Category Archives: Nuclear Issues

Triggering Nuclear War: Hazards of Husbanding Wargames

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Vice Admiral (retired) Vijay Shankar

Busting the canard that, between India and Pakistan the nuclear overhang is so fragile that a terrorist provocation by Pakistan cannot be met by a conventional response, for fear of triggering a nuclear exchange.

Wargaming

The roots of wargaming trace back to ancient India and China. The former refined the art to the classic board game of Chaturanga which in time evolved to the modern game of Chess, where a campaign was waged between two opponents through manoeuvres by the two arrays alternately; each piece had intrinsic abilities limited in their facility to engage the adversary. Much like the dynamics that drive a nation state whose comprehensive power is the aggregate of its individual strengths as defined by indices that take into account military, political, economic, cultural and leadership factors. So the game was played between two equivalent forces pitted against each other. The skills of a player was determined by his dexterity to manoeuvre, thrust, balance and out-think his adversary through deception and by attaining a stronger strategic posture within the rules of the game. Loss of the king led to what, in geopolitical terms, is referred to as the end of a regime.  

Both China and India also gave to the world the classic texts “The Arthashastra” by Chanakya and “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu emphasizing the importance of strategic thought as a critical feature of statecraft. The two texts form a compilation of aphorisms and principles that outlined the framework for wielding power and, indeed, waging armed conflict. They also prescribed the determinants of good national politics and defined the groundwork for use of modelling and wargaming as a training and decision-making tool. As history progressed, various cultures, including the Greeks and Romans, developed their own wargames, demonstrating their utility in honing military strategy.

The 19th century marked a significant transformation in the field of wargaming, particularly with the Prussian Army. Theorists such as Carl von Clausewitz translated their experience in the field to formalizing the concept, recognizing that military decision-making could benefit from structured simulations of battle scenarios. This in turn led to the development of Kriegsspiel, a table top wargame that allowed officers to practice operational and tactical decision-making.

The essence of the wargame is in discerning the thought processes of a Planner in arriving at a strategic, operational or even tactical decision; and analyse how best to arrive at an optimal outcome that could serve the purpose of enriching the art of state craft, developing war fighting doctrines or even honing skills of a tactical Commander. The intention was not to steer the wargame in a direction that served to fulfil or satisfy a preconceived argument.

The South Asian Stability Wargame

In March 2013, the Centre on Contemporary Conflict at the US Naval Postgraduate School conducted a strategic wargame, euphemistically called the ‘South Asian Stability Workshop’. The event was scheduled in Colombo Sri Lanka.  

The Wargame was politico-military in nature; its stated objective was to “examine crisis escalation dynamics in South Asia”. It involved the creation of a setting that was steered through events and three sequential response moves for which the country teams developed political and military directives. The directives for each move were analysed and adjudicated by Control setting-up specific situations for the next move. The third move was to lead to a possible decision to use nuclear weapons. Events were triggered by a planned Pakistan sponsored terrorist attack in a crowded sports stadium in India that resulted in the indiscriminate killing of a very large number of spectators including several VIPs. The entire process that shaped and drove the wargame was controlled within the rigid parameters of the following structure:

  • A scenario design that put in place the geographical setting, forces involved and the objectives of each side. This left little planning elbow room.
  • Country teams were assigned, however the participants neither had exhaustive domain expertise nor the behavioural bent of extant leadership. 
  • Game mechanics which included rules, parameters, and decision-making processes were established to govern how players could interact with the scenario.
  • Gameplay followed a rather inflexible path of decision making, issue of orders to forces, and engagement in strategic and operational discussions. The game in effect yo-yoed from the tactical to the Strategic levels with unreal rapidity.
  • The use of conventional forces in response to the terrorist provocation at once saw the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons by Pakistan in the tactical battle area where Indian Independent Combat Groups (ICG) launched rapid retributive thrusts to strike at terror infra-structure and their supporters.    
  • Analysis: Observers or analysts monitored the game, collecting data on the decisions made, outcomes, and the impact of those decisions on the scenario with only one purpose; to initiate a nuclear exchange.

As the game proceeded, the intention of Control became more than apparent; it was to compress the existing nuclear overhang to an extent where it provided the space for acts of State sponsored terror but none for a conventional kinetic response. The Game turned out to be a not so convincing argument for the tendentious notion that, between nuclear armed nations, there was no space for retaliatory action by conventional forces to terror attacks planned, armed, trained and sponsored by one of the States that had adopted the use of terror as an instrument of foreign policy.  

