Category Archives: Nuclear Issues

‘Strategic Competition’ is War by Other Means

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A Troubling Legacy of the Westphalian System

By

Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar (to be published)

A debate rages amongst western scholars and strategists of the significance and what elements of statecraft make for the essence of “Strategic Competition”. The argument is centrally about influence over the international system.

The phrase “Strategic Competitiveness” first made its appearance as a polcy touchstone, notably, in the 2018 National Defence Strategy of the USA. The document identified the revisionist states of China and Russia as strategic competitors. China for using “predatory economics” to intimidate lesser endowed nations while militarizing and persisting with its illegal claims in the South China Sea; and Russia as an “autocratic nationalistic state that eschewed the economic, diplomatic, and security aspirations of its erstwhile bloc”. The document further envisages challenges in every arena of human endeavour and the only answer it presents is to “field a lethal, resilient and rapidly adapting Joint Force. The Joint Force is combined with a robust constellation of allies and partners…aim being to achieve favourable balances of power that safeguard the free and open international order”.  

This understanding of the policy has indeterminate strategic significance, rather cramped relevance and harps on a chord reminiscent of the cold war in its quest for ‘Balance of Power’ and the carving out of two adversarial military Blocs. In a sense it entails substantial economic, political and military risks not just to the protagonists but to the world at large; and significantly excludes nations who may choose not to accept a confrontational posture or retain strategic autonomy.  

The Westphalian Paradox

The Peace of Westphalia, signed in 1648, ended long drawn out wars between feuding Christian societies in Europe. Its purpose was to consolidate a teetering Holy Roman (German) Empire that had been ravaged by wars, fragmentation and economic depredation. It created the “framework for relations” within West-Central Europe. Concepts of state sovereignty, new to Europe, and diplomacy find mention in the text of this Treaty.

While it was one of the attempts at codifying relations between states through an accepted set of laws, there was a looming threat that it provided a shield against. For, not only did it provide a basis to hold together Christendom as existed in West-Central Europe, but was an elemental collective pledge to confront the Ottoman Empire which was rampaging to its peak of power, wealth and expansion in South East Europe. What the Ottoman began as conquests in Asia Minor, led to the annexation of vast territories in Bulgaria, Greece and much of the Byzantine Empire. With the fall of Constantinople during the reign of Mehmed II (1432-1481), the Sultan’s dominion extended well into central Europe and was an ominous portent to the ‘Holy Roman Empire’.

Historical facts remind us that through the ages no International Order has ever been absolute nor has any one hegemon been endowed with the necessary power to control an Order in perpetuity. The emergence of rising powers provides the necessary dynamics for transformation of International Order; which in a way, mistakenly, provokes the mind to accept the simplistic axiom that “wars occur when the established order is challenged”.

The lamentable paradox is that the Westphalian System still remains the model for international relations, politics, concept of state sovereignty, basis of treaties/conventions and, critically, sets the criterion for “Global Governance”. This despite the arrangement not having space for emerging powers of autonomous bent. Just how pernicious the system can be was captured in  President George W. Bush’s confounding declaration to a joint session of Congress on 20 September 2001 where he left the comity of nations with a Hobson’s choice, “…Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make, either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

Contrarian states are recast as a threat to order; this crudely was the essence of the system. Competing powers within the fetters of the Westphalian Model are projected to be disruptive entities that seek to topple the balance of power and rebuff the institutions that are at the heart of Global Order extant. The system ironically was conceived to provide a security arrangement specifically for the Christian principalities of Germany (of the 17th century) while keeping some form of cohesiveness amongst believers of the faith within the ‘Holy Roman Empire’, significantly to serve as a bulwark against the rampaging Ottoman Empire to the South East. Its applicability was constrained by geography, race, identity, ethnicity and critically belief; its purpose was specific for Hapsburg control (1438-1740). Indeed, as a professor of military history at the National Defence Academy asserted …in this realm, command was neither “Holy nor Roman and not even was it an Empire!”   

The Post-Cold War Order

Global Governance is a post-Cold War concept (1995). Recognizing the new climate in international relations, former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, in 1989, brought together a group of international leaders to explore new approaches to managing global relations.  His efforts laid the foundations for the establishment of an overdue Commission on Global Governance. Indeed the inabilities of the Westphalian Model can be seen in various modern international institutions including the United Nations which is a leading example of how civilizational experiences of diverse societies that make up the international milieu of the day are excluded. The UN in addition to its many spectacular failures —often as a result of indecision but more on account of its weaknesses is a case study in what ‘Global Governance’ ought not to be. There are neither binding rules to forge agreements nor can the power of veto be reined-in through the intellectual science of reasoning. What carries the day is which side is backed by brute power. As in the war in Syria; when agreement falls prey to selfish interests; or in Rwanda, where the genocide of 1994 is yet to find closure. Selectively applied international norms that suit privileged interests, is another agent, as in Iraq and in the Russia – Ukraine conflict; or more perilously due to finance driven bigotry, as during the recent Covid 19 pandemic. In all cases the very purpose of the UN to maintain peace and security, uphold human rights, provide humanitarian aid and put in place a model for sustainable development amounts to little else than empty talk, bereft of value and at times, an instrument to justify malfeasance.

Recognising the weaknesses of the Westphalian Model the Commission suggested the creation of “a multilateral regulatory system of management focussed on development of global independencies and sustainable development”. The idea has in its original form lost traction over time and wobbles on the edge of history’s garbage pail. Was this an act of geopolitical short sightedness or self-centredness of Western elites and influencers or was it a deliberate act that saw in the post-Westphalian world the need to cement a place for the Global Hegemon?    

