GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES

How Great Power Competition Is Changing the Geopolitics of Mongolia

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Jeff Goodson
Board of Contributors
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Jonathan Addleton

Jan 24, 2020 | 10:00 GMT

Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga speaks on Sept. 5, 2019, during the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia.

Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga speaks on Sept. 5, 2019, during the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia. Under Battulga, Mongolia has been deepening its relationship with Russia.

(MIKHAIL METZEL\Tass via Getty Images)

Highlights

  • To protect its sovereignty and independence, Mongolia has walked a geopolitical tightrope tethered by a "good neighbor" policy with Russia and China and a "third neighbor" policy with the United States and other countries.
  • The great power competition among China, Russia and the United States is changing the calculus on Mongolian sovereignty; the most visible feature of that competition is China's emergent regional and global hegemony.
  • For Mongolia, deepening its relationship with Russia and its strategic alliances with select allies will strengthen prospects for a hard global pushback from multiple directions should China ever decide to seriously threaten Mongolia's sovereignty and independence.

Mongolia is in a uniquely precarious situation, geographically, demographically and economically. Landlocked and isolated in East Asia, it has the lowest population density of any sovereign nation in the world. Its 3 million people, in a country about the size of Alaska, are dwarfed by 133 million Russians to the north and 1.4 billion Chinese to the south. It also has one of the coldest climates in the world. While these factors greatly constrain Mongolia economically, it has the world's best cashmere, huge eco- and cultural tourism potential and -- most critically -- an enormous mineral resource endowment. After the Cold War, rooted in Francis Fukuyama's idea that the end of history was nigh, there was great initial enthusiasm for a lasting new liberal international order. That notion proved both illusory and short-lived. By 2014 great power competition had fully reemerged, bringing with it a fundamental shift in the international security...

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