The failure of Pax Americana

Illustration by Andrzej Zaręba

As these powers expanded their influence deeper into the post-Soviet territory, they also started to gain popularity at home. As the new populists, they have managed to legitimise the model of authoritarian power on a significantly large territory. We may soon see the consequences of this turn towards non-democratic rule in the form of a temporary transition to a new concert of powers. Its preliminary signs are already emerging, so let us try to understand why.  

Thirty states

The period of the collapse of the communist bloc between 1989 and 1991 – or more precisely in 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved – is the key to understanding the ongoing geopolitical transition. As a result of the regime change in Poland, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union (to name the most notable ones) the world saw the emergence of a new political territory which became commonly known as the post-Soviet space. This area included states that came out of the Soviet Union (the former Soviet republics) as well as those which, in 1991, left the Warsaw Pact military alliance. It also included the states that were established after the collapse of Yugoslavia (1991-1992) as well as Albania and Mongolia. The German Democratic Republic, which became part of the united Germany, was not taken into account.

Overall, when referring to this post-Soviet world we are talking about 30 states which became independent in the early 1990s and were given the opportunity to become democratic and have free market economies. However some (like Kosovo, for instance) gained these much later (e.g. in 2008). The scale of change that was to take place as a result of the transition was to be massive and deep. It was to affect a territory that constitutes 46 per cent of the whole of Eurasia – a critically important region, geopolitically speaking. However, almost at the outset it became clear that the elite of the various newly independent states were not prepared to organise and manage modern administrations, let alone a transparent political and economic life. The questions which then emerged in western decision-making circles were how many of the 30 states would actually be able to handle their newly gained freedom and what kind of learning curve was ahead of them.

Along with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a serious geopolitical reshuffling was also taking place. After more than four decades of the Cold War, the world bid farewell to the stable bipolar order. The United States, the power with the upper hand in the final stages of this frozen conflict, emerged as the natural leader of the West, one that could play a key role in the new building of the post-Soviet space. By taking the lead the US opted not only to be a conqueror of the new territory but also aspired to become its teacher of democracy. In this role, the US was supported by what was referred to as the broader West – made up of countries like the US, Canada, Western European states and supported by Australia and Japan. Popularly known as Pax Americana, the group gathered consolidated democracies whose example was to influence the political changes taking place in the newly democratising states.

Western school of democracy

Generally speaking, Pax Americana operated on three levels which included: 1) a US-led military and political alliance; 2) the promotion of a free market economic system; and 3) democratic rule with a strong emphasis on the rule of law and the balance of power. Through these three platforms a new system was to be transplanted onto the newly democratising territories. The new political and economic reality counted on the approval of the local societies, mainly because of the allure that the American (or more broadly western) culture enjoyed globally at that time. The most illustrative example of the great potential of American pop culture was the crowd that stormed the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in Moscow. At the early stages of the transformation, not only food, but almost everything that came from the West was warmly welcomed in the post-Soviet states.

The American establishment understood this propensity very well. In January 1992 the George H. W. Bush administration organised a conference in Washington DC to discuss assistance to Russia. During the meeting, a support programme for a “new Russia” was approved. The initiative was even accompanied by a discussion generated by Walter Russell Mead’s article in the World Policy Journal, as to whether the US should repeat history and buy a part of Siberia from Russia just as it once purchased Alaska. All this indicates that in the early 1990s the West in general – and the US in particular – believed they were in charge of developments in the post-Soviet space. Obviously not everybody was content with this arrangement, and within the US there were serious disputes between interventionists and isolationists. Today, it is difficult to imagine what would have happened had the isolationists won and the US left the post-Soviet space alone. It is quite clear that almost all the post-communist states were too poorly equipped to function independently or even to maintain a basic level of sovereignty, not to mention being able to provide their citizens with an acceptable standard of living. 

In all frankness, the US did not give the post-Soviet states equal treatment in terms of implementing democratic principles. If we compare the 30 states to students in a classroom, we can easily see that some states were more important than others. The privileged ones, including Russia and Kazakhstan, had natural resources or were in geostrategic locations, or had access to nuclear technologies (like Ukraine) and an influential diaspora in the West. There were also star pupils that were presented to others as an example to follow. To achieve this status, a state had to excel with the “buzzwords” of the time – like “market reform” or “political transformation”. Poland was the leader of this group, together with Hungary and the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania).