The Focus; Sway over International Systems

The method of conducting international relations and the institutions that enabled the creation of alignments are pre-disposed to the idea of Realpolitik and are, consequently, interpreted in terms of the national interests of the resident hegemon. The coming of an emerging power, accordingly, sends out the call for an impending confrontation. One of three possible fallouts of such interplay is; assimilation into the Order, defeat by force of arms or advent of a new Order.

International benchmarks for accomplishment in Strategic Competition are five-fold: vitality of citizenry, technological prowess, strength of economy, demography and geographic endowment. These characteristics form the basis for determining two critical competitive priorities:  degree to which rivalry can be advanced and at what stage rivalry turns to “unfavourable-antagonism”, both priorities are driven by blinkered national interest, defy common understanding and border on brinkmanship. Since the struggle is, in many ways, over the essential character of the international system its institutions, rules and conventions; it is the individual perception of ‘universal application’ that prevails over the narrative. Morality, in the matter, plays a minor part. The key lies in how the anecdotal can be reconstituted to present a convenient reality. Indeed, it will also explain the power exertions that dominate this pursuit.  

The dangerous dichotomy lies in the divergent pulls that exist between a globalised world economy and exclusive state polity. While the world economy relies on a secure and stable system of governance for trade, communications and development for which organisations exist on land and in the air controlled and regulated by United Nations institutions such as the International Chamber of Commerce, the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the World Trade Organisation; and on the oceans it is built on the bedrock of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). UNCLOS lays out rules for everything from global shipping enterprise and management of offshore natural resources including fisheries, critical minerals, oil, and natural gas—all managed primarily through the convention’s authority. Yet, Strategic Competition is not about how best these institutions can collectively be governed; but about control of these very institutions.      

Outcome of Competition: Collapse, Capitulation or Compromise

Studies refer to the concept of strategic competition over a range of interpretations; from a tautological point of view as “the act of competing” to the more nuanced “attempt to gain advantage over a nation or group of nations that are believed to pose a threat through self-interested pursuit of power and influence.” Two phrases in the latter description that become significant are:  ‘…believed to pose a threat’ and ‘…pursuit of power and influence’, both of which remain open ended in their implication and substance. While the issue of what comprises a ubiquitous threat and what commonly is recognised as the object of power and influence remains masked. Indeed, for a nation to announce that it is embracing Strategic Competition says nothing about how it will do so—that is, what specific instruments of state power to achieve success it will employ—or what it will prioritize. 

A realistic scrutiny of the relationships involved conforms to the historical concept of ‘Great Power Rivalry’, which in the past determined foreign policy, economic rapacity and national security; all characteristics that underpinned domination. The question that begs an answer is ‘in what way does Strategic Competition differ from Belligerent Hegemony?’  If the former refers to the combination of one group of people or groups of people exploited by another group of people; then there is little difference. The process of competition is invariably a tussle of differentials in growth rates, technological prowess, ideology distinction and economic stability; which in turn impacts on political and ominously, military balance.

Our own experience of competitive rivalries since the age of colonial antagonism to the present, tend to ignore the critical question of outcomes as planners fail to occupy themselves with where ‘Competition’ is leading to. History of intense rivalries between nations, tell us, they end for one side, in one of three ways: Collapse, Capitulation, or Compromise. Outcomes that terminate in consequences other than these three often set the stage for a return to confrontation.

We are then faced with a strategic dilemma which Michael Howard (war and social change-an essay) underscored, “…there is no war without resistance; but without resistance and the possibility of resistance, there is no International Order.”

Strategic Competition in Ukraine; Hazards of Wavering Resolve

The downside of being a part of a group engaged in strategic competition is the danger of rapid escalation and ‘wavering-resolve’. The on-going conflict in Ukraine is an example of how rapidly the situation can escalate to armed conflict and how diffidence can queer the pitch when engaged in strategic competition. Jens Stoltenberg, the ‘On-Off’ NATO Secretary General, suggested Ukraine might today have to decide on some “kind of compromises”. The former Commander of the UK’s Joint Forces Command went a step further when he warned that Ukraine could face defeat by Russia in 2024. General Barrons is quoted as saying “there is a serious risk” of Ukraine losing the war this year. The reason, he attributes, is “because Ukraine may come to feel it can’t win”. “And when it gets to that point, why will people want to fight and die any longer, just to defend the indefensible?”

Why people will want to fight and die is very convincing logic, but to have reached this conclusion in a proxy war after two years of so much disruption, wasteful destruction and sapping of global economies is baffling, to say the least.   

Enervating Frailties and the Virtue of Biding One’s Time 

While the agitation continues with academics and think-tanks over whether there exists a red-line between ‘Competition’ and ‘Conflict’; China has embarked on its own discernment since the 1970s, of ‘What is’ and ‘How’ Strategic Competition is to be prosecuted. At its heart are two pivotal precepts: the first is that the accumulation of power, beyond a point, can turn on itself; for the essence of competitiveness is to recognise that ‘Power’ plays a covering role as a bulwark against precipitate recourse to arms. Targeting frailties of the adversarial system and measures taken to enervate them (over time) through the manipulation of information and undermining values; till decay and doubt sets in is the aim. Beijing believes they can wait. The second is to guard against reckless acts by the adversary that may compromise China’s festering debilities and, indeed, undermine their scheme of enervating the adversary. Not having put a time frame for their strategic plans has lent considerable credibility to China’s position as a major power. Going back over the last half century, it is apparent that Beijing has persisted with this policy of playing one superpower against the other and yet, often, acted in defiance of the two. Despite its vulnerabilities, it neither yielded nor has it been pliant to the entreaties of Moscow or Washington. For these very reasons and as a participant in the many political and military conflicts of the post-cold war era China has today attained a singular stature in the international system as a superpower.

