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INTERNATIONAL SECURITY ENVIRONMENT

Article · September 2020

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INTERNATIONAL SECURITY ENVIRONMENT

INTRODUCTION

Trends in the International Security Environment

1. Global security environment is mainly characterized by the following major

trends: the acceleration of globalization and regional integration, along with the
persistence of actions that aim for state fragmentation; reasonable convergence of efforts
to establish a new stable and predictable security architecture, accompanied by
heightened anarchic tendencies in some regions; renewed efforts by states to preserve
their influence in the dynamics of international relations, along with developing new
forms of intervention and increasing number of non-state actors in international relations
dynamics.

2. Currently, there is a reconfiguration in the diagram of power relations: from a

bipolar world, in which the U.S. and USSR fulfilled the role of superpowers and regional
powers had little significance, a turn is made to another type of global security system. In
the first possible variant of evolution, a single superpower, a megapower, ie U.S., must
meet the demands and challenges that sometimes occur from the rising regional powers,
creating a unipolar global security system. The second trend of evolution of the global
security environment, to multipolarity, is dependent on the capacity and interests of some
regional powers.
 2

3. A number of states and non-state entities are included in the category of regional
powers. These are situated on two continents – Europe and Asia – and are quite
numerous: EU, China, Russia, Japan and India. World evolution from bipolarity to
multipolarity coincides with the transition from nuclear to the informational era, specific
to post- industrial society. These two trends in the evolution of international environment
generate substantial changes in perceptions of national security and international status
by political leaders, public and media in various countries.

4. In addition to the superpowers and regional powers there are also niche powers.
These are states and non-state entities or actors who have developed a high capacity in a
relatively narrow and limited domain, that enable them to influence, sometimes
decisively, short-term evolution of the international environment. Increasingly more non-
state entities are situated between niche powers, including terrorist organizations.
Terrorist organizations produce major effects on the relations between different actors in
the international arena, both through great emotional impact that terrorist actions have on
people and politicians and through their media.

5. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the possibility of new terrorist attacks
using biological and chemical weapons induced real psychosis for American population
and media. It was proved that unconventional and asymmetric means used by terrorist
organizations often catch authorities unprepared in national security responsibilities. In
this context, with numerous risks, dangers and threats, building an extensive and
comprehensive security system is a priority for all democracies.

6. Changes and trends in the security environment are difficult to predict, but some
general aspects of evolution and the current security environment new configurations
have emerged and are as follows:

(a) Nations, even the great powers, can not avoid transnational threats alone.

(b) The role of security structures (UN, NATO, EU) is increased and
diversified, in prevention and management of unstable situations. This involves
new guidelines regarding military coalitions, operations strategy (imposing,
maintenance, post-conflict stability) and the modes of intervention in different
operations.

(c) Migration, with destabilizing effects, can be a threat in terms of

liberalization of movement of persons, leading to perpetuation of conflicts and
economic crises.

(d) Territorial disputes are still a source of instability and a permanent increase
in risk situations.

(e) Old tensions, prejudices, traumas and revenge desires are conserved, fact
that perpetuates regional or zonal conflict states.
 3

(f) Great progress of communications and information technology allows

almost unlimited, difficult to control access to information of terrorist groups,
specialized in organizing the destabilizing actions.

(g) Security is no longer a problem exclusively related to states, no longer

limited to war and peace, but also includes non- military actions that have a great
impact on society, becoming a major concern of security structures, in cooperation
with the States concerned.

(h) U.S. will continue to be the world’s leading political, military and
economic force, able to solve major problems of the current security environment.

(j) Terrorism will remain a constant threat, manifested both as a tool for mafia
clans and for violent political pressure.

7. Following the development of international trade and investment flows,

developments in technology and the spread of democracy, a growing number of states,
nations and peoples received the privilege of freedom and prosperity after 1990. These
positive evolutions also had as a consequence a greater involvement of non-state groups
and parties in international affairs. However, many issues from the past remained
unresolved and others worsened. Thus, regional conflicts have continued to remain a
significant source of instability and to affect economic activities.

8. In terms of size, speed and directional flow, the transfer of global wealth and
economic power now under way—roughly from West to East—is without precedent in
modern history. This shift derives from two sources :

(a) Increases in oil and commodity prices have generated windfall profits for
the Gulf States and Russia.

(b) Lower costs combined with government policies have shifted the locus of
manufacturing and some service industries to Asia.

Future Trends

9. Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor, the
United States’ relative strength—even in the military realm—will decline and US
leverage will become more constrained. At the same time, the extent to which other
actors—both state and nonstate—will be willing or able to shoulder increased burdens is
unclear. Policy makers and publics will have to cope with a growing demand for
multilateral cooperation when the international system will be stressed by the incomplete
transition from the old to a still-forming new order.
 4

10. Growth projections for Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRICs) indicate they
will collectively match the original G-7’s share of global GDP by 2040-2050. China is
poised to have more impact on the world over the next 20 years than any other country. It
also could be the largest importer of natural resources and the biggest polluter.

11. Russia has the potential to be richer, more powerful and more self-assured in
future if it invests in human capital, expands and diversifies its economy and integrates
with global markets. On the other hand, Russia could experience a significant decline if it
fails to take these steps and oil and gas prices remain in the $50-70 per barrel range. No
other countries are projected to rise to the level of China, India, or Russia and none is
likely to match their individual global clout. However, the political and economic power
of other countries—such as Indonesia, Iran and Turkey is likely to increase.

12. Many other countries are likely to fall further behind economically. Sub-Saharan
Africa will remain the region most vulnerable to economic disruption, population
stresses, civil conflict and political instability. Despite increased global demand for
commodities for which Sub-Saharan Africa will be a major supplier, local populations
are unlikely to experience significant economic gain. Windfall profits arising from
sustained increases in commodity prices might further entrench corrupt or otherwise ill-
equipped governments in several regions, diminishing the prospects for democratic and
market-based reforms. Although many of Latin America’s major countries will have
become middle income powers by 2025, others, particularly those such as Venezuela and
Bolivia that have embraced populist policies for a protracted period, will lag behind—and
some, such as Haiti, will have become even poorer and less governable. Overall, Latin
America will continue to lag behind Asia and other fast-growing areas in terms of
economic competitiveness.

13. Asia, Africa and Latin America will account for virtually all population growth
over the next 20 years; less than 3 percent of the growth will occur in the West. Europe
and Japan will continue to far outdistance the emerging powers of China and India in per
capita wealth, but they will struggle to maintain robust growth rates because the size of
their working-age populations will decrease. The US will be a partial exception to the
aging of populations in the developed world because it will experience higher birth rates
and more immigration. The number of migrants seeking to move from disadvantaged to
relatively privileged countries is likely to increase.

14. The study on International Security Environment will undertake an analysis of the
problem and attempt to find answer to the expanding problem being faced by the
international community at large.
 5

GEOPOLITICS AND GEOSTRATEGY

15. Geography is the very basis for strategy and geopolitics. Strategy is defined by
Napoleon as the art of using time and space in a military and diplomatic manner. Prof
Nicholas J Spykeman, the great Dutch American Strategist of the early WW-II era wrote
in 1942 that “Geography does not argue. It simply is”. He said: Geography is the most
fundamental factor in the foreign policy of states because it is the most permanent.
Militaries come and go, even dictators die, but mountain ranges stand unperturbed.

16. All wars, of all kinds and in all periods can be analysed by means of the following
seven contexts. Political, Social-cultural, economic, technological, military-strategic,
geopolitical and geostrategic and historical. They define all the essential characteristics of
a particular armed conflict

17. Geopolitics is the influence of geography upon human divisions. As Napoleon

said, “ To know a nation’s geography is to know its foreign policy”. Geography is the
physical reality, composed of mountains, rivers, seas, wind patterns and so on. It
describes the geological features of the earth, the physical attributes of the land, sea and
air environments. Geopolitics is the human factor within geography. It is the geographic
distribution of centers of resources and lines of communication, assigning value to
locations according to their strategic importance.

18. Geostrategy is the geographic direction of a state’s foreign policy. More precisely,
geostrategy describes where a state concentrates its efforts by projecting military power
and directing diplomatic activity.

19. One way to conceptualize geography, geopolitics and geostrategy is by examining

their patterns of change. There are three different levels of change, ranging from tectonic
(no change) in the case of geography to potentially rapid change in the case of
geostrategy. Geographic changes are measured in geological ages of thousands of years,
while geostrategic changes are measured in days, months and years. Geography is by and
large constant, with the exception of catastrophic events that are rare and unpredictable.
Geopolitics changes with the rise and decline of centers of resources and shifts in routes.
It is a change that occurs slowly, often imperceptibly and usually spans decades and
centuries. The late-fifteenth-century discoveries of new routes around Africa, linking
Atlantic Europe directly with Asia, are an example of a geopolitical change that over the
course of a few decades altered the map of the world. The current economic growth of
East Asia and China in particular, in a few years may represent a geopolitical change of
similar proportions. Geography, geopolitics and geostrategy constitute in a sense three
layers of the international arena that move at different speeds and for different reasons.
 6

20. They are related to, but do not determine, one another. Geostrategy is not a mere
reflection of the underlying geopolitics, which in turn is not a copy of geography.
Conversely, geography does not determine the geopolitical situation, which in turn does
not determine the geostrategies of states. Geopolitics describes the geographic
distribution of centers of resources and routes, which, however, is determined by a
combination of technology and geography and not by geography alone. Similarly,
geostrategy is an interpretation and a response to geopolitics and is not determined by it.

21. When there is a disconnect between the geostrategy of a state and the underlying
geopolitics, that state begins its decline. The state loses control over centers of resources
and lines of communication and consequently relinquishes much of its influence over
other states. This is not unavoidable, for states can and do change their foreign policy to
reflect more adequately the geopolitical situation. Diplomatic, technological and
bureaucratic challenges often make it difficult to reorient geostrategies.

22. Geopolitics has been defined as: “The study of geographic influences on power
relationships in international politics.” Its maxim is the words of Sir Halford John
Mackinder, founding father of geopolitics and geostrategy:

(a) "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland.

(b) Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island.

(c) Who rules the World-Island controls the world.

23. Mackinder had an enormous influence on the field of geopolitics and international
relations. Mackinder initiated a study that continued in the United States, although with
different accents, with writers such as Nicholas Spykman and Hans Morgenthau.
However, because of the strongly deterministic overtones of his theory, Mackinder also
became associated with the worst example of geopolitics, the pseudoscience of Nazi
Geopolitics. The German “science of geopolitics” took the natural scientific approach to
a perverted extreme by claiming that geographic features of the earth justified the
necessity of Nazi military expansion and human superiority. Nazi geopoliticians such as
Karl Haushofer transformed the study of politics and geography into an ideologically
motivated theory. The concept Lebensraum was the intellectual product of Geopolitic.
Because of the dictates of geography, Germany had to expand and seek a “vital space”
that was indispensable to her economy and her growing population.

24. Whereas Mackinder’s emphasis was on land power because of emerging

technological developments in rail and road transport, the same Industrial Revolution
made America Navy captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, a slightly older contemporary of
Mackinder, a proponent of sea power. Mahan thought sea power not only more important
than land power in the fight for dominance, but also less threatening to international
stability.
 7

25. Though Mackinder was awed by the strength of Russia, given its control of the
Heartland, Mahan, Whose book The Problem of Asia preceded Mackinder’s “The
Geographical Pivot of History” article by four years, espied Russia’s vulnerability, given
its distance from the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Russia’s “irremediable
remoteness from an open sea has helped put it in disadvantageous position for the
accumulation of wealth”, and, as Mahan goes on, “This being so, it is natural and proper
that she should be dissatisfied and dissatisfaction readily takes the form of aggression.”
Mahan calls the nations laying to the south of Russia and north of the Indian Ocean the
“debatable ground” of Asia, “the zone of conflict between Russian land power and
British sea power.”(Spykman, four decades later, will call this area the Rimland.) Of this
debatable ground, Mahan emphasizes the importance of China, Afghanistan, Iran and
Turkey. It is no coincidence that in 1900 he is able to identify the pivotal states of
geopolitical significance in our own time: for geography is unchangeable. Espy

26. The mid twentieth century Dutch American scholar of geopolitics Yale Professer
Nicolas J Spykman was a generation younger than Mackinder. Spykman describes the
Heartland as vaguely synonymous with the Soviet Empire, bordered by ice-blocked
Arctic seas to the north, between Norway and the Russion Far East; and to the south
ringed by mountains, from the Carpathians in Romania to the plateaus of Anatolia, Iran
and Afghanistan, and turning northeastward to the Pamir Knot, the Altai Mountains, the
plateau of Mongolia, and finally over to Manchuria and Korea. This to him was the
world’s key geography, which would be perennially fought over. To the north and inside
this belt of mountain and tableland lies the Heartland; to he south and outside this belt lie
the demographic giants of Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, China and Japan as well
as the oil-rich Middle East. These marginal areas of Eurasia, especially their littorals, was
what Spykman called the Rimland. Spykman held that the Rimland was the key to world
power; not Mackinder’s Heartland, because in addition to domination Eurasia, the
maritime-oriented Rimland was central to contact with the outside world.

POST COLD WAR SECURITY ENVIRONMENT

Globalisation.

27. Globalization, defined as a dynamic process of rapidly growing, if uneven, cross-

border flows of goods, services, money, people, technology, ideas, cultures, values, crime
and weapons throughout the world,will continue to be a dominant influence on the
evolving security order by deepening interdependence and empowering certain actors
while alienating and marginalizing others. Globalization is not bringing geopolitics or
ideological struggles to an end. Rather, globalization’s influences interact with traditional
regional and ethnic rivalries and are exacerbating many transnational threats. While most
futurists describe the inevitability of a globalized society, some point out that catastrophic
events or a major global recession could intervene to slow or reverse its course. As the
United States seeks to advance its global economic and security interests and promote
democracy, civil society and the rule of law in this environment, it will be challenged by
instability arising from strains on governance, economic dislocation and political
 8

convulsions. It will also be challenged by radical ideologies—particularly the jihadist

vision of ridding the Muslim world of Western influence, corrupt regimes and restoring
the caliphate—and dissenting views of global order—such as the notion of “sovereign
democracy” embraced by Russia, China and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization who see vigorous U.S. promotion of democracy and human rights as
representing unwarranted interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states. With
these conditions, volatility will likely be the dominant feature for the foreseeable future.

28. An expanding and increasingly integrated global economy combined with a

continued technological revolution, particularly in the areas of information and
biotechnology, will kick the forces of globalization into high gear over the next decade.
This trend both enables and is enabled by, the flows of energy, money, people, security,
technology and information without regard to international borders. An increasing
portion of the world’s population will be connected to the globalization grid. This
“flattening” of the world due to globalization is not simply about how governments,
business, organizations and people communicate and interact; it is about the emergence
of completely new social, political and business models. These profound changes will,
over the long term, alter the way in which governments approach conflict on the
international stage. The speed and breadth of change will determine the potential for
disruption, as opposed to an orderly transfer of power from the old to the new.

29. Expanding webs of social, economic, political, military and information

architectures will afford opportunity for some regional powers to compete on a broader
scale and emerge on the global landscape with considerable influence. In addition,
regional power structures are likely to change continuously, as regional conflicts, civil
wars and transnational actors reshape existing norms. It can be expected that nations,
transnational actors and non-state entities will challenge and redefine the global
distribution of power, the concept of sovereignty and the nature of warfare. Local
conflicts and wars will be commonplace and will always carry the risk of escalation into
broader conflicts.

30. As societies either transform or resist change, additional challenges will arise in
the form of ethnic and religious extremism, nationalism, authoritarianism and problems
of governance. These challenges will be particularly acute in the geographic “arc of
instability” or the “gap” countries that are not well integrated into the world economy and
have weak or inflexible governance and are, therefore, being buffeted by the winds of
globalization. While the global economy expanded by about 30 percent during the 1990s
and is continuing to grow at an average of about 3 percent a year, the gap between the
richest and poorest countries is widening. The modern industrial powers possess 70
percent of the world’s wealth but have only 28 percent of the world’s population. Their
per capita wealth is four to seven times greater, on average, than the vast number of far
poorer countries that house nearly three-quarters of the world’s people. While some
developing countries are growing fast, the overall disparity between the rich and poor has
actually widened because both clusters are growing at similar rates and rapid population
growth in the poorer countries can lower per capita income. It will take decades for some
developing countries to achieve moderate wealth.
 9

31. Over the coming decade, the international community will struggle to manage the
accelerating pace of change and turmoil stemming from globalization. While the United
States will remain preeminent on the world stage, its influence and ability to manage this
turmoil will hinge on better integrating various elements of national power, sustaining
alliances and partnerships and maintaining cooperative relations with the other major
powers. Widening economic inequality and the global jihadist insurgency with its anti-
Western ideology will remain particularly vexing challenges to a stable world order for
the foreseeable future. Threats to the U.S. homeland, critical infrastructure and deployed
forces will continue to evolve and diversify. Countering weapons of mass destruction or
mass effect will prove increasingly difficult and the probability of such weapons coming
into the hands of terrorists will increase significantly. Climate change and resource
scarcity will be growing causes of humanitarian crises and instability.

ORGANISATIONS

32. United Nations Security Council. The Security Council is the United
Nations' principal crisis-management body, empowered to impose binding obligations on
the UN's 193 member states to maintain peace. The Council's five permanent and ten
elected members meet regularly to assess threats to security, encompassing issues that
include civil wars, natural disasters, arms control and terrorism. Structurally, the body
remains largely unchanged since its founding in 1946, stirring debate among many
members about its efficacy and legitimacy as arbiter on matters of international security.

33. Structure of Security Council. Any one of the five permanent members (P5) of
the Security Council—China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and
the United States—can veto a resolution, a power not afforded to its ten elected members.
The P5's privileged status has its roots in the UN's founding in the aftermath of World
War II.

34. The Council's presidency rotates on a monthly basis, ensuring some agenda-setting
influence for its ten nonpermanent members, who are elected by a two-thirds vote of the
General Assembly to serve two-year, nonconsecutive terms. The main criterion for
eligibility is contribution 'to the maintenance of international peace and security," often
defined by financial or troop contributions to peacekeeping operations or leadership on
matters of regional security likely to appear before the Council.

35. Subsidiary organs that support the Council's mission include ad hoc committees on
sanctions, counterterrorism, nonproliferation, international criminal tribunals for Rwanda
and the former Yugoslavia. Within the UN Secretariat, the Department of Peacekeeping
Operations and Department of Field Support manage field operations. The Peacebuilding
Commission, established in 2005 as a repository of institutional memory and "lessons
learned," serves an advisory role.
 10

Security Council’s Tools for Conflict Management

36. The Security Council aims to reach peaceful resolution of international disputes
under Chapter VI of the UN Charter. Failing that, it is empowered to take more
aggressive action under Chapter VII, such as imposing sanctions or authorizing the use of
force "to maintain or restore international peace and security." Peacekeeping missions are
the most visible face of the UN's conflict-management work; in late 2013 the Council
was overseeing sixteen operations and nearly ninety-seven thousand uniformed
personnel.

37. Constrained by U.S.-Soviet rivalry, the Security Council acted infrequently in the
four-and-a-half decades between its founding and the close of the Cold War in 1989.
During that time it authorized seventeen peacekeeping operations.

38. The Security Council has authorized fifty-one operations in the years since the
Cold War, many responding to failing states, civil wars, or complex humanitarian
emergencies and deploying to conflict zones in the absence of cease-fires or parties'
consent. Under more muscular mandates, they have combined military operations—
including less restrictive rules of engagement that allow for civilian and refugee
protection—with civilian tasks, including policing, electoral assistance and legal
administration. Developing nations provide the lion's share of personnel.

39. A number of these operations, including those in Cambodia and El Salvador, were
touted as successes. But increasingly complex emergencies, which mushroomed in the
1990s, challenged the Council's ability to mount effective, coordinated responses.

Coercive Measures by Security Council

40. The sanctions provisions provided for by Article 41 of the UN Charter lay
dormant through much of the Cold War only to become one of the Security Council's
most frequently employed tools. Sanctions were imposed just twice prior to the fall of the
Berlin Wall: in 1966, a trade embargo was enacted against the white-minority
government in Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) and in 1977, an arms
embargo was enacted against apartheid-era South Africa. Yet the Council began to make
regular use of sanctions in the early 1990s in Iraq, the former Yugoslavia and Haiti.

41. The Council also has the power to refer cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes
against humanity to the prosecutor of the independent International Criminal Court. It did
so for the first time in 2005, resulting in an outstanding warrant for Sudanese president
Omar al-Bashir on charges regarding Darfur.

42. NATO's seventy-eight–day-long air war in Kosovo is the most oft-cited case in
arguing for the legitimacy of humanitarian interventions outside Security Council
authorization. The bombing campaign was undertaken to protect Kosovar Albanians from
ethnic cleansing by Serbs. An independent commission of scholars later deemed the
intervention "illegal but legitimate."
 11

43. The emergence of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in the early 2000s appeared
to justify the use of force outside Council authorization by qualifying the principle of
noninterference in sovereign affairs. The doctrine, as adopted by the UN General
Assembly in 2005, stipulates that states have a responsibility to protect their populations
from crimes against humanity; the international community has a responsibility to use
peaceful means to protect threatened populations; and when a state "manifestly fails" to
uphold its responsibilities, coercive Chapter VII measures should be collectively taken.

44. Successive U.S. administrations have argued that intervention can be undertaken
with regional organizations or "minilateral" coalitions of the willing conferring
legitimacy. But UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has rejected this position, saying,
"The responsibility to protect does not alter, indeed it reinforces, the legal obligations of
Member States to refrain from the use of force except in conformity with the Charter."
This debate was revived in the run-up to the 2011 NATO-led Libya intervention and
continues with the ongoing Syrian civil war.

Criticisms of Security Council

45. A number of critics, including member states from the developing world, charge
that the Council's structure is anachronistic. The Council was expanded from six elected
members to ten in 1965 and the People's Republic of China took the permanent seat
allotted to China, previously occupied by the Republic of China (Taiwan), in 1971. Since
then, the body's composition has remained unchanged.

46. Developed and emerging powers such as Japan, Germany, India, Brazil, South
Africa and Nigeria have sought Council enlargement and a permanent seat for
themselves. Others have called for a common European seat to replace the British and
French permanent seats as the EU moves toward a common security policy. The debate
about expansion is often framed as a tradeoff between legitimacy and efficacy.

47. Other critics of the Council include advocates of R2P, who say the veto gives
undue deference to the political interests of the P5, leading to inaction in the face of mass
atrocities. It is not just P5 members who have demonstrated reluctance to use force.
Beyond Russia and China, aspirants to permanent-member status including Brazil, India
and Germany have views on intervention and sovereignty at odds with those espoused by
the United States.

