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The Case Against Mexico Joining NATO

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By Raúl Zepeda-Gil

Artwork: “Esquadron 201,” The 201st Mexican Fighter Squadron, Mexican Expeditionary Air Force Artist: Ginny Sherwood

Mexico has no benefit in joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In a pragmatic sense, the relation with the United States constrains how Mexico employs its foreign policy. Adding a new layer of complexity, coming from an international organisation that has an overwhelming leadership from the U.S., would futher hinder Mexico’s foreign policy by reducing its freedom degrees of action by excesing a neutralilty instance in international security matters.

Historically, Mexico has diverged from the U.S. foreign policy and acted in a semi-neutral basis for the rest of the world. After the recurrent invasions from the U.S. and France during the 19th Century, Mexico adopted constitutional principles enshirend in article 89, fraction X: self-determination, peaceful conflict resolution, follow international law, and the proscription to threat to use force against other State. 

Mario Ojeda, one the most relevant experts on Mexico’s foreign policy, described the paradox of a relatively weak country neighbouring through a long border with the United States: it has independence in foreign policy in exchange for cooperation in everyday matters. Mexico does not engage in international security affairs of the U.S., but has intensive cooperation in other maters: border protection, migration issues, having a Free Trade Agreement, and Plan Merida for anti-drug initiatives. 

In 2019, Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary-General of NATO, in response to the integration of Colombia as a partner of the alliance, mentioned that other Latin American countries could integrate in the same way. This appeal happened in a particular geopolitical moment: Brazil had requested to join NATO to help Donald Trump pressure the rest of the member states internally. 

2021 has changed the scenario: Trump is now out of office. And Joe Biden will reinforce the U.S. presence in NATO. However, before these junctures, two members of the Atlantic Council have made their case for Mexico in NATO. Skaluba and Doyle argued: 

“Mexico could serve as a gateway for an intensified NATO presence in Latin America where the alliance is absent outside of a formal partnership with Colombia. Given Russia’s criticality in propping up Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela and China’s growing influence throughout the Global South, an augmented NATO role in Latin America could further democracy promotion while providing a timely deterrent effect, including on Russia’s solicitation of Mexico to increase bilateral trade and security agreements.”

This idea has been widely debated. In 2012, Christopher Sands, of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkin’s University, said:

President Obama and Prime Minister Harper should consider Mexico when they meet with other NATO leaders in Chicago. NATO with Mexico as a member could also confirm the alliance’s role as a guarantor of security and mutual cooperation against transnational security threats that contributes to the prosperity of the west, in Europe and North America equally.

Both pieces, plus the Stoltenberg declaration, do not mention why or how Mexico would benefit from a NATO membership beyond the current benefits from the bilateral relationship with the U.S. or the integration within the free trade agreement government Canada. Both quotes show that having Mexico’s main interest in NATO is to be functional to the NATO agenda. Nonetheless, history has shown that Mexico’s geographical closeness to the U.S. automatically requires Mexico to be auxiliary to the Atlantic agenda. Mexico is so entwined with the U.S. that it will choose to be with the U.S. on a global scale conflict. 

Nonetheless, beyond a real common threat to Mexico and the U.S., such as the Japanese Empire during the Second World War, Mexico does not need to enter into the agenda of international conflicts of the U.S. The advantage of Mexico’s independent foreign policy is that Mexico exchanges cooperation of its own agenda without the need to be involved in issues that are not geopolitically relevant to Mexico. For example, the George W. Bush administration pressured Mexico to enter the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq in 2002. Nonetheless, México denied joining that endevour initially because it was not supported in the UN Security Council. Afterwards, with the negative vote of Mexico in the UN Security Council in 2003, the Iraq War was not athorised, therefore, giving Mexico the main reason to deny any future involvement: it was against the Mexican constitutional principle of following the international law. Indeed, diplomatic tensions arose, but the bilateral agenda continued as usual, and Mexico did not embark in a conflict; it not needed be involved. 