As China’s power grows and the contours of its Grand Strategy of ‘Rejuvenation and Revision’ are fully unveiled, the four ‘Initiatives’ or instruments of its strategy can be seen from a perspective that is set on competing and overturning existing order:

  • The first is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that poses to finance and boost infrastructure of dependent and client economies and in turn become the engine of Beijing’s geo-strategic military, financial reach and political clout.
  • Second, the Global Development Initiative (GDI) launched in 2021 at the UN General Assembly targets developing nations with small-scale projects that address poverty alleviation, digital connectivity, climate change, and health and food security; aim being to further their hold and reliance on Beijing. At its core is Beijing’s emphasis on economic development as the basis for human rights rather than equality and dignity.
  • Third, the Global Security Initiative (GSI), launched in 2022 seeks to promote China as the central arbiter to coordinate security needs of the region first, followed by global demands, through diplomacy contingent upon China.
  • Lastly, the Global Civilizational Initiative (GCI) introduced in March 2023, promotes a state-focused and state-defined values system that serves to eliminate universal values such as human rights and democracy. In a GCI-related address, Xi called “peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom” “common aspirations”, and not rights, of humanity. The GCI argues that the perceptions of such “common” aspirations are “relative” and that countries must “refrain from imposing their own values on others.

Meanwhile globally nations in the West and Asia are determined to push back against what is seen as Chinese hegemonic designs and revisionism. Multilateralism in this milieu provides a tremendous advantage, particularly so when strategic interests converge when confronted with a Beijing that seeks ‘Rejuvenation’.

Beijing has emerged and has thrown the gauntlet to unsettle the existing status-quo. In strategic terms the greatest risks in the competition are that contestants develop policies and technologies that threaten existing critical economic networks and informational dependencies within the prevailing international structures. This provides the logic for preparations by the military to fight an indefinable and often elusory conflict through the formation of coalitions and arming to the teeth. Who then benefits from Strategic Competition?

The Indispensible Enemy

               Daniel Ellsberg, the late, well acclaimed whistle-blowing author of the Pentagon Papers, posed a query: ” In the current state of world affairs where, uncertainty and conflicts are the rule; who benefitted from war?” Certainly in Ukraine, the South China Sea and Gaza it cannot be the chief protagonists but the contrivers and puppeteers of conflict.

The proxy war in Ukraine benefits most the USA; for the conflict has turned back to history and revived a threat from an “alliance of authoritarian powers” working against Western democracies. It has paved the way for American growth and leadership, and fashioned an antagonistic bloc comprising Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. And so too potentially, has the brewing conflict in the South China Sea; the conflict in Gaza is complex for it has gone beyond retribution.

Israel’s war against Hamas may have been justified by the latter’s murderous assault of 07 October 2023, but for the battering of Gaza to be prosecuted with a perverse and unrelenting ferocity for over ten months begs an explanation that cannot be vindicated by the idea of ‘rightful-reprisal’. Indeed, is there more to this conflict? Could it be that carnage provides the opportunity to take the first step towards realising the long sought after alternative to the bothersome absence of control over the Suez Canal? The Ben Gurion Canal project proposes to connect the Gulf of Aqaba (Eilat) in the Red Sea with the Mediterranean Sea and would pass through Israel and end in or near the Gaza Strip (Ashkelon). And if this Canal became a reality the Suez moves to the background for it can handle deeper draught and greater volumes of traffic. Most critically the Canal would be under firm control of the USA, Israel and the Western powers.

The key to continuing Great Power status, as Ellsberg ominously suggested, was the incessant availability of an indispensible enemy and the will to competition with that foe.

Global Governance and the Quest for a Stable World Order

The ‘Authoritarian Bloc’ is in a perilous struggle to bring about the decline and collapse of its perceived rivals with the aim to don the mantle of world leadership. In such a calculus, international affairs of the day, presents a world in which it is not just the ‘balance of power’ that is sought to be toppled; but every element of society—economy, diplomacy, law, trade, cyberspace, social media, journalism, culture and indeed the very nature of peoples—have become tools in a strategic competition. States with political authority over the sources of power of a nation are uniquely positioned to impose costs on other states. They have the advantage, in the short term, since they can wield elements of ‘soft and hard power’ unquestioned and direct through central control of these instruments. This state of affairs can only last as long as citizens remain convinced of motivations and kept blind to hazards of such competition.

With proliferation of nuclear weapons and the growing inclination towards the use of low-yield weapons to salvage a troubled conventional campaign; balance of power has ceased to be a fully relevant and credible principle of global order. However, it still retains a presence in international relations, more particularly, in the sphere of regional relations among states. So it is neither balance of power nor the exercise of brute force or even the emergence of a global hegemon that will assure a stable world order. Global governance in its pristine form is order that emerges from institutions that recognise the equality of humankind, acknowledged processes, formal agreements, and informal time-honoured mechanisms that negate unilateral military action and regulates collective action for a common good.

Global governance encompasses activity at the international, transnational, and regional levels that transcend national boundaries. In this conception of global governance, cooperative action based on rights and rules that are enforced through a combination of financial and moral incentives and, should the need arise; collective military power that proposes to replace disruptive strategic competition. If not, as Willy Brandt in 1980 put it, “Are we to leave our successors a scorched planet, impoverished landscapes and ailing environment?”

The Putin Interview; Stoking of a Nuclear War

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By

Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar (To be Published)

Putin’s History Lesson

On 06 February, 2024, Vladimir Putin breached his self-imposed hiatus on the Western media and offered a sitting to a Mr Tucker Carlson.  The reason and timing of the interview, the Western media will have the world believe, was an attempt to influence the forthcoming American presidential elections. ‘Naked and provocative propaganda against President Joe Biden’s Ukraine Policy,  claimed the detractors which included the so called “liberal” media. And yet, the session comes at a time when NATO is suffering from pangs of ‘Ukraine Fatigue’, burden of the conflict has globally stressed economies, drain on military resources of the West hollowing out their own preparedness, anxiety of nuclear escalation and indeed the third year of war and loss of lives has left the Ukrainian citizenry with fading appetite for the conflict.

