What's the next geopolitical hotspot on the globe? Mongolia, pitting the USA squarely against China and Russia

What's the next geopolitical hotspot on the globe? Mongolia, pitting the USA squarely against China and Russia

Last week I had an interesting and lively series of discussions with some policy wonks and political science experts who wanted my opinion on where the next geopolitical hotspots would be...one of my contentions was central Asia. The US military offensive doctrine of "circle the wagons" around Russia has been in play for several decades and it has Soviet-minded NATO-phobes and Russian nationalists nervously eyeing the growing encrochment and encirclement.

NATO and the USA has been quietly and discreatly surrounding Russia with military outposts or forming alliances and courtships with western friendly governments for a few decades starting with Poland in central Europe, Ukraine, Turkey, Georgia and Afghanistan (which could have an alternate agenda too). Logically next they should be moving east into Central Asia.Who is up for courting there? Well, the rarely noticed but strategically important country of Mongolia, located between Russia and China.

They asked me to prove my contentions, so here's a story I found on the BBC Monitoring FSU News service back in April which supports my views, strategic thinking and observations:

USA, NATO flirt with Mongolia over possible deployment of bases - Russian paper Anonymous. BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union. London: Apr 10, 2010.

Abstract (Summary)

On 29 March NATO officially recognized Mongolia as a participating country in the coalition in Afghanistan and invited an Ulan-Bator representative to a meeting of the heads of ministries of foreign affairs, which is to be held in Estonia on 23 April. The analyst concludes that Mongolia is growing increasingly close to the USA and NATO. As a confirmation of his conclusion, he also points to the regular participation of the Mongolian military in the joint Khan Quest annual military exercises. "With its enormous spaces (more than 600,000 square miles) and a small population of less than three million people, of which nearly 40 per cent live in the capital, Mongolia is an optimal place for the deployment of American military intelligence gathering (ground-based, air-based, and satellite) for simultaneously keeping an eye on China and Russia. The country's new president, who was educated in the USA, will most likely not deny Washington's requests," [Rick Rozoff] asserts on the Opednews.com website.

By the way, Russian specialists believe it to be unlikely that Mongolia will make such an unfriendly gesture towards Russia. Colonel General Viktor Yesin, the former chief of the Main Staff of the Strategic Missile Troops (RVSN), suggested in an interview with "NG" that this article may be an attempt to cause dissension in relations between Ulan-Bator and Moscow and Beijing. "If one assumes that such an agreement between Mongolia and the USA will be achieved, it will indeed give the Americans enormous opportunities to collect intelligence on a broad range against Russia, particularly Siberia and the Far East, and especially against China. But I believe that Mongolia's leadership will hardly choose to take such a step, considering the dependence of Mongolia's economy upon the PRC and Russia," Yesin said.

Full Text (929 words)

Nezavisimaya Gazeta website, Moscow, in Russian 6 Apr 10/BBC Monitoring/(c) BBC

Text of report by the website of heavyweight Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 6 April

["USA and NATO Flirting with Mongolia," by Andrey Terekhov. The author rejects idea that Mongolia will permit USA and NATO to deploy bases and recon assets within its territory.]

Washington and Brussels, it appears, have taken a serious interest in Mongolia. In the assessment of the American expert Rick Rozoff, this country, which is participating in the war in Afghanistan, is in reality of greater interest for USA intelligence gathering than for the fact that it is located between Russia and China. "NG" experts acknowledge that from a military point of view the deployment of USA bases in Mongolia would have a negative impact upon the security of both Russia and China.

Rozoff is the author of a recent sensational article that says that America "is surrounding Russia and China" with its ABM system. He notes that in the last decade the USA has set up bases and other military facilities and deployed its armed forces in those parts of the world that it was unable to penetrate during the epoch of the cold war. This includes: Africa -2,000 military men in Djibouti; the Black Sea region -seven new air force and training bases in Bulgaria and Romania; the de-facto control of Air Force, Navy, and Ground Troops, as well as a tracking facility, in Georgia; and the deployment in April of batteries of Patriot systems in Poland. USA military facilities in the Middle East, in Central and Southern Asia, in Eastern Asia, in South and Central America, in the Indian Ocean, and in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean continue to be added to the list. "Mongolia, no matter how remote and inaccessible it might be, is not immune to the world-wide wave of American military expansion," Rozoff states.

On 29 March NATO officially recognized Mongolia as a participating country in the coalition in Afghanistan and invited an Ulan-Bator representative to a meeting of the heads of ministries of foreign affairs, which is to be held in Estonia on 23 April. The analyst concludes that Mongolia is growing increasingly close to the USA and NATO. As a confirmation of his conclusion, he also points to the regular participation of the Mongolian military in the joint Khan Quest annual military exercises. "With its enormous spaces (more than 600,000 square miles) and a small population of less than three million people, of which nearly 40 per cent live in the capital, Mongolia is an optimal place for the deployment of American military intelligence gathering (ground-based, air-based, and satellite) for simultaneously keeping an eye on China and Russia. The country's new president, who was educated in the USA, will most likely not deny Washington's requests," Rozoff asserts on the Opednews.com website.

By the way, Russian specialists believe it to be unlikely that Mongolia will make such an unfriendly gesture towards Russia. Colonel General Viktor Yesin, the former chief of the Main Staff of the Strategic Missile Troops (RVSN), suggested in an interview with "NG" that this article may be an attempt to cause dissension in relations between Ulan-Bator and Moscow and Beijing. "If one assumes that such an agreement between Mongolia and the USA will be achieved, it will indeed give the Americans enormous opportunities to collect intelligence on a broad range against Russia, particularly Siberia and the Far East, and especially against China. But I believe that Mongolia's leadership will hardly choose to take such a step, considering the dependence of Mongolia's economy upon the PRC and Russia," Yesin said.

He emphasized that Mongolia has assumed the status of a non-nuclear zone and that the country's leadership has demonstrated its intent to remain a strictly neutral state. Ulan-Bator, which is an observer in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (ShOS), does not wish to become a member of the organization, as long as it maintains its neutral status. However, in the opinion of our interviewee, the fact that Mongolia was largely ignored in the 1990s has had a negative impact upon our relations.

Galina Yaskina, a doctor of political sciences and a chief scientific worker at the Institute of Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is also not inclined to dramatize the situation. Mongolia has proclaimed that it is not permitting the deployment of foreign military facilities within its territory. In addition, relations between our countries are characterized as a strategic partnership. This policy was again confirmed by the Declaration for the Development of a Strategic Partnership on 25 August 2009, which was signed during the state visit of President Dmitriy Medvedyev to Ulan-Bator. Vladimir Putin was in Mongolia shortly before that.

Doctor Yaskina told "NG" that: "The decline in combined trade has been halted, and the turnover of goods has reached a level in excess of one billion dollars ahead of schedule. The role of regional and border ties is increasing. In February of this year the heads of the governments reached an agreement at the request of the Mongolian side in regard to a massive outbreak of hoof and mouth disease in cattle in Mongolia, by which the Russian Federation will give humanitarian aid to Ulan-Bator by offering it 57,000 tons of fodder grain," Doctor Yaskina told "NG." In the area of defence, cooperation has a positive dynamic and joint exercises are organized. In the future, the development of relations will undoubtedly be of a constructive nature, she summarized.