Launch of a Nuclear Canard that Persuaded a Strategy of Restraint

After the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989, there was a surge in tensions along the Indo-Pak Line of Control in Kashmir which constituted, as interpreted by US ‘experts’, an imminent nuclear flash point. Two contributory factors provoked this ‘narrative’ said the American interlocutors; firstly, the antagonists involved were undeclared nuclear armed states and secondly, events of 1989 that led to the withdrawal of Russia from Afghanistan had released the victorious Mujahidin for deployment elsewhere and in Kashmir; it also set in motion a hubris in the Pakistan ‘deep-state’ that translated to a brutal insurgency in the Indian state of Kashmir. The latter resulted in genocide and mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits out of the State leading to the shoring-up of Indian security forces in the State. To substantiate the American narrative a dubious report was released by the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research titled “India-Pakistan Relations: A Delicate Balance” that suggested (rather contrarily) that in the unlikely event of  “hostilities, India may escalate the conventional war by triggering events to take out all of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons (ironically, as recent as end 1989, the Bush Sr administration had signed off the fact that Pakistan did not possess nuclear weapons) facilities in coordinated surgical strikes.” This document was further addled in May of 1990, when the then Deputy NSA Robert Gates, came scurrying to the sub-continent on a covert Quixotic mission to defuse a mythical nuclear war.     

And thus began a long saga of misinformation and half-truths that emphasised the canard that between India and Pakistan the nuclear overhang was so fragile that a terrorist provocation by Pakistan must not bring about a conventional response by India for fear of triggering a nuclear exchange. Unfortunately, from the 1993 Mumbai bombings, hi-jacking of IC 184 in 1999, through the Kargil ‘invasion; to the assault on the Indian Parliament in 2001, the 2008 three day carnage in the financial capital of Mumbai and a host of other terrorist onslaughts by Pakistan based terror outfits (Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizbul Mujahedin) the self-shackling mantra of denying conventional response to terrorist attacks took root in India as the inane ‘Strategy-of-Restraint’ which contributed in large measure to paralysis of military policy when confronted with incidents of cross border terror attacks.

To Bleed India by Inflicting a Thousand Cuts: Instrumentation of Terror Groups

Carl von Clausewitz’s unerringly wise counsel ought to have fallen on Indian ears, that even the “simplest” strategic decision making can be bewilderingly difficult. And so it must be with Pakistan’s threat of nuclear weapons usage in protraction of a terrorist attack sponsored by them in the first instance; despite there being no precedence of such action, nor incentive of benefit or even inclination to escalate to a nuclear exchange. The Pakistan Establishment’s doctrine has remained committed to two cardinal dogmas, firstly the instrumentalisation of Islam using jihadi proxies as tools of a policy (Fair Christine, Fighting to the End, Pg. 80-89) to “bleed India by inflicting a thousand cuts”; and secondly, to support the discredited ideology of the “Two Nation” theory in order to sustain popular appetite for unending conflict with India. In this frame of reference, the question of intensifying the conflict to the level when nuclear self-destruction is assured appears aberrant.

The link between sub-conventional warfare and nuclear war fighting is at best a tenuous one. Conceptually, no amount of tinkering or reconstitution of nuclear policy can deter a conventional response to terror attacks. Such a notion would appear far-fetched because of the very nature of the weapon involved. Pakistan has in its arsenal tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) with the stated purpose of countering an Indian conventional strike. Almost as if to suggest that they control the levers of nuclear escalation. This is an odd proposition since India does not differentiate between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, (the bed rock of its “No First Use” policy).   

In the end analysis, the use of nuclear weapons introduces a new and uncontrollable dimension. Logically, if a Pakistan sponsored terror attack is the triggering event of a sequence of reactions, then it must equally be clear that their nuclear red lines give space for a conventional response. After all, the premise that a terror attack is seamlessly backed by nuclear weapons is not only ludicrous but is not even the Pakistan case. For, when dealing with the threat of use of nuclear weapons, to suggest that ambiguity and First Use provide options, is to suggest that nuclear war fighting, almost in conventional terms, is an option. This is denial of the nature of nuclear weapons and statements that have emanated from Pakistan’s leadership support the idea that only a threat that jeopardises the very existence of that State can provoke the First Use of nuclear weapons, by which is implied;

  • Loss of vast territories
  • Substantial destruction of the military
  • Economic strangulation
  • Destabilising of the nation can provoke the first use of nuclear weapons.

Against the reality of conventional war with its limited goals, moderated ends and the unlikelihood of it being outlawed in the foreseeable future, the separation of the conventional from the nuclear is a logical severance. Nuclear weapons are to deter and not for use; intent is the key; transparency and an abhorrence of ambiguity are the basis of its credibility. These remain the foundational principles that a nuclear weapon state must adhere to. Given the politics of the region, historical animosities and the influence of jihadi principles on the military in Pakistan, the dangers of adding military perfidy is more than just a possibility; however, to link nuclear malfeasance appears fanciful.