For a country so dependent on the U.S. economy, joining to NATO would mean relinquishing degrees of freedom in foreign policy. Mexico is in line with North America’s defence by cooperating with the U.S. Northern Command and follows constitutional principles of peaceful resolutions of conflict and democratic values. However, joining with NATO would mean that Mexico could be pressured to integrate to conflicts in Afghanistan, Libya, Bosnia, or Yemen, contentious by themselves in other multilateral forums. 

As stated before, Mexico usually disagrees with NATO countries in the UN on international security matters. For example, Mexico has never supported Responsibility to Protect as a policy, instead prefers diplomatic mediation. And has never supported military responses for international security matters, rather than just peacekeeping operations.

The previously mentioned authors argued that Mexico would benefit from the Security Sector Reform (SSR) framework that NATO implemented in Eastern Europe. Is it necessary that Mexico join NATO to ask for bilateral or multilateral cooperation in implementing SSR framework? The authors were not aware that bilateral cooperation with the U.S. in anti-narcotics agenda has involved some SSR programs under the Merida Initiative signed during the George W. Bush administration. Nowadays, UN peacekeeping is a more effective way to engage in SSR reform in the defence sector than NATO initaitives. Mexico has established a new peacekeeping educational centre for its recent engagement in UN peacekeeping since 2014, after a long absence from any peacekeeping since the late 1950s. Therefore, there are no apparent benefits in cooperating with NATO.

Finally, we remember why NATO was founded: to combat Soviet influence Undeniably, Mexico also was under the influence of Cold War global politics. However, instead of following the US foreign policy agenda, Mexico has followed a foreign policy agenda based on promoting peaceful resolution of conflicts, neutrality in conflicts, and the promotion of de-nuclearisation. Mexico has developed a diverse portfolio of multilateral initiatives in the UN that are possible because it does not follow U.S. foreign policy: migration agreements, small arms trafficking and recently, promoting the global vaccine alliance for developing countries. Close cooperation in real bilateral problems with the U.S. allows Mexico to act with more freedom in global issues. Joining NATO would hinder that freedom.

it is not a problem to argue that a country has a role in the global scenario. But, the problem with the Atlantic Council’s arguments is that they do not consider any of the current foreign policy traditions of Mexico. In simpler terms: they did not even mind asking or thinking in Mexican terms why would it be useful to be in NATO, beyond a random menu or SSR reform, without knowing what is happening in its SSR agenda. In even more practical terms: if there is something that unsettles the U.S. about the Mexico’s bilateral relations with Russia or China, a phone call between the State Department and the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs would be more effective than a long and exhaustiative process in joining NATO. 

 

Raúl Zepeda-Gil is a Mexican PhD Student in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London. He holds degree in political science by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a master’s degree in political science by El Colegio de Mexico. One of his research topics is Mexican multilateral foreign policy and civil-military relations. You can follow him on Twitter at @zepecaos. 

Enhancing Cyber Wargames: The Crucial Role of Informed Games Design

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by Amy Ertan and Peadar Callaghan

“Risk – Onyx Edition (Ghosts of board games past)” by derekGavey.
Licensed under Creative Commons

 

‘A game capable of simulating every aspect of war would become war.’

Martin Van Creed, Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes, 2013.

 

The launch of the MoD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory first Defence Wargaming Centre in December 2019 is an opportunity for future wargaming design. While current games do enable some knowledge transfer, the tried-and-tested techniques employed by the serious games community would enhance these exercises with more effective strategising and training mechanisms.  This article highlights how the characteristics of cyberspace require a distinct approach to wargames, and provides recommendations for improved development and practice of cyber wargames by drawing on established games design principles.

The use of games in educational settings has been recognised since the 4th century BC. Wargames, however, are a more recent invention. Wargaming first emerged in modern times via the Prussian Army. Kriegsspiel, as it was called, was used to teach tactics to officers as part of the Prussian Military Reforms in the wake of their devastating defeats at the hands of Napoleon. Ever since, military wargames have become a feature of training military personnel. The UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Red Teaming Guide defines a wargame as ‘a scenario-based warfare model in which the outcome and sequence of events affect, and are affected by, the decisions made by the players’. These games, as noted by the MoD’s Wargaming Handbook, can be used to simulate conflicts in a low-risk table-top style setting across all levels of war and ‘across all domains and environments’. Wargames have repeatedly proved themselves a reliable method in communicating and practising military strategy that can be applied to explore all varieties of warfare.

