As my friend Georgi Derlugian argues in this excellent op ed in today’s electronic version of the New York Times, Turkish Premier Erdogan decided to help his Azeri allies seize the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagarno-Karabakh in September, which had the net effect of expanding Turkey’s realm of influence. “It’s a harbinger of the coming world disorder,” Derlugian writes. Sure enough, a month later, Iran’s proxy terror group, Hamas, launched its brutal invasion of Israel. And of course, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is nearing the two-year mark.
Can it be any coincidence that Turkey, Iran and Russia are pursuing their own visions of greatness in complete violation of the “rules-based international order” that the United States and its allies created after World War II. And what must China’s Xi Jinping be thinking as he sees the United States engaged in major military support operations in Ukraine and soon in Israel? Here’s my guess about what he’s asking his advisors: Does the U.S. have the capacity to respond to a third major crisis in Asia?
All the world’s despots pay close attention to what happens in the United States and both China and Russia seek to use social media and conventional media to widen the divisions among Americans and cause them to lose faith in their own institutions, as Mike McLaughlin and I describe in “Battlefield Cyber: How China and Russia Are Undermining Our Democracy and National Security” available here. The fact that Donald Trump can remain a viable candidate for the presidency despite multiple violations of the law, the fact that the U.S. government cannot agree on a budget and the fact that a handful of whack jobs have been able to cripple the House of Representatives–all those things have international consequences. “What kind of message are we sending to our adversaries when we can’t govern, when we’re dysfunctional, when we don’t even have a Speaker of the House?” Representative Michael McCaul of Texas asked on CNN on Sunday.
There’s no evidence that Turkey, Iran, Russia and China are consciously coordinating their aggressions. Turkey and Iran, in particular, think of themselves as competitors dating back many centuries. But China and Iran have developed their relationship because of Iran’s oil and both are supporting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Turkey’s Erdogan also plays a double-edged game with the Russians. The net effect is all of them feel empowered because of implicit or explicit support from other major powers.
If America is going to defend its interest and values in this increasingly dangerous world, it simply has to re-establish a political center, as we argue in Battlefield Cyber. The amplification of divisive messages has become the order of the day. We have become a nation of one-line zingers aimed at destroying our rivals. The mainstream media has in some respects been taken over by the values of social media–let’s say something catchy and provocative and see how many people click on it. The world’s dictators are loving it.