The post-communist countries also received different offers in terms of membership in international organisations. Accordingly, while the states which formerly belonged to the Warsaw Pact were all offered membership in the EU and NATO, this was not the case with the former Soviet republics (with the exception of the three Baltic states). The offers also varied with the states that emerged from the ruins of Yugoslavia. Among them to join the EUI and NATO were Slovenia and Croatia, first and foremost. With some delay they were joined in NATO by Albania and Montenegro (and soon Macedonia as it finalises the name agreement with Greece).

In parallel

Russia returned to its imperial policy sooner than anybody expected. Already in 1993 the first signals were present, indicating that Moscow did not want to be just a student in the democracy class lectured by Washington. The Kremlin indicated that it had its own plans to salvage the core of the empire, namely the Russian Federation. A key moment was in 1994 when Russian troops entered Chechnya. This act of aggression was not only a cumulative moment in the First Chechen War but it was also a message sent to the wider world that Russia would not accept any territorial destruction. At the time when the Russian troops were getting ready to storm Grozny, some post-Soviet states began their journey towards authoritarianism. In Belarus, Alyaksandr Lukashenka was already the president (he still is today!) while regimes in states like Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan began consolidating power that remained ceaselessly in the hands of the same Soviet nomenclature that skilfully transformed into the new elite. Thus the process of political democratisation only succeeded in the states of the former Warsaw Pact – Slovenia, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Their success continues to be an inspiration for post-Soviet states like Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and Kyrgyzstan, which show modernisation and democratic tendencies, but are not strong enough to be judged as permanent trends.

Economically speaking, the whole post-Soviet space has suffered from the same epidemic – namely, deep and pervasive corruption. Its roots can be traced back to Tsarist Russia – or more precisely the first Romanov Empire – from where it was exported to the territories of today’s post-Soviet states. Corruption also existed in the Soviet Union where it became widespread during Leonid Brezhnev’s rule. Additionally, in some states in Central Asia and the Balkans, bribery was enforced by traditional forms of family and clan support, which made absorption of western patterns even more challenging.

Corruption was related to another negative phenomenon, which also turned out to be a characteristic of the transformation. It was the rapid oligarchisation of social and economic relations which was the greatest failure of the West in relation to the post-Soviet space. From the entire region, only Poland avoided the problem, mainly thanks to the macroeconomic decisions made by Leszek Balcerowicz in the early years of the transition between 1989 and 1991. His socially painful reforms accelerated privatisation and thereby hindered the creation of an oligarchic system which could have easily emerged from among the former communist nomenclature.

In the 1990s there was also an assumption that US-led military alliances and international organisations would become instruments to help post-Soviet states on their journey into the western world. Inter-state institutions were also an embodiment of the idea that former communist states needed help in undertaking democratic reforms. They proved not to be very effective. Neither the OSCE (founded in Helsinki in 1973) nor the Community of Democracies (established in Warsaw in 2000) played any transformative role in these processes apart from focusing on technical aspects such as election observations. Thus the only effective way of introducing democratic change in the post-communist states came from their own initiatives which these countries undertook when they decided to join NATO and the EU. Also, only these two organisations, through their institutions and membership requirements, were able to force deep structural changes. Solely the states that undertook the challenge of adjusting to NATO and EU standards succeeded in the reforms, at least for some time.

Swing states

An analysis of the first stage of the post-communist transformation reveals the following: in the 1990s only the three Baltic states and the countries of the former Warsaw Pact undertook the necessary reforms to become NATO and EU members. From the former Yugoslavia, only Slovenia and Croatia followed a similar path. In parallel, states such as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus cemented their authoritarianism. Their departure from western democracy allowed players such as Russia and Turkey to enter the game and start spreading their influence on the weaker post-Soviet states. They were later joined by Hungary which also revealed its old-time imperial claims on Ukraine.

Undoubtedly, the most important players in the great post-Soviet transformation game that will determine its final outcome are the states which have a strong pro-western tendency but are in Russia’s field of interest. These can be called the “transition swing states”. Their group includes almost all the states that went through the so-called coloured revolutions – the social upheavals organised in reaction to either election fraud, government attempts to return to Russia’s sphere of influence, or bolstering authoritarianism. In the early 2000s, pro-democratic protests took place in Serbia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. The 2003/2004 Rose Revolution in Georgia and the 2004/2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine may have slowed down the negative processes but they did not eliminate them entirely. Attempts to organise a massive protest in Belarus in 2006 even brought worse results.