And yet the bizarre hypothesis still persists that relations between the two nuclear armed neighbours are plagued by a nuclear nightmare; of Pakistan in possession of a hair-trigger, opaque, nuclear arsenal that has embraced tactical use under decentralised military control, steered by a doctrine seeped in ambiguity and guided by a military strategy that carouses and finds unity with jihadists, not forgetting that the effect of an enfeebled civilian leadership in Pakistan that is incapable of action to remove the military finger from the nuclear trigger only adds to this premise. But, it does not take a great deal of intellectual exertion to declare that this nightmare in the wake of Operation Sindoor stands busted.

The catch is, as Cohen so succinctly put it (The idea of Pakistan, Cohen Stephen, Pgs. 97-130) “Pakistan will continue to be a state in possession of a uniformed bureaucracy even when civilian governments are perched on the seat of power. Regardless of what may be desirable, the army will continue to set the limits on what is possible in Pakistan.” At the core of this outlook is the rather obsessive “utilisation of Islamist militant groups as tools of foreign policy” (Fighting to the end, Fair, Christine Pg. 85) and the fatal contradiction of neutralising some inconvenient jihadi groups while instrumentalising others to further their revisionist policies.

Operation Sindoor; Larger Impact of the 88 Hour War

From a long term war fighting perspective ‘Operation Sindoor’ signals a strategic metamorphosis in the nature and manner in which a nation’s military must reform in order to fight and win a modern conflict that is limited both in time and objectives.

On 22 April 2025, Pakistan sponsored terrorists killed, in a most barbaric manner, 26 tourists in the idyllic meadows of Baisaran near the hill station of Pahalgam in the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. What was singularly heinous about the massacre was the identification by religion of the victims and selection of men only shot at point blank range in front of wives, women and children with instructions to carry their message of religious odium to the rest of India. This assault was not a random incident of terrorist violence but carried with it a diabolical urge to arouse large scale sectarian passions within the country. The Resistance Front (TRF) was quick to claim responsibility for the carnage. The Front is an offshoot of the UN proscribed terror organisation, Lashker-e-Taiyba. It claimed control and responsibility not once on 22April but again the very next day. However, TRF denial on 26 April came after the Pakistani security establishment pressured the LeT-linked terrorist group to distance itself from the mass slaughter; for the purpose of the terror attack had failed on three counts. Firstly, the objective of undermining normalcy returning to Jammu & Kashmir, particularly, to impact the mainstay of the economy, tourism (a record 23 million tourists visiting the valley in 2024) had come a cropper as the flow of vacationers was quickly restored. Secondly, anticipated sectarian passions were never aroused as massive protests by Kashmiris erupted across the Valley against the attack. And lastly, the international community’s widespread and unconditional condemnation of the attack along with expressions of sympathy towards the victims. The immediate Indian reaction to the massacre came on 23 April with the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) being held in abeyance followed by a promise of a kinetic response at a time and place of choice.  

Operation Sindoor was more than a swift and precise military response to another cross-border terrorist attack. It marked a strategic inflection point. In just 88 hours, India used indigenous systems to strike hardened targets across the border with precision, speed, and overwhelming effect. No US systems. No foreign supply lines. Just BrahMos missiles, Akashteer air defence units, Rudram anti-radiation missiles, the Netra Airborne Early Warning & Control System (AEW&CS) and loitering munitions designed or assembled at home. The Operation was conducted in three distinct phases.

  • Phase I (Night 06/07 May), Operation Sindoor launched in retaliation for the Pahalgam massacre; targeted nine terrorist centres from Bahwalpur in the south, Muridke and Sialkot in the Lahore sector and Muzaffarabad along with 4 other sites in POK.
  • Phase II (08-09 May), Pakistan military response to the Indian attacks on terror sites with missiles, drones and UAVs, as it took ownership of the terror infrastructure.
  • Phase III (10 May), Indian suppression and counter-air operations aimed at destruction of select Pakistan air defence networks followed by crippling attacks on strategic Pak air assets, infrastructure and Command & Control networks. Pak DGMO calls for a ceasefire. India agrees for cessation of fire.

During Phase I, India targeted nine terrorist strongholds. Five in Pak occupied Jammu and Kashmir which included Sawai Nala camp in Muzaffarabad- a training centre for Lashkar-e-Taiba. Syedna Bilal Camp in Muzaffarabad- This was a staging area of Jaish-e-Mohammed. Gulpur camp in Kotli – This was a base camp of LeT that was active in Rajouri and Poonch areas of Jammu. Barnala camp in Bhimber.  And Abbas camps in Kotli- Fidayeen of the LeT were prepared here. Targets within Pakistan included Sarjal Camp and Mehmoona Joya camp, both in Sialkot. Markaz Taiba Centre in Muridke – Terrorists who participated in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks were trained here. Markaz Subhanallah in Bahawalpur; the HQ of Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) where recruitment, training, and indoctrination of terrorists targeting India was undertaken. Significantly the last two were major centres of terror activities and housed the headquarters of the LeT and the JeM. Battle damage Assessment revealed that all these targets were hit with uncanny accuracy and minimal collateral damage. Phase II and III emphasised, with telling impact, the inviolability of Indian air defences and the effectiveness of Indian counter air and offensive air operations.

