Everyone's friend: How Mongolia stays on good terms with Russia, China and western powers
The first luxury hotel to be built in
Mongolia
and once the only one with a constant supply of hot running water, the Ulaanbaatar Hotel is now something of a curiosity of Soviet-era architecture. But for a couple of decades after it opened in 1961, this monumental building with its broad, 17-bay facade, was a rare, cosmopolitan venue in a remote, landlocked country under communism.
'The world was divided, uncertain, and even on the brink of war. During this time, the Ulaanbaatar Hotel was a home for many foreign diplomats and curious international journalists,' said Mendee Jargalsaikhan, director of Mongolia's Institute for Strategic Studies.
He was speaking in the hotel at the start of the 10th Ulaanbaatar Dialogue on Northeast Asian Security, an annual conference that brings together diplomats, security experts and academics from across the region and around the world. Last week's conference featured speakers from
China
,
Russia
,
Japan
and
South Korea
, along with the
United States
,
Canada
,
Australia
and a number of central Asian republics.
North Korea
sent representatives every year until the coronavirus pandemic and they have yet to return. But Mongolia, which was among the first countries to recognise the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), has good relations with Pyongyang and the organisers hope the North Koreans will return.
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After 70 years as a communist state with close economic, diplomatic and military ties to the Soviet Union, Mongolia became a liberal, parliamentary democracy after 1990. It normalised relations with China, established links with the US and the European Union and joined the Non-Aligned Movement.
Russian president Vladimir Putin in Ulaanbaatar last year. Photograph: Byambasuren Byamba-Ochir/AFP via Getty Images
David Curtis Wright, a history professor at the University of Calgary, said Mongolia succeeded where Canada failed in the 1980s and 1990s in its aspiration to become everyone's friend. It has good relations with all of the six other states with stakes in northeast Asian security.
'Mongolia understands continental northeast Asian security concerns better than Japan, South Korea or the United States, and Mongolia also understands Japanese, South Korean and American security concerns better than Russia, China and the DPRK,' he said.
'Mongolia understands that war in northeast Asia would involve four nuclear states – the United States, Russia, China and the DPRK – and two other heavily armed states, Japan and South Korea, and the possible results are unthinkable. In addition, embroiling the world's three largest economies, the United States, China and Japan in a war in northeast Asia would be utterly catastrophic for the world's economy.'
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Mongolia's constitution prohibits foreign militaries from transiting through its territory or basing forces there and the country has declared itself a nuclear weapons-free zone. This has not stopped its troops from serving in support of the US in Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan but Mongolia's forces are better known for their service on United Nations peacekeeping missions.
Northeast Asia has no military alliance similar to Nato and Mongolia faces a formidable challenge as it tries to manoeuvre between Russia, China and the western powers without compromising its sovereignty or democratic governance. Without the financial resources to build defence capabilities like Singapore or Switzerland, Mongolia has to engage in 'soft balancing' using diplomatic means.
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Its policy is modelled on that of Finland during the cold war, so that it avoids joining security alliances with the great powers and abstains from taking a stance on controversial matters. Like Finland in the late 20th century, Mongolia today presents itself as a neutral place for the great powers to negotiate.
Yoko Iwama, a professor of international relations at Japan's National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, told the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue that the waning of American hard and soft power presented challenges for northeast Asia. The advanced, affluent societies across the region had to think about how to avoid a war that would be too destructive for any of them to accept.
'This is somewhat similar to the 1970s in cold war Europe. Both the US and the USSR were facing multiple difficulties, and therefore wanted a relaxation of tensions. They also needed mechanisms and institutions to run this process, since the build-up of nuclear weapons had made war simply suicidal for both sides, a series of dialogues between East and West,' she said.
'We need a similar process in Asia. We need management of nuclear weapons between the nuclear powers, which are actually much more diverse today than in Europe in those days. Although the total number of warheads is a lower today than during the cold war, that does not make these weapons less destructive.'
Chinese vice-president Han Zheng with his Mongolian counterpart Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh in Ulaanbaatar last year. Photograph: Byambasuren Byamba-Ochir/AFP via Getty Images
The shift in US foreign policy since
Donald Trump
's return to the White House has unnerved some of Washington's allies, particularly in Europe. But for Kirill Babaev from the Russian Academy of Sciences, it is one of a number of positive changes in the international environment.
He said there were signs that the lowest point in opposition between the great powers had passed and de-escalation was now under way, with the US and Russia talking on the phone at least once a week and Washington and Beijing sitting down to discuss their trade relationship. He noted that Japan and South Korea's trade ministers had met their Chinese counterpart to find common ground and both Seoul and Tokyo were considering easing sanctions against Russia.