48. While R2P advocates criticize the Security Council and its members for a lack of
political will, others question the UN's conflict-management capacity, often citing 1990s
peacekeeping crises in Somalia, the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

49. In the shadow of its 1993 experience in Somalia, in which eighteen Army rangers
were killed in an attempt to capture a warlord, the United States was among the powers
that prevented a robust UN response in Rwanda, where in 1994 an estimated eight
hundred thousand people were killed in a genocide committed against ethnic Tutsis.
 12

50. The UN likewise suffered humiliating defeats in the Balkans, where peacekeepers
were used as human shields in the siege of Sarajevo and failed to protect civilians in the
designated safe area of Srebrenica from massacre. Experts say these missions were
undermined by problems both logistical and political, including muddled mandates,
inadequate resources and major powers' parochial interests.

51. Peacekeeping mandates continue to be the focus of scrutiny for their scope, cost
and cases in which peacekeepers themselves have committed abuses. The UN's overall
track record is relatively strong: "Peacekeepers have produced stabilization in highly
explosive conflicts, contained them and more often than not, slowly, painstakingly helped
resolve them."

Prospects for Reform

52. Prospects for substantial reform are seen as remote because amending the UN
Charter requires an affirmative vote and domestic ratification by two-thirds of UN
member states, including all of the permanent members of the Security Council. P5
members are unlikely to take measures that curb their own influence. While there is
broad agreement among UN members that the Security Council's makeup is outdated,
each of the various proposals for reform inevitably leaves some aspirants alienated. Some
proposals call for additional permanent members and others for a new class of elected
seats with the possibility of renewal.

53. Other Organisations Other than the United Nations. There are hard
forms of global governance : The World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the
IMF.There are number of “soft” instruments, such as the G20 at one end and networks of
non-government organizations at the other. These entities have no formal mandates or
legal powers of enforcement, but they do have value.

54. Institutions like the IMF, World Bank must be brought fully up to date, and made
fully representative of the changing dynamics of the global economy. More broadly, the
new multilateralism must be made more inclusive encompassing not only the emerging
powers across the globe, but also the expanding networks and coalitions that are now
deeply embedded in the fabric of the global economy. The new multilateralism must have
the capacity to listen and respond to those new voices.

55. The new multilateralism also needs to be agile, making sure that soft and hard
forms of collaboration complement rather than compete with each other. It needs to
promote a long-term perspective and a global mentality, and be decisive in the short term
to overcome the temptation toward insularity and muddling through. Fundamentally, it
needs to instill a broader sense of social responsibility on the part of all players in the
modern global economy.

56. There is a need of the new 21st century multilateralism to get to grips with big
ticket items like climate change and inequality. On these issues, no country can stand
alone. Combating climate change will require the concerted resolve of all stakeholders
 13

working together—governments, cities, corporations, civil society, and even private

citizens. Countries also need to come together to address inequality. As but one example,
if countries compete for business by lowering taxes on corporate income, this could make
inequality worse.
[A New Multilateralism for the 21st Century: the Richard Dimbleby Lecture,
Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund, London, February
3, 2014 ]

IT Revolution.

57. The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has reshaped the
international security environment. These technologies bring immense economic and
social benefits; they can also be used for purposes that are inconsistent with international
peace and security. There has been a noticeable increase in risk in recent years as ICTs
are used for crime and the conduct of disruptive activities.

58. Numerous bilateral, regional and multilateral initiatives since 2010 highlight the
growing importance accorded to greater security of and in the use of ICTs, reducing risks
to public safety, improving the security of nations and enhancing global stability. It is in
the interest of all States to promote the use of ICTs for peaceful purposes. States also
have an interest in preventing conflict arising from the use of ICTs. Common
understandings on norms, rules and principles applicable to the use of ICTs by States and
voluntary confidence-building measures can play an important role in advancing peace
and security.

59. ICTs are dual-use technologies and can be used for both legitimate and malicious
purposes. Any ICT device can be the source or the target of misuse. The malicious use of
ICTs can be easily concealed and attribution to a specific perpetrator can be difficult,
allowing for increasingly sophisticated exploits by actors who often operate with
impunity. The global connectivity of ICT networks exacerbates this problem. The
combination of global connectivity, vulnerable technologies and anonymity facilitates the
use of ICTs for disruptive activities.

60. Threats to individuals, businesses, national infrastructure and Governments have

grown more acute and incidents more damaging. The sources of these threats comprise
both State and non-State actors. In addition, individuals, groups, or organizations,
including criminal organizations, may act as proxies for States in the conduct of
malicious ICT actions. The potential for the development and the spread of sophisticated
malicious tools and techniques, such as bot-nets, by States or non-State actors may
further increase the risk of mistaken attribution and unintended escalation. The absence
of common understandings on acceptable State behavior with regard to the use of ICTs
increases the risk to international peace and security.

61. Terrorist groups use ICTs to communicate, collect information, recruit, organize,
plan and coordinate attacks, promote their ideas and actions and solicit funding. If such
groups acquire attack tools, they could carry out disruptive ICT activities.
 14

62. States are concerned that embedding harmful hidden functions in ICTs could be
used in ways that would affect secure and reliable ICT use and the ICT supply chain for
products and services, erode trust in commerce and damage national security.

63. The expanding use of ICTs in critical infrastructures and industrial control systems
creates new possibilities for disruption. The rapid increase in the use of mobile
communications devices, web services, social networks and cloud computing services
expands the challenges to security.

Failed or Failing States

64. Weak and failing states pose a challenge to the international community. In
today’s world, with its highly globalized economy, information systems and interlaced
security, pressures on one fragile state can have serious repercussions not only for that
state and its people, but also for its neighbors and other states halfway across the globe.
Since the end of the Cold War, a number of states have erupted into mass violence
stemming from internal conflict. Some of these crises are ethnic conflicts. Some are civil
wars. Others take on the form of revolutions. Many result in complex humanitarian
emergencies. Though the dynamics may differ in each case, all of these conflicts stem
from social, economic and political pressures that have not been managed by
professional, legitimate and representative state institutions. Fault lines emerge between
identity groups, defined by language, religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, class, caste,
clan or area of origin. Tensions can deteriorate into conflict through a variety of
circumstances, such as competition over resources, predatory or fractured leadership,
corruption, or unresolved group grievances. The reasons for state weakness and failure
are complex but not unpredictable.
 15

65. The Failed States Index Rankings 2013 is given below :

66. Why Do States Fail. The combination of resource depletion (like water),
demographic youth bulges and the proliferation of shanty towns throughout the
developing world are responsible for ethnic and sectarian divides, creating the conditions
for domestic political breakdown and the transformation of war into increasingly
irregular forms making it often indistinguishable from terrorism. Civil society in
significant swaths of the earth is still the province of a relatively elite few in capital cities.

67. The End of Imperialism. Imperialism provided much of Africa, Asia and Latin
America with security and administrative order. It may not have been fair and it may not
have been altogether civil, but it provided order. Imperialism, the mainstay of stability for
human populations for thousands of years, is now gone.

68. The End of Post-Colonial Strongmen. Colonialism did not end completely with
the departure of European colonialists. It continued for decades in the guise of strong
 16

dictators, who had inherited state systems from the colonialists. Because these strongmen
often saw themselves as anti-Western freedom fighters, they believed that they now had
the moral justification to govern as they pleased. The Europeans had not been democratic
in the Middle East and neither was this new class of rulers. Hafez al Assad, Saddam
Hussein, Ali Abdullah Saleh, Moammar Gadhafi and the Nasserite pharaohs in Egypt
right up through Hosni Mubarak all belonged to this category, which, like that of the
imperialists, has been quickly retreating from the scene.

69. No Institutions. The post-colonial Arab dictators ran moukhabarat states: states
whose order depended on the secret police and the other, related security services. But
beyond that, institutional and bureaucratic development was weak and unresponsive to
the needs of the population -- a population that, because it was increasingly urbanized,
required social services and complex infrastructure. It is institutions that fill the gap
between the ruler at the top and the extended family or tribe at the bottom. Thus, with
insufficient institutional development, the chances for either dictatorship or anarchy
proliferate. Civil society occupies the middle ground between those extremes, but it
cannot prosper without the requisite institutions and bureaucracies.

70. Feeble Identities. With feeble institutions, such post-colonial states have feeble
identities. If the state only means oppression, then its population consists of subjects, not
citizens. Subjects of despotisms know only fear, not loyalty. If the state has only fear to
offer, then, if the pillars of the dictatorship crumble or are brought low, it is non-state
identities that fill the subsequent void. And in a state configured by long-standing legal
borders, however artificially drawn they may have been, the triumph of non-state
identities can mean anarchy.

71. Doctrinal Battles. Non-state identity in the 21st-century Middle East generally
means religious identity. And because there are variations of belief even within a great
world religion like Islam, the rise of religious identity and the consequent decline of state
identity means the inflammation of doctrinal disputes, which can take on an irregular,
military form. The Roman Empire collapsed and Christianity rose as a replacement
identity, the upshot was not tranquility but violent, doctrinal disputes between Donatists,
Monothelites and other Christian sects and heresies. So, too, in the Muslim world today,
as state identities weaken and sectarian and other differences within Islam come to the
fore, often violently.

72. Information Technology. Various forms of electronic communication, often

transmitted by smartphones, can empower the crowd against a hated regime, as protesters
who do not know each other personally can find each other through Facebook, Twitter
and other social media. But while such technology can help topple governments, it cannot
provide a coherent and organized replacement pole of bureaucratic power to maintain
political stability afterwards. This is how technology encourages anarchy.
 17

73. How to Fix Failed States?

(a) Externally driven state-building long-term commitment, intelligent

planning, deep understanding of society and culture, international cooperation, lots
of money, acceptance of casualties.

(b) Governance reform.

(c) Foreign aid, debt relief.

(d) Containment.

(e) Why it’s difficult: collective action problem—everyone waits for everyone
else to act.

74. Conflict. States and non-state actors will exist in a condition of persistent
competition. The fundamental nature of conflict will endure. It will remain an inherently
human endeavour, with all the uncertainty that this implies. However, the character of
conflict will continue to evolve, remaining innately volatile. State and non-state actors
will seek to combine conventional, irregular and high-end asymmetric methods
concurrently, often in the same time and space and across the combined domains of the
air, land, sea, space and cyberspace. Conflict is likely to involve a range of transnational,
state, group and individual participants who will operate at global and local levels. In
some conflicts, there is likely to be concurrent inter-communal violence, terrorism,
insurgency, pervasive criminality and widespread disorder. Tactics, techniques and
technologies will continue to converge as adversaries rapidly adapt to seek advantage and
influence, including through economic, financial, legal and diplomatic means. These
forms of conflict will transcend conventional understanding of what equates to irregular
and regular military activity.

75. Innovative communication techniques will create a network-enabled audience,

providing both a challenge and an opportunity for military operations. Adaptive
adversaries will seek to utilise the media and the opponent’s political system to their
advantage. States will increasingly sponsor proxies, seeking to exploit gaps in the
international system while minimising state-on-state risks.

MAJOR THREATS TO INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

76. Elements of National Security. Various elements of National Security are:-

(a) Military Security. Implies the capability of a nation to defend itself

and/or deter military aggression
 18

(b) Political Security. Is about the stability of the social order and
specifically addresses threats to sovereignty
(c) Economic Security. The freedom to follow choice of policies to develop a
nation's economy in the manner desired, forms the essence of economic security

(d) Environmental Security. Deals with environmental issues which threaten

the national security of a nation in any manner

(e) Security of Energy and Natural Resources. Resources include water,

sources of energy, land, oil and minerals

WMD Proliferation

77. Traditionally, international agreements and diplomacy have deterred most nation-
states from acquiring biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons, but these constraints may
be of less utility in preventing terrorist groups from doing so. The time when only a few
states had access to the most dangerous technologies is past. Biological and chemical
materials and technologies, almost always dual use, move easily in our globalized
economy, as do the personnel with scientific expertise to design and use them. The latest
discoveries in the life sciences also diffuse globally and rapidly.

78. Nuclear. Large stockpiles of nuclear weapons are tempting targets for nation-
states or groups set on attacking the nation states who possess these. Black-market trade
in sensitive nuclear materials is a particular concern. The prospect that al-Qaida or
another terrorist organization might acquire a nuclear device represents an immediate and
extreme threat to global security.

79. Biological Weapons. Biological weapons eventually may be used in a terrorist

attack. To prevent deadly viruses from being turned into mass casualty weapons, one of
the most difficult challenges is obtaining timely and accurate insight on potential attacks

Cyber-Attacks

80. The drumbeats of cyberwarfare have been sounding for years. Network intrusions
are widely viewed as one of the most serious potential national security, public safety and
economic challenges. Technology, in this case, becomes a double-edge sword. The very
technologies also empower individual criminal hackers, organized criminal groups,
terrorist networks and other advanced nations to disrupt the critical infrastructure that is
vital to economy, commerce, public safety and military.

81. There are indications that some terrorist organizations have heightened interest in
developing offensive cyber capabilities, but they will probably be constrained by inherent
resource and organizational limitations and competing priorities.
 19

82. Hacktivists continue to target a wide range of companies and organizations in

denial-of-service attacks, Most hacktivists use short-term denial-of-service operations or
expose personally identifiable information held by target companies, as forms of political
protest. However, a more radical group might form to inflict more systemic impacts such
as disrupting financial networks or accidentally trigger unintended consequences that
could be misinterpreted as a state-sponsored attack.

83. Cybercriminals also threaten nation’s economic interests. They are selling tools,
via a growing black market, that might enable access to critical infrastructure systems or
get into the hands of state and nonstate actors.

84. Natural Resources: Insecurity And Competition. Competition and scarcity

involving natural resources food, water, minerals and energy are growing security threats.
Many countries are vulnerable to natural resource shocks that degrade economic
development, frustrate attempts to democratize, raise the risk of regime-threatening
instability and aggravate regional tensions. Extreme weather events (floods, droughts,
heat waves) will increasingly disrupt food and energy markets, exacerbating state
weakness, forcing human migrations and triggering riots, civil disobedience and
vandalism. Criminal or terrorist elements can exploit any of these weaknesses to conduct
illicit activity and/or recruitment and training.

Food Security.

85. Natural food-supply disruptions, due to floods, droughts, heat waves and diseases,
as well as policy choices, probably will stress the global food system in the immediate
term, resulting in sustained volatility in global food prices. Policy choices can include
export bans; diversions of arable lands for other uses, such as urban development; and
foreign land leases and acquisitions. Many resource-strapped countries have been losing
confidence in the global marketplace to supply vital resources and increasingly looking to
shield their populations in ways that will almost certainly threaten global food
production. For example, emerging powers and Gulf States are buying up arable and
grazing land around the world as hedges against growing domestic demand and strained
resources.

Water Security

86. Risks to freshwater supplies due to shortages, poor quality, floods and climate
change are growing. These forces will hinder the ability of key countries to produce food
and generate energy, potentially undermining global food markets and hobbling
economic growth. As a result of demographic and economic development pressures,
North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia face particular difficulty coping with water
problems.

87. Lack of adequate water is a destabilizing factor in countries that do not have the
management mechanisms, financial resources, or technical ability to solve their internal
water problems. Some states are further stressed by heavy dependence on river water
 20

controlled by upstream nations with unresolved water-sharing issues. Wealthier

developing countries probably will experience increasing water-related social disruptions,
although they are capable of addressing water problems without risk of state failure.

88. Many countries are using groundwater faster than aquifers can replenish in order
to satisfy food demand. In the long term, without mitigation actions exhaustion of
groundwater sources will cause food demand to be satisfied through increasingly stressed
global markets.

Energy Security

89. Oil prices will remain highly sensitive to political instability in the Middle East,
tensions with Iran and global economic growth. In the coming year, most growth in new
production probably will come from North America and Iraq, while production from
some major producers stagnates or declines because of policies that discourage
investment.

90. Sustained oil prices above $80 per barrel would support the growth in North
American oil production. That growth is being propelled by the production of tight oil,
due to the application of horizontal drilling and hydrolic fracturing. Many Organization
of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members are increasingly dependent on
high oil prices to support government spending. However, the budgets of countries that
subsidize domestic fuel consumption will come under greater stress with high oil prices
and rising domestic demand.

Climate Change and Demographics

91. Food security has been aggravated partly because the world’s land masses are
being affected by weather conditions outside of historical norms, including more frequent
and extreme floods, droughts, wildfires, tornadoes, coastal high water and heat waves. In
the 21st century climate change can impact national security ranging from rising sea
levels, to severe droughts, to the melting of the polar caps, to more frequent and
devastating natural disasters that raise demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster
relief . The change wrought by a warming planet will lead to new conflicts over refugees
and resources and catastrophic natural disasters, all of which would require increased
military support and resources.

Health Security

92. Scientists continue to discover previously unknown pathogens in humans that

made the “jump” from animals zoonotic diseases. Human and livestock population
growth and encroachment into jungles increase human exposure to crossovers. No one
can predict which pathogen will be the next to spread to humans, or when or where such
a development will occur, but humans will continue to be vulnerable to pandemics, most
of which will probably originate in animals.
 21

93. An easily transmissible, novel respiratory pathogen that kills or incapacitates more
than one percent of its victims is among the most disruptive events possible. Such an
outbreak would result in a global pandemic that causes suffering and death in every
corner of the world, probably in fewer than six months. This is not a hypothetical threat.
History is replete with examples of pathogens sweeping populations that lack immunity,
causing political and economic upheaval and influencing the outcomes of wars for
example, the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic affected military operations during World War I
and caused global economic disruptions.

Terrorism and Transnational Organized Crime

94. Terrorism. In the absence of employment opportunities and legal means for
political expression, conditions will be ripe for disaffection, growing radicalism, and
possible recruitment of youths into terrorist groups. Terrorist groups in future will likely
be a combination of descendants of long established groups—that inherit organizational
structures, command and control processes, and training procedures necessary to conduct
sophisticated attacks—and newly emergent collections of the angry and disenfranchised
that become self-radicalized.

95. Transnational Crime. Transnational criminal networks has become one of the
national security challenges. These groups cause instability and subvert government
institutions through corruption. Transnational criminal organizations have accumulated
unprecedented wealth and power through the drug trade, arms smuggling, human
trafficking and other illicit activities. They extend their reach by forming alliances with
terrorist organizations, government officials and some state security services.
Transnational Organized Crime can threaten nations interest in the following manner :

(a) Drug Activity.

(b) Facilitating Terrorist Activity.

(c) Money Laundering.

(d) Corruption.

(e) Human Trafficking.

(f) Environmental Crime.

 22

GLOBAL POWER EQUATIONS

USA

96. The American geography is an impressive one. The U.S. Atlantic Coast possesses
more major ports than the rest of the Western Hemisphere combined. Two vast oceans
insulated the United States from Asian and European powers, deserts separate the United
States from Mexico to the south, while lakes and forests separate the population centers
in Canada from those in the United States. The United States has capital, food surpluses
and physical insulation in excess of every other country in the world by an exceedingly
large margin. So like the Turks, the Americans are not important because of who they
are, but because of where they live.

97. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the resulting instability and
vulnerability of former Soviet republics in Trans Caucasus and Central Asia, the impact
of geopolitics on U.S. foreign policy became stronger. There was a return to Mackinder’s
emphasis on the control of Eurasia. In 1992, the Pentagon stated clearly and concisely
what the new U.S. foreign policy goal in Eurasia would be. “Our first objective is to
prevent the reemergence of a rival that poses a threat on the territory of the former Soviet
Union. This is a dominant consideration…and requires that we endeavor to prevent any
hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated
control, be sufficient to generate global power…Our strategy must now refocus on
precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitor.”

98. On 7 October 2001, the U.S. launched Operation Enduring Freedom and invaded
Afghanistan, with coalition partners, to topple the Taliban regime and prevent the country
from serving as a sanctuary for al- Qaeda. The occupation of Afghanistan placed
Washington in a position to pursue Dr. Brzezinski’s geostrategic imperative of
“managing” Eurasia. But with a difference. Instead of a “cooperative relationship” with
China, the emphasis is on containment of China.

99. U.S. Objectives in Afghanistan. The Geopolitical objectives enunciated by the

Pentagon and Dr. Brzezinski center on control of the natural resources of Afghanistan
and Central Asia to prevent the rise of regional hegemons like Russia or China.

100. The natural resources of Afghanistan include oil, gas, copper, cobalt, gold, lithium
and other untapped mineral deposits that have an estimated combine worth in excess of a
trillion dollars. Among the most strategic of these minerals are Rare Earth Metals, which
are indispensable to modern technology. They are needed in manufacturing cell phones,
laptops, compact disks, flat screen display monitors, rechargeable batteries, catalytic
converter, hybrid cars and solar panels, to name a few items. The principle resources of
Central Asia are oil, gas and pipelines.
 23

101. Control the World's Oceans. The two world wars of the early 20th century
cleared away the competition for USA. No battles were fought in the mainland United
States. Not a single American factory was ever bombed. Alone among the world's powers
in 1945, the United States was not only functional but thriving.

102. The United States immediately set to work consolidating its newfound power,
creating a global architecture to entrench its position. Over the next few years the United
States' undisputed naval supremacy allowed the Americans to impose a series of changes
on the international system.

103. The formation of NATO in 1949 placed all of the world's surviving naval assets
under American strategic direction.

104. The inclusion of the United Kingdom, Italy, Iceland and Norway in NATO
granted the United States the basing rights it needed to utterly dominate the North
Atlantic and the Mediterranean -- the two bodies of water that would be required for any
theoretical European resurgence. The seizure of Japan's Pacific empire granted the
Americans basing access in the Pacific, sufficient to allow complete American naval
dominance of the north and central portions of that ocean.

105. A formal alliance with Australia and New Zealand extended American naval
hegemony to the southern Pacific in 1951. A 1952 security treaty placed a rehabilitated
Japan -- and its navy -- firmly under the American security umbrella.

106. The United States grants benefits to as many states as possible for not joining a
system or alliance structure hostile to American powert. The United States has largely
blunted any desire on the part of South Korea, Japan and most of the European states
from siding against the United States in any meaningful way.

107. The military side of this policy is equally important. The United States engages in
bilateral military relationships in order to protect states that would normally be
swallowed up by larger powers. NATO served this purpose against the Soviets, while
even within NATO the United States has much closer cooperation with states such as the
United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania, which feel
themselves too exposed to extra-NATO foes (most notably Russia) or even intra-NATO
allies (most notably Germany).