In the meantime Putin, in his inimitably sardonic style, set about delivering a primer to Tucker on Russian history. Beginning with the first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus, that arose in the 9th century; through the influence of the Byzantine Church that gave to the state Orthodox Christianity, he arrived at the rule of Oleg the Wise (879 CE), a Varangian Prince who founded an empire which  over three centuries spread to cover the modern State of Belarus, Slavonic-Norse Russia and significantly, Ukraine. Putin appeared to emphasize that the unit of historical understanding was neither nations nor epochs but societies such as that which bound the Orthodox Christians together. This historical narrative, to Putin, established the civilizational connect with Ukraine and set the stage for Tucker’s and obliquely the West’s discernment of Russia’s title to territories inhabited by cultural brethren.

In dragging Tucker through the common attributes of shared civilizational institutions, what really was Putin’s aim? Was it to educate his viewers through Mr Carlson or was it to show conviction that the West and NATO could do little to alter the new reality of Ukraine other than to accept it. Intervention, as Putin warned recently, would lead to nuclear war.

The Perilous Balance of Terror

Even after the many threats of nuclear escalation during the course of conflict, few in the West subscribe to the view that Mr Putin will make an irrational decision to attack NATO states with nuclear weapons in retaliation for support to Ukraine. And yet, everything about this conflict whether it was the abrogation of the Minsk Agreements, President Yanukovych’s ouster, Zelensky’s bid to enter NATO, the purposeless sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, the self-blow to Western economies or even the stubborn support to a proxy war; are irrational in character and illogical in progression. The final astonishing contradiction is what the Western allies consider likely; Russia will use tactical nuclear weapons. Yet, they persist with supporting the war with munitions and training in the entrenched strategic belief that tactical nuclear weapons are far less damaging than city-destroying high-yield nuclear weapons and therefore (outrageously), more “usable.” In this disordered ambience, is there mass insanity in the belief that the risk of escalation by Western allies is not a certainty?

The hostile detonation of a nuclear weapon, of any yield, would be an unprecedented denial of the dogma of deterrence, a theory that has underwritten military policy for the past 75 years. The idea stipulates that adversaries are deterred from launching a nuclear attack because by doing so they risk an overwhelming counterattack. Possessing nuclear weapons isn’t about winning a nuclear war, the theory goes, it is about preventing one. It hinges, perilously, upon a balance of terror. But, one is at a loss to explain the brinkmanship that has persistently stimulated this line of thinking that the provocation for nuclear use in some absurd way advances the war-aims. The danger of nuclear use in Ukraine fluctuates. It waned after Ukraine’s counter offensive of the summer of 2023 proved a fizzle. But, if Kremlin feels threatened by increased NATO intervention or conflict losses, it could create more dependency on Russia’s nuclear arsenal; the threat could rise exponentially.

Back to the Putin Hearing; Mounting Logic for Nuclear War

Coming to the central issue of termination of the war in Ukraine, Putin made a revelation. A few weeks into the conflict, he disclosed that Ukraine was ready to sign a deal with Russia during peace talks in Istanbul (April 2022), until Western powers, led by the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, ordered Kyiv to scrap the deal. Negotiators had tentatively agreed on the outlines of an interim settlement: “Russia would withdraw to its position on 23 February 2022, when it controlled part of the Donbas region (Donetsk and Luhansk), and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.” Putin then highlighted the impact of Boris Johnson’s surprise visit to Kiev on 09 April 2022; its purpose, he alleged, was to break off from talks and scuttle the deal for two key reasons “Putin cannot be negotiated with, and the West was not ready for the war to end.”

Efforts to obtain authentic facts on details of the Johnson-Zelensky meeting through Britain’s “Freedom of Information Act 2000” have thus far met with bureaucratic chicanery. While on ground, the British government has encouraged the continuation of the war through huge arms shipments and incendiary rhetoric. When read in conjunction with the US Secretary for Defence statement of the same period; that the Biden administration’s objective in arming Ukrainian forces is to “see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine”; lends credence to Putin’s revelation. In the meantime, the European Union goes into strategic dither as France turns Hawk from a Dovish posture of the past. French President Macron’s stance toward the war in Ukraine is at best, inconsistent. He has argued that Europe “must get prepared for a long war” in order to put Ukraine in the best possible position for negotiations. He also defended his decision to keep talking with Putin, arguing that “we must do everything to make a negotiated peace possible.” Differences over the response to the war have deepened between Paris and Berlin in recent weeks, after the German chancellor said long-range Taurus missiles would need German soldiers on the ground in Ukraine to look after them and that was a limit that he was not prepared to cross. President Macron has angered his NATO partners by suggesting that sending Western troops could not be ruled out. In this ambience of contrariety what may be deduced is the absence of resolve to either fuel the conflict towards a decision point or to sue for a negotiated peace. Macron’s logic for peace appears skewed when he warned that Russia was seeking to extend its power and would not stop now: “if we let Ukraine lose this war, then for sure Russia will threaten Romania, Poland and Moldavia;” forgetting that NATO is bound to defend the former two being members, while public opinion in Moldavia (over 60%) is against NATO membership.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, further muddied the waters when he warned recently that Ukrainians were “not running out of courage, they are running out of ammunition”. He said the shortage was one of the reasons why Russia had made recent advances on the battlefield, and he called on the allies to provide Ukraine with what it needed. He even suggested the possibility of deploying troops in Ukraine much to the astonishment of some allies. In the backdrop, the Trump-Biden tangle in the looming American general elections, has put on notice the (hither to) trusty US security umbrella.

