order

Follies and Discontents of Liberal Order Building from the 2000s The enlargement of the US-led liberal international order in the postCold War era at first appeared like a success story without precedent. The number of democracies worldwide as well as the level of freedom in the world rose significantly in the late twentieth century and peaked in the early 2000s. As Freedom House details, the percentage of countries classified as “not free” shrank from 37 to 23% between 1988 and 2005, and those ranked “free” jumped from 36 to 46% in the same time period.1 Economically, the world reached levels of prosperity never seen before. Global GDP rose by more than 40% from 1990 to 2000.2 These wealth gains also contributed to a significant drop in poverty levels worldwide.3 Security-wise, the number of interstate conflicts in the world declined after a spike in the early 1990s; non-state violence increased, though.4 Human rights norms were on the rise. After its conceptual evolution in the 1990s, the United Nations finally codified the “responsibility 1 Freedom House (2019, p. 3). 2 IMF (2022). 3 For global poverty trends see World Bank (2022). 4 See Uppsala Conflict Data Program (2022).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Groitl, Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18659-2_7

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to protect” (R2P) norm in 2005. Though the UN Security Council remained the central decision-making organ, the R2P called upon the international community to intervene if state authorities fail to protect their citizens or even commit mass violence themselves. It de facto made state sovereignty conditional on how political authorities treat their citizens, even if only in the most egregious cases of violence. The world, it seemed, was becoming not only more interconnected but also more Western and more liberal. In hindsight, it was a short-lived triumph. The extended US-led liberal international order of the post-Cold War era has eroded for the past 20 years—unevenly and almost unnoticeably at first, but then in ever clearer terms and at an accelerated pace. Seeds for the erosion were sown exactly when the United States appeared more powerful and unconstrained than ever before. When the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, struck, the United States was at the height of its power. However, the war against terrorism as it was defined by the George W. Bush administration did severe and lasting damage to the US-led international order from within.5 The United States under President George W. Bush sought to adapt US foreign policy to the new security environment which was characterized by transnational networked terrorism, non-state actors defying the state-based rules of warfare, and the obvious limits of deterrence to keep even the strongest country safe. First, the United States decided that violent non-state actors would best be kept in check by holding accountable the states that harbor them. To deny al-Qaida its safe haven in Afghanistan, the United States pursued a policy of regime change and toppled the Taliban in 2001. Waging war against a sovereign country in response to terrorist attacks opened up a new paradigm. It defined state sovereignty as conditional upon the prevention of transnational terrorism plotted and executed from one’s soil. Secondly, the United States decided that the laws of warfare would not apply to terrorists who disregarded these very rules. Those captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan were classified as “foreign fighters,” not prisoners of war with Geneva convention rights. Both decisions led on a slippery slope. Problems mounted when a potential war against Iraq came into focus in 2002. The Bush administration expanded the notion of conditioned 5 Many see the post-9/11 era as a turning point for the US-led international order. See, e.g., Maull (2019, 2020).

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sovereignty further by making the case for “anticipatory self-defense” against states that possibly contribute to the emergence of future security threats. The administration linked terrorism, rogue states, and WMD to make its case. It characterized Iraq as a “rogue state” defying international law, which rested on solid ground. It pointed to the dangers of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which was a real concern but unproven in the specific case. And it warned of the dangers of a horrific terrorist attack in case of an unholy alliance between a nucleararmed rogue state and violent non-state actors. Though not impossible, it was speculative. The 2002 national security strategy nonetheless adopted a policy of preemption, which in its specific formulation amounted to a policy of prevention. The United States demanded for itself the right to wage war against a sovereign state on the premise that inaction could turn an abstract current risk into a horrific future threat. Soon thereafter, the Bush administration pursued regime change in Iraq without UN Security Council mandate in 2003.6 This set a dangerous precedent and contributed to the erosion of America’s authority as an ordering power. The message sent was that the United States would be willing to circumvent or rewrite rules unilaterally when it deemed fit. It led to continued international controversy and divided allies. From a European standpoint, EU unity, the UN, and multilateral processes were indispensable, however, Washington’s course undermined all of them. In the end, neither regime change in Iraq nor the pacification of post-Taliban Afghanistan succeeded as envisioned, the terrorist threat morphed and spread, and the Bush administration presided over two costly wars without end. Taken together, Washington’s response to 9/11 strained own capabilities and undermined the functionality and legitimacy of US leadership. Observers at the time wondered if this was the end of the liberal West.7 The war on terror also shook the US-led liberal order in a broader sense by hurting global democracy and human rights. Detaining foreign fighters for unlimited periods without trial in Guantanamo prison camp, the use of torture (euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques”), and the establishment of CIA-led detention and interrogation sites in third countries undermined normative ideals and credibility. The

6 See Bush (2002). For an analysis see Steinberg et al. (2002). 7 See, e.g., Anderson et al. (2008).

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same is true for individual transgressions like the mistreatment of inmates through US soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Overall, though violent non-state actors pose severe difficulties for international law and politics, the US overreached and hurt itself by violating key democratic and humanitarian norms it had championed before and would continue to champion thereafter.8 That the Bush administration in its second term explicitly defined its foreign policy in terms of supporting freedom and democracy worldwide and reframed the post-9/11 wars along these lines even aggravated the damage. Considering the chaos that had emerged in Iraq as well as the detrimental side effects of the overall war on terror, Bush’s freedom agenda discredited democracy promotion in a broader sense. The thrust of Western democracy promotion efforts was incentives-based, noncoercive, and demand-oriented. Ironically, though the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had been launched for national security reasons with disconcertingly little regard for post-conflict stabilization, in retrospect it appeared as if the United States was intent on exporting democracy at the barrel of a gun with dubious means and catastrophic results. In fact, neoconservative rhetoric notwithstanding, the United States had explicitly rejected extensive nation- and state-building in both countries.9 In other realms, the operationalization of the Bush administration’s freedom agenda was as out of touch with allied interests as the earlier values-free, unbounded war on terror had been. When the US pushed for quick NATO membership for (Westernizing) Ukraine and Georgia after 2004, some European allies feared the breakdown of relations with Russia. While France and Germany led the way to oppose the enlargement scheme, others like Poland were firmly in line with Washington. The same dynamic surfaced over missile defense plans. Even beyond the war on terror, the United States did not rally but divide its European allies.10 All the while, the burdens of drawn-out military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, where NATO had taken over in 2003, placed an enduring strain on the United States and its European partners. From 2005 onward it became evident that the initial expectations for quick and easy regime 8 Desch (2007/08) makes the argument that the US overreached into illiberalism after 9/11 because of its liberal traditions. 9 See Groitl (2015, pp. 416–523) and Ferguson (2005, pp. 164–166). 10 On missile defense and NATO enlargement see Stent (2015, pp. 153–158; 163–

168).

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changes in Afghanistan and Iraq had been fundamentally flawed. The situation was on the brink of civil war in Iraq and on a steady downward trend in Afghanistan. In military-strategic terms, complex stabilization operations and counterinsurgency campaigns (inadvertently) became the top priority over the course of the 2000s, which burdened the United States and allied militaries with an exhausting transformation under fire to adapt to these kinds of operations. But the strains were also political. What the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq did was to consume attention, resources, and strength, even though they were counterproductive to resolve the terrorist threat and distracted from the true challenges for the international order.11 Taken together, the damage of the post-2001 war against terrorism for the US in terms of credibility, reputation, material power, and global authority was substantial. As the Pew Research Center’s multiyear surveys on global attitudes show, both favorable views of the United States as well as confidence in the US president’s leadership collapsed in the early 2000s, even and particularly among traditional allies in Europe. By President Bush’s last year in office in 2008, public confidence in his leadership ranged around 16% in the UK, 14% in Germany, 13% in France, and 8% in Spain.12 The financial costs of the war in Afghanistan totaled over 2 trillion USD in 2019—with little to show for it as the Taliban were gaining ground yet again.13 Operations in Iraq had a similar price tag with a peak burden in 2007 and 2008. Overall, the fight against terrorism accumulated costs of an estimated 6.4 trillion, a 2019 study found.14 Besides, the war on terror aggravated the political polarization in the United States and distracted political attention away from other issues. The United States exhausted itself in large-scale interventions in the Middle East which were irrelevant in a broader strategic sense. As

11 The literature on the defects of the post-9/11 war on terror is vast and diverse. Arguments covered include its exhaustive and corrosive effects within, the pushback it generated without, the strains on alliances, the lack of strategic purpose, or the corruption of US foreign policy into the habits of perpetual war. As exemplifications see, e.g., Kilcullen (2009) and Kaplan (2008). 12 Pew Research Center (2022a). Indicator: Confidence in the US president. 13 Almukhtar and Nordland (2019). 14 Crawford (2020).

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Hillary Clinton later famously put it, “the future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq.”15 Despite the damage of the war on terror, it did not deal a death blow to the liberal West or the US-led international order. There was still a wide consensus about the kind of order the United States and its allies aspired to create through enlargement: one that reins in violence as a tool of policy, preserves the territorial status quo, and allows states to determine their own fates free from great power domineering; one that boosts democracy, free markets, and free trade; one that promotes individual freedom and human rights as universal principles. Securitywise, the United States maintained its global commitments, and no US alliance broke over the rifts in the fight against terrorism. In fact, allies intensified cooperation in less controversial fields and let NATO take the lead in Afghanistan from 2003, for example, in part to compensate for conflicts over Iraq.16 NATO and EU Eastern enlargements and partnership programs proceeded as envisioned. NATO membership grew by 9 to 28 and the EU’s by 12 to 27 states in the 2000s. The United States and its allies continued to support fledgling democracies, economic freedom, free trade, and human rights, most intensely in wider Europe but principally worldwide. Economic globalization proceeded apace in the most dynamic ways.17 Hence, the excesses of the war on terror and the overreach of the George W. Bush administration could be rationalized as aberrations, meaning that the transatlantic partnership as well as the liberal international order could be repaired going forward.18 But the next setback came already in 2008/2009 when the global financial crisis, which turned into a multifaceted economic crisis, hit. It had its roots in the US real estate market and lax mortgage lending practices, which led to a widespread banking crisis once the real estate bubble collapsed. The magnitude of the problem reached the public eye when the investment giant Lehman Brothers defaulted in September 2008, which sparked chain reactions across the globe. The global financial crisis soon morphed into a broader economic crisis. Inter-bank lending ground to a halt, while liquidity strains, a global downturn, and job losses

15 Clinton (2011). 16 See Rynning (2012). 17 See Felbermayr et al. (2019). 18 For a summary of the state of affairs at the time see Dunn (2009).

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burdened economies worldwide. States were forced to step in with huge bailouts as well as economic stimulus packages and recovery programs. As public debts skyrocketed, another spin-off crisis unfolded: the European sovereign debt crisis. Struggling economies like Greece, Spain, or Italy had accumulated sizable amounts of public debt before the banking crisis hit. With large-scale spending needs for bailouts and recovery programs, their financial liabilities turned into overbearing burdens. Eventually, several Euro states had to be bailed out through EU and IMF help and faced austerity demands going forward.19 The financial and economic crisis had profound effects. Some, like the United States, recovered fairly rapidly from the immediate economic fallout. But bailouts and stimulus packages came at the cost of burgeoning debt and a domestic backlash. In Europe, the economic strains came to last. Some countries, particularly those hit by the Euro crisis on top, have struggled ever since. Imposed reform mandates, public spending cuts, and rising inequality aroused widespread frustration within the West with the global economic order of its own making. The Western (neo)liberal economic model of globalization, deregulation, and small-state mantras lost legitimacy.20 In addition, the transatlantic partnership showed signs of enduring stress. There was neither a consensus on how to overcome the crisis nor much inclination in Europe to heed American advice. Instead, the reverberations of earlier transatlantic rifts over Iraq and else incentivized an anti-American crisis blame-game after 2008.21 The financial and economic crisis not only discredited the liberal West as a producer of functional and legitimate economic order, but also brought to the open its shrinking relative weight. The rise of the G20 as a steering committee reflected this. No longer was the small club of leading industrialized states—democracies with the exception of Russia in the G8—in a position to coordinate a way forward for the world economy. Obama acknowledged as much at the G20 meeting in London in 2009: “Well, if it’s just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy, you know, that’s an easier negotiation […]. But that’s not the world we live in. And it shouldn’t be the world that we live in.”22

19 See, e.g., The Economist (2013, 2010). 20 See, e.g., The Economist (2016). 21 See Tooze (2018). 22 Barack Obama, quoted from Javers (2009).

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The advanced economies, particularly the G7 as the core group, had for decades been the predominant forces in the world economy, but postCold War globalization led to the rapid rise of emerging markets and developing economies. After the Cold War their relative shares narrowed, before the West’s former lead collapsed in the early 2000s (measured in purchasing power parity). It was, first and foremost, the dynamic upsurge of Asia that led to this sea change.23 Within this overall trendline, the defining development was China’s emergence as a major economic power. Its double-digit growth rates since the beginning of the reform era in the late 1970s have been nothing but impressive. After a first major growth period in the 1980s, another one in the 1990s, and yet another growth drive after its WTO accession in the 2000s, China also stood out as particularly resilient during the financial and economic crisis. Its GDP of 19.91 trillion USD has meanwhile surpassed the EU’s 17.2 trillion USD, after the latter has struggled for years to overcome the adverse effects and after-effects of the 2008/09 crisis. Though the United States still ranks first as the world’s largest economy with a GDP of 25.5 trillion USD, its lead has been shrinking. Starting from the baseline of economic collapse in the 1990s, Russia also saw significant economic growth in the 2000s, which dwarfs, however, compared to China: Russian GDP reached the high point of its development at 2.29 trillion in 2013.24 While China’s and Russia’s capabilities will be dissected in more detail in the following chapters, suffice it to say for the moment that the changing patterns of global economic gains and weight were the prime international trends into the 2000s. China and other emerging powers were catching up, whereas the liberal West, particularly due to European weakness, lost out in relative terms. In addition, global defense spending was on the rise. The globalizing world, which was characterized by massive wealth gains and interdependence, saw a parallel militarization. For proponents of economic peace theory this is counterintuitive: interdependence should decrease the salience of force and the need for defense investments. The reality was different. On the one hand, economic gains were funneled into building 23 IMF 2022. GDP based on PPP, Share of World. Comparison of emerging markets and developing economies; major advanced economies G7; emerging and developing Europe; emerging and developing Asia. 24 IMF (2022). GDP data for the US, the EU, Russia and China from 2022 in current USD.

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military power over the 2000s, as Russia, China, and others did. On the other hand, Western states spent significantly higher levels on defense than a decade earlier. US defense spending jumped to record heights post2001 and has remained at a high level ever since, in 2021 at around 768 billion USD annually. It reflected the burdens of sustained warfighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, commitments in others theaters, and the needs of primacy.25 EU defense spending of around 250 billion USD (aggregated for illustrative purposes) also reflects the trendline, though at a far lower level.26 Put simply, while economic risers could afford to beef up their militaries, the liberal West was increasingly busy policing and pacifying the liberal order-building project (and its aberrations). The degree to which the international system was changing was only beginning to be seen when Barack Obama assumed office in January 2009. Obama set out to recreate and protect American strength in order to make the US-led liberal order fit for the future. While earlier hopes for a transformation of world politics appeared like illusions of a distant past, the liberal internationalist strategic consensus still held. Political elites still assessed that the US-led international order—which was underpinned by US power and a global system of alliances and institutions and supported security and self-determination, democracy and the rule of law, liberal economics, and universal human rights—served US interests well. Though enlarging the liberal order was increasingly a far fetch, the United States was keen on adjusting it to changed circumstances to preserve it.27 Security-wise, the United States maintained its alliance commitments but changed its posture. First, Obama wanted a more equal burden sharing, which would give the United States a chance to retrench into the role of an enabler of collective action in Europe. The idea of “leading from behind” was a case in point. Second, since the global power balance was changing fast in China’s favor, the United States hoped to “reset” relations with Russia, prod European self-sufficiency, and allow the United States to “pivot” to the Asia–Pacific. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared in 2011 that the future world order would be decided

25 Critics consider the US military posture excessive and out of touch with core security interests. See, e.g., Mearsheimer and Walt (2016) and Glaser (2018). 26 SIPRI (2022; numbers in constant 2020 USD) and World Bank (2022; for EU aggregates and visualizations). 27 See Rose (2015).

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in Asia, and the US vowed to be a part thereof.28 Third, the United States wanted to cut back on international crisis management commitments. It would focus on key priorities abroad and long-overdue reforms at home instead, all of which was subsumed under the catchphrase “rebalancing.”29 Taken together, America planned to focus on key priorities more selectively, and that meant above all the rise of China and dynamics in Asia. Politically and normatively, the United States was intent on recreating moral authority, restoring trust in American democracy and leadership, and working closely with democratic allies. But there was a new realism and somberness. Protecting democratic gains was difficult enough, so ambitious efforts to expand the community of democracies seemed increasingly less feasible. While the endeavor to enlarge the realm of democracy, rule of law, good governance, and liberal values was ongoing in the European periphery with the EU as the driving force, opportunities for global democratization narrowed. When the Arab Spring rattled autocratic states in North Africa and the Middle East beginning in 2011, Western leaders professed rhetorical support to (what was hoped to be) democratic revolutions. It soon became evident that the situation was extremely complex, while the proclivity to get involved was severely limited.30 To preserve an economic order in line with its free market interests, the United States sought to reinvigorate a liberal trade agenda and define global rules and standards through two weighty regional deals: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the EU as well as the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) between the United States and eleven states along the Pacific rim. TTIP sought to unleash the growth potential of the transatlantic economy and define global standards through Euro-American economic power. TPP intended to increase the American economic footprint in Asia in line with its strategic role and shape the rules of the game in the most dynamic region worldwide. As Obama explained: 28 Clinton (2011). For a comprehensive analysis of the centrality of the Asia–Pacific see The Economist (2014a). 29 See Manyin et al. (2012). 30 For an overview of the series of uprisings commonly described as the “Arab Spring”

see von Schwerin and Spalinger (2020). On the policies of retrenchment in the US as well as their sources and effects see Stephens (2015).

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We have to make sure America writes the rules of the global economy. And we should do it today, while our economy is in the position of global strength. […] Because if we don’t write the rules for trade around the world—guess what—China will. And they’ll write those rules in a way that gives Chinese workers and Chinese businesses the upper hand, and locks American-made goods out.31

But despite both projects’ geopolitical importance, they faced severe opposition. While protectionist attitudes in the US complicated TPP’s prospects, TTIP stalled due to anti-globalization and anti-American sentiments in Europe.32 Ambitions to the contrary notwithstanding, the Obama administration presided over the fracturing of the liberal international order of Western making. By the time the president left office, the United States was confronted with tension and upheaval in all of the key regions it had long defined as vital. There was a revanchist Russia in Europe, a newly assertive China in Asia, and a splintering Middle East characterized by repression, bad governance, radicalism, the wars of the Arab Spring, and the SaudiIranian competition for regional hegemony. It was, as the Economist aptly labeled it, a “world of pain.”33 American power and liberal appeal were embattled, while rivals made gains in their quest to redefine the global order on their terms.34 This development was all the more astounding as the raw metrics of power had changed but not overturned the polarity of the international system. Although emerging powers, first and foremost China, had made significant gains, Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth convincingly make the case that the United States is still the sole superpower in a unipolar system. Even China as the most capable challenger is no true peer in material terms.35 Economically, trade volumes and GDP tell only a partial story, while qualitative metrics like innovative potential, patents, Nobel Prizes, or the novel UN metric of “inclusive wealth”

31 White House (2015). 32 On TTIP see Falke (2017) and Hamilton (2014, pp. 32–36). On TPP see The

Economist (2014b) and Green and Goodman (2016). 33 The Economist (2014b). 34 On the contraction of the liberal international order see Boyle (2016). 35 See Brooks and Wohlforth (2015/16; 2016b).

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(factoring in “(i) manufactured capital (roads, buildings, machines, equipment), (ii) human capital (skill, education, health), and (iii) natural capital (sub-soil resources, ecosystems, the atmosphere)”) show the United States far ahead. Military spending levels and trajectories do not account for cumulative strength as a product of enduring investments, a grown R&D and industrial base, or operational experience.36 In addition, the United States remains unrivaled in its global presence. It has close to 60 formal treaty allies and more than 250,000 troops on 800 bases/facilities in 70 countries, as John Glaser details.37 Due to the dominance of the US dollar in the global financial system, Washington possesses an unmachted potential to “weaponize interdependence” with sanctions.38 In sum, the world even today is far from a power transition in the real sense of the term, let alone if US strength is aggregated with its Western partners. Hence, the common narrative of American and Western decline cuts the real story short in many ways.39 But while competitors nonetheless found ways to contest the status quo order without, the liberal West was fraying from within. First, US alliances were in crisis. The transatlantic alliance had been the cornerstone of the liberal West from the Cold War into the post-Cold War era. European allies have in strategic terms bandwagoned with the United States after the Cold War. Yet a fracturing consensus over interests, priorities, and burden sharing has plagued European-American relations in the new millennium. From a European perspective, the war on terror had illustrated that following the American lead did not necessarily serve own interests well. Increasingly, US policies divided Europe instead of unifying it. In addition, the growing disconnect between Europe’s regional preoccupations and the US global posture factored in. From the American point of view, continued European weakness undermined its usefulness as a partner. When the United States pivoted to Asia in 2011/12, European allies struggled to step up at home, while they largely remained on the sidelines and incapable of defending their own interests in a

36 Examples from Brooks and Wohlforth (2016b, pp. 92–96; UN definition of “inclusive wealth” quoted from pp. 93–94). 37 Glaser (2018, pp. 173–174). 38 See Farrell and Newman (2019). 39 See, e.g., Cox (2012) and Lieber (2012).

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changing Asia.40 When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and waged war in Eastern Ukraine, only US forces could credibly deter Moscow and reassure anxious Central and Eastern European NATO allies. Europeans were unable to provide for their own defense without US support. Though willing to reinvigorate the European deterrent, it was evident that Washington would not look after Europe’s wider security needs. If a lesser conflict erupted in the European periphery, Europe would have to handle it on its own or suffer the consequences. At the same time, debates about the necessity of European strategic autonomy emerged.41 Unsurprisingly, there was no transatlantic China policy under these conditions, even though China’s rise was the most significant long-term challenge.42 Second, both the United States and its Western allies slid into political crises at home and found few low-hanging fruits for cooperation and joint success. In the United States, partisan polarization and gridlock have worsened significantly in the post-Cold War era and rendered the political system increasingly defunct.43 The spill-over effects regularly interfered with foreign policy and limited what the United States could do.44 No matter how hard the Obama administration tried to adapt to a changing international environment and build a long-term foreign policy and defense agenda focused on the Asia–Pacific, domestic cleavages, resource limits, and competing priorities led to strategic dilemmas.45 That the United States had exhausted itself militarily in the 2000s and that the crises of the 2010s—the upheavals of the Arab Spring, the war in Syria, and the emergence of the so-called Islamic State, to name just a few—offered no clear-cut paths to victory both contributed to an overall retrenchment of US power.46 Things did not look better in Europe. The EU had always struggled with fractured decision-making and incoherence in foreign affairs, but

40 See Gareis and Wolf (2016), Gareis and Liegl (2016), and Wagener (2016). 41 On the growing estrangement in the transatlantic alliance and debates about Europe’s

strategic future see Groitl (2017a, 2022a, b), Haine (2015), Rynning (2014), and Polyakova and Haddad (2019). 42 See Groitl (2017c) and Maher (2016). 43 See Pew Research Center (2014) and Pew Research Center (2022b). 44 See Schultz (2018) and Groitl (2017b). 45 See Brands (2016) and Brands and Feaver (2016). 46 See Kaplan (2016).

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the problem has worsened since 2008. It is fair to say that an endless saga of internal crises sucked up all the oxygen. Challenges ranged from the financial to the economic to the Euro crisis, the wedge issue of migration, the rise of populism, the collapse of the EU’s outward transformation strategy, increasingly vicious debates about “exiting,” the Brexit referendum, the drawn-out British-European divorce, and the rollback of democratic achievements even in key members like Poland and Hungary. The EU is struggling to come to grips with the multitude of internal cleavages, which limits its capacity to focus on questions of world order— in spite of the invigorated attempt to empower itself in the foreign policy and defense realms since 2016.47 Third and closely intertwined with aforementioned cleavages, the West’s former political consensus has frayed. Illiberal and populist voices are on the rise on both sides of the Atlantic.48 While the democratic consolidation of Europe as well as the deepening and widening of the EU had long been interpreted as one-way streets, the recent past has made clear that both are indeed reversible.49 Economically, the earlier selfconfidence and broad-based consensus on neoliberal globalization, free markets, and free trade has vanished, as the multifaceted discontents with liberal economics illustrated vividly. Socio-economic inequality has been on the rise in Western societies, and so have nationalist, protectionist, and anti-globalist sentiments.50 Not only liberal political and economic principles but also liberal values have increasingly become contested. This revolves around domestic (re)negotiations of individual rights within society (e.g., identity politics) as well as the tensions between the global and the national, between universal and citizen rights (e.g., migration; asylum policy). The latter was thrust into the spotlight when a refugee stream reached European soil in 2015, driven to a large degree by the war in Syria which had

47 The sense of threat and the need to respond are reflected in European Union (2016, 2022). 48 See, e.g., Krastev (2018), Inglehart (2018), Pappas (2016), and Mudde (2015). 49 See, e.g., Matthijs (2017). 50 Anti-globalization discontents have spurred a rich debate that acknowledges the

defects of the status quo economic order. See Colgan and Keohane (2017), Rodrik (2019), Snyder (2019), and Colgan (2019). Others point to the irrationality of populist sentiments instead. See Blinder (2019).

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no easy solution.51 But it also tied in with accelerating migration trends and growing cross-border mobility. Vociferous debates on both sides of the Atlantic illustrated the difficile interconnections between the national and global levels. If the international order was increasingly characterized by ruptures that force millions of people to leave their homes, be it to escape violence or to look for a better life, tensions between universalisms and national prerogatives are to be expected.52 This is a long-term trend. The number of refugees and displaced people is at record levels not seen since World War II—standing at close to 89.3 million forcibly displaced in 2022, which was more than twice the number it had been ten years ago.53 A wave of populism has swept across Europe and the United States in recent years. Despite their differences, populist actors are united in their hostility toward (elements of) the Western liberal international order. In general, their traits include a distinct anti-globalism, a yearning for a strong nation-state, and antipathy toward international institutions; an anti-elitism and anti-democratic illiberalism with attacks on the free press, civil society, and intellectuals; skepticism toward liberal economics and free trade; and in normative terms a rejection of seeming starry-eyed liberal “do-goodism.” The earlier strategic consensus on the merits and feasibility of liberal international order building exists no more.54 The election of Donald J. Trump as the President of the United States in November 2016 took the anti-globalist populist revolt to a new level. For the first time in more than 70 years did a US president call into question the core tenets of a liberal internationalist grand strategy. While all of his predecessors since Franklin D. Roosevelt had agreed (albeit in variations and adjusted to the challenges of the day) that the United States needed to shape an international order, namely one of a specifically liberal kind, Trump called for a new “America First” policy. Conceptually, Trump’s “America First” agenda amounted to an incoherent mix of

51 See Byman and Speakman (2016). 52 For an insightful analysis of the inner-EU split on migration see Krastev (2016). 53 Number from UNHCR (2022). 54 The literature on the recent populist and illiberal revolts in the West is vast and wide. Among the most insightful analyses are Inglehart and Norris (2016), Goodhart (2017), and Krastev and Holmes (2019).

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isolationism, primacy, militarism, zero-sum game thinking, transactionalism, protectionism, and normative nihilism.55 Even though the United States possessed the same material capabilities as before, the Trump presidency diminished American strategic capability and international influence through its post-factual politics, its impulsive zig-zags, and a foreign policy that catered to narrow domestic audiences.56 President Trump undermined, both at home and abroad, what the United States, the liberal West, and the liberal international order once stood for. He called into question alliances, multilateralism, and US leadership. Instead, he hailed the notion of international politics as an eternal struggle between strong nation-states, unbound by principles or longterm commitments. Trump undermined democracy and the rule of law at home and abroad. He slandered the free press, disregarded democratic norms, equated democracies and autocracies, and cozied up to dictators. Economically, his strong preference for protectionism seemingly overshadowed legitimate concerns about unfair trade practices and imbalances in the world economy. Institutions have come under assault. Normatively, notions of universal human rights and their defense have taken a backseat. All in all, Trump set out to demolish the liberal international order of Western design.57 The Trump presidency fueled debates about the state and the future prospects of the international status quo. Calls mounted for Europe to step up as a prime defender of the liberal international order and offset the American abdication of leadership.58 Others pointed to the many non-Western stakeholders that contribute to the globalized liberal order.59 Optimists emphasized the inherent resilience of institutionalized, multilateral structures.60 Liberal internationalists and proponents of deep engagement stressed the pay-offs of the status quo and hoped for a

55 See Groitl (2016). 56 See Groitl (2017b). 57 For a summary analysis see Bierling (2020). On US-European relations see Groitl

(2020). On the erosion of US leadership see Brands (2017/2018) and Daalder and Lindsay (2018). On the (threatened) dismantling of the international order from within see The Economist (2018), Patrick (2017), and Böller and Werner (2021). 58 See Szewczyk (2019) and Fröhlich (2017). 59 See Miller (2018). 60 See Ikenberry (2018).

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restoration of US leadership post-Trump.61 Yet again others considered the liberal international order doomed. While some of them emphasized the inescapable nature of power shifts, others blamed the inherent tendency for overreach which set the US-led liberal order up for failure.62 These debates thus largely concentrated on two poles: those saying that the status quo liberal international order (building effort) is the optimum and needs to be restored, and those claiming it is a fool’s errand and deserves to fail. A third way of viewing things, however, is that the international order that had emerged over the last decade was not the kind Western policymakers had envisioned. Policy output and systemic outcome are two different things, after all. It is misleading to describe the current global status quo in unqualified terms as a liberal international order under stress for the simple reason that no global liberal order exists. By the 2010s, it was evident that the efforts to build and enlarge the liberal order had proceeded unevenly and gone awry in multiple respects. While there was a globalized free trade order, it increased inequality within the liberal West and empowered the illiberal rest. Despite the expansion of global economic networks, the zone of the liberal deep peace with democracy, market economics, and individual freedoms still had clear geographic limits, while functional statehood is found wanting altogether in many corners of the world. Another layer of complexity is added by the fact that the globalized world is characterized by multifaceted entanglements on a vertical level (local, national, global) as well as the horizontal level (national, regional, global). While states have shaped this global world, they are neither fully in control nor untouched by the globality that has emerged in form of accelerated movements of ideas, information, capital, goods, people, and threats. After decades of an upward trajectory, democracy and freedom started to retreat beginning in the mid-2000s. This included a rollback in previously fledgling democracies, but also a decline of democratic health in established ones.63 New forms of digital authoritarianism have shattered earlier hopes that the internet would help promote political accountability, human rights, and individual freedom. Instead, dictators utilize the digital

61 See Stokes (2018) and Brooks and Wohlforth (2016a). 62 For the former see Layne (2018), for the latter Mearsheimer (2019). 63 See Freedom House (2019).

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sphere to secure their rule, repress freedom of speech, persecute dissidents, and disseminate propaganda.64 While humanitarian norms were ascending in the 1990s and early 2000s, they are meanwhile embattled and have repeatedly been violated with impunity as illustrated by the war in Syria and, most recently, in Ukraine. Western human rights policies are in a “slow-motion crisis at the United Nations,” first and foremost due to the “fading power to set the rules of the game.”65 Challenges for security and regional stability have become as multifold as intractable. While fragile statehood and extremism (which came together in the territorialization of the so-called Islamic State in 2014) plague the Middle East, Russian and Chinese great power politics made a comeback in Europe, Asia, and beyond. Taken together, the liberal West is confronted with a world that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to liberal international order building. Instead of a liberal convergence, the world saw a new “normative polarization,” as Chester A. Crocker described the growing divergence of interests and normative ideals of how the world ought to be ordered. It manifests itself in various ways, be it in the form of an authoritarian backlash or nationalist revivals, and complicates international affairs.66 Under the conditions of power shifts and interest divergence, Hurrell diagnosed the beginning of “a period of hegemonic decompression” in the international system.67 It was not preordained but contingent upon actor choices within a structural context, as Patrick Porter emphasized by pointing to the dawning of a “period of competitive multipolarity partly because major players have decided to.”68 Over the past year, the challenge of geopolitics has acquired new urgency with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s ever clearer positioning as an antagonist. In response, the Joe Biden administration and its allies in Europe and Asia are cooperating closer than many had deemed possible. Yet the overall story of the past decade has been that a less united, less strategically capable, increasingly self-doubting West was hurting from within and challenged from without in a turbulent world. 64 See Shahbaz and Funk (2019). 65 Gowan and Brantner (2008, p. 1). 66 Crocker (2015, p. 12). 67 Hurrell (2006, p. 12). 68 Porter (2019, pp. 9–10).

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Viewed from the inside, the core question is whether the liberal West can be reset as a political community of like-minded states and find a plausible strategic course to deal with changed conditions. Viewed from the outside, one of the key questions is whether the United States and the liberal West provide the leadership and order others need. The necessity to find more restrained ways of projecting power and pursuing international order spurred lively strategic debates.69 Going forward, the liberal West must think anew about how to respond to Russia’s and China’s novel levels of aggression, ambition, and self-confidence. It has to be a course that prioritizes self-protection, after all. What started out as the triumphant globalization of the liberal West after the Cold War, has led to a less liberal West grappling with a less Western world.

Constraints on Russia and China While the erosion of the liberal West created new operating space for rivals like Russia and China, the US-led constraint on these two powers by no means vanished. Indeed, it would be misleading to suggest a linear trend toward a freer hand. Opportunities and constraints have waxed and waned unevenly yet left a significant mark on both over the past two decades. When the George W. Bush administration came into office in 2001, it professed to view the world in realist terms. Bush emphasized the temporary nature of the “strategic pause” of the 1990s and the need to prepare for future peer competitors. The PRC appeared as the prime candidate, and Bush refuted earlier notions of an emerging strategic partnership with Beijing. Relations were already strained by NATO’s accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 as well as the collision of an American and a Chinese aircraft and the ensuing political crisis in 2001.70 Views on Russia hardened as well. Since reforms had gone awry and its power potential was depleted, there was a sentiment in Washington that own priorities such as ballistic missile defense and efforts to curb proliferation should be pursued with less deference to Moscow’s sensitivities. Also, Russian exports of weapons and nuclear technology even to international pariahs had become a major irritant. Moscow seemed “willing to

69 See, e.g., Jentleson (2014), Mazarr (2014), and Lissner and Rapp-Hooper (2018). 70 See Kan et al. (2001) and Dumbaugh (2000).