108. The United States has similar favoured relationships with a broad host of non-
European states as well, each of which feels physically threatened by local powers. These
non-European states include Pakistan (concerned about India), Taiwan (China), South
Korea (North Korea, China and Japan), Mongolia (China and Russia), Thailand (China,
Myanmar and Vietnam), Singapore (Malaysia and Indonesia), Indonesia (China),
Australia (China and Indonesia), Georgia (Russia), the United Arab Emirates and Qatar
(Saudi Arabia and Iran), Saudi Arabia (Iran), Israel (the entire Muslim world), Jordan
(Israel, Syria and Iraq) and Kuwait (Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia).
 24

109. Even the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq should be viewed in this light.
Al Qaeda, the Islamist militant group behind the 9/11 attacks, espoused an ideology that
called for the re-creation of the caliphate, a pan-national religious-political authority that
would have stretched from Morocco to the Philippines -- precisely the sort of massive
entity whose creation the United States attempts to forestall. The launching of the war in
Afghanistan, designed to hunt down al Qaeda's apex leadership, obviously fits this
objective. As for Iraq, one must bear in mind that Saudi Arabia funded many of al
Qaeda's activities, Syria provided many of its recruits and Iran regularly allowed free
passage for its operatives. The United States lacked the military strength to invade all
three states simultaneously, but in invading Iraq it made clear to all three what the
continued price of sponsoring al Qaeda could be. All three changed their policies vis-a-
vis al Qaeda as a result and the recreation of the caliphate (never a particularly likely
event) became considerably less likely than it was a decade ago.

110. Withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan has two implications for the
Americans and the wider world. First, the Americans are tired of war. They want to go
home and shut the world out and with the death of al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden on
May 2, 2011, they feel that they have the opportunity to do so. Second, the American
military is battle-weary. It needs to rest, recuperate and digest the lessons of the wars it
has just fought and American politicians are in a mood to allow it to do just that. But
while the U.S. military is battle-weary, it is also battle-hardened and alone among the
world's militaries it remains easily deployable.

111. Russian power will consolidate and deepen its penetration into the borderlands of
the Caucasus and Central Europe. While the Americans have been busy in the Islamic
world, it has become readily apparent what the Russians can achieve when they are left
alone for a few years. A U.S. isolationist impulse would allow the Russians to continue
reworking their neighborhood and re-anchor themselves near the old Soviet empire's
external borders, places like the Carpathians, the Tian Shan Mountains and the Caucasus
and perhaps even excise NATO influence from the Baltic states. While the chances of a
hot war are relatively low, Russia's regeneration as the most problematic to the long-term
American position because of the combination of Russia's sheer size and the fact that it is
-- and will remain -- fully nuclear armed.

112. Iranian power will seek to weaken the American position in the Persian Gulf. A
full U.S. pullout would leave Iran the undisputed major power of the region, forcing other
regional players to refigure their political calculus in dealing with Iran. Should that result
in Iran achieving de facto control over the Gulf states -- either by force or diplomacy --
the United States would have little choice but to go back in and fight a much larger war
than the one it just extracted itself from. Here the American impulse to shut out the world
would have imminent, obvious and potentially profound consequences.
 25

113. German power will creep back into the world as Berlin attempts to grow its
economic domination of Europe into a political structure that will last for decades. The
European debt crisis is a catastrophe by all definitions save one: It is enabling the
Germans to use their superior financial position to force the various euro nations to
surrender sovereignty to a centralized authority that Germany controls. Unlike the
Russian regeneration, the German return is not nearly as robust, multi-vectored or certain.
Nonetheless, the Germans are manipulating the debt crisis to achieve the European
supremacy by diplomacy and the checkbook that they failed to secure during three
centuries of military competition.

114. The Americans will resist gains made by these powers, but so long as they are
loath to re-commit ground forces, their efforts will be half-hearted. Unless a power
directly threatens core U.S. interests -- for example, an Iranian annexation of Iraq --
American responses will be lackluster. By the time the Americans feel ready to re-
engage, many of the processes will have been well established, raising the cost and
lengthening the duration of the next round of American conflict with the rest of the
world.

115. Advances by others in science and technology, expanded adoption of irregular

warfare tactics by both state and nonstate actors, proliferation of long-range precision
weapons, and growing use of cyber warfare attacks increasingly will constrict US
freedom of action.

Europe

116. Europe is one of the pillars of the global system and what happens to Europe is
going to define how the world works.

117. The question is whether the European Union will stabilize itself, stop its
fragmentation and begin preparing for more integration and expansion. Alternatively, the
tensions could intensify within the European Union, the institutions could further lose
legitimacy and its component states could increase the pace with which they pursue their
own policies, both domestic and foreign.

118. Since the sovereign debt crisis and a banking crisis in Europe, the crisis has turned
from a financial to an economic crisis, with Europe moving into recession and
unemployment across the Continent rising above 10 percent. More important, it has been
a period in which the decision-making apparatus created at the founding of the European
Union has been unable to create policy solutions that were both widely acceptable and
able to be implemented. EU countries have faced each other less as members of a single
political entity than as individual nation-states pursuing their own national interests in
what has become something of a zero-sum game, where the success of one has to come at
the expense of another.

119. The financially healthier countries wanted the weaker countries to bear the burden
through austerity. The weaker countries wanted the stronger countries to bear the burden
through continued lending despite the rising risk that the loans will not be fully repaid.
 26

The result has been constant attempts to compromise that have never quite worked out.
The second dimension has been class. Should the burden be borne by the middle and
lower classes by reducing government expenditures that benefit them? Or by the elites
through increased taxation and regulation?

120. The European Union has been so focused on the financial crisis that it is not clear
that the unemployment reality has reached Europe's officials and bureaucrats, partly
because of a growing split in the worldview of the European elites and those whose
experience of Europe has turned bitter. Partly, it has been caused by the fact of
geography. The countries with low unemployment tend to be in Northern Europe, which
is the heart of the European Union, while those with catastrophically high unemployment
are on the periphery. It is easy to ignore things far away.

121. Key Partnerships. Ongoing US-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment

Partnership (TTIP) negotiations, European Parliament (EP) elections, the withdrawal of
Allied forces from Afghanistan and new leadership in the EU and NATO will create new
dynamics in the transatlantic partnership in 2014. Europeans are likely recognize the need
to isolate the TTIP negotiations from the other issue areas.

NATO

122. The Strategic Environment and Global Trends In the wake of the Cold War’s end,
the transatlantic Alliance faced a rapidly changing world that challenged NATO in
unanticipated ways. The turbulent decades since the end of the Cold War featured NATO
interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, a new relationship with Russia, the enlargement of
the Alliance, a rapid response to a revolution in Libya and the largest sustained operation
in NATO’s history in Afghanistan. The coming decades promise to be significantly more
dynamic for the transatlantic relationship in general and for NATO in particular, due to a
new security environment fueled by global megatrends.

123. Many global trends suggest that the Alliance’s most pressing security challenges
will be found closer to the Euro-Atlantic area. NATO’s ability to respond to these
challenges will be more constrained due to continued fiscal pressures, degraded Alliance
cohesion and the presence of significant new powers both state and nonstate with
divergent values and interests. Therefore, transatlantic policymakers must immediately
begin the internal dialogue on how to best prepare NATO for this very different era of
renewed, broadened global competition.

Russia

124. Russia's physical location in the middle of the flat regions of northern Eurasia,
makes the country a natural counterbalance to the United States and the state most likely
to participate in an anti-American coalition. Not only does Russia's location in the
flatlands of Eurasia require it to expand outward to achieve security (thus making it a
somewhat "continent-sized" power), its natural inclination is to dominate or ally with any
major power it comes across. Due to its geographic disadvantages, Russia is not a country
 27

that can ever rest on its laurels and its strategic need to expand makes it a natural
American rival.

125. For most of the second half of the 20th century, the Soviet Union controlled
Eurasia -- from central Germany to the Pacific, as far south as the Caucasus and the
Hindu Kush. When the Soviet Union collapsed, its western frontier moved east nearly
1,000 miles, from the West German border to the Russian border with Belarus. Russian
power has now retreated farther east than it has been in centuries. During the Cold War it
had moved farther west than ever before. In the coming decades, Russian power will
likely to settle somewhere between those two lines.

126. After the Soviet Union dissolved at the end of the 20th century, foreign powers
moved in to take advantage of Russia's economy, creating an era of chaos and poverty.
Most significantly, Ukraine moved into an alignment with the United States and away
from Russia -- this was a breaking point in Russian history.

127. The Orange Revolution in Ukraine, from December 2004 to January 2005, was the
moment when the post-Cold War world genuinely ended for Russia. The Russians saw
the events in Ukraine as an attempt by the United States to draw Ukraine into NATO and
thereby set the stage for Russian disintegration.

128. If the West had succeeded in dominating Ukraine, Russia would have become
indefensible. The southern border with Belarus, as well as the southwestern frontier of
Russia, would have been wide open.

129. Merely 12 years ago, Russia was not even in complete control of its own territory,
with an insurgency raging in Chechnya and many other regions exercising de facto
sovereignty. National savings had either disappeared in the August 1998 ruble crisis or
been looted by the oligarchs. During the American wars in the Islamic world, however,
the Russians reorganized, recentralized and earned prodigious volumes of cash from
commodity sales. Russia now has a stable budget and more than half a trillion dollars in
the bank. Its internal wars have been smothered and it has re-assimilated, broken or at
least cowed all of the former Soviet states. At present, Russia is even reaching out to
Germany as a means of neutralizing American military partnerships with NATO states
such as Poland and Romania and it continues to bolster Iran as a means of keeping the
United States bogged down in the Middle East.

130. Interestingly, the geopolitical shift is aligning with an economic shift. Vladimir
Putin sees Russia less as an industrial power than as an exporter of raw materials, the
most important of which is energy (particularly natural gas). He is transforming Russia
from an impoverished disaster into a poor but more productive country. Putin also is
giving Russia the tool with which to intimidate Europe: the valve on a natural gas
pipeline.

131. Europe is hungry for energy. Russia, constructing pipelines to feed natural gas to
Europe, takes care of Europe's energy needs and its own economic problems and puts
Europe in a position of dependency on Russia. In an energy-hungry world, Russia's
 28

energy exports are like heroin. It addicts countries once they start using it. Russia has
already used its natural gas resources to force neighboring countries to bend to its will.
That power reaches into the heart of Europe, where the Germans and the former Soviet
satellites of Eastern Europe all depend on Russian natural gas. Add to this its other
resources and Russia can apply significant pressure on Europe.

132. But the real flash point, in all likelihood, will be on Russia's western frontier.
Belarus will align itself with Russia. Of all the countries in the former Soviet Union,
Belarus has had the fewest economic and political reforms and has been the most
interested in recreating some successor to the Soviet Union. Linked in some way to
Russia, Belarus will bring Russian power back to the borders of the former Soviet Union.

133. From the Baltics south to the Romanian border there is a region where borders
have historically been uncertain and conflict frequent. In the north, there is a long, narrow
plain, stretching from the Pyrenees to St. Petersburg. This is where Europe's greatest wars
were fought. This is the path that Napoleon and Hitler took to invade Russia. There are
few natural barriers. Therefore, the Russians must push their border west as far as
possible to create a buffer. After World War II, they drove into the center of Germany on
this plain. Today, they have retreated to the east. They have to return and move as far
west as possible. That means the Baltic states and Poland are, as before, problems Russia
has to solve.

134. Putin is for the moment in a strong position in Ukraine because Ukraine simply
matters to him more than it matters to the United States or even to Europe. And it matters
more to him because of geography. Ukraine, for all the familiar reasons, is central to the
destiny of European Russia, to Russia's history and identity and particularly to Russia's
access to the warm waters of the Mediterranean via the Black Sea. And because Russia's
Black Sea Fleet is based on the Crimean Peninsula, Putin feels he cannot just stand by
and watch his fleet become subject to an emerging, overtly pro-Western state in Ukraine.

135. Meanwhile, geography dictates that Ukraine has a long border with Russia and is
not separated from it by any formidable geographical features. Thus, even as Putin needs
Ukraine and Crimea more than the West does, he also has more leverage over Ukraine
and Crimea than the West does. Because of geography, natural gas deposits are primarily
in Russia rather than in Ukraine. And thus Ukraine is dependent on Russia for not only
trade, but energy, too. (Ukraine's shale reserves are mainly in the eastern, pro-Russian
part of the country).

136. Because of geography, the Baltic States, Poland and Moldova are threatened: They
are contiguous to Russia and Ukraine, with no natural impediments to protect them. In
the Baltic States in particular, there are Russian minorities useful to Putin, for the flat
geography of the North European Plain has enabled the flow of people and changeability
of borders over the centuries.
 29

137. It is not clear what happened in Kiev. There were of course many organizations
funded by American and European money that were committed to a reform
government. It is irrelevant whether, as the Russians charge, these organizations planned
and fomented the uprising against former President Viktor Yanukovich's regime or
whether that uprising was part of a more powerful indigenous movement that drew these
groups along. The fact was that Yanukovich refused to sign an agreement moving
Ukraine closer to the European Union, the demonstrations took place, there was violence
and an openly pro-Western Ukrainian government was put in place. The Russians cannot
simply allow this to stand. Not only does it create a new geopolitical reality, but in the
longer term it also gives the appearance inside Russia that Putin is weaker than he seems
and opens the door to instability and even fragmentation. Therefore, the Russians must
respond. The issue is how.

138. The European and American strategy to control the Russians has been to threaten
sanctions. The problem is that Russia is the world's eighth-largest economy and its
finances are entangled with the West's, as is its economy. For any sanctions the West
would impose, the Russians have a counter. There are many Western firms that
have made large investments in Russia and have large Russian bank accounts and
massive amounts of equipment in the country. The Russians can also cut off natural gas
and oil shipments. This would of course hurt Russia financially, but the impact on Europe
and global oil markets would be more sudden and difficult to manage. Some have argued
that U.S. energy or European shale could solve the problem. The Russian advantage is
that any such solution is years away and Europe would not have years to wait for the
cavalry to arrive. Some symbolic sanctions coupled with symbolic counter-sanctions are
possible, but bringing the Russian economy to its knees without massive collateral
damage would be hard.

139. The most likely strategy Russia will follow is a combination of all of the above:
pressure on mainland Ukraine with some limited incursions; working to create unrest in
the Baltics, where large Russian-speaking minorities live and in the Caucasus and
Moldova; and pursuing a strategy to prevent Eastern Europe from coalescing into a single
entity. Simultaneously, Russia is likely to intervene in areas that are sensitive to the
United States while allowing the Ukrainian government to be undermined by its natural
divisions.

140. Russia will have to compete for influence with the EU in the West and
increasingly with China in Central Asia: both will pose challenges to pursuit of Eurasian
integration. Defining the limits of Russian influence will be controversial. The United
States and the countries within the old Soviet sphere -- will not want Russia to go too far.

141. Russia will not become a global power in the next decade, but it has no choice but
to become a major regional power. And that means it will clash with Europe. The
Russian-European frontier remains a fault line.
 30

Central Asia

Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

Historical Background

142. Central Asia is the core region of the Asian continent and stretches from the
Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia
in the north. It is also sometimes referred to as Middle Asia and, colloquially, "the 'stans"
(as the six countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending
with the Persian suffix "-stan", meaning "land of") and is within the scope of the wider
Eurasian continent. Central Asia consists of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan; it borders Russia, China, the Middle East and South Asia.

Regional Tensions and Conflicts

143. The legacies of co-mingled ethnic groups, convoluted borders and emerging
national identities pose challenges to stability in all the Central Asian states. Emerging
national identities accentuate clan, family, regional and Islamic self-identifications.
Central Asia’s convoluted borders fail to accurately reflect ethnic distributions and are
hard to police, hence contributing to regional tensions. The fertile Ferghana Valley is
shared by Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. The central governments have
struggled to gain control over administrative subunits. Most observers agree that the term
“Central Asia” currently denotes a geographic area more than a region of shared
identities and aspirations, although it is clear that the land-locked, poverty-stricken and
sparsely populated region will need more integration in order to develop.
 31

144. On the one hand, the Central Asian states have wrangled over water-sharing,
border delineation, trade and transit and other issues.

145. Energy Resources. The Caspian region is emerging as a notable source of oil and
gas for world markets. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has estimated that
gas exports from the region could account for 11% of global gas export sales by 2035.
According to British Petroleum (BP), the proven natural gas reserves of Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are estimated at over 450 trillion cubic feet
(tcf), among the largest in the world. The region’s proven oil reserves are estimated to be
48 billion barrels, comparable to Libya. Russia’s temporary cutoffs of gas to Ukraine in
January 2006 and January 2009 and a brief slowdown of oil shipments to Belarus in
January 2010 (Belarus and Ukraine are transit states for oil and gas pipelines to other
European states) have highlighted Europe’s energy insecurity.

146. The Central Asian states were pressured by Russia to yield large portions of their
energy wealth to Russia, in part because Russia controlled most existing export pipelines.
Russia attempted to strengthen this control over export routes for Central Asian energy in
May 2007 when President Putin reached agreement in Kazakhstan on supplying more
Kazakh oil to Russia. Putin also reached agreement with the presidents of Turkmenistan
and Kazakhstan on the construction of a new pipeline to transport Turkmen and Kazakh
gas to Russia. The first In the post cold war period, the Central Asian countries have
engaged themselves in nation building and consolidation of their statehoods. The
pessimistic scenarios feared in the early nineties of Central Asia disintegrating have not
fortunately been realized. No state has become a failing state.

147. Religious extremism, fundamentalism and terrorism continue to pose challenges to

Central Asian societies as well as regional stability. The Fergana Valley remains a hot
spot of fundamentalism. Central Asian republics face serious threat from illegal drug
trade emanating from Afghanistan. Instability in Central Asia can spill over into sensitive
regions like Xinjiang.

148. Traditionally, Central Asia has been an arena of "great game". The modern version
is being played out even today. Russia, China, US, Turkey, Iran, Europe, EU, Japan,
Pakistan, India, Afghanistan have all substantial security and economic interests in the
region. In order to maximize their geo-political advantage and also to ensure that their
national interests are safeguarded, the Central Asian countries have engaged with the rest
of the world through a variety of channels and institutions.

149. Central Asian countries are land locked and have looked for building connectivity
to global markets. They have sought to revive the ancient Silk Route. Their connectivity
with Russia remains the most dominant feature. In the recent years, new connectivity has
been built with China as reflected, for instance, in the Kazakh-China gas pipeline. New
infrastructure has been built facilitating Central Asia’s connectivity with rest of the
world.

150. China’s Central Asia Problem. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, China
and its Central Asian neighbours have developed a close relationship, initially economic
 32

but increasingly also political and security. Energy, precious metals and other natural
resources flow into China from the region. Investment flows the other way, as China
builds pipelines, power lines and transport networks linking Central Asia to its north-
western province, the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. China’s influence and
visibility is growing rapidly. It is already the dominant economic force in the region and
within the next few years could well become the pre-eminent external power there,
overshadowing the U.S. and Russia.

151. Beijing’s primary concern is the security and development of its Xinjiang
Autonomous Region, which shares 2,800km of borders with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan. The core of its strategy seems to be creation of close ties between Xinjiang
and Central Asia, with the aim of reinforcing both economic development and political
stability. This in turn will, it is hoped, insulate Xinjiang and its neighbours from any
negative consequences of NATO’s 2014 withdrawal from Afghanistan.

152. Beijing is starting to take tentative political and security initiatives in the region,
mostly through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which, however, has
shown itself ineffective in times of unrest.

153. The US has used Central Asia to achieve its logistical and military objectives in
Afghanistan in the past decade or so. Central Asian countries have provided land and air
routes to the US for supplies to Afghanistan. These routes will also be used when the US
withdraws from Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have been direct
beneficiaries. The withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan would result in dilution
of the US influence in Central Asia.

154. Several other actors have developed stakes in the Central Asian region. These
include Iran, Turkey, European Union and even Japan. Central Asia’s mineral resources
and Central Asian markets are important motivations in the policies of these countries.

155. Afghanistan and Af-Pak region pose security challenge to the cohesiveness of
Central Asian Region. Drug trade and extremism emanating from an unstable
Afghanistan and Afghanistan-Pakistan region is a concern which Central Asian countries
have not been able to handle effectively.

THE ASIA PACIFIC REGION

156. Asia-Pacific, which covers China, Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, is a region
with complex currents. On the one hand, there is an unabated region-wide drive for
economic development that has been pushing Asia-Pacific forward for decades. On the
other hand, this region is troubled with, aside from many other conflicts, unsettled
maritime disputes that have the potential to trigger wars between and among the Asia-
Pacific nations.

157. Rise of China. China's rise has created a flux. An economic giant, with a GDP of
USD 7.3 trillion (2011-World Bank) & an annual military expenditure of Yuan 650
billion (approx USD 103 billion) in 2012, China has overtaken Japan in economic and
 33

military terms and may overtake the US’ economy in the next 10-20 years depending
upon the growth rate differential between the two countries.

158. China’s rise is altering the balance of power globally & regionally. The confidence
in China's peaceful rise and peaceful development has been seriously dented due to rising
tensions in South China Sea and in East China Sea. The new leadership is nationalistic &
sharply focused on China’s ‘core’ interests.

159. China's rapid military modernisation and projection of its power beyond
immediate neighbourhood and in the West Pacific, has raised apprehensions among its
neighbours. It has developed a powerful navy – with aircraft carriers, submarines, anti-
ship missiles – which is rivalling that of Japan and the US. China is following Anti
Access Anti-Denial (A2D) strategy to deter the US from entering the island chain in the
area of Chinese influence.

160. The rising tide of nationalism in China has caused anxieties among neighbours.
China’s formulations on ‘core’ interests with attendant focus on sovereignty, has created
doubts in the minds of the neighbouring countries about China’s intentions. China
regards the South China Sea as its internal waters. This will have major impact not only
in the neighbourhood but also for international shipping.

161. On the flip side, it must also be recognized that China’s rise has also benefited the
neighbours, particularly in the economic field. For most countries, China is number one
trading partner. China-ASEAN trade is $ 380 billion. The ASEAN economies have got
integrated with that of China. People-to-people contacts between China and its
neighbours have also deepened with greater connectivity, openness and transparency.

162. China is getting integrated with the regional architectures. This has increased
China’s role in regional stability. For instance, China has an FTA with ASEAN. The
ASEAN countries are part of a global supply chain which passes through China to global
markets. Thus the economic and social interdependence has increased. China is
participating in RCEP negotiations. RECP will bring about a higher level of economic
integration between the ASEAN, China, Japan, Australia and India.

