Commenting on the above Op-Ed and headline subject, this morning I had a lively exchange of views on WhatsApp with a very respected friend of mine in Bangalore who is also a retired IAS officer having served with distinction in an erstwhile PMO (Prime Minister’s Office).
He wrote : “No country is safe if RIC (Russia China India) come together and that includes the entire American continent leave alone poor USA.”
My reply : RIC coming together is a geopolitical pipedream, IMHO.
His retort: This is due to trust deficit. Russia these days acting as trust moderator in RIC. It’s a pipedream for China to envision a unipolar world with that nation being the singular pole. China is increasingly coming to realise this truism. Hence the Russian role.
My summing up:
Sir , The position of America is impossible to challenge mainly because of its geography . The oceans offer it enormous strategic protection from any kind of military threat from anywhere .
America’s Monroe Doctrine further effectively ensures that the USA will never have to face threats from any neighbouring country in the Western Hemisphere , either directly or as any one else’s proxy . Any threat from Latin or South America will be ruthlessly crushed and exterminated. E.g. Cuba. Chile, Nicaragua, Argentina , Mexico …. History of the Western Hemisphere is the history of the Monroe Doctrine.
The USA also has enormous natural resources including energy reserves. Russia, India and China too have large natural and energy resources that make them formidable powers but they do not have the requisite advanced technology to tap and exploit their respective resources or to weaponise it in the aggressive way the USA can and does.
China, India and Russia are great powers no doubt but they do not have as America does vast oceans that keep them away at a safe and healthy distance from each other geo-strategically . When you have neighbours next door to you , it’s very difficult to both collaborate and compete at the said time . Interests cannot be expected to always converge. Cooperation and mutuality can never be taken for granted .
Sir, As you rightly point out “the trust deficit” will always rankle and offset the possibility or the “pipe-dream” of any strategic alliance or even alignment amongst RIC members.
Great power rivalry today is the same as it has always been for the last 100+ odd years. It has always been about one overriding reason only : Energy, Energy and Energy.
The nation that wins the war for control over energy resources and reserves (oil, gas , fossil, non-conventional) will rule the world as an unchallenged hegemon.
America today is not going to give up its ambition to be that global hegemon commandeering all of the world’s energy supply .
Venezuela is its latest successful takeover as a hegemon in the Americas. Saudi Arabia was always its captive energy vendor. Iran will be broken and brought to its knees too in good time by America and become its other gas-pump station in West Asia and near-Eastern Europe.
The final coup too will happen eventually when Russia’s vast energy reserves of oil, natural gas and minerals too become the last final frontier to be conquered and annexed under Pax Americana.
There are only 2 things that can ever conceivably stop the American global expansionist juggernaut:
1. Discovery of some totally new and revolutionary energy source other than anything ever known to mankind today. In other words, a paradigm change in the energy sector of the entire world that resets and initialises all relations between and amongst major military-powers and economic powerhouses.
2. A devastating nuclear war becomes unavoidable and breaks out between America and Russia + and/or China that ends up destroying much of both the Western and Eastern Hemisphere, reducing both to crippled states on a scale much larger and more grievous than Japan was after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
As far as I can see, there is really no other alternative scenario to the apocalyptic one I envisage above .
Can you think of any other that is less so?
Sudarshan Madabushi