Neutral analysts have determined that India’s Operation Sindoor was a decisive triumph for India, because Pakistan could neither penetrate Indian air defences nor could they cause any disruption to the offensive action taken by the Indian military. Indian airspace was free of any Pakistan aggressive action, while Indian counter air operations had rendered Pakistan open to bombardment by Brahmos, UAVs, hovering munitions and other missiles.

Eleven Pak air bases had been struck to the extent of annulling their operational capabilities. Also, five air-defence systems of Chinese origin had been destroyed opening vast gaps in their air defence environment. While at least two of their AWACS had been destroyed along with several fighter aircrafts either in the air or on ground; the strikes were accompanied by large scale spoofing and deception manoeuvres. More importantly their command centres including the vital one at the Nur Khan air base that houses its nuclear command facilities along with strategic mobility control and communication networks was rendered dysfunctional.

Meanwhile, Pakistani air-defences—built largely around older Chinese systems like the LY-80, HQ-9/P, and FM-90—were powerless to detect, deter, or respond to the strikes. In the skies over Pakistan, India didn’t just dominate, but its counter-air operations redefined and placed awkward questions for regional deterrence.  

Perspectives for Arm-Chair Strategists

The ‘88-hour’ engagement came as a breath of fresh air to strategists long entrenched in the belief that limited armed engagements could only be decided by the occupation of territories, weight of destruction and casualties rather than the impact of demoralisation, exposing vulnerabilities of defences and out manoeuvring of the adversary. In a reverse analogy, just as the machine gun and trench warfare provided the negative and bizarre logic for the clash of mass against mass resulting in a meat-grinder military doctrine; swift and complete counter air operations followed by targeted offensive air operations are the key to success in limited modern operations. Remember in Operation Sindoor counter air and offensive air operations followed in rapid succession of minutes rather than hours which had a paralysing and unbalancing effect on the adversarythat quickly resulted in the first calls for a ceasefire.

For the arm-chair strategist, some of who bewailed the fact that, cessation of operations came at a time when the Pakistan air space was wide open to an extent when a joint air-land thrust ought to have expanded their objectives to the occupation of territory and salients in POK. This is symptomatic of a lack of understanding of the nature of modern power, its application and its deterrent impact; that is, to prevent certain threats from materializing by posing an even greater threat. There is no inevitable symmetry between offensive and defensive power as both are influenced as much by resolve as by magnitude of power and immeasurable considerations such as surprise, geography, limitations on purpose and indeed the degree to which objectives are pursued. These characteristics of power will also determine the risks that the state is willing to take. Perils are heightened as offensive power gains the edge over the defense and penetrates to an extent when friction clutches-in. In operation Sindoor, objectives were limited, risks of getting embroiled in a drawn out slugging match of attrition particularly on land was to be avoided, remember the higher political directive “Samay seemit hai aur laksh bade” (Time is limited and our aims are large) almost as if to suggest that the engagement must be brought quickly to a decisive conclusion without jeopardizing our long term developmental agenda. Assessment of risks had to account for possible escalation and how far the adversary’s nuclear bluff could be called. Importantly, deterrence provided incentive for innovation, both political and operational to India that ran consistent with rapidly changing technology, as long as it was brisk in time and limited in space. The key consideration was that Sindoor was retaliation to an act of terror; so-much-so that had Pakistan chosen not to respond militarily, the operation would have concluded after Phase I.  

As for the “narrative-war” which some severe critics of Operation Sindoor believe ‘India lost the plot’; is there really any such thing that has a lasting impact in this age of transparency? In the American lexicon ‘narrative’ implies “a story or account of events, or the like, whether true or fictitious”. Surely the final arbiter was the stark photo evidence of the demolition of the JeM headquarters in Bahwalpur, devastation of the LeT headquarters at Muridke and other terror camps and critically the suppression of the Pakistan air-defences and the neutralisation of their strategic air stations including the Nur Khan air base. After all it was the Pakistan Director General of Military Operations that sued for a cease-fire.     

Legacy of Op Sindoor

A flawed strategic anti-terrorist doctrine will lead to not just advancing enticement for similar acts of terrorism but also absorb great energies and resources of the State in attempting to reconcile the act with advocacy of restraint; besides projecting an underlying softness of the State. In the absence of a doctrine, the case reduces to responding by determining the absolute rights and wrongs as determined without considering that the very sovereignty of the nation (by which is implied the ultimate authority of the State for the maintenance of order) is on trial. This makes for a recipe of inaction; unfortunately it was, to a great measure, the ill-conceived policy followed by India in the past.    