163. The future is uncertain. China’s economic performance is suspect and riddled with
many problems. How long will China maintain its growth and what will be the impact of
the slow-down of Chinese economy in the region will be worth studying. China presents
a complex picture. The talk of containment of China is problematic given the growing
interdependence between China and most major economies of the region.
 34

ASEAN

164. The ASEAN Region, traditionally a region divided by numerous internal fault
lines, has sought to put its act together particularly since the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
ASEAN countries have sought to resolve their disputes through consensus and dialogue.
They have engaged with the outside world while emphasising the ASEAN centrality in so
far as their region is concerned. With a combined GDP of over $ 2 trillion (2011) and
total trade of $ 2.4 trillion (2011), ASEAN has emerged as a formidable economic force.
ASEAN unity is under strain. The South China Sea is a hotspot of tension and is likely to
remain so. The mistrust between China and ASEAN is increasing because of South China
Sea issues.

Japan

165. Japan is getting revitalised. Prime Minister Abe is determined to restore Japan’s
primacy. Japan’s New Defence Policy guidelines indicate that Japan is likely to devote
increasing attention to recrafting its military strategy and enhancing its defence postures.
China’s assertiveness and North Korea’s nuclear programme are serious security
concerns for Japan. In the altered scenarios, Japan is focusing on India as a security
partner. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Japan got worldwide headlines as it
signalled deepening of India-Japan strategic and security partnership. Prime Minister Abe
is reported to have proposed “a strategy whereby Australia, India, Japan and the US state
of Hawaii form a diamond to safeguard the maritime commons stretching from the Indian
Ocean region to the Western Pacific. The Indian Prime Minister spoke of India and Japan
as “natural and indispensable partners for…a peaceful, stable, cooperative and prosperous
future for the Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean regions.” Clearly, India-Japan relations are
important in the context of peace and stability in Asia Pacific.

Australia

166. It would be useful to see how Australia is adjusting to the rise of China. Australia
sees opportunities for itself in the so-called “Asian Century”. It welcomes the rise of
China and accepts its military growth as “natural”. Australia is pulling out all stops to
deepen its relations with China at every level. At the same time, Australia is also hedging
against China by building its own defence capabilities and supporting US rebalancing &
pivoting to the Asia Pacific. It is seeking partnerships with India, Japan and South Korea.
In particular, Australia takes note of India’s growing strategic weight in the region and
assigns special importance to India in the context of “Indo-Pacific”. It regards Indian and
pacific oceans as “one strategic arch”. India needs to deepen its relations with Australia,
particularly in the context of Australia’s emergence as a major supplier of coal and
possibly uranium in the future. Australia is also helping India in education and skill
developments.
 35

167. South Korea. South Korea faces a volatile security environment,

particularly in the context of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programme and its
unpredictable behaviour. South Koreans pay major emphasis on the protection of the sea
lanes of communication in the East Asian region and seek cooperation with India in this
regard. They also take note of Chinese hegemonic outlook in the region. While
maintaining close ties with India, the Cheonan incident and Yeon Pyieng Island shelling
in 2010 have highlighted the increasing military trend in that area.

168. USA. On top of these mixed currents, there is an intense competition between
China and the United States over a wide range of vital interests in this region. For better
or for worse, the U.S.-China relationship is becoming a defining factor in the relations
among Asia-Pacific nations.

169. The U.S. strategic shift toward Asia-Pacific is, as President Barack Obama puts it,
not a choice, but a necessity. Although conflicts elsewhere, especially the ones in the
Middle East, continue to draw U.S. attention and consume U.S. foreign policy resources,
the United States is turning its full attention to China and Asia-Pacific.

170. As the United States makes its strategic shift and rebalances its military toward
Asia-Pacific, it is faced with the problem that its Asia-Pacific allies who are pursuing
territorial disputes with China will misread U.S. intentions and overplay the “U.S.” card.
On the other hand, if China believes that U.S. efforts are simply an attempt to complicate
China's relations with its neighbors—without actually shedding any blood—it may take
strong and assertive action to “silence” its opponents.

171. In the mid-2000s, the United States and China made an unprecedented strategic
goodwill exchange and agreed to blaze a new path out of the tragedy of great power
transition. The United States is either indirectly or deeply involved in many of the
disputes between China and its neighbors. These conflicts all run the risk of involving
China and the United States in unwanted wars.

172. For the United States, its dilemma is how to uphold the regional order in Asia-
Pacific while not emboldening China and China’s disputants to take reckless acts against
each other.

173. For China, its dilemma is when and how to settle its territorial disputes. It appears
that China believes time is not on its side the longer China defers the issue, the stronger
its opponents' hold on the disputed territories, further weakening China’s position. There
is ample evidence that while China is still advocating shelving the disputes for the future,
it is still making efforts to gain control of the disputed territories. Territorial dispute is
becoming an urgent issue in Asia-Pacific. A more relevant question thus has become how
China settles the disputes with its neighbors. China has promised to settle the disputes
peacefully and through bilateral consultations. China also blames the United States for
interfering and complicating the negotiations. Can the United States and the Asia-Pacific
nations give China the benefit of the doubt?
 36

174. There is no easy answer to these inextricable dilemmas. All in Asia-Pacific must
walk a fine line in managing these conflicts.

North Korea

175. The North Korean situation is the most unpredictable in the region. Much work
remains to achieve a verifiable agreement concerning the elimination of existing weapons
stockpiles and other nuclear programs. Without successful implementation of the Six-
Party framework, North Korea will retain its status as a nuclear power with uncertain
reactions in the region. After Pyongyang’s test, Japan and South Korea sought and
received U.S. assurances that extended deterrence still applies. However, in the long
term, Japan could be tempted to embark on its own program. The prospects for additional
global proliferation will increase significantly. Overt use of force on the peninsula, in the
form of preemptive or preventive force, or even a blockade, could spark a dangerous
conflict and require significant U.S. military involvement for years to come to deal with
its aftermath. The possibility of total North Korean collapse is not especially high, since
China and South Korea would intervene to prevent a total failure. Overall, the prospects
for resolution on the peninsula in the next 5 years are not good but will require significant
U.S. attention to ensure the situation does not become catastrophic.

CHINA

The Geopolitics of China: A Great Power Enclosed

176. Contemporary China is an island. Although it is not surrounded by water (which

borders only its eastern flank), China is bordered by terrain that is difficult to traverse in
virtually any direction. Internally, China may be divided into two parts: the Chinese
heartland and the non-Chinese buffer regions surrounding it. There is a line in China
called the 15-inch isohyet, east of which more than 15 inches of rain fall each year and
west of which the annual rainfall is less. The vast majority of Chinese live east and south
of this line, in the region known as Han China the Chinese heartland. The region is home
to the ethnic Han, whom the world regards as the Chinese.

177. The Chinese heartland is divided into two parts, northern and southern, which in
turn is represented by two main dialects, Mandarin in the north and Cantonese in the
south. These dialects share a writing system but are almost mutually incomprehensible
when spoken. The Chinese heartland is defined by two major rivers the Yellow River in
the north and the Yangtze in the South, along with a third lesser river in the south, the
Pearl. The heartland is China's agricultural region. However and this is the single most
important fact about China it has about one-third the arable land per person as the rest of
the world. This pressure has defined modern Chinese history both in terms of living with
it and trying to move beyond it.
 37

178. A ring of non-Han regions surround this heartland Tibet, Xinjiang province (home
of the Muslim Uighurs), Inner Mongolia and Manchuria.

179. Apart from European encroachments in which commercial interests were backed
up by limited force, China suffered its most significant military encounter -- and long and
miserable war -- after the Japanese invaded and occupied large parts of eastern China
along with Manchuria in the 1930s. Despite the mismatch in military power and more
than a dozen years of war, Japan still could not force the Chinese government to
capitulate. The simple fact was that Han China, given its size and population density,
could not be subdued. No matter how many victories the Japanese won, they could not
decisively defeat the Chinese.

China's Geopolitical Imperatives

180. China has three overriding geopolitical imperatives:

(a) Maintain internal unity in the Han Chinese regions.

(b) Maintain control of the buffer regions.

(c) Protect the coast from foreign encroachment.

181. China is more enclosed than any other great power. The size of its population,
coupled with its secure frontiers and relative abundance of resources, allows it to develop
with minimal intercourse with the rest of the world, if it chooses. During the Maoist
period, for example, China became an insular nation, driven primarily by internal
interests and considerations, indifferent or hostile to the rest of the world. It was secure
and, except for its involvement in the Korean War and its efforts to pacify restless buffer
regions, was relatively peaceful. Internally, however, China underwent periodic, self-
generated chaos.

182. The weakness of insularity for China is poverty. Given the ratio of arable land to
population, a self-enclosed China is a poor China. Its population is so poor that economic
development driven by domestic demand, no matter how limited it might be, is
impossible. However, an isolated China is easier to manage by a central government. The
great danger in China is a rupture within the Han Chinese nation. If that happens, if the
central government weakens, the peripheral regions will spin off and China will then be
vulnerable to foreigners taking advantage of Chinese weakness.

183. For China to prosper, it has to engage in trade, exporting silk, silver and industrial
products. As trade between China and the world intensified, the Chinese who were
engaged in trading increased their wealth dramatically. Those in the coastal provinces of
China, the region most deeply involved in trading, became relatively wealthy while the
Chinese in the interior (not the buffer regions, which were always poor, but the non-
coastal provinces of Han China) remained poor, subsistence farmers.
 38

184. China's primary geopolitical issue is this: For it to develop it must engage in
international trade. If it does that, it must use its coastal cities as an interface with the
world. When that happens, the coastal cities and the surrounding region become
increasingly wealthy. The influence of foreigners over this region increases and the
interests of foreigners and the coastal Chinese converge and begin competing with the
interests of the central government. China is constantly challenged by the problem of how
to avoid this outcome while engaging in international trade.

Controlling the Buffer Regions

185. The rapid-fire consolidation of the buffer regions gave Mao what all Chinese
emperors sought, a China secure from invasion. Controlling Tibet meant that India could
not move across the Himalayas and establish a secure base of operations on the Tibetan
Plateau. There could be skirmishes in the Himalayas, but no one could push a
multidivisional force across those mountains and keep it supplied. Xinjiang, Inner
Mongolia and Manchuria buffered China from the Soviet Union. Mao was more of a
geopolitician than an ideologue. He did not trust the Soviets. With the buffer states in
hand, they would not invade China. The distances, the poor transportation and the lack of
resources meant that any Soviet invasion would run into massive logistical problems well
before it reached Han China's populated regions and become bogged down -- just as the
Japanese had.

186. China had geopolitical issues with Vietnam, Pakistan and Afghanistan,
neighboring states with which it shared a border, but the real problem for China would
come in Manchuria or, more precisely, Korea. The Soviets, more than the Chinese, had
encouraged a North Korean invasion of South Korea. It is difficult to speculate on Joseph
Stalin's thinking, but it worked out superbly for him. The United States intervened,
defeated the North Korean Army and drove to the Yalu, the river border with China. The
Chinese, seeing the well-armed and well-trained American force surge to its borders,
decided that it had to block its advance and attacked south. What resulted was three years
of brutal warfare in which the Chinese lost about a million men. From the Soviet point of
view, fighting between China and the United States was the best thing imaginable.
However, what it demonstrated was the sensitivity of the Chinese to any encroachment
on their borderlands, their buffers, which represent the foundation of their national
security.

Protecting the Coast

187. With the buffer regions under control, the coast is China's most vulnerable point,
but its vulnerability is not to invasion. Given the Japanese example, no one has the
interest or forces to try to invade mainland China, supply an army there and hope to win.
Invasion is not a meaningful threat.

188. The coastal threat to China is economic, though most would not call it a threat.
The British intrusion into China culminated in the destabilization of the country, the
virtual collapse of the central government and civil war. It was all caused by prosperity.
 39

Mao had solved the problem by sealing the coast of China off to any real development
and liquidating the class that had collaborated with foreign business.
189. His successor, Deng Xiaoping, was heir to a powerful state in control of China and
the buffer regions. He also felt under tremendous pressure politically to improve living
standards and he undoubtedly understood that technological gaps would eventually
threaten Chinese national security. He took a historic gamble. He knew that China's
economy could not develop on its own. China's internal demand for goods was too weak
because the Chinese were too poor.

190. Deng gambled that he could open China to foreign investment and reorient the
Chinese economy away from agriculture and heavy industry and toward export-oriented
industries. By doing so he would increase living standards, import technology and train
China's workforce. He was betting that the effort this time would not destabilize China,
create massive tensions between the prosperous coastal provinces and the interior, foster
regionalism, or put the coastal regions under foreign control. Deng believed he could
avoid all that by maintaining a strong central government, based on a loyal army and
Communist Party apparatus. His successors have struggled to maintain that loyalty to the
state and not to foreign investors, who can make individuals wealthy. That is the bet that
is currently being played out.
China's Geopolitics and its Current Position
191. From a political and military standpoint, China has achieved its strategic goals.
The buffer regions are intact and China faces no threat in Eurasia. It sees a Western
attempt to force China out of Tibet as an attempt to undermine Chinese national security.
For China, however, Tibet is a minor irritant; China has no possible intention of leaving
Tibet, the Tibetans cannot rise up and win and no one is about to invade the region.
Similarly, the Uighur Muslims represent an irritant in Xinjiang and not a direct threat.
The Russians have no interest in or capability of invading China and the Korean
Peninsula does not represent a direct threat to the Chinese, certainly not one they could
not handle.

192. The greatest military threat to China comes from the United States Navy. The
Chinese have become highly dependent on seaborne trade and the United States Navy is
in a position to blockade China's ports if it wished. Should the United States do that, it
would cripple China. Therefore, China's primary military interest is to make such a
blockade impossible.

193. It would take several generations for China to build a surface navy able to compete
with the U.S. Navy. Simply training naval aviators to conduct carrier-based operations
effectively would take decades -- at least until these trainees became admirals and
captains. And this does not take into account the time it would take to build an aircraft
carrier and carrier-capable aircraft and master the intricacies of carrier operations.

194. For China, the primary mission is to raise the price of a blockade so high that the
Americans would not attempt it. The means for that would be land- and submarine-based
anti-ship missiles. The strategic solution is for China to construct a missile force
 40

sufficiently dispersed that it cannot be suppressed by the United States and with sufficient
range to engage the United States at substantial distance, as far as the central Pacific.
195. This missile force would have to be able to identify and track potential targets to
be effective. Therefore, if the Chinese are to pursue this strategy, they must also develop
a space-based maritime reconnaissance system. These are the technologies the Chinese
are focusing on. Anti-ship missiles and space-based systems, including anti-satellite
systems designed to blind the Americans, represent China's military counter to its only
significant military threat.

196. China could also use those missiles to blockade Taiwan by interdicting ships going
to and from the island. But the Chinese do not have the naval ability to land a sufficient
amphibious force and sustain it in ground combat. Nor do they have the ability to
establish air superiority over the Taiwan Strait. China might be able to harass Taiwan but
it will not invade it. Missiles, satellites and submarines constitute China's naval strategy.

197. For China, the primary problem posed by Taiwan is naval. Taiwan is positioned in
such a way that it can readily serve as an air and naval base that could isolate maritime
movement between the South China Sea and the East China Sea, effectively leaving the
northern Chinese coast and Shanghai isolated. When you consider the Ryukyu Islands
that stretch from Taiwan to Japan and add them to this mix, a non-naval power could
blockade the northern Chinese coast if it held Taiwan.

198. Taiwan would not be important to China unless it became actively hostile or allied
with or occupied by a hostile power such as the United States. If that happened, its
geographical position would pose an extremely serious problem for China. Taiwan is also
an important symbolic issue to China and a way to rally nationalism. Although Taiwan
presents no immediate threat, it does pose potential dangers that China cannot ignore.

199. There is one area in which China is being modestly expansionist -- Central Asia
and particularly Kazakhstan. Traditionally a route for trading silk, Kazakhstan is now an
area that can produce energy, badly needed by China's industry. The Chinese have been
active in developing commercial relations with Kazakhstan and in developing roads into
Kazakhstan. These roads are opening a trading route that allows oil to flow in one
direction and industrial goods in another.

200. In doing this, the Chinese are challenging Russia's sphere of influence in the
former Soviet Union. The Russians have been prepared to tolerate increased Chinese
economic activity in the region while being wary of China's turning into a political
power. Kazakhstan has been European Russia's historical buffer state against Chinese
expansion and it has been under Russian domination. This region must be watched
carefully. If Russia begins to feel that China is becoming too assertive in this region, it
could respond militarily to Chinese economic power.

201. But these are only theoretical possibilities. The threat of an American blockade on
China's coast, of using Taiwan to isolate northern China, of conflict over Kazakhstan all
are possibilities that the Chinese must take into account as they plan for the worst. In fact,
the United States does not have an interest in blockading China and the Chinese and
Russians are not going to escalate competition over Kazakhstan.
 41

Economic Dimensions of Chinese Geopolitics

202. The problem of China, rooted in geopolitics, is economic and it presents itself in
two ways. China has an export-oriented economy. It is in a position of dependency. No
matter how large its currency reserves or how advanced its technology or how cheap its
labor force, China depends on the willingness and ability of other countries to import its
goods -- as well as the ability to physically ship them. Any disruption of this flow has a
direct effect on the Chinese economy.

203. The primary reason other countries buy Chinese goods is price. They are cheaper
because of wage differentials. Should China lose that advantage to other nations or for
other reasons, its ability to export would decline.

204. And all of this is outside of China's control. China cannot control the world price
of oil. It can cut into its cash reserves to subsidize those prices for manufacturers but that
would essentially be transferring money back to consuming nations. It can control rising
wages by imposing price controls, but that would cause internal instability. The center of
gravity of China is that it has become the industrial workshop of the world and, as such, it
is totally dependent on the world to keep buying its goods rather than someone else's
goods.

205. But in geopolitics we look for the center of gravity and for China the center of
gravity is that the more effective it becomes at exporting, the more of a hostage it
becomes to its customers. Some observers have warned that China might take its money
out of American banks. Unlikely, but assume it did. What would China do without the
United States as a customer?

206. China has placed itself in a position where it has to keep its customers happy. It
struggles against this reality daily, but the fact is that the rest of the world is far less
dependent on China's exports than China is dependent on the rest of the world.

207. Which brings us to the second, even more serious part of China's economic
problem. The first geopolitical imperative of China is to ensure the unity of Han China.
The third is to protect the coast. Deng's bet was that he could open the coast without
disrupting the unity of Han China. As in the 19th century, the coastal region has become
wealthy. The interior has remained extraordinarily poor. The coastal region is deeply
enmeshed in the global economy. The interior is not. Beijing is once again balancing
between the coast and the interior.

208. The interests of the coastal region and the interests of importers and investors are
closely tied to each other. Beijing's interest is in maintaining internal stability. As
pressures grow, it will seek to increase its control of the political and economic life of the
coast. The interest of the interior is to have money transferred to it from the coast. The
interest of the coast is to hold on to its money. Beijing will try to satisfy both, without
letting China break apart and without resorting to Mao's draconian measures. But the
worse the international economic situation becomes the less demand there will be for
Chinese products and the less room there will be for China to maneuver.
 42

209. The second part of the problem derives from the first. Assuming that the global
economy does not decline now, it will at some point. When it does and Chinese exports
fall dramatically, Beijing will have to balance between an interior hungry for money and
a coastal region that is hurting badly. It is important to remember that something like 900
million Chinese live in the interior while only about 400 million live in the coastal region.
When it comes to balancing power, the interior is the physical threat to the regime while
the coast destabilizes the distribution of wealth. The interior has mass on its side. The
coast has the international trading system on its. Emperors have stumbled over less.

Mapping the Claims

210. Six countries lay overlapping claims to the East and South China Seas, an area that
is rich in hydrocarbons and natural gas and through which trillions of dollars of global
trade flow. As it seeks to expand its maritime presence, China has been met by growing
assertiveness from regional claimants like Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. The
increasingly frequent standoffs span from the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, on China’s
eastern flank, to the long stretch of archipelagos in the South China Sea that comprise
hundreds of islets. The U.S. pivot to Asia, involving renewed diplomatic activity and
military redeployment, could signal Washington’s heightened role in the disputes, which,
if not managed wisely, could turn part of Asia’s maritime regions from thriving trade
channels into arenas of conflict. The Maritime disputes of China are depicted in the
following diagram:-

Maritime Disputes of China

Legend
 43

1. China. China claims the largest share of territory in the South China Seas,
basing its assertions on historical grounds demarcated by a nine-dash line it
drew in 1947. It does not adhere to the international protocols set out by the
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and has clashed
militarily with Vietnam and the Philippines over the Paracels and Spratly Islands.
It has also resisted attempts to resolve the disputes through UNCLOS or regional
body ASEAN, preferring to pursue conflict resolution bilaterally. China’s
maritime claims extend to the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea,
where it has clashed with Japan. Rising nationalism in both countries and a long
wartime history have escalated tensions despite highly interconnected economies.

2. Japan. Japan claims it annexed what it calls the Senkaku Islands in 1895. It
retained residual sovereignty over the islands after the Treaty of San Francisco in
1951, and the United States returned full control of the territory to Tokyo after the
Okinawa Reversion Treaty in 1971. Japan views this reversion agreement as
validation of its sovereignty over the islands.

3. Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Composed of five uninhabited islets and three

rocks, the Diaoyu/Senkakus are the center of an escalating territorial dispute
between China and Japan, which bought three of the islands in 2012 from a private
owner. The region contains rich fishing grounds and potential oil and gas deposits.

4. Taiwan. Taiwan, where the Koumintang regime settled after defeat by

communists on the mainland in 1949, adheres to the same nine-dash-line claim as
China in the South and East China Seas. It currently has a presence on the Spratly
and Pratas Islands.

5. Philippines. The Philippines claims the Paracel and Spratly Islands based on
its EEZ and continental shelf zones. Tensions reached an inflection point with the
Chinese occupation of the Spratly’s Mischief Reef in 1994, leading to the first
instance of combat between China and an ASEAN member other than Vietnam.
Much of Manila’s territorial tension with Beijing centers around competition for
resource development, and skirmishes have erupted regularly since March 2011.
In early 2013 the Philippines was the first claimant country to launch an
arbitration case under UNCLOS against China’s South China Sea claims.