What is becoming increasingly apparent is the lack of strategic solidarity in NATO’s approach to the conflict; but more importantly the inability to note that it is to the Kremlin’s advantage to make this a conflict against NATO; for it frees Putin’s strategic options. As the veil on the West’s proxy war falls away, the West’s rhetoric and discordant postures suggest the possibility of a  mounting logic for a full blown nuclear clash.  

Reopening Peace Talks

Putin’s exposé is the cause for several misgivings: Why did Western leaders want to stop Kyiv from signing a seemingly reasonable deal with Moscow? Did they consider the conflict a proxy war whose aim was the emaciation of Kremlin’s power? Why is the NATO rhetoric suggesting a more robust intervention in the war? And, most importantly, what would it take to get back to the table?

To restore peace talks is, debatably, very challenging. Particularly so, given that both Ukraine and Russia have (at least publicly) hardened their negotiating positions significantly in recent months. But there are some indications that could help in piecing together a deal. One possible track back to the negotiating table is to resurrect the “Black Sea Grain Agreement” of July 2022, in which Kyiv, Moscow, Turkiye and the UN agreed to restart wheat exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. The deal had held strong despite continued hostilities, allowing more than one million metric tons of grain to enter the world’s “insecure food markets”. This accord broke down in July 2023. Today it is replaced by a precarious under-the-counter shipping corridor. The passageway is guaranteed by no nation other than a notional humanitarian acceptance by both belligerents of the embarrassing impact of the war on deprived neutrals. This common position if enlarged provides an opening to a more all-embracing peace talks.

The second track to a detente is centred on the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power complex that continues to be threatened by artillery shelling from both sides. A monitoring committee of the IAEA has been tasked to ensure that the plant remains safe condition. Kyiv and Moscow have both shown by this concession that they want to diminish the co-lateral impact of the conflict, and are amenable to negotiate on this score. But, as long as this conflict does not find a truce, the spectre of a catastrophic event — whether through an unintended strike on the Zaporizhzhia complex or a deliberate escalation to nuclear war — will continue to loom. It’s time for Russia, Ukraine, and the West to recognize that there’s only one way to put an end to these risks; come to the negotiating table. Unfortunately, Putin is in no mood to make the first move ever since Boris Johnson’s ill-advised ‘April visit’.

The state of the conflict and loss of lives and resources, economic fatigue of western donors, the ebbing enthusiasm coupled with frustration of the Proxy and crucially, the looming danger of an unintended nuclear clash, all add up to and seem to advocate an urgent return to the Table.

Ramification on Nuclear Arms Control Structures as a Conclusion

Russia blocked a UN agreement aimed at shoring up the much delayed Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review in August 2022, citing concerns about clauses related to the situation at the Zaporizhzhia. The move highlights the negative effect that the conflict has had on the non-proliferation cause. But despite the failure of the NPT Review there is a glimmer of hope in the endorsement of a framework for strategic arms limitation: “The framework for a U.S.-Russian arms control arrangement is not perfect and will require concessions from both Washington and Moscow. But this is part of the arms control bargain, and the benefits, like the non-use of nuclear weapons in warfare since 1945, have consistently outweighed the perceived costs” and indeed, geopolitical markdowns.

 The awkward strategic irony in all this is the status of Russian Uranium exports to The USA. A program, ironically, dubbed Megatons to Megawatts was part of a raft of non-proliferation efforts undertaken ‘cooperatively’ at one time by Moscow and Washington to sequester and dilute stocks of nuclear weapons and materials. The Program continues unabated, conflict or no conflict. 

Geopolitics of Securing the Maritime Environment

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By

Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar

(The article has been published in the December 2023 issue of the DSA and is available at the following link https://www.dsalert.org/DSA-Editions/2023/December-2023_Vice_Admiral_%28retd%29_Vijay_Shankar%2C.pdf )

Understanding Geopolitics: A New Slant

The term ‘geopolitics’ has historically been employed in reference to a nation’s interests and stratagems adopted to secure them. This understanding is subjective; for  it does not account for the full significance of the term and even bears negative connotations. In the run-up to the Second World War, both Germany and Japan’s expansionist policies were justified using the ‘geopolitical’ argument garbed in bizarre concepts of Lebensraum and the Greater East Co-prosperity Sphere . More recently In the post-war era, America saw in its strategic doctrine of ‘Containment’ an instrument that assured its geopolitical dominance in world affairs.

In the 21st century, geopolitics aims at explaining how geography can impact politics and how states try to mitigate these effects.  Geography, in other words, contributes to defining the boundaries of what is possible to achieve in international relations along with economic and security advantages that may be leveraged. China In its South China Sea policy has shown just how ‘creatively’ this can be achieved.  

Integration of Maritime Power with Geopolitics: Survey of the Domain  

Thucydides, in the 4th century Bce, chronicled events of the Peloponnesian War (431-404Bce).  Aggressive moves by Athens to establish empire and control the geopolitics of the Mediterranean caused fear in Sparta and provoked war. The conflict bears so many similarities to wars waged through the ages across both the maritime and continental dimensions that it offers lessons to this day. Athens forged a maritime alliances, while Sparta led a coalition of continental powers. The years of fighting depleted manpower and financial resources on both sides. Eventually, the Spartans destroyed the Athenian fleet, leading to capitulation of an exhausted Athens. Three significant lessons emerge:

  • Wars of attrition between balanced alliances do not yield spectacular victories, rather, exhaustion and a blurring of lines between victor and vanquished.
  • Maritime superiority by itself does not win a war that is fought for influence over land.
  • Wars stimulated by overconfidence leave much to chance.