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sell anything to anyone for money,” as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz criticized in 2001.71 Washington’s plans to focus on Russia and China as potential future peer competitors were thwarted by 9/11. The post-2001 war on terror deflected attention away from both major powers as terrorism and Islamism appeared as imminent dangers. As Robert Sutter judged, “U.S. strategic attention to China as a threat remained a secondary consideration for American policy makers.”72 Similarly, Russian-American relations at first seemed headed toward pragmatic cooperation due to shared counterterrorism concerns, moving beyond past acrimony over Kosovo and else.73 Overall, the post-9/11 political climate gave both states a chance to emphasize commonalities with the United States and pursue their own national interests out of the American spotlight. But unconstrained US military power wielding nonetheless reverberated throughout the international system. While the war on terror led attention away from Moscow and Beijing, the second signature feature of Bush’s tenure, namely the embrace of an agenda for freedom and democracy worldwide, had exactly the opposite effect. As evidenced in his second inaugural speech in 2005 and the 2006 national security strategy, Bush interpreted the promotion of democracy and freedom as a core national interest: We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. America’s vital interests and our deepest belief are now one. […] So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.74

He emphasized that the United States would dedicate its power to this cause: “America’s influence is not unlimited, but fortunately for the

71 Paul Wolfowitz, quoted from The Economist (2001). 72 Sutter (2015, p. 56). 73 See Mankoff (2012, pp. 99–106). 74 Bush (2005).

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oppressed, America’s influence is considerable, and we will use it confidently in freedom’s cause.”75 Indeed, Bush built upon and expanded the Clinton administration’s support for civil society, freedom of the press, rule of law, and institutions worldwide through state-led aid for nongovernmental initiatives. Funds allotted for the promotion of democracy, good governance, and human rights went from roughly 700 million USD in 2001 to a request of 1.7 billion USD for the fiscal year 2009. The National Endowment for Democracy’s budget skyrocketed from 31 million USD in 2001 to a request of 80 million USD when Bush left office. Financial resources for international broadcasting services like Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia rose from 441 million USD in 2001 to 670 million USD in 2008. The President personally met more than 180 activists for democracy and human rights from 35 countries.76 The United States was determined to build a more liberal world, after all. Despite Europe’s repulsion against the Bush administration, its own foreign policy agenda aligned with the goal of promoting democracy and freedom. Though not limited to it, efforts concentrated on the European continent. After the eastward enlargement of EU and NATO had conceptually been set in motion in the 1990s, both proceeded apace in the 2000s. In 2004, the EU grew by 10 new members who had adapted their domestic political, economic, judicial, and social systems in far-reaching ways. To avoid new dividing lines and shape its external environment, the EU laid out a complementary European Neighborhood Policy (ENP). It aimed at projecting transformative power outward to support democracy, good governance, rule of law, market-based economic development, and liberal norms and thereby bring the European periphery in line with EU needs. While the ENP targeted all neighboring states to the East and the South in relatively unspecified ways (to date there are 16 ENP partner countries from a crescent ranging from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and North Africa), a more targeted Union for the Mediterranean and an Eastern Partnership (EaP) program were implemented in 2009. The EaP addresses Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine

75 Bush (2005). See also Bush (2006). 76 Numbers from White House (2008). See also White House (2009).

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and encourages liberal reforms through economic incentives and political association.77 Russia was confronted with an enlarging liberal core order in its vicinity in the 2000s. Not only was the direction of American and European policies unequivocally clear, but their efforts to aid democratization and liberalization in the post-Soviet space were also pursued with more determination than ever before or anywhere else in the world. Of course, these were incentives-based cooperation formats that were sought by those countries involved, not a Western development scheme imposed on them. Offers fell on particularly fertile ground because the deficits of post-socialist political and economic transformations in the post-Soviet space had led to stasis. Societies longing for political accountability and economic prosperity saw the liberal West as a model to emulate. Color revolutions in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004) underlined that Russia faced the prospect of a transforming neighborhood that radiated away from it. This might turn Russia into an increasingly isolated outlier instead of the organizing pole in Eastern Europe it wanted to be.78 With regards to Russia itself, the West’s policy was characterized by the stubborn conviction that Moscow would (have to) come around to Western positions, after all. The West kept prodding and reprimanding Russia to liberalize politically, economically, and normatively. The United States regularly singled Russia out as a defector that did not live up to standards. When the State Department launched the Freedom Defender Award to acknowledge foreign activists and NGOs, for example, it was first presented to a Russian journalist and regime critic in 2008.79 The Magnitsky Act of 2012 (named after a Russian tax consultant who investigated corruption and died in a Moscow prison in 2009), targeted individual human rights abusers with sanctions. Europeans on their part clung to a transformational logic. Policy initiatives rested on the premise that economic inducements would incentivize domestic reforms in Russia. Examples include the 2008 German-Russian modernization partnership as well as the 2010 modernization partnership between the EU and Russia. In a joint newspaper contribution, German Foreign Minister 77 See European External Action Service (2021, 2022) and European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (2017). 78 For a brief overview of the EU’s neighborhood policy and Russian responses see Schwarzer and Stelzenmüller (2014, pp. 2–5). 79 See Rice (2008) and White House (2008).

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Guido Westerwelle and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pledged that the partnership served the “community of democratic societies based on the rule of law with diverse market economies as well as a high standard of living.”80 This was not what Russia was but what Germany hoped Russia would become. Indeed, Stefan Meister argued that the assumptions of political “change through interweavement” in the wider traditions of Willy Brandt’s “Ostpolitik,” which were at the heart of Berlin’s approach to Moscow, persisted largely independent of actual results until Russia’s annexation of Crimea and war in Eastern Ukraine.81 It was hope disguised as strategy. The potential for true a Russian-Western alignment was limited under these circumstances, but the pressure Moscow felt was high. Seemingly, tensions relaxed early in the presidency of Barack Obama. A RussianAmerican “reset” led to the New START strategic arms reduction treaty in 2009. In addition, the Obama administration reversed earlier plans for a ballistic missile defense system with interceptors stationed in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic.82 But such islets of cooperation did not change the wider ramifications of the enlarging liberal West for Russia and its surroundings. Despite the fractures in the liberal international order, it was still enlarging regionally in the post-Soviet space and put pressure on Russia to adapt or acquiesce.83 China could not maneuver as it pleased either. Despite the commitments in the Middle East in the 2000s, the United States never relinquished its role as the Asian hegemon and pacifier. Washington sent the clear signal that it envisioned a peaceful, open, prosperous, and increasingly democratic East Asia. The Bush administration, as so many, viewed China’s experience under the prism of South Korea or Japan, suggesting that the PRC’s political system was doomed and would liberalize eventually. The administration also did not hold back with criticism of China’s domestic politics, not least because the suppression of religious freedom, the forced one-child policy, and wider human rights concerns rallied social conservatives in the United States. The Dalai Lama has been received

80 German Federal Foreign Office (2010). On the EU-Russia modernization partnership see European Union and Russian Federation (2010). 81 See Meister (2014, p. 2, 2012). 82 See Baker (2009). 83 On US-Russian hopes and realities under Obama see Rudolf (2016, pp. 17–19).

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by every US president from George H. W. Bush to Barack Obama.84 The United States left no doubt that it remained committed to hedging against potential instability in Asia and down the road envisioned a different China than the repressive one-party dictatorship the PRC was. But instead of forcing change or hurting China’s rise, Washington in the mid-2000s subscribed to the view that it should and could be encouraged to become a “responsible stakeholder” in the US-led order.85 This focused foremost on the country’s international behavior, not its domestic political system. The underlying assumption was that China could be socialized into the status quo order and should contribute more to preserve it. The United States at the time assessed that it could afford to rely on incentives and appeals due to its unrivaled position of power. Even in Asia the US recorded trade gains and remained a sought-after security partner.86 The goal was to “shape the choices” of China as a rising power, which included cooperation offers, but also constraining Beijing by upholding the regional status quo.87 Indeed, US policy at the time was aptly characterized as combining elements of engagement with hedging.88 At the same time, however, the tone from Washington would become increasingly demanding and prior patience soon evaporated. State-led distortions in the Chinese economy, among them an artificially low exchange rate to boost exports and intellectual property theft to shortcut innovation, posed severe problems. In 2006, the United States under the leadership of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson launched a Strategic Economic Dialogue to make progress, while US policy in general has consistently attempted to push China to conforming to Western norms and standards.89 Under President Obama, Chinese state-led industrial espionage, intellectual property theft, and imbalanced trade relations continued to be major concerns that were addressed at the highest levels. While no trade war scenario akin to President Trump’s later course was in the books at the time, it was clear that the economy turned from a 84 See Pomfret (2016). 85 Zoellick (2005). 86 See Sutter (2015, pp. 57–59). 87 Christensen (2015). 88 See Medeiros (2005). 89 See Sutter (2015, pp. 59; 130–131).

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stabilizer into a divisive issue in Sino-American relations. The Transpacific Partnership, which Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter labeled as “important to me as another aircraft carrier,” was clearly designed to increase the US footprint as an economic rule-maker and constrain China.90 In military-strategic terms, the United States declared to be pivoting to the Asia–Pacific under Obama to preserve regional stability in the face of ongoing power shifts. As Christensen points out, it was a misnomer because the United States had never been away and bolstered its security partnerships already under the Bush administration.91 But from 2011 the United States devoted more political attention to the region, helped Asian nations build capabilities and capacities, and moved closer even to former adversaries like Vietnam. While the 2012 strategic guidance for defense planning included cuts in all other regions, the US military presence and operations in the Asia–Pacific would remain fully funded. In addition, the United States envisioned a rebalancing of military capabilities into the region, mandating that 60% of all naval capabilities be relocated to the Pacific Command by 2020. Freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea signaled that the United States considered the freedom of the seas a core interest and were flanked with strategic dialogue and reassurance programs.92 The United States also stepped up demands on China to help solve international issues. Climate negotiations were a case in point. Obama pressured China to make a significant contribution as a major power instead of ducking responsibility by self-characterizing as a developing nation. In 2014, Obama explicitly chastised Beijing as a free-rider for failing to aid global problem management in any way commensurate with the country’s grown stature: “They are free riders. And they have been free riders for the last 30 years and it’s worked really well from them.”93 For China, the increased level of attention given to itself, its behaviors, and its neighborhood promised to make life harder. 90 Carter (2015). For an analysis of Sino-US economic issues see Meltzer and Shenai (2019). Obama was more hawkish on China and trade than his economic advisers and sided with the foreign policy team on a number of issues. See Landler (2016, pp. 297– 298; 301–303). 91 See Christensen (2015, p. 248). 92 On the 2011/12 “pivot” plans see Manyin et al. (2012). For prominent insider

accounts of Obama administration officials see Campbell (2016) and Bader (2012). 93 Barack Obama, quoted from Friedman (2014).

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In other ways, however, pressure on China relaxed or did not fully materialize. One example is the EU’s self-referential and timid policy. China had become substantially richer but neither economically nor politically free in the 2000s. Brussels nonetheless stuck to long-held hopes that trade would liberalize China. A 2009 report to the European Parliament reaffirmed that “change through trade is a way to contribute to China’s transformation into an open and democratic society.” As Fox and Godement’s analysis of EU-China relations details, such assumptions were delusional.94 But European powers were reluctant to antagonize Beijing. Flawed assumptions were complemented with fears of economic retribution, particularly in the wake of the economic and financial crisis. As European diplomats would concede off the record, individual members preferably let Brussels be the harbinger of bad news if there was any conflict with China, hoping to avoid national punishment. Although envisioned reforms did not materialize, Europeans largely stuck to established dialogue formats, degrading them almost to ritualistic efforts. A European official characterized the EU aptly as “asking China to help the EU to help China.”95 The United States in practice was also more restrained and detached from the region than the declared Asia–Pacific agenda suggested. President Obama was conflict-averse and hoped to make progress with a conciliatory approach. However, efforts to defuse tensions were interpreted as American weakness and played by the Chinese, as when Obama postponed a meeting with the Dalai Lama to after a summit with Hu Jintao in 2009.96 Though frustrated with Chinese behaviors on a number of fronts, from the South China Sea to economic foul play or cyber breaches, Obama stuck to an incentives-based approach to engage Beijing diplomatically and strengthen the network of allies. While the 2010 national security strategy had broadly welcomed China’s rise and encouraged it to become a stakeholder, the follow-on 2015 version demanded Beijing abide by the rules.97 At the same time, however, the Obama

94 See Fox and Godement (2009, quote from p. 20). 95 2008 ECFR interview with a senior EU official, quoted from Fox and Godement

(2009, p. 21). 96 See Pomfret (2016). 97 See Obama (2010, 2015).

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administration deliberately avoided to speak of a “great power competition” and insisted the Pentagon do neither.98 In the end, however, Chinese defiance left Washington deeply frustrated because the policies to curb and constrain Beijing’s behavior were found wanting and the pivot’s rhetoric was stronger than its operationalization in practice.99 The Donald J. Trump administration finally discarded the previously dominant idea of engagement. The 2017 national security strategy labeled Russia and China as revisionist powers that had to be reined in.100 It promised to increase targeted pressure on both. With regard to China, the United States launched a trade war and implemented restrictions in the IT sector. Trade representative Robert Lighthizer labeled China’s economic practices as an “existential threat” to the well-being and future competitiveness of the United States.101 The strategic conception was broadened from the Asia–Pacific to the Indo-Pacific as the central regional theater, and the declared goal was to preserve a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” The United States stepped up freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea to counter undue maritime claims and nurtured the so-called Quad format with India, Japan, and Australia to rally the region’s big democracies. Sanctions were imposed, among others, for China’s human rights violations against the Uighur minority and the political crackdown on Hong Kong. In 2020 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a landmark speech at the Nixon library where he declared the policy of engagement that had been practiced toward China since its opening a failure.102 With regard to Moscow, the United States stepped up its efforts in and contributions to NATO to reassure Eastern European allies and deter Russia. Washington also authorized lethal military assistance for Ukraine, which had been declined before. Cleavages of interests persisted

98 See Rudolf (2019, pp. 11–12). 99 On Obama-era policies and challenges see Christensen (2015, pp. 242–287) and

Sutter (2015, pp. 69–107). On the persistent trend of self-deception in US China policy see Waldron (2015). 100 See Trump (2017). 101 Office of the US Trade Representative (2018). 102 See Pompeo (2020). For a summary analysis of Sino-American conflicts see Rudolf

(2019). Briefly also Rachman (2020). For an exploration of potential strategic alternatives to deal with growing tensions see Friedberg (2015).

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and dominated the relationship with Moscow.103 The United States was prepared to push back harder against both. Despite this seeming coherence, the Trump administration foreign policy was de facto characterized by its distinct lack of strategic clarity. This held true for American Russia and China policy and had to do, first and foremost, with the President himself. He repeatedly praised Xi Jinping, undermined alliances in Europe and Asia, and had no strategic understanding of how to restrain a rising China. Instead, impulsive and transactional as he was, Trump regularly undercut his own administration’s efforts to systematically repel Beijing’s assaults on the status quo order. Similar dynamics were at play in Russian-American relations. Efforts to project strength, determination, and allied unity were counteracted by Trump’s hostility toward NATO and the EU and his seeming affinity for Vladimir Putin. While national security professionals in Washington attempted to craft coherent policies to limit Russia’s and China’s opportunities for revisionism, the President himself repeatedly made clear that he, just like Xi and Putin, did not see the merits of a US-led liberal international order.104 When Joe Biden entered the White House in January 2021, he vowed to reclaim America’s global leadership role. Biden defined the contest between democracy and dictatorship as the overarching conflict of our times. This has been labeled an “emerging Biden Doctrine.”105 Washington generally views Beijing as the top priority for US foreign policy, though Russia forced itself on the agenda with the 2022 invasion of Ukraine at the latest. In tackling both, building and nurturing alliances is key. The 2022 national security strategy reaffirmed the focus on Russia and China as the core challenges to the established international order.106 Despite American attempts to present the image of a steadfast partner, doubts remain. This concerns both the US leadership capacity as well as its views on international order. After all, there is a degree of continuity from the Trump to the Biden administration, for example when it

103 See Adomeit (2018) and Stent (2019, pp. 311–343). 104 On the defects of Trump’s China and Russia policy see Huxley and Schreer (2017),

Groitl (2019), Adomeit (2018), and Stent (2019, pp. 311–343). 105 Brands (2021). 106 See Biden (2022) and the earlier interim guidance Biden (2021).

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comes to global trade policy.107 At the same time, the United States is consumed with toxic partisanship, a polarized society, and the reverberations of January 6, 2021, the storm on the Capitol instigated by President Trump to subvert the legitimate transition of power after he had lost the election in November 2020.108 Whether and how the United States can revamp and revitalize the liberal international order as its anchor state remains to be seen under these circumstances. All in all, the US-led international order affected Russia and China in very immediate ways in the 2000s. But even though the stimuli were indisputable, they were also contradictory. The United States was dominant throughout the 2000s and wielded its power in the most unrestrained way to fight global terrorism. The circumvention of the UN Security Council, the reinterpretation of sovereignty norms, and the turn to a strategy of regime change were anathema to Moscow and Beijing. So were the policies that a) prodded domestic change and singled out both regimes as outliers of the global norm, b) demanded policy adjustments from both, and c) were tailored to shaping their regional environments in line with Western interests. While this meant preserving the territorial status quo as well as the United States’ political, economic, and military centrality in Asia, it meant changing the political status of alignments and partnerships in Europe through Western transformational appeal and institutional growth. Moscow and Beijing felt clear and present constraints. They and their surroundings (albeit in varying intensities under different context conditions) were subject to more and more direct Western influence. At the same time, important factors were working in the opposite direction and increased their leeway. Most importantly, the liberal West was fraying from within. By the late 2000s, shifting powers as well as the internal political and ideational fissures in the liberal West gave Russia and China opportunities to assert themselves and exploit cleavages. In recent years, the West has launched policies to rein in both, which promised to make the international environment more difficult to navigate. Paradoxically, though, the presidency of Donald Trump at the same time widened their window of opportunity for revisionism due to the erosion of the

107 On Biden’s China policy see Groitl (2022b); on Russia and transatlantic affairs see Kimmage (2022). 108 See, e.g., Pew Research Center (2022b).

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liberal international order from within. It was a clear warning that the US-led order may well be destroyed from within even if it manages to hold out without.109 The degree to which the Biden administration is able to recreate American leadership and resolve internationally remains to be seen.

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Stephens, B. (2015). America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder (Paperback ed.). Sentinel. Stokes, D. (2018). Trump, American Hegemony and the Future of the Liberal International Order. International Affairs, 94(1), 133–150. Sutter, R. G. (2015). The United States and Asia: Regional Dynamics and Twenty-First-Century Relations. Rowman & Littlefield. Szewczyk, B. M. J. (2019). Europe and the Liberal International Order. Survival, 61(2), 33–52. The Economist. (2001, March 23). A US-Russian Chill. The Economist. The Economist. (2010, September 25). How to Run the Euro: Fixing Europe’s Single Currency. The Economist. The Economist. (2013, September 7). The Origins of the Financial Crisis: Crash Course. The Economist. The Economist. (2014a, November 15). Special Report: The Pacific Age. The Economist. The Economist. (2014b, May 3). The Decline of Deterrence: America is no longer as Alarming to its Foes or Reassuring to Its Friends. The Economist. The Economist. (2016, September 29). The World Economy: An Open and Shut Case. The Economist. The Economist. (2018, June 9), Donald Trump and the World: Present at the Destruction. The Economist. Tooze, A. (2018). The Forgotten History of the Financial Crisis: What the World Should Have Learned in 2008. Foreign Affairs, 97 (5), 199–210. Trump, D. J. (2017). National Security Strategy of the United States of America. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/ 2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf UNHCR. (2022). Global Forced Displacement. Retrieved October 15, 2022, from https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends Uppsala Conflict Data Program. (2022). Continuously updated. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://ucdp.uu.se/ Wagener, M. (2016). Power Shifts and Tensions in East Asia: Implications for European Security. European Foreign Affairs Review, 21(Special Issue), 81– 98. Waldron, A. (2015). The Asia Mess: How Things Did Not Turn Out As Planned. Orbis, 59(2), 143–166. White House. (2008, December 10). Fact Sheet: Promoting Human Rights Worldwide. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/rel eases/2008/12/20081210-1.html White House. (2009, January 12). Fact Sheet: President Bush’s Freedom Agenda Helped Protect the American People. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.arc hives.gov/infocus/bushrecord/factsheets/freedomagenda.html

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White House. (2015, May 8). Remarks by the President on Trade, Nike Inc., Beaverton, Oregon. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/ 2015/05/08/remarks-president-trade World Bank. (2022). Database. Continuously updated. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://data.worldbank.org. Zoellick, R. B. (2005, September 21). Whither China: From Membership to Responsibility? Speech. https://2001-2009.state.gov/s/d/former/zoellick/ rem/53682.htm

CHAPTER 8

Russia’s Nightmare: Destructive Revisionism for Great Power Survival

Balance of Interests and Propensity to Adapt Although Russia under Boris Yeltsin had initially looked West after the collapse of the Soviet Union, leaders in Moscow soon realized that the US-led liberal international order did not offer the kind of spoils and gratification they envisioned and desired. Ten years later the country had reached an inflection point. When Yeltsin named Vladimir Putin prime minister in 1999 and positioned him as the natural heir for the presidency a few months later, he gave him a mandate to recreate Russian strength.1 Putin viewed the 1990s “as a period not of freedom and stabilization but of chaos,” as a former advisor recounted, and defined the way forward.2 Officials in Russia concluded that the Western liberal path was antithetical to Russian needs. By the early 2000s, those once characterized as “liberal Westernizers” had largely disappeared from the political scene, while “pragmatic nationalists” called for a development model adapted to Russian traditions and “fundamentalist nationalists” were convinced of the need to find a unique Russian way.3 These debates related to 1 See Yeltsin (1999). 2 Andrei Illarionov, quoted from The Economist (2016a). 3 Characterization according to Light et al. (2000, p. 79). Without italics from the

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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Groitl, Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18659-2_8

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Russia’s place in the world, but also to its problems within. A core theme that emerged was that Western-style reforms had weakened the country. The decentralization of political power, economic privatization, and the empowerment of regions as well as civil society at the expense of the state, the argument was, were both alien to Russia’s political traditions, history, and culture and counterproductive for a functional post-Soviet state.4 Putin shared the belief that it was the replication of external development schemes that hurt Russia, as his so-called Millennium Manifesto of 1999 explicated. Instead of chasing Western liberal dreams, which Putin saw as a nightmarish recipe for Russian decline, he set out to reverse course. A more apt developmental path included, for example, the cultivation of “traditional values of Russians,” such as the belief in own greatness as a foundational idea to instill a sense of unity and purpose in Russian society: “Russia was and will remain a great power. It is preconditioned by the inseparable characteristics of its geopolitical, economic and cultural existence.” Central to such a renewal was the embrace of strong statehood and economic recovery. Putin pointed to obvious reform needs, such as the fight against black market structures, organized crime, or corruption, and reaffirmed a commitment to globalization. But he also envisioned a greater role of the state to manage the economy for the country’s benefit.5 Building upon these themes, one key concept to emerge in the 2000s was “sovereign democracy,” a term coined in 2006 by Putin’s advisor Vladislav Surkov. As Andrew Kuchins makes clear, it was the experience of the 1990s that led the Kremlin to believe that foreign actors have had too much of a say in Russia’s development—to the country’s detriment.6 Consequently, strengthening national sovereignty became a major goal of Russian politics and diplomacy. To regain, protect, and exert sovereign agency meant not only to devise a domestic course independent of outside expectations and free from interference, but also to exert itself as an independent pole commanding respect and influence in international affairs.7 Unsurprisingly, the Russia that emerged under these circumstances was

4 See, e.g., Yevgeny Primakov in an interview in 2007, quoted in Kuchins (2010, p. 44). 5 All quotes from Putin (1999). 6 See Kuchins (2010, p. 44). 7 See Renz (2018, pp. 30–36) and Salzman (2019, pp. 45–51).

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one that viewed the US-led liberal international order in ever more hostile terms. An immediate priority under Vladimir Putin was to cultivate a new “power vertical.” This entailed reclaiming the supremacy of the Kremlin to exert centralized control. Presidential powers were strengthened, and Russian parliamentarianism became part of a managed system under the auspices of the executive branch. Going forward, the Duma would largely serve as a legitimizer for the political course crafted in the Kremlin. Its members, the president’s United Russia party as well as token opposition parties and candidates all played roles in a staged democratic process. After Russian regions had increased their independence from Moscow during the 1990s, Putin presided over the restoration of central governing powers in the 2000s. Regional governors were no longer elected but appointed, and the Federation Council was emasculated. The centralization of power was also legitimized with the Chechen security challenge. As Dmitri Trenin put it, the Second Chechen War “contributed to a wideranging securitization of the Russian political system.”8 Indeed, the rise of the so-called Siloviki, men from the military or intelligence sector, to positions of power became a defining feature of Russian politics, in addition to the emergence of an increasingly personalized system of governance with Vladimir Putin at its core.9 Authorities also reasserted control over citizens and civil society. The Russian state tightened its grip on the news media. Instead of subjecting itself to an independent press, the Kremlin utilized state-controlled media to steer public opinion. Although the regime upheld the illusion of popular participation and representation, it rested upon manipulation and make-believe. Partisan pluralism and election campaigns with authorized opposition candidates were orchestrated as much as parliamentary decision-making. Peter Pomerantsev assessed: “With power centralized under Putin, […] the Kremlin could run both television and politics like one vast scripted reality show.”10 Larry Diamond characterizes such systems as “electoral authoritarian.”11 In terms of norms, the Russian 8 Trenin (2003, p. 6). On Moscow’s modus operandi with Chechnya see Halbach (2018a) and Wilhelmsen (2018). 9 On the centralization of power, unaccountable governance, and the importance of the Siloviki under Putin see Mommsen and Nußberger (2007) and Mommsen (2017). 10 Pomerantsev (2016, p. 174). 11 Diamond (2008, p. 55).

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conception of the state put the regime over the people, authorities over the individual, order over freedom, and centralized hierarchy over pluralism, which shaped its views on international order and justice.12 What Kremlin terminology described as “sovereign democracy” was democratic in name only. A core element thereof was to minimize, deflect, and preclude external judgment or criticism of Russia’s political development as undue interference in internal affairs while practicing authoritarian restoration. As Putin put it in his 2005 annual address, Russia was to “decide itself how best to ensure that the principles of freedom and democracy are realised here, taking into account our historic, geopolitical and other particularities.”13 Since 1999, for example, Russia would not invite the European Parliament for election observation missions any longer.14 Frictions were inevitable as Moscow tried to cultivate ties with the EU but rejected to be influenced by it.15 The claimed right to be spared from outside admonishments was a protective shield for authoritarian revival. Economically, Putin presided over the emergence of a crony state capitalist system. After assets had been sold out in a privatization spree in the 1990s, Putin set out to subordinate oligarchs to the power of the Kremlin and restore state access to and control of the country’s wealth, particularly in the vital oil and gas sectors. To this end, Russia renationalized assets with political pressure. From 2002 to 2007, the Russian state’s share in oil production grew from 16 to 50%.16 Fifteen years into Vladimir Putin’s reign about 55% of the country’s economy was back in state hands and close to 30% of the Russian workforce was back in government service.17 Yet while oligarchs used to wield political power, now the Kremlin controlled the oligarchs. As the Economist described it: “Mr Putin did not destroy the oligarchy but merely changed

12 The Russian discourse focuses on the rights of the state and on justice for the state. See MacFarlane (2003, p. 179). 13 Putin (2005). 14 See European Parliament (2022). 15 See Lynch (2004, pp. 99–100). 16 Goldman (2009, p. 155). See also Åslund (2019) and McFaul (2020, pp. 109–110). 17 Djankov (2015).

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the oligarchs, creating much closer links between property and political power.”18 Corruption and the criminalization of the economy are endemic under such circumstances. As Mark Galeotti assessed, “under Putin, gangsterism on the streets has given way to kleptocracy in the state.”19 Russia’s economic system morphed into a toxic brand of crony state capitalism, which generated massive riches for its insiders.20 Another ingredient for the re-creation of strong statehood was ideational. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Soviet symbolism was thrown out, pre-Soviet history rose as a source of national reference, and the Russian Federation adopted the tricolor from Tsarist times as its flag and a nineteenth-century song as its anthem. But what this new Russia’s national essence ought to be remained unclear. In 1996, a public contest endeavored to find a new “national idea.”21 In the new millennium, the Kremlin led the way to construct Russia’s identity anew and redefine the Russian Federation as the organic successor of the Soviet Union. One symbolic move was the introduction of the 1938 Soviet anthem with new lyrics as the Russian anthem in late 2000.22 In official political historiography, World War II became the formative experience to legitimize strong statehood based on a glorious past, which went hand in hand with a whitewashing of Stalinism. An honest assessment of the past seemingly imperiled the reconstruction of strong Russian statehood in the present. Anything that helped consolidate the strong state, be it warped or constructed memories, was welcome. Objectively, it amounted to a state-sponsored manufacturing of history for political purposes.23 This went hand in hand with the self-confident reassertion of an international great power role as Russia’s essence. In 2005 Vladimir Putin famously affirmed that the collapse of the Soviet Union had been “a major geopolitical disaster of the [20th ] century” and “a genuine drama” for the Russian nation.24 He was dismayed “that the Soviet Union had lost its position in Europe […]. But I wanted something different to rise in 18 The Economist (2016b). 19 Galeotti (2019a, p. x). 20 See Djankov (2015). 21 Stent (1999, p. 186). 22 See The Economist (2016a). 23 See Stewart (2020). 24 Putin (2005).

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its place. And nothing different was proposed,” which, as he saw it, was the fault of Gorbachev and others in Moscow who “just threw everything away and left.”25 It was both a sentiment that stuck and a call for action: to reclaim Russia’s role as an independent great power pole. The notion that Russia would have to reestablish itself as a great power was a theme that energized the nation. Russia scholarship virtually unanimously attests the country a great power mentality, which has proven extremely resilient and is detached from material metrics. Stephen Blank summarizes that “Russian elites fully believe that if Russia is not a great power then it is nothing […],” a view he considers “an article of faith.”26 In addition, Russia entertains a distinct brand of great power identity. Other nations also possess a sense of exceptionalism and mission. Russia’s revolves less around what the country has to give but rather what it deserves. As Bobo Lo outlined, Russia demands to have a say but declines to have responsibilities.27 Lastly, Russia’s self-understanding as a great power is deeply ingrained in society, which makes it a powerful resource to tap for mobilization. What it means to be a great power is widely understood as follows: to command international respect, defy others, and be feared.28 While Russia was undergoing its authoritarian restoration, the country enjoyed an economic upswing, which solidified the former. Economic success creates “buy-off” options to secure regime legitimacy and stability.29 After the traumatic hardships of the 1990s, Russians widely applauded Putin and saw the country back on track.30 However, the economic recovery of the 2000s was not driven by a sustainable modernization process. Analysts broadly agreed that Russia had to double down on structural reforms, required strong political institutions, and needed to move toward a true free market economy. One of them was liberal economist Herman Gref, Russia’s minister of economics and trade from 2000 to 2007: “The centerpiece of the new social contract is the primacy

25 Vladimir Putin, quoted from Hill and Gaddy (2013). 26 Blank (2015, pp. 164–166, quote from p. 164). 27 See Lo (2015, p. 50). 28 See Levinson (2015). 29 See Diamond (2008, pp. 90–105). 30 See Gerrits (2012, pp. 37–43).

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of the citizen over the state.”31 It was exactly what the Russian leadership had rejected as politically unfeasible. Though Putin professed interest in modernizing the economy through liberalization, political expediency drove the country in the opposite direction. Putin’s authoritarian great power revival set the country on a multidimensional collision course with the West. Some sympathetic observers play down the ramifications. Due to its seeming commitment to pluralism, they deem the Russian notion of “sovereign” development more benign than Western universalisms.32 But the key cleavage was that the global US-led liberal international order as well as its specific manifestation in Europe increasingly violated Russia’s vital needs on all fronts, even more so than in the 1990s. The more Russia distanced itself from a Western model of development, the wider the gap got between both sides’ visions for order. What Russia needed was an international environment that was conducive to authoritarian restoration, crony capitalism, the strong state at home, and an imperial great power identity abroad. US dominance and the Western liberal order were antithetical to this in multiple senses. Russia resented unipolarity and insisted to be recognized as a peer great power. The Russian national security concept of January 2000 diagnosed “attempts to create an international relations structure based on domination by developed Western countries […] under US leadership and designed for unilateral solutions,” which Russia rejected. Among its core interests Russia listed “upholding its sovereignty and strengthening its positions as a great power and as one of the influential centers of a multipolar world.” According to its self-assessment, Russia “objectively continues to play an important role in global processes by virtue of its great economic, science-technological and military potential and its unique strategic location on the Eurasian continent.” But others, Moscow complained, tried to deny it its rightful place, “stepping up efforts to weaken Russia politically, economically, militarily and in other ways.”33 The June 2000 foreign policy concept reiterated these themes. While the document acknowledged that Russia’s relative weakness had yet to be overcome, it emphasized Russian agency as a major shaper of a “new world order” to steer the world from US unipolarity. This new order was

31 Herman Gref, quoted from The Economist (2016b). 32 See Sakwa (2019, p. 159). 33 Russian Federation (2000a).

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meant to be UN-centric, “multipolar,” and “democratic”—in the sense of curbing Western hegemony and elevating Moscow’s influence: “Russia shall seek to achieve a multipolar system of international relations that really reflects the diversity of the modern world with its great variety of interests.”34 Russia wanted to lessen the effects of American and Western liberal hegemony. As Gail Lapidus summarizes: “If the United States was enjoying an unprecedented international primacy, Russian policy was aimed at constraining it.”35 Hopes for a quick resolution evaporated in the 2000s. Putin initially committed to partnership with the West. In an interview with the BBC in 2000 he posited that his country was naturally a part of the European political scene without any bad blood with NATO.36 But from Moscow’s point of view, the West would have to accommodate Russia and respect its interests as a peer great power. This vision of great power managerialism was rejected, however. As Thomas Wright judged, Putin expected returns for his cooperation in the post-2001 war on terror—that the US “withhold support for political change inside Ukraine” or grant Russia “more leeway in its neighborhood”—, while US leaders were not thinking in such terms.37 Instead, the Bush administration abandoned the ABM treaty, which threatened Russia’s ability to maintain strategic parity. Relations collapsed when the United States went to war against Iraq without UN Security Council approval in 2003. Just a few years after Kosovo, the United States yet again decided to use force without a UN mandate, sidelining Russia’s institutionalized right to have a say. Moscow viewed US actions as unipolar overreach, in which legitimizations were invented on the go and fellow great powers disrespected. Unipolarity enabled the United States to do whatever it wanted to whomever it wanted wherever it wanted and whenever it wanted.38

34 Russian Federation (2000b). 35 Lapidus (2002, p. 107). 36 See BBC (2000). 37 Wright (2015, p. 18). 38 See Stent (2015, pp. 49–96) and Mankoff (2012, pp. 106–113). On Iraq and the

Russian dualism over preemption/prevention (which was rejected but also offered ways to rationalize Moscow’s own regional power grabs) see Allison (2013, pp. 98–119).

