War and Fear

THE YEAR HENRY KISSINGER DIED, THE UK CROWNED A NEW monarch, India hosted the G20 summit, Israel suffered the deadliest terror attack in its history, and consequently the world was left grappling with the possible expansion of not one but two ongoing wars, may have had more than 365 days could normally handle but it hasn’t surprised by entering its last weeks with Vladimir Putin deciding to grant himself a fifth term as Russian president and a US Senator calling Chinese garlic a security risk.

The more quotidian dimensions to risk, a word that seems to have worn itself out of meaning in the course of 2023, meanwhile, have involved extreme weather events evidencing climate change—even as COP28 descended into a brawl before the historic deal was signed which, however, promised a turn­ing away from fossil fuels but not phasing them out—cyberattacks and the proliferation of disinformation and misinformation such as with the two wars in question, growing domestic political discontent nowhere more visible than in the US of ‘grab-bag’ extremists on the right and woke militants on the left and in a Europe readier to embrace the far-right where Geert Wilders has at last taken two steps up and none back (so far). However, nothing has been as persistent as the ‘cross-cultural’ debate on the possible impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI).

All of these are challenges 2023 will bequeath to 2024, a year set to be tougher than anything witnessed and overcome in the 21st century to date. Even after 9/11 there were fewer variables to account for and less uncertainty. Nevertheless, the one risk that trumps all is the oldest of the lot: war. To take the two ongoing conflicts—Russia’s war of aggression and occupation in Ukraine and Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza after Hamas’ October 7 massacre—the chances of either escalating and expanding into a wider conflagration are deemed to be remote, placed in the category of ‘very low probability’ in most analyses. And yet, it’s the very nature of war, and especially asymmetric warfare as in Gaza, that makes probability estimates a waste of time. But regardless of probability, escalation-expansion of either war would doubtless be high-impact events, drawing in more and more external players and upending the global economy and the world order.

That’s why the true measure of 2023 can’t be arrived at by taking into account only the big news. Even a geopolitical summary of the year isn’t possible without going beyond headlines, let alone any forward-looking analysis.

In September, a Reuters investigation reported for the first time that the US has been quietly reviving its Cold War-era multibillion-dollar undersea surveillance programme to tackle the rise of the Chinese navy and Beijing’s own expanding spy and surveillance efforts. The existence of the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS) was revealed only in 1991, after the Cold War had ended, but now it’s being upgraded by modernising the network of undersea acoustic cables, retrofitting existing surveillance vessels with state-of-the-art equipment, as well as miniaturising and ‘glo­balising’ maritime surveillance tools, including small submarines and sea drones. The Indo-Pacific was already the principal theatre of military competition between the US and China before the urgency of the crisis across the Taiwan Strait. If the US is reviving and up­grading IUSS, China is building its own maritime espionage infra­structure called the Great Underwater Wall. The threat perception is not merely about a Chinese attack on Taiwan but sabotage and destruction of “critical undersea infrastructure, including oil pipe­lines and fiber-optic internet cables”. America also seems to have learnt a lesson from Ukraine whose relatively effective use of cheap unmanned sea vehicles (USVs) against Russian naval assets has not only exposed the vulnerability of big vessels but also spurred the US to invest in its own defensive and offensive capabilities in similar technology. Behind the scenes, but not exactly as a well-kept secret, the US and China are working on AI-operated weapons, such as warships, submarines, fighter jets, etc that can function on their own.

THE THREAT TO Taiwan makes the Indo- Pacific the geopolitical fulcrum of the world notwithstanding the two wars raging in Eu­rope and Asia. A third war, one directly involv­ing the US and its allies against China—and global catastrophe won’t be in the realm of speculation anymore. Although chances of a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan are low in 2024, the island will hold elections in January and the outcome will have consequences for Beijing’s behaviour. What’s more likely, and therefore riskier, is a regular act of Chinese maritime aggression leading to a miscalculation on someone’s part and triggering either the anticipated war sooner than expected or at least causing a bigger incident that either side would desire at the moment.

It’s in light of these scenarios that the contention that 2023 has been the year China came in from the cold should be evaluated. While Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s attempt at rapprochement with Beijing have already turned a tad cold with relations quickly reverting to a more ‘normal’ ping-pong of ac­cusations and counter-accusations chiefly around the conduct of the PLA Navy, much has been made of the presidential hotline and resumption of military-to-military communication as the outcome of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s bilateral meeting with US President Joe Biden in November.

In reality, what has changed? The Chinese economy has shown little signs of bouncing back from its manhandling by Xi through the pandemic. Short of nationalisation and/or helicopter-funding, the Chinese real estate industry is un­likely to recover anytime soon. And both actions would have such ghastly consequences for the Chinese and global economies that one can’t picture even Xi taking such steps. Thus, the Biden-Xi summit was more in China’s interests than anybody else’s and it doesn’t look like America is go­ing to change its mind about the Indo-Pacific. Biden called Xi a dictator after all. And even Europe has learnt to grow back part of its spine to the extent that trust levels vis-à-vis Beijing are at their lowest in decades. Somewhere in all this what needs to be factored in is the object lesson in dealing with Chinese aggression that India has taught the West since the Galwan clashes of 2020. Sometimes, the wolf warrior can’t do much other than bark.

