Turkey's ‘Rake’ for the US Was Made in China

Last year, The National Interest published an article "Eurasia: Between Russia and Turkey." The idea was that Western democracies should support the expansion of Turkey and its leader Recep Erdogan's influence in Central Asia as an effective tool to counter Russia's aspirations in the region. This is not a new idea. If you look closely at it, you will find that it is a somewhat modernised idea of Henry Kissinger's about the need for a system of balances in international politics. In the old formula, it is only necessary to replace "China" with "Turkey" and "USSR" with "Russia". But was Kissinger's model ever successful?

It was based on the premise that in order to maintain a balance in international politics, the interests of only a limited number of states (originally the United States, China and the USSR) with huge economic and military potentials should be taken into account. At the same time, the main instrument of geopolitics was considered to be the reorientation of one of the hegemons in favour of the other in order to achieve a balance of power.

Kissinger's idea of the balance of power was dominant from the 1970s until the end of the Cold War due to the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Kissinger promoted the idea of opposing China to the USSR and dividing their alliance. And this project is still generally considered a success. But the facts tell us otherwise. The division of the USSR and China did not help the capitalist West in its struggle against the socialist bloc during the Cold War.

After the cooling of relations between the former allies in terms of building communism, there was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the crisis in Europe in 1983, when the world was once again on the brink of nuclear conflict, and a huge number of wars in Africa and Central America with the active participation of the USSR and its satellites. And the absence of China as an ally of the ‘Soviet empire’ did not prevent these conflicts.

And China simply did not have the means to participate in these Soviet adventures. It could only export its poor and unmotivated population to war. As North Korea is now doing in Ukraine, supporting the Russians. And China could not compete with the West. For example, China's GDP in 1980 was only $191.1 billion, compared to $2.857 trillion in the United States. A gap of 15 times (!). And this is without taking into account the shortage of weapons due to the backward defence industry.

But Kissinger's proposals did have consequences. The main result of supporting China as opposed to the USSR was China's rapid growth and transformation into a hegemon in the Pacific region and a rival to the United States in trade wars and international politics.

The most surprising thing about this story is that the United States is now reaping the results of its actions in pursuit of mythical ideas. The monster that grew up on generous American funding is now the No. 1 problem for politicians from both Democrats and Republicans.

Not to mention the betrayal of its allies in the Pacific region - Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. The United States has created a threat to them that they are forced to look back on every day. And in Washington, they are forced to debate what military assistance can be provided to the region to deter China.

At the same time, China's prospects for strengthening its international position were visible as early as the 1970s. Therefore, the very idea of Kissinger is worse than a crime. It was a mistake. And this is the root of the problem with China, which is now difficult to solve on Capitol Hill.

If you stimulate the development of one of the centres of the balance of power with an autocratic, if not dictatorial, regime and a potentially strong economy, it will eventually begin to expand not only in the region but also beyond. And it is impossible to control this expansion.

History has already seen such examples. Let's recall how the United States, the United Kingdom, and France pumped investments and technologies into Nazi Germany and the communist USSR. As a result, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler initially reached an understanding and divided the zones of influence in Europe. Nevertheless, the leaders of such states actually spoke the same language with ideological contours they understood. And then the Great War came to Europe.

In the end, China in the 1980s did little to oppose the USSR and deter it. Instead, it made full use of Kissinger's concept and Western aid purely to achieve its own goals. And the USSR lost the Cold War for one simple reason: the Middle Eastern countries flooded the world energy market with their oil and collapsed prices, destroying the Soviet economy.

Applying Kissinger's ‘Chinese’ approach to Turkey will lead to the same result. Ankara is a significant economic and, most importantly, military player in a region rich in natural resources. This only stimulates its expansionist aspirations. And they are already great. Turkey still suffers from phantom imperial pains. This includes claims to Syria, as Erdogan publicly states. And attempts to develop vassalage relations with other countries in the region, including by imposing the ideology of ‘pan-Turkism’, which is similar to the ideology of the ‘Russian world’ promoted by Russia.

Erdogan's Turkey is very far from democratic status in the sense of Western democracies. This allows Ankara to quickly find common ground with Moscow on any problematic issues. This is increasingly reminiscent of the situation with China in the 1970s.

Currently, there is no convincing evidence that Turkey is ready to take on the role of a counterweight to Russia. Quite the contrary. This is especially true given the way Ankara and Moscow have settled their relations after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

But there are more than enough prerequisites for Turkey to repeat China's path with the support and assistance of the West. There is no need to once again create an imperial monster and then spend huge resources to curb its overgrown ambitions.

An alternative to Kissinger's failed concept is ordinary competition. The presence of a sufficiently large number of medium and small states is a more significant guarantee of regional security and limitation of imperial ambitions than a risky bet on an autocratic player. Smaller players have a ceiling on their growth opportunities, limited by their neighbours, economic capabilities or population.

At the same time, it is desirable (but not necessary) that they still gravitate towards the democratic system. Such a security system limits the ambitions of the region's leaders. And political changes within individual states do not lead to a deterioration in the overall situation. In addition, the risks of regional military conflicts are minimised, and competition drives the development of the region as a whole. At the second stage, the creation of a regional defence bloc with the support of the United States can begin.

This approach, of course, requires careful and scrupulous work. On the other hand, history shows that simple solutions lead to disasters. The world is generally too complex to solve emerging problems ‘in 24 hours’.