Neorealist and Neoliberal Alternatives to U.S. - Russian Security Cooperation - Essay Example

Neorealist and Neoliberal Alternatives to U.S. - Russian Security Cooperation Contents Introduction 2 US – Russian relations as perceived by neorealists and neoliberals 3 Nature of arms proliferation 5 Unilateral actions and their aftermath 8 Some instances of bilateral and multilateral cooperation between US and Russia 11 Conclusion 13 Introduction While discussing international relations between sovereign nations there has been an ongoing debate between the impact two predominant theories – neorealism and neoliberalism have on shaping approaches, attitudes and policies of nations as to how they would interact with one another. While neorealism essentially believes that international political situation is inherently anarchic and the only chance of survival a state has is through striking an acceptable balance of power, neoliberalism postulates the world is a community of nations where collective security should be the goal which can be attained through rational harmonization of sovereign interests of member nations (Calhoun 2002). So, it would be in the nature of things to briefly discuss these two apparently contradictory theories, more so the conflict between them, before one delves deeper into the intricacies of mutual relations between two United States and Russia. Anarchy has very often been the starting point of many theories of international relations and the first important point of difference between these two theories is how they perceive anarchy and how they draw their conclusions from such perceptions. The problem possibly lies in having implicit assumptions regarding strategic considerations of a state that are not clearly codified but clouds clarity in drawing rational inferences. The second point of difference is the issue of absolute and relative gains of states. The issue of absolute or relative gains is inextricably intertwined with strategic environment of a particular state and the extent of absolute or relative gains is measured by a particular state against the backdrop of the strategic environment in which it is located. This is best exemplified in attempts made by states to strike a balance between offense/defense probabilities and quantifying the threat perception. The third issue that is more of a corollary of the second issue is the extent to which two states should cooperate and what would be the most optimum formula for sharing between them the gains arising out of such cooperation (Powell 1994). US – Russian relations as perceived by neorealists and neoliberals Right from the Cold War days, policy formulation in United States and Russia (then USSR) pivoted around the concept of balance of power where national security held the center stage. Both the players were intent on developing ‘deterrent power’ to exclude the probability of preemptive strike by the other. In a way, such a neorealist approach had paved the way for apparent rapprochement between these two players in post-Cold war period as they had reached a point of mutual understanding about prevailing ground realities (Waltz 1979). However, those who do not subscribe to neorealist approach towards foreign policy argue that after what had happened in New York on September 11, 2001 or at Beslan on September 1, 2004, the utility or efficacy of unilateral and hegemonic political approach seems to be on the wane. The phenomenal rise of the menace of terrorism, especially the threat terrorists often put out of employing weapons of mass destruction, desperately points to the need of ushering in multilateralism as a single state independently can do precious little against a highly decentralized and diffused terrorist network that knows neither any language nor any state boundaries. The pathology of conflict between nations has undergone a radical change in post-Cold War era. It is now no longer a conflict between communism vs. fascism or, liberalism vs. communism but a conflict between modernity and fundamentalism and the only antidote to such stateless menace is cooperation between sovereign states in line with neoliberal concepts especially in the domains of law enforcement, strategic sharing of intelligence and enforcing strict norms of non-proliferation as no single state player has the wherewithal to tackle such a global menace (Lieven 2002). Unilateral attempts to solve such critical situations have routinely failed to find a lasting solution as is apparent in the unilateral invasion of Iraq by US or futile attempts made Russia to stamp out fundamental terrorism from its soil. Such unilateral attempts by state powers, irrespective of how strong they are, discourages international community from actively assisting these states as they attempt to weed out a genuine menace. This further weakens international cooperation which happens to be the best defense against global terrorism. Neorealist rebuttal to this argument indicates rise of terrorism is not a novel phenomenon and its advent in new avatar of religious fundamentalism in no way reduces super power rivalry. Moreover, terrorism is surely not as serious a threat as that from competing powers which threatens the very existence of a state. Hence, terrorism, though a threat to humanity in general is definitely not a threat to the existence of a specific state. Thus, every state should retain the freedom to react as it deems proper to counter terrorist threat rather than wait for international consensus. Such an approach, needless to say, assumes superiority of state powers and in an oblique way also heaps contempt and possibly suspicion on other members of the world community. Both these approaches fail to address the real problems that are vitiating world peace and equilibrium. While neoliberals lack in offering a proper prescription of distribution of power and gains from international cooperation especially in the domain of armament control and thus are short of depth while suggesting ways and means of balancing the strength of possible rivals, neolrealists fail to adequately address the problem of neutralizing weapons of mass destruction that are in real threat of falling in the hands of terrorists and other non-state actors (Keohane 2002). Therefore, one has to admit that dependence on any single approach would not be enough to solve the complex problems that United States and Russia now face. There are sure several areas of mutual concern as