International Relations and Diplomacy (ISSN2328-2134) Volume 8, Number 01,2020

International Relations
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Volume 8, Number 1, January 2020 (Serial Number 76)
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★Abdel-Hady (Qatar University, Qatar); ★Martha Mutisi (African Centre for the Constructive
★Abosede Omowumi Bababtunde (National Open Resolution of Disputes, South Africa);
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Poland); ★Niklas Eklund (Umeå University, Sweden);
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★Chandra Lal Pandey (University of Waikato, New Public Policy, Singapore);
Zealand); ★Peter A. Mattsson (Swedish Defense College, Sweden);
★Constanze Bauer (Western Institute of Technology of ★Peter Simon Sapaty (National Academy of Sciences of
Taranaki, New Zealand); Ukraine, Ukraine);
★Christian Henrich-Franke (Universität Siegen, Germany); ★Raymond LAU (The University of Queensland,
★Christos Kourtelis (King’s College London, UK); Australia);
★David J. Plazek (Johnson State College, USA); ★Raphael Cohen Almagor (The University of Hull, UK);
★Dimitris Tsarouhas (Bilkent University, Turkey); ★Satoru Nagao (Gakushuin University, Japan);
★Fatima Sadiqi (International Institute for Languages and ★Sanjay Singh (Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law
Cultures, Morocco); University, India);
★Ghadah AlMurshidi (Michigan State University, USA); ★Shkumbin Misini (Public University, Kosovo);
★Guseletov Boris (Just World Institute, Russia); ★Sotiris Serbos (Democritus University of Thrace,Greece);
★Hanako Koyama (The University of Morioka, Japan); ★Stéphanie A. H. Bélanger (Royal Military College of
★Kyeonghi Baek (State University of New York, USA); Canada, Canada);
★John Opute (London South Bank University, UK); ★Timothy J. White (Xavier University, Ireland);
★Léonie Maes (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium); ★Tumanyan David (Yerevan State University, Armenia);
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The Editors wish to express their warm thanks to the people who have generously contributed to the
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International Relations
and Diplomacy
Volume 8, Number 1, January 2020 (Serial Number 76)
Contents
Christian Realism
Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King, Jr.: Christian Realism, Pacifism,
and the Beloved Community 1
Daniel G. Lang
Maritime Policy
China and Russia on the Baltic Sea: Between Rivalry and Cooperation 14
Piotr Mickiewicz
Nesting Orientalisms
Nesting Orientalisms: Case of Hungary, Its Imaginary Occidentalisation Process,

and Inconsistencies 22
Cemre Aydoğan
Anti-Drug Policy
An Analyze of Anti-Drug Policy and Its Effects of Enrique Peña Nieto’s Government
in Mexico 29
LU Lingling
International Relations and Diplomacy, January 2020, Vol. 8, No. 01, 1-13
doi: 10.17265/2328-2134/2020.01.001
D DAVID PUBLISHING
Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King, Jr.: Christian

Realism, Pacifism, and the Beloved Community
Daniel G. Lang
University of Lynchburg, Lynchburg, USA

Reinhold Niebuhr’s intellectual journey in the 1930’s away from the idealism of liberal Protestantism and the
optimism of the Social Gospel toward the more sober understanding of Christian realism involved, among other
things, a rejection of pacifism. While conceding that the use of force in international relations is morally perilous,
Niebuhr saw the utopianism of the pacifist position “to be nothing more than a capitulation to tyranny”. Martin
Luther King Jr. encountered Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society and other works in seminary a generation
later. While he found much to praise in Niebuhr’s analysis, ultimately he rejected Niebuhr’s critique. Nevertheless,
in spite of King’s very public embrace of Gandhi’s pacifism, one finds in King’s practice of non-violent resistance
substantial engagement with Niebuhr’s ideas.
Keywords: Christian realism, utopianism, ethical dualism, pacifism, non-violent resistance
Introduction
Reinhold Niebuhr’s intellectual journey away from the idealism of liberal Protestantism and the optimism
of the Social Gospel toward the more sober understanding of Christian realism involved, among other things, a
rejection of pacifism. While conceding that the use of force in international relations is morally perilous,
Niebuhr saw the utopianism of the pacifist position “to be nothing more than a capitulation to tyranny”. Martin
Luther King Jr. encountered Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society, The Nature and Destiny of Man, and
other works in seminary a generation later and came to credit Niebuhr’s critique as one of the most important
influences on his path to nonviolence. Niebuhr’s “extraordinary insight” about the reality of sin on every level
of human existence, wrote King, “helped me to recognize the illusions of a superficial optimism concerning
human nature and the dangers of a false idealism” (King, 1958, p. 99). King contended that the path of
non-violent resistance that he championed was a “realistic pacifism” that incorporated Niebuhr’s insights and
yet also addressed shortcomings in Niebuhr’s position. The extent to which King’s approach succeeded is the
question this essay takes up. It begins with a description of Niebuhr’s critique of utopianism and pacifism, then
considers Niebuhr’s influence on King with respect to the theory and practice of non-violent resistance, and
concludes with a reflection on Niebuhr’s continuing relevance for evaluating King’s achievement.
Niebuhr’s Critique of Utopianism

Niebuhr regarded as utopian those who contended for the establishment of a political order in which its
Daniel G. Lang, Ph.D., professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Lynchburg,
Lynchburg, USA.
2 CHRISTIAN REALISM, PACIFISM, AND THE BELOVED COMMUNITY
members would “see and understand the interests of others as vividly as they understand their own” and where
they have the moral goodwill that prompts them “to affirm the rights of others as vigorously as they affirm their
own” (Niebuhr, 1932, p. xxxiv). What liberal democratic rationalists like John Dewey or religiously motivated
adherents of the Social Gospel like Walter Rauschenbusch misunderstood was the way that human nature itself
at once inspires and inhibits the realization of such an order. Utopians’ misreading of human nature leads them
into illusions about the possibilities and limitations about human action in the world. Individuals in their closest
relationships can love and respect others, practicing the mutuality of which these utopians speak. However, to
expect reason and moral goodwill or brotherly love to serve as the foundations for larger political communities
is to ignore “the brutal character of the behavior of all human collectives, and the power of self-interest and
collective egoism in all intergroup relations” (Niebuhr, 1932, p. xx). A too-consistent optimism about what
people are capable of sooner or later gives way to a too-consistent pessimism when hopeful enthusiasm for
change turns into bitter cynicism and withdrawal. Between these, Niebuhr argued for a Christian realism that
holds that human beings are moral beings and that they can never really escape the power of self-love. The
most fundamental truth about human beings is the truth we are naturally both free and finite. Our freedom
consists in our ability to stand outside of our situation and to imagine how it might have been or could be
different. This capacity for self-transcendence makes it possible for us to resist our instincts and break free of
our particular circumstances to create new ideas, challenge prevailing patterns of thought, and establish a
remarkable variety of social organizations. It enables us to make history rather than merely swim along in its
flow. It fuels the hope that through education, the cultivation of social intelligence and the strengthening of the
moral sense harmonious social relationships can be established and a just political order can emerge. It allows
us to devote ourselves to a cause larger than ourselves and imagine that our actions might have world-historical
significance. In short, utopian dreams may be said to be rooted in human nature itself as an expression of this
capacity to re-create ourselves.
Yet humanity’s capacity for self-transcendence is also the source of its undoing. For Niebuhr, there is no
level of human moral or social achievement untainted by the corruption of inordinate self-love. The ability to
stand outside and beyond the world “tempts man to megalomania and persuades him to regard himself as the
god around and about whom the universe centers” (Niebuhr, 1941, p. 124). The self is still a mortal and finite
self, unable to comprehend itself in its full stature of freedom. The awareness of its contingency—the
realization that unlimited freedom is not possible for finite creatures—produces in the self a sense of insecurity
and anxiety. The inevitable and unfortunate response to this insecurity is for the self to seek to overcome it
either by denying the limits of its creatureliness, which in theological terms is the sin of pride, or in seeking to
escape from freedom by finding a god in a person or process outside the self, the sin of sensuality or sloth
(Niebuhr, 1941, pp. 185-186; Lovin, 1995, pp. 140-144). Pride reveals itself in overt ways through assertions of
power over others and over nature itself; more insidious are the covert manifestations of intellectual pride and
the “pride of virtue” or self-righteousness. Intellectual pride is the pride of reason which takes finite knowledge,
gained from a particular perspective to be the final and ultimate knowledge; moral pride is “the pretension of
finite man that his highly conditioned virtue is the final righteousness and that his very relative moral standards
are absolute” (Niebuhr, 1941, pp. 194-199). The opposite temptation is to deny our freedom by immersing
ourselves in those activities that require little of us and to focus primarily on our basic organic needs. This is
the sin of “not doing what we ought to have done”. The paradox at work in both pride and sloth is that the more
we seek to transcend our finitude or deny our freedom, the more anxious we become and the more insecure we
CHRISTIAN REALISM, PACIFISM, AND THE BELOVED COMMUNITY 3
feel. And the more insecure we feel, the harder we try to overcome our limits or simply give in to the escapism
of what is (Niebuhr, 1941, pp. 157-166; Lovin, 1995, pp. 149-154).
Human collectivities are the receptacles for both our self-giving and our power-seeking impulses. As
naturally social beings, we require community. The individual cannot be a true self in isolation; it is only in
responsible and mutual relations with our fellows that we can lead fulfilled lives. But the will to live that brings
us together is inextricably linked with the will to power. Made anxious by the awareness of our freedom and
potential perils to it, we seek to gain security by asserting our significance and enhancing our power. These
assertions of power and prestige invariably encroach on the prestige and power of others. Conflicts ensue.
Typically, these encroachments are justified in moral and ideological terms, raising the stakes and making
resolution even more difficult. That is why, for Niebuhr, all social cooperation on a larger scale than the most
intimate social group requires a measure of coercion. The presence of competing wills-to-power and the
inevitability of divergent interests mean that some measure of force will need to be established and maintained.
Political, legal, and moral institutions and processes may be developed that allow for ways to adjudicate and
resolve conflicting interests, yet the coercive element is never absent. Even in democracies, there is a coercive
as well as a moral element in their adoption of the majority rule principle. It may be that the majority is right,
but it is also true that by virtue of its power the majority coerces the minority. The inevitability and the
necessity of coercion are why, for Niebuhr, “Politics will, to the end of history, be an area where conscience
and power meet, where the ethical and coercive factors of human life will interpenetrate and work out their
tentative and uneasy compromises” (Niebuhr, 1932, p. 4).
Niebuhr’s analysis of the rise, persistence, and moral limitations of the nation-state flow from this account
of human nature. The capacity for self-transcendence made it possible for the human imagination to extend the
natural organic feeling of family and tribe to larger units of cooperation, extending in the 19th century to the
nation-state. There was in this development a significant moral element. For the individual, national loyalty can
be a high form of altruism, commanding self-sacrifice in the name of a great cause. Paradoxically, such loyalty
transmutes individual unselfishness into national egoism. The unqualified character of the individual’s devotion
to the nation then becomes the basis for the national authorities to use their power without moral restraint. Thus,
the “unselfishness of individuals makes for the selfishness of nations” (Niebuhr, 1932, p. 91).
Like the individual, the nation-state gives in to the temptation to claim for itself a value more universal
than its historical existence really permits. Through this claim, “human pride and self-assertion reach their
ultimate form and seek to break all bounds of finiteness. The nation pretends to be God” (Niebuhr, 1941, I, p.
212). Armed with the coercive element of the police power and equipped with potent and vivid symbols that
speak to self-giving passions, the nation-state has decisive advantages over other groups in securing individual
loyalties. These encourage its pretensions to permanence. What lies beyond the nation, the community of
mankind, is simply too vague to inspire devotion. Unfortunately, neither religious nor rational idealism can
effectively check national egoism. The power and prestige of the international community is not significant
enough to discipline recalcitrant nations. Nor can balances of power provide a guarantee of sustained stability.
Thus, national self-assertiveness will continue; conflicts among nations will persist; and the resort to war will
remain as a possibility. The best that can be expected of nations is that they can learn to do justice to wider
interests, while they pursue their own (Niebuhr, 1932, p. 109). Unless one acknowledges the power of the
particular, limited, and uniquely vital historical communities to work as centrifugal forces against the
centralizing pressures of globalization and moral universalism, all efforts to establish global governance will
fail. Yet, political realists who recognize only these centrifugal particularities and speak only of power and of
balances of power miss the possibilities for establishing new structures of politics and open themselves to the
danger of moral cynicism and giving up on justice altogether. Instead, world community must be built not by
destroying self-interest, but by “deflecting, beguiling, and harnessing” it in working to establish significantly
greater concurrence between self-interest and the general welfare (Niebuhr, 1946, pp. 153-162, 174-186).
Niebuhr’s Critique of Pacifism

