EAI Fellows Program Working Paper Series No. 18

Abstract

After centuries of dependence on the Qing and Soviet domains, Mongolia became independent in 1990. Since then, it has sought to preserve independence while balancing the interests of its two neighbors, Russia and the People’s Republic of China. To counterbalance the influence of these two actual neighbors, Mongolia has cultivated relations with states that do not border it, but which serve as metaphorical "third neighbors." Chief among those external balancers is the United States, the involvement of which provokes anxiety in Moscow and Beijing. Thus, Mongolia’s independence has affected, and is affected by, geopolitical rivalries among the great powers. One manifestation of rivalry is competition for access to Mongolia’s mineral and energy resources, leaving Mongolia vulnerable to "soft colonialism," in which its economic and political autonomy may be compromised, even if territorial integrity is not. Ulaanbaatar’s clever foreign policy has enhanced Mongolia’s status, but its independence is threatened by factors it cannot control.
1. Mongolia
2. Geopolitics
3. Geostrategic
4. Great Game
5. Third neighbor
6. Mining
7. Soft colonialism
8. Buffer
9. Sino-Russian relations

Author

Alan M. Wachman, Associate Professor of International Politics, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

This paper was submitted to "EAI Fellows Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia" supported by the Henry Luce Foundation based in New York. All papers are available only through the online database.

For centuries, Mongolia was a territorial buffer. When the Manchus conquered China and established the Qing empire, they swept Mongolia into their realm. When the Qing collapsed, Moscow sucked Mongolia into its own expanding domain and, during the period of Sino-Soviet enmity from the mid-1960s to 1989, the Soviet Union stationed troops and military equipment in Mongolia to enhance its strategic advantage over the PRC. For Moscow, Mongolia was then a territorial buffer.the particularities of Mongolian terrain underscored its salience as a shield behind which Russia felt more secure than if Mongolia had been in China’s hands (Garver 1988, 217; Liu 2006, 342). While Mongolia apparently sought Soviet protection against the prospect of Chinese irredentist expansionism, its territory was used by Moscow to ensure shorter lines of attack on the PRC than the Soviet Union would have otherwise had and to offer greater strategic depth in which to combat a PRC assault, had Beijing launched an assault on the Soviet Union (Soni 2002).

Since Mongolia became independent of the Soviet Union in 1990, neither Beijing nor Moscow has viewed Mongolia as a territorial buffer. However, Mongolia has played the role of what might be called a geopolitical buffer. What Moscow and Beijing seek of Mongolia is not a barrier that can be subordinated by one to enhance the defense of the homeland territory from assault by the other, but a neutral region where each of the two neighbors can be assured of Ulaanbaatar’s political pliability and an absence of menace. It suits Beijing and Moscow that Ulaanbaatar is deferential to their own core interests, so long as Mongolia does not give precedence to the interests of one over the other. In that sense, Mongolia is still a buffer, but its role is defined politically and economically, rather than territorially, by its determination to be an unaligned zone of neutrality in a region with a fierce and bloody history of geopolitical friction. If Mongolia were to align itself too closely to either of its proximate neighbors, it would surely spark alarm. Should it lean too far toward Moscow or Beijing, the other would swiftly see Mongolia as a territorial buffer subject to exploitation by the other side. Likewise, both Moscow and Beijing would balk if Mongolia were drawn too tightly into the embrace of the United States...(Continued)