6. Paracel Islands. The Paracels, which occupy roughly 7.75 square kilometers
(4.8 square miles), are claimed by China and Vietnam. French Indochina annexed
the territory in 1932 and in 1974, China occupied the islands, building a military
installation with an airfield and harbor. The islands also boast fishing and natural
resources.
7. Spratly Islands. The Spratlys are a cluster of more than one hundred small
islands and reefs that together measure less than five square kilometers (3.1 sqaure
miles). The territory is host to rich fishing grounds and oil and gas deposits, and is
claimed by China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines. All claimants occupy a
toehold on roughly half of the islands.
 44

8. Vietnam. Vietnam has been one of the most vocal claimants in the South
China Sea dispute. It claims the Spratly and Paracel Islands based on its EEZ and
continental shelf zones, and joined Malaysia in May 2009 in a joint submission of
territorial claims in the South China Sea to UNCLOS. Vietnam fought China in
1947 over the Paracels, which China occupied, and again in 1988 when China’s
navy sank three Vietnamese vessels, killing seventy-four Vietnamese sailors on
the Johnson Reef in the Spratlys. The confrontation marks China’s first armed
conflict over the Spratlys, and one of the most serious military clashes in the South
China Sea.

9. Malaysia. Malaysia claims some islets in the southern Spratlys, and has
occupied five of them since 2009. In 1991, it developed a resort and built an
airstrip on Swallow Reef to promote tourism, prompting fellow claimants,
including the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, and China, to protest. It clarified its
claims in 2009 with the joint Vietnamese-Malaysian submission to UNCLOS on
the limits of the continental shelf, and maintains a less confrontational relationship
with China than other claimants.

211. China, even as its rate of economic growth slows, is continuing to both enlarge
and modernize its navy while expanding its commercial interests around the southern
navigable rimland of Eurasia. China has been putting money or displaying interest in
deep-water port projects in Kenya, Tanzania and Bangladesh, following its hands-on
construction and financing of other Indian Ocean ports in Myanmar, Sri Lanka and
Pakistan. In addition, China has established a resource-extraction empire throughout sub-
Saharan Africa to link up with these budding, western Indian Ocean ports.

212. Beyond the geographic power play by Russia in Greater Europe and China's
nascent attempt at a two-ocean commercial strategy, there are the smaller great games
being engaged between China and India in Greater South Asia, between Russia and
China in Central Asia, between China and Japan in northeast Asia and between China
and smaller powers in Southeast Asia.

213. In Greater South Asia, China and India compete for influence in Sri Lanka,
Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar. China built a new deep-water port for Sri Lanka and
helped its Sinhalese Buddhist regime win a civil war against Hindu Tamils by supplying
it with arms while the West did almost nothing. But Sri Lanka's very proximity to India
and its inextricable links with it through the Tamil community, means China cannot
ultimately dominate Sri Lanka. Bangladesh holds the key to the opening of trade routes
beneficial to both southwestern China and India's northeast. Thus, both Beijing and New
Delhi compete for influence in Dhaka. Nepal has a long and badly policed border with
India so that influence in Kathmandu is vital for New Delhi, even as China has been
attempting to establish a military and diplomatic bridgehead there. Myanmar, once part of
British India is where China has built a port and pipeline for natural gas. Here is where
India's and China's geographic interests truly crosshatch and thus why both are active
there: with India involved in its own port and pipeline projects.
 45

214. In Central Asia, where Russia has military and economic links with several former
Soviet republics, China has been investing in concessions for minerals and hydrocarbons,
even as it has been constructing pipelines and trying to build a rail system from the
former Soviet Central Asian republics to western China. Indeed, the scholars Raffaello
Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen of the United Services Institute in London and the
Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington have documented in detail how China, despite
obstacles, is constructing an "inadvertent empire" in Central Asia.

215. As for maritime East Asia, from Japan in the north to Indonesia in the south,
China has been steadily expanding its influence in recent years and decades through its
naval, economic and political reach. China's perceived aggression has been an element in
the waning of Japanese quasi-pacifism and the rebirth of nationalism in Japan, with
probable military consequences. Chinese-Japanese sparring over islands in the East China
Sea has to be seen in this light. The same with island disputes in the energy-rich South
China Sea: the result of expanding Chinese naval power, even as the military and
institutional capacities of countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines have
grown, too, over the course of the decades. Rather than grope toward a post-historical
nirvana in which nationalism wanes and the power of the individual waxes triumphant,
capitalist prosperity in Asia since the 1970s has culminated in military expansion and
thus a simmering battle for space and power.

Japan

216. Japan now has every reason to tailor its military capabilities in order to take
precautions against China’s rise. For years U.S. defense officials have argued that a
stronger Japan would help ensure China’s peaceful ascent. Only a few years ago, defense
officials and think tank analysts in Washington were fretting that the Japanese might not
muster the courage to stand up to China. The explanation for all this is clear: Almost
seven decades of U.S. military presence in Japan has created, on an emotional level, a
powerful Japan lobby within the American military and on the Pentagon’s E-Ring. This
was further buttressed during the Rumsfeld years, when the United States encouraged
Japan to spend billions of dollars on defending itself against North Korean missiles and to
host a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier strike group, despite Japan’s attitude toward
nuclear weapons at the time. Washington sees immediate benefits in Japan’s growing
willingness to defend itself rather than rely so heavily on the United States.

217. The real danger Japan poses to the Americans is that attempting to establish a
formidable defensive posture could provoke China into a dangerous escalation that, in
turn, could ensnare the United States in a confrontation with the latter.
218. While Japan reacts to a changing of the status quo, China is aware of its own role
as an agent of change. Beijing knows that it is an emerging power. It knows that
emerging powers disrupt the international system. But it needs to buy time, since it isn’t
ready to confront directly and unapologetically the American-led status quo in the
Pacific. China’s lack of readiness is heightened by the precarious consolidation of
political power and economic reforms that the Xi Jinping administration has undertaken
out of necessity. China thus seeks a “new kind of major country relationship,” a phrase
Chinese and American diplomats have taken to repeating, whereby the two countries will
 46

find some way of accommodating each other to China’s military emergence without
causing the disruption and conflict that history books suggest is inevitable.

219. In the eyes of the Pentagon, Japan now has every reason to tailor its military
capabilities in order to take precautions against China's rise. For years U.S. defense
officials have argued that a stronger Japan would help ensure China's peaceful ascent.
Only a few years ago, defense officials and think tank analysts in Washington were
fretting that the Japanese might not muster the courage to stand up to China. The
explanation for all this is clear: Almost seven decades of U.S. military presence in Japan
has created, on an emotional level, a powerful Japan lobby within the American military
and on the Pentagon's E-Ring. This was further buttressed during the Rumsfeld years,
when the United States encouraged Japan to spend billions of dollars on defending itself
against North Korean missiles and to host a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier strike
group, despite Japan's neuralgic attitude toward nuclear weapons at the time. (See "What
Rumsfeld Got Right," by Robert D. Kaplan, The Atlantic, July 2008.) From a purely
geopolitical point of view, a more assertive Japan could someday revive an old threat to
the United States, since both are maritime powers. But for now, Washington sees
immediate benefits in Japan's growing willingness to defend itself rather than rely so
heavily on the United States.

220. The real danger Japan poses to the Americans is that attempting to establish a
formidable defensive posture could provoke China into a dangerous escalation that, in
turn, could ensnare the United States in a confrontation with the latter.

INDIAN OCEAN REGION (IOR)

221. The Indian Ocean Region (IOR), comprising the ocean and its littorals, is India’s
regional or immediate geo-strategic environment. As the third largest body of water in the
world and containing vital sea lanes that help feed some of Asia’s largest economies, the
importance of the Indian Ocean has long been clear. The sea lanes in the Indian Ocean
are considered among the most strategically important in the world. According to the
journal of the Indian Ocean Region, more than 80 per cent of the world’s seaborne trade
in oil transits through Indian Ocean choke points, with 40 per cent passing through the
Strait of Hormuz, 35 per cent through the Strait of Malacca and 8 per cent through the
Bab el-Mandab Strait.
222. The Indian Ocean, sometimes called the maritime Silk Road, represents the
profound linkage between the Middle East and a rising Asia. The trade and economic
connectivity has been well understood for years. China, Japan and India rely heavily on
oil from the Persian Gulf states, while a new economic interdependence has developed in
manufactured goods, energy refinery capacity, food security and labour migration.

223. All of these countries in the IOR are developing countries, but their level of
development – as well as their level of stability and security – varies radically even
within a given Subregion. There is no simple way to characterize opportunity and risk. In
some cases, civil conflict drives national behavior and interaction with neighboring
 47

states, in others it is the risk of local military conflicts and in a few, the risk of broader
regional conflicts.

224. The IOR is also one of the, most complex regions in the world in human terms. It
includes a wide variety of different races, cultures and religions. The level of political
stability, the quality of governance, demographic pressures, ethnic and sectarian tensions
and the pace of economic growth create a different mix of opportunity and risk in each
state – sometimes affecting mid and long-term development and sometimes creating near
terms problems in stability that have not triggered internal or civil conflict.

225. The Gulf is also currently the area that poses the highest risk of a serious military
conflict. There are serious issues of the broad regional competition for influence between
Iran and Arabs states, the risk of asymmetric war in the Gulf, a major conventional arms
race and Iran’s build-up of major ballistic missile forces.

226. The overall stability of the flow of shipping and maritime traffic throughout the
IOR impacts on importers and exporter on global basis, affects the flow of petroleum
exports. The main risk to this stability is currently piracy and maritime crime. In the west,
it is concentrated around Somalia and to the east around the Strait of Malacca and
Indonesia. Piracy is presently a low but continuing risk and of major importance to
shippers. It does, however, have a particularly critical impact on key East Asian trading
states like China, Japan and South Korea.

227. Demographic pressures from massive past population growth put a high degree of
stress on the governance and economies of most regional states. The region is filled with
countries with very young populations and with the exception of a few Gulf and
Southeast Asia states, these present major challenges in terms of education, job creation
and infrastructure.

228. The key challenges of this kind that the IOR countries face include:

(a) Political Stability and Non Violence.

(b) Economic Stability.

(c) National Governance.

(d) Unemployment in General.

(e) Youth Unemployment.

(f) Education.

(g) Health.

(h) Poverty.
 48

The Gulf and Energy Exports

229. The extent to which Iran and the Arab Gulf states can produce and move oil, gas
and product by sea or pipeline has a massive impact on the economy of virtually every
developed and trading state and increasingly on the developed and more advanced
economies in nations of Asia – whose exports, in turn affect the security and stability of
the economy of virtually every other developed state.

230. Several of the states in the Gulf – or that affect the flow of petroleum within the
Gulf and Middle East Subregion -- involved suffer from serious internal instability and
the risk of civil conflict. Egypt is a key case in point because of its role in establishing the
security of the Suez Canal and SUMED pipeline, but Bahrain, Iraq, Syria and Yemen –
and to a lesser degree Iran – all present significant national risks.

231. More broadly, the struggle between the Arab Gulf states and Iran and the role the
US plays in ensuring the security and stability of the Gulf, presents major ongoing risks
that will not be resolved by the current negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 even if
these negotiations are fully successful.

232. At present the arms race in the Gulf; Iran’s broader struggle for influence over
Iraq, Syria and Lebanon; and the growing tensions and conflicts between Sunnis and
Shi’ites/Alawites seem containable and the level of deterrence of any serious conflict
seems relatively high. The Gulf Subregion still however, poses the most serious near-
term strategic risk in the IOR.

The US, China, the IOR and the Gulf

233. The US is now the dominant outside power in the Gulf and Middle East backed by
limited support from Britain and France. The US is also the dominant power in projecting
air-sea forces into the Indian Ocean from the East. At the same time, the analysis of
energy flows shows that the US future military role in the region may be affected by
major reductions in US energy import dependence.

234. Moreover, China and the Asian powers are now heavily dependent on Gulf oil
exports and supplies from the IOR and this dependence is projected to increase sharply
over the next few decades.

235. China is also become a modern blue water navy, improving its ability to project air
and missile power and is playing a growing role in the Indian Ocean. It may become a
competitor to the US and India. Energy import dependence may also affect the role of
Japan and South Korea – which are even more dependent than China – but both currently
have limited power projection capability beyond the Strait of Malacca.

236. Much depends on whether the United States will continue to use its forces to
maintain stability in the IOR and whether it sees its growing domestic energy output as
reducing its need for strategic involvement in the Gulf and IOR. There has been
considerable confusion over the level of US commitment because of speeches referring to
 49

a “pivot to Asia,” US and P5+1 negotiation with Iran, claims of US energy independence
and the impact of sequestration and US defense budget cuts. More tangibly, the US
increased its forces in the Gulf in 2013, rather than cut them.

INDIA

The Geopolitics of India

237. The geopolitics of India must be considered in the geographical context of the
Indian subcontinent -- a self-contained region that includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh
and, depending how one defines it, Nepal and Bhutan. We call the subcontinent "self-
contained" because it is a region that is isolated on all sides by difficult terrain or by
ocean. In geopolitical terms it is, in effect, an island.

238. This "island" is surrounded on the southeast, south and southwest by the Bay of
Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. To the west, it is isolated by mountains
that rise from the Arabian Sea and run through Pakistan's Baluchistan province,
stretching northward and rising higher and higher to the northwestern corner of Pakistan.
There, at the Hindu Kush, the mountain chain swings east, connecting with the Pamir and
Karakoram ranges. These finally become the Himalayas, which sweep southeast some
2,000 miles to the border of Myanmar, where the Rakhine Mountains emerge and from
there south to India's border with Bangladesh and to the Bay of Bengal. The Rakhine are
difficult terrain not because they are high but because, particularly in the south, they are
covered with dense jungle.

The Geography of the Subcontinent

239. The subcontinent physically divides into four parts:

(a) The mountainous frame that stretches in an arc from the Arabian Sea to the
Bay of Bengal.

(b) The North Indian Plain, stretching from Delhi southeast through the Ganges
River delta to the Myanmar border and from the Himalayas in the north to the
southern hills.

(c) The Indian Peninsula, which juts southward into the Indian Ocean,
consisting of a variety of terrain but primarily hilly.

(d) The deserts in the west between the North Indian Plain and Pakistan's Indus
River Valley.

240. Pakistan occupies the western region of the subcontinent and is based around the
Indus Valley. It is separated from India proper by fairly impassable desert and by swamps
in the south, leaving only Punjab, in the central part of the country, as a point of contact.
 50

Pakistan is the major modern-day remnant of Muslim rule over medieval India and the
country's southwest is the region first occupied by Arab Muslims invading from what is
today southwestern Iran and southern Afghanistan.

241. The third major state in the subcontinent is the Muslim-majority Ganges delta state
of Bangladesh, which occupies the area southeast of Nepal. Situated mainly at sea level,
Bangladesh is constantly vulnerable to inundations from the Bay of Bengal. The
kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan rest on the heights of the Himalayas themselves and
therefore on the edge of the subcontinent. There is also a small east-west corridor
between Nepal and Bangladesh connecting the bulk of India to its northeastern states and
its eastern border with Myanmar.

242. The bulk of India's population lives on the northern plain. This area of highest
population density is the Indian heartland. It runs through the area around Lahore,
spreading northwest into Pakistan and intermittently to Kabul in Afghanistan and also
stretching east into Bangladesh and to the Myanmar border. It is not, however, the only
population center. Peninsular India also has an irregular pattern of intense population,
with lightly settled areas intermingling with heavily settled areas. This pattern primarily
has to do with the availability of water and the quality of soil. Wherever both are
available in sufficient quantity, India's population accumulates and grows.

243. India's internal divisions are defined by its river systems: the Ganges, the
Brahmaputra, the Narmada and so on. All of India's major cities are centered around one
of these river systems, a fact that has been instrumental in the rise of so many distinct
cultures in India -- Punjabis, Gujaratis, Marathis, Tamils and others -- which have
manifested in modern times as states within India. That said, Indian nationalism is very
strong and counters the separatist tendencies. There is a balance between a strong central
governance and substantial regional autonomy.

244. What is permanent in the subcontinent is the frame, the mountains and beyond
these the wastelands. We can see this most clearly when looking at the population
distribution of the surrounding regions. The subcontinent is isolated as a population
center, surrounded by comparatively empty regions. It is not only a question of the
mountains around it, although those are substantial barriers; the terrain beyond the
mountains in every direction is sparsely populated and in many ways its resources are
insufficient to support a sizable, sedentary civilization. As a result, India has rarely
demonstrated an appetite for adventurism beyond the subcontinent. If India can find a
way to manage Pakistan and Bangladesh, there is little pressure to do anything more.

India's Geopolitical Imperatives

245. The geography of the subcontinent constrains the behavior of governments that
arise there. If there is to be an independent India and if it is to be a stable and secure
nation-state, it must do the following things:

(a) Achieve suzerainty in the Ganges River basin. The broad, braided plains of
the Ganges basin are among the most fertile in the world and guarantee a massive
 51

population. India must become the premier power in this heartland. This does not
mean that such power must be wielded by a unified, centralized authority. A
coalition of powers can be functional and even somewhat hostile powers such as
Bangladesh can be tolerated so long as they do not challenge India's authority or
security.

(b) Expand throughout the core of the subcontinent until it reaches all natural
barriers. Forests, hills and rivers aside, there is little else in the confines of the
subcontinent that limits India's writ. "Control" of the additional territories can be a
somewhat informal and loose affair. The sheer population of the Ganges basin
really requires only that no foreign entity be allowed to amass a force capable of
overwhelming the Ganges region.

(c) Advance past the patch of land separating the Ganges basin from the Indus
River basin and dominate the Indus region (meaning Pakistan). The Indus Valley
is the only other significant real estate within reach of India and the corridor that
accesses it is the only viable land invasion route into India proper.

(d) With the entire subcontinent under the control (or at least the influence) of a
centralized power, begin building a navy. Given the isolation of the subcontinent,
any further Indian expansion is limited to the naval sphere. A robust navy also acts
as a restraint upon any outside power that might attempt to penetrate the
subcontinent from the sea.

246. These imperatives shape the behavior of every indigenous Indian government,
regardless of its ideology or its politics. They are the fundamental drivers that define
India as a country, shaped by its unique geography. An Indian government that ignores
these imperatives does so at the risk of being replaced by another entity -- whether
indigenous or foreign -- that understands them better.
 52

The Geopolitics of Modern India

247. Modern India has its origins in the collapse of the British Empire. Indeed, it was
the loss of India that ultimately doomed the British Empire. The architecture of the
British Empire was built around India and once India was lost, the purpose of that
architecture dissolved as well. The historical importance of India could not be
overestimated.

248. The British gave up India for several reasons, the most important of which was
commercial: The cost of controlling India had outstripped the value derived. This
happened in two ways. The first was that the cost of maintaining control of the sea-lanes
became prohibitive. After World War II, the Royal Navy was far from a global navy.
That role had been taken over by the United States, which did not have an interest in
supporting British control of India. As was seen in the Suez crisis of 1956, when the
British and French tried to block Egyptian nationalization of the canal, the United States
was unprepared to support or underwrite British access to its colonies (and the United
States had made this clear during World War II as well). Second, the cost of controlling
India had soared. Indigenous political movements had increased friction in India and that
friction had increased the cost of exploiting India's resources. As the economics shifted,
the geopolitical reality did as well.

249. The independence of India resulted in the unification of the country under an
authentically Indian government. It also led to the political subdivision of the
subcontinent. The Muslim majority areas the Indus Valley region west and northwest of
the Thar Desert and the Ganges River basin both seceded from India, forming a separate
country that itself later split into modern day Pakistan and Bangladesh. It was this
separatism that came to frame Indian geopolitics.

250. India and Pakistan, for the bulk of their mutual existence, have had an adversarial
relationship. Pakistan's own geographic, demographic and economic inferiority, has
forced Islamabad to craft its entire foreign policy around the threat from India. As a
result, the two sides have fought four wars, mostly over Kashmir, along with one that
resulted in the hiving off of Bangladesh.

251. As noted earlier, the Indian heartland is the northern plain of the Ganges River
basin. This plain is separated from Pakistan's heartland, the Indus Valley, only by a small
saddle of easily traversed land; fewer than 200 miles separate the two rivers. If India is to
have any ambition in terms of expansion on land, the Indus is the only option available
all other routes end either in barriers or in near wasteland. Meanwhile, the closeness and
sheer overwhelming size of India is central to Pakistan's mind-set. The two are locked
into rivalry.

China and the Himalayan Wall

252. Apart from this enmity, however, modern India has faced little in the way of
existential threats. On its side of the mountain wall, there are two states, Nepal and
Bhutan, which pose no threat to it. On the other side lies China.
 53

253. China has been seen as a threat to India and simplistic models show them to be
potential rivals. In fact, however, China and India might as well be on different planets.
Their entire frontier runs through the highest elevations of the Himalayas.

254. A potential geopolitical shift would come if the status of Tibet changed, however.
China's main population centers are surrounded by buffer states Manchuria, Inner
Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. So long as all are in Chinese hands, the core of China is
invulnerable to land attack. If, however, Tibet were to become independent and if it allied
with India and if it permitted India to base substantial forces in its territory and to build
major supply infrastructure there, then and only then India could be a threat to China.

255. The Chinese tried to develop equivalent threats in India, particularly in the form of
Maoist communist insurgencies. Indian Maoists (Naxalites) and Nepalese Maoists have
been supported by Beijing, though that support is no longer what it used to be. The
Chinese have lost interest in aggressive Maoism, but they do have an interest in
maintaining influence in Nepal, where the Maoists recently increased their power through
electoral gains.

Russia, the United States and Pakistan

256. In the absence of direct external threats, modern India's strategic outlook has been
shaped by the dynamics of the Cold War and its aftermath. The most important strategic
relationship that India had after gaining independence from Britain in 1947 was with the
Soviet Union. There was some limited ideological affinity between them. India's
fundamental national interest was not in Marxism, however, but in creating a state that
was secure against a new round of imperialism. The Soviets and Americans were
engaged in a massive global competition and India was inevitably a prize. It was a prize
that the Soviets could not easily take: The Soviets had neither an overland route to India
nor a navy that could reach it.

257. The United States, however, did have a navy. The Indians believed (with good
reason) that the United States might well want to replace Britain as a global maritime
power, a development that might put India squarely in Washington's sights. The Indians
saw in the United States all the same characteristics that had drawn Britain to India.
Elsewhere, India saw the United States acting both to hurry the disintegration of the
European empires and to fill the ensuing vacuum. India did not want to replace the
British with the Americans -- its fundamental interest was to retain its internal cohesion
and independence. Regardless of American intent -- which the Indians saw as ambiguous
-- American capability was very real and from the beginning the Indians sought to block
it.

258. For the Indians, the solution was a relationship, if not quite an alliance, with the
Soviet Union. The Soviets could provide economic aid and military hardware. The
relationship with the Soviet Union was perfect for the Indians, since they did not see the
Soviets as able to impose satellite status on India. From the American point of view,
however, there was serious danger in the Indo-Soviet relationship. The United States saw
it as potentially threatening U.S. access to the Indian Ocean and lines of supply to the
 54

Persian Gulf. If the Soviets were given naval bases in India, or if India were able to
construct a navy significant enough to threaten American interests and were willing to act
in concert with the Soviets, it would represent a serious strategic challenge to the United
States.

259. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the United States was facing a series of
challenges. The British were going to leave Singapore and the Indonesian independence
movement was heavily influenced by the Soviets. The Egyptians and therefore the Suez
Canal, also were moving into the Soviet camp. If India became a pro-Soviet maritime
power, it would simply be one more element along Asia's southern rim threatening U.S.
interests. The Americans had to act throughout the region, but they needed to deal with
India fast.

260. The U.S. solution was an alliance with Pakistan. This served two purposes. First, it
provided another Muslim counterweight to Nasserite Egypt and left-leaning Arab
nationalism. Second, it posed a potential threat to India on land. This would force India to
divert resources from naval construction and focus on building ground and air forces to
deal with the Pakistanis. For Pakistan, geographically isolated and facing both India and a
not-very-distant Russia, the relationship with the United States was a godsend.

It also created a very complex geographical situation.

261. The Soviet Union did not directly interfere with Pakistan the two were separated
by a narrow strip of territory in the northeastern most confines of Afghanistan known as
the Wakhan Corridor. The Soviets could not seriously threaten Pakistan from that
direction, but the U.S. relationship with Pakistan made Afghanistan a permanent Soviet
interest (with full encouragement of the Indians, who wanted Pakistan bracketed on both
sides). The Soviets did not make a direct move into Afghanistan until late 1979, but well
before then they tried to influence the direction of the Afghans and after moving, they
posed a direct threat to Pakistan.

262. China, on the other hand, did border on Pakistan and developed an interest there.
The aforementioned Himalayan clash in 1962 did not involve only India and China. It
also involved the Soviets. India and China were both putatively allied with the Soviet
Union. What was not well known at the time was that Sino-Soviet relations had
deteriorated. The Chinese were very suspicious of Soviet intentions and saw Moscow's
relationship with New Delhi as potentially an alliance against China. Like the Americans,
the Chinese were uneasy about the Indo-Soviet relationship. Therefore, China also moved
to aid Pakistan. It was a situation as tangled as the geography, with Maoist China and the
United States backing the military dictatorship of Pakistan and the Soviets backing
democratic India.
 55

Shifting Alliances and Enduring Interests

263. In 1992, India's strategic environment shifted: The Soviet Union collapsed and
India lost its counterweight to the United States. Uncomfortable in a world that had no
balancing power to the United States, but lacking options of its own, India became
inward and cautious. It observed uneasily the rise of the pro-Pakistani Taliban
government in Afghanistan replacing the Indian-allied Soviets but it lacked the power to
do anything significant. The indifference of the United States and its continued
relationship with Pakistan were particularly troubling to India.

264. Then, 2001 was a clarifying year in which the balance shifted again. The attack on
the United States by al Qaeda threw the United States into conflict with the Taliban.
More important, it strained the American relationship with Pakistan almost to the
breaking point. The threat posed to India by Kashmiri groups paralleled the threat to the
United States by al Qaeda. American and Indian interests suddenly were aligned. Both
wanted Pakistan to be more aggressive against radical Islamist groups. Neither wanted
further development of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Both were happy to be confronting
the Pakistanis with more and more aggressive demands.

265. The realignment of Indian relations with the United States did not represent a
fundamental shift in Indian geopolitics, however. India continues to be an island
contained by a ring of mountains. Its primary interest remains its own unity, something
that is always at risk due to the internal geography of the subcontinent.

266. India will go with the flow, but given its mountainous enclosure it will feel little of
the flow. Outside its region, India has no major strategic interests though it would be
happy to see a devolution of Tibet from China if that carried no risk to India and it is
always interested in the possibility of increasing its own naval power (but never at the
cost of seriously reshaping its economy). India's fundamental interest will always come
from within from its endless, shifting array of regional interests, ethnic groups and
powers. The modern Indian republic governs India. And that is more important than any
other fact in India.

267. India until recently has been more or less a land-bound nation framed against the
open ocean. But that has suddenly changed with advances in military technology that
have compressed oceanic geography, and with the development of the Indian economy,
which can finance major shipbuilding and acquisitions. Another factor driving India
seaward is the threat of China itself, as China’s own naval aspirations move it beyond the
Western Pacific into the Indian Ocean.

268. China has been helping to build or upgrade ports around India: in Kyaukpyu,
Burma; Chittagong, Bangladesh; Hambantota, Sri Lanka; and Gwadar, Pakistan. In all of
these countries China is providing substantial military and economic aid, and political
support. China, as we know, already has a great merchant fleet and aspirations for a blue-
water oceanic navy that will guard its interests and protect its trade routes between the
hydrocarbon-rich Middle East and China’s Pacific coast. This is occurring at the same
time that India has aspirations for a Monroe Doctrine style presence throughout the
 56

Indian Ocean from southern Africa to Australia. The greatly overlapping naval spheres of
interest aggravate the border issues in the Himalayan north that are still outstanding.
China is seeking to protect its own sea lines of communications with friendly, state-of-
the-art harbors along the way. But India feels surrounded. The futuristic possibility of a
Pakistani-Chinese naval center of operations near the entrance to the Persian Gulf in
Gwadar has led to the expansion of the Indian naval port of Karwar on the Arabian Sea.
The port and energy pipelines China is building at Kyaukpyu in Burma have caused India
to initiate its own port and energy complex at Sittwe, fifty miles to the north, as India and
China quicken their competition for routes and resources in western Indochina.

Pakistan

269. Pakistan can be viewed as an artificial puzzle pieces of a territory, straddling the
frontier between the Iranian-Afghan plateau and the lowlands of the sub-continent,
encompassing the western half of the Punjab, but not the eastern half, crazily uniting the
Karakoram in the north (some of the highest mountains in the world) with the Makran
Desert almost a thousand miles away to the south by the Arabian Sea. Whereas the Indus
should be a border of sorts, the Pakistani states sits on both of its banks. Pakistan is the
home of four major ethnic groups, each harboring hostility with the others and each
anchored to a specific region: Punjab to the northeast, Sindh to the southeast, Baluchistan
to the southwest, and the Pushrun-dominated North-west Frontier. Islam was supposed to
have provided the unifying glue for the state but it has singularly failed in this regard as
birth of Bangladesh showed. Islamic groups in Pakistan have become more radical,
Baluch and Sindhis continue to see Pakistan as a foreign entity overloaded by the
Punjabis, with the Pushtuns in the northwest drawn more into the Taliban-infected
politics of the Afghan-Pakistani border area.

270. Pakistan is passing through one of the most dangerous periods of instability in its
history. This instability goes far beyond Al Qa’ida, the Taliban, and the war in
Afghanistan. Pakistan is approaching a perfect storm of threats, including rising
extremism, a failing economy, chronic underdevelopment, and an intensifying war,
resulting in unprecedented political, economic and social turmoil.

271. These broad patterns of violence in Pakistan have serious implications for
Pakistan’s future, for regional stability. Pakistan remains a central node in global
terrorism. Osama Bin Laden was killed deep inside Pakistan in an area that raises deep
suspicion about what Pakistani intelligence officials, senior military officers and
government officials did and did not know about his presence – and the presence of other
major terrorists and extremists like Mullah Omar and the “Quetta Shura Taliban.”

272. Pakistan pursues its own agenda in Afghanistan in ways that provide the
equivalent of cross-border sanctuary for Taliban and Haqqani militants, and that prolong
the fighting and cause serious US, ISAF, and Afghan casualties. At the same time, it
cooperates with the US in dealing with some aspect of these threats, and it faces a
growing threat from domestic terrorist and extremists.
273. Al Qa’ida and the Taliban are only part of the story. There are many other
movements and tensions that feed violence and extremism in Pakistan, and which grow
 57

out of a government that has consistently failed to meet the needs of Pakistan’s people
over a period of decades. There are tremendous shortfalls in the Pakistani government’s
capacity and willingness to provide for its citizens in ways that discourage a rising tide of
violence and separatist movements.

274. These failures in Pakistani governance and development interact with a growing
wave of Sunni-Deobandi radicalization that manifests in anti-state violence and sectarian
intolerance. A significant resulting uptick in terrorist violence has been accompanied by a
gradual perversion of the Pakistani social fabric, intimidating secularism at the expense
of militant Islam.

275. Despite these dangers, Pakistan is not a hopeless case. The country is not yet in
terminal decline, if only because of its vigorous civil society and its talented secular elite.
Nevertheless a wide gap exists between Pakistan official rhetoric and reality, and its
leaders, military, and politicians fall far short of meeting its people’s needs.

276. Pakistan needs to give priority to its internal needs over dealing with external
threats. Pakistan continues to give priority to strategic competition with India, in ways
that creates growing problems in Afghanistan as well as strengthens internal extremists.
Pakistan devotes an inordinate amount of its attention and resources to this struggle, and
does so at the direct expense of the welfare and future of its people.

The Challenges of Internal Violence

277. Pakistan faces the convergence of various localized conflicts that were once
insulated from each other. A massive growth in militancy in the Pakistani-Afghan border
area interacts with growing threats in the heartland of the Punjabi, Sindhi and Baloch
interior. Pakistan‟s growing instability does not have one cause or center of gravity, it has
many.

278. The war in Afghanistan has moved al-Qaeda into Pakistan along with the Taliban,
Haqqani network, and Hekmatyar‟s forces. At the same time, Pakistan faces a
combination of separatist pressures in Baluchistan and the Sindh and foreign and
domestic neo-Salafi threats that have growing ties to al-Qaeda. These threats include the
continuing violence in the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (FATA) and the
neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK). Insurgent momentum shows few signs of
having been decisively reversed despite increasingly robust Pakistani military operations.
Improved counterinsurgency efforts have had some successes in certain tribal agencies,
but gains are likely to be ephemeral, as many of the root causes of militancy remain
unaddressed, including political, administrative and economic stagnation.

279. A diverse array of militant actors including core command nodes of al-Qaeda,
continue to operate inside the tribal areas. They maneuver in support of distinct
organizational priorities, including the global jihad, regional jihads in Afghanistan and
Kashmir, as well as domestic anti-state and sectarian agendas. They often collaborate on
operational, ideological and fundraising axes.
280. Their combined activities have uprooted many of the traditional modes of tribal
governance, complicating efforts to restore stability. Pakistani military operations have
 58

also compounded these problems. The selective counterinsurgency approach adopted by

the military has attempted to delineate between groups actively hostile to Pakistani
interests, and those – like the Haqqani Network and the Afghan Taliban -- that may have
future strategic utility in reestablishing Pakistan‟s sphere of influence and helping
contain its external enemies.

Instability as a Self-Inflicted Wound

281. This violence is driven by a mix of ideology, religion, politics, governance,

economics, and demographics that have all of the ingredients that have caused instability
in Middle Eastern regimes. The drivers of conflict are shaped by a systemic malaise that
includes weak and underdeveloped governance institutions, hobbled by the omnipresent
specter of a military coup that incentivizes the maximization of rents instead of efficient
representation.

282. Economic mismanagement, and chronic underdevelopment in building up the

nation‟s base of human capital, have perpetuated deep inequalities and assisted in the
alienation of large segments of the population. Demographics are an additional problem,
and population pressures are compounded by a severe and growing “youth bulge.” Social
services, including the provision of core goods such as education, employment and health
are already inadequate, and integrating increasing population figures has worrying
implications for future instability.

283. Other key underlying causes of violence and instability include a dysfunctional
civilian government that is all too often mired in internecine squabbling, self-seeking
service politics, and the willingness to exploit ethno-sectarian divides for political gain.
Strong organizational resistance continues to impede reform. Corruption, service politics,
nepotism and favoritism, power brokers, entrenched feudal interests, and a marked civil-
military imbalance continue to lead Pakistani elites to give their interests priority over
those of the population, and help institutionalize entrenched patronage networks,
widespread corruption and significant structural distortions in tax collections.

Afghanistan

284. Afghanistan is, in terms of geography, barely a country at all. It is driven by

cathedral-like mountain ranges within its territory, which help seal divisions between
Pushtuns and Tajiks and other minorities, even as comparatively little in the way of
natural impediments separates Afghanistan from Pakistan, or Afghanistan from Iran.
Looking at the relief map, and noting that more than half of the world’s 42 million
Pushtuns live inside Pakistan, one could conceivably construct a country called
Pushtunistan, lying between the Hindu Kush mountains and the Indus River, thus
overlapping the Afghani and Pakistani states.

285. Afghanistan only emerged as a country of sorts in the mid-eighteenth century,

when Ahmad Khan, leader of the Abdali contingent in the Persian army of Nader Shah
the Great, carved out a buffer zone between Persia and a crumbling Mughal empire in the
Indian Subcontinent, which was later to evolve into a buffer zone between czarist Russia
 59

and British India. Thus the case can be made that with the slow-motion dissolution of the
former Soviet Empire in Central Asia, and the gradual weakening of the Pakistani state, a
historic realignment is now taking place that could see Afghanistan disappear on the
political map: in the future, for example, the Hindu Kush (the real northwestern frontier
of the subcontinent) could form a border between Pushtunistan and a Greater Tajikistan.
The Taliban, the upshot of Pushtun nationalism, Islamic fervor drug money, corrupt
warlords, and hatred of the American occupation, may, in the words of Asian specialist
Selig Harrison, merely be the vehicle for this transition that is too broad and too grand to
be in any way deterred by a foreign military run by impatient civilians back in
Washington.

286. For Afghanistan, as a geographical buffer between the Iranian plateau, the Central
Asian steppes, and the Indian Subcontinent, is breathtakingly strategic, and thus has been
coveted by not just Russians, but also by Iranians and Pakistanis, even as Indian
policymakers have been interested in it.

287. The war in Afghanistan is not one that can be won in the conventional sense. A
"victory" as Americans define it requires not only the military defeat of the opposing
force but also the reshaping of the region so that it cannot threaten the United States
again. This is impossible in Afghanistan because Afghanistan is more accurately
perceived as a geographic region than a country. The middle of the region is a
mountainous knot that extends east into the Himalayas. There are no navigable rivers and
little arable land. The remaining U-shaped ring of flat land is not only arid but also split
among multiple ethnic groups into eight population zones that, while somewhat discrete,
have no firm geographic barriers separating them. This combination of factors
predisposes the area to poverty and conflict and that has been the region's condition for
nearly all of recorded history.

288. The United States launched the war in late 2001 to dislodge al Qaeda and prevent
the region from being used as a base and recruitment center for it and similar jihadist
groups. But since geography precludes the formation of any stable, unified or capable
government in Afghanistan, these objectives can be met and maintained only so long as
the United States stations tens of thousands of troops in the country.

289. Afghanistan indeed poses an indirect threat to the United States. Central control is
so weak that non-state actors like al Qaeda will continue to use it as an operational center
and some of these groups undoubtedly hope to inflict harm upon the United States. But
the United States is a long way away from Afghanistan and such ideology does not often
translate into intent and intent does not often translate into capacity. Even more
important, Afghanistan's labor, material and financial resources are so low that no power
based in Afghanistan could ever directly challenge much less overthrow American
power.

290. The American withdrawal strategy, therefore, is a simple one. Afghanistan cannot
be beaten into shape, so the United States must maintain the ability to monitor the region
and engage in occasional manhunts to protect its interests. This requires maintaining a
 60

base or two, not reinventing Afghanistan in America's image as an advanced multiethnic

democracy.

291. The future scenario in Afghanistan may be described as semi-chaos. As the

Taliban establish some control in parts of the Pashtun south and southeast of the country,
a grouping of the Tajiks and Uzbeks re-establish some variant of the old Northern
Alliance beyond the Hindu Kush, adjacent to former Soviet Central Asia. This will be
complex and half-hearted, as the Pashtuns have forged alliances with parts of the Tajik
and Uzbek north over the past decade. The Kabul government may not collapse so much
as shrink or weaken a bit, becoming, once again, the enlarged city-state of Greater Kabul,
with modest influence elsewhere in the country. As for the Talibanistan in parts of the
south and southeast, that might be less a solid frame mini-state than an assemblage of
loosely allied emirates of a sort, riven by different clans and criminal networks. Over
time, that itself might encourage the ability of the ethnic Pashtun slice of western
Pakistan to further distance itself from the central government in Islamabad, creating
what a geographer might label Pashtunistan, even as the term itself went out of some
fashion decades ago and thus will be vehemently denied by experts who concentrate on
all the undeniable cleavages within the Pashtun tribal region.

292. In such a scenario, Pakistan, while not arming the Taliban, will be the most
significant outside power in southern and eastern Afghanistan, even as the Iranians
already are in western and parts of central Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the Russians will do
what they can to insure that transnational jihadists do not infiltrate back into northern
Central Asia, following the American withdrawal from southern Central Asia. Thus, from
the Iranian Plateau eastward to the Indus River Valley there will be vague political
authority at best, matching the vagueness of such authority in the other direction, from
the Iranian Plateau westward to the Mediterranean.

293. Studies by groups like the IMF, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank do
show that it is possible to ease the impact of “transition” on Afghanistan and Pakistan by
seeking improved regional development and cooperation in three different subregions:

(a) Central Asia and the “Stans” to the north of Afghanistan.

(b) Afghanistan and the border areas in Pakistan that affect the Afghanistan-
Pakistan War.

(c) Indian and Pakistani relations within the context of South Asia and the
tensions between India and Pakistan.
 61

294. In theory there is an economic and political case for regional cooperation between
the “Stans,” Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Iran. There is a case for a “New Silk
Road” that seeks to find ways to develop and stabilize Afghanistan (and to some degree
Pakistan) by making Afghanistan a major economic transit route and developing its
natural resources; and finding some regional solution to the India-Pakistan conflict –
usually centered around Kashmir – that would help stabilize Pakistan and reduce Indian
and Pakistani conflict in Afghanistan as a side benefit.

Afghan Hopes and Ambitions

295. It seems highly unlikely that insurgent groups like the Taliban and Haqqani
network will reach any form of political reconciliation with the Afghan government
before the US and other allied forces leave unless they feel they can use such agreements
to win outright. It seems equally unlikely that Pakistan will cease to seek its own
objectives in Afghanistan and put an end to insurgent sanctuaries inside its borders.
Tactical gains against the insurgent matter but it is far from clear what level of security
they can win on a political level, and sustain once US and allied forces leave. The quality
of Afghan governance at every level is critical to popular support as transition takes
place.

296. India. A stable and reasonably moderate Afghanistan becomes truly the hub of
not just southern Central Asia, but of Eurasia in general. Mackinder’s Heartland exists in
terms of the “convergence” of interests of Russia, China, India, and Iran in favor of
transport corridors through Central Asia. And the most powerful drivers of Eurasian trade
routes are the Chinese and Indian economies. Estimates for overland Indian trade across
Central Asia to European and Middle Eastern markets foresee a growth of over $100
billion annually. It is only because Afghanistan remains at war that New Delhi is not
connected by trucks, trains, and trans-Caspian ships to Istanbul and Tbilisi; or to Almaty
and Tashkent by road and rail. Nevertheless. India has contributed significantly to
building Afghanistan’s road network, along with Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Indian-
funded Zaranj-Delaram highway connects western Afghanistan to the Iranian port of
Chah Bahar on the Arabian Sea. Indians can taste the benefits that a quiescent
Afghanistan can bring them, even as it has been violent for more than three decades. For
a quiescent Afghanistan would spur road, rail, and pipeline construction not only in all
directions across Afghanistan, but across Pakistan, too, and therein lies the ultimate
solution to Pakistan’s own instability. Though a region at peace benefits India most of all,
because its economy dwarfs that of other state save for China.

MIDDLE EAST

297. In recent past the Middle East has become an even more violent place than usual.
Iraq is now once again home to one of the most bloody civil wars in the world, after Syria
of course, which is the worst. The Middle East is in the midst of a sectarian struggle, like
those between Catholics and Protestants in Europe in the age of the Reformation. These
tensions are rooted in history and politics and will not easily go away.
 62

298. Three factors have led us to this state of affairs. First, the structure of Middle
Eastern states. The modern Middle East was created by the colonial powers at the end of
World War I. The states the British and French created, often with little forethought, were
composed of disparate groups that had no history of being governed as one entity. Iraq,
for example, was formed by putting together three Ottoman provinces that had little in
common.

299. The colonial powers often chose a set of rulers who came from a minority group.
(It was a cunning strategy. A minority regime always needs the help of some outside
force to rule.) Thus the French, when facing a nationalist insurgency in Syria in the 1930s
and 1940s, recruited heavily from the then-persecuted Alawite minority, which came to
dominate the army and, in particular, the officer corps of the country.

300. The second factor at work has been the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism. Its
causes are various the rise of Saudi Arabia and its export of puritanical Wahhabi ideas,
the Iranian revolution and the discrediting of Westernization as the secular republics in
the region morphed into military dictatorships.

301. The most important states in the Middle East Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt, for
example — were not sectarian; in fact, they stressed their secular mind-set. But over
time, as these regimes failed, they drew increasingly from particular tribes that were loyal
to them. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq went from mildly sectarian to rabidly so by the 1990s.

302. Often the new sectarianism reinforced existing patterns of domination. When you
travel in the Middle East, you often hear that these Sunni-Shiite differences are wholly
invented and that people always lived happily together in the old days. These comments
are almost always made by Sunnis, who assumed that their Shiite brethren, who were
rarely seen or heard in the corridors of power, were perfectly content with their
subordinate status.

303. The third factor is one involving Washington deeply: the invasion of Iraq. If a
single action accelerated the sectarian conflicts in the Middle East, it was the decision of
the George W. Bush administration to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime, dismantle all
structures in which Sunnis had power and then hand over the Iraqi state to Shiite religious
parties.

304. Washington in those days was consumed with the idea of transforming the Middle
East and paid little attention to the sectarian dimensions of what it was unleashing. The
consequences of these policies are now clear. The Shiites proceeded to oppress the
Sunnis — seemingly with Washington’s blessings. More than 2 million Iraqis — mostly
Sunnis and Christians — fled the country, never to return. The Sunni minority in Iraq,
which still had delusions of power, began fighting back as an insurgency and then
became more extreme and Islamist. These tribes are all tied by blood and kinship to
Sunni tribes in their next-door neighbor, Syria and those Syrian Sunnis were radicalized
as they watched the Iraqi civil war.
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305. India Interest. India has longstanding historical and cultural relations with
the West Asian region. For India, in particular, West Asia is a significantly important
region. People-to people contacts have existed between India and West Asia for
centuries. India has been a supporter of the Palestinian cause and has demanded a
comprehensive relationship with the Palestinian state and the people. Any development in
the region has direct implications for India. There are nearly 6.5 million Indians living
and working in the West Asian region. According to a World Bank report India received
US $ 70 billion in remittances during 2012 and a majority of the remittances came from
the region. In addition, India’s total trade with West Asia in the year 2012-13 stands at
US$ 205.71 billion. The region is also vital for India's energy security. Nearly two-thirds
of our hydrocarbon imports are from this region.