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Things did not look better at the regional level, where the evolution of European order—centered on NATO and the EU with growing membership, sway, and reach—challenged Russia’s self-image as a regional ruleshaper. Despite Russian hopes to the contrary, the transatlantic rift over Iraq turned out to be a brief and fleeting opportunity for axis diplomacy in 2002 and 2003. Not only did the “new Europe” firmly support the United States even in flexible coalition of the willing formats, but NATO also upgraded itself to a globally operating warfighting organization in Afghanistan. At the same time, the second round of NATO’s Eastern enlargement was just around the corner in 2004. Security remained a transatlantic affair, a globalizing one even, and Russia had little room for maneuver.39 The growing ambit of democracy, market economics, and liberal norms across the continent turned things from bad to worse. As seen from the EU, its policies of integration and transformation benefited all. Seen from Russia, however, the United States and the EU remodeled the continent in a manner that diminished its influence and potentially even endangered its very regime. A rules-based Europe full of functioning liberal market democracies is not one in which an authoritarian kleptocracy with imperial inclinations can thrive. One sample area of divergence between the two politico-economic models was the energy sector. The EU resented Russia’s politicization of gas prices as incompatible with rules-based trade. For Russia, offering preferential rates, threatening price hikes, or cutting deliveries for punishment were major tools to project influence.40 With the country’s autocratic and crony state capitalist consolidation the politico-economic divide just widened.41 The EU’s gravitas became a direct threat to Russia’s own plans to reintegrate the post-Soviet space, which gained steam in the 2000s. Moscow is wedded to an imperial self-understanding. Vladislav Surkov, a leading ideologue in Putin’s regime, would later describe it as Russia’s return to “its natural and only possible status as a great, growing, countrycollecting community of nations.”42 Even though Russia envisioned 39 On resentment against a “global NATO” see Allison (2013, pp. 180–183); on Russia and European order see Allison et al. (2006). 40 See The Economist (2003). 41 See Orenstein (2019). 42 Vladislav Surkow, quoted from Stewart (2020, p. 13). Without added italics. Own translation.

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regional centrality as an integrative pole, the region, particularly the states along the Western flank, moved in another direction. They tried to assert their sovereign independence and looked West. At the same time, the EU unleashed reform incentives through enlargement and outreach to noncandidate countries. The European Neighborhood Policy was perceived, in Dmitri Trenin’s words, as “too condescending” (in attempting to address Russia this way) and “too competitive” in terms of influence.43 Unlike the EU, Russia viewed the world in term of exclusive spheres of influence. Consequently, while the EU reached out and addressed the sovereign states of Eastern Europe independently, Russia claimed to have a say and rejected European initiatives.44 The conflict was about influence but also governance principles. Color revolutions in the post-Soviet space showcased the WesternRussian divide. Pro-democratic revolutions rattled Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan from 2003 to 2005; protests in Uzbekistan were crushed. It was instances of popular revolt against legacy authoritarianism, predatory oligarchic capitalism, corruption, and a lack of economic opportunities. Indeed, Poland and Ukraine provide good examples to compare developmental pathways. Both had economies of roughly the same size in 1990, but by 2012 Ukraine’s GDP had contracted by about a third, while Poland’s had doubled.45 Hence, turning West promised prosperity and justice. While the West praised and supported the pro-democracy movements, they were seen as catastrophes in Moscow. Ivan Krastev described the Orange Revolution in Ukraine as “Russia’s 9/11.” The EU had been viewed as a benign force that would reduce US influence before, yet it came to be seen as a “major rival,” even surpassing NATO.46 Russian officials were convinced that it was not popular will but other powers’ manipulation that ousted their clients, which is not an outlandish thought if one views the world through the Kremlin’s eyes. The Russian practice of “sovereign democracy” meant that election results were manufactured from above, and Russia was meddling in neighboring countries to elicit

43 Trenin (2005, p. 2). 44 See Adomeit (2011) and Klein (2018, pp. 7–9). 45 Example and numbers from Freedman (2014, p. 17). 46 Krastev (2005). See also Lynch (2004) and Diamond (2008, p. 85).

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the desired outcomes and wield influence through informal power structures.47 The potential contagion effects of democratization on the home front were relevant as well. All in all, Russia saw itself caught up in a relentless zero-sum game struggle for regional order.48 Halfway into the 2000s, it became crystal clear to the Russian leadership that it would have to fight back. What the Russian leadership wanted was an international order that was safe for authoritarian government, allowed Moscow to integrate the post-Soviet space on its terms, and play the role of a lead great power in Europe and the world. US primacy and liberal hegemony were antithetical to this in every sense. It was not the West’s fault. No state has an inherent right to greatness, and Russia simply did not have the competitive edge to make neighbors gravitate toward itself. Essentially, Moscow expected the West to voluntarily defer to itself as the regional leader and peer great power, which in turn was incompatible with Western visions. Since its vital needs were in an egregious—and growing—disconnect with the US-led international order, it was clear that Moscow would not stand idly by. As Putin put it a few years later: “It looks like the so-called ‘winners’ of the Cold War are determined to have it all and reshape the world into a place that could better serve their interests alone.”49 The sole option for Moscow was to seek to revise the status quo to preserve its vital needs. This would either happen in constructive terms by successfully building up an alternative order or by a course of nihilist destruction instead. Russia’s window of opportunity allowed for the latter only.

Window of Strategic Opportunity The US-led liberal international order was, from the Russian point of view, illegitimate, dysfunctional, and the product of an unbalanced international system of American dominance. At the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Vladimir Putin denounced the United States as the gravest threat to security and stability worldwide. He railed against the dangers of 47 On Russia’s role in Ukraine and dashed expectations see Petrov and Ryabov (2006) and Stent (2019, pp. 189–194). 48 See Orenstein (2019), Stent (2015, pp. 97–123), Myers (2016, pp. 263–280), Adomeit (2011), and Mankoff (2012, pp. 219–262). 49 Vladimir Putin at the 2014 Valdai Discussion Club meeting, quoted from Kotkin (2016, p. 7).

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unipolarity and hegemony in general and the failings of the United States in particular: “I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security.”50 In a tour d’horizon of policy fields and issue areas, he gave the US-led order building effort a failing grade on all counts. He alleged it was full of double standards, unjust, and excluding. He lambasted NATO enlargement as a “provocation” and threat for Russia, not an integral element of European security. And he scolded the West for meddling in the internal affairs of sovereign countries and subverting once cherished institutions like the OSCE with the ever growing concern for human rights. Indeed, Moscow by that time was convinced that the United States and its allies would play the values card instrumentally to deny Russia its rightful place as a peer.51 Rich countries, Putin charged, prevented a more equitable economic development, while the WTO politicized accession procedures to make life hard for Russia. He concluded that Russia would welcome cooperation to construct “a fair and democratic world order that would ensure security and prosperity not only for a select few, but for all.”52 The 2008 foreign policy concept reiterated these complaints and the call for a new world order more appreciative of Russian needs.53 The vision of order Moscow entertained was reminiscent of a nineteenth-century great power concert. It featured exclusive spheres of influence, unconditional respect for its own great power interests as well as a Westphalian understanding of sovereignty where domestic affairs, at least of the peer great powers, were off-limits. Moscow presented itself as an independent civilizational pole in a world characterized by the interaction of major civilizations with different value systems. In the European theater, Moscow sought inclusion in a “truly unified Europe without divisive lines though equal interaction between Russia, the European Union and the United States,” as the 2008 foreign policy concept put it.54 Putin’s successor in the Kremlin, Dmitri Medvedev, suggested a panEuropean security structure along these lines in 2008. Eugene Rumer and Angela Stent judged that Russia hoped to “create a ‘son of OSCE’ 50 Putin (2007). 51 See Baev (2017). 52 Putin (2007). 53 See Russian Federation (2008). 54 Russian Federation (2008).

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without the Basket Three provisions for democracy-building, a system in which Russia, Europe and the United States would be equal partners, but which does not concern itself with the internal organisation and politics of member states.”55 In 2013, Putin explained: “I want to remind you that the Congress of Vienna 1815 and the agreements made at Yalta in 1945, taken with Russia’s very active participation, secured a lasting peace.”56 After Russia had unsuccessfully tried to get the West to defer to its wishes voluntarily, it turned to forcing them down the West’s throat. Moscow wanted an order that was conducive to its identity as a deserving great power and its imperial mindset of regional hegemony. Moreover, the ideal order ought to be politically agnostic and provide an autocratic Russia with full participatory opportunities and regime security. The timing of Russia’s revisionist revival reflected the perceived urgent necessity to push back, but also a window of opportunity to do so. First and foremost, Russia’s power base had grown significantly over the 2000s. The most visible change was massive GDP growth. Growth rates averaged around 7% per year from 2000 to 2008; after negative growth of −7.8% in 2009, it bounced back with an average of around 4.5% from 2010 through 2012.57 Real GDP climbed from 195.91 billion USD in 1999 to 1.66 trillion USD in 2008 and after the bump of the financial and economic crisis to a historic high point of 2.29 trillion USD in 2013.58 Russia’s currency reserves skyrocketed from 20 billion to roughly 600 billion USD between 1999 and 2009. The stock market grew by 1,000% in the same time period.59 The country possessed a very different kind of economic stature in the late 2000s than a decade earlier. Russia had also consolidated politically and invested in the defense sector. Indeed, the capacity of the bureaucracy and the state had progressed significantly since the turmoil of the 1990s. The perceived need for strong statehood is firmly tied to the conviction that world politics is a geopolitical zero-sum game, where smaller powers are at the mercy of the dominant ones, hard power is the essential metric of leverage, and even softer types of power projection are best understood 55 Rumer and Stent (2009, p. 97). 56 Putin (2013). 57 IMF (2022). 58 World Bank (2022). GDP in current USD. 59 Currency reserves and stock market data from Kuchins (2010, p. 38).

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as “soft coercion.”60 Hence, military hard power is the ultimate currency to protect own interests. As Vladimir Putin stressed in an article, Russia’s conventional and nuclear strength was a life insurance against breaches of its own sovereignty by outside forces.61 To improve its relative position, Russia used the 2000s to invest in the defense sector and reverse the previous decade’s downward spiral. Its military expenditure multiplied between 1998 and 2008, climbing from around 14.5 billion to 43 billion USD.62 The country also scored important international wins, such as the honor to host its first G8 summit in 2006, at long last. This reinforced the sense that Russia had made a comeback among the world’s leading powers. Globally, the enthusiasm regarding global power shifts, the rise of the “rest,” and new cooperation formats like the BRICS all added to an air of growing prestige and clout. While Russia was lukewarm toward the G20—it was too large a forum to convey special status and Russia was too little of an economic innovator to play a lead role—the BRICS allowed it to present itself as “part of the dynamic group of ascendant powers, in contrast to a decaying and discredited West,” as Lo summarized Russian views.63 The 2008 foreign policy concept mirrored the newfound self-confidence, describing the country as one that “exerts a substantial influence upon the development of a new architecture of international relations” due to its membership in the UN Security Council, the G8, and other diplomatic formats, its multidimensional power resources, and pragmatic network diplomacy. That said, “traditional cumbersome military and political alliances” and “[b]loc approaches to international problems”—obvious references to the institutional setup of the West— were described as out of step with a changing world.64 Russia, it seemed, owned the future. Despite Moscow’s gains, however, the material power balance remained heavily asymmetric in the West’s favor. With the sole exception of nuclear weapons, where Russia enjoyed strategic parity with the United

60 See Lo (2015, pp. 40–42). 61 Putin (2012). 62 SIPRI (2022). Military spending in constant (2020) USD. 63 See Lo (2015, pp. 76–80; quote from p. 78). For an analysis of Russia’s utilization

of the BRICS see Salzman (2019). 64 Russian Federation (2008).

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States, even an ascending Russia was far from catching up economically or technologically. Renewed military investments also dwarfed against defense spending of the United States, the European states, or NATO.65 But what added to Russia’s stature was its level of assertiveness and drive. Angela Stent described how the 1990s left the sentiment that Yeltsin and his team were “not acting enough like ‘sons of bitches’ and acquiescing to an agenda set by the West […].”66 Russian politics under Putin was, as Dmitri Trenin explained, infused with the conviction that assertiveness and determination were crucial power assets.67 If willpower and resolve are seen as power enhancers, an authoritarian system like the one Putin presided over was particularly well equipped to punch above its weight. Putin is commonly characterized as “a skilled and opportunistic risk taker capable of forcing others to deal with him on his own terms.”68 Unsurprisingly, the risk-tolerant and ruthless leader of a highly personalized system of unaccountable governance may seek to offset relative weakness in capability by “badass” capacity. Unlike in its relations with the West, Moscow has always been a heavyweight compared to its post-Soviet neighbors. Even in the 1990s, Russia remained the overbearing state in terms of territory, population, economic strength, military capability, and political centrality. The permanent seat at the UN Security Council as well as Soviet nuclear weapons stocks remained exclusively in Moscow’s hands. Its relative advantage in economic and military terms was stark. Russia’s GDP was about three times as large as that of all the other post-Soviet states combined.69 In addition, Russia exploited asymmetric dependencies as sharp political tools to exert leverage and, for example, supplied oil and gas at politically adjusted rates to incentivize or punish. Between 1992 and 2006, Russian energy deliveries to Central and Eastern European countries were

65 For comparative illustrations of GDP and military spending see World Bank (2022) and SIPRI (2022). 66 Stent (2015, p. 25). 67 See Trenin (2016a, p. 27). 68 Rumer et al. (2017, p. 13). 69 Own calculation based on World Bank (2022). Post-Soviet states excluding the Baltics.

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suspended 55 times, and such incidents coincided with political decisionpoints.70 Moscow’s weaponization of gas was particularly blatant toward Ukraine after the Orange Revolution.71 Russia also possessed and widely utilized even harder coercive leverage. Russia is the overbearing military power in the region and has accounted for roughly 90% of all defense expenditures in Eastern Europe in the 2000s and beyond.72 As Margarete Klein detailed, with the exception of Azerbaijan no other post-Soviet state increased military spending percentage-wise as much as Russia between 2008 and 2017. In absolute numbers, Russia’s military budget was 17 times higher than Ukraine’s and 29 times higher than Azerbaijan’s in 2017, the region’s other two top spenders.73 Massive as it was, the spending asymmetry was in fact a new low that already reflected Ukraine’s post-2014 buildup.74 Exploiting this lopsided regional structure, Russia has long forced itself upon neighbors through the cultivation, use, and abuse of unresolved territorial matters in open and “frozen” conflicts.75 The self-proclaimed responsibility for Russians residing abroad gave it a pretext to intervene in the internal affairs of its sovereign neighbors. Over time, Moscow has creatively utilized “passportization” and fast-track naturalizations to widen its influence and build such opportunities. The policy took off in the Moldovan separatist region of Transnistria in 2002—by now home to 220,000 Russian passport holders, which amounts to 44% of the population—and has become common practice to the present day.76 Overall, Russia uses politics of fracture to coercively retain influence over a region that does not naturally gravitate toward itself.77 The cultivation of civilizational soft power to stylize itself as the natural and inevitable lead power in a Slavic-Orthodox region was an add-on. The notion of civilizational largess that transcends borders gained prominence and relevance. In 2007, the Kremlin launched the “Russkiy Mir” project 70 Number from Pomerantsev (2016, p. 179). 71 See Goldman (2009, pp. 221–223). 72 SIPRI (2022). 73 Klein (2018, pp. 13–14). 74 See SIPRI (2022). 75 See Mankoff (2014) and Stent (2019, pp. 153–163). 76 Burkhardt (2020, p. 4). 77 For the concept of regional fracture see Ohanyan (2018).

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to tie together the “Russian world” beyond Russian soil. It engaged in various efforts to gain cultural leverage, support Russian language education, and else.78 A few years in, Russia’s role as a civilizationstate was complemented with notions of it being a conservative power that embodied “traditional values” in a world of Western decadence.79 Russia’s civilizational and cultural turn served as an ideational safeguard and legitimation for Moscow’s self-proclaimed lead role independent of material power metrics. Overall, Moscow made significant gains over the 2000s. Its relative material power advantages as well as its coercive strategic leverage over its neighbors were significant. Its coercive potential, however, stood in marked contrast to its loss of relative political influence to the West in the region. Despite its partial upswing, Russia was in no way coming close to a balance with the West. But it possessed strategic avenues and the power multiplier of determined and ruthless leadership to force itself upon the international scene. At the same time, the liberal West was increasingly hurting from international blunders and divisions within. This offered a golden opportunity to discredit the West’s course and seek to exploit internal fissures. Taken together, the reality and air of renewed Russian strength combined with the self-inflicted problems of the West and the regional power imbalance in the post-Soviet space offered the perfect opportunity to challenge the evolving patterns of the liberal order. Russia would discredit and actively thwart its legitimacy, functionality, and enforceability with a destructive mix of instruments and measures.

Strategic Response: Destructive Revisionism The war against Georgia in August 2008 was the overture to an era of destructive revisionism. Though NATO had postponed accession plans for Georgia and Ukraine at the Bucharest summit 2008, Russia acquitted membership wishes with explicit threats.80 The conflict escalated a few months later over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two breakaway Georgian provinces where Moscow supported separatists. When Georgian troops 78 On the “Russian world” concept and related political efforts see Stent (2019, pp. 147–149). 79 See, e.g., Putin (2013). On this “civilizational turn” see Tsygankov (2016, pp. 237– 240). 80 See Kishkovsky (2008).

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launched military operations against South Ossetia, Russia responded with an attack deep into Georgia. As Uwe Halbach, Margarete Klein, and others made clear, the Russo-Georgian War was a caesura for the entire post-Soviet space, illustrating that “frozen conflicts” could easily be “unfrozen” and that Moscow was prepared to go to war against a sovereign neighbor for the sake of retaining its influence.81 Russia has since recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia and turned them into “protectorates” with a troop presence of about 8,000.82 The war enforced Russia’s sphere of “privileged interests” and effectively nullified Georgia’s prospects for NATO membership.83 At the 2008 Valdai Discussion Club meeting, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev charged that any prospect of Georgian NATO membership was inacceptable and would exacerbate security risks: “The situation is not fair to Russia, it is humiliating to Russia, and we are not going to tolerate it any longer.”84 Going beyond Georgia, Moscow tried to purport the message that NATO and the West were responsible for the growing level of insecurity in Europe. Russia warned it may be forced to deploy Iskander short-range missiles to its exclave Kaliningrad to counter the dangers of US missile defense plans, a threat it backed off from shortly thereafter but made true on later.85 The 2010 Russian military doctrine named NATO as number one external military threat.86 The broken promise narrative was revitalized, suggesting that misgivings over NATO enlargement were the result of Western deception, not the accession wishes of sovereign countries or Moscow’s hegemonic ambitions in the post-Soviet space. Moscow presented the United States as the troublemaker, whereas Europeans were characterized as more sensible yet misled to act against their own interests.87 In this context, Russia also seized the financial and economic crisis as an opportunity to single out the United States.

81 Klein (2018, p. 5) and Halbach (2018b, p. 2). 82 Halbach (2018b, pp. 2–3). See also Barry and Myers (2008). 83 See Rumer and Stent (2009) and Stent (2015, pp. 168–176). 84 Dmitri Medvedev, quoted from New York Times (2008). 85 See Barry and Kishkovsky (2008). 86 Russian Federation (2010). 87 For an overview of Russian NATO narratives see Adomeit (2011, pp. 28–32).

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Medvedev blamed Washington’s “arrogant course,” preference for “unilateral decisions,” and overall recklessness as responsible for upheavals in the realms of security, the economy, and diplomacy.88 From a strategic point of view, the posture made sense. It did not matter that Russia was not threatened by NATO and had no veto over accession decisions. But if Russia threatened escalation on the basis of a purported NATO threat, it needed just a few in the West to buy into Russian reproaches to get the West to back off. Considering the growing divisions within the transatlantic alliance as well as increasing domestic cleavages, such tactics were tailor-made to score a temporary win and force Western accommodation of Russia’s regional preferences. Indeed, Russia did not suffer many consequences after the attack on Georgia. Overall, that Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili had mishandled the situation, that the West had overreached in NATO enlargement debates, and that Russia’s sensitivities had to be taken more seriously soon came to be accepted as dominant interpretations.89 As Jeffrey Mankoff points out, however, Russia did face costs of a different kind. Not only had Moscow lost Georgia for good, but its actions also raised fears in the region and coincided with a contraction of foreign investments in Russia. All of this highlighted the lopsided nature of Russian power.90 The Russian regime’s vulnerability and anxiety would rise further when its domestic authoritarian bargain came under pressure. The financial and economic crisis hit Russia hard. GDP plummeted from 1.78 trillion to 1.31 trillion USD from 2008 to 2009.91 Though growth initially resumed quicker than in the West, the crisis was a reminder Russia that lacked a sustainable pathway to prosperity. Economic strength depended on the rise in oil and gas prices in the 2000s. While the price had hovered around 20 USD per barrel Brent crude oil in the 1990s, it sold for over 130 USD by 2008.92 Following Stefan Halper’s distinction of two types of illiberal capitalisms, Russia was caught in resource-extractive petro capitalism, while China moved to a type of state-directed capitalism which

88 Dmitri Medvedev, quoted from Barry and Kishkovsky (2008). 89 See, e.g., Dembinski et al. (2008). For a critical assessment thereof see Shevtsova

(2010, pp. 81–87). 90 See Mankoff (2012, pp. 243–245). 91 IMF (2022). GDP in current USD. 92 The Economist (2016c).

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generated wealth on its own.93 Russia remained stuck in the ways of a rentier economy living off its natural resources, meaning that falling demand or declining prices would drag the country’s economy down with them. Given that the revenues of natural resource sales accounted for about 40% of Russia’s budget, it was a major vulnerability.94 Medvedev stressed the urgency of economic modernization demands, but to no avail. In a 2009 treatise entitled “Go Russia” (also translated as “Forward Russia”), he described the Russian economy as a Soviet-style “primitive economy based on raw materials and endemic corruption” with a “humiliating dependence on raw materials,” which lacked innovations and did not address individual (consumer) needs.95 His 2009 annual address reiterated the analysis and a call to action that Russia could not “depend on the achievements of the past forever” if it wanted to maintain great power status.96 Yet the political barriers to economic reform had become insurmountable. Necessary reforms to create a free market environment, such as solid property rights, rule of law, or the fight against corruption, were antithetical to regime stability. Vice versa, the features of the political regime, such as state control over national assets and revenues, personal loyalties and spoils, or a politicized judiciary, stood in the way of market reforms. The state capitalist system even solidified after the 2008/2009 financial crisis, and authoritarianism prohibited economic modernization.97 The World Bank’s economic fitness index saw Russia decline over the 2000s despite its seeming economic recovery.98 In addition, Russia was undergoing a process of securitization. Beginning in 2008 and building on lessons from the war in Georgia, a military modernization program was launched.99 This reinforced a trend that had characterized Russia throughout, namely a high degree of militarization. The global militarization index of the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies ranks Russia among the most militarized states worldwide

93 See Halper (2010, pp. 68–73). 94 Number from Kramer (2009). On Russia’s qualities as an energy superpower see

Goldman (2009). 95 Medvedev (2009). 96 Levy (2009). 97 See The Economist (2009, 2010, 2012, 2016b) and Kluge et al. (2020, pp. 2–3). 98 World Bank (2022). 99 See Trenin (2016b) and Klein and Pester (2013).

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post 2000.100 The military-industrial machinery and security services gained, once again, an outsized role and would take up a sizable share of the federal budget. Defense spending climbed to around 11% of all government spending in the 2000s and climaxed in 2016 with close to 15%.101 It meant, however, that funds were lacking in other sectors. Public dissatisfaction with the political system and its growing deficiencies soon became evident. After serving the constitutional maximum of two consecutive terms as president, Vladimir Putin installed Dmitri Medvedev as his successor in 2008 and took the post of the prime minister himself. De facto, Putin never relinquished power. Four years later, they not only swapped positions but also rigged elections to manufacture the planned outcome. It left no illusions about Russia’s “sovereign democracy.” Power lay firmly in the hands of a powerful elite, while the political process merely imitated democratic procedures. What Russia had plenty of was make-believe.102 According to polls, public trust in Putin-style governance dropped from 35 to 20% between 2008 and 2012, while Western democracy was viewed increasingly favorably, with support rising from 15 to 30%.103 For a regime going to great pains to uphold the illusion of electoral accountability while seeking to preserve unaccountable authoritarianism, this is an existential threat. Externally, Russia doubled down on the institutionalization of an antiWestern “counter-order” in the post-Soviet space with limited success. Security-wise, Moscow hoped to develop the 2002 six-member Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which had grown out of the 1992/1994 Collective Security Treaty of originally nine post-Soviet states, into a tool to multilateralize its security interests. Members include Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and intermittently also Uzbekistan. Dependencies for weapons sales, training assistance, or overall defense needs gave Russia great leverage with some

100 See Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (2022). 101 World Bank (2022). Military Expenditure as percent of general government

expenditure. 102 See The Economist (2016c). 103 The Economist (2016c).

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like Armenia, but the Kremlin’s attempts to nurture and exploit dependencies reinforced pushback.104 Economically, Russia hoped to forge the Eurasian Economic Community founded in 2000 between Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan (with intermittent membership of Uzbekistan 2005–2008) into a regional center of gravity. In 2010 it morphed into a Eurasian Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, before the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) was agreed on in 2014 and came to life in 2015 with Armenia and Kyrgyzstan as two additional members. The EAEU was the heart of Russia’s economic regional order-building efforts with the goal to integrate members into a common market in goods, services, capital, and labor—quasi mirror-imaging the European Union.105 Russia also revived the proposal of a free trade area from Lisbon to Vladivostok in 2010. Though they sounded compatible, Russian initiatives were antithetical to the EU’s vision. Moscow wanted to integrate its neighborhood on its terms and discuss the wider regional order with the EU as a peer. Hence, the Kremlin stepped up efforts to derail the EU’s Eastern Partnership. Russia tried to prevent the westward drift of at least Armenia, Moldova, and Ukraine in what it interpreted as a zerosum game rivalry with the EU. Georgia and Azerbaijan were effectively lost due to the conflicts over Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno Karabakh. But Moscow wanted to sway those “up for grabs,” thwart the signing of EU association and free trade agreements, and pull those on the fence over to its own Eurasian integration project, as it managed to do with Armenia.106 “The Moscow version of a Greater Europe has Russia as the gravitational center of this mega-structure in the post-Soviet space, institutionalized through the Eurasian Union (EAU).”107 Russia’s ambassador to the EU pointed out that Moscow would want the European Union to talk to the Eurasian Union, instead of, for example, having the EU and the EAU both talk to Ukraine.108 Russia’s regional integration

104 For an excellent analysis of dependencies and integration efforts in security affairs see Klein (2018, pp. 25–37). 105 See Rolland (2019, p. 9). 106 See Freedman (2014, pp. 17–23) and Halbach (2015). 107 Secrieru (2013, p. 2). 108 See Secrieru (2013, p. 2).

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schemes were clearly designed as hegemonic instruments, which was what others worried about.109 Ukraine, the second-largest and second-most powerful post-Soviet state, was the key part in Moscow’s vision. Russia dreamt of Kyiv’s alignment after pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovych took over in 2010 and steered the country away from prospective NATO membership. Conversely, as Roy Allison pointed out, “Russian diplomacy castigated EU programmes and reform processes in the EU’s eastern security neighbourhood for hindering ‘natural’ processes of Russia-led Eurasian integration—expected to lead towards a Eurasian Economic Union linking most CIS states.”110 Russia would come to interpret this as the West “rigging the international system,” unduly “turning around” neighbors, and stealing partners from its orbit. While alignment with Russia served the interests of some, particularly the Central Asia autocracies, Moscow did not possess a competitive model of development or an attractive vision of order that resonated with its Western flank. Unsurprisingly, the envisioned restoration of regional hegemony with a cordon of pliant authoritarian states did not come to pass naturally, and neither did the West volunteer to retract. The American-Russian “reset” during the Obama administration thus had little chance to redefine bilateral relations in a wider sense. While there was a commonality of interest over nuclear arms control and disarmament, differences remained over domestic governance and regional influence. Speaking in Moscow in 2009, Obama discarded the nineteenthcentury sphere of influence thinking: “In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chess board are over.” He continued to praise the value of a democratic and accountable government that serves the people (which contrasted with Russia’s authoritarian, crony-capitalist model); explicitly referenced Ukraine’s and Georgia’s sovereignty to make alliance decisions based on the will of the people, and rejected Yalta-type diplomacy.111 Obama rounded off his Moscow trip by meeting Russian opposition leaders like Boris Nemtsov

109 See Lo (2015, pp. 80–81) and Shevtsova (2016, pp. 44–46). For a Russian counterview see Lukin (2014). 110 Allison (2014, p. 1256). 111 White House (2009).

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who commented afterward: “Liberating Russia from this corrupt bureaucracy is not Obama’s obligation, it is ours. This is our battle,” adding that close contact with America was valuable for the cause.112 Shortly thereafter, Vice President Joe Biden affirmed Washington’s open-door policy toward Georgia and Ukraine and rejected Russian prerogatives.113 While none of this should be controversial, it was the antithesis of Russia’s take on domestic and international order. As seen from Moscow, while the concerns regarding missile defense and strategic nuclear arms temporarily relaxed, the West kept undermining the Russian regime from within and chipping away its influence without.114 It added up to a paranoid reading of world events. The view had hardened that public calls for free and fair elections, rule of law, and accountability were never true citizen concerns but just the latest Western plot to undermine the stability of nonconformant regimes. Color revolutions in the post-Soviet space in the 2000s were interpreted as a type of unconventional warfare waged by the West. Correspondingly, the 2010 military doctrine identified attempts to bring about constitutional change, challenge Russia’s sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity, and disrupt state organs as internal military threats (in addition to naming NATO the prime external military threat).115 According to David Kramer, Russia’s growing internal repression and lawlessness, economic troubles, and siege mentality added up to a toxic mixture: “A paranoid Russian leadership that see threats everywhere, but particularly from the United States, makes for a very difficult partner for the Obama administration.”116 The uprisings of the Arab Spring beginning in 2011 were interpreted along similar lines. After all, the legitimacy of authoritarian governance, the limits or reaches of sovereignty, and the rights and responsibilities of the international community were on public display and (re)negotiated. Russia and like-minded authoritarians feared the spill-over effects and championed the right of governments to quell public protests by all

112 Boris Nemtsov, quoted from Feifer and Whitmore (2009). 113 Joe Biden in July 2009 in Ukraine, see Barry (2009). 114 See Kramer (2010). 115 See Russian Federation (2010). 116 Kramer (2010, p. 75). On Putin’s Russia, the Putinist system of management, its

authoritarian lawlessness within and aggressive potential without see Lucas (2014) and Galeotti (2019b).

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necessary means. This view hardened after Libya, where the UN Security Council—with Russian and Chinese abstentions—mandated a no-fly zone based on the responsibility to protect (R2P) to prevent mass killings of civilians in 2011. When NATO implemented it, Russia charged the alliance overstepped its mandate and “broke” Libya.117 Moscow alleged that Western norms of democratization and humanitarian intervention served the fig-leave purpose of legitimizing violence against rival regimes and produced nothing but chaos.118 Worse still, the Kremlin was convinced that the West instigated such revolutions. When public protests rattled Moscow in late 2011 and 2012 after the Putin–Medvedev team had made a mockery of the constitution and manufactured the desired election result, the Kremlin blamed the United States. Putin specifically reproached US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for supposedly mobilizing “mercenary” critics: “She set the tone for some opposition activists, gave them a signal, they heard this signal and started active work,” Putin insisted. “We need to work out forms of protection of our sovereignty, defense against interference from outside.”119 That corruption, election fraud, dwindling economic prospects, the lack of accountability, or similar grievances led to the eruption of public outrage had no place in the mental landscape of Russian leaders. Going forward, the Putin regime doubled down on the purported need to protect the country against malign foreign influences. In 2012, Russia passed its foreign agent law. NGOs or civil society groups that receive funding from abroad were declared “foreign agents” in Stalinist terminology. The list of “foreign agents” expanded over the years to include the renowned Levada Center of public opinion research or the (meanwhile prohibited) human rights organization Memorial, which looked into Soviet-era crimes.120 In 2017 the law was amended to include media outlets, in 2019 even individuals such as bloggers could be labeled foreign agents.121 It was widened further still to subject virtually every

117 Putin opposed the Libya decision from the beginning. See Levy and Shanker (2011). 118 See Myers (2015) and Renz (2018, pp. 34–35). 119 Vladimir Putin in December 2011, quoted from Gutterman and Bryanski (2011).

For a good account of Clinton’s Russia views see Warrick and DeYoung (2016). 120 See BBC (2015). 121 See BBC (2019).

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private citizen to the foreign agent law for unspecified “political activities” and stifle dissent.122 The same logic also showed in Russia’s retreat from previously accepted international commitments, for example in the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights.123 In addition to erecting domestic defenses, the Kremlin stepped up the fight against the (from its point of view) detrimental effects of the USled international order in Europe and beyond. After all, closing itself off did not make the international order more forthcoming, and the sense of embattlement from without was not going away. Instead, the Kremlin felt the need to stand up to the West with resolve.124 The 2013 foreign policy concept placed Russia explicitly in the role of a global balancer, which “reflects the unique role our country has been playing over centuries as a counterbalance in international affairs and the development of global civilization.”125 Seeing itself in an undeclared war with the West with its very survival at stake, both as the regime that it was and as the great power it aspired to be, Russia castigated the Western liberal order as illegitimate, dysfunctional, and unenforceable. Andrew Monaghan argued in his analysis of the 2013 foreign policy concept that Russia exhibited a “blend of confidence and insecurity.”126 How Russia proceeded was inextricably linked to its mix of capabilities, state capacity, and strategic options. The Russian state possesses a curious mixture of strengths and weaknesses, which makes it hard to classify. As Dmitri Trenin put it: “The problem with Russia is that it doesn’t fit neatly in one box. It is both strong and weak; authoritarian and lawless; traditionalist and valueless.”127 Economically, Russia was clearly struggling and could not replicate its earlier successes. Growth rates, GDP as well as GDP per capita plummeted. Per capita GPD, for example, grew from 1,901 USD in 2000 to 15,928 USD in 2013, but

122 See Bigalke (2020). 123 See Stewart (2019). After the invasion of Ukraine, Russia was expelled from the

Council of Europe. 124 See Lukyanov (2016). 125 Russian Federation (2013). 126 Monaghan (2013, p. 7). 127 Trenin (2016a, p. xii).