As cyber becomes an increasingly important warfighting domain, both by itself and in collaboration with other domains, cyber wargames have begun to be played with the same frequency and importance as the traditional domains. Since 2016, the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) has annually coordinated Crossed Swords, focusing on technical training, while NATO’s annual Cyber Coalition focuses on goals including information-sharing and collaboration and the Atlantic Council’s Cyber 9/12 focuses on strategic policy-making. Military examples include the U.S. Naval War College’s Defending Forward wargames, where, in its simplest form, cyber defenders (‘blue teams’) defend against cyber adversaries (‘red teams’). While these games are a great step forward in understanding, analysing, and preparing for the problems of cyberwarfare, these exercises tend to draw on existing conceptions of traditional serious games. This represents a missed opportunity; the cyber domain differs from traditional conflict in ways that warrant a fresh look at the design of wargames.

By design, wargames create an abstracted model of reality containing primary assumptions and simplifications that allow the model to be actionable. Underlying assumptions include: that the enemy is known, rational and ruthless; that the conflict being modelled is zero-sum in nature; that the games are effective tools even without specifically conceptualising how knowledge transfer takes place; and that the scope of the game should mirror reality as closely as possible. While these assumptions are appropriate for—or at least not detrimental to—traditional models of kinetic warfare, they are problematic for cyber wargame design. The challenges with each underlying assumption are described in turn.

The Known, Ruthless, and Rational Enemy

As Larry Greenemeier noted a decade ago, in cyberspace, the fog of war is exacerbated. While traditional warfare often limits available knowledge on an adversary’s location, in the cyber domain the reality is that defenders may not know who the enemy is nor their goals. When the enemy is an unknown, they can appear to act in an irrational way, at least from the perspective of the defender. This is due to the inherent asymmetry of the attacker. Through reconnaissance, the attacker will more than likely hold more information about intended targets than the defenders. Each of these issues, individually and collectively, are typically under-emphasised in most rigid wargames.

A Zero-Sum Nature of Conflict

Rigid wargames use a unity of opposites in their design, the goals of one side are diametrically opposed to the other. This creates a zero-sum game in which the goal of both the red and blue teams is the destruction of the other side. However, cyber conflict holds features of non zero-sum games, such as how the victory of one side does not always come with an associated loss to the other. Additionaly, there is an asymmetry introduced that should be addressed in the game design stage.

Knowledge Transfer: What is Actually Being Taught?

Another assumption made in the deployment of wargames is that they teach. However what is being taught is not as closely examined. In general, serious games can be categorised into two broad types: low road (or reflexive transfer) games; and high road (or mindful transfer) games. Low road transfer games are concerned with direct training of a stimulus and a response in a controlled environment that is as similar as possible to the context that the player is presented with in real life. For example, a flight simulator. The second type high road games are designed to encourage players to mindfully make connections between the context of play and the real world. Reflexive games are more likely to emphasise speed whereas mindful transfers are more likely to emphasise communication between players. Games must be designed using the knowledge transfer type most appropriate to the intended learning outcomes of the game.

Overenthusiastic Scoping

Cyber operations do not exist in isolation from traditional models of warfare. The integration of cyber operations with kinetic warfare, however, dramatically increases the complexity. Even attempting to capture the whole cyber landscape in a single game runs the real risk of detail overload, decision paralysis, and distracting the player from the game’s intended learning objectives. The longer it takes to learn to play, the less time the player has available to learn from the play. In reality, one cannot accurately simulate the real-world threat landscape without sacrificing effective learning (unless the learning point is simply to illustrate how complex the cyber threat landscape might be). For example, if the cyber wargame is focusing on the protection of critical national infrastructure, then side-tasks focusing on several other industries are likely to confuse, rather than assist, participants in achieving the desired learning goals.