Iran

306. Iran is the world's only successful mountain country. As such it is nearly
impossible to invade and impossible for a foreign occupier to hold. Iran's religious
identity allows it considerable links to its Shiite co-religionists across the region, granting
it significant influence in a number of sensitive locations. It also has sufficient military
capacity to threaten (at least briefly) shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, through which
roughly 40 percent of global maritime oil exports flow. All of this grants Iran
considerable clout not just in regional but in international politics as well.

307. However, many of these factors work against Iran. Being a mountainous state
means that a large infantry is required to keep the country's various non-Persian
ethnicities under control. Such a lopsided military structure has denied Iran the skill sets
necessary to develop large armored or air arms in its military. So while Iran's mountains
and legions of infantry make it difficult to attack, the need for massive supplies for those
infantry and their slow movement makes it extremely difficult for the Iranian military to
operate beyond Iran's core territories. Any invasion of Iraq, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia while
American forces are in theater would require such forces -- and their highly vulnerable
supply convoys -- to march across mostly open ground. In the parlance of the U.S.
military, it would be a turkey shoot.

308. Mountainous regions also have painfully low capital-generation capacities, since
there are no rivers to stimulate trade or large arable zones to generate food surpluses or
encourage the development of cities. Any patches of land that are useful are separated
from each other, so few economies of scale can be generated. This means that Iran,
despite its vast energy complex, is one of the world's poorer states, with a gross domestic
product (GDP) per capita of only $4,500. It remains a net importer of nearly every good
imaginable, most notably food and gasoline. There is a positive in this for Iran -- its
paucity of economic development means that it does not participate in the Bretton Woods
structure and can resist American economic pressure. But the fact remains that, with the
exception of oil and the Shiite threat, Iran cannot reliably project power beyond its
borders except in one place.

309. Unfortunately for the Americans, that place is Iraq and it is not a location where
Iran feels particularly pressured to compromise. Iran's Shiite card allows Tehran to wield
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substantial influence with fully 60 percent of the Iraqi population. And since the
intelligence apparatus that Iran uses to police its own population is equally good at
penetrating its Shiite co-religionists in Iraq, Iran has long enjoyed better information on
the Iraqis than the Americans have -- even after eight years of American occupation.

310. It is in Iran's interest for Iraq to be kept down. Once oil is removed from the
equation, Mesopotamia is the most capital-rich location in the Middle East. While its two
rivers are broadly unnavigable, they do reliably hydrate the land between them, making it
the region's traditional breadbasket. Historically, however, Iraq has proved time and
again to be indefensible. Hostile powers dominate the mountains to the north and east,
while the open land to the west allows powers in the Levant to penetrate its territory. The
only solution that any power in Mesopotamia has ever developed that provided a
modicum of security is to establish a national security state with as large a military as
possible and then invade neighbors who may have designs upon it. More often than not,
Persia has been the target of this strategy and its most recent application resulted in the
Iraq-Iran War of 1980-1988.

311. Simply put, Iran sees a historic opportunity to prevent Iraq from ever doing this to
it again, while the United States is attempting to restore the regional balance of power so
that Iraq can continue threatening Iran. It is not a dispute that leaves a great deal of room
for compromise. Iran and the United States have been discussing for five years how they
might reshape Iraq into a form that both can live with, likely one with just enough
military might to resist Iran but not so much that it could threaten Iran. If the two powers
cannot agree, then the Americans will have an unpalatable choice to make: either remain
responsible for Iraq's security so long as Persian Gulf oil is an issue in international
economic affairs or leave and risk Iran's influence no longer stopping at the Iraq-Saudi
Arabia border.

Iraq

312. After the 2011 U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, sectarian divisions and the Sunni led
uprising in neighboring Syria have fueled a revival of radical Islamist Sunni Muslim
insurgent groups that are attempting to undermine Iraq’s stability. Iraq’s Sunni Arab
Muslims resent the Shiite political domination and perceived discrimination by the
government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Iraq’s Kurds are embroiled in separate
political disputes with the Baghdad government over territorial, political and economic
issues. The rifts caused a significant uprising led by the Sunni insurgent group Al Qaeda
in Iraq, now also known by the name Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), that
began December 26, 2013 and gained control of several cities in Anbar Province. Earlier,
unrest delayed some provincial elections during April-June 2013 and the latest uprising
could affect the legitimacy of national elections for a new parliament and government set
for April 30, 2014. Maliki is widely expected to seek to retain his post after that vote.

313. The latest violence has exposed weaknesses in the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) in
the absence of direct U.S. military involvement in Iraq. To date, the 800,000-person ISF
has countered the escalating violence by itself, but the violence killed nearly 9,000 Iraqis
in 2013—more than double the figure for all of 2012. Informal security structures put in
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place during the U.S. intervention in Iraq in 2003-2011 have fractured or faltered in the
late 2013-early 2014 ISIL challenge. And there are a growing number of reports that
some Shiite militias have reactivated to retaliate for violence against Shiites. U.S. forces
left in December 2011 in line with a November 2008 bilateral U.S.-Iraq Security
Agreement. Iraq refused to extend the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, seeking to put
behind it the period of U.S. political and military control. However, Iraq continued to
press to acquire sophisticated U.S. equipment such as F-16 combat aircraft, air defense
equipment and attack helicopters. As violence escalated significantly in January 2014,
U.S. officials and Members of Congress have agreed to increase security assistance to the
Maliki government, including providing the attack helicopters, while ruling out re-
introduction of ground troops to Iraq. At the same time, the United States has counseled
restraint in use of force against civilians and promoted dialogue among Iraqi factions to
resolve the underlying sources of Sunni resentment.

314. The consequences of these policies are now clear. The Shiites proceeded to
oppress the Sunnis — seemingly with Washington’s blessings. More than 2 million Iraqis
— mostly Sunnis and Christians — fled the country, never to return. The Sunni minority
in Iraq, which still had delusions of power, began fighting back as an insurgency and then
became more extreme and Islamist. These tribes are all tied by blood and kinship to
Sunni tribes in their next-door neighbor, Syria and those Syrian Sunnis were radicalized
as they watched the Iraqi civil war.

Saudi Arabia

315. Saudi Arabia is an Arab, Sunni Islamic monarchy. It has steadily modernized in
virtually every dimension, but its royal family gives its own security and that of the
Kingdom first priority and sees the world in terms of its view of Islam and Arab interests.

316. Saudi Arabia is not a major global power, has relatively weak local allies and is
dependent on outside states for its arms and the civil imports it needs to survive. It cannot
finance or operate the global mix of satellites and other intelligence and command and
control assets available to the United States. It cannot project power deep into the region
– much less at a global level.

317. Most important, Saudi Arabia faces immediate threats in its neighborhood and on
its borders. Iran, Iraq and Yemen all present a complex mix of threats, as does the
broader impact of Islamic extremism and terrorism and the growing divide between
Sunni and Shiite. The civil war in Yemen and uprisings in Egypt affect every aspect of
Saudi security and the resulting mix of instability and civil war is a direct threat – not an
exercise in seeking some form of democracy and reform.
318. The rise of Iranian influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – and instability and
sectarian issues on Bahrain and Yemen are a central focus of its security and stability and
the real and potential threats posed by the more extreme elements of the Muslim
Brotherhood, groups like ISIS in Iraq and Syria and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
are far more real. Jordan is not a friendly mini-state to Saudi Arabia. It is a vital shield to
its Western border. Qatar is not a problem or challenge to the United States, but is a
direct challenge to Saudi Arabia.
 66

319. Saudi Arabia is equally committed to the Palestinians. Islam and an Arab identity
are very real values to every Saudi, including all of the leading members of the royal
family. Palestinian tensions and unrest are a key source of the ideological pressure and
divisions in the Arab world and a direct threat to Jordan and now increasingly to Egypt
and the Sinai. U.S. support of Israel is a challenge to Saudi legitimacy in acting as an ally
of the United States.

320. Saudi Arabia’s new anti-terrorism legislation and lists of terrorist organizations
have made it clear that Saudi Arabia has no tolerance for violent Islamist extremism near
its borders and it has quietly shown that it is able to deal with rebel factions on more
direct and informed level. A U.S.-Saudi-Jordanian partnership – with British, French,
UAE and Kuwaiti support – might still have an impact.

321. Saudi Arabia needs to put its own house in order and deal more equitably and
realistically with its native Shi’ites. It needs to both pressure Bahrain for similar reform
and help Bahrain finance it. It needs to reach out to all of the Islamic sects in Lebanon,
Iraq and Yemen and actively encourage its own internal tolerance. These are measures
that the United States and other Western states can encourage but not take and the map of
the modern Middle East is now virtually a warning that Islamic sects could repeat all of
the worst abuses of the Christian reformation and counter reformation.

322. Saudi Arabia was one of only three ¬countries in the world to recognize and
support the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan until the 9/11 attacks. It is also a
major player in Pakistan, now home to most of the world’s deadliest terrorists. The
country’s former Law Minister Iqbal Haider told Deutsche Welle, the German news
agency, in August 2012, “Whether they are the Taliban or Lashkar-e-Taiba, their
ideology is Saudi Wahhabi without an iota of doubt.” He added that there was no doubt
Saudi Arabia was supporting -Wahhabi groups throughout his country.

323. Ever since al-Qaeda attacked Riyadh directly in 2003, the Saudis have stamped
down on terrorism at home. But they have not ended support for Wahhabi clerics,
centers, madrasahs and militants abroad. During the Iraq War, much of the support for
Sunni militants came from Saudi sources. That pattern continues in Syria today.

324. The regime fears that any kind of empowerment of the Shi‘ites anywhere could
embolden the 15% of Saudi Arabia’s population that is Shi‘ite—and happens to live in
the part of the country where most of its oil reserves can be found. That’s why the Saudis
sent troops into neighboring Bahrain during the Arab Spring of 2011, to crush the Shi‘ite
majority’s uprising.
325. Saudi royals have been rattled by the events in their region and beyond. They
sense that the discontent that launched the Arab Spring is not absent in their own
populace. They fear the rehabilitation of Iran. They also know that the U.S. might very
soon find itself entirely independent of Middle Eastern oil.

326. Given these trends, it is possible that Saudi Arabia worries that a seat on the U.N.
Security Council might constrain it from having freedom of action. Or that the position
could shine a light on some of its more unorthodox activities. Or that it could force
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Riyadh to vote on issues it would rather ignore. It is also possible that the Saudis acted in
a sudden fit of pique. After all, they had spent years lobbying for the seat. Whatever the
reason, let’s concede that, yes, Saudi Arabia is angry with the U.S. But are we sure that’s
a sign Washington is doing something wrong?

Syria

327. Long before the current uprising, Syrians struggled with many of the challenges
that have bred deep dissatisfaction in other Arab autocracies, including high
unemployment, high inflation, limited upward mobility, rampant corruption, lack of
political freedoms and repressive security forces. These factors have fueled opposition to
Syria’s authoritarian government, which has been dominated by the Baath (Renaissance)
Party since 1963 and the Al Asad family since 1970. President Bashar al Asad’s father—
Hafiz al Asad—ruled the country from 1970 until his death in 2000.

328. The Syrian population, like those of several other Middle East countries, includes
different ethnic and religious groups. For years, the Asad regime’s strict political controls
prevented these differences from playing a divisive role in political or social life. A
majority of Syrians, roughly 90% of the population, are ethnic Arabs; however, the
country contains small ethnic minorities, notably Kurds, the country’s largest distinct
ethnic/linguistic minority (7%-10% of the total population). Of more importance in Syria
are religious sectarian differences. In addition to the majority Sunni Muslims, who
comprise over 70% of the population, Syria contains several religious sectarian
minorities, including three smaller Muslim sects (Alawites, Druze and Ismailis) and
several Christian denominations. The Asad family are members of the minority Alawite
sect (roughly 12% of the population), which has its roots in Shiite Islam.

329. Despite the secular nature of the ruling Baath party, religious sects have been
important to some Syrians as symbols of group identity and determinants of political
orientation. The Asads and the Baath party have cultivated Alawites as a key base of
support and elite security forces have long been led by Alawites. The government
violently suppressed an armed uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood in the early
1980s, killing thousands of Sunni Muslims and others.
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330. Religious, ethnic, geographic and economic identities overlap in influencing the
views and choices of Syrians about the current conflict. Within ethnic and sectarian
communities are important tribal and familial groupings that often provide the
underpinning for political alliances and commercial relationships. Socioeconomic
differences abound among farmers, laborers, middle-class wage earners, public sector
employees, military officials and the political and commercial elite. Many rural, less
advantaged Syrians have supported the opposition movement, while urban, wealthier
Syrians appear to have mixed opinions. Despite being authoritarian, Syrian leaders over
the years often found it necessary to adopt policies that accommodate, to some degree,
various power centers within the country’s diverse population and minimize the potential
for communal identities to create conflict.

331. That need is likely to remain, if not intensify, after the current conflict. While
sectarian considerations cannot fully explain power relationships in Syria or predict the
future dynamics of the uprising, there are indications that as the fighting continues
sectarian and ethnic divisions are growing among Syrians. The Sunni Arab majority has
been at the forefront of the protest movement and armed opposition to the Alawite-led
regime, with Syria’s Christians and other minority groups caught between their parallel
fears of violent change and of being associated with Asad’s crackdown.

332. The Alawite leadership of the Syrian government and its allies in other sects
perceive the mostly Sunni Arab uprising as an existential threat to the Baath party’s
nearly five-decade hold on power. At the popular level, some Alawites may feel caught
between the regime’s demands for loyalty and their fears of retribution from other groups
in the event of regime change or a post-Asad civil war.

333. Some Sunni Arabs may view the conflict as a means to assert their community’s
dominance over others, but some Sunni opposition leaders have sought to assuage these
concerns. Others have pledged that orderly trials and the rule of law will prevail in any
post-conflict setting. However, reports of abuses suggest that rebel leaders at times are
unable or unwilling to ensure that such sentiments prevail.

334. While some Kurds view the conflict as an opportunity to achieve greater
autonomy, others are wary of supporting Sunni Arab rebels who, should they come to
power, may be no less hostile to Kurdish political aspirations than the Asad government.
Some members of Syria’s various Christian communities fear that the uprising will lead
to a sectarian civil war and that they could be subjected to violent repression, given that
Muslim extremist groups have targeted Iraqi Christians since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in
2003. Other Christians reportedly are assisting the armed opposition, including locally
active militias and elements of the Free Syrian Army.

335. The popular-uprising-turned-armed-rebellion against the Asad regime is in its

third year and seems poised to continue, with the government and a bewildering array of
militias locked in a bloody struggle of attrition. Over the course of Syria’s civil war,
momentum has shifted between government and rebel forces. Currently, the support
provided by Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters appears to have helped enable the
Asad regime to wrest the initiative from the opposition in central Syria (such as Homs)
and to launch counteroffensives on the outskirts of the capital.
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336. The Asad regime retains its advantages in air power, armored equipment and
artillery. Various opposition forces control areas of northwestern, eastern and southern
Syria . In areas near the northern city of Aleppo, diverse rebel forces have announced
limited tactical successes in recent weeks, including the fall of a key military air base.

337. Lebanon. A large and capable jihadist presence in Syria will encourage the
slow rise of an indigenous jihadist movement in Lebanon. Hezbollah will have to split its
attention between an emerging Sunni militant threat in Lebanon and reinforcing its
sectarian allies in Syria. The Lebanese political and militant landscape will become even
more fragmented in 2014 as various factions seek accommodation with one another to
adapt to Iran's strengthening role in the region. Hezbollah and Iran will try to take
advantage of the atmosphere of negotiation in an attempt to push the United States
toward accepting Hezbollah as a political actor and to formally integrate Hezbollah's
militia into the Lebanese army for the Shiite organization's long-term preservation.

Egypt

338. In Eqypt, which has a population of 83 million people, politics are not monolithic,
but for decades there have been two forces that have been dominant—the armed forces
and the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt’s military has produced three presidents (Gamal
Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak) and is so thoroughly ingrained within
various segments of society that it is widely considered a state within a state. It employs
hundreds of thousands of young men; maintains businesses which afford the armed forces
financial self-sufficiency; and commands the loyalties of millions of private citizens from
the business community, from the Muslim and Christian religious establishments of Al
Azhar and the Coptic Church and from other Egyptians who consider it a source of
national pride.

339. Generally rivaling the military has been the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization
that historically embodies the pursuit of political Islam. For most of its 85-year history,
the Brotherhood (an illegal organization from 1954 to 2011) has opposed (violently at
first, then, beginning in the 1970s, non-violently) single party rule backed by the military
and advocated for a state governed by a vaguely articulated combination of civil and
Shariah (Islamic) law. It derives legitimacy from millions of lower and middle class
Egyptians in urban and rural areas alike. From its disciplined internal workings to its
external charitable activities, the Brotherhood has been able to maintain party cohesion
and effectively mobilize outside supporters when necessary.

340. When popular demonstrations sparked by the “Arab Spring” compelled the
military to force the resignation of former President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, a
third force arrived on the Egyptian political scene – the power of youth-driven street
protests. However, youth revolutionaries, despite their ability to corral support in Tahrir
Square and elsewhere, were either unable or unwilling to translate their revolutionary
success into post-revolutionary electoral politics. Long-established secular opponents of
the Mubarak regime and the Muslim Brotherhood similarly failed to effectively organize
themselves and compete politically. Thus, when Mubarak’s regime dissipated (embodied
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by the disbandment of the ruling National Democratic Party, the dissolution of the police
forces and arrests of corrupt oligarchs), the military and the Muslim Brotherhood filled
the political vacuum.

341. From February 2011 to June 2013, the post-Mubarak period was characterized by
the sometimes cooperative, sometimes contentious relationship between the military and
Muslim Brotherhood. In this drama, the military acquiesced to Islamist success at the
ballot box and the Brotherhood accepted the military’s autonomy. This arrangement was
tactical and, notably, not based on any shared consensus regarding the rule of law. When
legal disputes arose over defining executive power or the substance of electoral laws and
the constitution, the military, former President Morsi (who came from the Muslim
Brotherhood) and Mubarak-era judges all had on occasion unilaterally declared their
decisions to be the final word.

342. With the military now openly suppressing the Brotherhood, Egypt faces a future in
which it may not be possible for quite some time to reach a basic national consensus over
the rule of law, national identity and the role of religion in public life. Without such
consensus, many experts doubt that there can be social stability, economic growth and
open political competition.

343. It now seems all too likely that it will take at least half a decade for Egypt to find a
new balance between military rule and a more open political system that will creating
lasting political consensus and stability. Unless the United States, Saudi Arabia and other
key aid donors like the UAE and Kuwait cooperate, Egypt may return to crony
capitalism, corruption and a kind of development that fails to meet the needs of many of
its people. Repression is likely to lead to growing internal violence and spillover into the
region.

Israel and the Palestinians

344. The passing of Yasser Arafat and Israel’s 2006 withdrawal from Gaza held some
promise of a new politics of realism in settling the Arab-Israeli dispute. However, the
Palestinian Authority’s inability to control extremist violence and the polarization of the
leadership struggle between Hamas and Fatah have precluded diplomatic progress on a
settlement. Israel has created de facto borders by building a barrier separating the Jewish
state from the West Bank, but it could lead to further unrest and violence.

345. It is all too likely that the best efforts of the Obama Administration will not
produce a framework agreement for peace in the foreseeable future. Both the Israelis and
Palestinians are too divided internally, too suspicious of each other and Israel is focused
on too many outside security concerns. If there is such success, however, the United
States and Saudi Arabia should be immediately ready to not only support such an effort
politically, but back it with the kind of aid that will guarantee Israel as much security as
possible and fund the economy and economic development of a Palestinian protostate.

346. In fact, this is the same course that the United States and Saudi Arabia should
pursue if a peace agreement fails. The United States should continue it peace efforts and
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Saudi Arabia should keep the Arab peace plan option open. The United States should
continue to ensure that Israel remains secure – and here Arabs really need to consider
how a nuclear armed Israel might behave if the United States ever did remove such aid.

347. There is still much more that can be done to aid the Palestinians, however, even if
this peace effort fails or is indefinitely delayed. In fact, providing a major economic aid
package – tied carefully to conditions that require a realistic development plans, fiscal
controls and effective governance would aid the Palestinian people, encourage political
moderation and help lay the conditions for some form of statehood.

348. The Palestinian people deserve far more. So, for that matter, do the Israelis and
Jordanians. Walls, rivers and boundaries can only do so much. Palestinian economic
development is the minimum step that can help bring some degree of added security to
both the Palestinians and their immediate neighbors.

Turkey

349. While Tehran stands to strengthen its regional position through accommodation
with Washington, Turkey will look for ways to balance against Iran. These efforts will be
most visible in Iraq, where Turkey will try to anchor its influence in the north through
energy deals with the Kurdistan Regional Government while Iran maintains a dominant
position in Baghdad through the Shiite-led government. Baghdad will try to avoid
pushing the Kurds too far in an election year while it also deals with a persistent jihadist
threat and Ankara will struggle to work out a compromise with Baghdad and Tehran
while trying to maintain Kurdish support in a volatile election season at home. Periodic
truces are possible, but a grand bargain satisfying the interests of Baghdad, Ankara and
Arbil in northern Iraq's energy exports is unlikely.

350. The government's ambitious peace process with the Kurdistan Workers' Party will
reach an impasse, with the government too politically constrained to agree to concessions
on political amnesty and the Kurds without an incentive to withdraw their forces.

351. Turkey is likely to reprioritize its foreign policy objectives. While trying to further
its gains in northern Iraq, Turkey will have limited influence in Syria and Egypt. Outside
the Arab world, Turkey will maintain a dialogue with Armenia and Cyprus in an attempt
to extend its influence in the Caucasus and the eastern Mediterranean, but a diplomatic
breakthrough in either arena will be difficult. Turkey's ties with Israel will improve
gradually, but Ankara will prefer to keep the relationship muted while it tries to shape
perceptions in the Arab world.
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Arab Spring

352. The wave of poplar protests called ‘Arab Spring’ started in Tunisia in December
2010 when the people protested against their ruler Ben Ali who then fled to Saudi Arabia.
This raised hopes among millions of other citizens in the neighbouring Arab countries.
Thus, within a short span of time the protests spread to other countries like Algeria,
Libya, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen and some other Gulf countries. The
demands of the protesters varied from country to country but in general it included
demands for political freedom, social freedom, press freedom, improved human rights
conditions, economic betterment etc. The demands reflect a desire among the masses,
particularly the new generation of young and educated, to be liberated from the reins of
the old and authoritarian leadership and play a role in the decision making process of the
state. Till date, the protests have overthrown four long serving dictators Ben Ali of
Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Ali Abdullah Saleh
of Yemen. While the Bashar Al Assad regime in Syria is struggling for its survival, other
countries have successfully managed to suppress the protests against the regimes either
by crackdown by the security forces or by promising economic and political reforms.