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has declined since.128 It was the political conditions that stifled innovation, making Russian entrepreneurs an “endangered species,” as William Pomeranz quipped.129 Hence, Russia struggled to make ends meet at home, which meant it had few options to use economic incentives to contest the international order abroad. “Its anachronistic state cannot deal with modern challenges, resolve contradictions and injustices or offer any vision of a common future,” the Economist summarized Russia’s state of play pessimistically.130 The Kremlin had to utilize the assets it had readily available. On the one hand, these included traditional great power tools centered around two dimensions. First, its legacy diplomatic powers at the UN Security Council gave Moscow institutional prerogatives to challenge the West. Second, there was the military realm. Russia’s nuclear superpower status and its modernizing military provided a credible deterrent as well as coercive leverage. On the other hand, authoritarianism offered asymmetric options that Western states did not have at their disposal. First, swift and largely unaccountable decision-making in the Kremlin allowed Moscow to outpace and overwhelm others. Second, Moscow was relatively unconstrained in the substance of its actions. Third, the Kremlin had a propaganda apparatus in place that could be redirected to international usage.131 Taken together, the Russian revisionist challenge would come to revolve around two seemingly contrarian trends which were, however, closely intertwined in strategic practice: traditional great power diplomatic and military power plays as well as “guerrilla” practices of hybrid and information warfare. Russia combined these two strategic avenues to exert coercive vetoes to keep the West at bay, both regionally and globally, and to utilize and escalate divisions within and between the states of the liberal West. What it boiled down to was to exploit weaknesses and to destructively delegitimize, undermine, and incapacitate the liberal West and the order of its making. It was what Russian capabilities, capacities, and available options were tailor-made for, while efforts to constructively 128 IMF (2022). GDP per capita, current prices. 129 Pomeranz (2014). 130 The Economist (2016a). 131 On the systemic advantages of autocracy see Brands (2018, pp. 87–91). For a

comparative analysis of the relative strengths of authoritarian and democratic governments (and the superiority of democracies) see Kroenig (2020).

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build an order of Russian design would have required leverage that Russia could not muster. The response to the war in Syria came from a great power playbook. When Bashar al-Assad doubled down by force to subdue protests in 2011, Russia had his back. Preserving a long-standing partnership with Syria and protecting a Russian naval base aside, one core aim was to debunk Western claims that sovereign governments should be held accountable for how they handle internal matters. In 2015, Russia intervened directly on Assad’s side. Russian and Syrian forces were repeatedly called out for war crimes and scorched-earth tactics. With Russian help, the Syrian regime turned around a seemingly lost war. Moscow pressed for victory on the battlefield, shielded Assad from punishment (including for the repeated use of chemical weapons), and spoiled much-needed humanitarian aid for the sake of Syrian sovereignty.132 As protective power, Russia vetoed 13 resolutions in the UN Security Council.133 Western efforts to get the International Criminal Court involved were prevented by Russia and China on the grounds that internal affairs were off-limits.134 In the end, the principle of national sovereignty was de facto placed higher than at any other time in the post-Cold War period. The Syrian regime got away with egregious human rights violations, war crimes, and the use of chemical weapons. At the same time, Moscow sought to delegitimize the United States and the West for purportedly instigating catastrophies like the Arab Spring, while Putin portrayed Russia as a force for stability and order.135 Russia was determined to prevent any conditionalization of sovereignty and rejected notions of a “rulesbased international order” as a Western plot to unduly impose on other states or even destabilize them from within. Instead, governments ought to have the right to do as they please within their own borders. Nevertheless, sovereignty was seen as a relative good, namely as absolute for the great power poles but conditioned upon the great powers for the lesser

132 On the war in Syria and Russia’s role see The Economist (2013, 2015a, 2019) and Klein (2016b). 133 Number from Remler (2020, p. 5). 134 See Nathan (2016, p. 25). 135 See Putin (2015).

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ones. Hence Russia grants itself the right to infringe on the sovereignty of others while upholding it as a sacrosanct principle for itself.136 Regime anxiety and geopolitical concerns blended in late 2013 when an association agreement between the EU and Ukraine was imminent. Its conclusion would have shattered Russia’s “Eurasian dream,” as Jeffrey Mankoff explained.137 Consequently, Russia intervened with Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych to thwart the signing. But the decision to back away from the association agreement and use force against demonstrators triggered mass pro-EU protests in Kyiv. After Yanukovych fled the country and a pro-European government took over in Ukraine, Moscow annexed Crimea and launched a concealed war in Eastern Ukraine in 2014.138 After its short punitive campaign against Georgia a few years before, Russia made clear it was prepared to resort to military coercion even on a grander scale to stop Ukraine’s westward drift. Operations in Ukraine illustrated how Russia tried to sow confusion and blur the lines between war and peace. Moscow pretended the West had manufactured an coup in Ukraine, which plunged the country into turmoil. Russia fabricated intervention pretenses with the alleged need to protect kinsmen against a fascist, Western puppet regime in Kyiv. It falsely proclaimed a humanitarian emergency in Crimea. During the annexation of Crimea, Russian soldiers operated without insignia. While Putin at first denied any role in it, he later credited himself for decisive action. While pretending that the fighting in Eastern Ukraine was among local forces, Russian figures organized, equipped, and led the secessionists proclaiming the two ‘People’s Republics’ of Donetsk and Luhansk. Though it orchestrated the fighting in Eastern Ukraine, Russia presented itself as a broker in the Minsk peace process. Russia violated international law but professed to respect it.139 German Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly told US President Barack Obama that Putin “lives in another world.”140 The propaganda blitz was highly effective at first and gave Moscow a chance to shape the narrative. Russia made the case that Western

136 For Russian views on sovereignty and international law see Remler (2020) and Schaller (2018). 137 Mankoff (2014, p. 66). 138 See Stent (2019, pp. 194–207) and The Economist (2014a, 2014b). 139 See Allison (2014) and Kreß and Tams (2014). 140 Angela Merkel, quoted from The Economist (2016d).

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liberal order building and the widening ambit of institutions like NATO or the EU (be it through enlargement or association agreements) were dysfunctional and illegitimate. They would tear countries apart, as seemingly seen in Ukraine, sow conflict among neighbors, create new dividing lines, encourage violence, and leave Moscow no choice but to defend the country as well as compatriots abroad against hostile forces.141 An astounding number of people in the West fell for such distortions. Although Russia had seized territory and was waging a war against Ukraine, 60 German intellectuals and (retired) political figures called upon decision-makers to avert the danger of war in Europe and heed Russian concerns in December 2014.142 The pattern repeated itself even after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.143 Many appeared sympathetic to the Russian narrative that NATO and the EU were encroaching upon it and endangering security and stability in Europe.144 In Russia, the annexation of Crimea was applauded as “a sign of resurgence of the great Russian state and revenge against the West.”145 The West punished Russia with economic and financial sanctions, expelled the country from the G8, and stuck to its partnership policies in Eastern Europe after 2014.146 In addition, the United States and NATO re-postured to reassure anxious allies in Central and Eastern Europe and deter any Russian aggression on alliance territory.147 But maintaining and operationalizing the consensus was the hard part. Russia was bent on shattering the US-led order and it possessed multiple inroads to divide Europe and the United States as well as Europeans among each other to erode the functionality of the liberal West.148 Moscow had no lack of revisionist commitment. The revanchist theme that Crimea’s annexation was the end of Versailles-like “Erfüllungspolitik” (policy of fulfillment) has become part and parcel of Russian strategic discourse.149 It foreshadowed 141 See, e.g., Myers and Barry (2014). 142 See Various (2014). 143 See Kluth (2022). 144 See Mearsheimer (2014). For direct critiques see McFaul et al. (2014). 145 Lev Gudkov, quoted from The Economist (2014c). 146 See Fischer (2015), Lang and Lippert (2015), and Morelli (2017). 147 See Belkin et al. (2014), Ringsmose and Rynning (2017), and Zapfe (2017). 148 See Major and Puglierin (2014) and Krastev and Leonard (2015). 149 Heisbourg (2015, p. 33). Italics in original.

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that Russia would be willing to up the ante even more to forcibly keep Ukraine in its orbit and the West at bay, if need be. In 2013, Russia’s chief of the military general staff, General Valery Gerasimov, explicated the changing nature of warfare. From the Russian standpoint, war and peace as well as military and nonmilitary means were no longer distinct realms but overlapped and blurred to an unprecedented degree. It meant that war was fought without being declared, could be waged even if no shots were fired, and may be decided by civilian tools employed for strategic ends. Societal and political cohesion versus fracture as well as activities to incentivize one or the other had become key fields of strategic competition. After all, a rival’s relative strength could be knocked off by internal fracture or manipulated perceptions, while one’s own leverage would be magnified in relative terms. In line with this logic, information confrontation moved to the fore as a key domain in modern warfare. As Gerasimov put it, modern hybrid conflicts are fought with “political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other nonmilitary measures.”150 Herein lies a noteworthy intellectual disconnect. Russian views on the changing nature of warfare were interpreted in the West as the “Gerasimov doctrine:” a blueprint for Russian action, particularly after the annexation of Crimea.151 In Moscow, it was seen as the summary of an American and Western playbook, namely one of “turning around” states and fabricating color revolutions for geopolitical gain. The changing nature of warfare was interpreted as something Russia had to find an answer to rather than Russia’s answer itself. As Keir Giles noted, the evolution of Russian military thinking shows that hybrid warfare was attributed to the West, with Russia “adopting and adapting these ‘lessons’ from the West.”152 Hence, while Russia would portray its actions as defensive and mirror-imaging what the United States and its allies had allegedly been doing for a long time, they were perceived as unprovoked aggression in the West. Russia saw itself in an unconventional peacetime war, in which its very essence as an authoritarian great power was at stake. The 2014 military doctrine reflects the growing concern over internal threats,

150 Gerasimov (2013/2016, p. 24). 151 Galeotti (2018). 152 Giles (2016, p. 26).

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defining regime subversion, waning cohesion, or uprisings as military challenges.153 Putin himself would elaborate that the country’s enemies tried to decapitate Russia as a sovereign, powerful state by instigating public protest against ruling authorities: “attempts are made to weaken us from within, make us more acquiescent, and make us toe their line.”154 If domestic turmoil incapacitated the state, it would be easy prey for its international rivals. In this sense, engaging civil society or holding authorities to account over governance standards was neither benign nor for a shared common good, but a zero-sum game competition by other means. Russian voices would even insinuate the West had a sinister scheme to weaken Russia to the point of state collapse, legitimizing aggression on these grounds.155 It consolidated a siege mentality. The Putin regime saw itself embattled by a hostile West in a (nonmilitary) war in times of peace, which required counterstrikes. All of this spurred intense debates about the features, logic, and novelty of “non-linear,” “irregular,” “indirect,” or “hybrid” warfare in Russian strategic practice and its meaning for the West.156 As Can Kasapoglu analyzed, Russian interpretations of offensive hybrid scenarios focus on the penetration of adversarial spaces in the tradition of Soviet theory. Tied to it was a revival of the Soviet concept of “reflexive control,” which aimed at shaping adversary decision-making.157 The underlying strategic logic is to get more of what one wants through manipulation or sponsored fracture. Russia would rely on state-directed seeming “nonstate” tools (e.g., media propaganda; disinformation campaigns; trolls; etc.), hard-to-attribute ones (e.g., cyber warfare), or freewheeling threats beyond the bounds of diplomatic practice (e.g., nuclear threats) in its peacetime war with the West. A central element in Russia’s destructive revisionism was information warfare. Conflict in the information space in the Russian understanding encompasses two aspects, namely the technical dimension of cyber-warfare and the human dimension—referred to as “informationtechnology warfare” and “information-psychological warfare” in strategic 153 See Russian Federation (2014). 154 Vladimir Putin, quoted from Sakwa (2017, pp. 102–103). 155 See, e.g., Allison (2014, pp. 1292–1293) and Shevtsova (2010, pp. 113–116). 156 See Renz (2018, pp. 160–188) and Charap (2015/2016). 157 Kasapoglu (2015, pp. 1–2).

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parlance.158 Already in its 2008 foreign policy concept, Moscow vowed to invest in its ability to project a desired image of itself.159 The 2014 military doctrine stressed the dangers of holistic gray-zone conflict, where “subversive information activities against the population” were a major issue.160 In 2016, a doctrinal document on information security was issued. It left no doubt the Kremlin viewed information as a geopolitical weapon. Specifically, the document identified the “growing use of certain States and organizations of information technologies for military and political purposes” and their potential to “undermine the sovereignty, political and social stability and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation and its allies.”161 Hybrid warfare scenarios enable but neither preordain nor forgo an escalation to the use of military force. Creating confusion and sowing division may constrain opponent responses and help exploit or even generate windows of opportunity, which experts warned to expect as the new normal.162 The annexation of Crimea and Russia’s war in Eastern Ukraine were textbook examples of swift military moves that were facilitated by an informational fog of war. Elbridge Colby warned of the challenges for NATO. In the case of a surprise invasion of the Baltics, the United States would have to choose between accepting a fait accompli or nuclear escalation.163 A RAND analysis indeed found that NATO would be forced into a liberation operation with uncertain prospects if push comes to shove in the Baltics.164 But information warfare is also a venue of confrontation in its own right. Mark Galeotti proposed to view Russian military thinking as reminiscent of what George Kennan had described as “political war,” namely “the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives,” including overt, covert, political, economic, psychological, and proxy operations.165 Strategic goals may 158 Giles (2016, p. 9). 159 See Russian Federation (2008). 160 Russian Federation (2014). 161 Russian Federation (2016). 162 See Blank (2014). 163 See Colby (2018, p. 28). 164 See Shlapak and Johnson (2016). 165 George Kennan, quoted from Galeotti (2018).

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be achieved by altering decision-making in targeted states, thwart (joint) political responses, or manipulate optics to justify own actions.166 Again, this echoes Soviet practices as George Kennan described them in 1946. Moscow would try to undermine the general political and strategic potential of major Western powers, to disrupt national self-confidence, to increase social and industrial unrest, to stimulate all forms of disunity…Anti-British talk will be plugged among Americans, anti-American talk among British. Germans will be taught to abhor both Anglo-Saxon powers. Where suspicions exist, they will be fanned; where not, ignited.167

In Soviet days, about 15,000 KGB operatives were engaged in psychological and disinformation operations, a tradition that has survived the Soviet Union.168 According to the Russian 2011 handbook on “InformationPsychological War Operations,” operations ought to be like “invisible radiation” so that “the population doesn’t even feel it is being acted upon.”169 The Kremlin’s information warfare rests on a complex “ecosystem” with five core elements, as a US State Department report analyzed: “official government communications, state-funded global messaging, cultivation of proxy sources, weaponization of social media, and cyberenabled disinformation.”170 This ecosystem, which came to full fruition in the 2010s, includes state-controlled propaganda posing as news outlets, such as RT or Sputnik, but also an army of opaque proxy communicators: trolls, bots, and fake social media accounts as well as networks of “alternative” information sources like websites, research institutes, or journals, which dilute their affiliation with the Russian government, cross-post, and serve as multipliers of anti-American, anti-Western views and conspiracy theories.171 Intelligence reports assessed that the Russian

166 See Giles (2015, 2016). 167 George Kennan, quoted from The Economist (2016d). 168 The Economist (2016d). 169 Quoted from Pomerantsev (2016, p. 181). 170 US Department of State (2020, p. 3). 171 For an overview of select proxies and their operations see US Department of State (2020).

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intelligence services GRU and SVR play key roles in targeted disinformation and increasingly practice what US officials refer to as “information laundering,” using strawmen to spread stories fabricated by Russian intelligence to sympathetic third sites.172 Information warfare emerged as a key venue of destructive revisionism because crucial opportunity structures were in place. Russia’s domestic qualities allowed it to practice an all-out information warfare campaign, which was easy to operationalize and relatively cheap. At the same time, the liberal West was susceptible to divisionary tactics. The Kremlin’s foreign propaganda TV program RT broadcasts in English, German, Arabic, and Spanish, is funded with about 300 million USD annually, reaches about 600 million people (RT statistics), is available in 3 million hotel rooms, and belongs to the most frequented YouTube channels worldwide.173 Overall, Russia’s foreign disinformation machinery is relatively low-cost. Expenses of around 1.3 billion USD per year make it a worthwhile power projection tool, as a former official of the EU task force to expose Russian disinformation (StratCom Task Force) judged in 2018: “For Russia, they are a cost-effective method for disrupting and undermining us.”174 Only after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 did the West take meaningful action to counter the dissemination of Russian propaganda, but it still reaches target audiences in the rest of the world.175 Russian information warfare does not sell one coherent narrative but supports an alternative worldview. Alexander Vershbow, a US diplomat who served in Russia and NATO, described it as “an endlessly changing storyline designed to obfuscate and confuse to create the impression that there are no reliable facts, and therefore no truth.”176 After the failed Russian assassination attempt of Sergei Skripal in London with a chemical nerve agent, for example, the Washington Post found 46 different accounts put forth by the Russian propaganda machinery.177 Still, Russia

172 See Barnes and Sanger (2020) and Troianovski and Nakashima (2018). 173 Numbers from Pomerantsev (2016, p. 179). 174 Jakub Kalensky, quoted from Warrick and Troianovski (2018). On the challenge for Europe see Meister and Puglierin (2015). 175 See Council of the EU (2022). 176 Alexander Vershbow, quoted from The Economist (2016d). 177 Warrick and Troianovski (2018).

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systematically targets the West. Promoting cynicism is one dimension. “The goal is to prove that the West is just as bad as the regimes that the West is trying to criticize. Everybody can be bought, and Western democracy is a sham [...],” Lilia Shevtsova summarizes.178 Sowing division is the other. Moscow seeks to split the United States and Europe, lambasts the EU und its bureaucracy, slanders self-serving liberal elites, and denounces a decadent, immoral, emasculated, collapsing West. These master narratives are relentlessly reiterated, adapted, repeated, and tailored to specific target audiences in various languages.179 These efforts are complemented by support for centrifugal forces and fringe parties, both on the right and left, and election meddling. Russia has cultivated ties with Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National or Hungary’s Jobbik Party, for example. The Kremlin forges personal relationships at the intersection of the business and political worlds and weaves a web of sympathetic figures who are featured on its propaganda channels.180 It has helped spur anti-EU sentiments in the run up to the Brexit referendum and has meddled in the 2016 US presidential election to support Donald Trump.181 Overall, it adds up to a systematic challenge in form of open and concealed efforts to undermine, manipulate, and thwart, which Ellehuus summarizes as “malign influence activities” and “gray zone tactics” between war and peace.182 Technical cyberattacks are another domain. Russia has acquired superpower qualities and operates audaciously unrestrained with its military intelligence agency GRU as the prime agency in the cyber realm.183 Russia’s cyber offense broadly attacks military and civilian targets and follows a freewheeling approach. It includes nuisances and efforts to sow fear (e.g., GRU posing as Islamic State terrorists blacking out a French TV station in 2015); political punishments (e.g., against Estonia in 2007 or Ukraine in 2017); cyber intrusions to build blackmail and disruption

178 Shevtsova (2016, p. 51). 179 The EU’s task force tracks Russian disinformation. See https://euvsdisinfo.eu. 180 See Pomerantsev (2016, pp. 177–179). 181 On US election meddling US Department of Justice (2019). On influence and disinformation operations in Europe and responses see Ellehuus (2020) and Brattberg and Maurer (2018). 182 Ellehuus (2020, p. 4). 183 See Troianovski and Nakashima (2018).

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potential (e.g., hacking of the electrical power grid in the United States) or data theft and espionage (e.g., attack on the German parliament).184 Cyber activities allow the perpetrator to punish from the shadows, test resolve, unnerve and scare, attack and destroy, or plant the seeds for future coercion, while modes of deterrence and behavioral norms are weak and ill-defined.185 Taken together, Russia has come to engage in a full-fledged campaign to exploit the vulnerabilities and attack the cohesion of the liberal West from within. Molly McKew called it “Russia’s new chaos theory of political warfare:” “Chaos is the strategy the Kremlin pursues: […] the objective is to achieve an environment of permanent unrest and conflict within an enemy state.” This approach neither beefs up Russian capabilities in an absolute sense nor does it rally international support for an alternative system of order. Instead, it exploits weaknesses to undermine the cohesion of the West and the liberal order of its making. “The Russians know they can’t compete head-to-head with us – economically, militarily, technologically – so they create new battlefields,” McKew analyzed. “They are not aiming to become stronger than us, but to weaken us until we are equivalent.”186 To make the international order safe for Russia as an authoritarian and imperial great power, however, traditional hard power metrics remain relevant. Sowing division in the West was a valuable tool to undermine the enforceability, functionality, and legitimacy of the liberal international order, but it was insufficient. Ofer Fridman warned that the preoccupation with disinformation and propaganda misled many to view Russia as a helplessly declining power that redefined its approach to warfare as a last resort. Indeed, it is only half the story, and Fridman is correct to criticize the repeated errors of omission in assessing Russian military capabilities and thinking. While Gerasimov was famed in the West for allegedly reinventing Russia’s approach to warfare, he emphasized the continued relevance of military hard power as a readily and globally available power projection tool.187

184 For examples see Troianovski and Nakashima (2018), Perlroth (2020), and US Defense Intelligence Agency (2017, pp. 39–40). 185 See Nye (2016/2017) and Mazanec (2016). 186 McKew (2017). 187 See Fridman (2019, spec. p. 109).

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Russia has modernized its military in the past decade. From 2008 to its preliminary high point in 2016, defense spending rose substantially to 74 billion, and the defense spending rate to GDP reached a high point of 5.4% in 2016. In 2021, military spending stood at 63 billion USD.188 The first multiyear rearmament program from 2011 to 2020 encompassed funds of about 580 billion Euro with the goal of having about 70% of modern weaponry in the armed forces by 2020. Another major contribution was the professionalization of the roughly 900,000 strong Russian armed forces through organizational reforms. This included the transition to a mostly volunteer army with only a third still made up of conscripts, expanded training routines, and a significant growth in the number, size, and ambition of maneuvers since 2011. In support of its power projection capability, Russia invested heavily in its airborne expeditionary forces and established a Special Forces Command in 2013, giving the Kremlin an operational force of about 100,000 troops for rapid response missions or special operations behind enemy lines.189 Until its botched invasion of Ukraine revealed its hollow state in 2022, military modernization appeared to have increased Russian might vis-à-vis its neighbors and the West substantially, including the ability to project power into other regions.190 Expanding relations with China—with increased defense cooperation, joint naval exercises, and maneuvers—offered additional clout.191 At the same time, a persistent sense of weakness drives military modernization debates. At least 18 articles from 2007 to 2017 in the Russian General Staff’s journal Military Thought made the case for preemption—for fear of not being able to prevail in case of a (nonfactual) NATO surprise attack, and many even left open whether this should include nuclear force.192 Nuclear weapons are power maximizers to offset conventional weakness. They play an outsized role for Russia as 188 SIPRI (2022). Military expenditures in constant (2020) USD. 189 Data points from Klein (2018, pp. 13–16). On military modernization efforts see

also Klein and Pester (2013). 190 On Russia’s military strength and threat potential see Klein (2018, pp. 13–24), Klein (2016a), US Defense Intelligence Agency (2017, pp. 42–43), Renz (2018), Gressel (2015), Sokolsky (2017), and Hermann (2020). On Syria see Klein (2016b). 191 See Paul (2019) and Carlson (2018). For an overview of defense cooperation into the 2000s see Ryan (2010). 192 Velez-Green (2018).

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a deterrent and ultimate survival guarantee. Russia has been modernizing its nuclear force and places high emphasis on tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield usage, raising fears of an “escalate to de-escalate” logic from conventional to nuclear war.193 Russia’s breaches of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which had banned land-based nuclear-capable systems with ranges between 500 km and 5.500 km, led to its collapse in 2019 after five years of wrangling.194 Military threats, show of force, and coercion are inherent in Russia’s destructive revisionism to split the West, undermine the credibility of Western institutions, and sow doubts about the practicality of Western policies. Russia utilizes its military might to indimidate and divide the United States and its NATO and EU allies. From 2014, Russia stepped up testing the waters of NATO cohesion with infringements of NATO territory with air and naval forces and close encounters.195 In the fall of 2014 Putin warned that “Russian troops can reach Kyiv as much as Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw, or Bucharest within two days,” if he wanted.196 Going forward, Russia scared its neighbors with reinforcements in the Western military sector, snap exercises, large-scale maneuvers evading the commitments of the Vienna document, and the stationing of nuclearcapable Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad. Its maneuvers model warfighting against the West and raise anxiety in the Baltic states and Poland as enemy countries look a lot like them.197 The practice of intimidation extends to the nuclear domain. After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Putin affirmed he was willing to use nuclear weapons for the sake of “historic territory.”198 In 2015, Russia’s ambassador to Denmark threatened in a newspaper op-ed that if Denmark joined NATO missile defense, “then Danish warships will be targets for Russia’s nuclear weapons. Denmark will be part of the threat to Russia.”199 Shortly thereafter, nuclear threats were issued in case of

193 See Felgenhauer (2018, pp. 25–28), Colby (2018), Rose (2018), Meier (2014), and Kroenig (2015, pp. 54–57). 194 See Pifer (2018) and Meier (2019). 195 See Frear et al. (2014). 196 Vladimir Putin, quoted from Brössler (2014). Own translation. 197 See Higgins (2017) and Gressel (2015, 2018). 198 Vladimir Putin, quoted from The Economist (2016d). 199 Quoted from Milne (2015).

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a NATO troop movement to the Baltics.200 Already in the late 2000s, Russia had made nuclear threats against Poland over US missile defense plans and practiced a nuclear weapons attack on Warsaw in its 2009 Zapad military drill.201 The latest nuclear threats against the West in 2022 to deter support for Ukraine were thus a continuation of previous practices. What it boils down to is the attempt to translate nuclear might into political leverage. Russia is on par with North Korea in this regard. They are the only two states cavalierly threatening nuclear war. Military pressure tactics against NATO and the United States have reached a new high in 2021 when Russia presented treaty proposals for a new European security architecture, which effectively were ultimatums paired with a massive military buildup on Ukraine’s border. What Moscow envisioned and presented as a nonnegotiable demand was that NATO foreswear future enlargements and infrastructure be withdrawn to the pre1997 status quo, effectively turning all members who had joined after the Cold War into a neutralized buffer zone.202 Giving in to such requests would destroy NATO as well as the post-Cold War European security order and hand Russia on a silver plate what it had desired all along. Since all prior attempts to force itself upon its neighborhood and get the United States and Europe to accept a renewed division of Europe in spheres of influence had failed, Moscow raised the stakes. After all, time was running out from its own point of view. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine is to be seen in this light. The full-scale invasion in plain sight may have come unexpectedly. After all, alternative scenarios of blackmailing Ukraine and the West to extract concessions appeared more plausible in cost-benefit-terms. But Russian policy toward Ukraine has been characterized by a long-term determination to deprive the country of its national identity and sovereignty.203 The war against Georgia, the annexation of Crimea, the war in Eastern Ukraine from 2014, and the invasion of 2022 thus stand in one line of continuous escalation. They are driven by Russia’s attempt to preserve an exclusive sphere of influence and keep liberal governance and institutions at bay to preserve its holistic security needs as an imperial and authoritarian great

200 See Braw (2015). 201 See Dunin (undated). 202 See Fischer (2021). 203 See Hill and Stent (2022).

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power—against the express will of the countries involved. Of course, it is the ultimate expression of Russian weakness. None of the earlier pressure tactics have given Moscow what it desperately seeks, namely recognition as the commanding pole in Eurasia. Upping the ante to full-scale war will not do the trick either. Instead, Russia is on a self-defeating course, while the world is witnessing the slow and bloody death of Russian imperialism.204 The invasion of Ukraine was a “strategic failure” from the very beginning, born from Russian weakness and reinforcing it.205 Russian policies of the past 15 years offered a prototypical illustration of destructive revisionism. Balancing out or even surpassing the power projection capabilities of the West and creating a full-fledged alternative order was unattainable. Weakening, rolling back, or even destroying undesirable elements of the international order by eroding the West’s ability to sustain them while beefing up its own military deterrent and power projection capabilities, however, provided a plausible strategic inroad to alter Moscow’s operating environment. In all its actions, Russia seized on its strengths, exploited the weaknesses of the West, played on the cleavages within Western states and between them, and utilized the digital revolution to weaponize information against open societies. Its recklessness, risk-tolerance, and freewheeling approach magnified insecurity und unpredictability.206 With wars in Georgia, Syria, and, first and foremost, Ukraine, Russia professed its will to resort to brute violence to render defunct and roll back the US-led liberal order. Its destructive revisionism has long undermined the basic ground rules of diplomatic practice—be it by assassinations on foreign soil, the use of chemical agents, preposterous propaganda lies, or casual nuclear threats. Attempting to annihilate a sovereign neighbor takes it to a new level. In its war against the Western liberal international order, seemingly nothing is off-limits. Unwilling to accept the rules of the post-Cold War order, which was viewed as a threat to the country’s imperial great power identity and regime survival, the Kremlin negates there are rules at all. In doing so, Russia accelerates its own decline by trying to halt it. 204 See Ma´cków (2022) and Meister (2022). 205 Gould-Davies (2022). 206 That Russia’s course is characterized more by improvisation than design is an argument made by Treisman (2016), Meister (2014), Topol (2019), and Pavlovsky (2016).

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While the Kremlin appears bold and overbearing without, Russia is scarred by weakness. Present-day politics play out, to a large part, in the realm of make-believe. State-led propaganda targets the audience at home with stories of American villainy, European weakness, and Russian wins.207 But the country was knee-deep in a process of (uneven) politicoeconomic decline already before its attack on Ukraine. Russia’s economy has been in deep trouble for years, unable to unleash innovation-based growth, while the burdens of empire drained resources and living standards eroded.208 Now it faces outright ruin with the end of its role as a major energy supplier for Europe and the rigid Western sanctions in response to the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.209 At the same time, the personalized Putinist system of governance is statist and fragile, characterized by the “dictator’s dilemma:” Putin can’t leave to protect regime stability, which he endangers by stifling needed reforms.210 Even Russia’s presumed military might evaporates before the world’s eyes. Though the war is ongoing, Moscow has already lost in multiple ways, not least because the war exposed the deficits of the Russian armed forces and war strategy.211 Therefore, the blitz annexation of Ukrainian territory in September/October 2022 and the escalating nuclear rhetoric displayed weakness, not strength. Deepening Russia-China ties may suggest a powerful anti-Western front. Despite commonalities of interests, the relationship is highly imbalanced and cannot give Moscow what it seeks. Financial constraints led Moscow to agree to sell state-of-the-art military equipment to Beijing after 2014, despite an earlier well-founded reluctance to do so. Russia also struck a major 30-year deal on energy at favorable rates for Beijing, after negotiations had long been gridlocked. In addition, Beijing has become the dominant trading power in Central Asia in 2008. Moscow pushed the 2015 alignment of the Eurasian Economic Union and China’s Belt and Road initiative and a 2016 proposal for a Greater Eurasian Partnership

207 Journalistic accounts offer good insights into the web of make-believe. See Atai (2019) and Lielischkies (2019). 208 See Adomeit (2015), Guriev (2016), Kluge (2019), Kluge et al. (2020, pp. 2–3), and The Economist (2014d, 2015b, 2016e). 209 See Shagina (2022). 210 Unnamed Russia expert, quoted from Ioffe (2018). 211 See Dalsjö et al. (2022).

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to create an air of Russian agency and leadership. But it is threatened to be relegated to the position of a junior partner. By now, China has even matured into a military power in Central Asia, Moscow’s traditional turf.212 Although both promised a friendship without limits in a landmark joint statement in February 2022 and although China de facto sides with Russia and parrots its propaganda over the war in Ukraine, Beijing acts opportunistically.213 With a troubled economy, limited means to attract followership, and aggravating needs to supplant the bogged modernization promise with another source of regime legitimacy at home, anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism have moved to the fore. As Lilia Shevtsova diagnosed: “Russian foreign policy has become the Swiss Army knife of the personalized-power system’s drive to preserve itself.”214 Robert Kaplan concurs that “it is domestic insecurity that is breeding belligerence.”215 The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is the preliminary climax, which exposes the dead end Russia has maneuvered itself in. In this sense, fighting and undermining the United States and the Western liberal international order has turned from a foreign policy goal to create a more favorable external environment into a lifeline for regime survival. Even a retreat or wholesale collapse of the US-led international order, which has become even less likely with the Ukraine war, would not suffice to give the Putinist regime the security it needs. It is a recipe for disaster.

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Ryan, K. (2010). Russo-Chinese Defense Relations: The View from Moscow. In J. Bellacqua (Ed.), The Future of China-Russia Relations (pp. 179–202). The University Press of Kentucky. Sakwa, R. (2017). Russia Against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order. Cambridge University Press. Sakwa, R. (2019). Russia’s Futures. Polity Press. Salzman, R. S. (2019). Russia, BRICS, and the Disruption of Global Order. Georgetown University Press. Schaller, C. (2018). Völkerrechtliche Argumentationslinien in der russischen Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik: Russland, der Westen und das »Nahe Ausland« (SWP-Studie 10). Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik. Secrieru, S. (2013, November). Ukraine Before Vilnius: Who Blinks First? (On Wider Europe Series). German Marshall Fund of the United States. Shagina, M. (2022). Russia’s Demise as an Energy Superpower. Survival, 64(4), 105–110. Shevtsova, L. (2010). Lonely Power: Why Russia Has Failed to Become the West and the West Is Weary of Russia. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Shevtsova, L. (2016). Forward to the Past in Russia. In L. Diamond, M. F. Plattner, & C. Walker (Eds.), Authoritarianism Goes Global: The Challenge to Democracy (pp. 40–56). Johns Hopkins University Press. Shlapak, D. A., & Johnson, M. (2016). Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO’s Eastern Flank: Wargaming the Defense of the Baltics. RAND Corporation. SIPRI. (2022). SIPRI Military Expenditure Database. Continuously updated. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://milex.sipri.org/sipri Sokolsky, R. (2017, March 13). The New NATO-Russia Military Balance: Implications for European Security (Task Force White Paper). Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Stent, A. E. (1999). Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, the Soviet Collapse and the New Europe. Princeton University Press. Stent, A. E. (2015). The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Paperback ed.). Princeton University Press. Stent, A. E. (2019). Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest. Twelve Books. Stewart, S. (2019). Der Europarat und Russland: Glaubwürdigkeit verlangt konsequente Entscheidungen (SWP-Aktuell 29). Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik. Stewart, S. (2020). Geschichte als Instrument der Innen- und Außenpolitik am Beispiel Russlands: Wie die Gegenwart die Vergangenheit beeinflusst (SWPStudie 22). Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik. The Economist. (2003, November 13). Russia’s Need to Belong: Seal of Disapproval. The Economist.

