On May 9, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin coasted into the Crimean port of Sevastopol on a naval launch, gliding past Russian warships arrayed to greet him. It was Victory Day, the Russian holiday commemorating the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany. Over the years, Putin has made the occasion a great celebration of Russian nationalism. He had spent the morning in Moscow attending a military parade in Red Square, an old Soviet practice he resurrected in 2008. His visit to Crimea came two months after he led Russia’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian territory—a move condemned not only by Ukraine’s government but also by much of the world. In his remarks at Sevastopol, Putin roused his audience with patriotic themes.
“I think 2014 will also be an important year in the annals of Sevastopol and our whole country, as the year when people living here firmly decided to be together with Russia, and thus confirmed their faith in the historic truth and the memory of our forefathers,” he said, in remarks broadcast nationally.15 Putin called Victory Day “the holiday when the invincible power of patriotism triumphs, when all of us particularly feel what it means to be faithful to the Motherland and how important it is to defend its interests.”16 After the speech, Russian jets flew over the crowd, through what mere months before had been Ukrainian airspace.17
While Putin was in Crimea, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin celebrated Victory Day in Moldova’s breakaway pro-Russian region of Transnistria, declaring Russia the “guarantor of security” for what he provocatively called “the republic of Transnistria,” echoing the language Russia has used to justify intervention in Ukraine.18 On May 11, in a referendum widely denounced by the West, 90 percent of voters in the eastern Ukraine provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk voted for secession from Ukraine.19 Pro-Russian activists were soon saying that they wanted to become part of Russia; annexation might be only a matter of time.
Regardless of what ultimately happens in Ukraine, the Russian seizure of Crimea has fundamentally changed the international power balance. Despite the sanctions that have been put in place, Russian aggression and assertiveness have yet to be deterred, and the United States and its European allies have no clear consensus on how to proceed. For the first time, the essential principles of the NATO alliance have been called into question—with implications for Eastern and Central Europe, and indeed for the world.
While the world anxiously watched the Ukraine situation, an 80-ship Chinese fleet sailed into waters claimed by Vietnam to install a billion-dollar oil rig in the energy-rich South China Sea. When Vietnam’s coast guard arrived, the Chinese flotilla responded with force, ramming at least one Vietnamese ship and firing water cannons at others.20 Then, later in May, a Chinese vessel rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat in the disputed waters.21 China claims 90 percent of the South China Sea as its own, rejecting the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and staking claims to dozens of islands and reefs that Beijing claims are historically Chinese.22
New examples of Chinese assertiveness in regional waters occur regularly. As this book went to press, Chinese jet fighters armed with missiles “buzzed” two Japanese reconnaissance planes in the two countries’ overlapping air-defense zones over the East China Sea. The Chinese fighters got within 100 feet of the Japanese planes, in what the Japanese defense minister described as a dangerous act that would increase tensions between the two nations.23 Those tensions have been rising for years. In late 2013, China unilaterally imposed an “air-defense identification zone” in the East China Sea in airspace that overlaps with Japanese and South Korean airspace, and it threatened any aircraft that penetrated the zone.24 The incident with the Japanese planes could mark a new and more dangerous stage in the standoff.
China has been acting more provocatively toward its Asian neighbors for years. Beijing recently began a construction project in the disputed Spratly Islands, despite a long-standing agreement with the Philippines and other nations in the region not to build on these disputed landmasses. The Philippines filed a formal protest, and the action worsened relations with Vietnam, already angered by the oil-rig incident. It wasn’t clear what the Chinese were building in the Spratlys—only that Beijing insisted that its right to do so was purely a matter of “Chinese sovereignty.”25 In March 2014, China blockaded Philippine marines stationed on Second Thomas Shoal, an uninhabited atoll China claims for itself.26
While some foreign-policy observers may believe that Beijing is acting recklessly, it’s more likely that these provocations are all part of a broader strategy to undermine U.S. authority in the region by picking small, winnable fights. “China is seeking to prove to its neighbors that containment cannot work and that the U.S. cannot be relied upon to defend them,” wrote David Pilling in the Financial Times. “If it can do so, they and Washington will have to acknowledge that the status quo is untenable. It is a dangerous strategy. It is also a clever one.”27
“China is deliberately doing these things to demonstrate the unsustainability of the American position of having a good relationship with China and maintaining its alliances in Asia, which constitute the leadership of the United States in Asia,” says Professor Hugh White, a former senior Australian defense official.28
Russia and China are also formidable combatants in one of the 21st century’s primary battlegrounds: cyber warfare. The Justice Department’s May 2014 indictment of five Chinese officers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for cyber espionage only confirms what has been poorly understood up until now, but which we assert vigorously in Chapter 3: that a state-sponsored cyber war against the United States is being directed at the highest levels of the Chinese government. Russia, too, is a key cyber player: Hackers almost certainly affiliated with Moscow have been behind some of the most destructive private-sector cyber attacks of recent years.
Americans had only to note the two countries in which Edward Snowden stopped when he was on the run from the United States after he leaked American intelligence secrets: first China, then Russia, where he was eventually granted asylum. Those who dismiss the strong likelihood that Snowden was an agent of either the Russians or the Chinese are deluding themselves.
As Russia and China flex their muscle, rogue nations have often looked to one or both of them for support—tacit or explicit. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad stands in a stronger position than he has for years, thanks in no small part to Vladimir Putin’s staunch support. President Obama threatened Assad with missile strikes in August 2013 after the dictator used chemical weapons against rebel groups and civilians, but at the last moment Obama completely reversed himself, making the term “red line” into an international synonym for spinelessness.
Likewise, the Islamic theocracy that runs Iran is closing in on achieving its goal of becoming a nuclear power. This time, it hasn’t been American irresolution that is to blame, but American commitment—a commitment to a fatally flawed nuclear accord that will all but assure the Iranians of getting what they want. Finally, a new Defense Intelligence Agency report shows that North Korea has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles. The murderous regime, propped up by China, threatens the peace and stability not only of Asia, but the world.
All these challenges are serious, complex, and multifaceted, and it would be foolhardy to assume that even under the finest leadership, the United States could solve them all with the best conceivable outcomes in each case. At the same time, however, there is no question that these problems have been exacerbated and made much more dangerous and destabilizing by failed American leadership—or, more accurately, by an abdication of American leadership.
AMERICA IN RETREAT
It’s not often that congressional leaders emerge from a White House meeting with the president of the United States and call their visit “bizarre,” but that’s how Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee described his sit-down with Obama-administration national-security officials in May 2014. Listening to them talk about Syria, Afghanistan,