Instead of China returning from the wilderness, 2023 has seen India’s arrival at the global high table in word and deed. The ad­mission of the African Union to G20 on India’s watch and the joint statement indicating the success of the September summit in New Delhi are merely landmarks pointing at the leadership role India has no compunctions about assuming in the ‘Global South’ with China looking on. The proof of Delhi’s newfound confidence and dexterity in navigating the geostrategic minefield is its continued engagement with Russia, still buying its oil, while not taking one misstep with its Western partners. Realpolitik alone doesn’t explain it all. The proof is what could have been not one but several mis­steps and yet wasn’t—the aftermath of the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada and the foiled alleged assassination attempt on Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in the US. Delhi’s differential re­sponse to Ottawa and Washington is actually a reflection of its own increased weight in the global arena while the two Khalistani episodes, in sum, add to the evidence of India’s indispensability to America’s strategic calculus. And that leads us straight back to the contours of global risk at the end of 2023.

PUTIN GAINED THE most from Hamas’ attack in Israel and the consequent Gaza war even as the Russia-China axis has been given concrete shape by the war in Ukraine. While it’s debatable whether Ukraine’s disappointing counteroffensive would have fared any better without the crisis in the Middle East, the Russians’ strike rate improved with the at­tention of the world elsewhere although it has long become a war of attrition. It added to Ukraine fatigue among the US and its allies. But a probable accident or miscalculation along NATO’s border with Belarus-Russia notwithstanding, the risk of escalation is far greater in the Middle East than in Europe. And the country whose adventurism poses the gravest im­mediate threat to world peace today is Iran.

There was always the danger that the longer the Gaza war lasted, the greater the chances that Hezbollah, Tehran’s client in Lebanon to Israel’s north, would no longer be content with firing the odd rocket into Israel. That itself would increase the chances of a direct confrontation between the US and Iran. However, a still greater threat comes from Tehran’s most favoured proxy in its attempts to widen the war beyond Gaza—the Houthi militia in Yemen. The Houthis have launched missiles and drones at Israeli and US targets and, with little to lose, show no inclination to pause or stop altogether. Iran’s motive in escalating the conflict is not merely to force Israel into accepting a ceasefire sooner than it would like. Tehran, above all, wants to see the death of the Abraham Accords and relations between Israel and the Gulf Arab states returning to something reminiscent of old hatreds. That would salvage Iran some of its lost influence beyond the Gulf, with the Chinese already having midwifed the beginnings of a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia.

On December 8, the New York Times reported on a plan out­lined by analysts close to the regime in Tehran and unidentified members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps whereby Iran is pushing the Houthis to increase their attacks on Israeli and US targets, which is corroborated by Israeli and US intelligence. The logic is simple: “The Houthis… are Iran’s chosen proxies be­cause from Yemen they are both close enough to the Red Sea’s strategic waterways to disrupt global shipping, and far enough from Israel to make retaliatory strikes difficult.” Moreover, “un­like Hezbollah… the Houthis are not beholden to domestic politi­cal dynamics—making them effectively accountable to no one.”

Extreme weather events disrupting global supply chains or monetary policy tightening by central banks caus­ing a global recession may all be risks 2023 will pass on to 2024, but when the greatest danger and its ex­panding fallout is also the most traditional the world has known—war—then preparedness remains key and Ukraine has demonstrated how much munitions matter. Biden took the right call bypassing Congress and clearing the sale of tank shells to Israel through an emergency provision given how much a quicker end to the Gaza war, with Hamas vanquished, is in the interests of global security. But with an election year coming up and a large section of his own party in revolt, the president who came good and showed his experience post-October 7, faces a much tougher electoral battle than in 2020. Ukraine, too, will perish without scaled up military aid, ending the sovereignty of a small nation that dared to face up to the bully next door.

In Foreign Policy’s Fall 2023 issue, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, while welcoming the return of the US to most international fora, chastised Washington for not grasping the necessity of a new multilateralism, a failure Brown attributes to an inability to comprehend, or fully comprehend, “three seismic geopolitical shifts”: that the neoliberal economic order is being replaced by neo-mercantilist economics “as states redefine their economic self-interest in terms of security protection”; that the transition from post-Cold War unipolarity to multipolarity doesn’t imply a handful of equal powers but a world of compet­ing powers and geopolitical flux; that the “hyperglobalization that characterized much of the last 20 years is being superseded by a new kind of globalization”, a “globalization-lite” that’s replac­ing “globalization-heavy” where restrictions on trade to protect national living standards are par for the course. Brown, who has clearly been more in touch with the world since he left No 10 than David Cameron, argues that the US is unwilling to join any club it can’t lead but it can’t rebuild the world order by small partnerships with select states alone. It needs to return to multilateralism and reinvent it. Otherwise, China may yet steal the show.

Brown’s thesis is right in the long term. But it’s dismissive of the compulsions of the short term. The minilateralisms he despises came about precisely because of the dysfunctionality of the big multilateral institutions that underscored the need for smaller groups to deal with reachable targets with far greater chances of success. Missing the big picture ultimately costs more. But that doesn’t mean there’s time to persuade everybody to agree on everything, let alone wait for them to do so of their own.

2023 In ReviewgeopoliticsIndiaIsrael-Palestine conflictUkraine crisisUS-China