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The Economist. (2009, November 26). Russian Modernization: Dmitry Medvedev’s Building Project. The Economist. The Economist. (2010, March 13). Modernizing Russia: Another Great Leap Forward? The Economist. The Economist. (2012, January 21). Theme and Variations: State Capitalism Is Not all the Same. The Economist. The Economist. (2013, September 21). America, Russia and Syria: The Weakened West. The Economist. The Economist. (2014a, February 22). Ukraine Crisis: Europe’s New Battlefield. The Economist. The Economist. (2014b, July 5). Ukraine and Russia: War by Any Other Name. The Economist. The Economist. (2014c, May 10). Russia and Ukraine: Putin’s Gambit. The Economist. The Economist. (2014d, December 17). The Economist Explains: What’s Gone Wrong with Russia’s Economy. The Economist. The Economist. (2015a, September 30). The Economist Explains: Why Russia Is an Ally of Assad. The Economist. The Economist. (2015b, January 17). Russia’s Battered Economy: Hardly Tottering by. The Economist. The Economist. (2016a, October 20). Take Care of Russia: But Mr Putin Is Not Setting About it in the Best Way. The Economist. The Economist. (2016b, October 20). The Economy: Milk Without the Cow. Political Reform Is an Essential Prerequisite to a Flourishing Economy. The Economist. The Economist. (2016c, October 20). Russia: Inside the Bear. The Economist. The Economist. (2016d, October 20). The Fog of Wars: Adventures Abroad Boost Public Support at Home. The Economist. The Economist. (2016e, January 23). Phase Two: Russia’s Economic Problems Move from the Acute to the Chronic. The Economist. The Economist. (2019, May 18). Russia’s Military Gamble in Syria Is Paying Off Handsomely: But for How Long? The Economist. Topol, S. A. (2019, June 25). What Does Putin Really Want? New York Times Magazine. Treisman, D. (2016). Why Putin Took Crimea: The Gambler in the Kremlin. Foreign Affairs, 95(3), 47–54. Trenin, D. (2003). The Forgotten War: Chechnya and Russia’s Future (Policy Brief 28). Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Trenin, D. (2005, September). Russia, the EU and the Common Neighborhood. Centre for European Reform. Trenin, D. (2016a). Should We Fear Russia? Polity Press.

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Trenin, D. (2016b). The Revival of the Russian Military: How Moscow Reloaded. Foreign Affairs, 95(3), 23–29. Troianovski, A., & Nakashima, E. (2018, December 28). How Russia’s Military Intelligence Agency Became the Covert Muscle in Putin’s Duels with the West. Washington Post. Tsygankov, A. P. (2016). Russia’s Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity in National Identity (4th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. US Defense Intelligence Agency. (2017). Russia Military Power: Building a Military to Support Great Power Aspirations. www.dia.mil/Military-Power-Public ations US Department of Justice. (2019). Report on the Investigation Into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. www.justice.gov/storage/rep ort.pdf US Department of State. (2020). GEC Special Report: Pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem. www.state.gov/wp-content/upl oads/2020/08/Pillars-of-Russia’s-Disinformation-and-Propaganda-Ecosys tem_08-04-20.pdf Various. (2014, December 5). Wieder Krieg in Europa? Nicht in unserem Namen! Open Petition. Retrieved December 15, 2020, from www.zeit.de/politik./ 2014-12/aufruf-russland-dialog Velez-Green, A. (2018, March 14). Russian Strategists Debate Preemption as Defense Against NATO Surprise Attack. Russia Matters Project. Harvard University. https://russiamatters.org/analysis/russian-strategists-deb ate-preemption-defense-against-nato-surprise-attack#_edn24 Warrick, J., & DeYoung, K. (2016, November 3). From ‘Reset’ to ‘Pause’: The Real Story Behind Hillary Clinton’s Feud with Vladimir Putin. Washington Post. Warrick, J., & Troianovski, A. (2018, December 10). Agents of Doubt: How a Powerful Russian Propaganda Machine Chips Away at Western Notions of Truth. Washington Post. White House. (2009, July 7). Remarks by the President at the New Economic School Graduation, Moscow, Russia. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ realitycheck/the-press-office/remarks-president-new-economic-school-gradua tion Wilhelmsen, J. (2018). Inside Russia’s Imperial Relations: The Social Constitution of Putin-Kadyrov Patronage. Slavic Review, 77 (4), 919–936. World Bank. (2022). Database. Continuously updated. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://data.worldbank.org Wright, T. (2015). The Rise and Fall of the Unipolar Concert. The Washington Quarterly, 37 (4), 7–24.

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Yeltsin, B. (1999, August 9). Live Address on National TV . Retrieved October 11, 2022, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/monitoring/ 415278.stm Zapfe, M. (2017). Deterrence from the Ground Up: Understanding NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence. Survival, 59(3), 147–160.

CHAPTER 9

China’s Dream: Constructive Revisionism for Great Rejuvenation

Balance of Interests and Propensity to Adapt The seeds for Chinese revisionism had been sown long before it would become a real policy option. From the founding of the PRC, the CCP has longed to recreate China’s greatness under its leadership. However, the US-led international order remained an obstacle in the path of China’s great power revival. The PRC would have to either cut back on its ambitions and adapt its policies and polity or overturn those elements that violated its needs. The areas where Beijing’s interests clashed with the US-led order had a lot of continuity. First, the status quo of territory and influence did not conform to Beijing’s views of its legitimate reach and grandeur. Second, the external pressures to conform to liberal political and human rights norms led to acute regime survival concerns of the CCP, which equated its own rule with the survival of China as a sovereign nation and state. At the same time, however, it was the cooperation with the United States and the wider West that has allowed the PRC to thrive since the reform era and, even more so, since the end of the Cold War. Incentives for pushback and accommodation thus have existed side by side. Beijing’s strategic calculus tilted as the 2000s wore on. To begin with, Washington’s ability and willingness to pursue a unilateral policy of regime change served as a dire warning to Beijing. US “hegemonism” © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Groitl, Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18659-2_9

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and “interventionism” spurred security concerns even if, objectively, the PRC’s environment continued to be more benign than ever before with no immediate threat to its physical security.1 As a Chinese newspaper summarized in 2002, the United States had “reached the point that it can do whatever it wants in the world and can try to seek an enemy with which to carry out a trial of strength at any time.”2 Chinese authorities considered this a lingering problem, as the 2002 defense white paper pointed out: “The world is far from being tranquil. The old international political and economic order, which is unfair and irrational, has yet to be changed fundamentally.”3 Officials in Beijing expected that China and Asia would increasingly move to the center of attention of US foreign policy. Indeed, the US gained visibility in wider Asia with its military presence in Afghanistan, its reinvigorated partnership with Pakistan, arms sales to Taiwan, revitalized strategic relations with Japan, a closer partnership with India, and eventually also a rapprochement with Vietnam as well as support for a political transformation in Myanmar. Hu Jintao, who served as CCP General Secretary (2002–2012) and Chinese President (2003–2013), assessed in the 2000s that the America’s “strategic eastward movement has accelerated,” which posed problems for China: “They have extended outposts and placed pressure points on us from the east, south, and west. This makes a great change in our geopolitical environment.”4 This overall trend was seen as a holistic challenge that needed to be dealt with, as Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (2003–2013) expressed: “The US military is planning to move the focus of military planning from Europe to the Asia– Pacific region. The US will continue to exert pressure [on us] on Taiwan, human rights, security, and economics and trade [issues].”5 Viewed from Beijing, the United States “seemed to have a finger in almost every pie,” as Kerry Brown put it. “It became imperative to try and escape from the presence of the US almost everywhere China looked.”6 Along these lines,

1 See Gill (2005). 2 Quoted from Foot (2006, p. 81). 3 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2002,

Chapter I). 4 Hu Jintao, quoted from Nathan and Gilley (2003, pp. 235–236). 5 Wen Jiabao, quoted from Nathan and Gilley (2003, p. 236). 6 Brown (2018, p. 81).

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the 2004 defense white paper identified not only global “hegemonism and unilateralism” as evidenced by the Iraq War, but also the changing US military presence in Asia as “complicating security factors.”7 The prospect of an even greater US role was anathema to leaders in Beijing. US hegemony had long characterized Asia, and a rising, globally entangled China desperately needed less of it. The country faced the uncomfortable fact that it had virtually no control over its vital lifelines at sea. The South China Sea has morphed into the most densely frequented maritime space through which about one-third of global maritime trade traverses.8 Chokepoints like the Strait of Malacca or the Street of Hormuz were critical, too: the former for all seaborn transportation of commodities and goods into and out of Asia, the latter for the flow of natural resources from the Persian Gulf. Ninety percent of China’s oil imports come by sea, which makes up roughly 60% of its overall consumption.9 In case of conflict, Beijing would be at the mercy of the United States for naval access to the world, which made US maritime dominance not only undesirable as a matter of principle but outright dangerous.10 Another factor was the geography of China’s economic wealth production, which is concentrated along its eastern coastline.11 Extending the reach of its sovereign control and denying the United States the freedom to operate at will in China’s maritime neighborhood became urgent matters under these circumstances. The South China Sea was also critically important for national defense and strategic deterrence. After slugging on with modest capabilities for decades, China invested heavily in its strategic assets over the 2000s to be able to deter and, if necessary, fight a high-tech adversary.12 As Sarah Kirchberger and Patrick O’Keeffe demonstrate, the importance Beijing ascribes to the South China Sea—and the costs it is willing to incur—cannot be fully understood if one doesn’t acknowledge its military-strategic relevance. Control over the South China Sea is essential

7 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2004, Chapter I). 8 Number from Ratner (2017, p. 64). 9 Numbers from Lind and Press (2018, p. 188). 10 See, e.g., Lind and Press (2018, pp. 188–191) and Maçães (2018, pp. 20–22). 11 See Yoshihara and Holmes (2018, pp. 48–69). 12 See Chase and Chan (2016).

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to protect China’s space infrastructure; it is also crucial for its submarinebased nuclear deterrent and second-strike capability.13 Beijing’s historicized territorial claims, which neither hold up to legal nor historical review, provided a rationalization.14 From the Chinese point of view, the strategic pressure grew to alter the undesirable realities of US hegemony. Moreover, the status quo limbo regarding Taiwan increasingly turned into a liability. Taiwan had matured into a successful economy, but also developed pride as a vibrant Asian democracy. Surveys showed significant increases in Taiwan’s national awareness and little propensity for unification. In the past, CCP leaders were self-confident that the Taiwan issue would be resolved in China’s favor in the long run, sensing they could afford strategic patience.15 But despite the PRC’s growing economic stature, Taiwan moved away politically. And though the PRC’s isolation campaign had nibbled away diplomatic recognition since the 1970s, Taiwan’s visibility (through its international relations, presence in institutions, treaties, NGOs, etc.) had grown after the country’s democratization in the 1990s.16 The United States and its (defense) support for Taipei were regarded as the root of the problem. Beijing’s 2004 defense white paper claimed that “separatist activities of the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces have increasingly become the biggest immediate threat to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” and blamed the United States for it.17 When the United States and Japan declared the peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue as a “common strategic objective” in 2005, Beijing was enraged about what it viewed as an undue interference in internal affairs.18 Accepting Taiwanese de facto, let alone de jure independence was nonnegotiable. As it was defined, the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation could not be achieved without taking control of Taiwan. This has a nationalist but also a military-strategic dimension. Taiwan holds a central

13 See Kirchberger and O’Keeffe (2019) and Rudolf (2019, pp. 21–23). 14 On the relatively current construction of Chinese historical claims see Miller (2017,

pp. 202–206). 15 See Bush (2019, p. 2). 16 See Chao and Hsu (2006, pp. 41–67). 17 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2004,

Chapter I). 18 See China Daily (2005) and New York Times (2005).

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place in the “first island chain,” Beijing’s envisaged defense perimeter.19 Given the circumstances, China increasingly sensed the need to take action to protect its interests. The 2004 defense white paper issued a clear war threat, promising China would prevent any move toward independence at all costs. The PLA stepped up preparations for “local wars under the conditions of informationalization” against high-tech adversaries, a definition of its main tasks that had emerged in the 1990s with an eye to United States.20 Though still speaking of peaceful unification, a war threat was formalized in the 2005 anti-secession law, which a Chinese official characterized as “both necessary and timely.”21 The odds seemed to be shifting against the PRC. A contributing factor was nationalism. As Evan Medeiros described, there was “a pervasive belief in China that it is in the process of reclaiming its lost status as a ‘great power’ […]” in the 2000s. This notion of taking its “rightful place” in world affairs came with an “entitlement mentality.”22 Cutting back on historicized grievances and accommodating the present status quo was highly unlikely under such conditions, not least when sentiments of entitlement go hand in hand with a “victim mentality.”23 Anti-Americanism blends in with this aggrieved nationalism and is part and parcel of CCP messaging. As the propaganda outlet Global Times stated before Joe Biden assumed office, for example: But it is American politicians’ common practice to contain China’s rise and split China. In other words, almost no American politician wants to see peace in China. Therefore, not matter who comes to power in the US, increasing the mainland’s strength to fight against Taiwan secessionists will be an eternal theme.24

The CCP’s propaganda portrays the United States as a malign actor, which denies the Chinese nation what is rightfully hers and is out to hurt China, be it with respect to Taiwan or else. 19 See Yan (2006, p. 194) and Foot (2006, p. 80 [Fn4]). 20 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2004,

Chapter II). See also US Defense Intelligence Agency (2019, pp. 2–3). 21 Quoted from Cody (2005). 22 Medeiros (2009, pp. 7–9). 23 Medeiros (2009, pp. 10–11). 24 Global Times (2020).

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What China needed and desired was an external environment that supported its unhindered rise. Chinese leaders feared that the United States was in a position to impose limits on their ambitions and rally others. Vice versa, neighbors might be less deferential to a rising PRC as long as the United States had their back. China had tried to assuage fears of its growing stature by discarding the so-called “China threat theory” as a baseless US invention. The PRC even cultivated a narrative of exceptionalism, emphasizing that it would be historically and culturally alien for China to seek hegemony.25 But chances were that a stronger and more assertive China would face US-orchestrated pushback. Taken together, Beijing came to view the status quo of territorial control and US hegemonic influence as a lingering problem that needed remedy. The urgency to alter the regional status quo in China’s favor and free itself from the US straightjacket rose over the 2000s and 2010s.26 Regime security concerns blended in. The world was anything but safe for autocracy. Not only had the West managed to inject liberal values into the international order as norms others were held accountable to. But they also fell on fertile ground as various color revolutions in Eastern Europe in the 2000s confirmed. The Chinese interpretation was that the United States was “weaponizing ideology” and practicing “ideological geopolitics”—intent to “infect” countries with liberal ideas, bring them into line, or intervene in their internal affairs on normative grounds.27 Color revolutions in the post-Soviet space were viewed as a US-instigated ploy to weaken Russia and a nightmare scenario for China, which tied in with its own fears of “peaceful evolution.”28 The strategic assessment of China’s fourth-generation leaderhip around Hu Jintao left no doubt: It is American-style attempts to undermine state sovereignty on grounds of human rights abuses or imminent threats that undermine the status quo. In Chinese eyes, then, the chief obstacle to global stability and international law—the source of the hegemonism and power politics that China is sworn to oppose—is the US.29 25 See Zhang (2013). 26 See Wolf (2017). 27 Terms by the author. Sketch of Chinese scholars’ views based on Foot (2006, pp. 81–

82). 28 See Friedberg (2011, pp. 127–139). 29 Nathan and Gilley (2003, p. 235).

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The Arab Spring uprisings from 2011 heightened Beijing’s fears, even more so when NATO intervened in Libya to protect civilian lives and contributed to the fall of the Ghaddafi regime.30 The political and normative dilemmas emanating from the US and Western liberalism were seen as persistent threats to regime security, defined as unconditional CCP rule. The CCP came up with multiple responses in the 2000s. To protect its power monopoly against challenges arising from soaring and uneven economic growth, the Party successfully coopted entrepreneurs and the emerging middle class.31 It also erected new defenses in the digital realm. Turning the internet into a Chinese “intranet” by what is called the “great firewall” was considered a defensive measure “to thwart Western attempts to conquer China ideologically,” the Global Times noted.32 More than one million work in the online censorship apparatus.33 The CCP also began to stylize repressive one-party dictatorship as Chinese-style democracy. In the early 2000s, authorities had still censored the term “democracy,” yet by 2007 Wen Jiabao argued that “democracy, law, freedom, human rights, equality and fraternity” were concepts of all of humanity, not Western prerogatives.34 Hu Jintao referenced “democracy” over 60 times in his speech at the CCP National Congress the same year.35 Conveying to a Chinese audience that there was no need to desire democracy, rule of law, or human rights as they allegedly had it all, the Party also sought to muddy the waters internationally.36 Besides, the CCP instrumentalized Chinese history and culture to legitimize its own rule. Hu Jintao introduced the concept of a “harmonious world” at the UN in 2005 and elaborated on the “harmonious society” at the 17th Party Congress in 2007. The Party presumed for itself to lead a harmonious society and provide a new way of thinking

30 See Brown (2018, p. 96). 31 See McGregor (2012, pp. 31–32; 194–228) and Brown (2020, pp. 118–120). 32 Quoted from Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020, p. 24). Own translation. 33 Number from Pillsbury (2016, pp. 179–180). 34 Quoted from McGregor (2012, p. 20). 35 Number from Brown (2018, p. 97). 36 On the attempted whitewashing of dictatorship see Strittmatter (2020, pp. 20–34).

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about the wider world.37 Both terms insinuate a culturally grounded model of hierarchical rule in which all have proper places and roles.38 If CCP dictatorship is historicized as flowing naturally from the Chinese past, then whoever questions the CCP disturbs the legitimate social order and needs to be “harmonized.”39 The “harmonious world,” though it was not clearly defined, spurred discussions to which degree it reflected historical Tianxia notions of hierarchical order under Chinese auspices.40 It was obvious that domestic responses alone were not enough to protect regime security, however. The terminological subversion of democracy as well as “harmonious world” rhetoric indicated as much. In 2003, Hu Jintao recognized that the PRC had to create an “advantageous environment of international public opinion” to protect “China’s national security and societal stability.”41 The initial answer was a campaign to increase Beijing’s “soft power.”42 It focused primarily on so-called Confucius Institutes, China-funded educational centers at universities worldwide. After the first Confucius Institute was established in South Korea in 2004, their number rose to 548 worldwide over the next 15 years, with an additional 1,193 so-called Confucius classrooms in primary and secondary schools.43 In the long haul, however, a CCP-led China needed more to prosper and rise, namely an international environment without a liberal bias. After all, as long as China’s domestic system was an outlier to globally dominant political and human rights norms, it would be susceptible to outside pressure and “spiritual pollution.” Intense party deliberations led to a straightforward conclusion in the mid-2000s. China had to alter the

37 On “harmonious society” and “harmonious world” concepts see Callahan (2013, pp. 46–52), Callahan and Barabantseva (2011), and Noesselt (2010, pp. 183–185). 38 See Halper (2010, p. 150). 39 See Callahan (2011, pp. 263–264) and Strittmatter (2020, p. 31). 40 There is no consensus whether and to what degree China’s “harmonious world”

paradigm is rooted in historical Tianxia notions. For Chinese debates and a critical reflection see Callahan and Barabantseva (2011). On the definitional loopholes of the official Chinese discourse see Noesselt (2010, pp. 186–193). 41 Hu Jintao, quoted from Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020, p. 33). Own translation. 42 The importance of “soft power” is reflected in the sudden emergence and dramatic

upswing of the term in official discourse. See Godehardt (2020, p. 22). 43 Numbers from Jakhar (2019). See also The Economist (2009a) and Torres (2017).

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ideological and discursive status quo in world affairs.44 The political and normative pillars of the international order would have to be brought into line with the CCP’s needs to safeguard regime security. As Hamilton and Ohlberg describe, this is what Beijing set out to do: “The Communist Party of China (CCP) is determined to change the international order and shape the world according to its wishes.”45 Lastly, revisionist needs also became increasingly salient in the economic domain. Before, the economy had been the one realm where China was open to adapt (on its terms) to Western standards. After all, capitalism and trade, partnership with the United States and the wider West, and the inclusion in the WTO appeared as sole pathways to prosperity. But the Chinese propensity to transition to market economics had been limited from the beginning by the logic of its political system.46 Chinese intellectuals and leaders pondered the opportunities and dangers of economic globalization into the 2000s. As Yong Deng and Thomas Moore analyzed, they concluded that national rejuvenation necessitated the integration into the global economy. Though this produced vulnerabilities, globalization was seen as a process that could be utilized to “democratize” the international system characterized by Western liberal hegemony and help China pursue its own interests. The logical consequence was that China would have to become an active shaper of globalization instead of adapting to globalization on Western terms.47 China’s course made clear that prospects for true economic liberalization at home and full adaptation to the rules-based international trade order were fading. The accession to the WTO in 2001 was a landmark event. In the Chinese discourse, WTO accession is described as “entering the world.”48 It was interpreted as the end of an externally driven reform agenda. This mindset was diametrically opposed to Western expectations, as Fox and Godement explicated: European and American negotiators have been guilty of wishful thinking in their dealings with Beijing. They hoped that China’s accession to the WTO

44 See Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020, p. 33). 45 Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020, p. 17). Own translation. 46 See Pei (1994). 47 See Deng and Moore (2004) and Medeiros (2009, pp. 20; 26–27). 48 Sel (2019).

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in 2001 would act as a catalyst for market reform and a strengthening of rule of law. But China seems to have seen membership as the conclusion of its reform process rather than the beginning.49

Going forward, the WTO was soon gridlocked over Western attempts to distinguish between developing states and more advanced emerging economies, while China mounted a diplomatic counteroffensive. Beijing self-identified as a developing country and clung to “special and differential treatment” (SDT) clauses, which grant exemptions from WTO requirements and were seen as a major asset for its own rise. As a negotiator described the position of the Chinese: “They are aware of the risk and do everything they need to avoid it.”50 Their take was to aim for as little reform as possible, just enough to avoid an unraveling of the WTO system.51 Furthermore, China’s state capitalist economic model has long utilized unfair trade practices that harm free market economies, with little inclination in Beijing to relent. Issues ranged from market distortions, currency manipulation, forced technology transfers, discrimination against foreign companies, nonreciprocal market access, opaque subsidies, statesupported/-directed industrial espionage, and else.52 It should not have come as a surprise. The maximization of GDP growth was the overarching leitmotif in the 2000s.53 Generally, as Hart and Johnson emphasized, a system where the ruling clique uses the law as an instrument of power has no frame of reference for rules-based governance. Unfulfilled reform promises as well as defiance of WTO commitments have been major problems since accession.54 Moreover, economic liberalization has always been viewed through the domestic lens of regime security and rejuvenation. The party-state never relinquished control and had no intention of ever doing so. To use an image from the 1980s: The market is seen as a bird that can fly within the cage set up by the CCP. In the new millennium, the cage had gotten bigger and less obvious, but the CCP was not inclined

49 Fox and Godement (2009, p. 11). 50 Quoted from Hopewell (2017, p. 1385). 51 See Zhu (2019). 52 See The Economist (2017a) and Meltzer and Shenai (2019). 53 See Brown (2018, p. 27). 54 See Hart and Johnson (2019, pp. 12–15).

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to open it up and let the bird fly free.55 Domestic political imperatives made it virtually impossible for China to adapt to free market and trade practices, which meant that the country would game the liberal economic order for profit and adjust it to its own politico-economic needs down the road. The PRC came under increasing pressure over the 2000s. For one thing, Western discontents with China’s economic model and practice were growing. For another, Beijing needed to figure out how to avoid the so-called middle-income trap. Export-driven growth schemes, which rest on foreign investments and low-skill, low-pay manufacturing, naturally reach an inflection point if respective economies do not manage to transition to a more advanced form of innovation-driven and balanced growth. Obviously, the country required a new economic way forward.56 Since the CCP would not take chances, more state intervention, not less, was in the books. Taken together, there was a growing necessity to revise the rules of the world economy according to Beijing’s regime needs instead of being shaped by them. Lastly, China turned into an international heavyweight in the 2000s, which changed the way the country related to the wider world. What the PRC needed was an environment that allowed its further rise. Yet lying low became less salient, not only because of China’s growing revisionist needs but also due to how others responded to it. China faced ever more insistent demands to step up as a “responsible stakeholder.”57 Beijing interpreted the attempts to enlist it in global problem-solving as ploys to burden the PRC and its rise. But dragging its feet on the premise that it was a developing nation was not viable in the long run.58 It left China with the choice of reactively responding to Western demands (and definitions of what it meant to be a responsible actor) or proactively developing its own visions of order and global governance. As Yuan Peng, a think tanker from Beijing put it: “China, for its part, does not base its notion of international responsibility on U.S. expectations.”59 What China really needed was a world in line with the needs of the communist 55 Image from Brown (2018, pp. 52–53). 56 On the changing economic reform calculus see Noesselt (2018a, pp. 439–441). 57 Zoellick (2005). 58 See Brown (2017, p. 35). 59 Yuan Peng, quoted from Deng (2015, p. 124).

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party-state, not one that placed burdens on China to do the bidding of other countries or adapt to rules that others had defined. China’s growing revisionist needs and waning inclination to accept or at least tolerate the status quo can be traced in its political discourse. Nadine Godehardt uncovered that the phrase “in line with international norms,” which corresponds with notions of integration and adaptation to a given international status quo, was on a steep rise until 2001, the year of China’s WTO entry. Yet its usage has declined ever since. Vice versa, the term “docking” saw a slow, steady rise over the 2000s, gained prominence at the end of the decade, and experienced a steep upward curve when Xi Jinping took over in 2012/2013. “Docking” as a foreign policy concept refers to adapting the international order to own needs— by developing own ordering principles and structures that exist on par with Western ones, blend in with the existing order to modify it, or roll back the status quo altogether.60 In other words, Chinese leaders came to conclude that the international order had to be brought into line with the needs of the party-state, not the other way around. All in all, it became increasingly evident that the PRC’s core strategic needs were in sustained conflict with US global dominance and the liberal international order—despite the benefits it provided. At the same time, the propensity to tolerate, let alone to adapt to the status quo declined. While strategic accommodation to the United States and the Western liberal order had been useful before, it finally appeared as a corset to tight and impractical for a rising China. The struggle for order was one leaders in Beijing were finally willing to fight for the sake of the CCP’s survival and the rejuvenation of the nation. The stage was set for China to turn revisionist once the opportunity structure of the international system allowed it. Beginning in the late 2000s, it did.

Window of Strategic Opportunity The global financial crisis of 2008 turned out to be an inflection point. While Western economies plunged into a period of economic hardship and divisive politics, China was not affected by the financial meltdown, churned out a massive stimulus package to boost its economy, presented itself as a guarantor of global recovery, and came out more self-confident

60 See Godehardt (2020, pp. 14–17; graph on p. 15).

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than ever.61 At the same time, China felt extremely vulnerable to the potential domestic ramifications of a global economic crisis. It led to the curious situation that Beijing went through the crisis “cocky on the international stage but insecure at home,” which Christensen described as a “toxic combination.”62 After all, nationalism is the second major pillar of regime legitimacy, ready to be utilized in times of crisis. Sentiments of superiority and uncertainty both bolstered Beijing’s newfound international assertiveness.63 What made the financial and economic crisis a true caesura from the Chinese point of view was that the Western model of economic liberalism seemed to have failed spectacularly. On the one hand, US-driven neoliberal deregulation and a lack of oversight were the roots of the crisis. On the other, Western democracies struggled with the political fallout and the slow recovery afterward. The PRC appeared stronger than ever as its state capitalist authoritarian system seemingly proved itself, and the world, including US allies in Europe and beyond, looked to China as a crucial partner. The centrality of the G20 as the new global economic steering committee tied in with the excitement about the emerging economies of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). It conveyed a message of Western decline and new opportunities, all of which had been unthinkable a decade earlier. The Chinese believed that the United States, which was already weakened by the controversies and strains of the global war on terror, was in a downward spiral in terms of power, influence, and authority. A CCP newspaper stated with unconcealed excitement at the time: “U.S. strength is declining at a speed so fantastic that it is far beyond anticipation.”64 When US President Barack Obama took office in 2009, his conciliatory tone toward China in his first year—attempting to focus on shared interests and promote cooperation—was interpreted as an invitation to test US resolve. “[…] Obama’s strong positive attention to and accommodation toward China reportedly were seen in China as signs of American weakness and 61 There is widespread agreement on the watershed quality of the financial and economic crisis. See, e.g., Terhalle (2015) and Wright (2015, p. 20). 62 Christensen (2015b, p. 28). 63 On the crisis symptoms, domestic responses, and anxieties see Ross (2013, pp. 75–

77) and Christensen (2015a, pp. 242–245). 64 For a summary of Chinese assessments see Friedberg (2011, pp. 130–131; quote from p. 131).

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apparently added to reasons for China to pressure the United States more over long-standing and recent differences,” Robert Sutter recapitulated.65 Though China, according to its own assessment, remained confronted with “the superiority of the developed countries” and the United States in particular, the trend line instilled optimism, at long last.66 (Perceived) US weakness in combination with the crisis of Western economic liberalism presented a unique opportunity to seek modifications in the international order. China called for reforms of the global economic and financial order, indeed for a “novel world order” where developing economies would play a larger role, which also served the purpose of singling out the United States as the source of global economic and financial hardships.67 Hu Jintao disparaged the US-centered global financial system as a “product of the past” in 2011.68 The CCP propaganda paper People’s Daily in early 2009 envisioned the “unambiguous end to the U.S. unipolar system after the global financial crisis.”69 It was the opening salvo in a broader effort to bring the global environment in line with Chinese needs. What enabled such new self-confidence was the country’s homegrown strength. China had matured from a developing nation into one of the leading economies and trading powers by the late 2000s. The country’s fast-paced rise exceeded even earlier prognoses. Forecasts from the early 2000s expected China’s GDP would rank third globally behind the United States and Japan by around 2020.70 In reality, China leaped forward after its WTO accession in 2001. It surpassed Japan’s economy in 2010 already and today is second only to the United States. While America’s GDP was 15 times larger than China’s in 1990, the rate declined to 8.4 in 2000, 2.5 in 2010, and 1.4 in 2020. China’s share of world

65 Sutter (2015, p. 7). 66 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2009,

Chapter I). For overviews of Chinese assessments and the notion of a world of one superpower and multiple great powers see Glaser and Morris (2009) and Friedberg (2011, pp. 131–132). 67 See Halper (2010, pp. 5–6; 23). 68 Hu Jintao, quoted from McGregor (2012, p. xxii). 69 People’s Daily commentary from February 2009, quoted from Glaser and Morris

(2009). 70 For such an assessment see Lardy (2001).

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GDP has grown from roughly 2.5% in 1995 to close to 20% by 2020.71 Measured in terms of purchasing power parity, the Chinese economy has already gained a roughly 20% lead over the United States.72 Regarding its economic fitness, the World Bank has seen China on a steep rise since the 1990s and in top rank beginning in 2009.73 China’s ability to utilize its economic power and exert influence abroad rests on how it relates to other countries. A McKinsey analysis details that China’s exposure to the world in terms of trade, technology, and capital had grown until 2007 but decreased thereafter. Among others, it has to do with the growing relevance of the domestic market and the cordoned state of the Chinese economy. The world’s exposure to and dependency on China, however, has expanded significantly as the country has matured into a major market (about 30% of global consumption in fields like the car industry, luxury goods, and mobile phones).74 Though still dependent on foreign technology and components, China has made huge progress as an innovation powerhouse.75 By 2017, China was the prime trading partner for over 120 countries worldwide.76 Its share of global exports jumped from 3.9% in 2000 to 14.7% in 2020—leaving the established top-exporters United States and Germany far behind with 8.1% and 7.8%, respectively.77 While the country used to be heavily dependent upon exports—their share of GDP had risen from 2.5% in 1970 to 9% in 1989 to a high point of 36% in 2006—the rate has declined steeply since and stood at 20% in 2021.78 Furthermore, Chinese firms have gone global. Already in 1999 Jiang Zemin initiated a “go out” campaign and encouraged Chinese stateowned enterprises to invest in strategic assets abroad, particularly in natural resources.79 Commodities, raw earths, and energy were pursued 71 Own calculation (numbers rounded) based on data from IMF (2022). GDP in current USD. 72 World Bank (2022). GDP, PPP (current international $). 73 World Bank (2022). Economic Fitness. 74 Woetzel et al. (2019, pp. 4–9; spec. p. 5). 75 See Woetzel et al. (2019, pp. 3; 10–14; 36–37). 76 Number from Brown (2018, p. 35). 77 Nicita and Razo (2021). 78 World Bank 2022. Exports of Goods and Services as percent of GDP. 79 See Miller (2017, p. 32).

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with a mercantilist approach.80 Since then, China has massively expanded its role as an investor. Not only have its foreign direct investments doubled from 43 to 90 billion USD between 2009 and 2013, but Beijing also encouraged state-owned and private companies to compete in global markets.81 The number of companies operating abroad has close to quadrupled just between 2010 and 2016.82 Overall, China’s global economic footprint has changed rapidly, increasing its political leverage, while its own vulnerabilities were purposefully reduced. Regionally, the fact that China surpassed Japan’s GDP in 2010 was considered a watershed. Yuan Peng, a Chinese think tank official, depicted it as the “most significant landmark in Asia’s history since Japan’s defeat of China in the First Sino-Japanese War” in the late nineteenth century: “The power pattern of an Asia–Pacific led by Japan or by America and Japan […] is about to change.”83 Seen from Beijing, the world appeared on the verge of returning to the “natural” distribution of regional power with itself at the top. Factoring in other diplomatic successes over Japan at the time, a US official concluded that “China believed they had secured Asia without a shot.”84 Indeed, the PRC matured into the dominant economy in Asia. The entire region has seen dynamic growth. But viewed in absolute numbers, China leaves all others far behind. While Japan’s GDP was more than seven times the size of the Chinese in 1995, it was less than half of China’s by 2015.85 Neighbors are all heavily reliant on China through integrated supply chains, high import and export shares, and the inflow of capital. In 2009, the PRC became ASEAN’s largest trade partner; the creation of the 2010 China-ASEAN free trade area (CAFTA) deepened relations further, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a panAsian free trade area involving 10 ASEAN members and six other Asian countries including China, was the next step.86 Though China’s weight is

80 See Lind and Press (2018) and Economy and Levi (2015). 81 See Noesselt (2018b, pp. 158–161; number from p. 159). 82 Woetzel et al. (2019, p. 29). 83 Yuan Peng, quoted from McGregor (2017, p. 241). 84 See McGregor (2017, pp. 242–247; quote from p. 245). 85 IMF (2022). GDP growth and GDP in current USD. 86 See Shambaugh (2018, pp. 121–122).