Perhaps the compelling legacy of Operation Sindoor is the new norm it has set for the Indian government, the use of force against terrorist-linked targets in Pakistan proper has now moved from “anomaly” to the “rule”. Whereas past crises of similar nature would elicit symbolic action, future attacks on Indian soil – especially those traced to organizations and infrastructure across the border, will invite a response of equal or greater intensity to target and degrade entities enabling terrorist action; which includes support and financing elements.      

Technology and Survivability of Nuclear Forces

There can be no absolute cure for war; yet in the absence of a total remedy for conventional war, there had to be hope to prevent catastrophe; from this developed the idea of deterrence, the instrument to enable deterrence was the nuclear weapon. And therefore the first and most vital condition from a nation’s security standpoint is to institute measures that provide a guarantee to the state (as well as the adversary) that a response to a nuclear attack will be a devastating retaliation in kind. As Churchill, in 1955, put it “…by a process of sublime irony, the world was facing a situation where safety will be the sturdy child of terror (balance of terror), and survival the twin brother of annihilation (MAD)”.  

The question then arises; will emerging technologies raise expectations to enable the employment of forces that will significantly reduce the survivability of an adversary’s nuclear forces in a conflict? If not, then is the perspective that Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) remains a powerful reason for a deterrent relationship to hold valid? Also, if missiles today can perform all of the technical functions of the strategic nuclear bomber with greater speed and more precision, then are we witnessing the phasing-out of the manned air vector? But at the same time has adequate thought been given to the change in character and vulnerability of a nuclear second strike policy based entirely on the missile (ballistic or cruise) launched from mobile carriers and driven by Artificial Intelligence? Operation Sindoor, within a matter of hours had exposed the vulnerability of the Pakistan air-defences and their National Command Authority. Did this in turn expose their nuclear arsenal to counterforce action? Also, will not the reliability of a counterforce strategy decline with time, technology and transparency? These are complex questions for the political leadership for whom nuclear strategy may be but one of his concerns, excessive complexity may itself lead to paralysis as Clausewitz had noted.

Conclusion

We began with the propagation of an intricately fabricated canard that “between nuclear armed nations, there was no space for retaliatory action by conventional forces to terror attacks planned and sponsored by one of the States that had adopted the use of terror as an instrument of foreign policy.” Despite the fact of the disingenuousness of the sham; its plausibility lay in the proposition that linkage between Pakistan’s use of terror organizations as a tool of state policy to wage war on India has perverse consequences that link it to nuclear escalation. This bizarre correlation, Pakistan will have the world believe, comes to play if and when India chooses to respond with conventional forces to a terror strike puppeteered by their “Deep State.” Fatefully this policy has led to a self-destructive urge that has decomposed the diversity of Pakistan society. Not only are some terror clients at war against the state but some have led the persistent call to violence against Shias, Ahmedias, Barelvis, Agha Khanis, Borees, Baluchis and not forgetting Hindus and Christians. The Army has shown absolutely no predilection to eliminate these outfits; only because they serve their purpose in India and for fear that any act against their terror clients is acceptance that the ‘two-nation’ is misbegotten and indeed spurious. 

At the heart of the matter is Pakistan’s, or at least its army’s, rejection of any separation of the Maulvi from the state. There are two critical reasons for this; firstly Muslims are seen to constitute a separate nation despite the fact of the creation of Bangla-Desh and the Muslim demography of India almost equalling that of Pakistan.  Secondly, the army’s self-appointed role to defend the “two-nation” ideology. Six days before the carnage of Pahalgam, the Pakistan Army Chief, on 16 April 2025, ranted on this ludicrous theme at a public convention of overseas Pakistanis, notwithstanding the successive military defeats it has suffered at India’s hands or the political and diplomatic setbacks it has faced has convinced it to revise its defunct ideological dogma. Operation Sindoor is yet another case of having suffered crippling strikes to its terror infrastructure as well as its vital air assets and air defence networks in just 88 hours. Yet, defeat for Pakistan is only with the death of its ideology and this can only occur if the army wills it. No amount of economic hardships (the state has been to the IMF for a bail out on 25 occasions in its short existence) nor has the failure of its many dictatorships that ruled it for 34 of its 78 years of existence in any way prodded the army to surrender its power or even allow a political system to take root in that country. The improbable paradox is that Pakistan is a case of an army that depends on an interminable conflict with India, a failing economy, splintering society, rapacious politicians and geopolitics of international opportunism for its very existence.

