-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! The End of the Post-Cold War Era 10 April 2001 By George Friedman Tensions between the United States and both China and Russia have marked the past few weeks. This period will be remembered as the end of the post-Cold War period and the beginning of a new international relations era. Deteriorating relations with Washington led to headline-grabbing incidents with both great powers: the ongoing standoff over the EP-3E with China and the espionage tit-for-tat with Russia. Without that deterioration, these incidents would not have occurred. The United States would not have expelled hordes of Russian diplomats and the Chinese would not have intercepted the American spy plane, and if they did, they would have released it quickly. At stake is the international system’s composition. Two great powers want to see a more multipolar world. The one superpower understandably wants to maintain the status quo of a uni-polar system. The conflict in Kosovo was the origin for this deterioration in relations. Neither Moscow nor Beijing wanted NATO to intervene against Milosevic, believing Yugoslavia’s national sovereignty must be respected. Both powers felt if intervention did take place, it should consist of U.N. forces from neutral or secondary and tertiary powers, featuring Russian forces in a leading role. The Kosovo War convinced both Beijing and Moscow the United States was out of control. The Chinese sincerely believe the bombing of their embassy was deliberate and were struck by Washington’s disregard for consequences. From Russia’s point of view, the war’s ending was intolerable. The United States, unable to invade Kosovo, used Russian diplomatic efforts to persuade the Serbs to capitulate. The Russians were marginalized from the beginning, their diplomatic efforts brushed aside. While Kosovo was the key event, the underlying process has been under way for much longer. Russia and China both supported what they called a “multipolar” world in which there is a group of great powers governing the evolution of international affairs. Of course, the reality was a uni-polar world with the United States as the pre-eminent power. Washington took this state of affairs for granted, a hallmark of the post-Cold War period. The economic prosperity of the 1990s allowed the diplomatic nonchalance. Russia and China’s natural tendency to resist U.S. politico-military power was counterbalanced by their interest in maintaining friendly economic relations. A different economic reality emerged as the 1990s closed. It was inevitable that projection of U.S. power would, in due course, lead to resistance at precisely the moment when the economic benefits of good relations with the United States became less than the geopolitical threat posed by the United States. Around the time Russia and China became overtly concerned about their geopolitical situation, a government change in the United States generated a foreign policy that looks at the world geopolitically. The Russians and Chinese understand fully the American thinking: they did not see Clinton as nearly as altruistic as he saw himself and they understand Bush’s team knows what power politics is all about. Beijing saw Washington give Moscow a solid shove over espionage and seized on the EP-3E capture as an opportunity to shove back. The true issues are neither espionage nor aircraft, but the desire of two great powers to keep the one superpower out of their respective spheres of influence. Russia wants the United States to stay out of the Caucuses and Central Asia and to maintain a much lower profile along the former Soviet Union’s frontiers. China does not want the United States to arm Taiwan, nor does it want the U.S. Navy, under its doctrine of littoral warfare, moving up to the coast of China with ships and planes. The United States is not going to concede on these points. Washington wants to bottle up the Russians in Eurasia as far as possible and it does not intend to withdraw from the international waters around China. In short, the lines are drawn showing a very different world than existed in the past decade. We are not in a new Cold War. This is a world with few precedents, one in which a superpower faces multiple great powers trying to control it. The post-Cold War era is gone and cannot be resurrected. All that is lacking for this period of international relations is a good name. Something catchy will come to mind. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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