Growing tensions between the West and Russia and between the United States and China go well beyond competing interests in a rustbelt in eastern Ukraine or over uninhabited rocks in the South China Sea. Fundamentally, they are about whether Russia and China will acquire sphere of influences in their neighborhood. Russia seeks special influence in the former Soviet Union and China is looking to make its nine-dash line in the South China Sea a reality.
For almost a quarter of a century, the United States has said it opposes a return to a spheres-of-influence order of the kind that existed in the Cold War or prior to World War II. In fact, in 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry even formally repudiated the Monroe Doctrine. Successive presidents have endorsed a Europe “whole and free” and the principle that states should get to decide their own foreign relations. This policy had real consequences, in Europe especially—since the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has expanded from sixteen countries to twenty-eight and the European Union from eleven to twenty-eight.
However, it was relatively easy to oppose a return to spheres of influence when no other major power was actively trying to reconstitute it. Now, Russia is using hybrid warfare to seize territory in Europe, and China is using land-reclamation tactics in the South China Sea. While Russia and China are very different actors, these strategies of territorial expansion present the United States with a particularly thorny problem. U.S. rhetoric is consistent—it opposes a return to a spheres-of-influence order—but it is unclear what this means. So far in Europe, it involves imposing costs on Russia for seizing territory in Ukraine, but not stopping it from doing so or reversing it after the fact. In Asia, it means diplomatic efforts on maritime security, but nothing to punish or stop China’s strategy of changing the facts on the ocean.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-russia-vs-america-great-power-revisionism-back-12733
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