My Take | The US can’t resist the return of ‘Great Game’ politics
As American hegemony erodes, the old practices of balance of power and spheres of influence are making a comeback
“Men have not always acquiesced in the perpetual quadrille of the Balance of Power. They have often wished that the music would stop and that they could sit out a dance without maintaining the ceaseless watch on each other … The simplest ‘solution’ for anarchy, as Hobbes held, is that one Power should subdue all the rest.”
– A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848 – 1918
RT, the controversial news media platform ideologically aligned with the Kremlin, doesn’t mince words. A big op-ed headline reads: “Putin just announced Russia’s own Monroe Doctrine: The president has cleared up any ambiguity about how Moscow will respond to any new threats in its backyard”.
Since the last century, the Monroe Doctrine has become synonymous with the practice of spheres of influence, and the idea fits the Russian leader’s conception of the Ukraine war to a tee.
“One of the outcomes of Russia’s military operation should be a growing awareness among neighbouring countries that looking for a fight with Moscow is a bad idea, and that Nato won’t be able to protect them,” the RT writer declared.
“Furthermore, the West must recognise that by inciting Russia’s neighbours to wage war against it, it risks prompting a nuclear war. That is an approach James Monroe would certainly have approved of.”
