Recent conflicts, multipolarity and international relations
The writer is a retired major general and has an interest in International Relations and Political Sociology. He can be reached at tayyarinam@hotmail.com and tweets @20_Inam
Yes, our world is changing and changing faster than we can fathom. Conflicts, the integral part of human existence — once combined with other forces like climate change, population explosion, migration towards the affluent north, social media and information technology, and now the unsettling prospects, potential and threat of Artificial Intelligence (AI) — are far more profound than we can humanly appreciate. When Fracis Fukuyama wrote his epic essay, The End of History (1989), pronouncing the ultimate triumph of western ethos enshrined in democracy and capitalism, as I was studying political sociology in an American University, he wasn’t able to appreciate that Sameul P Huntigton would be announcing the Clash of Civilizations in 1993. Both essays were later published in book form.
A look at the recent conflicts first…the historic catalyst of change in human order, induced and implied. The war in Ukraine may not have ushered in another revolution in military affairs (RMA), as the war is bogged down in the trench warfare of World War-I; that the tank is still not obsolete, and that artillery and not infantry is responsible for most casualties on either side, through firing of countless dumb and mostly unguided shells; that the war has not crossed the lethality threshold; and that maneuver, however curtailed, is still the decisive operational factor. The ensuing relative stalemate on the ground has diminished the effects of newer entrants and re-entry of some older factors in warfare like drones, IT, irregular forces (volunteers and Wagner Group), etc. However, on the geo-strategic and geo-economics plains, this war has profoundly changed things.
In geo-strategy, a Europe till recently ambivalent and reliant for its defence on the US umbrella has been jolted at the moorings. At political level, EU has usurped the erstwhile Soviet backyard by bringing Baltic states and former Soviet-bloc nations in its fold. Militarily, the war has rejuvenated NATO like never before. And domestically, most European nations are again heavily investing in militaries and military hardware, mostly cutting developmental expenses. And the war has cemented the Trans-Atlantic Alliance with the US regaining its once dwindling position as the undisputed leader of the ‘free’ world.
Sociologically, Ukrainian War’s standards of human rights, human fraternity and anguish are not applicable everywhere like in Gaza, indicating a palpable drawing of lines between ‘us and them’. Race and ethnicity are rising from the ashes of a bygone liberal order, and ‘equal opportunity’ for integrated migrant humanity in western hemisphere is increasingly becoming a pipedream. There is rising right-wing noise for zero immigration and possible expulsions. There is discernable intolerance in today’s Europe for immigrants, especially those with Muslim backgrounds. And that pervasive sentiment is eroding democracy and mainstreaming the fringe. We see the signs in Baltics, Scandinavia and in Western Europe. New entrants have run out their erstwhile welcome in these times of post-pandemic global economic and political stress.
There is a resurgence of debate about the European security. Emerging from fragmentation and warfare during the days of empires, Europe transcended into internecine fighting during World Wars, where it outsourced its security to the US. The argument advanced by Timothy Garton Ash in his essay… Postimperial Empire in May/June 2023 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine discusses the EU-NATO combine with its vast economic and military power, behaving like another empire, however loathsome the concept may be for the Europeans. Europe perhaps cannot remain safe, integrated and prosperous outside the paradigm of collective security under any formulation of an empire. And in modern times, that is under the US cover; or without it, as and when Europe takes the burden of its security like in the emerging EU-NATO construct.
However, the war in Ukraine has brought to fore the endemic riddle, that is Russia. Russian fitment into the European mosaic has and will always remain problematic. Failing to find a mooring in the Western-defined order after the collapse of Warsaw Pact, Russia re-gravitated towards China and that remains the pattern for the foreseeable future. Sino-Russian compact would be the ‘other’ pole of multipolarity in the global order.
The other war, in Palestine, affects the global south and the Islamic Middle East. The brutal, disproportionate and callous response to the Hamas-engendered violence on 7th October by the IDF and its US backers is going to leave deep scars on the global geo-political landscape. It strains the US economically and militarily by providing huge and simultaneous aid to two war zones with no end in sight. It paints the US and other pro-Israel Western leaders in extremely negative light in their own countries and in the Global Street. Merciless bombing, killing of women, children and civilians in disproportionate use of force by the IDF has jolted the human conscience like never before. Pro-war and no ceasefire arguments championed by none other than President Joe Biden recently are seen extremely hypocritical, heartless and unconscientious.
The dead children of Gaza also announce the death of the Jewish power and influence worldwide. With the Holocaust as a shameful chapter in human history, its repeat by its survivors in a different time and place, mostly targeting women and children, will affect the outsized influence of the World Jewry, despite the so many good things that it does. The conflict has brought the Jewish power in business, media and politics in the sharpest focus, much to the dislike of respected Jewry. A wise, pro-Israel New York Times journalist, Thomas Friedman, a Jewish himself, recently wrote… “We will have to either become captives of Netanyahu’s strategy — which could take us all down with him — or articulate an American vision for how the Gaza war must end.” Because in his reckoning ‘Seven million Jews trying to govern five million Palestinians in perpetuity’ is just not possible.
With a demography that is decidedly against Israel, an IDF that is committed in a hopeless mission against a people, and a political goal of exterminating Hamas that is unattainable, this war will redefine the Middle East and relations with and among the wider ‘Abrahamic Fraternity’. The road to compromise on two-state solution ONLY would lead to peace, as all other options are bad for Israel, its Jewish lobby in the US, the US itself and the Middle East.
In addition to commencement of erosion of the Jewish power and the rise in anti-Semitism, the war in Gaza has further alienated the Muslim Street from their spineless leaders. This might be the harbinger of another ‘Muslim Spring’ needing a spark in the tinderbox of already simmering social discontent and economic anger. Outcomes in Gaza reshape power formulation in the Middle East and Africa and affect Sino-US and US-Russia entente. For the US, getting embroiled distracts its focus from other priorities…like a rising China and the war in Europe against Russia.
For Europe to stay united firmly in the US ambit, war with Russia or bogey wars in the Middle East against militant Islam and its heterogeneous variants (like Hamas) seems the essence of strategy.
More next week.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 30th, 2023.
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