'The second trend is definitely that the Global South is raising its voice because it also needs a place at this table of negotiations,' he said.
'I think for the first time in centuries, we see the situation where the Asian countries, the regional players, are becoming strong enough to become part of global policy, and that countries like China, India, the Middle Eastern countries, countries of Africa and Latin America would like to play a more vital part in global politics and the global economy. This, I think, creates a totally new world for us, a world that we have never known before, a world which will be free of so-called European, or if we call it white, domination in world politics or economics.'
Babaev said that the three major nuclear powers – the United States, Russia and China – now recognised these major trends in global affairs and that western domination was coming to an end. They would have to compromise to achieve a more stable system of global governance and he suggested that Washington, Moscow and Beijing could become the cornerstones of the new system.
'These will not be the only participants of the process, but without any of the three largest nuclear powers ... it will not be possible. We should definitely include also the regional powers, those who are now increasing their role in the world economy, including countries of south Asia, southeast Asia, Middle East and Latin America,' he said.
'I think probably it will be a good idea to revive the Security Council of the United Nations, which is actually a stalemate at the moment, just because the great powers cannot agree. But in case a compromise will be found between the three key players, United States, Russia, and China, then I think the regional partners will also follow, and we will revive the system of international governance, which will last for another five decades or something like that.
'I think we need an overall security guarantee agreement, which will look like probably something between Yalta 1945 or Helsinki 1975, or probably something new, but in any case will guarantee that the national interests will be secured and respected for all countries, either big or small.'
Babaev's proposal outraged some European participants, who noticed that Europe was the only region he did not mention as having any role in shaping the new global system. He later criticised the EU for failing to offer any constructive proposals for peace in
Ukraine
and wanting to prolong the war there.
Zhuo Zihan from China's Fudan University struck a more cautious note, asserting Beijing's opposition to the idea of spheres of influence or a carve-up between the great powers. And he was more pessimistic about the prospects of an early improvement in relations between the US and China.
'Let's be candid. We recognise the structural nature of this rivalry. But we are concerned by a tendency in some American political circles to treat China not as a peer to be engaged, but as a threat to be contained. This really has profound implications for our region.
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'US strategy documents increasingly define China not as a strategic partner to manage peacefully, but as a systemic rival. This kind of thinking presses regional actors to choose sides. It stokes arms races, and undermines the co-operative spirit,' he said.
'China does not seek hegemony, either in Asia or anywhere else. We are not believers in exclusive spheres of influence. We believe each country, including Mongolia, the Koreas and Japan has a right to chart its own course in peace on an equal footing with sovereignty and dignity.'
Jenny Town, a senior fellow at the Stimson Centre in Washington, said that intensifying big power competition, the hardening of adversarial security alignments and rapidly growing defence budgets in northeast Asia reflected attempts to mitigate security dilemmas but also exacerbated them. A northern triangle of Russia, China and North Korea appeared to be pitted against the southern triangle of Japan, South Korea and the United States.
Smog settles over the Mongolian capital every winter. Photograph: Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images)
But she suggested that Trump's return to the White House and
the election in South Korea of Lee Jae-myung
, a foreign policy pragmatist, could make a difference.
'The changes in leadership, especially in the United States and South Korea, pose an international opportunity,' she said.
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'Each country has ample agency to redefine both the extent and the limits of co-operation in the region, both within the alliance structure as well as across adversarial ideological alliances. So while both Washington and the newly elected government in Seoul have pledged the continuous strengthening of alliance co-operation, both bilateral and multilateral, and to bolster readiness against the threats, there's a degree of uncertainty about the sustainability of such co-operation.'
Over two days, participants in the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue discussed security challenges and multilateral co-operation in northeast Asia, co-operation with central Asia,
climate change
and energy resilience. Mongolia will host the Cop17 climate talks in 2026 and the country has suffered an increasing number of severe weather events linked to climate change.
Khishigjargal Enkhbayar, co-founder of the United Nations Association of Mongolia, said that young people across northeast Asia understood the need to work together to address climate change and energy resilience. This was true of all the region's challenges.
'Consensus in our region will not come very easily, especially as we lack a multilateral mechanism for co-operation,' she said.
'And yet this region, home to two nuclear states and a quarter of the world's GDP, cannot afford continued fragmentation. I think this was very much echoed throughout the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue conference. Our futures are very deeply intertwined, and whether we acknowledge it or not.'
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