well as indeed there are areas that should best be left to these states for solution without any form of international cooperation or consensus. The first step in this direction should rational categorization of threats into those that emanate from state actors and those that emanate from non-state actors. As both these nations are militarily far superior to any other nation in the world, the most common perception of threat emanates from unrestricted diffusion of technology related to weapons of mass destruction as those states that lag behind have enormous temptation to avail of this shortcut to be at par with United States and Russia. If such technology comes under the control of non-state actors, the potential of catastrophe gets multiplied many more times as these non-state actors have no compunctions or constraints as any state actor however much recalcitrant it may be has. Nature of arms proliferation There is a distinct school of thought among those tracking non-proliferation across the world that perceptions of threat in Washington and Moscow are so divergent that there is hardly any area of mutual cooperation. As United States is busy in developing low yield strategic nuclear weapons to be used in destroying enemy bunkers, Russia happens to be more concerned about further enhancing its nuclear arsenal as an economical alternative to maintain large conventional army. While the main concern of United States is to somehow put a cap on attempts by emerging nations to become nuclear capable either through vertical proliferation (i.e. developing nuclear capability through internal research and development) or through horizontal proliferation (i.e. acquiring nuclear capability through an agent of illicit proliferation), Russia seems overwhelmed about the cost of maintaining its massive Cold War arms inventories. Some observers are of the opinion that financial issues induced Moscow to draft a material agreement with Teheran. Then, does that mean that United States and Russia have no common grounds of mutual interests? From observing the world scenario one infers that though these two states have diverse areas of interest even in the domain of non-proliferation, there are certain distinct zones where their interests do converge in a big way. The most important such domain is the fear that weapons of mass destruction might fall in the hands of terrorists. But while they have a commonality interest in that limited zone United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty simply because it was apprehensive of a nuclear attack by a state that has turned rogue according to its perception. It has also circumvented the conditions of Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) for reserving to itself the right of testing new and obviously more lethal nuclear weapons that surely also violates the obligations of P-5 under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It has also violated the NPT when it entered into a strategic nuclear partnership with India even though the stated objective of that partnership has been utilization of nuclear power for peaceful purposes. Thus, even though United States has officially maintained that its greatest concern is weapons of mass destruction falling in the hands of terrorists and similar stateless actors, the nuclear security policies of that country it seems are not geared sufficiently to counter any such eventuality. Most experts in any case are of the opinion that the possibility of weapons of mass destruction falling in the hands of terrorists is extremely remote rather; the more genuine danger to world peace is the massive and quite rightly unnecessary stockpile of nuclear weapons that are in the hands of these two superpowers. Moreover, the continuous search of tactical nuclear alternatives is bound to trigger a reversion to Cold War levels of nuclear inventory. Also one should realize that designing a nuclear weapon is well within the expertise of terrorists. They are hamstrung by lack of fissionable material and not weapons design. Further, Russia is still suffering from the megalomania of its earlier superpower status that it enjoyed as undivided Soviet Union. It is pretty tough for it to relinquish such an eminent status while it realizes that infusion of foreign capital is essential for it to maintain its humongous arms industry and takes the easier route of technology transfer to Iran (Rosenau 2003). Thus, the compulsions of United States and Russia as individual state actors has, instead of restricting proliferation of nuclear weapons, actually encouraged proliferation the advantage of which is being taken by countries as China, India and Pakistan who through a judicious combination of both vertical and horizontal proliferation are steadily closing the crucial gap military superiority so long enjoyed by United States and Russia (Gilpin 2002). While Russia is probably correct in its assessment that US concern of weapons of mass destruction falling in the hands of terrorists is largely exaggerated, they are also ignoring, willfully or otherwise, that it is extremely hard to control state sponsored proliferation as that happened when A. Q. Khan of Pakistan worked overtime to ensure widespread illegal diffusion of nuclear technology takes place in as far off countries as North Korea. The problem of horizontal and vertical proliferation is that it sets in process a virulent chain reaction of potentially pernicious possibilities. Any alteration in the balance of power in Asian continent might induce Japan to begin rearming itself thus sparking a resultant arms race in Eastern Hemisphere. China and India would waste no time in arming themselves with additional air and naval strike capabilities and the gap that now exists between Russia and these countries would steadily start closing down. The problem is Russia refuses to acknowledge that such an arms race would eventually weaken its position as a superpower and undermine its basic objective as it remained dependent on its ageing and potentially vulnerable intercontinental ballistic missiles. Unilateral actions and their aftermath It is pretty obvious that unilateral moves are attractive to both United States and Russia in the sense that they allow more freedom to act in any way these states deem fit, but unilateral counter terror moves by these countries have actually spawned more terrorist activities in their wake. Further, there are inherent thorny issues with