Having been a leader of the pacifist organization, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, during the 1920’s,
Niebuhr understood pacifism’s appeal. The disillusioning experience of World War I, the Gospel admonition to
love one’s enemies, and the hope of secular rationalists that economic interdependence and technological
change had made war obsolete fed in different ways pacifist hopes that the use of violence and war could be
made a thing of the past if only humanity put its mind to it. As the decade wore on, however, Niebuhr
increasingly distanced himself from this view. As a young pastor in Detroit, he saw firsthand the harshness of
industrial society and the conflict between the workers and the propertied. What did the admonition to love
one’s neighbor mean in such circumstances? And what did it mean internationally with the onset of fascism in
Italy, Japan, and Germany? By the time Moral Man and Immoral Society was published in 1932, Niebuhr had
come to regard pacifism as a version of utopianism based on a shared misreading of human nature. The pacifist
assumption that people are intelligent and moral and that treating others generously will help them discover and
develop those qualities in themselves is partially true. Love, disinterestedness, and benevolence do have a
strong social and utilitarian value. The moral principle of “Do as you would be done by” on which pacifism is
based is rightly regarded as a significant moral achievement that should not be violated lightly. The pacifist’s
insight that violence tends to beget violence and arms build-ups on one side tend to result in arms build-ups on
the other is not wrong. Once one sees, however, that the world of nature and history is a world in which
individual and collective egoism will never be overcome, one must renounce the utopianism in pacifism
(Niebuhr, 1932, p. 265; Niebuhr, 1957a, pp. 247-253; Niebuhr, 1957b, pp. 254-260).
Given the persistence of egoism, Niebuhr concluded that no society can exist without the use of coercive
force nor could it trust all of its citizens to accept necessary social arrangements voluntarily. Moral suasion
alone can only go so far; love cannot serve as a substitute for justice as the foundation for social relations.
Christian pacifists are right when they insist that love is the ultimate law of life. What they have failed to
realize is that the love for one’s neighbor might oblige one to intervene coercively to protect him or her from
harm. By prioritizing peace over justice, such pacifism results in the acceptance of injustice:
Capitulation to tyranny in the name of nonresistant perfection may be very noble for the individual. But it becomes
very ignoble when the idealist suggests that others besides himself shall be sold into slavery and shall groan under the
tyrant’s heel. (Niebuhr, 1957c, p. 277)
Moreover, the moral absolutism reflected in some forms of pacifism commits the sin of self-righteousness.
Its perfectionism is corrupted by its refusal to engage responsibly to preserve some relative decency and justice
in society against tyranny and injustice. Justice, which involves making discriminate judgments between
conflicting claims, is less than self-giving love because it assumes the power of self-interest, individually and
collectively. Thus, the sinfulness of all men, even the best, makes justice between competing interests and
conflicting wills a perennial necessity in history. The establishment of justice always involves a certain degree
of pressure, of claims and counterclaims, of pushing and shoving, and the messy balancing of interests. There is
an element of tragedy in this, “but any illusion of a world of perfect love without these imperfect harmonies of
justice must ultimately turn the dream of love into a nightmare of tyranny and injustice” (Niebuhr, 1957d, p.
29).
In his critique of pacifism, Niebuhr noted that it came in several varieties. The purest form of pacifism is
non-resistance. Essentially, non-resistance is withdrawal from society and the abandonment of all sense of
social or political responsibility. This is the way of the mystic, the monk, and the martyr. Less extreme
adherents of pacifism commit themselves to pursue social change but with non-violent means only. However,
for Niebuhr “non-violence does coerce and destroy” and “the more intricate and interdependent the social
process in which non-cooperation is used, the more certainly is this the case” (Niebuhr, 1932, p. 241). Niebuhr
found confusing and misleading Gandhi’s description of his non-violent approach as making use only of
spiritual “soul force”, as against physical “body force”. As he saw it, Gandhi’s method went beyond “spiritual”
non-resistance to include forms of physical coercion as well. The marches, demonstrations, protests, boycotts,
strikes, and acts of civil disobedience that Gandhi directed placed physical constraints on the freedom of others
and imposed real costs. For example, the boycott of British cotton resulted in the undernourishment of children
in Manchester, England, because of the loss of employment brought on by the boycott. These and the other
measures Gandhi advocated clearly resulted in the suffering for others through the deprivation of services,
unemployment, income loss, and even bloodshed. Innocents suffered along with the guilty. For Niebuhr this
meant that the sharp distinction Gandhians drew between violent and non-violent methods was not as
meaningful as they insisted. In his actions, Gandhi implicitly accepted the legitimacy of using coercion and
“once we admit the factor of coercion is ethically justified, though we concede that it is always morally
dangerous, we cannot draw any absolute line of demarcation between violent and nonviolent coercion”
(Niebuhr, 1932, p. 172). From Niebuhr’s point of view, all responsible leaders of a political community will
need to use coercive means and, importantly, it can be morally responsible to do so. Since violence and
revolution cannot be ruled out as immoral a priori, their possible use then becomes a question of political as
well as moral judgment. In fact, Niebuhr praised Gandhi’s political judgment and found much in his method to
commend, though he thought Gandhi’s conception of non-violence problematic. What Gandhi had shown is
that non-violent resistance could work and be morally justified in certain circumstances. He had creatively
opened up new possibilities for the oppressed to take action against their oppressors.
Implicitly, what Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society points to is a theory of justified coercion;
explicitly it makes the case for nonviolent resistance in particular cases. A morally justifiable use of
coercion—non-violent or violent—ought to begin with the motive of concern for the well-being of others and
move to determine the right instrument for its goal and whether the objective is achievable. The choice of
means certainly can condition the ends that can be achieved; in this, the use of non-violent resistance offers
some real advantages as Gandhi’s case illustrated. Gandhi’s willingness to endure suffering and pain without
striking back, his “cheerful submission” to punishment for deliberately breaking the law, his expressions of
love for his adversaries, and his forgiving spirit made the negotiations between him and British officials less
acrimonious. Violent conflicts always create resentments in both parties to a conflict, making accommodation
more difficult. In the case of non-violent resistance, however, when the resisters have suffered more pain than
they have inflicted, that spirit of resentment or vengeance is minimized. Negotiations and co-operation to reach
new understandings become easier (Niebuhr, 1932, p. 251). Niebuhr also pointed out that Gandhi’s method also
allowed him to distinguish between the evils of a social situation and the individuals involved in it. Imperialism
as a system was the problem, not the British individuals who found themselves having to defend it. Whether
actually true or not, Gandhi’s approach of not ascribing personal blame for the system to his British
interlocutors wisely reduced the element of personal animosity which could easily get in the way. In short,
non-violent resistance as a type of coercion offered promising opportunities for nurturing the moral and rational
factors in social life, particularly in those cases where there is an oppressed minority that has no possibility of
developing sufficient power to oppose its oppressors (Niebuhr, 1932, pp. 247-251).
In Moral Man and Immoral Society, Niebuhr drew particular attention to the possibilities of the strategy of
non-violent resistance for the “emancipation of the Negro race in America”. To rely on education and moral
suasion alone to persuade white Americans was illusory; the “white race in America will not admit the Negro to
equal rights if it is not forced to do so”. Nor was violent revolution an option, since Negroes were hopelessly
outnumbered and lacked significant economic resources. Their use of violence would “bring forth the most
violent passions of which ignorant men are capable” (Niebuhr, 1932, pp. 253-254). However, Gandhi’s
methods could be adapted to fit American conditions and could make advances toward justice even against the
selfish forces of an immoral society. Specific measures Niebuhr mentioned included boycotts against banks and
other commercial interests that practiced discrimination and chose not to pay taxes to local governments to
protest the severe underfunding of black educational institutions.
In this struggle, Niebuhr thought that the religious experiences of black America could serve as a useful
imaginative resource on which to draw. The Christian faith they shared with their white co-religionists insisted
on the transcendent worth of the individual, fostered attitudes of repentance which recognize that the evil in the
foe is also in the self; dwelled on the possibilities in forgiveness; and nourished the impulses of love which
claim kinship with all men. Taken to heart, these commitments could provide motives for action that would
build up rather than tear down (Niebuhr, 1932, pp. 254-255).
To be sure, Niebuhr’s qualified support for non-violent resistance did not mean that he regarded the use of
violence as a morally impossible instrument of social change. The successful use of non-violent resistance
depended in part on the response of the dominant group that was its target. Gandhi succeeded in India, in part,
because the British had some degree of moral conscience. To advocate its use against totalitarian tyrannies like
Nazi German or communist Russia was irresponsible because those regimes had clearly demonstrated their
willingness to act ruthlessly against all opposition. The key question about revolution for Niebuhr was the
purpose the use of violence would serve. He appreciated and used Marxist class analysis as a way to understand
the advanced industrial societies of the West, yet he identified Marxists as “children of light” because of their
romantic view of human nature. A violent revolution whose goal was to produce a new society whose members
would be able to do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted and where the government would wither
away because coercive means would no longer be necessary was clearly utopian and therefore not morally
justifiable as a revolutionary goal. Indeed, it had already become clear to Niebuhr by 1932 that the Leninist
“temporary” dictatorship of the proletariat could be extended indefinitely; it was bound to become a tyranny
(Niebuhr, 1932, p. 194). By contrast, the American Revolution, though flawed in important respects, aimed at a
possible dream, one consistent with human nature. Its purpose was not “the uncoerced and perfect peace and
justice” but was instead the establishment of a society “in which there will be enough justice, and in which
coercion will be sufficiently non-violent to prevent this common enterprise from issuing into complete disaster”
(Niebuhr, 1932, p. 22).
In summary, then, Niebuhr presented utopianism and pacifism as in tension with justice. Every structure of
justice as embodied in political and economic institutions will “contain elements of injustice that stand in
contradiction to the law of love” and every one will contain “higher possibilities” toward which those directing
those institutions can strive. It is only when the mind “is not confused by utopian illusions” that it can
“recognize genuine achievements of justice” and feel an obligation “to defend them against the threats of
tyranny and the negation of justice” (Niebuhr, 1957e, p. 283).
Martin Luther King’s Reading of Niebuhr