Towards the end of the 19th century it was thinkers like Mahan and Julian Corbett who set ablaze the maritime spirit of the new century. They saw the maritime domain as a medium through which a nation could not just project power, but also control the strategic direction of any conflict. In The Influence of Sea Power upon History, Mahan analysed the use of British naval forces to demonstrate that nations that exercised control of important parts of the maritime domain, dominate history. More specifically, it was the effect of sea power upon wealth and prosperity of nations that moulded the course of history and gave to Britain the heft to achieve global pre-eminence. Mahan’s significance was twofold: first, in the realm of grand strategy he asserted that power came from integration of maritime activities with geopolitics and colonial-economics. Second, command and decision making in war from a position of naval superiority gives to the advocate both a logistical highway and a flexible ‘avenue of approach and exit’. He emphasized that sea power was about commercial use of the domain in peace and its control in war; about profits and power projection. Mahan’s theory remains persuasive, in part, to this day.

Corbett, on the other hand, believed naval influence on the maritime domain to be a part of national policy which had sway over the non-military elements of state power. He saw the fleet not merely an instrument of control but as an accompaniment to assuring the “act of passage on the sea.” It was from this critical tenet that concepts of Sea Denial, Sea Control and Power Projection evolved. Perhaps his abiding legacy to contemporary maritime thought was the idea that “freedom of the seas was an irreducible factor” for the sea was not territory for conquest; nor the oceans defensible. What it constituted was a substantial determinant in the growth of a nation and prosecution of war (Corbett Julian, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, Longmans, 1911).

Language of War

Within an international system that hovers between order and anarchy, differentiated pace of growth among states engenders rivalry over resources, technology, commerce and markets. Realists of the early 20th century, such as Halford Mackinder and Friedrich Ratzel suggested how power may transcend geographic realities making the threat of armed conflict a general reality. At the same time, abstractions of national honour, prestige and other national interests that often separate the state from its citizenry are at odds with the violence of, as Clausewitz phrased it, the “Language” of War. In this fray experience of wars of the second half of the twentieth century suggests that people faced with the “language” of war, prevail. Add to this the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction with their intrinsic menace of ending political purpose and we have the coming of indirect, relatively scaled down version of conventional wars albeit with high destructive potential fought in the penumbric shadows of a nuclear holocaust.

Rise and Fall of Powers: A Familiar Cadence

There is empirical evidence to suggest that the global economic crisis of the 1930s that in part set off the Second World War was responsible for thrusting the US into astonishingly favourable strategic circumstances. This situation not only triggered the Cold War but ultimately in the late 1980s, forced the melt-down of the Soviet Union and set into motion another ‘fall and rise’ in the global power structure. The characteristics of the economic crisis of the thirties rings a cadence now familiar to contemporary conditions – discontent as the basis that govern international economic systems, protectionism, unfair trade practices, one-sided competition, restricted access to resources, creation of proprietary mercantile routes and nationalistic policies; all in contradiction to the demands of an increasingly globalised world. Ironically they also characterize ‘Strategic Competitiveness’. And as long as it transpires within an international order that is influenced by uneven growth and shrinking natural resources; the quest for power will invariably be linked to the generation of military capabilities that can secure domination.

The Fragility of Power-Balances in the International System

The ultimate reality of the international system is the place that power enjoys in the scheme of assuring stability in relations between nations. Uncertainty in relations queers the pitch, in view of the expanded space for forces that can disrupt the status quo. For example, China has unambiguously articulated three canons that make for its strategic objective of ‘Rejuvenation’; revision of the existing order, sustained growth at any cost and by any means and regional pre-eminence. In the absence of a security oriented cooperative impulse, the problem with such sweeping strategies is its blindness to recognize that, we are in fact dealing with diverse regions, fast depleting resources and sea spaces that are the busiest of all the “vast commons”. The reluctance for collaboration on mutually acceptable terms makes the potential for friction high and the only consideration that could bring about change is the ability to attain a strategic posture that serves to deter and stabilize. Availability of full-spectrum military forces becomes central to any power equation and in consequence provides the foundation for order.

So, in our assessment of current geopolitics we note, the extinction of the “Cold War” was a temporary hiatus that after three decades has morphed the communist bloc to an autocratic and nationalistic faction comprising China and Russia that seek revision of world order on its terms. This refrain brings them in direct conflict with believers of unrestricted economic activity. At the same time the vision of unrestricted global economic activity has proven so fragile and subject to the many nuances of politics that, power deficient nations are left out.

The Challenge of China

Since inception in 1949, China’s strategic focus has shifted from ‘revolution-survival-recovery’ to an emphasis on ‘rejuvenation’. Both internal and external factors have shaped this vision. Internally the “century of humiliation” has given primacy to regime survival as the leading strategic goal, while rejuvenation expresses a quest for pre-eminence in world affairs on China’s terms. And thus, externally it has led to tensions over its revisionist and expansionist policies that have characterized its rise.

Militarily securing China’s overseas interests has increasingly become a part of its strategy, as articulated in their 2019 Chinese defence white paper . In the South China Sea Beijing is threatening control all within what it calls its “9 Dash Line”, which in 2016, the International Court of Arbitration at the Hague had unequivocally rejected.

The enigma of ‘the China-approach’ is that, having greatly benefitted from international systems, it has deliberately undermined the very same system by not fully supporting its governing elements; whether WTO, UN, IMF or the World Bank. Past complacency about Beijing’s predatory economic, military and ideological intentions have today crystallised to a danger that is real and may trigger an avoidable conflict. Even without war, tensions in the Indo-Pacific, along India’s northern borders and the slow weaning away from dependency on supply chains emanating from China have caused huge economic costs and deepened the chasm between the two blocs. An assessment of not just China’s strengths, but also of its vulnerabilities is, therefore of direct strategic consequence.