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felt worldwide, the developed economies of Europe and the United States are far less exposed than its Asian neighbors.87 What sets the PRC apart is that in its politico-economic system business is not just business. Economic ties are used in immediate ways for (coercive) political purposes. As Bonnie Glaser illustrates, “China’s strategy is to weave together a network of economic interdependence. It is using the centrality of its power to persuade other nations that to challenge China […] is simply not worth it.”88 Miller agrees: “The goal is to create a web of informal alliances lubricated by Chinese cash. As its neighbors become ever more economically dependent on it, China believes its geopolitical leverage will strengthen.”89 Addressees of Chinese policies admit its effectiveness. A senior official of the Malaysian foreign ministry conceded that “the crude and simply answer is money. Money talks. China offers huge investment and markets.”90 Beijing utilizes its economic power to incentivize and punish. Meeting the Dalai Lama, for example, comes with significant economic retributions since the era of Hu Jintao.91 The list of states punished economically for whatever Beijing dislikes politically is long and expanding. China has invested heavily in its military buildup and modernization to complement its economic rise. The PRC’s official military budget has climbed from roughly 22 billion USD in 1990 to around 42 billion USD in 2000, 132 billion USD in 2010, and about 270 billion USD in 2021.92 Both deterrence and (regional) power projection capabilities are built up at a rapid pace. This includes littoral and blue water naval capabilities, short- and medium-range missiles, cyber competencies as well as strategic nuclear forces. Since China presided over spectacular economic growth, its share of military spending in overall government spending declined from a high of around 17% in 1992 to a low of 4.7% in 2020.93 Measured as a percentage of GDP, China spent less than 2% on defense during its

87 See Woetzel et al. (2019, pp. 6–7) and Saunders (2014, p. 371). 88 Bonnie Glaser, quoted from The Economist (2014a). 89 Miller (2017, p. 11). 90 Interview with David Shambaugh, quoted from Shambaugh (2018, p. 98). 91 See Fuchs and Klann (2013). 92 SIPRI (2022). Military expenditure in constant 2020 USD. 93 World Bank (2022). Military Expenditure (% of general government expenditure).

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massive buildup from 2004 to 2020.94 The PRC also managed to advance technologically and reduce dependency on weapons imports. The volume of arms imports was on a steep rise from 1990 to 2005 and on a steady decline ever since.95 On top of East Asia’s economic asymmetries, the region’s military lopsidedness was great and growing. China’s rise provoked defense investments across the region. India, South Korea, and Japan, for example, have increased their military budgets considerably over the past 20 years; the former two even more than doubled their defense spending.96 But none can keep up with China. Prosperous win–win economic cooperation in Asia was increasingly paired with zero-sum game security fears and omnipresent military dangers.97 The asymmetries allowed China to combine economic incentives and punishments with assertive military bullying, if need be, to press its regional interests. And China would do so with confidence, as a senior official from Thailand admitted in an interview with David Shambaugh: “Thirty-five years ago when Chinese ministers came here, they were quite humble—nowadays it’s no longer so. China now has power, and they are acting like it—they come here and tell us to do this and do that. […] The emperor now has both the will and capability to enforce its desires.”98 China’s defense buildup was specifically tailored to keeping the United States at bay. Confronted with unconditional US superiority, Chinese strategists have postulated the need to offset adversarial strength and exploit vulnerabilities from the 1990s: “military preparations need to be more directly aimed at finding tactics to exploit the weaknesses of a strong enemy.”99 According to the Chinese understanding of integrated strategic deterrence developed in the past two decades, nuclear,

94 World Bank (2022). Military Expenditure (% of GDP). 95 World Bank (2022). Arms imports (SIPRI trend indicator values). 96 SIPRI 2022. Military expenditure in constant (2020) USD. 97 See Feigenbaum and Manning (2012), Mastro (2014), and Saunders (2014). 98 Quoted from Shambaugh (2018, p. 124–125). 99 Contribution from Liberation Army Daily from 1999, quoted from US Department of Defense (2010, p. 27). Without italics from original. See also US Department of Defense (2000).

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conventional military, and nonmilitary tools from the political, diplomatic, economic, technological, societal, and other realms must be woven together in order to deter and, if necessary, fight a high-tech adversary.100 Hoping to break US hegemony in Asia, China needed capabilities and concepts to undermine US defense alliances, raise the price tag on American and allied actions, limit Washington’s ability to operate in the region, and bolster its own deterrent and defenses. Along these lines, the Chinese military was undergoing, as a US Defense Department report assessed in 2009, “comprehensive transformation from a mass army designed for protracted wars of attrition on its territory to one capable of fighting and winning short-duration, high-intensity conflicts along its periphery against high-tech adversaries […].”101 China’s anti-access/area denial strategy (A2/AD) placed special focus on building its navy, missile force, and paramilitary or nonmilitary maritime proxies, like an armada of coast guard, militia, and fishing boats. China today has the world’s largest navy with around 350 ships and submarines and an arsenal of over 1,250 ground-launched ballistic missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles with ranges between 500 km and 5,500 km.102 In short, as a senior US defense official summed up in Congressional testimony in 2015, China aims at defeating “the American way of doing power projection.”103 This pertains also to diplomatic leverage and the politics of international institutions. China has made a determined effort to build power within the existing institutional architecture. Cultivating a cadre of well-trained diplomats and striving to fill leadership positions in UN organizations out of the spotlight, gives critical leverage.104 In addition, Beijing strategically utilizes trade and investment policies to strengthen its diplomatic clout. Forging relations with African states, for example,

100 See Chase and Chan (2016). 101 US Department of Defense (2009, p. i). 102 US Department of Defense (2020, p. ii). 103 Undersecretary of Defense Frank Kendall, quoted from Heath and Erickson (2015, p. 150). To trace China’s military advances over time see the annual reports from the US Department of Defense to Congress. With various foci see also O’Rourke (2022) and Bitzinger (2014). 104 See Zoll (2020).

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translated into political influence.105 Lastly, the PRC possessed a functional state apparatus and domestic leeway. The features of a one-party dictatorship give latitude in foreign policy. Of course, autocratic systems are not necessarily strategically superior to democracies.106 But China has proven capable of extending its sway abroad. Overall, Beijing’s window of opportunity for revisionism was wide open by the late 2000s. Not only had the Western model of democracy, market economics, and individual freedom suffered precipitously over the 2000s. But the West’s material lead had declined, too, and internal divisions foreshadowed an increasing self-inflicted incapacitation. Also, while the PRC had been heavily dependent on Western goodwill for institutional inclusion in the globalizing economic order, a decade on the relative dependencies had changed. China had become entangled in the global economy, and in the wake of the financial and economic crisis Western countries looked to Beijing as a source of economic recovery. Finally, China’s political, economic, and military power advanced rapidly, which altered the regional and global balance of influence. Taken together, Beijing possessed a plethora of means and avenues to contest the Western liberal international order. And so it did.

Strategic Response: Constructive Revisionism The revisionism China resorted to in the past decade can be labeled “constructive” in theoretical terms. China did not set out to merely undermine the US-led international order. Beijing defined a vision to make the world safe for the holistic security needs of the party-state. To realize this goal, it sought to impose, enforce, entice, and institutionalize new principles of international order, at times building upon established ones, at times proposing ones diametrically opposed. While destructive revisionism rests heavily on disruption, constructive revisionism is more aspirational, resource-intense, and incentives-based. Still, it has to be understood analytically as a technical expression. In normative terms, China’s “constructive” revisionism threatens Western interests just like Russia’s destructive course does.

105 On China-Africa relations see Noesselt (2018b, pp. 161–167), Sutter (2016, pp. 299–313), and Chin and Thakur (2010, pp. 126–127). 106 See Kroenig (2020).

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First of all, a new proclivity to challenge the territorial status quo and US regional hegemony in Asia became visible. Beijing bullied its neighbors and was uniquely abrasive toward the United States. In 2010, the PRC suspended military-to-military contacts with the United States and declined to host Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in response to renewed arms sales to Taiwan. Gates rebuffed China’s behavior, arguing that defensive support for Taiwan was neither new nor unwarranted but part of the normalization of Sino-American relations with the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. For Beijing things had changed, though. A former PLA general encapsulated the mood at the 2010 Shangri-La Dialogue meeting, as Gates recounted: “China had lived with the Taiwan arms sales in 1979, he said, ‘because we were weak. But now we are strong’.”107 In the East and South China Seas, Beijing turned to open territorial expansionism. In 2009, the PRC formally submitted its claim to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf for almost the entire South China Sea within the so-called “nine-dash line.” It claimed “indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and the adjacent territorial waters, and enjoys sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the relevant waters as well as the seabed and subsoil thereof […].”108 Beijing’s sought to deal with neighbors like Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and others bilaterally and by using economic clout in tandem with military-strategic bullying. At the 2010 ASEAN meeting in Hanoi, they for the first time spoke out collectively. The United States, neutral on territorial claims but insisting on freedom of the seas, encouraged a multilateralization to counteract Beijing’s intimation tactics.109 China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi reminded all that “China is a big country and other countries are small countries and that is a fact.”110 Doubling down, Chinese officials declared respect for their territorial sovereignty in the South China Sea a “core interest,” which put maritime claims on a par with Taiwan or Tibet.111 The confluence of seeming US weakness and newfound Chinese stature after the financial crisis offered a

107 Gates (2014, p. 416). See also McGregor (2017, p. 252). 108 Notes Verbales to the UN Secretary General from May 2009, quoted from US

Department of State (2014, p. 1). 109 See Gates (2014, pp. 416–417). 110 Yang Jiechi, quoted from The Economist (2014b). 111 See McGregor (2017, pp. 248–261) and Landler (2016, pp. 298–301).

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golden opportunity to push territorial claims. In addition, it allowed the CCP to rally nationalist sentiments at home and smooth over domestic insecurities, which were serious at the time.112 After Xi Jinping took over as general secretary of the CCP in late 2012, China’s revisionist practice became more systematic and entrenched. Xi’s message was one of utmost self-confidence paired with acute regime insecurity. He emphasized past achievements and future responsibilities of the Party for the entire nation: Since the founding of the CPC, we have united and led the people to advance and struggle tenaciously, transforming the impoverished and backward Old China into the New China that has become prosperous and strong gradually. […] Our responsibility is to unite and lead people […] while accepting the baton of history and continuing to work for realising the great revival of the Chinese nation in order to let the Chinese nation stand more firmly and powerfully among all nations around the world and make a greater contribution to mankind.113

The CCP in its own assessment was “the backbone of the nation,” as Xi put it, and its role was to deliver what the people needed and desired.114 But he also reminded his audience to never forget the lessons of the Soviet Union’s collapse, namely the Communist Party’s loss of control over the military and ideology, which opened the door to disaster.115 By that time, an interesting development had taken place. The CCP studied the Soviet Union’s downfall excessively. Initially, internal defects were acknowledged. By the time Xi took command, however, the Soviet collapse had been reinterpreted to have occurred solely due to American infiltration. Scared by color revolutions against repressive rule during the 2000s, the Party took lessons from its own reading of events.116 Fears that the external might of the PRC could be undercut by a domestic unraveling were omnipresent, and the 2000s magnified them. Under Xi’s predecessor Hu Jintao, churning out record-breaking economic growth was the overarching goal, with little attention to 112 See Friedberg (2018, pp. 20–21) and Ross (2013). 113 Xi (2012). 114 Xi Jinping, quoted from Mitchell and Clover (2017). 115 See Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020, p. 28). 116 See Palmer (2016).

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side effects. Dissatisfaction with unresponsive party cadres, elite selfenrichment, corruption, environmental pollution, and social inequality had grown considerably. Public protests, generally labeled “mass incidents,” increased from 10,000 (1994) to 180,000 (2010).117 The 2009 riots in Xinjiang added to the anxiety.118 Xi and others viewed Hu’s two terms as a “lost decade” in this regard.119 De facto, the country had become state capitalist economically and nihilistically authoritarian politically, while the limits and uncertainties of economic transformation demanded additional answers.120 Growth settled into a single-digit new normal after 2010.121 Xi set out to reduce domestic vulnerabilities and pursue China’s revisionist foreign policy ambitions with determination. The two dimensions were clearly linked. As Andrew J. Nathan and Robert Ross point out, this had long been the interesting dualism of Chinese nationalism: “Many Chinese see themselves as a nation beleaguered, unstable at home because insecure abroad, and vulnerable abroad because weak at home.”122 Domestic cleavages needed remedy to be able to succeed without, while adjustments to the international order were necessary to prevail at home. As Xi explained to party officials in 2013: “Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason was that their ideals and convictions wavered […]. We’re a major power, and we absolutely cannot allow any subversive errors when it comes to the fundamental issues.”123 Western liberalism instilled grave regime security fears, and Xi was determined to erect defenses. A landmark document early in Xi’s term was the Central Committee’s so-called Document Number 9 of April 2013 on the “current situation in the ideological sphere.” The guidance lists seven ideological trends that have to be fought viciously by all officials: Western constitutional democracy, universal values, civil society, neoliberalism, Western journalistic principles, historical nihilism (i.e., “reassessing history” or the merits 117 Lim (2015, p. 174). 118 See The Economist (2009b). 119 Mitchell and Clover (2017). 120 On the dysfunctions of the politico-economic system see Pei (2006). 121 IMF (2022). Real GDP growth; annual percent change. 122 Nathan and Ross (1998, p. 34). 123 Xi Jinping, quoted from Buckley (2013a).

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and inevitability of CCP rule), as well as doubts about reform era achievements and socialism with Chinese characteristics (e.g., criticisms that political reform lags economic reform or that China’s politico-economic model needed to emulate Western standards).124 Although it was interpreted as a watershed when leaked in 2014, its essence was not new. In 2009, for example, another document on the “Six Whys” had made the case why China would never adopt the Western political model of multiparty democracy or an independent judiciary.125 The CCP has long seen itself in an existential struggle for survival against Western liberalism and sounded the clarion call for resistance on all levels in ever clearer terms under Xi. The following years saw a frenzy campaign to re-ideologize the Party and strengthen the Party’s grip on the country. Xi launched an anticorruption campaign, which provided an opportunity for cleansing the ranks to solidify his power. By 2022, a total of 4.7 million officials faced investigations for charges of corruption, disloyalty, or incompetence.126 Xi centralized power in his own hands and rolled back some earlier reforms, such as collective rule, term limits, or the strengthening of state institutions. Consolidating power within, he also left no doubt about the CCP’s role without. “Party, government, military, people, education; east, south, west, north, central: the party leads everything,” Xi made clear in 2017.127 Of course, the CCP had never relinquished control over any segment of the Chinese state or society, but the reins have tightened in recent years. New forms of digital repression were put to use, such as soft laws threatening prison for sharing “rumors” or holding administrators accountable for the promotion of “socialist core values” in chat groups. Renewed purges targeted human rights lawyers, and the Party also brought back show trials and public confessions.128 Unitary front ideology (demanding all elements of society support the Party’s goals) 124 Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s General Office (2013). See also Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020, p. 29) and Drezner (2013). 125 See Brown (2018, pp. 97–98). 126 Reuters (2022). 127 Xi Jinping at the 2017 Party Congress, quoted from Reuters (2022). On Xi, his and the CCP’s claim to power see also The Economist (2014c, 2017b), Ang (2018), and McGregor (2019). 128 See Shahbaz and Funk (2019), Economy (2019, pp. 55–90), and Strittmatter (2020, pp. 35–48; 61–100).

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was vigorously promoted, circumscribing the always limited leeway of the media, academia, and other sectors further. A 2018 constitutional amendment clarified that CCP rule was the “defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” making it the baseline of the state.129 Under Xi’s leadership, the new mantra became the “China dream” to instill a sense of unitary purpose. It tried to speak to the expectations of the people for a good life, not just one without want.130 This included the fulfillment of national rejuvenation and a return of China to global centrality. Two centenary goals underlined these points. The first was to achieve a moderately prosperous society by 2021, the centennial of the Communist Party. From then on, there would be no more fixed targets on growth, as material gains alone would not suffice as metrics of achievement any longer. The second goal for 2049, the centenary of the PRC’s founding, was the realization of the wholesale rejuvenation of the Chinese nation as a great power. The success metrics include the extension of territorial control to what China deems hers as well as the attainment of international respect and centrality. Under Xi, the PRC revealed its will to take a lead role in shaping the future world order. The China dream narrative reduced the relevance of domestic performance metrics, but upgraded nationalism as a source of legitimacy. The CCP has successfully nurtured a sense among the (young) Chinese that the world was hostile, that foreigners had victimized China all along, and that they would want to deny it its deserved place and status. How effective such narratives are has become evident.131 They would not lose their importance either. As Xi made clear in a December 2015 study session of the Central Committee, “promoting patriotism to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” was imperative.132 While nationalism may be an enabler for foreign policy ambitions, it also allows leaders to utilize foreign affairs to prop up regime legitimacy under conditions of single-digit growth and uncertainty. Obviously, the goal of national rejuvenation could not be reached within an international order characterized by US leadership and liberal

129 Grünberg and Drinhausen (2019). 130 See Brown (2018, pp. 48–49). 131 See, e.g., Wang (2020). 132 Xi Jinping, quoted from Blackwill and Campbell (2016, p. 15).

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principles. What was needed was a new order “with Chinese characteristics.” Xi did not invent the overall goal of national rejuvenation, which has been present all along, but he redefined the strategic pathway to get there. The sense that a window of opportunity existed to make the world more amenable to CCP interests featured prominently in Chinese documents and actions. A 2013 defense paper approvingly noted: China has seized and made the most of this important period of strategic opportunities for its development, and its modernization achievements have captured world attention. China’s overall national strength has grown dramatically […]. China’s international competitiveness and influence are steadily increasing.133

While Deng Xiaoping had advised to “hide and bide” (i.e., “lay [sic] low and join existing order”), Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao had used the mantra of the “peaceful rise” (i.e., “reassure and adapt to existing order”). Xi suggested that rejuvenation could best be achieved by modifying the international status quo (i.e., “reassure, reform existing order, and resist”), as Goldstein periodized. Under Xi, China is “not simply adapting to, but instead more actively shaping, the world in which it is rising.”134 The most immediate theater was the regional balance of power and influence. China wanted what the United States was not willing to give, namely regional primacy. Beijing used various inroads to contest the status quo. Under the header of “new type of major power relations,” which Xi proposed in 2012, the Chinese focused on the non-inevitability of conflict between a rising power and an established hegemon. But the concept also tried to redefine the bilateral relationship on Beijing’s terms, namely as one of coequals with legitimate interests that deserve respect. SinoAmerican relations were envisioned as “no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect, and win–win cooperation.”135 As Chinese intellectuals explicated, the “new type of major power relations” demanded American concessions. Economically the United States should end “discrimination”

133 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2013, Chapter I). 134 Goldstein (2020, pp. 169; 178). 135 Foreign Minister Wang Yi in 2013, quoted from Wu (2014, p. 66).

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in form of high-tech export restrictions or investment screening protocols; regarding the South China Sea, “Washington should understand the limits of its role in these disputes.”136 China also challenged the regional territorial status quo with renewed determination. Already in 2012, China effectively took over the Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines. The Paracel Islands, located 350 kilometers south of Hainan and controlled by China since the defeat of (South) Vietnam in 1974, moved center stage when China announced a new administrative structure to govern the South China Sea from Woody Island in July 2012. The PRC also sought to enforce its claims on the Spratly Islands, extending China’s territory down to James Shoal, a feature 1,500 kilometers south of Hainan and 22 meters under sea level. In all of these disputes, Chinese abrasiveness led to escalating regional tensions with rival claimants.137 In late 2012, China issued new passports that depicted the claimed areas in the South China Sea as its own territory.138 Similar patterns emerged in the East China Sea over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, which are administered by Japan but claimed by China. After multiple diplomatic crises and punitive economic measures by Beijing, a white paper denounced Japan and the United States in scathing terms and affirmed the Diaoyu were “China’s Inherent Territory” in 2012.139 A military show of force in the vicinity of the disputed islets even raised fears of a military escalation and compelled the United States to launch a diplomatic mission to de-escalate.140 In 2013, Beijing unilaterally announced an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over vast swaths of the East China Sea, including the Senkakus and areas claimed by South Korea. The United States and Japan refuted Chinese ADIZ claims over the Senkaku islands with an unannounced flight, but the trendline was clear. Ongoing tensions and close encounters between Chinese and Japanese military vessels and aircraft pressured the Obama administration

136 Wu (2014, pp. 73–74; 70). 137 See Miller (2017, pp. 199–202), McGregor (2017, pp. 286–288), and The

Economist (2012a, 2012b). 138 See Anderlini and Bland (2012). 139 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2012,

Chapter I). 140 See Ross (2013, pp. 83–87) and McGregor (2017, pp. 261–283).

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in April 2014 to clarify that US security commitments to Japan included the Senkakus. The level of China’s brashness was astonishing. At a joint press conference with US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, his Chinese counterpart accused Japan of illegitimate claims and asserted his country’s “indisputable sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands,” on which it would “make no compromise, no concession, no treaty.” Instead, he threatened that the “Chinese military can assemble as soon as summoned, fight any battle and win,” forcing Hagel to reaffirm US defense guarantees.141 Beginning in 2014, China forged ahead with massive land reclamation efforts in the South China Sea, moving, as Ely Ratner put it, “from a trot to a gallop:” China has manufactured about 3,000 acres of land alone in the Spratly Islands within one and a half years, while, in comparison, the decades-long activities of Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam do not even add up to 150 acres.142 Besides, China not only constructed permanent features but also infrastructure that foreshadowed a military usage. Though Xi Jinping denied any intention of militarizing the newly built islands in his meeting with Barack Obama in 2015, it is exactly what China did.143 To assert its sovereignty over the area, the PRC bullies others and issues hawkish demands to leave international waters even to US forces.144 As the foreign minister stated bluntly in 2014: “We are willing to listen to voices from our neighboring countries and respond to their doubts about our neighborhood policy […]. [But] we will defend every inch of territory that belongs to us.”145 Similarly, Xi Jinping professed a nonnegotiable position: “We cannot lose even one inch of the territory left behind by our ancestors.”146 As the Chinese define the regional map, the South China Sea is a Chinese pond.147

141 Chinese Defense Minister General Chang Wanquan, quoted from Cooper (2014). On the ADIZ and related tensions see also Buckley (2013b), Choe (2013), and McGregor (2017, pp. 305–308; 321). 142 Ratner (2017, p. 65) and The Economist (2018a). 143 See White House (2015), Sanger and Gladstone (2016), and CSIS (2022). 144 See, e.g., Beech (2018). 145 Wang Yi, quoted from Miller (2017, p. 214). 146 Xi Jinping 2018, quoted from Gibbons-Neff and Myers (2018). 147 For a summary analysis of Chinese positions and policies see Will (2014, pp. 5–24).

For a visualization see Manning and Cronin (2020).

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What made China’s territorial revisionism so difficult to counter was the gray-zone nature of its “creeping annexation.”148 It employed salamislicing tactics and proceeded in small steps, which would fly under the radar of military counterreaction but over time still change the facts on the ground. In addition, China utilized fishing flotillas and civilian vessels to push ahead, violate the territorial rights of neighboring countries, and stake its own claims. Although Chinese vessels even ram foreign ships, authorities would simply deny any of it.149 Another instrument is to apply the terminology of domestic law to “internalize” matters and use vague language (“adjacent waters;” “relevant waters”).150 Furthermore, China explicitly frames its claims as historical grievances, implying that its territorial revisionism is both a matter of justice and limited in scope, although ambitions have expanded over time.151 The narrative of national humiliation gives offensive expansionism a defensive spin. Chinese officials relentlessly reiterate that they seek to preserve the legitimate status quo that was destroyed by foreign powers in the past, while the United States (and international bodies) allegedly perpetuate historical injustice, with no compromise in sight.152 China was effectively redrawing the map with a mixture of defiance and bribery. It doubled down on what it labeled “peripheral diplomacy” to build positive leverage in the region while still pushing its claims hard.153 The arbitration tribunal in The Hague rejected all of China’s demands in 2016 after the Philippines had referred their case for review under the statutes of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS).154 Though a member of UNCLOS, Beijing simply denied the tribunal’s authority. Shortly after the ruling, China would join forces with Russia to conduct naval exercises in the South China Sea for the

148 Kirchberger and O’Keeffe (2019). Own translation. 149 On China’s “gray-zone” tactics and the use of non-military entities see Holmes and

Yoshihara (2017) and Hosford and Ratner (2013). 150 See Lohschelder (2017). 151 See Roy (2019). 152 See, e.g., Lind (2017, pp. 75–76) and Hieber (2018, pp. 460–462). 153 On China’s renewed “peripheral diplomacy” efforts to reassure see Shambaugh

(2018, spec. pp. 95–98) and Goldstein (2020, pp. 180–182). 154 See The Economist (2016).

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first time.155 Despite the legal clarity of China’s transgressions, the EU merely appealed to all parties to respect international law, clearly trying to avoid economic ramifications.156 Though the United States was more vocal und undertook freedom of navigation operations, no serious effort was made to stop China’s land reclamation and expanding control. As Elbridge Colby and Ely Ratner assessed, China was sure of “Washington’s risk aversion” and its own ability to “weather ephemeral international outrage.”157 De facto, Beijing changed the maritime territorial status quo in Asia while the world at large stood by. Beijing also upped the ante to resolve its Taiwan problem. Beijing exploits its own global political and economic clout to isolate Taiwan, seeking to nullify its de facto existence. From 2015, China made efforts to bar Taiwanese officials from even entering the UN headquarters in New York and the regional UN office in Geneva.158 In 2018, Beijing demanded that international airlines designate Taiwan as a part of China or lose access to the mainland.159 While Taiwan was able to contribute to deliberations after the SARS outbreak in 2003, China prevented its participation in WHO meetings over the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.160 Lubricating relations with economic and financial promises, Beijing managed to reduce the number of Taipei’s formal diplomatic contacts to 15, and seven countries broke with Taipei between 2016 and 2020 alone.161 In 2017, the CCP National Congress dropped references to the will of the Taiwanese and underlined that unification was not an option but a necessity.162 Bringing Taiwan under mainland rule, by force if need be, was defined as a core element of the country’s national rejuvenation: China must be and will be reunited. China […] will never allow the secession of any part of its territory by anyone, any organization or any political party by any means at any time. We make no promise to renounce the

155 See Sakwa (2019, p. 164). 156 See Council of the EU (2016). 157 Colby and Ratner (2014, p. 11). See also Ratner (2017). 158 See Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020, p. 366). 159 See Palmer and Allen-Ebrahimian (2018) and Wee (2018). 160 See Hernández and Horton (2020). 161 Numbers from Shattuck (2020, pp. 334–335). 162 See Bush (2017) and Wong (2020).

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use of force, and reserve the option of taking all necessary measures. […] The PLA will resolutely defeat anyone attempting to separate Taiwan from China and safeguard national unity at all costs.163

As Richard Bush analyzed, coercive intimidation was considered “just right” at the end of the decade. There was no chance to persuade the Taiwanese to succumb to mainland rule, particularly with the crackdown on the “one country, two systems” model in Hong Kong, yet an all-out war was risky and costly.164 But force moved to the fore as a potential necessity and option.165 To alter the status quo on its terms below the threshold of war, shaping perceptions and responses is of vital importance. The 2022 visit of Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, illustrated some of the mechanisms. The PRC responded with the most massive military maneuvers around Taiwan to date and tried to convey the sense that the United States had provoked a crisis. Of course, it is solely the PRC’s choice what it instrumentalizes as an alleged provocation. Parliamentary visits to Taiwan from the United States and other countries are routine events. Beijing decided saber-rattling was in its interest on this occasion, but not when President Biden repeatedly suggested the United States has an obligation to defend Taiwan in case of attack, for example. However, if Beijing succeeds to change perceptions—getting others to blame the United States for Chinese live-fire exercises or reproduce the CCP lingo of “reunification” and “renegade province”—, it wins small-step victories in its revisionist quest. These cases are about more than territorial adjustments. China wants to break US hegemony in Asia, which lies at the heart of Beijing’s grievances. First, this includes efforts to limit Washington’s coercive capabilities. Admiral Philip Davidson, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, conceded in 2018: “China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States.”166 Second, China questions the functionality of US hegemony, both for the United 163 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2019a, Chapter II). 164 Bush (2019, p. 6). 165 See O’Hanlon (2022). 166 Admiral Philip Davidson, quoted from The Economist (2018a). On the changing balance of power in the Pacific see Yoshihara and Holmes (2017, 2018).

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States and its regional partners. Was is truly beneficial to commit to the region—and did it really serve the interests of Asian states to align with the United States? As Hugh White assessed: “China confronts America with the choice between deserting its friends and fighting China.”167 At the same time, it forces allies to ponder how much they trust the US and how much they are willing to pay to resist Chinese wishes. Third, in addition to its enforceability and functionality, China targeted the legitimacy of US hegemony in Asia. The dominant theme was that not Chinese actions but the US involvement in Asia was the source of instability. Calling for “Asia for Asians,” the PRC insinuated that regional relations would be characterized by harmony and win–win cooperation if the United States did not “disturb” the natural order of things. As Xi Jinping put it: “It is for the people of Asia to uphold the security of Asia.”168 On another occasion he posited: “It is disadvantageous to the common security of the region if military alliances with third parties are strengthened.”169 Along these lines, Beijing pretends to be willing to negotiate dispute settlements with “those states directly involved.”170 Delegitimizing the United States’ security role and getting Washington to disengage would be the ultimate prize for China—and change the region for good into one under Beijing’s preeminent influence.171 China’s revisionism is not limited to such regional questions of territory and influence. Instead, Beijing mounts a holistic offense against the US-led liberal international order in a broader sense. The evidence shows that China doesn’t merely aim at destroying the status quo. It wants to supplant it with something new, namely a novel political, economic, and normative order with “Chinese characteristics.” The core goal is to deliberalize the international system and make it agnostic to the nature of China’s political regime or even supportive of CCP dictatorship and the party-state. In order to get there, the CCP must sway others that Chinese “rejuvenation” would serve the world well.

167 Hugh White, quoted from The Economist (2014b). 168 Xi Jinping, quoted from Heath and Erickson (2015, p. 146). 169 Xi Jinping, quoted from Heath and Erickson (2015, p. 147). 170 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2019a, Chapter II). 171 See Lind (2018).

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The CCP today self-confidently makes the case for the “China model” as an alternative path to modernity—even one superior to the Western liberal brand, to be emulated by others instead of shunned by the West. At its core, this model rests on the combination of political authoritarianism and globalized, state-directed capitalism, which is thoroughly at odds with Western notions of political, economic, and societal liberalism yet welcomed in many corners of the world as a seeming shortcut to prosperity without democratization.172 Of course, China’s path to economic success is by no means universally applicable or easily replicable, since it depended on a peculiar mix of unique factors.173 How sustainable it is remains to be seen. Nevertheless, Beijing’s approach of focusing on development and the developing world amounts to a veritable challenge. Indeed, as Joshua Eisenman and Eric Heginbotham succinctly summarized: “China is enlisting developing countries in its effort to constrain U.S. power,” and it does so in multiple forms and venues.174 This serves the larger purpose of bringing the international order into line with its own needs. Beginning in the mid-to-late 2000s, China made massive forays into development assistance and finance, which foreshadowed how it would seek to revise the status quo. It built on tropes it had cultivated before. Beijing promised that it—unlike the West—would be a champion for inclusive development and that it—unlike the West—would not lecture other countries on how to organize their internal affairs. From 2007 onward, the China Development Bank started providing international loans. By 2013, the loan volume stood at around 187 billion USD. Similarly, China’s Export–Import Bank established itself in international development lending from 2010 onward. In a matter of just a few years, China came to overshadow by far the multilateral institutions in the field.175 The PRC’s growing economic stature and influence helped authoritarianism worldwide. An economically prosperous but authoritarian China established itself as an entity for fellow autocrats to turn to. Beijing 172 See Halper (2010). For a critical discussion of notion of a new “Beijing consensus” versus the older “Washington consensus” see Beeson and Li (2015). 173 That China’s development, possible lessons for others notwithstanding, depended on unique factors is shared by, e.g., Chin and Thakur (2010, pp. 123–125). 174 Eisenman and Heginbotham (2019, p. 75). 175 Numbers from Miller (2017, pp. 41–42); also The Economist (2022, p. 6).

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emerged as a “hub” regarding trade, investments, and assistance for countries categorized as “not free.” Dictators like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus were among the beneficiaries.176 Countries on top of the list of its most important energy and trade partners as well as recipients of aid and investment are the likes of Angola, Sudan, Congo, and Venezuela.177 Stefan Halper calls the China model “a most troublesome export:” The critical distinction between Chinese and Western assistance is that China provides hard-currency loans without the conditions imposed by the West. There is no obligation to create a civil society in the Western sense, no requirement to abide by international accounting standards or accepted legal standards—and certainly no attempt to interfere in the recipient’s internal affairs.178

Though professing to be “blind” toward domestic governance in third countries, China de facto waded into the global autocracy promotion business.179 By now it has become obvious that even party and “capacity building,” particularly in African countries, are essential ingredients to Beijing’s approach. In 2022, the first 120 African party cadres underwent leadership training in a newly opened Chinese-funded school in Tanzania.180 Taken together, Beijing began to challenge a basic pillar of the post-Cold War order, namely that democracy was the global gold standard and democratization was a trend to be supported or even demanded. Beijing’s development-focused approach was strategically adept. First, development needs were vast indeed, and China’s initiative fell on fertile ground. Second, China’s “century of humiliation” experience and narrative gave it special credibility in postcolonial contexts. Similarly, it catered to sentiments of perceived disrespect of fellow post-socialist states and others that resent being “lectured” by the West on reform needs.181 176 Diamond (2008, p. 86). 177 See Halper (2010, pp. 44–46; 75–101). 178 Halper (2010, pp. 32; 30). 179 For an excellent analysis see Nathan (2016). 180 The Economist (2022, p. 8). On the CCP’s political outreach see also Eisenman

and Heginbotham (2019, pp. 68–69). 181 See von Hauff (2018, pp. 10–11; 15–18).

