Re-Building Leverage In An Increasingly Multi-Polar World: The West And Russia In A Geo-Political Context

About a month ago, I wrote the following regarding the Obama Administration's relations with Russia, as seen in a geo-political context: "Russia might very well be needed as a potentially leveraging factor [in the emerging multi-power world structure]." I was writing most specifically about China, and I still believe that the Obama Administration is attempting to bring Russia into the Western fold to the extent that Russia can help provide a regional counterbalance to China's emerging power status. (India is another emerging regional rival to China.) But Russia (and Georgia, where recent Russian aggression was a major geo-political worry for the West) is located fairly close to Iran, too, and the Kremlin has long-since kept a worried eye on that politically volatile Middle Eastern country and its nuclear ambitions.

Hence, by attempting to create a new political and working template with Russia, the Obama Administration is seeking a geo-political partnership with the Kremlin insofar as it can help diffuse some of the tensions with multiple countries in Russia's general region (as in the possible case of Iran), or, if rising tensions are in some cases inevitable (as in the possible case of China), insofar as it can provide leverage for the U.S. and much of Europe and against the emerging opposition.

Now, this is not to suggest that tensions between the West and, say, Iran will inevitably ease over the next few years, or that tensions between the West and China will inevitably escalate over that period of time, but the possibilities of those two outcomes exist. If I had to choose the one that is "more likely," I would say that tensions between the West and China will inevitably increase. For its part, tensions between the West and Iran may ease, but right now it looks as though they are just as likely to increase. At any rate, the West would be best served if it had a solid set of plans to deal with the simultaneous increasing of tensions between the West and both China and Iran. In that case, surely working to bring Russia a bit more into the Western fold would be a major part of those plans, for geographical and geo-political reasons. (And, in a best-case scenario, if Russia's geo-political mindset were to become a bit more aligned with the West's, tensions in presently-volatile Eastern Europe might ease, which could help the West to project a stronger, more united front against any of a number of potential challenges.)

Yet with the worldwide financial crisis in full roar at present, economic instability is expanding both inside of Russia and inside of many of its neighboring countries (such as recently-industrializing Eastern European countries and former Soviet states to its west and south, as well as China to its south-east, and so forth). This will surely make what would already be a difficult, volatile process of attempting to create more genuine and coordinated Western-Russian cooperation even more difficult and volatile. The Obama Administration has taken a calm line on this so far, which has helped, but both the West and Russia are going to need a little luck to pull-off such increasingly necessary cooperation over the coming years. Stay tuned, folks, and hold onto your seats--this ride is going to stay bumpy for some time to come.