Recommendations

How should we best approach the challenge of effective cyber wargame design?

We propose that designed cyber wargames must be in line with the following four principles:

  • Include ‘partial knowledge’ states.If the cyber wargame player has full knowledge of the game state, the game becomes nothing more than an algorithmic recall activity where a player can predict which actions are likely to result in successful outcomes. Certain ludic uncertainties can be included to induce ‘partial knowledge’, simulating the fog of war as required for each game.
  • Include ‘asymmetric positions’ for the players.The character of cyberwar is better modelled through asymmetric relationships between players. Cyber wargame designers need to consider the benefits to having this asymmetry inside the game.
  • Confirm learning objectives and knowledge transfer type before commencing design.Both low road and high road transfer games are valuable, but they serve different functions in the learning environment. A conscious choice for whether the game is attempting to promote low road or high road transfer should be confirmed before game design commences to ensure the appropriateness of the game.
  • Clearly scoped game to explore specific challenges.A well-scoped smaller game increases players’ willingness to replay games multiple times, allowing players to experiment with different strategies.

Conclusion

As both cybersecurity and wargames increase in importance and visibility, so does research on the use of cyber wargaming as a pedagogical tool for practitioners, policymakers, and the military. Existing principles within the games design profession around clear scoping of goals, game narratives, and appropriate player capabilities may all be applied to enhance existing cyber wargame design. The inclusion of partial knowledge states and asymmetric player capabilities both reflect crucial aspects of the cyber domain, while explicit attention to a game’s desired learning objectives and scope ensures that the resulting designs are as effective as possible. In a world in which cyberspace is only expected to become a more common feature of modern conflict, it is strongly advised that the MoD’s Defence Wargaming Centre leverages these tools and training opportunities. In the asymmetric and unpredictable field of cyber warfare, we need all the advantages we can get.

 

Amy Ertan is a cybersecurity researcher and information security doctoral candidate at Royal Holloway, University of London, and predoctoral cybersecurity fellow at the Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School. She is an exercise designer for cyber incident management scenarios for The CyberFish Company. As a Visiting Researcher at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Center of Excellence, Amy has contributed to strategic scenario design for the cyber defence exercise, Locked Shields 2021. You can follow her on twitter: @AmyErtan, or via her personal webpage: https://www.amyertan.com

Peadar Callaghan is a wargames designer and lectures in learning game design and gamification at the University of Tallinn, Estonia. His company, Integrated Game Solutions, provides consultancy and design services for serious games and simulations, with a focus on providing engaging training outcomes. You can find him at http://peadarcallaghan.com/

NATO’s 21st Century Agenda: In Conversation with Paul King

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by Hélène Kirkkesseli

On 11 March 2020, Strife had the pleasure of welcoming Paul King, Programme Officer/Editor at NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division, to discuss the Alliance’s history, as well as its current agenda. The event, which was well attended by MA and PhD students, was chaired by Strife Senior Editor Stanislava Mladenova, currently a PhD Candidate at the Department of War Studies and former member of the NATO international staff.

Just months after NATO’s seventieth anniversary, this event served as an opportunity to discuss the evolving security threats the Alliance must face. It looked at how, seventy years after its founding, NATO has learned to adapt to emerging challenges, beyond the physical and visible threats outlined in its Article 5, by tackling hybrid warfare and countering international terrorism through shared intelligence. The need to adapt to this new reality was clearly demonstrated by the 2007 cyberattack against Estonia, or the international terrorist attacks in the Alliance’s own capitals. These threats have to lead to NATO improving its awareness, preparedness, and response capabilities through, for example, the standing up in 2017 of the Joint Intelligence and Security Division in its Headquarters.