Like Niebuhr, Martin Luther King, Jr. came from a family of clergy. The son and grandson of Baptist
ministers, King himself was ordained while an undergraduate at Morehouse College. He first encountered
Niebuhr’s work as a divinity student at Crozer Theological Seminary in 1951. At the time, he described himself
as a liberal theologically and politically. Specifically, this meant for him rejecting a literalist reading of the
Bible, embracing the methods of modern science, abandoning the doctrine of original sin, and accepting the
teaching of the “Social Gospel” that “the gospel at its best deals with the whole man, not only his soul, but also
his body” (King, 1958, p. 36). The “neo-orthodox” theologians he was introduced to in seminary, including
Niebuhr, challenged these views. Instead, they emphasized the fragility of human reason, the transcendence of
God, the persistence of sin, and the dangers of identifying any particular economic or political system with the
Kingdom of God. In papers at the time and later in his published work, King wrote that these neo-orthodox
perspectives had a chastening effect on him. He saw value in neo-orthodoxy’s emphasis on the depth of human
sin and the necessity of perpetual repentance, which also helped him to understand better “the race problem”
that he had experienced. Nevertheless it remained his desire to be optimistic about human nature and hopeful
about the possibility of social change (King, 1992a, pp. 251-256; King, 1992b, pp. 359-363).
How much influence Niebuhr’s thinking actually had on King has become a matter of scholarly dispute;
on the one hand, biographer Taylor Branch has argued that reading Niebuhr changed King’s life; on the other,
the editor of King’s papers, Clayborne Carson, believes that King, ever attentive to his audience in his writing,
exaggerated Niebuhr’s impact (Carson, 1992, pp. 54-56; Branch, 1988, pp. 81-87). What King wrote in his
“Pilgrimage to Nonviolence”, is that he became so enamored in seminary of Niebuhr’s social ethics “that I
almost fell into the trap of accepting uncritically everything he wrote” (King, 1958, p. 97). In particular, he
praised Niebuhr’s insight into the complexity of human motives and his discussion of the complicated
relationship between morality and power. Niebuhr, he said, had helped him to recognize the illusions of a
superficial optimism concerning human nature, the dangers of a false idealism, and the glaring reality of
collective evil. Against the rosy optimism of liberal theology, “[w]e have recognized that man has misused his
kingly prerogative as a social animal by making others bear the burden of this selfishness”. Accordingly, “the
word sin must come back into our vocabulary” as at least part—and maybe the deepest part—of the explanation
for many of the ills of the world (King, 1992c, p. 137).
Nevertheless, King pointed out that Niebuhr’s analysis, while stimulating and profound, meant different
ethical standards for individuals than for collectivities. Because agape love “must suffer in purity when
taken into social relations”, justice rather than love is the best a Niebuhrian can hope for in the social unit. Even
a structure of justice based on the equality of rights and power would have to be regarded as morally inferior to
a community of love. Love, which seeks out the needs of others, can move individuals to care about justice and
it can also temper the self-righteousness to which justice is prone. The inevitable corruption of love into
self-love, however, makes a reliance on love in social relations an “impossible possibility” (King, 1992d, pp.
141-151).
Ultimately, King found this approach too pessimistic about human nature and therefore insufficiently
attuned to the transformative potential of agape love. Niebuhr, he found, tended to overemphasize the human
inability to comprehend God’s purposes for humanity and thus to overlook the cure of divine grace which can
lift men out of “the sinful contradictions of history” and establish him “above the sins of the world”. Through
the practice of agape humanity is enabled to move toward the universal recognition of human dignity. Ours is a
moral universe, hinged on moral foundations, and the arc of that universe is bending toward justice (King,
1992e, pp. 248-255). God works through history for the salvation of his children; he struggles with them
against the forces of evil; and the moral laws that He has established will eventually defeat those who defy
them (Ansbro, 1982, pp. 67-68).
King’s commitment to the centrality of agape love as the foundation of ethical conduct pointed him
toward nonviolence and pacifism. In light of Niebuhr’s critique, however, he sought a “realistic” pacifism, one
that would not claim to be without sin but which represented the lesser evil in the circumstances. Nevertheless,
King said Niebuhr’s critique of pacifism “left me in a state of confusion”. And so it was that he turned to
Gandhi’s teachings on nonviolent resistance as the “only morally and practically sound method open to
oppressed people in their struggle for freedom” (King, 1958, pp. 96-101).
King rejected Niebuhr’s characterization of pacifism as an essentially passive non-resistance and insisted
on the moral distinction between violent and non-violent resistance. Citing Gandhi’s activism, King described
the appropriate non-violent approach as the “courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love”. While not
physically aggressive toward his opponent, the non-violent resister’s “mind and emotions are always active,
constantly seeking to persuade his opponent that he is wrong”. Side-stepping Niebuhr’s observation that
nonviolent resistance will necessarily involve elements of coercion, King stressed the moral importance of
acting non-violently. When the non-violent resister expresses his protest through noncooperation, civil
disobedience, demonstrations, strikes, and boycotts, these are to awaken a sense of moral shame in the
opponent and thereby bring about a transformation and change in the opponent’s heart. The possibility that
nonviolent resistance opens up is a process of redemption and reconciliation that results in the creation of a
community with love at its core, the “beloved community” (King, 1958, pp. 98-102).
King explicated the meanings of three Greek words for love: eros, philia, and agape. Eros is the yearning
of the soul for the divine; philia is the love found in friendship; agape is the creative, redemptive good will
toward all. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of agape love. It enables us to love every man not
because we like him or because his ways appeal to us but because God loves him. “It is the love of God
operating in the human heart”. Such love supplies others’ need for community through its self-giving spirit,
which dissolves the sentiments of mistrust and hatred that keep people from loving their fellow human beings.
It “makes no distinction between friend and enemy”, and it ultimately involves “a recognition of the fact that all
life is interrelated … and all men are brothers” (King, 1958, pp. 104-106). Applied to the American context,
King pointed out how the system of racial segregation damaged the souls of the dominant white class along
with those of the subordinate black one. Their personalities scarred by segregation, whites “need the love of the
Negro” to remove the tensions, insecurities, and fears they felt. As they overcome their oppression by others,
nonviolent resisters demonstrate their own dignity as human beings by mastering the passions of fear, self-pity,
hatred, and vengeful anger. Thus their willingness to accept suffering without retaliation is redemptive for
themselves as well as for their segregationist opponents (King, 1958, p. 106; Myers, 2003, pp. 666-686). Such
sacrificial, selfless love makes possible the dream of a racially integrated America, a “beloved community”
whose members “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”. Whereas
Niebuhr taught that justice was the negative application of love (using force to restrain the inordinate ambitions
of individuals in the community), King embraced the power of agape to create genuine community with justice
as its by-product.
Even though King laid out his principles of non-violence as an answer to Niebuhr’s critique of pacifism
and as an embrace of Gandhi’s principles, his practice of non-violent resistance suggested considerable
engagement with Niebuhr’s ideas. As John Ansbro has pointed out, Gandhi stressed the necessity of
self-purification and self-help programs as a condition for achieving political independence; King, on the other
hand, became convinced that the American federal government could and should do more for
African-Americans than they could do for themselves (Ansbro, 1982, pp. 141-145). While King did urge his
followers to strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health and called on blacks to do more to improve
themselves, he consistently and persistently sought ways to convince federal authorities to bring their power to
bear against state and local ones. As we have seen, Niebuhr had set forward a theory of justified coercion using
non-violent resistance with a significant religious component as his recommended option for
African-Americans in their struggle against oppression. Niebuhr also taught that coercive measures would need
to be brought to bear if greater respect for equal justice for American blacks were to come about. The
non-violent campaign King undertook to end racial segregation, to secure voting rights for African-Americans,
and to attack the causes of poverty show how a courageous, creative individual might apply Niebuhr’s
approach. This becomes clearer in the context of the Montgomery bus boycott, which, as Marshall Frady points
out, set the pattern for King’s subsequent campaigns (Frady, 2006, p. 41; Lemert, 2011, pp. 92-99).
The Montgomery Bus Boycott

In 1954, four years after first reading Niebuhr, King became pastor of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church. Barely a year later, he found himself thrust into leadership of the Montgomery Improvement
Association, the organization brought to life by Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a segregated city bus
and her subsequent arrest. As word of the arrest spread, the idea of a bus boycott quickly surfaced and
alternative ways to transport black Montgomerians to and from work were devised. It was King’s genius to
characterize the boycott in moral terms as “non-cooperation with an evil system”. Early on, he focused on the
moral element: The purpose of the boycott was not to put the bus company out of business; it was to “put
justice in business”. In Niebuhrian fashion, King sought to mobilize the limited coercive means of the boycott
on behalf of the morally praiseworthy end of equal justice. Niebuhr’s analysis of power showed that all social
structures involved a mixture of coercive and ethical-legal legitimizing principles and the defenders of those
structures believe they reflect those principles better than they really do. King agreed; Jim Crow segregation
showed how self-love distorted justice and deceived itself about the goodness of its intentions. As King
observed of one of the white segregationist ministers he dealt with during the year-long crisis brought on by the
boycott: The “isness” of segregation had for him become the “oughtness” of moral law. The fervor of that
minister’s denunciation of the boycott, compared with the tepid statements of support from white integrationists
was, King observed, an example of the tragedy of history that “the children of darkness” are frequently more
determined and zealous than the children of light (King, 1958, p.119).1
As King prepared to address the bus boycott’s first mass rally, he confronted a basic dilemma: How to
make a speech militant enough to mobilize and sustain the boycott and yet moderate enough to keep the fervor
within controllable bounds? King’s address sought to honor both freedom and finitude, the need for spirited
action and the need for setting boundaries on that action. After reviewing the series of events that had sparked
the boycott and raising questions about the legality of the city’s segregation ordinances, King went on to insist
first on the justice of the cause—“if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong!”—and then on the importance of
acting in love. Echoing Niebuhr, he said, “Justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that
which would work against love” (King, 1958, pp.59-62; Branch, 1988, p. 141). The militancy that would come
from dwelling on justice alone and that might lead to resentment, hatred, and acts of vengeance would be
moderated by compassion for segregationists caught up in an evil system. Adding to the sense of moderation
and “sweet reasonableness” was the fact that the demands of the Montgomery Improvement Association were
also remarkably restrained. All that the boycotters were asking for was courteous treatment for all passengers,
seating passengers on a first come first served basis, and hiring Negro bus drivers to drive the predominantly
Negro routes. However, what King and his associates hoped would be a short-lived confrontation that would
result in peaceful accommodationbecame instead a year-long ordeal due to the intractable resistance from the
white establishment.
Victory eventually came because the nonviolent campaign combined moral and coercive elements; as
Niebuhr had said, the white establishment would have to be forced to grant Negroes equal rights. In addition to
the powerful moral example set by the non-violent resisters and their use of economic coercion against the bus
company, King and his associates actively sought to involve the power of the federal government. In this case,
that meant pursuing a ruling in the federal courts and eventually securing a Supreme Court decision that held
legally segregated buses to be unconstitutional. Thus, the campaign relied both on the possibility of shaming its
adversaries into acting decently and on the power the national government and the democratic principles of the
American republic itself could exercise. King recognized that the coercion of the law alone would not be
sufficient. The law, he noted, can keep a man from lynching another, but it cannot make that man love another.
For that moral regeneration, the practice of self-giving love and forgiveness would be required.
King recognized that desegregation of schools and buses and full legal access to the public space alone
would not be enough to secure civil rights. A closer approximation of justice required a shifting in the balance
of power within society by admitting the disenfranchised into the political conversation. For King, what was
needed was a revolution to “get in”, not one to overthrow, the system. That meant securing the right to vote and
then using it. In his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”, King reminded his readers of Niebuhr’s observation that
groups are more immoral than individuals and that history is the tragic story of the fact that privileged groups
seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Those who would make moral claims to their civil rights must gain
the power to attain them (King, 1992f, p. 87; Diggins, 2011). As he argued in “Nonviolence: The Only Road to
Freedom”, “Our experience … has been that a drive which registers Negroes to vote can do more to provide
protection of the law and respect for Negroes by even racist sheriffs than anything we have seen” (King, 1992g,
p. 129).
1
This, of course, was the theme of Niebuhr’s book, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.
Non-Violence and the “Brotherhood of Man”

As King’s career progressed, his pacifism became more unyielding and his demands more radical.
Throughout his career King defended the use of principled non-violent resistance in domestic protests; in later
years, he increasingly applied the principle to international conflict as well. From a general condemnation of
“militarism” in his 1964 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, King by 1967 had become an outspoken opponent of
the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In an address to the organization, Clergy and Laity Concerned, at the
Riverside Church in New York, King linked the civil rights struggle and the movement against the Vietnam
War. The war was diverting attention from the more urgent “war on poverty” and the American casualties were
disproportionately African-American. The problem wasnot simply the injustice and foolishness of that
particular war, but that war itself was obsolete. What he called for was a radical revolution in values against the
“giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism”. All over the globe, people were in revolt against old
systems of exploitation and oppression and the United States found itself on the side of the developed,
industrialized, colonialist West against them. As the richest and most powerful nation in the world, America
could lead a revolutionary reordering of priorities “so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the
pursuit of war”. On the other side of this revolution would be a new America and a new world—a thoroughly,
finally integrated world community bound by ecumenical, humanitarian love. It would be a “world-wide
fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation” based on “an all-embracing
and unconditional love for all men”. King provided no blueprint setting out the institutional details of this
version of the “beloved community”, but made it clear that he regarded the achievement of this new world as a
real possibility. It is the way the arc of history bends. And he made it equally clear that he identified this new
order with the embrace of a fully universalized Christianity and, at times, even with the immanent
establishment of the Kingdom of God itself. Preaching to striking sanitation workers in Memphis on the
evening before he was assassinated, King expressed his conviction that we, as a people, will get to the
Promised Land”. He knew this was so, he said, “because I’ve been to the mountaintop … Mine eyes have seen
the glory of the coming of the Lord!” (King, 1992h, p. 203)
It is hard to find much of Niebuhr in this vision, which from a Niebuhrian perspective, must be considered
utopian. Niebuhr, as we have seen, like King, did pass judgement on the pride of nations and the perils of
national self-assertion; he did embrace the “brotherhood of man” at some level; and he believed that a divine
presence could enter human history. However, he also insisted that to the degree that steps could be taken to
nourish a sense of world community, they should be taken in full awareness of the power of self-love and
collective egoism. What countervailing centers of power did King think could be brought into being to
challenge the power of the nation-state? Moral suasion alone—which seems to be what King was depending
upon—hardly seems adequate. Moreover, Niebuhr pointed to a certain tension between justice and love. The
agape love that King celebrated is disinterested, unselfish love; justice, on the other hand, involves the claims
and counter claims of rights for oneself as well as for others. The persistence of self-interest and self-love is
why the social unit can accommodate justice, not agape (Frady, 2006, p. 193). Following Niebuhr, one might
say that there is a danger to justice itself as an unintended consequence of King’s utopian vision. This concern
is what animated Niebuhr’s preference for a gradual approach to the civil rights revolution and his suspicion
that relying on the authority of the Supreme Court alone would prompt a backlash (Diggins, 2011, p. 91). The
more radical King’s vision of integration became, the more it risked raising expectations that could not be
achieved. For some, King’s words are inspirational; for others, unmet expectations prompted by King’s appeals
may have contributed to continuing racial division, cynicism, anger, and despair (Myers, 2003, p. 685).
Niebuhr in Moral Man and Immoral Society directs much of the reader’s attention to the false illusions
and dangers of utopianism, yet he concludes the book by noting that there is something beautiful and humanly
necessary in the tragedy of moral idealism or utopianism. His comment might serve as well for the judgment
Christian Realism might make about King’s non-violent resistance movement and the beloved community he
hoped would issue from it. We live in an age, Niebuhr observed, when “personal moral idealism is easily
accused of hypocrisy and frequently deserves it” and when “honesty skirts the edges of cynicism”. This is
tragic because what the individual conscience feels when it lifts itself above the world of nature and out of the
web of its collective relationships is “a necessity of the soul”. Having shed the false illusion that what is the
way it ought to be, those consciences will recognize that they cannot “leave the total human enterprise
unredeemed of its excesses and corruptions”. The most effective agents of such moral idealism will be those
who embrace a new illusion: that the life of mankind can achieve perfect justice. Though it is an illusion, it is a
valuable one “for justice cannot be approximated if the hope of its perfect realization does not generate a
sublime madness in the soul” (Niebuhr, 1932, p. 277).
References
Ansbro, J. J. (1982). Martin Luther King, Jr.: The making of a mind. Maryknoll: Orbis Books.
Branch, T. (1988). Parting the waters: America in the King Years. New York: Touchstone.
Carson, C. (1992). Introduction. In The papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Vol. 1, pp. 1-37). Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Diggins, J. P. (2011). Why Niebuhr now. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Frady, M. (2006). Martin Luther King, Jr.: A life. New York: Penguin.
King, M. L. Jr. (1958). Stride toward freedom: The montgomery story. New York: Harper.
King, M. L. Jr. (1992a). How modern Christians should think of man. In C. Carson (Ed.), The papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Vol. 1, pp. 251-256). Berkeley: University of California Press.
King, M. L. Jr. (1992b). An autobiography of my religious development. In C. Carson (Ed.), The papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Vol. 1, pp. 359-363). Berkeley: University of California Press.
King, M. L. Jr. (1992c). Contemporary continental theology. In C. Carson (Ed.), The papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Vol. 2, pp.
359-363). Berkeley: University of California Press.
King, M. L. Jr. (1992d). Reinhold Niebuhr’s ethical dualism. In C. Carson (Ed.), The papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Vol. 2,
pp. 141-151). Berkeley: University of California Press.
King, M. L. Jr. (1992e). Rediscovering lost values. In C. Carson (Ed.), The papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Vol. 2, pp.
248-255). Berkeley: University of California Press.
King, M. L. Jr. (1992f). Letter from a Birmingham jail. In J. Washington (Ed.), I have a dream:Writing and speeches that
changed the world (pp. 83-100). San Francisco: Harper.
King, M. L. Jr. (1992g). Nonviolence: The only road to freedom. In J. Washington (Ed.), I have a dream:Writing and speeches
that changed the world (pp. 125-134). San Francisco: Harper.
King, M. L. Jr. (1992h). I see the Promised Land.In J. Washington (Ed.), I have a dream:Writing and speeches that changed the
world (pp.193-203). San Francisco: Harper.
Lemert, C. (2011). Why Niebuhr matters. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lovin, R. (1995). Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian realism. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Myers, P. C. (2003). The two revolutions of Martin Luther King, Jr. In B.-P. Frost and J. Sikkenga (Eds.), History of American
political thought (pp. 666-686). Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books.
Niebuhr, R. (1932). Moral man and immoral society: A study in ethics and politics. New York: Scribner’s.
Niebuhr, R. (1941). The nature and destiny of man, Vol. 1. New York: Scribner’s.
Niebuhr, R. (1946). The children of light and the children of darkness. New York: Scribner’s.
Niebuhr, R. (1957a). Pacifism and the use of force. In D. B. Robertson (Ed.), Love and justice: Selections from the shorter
writings of Reinhold Niebuhr (pp. 247-253). New York: Meridian Books.
Niebuhr, R. (1957b). Why I leave the F.O.R. In D. B. Robertson (Ed.), Love and justice: Selections from the shorter writings of
Reinhold Niebuhr (pp. 254-260). New York: Meridian Books.
Niebuhr, R. (1957c). To prevent the triumph of an intolerable tyranny. In D. B. Robertson (Ed.), Love and justice: Selections from
the shorter writings of Reinhold Niebuhr (pp. 272-278). New York: Meridian Books.
Niebuhr, R. (1957d). The ethic of Jesus and the social problem. In D. B. Robertson (Ed.), Love and justice: Selections from the
shorter writings of Reinhold Niebuhr (pp. 29-39). New York: Meridian Books.
Niebuhr, R. (1957e). The Christian faith and the world crisis. In D. B. Robertson (Ed.), Love and justice: Selections from the
shorter writings of Reinhold Niebuhr (pp. 279-284). New York: Meridian Books.
doi: 10.17265/2328-2134/2020.01.002
D DAVID PUBLISHING
China and Russia on the Baltic Sea: Between Rivalry and