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Third, China’s development agenda tapped a massive reservoir of political clout in the developing world to be utilized in the UN and multilateral formats. Fourth, Chinese policy was difficult to counteract despite Western concerns since development is an uncontroversial and noble goal. Fifth, the political ramifications—the degree to which China promotes illiberal norms and practices and weaves a web of dependencies and influence—would only become manifest in the long run. Lastly, Beijing tried to frame its own national desire for revisionism in a seemingly altruistic way—presenting what the CCP needs as beneficial for the world. Beijing developed a set of narratives that blend in with one another and serve as red threads for its communications with the world. They revolve around an externalized “China dream” narrative and the trope of a “community of shared destiny/shared future for mankind.” As Xi Jinping explained at the UN in 2015, China envisions to “build a new kind of international relations with win–win cooperation at its core and to create an international community that realizes a shared positive future for all of humankind.” This entails respect for the “sovereign equality” of all states and their national “development paths,” an understanding that “the future of the world must be shaped by all countries,” and a commitment to “inclusive development” for all as well as to the “harmonious coexistence” of civilizational differences.182 The rhetoric comes across as a reaffirmation of multilateralism. However, the “community of shared destiny” is a trope designed to replace established notions of a rules-based order and an international community defined by universal liberal norms. China views itself in the lead to provide visions thereof. The narrative has been employed in various contexts to make the case for cooperation in line with Chinese needs, most recently in the coronavirus pandemic.183 To fill the promises of the “China dream” and the “community of shared destiny for mankind” with life, the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) emerged as the central project. The 2013 announcement of the multibillion initiative was a landmark in China’s foreign policy. It laid down the vision of massive infrastructure investments to spur economic growth and development across Eurasia. Complementing it with maritime, digital, and other silk road proposals, the PRC made ambitious plans for massive investments in roads, railroads, ports, digital infrastructure, and the

182 Xi (2015). 183 See Godehardt (2020, pp. 27–30) and Hart and Johnson (2019).

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creation of new patterns of connectivity radiating from and to itself. By 2022, according to Chinese counts, 149 states and 32 international organizations had signed up for cooperation formats.184 The BRI functioned as a multidimensional power projection tool. First, Beijing invested massively in its outward communications, suggesting the world gravitated toward Beijing, irrespective of real investment volumes.185 Second, while the BRI creates the impression that China spends vast sums on infrastructure worldwide, most projects are financed by (opaque) loans. Estimates of real investments and BRI-related loans vary immensely. The Economist tallied the latter at around 900 billion USD, a US-consultancy at 461 billion USD, while others speak of around 200 billion USD.186 They have gained notoriety for their lack of transparency and sketchy financing schemes as some countries found themselves trapped in debt.187 Third, China operates its geoeconomic scheme with divide-and-rule tactics designed to maximize its own leverage. Bilateralizing relations with partners is one way, groupings like the 16+1 (which had intermittently grown to 17 states and is down to 14 by now) with Central and Eastern European EU and non-EU members is another.188 Of course, the BRI, first and foremost, serves the interests of the party-state. China had built massive overcapacities in the construction sector. Generating new demand and externalizing overcapacities would keep the Chinese economy humming. Though BRI projects tend to be financed via loans, it is mostly Chinese construction companies that build roads, railroads, ports, and else in recipient countries. By 2018, Chinese companies executed about 80% of all BRI projects.189 New land- and sea-based infrastructure would also help spur growth in China’s underdeveloped hinterland and diversify transit routes. Furthermore, cultivating civilian infrastructure networks has an additional military-strategic value. 184 Numbers from Global Times (2022a, 2022b). For a visualization see MERICS (2018). 185 On the limits of China’s BRI promises in Central and Eastern Europe see Münster (2019). 186 The Economist (2018b), Kynge and Yu (2020), and Krumbein (2019, p. 3). 187 See Abi-Habib (2018). 188 See von Hauff (2018). The author of this study is highly critical of the BRI. Others offer more benign assessments. See, e.g., Khanna (2019). 189 Figure from Economy (2018, p. 65).

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Chinese state-owned enterprises meanwhile operate “at least 76 ports and terminals out of 34 countries,” some of which have already hosted naval vessels.190 However, the crucial component of the BRI is to support Beijing’s vision of an alternative international order based on Sino-centric growth and development. The BRI does not merely envisage the creation of new or better routes for the exchange of goods between Asia, Africa, and Europe. Instead, the land-based “economic belt” envisages reshaping and sinicizing global production and supply chains by unleashing economic activity in previously peripheral regions and moving China to the center of economic networks. In this sense, the BRI is the baseline for a new type of globalization with Chinese characteristics, radiating to and from China. The BRI intends to generate Sino-centric connectivity and export Chinese standards, be it in customs regulations and processing, IT, telecommunication standards, and political governance principles. “Its ultimate aim is to make Eurasia (dominated by China) an economic and trading area to rival the transatlantic one (dominated by America).”191 In addition to changing power relations, it is meant to revise the norms of global governance. What China promises in its BRI and other communications is development and prosperity without infringing the sovereignty of states over domestic governance. As Nordin and Weissmann argue, the BRI is as much about networked capitalist outreach as it is a narrative of a Sino-centric world order that is described as “the open, equal and mutually beneficial alternative to an Americanled world order that is by contrast portrayed as exclusionary, unequal and power-grabbing.”192 Despite denouncing Western universalisms, BRI documents and official rhetoric suggest that China champions a global governance model based on universal values itself. It comes in the form of the “‘Silk Road spirit’ of ‘peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit,’” which was allegedly “shared by all countries around the world.”193 Callahan reinforces that 190 Economy (2018, p. 66). For summary overviews of the multiple BRI rationales see also Noesselt (2018a, pp. 445–448; 451–452), Hieber (2018), and Miller (2017, pp. 48–51). 191 The Economist (2017c). 192 Nordin and Weissmann (2018, p. 245). On the BRI and world order see also

Maçães (2018). 193 Nordin and Weissmann (2018, p. 240).

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Beijing aspires to develop its (regional) relations beyond the economic sphere toward a shared acceptance of norms of interaction with itself at the center through BRI efforts.194 Unlike Russia’s regional integration efforts, which aim at closing off the post-Soviet space and securing a regionally bounded exclusive sphere of influence, Beijing envisions open networks that grow outward.195 Complementing national and bilateral initiatives, Beijing opted for new multilateral formats and international institutions, such as the Shanghaibased BRICS New Development Bank (2014) and the Beijing-centered Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (2015). Investments in alternative institutions had to do with the gridlock China faced in existing ones.196 But it came with crucial add-ons. For one thing, multilateralizing its development agenda imbued Beijing’s revisionist aspirations with legitimacy. For another, it split the United States and its European allies on the appropriate response. While the United States and Japan called upon others to boycott the AIIB for fear of a subversion of development assistance standards, for example, European allies joined as founding members, reasoning that the bank’s operation could best be shaped from within. Western divisions helped turn geoeconomic might into geopolitical gain and revisionist leverage, not least since Washington’s combative stance had little natural sway. Few states want to pick sides.197 It is worth pointing out, however, that the lending volumes of the multilateral standards-based AIIB are dwarfed by national, non-accountable instruments. The China Development Bank alone financed 600 projects with 190 billion USD from 2013 to 2018, compared to the AIIB’s overall 36.43 billion USD for 190 projects to date.198 While the PRC tried to instill new organizing principles for a politicoeconomic order of the future, it continued to game the liberal economic order to bolster its state capitalist system at the expense of the free market economies. To make the transition from a manufacturing to an innovative high-tech economy, China developed its “Made in China 2025” industrial strategy. Chinese companies were to become global champions 194 See Callahan (2016). 195 See Kaczmarski (2017). 196 See The Economist (2014d) and Miller (2017, pp. 34–43). 197 See Perlez (2015) and Hilpert and Wacker (2015). 198 The Economist (2022, p. 6).

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in key sectors, including artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, and else. The agenda soon was streamlined to focus on “stranglehold technology,” meaning components with maximum coercive and vulnerability potential.199 To gain a competitive edge, China has invested massively, but it still depends on high-end technological imports, particularly from the United States, Japan, and Germany.200 In a systematic politico-economic effort, Chinese state-owned enterprises made strategic acquisitions abroad, using market distortions like opaque subsidies or generous state credit lines. Vice versa, the party-state did not reciprocate acquisition opportunities. Chinese economic liberalization has ground to a halt and even reversed gear under Xi. State-owned enterprises have gained prominence and party cells have become heavily involved in the business world.201 Nevertheless, Beijing presents itself as a steadfast supporter of liberal trade. When the United States and the EU introduced investment screening and other mechanisms to counter Chinese market distortions, Beijing lambasted their alleged protectionism. In reality, the Chinese market is effectively closed to foreign players in many fields.202 Ironically, the Trump administration’s bilateral tariffs and assaults on the gridlocked WTO gave Beijing a golden opportunity to stylize itself as a guarantor of free trade, as Xi Jinping did at the 2017 World Economic Forum. The New York Times called this a “surreal alteration of the global order.”203 Similarly, in public perception “Trump’s trade war” was commonly described as a cause of upheaval in the global economy, overshadowing China’s long-standing unfair trade practices, which have been a shared concern in all industrialized economies. Western concerns about China and its international policies are misrepresented as vicious attempts to contain the PRC’s rise and shatter the hopes and ambitions of fellow developing nations. Beijing’s rhetoric of a “community of shared destiny” places itself among those aspiring developing nations that still lag behind the West in wealth and prosperity. As Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in 2022, for example, China “will continue 199 See The Economist (2020). 200 See Woetzel et al. (2019, pp. 3; 10–14; 36–37). 201 See The Economist (2020). 202 For an overview see Woetzel et al. (2019, particularly graph on p. 11). 203 Goodman (2017).

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to speak out for them [developing nations] and help them solve their problems. We will give full support to increasing the representation and voice of developing countries in international affairs,” whereas “protectionism” and conflicts in the WTO hurt all.204 While Beijing promises to be an advocate for their dreams, it castigates the United States and the West as antagonists that are responsible for and seemingly try to perpetuate a world of haves and have-nots—be it by design or through the inadequacies of the Western model. Rallying the developing world provides influence, helps make the world safe for a CCP-ruled, authoritarian, and state capitalist China, and facilitates the contestation of the US-led international order. The 2021 Global Development Initiative and the 2022 Global Security Initiative are further steps in this direction. Optimism has meanwhile taken root in Beijing. “Over the past decade, China has evolved from a participant, beneficiary, and contributor to a leader in global governance,” scholar Wang Yiwei noted approvingly.205 One of the major venues is the UN human rights system. The flawed structure of the UN Human Rights Council allows states with horrific records to discuss, assess, and shape human rights policy.206 Always anxious about its own regime survival, CCP-led China uses its leverage with developing nations to immunize itself against criticism or punishment for domestic repression, be it regarding Hong Kong, Tibet, or the mass incarceration of the Uighurs in Xinjiang.207 But Beijing’s overarching goal is nothing less than to turn the concept of human rights on its head and eradicate the notion of universal individual rights vis-à-vis the state. If it were to succeed, the PRC would be safe from outside criticism and, absurdly, could present itself as a champion of global human rights with Chinese characteristics. First, China tries to negate the existence of a universal canon of human rights and wants to institutionalize human rights as the prerogative of national governments. Sticking to a long-standing trope, Beijing makes the case for relativism:

204 Wang Yi at the UN General Assembly in September 2022, quoted from Global Times (2022a). 205 Wang Yiwei, quoted from Global Times (2022b). 206 See Calamur (2018). 207 See, e.g., Eisenman and Heginbotham (2019, p. 61).

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Different nations have different tasks and take different approaches to ensure human rights, because they differ in terms of stage of development, economy, culture and society. Diversity in developing human rights should be respected. […] There is no universally applicable model, and human rights can only advance in the context of national conditions and people’s needs.208

To strengthen national governmental authority, China seeks to diminish the codified roles of civil society actors and UN bodies. Teaming up with Russia, among others, it attempts to roll back protections for “human rights defenders” (e.g., civil rights lawyers, advocacy groups) that have been institutionalized since the 1990s. One such effort was a 2016 resolution that called upon states to protect human rights defenders seeking to advance economic, social, and cultural rights. China and Russia advocated to leave it to governments to decide whether human rights advocacy was lawful and proper. Though they failed in this case, it highlighted the trend line.209 Second, China seeks to deinstitutionalize the UN’s role as an enforcer of human rights norms. Reprisals and punishments ought to be abolished out of respect for the sovereign rights of states over their internal affairs. A China-sponsored resolution indeed made it through the UNHRC against Western objections in 2018. It dealt with “promoting mutually beneficial cooperation in the field of human rights” and was replete with references to multilateralism and joint progress. Yet it desired to redefine human rights as an affair of intergovernmental dialogue, opposing human rights to be enforced against the will of national governments.210 To tie the hand of the UN wherever possible, Beijing uses its leverage to slash budgets of human rights-related offices or field missions.211 In a 2018 review of its human rights record by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, contributions from civil society groups on Hong Kong, Tibet, and the Uighur minority were partially downplayed, partially removed from the public’s eye. The UN office’s response that it “must respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of 208 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2019b, Chapter II). 209 See Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2016). 210 UN Human Rights Council (2018). 211 See Lynch (2018).

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the States concerned” reflected Beijing’s pressure tactics.212 The recent visit of High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet to China and her 2022 report, which eventually indeed spoke of potential Chinese crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, was a saga of arm-twisting.213 Third, China seeks to multilateralize and institutionalize the view that economic development was the true and most important human right. In 2017, China successfully brought its first-ever resolution to pass in the UN Human Rights Council to that end—against stern Western objections. But China had won enough votes, among others, from Bangladesh, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Venezuela.214 The resolution entitled “The Contribution of Development to the Enjoyment of All Human Rights” was a step to relativize the individual and political dimensions in the human rights canon and prioritize economic development. As China elaborated in a follow-on communication: The right to existence and the right to development are the primary and basic human rights. Poverty is the biggest obstacle to the realization of human rights. […] Development is not only a mean to eliminate poverty, but also a condition for the realization of other human rights, and a process for human beings to realize our potential.215

While human rights norms empower the individual vis-à-vis state authorities, the Chinese interpretation explicitly places the individual behind the collective, as the former can only thrive with the latter.216 It reaffirmed a position China has staked out in the early 1990s. Collective economic development is said to trump individual (political) rights, which redefines (Chinese) authoritarian repression as a necessary tool to protect the human rights of the (Chinese) people. If Beijing succeeds, it would be the end of the human rights regime as we have known it since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is exactly what China set out to do. The ability to rally 212 Criticism and quote as in Human Rights Watch (2018). 213 See Cumming-Bruce and Ramzy (2022). 214 See UN Human Rights Council (2017). 215 People’s Republic of China (2017). 216 See People’s Republic of China (2017). See also Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2019b, Chapter II).

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the votes in the UN has significantly tilted from the West to Beijing already in the 2000s, while attempts to multilateralize its take on human rights have gained ground in recent years.217 Its human rights discourse is firmly in line with foreign policy narratives of a “China dream” and a “shared destiny for mankind.” At home, CPP rule was the key ingredient to rejuvenation and the protection of human rights, as a 2019 white paper purported: “The Party’s leadership is the fundamental guarantee for the people of China to have access to human rights, and to fully enjoy more human rights.”218 Beyond, China portrays itself as a leading peer contributor to global human rights governance on route to a “fairer, more rational and inclusive direction,” which supports the needs of fellow developing countries that had suffered through colonialism and else.219 In a symbol of utmost defiance, the summary of the latest white paper on human rights was illustrated with a photo depicting happy Xinjiang residents in propaganda outlets.220 While China places heavy emphasis on incentives and economic clout to remodel the world according to CCP needs, it is neither taking chances nor shying from coercion. Instead, Beijing has turned to “sharp power,” which interweaves various tools of leverage to force acquiescence. An important element thereof is, put bluntly, brainwashing the world with Chinese propaganda. As Godehardt shows, China let go of earlier hopes to build “soft power” and focused on discursive hegemony under Xi as a targeted way of (coercively) shaping international views.221 Sharp power “seeks to penetrate and subvert politics, media and academia, surreptitiously promoting a positive image of the country, and misrepresenting and distorting information to suppress dissent and debate,” as the Economist summarized succinctly.222 Outward propaganda gained massive importance in the past decade. In 2009, the PRC announced to spend roughly 7.25 billion USD on its worldwide media efforts as part 217 See Gowan and Brantner (2008, spec. pp. 4–6), Hart and Johnson (2019, pp. 15– 16), Human Rights Watch (2017), and Piccone (2018). 218 Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2019b, Chapter I). 219 See Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2019b, Chapters VII and VIII, quote from Chapter VII). 220 See Xinhua (2019). 221 See Godehardt (2020, p. 22). 222 The Economist (2017d).

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of a campaign called “big propaganda.” The number of Xinhua News Agency bureaus abroad rose from 100 to 186; the Chinese State’s CCTV, which already had an international outlet in English, added Arabic and Russian programs; the Global Times, sort of an international edition of the party paper People’s Daily, was kicked off in English in 2009. In the early 2010s, the PRC spent an estimated 7 to 10 billion USD per year on media operations addressing foreign audiences.223 Xi Jinping set out to make global propaganda more effective. China’s media presence and the share of local employees abroad have grown significantly, even though the CCP’s Office for Foreign Propaganda remains in charge.224 Chinese government entities quietly buy into and utilize foreign media outlets to disperse pro-regime coverage. One example was a network of 33 radio stations in 14 countries that was discovered in 2015.225 Under Xi, CCP and state organs also began to aggressively use platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube to target foreign audiences. By 2020, propaganda outlets such as the Global Times, China Daily, People’s Daily, China Global Television Network, and Xinhua News Agency have gathered tens of millions of followers.226 It is complemented by diverse efforts in diplomacy, academia, the entertainment industry, and else to subvert perceptions and mainstream CCP views globally, which Hamilton and Ohlberg labeled a “silent conquest” to prevail over Western democracy.227 By now the country even self-confidently presents its model of governance as superior to the West. Efforts to redefine the Chinese system of one-party dictatorship as “Chinese-style democracy” have been underway for a while and are an integral ingredient in the ideological contest. As Holbig and Schucher showed, China has tried to rebrand itself as the “world’s largest democracy” under Xi, rejecting what is seen as Western “discourse hegemony” on the term and claiming to represent a successful, fully-fledged democratic model of governance superior to liberal, multiparty democracy.228 It is a theme the CCP has doubled down on in 223 Numbers and examples from Brady (2016, pp. 191; 188). 224 See Brady (2016, pp. 192–195). 225 The Economist (2017d). 226 See Gill (2020, pp. 100–101). 227 Hamilton and Ohlberg (2020). Own translation. 228 Holbig and Schucher (2016).

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recent years. Xi’s China stifles and rejects reform calls, be they internal or external, and responds with repression at home and an ideological offensive abroad. Presenting party dictatorship as effective and just, as a 2021 white paper entitled “China: Democracy that works” did, Beijing undertakes a determined campaign to cast Western democracy as dysfunctional, chaotic, unfair, and as a global threat.229 The coronavirus pandemic was a major battleground in this systemic rivalry.230 But essentially all policy fields are subject to the overarching ideological struggle. History may have returned, but it is not over yet. At the 19th CCP National Congress in 2017, Xi self-confidently made the case that China had risen: “The Chinese nation now stands tall and firm in the east,” echoing Mao’s 1949 declaration that the Chinese people had stood up.231 The CCP sees its leadership as instrumental for China’s rejuvenation, which in turn was an asset for the world and gladly embraced by it.232 But are the CCP’s domestic survival needs and the needs of other countries truly in lockstep? Can China convince others through attraction, bully them through coercion, or manufacture buy-in through propaganda? Can it even succeed at home? There are many reasons for doubt. Considering its multifold domestic vulnerabilities, we should not bet on a linear upward economic trajectory. Indeed, demographic calamities, a looming real estate and debt crisis, declining productivity, ideological rigidity, international disillusionment, and else foreshadow hard times.233 In almost Orwellian terms, the CCP increasingly refers to “happiness” of the people (not prosperity or other quantifiables) as the metric to judge its political, economic, and human rights performance. Needless to say, whoever dares to be unhappy with CCP rule faces the wrath of the party-state. The implications without are equally dire. Should China’s economy falter, as Blackwill and Campbell point out, nationalism will gain importance as the lead source of regime legitimacy.234 This leaves the West with difficult choices on how to deal with Xi’s China.

229 See, e.g., Drinhausen (2021). 230 See Gill (2020). 231 Xi Jinping, quoted from Mitchell and Clover (2017). 232 See Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China

(2019c). 233 See Dieter (2021) and Kamp (2022). 234 See Blackwill and Campbell (2016, pp. 24–27).

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PART V

Conclusion

CHAPTER 10

Geopolitical Realities: The Case for Neo-Containment Against Russia and China

Theoretical and Empirical Findings This study started with the observation that neither Russia nor China has integrated into the US-led international order the way Western decisionmakers had hoped after the Cold War. Instead, both have emerged as major revisionist powers. Although their policies differ, their overall goal is in tune, namely to make the international order less Western and less liberal. This empirical puzzle ties in with a theoretical one: What explains the (in)stability of international orders and revisionism? Even though international order building and contestation are among the most foundational matters of international affairs, established theorizing does not offer a convincing answer. This study constructed a novel neoclassical realist model of order building and contestation and applied it to the empirical case studies of Russian and Chinese post-Cold War opposition against the US-led international order. It showed that Russia and China went revisionist because both had the will and the opportunities. This concluding chapter will review the theoretical argument and its empirical validation before it proceeds to policy recommendations on what to do about the return of the revisionist authoritarian great powers. To improve our understanding of revisionism, the theoretical section first clarified the dependent variable. Revisionist behaviors differ in width, depth, and modes employed. The study outlined a metrics-based © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Groitl, Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18659-2_10

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approach to distinguish revisionist ideal types. Russia and China were both identified as “hard revisionists” by this standard. To explore why states turn to hard revisionism, the explanatory merits of established grand theories were discussed. It turned out that they are ill-suited for the purpose at hand. Existing models appear loaded with teleological assumptions. They either take revisionism as a normal, eternal given (albeit without substantive views on what revisionists want beyond changing the balance of power) or are overly hopeful that destructive dynamics can be kept in check through institutionalization and win–win cooperation on the one hand or norm diffusion and socialization on the other. To provide a fresh angle, this study operationalized neoclassical realism, which ties the study of international order building and contestation to strategic studies. It turned out as the right choice. This study has shown the accuracy of the expanded realist argument. Four theoretical points deserve special mention: First: International order is what the dominant powers make of it and reflects their domestic-level needs. International order is the product of (competing) state policies and an international outcome. While it is a rough reflection of power balances in the world, it is the strategic decisions of states—what they use their power for and how (successfully) they employ it—that determine the contours of the international order. Order building and contestation are thus processual and strategic. States seek to create an international environment that is conducive to their own national interests, and they compete with one another in a continuous game of strategic interaction for this end. The international order at any given time is shaped by the dominant powers. It reflects their influence, interests, and interactive outcomes. Second: The security needs of states are more expansive than realist scholarship tends to acknowledge. Realists argue that states are driven by their survival needs under the conditions of anarchy. Traditionally, this is understood as physical security against armed attack. This study’s neoclassical realist model showed that vital survival needs encompass much more. States desire an international environment that works for the kind of substantive entities that they are. States are defined by the reach of their sovereign territorial control, their self-defined extraterritorial influence claims and roles, their political regime type, their economic system, and their normative compass

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on how the individual relates to the collective. What they need is an environment that helps them do well as the kind of substantive entities that they are. National interests cannot be assessed by looking at relative power shares alone. Instead, we have to admit that vital needs are conditioned by the ideas and structures within states. If the international order works for them, they can be expected to be happy joiners. If it challenges their core domestic needs, states are likely to gear up for self-defense or pushback. Third: Decision-makers act on behalf of the state, which gives them leeway to decide whether to embrace external adaptation incentives or hold out against these constraints. As the neoclassical realist model purports, international stimuli are processed at the national level and translated into policy by state leaders. It is they who assess what a given international order does to their state and its vital strategic needs. Once we acknowledge that international structures do not determine policy, the international system becomes an arena for national strategic choices. Indeed, the explicit conceptualization of international order building and revisionism within the realm of grand strategy is one of this study’s core features and strengths. Past theorizing has placed too much emphasis on seemingly inevitable structural forces, as system-level theories of different types do. Those who emphasize agency, as unit-level theorizing does, disregard the purposiveness of state action, which is interpreted as a non-directional output of competing domestic actors. This study emphasizes the interconnectedness of the system- and unit-level of analysis. It is the most powerful states that shape the contours of the international system, it is the outcome of an international order of their making that all others are subject to, and it is national decisionmakers who take grand strategic choices to reconcile international stimuli with domestic needs and strategic opportunities. Fourth: There is no need to balance out or overtake a hegemon in terms of its overall capabilities to contest the status quo order. States can be expected to go revisionist if a given international order collides with their vital national needs and if they possess the means to do something about it. Hence, not all potential revisionists turn into real ones. Some states are forced to slog on in an unfavorable international environment and endure continuous external pressure and punishment. But those with a suitable power base, state capacity, and available strategic options are the ones prone to revisionism.

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They try to change the rules of the game to bring the international system in line with their needs. Since revisionism is a rejection of the status quo, we cannot explain revisionism without an appreciation of the given order. Since revisionism is a strategic choice, it is the interrelation of international stimuli, national needs/adaptation propensity, and strategic opportunities that open up or close off revisionist paths. Under these conditions, revisionist opportunities exist without changes in the polarity of the system. The empirical analysis validated the theoretical assumptions. Russia and China see the US-led international order as detrimental to their own needs, are unwilling to adapt, and push back internationally instead. That it has come so far was more likely than not. The post-Cold War period did not begin with a clean slate. In the long arch of history, the current struggle is the latest reiteration of the global, state-based international order that has emerged in the modern age. Russia and China have long histories as great power rule-makers who have competed with the West in earlier times. At the dawn of the post-Cold War period, powerful legacies and trajectories cast their shadows over the coming interaction of Russia, China, and the West in the new era. Since the liberal West had been molded into a functional community of like-minded states under US leadership over previous decades, it was highly likely that the postCold War order would be framed along its intellectual and institutional lines. Not very likely, however, was that Russia and China would become true joiners of a US-led liberal order. Russia appeared to turn West after the Cold War, but it entered the period with the trauma of the collapse of the communist order and the Soviet empire. Russia had a long history of centralized control, yet no grown tradition of accountable, law-based, representative government, pluralism, or a strong civil society. Its strength as a great power had never rested on economic innovation, but on military dominance and the resource extraction capacity of an overbearing state. Also, the reach of Moscow’s rule had never been as limited in the modern age as when the Russian Federation was born amidst the Soviet collapse. The initial embrace of the West was premised upon quick gains, a preservation of its peer great power role, and a consensual renegotiation of the post-Cold War order.

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The Chinese case is equally instructive. The PRC has never made peace with the loss of its ancient role as a major power center in world politics. It has self-defined as a revanchist state from its founding in 1949 with substantive grievances and the express goal of “rejuvenating” the country to reclaim a position of centrality under CCP auspices. The communist PRC had looked to Moscow for this very goal, before it turned to the United States in the 1970s. What the country needed was development, and the CCP was willing to try what worked. But it entered the post-Cold War era fully convinced that CCP rule had to be maintained at all costs. Leaders in Beijing felt vindicated after surviving the 1989 Tiananmen protests for democratic reform—and were bent on taking all necessary precautions to prevent any repetition thereof. Hence, a lot of history was present when history presumably ended. Neither Moscow nor Beijing was predisposed to succumb to an order of somebody else’s making, let alone one that promoted liberal political, economic, and normative principles. This is, however, exactly what the post-Cold War US-led international order came down to. As an ideal type, it is characterized by a presumption of a (global) US security management role based on alliances and a rejection of rival great power domineering or exclusive spheres of influence. Politically, it primes support for democratic, lawbased governance. Economically, it revolved around market economics and free trade. Normatively, it cherished human freedom and universal rights to empower the individual against the state. During the Cold War, the US-led liberal international order developed in an externally bounded form. Its liberal core existed in Western Europe and North America, where the outlined elements were largely present in lockstep. Beyond, however, a balance of power logic and realpolitik pragmatism predominated to contain Soviet communism. In the post-Cold War era, the external bounds were lifted. After the Cold War, the liberal international order widened in geographical reach, broadened in scope, and deepened in principles. The United States and its allies embraced liberal internationalism as their guideline to deal with the novel unipolar and seemingly ideationally uncontested world. It was an agenda to use Western power and influence to project transformation incentives outward and support the pacification of the international system on Western terms. This included support for democracy, free markets, and individual freedom beyond their prior reaches through policies of engagement, which were designed to mold former outsiders into stakeholders of the liberal order. What this meant

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in terms of international stimuli was that the West incentivized the transformation of policies and polities along a liberal model as the seemingly inevitable pathway to modernity. While its regional thrust was in Europe, the aspired globalization of the liberal West produced worldwide effects as well as pressures on Russia and China to adapt their policies and polities to a universal liberal standard. The logic of engagement rested on dubious assumptions. First, there was an expectation that economic globalization and trade, dialogue, and diplomatic contacts would produce a convergence of interests and systems. The presumed linkage between free trade, democracy, and the empowerment of individuals vis-à-vis state, however, was by no means a natural or inevitable trend. Second, it was not recognized that engagement was perceived as a form of geopolitics in some quarters of the world. The aspired globalization of the liberal West meant that states found themselves under pressure to conform to liberal principles or be held accountable. While policies of engagement were viewed as benign in the West, authoritarian regimes saw them as an assault on their regime security. Third, engagement was pursued with an autopilot mentality. It was the processual preference that defined policy, not outcomes. Since engagement policies were hardly conditionalized, they offered authoritarian powers tangible opportunities for benefit, but imposed few hard constraints forcing them to change their ways. In the end, Western policies that were designed to steer Russia and China into a world of win– win cooperation produced the worst of two worlds. They antagonized Moscow and Beijing and helped empower them. Russia was ailing in the post-Soviet phase to build a functional, prosperous, novel state. At first, it seemed as if it would modernize along Western lines and fall in line with the ideals of a sovereign neighborhood, democracy, market economics, and universal human rights. But it did not take long to see the disconnect between the rhetorical commitment to liberal principles and the mundane realities of the post-Soviet Russian state. Though committing to a “normalization” of Russia, even the pro-Western administration of Boris Yeltsin was convinced of legitimate prerogatives in what it called its “near abroad.” Even though the Russian leadership vowed to support democracy, rule of law, and universal human rights, in reality, the country saw the dominance of legacy informal power structures, unaccountable governance, oligarchic, predatory capitalism, and an increasingly manipulated public. While the West progressively

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conditionalized state sovereignty on human rights grounds, the Russian side regarded this as a danger to state survival. While Russia at first had looked West in order to prosper, preserve its great power status, and do well, the grim reality over the 1990s was that its national strength and international influence withered. Though this was due to internal reform defects, not ill-meaning Western policies, it limited the country’s chances to benefit from and embrace the enlargement of the liberal order. Eventually, Russian frustrations matured into resentment. The country’s difficulties to prosper, join institutions, and receive quick international recognition, as in the G7 or the WTO, the sentiment of dependency, as with the IMF, as well as the inability to push through its own views on Europe’s emerging political and security order, as with NATO enlargement or out of area interventions, were increasingly externalized. From a Western standpoint, Russia failed at reforms and did not offer plausible answers for a united, free Europe. Seen from Moscow, Russia did not receive the support and recognition it deserved, was willfully marginalized, and lost out against the West’s geopolitical wins. By the end of the 1990s, the world looked nothing like the post-Soviet future Russian leaders had envisioned. But without a solid power base and functional government, Moscow had no other chance than to grudgingly accept the new world emerging around it. It resentfully accommodated to the post-Cold War order of Western making. For the Chinese, the Cold War never ended. While the CCP had set sail for an economic opening and global integration in the late 1970s, this was a calculated step to help the regime survive and prosper. It was not, as outsiders falsely believed, the beginning of a wider alignment with the West. The protection of CCP rule against liberal incentives, pressures, and demands, continued to be the supreme goal of Chinese leaders after the Cold War. They neither embraced the idea of political transformation, nor did they have any intention of cutting back on territorial claims, their notion of extended sovereignty rights, or their opposition to universal human rights. Not even a full economic liberalization has ever been realistic due to its political implications. What Beijing aspired was a tightly circumscribed, partial integration into the US-led liberal international order mandated by its own development needs. In this sense, the end of the Cold War fundamentally changed the external operating environment, but not the essence of the Chinese regime or its vital needs. Western leaders, however, fell for the faulty assumption that the tide of history was working in their favor, leaving the Chinese party-state no

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choice but to open up on all counts to get ahead and prosper. Under the new conditions, the CCP erected safeguards to protect its authoritarian claim to power while the country globalized economically to build comprehensive strength. China did not embrace the US-led international order in the postCold War era, but strategically accommodated to it. Despite the country’s economic upward trajectory, it was not in a position to challenge the international status quo at the time. Even though liberal hegemony contained many—as seen from Beijing—dangerous elements, such as the spread of democracy and individual human rights as universal norms, it would have been a self-defeating proposition to rally against it in outright opposition. It would have produced a Sino-American rift and disrupted the opportunities for political and economic gain. Hence, leaders in Beijing decided to lie low and bide their time. They quietly sought to ramp up internal safeguards to protect regime security, shield themselves from external pressures, and tried to deter the West from crossing the regime’s red lines (e.g., on Taiwan), while they pledged their commitment to continuous reform and reaped the benefits of a globalizing economy. Developments in the 1990s at first suggested a liberal triumph. The “Westernization” of the world was well underway and seemingly on a run. Toward the end of the decade, the United States was more powerful and self-confident than ever before. Materially and ideationally, the liberal West reigned supreme. Hence, it was not surprising that the development of the post-Cold War international order amounted to a globalization of the liberal West, not a renegotiation of the organizing principles of the international order with other prospective great powers. The seeming success would turn out to be a short-lived triumph, though. The aspired globalization of the liberal West led to a less liberal West and a less Western world. A decade later, the US-led liberal international order was mired in crisis. Flawed post-9/11 policies eroded the authority of the United States as an ordering power, exacerbated tensions among its allies, and led to the strains of endless wars. At the same time, globalization empowered emerging countries relative to the developed economies of the liberal West. The 2008/2009 financial and economic crisis dealt another blow to the earlier primacy of the liberal West in material and ideational terms, while the frictions of globality contributed to the rise of populist, illiberal voices in subsequent years. Nevertheless, the liberal West enlarged its reach even amidst its erosion within. This became an omnipresent

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reality for Russia, as the post-Soviet space was addressed with partnership offers. China was also confronted with increasing attention. Washington hedged with expanding partnerships in the Asia–Pacific and criticized the way Beijing gamed the international order to its advantage. By the late 2000s, Russia saw a dire need and opportunity to push back against the liberal West to preserve its imperial great power identity and its authoritarian regime survival. Russia had undergone an authoritarian restoration under Vladimir Putin. Instead of adopting democracy, market economics, and liberal norms at home and shedding great power prerogatives abroad, Russia revived an alternative model of authoritarian rule, state direction of relevant segments of the economy, and state-managed public opinion, combined with an unapologetic embrace of the country’s great power identity and influence claims abroad. It was evidently clear that tensions with the liberal world would escalate ever more the further Russia went down this path. Regionally, Moscow viewed the enlarging and deepening liberal order in Eastern Europe as a direct assault on its self-defined hegemonic claims. After all, the United States and its European allies supported the sovereign self-determination of states that, seen through Moscow’s imperial lens, were part of a Russian sphere of privileged interests. Worse still, support for democratization and the reform impulses generated by partnership and association programs diminished Russian influence and potentially even threatened authoritarian security in Russia itself. On a global scale, the trend to conditionalize sovereignty in support of liberal humanitarian values formalized the notion that individuals had rights vis-à-vis governing authorities. It went against the grain of what Putin’s Russia wanted and needed. Taken together, the Kremlin saw an urgent demand to push back against the US-led liberal West to preserve the (aspired) hegemonic role in the post-Soviet space, the status of an independent pole, and its own regime survival. All Russia needed for its revisionist turn was a plausible window of opportunity. In the late 2000s, it opened up for real. Russia had undergone a multiyear consolidation and economic rise, which the country used to prop up its power projection capacities. The sense of being among a select few rising powers (e.g., BRICS) and having made a comeback among the global leaders (e.g., G8) also emboldened the Putin regime. While Russia seemed on the rise, Western liberal internationalism was in severe crisis. But Moscow’s window of opportunity was not widening. A core weakness had loomed over Russia’s partial revival, namely that its economic success was not driven by self-perpetuating modernization,