US moves against terrorism. The issues need some attention as it is necessary to understand them to realize how US efforts to curb terrorism have actually provided terrorists the much needed oxygen that they have been hankering for. Because of improved border security almost all terrorist attacks takes place outside the political boundaries of United States. While by itself it is a commendable achievement of it security apparatus, it also throws up certain insurmountable problems in its unilateral drive against terrorism. As terrorist activities take place in foreign countries, most arrests and prosecutions also take place in foreign lands and US Judicial system remain practically ineffective in implementing the multitude of anti-terrorism legislations that are in force in United States. Thus one of the vital arms of the state power can hardly contribute anything to this crucial fight against terror. The other problem is that as United States is geographically far removed from the actual hotbeds of terror, intelligence gathering at ground level remains almost entirely dependent on local support and more often than not interested agents suitable tailor crucial bits of information to suit their personal ends. This was probably what had happened in the now busted hype of presence of huge quantities of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that was used by United States as a ruse to attack that country. Hence, however attractive the proposition of unilateral action might be to Unites States, in reality repeated opting for unilateral actions have actually resulted in angering and distancing the local populace and making it more difficult for United States to curb terrorism. On the contrary, the terrorists have got the advantage of bathing in the halo of martyrdom and furthering their heinous ideology among vast multitudes that would otherwise have never been attracted to the path of terror. Russia is also to be equally blamed for unilateral actions (inactions also in some instances) against terrorism. The persistent refusal of Russia to intervene in the fundamentalist environment in Caucasus, though logical from the perspective of sovereignty, has not helped the cause of eradicating terrorism. As it stands now the terrorist threats that Russia now faces from that region have an uncanny resemblance to the threats United States now faces from Iraqi insurgency. Religious fundamentalists have been able to successfully amalgamate with ethnic nationalists resulting in a fundamental transformation of Islamist violence into one that has blended highly venomous jaundiced versions of perceived insults and dishonor to both religion and nationality. The result is an extremely potent amalgam that is capable of unleashing unprecedented violence and waging a sustained campaign of creating a nation through unmitigated terror. Non-state actors that were previously refugees in an alien land have now found friends with the distinct possibly of having a state of their own (Byman 1998). The mayhem at Beslan was a glaring example of such a volatile amalgam of ethno-territorial aspirations and international Islamic fundamentalism. One of the problems of religious terrorism is that these movements often ratchet up the level of violence when they realize that their professed goals are impossible to achieve. Hence, the ethnic terrorist movement in Chechnya where it has to encounter a very robust government machinery or the terrorist conglomerate of al Qaeda which has a rather outlandish and vague aim would never hesitate to use a weapon of mass destruction if they could ever lay their hands on one (Crenshaw 1972). Perhaps an offshoot of this mentality is reflected in the ominous increase in the number of terrorist suicide attacks against Russia. Such form of terrorist attacks are essentially launched with the express objective of wrenching concessions from democratically elected governments that are quite naturally extremely sensitive to any form of harm that the terrorists may inflict on the electorate. The worst part of the whole issue is that neither concessions nor vicious offensives have been able to minimize suicide terrorist attacks. Records state that only one out eleven notorious suicide bombings could be prevented by disabling organizational capability (Pape 2003). Thus, instead of counter attack, the best possible tools against suicide terror would be defensive ones where potential targets are hardened and policies implemented that eliminate the halo of a martyr that is associated with a suicide bomber and also restrict chances of a terrorist organization from getting hold of a weapon of mass destruction. From what has been discussed above it is fairly clear that unilateral military offensives cannot by any means banish terrorism from the world map. It needs sustained multipronged maneuvers for the menace to be caged in. This is possible only through international cooperation that would ensure secure borders across continents, restrict access of terrorists to material resources and severely undermine the ability of individuals to freely move from one territory to another. Such an international cooperation would without doubt also hinder terrorists in a big way in their efforts to procure chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Some instances of bilateral and multilateral cooperation between US and Russia Thus the fears of use of weapons of mass destruction are very much a reality and bilateral and multilateral cooperation among nations is the only means of mitigating this problem. Cooperation can take a multitude of forms and some of the possible avenues are discussed here. The G-8 summit held in June 2003 is the most relevant example of cooperation in the domain of law enforcement with regard to countering terrorism. The main declarations in the agreement include inter alia bolstering international non-proliferation treaties and putting in place an action plan to secure sources of fissile material while preventing proliferation of technology related to weapons of mass destructions and initiating an action plan to ensure secured transportation across the globe. However, the most pertinent clause of the agreement is a declaration that moves must be set afoot to increase capacity of member nations to effectively fight the menace of terrorism. One of the envisaged moves is the institution of an International Counter-terrorism Action Group that would be entrusted with