In terms of the Alliance’s enlargement, King highlighted the Alliance welcoming its thirtieth, and newest member – Northern Macedonia. NATO’s ‘open door policy’ under the Washington Treaty welcomes any country willing and able to meet accession requirements. NATO’s many partners have played an integral part in NATO’s political agenda, and its military missions. But this continued strength, and physical expansion, especially in the last three decades, have sometimes been perceived as threats, especially by Russia, with which the Alliance had cultivated a crucial relationship. This abruptly ended with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 – an act, which violated international law, as it changed borders by force.

Among the several questions from the audience and particularly one about China’s defence expansion, King reiterated what NATO Secretary-General expressed in December of 2019, that ‘There’s no way that NATO will move into the South China Sea, but we have to address the fact that China is coming closer to us, investing heavily in infrastructure.” King emphasised that NATO is a collective defensive alliance, and it has no interest in a conflict with China, which is undoubtedly a significant player in the world

This event reaffirmed that despite some criticism of the Alliance, and questioning its strength in the current global security climate, NATO’s agenda for the 21st Century is busier than ever. It is continuing to strengthen its ability to deal with old threats, most recently exhibited by more countries reaching 2% GDP of defence spending, but also evolving to meet the challenges of cyber, terrorism, and the shifting geopolitical military strength of China.

Hélène is currently pursuing an MA in International Peace and Security within the War Studies department of King’s College London. Prior to this, she graduated from the double Law degree program between the universities of Paris-Nanterre in France and Essex in the UK, specializing in international public law and EU law. Having previously interned at the DG for External policies of the European Parliament and the US Embassy to France, she is now focusing her studies particularly on the South Caucasus region. You can follow her on Twitter: @hkirkkesseli

EU Foreign Policy: More Grand Delusion than Grand Strategy

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by Eliz Peck

24 May 2019

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron after the signing of a new Germany-France friendship treaty at the historic Town Hall in Aachen, Germany on Tuesday, 22 January 2019. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner).

Henry Kissinger once said that “no foreign policy – no matter how ingenious – has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none”. With the EU divided not just between – but within – its member states, a united EU foreign and security policy seems less likely than ever to succeed, regardless of the strength of its leaders.

The job title ‘High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy’ sounds important. And yet, relatively few everyday people living in the EU have probably heard of Federica Mogherini, or her job. In June 2016, Mogherini’s office published a European Union Global Strategy. It projected its vision of the EU’s grand strategy. In its introduction she urgently called for a united EU foreign and security policy in the face of “increasingly fractured identities.” Her calls came following the crises in Libya, Syria and Ukraine, where the EU proved itself an inadequate foreign policy actor, incapable of coordinating amongst its member states an effective and timely response to international crises.

It is misguided to simply attribute these foreign policy failures to weak political leadership. At state-level, leaders of the larger European countries have been as pro-active as domestic contexts have allowed in seeking to combat international crises. Chancellor Merkel sacrificed her political longevity when she threw open Germany’s doors in 2015 in response to the migrant crisis, asserting Wir Schaffen Das (‘We Can Do This’). The growth of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party can be traced back to Merkel’s ambitious open-door refugee-policy. This domestic backlash pushed her to back-peddle on a liberal policy, instead striking a deal with Turkey in March 2016 that would curb the number of refugees arriving in Europe.

Although countries can cooperate in certain foreign policies, grand strategy is typically the preserve of an individual state. Hal Brands, Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, sees grand strategy as “a purposeful and coherent set of ideas about what a nation seeks to accomplish in the world”. At their very core, grand strategy and foreign policy are a projection of the values and identity of the state. We see this clearly in President Truman’s policy of ‘containment’ between 1945 and 1953, which Brands describes as ‘the golden age of grand strategy’. First articulated in George Kennan’s so-called Long Telegram, the strategy of containment sought to mobilise the military, economic and diplomatic resources of the American state during the Cold War in order to mitigate the rise of their ideological and strategic rival, the USSR. Viewed from this perspective, the Marshall Plan not only aimed for a peaceful post-war economic reconstruction of Europe but sought to promote capitalist notions of liberty and prosperity that lie at the very heart of the American Dream.