The Eastern Partnership programme, which was created by the EU in 2009, was envisioned as an important instrument for maintaining western influence in the post-Soviet East. It proved effective to some extent, but only with regards to three states: Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, whose elites are, at least partially, interested in EU and NATO membership.

An infected West

The western reaction to the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the intervention in Donbas was clearly not univocal. Even more importantly, these events illustrated how some post-Soviet states are still interested in joining the West and becoming part of the Euro-Atlantic security structure. This goal would be potentially reachable had the West remained united. Yet with developments like the impending Brexit, it is quite clear that the post-Soviet East is losing the calm harbour it once had in the West.

In the wake of the 2016 US election, the massive migration wave that swept the western world, and the spectre of Islamic terrorist attacks, many post-Soviet societies have begun to ask themselves whether integration with the West is the right approach. The alternative approach, presented by Moscow, Ankara or Beijing, put greater emphasis on security, comfort of living and stability. The last two decades of active soft power engagement with the West has allowed Moscow to gather loyal supporters there. And in terms of the American school of liberal democracy and its post-Soviet students, the Kremlin has also found new opportunities of influence. It was mainly possible thanks to its soft power activities aimed at counteracting western influences that Russia has been actively pursuing since 2008. Russian oligarchs also played an important role in this game over the post-Soviet minds. They became the main carrier of the corruption virus which spread to the West while taking advantage of technological changes. The latter further allowed them to move capital easily and freely. In the end, we now have a seriously infected West.

Clearly without effective western soft power there is no more Pax Americana. That is why, despite all its past mistakes, the current weakness of the West is the primary threat to the future of the post-Soviet transformation. The second obstacle in this regard is the loosening of transatlantic ties. The lack of a united voice can surely make western societies an easy victim to manipulation and propaganda. Third, the noticeable departure from western values by some Central European countries has had an added impact on the swing states. It is simply not good news to hear that the star pupils are suffering from the increasing oligarchisation of politics and the decline of media freedom.

Overall, the failure of including the whole former communist Eastern bloc into the wider western world, coupled with the inability of small or weaker states to manage the re-furnishing of the territory have led to geopolitical chaos. One of its side effects is an impression of western instability and incompetence. However given the strategic importance of the region, the weakening of its states will have a broad effect on global economic stability.

Failure

At the time of the collapse of the Soviet system, many western experts feared the coming of the “defrosting effect”. In other words, they were afraid that, together with the loosening of the imperial and ideological pressure of the Soviet Union, the old problems of the region would come to the surface. This included nationalism, weak economic development and fragile democratic institutions. What we have learnt is that these trends can show up with a 30-year delay and can help create the impression of the collapse of the world order.

With the passage of time, it became clear that the majority of the post-Soviet states were not capable of organising their political and economic life on a level that would allow them to become an integral part of the wider transatlantic community. Instead of being quick-learning students in the school of liberal democracy, they have now become an easy field for geopolitical rearrangement, one that has been undertaken by stronger, although not necessarily democratic, regional and global players.

Looking at these developments today we can see that the US-led democratisation of the post-Soviet space has not succeeded. It was very weak in some states and in others it came with delay, while in some, like Hungary, it has begun a process of reversing. These trends could have probably been stopped, had there been an effective and long-term strategic engagement of the West. Instead, we have become witness to the failure of Pax Americana in the post-Soviet territory. The US and the wider West have proved to be too weak to carry out an effective systematic transformation from totalitarianism to democracy on such a large geographic and political space. Ultimately, the collapse of this ambitious project, which assumed a huge metamorphosis, has significantly weakened the morale and unity of the West as a whole.  

Translated by Iwona Reichardt

Paweł Kowal is an adjunct professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Science and the University of Warsaw. He is also a post-doctoral fellow at the College of Europe’s Natolin campus. He previously served as a Member of the European Parliament and was Secretary of State at Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is a member of New Eastern Europe’s editorial board.

Pax Americana, Post-soviet transformation