Contemplating Georgia, Part 3: Mongolia

Guest post by regular commenter and reader Aceface, who has extensive professional and personal experience in Mongolia.

Georgia and Mongolia have many similarities, especially in the context of US foreign relations. Both are former communist states. Both were dominated by Russia through the 20th century even before the Communist revolution. This influence waned when the Soviet Union collapsed, but Russia remains a powerful neighbor, part of the reason that both now enjoy close ties with the United States, which led to troops being sent to Iraq. (They are both also homes of tyrants—Georgia gave the world Stalin, Mongolia brought us Genghis Khan.)

But the differences are greater than the similarities. Georgia is a mountaineous country which is geographically small yet home to a basket of ethnicities that complicate its political existence. By contrast, Mongolia is a country of steppes and deserts and has simple borders with only small and quiet Kazakh minority. The archenemy of Georgian nationalism is Russia, which it sees as its primary, and indeed only, hostile power. Mongolia is more wary of China, but has a more balanced approach and is keenly aware that it is stuck between two enormous and powerful states.

A “third neighbor” has played an important role for Mongolia since its independence in 1911. Japan briefly served in this capacity in the early 20th century, when Mongolian nationalists in inner Mongolia collaborated with the Japanese. Inner Mongolia received autonomy when the Japanese ruled Manchukuo. But of course, this collaboration disappeared once Japan faced a challenge at home and pulled out, leaving Mongolians to deal with the fall-out: with the first signs of cross-border pan-Mongolian nationalism, Stalin ordered the liquidation of thousands of Mongolian intellectuals for the fear of solidarity with Mongols in China.

Today, the third neighbor is, in some ways, America. But the experience with Japan may have made Mongolians more realistic as to what a so-called “third neighbor” can do, and it maintains strong relations with Japan, both North and South Korea, and unlike Georgia, does not antagonize its neighbors. By contrast, Georgia’s unrealistic expectations of American protection and NATO power brought on the current conflict with Russia. Mongolia is also reluctant to join multilateral organizations and has stayed away from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Mongolians realize that no outside power can project its power at the heart of Inner Asia forever, and the reality of living between two giant neighbors is something that Mongolia will arguably have forever.

Of course, because Mongolia does not threaten the interests of Russia or China like Georgia threatened Russia (bypassing pipelines, American troops presence, NATO involvement, etc.), both countries generally think of Mongolia as a strategic backwater. So Moscow and Beijing can be more generouis with Mongolia becoming close to the US, and its role as a buffer state won’t change—at least not in the eyes of Moscow.