So the question that begs to be asked is why the leading democracy in the West is so disinclined to bring about a revision in the politics of Pakistan. And why, indeed, has it so vigorously supported the nuclear canard even though terrorism is a common universal scourge? And does the US Government need to be reminded that during the twenty-year “War on terror” in Afghanistan the Pakistan state and its army played a treacherous and duplicitous role that milked the US administration of over $32 billion while all the time providing safe havens and logistics to the very groups that they were fighting the war against. And who can forget where Osama-bin-Laden had gone into hiding, before he was found and killed. The White House, historically, works with and through the Pakistani army to manipulate that state’s foreign policy; it served a strategic “Pentagon-led” purpose up to the break-up of the Soviet Union. Is there a reason why the US is unlikely to lose interest in the failing Pakistan and is that because of the rooted relationship that their deep states have nurtured and benefited from over the years? Or does the sustenance of the nuclear canard form a part of, a yet unseen, strategic scheme?

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The Merz Declaration

By

Vice Admiral (Retd) Vijay Shankar

Scramble for the Nazi Atomic Bomb: A Stunted Programme

In the years leading up to World War II, Germany was at the forefront of theoretical and experimental physics pertaining to atomic energy. By the winter of 1938, German physicist Otto Hahn had discovered the physical reaction of nuclear fission after bombarding Uranium with neutrons. This discovery showed the Nazi government that weapons of mass destruction could be created from relatively small matter, leading them to recognise the awesome potential for devastation of nuclear chain reactions when engineered for military application. Werner Heisenberg (a contemporary) regarded as one of the most important nuclear physicists in history calculated that nuclear fission chain reactions when slowed down and controlled in a “uranium machine” (nuclear reactor), generate energy; when uncontrolled, the outcome was a “nuclear explosion” many times more powerful than conventional explosives. After Heisenberg reported that the enrichment of U-235 in Uranium was the best and only way to create explosives exponentially stronger than any every seen before, Hitler launched his atomic weapon programme. However, months later Heisenberg told the Nazi Weapons Bureau that an atomic bomb could not be built until 1945 and even then would demand a massive amount of critical resources and investments be diverted to the project. The uncertainties involved and the strategic situation in 1942 relegated priority of the programme.  

Despite availability of core intellectual theoretical resources, the failure of Germany to weaponize an atomic device may be attributed to three causes: the absence of a dedicated team of nuclear engineers resulting in the inability to rapidly realise the accessories; paucity of industrial support and significant investment to drive the project at the desired pace; lowering priority of the programme.

Restraints on German Nuclear Weapons Programme Post World War II  

As part of the accession negotiations of West Germany to the Western European Union at the London and Paris Conferences, the country was forbidden (by Protocol No III to the revised Treaty of Brussels of 23 October 1954 and Article VII of the Brussels Treaty of 1948) to possess or manufacture nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, with the proviso that the USA would stand guarantor of that nation’s  security. However, West Germany was plagued by doubts of whether they would in fact be left defenceless should a nuclear threat arise from the USSR.

By 1967, relations between the United States and West Germany were difficult because Washington was urging Bonn to support the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), which many conservatives in the ruling coalition opposed on grounds that the treaty was discriminatory by permanently denying West Germany the nuclear option. Then Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger was troubled that even if Moscow did not “intend to use threats or blackmail against Germany, the situation could change” and Germany “must consider how we could defend ourselves.” Against West German protestations of their need for nuclear weapons was the determined stand of the USSR that “we will not allow the Federal Republic of Germany to possess nuclear weapon”.

Germany since the onset of the Cold War has been under the “Nuclear Umbrella” provided by the  NATO Alliance, specifically by the USA. And Germany, on her part, has participated in the NATO nuclear weapons sharing arrangements and trains for strategic preparation and launch of nuclear weapons. United Germany is also restricted by the “Two plus Four Treaty” that supplanted the Potsdam Agreement of 1945. The Treaty prohibits nuclear rearmament of reunified Germany.

The Leaky Nuclear Umbrella

In February 1947, an exhausted, broke and heavily in debt Britain conveyed to the US State Department two diplomatic messages: one on Greece, the other on Turkey. Confessing that it could no longer continue its support for the Greek government forces that were fighting an armed Communist insurgency, Britain had announced plans to pull out of India and to wind down its presence in West Asia. The United States perceived an immediate threat of Greece and Turkey falling into Soviet control; and with it, potentially, the Suez Canal.

Almost overnight, the United States stepped into the vacuum left by the departing British. Declaring, “it must be a policy of the United States, to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.” It was the start of what became known as the Truman Doctrine. On the face of it was the idea that helping to defend democracy was vital to the United States’ national interests; however, the significance was, transition of leadership of the Western world from Britain to the United States, and so Europe has been protected by an American nuclear umbrella  since the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was the United States that promised NATO allies that any nuclear threat or aggression by the Soviet Union, and later, by Russia, would be deterred and, should the need arise, answered by the U.S. in kind. Today that partnership teeters on a razor’s edge as Trump’s America seeks rapprochement with Moscow. For with reconciliation between the two nuclear super powers comes a commitment to bring the Ukraine conflict to immediate closure, deny that hapless country membership of NATO; and in its wake stimulate a potential break-up of the post-World War II and post USSR order in Europe.   

