As Eurasia rises, America declines

The Eurasian paradigm is changing before our eyes, and this change is a direct threat
to the United States
By BRANDON J WEICHERTAPRIL 5, 2021

The combined landmass of Europe and Asia has heretofore rarely been perceived as a
direct threat to the United States and other Western maritime powers, primarily
because Eurasia was divided against itself.

It is true that Eurasia is home to the world’s largest population, some of the

most important natural resources, large swaths of arable land, and vast amounts of
potable water, but the region has historically been home to extreme sectarian rivalry
and regional division. 

The Eurasian paradigm is now changing before our eyes. And this change, contrary to
what many “graybeards” in Washington’s insulated foreign-policy establishment
believe, is a direct threat to the United States. 

Warning an audience at the Royal Geographical Society in London in 1904, famed

British geo-strategist Sir Halford Mackinder spoke of the danger of allowing a united
coalition of Eurasian powers to rise to power and dominate the continent.

According to Sir Halford, the world was divided into two groups of powers, the
democratic, maritime powers of the West and the autocratic, continental powers of
Eurasia. Mackinder assessed that the rise of railways risked shifting the balance of
power away from the maritime powers, such as the former British Empire or the
United States, and toward the rising industrial, land powers of Germany and Russia.

Sir Halford feared that the autocratic land powers would have significant advantages
in penetrating and exploiting the Eurasian heartland given their access via railways,
thereby barring access to these important regions to the maritime powers, such as
Britain or, in today’s formulation, the United States.

Ultimately, some of Mackinder’s concerns were ameliorated by the destruction of

Germany in the two World Wars. Eventually, the Soviet threat, too, evaporated at the
end of the Cold War. The Western, democratic, maritime powers had won. But that
victory was not final. 

Today, autocratic powers indigenous to Eurasia are rising yet again to challenge the

dominance of the maritime Western powers. This time, the challenge may be more
successful for the Eurasian autocracies against the maritime democracies than it was
in the previous century. 
Already, Moscow and Beijing have formed an alliance that grows in strategic
importance to the leaders of both nations every day. Meanwhile, Iran has signed a
significant 25-year development deal with China – on top of already serving as a
Russian cat’s paw in the Greater Middle East. As my Asia Times colleague M K
Bhadrakumar recently asserted, the “West Asian region is all about geopolitics –
starting from oil and jihad to the petrodollar.” 

Of course, this notion should be applied to the entirety of Eurasia. In the West, we
often talk about “shared values.” In Eurasia, however, it’s less important. The
cultures and nations that comprise the “World-Island” are dominated by classical
power politics.

These nations may not share much more than an affinity for autocracy in general.
They routinely make war upon and compete with one another for primacy. Yet when
their interests align – or when they face a shared threat – these Eurasian states can
form a potent check on American power.

The fear of a united Eurasia stems from the fact that its sheer size, population, and
natural resources would allow any power or group of Eurasian powers that began
coordinating with one another to challenge the United States directly – possibly even
to trigger a fundamental shift in world power away from the Western maritime
powers and toward the autocracies of Eurasia. 

After all, China has become the world’s second-largest economy. It will soon be the
largest economy. While not an economic power, Russia is a military juggernaut.
Iran’s vast energy resources have been added into this mix.

Meanwhile, Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,

is looking to join this new Eurasian consortium – as is nuclear-armed (and purported
American ally) Pakistan. Africa is slowly being absorbed into China’s new empire,
while the Arctic is being taken by Russia.

Taken together, these actors are serious threats to American power.

As this occurs, the United States appears to be in retreat. President Joe Biden’s
administration is abandoning its Saudi Arabian allies and appears poised to hand the
Mideast to Iran. Washington is poking the Russians over Ukraine, while doing little
to reinforce its European interests (and most European NATO members are
completely indifferent to these matters).

In the Indo-Pacific region, President Biden has rightly identified the need to build a

coalition based on containing China’s rise. Yet China’s threat is so much more than a
military one. It is a cultural and economic challenge. 

Sadly, America’s response on all fronts is one-dimensional (and ineffective).

Let’s face it, the US is no longer as culturally appealing or economically attractive as it
once was. To the rest of the world, we Americans look to be having an ongoing,
national nervous breakdown.

Biden has correctly assessed the need to reinvigorate America’s

domestic infrastructure and to strengthen America’s democracy at home, to make it
more appealing abroad. But, as David P Goldman has surmised, the Biden
infrastructure plan is more of a sop for Democratic Party special interests than it is
for actually turning the United States into a 21st-century dynamo. 

The US cannot possibly compete under current conditions with a Eurasia that has
fallen under the spell of militarily competent, economically vibrant, and culturally
appealing Eurasian powers. Unless a total reinvigoration of the United States at the
political, cultural, economic, and military level is done, the 21st century will be
dominated by a Chinese-led Eurasian order.

Dean Acheson once quipped, “[Americans] are children of freedom. We cannot be

safe except in an environment of freedom.” A China-led, Eurasian-dominated world
order would be unfree. And the United States would never be safe.

A Eurasian superstate would have the resources, manpower, technological

capabilities, and political will to make war upon the American superstate. It is
unlikely that the United States could either survive or thrive in such a world.