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but a temporary upswing in revenues from resource sales. With no plausible pathway to modernize the economy in its stifling political system, the country’s growing economic troubles brought domestic and international follow-on consequences. The need to push back against the US-led liberal international order, be it in shape of NATO or a transformational EU growing outward, just became stronger, while the means at Moscow’s disposal narrowed to its coercive strengths: its military might, information warfare capabilities, and propensity for daring assertiveness. Russia thus utilized the kind of tools it had available. Legacy nuclear and diplomatic powers were among them, and a determined military modernization and reform program added to Moscow’s coercive leverage. At the same time, it honed its cyber capabilities, propaganda skills, and other tools to exploit cleavages in and between Western countries, sow chaos and confusion, and divide the United States and its allies. The Kremlin’s relatively free hand to act swiftly as it pleases and a high degree of risk-acceptance were additional factors. The kind of revisionism that proved feasible for Russia was one of a distinctly destructive kind. It was about subverting the West from within and exploiting Western weaknesses to undermine the US-led liberal international order. Without an attractive developmental model or the powers to constructively sway others to follow Russia’s lead en route to an alternative order, destructive revisionism was the only strategic option. The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is the preliminary climax of Russian revisionist aggression. It is a selfdefeating course, accelerating the very decline Russia desperately seeks to halt. The Chinese case is different. China had strategically accommodated the West in the 1990s and built up substantial political, economic, military, and diplomatic capabilities in the 2000s. As Chinese leaders pondered ways to secure the survival of the PRC as the substantive entity that it was—namely an aggrieved great power with far-reaching rejuvenation goals under CCP dictatorship—erecting defenses to shield the PRC from the negative fallout of its noncompliance with liberal principles was not enough. The 2000s evidenced that US regional and global hegemony and a world defined by liberal, Western standards was not one in which the PRC could thrive in earnest. Even in realms where the status quo had been unpleasant but acceptable in the past, China now increasingly saw problems that needed remedy—be it American military dominance, the status quo of Taiwan, its own mounting maritime vulnerabilities, Western demands for full market liberalization, or calls that Beijing should bear

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more global governance burdens. The only way to make the world safe for itself was to bring the international order in line with the needs of the communist party-state. After lying low and building strength for about three decades, the chance to contest the status quo came in the late 2000s. It was the erosion of American power during the overreach of the Bush administration and the effects of the global financial and economic crisis that provided a golden opportunity. From then on, China would gleefully chastise Western weakness, praise its own system’s superiority, present itself as a viable alternative model for development and international order and leave a growing global footprint. Hence, revisionism became a feasible option at the time, after a long period of strategic patience and pragmatism. After all, the PRC’s revisionist potential has been there from the very beginning. Since China enjoyed a solid and expanding power base, in particular in the form of networked economic might, it came to practice constructive revisionism. This is, of course, a technical term, not a normative judgment. It conveys that some revisionists, like China, seek to build an alternative order, while others, like Russia, can only hope to destruct the status quo. While Chinese leaders also use destructive elements to undermine the legitimacy, functionality, and enforceability of the US-led status quo, the thrust of their actions is designed to build a new international order with “Chinese characteristics.” The strategic repertoire focuses heavily on economic incentives but is not short on coercive tools either. Institutions like the AIIB, schemes like the Belt and Road initiative, efforts to redefine human rights norms in the UN, military bullying, and salami-slicing tactics in the East and South China Seas, an invigorated threats-and-isolation campaign over Taiwan, and massive foreign propaganda are among the tools employed in the revisionist effort. The overarching goal is to break US hegemony and liberal dominance to make the world safe for the Chinese party-state (see Fig. 10.1 for a summary of the findings). Beijing cleverly presents its revisionist assault as a quest for global development and justice. The Chinese message is that its own goal of “national rejuvenation” and the fulfillment of the “China dream” of restored global centrality by 2049 were assets for humanity. In a world of Beijing’s making, the liberal “bias” instilled by the West would be gone, and the international system would be safe for dictatorship. A Sino-centric world order would revolve around China in economic terms and steer

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Strategic Opportunity

Strategic Response

globalization of US-led liberal international order

degree of divergence with liberal West

propensity to adapt to liberal West

to revise international order

to cope with external stimuli

RUSSIA

engagement and enlargement transformation demands strong regional constraints

seemingly low → growing

seemingly high → declining

low → declining

resentful accommodation

CHINA

RUSSIAN AND CHINESE ACCOMMODATION IN THE 1990s AND EARLY 2000s International Stimulus

Strategic Needs

engagement and enlargement transformation demands punishment dangers amidst leniency

substantial → economy as exception

low → partial econ. adjustments

low → rising

strategic accommodation

Strategic Opportunity

Strategic Response

expansion amidst erosion of US-led liberal international order

degree of divergence with liberal West

propensity to adapt to liberal West

to revise international order

to cope with external stimuli

RUSSIA

political transformation of Europe Western institutional growth regular critiques of domestic setup

high → growing

low → declining

widened → declining

destructive revisionism

CHINA

RUSSIAN AND CHINESE REVISIONISM FROM THE LATE 2000s International Stimulus

Strategic Needs

regional focus of the US on Asia demands for behavioral change inconsequential criticism

high → growing

low → declining

widening → rising

constructive revisionism

Fig. 10.1 Summary of findings

clear of the Damocles sword of Western sanctions. Asia would be reconfigured in line with Beijing’s demands, which entails territorial adjustments and a withering of US military hegemony and alliances in the region. Overall, the order Beijing proposes may appear benign in some quarters at first glance, but it is not. The preservation of CCP rule is the overarching metric for everything the Chinese party-state does, while authoritarian modernization is fraught with malign side effects.

Strategic Options for the West Since the return of great power rivalries are sad facts of life in today’s world, one of the most important questions is how to deal with them. The following takeaways from the theoretical and empirical findings are helpful entry points for the ensuing review of strategic options. First: The security needs of states encompass more than the absence of physical survival concerns. Debates about widening definitions of security are not new. Past interpretations broadened security interests

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outward beyond territorial deterrence and defense (i.e., states are compelled to deal with non-immediate security challenges beyond their borders). Yet it is imperative to enhance our understanding of domestic security needs. States may feel acutely threatened at home even if their physical security is not at stake. They need territorial security as much as ontological security, regime security, economic security, and normative security. If the international environment challenges one or several of these elements, states find themselves in situations of existential threat. They may respond aggressively yet rationalize their behavior as defensive. The Russian and Chinese leaderships both feel threatened as authoritarian powers by the USled liberal international order. Paradoxically, the Western perception is that both have received an extraordinary amount of goodwill and opportunities to thrive in a benign environment. As seen from Moscow and Beijing, revisionist policies are acts of reactive selfdefense. Seen from the West, they are offensively aggressive. This disconnect produces diplomatic gridlock and escalates tensions. Second: The Russian and Chinese cases show that the end of the Cold War was not the end of the systemic rivalry between competing models of domestic and international order. It is true that neither presentday Russia nor China seeks to export and replicate their domestic models abroad as their former Soviet or Maoist selves did. But the authoritarian, state and crony capitalist great powers do subvert the principles and rules of the liberal international order nonetheless. They support bad governance, pliant regimes, and corruption, and they try to manipulate perceptions with propaganda. Just like the liberal international order is a threat to their vital needs, an order shaped by authoritarian, state and crony capitalist great powers hurts the well-being of liberal market democracies. It underlines why hopes for a natural convergence were flawed. Both states’ leaderships chose to resist the Western model. They showed agency amidst structural constraints and will continue to challenge the liberal model in their dealings with the outside world. Third: Notions that international stability could easily be restored by a cut-back of Western ambitions, a return to Westphalian norms of sovereignty, or an unconditional allegiance to the UN are flawed. Russia and China present themselves as champions of the UN and Westphalian principles. But these are self-serving narratives. Adaptation pressures from dominant powers are not exceptional from an

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order building perspective. International orders mirror the domestic essence of their shapers; vice versa they pressure others to fall in line. The key difference between great powers is not whether they shape their surroundings, but rather how they do it: by persuasion, by incentive, by subversion, or by brute force. Western policies have been broadly incentives- and soft power-driven, and the success of the liberal international order stems from the degree of buy-in and imitation it inspired worldwide. Russia and China infringe the sovereign rights of others with little ado where they want and can, and they use coercive, manipulative tools of “sharp power” to manufacture acquiescence. Present-day Russia and China do not even respect the sovereignty of peers, as both “meddle” in the domestic politics of Western states. They champion national sovereignty only when it serves their own purposes. The same can be said about their commitment to the UN and international law. Russia and China denounce and ignore those elements of international law they dislike, while they cherish the UN first and foremost for their own privileged position among the P5 to challenge US hegemony. It should not be conflated with a principled commitment. All states will call for restraint from a position of relative weakness. The real test of a nation’s character comes when it assumes a position of overbearing power. Neither the Russian nor the Chinese systems are predisposed toward institutionalized restraint; instead, they believe in the rights of the strong and utilize power in direct and immediate ways to pursue their interests. At the same time, it is worth reminding that the UN and international law are not politically agnostic, but have been shaped by Western liberal ideals in the past. They may well be shaped by authoritarian powers in the future, who use multilateral processes to erase the liberal elements from global governance. In fact, this is already happening in the UN. Fourth: The empirical analysis has shown that the rhetoric and practice of revisionism revolves around the promise of an alternative path to modernity. Order-builders tend to advertise their own development model as a superior variant and a net plus for the world. Russia has little to offer in this regard. It was the benefits of rising oil and gas prices that helped the country get back on its feet, and the centralization of power in the Kremlin instilled a sense of direction. As the past decade has shown, authoritarianism and crony capitalism lead into a dead-end. China’s system is different. But despite

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Beijing’s claims, it does not offer a general, let alone superior model either. A confluence of factors came together that helped Beijing prosper, including strategically driven US support in the 1970s and 1980s, the coincidence of a country opening up and corporations sourcing out in the 1980s and 1990s as well as massive foreign aid and technology transfers. In addition, while cheap labor attracted foreign business in the early days, today it is the Chinese market that provides leverage and growth. In sum, the “China model” is not replicable, and its long-term success is not a given. Structural problems, such as social inequality, debt, subsidies-financed growth, a botched Covid response, and ideological zeal stifling innovation have piled up already. Since economic success is a political stake, the regime may resort to other sources of legitimacy, such as nationalism and the construction of foreign bogeymen, in growing degrees. It is the same path Russia has chartered. Fifth: Similarities aside, Russia’s and China’s proposed alternatives to the Western international order show stark differences. Russia views itself as a deserved peer pole in a multipolar world and is wedded to notions of a geographically bounded exclusive sphere of influence. This is premised upon a world of difference and great power poles as managers of world affairs. Efforts to construct itself as a conservative, traditionalist civilizational pole in this sense are another way to legitimize its presumed regional hegemony and global role independent of its material power base. Unfortunately, military escalation and the further erosion of diplomatic conduit are omnipresent dangers, since military power, information warfare capabilities, and risk tolerance are Moscow’s only real comparative strengths. China is a revisionist power of a different caliber. It couches the interests of the partystate in the aspirational language of a “community of shared destiny for mankind” and presents itself as a force empowering the developing world and creating a more equitable and just world order. Where Russia insists on prerogatives, China uses promises. Hence, Chinese revisionism is harder to come by since it touches on legitimate grievances of the inherited imbalance of the developed and the developing world. In addition, unlike Russia’s regional sphere of influence, the Sino-centric vision of order has no natural bounds. Two alternative visions of world order are on display. On the one hand, a Russian Yalta-type model, where rival independent poles preside over their respective exclusive spheres of influence, where

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military force is a key power projection tool, and where the great powers in the wider system practice a light kind of managerialism. On the other, a Sino-centric, economy-driven, networked order, which is open-ended, inclusive, and growing outward, seeks to rid global governance of individualist protections, and is antithetical to notions of rules-based governance. The CCP-led party-state governs by law, but its logic is incompatible with the rule of law. What both visions of order have in common is that they demand agnosticism toward repressive governance and deference to their leaders. Sixth: Russia and China are not building new orders from the ashes of an old one or detached in geographically remote areas. Instead, they try to force the US-led liberal West to downsize from a position of unrivaled preeminence. This contains grave escalatory potential. On the one hand, the continued challenging of functional features of the status quo order, such as alliances, can easily lead to a great power war. On the other hand, conflict and cooperation are closely intertwined, making political responses so difficult. What we are witnessing today is geopolitics under the conditions of globalization. Rivaling powers are highly interconnected with one another. Current efforts to reduce the dependence on Russian oil and gas illustrate how painful entanglements can become in times of crisis. In the case of China, economic interdependencies are even more complex and intricate. A core element of bipolar stability was the disentangled nature of the Cold War conflict structure as well as clear and mutually accepted front lines. Today’s geopolitical conflict pattern is very different. Seven: Though both Russia and China self-confidently make an antiWestern case, the normative hegemony of Western liberal ideals remains strong. It is no coincidence that authoritarians try to wrap their systems into the language of democracy, as Russia and China do. It is also no wonder that both rig the perceptions of their own populations to hold on to power. Both regimes silence critics, resort to massive make-believe and rewrite history to make it suit current political purposes. Over the past decade, it has become clear that both states have gone global in their efforts to manipulate reality. While neither Russia nor China offers a benign, naturally resounding model for the world to follow, their authoritarian systems—with their entrenched propaganda machineries and lack of political accountability—were uniquely well placed to exploit the digital communications revolution and engage in information

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warfare against the open, democratic societies of the West. Neither regime is capable of self-criticism, and both go to great pains to prove their alleged superiority over the West. This fundamental insecurity is the ultimate proof that their own systems are not self-sustaining on their own merit. So, what is to be done in light of such findings? First, it is imperative to shed false assumptions for good. The unconditional embrace of notions of “engagement” and “change through economic interweavement” was fundamentally flawed. The analysis made clear that dreams of an inevitable convergence of interests and ideals through economic globalization are far-fetched. The Russian and Chinese regimes have both rejected the Western model of domestic and international order as incompatible with their security needs and deliberately erected safeguards to keep liberal reform demands down or out. Under these circumstances, economic ties and gains do not diminish revisionist impulses but increase revisionist leverage. Overall, economic globalization helped the enemies of freedom gain strength, while it undermined the social compact in Western democracies. Put differently: The seeming win–win benefits of economic globalization spurred today’s revisionist challenge. But the core problem of engagement was its strategic complacency. “Engagers” deluded themselves into believing that they were, indeed, acting strategically in the long haul. Instead, they were offering rivals a helping hand. Second: The liberal West needs to get its house in order. Over the past 30 years, the West fell into the traps of overdrive and fracture. The current polarization in Western polities is one of the symptoms. While some on the right seek refuge in nationalism, others on the left welcome the decline of the liberal West due to historical injustice committed in its name. Both relativize the dangers posed by authoritarian challengers, the former by suggesting that realpolitik bargains were sound policy, the latter by excusing authoritarian repression with egregious what-aboutism. Both trends play into the hands of dictators around the globe. Self-consumed, inward-looking self-destruction comes at a cost internationally. The price is to cede ground to authoritarian powers that will use any vacuum, any retrenchment on the part of the West to build and solidify an international order that privileges their own needs. Mobilizing domestic support for a systematic, grand strategic response to the revisionist challenge is imperative. This requires an acknowledgment that states are, first and foremost,

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protectors of their citizens. They neither wither in a globalized world nor do they become less salient. On the contrary, they gain relevance to shield their citizenry from the frictions of globalization and a more antagonistic world. This is certainly no call for nationalism. But the liberal West needs protections and bounds to be able to recover within. Revitalizing the transatlantic partnership is imperative to withstand the challenge authoritarian great powers pose. It is in the best interest of states on both sides of the Atlantic to join forces, not based on nostalgia, but due to shared interests in the present and the future. A new mindset is needed to get there. A stronger European defense, for example, is commonly framed either as “giving in” to American demands or as “standing up” to and building autonomy from the United States. Both are flawed, and the current war in Ukraine serves as a stark warning. Europe’s security and defense are neither taken care of for the United States nor against it, but hopefully in close partnership with Washington. Europeans should be scared by the fact that they are, in relative terms, the big losers in the post-Cold War global power game. Despite the domestic cleavages and the damage done by the presidency of Donald Trump, this author still has more confidence in the United States to see the authoritarian challenge as what it is: a threat to the well-being of liberal market democracies on both sides of the Atlantic. Europe would be well served to heed such concerns. That said, in a world of globalized great power conflict, the transatlantic West can only succeed as a nucleus in a wider alliance of like-minded states in Asia and beyond. Third: Dealing with the return of authoritarian great powers requires a determined response of neo-containment . It begins with an honest acknowledgment that the renewed competition of systems and visions of order is forced upon the West and will not go away anytime soon. Russia and China are the kind of domineering, autocratic, crony state capitalist, and repressive regimes that they are. Their imperial and authoritarian revisionist needs are here to stay, and there is little the West can do about it. Indeed, taking our own behavior as the source or essential ingredient to Russian and Chinese conduct has been a common misconception for far too long. On the one hand, engagers hoped that Western policy could spark soft change and evolutionary domestic transformation in both countries. On the other, a remarkable coalition of critics from the left, right, and realpolitik camp join forces today and blame the United States and the liberal West had wrecked relations with Russia and China. Despite the contrarian angles, they all seem to believe that Russian and Chinese

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interests and behaviors were driven, first and foremost, by Western action. They are not. Both may change from within someday, but for now their revisionist needs and ambitions are a given. If so, can’t the West simply give them what they want to reduce tensions? Policies of accommodation and appeasement do not offer a plausible pathway. It would hurt Western interests fundamentally to cede Eastern Europe to Russia, Asia to China, and sit back and watch both rewrite the playbook of international order on their own terms. If left to their own designs, we could expect authoritarian (client) regimes, networks of corruption, and repression to expand and flourish. Great power domineering would take hold as a pattern of global governance. It would likely be a world that is hostile to democratic governance and sovereignty, since both states are prone to manufacture the concessions they seek. Basic freedoms, such as freedom of speech or a free press, universal human rights, or rules-based governance would have little sway in a world dominated by repressive, non-accountable regimes that care, first and foremost, about their own grip on power. The international economy could be expected to be characterized by politically operationalized dependencies, mercantilist practice, and the unchecked use of unfair trade practices that endanger free market economies. It would be a world very different from the one we know, a world undesirable from a Western point of view. Containment as defined by George Kennan in the old days was about limiting Soviet expansion and keeping up the external pressure until the communist regime collapses of its own defects. It presupposed a disentangled world as well as the need and opportunity to limit Soviet expansion geographically. Today’s challenge is certainly different, and so is the globalized world. Still, the ideas of containment have major merit today. First, the baseline conviction was that a world shaped by Soviet communism was not one in which the United States and the liberal West could flourish. Second, it acknowledged the limits of what was possible, namely to set external bounds to communist expansion instead of rolling it back. Third, containment placed its bets on the inherent internal shortcomings of models that rest on repression. These three insights are as timely now as they were then. Revisionism results from strategic needs and opportunities. The West cannot give in to the visions of order Russia and China cherish. It also cannot change the domestic needs of Russia and China as authoritarian powers. But there are opportunities to set limits to what they can do,

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both to the liberal democracies of the West and to the wider world. Hence, erecting new defenses for the liberal international order at home and seeking to alter the revisionists’ operating environment abroad is the strategic imperative for a strategy of neo-containment. Limiting Russia’s and China’s ability to game the international system for their own benefit and redefine it on their own terms would be the overarching goal. To do so requires a networked containment alliance, one which is not designed to gang up but to tie down, strengthening the web of existing rules to make it harder and costlier to break out. In so doing, it is crucial to reduce one’s own exposure to malign effects and to deny authoritarian contenders the opportunities they presently enjoy. The Russia challenge is not one of strength but weakness. Hence, neo-containment would have to focus on constraining its destructive revisionist potential and erecting safeguards against further escalation. This is easier said than done as Moscow is meanwhile waging a brutal war on Ukrainian soil. It is imperative that the West stands together to reduce the returns for the Putin regime’s aggression. Russia must lose this war. Kyiv needs continued support with weapons, financial and economic assistance, and humanitarian aid, while calls for negotiations and a quick cease-fire must be exposed as wishful thinking. If aggression pays off, the world will see more of it. In this sense, giving in to nuclear blackmailing and energy pressures would make matters much worse in the long run. While open Russian aggression beyond Ukraine appears not as the most immediate concern given the military weakness exposed in recent months, NATO and the EU have to fully live up to their own deterrence needs, defense investments, and reassurance promises. Conflict will be the defining feature of Europe’s security order going forward. Lastly, it is key to remain firm on economic sanctions and political isolation efforts. While war-related sanctions are largely Western initiatives, continued efforts must be made to reach out to bystanders or opportunistic states. Beyond Ukraine, Russia has waged a “peacetime war” for many years already against the West and the liberal international order. Its list of sins is extensive and includes, among others, disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks, assassinations on foreign soil, violations of the chemical weapons convention, loose nuclear rhetoric, or, most recently, suspected acts of sabotage. This must be viewed as a systematic threat and answered by investing heavily in domestic defensiveness and resilience against hybrid and “guerrilla” attacks that have become a signature feature of Moscow’s foreign affairs. In this sense, reducing own vulnerabilities and limiting

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Russia’s opportunities to exploit the open nature of the liberal West is crucial. Yet difficult questions remain how to prevent further escalation and get back to a modus operandi. Putin’s Russia is neither trustworthy nor reliable. It has broken almost every agreement or treaty ever signed and espouses a remarkable level of aggressiveness. Yet even a Russia that is significantly weakened economically, isolated politically, and sees its military might depleted is a Russia that remains a nuclear superpower and clings to imperial prerogatives. In procedural terms, Russia should be treated with the respect the Kremlin demands—calling it out as a declining regional power may be accurate and feel good, but it does not do any good. Rhetorical restraint and political pragmatism need to be resuscitated. This includes efforts to reach out over areas of shared concern, such as strategic nuclear arms control, as well as attempts to find “off-ramp” scenarios to end the hot war in Ukraine (without selling out Kyiv, of course). Sadly, the Russian case confirms one core assumption of this study, namely that declining powers are prone to use violence, whereas rising powers have a lot to lose from overly aggressive revisionism. In the Chinese case, neo-containment must be about limiting its relative rise and its negative effects. Beijing commands growing influence and relies in large part on economic incentives and development promises to revise the international order. Key frontlines are the economic and technological domains. Free market economies have to stand together against market distortions and foul play, which are ingrained in the nature of the Chinese politico-economic system. Valuable opportunities to strengthen the West’s sway over the rules of the game were squandered in the past ten years. The failure of TTIP and Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the TPP were major blowbacks. Reviving a free and fair trade agenda with like-minded free market democracies is as imperative as getting tough on Chinese unfair trade practices, which have gone unpunished for way too long. This includes limiting strategic acquisitions and treating Chinese companies for what they de facto are, namely instruments of or entities subject to the Communist Party. Much of this has been brought on its way in the past two years, but more needs to be done. Outcompeting China must be the overall ambition, both in bilateral terms and with respect to third countries. Even decoupling, once deemed outlandish, must be given due assessment. Of course, it is a tough nut to crack. After all, a systematic

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decoupling would only come about if mandated by governments for national security reasons. But if the China challenge is taken seriously, namely as a dystopian, economically powerful, high-tech authoritarian rival, decoupling in technically sensitive areas is not only plausible but vital. Even in sectors that are not immediately security-relevant, caution is warranted. Economic strength is the prerequisite for a geopolitical contest. Put bluntly, Western economic greed has helped the CCP-led China rise and assault the liberal international order. It is high time that short-term parochial economic interests are balanced out with national political, security, normative, and long-term economic interests. This means, among others, protecting free market economies against state capitalist distortions and placing greater emphasis on norms despite the lure of the Chinese market. One of the key failings in the West’s approach has been its inconsistency. Criticism went hand in hand with expanding opportunities for Beijing. Going forward, it takes less worthless criticism and more action where it matters. China will not foreswear its territorial claims, open up politically, play fair in global markets, or end the mass incarceration of the Uighurs. But defiance must come at a cost, and China may cut back if the costs are high enough. Territorial revisionism must be called out and reined in with a networked alliance of like-minded states. Beijing’s (unsustainable) development agenda has to be countered with Western initiatives to contain its influence. It is also time to acknowledge that some international institutions are dysfunctional. Preserving a nucleus rules-based liberal international order will require a contraction and institutional reset in some areas. The challenges of Russia and China also necessitate better defenses at home. Digitalization and the information revolution have emerged as game-changers in domestic and international politics, albeit in unexpected directions. Once hopes were high that a globalized communication space would aid democracy worldwide. The reality is that authoritarian powers have become digital natives fast and systematically. Although it goes against the grain of Western ideals of an open communication space, it needs to be explored how the liberal West can be shielded from the corrupting influence of Russian and Chinese propaganda, disinformation, and all other attacks in the information sphere. Building resilience— i.e., the ability to endure—is too defensive. Instead, the West should deny Russia and China the ability to exploit the openness of Western

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societies. Certainly, striking the right balance to adapt internet and information sovereignty to a liberal Western standard is difficult. But it is no option to ignore Russian and Chinese attempts to corrupt perceptions and narratives. At the same time, the West must improve its own communications. At home, people must understand that geopolitical conflicts with Russia and China are not a matter of future choice, but a reality. After a holiday from history, it is not preordained that the needs for neo-containment are intuitively understood. While the war in Ukraine and China’s de facto support for Russia have made clear that the world has entered a phase of open geopolitical competition, the lures of appeasement are omnipresent and strong. The hardships of inflation, recession, energy supply shortages, and rising prizes have already led to calls for appeasement toward Russia. One may well imagine that appeasing China may appear as a seductive idea to some, too. Neo-containment comes at costs, but the costs of inaction are much higher. While cutting back on past universalist ambitions of global liberal transformation and erecting defenses may be interpreted as a setback, it is an opportunity to refocus and revitalize the liberal West. First, the Western model of order possesses clear advantages as a more generally applicable pathway to sustainable development. Russia and China have no credible model at hand. Second, the appeal of Western values of democracy, rule of law, free markets, and individual freedom is unbroken. It is no coincidence that authoritarian China and Russia engage in the politics of make-believe and try to corrupt democracy and perceptions of reality. They are deeply insecure, and for good reason. At the same time, they are trapped in the propaganda worlds of their own making. Third, the liberal international order of American design has been a success story for the benefits it provides to others. Russia and China are, at heart, driven by their narrow authoritarian regime survival and great power desires. What Russia and China need at home is not necessarily conducive to the well-being of the wider world. The invasion of Ukraine as well as the sobering realities of Chinese BRI investments and heavy-handed wolf-warrior diplomacy offer a glimpse into what it is to live in Russia’s and China’s world. There is reason for optimism that a policy of neo-containment will allow the liberal West to prevail yet again. ∗ ∗ ∗

Index

A A2/AD, 389 America First, 66, 289 Appeasement, 68, 449, 453 ASEAN, 259, 386, 391 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIBB), 13, 408

B Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), 12, 356, 405–408, 441, 453 Biden, Joe, 292, 302–304, 338, 375, 401 BRICS, 11, 13, 18, 328, 383, 408, 439 Bush, George H.W., 5, 136, 138–143, 146, 147, 155–157, 214, 233, 234, 298, 322, 441 Bush, George W., 10, 276, 278–280, 293, 295, 297

C Century of humiliation, 224, 404 CFSP, 178 Charter of Paris, 6, 139, 191 Chemical Weapons, 258, 342, 450 Chiang Kai-Shek, 225 China Dream, 395, 405, 413, 441 CIS, 179, 189, 190, 212, 337 Clinton, Bill, 141, 143, 144, 147, 149, 151, 154, 157–159, 162, 191, 201, 202, 205, 210, 214, 254–256, 258, 295 Communist Party of China (CCP), 28, 224, 225, 228–244, 247–254, 256, 257, 260, 261, 263, 264, 371, 372, 374, 375, 377–379, 381–384, 391, 392, 394–396, 400, 402–405, 410, 413–415, 435, 437, 438, 440, 442, 446, 452 Community of share destiny, 405, 409

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Groitl, Russia, China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18659-2

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INDEX

Community of shared destiny for mankind, 405, 445 Constructive revisionism, 27, 79, 109, 110, 116, 390, 441 Containment, 6, 107, 133–135, 239, 258, 448–451, 453 Council of Europe, 185, 340 CSTO, 335 Cultural Revolution, 229, 250 Cyber, 111, 300, 346, 348, 350, 351, 387, 440 D Deng Xiaoping, 156, 228, 229, 232, 233, 235, 238, 248, 249, 251, 254, 396 Destructive revisionism, 27, 79, 116, 331, 346, 349, 353, 355, 390, 440 Disinformation, 11, 346, 348–351, 450, 452 E East China Sea, 12, 227, 241, 397 Eastern Partnership, 295, 336 Engagement, 8, 26, 62, 116, 133, 154–156, 158–160, 164, 238–240, 244, 257, 258, 290, 298, 301, 435, 436, 447 Engagement and enlargement, 14, 141 EU Global Strategy, 10 Eurasian Economic Union, 11, 336, 337 European Neighborhood Policy, 295, 324 European Union, 10, 11, 13, 141, 148, 149, 151, 152, 155, 160, 161, 189, 198, 203, 204, 212, 256, 261, 277, 280–284, 287, 288, 295, 296, 300, 302, 318,

323, 324, 326, 336, 337, 343, 344, 349, 350, 400, 406, 409, 440, 450

F Financial and economic crisis, 26, 281, 282, 327, 332, 333, 383, 390, 438, 441

G G20, 281, 328, 383 G7/G8, 6, 210 Georgia, 11, 190, 211, 278, 295, 296, 324, 331–334, 336–338, 343, 354, 355 Gerasimov doctrine, 345 Global Development Initiative, 410 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 28, 177–182, 205, 233, 320 Grand strategy, 22, 84, 94, 97, 106, 289, 433 Great Leap Forward, 228, 229, 250

H Hegemony, 11, 55, 56, 66, 67, 100, 102, 104, 108, 111, 137, 143, 153, 163, 189, 210, 227, 242, 244, 262, 264, 285, 322, 325–327, 373, 374, 376, 379, 389, 390, 401, 402, 413, 414, 438, 440–442, 444, 445 Hu Jintao, 264, 300, 372, 376–378, 384, 387, 392, 396 Human Rights Commission, 148, 261 Human Rights Council, 261, 410–412 Hybrid warfare, 345, 347

INDEX

I Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), 353 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 6, 8, 9, 28, 131, 138, 141, 151, 162, 189, 197, 198, 210, 211, 243, 275, 281, 282, 327, 333, 341, 385, 386, 393, 437 J Japan/Senkaku/Diaoyu, 397 K Kosovo, 145, 149, 150, 207–209, 294, 322 Kozyrev, Andrei, 7, 184–191, 200, 203, 204 Kuomintang, 225 M Mao Zedong, 5, 225, 238 Meddling, 11, 12, 324, 350 Medvedev, Dmitri, 326, 332–335, 339 Most-Favored Nation (MFN), 157, 158 N NATO, 7, 9, 11, 13, 16, 133, 141, 143–146, 148–150, 161, 163, 184, 185, 191, 192, 200–210, 212, 278–280, 287, 293, 295, 301, 302, 322–324, 326, 329, 331–333, 337, 339, 344, 347, 352–354, 377, 437, 440, 450 Neoclassical realism, 24, 25, 71, 79–84, 88, 94, 113, 432 New START, 297 Nuclear weapons, 7, 145, 160, 183, 206, 227, 328, 329, 352–354

457

O Obama, Barack, 19, 281–285, 287, 297–301, 337, 338, 343, 383, 384, 397, 398

P Peaceful evolution, 238, 240, 376 Peaceful rise/peaceful development, 9, 263, 264, 396 Political warfare, 351 Primakov, Yevgeny, 199, 204–207, 209, 316 Propaganda, 11, 12, 14, 231, 235, 240, 249, 252, 253, 257, 263, 292, 341, 343, 346, 348–351, 355–357, 375, 384, 413–415, 440, 441, 443, 446, 452, 453 Putin, Vladimir, 3, 9–11, 14, 16, 199, 214, 302, 315–323, 325–329, 331, 335, 338, 339, 342, 343, 346, 353, 356, 357, 439, 450, 451

R Revisionism, 9, 14, 16–18, 20–28, 39–49, 51–53, 58, 59, 61–63, 68–71, 79, 84, 95, 98, 100, 107–113, 115–117, 127, 303, 371, 390, 399, 402, 431–434, 440, 441, 445, 451, 452

S Sharp power, 413, 444 Soft power, 239, 330, 378, 413, 444 South China Sea, 12, 226, 227, 241, 259, 299–301, 373, 391, 397–399, 401, 441 Sovereign democracy, 316, 318, 324, 335

458

INDEX

Sovereignty, 4, 7, 13, 54, 86, 87, 89, 90, 95, 99, 102, 106, 115, 128, 129, 149, 150, 176, 179, 185, 189, 190, 195, 201, 203, 206, 208, 209, 211, 225–228, 231, 232, 234, 235, 237, 241, 255, 258, 260, 262, 263, 276, 277, 303, 316, 321, 326, 328, 337–339, 342, 343, 347, 354, 374, 376, 391, 398, 407, 411, 436, 437, 439, 444, 449, 453 Spiritual pollution, 232, 235, 378 Stalin, Josef, 174, 175, 181, 193, 227 Syria, 11, 287, 288, 292, 342, 352, 355

T Taiwan, 4, 8, 12, 14, 145, 149, 158, 159, 224–226, 228, 229, 241, 242, 245, 255, 256, 372, 374, 375, 391, 398, 400, 401, 438, 440, 441 Tianxia, 225, 378 TPP, 284, 285, 451 Trump, Donald, 10, 18, 61, 66, 108, 239, 289, 290, 298, 301–303, 350, 409, 448, 451 TTIP, 284, 285, 451

U Uighurs, 410, 452

Ukraine, 4, 7, 11–15, 29, 179, 182, 211, 278, 287, 292, 295–297, 301, 302, 322, 324, 325, 330, 331, 336–338, 340, 343–345, 347, 349, 350, 352, 354–357, 440, 448, 450, 451, 453 United Nations, 130–132, 150, 185, 228, 262, 276, 292 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 132, 176, 412 W World Bank, 6, 8, 28, 131, 141, 151, 162, 197, 198, 235, 243, 245, 246, 252, 275, 283, 327, 329, 334, 335, 385, 387, 388 World Trade Organization (WTO), 7, 9, 151, 159, 160, 211, 243, 248, 254, 256, 282, 326, 379, 380, 382, 384, 409, 410, 437 X Xi Jinping, 16, 302, 382, 392–395, 398, 402, 405, 409, 414 Xinjiang, 393, 410, 412, 413 Y Yeltsin, Boris, 7, 28, 155, 161–163, 179, 183–187, 189, 191–193, 195–197, 199–206, 208–213, 315, 329, 436