Reports are today emerging that Ukraine had survived the three years of a sapping war on account of an American partnership that was intricately enmeshed at the operational level and involved continuously in the planning process, providing real time intelligence and the movement of massive logistic support. The partnership at every stage not only controlled the progress of operations but also extended to clandestine specialised backup. In addition the Partnership also suggested that “Armageddon” would ensue should Russia contemplate nuclear use.

With the current US administration, the nature of the Partnership and with it, the bonds that held together NATO’s common posture towards the conflict, now lie cloven in tatters. The rift in the transatlantic security relationship has today ruptured to what appears an unbridgeable chasm.

Deepening Rift in Transatlantic Security Relationships

The Chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz government, rattled by the prospect of America  withdrawing security guarantees in the wake of a possible Russia-Ukraine peace treaty, is preparing a fundamental readjustment of Germany’s defence posture. Declaring the US indifferent to the continent’s fate, Merz “questioned the future of NATO and demanded Europe boost its own defences. German’s sense of deep domestic insecurity prompted him to suggest that he’d look to France and Britain to form a European nuclear umbrella, to replace US guarantees”; despite knowing full well that both countries sorely lacked capability, commitment and control to provide such a shield.

In truth, no alternatives exist ever since both France and the UK disavowed the deployment of land or air based vectors outside their borders. Even their existing sea-based deterrent lacks credibility without US surveillance and support infrastructure; as a matter of fact the UK deterrent, based on the “Trident D5” SLBN, is critically dependant on arsenal and vital infrastructure located in the USA and the platform the 4xVanguard class of SSBNs were due for retirement by 2024; their replacement the “Dreadnought” class is not expected in service for another decade (first of Class keel laid in March 2025). As for the French Deterrent Force, it is based on 4xTroimphant class SSBNs and Rafale fighter bombers. It is therefore, a mistake for Merz, to assume that the Anglo-French nuclear arsenal could replace American guarantees.

Clearly, the suggestion was that the weight of the German economy could lend leadership and control to a potential joint nuclear deterrent. The indications are more than discernable that Merz is counselling a limited shared nuclear deterrent. Are we on the threshold of witnessing the emergence of Germany as the latest in a looming string of nuclear armed nations?

Collapse of a Nuclear Theology

Since 1946, a nuclear theology crafted on the argument, that “atomic weapons were useful only as a deterrent to prevent war” (Bernard Brodie, The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order); a canonic conviction that laid the foundation of the nuclear deterrence theory is, today, in the throes of collapse. Is deterrence no longer a milestone on the road to nuclear disarmament? Is Germany embarking on the resurrection of a long buried programme that could sound the death knell for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and in its fallout expose the hypocrisy of “Extended Deterrence”? And what becomes of the assurance to non-nuclear allies, who having abjured nuclear weapons, find themselves denuded of U.S. nuclear security guarantees? What is equally astounding is the naïveté of the allies to hold faith in the belief that America would shoulder the responsibility of putting its own forces, population and territory, at risk on behalf of an ally with neither a quid-pro-quo nor castling arrangement. Are we missing something here?

Was the upholding of ‘extended deterrence’ the price of leadership and indeed, the ‘exceptionalism’ that the USA enjoyed since the end of World War II? Has the global hegemon abdicated its responsibility?

‘With NATO or With Nuclear Weapons’: Ukraine’s Delusional Defiance

Post the controversial tongue lashing that the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky received in the White House on 28 February 2025 along with the stipulation that neither was there place for Ukraine in the NATO nor would there be a continuation of US weapons supplies; Zelensky has, reportedly, returned to his  defiant  declaration, ‘Ukraine in NATO or nuclear weapons’. Ukraine possesses the capability to build a nuclear bomb. It could utilise spent plutonium fuel from its civilian nuclear power reactors, estimated at approximately seven tons together with its longstanding expertise in nuclear physics dating back to Soviet times, Ukrainian scientists would face minimal technical barriers in developing nuclear weapons. However, the country lacks the necessary reprocessing facilities to extract and weaponise this material. Adapting existing Ukrainian missile platforms for nuclear delivery would, however, pose minimal technical challenges, as the country already manufactures several missiles that could be modified to carry a nuclear warhead.

An indigenous Ukrainian nuclear programme would face critical ramifications from its allies and expose strategic vulnerabilities. Loss of strategic support will be a reality if Ukraine pursues nuclear weapons; jeopardising both military and financial aid. There is also the near certainty of the Kremlin’s pre-emptive retaliation due to its stated hypersensitivity to nuclearisation of a bordering state.   