China, after four decades of military modernisation, has transformed to a formidable offensive force. With 2 million personnel and an annual budget of $225bn, it has the world’s biggest army, air force, navy and a vast missile force. By 2030 it could have 1,000 nuclear warheads. China believes it will have the capacity to invade Taiwan by 2027, at a time when their power projection ability extends to the Second Island Chain. Within the Tokyo-Guam-Philippines-Western New Guinea chain, China believes its strategic Anti-Access Area Denial (A2/AD) forces will be in a position to impede the movement of enemy forces while compelling them to operate further away from this protective Chain. It is strategies such as A2/AD that continue to intimidate global order by threats of control of the South China Sea.

China’s military has evolved from its roots in Soviet doctrines to a modern war machine capable (by its own assessment) of combined operations under conditions of intense cyber and information warfare. In philosophy, there has also been a shift from “Mass to Precision”. Recruitment is, however, hard ever since the one-child policy was enforced (1980-2016) and dazzling growth made the military a not so attractive career proposition. The PLA struggles to hire skilled technical manpower to man their modern platforms, maintain high-tech equipment and fight a technological war. And to top it all they are woefully lacking in combat experience. Although China has made scientific leaps, from hypersonic missiles to stealth fighters, its military-industrial complex trails behind in areas such as metallurgy, engines, design abilities and still relies on foreign fundamental research. Embargoes on semiconductors and components have made it harder to catch up with global scientific frontiers. Despite Mr Xi’s endless purges, corruption appears to be pervasive. It may explain why General Li Shang Fu was sacked as China’s defence minister this year after only a few months in the job.

China’s military infirmities exist alongside its deepening economic woes. A property crunch and the Communist Party’s growing hostility towards the private sector and foreign capital are impeding growth. China’s GDP will drop to 3.5% by 2028, projects the IMF. Investment by multinational firms into China has currently turned negative for the first time since records began in 1998, suggesting foreign companies are not reinvesting their profits in China, and rather they are moving money out of the country. China’s $18trn economy has slowed, perhaps irreversibly.

Behind China’s military and economic stutter lies a third, and deeper problem – an autocratic dominance of a system that no longer allows serious internal policy debate. Economists and technocrats have been side lined in favour of party loyalists. Given Premier Xi’s style of functioning there is real danger of strategic miscalculations; for, China is challenging not just today’s economic orthodoxy, but the world’s political and security framework as well without bringing about a change within her own political morphology.

Defining Strategic Space and Intent  

With uncertainty driving geopolitical dynamics, the first imperative for India is to bring about policy coherence between strategic space and security interests. It begins by defining the geographical contours within which a strategy can be developed to contend with challenges identified. The broad parameters of this definition must factor in the regions from where trade originates, logistic supply chains traverse, energy lines run, sea lines of communication span, narrows therein and potential allies with who mutuality exists. In this context the sea space encompassing the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific provides the canvas within which our strategic interests will play out. This Oceanic body is dominated by ten important choke points and narrows. In essence the theatre gives to global trade efficient maritime routes that power the region’s growth. It accounts for over 70% of global trade, 60% of energy flow and is home to more than 50% of the world’s population; it also provides the context within which Indian maritime strategy must operate with the intent of assuring order, deterring upheavals and promoting mutuality. While our logistic chains traverse areas outside the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific these will need to be secured through partnerships, diplomacy and cooperative security measures.

Strategic Competitiveness   

The phrase “Strategic Competitiveness” mentioned earlier, first made its appearance in the 2018 National Defence Strategy of the USA . The document identified the revisionist states of China and Russia as strategic competitors. China for using “predatory economics” to intimidate lesser endowed nations while militarizing and persisting with its illegal claims in the South China Sea; and Russia as an “autocratic nationalistic state that eschewed the economic, diplomatic, and security aspirations of its erstwhile bloc”.

Strategic competitiveness has become one of the central preoccupations of governments. National wealth and economic prosperity are to some extent inherited but, in the main, created by the innovativeness of people. In this milieu the role played by the individual nation and partnerships in international relations have become more rather than less critical. Yet for all the writing on the topic, there is no theory nor is there an accepted definition of the term. It is amply clear that competitiveness amongst states develop when the existing status-quo is challenged, or indeed when a state or an alliance contests an emerging challenge. The tools of the contest are the combined “comprehensive national power” of one or more states pitted against the other.

Contestant Groupings

Ironically, Beijing’s recent White Paper titled “National Defence in a New Era” outlined its territorial ambitions in the South and East China Seas, Yellow Sea, Taiwan and Ladakh. It has warned regional powers of its willingness to use force and use it first if its ambitions are threatened. On cue, in response to China’s aggressive manoeuvres; the formation of a trilateral alliance between Australia, UK and the US (AUKUS) and the continuing Strategic Security Dialogue between Japan, Australia, India and the US (Quad) have made it amply clear that “countering China’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific” is number one priority. AUKUS’s mission is complemented by the Quad; the latter presenting a new security architecture that combines both military and economic prowess amongst nations that share a common vision of a free and rule-based order. The resolve to strategic confrontation against revisionism is thus emphasised. Such a visible demonstration of collective resolve is, perhaps, the only way to dampen Beijing’s aggressive expansionism, for through the waters of the Indo-Pacific over 70% of China’s energy flow and 60% of trade ply. It is China’s “growth-jugular” and it is here that like-minded states must develop strategies that potentially signal the ability to stymie Xi’s dream of “rejuvenation.” 