353. This has brought the region a new contour – a wave of protests for democratic
reforms in an otherwise authoritarian Arab world. The regime change also carries with it
the potentials of change in policies towards the neighbourhood and beyond. Throughout
the uprisings, the major regional countries have fought political and diplomatic wars
among themselves trying to assert their influence over the region. The Shia-Sunni war of
words has come to the fore during the protests. The outside powers have taken the
opportunity to strengthen their interests by intervening in the conflicts. On the whole, the
regional security scenario in West Asia has worsened with the arrival of the Arab Spring.

354. But the prospect of democracy in the region has receded. Most regimes have been
able to keep at bay, at least for the time being, the calls for change. The expectations from
the Arab Spring turned out to be overambitious. The old order has reasserted itself and
managed to survive for the time being. Arab spring is now commonly referred to as Arab
winter, reflecting the failure of protests movements to bring about change in the region.
Democracy may not have come to these countries as expected, yet the region has
nevertheless changed dramatically in the last three years. The regimes have survived, but
there is no surety how long will they survive. The internal and external environment has
changed. What is now clear is that the change will be unpredictable and nonlinear and
violence ridden. The old order will have to find new ways of surviving. Repression,
inducement and cajolement seem to be the tactic.

355. The major characteristics of the Arab spring have been:

(a) A great deal of violence has erupted and is likely to continue. There is no
early prospect of democracy taking hold in the region. The new regimes are likely
to be even more repressive. They will use repression and inducements to subdue
protests and perpetuate themselves.
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(b) A fall of Syrian regime will change the balance of power. The so called
Shia “axis of resistance” consisting of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon will
be weakened.

(c) Extremism will grow exponentially, affecting not only the region but
globally. The historic sectarian fault lines have become wide open and the region
could be torn apart if the sectarian tensions continue unchecked.

(d) Amidst the protests and violence in the Arab streets, Iran has risen as a
major regional power. Iran-Saudi rivalry for supremacy will be the defining
feature of the evolving situation.

(e) Religious extremism has become pronounced. Al Qaeda had got a second
wind. Salafists are on the rise and becoming prominent in the political arena.
Muslim Brotherhood has tasted power in Egypt but later has been thrown out of
power and subsequently banned by the Egyptian government. The behaviour and
future action of the Muslim Brotherhood will, to large extend, determine the
security and democratic transition in Egypt.

(f) GCC counties like Qatar are involved in carving out a new balance of
power. Qatar, though small but extremely rich, is playing an aggressive role in the
new balance of power. Likewise, Turkey, which led the call for Assad regime to
reform, has become an important player in the region. The regime is sympathetic
to Muslim Brotherhood. But, the role of Turkey and Qatar is controversial and
may lead to unintended consequences.

(g) The rise of Iran has deeply upset the Sunni regimes. Its alleged quest for
nuclear weapons has alarmed the GCC countries and Israel. If Iran acquires a
nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia will almost certainly do so, possibly with the help
of Pakistan.

(h) Chemical weapons have been used in Syria. Russia has brokered a deal
under which Syria is set to hand over its pile of chemical weapons for destruction.
Syrian regime has got a reprieve. In this process, the US has been seen as weak
and not in control of the situation.

(j) The US policies may undergo change. The US has already started talk to
Iran on nuclear issue and was forced to take Russian help in the Syrian case. The
shale gas revolution in the US will reduce its dependence upon the oil from the
region although its strategic objective of controlling Iran still remains. Saudi
Arabia is extremely upset with the US on the Syrian deal and the US talks with
Iran. It showed its displeasure by not accepting a seat in the UNSC, an
unprecedented step.
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356. The only country where Arab Spring may have a positive effect is Tunisia. Its
National Constituent Assembly has forged a new Constitution that, as The Times
reported, “is a carefully worded blend of ideas that has won the support of both Ennahda,
the Islamist party ... and the secular opposition.” It is surely one of the most liberal and
inclusive constitutions in the Arab world. It took three years of political struggles for the
Tunisians to get there and the whole thing could still blow up at any time, but it is an
achievement that Tunisians basically did on their own. What’s the secret?

357. The main religious and secular forces in Tunisia, after coming close to civil war,
finally agreed to the sine qua non for the success of any Arab democracy movement “No
victor, no vanquished.” Whether you’re talking Shiites, Sunnis, Alawites, Kurds, tribes,
Islamists or secular generals, in these pluralistic Arab states, unless all the key parties
accept the principle that power will be shared and rotated, there is no chance any of these
awakenings will make a stable transition from autocracy to more consensual politics.

Africa
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the
land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them
we had the Bible and they had the land.

--- Bishop Desmond Tutu

358. The artificial boundaries created by colonial rulers as they ruled and finally left
Africa had the effect of bringing together many different ethnic people within a nation
that did not reflect, nor have (in such a short period of time) the ability to accommodate
or provide for, the cultural and ethnic diversity. The freedom from imperial powers was
and is still, not a smooth transition. The natural struggle to rebuild is proving difficult.

Unequal International Trade; Comparative Disadvantage

359. Colonialism had thus transformed an entire continent. Vast plantations and cash
crop-based, or other extractive economies were set up throughout. Even as colonial
administrators parted, they left behind supportive elites that, in effect, continued the
siphoning of Africa’s wealth. Thus has colonialism had a major impact on the economics
of the region today. Various commentators, mostly from the third world observer that
colonialism in the traditional sense may have ended, but the end results are much the
same.

360. International trade and economic arrangements have done little to benefit the
African people and has further exacerbated the problem. IMF/World Bank policies like
Structural Adjustment have aggressively opened up African nations with disastrous
effects, including the requirements to cut back on health, education (and AIDS is a huge
problem), public services and so on, while growing food and extracting resources for
export primarily, etc, thus continuing the colonial era arrangement.

361. The resulting increased poverty of Sub-Saharan Africa and the immense burden of
debt has further crippled Africa’s ability to develop.
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362. There is a new scramble for Africa. Roads, railways and pipelines are being built
or envisioned into the interior of central Africa from multiple directions. Africa's
geographic tragedy through the ages has been its isolation, which has been among the
main causes of its poverty. Despite possessing a long coastline, Africa has relatively few
natural deep-water harbors. Its great rivers are generally not navigable from the interior to
the various seaboards. The Sahara Desert has acted as a barrier to human contact with the
great Eurasian civilizations.

363. Three proposed routes into the interior originate in Angola alone, leading mainly
toward the southern edges of the immense forest and jungle of the Democratic Republic
of the Congo. The Angolans, flush with offshore oil wealth and feeling secure enough in
their domestic control following a 25-year civil war, are a rare example on the continent
of intent and capability to extend their economic reach. They are initiating these plans
themselves and Luanda will pay the Asians for their technical expertise rather than barter
for it, as most other African governments would do. The goal is to extract diamonds,
copper and other precious commodities, which along the southern edges of the Congo
have not been properly mined or explored to their full potential.

364. South Africa plans a complex network of routes from the Indian Ocean northwest
and north into Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia, culminating, again, at
southern outposts in the Congo. The South Africans are after gold, diamonds, copper and
coal. The discovery of gold and diamonds and the blessing of a temperate climate with
several natural deep-water harbors set South Africa on a unique geopolitical trajectory,
empowering it to become the continent's economic hegemon. The present goal is to reach
stranded mineral resources and create a zone of South African economic and political
influence throughout southern Africa, with the potential to expand farther north into the
continent later.

365. The envisioned transport and pipeline network along the Indian Ocean in East
Africa goes from both the Kenyan and Tanzanian coasts westward to Burundi, Rwanda
and Uganda and a spur line could run north from the Ugandan capital of Kampala to the
South Sudanese capital of Juba. Ethiopia is reinforcing its rail connectivity to the Indian
Ocean at Djibouti and may eventually extend other links to South Sudan and Kenya. In
the East African cases, unlike with the Angolans and South Africans, the financing, the
impetus and the know-how must come from the Chinese and, to a lesser extent, the
Japanese. These Asian countries have a hunger for African copper and cobalt, rare earths
and other minerals from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and hydrocarbons
from South Sudan.
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366. These are not entirely new networks, given that the Chinese in the 1970s built a
railway into the Copperbelt of Zambia and the southern edge of the Congo (and the
Germans, British and Portuguese during colonialism built limited rail networks in their
respective colonies of Tanganyika, Kenya and Angola). Now the Chinese want to build a
deep-water port in Bagamoyo and the Japanese want to do likewise in Dar es Salaam:
Both ports are in Tanzania, with new pathways westward into the interior of Central
Africa in each case. The Kenyans have been trying to interest the Chinese in building a
port and transport links from Lamu on the Kenyan coast northwestward all the way into
the oil fields of South Sudan, but so far at least the Chinese have held back from making
a serious commitment. Beijing is sensitive to the consequences of empowering South
Sudan with a pipeline independent of Sudan and prefers instead to ensure that Juba and
Khartoum remain co-dependent and thus peaceful in their economic conduct, avoiding
any additional costs for crude extraction.

367. These newly planned routes into the interior from southern Africa and from East
Africa, point to one geographical phenomenon which stands out. Every route ends at or
near the edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but without really penetrating it.
The Congo, even if all of this infrastructure is built, will remain a vast, impassable blank
spot on the map despite its abundance of copper, cobalt, rare earths, diamonds and oil, to
say nothing of its agricultural potential (which is already its largest economic sector by
gross domestic product).

368. Here, too, geography is destiny. The Congo is both enormous in size among the
largest countries in Africa -- with a tropical rainforest difficult to clear, leading to poor
communication between its major cities and to a government in the capital of Kinshasa
that barely functions in terms of projecting authority. Rather than leading to Kinshasa,
transportation linkages serving the mineral-rich regions of Congo are engineered and
connected to neighboring regions. Congo is a universe unto itself of civil wars and local
fiefdoms divorced from any meaningful central control. The government knows full well
its constraints and thus limits its ambitions to playing the role of kingmaker reliant on
powerful barons ruling distant fiefs. So unconnected to the outside world is the Congo
that Kinshasa has not even one international hotel chain, whereas just across the river
from Kinshasa in the Republic of the Congo, hotel chains are numerous and the French
essentially run a vibrant, modernizing country.

369. With the gaping heart of the African interior as represented by the Congo still
destined to remain remote and pathways reaching around its edges from multiple points
along the Indian Ocean and from the adjacent southeastern Atlantic Ocean, we start to see
the emergence of the African piece of the Greater Indian Ocean trade and conflict system
a system that stretches from Angola far in the west on the Atlantic to the Philippines far
to the east in the South China Sea. In other words, the vast southern rimland of Afro-
Eurasia is forming into one organic region, with even sub-Saharan Africa now a part.

370. Finally, there are the new routes envisioned in the Horn of Africa and West Africa.
The Ethiopians want to upgrade their road and rail links from their capital of Addis
Ababa to Djibouti near the Strait of Bab el Mandeb, again, on the Indian Ocean. The
Ethiopians, having lost their outlet to the sea because of the separation of Eritrea, require
 77

a fully reliable export route for their light manufactured and agricultural goods and
modest mining wealth. Of more remote interest to the Ethiopians is trade with the interior
of central Africa. Transportation linkages Addis Ababa may foster there will find it in
competition for scarce financing that the Kenyans and Tanzanians are struggling to
mobilize.

371. As for West Africa, the only exciting advance appears to be a plan to upgrade land
links from Abidjan on the coast of Ivory Coast northeast through Burkina Faso into
Niger, where there is oil, natural gas and uranium. What infrastructure projects others
have constructed in West Africa, such as in Liberia and Sierra Leone, have been
extremely limited in scope and utility -- to extract resources from a specific mineral
concession. Nearby Nigeria, the largest country in West Africa and the most populous
country in the whole of Africa, is a landscape of low-level chaos. While Abuja aims to
improve infrastructure like roads, rail and power plants, these are often carried out at state
or local levels, without national initiative. And none of the infrastructure really links
much beyond its borders. West Africa, like the Congo, suffers from an unhealthy climate
compared to that of southern and East Africa and this has helped account for the
comparatively lower levels of development.

372. Thus, all these pathways point to an Africa where there may be exciting economic
progress in the south and east in both cases oriented toward the Indian Ocean while, for
the most part, the rest of the continent languishes in poverty, continued low-intensity
conflict and occasional bouts of anarchy.

373. As Chinese-financed port projects take shape along the Indian Ocean coast,
railroad networks expand from the coast to the African interior, rich with hydrocarbons
and strategic minerals and metals. Meanwhile, the population of sub-Saharan Africa
could grow from 1.1 billion people to 4.1 billion people by the end of the century,
according to the World Population Review. And this is not necessarily a linear projection,
but one based on declining birth rates. So even as the interior of Africa becomes
interconnected with the Oikoumene and urban middle classes burgeon on the African
continent, conflict, too, will proliferate there: for despite advances in agriculture,
environmentally fragile zones such as the Sahel and the water-starved slums of major
cities will simply be unable to support a population growing so dramatically in absolute
numbers.

374. And it’s often those fundamental factors of absolute population growth, resource
scarcity and climate change—not just evil individuals or disputes between groups—that
drives conflict, the breakdown of states here and there across sub-Saharan Africa since
the late-1990s is a demonstration of this. Such chaos will merge with the burgeoning
anarchy along the North African coast, where Libya has already crumbled into its
constituent parts, igniting further unrest in nearby Sahelian countries like Mali and Niger.
(And this is not to mention tribal conflict in the Central African Republic and South
Sudan.) Algeria is on the brink of a political transition that could weaken its grip upon its
own Saharan back-of-beyond. Tunisia, as central authority weakens even there, is less
and less in control of its southern borderlands.
China’s Role in Africa
 78

375. China has the advantage of never having enslaved or colonized the continent.
China has also not made any false promises coated with neo-liberalism. While the West,
the IMF and the World Bank put conditions China has so far been willing to provide
unconditional aid and invest in infrastructure. At the same time, however, it freely takes
full advantage of the opening up of markets that neo-liberal economic policies over the
last 25 years have offered, unencumbered. And so far, unlike the US, China has not
sought to establish military bases in Africa to protect its economic interests, which the
US has sought to establish through AFRICOM.

376. China’s role in Africa defies conventional stereotypes and punchy news headlines.
China is both a long-established diplomatic partner and a new investor in Africa. Chinese
interests on the continent encompass not only natural resources but also issues of trade,
security, diplomacy and soft power.

377. Few non-Chinese experts accept the notion that Chinese-African relations
represent interactions among equals, pointing out the inherent imbalance between a large,
wealthy, powerful state and a grouping of 54 nations that rarely, if ever, coordinate on
economic or foreign policy issues. Instead, Western observers tend to depict China as a
“spoiler” in Africa, whose “insatiable” and “voracious” appetite for mineral resources is
nothing more than a neo-colonial grab for raw materials that perpetuates African
countries’ underdevelopment. China’s willingness to engage autocratic regimes in Sudan
and Zimbabwe are highlighted as examples of China’s willingness to circumvent, or even
completely ignore, international efforts to curtail violence, human rights abuses and
corruption.

378. African officials overwhelmingly view China’s role in Africa as a positive

development, welcoming China’s heavy emphasis on government-to-government con-
tracts with few, if any, strings attached. Many Africans praise China’s contributions to
their nations’ infrastructure, highlighting visible improvements that contribute to
expanded economic activity, job creation for local workers and tangible improvements to
roads, rails, bridges and other transportation networks—all things that benefit ordinary
citizens, albeit indirectly.

379. Some in Africa, however, are critical of Chinese engagement. Labor unions, civil
society groups and other segments of African society criticize Chinese enterprises for
their poor labor conditions, unsustainable environmental practices and job displacement.
Good governance watchdogs warn that China negotiates unfair deals that take advantage
of African governments’ relative weaknesses, fosters corruption and wasteful decision-
making and perpetuates a neo-colonial relationship in which Africa exports raw materials
in exchange for manufactured goods. In some countries, resentment at Chinese business
practices has led to popular protests and violence against Chinese businessmen and
migrants.
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380. The Chinese investment in Africa is depicted below:-

Conflict in Africa

381. Africa is struggling with serious problem such as HIV/AIDS, terrorism and
internal conflict. Recent years have seen many regions of Africa involved in war and
internal or external conflict, from the seven or so countries directly involved in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the Sierra Leone crisis and the war in
Ethiopia/Eritrea and the various other civil wars. In addition to the conflict deaths, there
have been over 9 million refugees and internally displaced people. While refugee
numbers in recent years have declined, the number of internally displaced has risen.

382. The death toll from conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is
literally one thousand times greater than that in Israel-Palestine, yet it is the latter that is
the object of far greater media coverage … [and where] the intricacies and nuances of the
conflict, political situation and peace process are almost obsessively analyzed and
presented.… [African] conflicts are frequently brushed off and dismissed as being
chaotic, or worthy of some vague pity or humanitarian concern, but rarely of any in-depth
political analysis.
 80

383. Continued terrorist activity in parts of Africa is a virtual certainty as many states
lack the security capacity necessary to break up terror cells, thwart arms trafficking, or
prevent well-coordinated attacks. These problems, coupled with the existence of several
failed or weakened states with significant Muslim populations and the growth of Islamist
extremism in Nigeria and parts of western, central, and northeastern Africa, could aid and
abet the continent’s emergence as a new regional battleground in the war on terrorism.

384. As demonstrated by the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region, civil strife with potential
for mass violence will continue to plague a number of African countries. While the
sources of these conflicts are most often local, the United States and other members of
the international community may be drawn in to provide emergency assistance,
peacekeepers, or conflict mediation. In addition to ongoing and known conflicts in
Somalia, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, flashpoints triggering pressures
for new or expanded international interventions could well arise elsewhere in Africa’s
diverse western, central, and southern subregions.

Latin America

385. Political Changes. The Latin American and Caribbean region has made
significant advances over the past three decades in terms of both political and economic
development. In the early 1980s, 16 countries in the region were governed by
authoritarian regimes, both on the left and the right, but today, all nations with the
exception of Cuba are elected democracies. This past December, Argentina celebrated 30
years of civilian democratic rule since its military relinquished power in 1983 after seven
years of harsh dictatorship. Some observers contend that the region overall, despite some
exceptions, appears to be moving politically toward the ideological center, focusing on
centrist, pragmatic polices. The threat to elected governments in the region from their
own militaries has dissipated in most countries, although the 2009 ouster of President
Manuel Zelaya in Honduras is an exception. Colombia’s ongoing peace negotiations with
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which began formally in October
2012, has raised hopes that the hemisphere’s oldest civil conflict, which dates back to the
1960s, may be resolved.

386. Free and fair elections have become the norm in most countries in the region, even
though some elections have been controversial with allegations of irregularities, In 2013,
seven nations in the hemisphere held elections for head of government Despite significant
improvement in political rights and civil liberties, several in the region still face
considerable challenges. In a number of countries, weaknesses remain in the state’s
ability to deliver public services, ensure accountability and transparency, advance the rule
of law and ensure citizen safety and security. Many of the street protests that swept Latin
America in 2013, most notably in Brazil, were sparked by new middle classes demanding
better public services.
 81

387. There are also numerous examples of elected presidents over the past 25 years
who left office early amid severe social turmoil, often with economic crises, high-profile
corruption, or even the presidents’ own autocratic actions contributing to their ousters.

388. The quality of democracy in several countries in the region also has been eroded
by two key factors in recent years. One factor is increased organized crime. Mexico and
several Central American countries have been especially affected because of the
increased use of the region as a drug transit zone and the associated rise in corruption,
crime and violence. A second factor negatively affecting democracy is the executive’s
abuse of power in several countries that has led to a setback in liberal democratic
practices, with elected leaders seeking to consolidate power at the expense of minority
rights. In recent years, there has also been a deterioration of media freedom in several
countries in the region precipitated by the increase in organized crime-related violence
and by politically driven attempts to curb critical or independent media.

389. Some analysts see the growth of leftist populism in the region in such countries as
Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua as a threat to democracy because of the
tough treatment of political opponents and the dismantling of institutional checks and
balances. They contend that a type of competitive or electoral authoritarianism is taking
hold in these countries, in which democratic institutions exist but abuse by the incumbent
skews the playing field against opponents.

390. Economic Changes. The region has also undergone a significant economic
transformation. While the 1980s were commonly referred to as the lost decade of
development as many countries became bogged down with unsustainable public debt, the
1990s brought about a shift from a strategy of import-substituting industrialization to one
focused on export promotion, attraction of foreign capital and privatization of state
enterprises. Latin America experienced an economic downturn in 2002 (brought about in
part because of an economic downturn in the United States), but recovered with strong
growth rates until 2009, when a global economic crisis again affected the region with an
economic contraction of about 2%. Some countries experienced deeper recession in 2009,
especially those more closely integrated with the U.S. economy, such as Mexico, while
other countries with more diversified trade and investment partners experienced lesser
downturns. The region rebounded in 2010 and 2011, with growth rates of 5.6% and 4.3%
respectively. Economic growth rates declined since to a regional average of 3.1% in 2012
and 2.6% in 2013. Last year, the weak performances of Brazil (2.4%) and Mexico (1.3%)
dragged down the regional average. Poor economic performance in China, the United
States and Europe, however, could have a significant effect on the economic outlook for
Latin America. There is also increasing concern about economic conditions in Venezuela,
which is facing shortages of basic food and consumer items, electricity shortages, high
inflation (56% at the end of 2013) and falling international reserves. The recent plunge of
Argentina’s peso, which fell by 15% in January 2014, has also focused attention on that
country’s difficult economic situation characterized by high inflation and declining
international reserves.

391. Latin America’s differing approaches to democracy will continue. Good

governance will be hampered in some countries by disgruntled masses, inadequate
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infrastructure and growing pains of globalization and in others by unwillingness to push

through crucial structural reforms.

Source:-

The study material has been compiled from the following:-

(a) Writing of Robert D Kaplan [Books and Papers published in different

journals and web articles].

(b) Papers and interviews of Dr. George Friedman of STRATFOR.

(c) Papers published by Center of Strategic and International Studies (CISS).

(d) James R Clapper, Director of National Intelligence Council of USA, World

Wide Threat Assessment, Jan 29, 2014.

(e) Papers published by Strategic Studies Institute of US Army War College.

(f) Papers published by IDSA.

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