Launching a coordinated European grand strategy for multiple states and multiple identities was always going to be tough. What is more, the EU is vast. Individual strategic priorities differ because of the way that they are shaped by historical context and the geo-political landscape. Russian aggrandisement is a pressing concern for Eastern European countries like Poland, but not for Southern European countries like Italy who are struggling with the flow of migrants crossing the Mediterranean.

No issue more clearly illustrates the failure to coordinate a single EU grand strategy than the rise of China. Despite the recently published EU-China document deeming China a ‘systemic rival’ and calling for ‘full unity’ in EU responses, the member states have nevertheless prioritised national interests over falling in line with Brussels. This is seen in the growing bilateral links between China and the Central and Eastern European states – the so-called 16+1 group, eleven of whom are in the EU – who are hungry for Belt and Road investments. In March 2019, President Macron tried to show a united front when he invited Chancellor Merkel and European Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker to his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He triumphantly claimed “The face of a Europe that speaks with one voice on the international scene is emerging.” Only days later, this claim was undermined when Italy became the first G7 partner to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with China, endorsing the Belt and Road.

The new critical focus on EU foreign and security policy comes in the wake of the radically changed geopolitical landscape. Before 2016, there was little desire for a coordinated EU foreign policy as outlined in the EU Global Strategy. After plans for a European Army were abandoned in 1954, the European integration project was first economic and later political. Secure in their defensive NATO alliance, and on American support for individual foreign policy, the larger EU countries felt an officially coordinated foreign policy with their non-NATO neighbours was not a priority.

Yet Trump’s erratic ‘America First’ policies have thrown doubt on the previously steadfast NATO pact. In a somewhat frantic response, EU countries have had to look to each other for support. The 2017 formation of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) – an EU defence union – and Macron’s proposal of a European Intervention Initiative (E2I) at Sorbonne can be viewed in this light.

But this comes too little, too late. The time for establishing the groundwork for a common foreign and security policy was when times were good, not now. Euroscepticism dominates today’s political landscape. The rise of the far-right in Hungary and Poland, the populism of Brexit and Italy’s Five Star Movement and the domestic turmoil facing Macron and Merkel are calling into question certain values – multilateral cooperation and human rights, to name a few – that are the founding assumptions of EU cooperation. What we see now is a crisis of identity that goes to the very heart of the European project.

Collaboration between these countries is not impossible. The success of Europol and the European Counter Terrorism Centre show that states unite against a common-enemy. EU foreign policy has been even more effective in coordinating maritime missions aimed to disrupt acts of Somali-piracy based off the Horn of Africa, which threaten trade routes off the Gulf of Aden. But arguably, this success traces to the clear economic incentive for participation; most other foreign policy issues do not have such direct economic benefits. Without a wholehearted commitment to the European project, states will run into difficulty.

The last time the European territories’ foreign and security policies were coordinated under one single grand strategy was under Charlemagne, the ‘Father of Europe’ who died in the year 814 and was buried in Aachen. President Macron and Chancellor Merkel symbolically met there at the start of this year, in a show of solidarity and mutual commitment more than half a century after the Élysée Treaty was signed. Designed as a show of strength and renewed commitment, the limited progress made at the meeting only reinforced just how difficult foreign and security coordination is in the context of the current European disharmony.

Eliz Peck is an MA candidate in Conflict, Security and Development at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. You can follow her on Twitter @PeckEliz

Image source: https://www.apnews.com/02d7f1384f454f09b31a7c852d275e4e

Europe’s Greatest Gamblers: Anticipating Wars of the Future and Why European Leaders Are Choosing to Ignore Such Possibilities

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Anticipating war is out of fashion, yet the potential destruction and impact on global society of a major war are huge.