Cooperation
Piotr Mickiewicz
University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland

The Russian-Chinese cooperation conducted on sea basin conducted in the 21st century is aimed at limiting the US
ability to control global transport routes, especially energy transport carriers. The community of interests outlined
in this way allows for undertaking a number of political and economic initiatives and the use of demonstration of
strength in regions where the national interests of both countries are located. Its scope is limited by existing
divergences, which particularly concern the European policy of both countries. Chinese plans to build the One Belt
One Road transport system are violating the status quo in Eurasia in favour of Beijing. While under the Asian
policy both countries have managed to reach a compromise regarding the way of economic activity and the formula
for building this merger, the scale of divergence of interests in Europe limits the possibility of reaching a similar
agreement. Russia’s goal is primarily to limit the US’s ability to control northern shipping routes, followed by
maintaining political and economic influence in Europe in the context of China’s increasing activity and the gradual
decrease in the demand for energy resources. For China, the goal is to make the most effective use of the transport
system to Europe, ultimately based on the One Belt One Road project. Therefore, the only common strategic goals
of both countries in relation to Europe are striving to transfer the burden of US maritime activity from Asian
reservoirs to the waters of the Artic and North Atlantic the seas surrounding Europe. However, the Chinese from
this group exclude the Baltic Sea, which is to be an area of political stability. However, in the assumptions of
Russian policy, the Baltic is to be a substitute region for conducting Arctic rivalry. The existing discrepancies mean
that the scope of European cooperation of both countries is limited and will focus on limiting the American
dominance on maritime shipping routes and economic undertakings enabling the realization of the interests of both
countries.
Keywords: Russia, China, Baltic Sea, maritime policy, cooperation
Introduction
The economic and political transformations of the first decade of the 21st century led to significant
changes in the policy of China and Russia. The development ones adopted in their result meant that both
countries had to make a significant transformation of their own economies. It was connected with the necessity
to redefine the role and character of the conducted trade exchange and the significance of trade routes. These
concepts were presented in various strategic documents, but their common feature was the priority treatment of
trade exchange carried out by sea, recognition of the role of the global energy trading system as one of the most
important factors creating development processes. The developmental role of the import of technologies,
Piotr Mickiewicz, Ph.D., Professor, Institute of Political Sciences, University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland.
CHINA AND RUSSIA ON THE BALTIC SEA: BETWEEN RIVALRY AND COOPERATION 15
semi-finished products, and technological raw materials was also noticed, which further increased the
importance of sea communication routes in the policy of both countries (Government of the Russian Federation,
2003, Part I; Government of the Russian Federation, 2009, Part I, Part IV, p. 2, Part V; Russian Academy of
National Economy, 2010, T.II Part 16; State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2015b, s. 2-4; State
Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2006, Part I, Part II; State Council of the People’s Republic of
China, 2015a, pp. 3-4). This assumption defined the scope of possible Russian-Chinese cooperation, which was
the result of a limited community of interests in the process of obtaining the super-petrostate status1. The area
of cooperation was marked by two factors in the form of the necessary limitation of the US ability to control
regions for the extraction and transport of energy resources, which both countries regard as the most serious
threat to their security and ensure continuity of supply and “economic ties” of selected regions. In Russian
policy, the goal is to link energy importing countries, while China’s policy is focused on building advanced
economic and political contacts with exporters of energy and technological resources, as well as potential
importers of mass and high-tech production. In contrast, the fields of potential conflicts determine:
 geographical location of potential importers and exporters of energy resources in the regions of location of
vital interests of both powers;
 the scale and nature of mutual economic cooperation enabling the political and economic dominance of
the partner (the scale of Chinese investments in Russia and the volume of energy imports);
 different vision of the super-petrostate status and the resulting concept of achieving this status;
 the importance of American neo-naval (US Navy, Chief on Naval Operations, 2006; Department of Navy,
US Coast Guard, 2016)2 policy for the level of economic security in both countries.
Political and Economic Conditions of Russian-Chinese Cooperation in Sea Areas

The scope of the Russian-Chinese cooperation on sea waters is determined by three issues. The first is
China’s pursuit of the status of a US maritime player equivalent to the Pacific and Indian Ocean (Preston,
Bailey, Bradley, Wei, & Zhao, 2016, pp. 8-9)3. The second should be the issue of Russian economic security,
which was defined as the ability to exploit new deposits of energy resources in the Arctic shelf and export
energy carriers at a level that allows the implementation of state development processes (President of Russia,
2017, Part II, points 14-15, Part III, p, 20; President of Russia 2019, points 22, 27). The third is to gain the
ability to control areas of trade exchange under the One Belt One Road project, which requires a maritime
presence in the Red, Mediterranean, and Baltic Seas, and ultimately the Antarctic Ocean. The nature and
1
The author defines the concept of super-petrostate as a country which development and political position depends on the trading
of energy carriers, but at the same time is resistant to fluctuations in the market for their trading and has the ability to partially
create the way this market functions.
2
The author uses this concept to define the American vision of using the armed forces and conducting point expansion. This
applies in particular to the US’s ability to conduct political and military operations in two regions for a minimum of six months, or
political and economic operations protected by military potential, as well as the ability to base and transfer forces to any region of
the world. The formula of the activities carried out was to ensure the United States control of the freight system through maritime
presence at nodal points of global trade. In the first decade of the 21st century, they were located mainly in the Indian and Pacific
oceans and the Mediterranean, Arabian, and Black Seas (the Ormuz Bab del Mandab strait, Malacca, Bosporus, and Dardanelles,
as well as the Suez and Panama canals). Successively, in the second decade of the 21st century, the important of the Antarctic
Ocean waters with the Bering Strait and the Baltic, Caspian, and Azov Seas increased.
3
According to economic estimates, in 2020, China will import as much as 39 of 45 minerals necessary for the economy,
including as much as 70% of crude oil. The group of the most important exporting countries are overseas countries, such as
Australia, Persian Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Oman, Iraq, United Arab Emirates), Africa (Angola, South Africa), and both
Americas (Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, the USA, and Canada).
16 CHINA AND RUSSIA ON THE BALTIC SEA: BETWEEN RIVALRY AND COOPERATION
intensity of cooperation in maritime waters have been determined by the capabilities of both countries to
control the necessary to ensure their economic security of sea waters. They will take the form of actions aimed
at ensuring the possibility of conducting unrestricted navigation, including actions aimed at reflection of seized
vessels and interruption of blockade activities (Chinamil, 2015b)4. It should also be assumed that episodes
emphasizing the ability to enforce their national interests in sea depend on the shape of the interests of both
countries in a given basin and in a way that allows for expanding influence in the region. Nevertheless, the
most important political and economic determinant shaping the scope of Chinese-Russian cooperation in sea
areas will be the One Belt One Road project and—to a lesser extent—the organization of the Russian energy
exports to the so-called new (non-traditional) partners. Both projects require obtaining the ability to reside in
specific sea areas; in the case of the One Belt One Road project the issue in the water will remain a contentious
issue, these are mainly:
 the Antarctic Ocean with the Barents Sea forming the Polar Silk Road;
 the Baltic Sea which is to be part of the New Silk Road.
The Baltic Region Policy—Cooperation or Rivalry