Amidst this confounding situation, Poland stands out as Ukraine’s staunchest confederate. Is there a possibility that a nuclear axis builds between the two to generate an independent nuclear deterrent?  After all, such a move involving a NATO member not only compounds nuclear risks but also holds the promise of invoking the principle of collective defence, dragging a reluctant Alliance into the conflict.

One of the possible fall-outs of the deepening rift within the transatlantic alliance and the collapse of the American strategic nuclear umbrella is the “folding up” of NATO.

End of a Nuclear Heresy

Alarmingly, as nuclear armed nations toy with the idea that, the hitherto doctrines of a limited nuclear war and nuclear coercion  are no longer heretical policies; they fail to note the perilous impact it has on potential target nations. In the quest for security against nuclear coercion or the incipient menace of a looming ‘limited’ nuclear war, it will not be unusual for non-nuclear weapon states to consider developing arsenals of their own. Such action would undermine longstanding non-proliferation efforts and not only increase the chances of stumbling into a nuclear holocaust but, the absence of a credible nuclear hegemon would stimulate incessant anxiety of looming devastation.    

In a chilling statement that captured sensitivity to the ominous signs of a breakdown of the existing nuclear order, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in January 2025 declared that the Doomsday Clock had moved by a second from 90 to 89 seconds to midnight. The Clock is a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to global catastrophe caused by man-made technologies. Will the breakdown of extended deterrence and consequent nuclear proliferation be the tipping point that makes the likelihood of nuclear catastrophe not just a possibility but a probable reality?

America’s Liberation Day: Has Atlas Shrugged?

To add chaos to an already dangerously confused nuclear development; the early April 2025 pronouncement of Liberation Day in America sounded more a declaration of trade war against virtually the entire world. The notion of American exceptionalism that the US is a global exemplar of democracy, security and a convincing global nuclear regulator; is today precariously poised on very thin ice.  

America’s “Liberation Day” may be seen from two perspectives; the first is that decades of open U.S. markets has provided an incentive for unbalanced foreign tariffs and other protectionist measures that prevented the import of U.S. goods. “Only aggressive retaliation can reverse the damage and bring manufacturing back to American shores” is the battle cry declared by the Trump administration; some countries have retaliated by corresponding increase in tariffs on American imports, while others have been more subtle in their response; such as Japan which is the largest holder of US treasury bonds and its largest investor, has transferred a large bulk of their capital investments from the US to markets in China, India and the ASEAN countries. And more importantly, it has also chosen to trade with other partners in bi-lateral currencies; renouncing the USD.

The second perspective is founded on the faulty premise of the first, that manufacturing will, in fact, return and as a natural consequence permit tax cuts within the US. Unfortunately what is being sought is a denial of the reality that, the deliberate move-out of labour intensive manufacturing to China and the other developing economies, was the primary cause of the dazzling growth of the US economy over the last half century. To illustrate, in 1970 the American GDP was $1tr and by 2023 rocketed to $27tr. It was this very reality that won America the Cold War; caused the collapse of the Soviet economy; propelled the surge of its economy as it rapidly transited from an industrial to a service and technology driven economy. To turn back the clock and reinvent a manufacturing economy will only result in the diminution of the world’s sole hegemon. The macro downside to “Liberation Day” as the US administration attempts to completely turn the world trading system topsy-turvy in order to bring about , what it perceives as reciprocity and justice; is the  shrugging off  the burden of world leadership.

 An Understanding as a Conclusion

The ability to retract from the idea that nuclear weapons are a useable coercive tool of the state is linked to three larger concessions: the State will not be the first to use nuclear weapons; the State will neither aid nor abet the proliferation of nuclear weapons and lastly a firm belief in the larger idea of global nuclear regulation. The first two are based on the conviction that the weapon is an ultimate resort of dissuasion; while the third places a demand for ‘nuclear order’. This understanding flows from Brodie’s postulation that, the only purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear war. However, the global impact of recent policies relating to the on-going war in Ukraine and the emergence of new nuclear armed states; appear aimed at instilling fear and a willingness to persistently push the adversary to the nuclear brink. At a time when the end of an era of US led nuclear regulation signals the breakdown of the current nuclear order and a quick march forward of the Doomsday Clock.  

Policy makers do not appear to recognise the need for avoiding a nuclear conflagration. Simultaneously the meltdown of a world economic order that gave space for a global hegemon lies vacant. This throws up a paradoxical question; will the possession of a nuclear arsenal make the world a safer place? It is true that the balance of nuclear arsenals have deterred a global scale catastrophe (thus far at least); yet it is equally true, that its coercive effect and the absence of a regulatory regime increase the probability of proliferation that may push nuclear war from catastrophic loss of life to existential closure.

The choice is clear.  

‘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?”