 

By James M R Thorp

 

Soldiers from Poland’s 6th Airborne Brigade and the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, during The Poland-led multinational exercise Anakonda-16 (Credit image: KACPER PEMPEL/REUTERS)

Back in February, Elisabeth Braw wrote an article for POLITICO titled, ‘Europe isn’t ready to face modern threats’. Braw’s case is that NATO is ‘preparing for the wrong war’ and needs to ‘become more creative in defending against hybrid attacks’. ‘[H]ybrid’, a term coined by Frank Hoffman, is defined as incorporating ‘a full range of different modes of warfare, including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts… and criminal disorder’ acting at ‘all levels of war.’[1] Braw’s point that Russia and China have the will and ability ‘to bring a country to a standstill long before a conventional war takes place’ is one that is only just being heeded; for a start, the rate of cyber-attacks has increased dramatically in the last couple of years.[2] But Braw’s article misses the greater issue at hand: Western policies, economics, and its way of life all rely on the notion that war between the leading states of the world is no longer a real possibility. So, not only is the West unprepared for modern ‘hybrid’ threats, as Braw states, but it is almost entirely unprepared for any type of modern major conflict, even a conventional one.

But how likely is such a war and why has that possibility been ignored? Firstly, the world today is increasingly unstable: it faces a resurgent Russia, an unpredictable North Korea, and a ‘Thucydides Trap’ in the form of an increasingly dominant China, which is expanding its power and influence through measures such as building artificial islands in the South China Sea. Secondly, it may be that the US is globally dominant, and any major war would inevitably involve it, but it is rare to find someone who would solidly wager that such a major war (involving the US) would break out in the next five, or even ten, years. Yet, by looking at the case of the UK in the 1860-1910s – like the US now – the UK was globally dominant yet its share of global GDP was declining compared to its rivals, leading to a competition that culminated in the First World War – it is only rational to assume a similar situation could arise by the late 2020s.[3] Despite this, we continue to live in an age where the idea of ‘permanent peace’ is prevalent.

The moral, ethical, economic, and systematic structures that were formed after 1945, a world system dominated by the US and the West, has led to a decrease in conventional war and direct military confrontation; which in turn has led to a widespread global illusion – in the West especially – that the peace is prevalent and violence has been mostly eliminated. In reality, violence has been suppressed; human psychology has not changed enough since we formed as a species for us to have suddenly become incapable of violence. We have and always will be biologically and psychologically capable of both violence and peace, regardless of our moral and ethical systems.[4]

Europe unequivocally relies on the stability of this post-1945 order to remain safe and prosperous. Yet, with President Trump’s unpredictability, largely unknown agenda and open condemnation of NATO, Europe can no longer rely on the US to lead and remain a bastion of deterrence. The US itself stands highly divided, to the extent that the small, but genuine, chance of a second American civil war has become a talking-point amongst some security experts.[5] Similarly, Europe and the EU also stand divided, with waves of nationalism sweeping through, particularly in Austria, France, Italy, Spain and the UK. If one is to consider global issues that will greatly impact Europe, climate change is an existential threat that has the potential to violently destroy not just the post-1945 order, but our global society as we know it.[6] But, after the US pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord in 2017, neither can Europe rely on the US to lead us through that, nor is there much evidence to show that anyone in Europe is realistically stepping up to the challenge.

Then, in spite of these weaknesses among its members, NATO on the one hand is a powerful alliance with over three million troops and around ten thousand tanks, making it a force that is certainly to be reckoned with. But on the other hand, this force is significantly weakened by certain factors. As a fighting force weapons systems are disparate, for example 20 different types of fighter aircraft are used; in-theatre hierarchies and command systems are unclear [7]; and most importantly, there exists an adversary with capability to exploit NATO’s ‘Article 5’, by obfuscating whether a member state has been attacked by another state[8]. Then, despite NATO’s European Reassurance/Deterrence Initiative and the very recently announced ‘Four Thirties’ Plan, defence spending across member states has dramatically reduced over the past decade or two and it remains to be seen whether defence spending promises will be kept.