That these initiatives have made China “edgy” is clear from their declarations that “China will certainly punish Australia with no mercy”. Fearing forced unification, Taiwan is tightening its ties to the U.S.; Japan, is engaged in its largest military build-up since the Cold War; India is readying forces along its borders, developing strategies to occlude vital sea lanes in the Indian Ocean and has engaged partnerships that threaten China’s vulnerabilities; Australia is opening up its northern coast to U.S. forces. France, Germany, and the UK are sending warships into the Indo-Pacific to assert their rights. Clearly,  nations have become less enthused by China’s market and more worried about its disturbing intent.  

 Challenges in the Maritime Domain

China’s rising comprehensive power has generated an internal impulse to military growth and an external push for unilateral expansionism in the South and East China Seas and its extended regions of economic interests. It has developed strategies that target the maritime domain to assure a favourable outcome to what it perceives to be a ‘strategic competition’ for resources and control of the seaways.

The consequences of China activating artifices such as the Anti-Access and Area Denial strategy, unilateral Air Defence Identification Zones and geo-political manoeuvres to collar sources of raw materials, ports of dispatch and control of routes euphemistically called the maritime silk route and the establishing the String of Pearls in the Indian Ocean Region are clear to see. Debt traps that have been set by China to inveigle some of the hapless littorals of the Indian Ocean of their maritime facilities are symptomatic of a new form of colonial adventure. The paradoxical effects of China’s contrivances are to undermine its own strategic standing, hasten counter balancing alignments and urge a global logic of cooperative politics over imperial strategies.

The Maritime Environment: Considerations

In today’s context there emerges an all-encompassing concept of what is implied by “securing the maritime environment” and how it brings to play the comprehensive national power of a State particularly to forge partnerships and be willing to back consensual policies with military power. The safety and economic security of the nation depends upon the secure use of the near and far oceans in times of peace, tensions and during conflict. In order to develop a Strategy to secure the domain the need is to persistently integrate and synchronize existing means. Challenges in the maritime environment are centred on the following three considerations:

• Domain awareness through maritime Intelligence Integration.

• Operational Threat Response founded on wide area coordination strategies.

• Maritime Commerce Security Plan.

The quest for strategic leverage in domain is founded on an oceanic vision backed by the development of a posture that characterizes our resolve to fulfil the quest. Inspiration may take the form of a policy declaration in relation to a geographic region such as the ‘Act East Policy’, the ‘India Africa Forum Summit’, alliances and partnerships; or indeed the emergence of a power that threatens to revise the status-quo. Policy provides a frame of reference that not only has wide-ranging application but will remain central for purposes of force planning to develop posture.

Current membership of the original ten ASEAN grouping plus 6 is symptomatic of the shifting centre of gravity of geopolitics to the East. From a security angle, the inclusion of India, USA, Russia, Japan and South Korea in addition to China provides the rationale for strategic equilibrium. India and China along with ASEAN are set to become the world’s largest economic bloc. The grouping is expected to account for about 27 per cent of Global GDP. The buoyancy of the Indo-ASEAN relationship is backed by surging trade figures which is slated to hit USD 100 billion in the current year. With such burgeoning stakes strategic rebalancing in the region comes as a natural consequence. The expansion of the ASEAN and the creation of the ASEAN Regional Forum are suggestive of the littoral’s aspirations to counter balance the looming presence of China. Having thus brought about a modicum of coherence between security dynamics, strategic space and growth, we have the makings of a template to contend with the challenges that are present particularly the emerging unrelenting thrust by China for an exceptionable proprietary mercantile empire stretching across the region.

Force Planning to Secure the Maritime Environment

A fourfold classification of maritime forces has dominated contemporary naval thought. The grouping is largely functional and task oriented. It comprises of aircraft carriers, denial forces (including surface, air and sub-surface strike units), escorts and surveillance elements. Auxiliaries including logistic and other support ships and tenders provide distant and indirect support. While the ready availability of out-of-area bases, intelligence and strike elements become an imperative when devising cooperative operations.  In addition current thought has given strategic nuclear forces a restraining role to define and demarcate the limits within which conventional forces operate.

The make-up of the fleet must logically be a material and technological articulation of strategic concepts that prevail. India has for long aspired to attain a strategic maritime posture that would permit control and make safe oceanic spaces that serve to promote its national interests. And in times of hostility, influence the course of conflict. Partnerships such as the QUAD and the AUKUS provide the much needed basis for domain awareness, wide area strategic response and control mechanisms.

In this perspective, the fundamental obligation in times of tensions is therefore to activate means to first deter and if deterrence fails, to seize and exercise control over the ‘strategic space’ (it must come as no surprise that China develops forces necessary to realize its A2/AD policy). Pursuing this line of argument, it is the Aircraft Carrier Group and its intrinsic air power assisted by strike, surveillance and denial forces that sea control and security of control can be achieved. It is here that the true impact of the Aircraft Carrier is felt. Control and security of control is the relationship that operationally links all maritime forces with the Aircraft Carrier. In the absence of the latter, naval operations are reduced to a series of denial actions limited in time, space and restricted to littoral waters with little impact on the progress of operations on land. It is also for this reason that the Indian aircraft carrier programme today envisages a minimum force level of three Fleet Carriers at all times in order to meet the diverse tasks that the Navy may be charged with across geographically separated areas of interest under circumstances of change and uncertainty.

To Navigate the Crisis Ridden Stream

Bismarck suggested that great powers travel on the “Stream of Time” which they can neither create nor direct but upon which they can “steer with more or less skill”. How they emerge from that voyage depends to a large degree upon the wisdom of leadership. Bismarck’s sombre thoughts lead us back to our fundamental inquiry – whether the quest to secure the maritime environment lies in the turbulence of the ‘Stream of Time’  is a moot question, but how India navigates the crisis ridden stream is what leadership will have to contend with.