China and Russia’s Baltic policies are created by two processes: the way of implementation Polar Silk
Road and US LNG gas exports to the countries of the region. The concept of the Arctic maritime connection
from China to Europe (Polar Silk Road) presented in 2018 was supposed to be part of the newly constructed
Chinese Arctic policy. In 2013-2018, it was limited to three goals, the most important of which was to respond
to attempts to obtain the status of Arctic player by Japan and South Korea5. Less importance was then attached
to the possibilities of cooperation with Russia, considering that investments in the process of exploiting
Siberian deposits, for strategic reasons, should be focused on land transport6. The change in this policy that
took place in 2018 is the result of two processes, which should be considered the opportunities offered by the
export of Russian energy carriers of the Novatek Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG 27 terminals and the Russian
policy itself of using the north-west passage using the Northern Sea Route. The plans for the expansion of
Siberian fuel and energy complexes require the supply of elements of mining, transmission, and processing
infrastructure by sea, also from outside the Federation. Thus, Russia is forced to accept the very right to
navigate this route of trade vessels bearing the flag of other countries. For this reason, it limits—in relations to
solutions applied by Canada to the rules of Northwest Passage route flow—the scope of regulations regarding
the flow of this route to fulfil specific administrative obligations and the application of a tariff for specific
navigation and sailing services, including the obligation to use the services of Russian icebreakers.
Recognition by the US of Poland as the most important strategic recipient of LNG caused that Russia was
forced to open the Baltic Sea basin for the Chinese war fleet. The consequence of joint maritime manoeuvres
carried out in 2017 is, de facto, recognition by Moscow of Chinese trade interests in Europe (Sputnik, 2017).
The Baltic, which was to be, according to the assumptions of the sea doctrine, a sea under the full control of the
4
An example of this type of activity was Russian-Chinese exercises codenamed Joint Sea (17-21.05.2015). Using the anti-piracy
coalition, the Russians and Chinese carried them out in the Mediterranean. They also took the formula of actions aimed at
protecting maritime units, as they were focused on escorting and repelling pirate attacks.
5
These countries announced the assumptions of their Arctic policy in the years 2013 and 2015.
6
The promoted WSTO project enabled obtaining supplies from a Central Asian country and provided China with the ability to
control Russian supplies to South Korea and Japan.
7
Especially since the Chinese concerns are the owner of 30% of shares in these enterprises and import about four million tonnes
of LNG produced in them.
Russian Baltic Fleet, was included in the Chinese plan to build efficient, safe, and effective transport routes,
including those connecting the most important sea ports (China National Development and Reform
Commission, 2015, Part III Framework)8. The inclusion of the Baltic Sea as an element of the Silk Road should
be considered one of the crisis-making decisions in the mutual relations of both countries. The shape of the
Baltic transport routes is determined by political objectives in relation to the partner and in the regional and
global dimension. The main factor creating potential threats to Chinese-Russian cooperation is the issue of
including Russian imports as well as internal trade in goods in the Silk Road transport system. This solution
increases the economic efficiency of Asia-Europe rail connections and limits the scope of opening the Chinese
market to exports of goods from Europe. However, at the same time, it leads to an increase in the dependence
of the way these connections operate from Russia, which changes the relationship between China and Russia do
the detriment of China. It also eliminates, from Beijing’s point of view, the scope of potential cooperation with
the countries of Central and Eastern Europe under the 16+1 formula9. Countries which, due to their
geographical location and economic potential, play the role of regional leaders of the Silk Road project in
Chinese assumptions are Poland, Hungary, and Romania. The positive reaction, especially of Poland (Polish
Silk Road) (Biznesalert, 2018)10 meant that Russia’s goal is to force China to correct the route of the Trail and
carry it across the Baltic. The Russians mainly emphasize the need to include the Baltic ports as transhipment
hubs and Silk Road logistics centres. This policy is positively supported by Estonia and the Federal Republic of
Germany, although for Germany, an alternative solution may be a land connection via Łódź to Duisburg. The
above conditions determined the formula of China’s Baltic policy, and thus the areas of Russian-Chinese
rivalry and cooperation in the regional dimension. For China’s export policy, the Federal Republic of Germany
remains the principal partner as a place of export supply to the European Union market. The main role of the
Logistics Centre Duisburg AG as a place for the redistribution of goods and the scale of exports to Scandinavia
and Great Britain determines the extent of Chinese involvement in the Baltic region. The optimal solution is to
use Poland as a transit country and Łódź logistics centre together with container terminals in Gdańsk and
Gdynia, but also in correlation with the functioning and planned rail connections of the Nordic countries. This
solution ensures the transhipment efficiency of the main sea and land hubs of the European Union (Duisburg,
8
The Belt and Road run through the continents of Asia, Europe, and Africa, connecting the vibrant East Asia economic circle at
one end and developed European economic circle at the other, and encompassing countries with huge potential for economic
development. The Silk Road Economic Belt focuses on bringing together China, Central Asia, Russia, and Europe (the Baltic);
linking China with the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea through Central Asia and West Asia; and connecting China with
Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Indian Ocean. The 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road is designed to go from China’s coast to
Europe through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean in one route, and from China’s coast through the South China Sea to
the South Pacific in the other. […]At sea, the Initiative will focus on jointly building smooth, secure, and efficient transport routes
connecting major sea ports along the Belt and Road.
9
This cooperation formula has been in operation since 2012 and is created by the PRC and Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the
Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania,
and Macedonia. For Beijing, initially the economic goal was increasing investment involvement, but since 2015 the goal is to
implement the Silk Road project. Among the countries of the region interested in the significant involvement of China are
Hungary and Serbia, Romania, and from the Baltic States: Estonia and Poland.
10
The scale of Polish involvement in the implementation of the project can be proved by the calendar of meetings and statements
of representatives of political authorities. In 2015-2018, visits to China, during which talks were held about Polish participation in
this project, were visited by President Duda (2015) and the then Prime Minister, Beata Szydło (2017). The purposes of adjusting
the investment into the logistics and transport system to the Path project were indicated by both the then Prime Minister M.
Morawiecki, and the Deputy Minister in the Development Ministry P. Chorąży, while the present Minister of Infrastructure A.
Adamczyk emphasizes the convergence of this project with the Polish interests. A similar position is taken by a Polish member of
the Board of Directors of the Asian Bank for Infrastructure Investments Radosław Pyffel.
Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Hamburg), and in relation to exports to the Nordic countries, also allows reducing the
delivery time. The alternative in the form of the use of eastern Baltic ports, especially the Russian ones, located
in the Gulf of Finland or the ports of Estonia and Latvia (and ultimately the extended port in Kaliningrad), is
justified only in the context of using them for transport by German-Russian motorways of the sea (to Rostock
and Sassnitz-Mukran). As a consequence, the ports of Hamburg and Bremen as well as the Duisburg logistics
centre will remain the main transhipment hubs. Therefore, the above situation is treated in China as an
alternative, and Russia considers it to be the target. In this arrangement of transport lines, China will have to
accept the use of Russian transport systems (Trans-Siberian railway) and adapt the Silk Road threat system to
the shape of Russian internal trade in goods. This also creates the potential need to accept them in a way that
allows the use of Russian ports as transhipment and distribution locations for Chinese exports. The negative of
this solution is the need to accept Russian interests in Europe, especially in the Black Sea catchment area and
Central Europe. It also requires Beijing to refer to the way Russia conducts its policy towards Ukraine, Georgia,
and Poland. In practice, this may lead to the abandonment of one of the alternative Silk Road routes, i.e., the
route through southern Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia (Poti port), Ukraine (Odessa port), and Kiev to Łódź.
It is rather a project intended to weaken Russia’s position in the consortium implementing the One Belt One
Road project, rather than a real option. However, it is an important instrument of influence and must therefore
remain in Chinese concepts as potential scenarios for action.
In Russian policy, the way of using national transport systems and—in addition—port infrastructure on the
Baltic Sea is treated as a means to deepen the scope of bilateral cooperation with China and the Federal
Republic of Germany. By emphasizing this community of interests with Beijing, they seek to dominate the
Baltic transport system. However, in Russian policy, Germany is perceived as a state—a distributor of Russian
energy resources to the EU and imports of technological equipment components to Russia, necessary to
modernize the fuel and energy sector. The essence of Russian activities is therefore to create ventures that allow
the expansion of transmission systems in the EU and their integration with Nord Stream and bypass the Central
Europe region as a transit area. An attempt to transfer this exchange from land areas to the Baltic Sea, by using
the Baltic ports of the Federal Republic of Germany and the motorways of the Rostock and Sasnitz-Mukran
Seas, and Russian ports, however, is contrary to Chinese Baltic projects11. The presented conditions mean that
there is more competition than cooperation between Beijing and Moscow in the Baltic region. This region is not
a place of conducting joint economic initiatives or investments. In fact, based on the Chinese analysis of
investment activity in Europe, it can be stated that some of them are aimed at limiting the need to conduct joint
Chinese-Russian ventures. Beijing has an independent investment policy in Europe, which has been focused on
European economic and political powers (Germany, Great Britain, France) and countries important for the
shape of trade (Norway, Sweden, Poland, Finland, Italy, Greece, Hungary). Investment activity, with the
exception of Poland, was focused on such spheres of the economy as the municipal services sector, transport,
infrastructure, energy, and the machinery industry. In the case of Poland, after the fiasco of the concept of
11
The leading undertaking is the so-called Maritime Motorways, which are to run between the Baltic ports of Germany
[Sassnitz-Mukran, Rostock] and the Russian ports [Bałtijsk and Kaliningrad, Ust’Ługa, St. Petersburg]. The transhipment centre
in the Maritime Motorways system is the port of Sassnitz due to its transhipment infrastructure. It is adapted to the service of
Russian rail track sets, and the investments carried out jointly by Russian Railways and Deutsche Bahn for investments in the
ferry-rail transport system Bałtijsk-Sassnitz, allow handling of wheel reloading up to 6.5 million tonnes per year. The support, in
relations to the ro-ro cargo, is the Rostock port and a number of investments in the wheel-rail communication system, especially
in North Rhine Westphalia.
investment in the construction of transport systems, freight traffic in ports is the leading sphere. You can even
indicate areas of competition that focuses on the possibility of choosing alternative to Russian transport routes.
The most important, specific fields of competition are the China-Europe Land-Sea Express12 project and the
China’s policy towards Silk Road. The first of these projects does not include the Baltic region, while the
second one is to eventually connect Odessa with the Baltic ports, and the scope of cooperation between Beijing
and Kiev includes a number of projects, including investments in Ukraine and various cooperation initiatives of
the economic representations of both countries. However, while in 2016 the decisions on the intensification of
economic cooperation between the PRC and Ukraine were announced, the content of talks and conclusions of
the special Chinese-Ukrainian forum was not disclosed in 2017 (it was held on November 16, 2017). China’s
policy with regard to both projects can be described as instrumental. It also indirectly proves that Beijing’s
creation of Asia-Europe connections alternative to Russian land connections is used to reduce Russia’s position
in shaping the route and the way the Northern Silk Road functions.
Summary
Chinese-Russia cooperation on maritime waters is shaped by geopolitical factor and global political and
economic goals. The main reason is to ensure continuity of supply by sea, mainly energy carriers, and
expanding export opportunities. It also allows achieving partial goals in relation to actions aimed at weakening
the US position in global sea basins. The joint activity of naval forces on the seas surrounding the European
continent forces the increased activity of the American fleet in these waters. This indirectly limits its activity in
the Pacific reservoirs, i.e., areas of implementation of China’s national interests. To a lesser extent, this applies
to the American presence in the Arctic waters, but it is offset by the Russian policy of creating air and sea
incidents in the North Atlantic, as well as the North and Baltic Seas. The solution which, in Russian concepts,
is to limit the possible reactions of the US and its allies (mainly Great Britain and Canada) is the presence of
coalition naval forces in these waters. However, maritime activity in these waters is not a priority for China,
which has modified Russia’s policy. Russia has attempted to transfer this form of influence to the Baltic Sea, an
important area for Beijing. However, the presence of Chinese naval forces is temporary and limited to joint
exercises. Beijing will not be able to permanently station its own fleet in this region, which means that it is not
interested in creating political tensions that limit the possibility of conducting export expansion. Thus, the
political goal will remain to stabilize the situation in the region, also providing for limiting the American
presence and the possibility of creating a political situation. In addition, it allows controlling Russian maritime
activity, which is treated as one of the creators of export policy and economic expansion. Therefore, it should
be recognized that the factor determining Chinese presence in European waters is the awareness of the
difference in potential between the US fleets and the Chinese Navy. As noted above, obtaining the potential for
global activity and obtaining the status of a global maritime power is possible by increasing the potential of
naval forces and obtaining the ability to be stations in selected sea areas. The Chinese gain a significant part of
these opportunities through cooperation with Russia. Transferring the rivalry from the USA to a reservoir that
does not play a significant role for Chinese interests (outside the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea,
and the Eastern Mediterranean) is also of considerable importance. Thanks to cooperation with Russia, they can
mean the weight of American efforts to focus on the North Atlantic and Northern Europe’s waters and the
12
The project assumes the intermodal connection of Alexandria-Piraeus and rail to Budapest via Serbia.
western Arctic Ocean, i.e., in the distance from the most important Asian waters for their interests. At the same
time, including Russia in various forms of activity in the Pacific causes a kind of internationalization of its
operations, which eliminates the accusation of attempts to appropriate these waters. It also limits the possibility
of reaction, competing with China for their control and inclusion of the countries of the region in its Exclusive
Economic Zone. For the Russians, this cooperation allows them to gain the ability to contribute to the situation
in regions of potential exports of processed energy resources and to obtain political and military support for
projects carried out in the Arctic basins. It is obtained at the expense of acceptance of the Chinese presence in
the most important European sea basin for Beijing, i.e., the Baltic Sea. However, this presence is incidental and
depends on the nature of the political and military cooperation of both countries. However, it allows China to
achieve its strategic goals in relation to Northern Europe. When assessing the effectiveness of joint ventures
between China and Russia on maritime waters, it should be acknowledged that they allow limiting American
dominance and enabling the realization of maritime interests of both countries. They are not always convergent,
and the difference in potential means that the beneficiary of this cooperation is China, to a greater extent. This
leads to various forms of confrontation between the two partners and forces them to pursue individual policies
in specific subject and geographical areas.
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doi: 10.17265/2328-2134/2020.01.003
D DAVID PUBLISHING
Nesting Orientalisms: Case of Hungary, Its Imaginary

Occidentalisation Process, and Inconsistencies
Cemre Aydoğan
University of Rome La Sapienza, Roma, Italy