coordinating between member states for a more effective implementation counter-terror laws that already exist in individual nations. However the declaration, though lofty in intentions, was vague about how resources necessary for putting in place the envisaged mechanisms would be procured. The July 2006 G-8 Summit Declaration on Counter-terrorism further strengthened the resolve exhibited in the previous year’s summit by including a plan to streamline existing laws against terrorism in individual countries in such a manner that there is a unified legal structure across the world to deal with instances related to terrorism. Though the aims and declarations were noble, to say the least, very little progress on the ground has been observed. United States and Russia had set in place bilateral cooperation against terrorism when Robert Mueller, the then head of Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and Nikolai Patrushev, director of Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Counter-terrorism Cooperation in December 2004. That document sought to promote “operational links between numerous US agencies and their counterparts in Russia”, (U.S. State Department 2005). According to US State Department FBI and FSB have been cooperating on a regular basis after that meeting in areas of exchange of actionable intelligence and joint investigations and interrogations of suspects (U.S. State Department 2005). No movement can survive without an adequate and uninterrupted flow of funds and US and Russia can effectively cooperate in this regard to stymie terrorist activities. United States has passed the International Money Laundering Abatement and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act (IMLAA) in 2001 which though domestic in nature has some extra terrestrial jurisdiction in that the law stipulates that banks and other financial institutions must maintain detailed financial records of specific transactions and obtain verified information about the both the benefactor and the beneficiary of such transactions. The secretary of the treasury reserves the right to restrict or even totally prohibit transactions in accounts located in United States that use a correspondent or payable-through account. And, the US government reserves the right to outright seize funds from an account if such a bank has an interbank account located within the territorial limits of United States. The US government has seized nearly $65 million in assets and frozen another $147.4 million of terrorist funds (Center for International Trade and Security 2005). Russia has also passed a law On Counteracting the Legalization (Laundering) of Incomes Obtained by Criminal Means and the Financing of Terrorism that have broadly put in place restrictions similar to those stipulated in IMLAA. UN Security Council Resolution 1390 also stipulated that all countries must freeze assets of Taliban and al Qaeda and around $200 million had been thus seized till September 11, 2003. But barring the initial burst of activism, very little has been seized thereafter (Perl 2006). Conclusion It is clear from what has been discussed above that United States and Russia have not cooperated that much in areas of mutual concern. But almost exponential growth in terrorist threats has opened up possibilities mutual cooperation in some areas. However, initiation of such cooperation has certain inherent problems as both countries view themselves as superpowers having individual areas of influence and are unwilling to surrender their sovereign rights of self determination about the nature of retaliatory and preventive actions that they deem fit to counter threats of terrorism in their respective areas of influence. However, if United States and Russia can shed their inhibitions and come forward then one the primary areas of effective cooperation would be in so-called failed states especially those neighboring Russia. It is quite natural for Russia to be suspicious of such US activities as those might be perceived as a cover for increasing the sphere of NATO influence. To overcome such apprehensions, United States would do well to initiate a joint NATO-Russia Council to oversee strategic military intervention in this zone. Similarly, Russia’s attempts to convert the Shanghai Cooperation Organization into a regional forum for tackling terrorism should not viewed with skepticism by US as an attempt to curtail its sphere of influence. In this connection it might also be mentioned that Moscows joint declaration on counterterrorism with ASEAN should be welcomed by Washington rather than viewing it as a surreptitious move by Moscow to curtail the prevailing hegemony of United states in that region. References Byman, Daniel. "The Logic of Ethnic Terrorism." Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 21, no. 2, 1998: 149-69. Calhoun, Craig. "international relations ." Dictionary of the Social Sciences , 2002. Center for International Trade and Security. U.S. Anti-Terrorism Initiatives after 9/11. October 26, 2005. http://www.uga.edu/cits/documents/Legislative%20Visit/ Oct2005Initiatives911.pdf (accessed January 13, 2011). Crenshaw, Martha. "The Concept of Revolutionary Terrorism." Journal of Conflict Resolution 16, 1972: 383-96 . Gilpin, Robert. The Challenge of Global Capitalism: The World Economy in the 21st Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Keohane, Robert. "The Globalization of Informal Violence, Theories of World Politics, and the Liberalism of Fear." International Organization 1 (Spring), 2002. Lieven, Anatol. "The Secret Policemans Ball: The United States, Russia, and the International Order After 9-11." International Affairs 78, no. 2, 2002: 245-59. Pape, Robert. "The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism." American Political Science Review 97, 2003: 343-61. Perl, Raphael. International Terrorism: Threat, Policy, and Response. Research Report, Washington: Congressional Research Service, 2006. Powell, Robert. "Anarchy in international relations theory: the neorealist-neoliberal debate." International Organization, 1994. Rosenau, James. Distant Proximities: Dynamics beyond Globalization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. U.S. State Department. Country Reports on Terrorism 2004. 2005. http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/c14813.htm (accessed January 13, 2011). Waltz, Kenneth. A Theory of International Politics. New York: McGraw Hill, 1979. Read More