Perhaps most important of all is one of the key lessons taught to us by the father of modern military strategy, Carl von Clausewitz: that chance is an intrinsic feature of war[9], and because war is, in his words, a ‘continuation of policy with other means’, so too then is politics affected by chance[10]. If chance cannot be eliminated, it follows that the possibility of any type of war can never be eliminated from political interaction. On top of that, wars of a more ‘hybrid’ or ‘grey zone’ nature have become, and will continue to be, an even greater possibility.[11]

Some European leaders may have taken certain measures to prepare for a major modern war, including promises to achieve or come close to the two percent of GDP expenditure benchmark on defence. But are such promises little more than lip-service to NATO and the USA, with only four nations in Europe achieving the benchmark last year?[12]  If one considers that the world’s population has grown faster than exponentially[13], leading to massive urbanisation – two-thirds of the world’s population in cities by 2040 –, it becomes entirely probable that a modern major war would be indiscriminate and catastrophic.[14] Then consider what this article has highlighted regarding the likelihood of such a war. Taking this combined consideration, it then follows that despite NATO’s usually significant efforts, defence measures by European leaders are not nearly enough, that most politicians are repeatedly betting on war not occurring and the European public are kept blissfully unaware of a perilous future. Meanwhile, the stakes remain high, and the gamble is at the greatest level.

 

James is a recent MA Intelligence & International Security candidate at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. He graduated in January 2018 and is currently based in both Suffolk and London. You can find him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-thorp-280595/

 

Notes: 

[1] Frank Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars, (Arlington, Virginia: Potomac Institute of Policy Studies, December 2007), p. 8.

[2] Cyber-attacks increased by double in 2017, with Russia the main source of activity, see ‘Cyber-attack Volume Doubled in First Half of 2017’, Infosecurity, 11 August 2017.

[3] Look at the graph on page 335 and then go to pages 338-340, see Ian Morris, What Is War Good For: The Role of Conflict in Civilisation, from Primates to Robots, (London: Profile Books, 2015), p. 335 & pp. 338-340.

[4] Steven Pinker, in his seminal work, ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined’, highlights this inner battle within humans, who ‘are equipped with five distinct motives of violence, and four faculties that allow them to inhibit or avoid violence’, see Steven Pinker, ‘Frequently Asked Questions about The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined’

[5] See Chris Arkenberg, ‘What a new U.S. civil war might look like’, Foreign Policy, 10 October 2017 & Lt. Col. Robert F. McTague, ‘Some thoughts on how we might get from where we’re at now to a Second Civil War’, Foreign Policy, 10 October 2017.

[6] For the NATO special report on this, see ‘Special Report: The Importance of Climate Change for Transatlantic Security’, NAOC, 29 November 2017, also see Steven Jermy, ‘Perfect Storm?’, Russian International Affairs Council, 12 August 2013.

[7] This was displayed very clearly within ISAF in Afghanistan: ISAF was a coalition made up from NATO members and due to inequal commitments, cultural differences and (often) incompatible caveats a potentially unified command structure was fractured – information taken from lecture by Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jonathan Riley, King’s College London, 17th November 2016. See also Kathleen J. McInnis, ‘Lessons in coalition warfare: Past, present and implications for the future.’ International Politics Reviews, 1.2 (2013), pp. 78-82.

[8] Russia’s ‘little green men’ in Ukraine being a case in point, see Robert R. Leonhard and Stephen P. Philips, “Little Green Men”: A Primer on Modern Russian Unconventional Warfare, Ukraine 2013-2014 (Fort Bragg, NC: US Army Special Operations Command, 2015), p. 3 & 43.

[9] Carl von Clausewitz, ‘On War’, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 7. University Press

[10] ibid, p. 30.

[11] For “grey zone” see United States Special Operations Command White Paper: The Gray Zone, September 2015, p. 1.

[12] Only France, Greece, Poland and Romania spent over 2% of GDP on defence in 2017, see ‘SIPRI Military Expenditure Database’.

[13] Simon Lewis & Mark Maslin, The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene, (London: Penguin, 2018), pp. 6-7.

[14] ‘The Future of War: the new Battlegrounds’, The Economist, 25 January 2018.

Image Source: https://www.newsweek.com/europeans-are-quietly-preparing-war-russia-487307