What is the border between Central and Eastern Europe? This is an unanswered question in the literature of
contemporary European history and politics. In the modern state system, imaginary boundaries are products of the
imagined communities, and these boundaries also cause either to occidentalize or to orientalize the lands due to its
top-down/elitist imagination procedure. During the Cold War years, anti-USSR voices are important to see the
certain demand for Europeanization among people in today’s Central Europe where there especially had the
communist legacy. In general, the ultimate goal is to identify themselves as more western among Central and
Eastern European states for the sake of civilizational values of the Enlightenment and to reach today’s contested
Neoliberal welfare. This desire causes Nesting Orientalisms, Milica Bakic-Hayden’s concept. Nesting Orientalisms
are about re-constructing new Orient in the same region to hierarchizeitself as occidental. Through the process of
mapping its location and construction of occidental identity, Hungary defines itself as a part of Central Europe. But
what are the legitimated reasons of Hungary to define itself as Central European instead of Eastern Europe? Do
these reasons perfectly fit in today’s Central European formulation and stereotype? What are the possible reasons to
reject Hungary’s Central European self-definition? Moreover, under the shadow of the discussion on Central
Europe vs. Eastern Europe, to what extent does the rise of authoritarianism block ongoing occidentalisation process
of Hungary? In this research, I will answer these questions by analyzing modern political history of Hungary by the
method of interpretivist process tracing.
Keywords: Nesting Orientalisms, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Hungary, Cold War, occidentalisation
Introduction
In the name of the book, In Search of Central Europe (Schöpflin & Wood, 1989), the phenomena to
separate Europe via invisible borders is clear in immediate post-Cold War atmosphere. This demand can be
easily associated with the main motto of the zeitgeist for post-communist states: “return to Europe” (Agh,
1999). However, in geographical context, there is just one continent which is called Europe; hence Pandora’s
Box opens: To which Europe do the post-communist European states want to return? It is quite obvious that the
divisions in Europe are politically constructed due to ideological, economic, and social distinctions overtime in
the same continent, especially in its modern history. Orientalization and occidentalization processes became
daily exercises to re-arrange the borders between Western and Eastern Europe. Then, where is Central Europe?
This is an unanswered question in contemporary history of Europe. For Kundera, “Central European
identity” is directly related to “culture” and “its own distinctive profile” (Kundera, 1984). At this point, it is
Cemre Aydoğan, Ph.D. fellow, Program of History of Europe, University of Rome La Sapienza, Roma, Italy.
NESTING ORIENTALISMS: CASE OF HUNGARY 23
necessary to indicate that distinctive profile and culture of Central European identity is a way to separate
Central Europeans from “Russians” (Todorova, 1996). Hence, “othering” is still core part in the process of the
construction of a new identity in post-communist Europe and the new other is inevitably eastern and repressive
one. For Schöpflin, this is also explained as “authentic enough to act as an organizing principle for those
seeking something other than Soviet-type reality” (Schöpflin & Wood, 1989, pp. 19-30). Hence, the identity of
Central Europe is becoming to closer to the identity of Western Europe by a rupture from Russian (communist)
legacy.
Therefore, Eastern Europe became newly hierarchized backward neighbor of Central Europeans.
This occidentalization process for the sake of return to Europe is a typical example of Milica Bakic-Hayden’s
concept, Nesting Orientalisms which are about re-constructing new “Orient” in the same region to
hierarchize itself as occidental. Orientalized part is not just old communist friends (new foes), also internally
orientalized nations, Balkan states, which are important to re-write and re-locate Central European states in
global political arena as more European. For the case of Hungary, it is certainly part of the league of the
Central Europeans since 1989, and it is a generic example of anti-communist, democratically western
and leading figure of Balkan states. Since the collapse of the Empire of Austro-Hungary, visible patterns are
the cases for Hungary to classify itself as a Central European state, especially after the Cold War. It
clearly aimed to be part of the Hellenic past of European culture and an alien of the Russian world.
However, despite successful integration in the western league and Nesting orientalization process vis-a-vis
Russians and Eastern European states, especially Balkans, Hungary’s ongoing occidentalization is questionable
today.
Authoritarian nationalism, corruption, and falsification of history are the current problems of Hungary that
block its ongoing occidentalization, and cause to return to “Eastern Europe”. In this paper, I aim to analyze the
grandiose concepts, Nesting Orientalisms and Backwardness, to define and separate Central and Eastern Europe
to show their constructed features in terms of their meanings. Then, I discuss how, theoretically, the
differentiation is seen and how it becomes Nesting. And, I will analyze the case of Hungary and its
pseudo-occidentalization since 1989 by applying to Nesting Orientalisms in the region. Finally, I analyze how
today’s Hungary demonstrates a certain degree of backlashing, and how we can locate it as Eastern Europe
instead of central one. In the last part, I draw main conclusions. In this research, the process of
occidentalization of Hungary is traced in its modern history by an interpretivist analysis.
Larry Wolff’s Concept of “Backwardness” in Europe

Larry Wolff’s classic book, Inventing Eastern Europe, is important to locate the position of imaginary
Eastern Europe because, as he defines in his book, Western Europe needed a “backward” neighbor to be able to
occidentalize its modern history. One of the most legitimate reasons of the west to be able to orientalize Eastern
Europe is about Eastern Europe’s communist/Russian history. Historically, travelers’ diaries also show to see
the differentiation between Western and Eastern Europe. For example, “Hungary, Wallachia, Bulgaria, or
Serbia, eighteenth-century travelers agreed that these otherwise little-known regions were desolate places,
engulfed with poverty and misery” (Bakic-Hayden, 1995, p. 921). Modern example of this genre Rebecca
West’s Black Lamb Gray Falcon clearly hierarchies Eastern European, especially the ex-Yugoslavian, states by
referring to its daily violence and terror in 1930s. However, criminalization and isolation of the communism is
one of the easiest and concrete ways to locate “barbaric” Eastern Europeans as “eastern” (Malksoo, 2014).
24 NESTING ORIENTALISMS: CASE OF HUNGARY
For Neumann, the construction of the identity of other to define Russians is not a new project or naming in
the continent of Europe (2008). However, its failed modernization and end of the communist history are
thought of as lessons for Russians who need to “learn” from Europe to be successful (Neumann, 2008). Hence,
Russia and its sphere of influence in Europe are evaluated as the unsuccessful students of the world politics,
and they are hierarchized by their successful neighbors. It is also important to indicate that ethnic Slavic
identity is referred to demarcate Europe as the west and the east, and Slavism is seen as ethnic reason to
hierarchize Eastern Europe by referring to their Slavic Russian “brothers” (Suslov, 2012). However, like
travelers’ diaries, this is just a secondary reason to consolidate othering process which is mainly about ideologic
differentiation during the Cold War.
Thus, the concept of “backwardness” to create a binary in Europe has a Russian tongue also due to its ideologic
influence in its near history and ethnic Slavic ties. However, this dichotomy clearly demonstrates a “contrast”
which demarcates the west from Eastern Europe. Hence, the anomaly is construction of a third Europe: Central
Europe. Radio Free Europe in 1994 “published news in three categories: ‘Russia’, ‘Transcaucasia and Central
Asia’, and ‘Central and Eastern Europe’” (Todorova, 1996, p. 7). Now, we have another Europe which is in the
middle of Europe and needed to be differentiated from the Eastern one. Before that, 1980s are crucial times to
analyze an emergency for the different naming, Central Europe, despite the lack of concrete change which
would occur in 1989. Central European identity and a certain demand to use it came from a Hungarian historian
to define Hungarian’s identity neither Western nor Eastern (Szücs, 1983). So, today’s small state but also heir of
the glorious Austro-Hungarian Empire is one of the leading examples of Nesting orientalization in the region.
Nesting Orientalisms: Central Europe vs. Eastern Europe

Bakic-Hayden defines the concept of Nesting Orientalisms in her article during the last times of the
Yugoslavian Wars (1995). In her words, “while geographical boundaries of ‘Orient’ shifted throughout history,
the concept of ‘Orient’ as ‘other’ has remained more or less unchanged” (Bakic-Hayden, 1995, p. 917). This is
a Nesting style othering process in the region for the case of the states of the Socialist Yugoslavia while the
dissolution. For example, the dichotomy “Balkan state” and “non-Balkan state” between the former Yugoslav
states is a way to see how the states that evaluate themselves as “non-Balkan” try to occidendalize themselves
via newly constructed rupture from their modern and socialist history. Moreover, the term of Nesting
Orientalisms can be also used for the similar cases and othering stories. Hungary’s demand to be classified as a
Central European state is an example of this term.
In Szücs’s piece, the description of Western Europe is related to the dominance of the west over the east
culturally, politically, and economically, moreover “Latin Christianity” vs. “caesaropapist Orthodoxy” is used
to define the hierarchy in Europe (Todorova, 1996). Thus, Hungary assumed to be part of the developed west,
but this occidentalization process is not easy to be completed overnight for Hungary. Then, the new naming,
Central European identity, became a positive label for Magyars to facilitate rupture from Eastern Europe. For
Deak, “Hungary was a bastion of Western Christianity against the pagans, against such Balkan heretics as the
Bogomils, against Byzantium, and (beginning in the fifteenth century) against the Muslim Turks” (1992, p.
1043). Hence, from both modern and primordial perspectives, story of Nesting Orientalisms is inevitable part of
Hungarian nation-state formulation.
Even during the communist regime, Hungarian uprising of 1956 can be interpreted as a clear mass demand
against Stalinism and its impact on Hungarian politics. Hence, 1950s is a period that is associated with
de-Stalinization among Hungarian people, and the revolutionary leader of this period in Hungary, Imre Nagy,
turned into an iconic figure to commemorate his “moderate” ideas (Miklos, 2014). After Cold War, Imre Nagy
and the Hungarian uprising for the sake of de-Stalinization assumed one of the efforts for a rupture from
communist influence and legacy of Russia.
Therefore, deciding on the exact time to search a Central European identity is not certain in the history of
Hungary, but it is quite clear that it is an ongoing aim for Magyars and its most concrete version is the
accession period to the EU and the result of full membership. The full membership signifies a total integration
to Neo-liberal and Western Europe.
Case of Hungary: Do Magyars Belong to Which Europe?

Despite the uncertainty on time when the Magyars wanted to be a part of the west and western civilization,
as discussed above, the 20th century is crucial to analyze ideas and social movements on the road of Europe
even in the communist regime.
End of the Cold War is a legitimate beginning for the Magyars for a certain and visible rupture from Eastern
Europe. The Round Table process for Hungary is important for internalization and settlement of democratic
principles because however the system is designed at the beginning, it will try to conserve its first structure
(Lijparth, 1992). Although the election system is not designed to protect the rights of minorities and does not
aim a total minority inclusion, a parliamentary system welcomes different political parties (Lijparth, 1992).
Next steps were institutionally integration to the west, and the EU became an ultimate goal for the
Magyars to reach the welfare of the west as soon as possible. Hence, democracy and integration to the west
mean “immediate access to Western levels of prosperity” (Schöpflin, 1994). Agenda Hungary (1997) is a clear
summary of Hungarian accession period since the end of the Cold War to the west, and for Agh “elites are
much more interested in European integration than the masses with their particular short-term interests” (1999,
p. 850). Moreover, as Kopecky and Mudde stated “the Hungarian elite has become less Europhile over the
years and, in particular, the last government had a somewhat strained relationship with the EU” (2002, p. 307).
However, the total accession to the EU in 2004 is successful completion of a task on the road of the west and
rupture from Eastern Europe despite the fluctuating relations during the accession period between the EU and
elites (enlargement fatigue vs. Euro-fatigue).
After institutional integration, it was time for the social integration for Magyars to the west, and the crucial
part is the memory of this small and formerly communist state. Imre Nagy turned into a public hero, and his
monument eradicated in front of the Hungarian parliament in Budapest (BBC, 2018). Terror Haza, Terror
House is a Hungarian museum, which was founded to negatively commemorate the communist history of
Hungary in 2002. Moreover, Holocaust Memorial Center was founded in 2004 to commemorate Holocaust in
Hungary which is in accordance with the collective memory of the EU.
However, despite the full membership and mnemonic integration to the west for a Central European
identity and to be a part of Western welfare, Hungary re-arranged its façon and changed its direction under the
Fidesz government, especially since its victory in 2010. Now, there is an ontological rupture in Hungary’s aim
for a more European identity in its modern history.
Fidesz and Return to “Eastern Europe”

