In a world of complex interdependencies, shared responsibilities and common challenges, it is impressive to observe the persistence of imperialist visions that assume the responsibility of the great powers to control their “areas of influence”.
General Mark Milley is the same US military chief who in November of last year hired General Li Zuocheng, his Chinese counterpart – with whom he had met and dealt with sporadically five years earlier – and assured him that the US would not affect if President Trump, in a fit of madness, gave him that order.
The story is told in the book Peril (Danger) by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. Milley later confirmed these conversations at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “My job at that time,” he said, “was to lower the tension.” “My message was consistent: remain calm and stable. We will not attack them,” he added. But he clarified that, in his opinion, it was never Trump’s intention to attack China.
General Milley’s remarkable service record is a traversal of global geopolitics over the past forty years, covering the last leg of the bipolar world of the Cold War in the 1980s, the “unipolar moment” of American hegemony in the 1990s, and the transition to a non-hegemonic scenario that enters the 21st century, with the US rethinking its role as a global superpower and observing the rise of China as a world power.
With a degree in Political Science and International Relations from Princeton University in 1980 and postgraduate studies at Columbia University and Naval War College, Milley participated in the peacekeeping force in Sinai, the US interventions in Panama and Haiti, and in the wars in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Today, as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he warns that the development of a Chinese supersonic weapon takes the world to “a Sputnik moment,” a reference to the first Soviet space race success during the Cold War. “They (the Chinese) are expanding rapidly: in space, cyberspace and the traditional realms of land, sea and air,” he said. He noted how, since the late 1970s, the People’s Republic of China had grown from a huge peasant-based infantry army to “very capable armed forces with global ambitions.”
The highest-ranking US military chief clearly sees China emerging as “the greatest geostrategic challenge for the United States” in a scenario he describes as follows: “We are entering a tripolar world in which the United States, Russia and China are all great powers. In my opinion, we are entering a world that will potentially be more strategically volatile than, say, the last 40, 50, 60 or 70 years,” he told the Aspen Security Forum.
The Pentagon’s military commander also stressed that it will be of great importance “to maintain peace among the great powers”. “We are entering a period, in my view, of greater instability and potential risk,” he said, explaining that this is why Washington, Moscow and Beijing and all other allies must be “very careful” in terms of how they act. with each other in the future.
About Nato, Milley said that the Atlantic alliance should maintain dialogue with Russia and China. “I think we are in a period of great power peace right now, and we want to keep it that way. The last thing the world, the United States and anyone else needs is a great power war,” he said. On this, Milley said that there is a need for “mutual communication with Russia, China or any other country”, which could be carried out through intermediaries or directly.
“I firmly believe that we must not only speak to allies, partners and friends, but we must also speak to adversaries and enemies,” he reiterated, assuring at the same time that “mutual communication mechanisms” already exist between Washington and NATO with Moscow.
But Milley has also recently said some other things that most concern us in Latin Americans. It was at the inauguration of the new head of Southern Command – for the first time a woman – General Laura J. Richardson, who succeeds Admiral Craig S. Faller, at Southcom’s headquarters in Doral, Florida.
In this context, he stated that “this hemisphere (referring to the American continent) belongs to us and to no one else, and we are all side by side in this common cause to protect our hemisphere from any international threat.” And when in doubt, he mentioned China, Russia and Iran as the main global adversaries impacting the region. There is no recent memory of such a forceful statement about the way Washington views Latin America.
In a world of complex interdependencies, shared responsibilities and common challenges, the validity of imperialist visions that assume that the great powers are responsible for controlling their “areas of influence” is impressive. Russia did it from Chechnya to Crimea, China does it to Taiwan and Southeast Asia, and the US continues to do it with its “backyard”. Monroe doctrine over and over again. But the scenario is different. Other flows -commercial, migratory, technological-, social exchanges and cultural influences cross and erase these geopolitical borders demarcated by physical geography and by the distribution of world power among the great powers.
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