Despite the efforts of integration to the EU by Fidesz, a Magyar political party founded in 1988 and rose to
power since 2010 in the parliament, in the current politics, there is a clear attempt to refer to another Europe
which is neither Central nor Western one (Kreko & Enyedi, 2018). What it is interesting in this context is that
the norms of the west (interchangeable with the EU) are alienated and labeled as enemies of Fidesz-based
definition of Europe (Kreko & Enyedi, 2018).
Before listing Fidesz’s current actions and party position in Hungary, how to locate Fidesz as a political
party in terms of its ideology and discourse is an important step. There is a clear “authoritarian turn” in Fidesz
after 2010 victory (Jenne & Mudde, 2012). Also, Fidesz combines its authoritarianism with an ethno-populist
party discourse which is a clear illustration of its tendency to ethnically exclusionary party ideology (Jenne,
2018). Both authoritarian and direct exclusionary discourse and policies of Fidesz are contrast to normative
framework of the EU. Hence, Fidezs’s U-turn is a backlashing and alienation from the EU/Western perspective.
This U-turn also signifies possible populist electoral victories because Fidesz hierarchizes desires of “the
people” of Hungary as primary and demonstrates the EU as guilty due to economic situation.
Orban states that “there was no sense that European policy needed to be broadly consistent with some
long-term national objectives” (Taggart & Szczerbiak, 2013, p. 26). Hence, ethnic friends and national
sentiments are used as a tool to establish a barrier between Hungary and the EU or Western Europe. From the
perspective of Fidesz, Europe is not related to the EU’s value system; it is related to “European Christian values”
(DW, 2019). Hence, Christianity is used as a tool to mention a new Europe. Is this a new one? Fidesz and its
certain change from Europhile to Eurosceptic party signify a blurring in the political map of Europe.
This sharp change can be interconnected to several reasons in the modern politics of Hungary. First one is
about emergence of a mafia state in the period of Fidesz and consolidation of the oligarchs of Fidesz (Magyar,
2016). One of the crucial examples of the Fidesz’s oligarchs is the monopoly over tobacco by an oligarch all
around Hungary (Yavuz, 2019). Also, clientelism (Yavuz, 2019) became an inevitable part of Hungarian
elections, and illiberal democracy and its victory are clearly observable in Victor Orban’s Hungary.
Even in the domain of the memory politics, there is a direct attempt to falsify the history which is not in
accordance with the standards of the EU style (collective) memory. For example, in the Terror Haza, the
communist history is totally distorted, and there is no room to face “real” Hungarian Nazi history. In other
words, Hungarian Nazi history is depicted as a top down period and irreverent with Hungarian national
sentiment which is a clear example of falsification of history. For the sake of the consolidated relations with
Russia, Imre Nagy’s monument was replaced overnight, and it was exiled from its popular location (BBC,
2018).
Moreover, there are current cases that remind us of neo-Nazi movements, such as attack against an
LGBTQI+ friendly pub, expulsion of the Central European University, founded a left-leaning Jewish
millionaire, and strong opposition to receive the refugees. These are important empirical evidences to see the
rise of fascism in current Hungary, and also a clear rupture from the norms and identity of Europe. Despite the
rise of fascism in Europe, Fidesz case is different because Fidesz rose to political power and clearly attack and
alienate the idea of the EU to defend the cultural norms of Hungary (Pytlas, 2013).
Hence, an effort for the sake of westernization is interrupted by Fidesz in Hungary in a very sharp
discourse and mobilization. This definitely destroys Central European identity of Hungary that was aimed to be
obtained especially in the 20th century even in the days of the communist regime. Hence, the embedded
backwardness emerged in Hungary, and it could be evaluated as a “return to Eastern Europe” not a creation of a
new Europe.
Conclusion
In this paper, I aim to analyze the binary between Central and Eastern Europe. From the historical
perspective, the idea of Central Europeanness turned into a way to be part of the western civilization and the
welfare. That’s why there is a clear aim to alienate and other the backward and ideologically remnant of
communist part of Europe. To demonstrate Nesting Orientalisms in the region to complete their
occidentalization process, I selected the case of Hungary and its Nesting orientalization process vis-à-vis
Eastern Europe. It reached the peak with the collapse of communism, and the final stage was the total accession
to the EU for Magyars to be part of the civilized world.
However, current ruling party, Fidesz, and its direct effort for a rupture from the dream of Western Europe
is clearly traced. The rise of authoritarian nationalism and fascism in Hungary cause an uncertainty to map its
imagery location. It directly others Western Europe and the EU and demonstrates a clear rebellion to defend
barbaric and Nazi-based cases. Hence, there is a contrast mapping on behalf of Hungary, and in which Europe
we can locate Hungary is questionable now.
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doi: 10.17265/2328-2134/2020.01.004
D DAVID PUBLISHING
An Analyze of Anti-Drug Policy and Its Effects of Enrique Peña

Nieto’s Government in Mexico
LU Lingling
Northwest University, Xi’an, China

The drug problem has gradually penetrated into Mexican politics, economy, culture, and other fields since the 20th
century, and has become an important factor affecting Mexico’s development. Enrique Peña Nieto took office in
2012, and implemented a new anti-drug policy. His government has made reducing violence a major goal of the
anti-drug operation, using the national gendarmerie to counter the drug violence, and reforming the judiciary to
prevention crime. Enrique Peña Nieto’s anti-drug policy has achieved certain results at the beginning of his term.
However, the weakness of the national gendarmerie, corruption, and the sluggish economic development have
affected the anti-drug policy, and caused it to fail. The drug problem in Mexico is affected by multiple factors, and
its solution is a long one.
Keywords: Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico, anti-drug policy, crime prevention, drug violence
Since the beginning of the 20th century, the drug problem has plagued Mexico’s development. During the
period of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)’s rule in 20th century, drug trafficking organizations
formed the informal “asylum relationships” with government officials to ensure their survival and development.
And then, drugs have gradually penetrated into all aspects of Mexico’s politics, economy, and culture,
becoming one of the important factors restricting Mexico’s development. In 2000, the National Action Party
(PAN) came to power, cut off the “asylum relationship”, and took anti-drug actions. However, instead of
solving the drug problem in Mexico, it has caused the serious escalation of drug violence. Enrique Peña Nieto
won the presidential election in 2012, and his political party PRI returned to power. His anti-drug policy has a
profound impact on the drug problem in Mexico. This is the main content of this article.
Historical Evolution of the Drug Problem in Mexico

At the end of the 15th century, Spanish immigrants introduced cannabis cultivation to Mexico for the first
time. Poppies were introduced to Mexico by Asian immigrants in the mid-19th century. And then, Mexico
became an important drug supplier to the United States. After the 1970s, Mexico’s economy is weak, crises are
growing, the poor are growing, and the demand for drugs in international markets is increasing. At that time,
Colombia’s drug cartel declined, and Mexican drug trafficking organizations were developing rapidly.
The influence of drugs has penetrated into all aspects of Mexico’s politics, economy, society, and culture
after the 1970s. Politically, PRI’s government formed an informal “patron-client” relationship with drug
trafficking organizations, latter having significant impact on local governments. Economically, drugs have
LU Lingling, Ph.D., lecturer, History School, Northwest University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China.
30 ANALYZE OF ANTI-DRUG POLICY AND ITS EFFECTS
become an important driving force for Mexico’s economy. It is important means for some poor farmers in
Mexico to support their families to engage in drug cultivation and serve drug cartels. In 1998, about 300,000
farmers in Mexico were engaged in drug production, and nearly 468,000 peoples were directly or indirectly
related to drug smuggling (Rios, 2008, pp. 7, 9). Culturally, a new form of music chanting drug
lords—Narcocorrido, appeared and became popular music within a certain range (Edberg, 2004, p. 126). Drug
lords, because of their wealth and generosity, became the object of respect and worship for some poor (Malkin,
2001, p. 117).
Vicente Fox, belongs to PAN, was elected as president in 2000, the 71-year-long rule of the PRI ended.
The “asylum relationship” between the government and drug cartels broke down completely. President Vicente
Fox has taken tougher anti-drug measures to counter the growing drug violence. On the one hand, the Mexican
government has stepped up its efforts to seize drugs and arrest drug dealers, and vigorously eradicated illegally
grown poppies and cannabis (Storrs, 2004, pp. 4, 6, 10). On the other hand, the Mexican government has
strengthened anti-drug cooperation with the US government. In 2001, the Fox government established the
Agencia Federal de Investigacion (AFI); it’s personals were trained in the United States. The number of drug
dealers, who was extradited by Mexican agency to United States, was increased from 12 to 63 (Seelke, 2017, p.
14).
Mexico’s anti-drug action has played a certain role in combating drug cartels, but the arrest of cartel
leaders has led to the division of big drug cartels. The struggle between cartels for territory, resources, and
human resources has risen sharply. This triggered an escalation of drug violence. During President Vicente
Fox’s tenure, the number of deaths caused by drug violence increased from 1,080 in 2001 to 2,100 in 2006
(Chabat, 2010, p. 6).
In 2006, Felipe Calderón, also the candidate of PAN, was elected as president. He waged a full-scale drug
war on drug cartels. The Felipe Calderón believes that the federal army is more effective than the police, and
small, segmentary drug trafficking organizations are less harmful than large drug cartels (Felbab-Brown, 2011,
p. 37). Therefore, he does this in two actions. On the one hand, the so-called “fragment and control” strategy
was implemented to mobilize the army on a large scale to combat big drug cartels. After only 11 days in office,
he sent 6,000-person armies, and took military action in Michoacan. In 2009 alone, he sent 48,750 troops to
combat drug cartels (Grayson, 2013, p. 3). On the other hand, the “kingpin strategy” was taken to combat large
drug cartels and arrest large drug lords.From 2007 to 2012, 22 of Mexico’s 37 major drug lords were arrested
or killed (Hope, 2016, p. 6).
At the same time, Mexico’s government has also strengthened anti-drug cooperation with the United
States. President Felipe Calderón has stepped up extradited drug dealers to United States. There are over 100
drug dealers extradited to the United States each year in Felipe Calderón’s tenure (Seelke, 2017, p. 14). Mexico
signed an anti-drug cooperation agreement with the United States. In October 2007, the United States and
Mexico formally signed the “Merida Initiative”. According to the agreement, the United States and Mexico
cooperate in anti-drug cooperation. The United States provided Mexico with 1.4 billion U.S. dollars in the
following three years to support Mexico in purchasing anti-drug inspection equipment (such as helicopters),
train the army and update military equipment, upgrade communication systems, and strengthen law
enforcement capabilities (Weintraub & Wood, 2010, p. 38).
The Mexican army captured 41.23 million suspects of drug trafficking and killed 2,321 drug dealers from
2006 to 2011 (Grayson, 2013, p. 3). But by the end of Calderon’s administration, drug violence had spread to
ANALYZE OF ANTI-DRUG POLICY AND ITS EFFECTS 31
84% of Mexico’s cities (Zedillo & Wheeler, 2012, p. 33). The number of drug cartels in Mexico doubled from
2007 to 2011 (Zedillo & Wheeler, 2012, p. 34). Throughout the Calderón administration, INEGI reported
121,669 homicides, an average of over 20,000 people per year, more than 55 people per day, or just over two
people every. Under Fox, the number documented by INEG was only 60,162 homicides (Calderón, Ferreira, &
Shirk, 2018, p. 4).
The Anti-Drug Strategy in Enrique Peña Nieto’s Government

Enrique Peña Nieto, the candidate of PRI, was elected as president of Mexico in 2012, which means the
PRI came to power again after 12 years. In the challenge of unprecedented drug violence, and the desire of the
Mexican for national security and economic growth, Enrique Peña Nieto’s Government has made the reducing
violence as the core of its anti-drug policy, which includes the following aspects.
Abandon the “Kingpin Strategy”, Reduce the Drug Violence
Felipe Calderón’s “Kingpin Strategy” made big drug cartels to split into a large number of small ones. In
2014, the four major drug cartels in Mexico split into 60-80 (Liu, 2015, p. 52). These organizations lost
external restraint. They compete for territory, markets, and drug trafficking routes; the conflict between them
has intensified. Otherwise, the violence against the government, police, politicians, and even the media by drug
organizations has begun, leading to a surge in drug violence.
Therefore, Enrique Peña Nieto promised to adjust Calderon’s anti-drug strategy, and shift the focus of the
anti-drug policy to reducing violence that affects people’s lives, such as killings, abductions, and extortion. The
goal is to reduce drug violence by 50% in office (Shirk, Wood, & Olson, 2014, p. 265). His top security priority
will not be arresting the leaders of the organizations that move hundreds of millions of dollars of narcotics each
year into the United States. Instead, he and his advisers say, they will focus the government’s resources on
reducing homicide, kidnapping, and extortion (Weissenstein, 2012).
However, the Enrique Peña Nieto government did not completely abandon military means to combat drug
trafficking organizations. It continues to use military forces and polices to combat drug organizations such as
Sinaloa cartel, Gulf cartel, and Los Zetas. From 2013 to 2016, the Mexico government allocated a total of 485
million US dollars to intervene in areas with high crime rates (Seelke, 2017, p. 21).
Establish the National Gendarmerie to Combat Drug Violence
The reinstatement of the PRI has not restored the “asylum system” with drug trafficking organizations. At
the end of Calderon’s administration, 80% of the Mexican population still supported the government’s
anti-drug policy—use of the army to combat drug cartels (The PEW Global Attitudes Project, 2012, p. 1). But
the drug war was not a long-term solution. There are serious deficiencies in anti-drug action by the army. Some
Mexican people believe that the drug war makes the country “militarizing”, and may exacerbate the social
violence. They blame the government’s anti-drug operations for being too violent and forcing land and natural
resources (Grayson, 2013, p. 1).
Enrique Peña Nieto has proposed the establishing a 40,000-person “national gendarmerie” during the
presidential campaign, sending them to areas with high level violence, supporting the local government and
local police.As a result, Enrique Peña Nieto government formed a 5,000-member National Gendarmerie on
August 22, 2014. The function of gendarmerie is both military and police, and able to be mobilized where it is
needed quickly (Rico, 2016, p. 613).
In order to make the gendarmerie as “new model army” without corruption, the Enrique Peña Nieto
government rigorously screened the personnel of the gendarmerie. At the same time, the government also
provided huge funding to the gendarmerie in terms of funding, training, and equipment, to ensure that members
of the gendarmerie can receive relatively high salaries. The gendarmerie can receive high-quality training and
have modern weapons (Rico, 2016, p. 615). In addition, the government has also built infrastructure such as
airports, roads, and ports in remote areas to ensure that the gendarmerie can effectively enforce the law.
Carry Out Anti-Corruption Actions to Improve the Efficiency of Drug Control
Local governments in Mexico, especially the police, have been infiltrated by drug trafficking
organizations. Corruption is one of the key factors affecting the effectiveness of anti-drug policy of Mexico. As
Eduardo Almaguer, attorney general of Jalisco, said: roughly one in five actively collaborate with gangs and
about 70 percent “do not act” against them, and 1,733 serve police in Jalisco, or nearly 16 percent of the
municipal force, had failed evaluations known as “loyalty tests” (Graham, 2016).
Therefore, Enrique Peña Nieto government passed the “transparency reform” program in February 2014,
and created the “National Transparency System” to ensure that investigating agencies can smoothly obtain what
they need information. On April 16, 2015, the General Transparency Law was passed, which requiring all
government officials to disclose their work and task related information, and set a timetable for the actual and
complete disclosure of information of every government departments. This law also requested government to
have disclosed their violations of “crimes against humanity” and serious violations of human rights (Merino,
2015, pp. 10-13).
In April 2015, “National Anticorruption System” was established, requiring federal and state governments
to collaborate in anti-corruption. It composed: (1) independent and effective authorities coordinated around a
common mission to prevent and combat corruption; (2) a new comprehensive and integrated system of
administrative responsibilities; (3) a new criminal regime to fight corruption; and (4) a new control and
oversight system to coordinate state and local authorities (“The Road Towards Ending Corruption: Mexico’s
National Anticorruption System”, 2016, p. 5).
It also required a new integrated and unified administrative responsibility system, a new criminal
anti-corruption system, a new control and monitoring systems.In addition, Enrique Peña Nieto government has
established a Special Anticorruption Prosecution Office. The main function of the agency is to identify criminal
corruption cases reported by the public, and to investigate these cases as the Mexican government (“The Road
Towards Ending Corruption: Mexico’s National Anticorruption System”, 2016, p. 6).
Implement Socio-Economic Reforms and Crime Prevention
Enrique Peña Nieto government took socio-economic and educational improvement as an important
measure for drug control and crime prevention. He hoped that this would weaken the social foundation of the
drug problem, criminal violence, and finally change the situation of poor people relying on drug organizations
for public services and socio-economic benefits.
On the one hand, Enrique Peña Nieto government is committed to improving the living and welfare of the
people across the country. On January 21, 2013, President Enrique Peña Nieto issued a decree for the
anti-hunger campaign nationwide, which outlined a five-point plan to tackle hunger in 400 of Mexico’s roughly
2,500 municipalities, urging community action, local government responsibility and pledging to strengthen
agricultural production in afflicted areas.
This campaign includes: (1) zero hunger through adequate food and nutrition for those living in extreme
poverty and those with lack of access to food; (2) eradicate acute childhood malnutrition and improve
childhood weight/size standards/averages; (3) increase food production and income of peasant farmers and
small-scale producers; (4) minimize post-harvest food loss during storage, transport, distribution, and sale; (5)
promote community participation toward the eradication of hunger (The Hunger Project, 2013).
The Enrique Peña Nieto government also increased fiscal expenditures to extend the scope of federal
pensions to housewives, and increased funding for the Oportunidades project, which is one of Mexico’s major
poverty alleviation projects. Its main purpose is to support poor families in urban and rural Mexico, improve
their children’s education, health, and nutrition, and promote their ability to work in the future, thereby
reducing poverty. It aimed to provide 6.5 million poor families with medical care and their children’s schooling
(Seelke, 2013, p. 9).
On the other hand, the Enrique Peña Nieto government has taken special crime prevention program in
some areas with high levels of violence and crime. In 2013, Mexico government allocated $190 million for
crime prevention programs in 57 high-risk areas of drug violence (Felbab-Brown, 2014, p. 28). The plan
includes: (1) promoting full-time education, keeping students in school, reducing their access to criminal gangs
and drug trafficking groups, reducing the possibility of being recruited by these groups, (2) strengthening
treatment of drug users and adopting effective drug use prevention measures, (3) promoting the development of
small and medium enterprises, increasing employment, etc.
Renew “Merida Initiative” to Cooperation With the United States
The Merida Initiative, signed in 2007, is the basis for cooperation between the United States and
Mexico in anti-drug. United States and Mexico renewed the “Merida Initiative” in 2013. They agreed to
focus on justice sector reform, money laundering, police, and corrections professionalization at the federal
and state level, border security both north and south, and pilot approaches to address root causes of violence
(Seelke, 2017, p. 10). The United States provided Mexico with $682.9 million aids from 2013 to 2016 (Seelke,
2017, p. 11).
The United States supports Mexico’s efforts to increase anti-drug capabilities. The United States has
provided direct assistance to Mexico’s anti-drug operation. The United States had provided aid to purchase
inspection equipment, weapons; also provided training for anti-drug in Mexico. On the other hand, the United
States supports the reform of police and judiciary in Mexico. The United States trained 230,000 preventive
police and 30,000 ministerial (investigative) police (Seelke, 2017, pp. 16-17).
Two countries work together to maintain border security. In order to effectively prevent drug smuggling,
the United States has used automated license plate readers along the US-Mexico border. US has helped to
establish a Mexican Customs training academy to support professionalization and promote the Mexican
customs’ new role of performing inbound inspections (Seelke, 2017, p. 20).
Two countries are actively implementing crime and violence prevention programs. In order to eliminate
crime and violence at its source, the Mexican government has adopted a series of actions, such as strengthening
the crime prevention capacity of federal polices, encouraging state and local governments to strengthen
prevention of crime and violence, and increasing attention to people with a criminal tendency. According to
USAID’s plan, at the same time, the United States will provide Mexico with $9 million to prevent and combat
crime and violence from 2014 to 2018 (USAID, 2016).
In short, reducing violence is the focus of Enrique Peña Nieto government’s anti-drug policy, which is a
continuation and development of Calderon government. In this respect, the Enrique Peña Nieto government
wanted to end the drug war, created a new national gendarmerie, launched anti-corruption operations,
implemented criminal prevention program, and so on, in an effort to achieve the desired results.
Evaluation of the Enrique Peña Nieto’s Government’s Anti-Drug Policy

The violence in Mexico did decrease during the Enrique Peña Nieto’s first two years in power. The
number of deaths due to violence in Mexico decreased from 25,967 in 2013 to 23,063 in 2013, and further
reduced to 1,669 in 2014. From 2013 to 2014, the homicide rate decreased from 22 per 100,000 to 19 per
100,000, and reduced to 16 per 100,000 in 2015. But the drug violence has sharply risen after 2015. By the end
of 2015, the number of deaths due to violence had once again increased to 20,525, and the death rate had risen
to 17 per 100,000. In 2017, the homicide rate in Mexico reached 25.7 per 100,000, and the violence in Mexico
in 2018 reached a record high. The homicide rate increased to 27.3 per 100,000, and 33,341 people were
murdered (Calderón, Heinle, Ferreira, & Shirk, 2019, p. 3).
With regard to the distribution of drug violence, the scope of violence in Mexico showed a certain trend of
reduction in the early days of President Enrique Peña Nieto. According to statistics from INEGI, 1,073 of the
2,450 municipalities across Mexico were zero homicides in 2007. By 2013, the number of “zero homicides”
municipalities had been reduced to 817. The number of municipalities with zero homicides had grown to 889 in
2015. However, the scope of the violence in Mexico has expanded since 2016. 70% of municipalities were
threatened by violence in 2017, highest level since 1990 (Calderónet al., 2019, pp. 18-19).
Figure 1. Number of murders committed per 100,000 inhabitants in Mexico from 2009 to 2018. Note: Statista,
https://www.statista.com/statistics/714113/mexico-homicide-rate/Laura Y. Calderón et al., Organized Crime and
Violence in Mexico, Justice in Mexico, 2019, pp. 11-32.
The reasons for the failure of the Enrique Peña Nieto government’s drug policy are as follows:
Firstly, the Mexican National Gendarmerie is too weak. Affected by the drug war under Felipe Calderón
government, the relation between government and drug cartels was broke completely, and drug cartels
gradually divided, expanded across Mexico. In particular, drug war has broken the original balance of drug
trafficking organizations, causing them to fight each other endlessly for contention and smuggling routes. They
are out of control. They attacked the government, politicians, and civilians. Some small drug trafficking
organizations transformed into criminal groups focused on kidnapping and extortion.
After Enrique Peña Nieto came to power, it was no longer possible to restore the asylum relationship
between the PRI and drug trafficking organizations. The National Gendarmerie has only 5,000 people, and it
takes time to improve the Gendarmerie’s combat effectiveness. Therefore, Enrique Peña Nieto government
abandons military strikes against drug trafficking organizations, relying only on the gendarmerie to maintain
social security, will inevitably lead to an escalation of violence.
Secondly, the problem of corruption in Mexico remains unresolved, which limits the anti-drug actions.
Although the Enrique Peña Nieto government is concerned about corruption problem, corruption still exists in
Mexico. According to the Transparency International, the corruption of Mexico has deteriorated greatly after
2015, and the score of the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) has dropped to 30 points. Among the 176
countries counted, Mexico ranks 123 (“Corruption Perceptions Index 2016”, 2017). By 2016, 90% of the
murders of journalists have not been detected, and most of the criminals are in impunity. Mexico’s CPI score
dropped to 28 points and ranked 138 (“Corruption Perceptions Index 2016”, 2019). This severely constrains the
Enrique Peña Nieto’s anti-drug strategy. Even after Enrique Peña Nieto stepped down as president in 2019, he
was even caught in a corruption scandal.
Thirdly, social poverty in Mexico is an important factor affecting the drug problem.From the 1940s to the
late 1960s, the average GDP growth rate in Mexico was 6%, while the rural areas were only 2%. The wealth
owned by the poorest 50% of Mexico’s population decreased from 19% to 15.7% from 1950 to 1969. Mexico’s
unemployed population increased by 487% from 1960 to 1970 (Watt & Zepead, 2012, p. 46). A large number
of poor people are forced to make living to engage in drug cultivation, production, and trade. Drugs are also a
part of Mexico’s economy. By 2010, the average annual profit from drug in Mexico still is as high as US $30
billion (Nieto, 2012, p. 29).Some scholars called the “drug trafficking, the engine of the Mexican economy”
and others nicknamed the NAFTA as the “North American Drug Trade Agreement” (Nieto, 2012, p. 28). This
is an important reason for the emergence and development of the drug problem in Mexico.
The PAN government of Mexico has adopted a strict anti-drug policy since 2000. However, the overall
economic of Mexico during this period was not good, and the number of unemployed increased. The average
annual Mexico’s GDP was about 1.9% from 2000 to 2005, and about 2.18% from 2007 to 2012 (Watt &
Zepead, 2012, p. 156; Global Finance, 2017). At the same time, unemployment in Mexico has sharply raised.
About 700,000 people did not have formal job from 2000 to 2006, and increased to two million in Calderón’s
government (Watt & Zepead, 2012, pp. 162-163). Many unemployed people, especially young people, are in
the arms of drug trafficking organizations. They became the social foundation of Mexican drug trafficking
organizations. Many unemployed people, especially young people, join drug trafficking organizations. They
became the social foundation of these organizations.
The Enrique Peña Nieto government tried to improve the lives of the poor by developing the economy,
thereby eliminating the basis for the drug problem. He has made some achievements. The proportion of
unemployment people in Mexico decreased from 54.7% to 52.5% (OECD, 2017, p. 40). However, the gap
between poverty and the rich remains severe. The wealth of the richest Mexicans has increased five-fold since
1992. Mexico’s richest 1% of the population owns 43% of the country’s wealth by 2015 (Lee, 2015). For these
poor people, drug production and trade remain the important viable means of subsistence.
Conclusion
In the early 20th century, the PAN government launched the drug war for more than a decade, caused the
division drug cartels, and a serious escalation of drug violence. Today, the drug problem has become an
important factor affecting Mexican social security. After Enrique Peña Nieto came to power in 2012, he tried to
abandon the drug war, replace the army with the gendarmerie to combat drug cartels, strengthen the capacity of
the government and the judicial institutions, improve the education and living conditions of the poor, and then
resolve drug violence. However, his anti-drug policy focused on judicial and administrative reforms, and with
limited success. Under his administration, drug violence in Mexico has escalated sharply, and was
unprecedented. In fact, Mexico’s drug problem and violence are not only a matter of health and public safety,
but also reflect the long-term disadvantages of Mexico’s modernization. These problems are already deep and
cannot be reversed by a single government. With Obrador elected president of Mexico in 2018, he has to face
the challenges faced by his predecessors. Therefore, drug violence in Mexico will continue, and the solution to
the drug problem is still a long way off.
References
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Editorial Board Members of International Relations and Diplomacy:

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