Caught in the Middle

There are powers that look at American involvement in the Iran War as a significant opportunity to settle scores. Tying down an adversary in a war seems to be an achievable goal to them. I would earmark Russia as one such great power. However, unlike many others, I believe China holds no such ambitions; in fact, it is a great power that is caught in the middle. China's international position improved remarkably after the September 11 attacks, during the 20 years that the US was busy fighting the War on Terror. But this war, and its continuity, is considered to have hit the core of China's Achilles Heel: the disruption and discontinuity of its energy supplies. It is in this context that I want to write not just about China as a great power caught in the middle of this war, but also as an influential actor in Middle Eastern politics; and a medium power, Turkey.

Unlike popular belief, the threat to China's energy supply is not immediate but long-term. China retains a massive reserve oil stockpile of an estimated 1.4 billion barrels of oil. The daily consumption of oil by China is 15 to 17mb/d (millions of barrels per day) and considering that global oil consumption is nearly 100mb/d, this Chinese oil reserve, given the continued disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, can serve Chinese needs for the next 6 to 8 months. China produces 4 to 4.5mb/d, and this domestic production covers only 25% of China's total demand; the rest China imports, which is closer to 10 to 11mb/d. This makes China the largest importer of crude oil in the world. Given this reality, to state that China is sufficiently insulated from the near-term disruption of energy supplies is a fair assumption to make. If the war escalates, China can end up facing huge energy supply problems, yet the China that we know may already be prepared to make a switch to alternative sources of energy.

Indian Minister for External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, said something very reasonable and interesting about China. He said that "for two decades, China had been winning but not fighting, while the US was fighting without winning." I would like to add one more aspect to this statement, which is that China has not just been winning and not fighting, but also learning and adapting. In the context of the Iran War and energy disruption being seen as China's Achilles Heel, it is interesting to imagine how well China is prepared and ready to adapt to this hostile change. Over the years, China has developed sources of renewable energy and has built up massive overcapacity in coal power. Since 2008, renewables have generated one-third of China's power. Presently, China dominates the manufacturing of batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars. One can easily assume that China's future will be free from a dependence on fossil fuels, and that it will emerge as a leading state that will achieve absolute dependence on green energy.

US military presence in the Gulf States was a plausible reason for the oil refineries and the port facilities of these countries to be attacked. But while the US was attacking and not winning this war, China was preparing contracts for the reconstruction and rebuilding of these facilities. That, in the Indian External Minister's words, is the classic Chinese way of not fighting but learning, adapting, preparing and winning in the end.

Turkey's current strategy is guided by its posture of neutrality in this war, but can this neutrality insulate Turkey from any unfavourable outcomes? Geography necessarily makes Turkey a part of the ongoing battle space. Incirlik, the airbase in Southern Turkey, houses NATO air defence systems and is manned by some 2,000 American troops and many other troops from the allied NATO countries. Turkish neutrality cannot remove this fact, and Iranian calculations and its strategic perception about Turkey will definitely hinge on where Turkey is actually boxed in, in its NATO membership. But with NATO, Turkey has a history; it was excluded from the exclusive NATO programmes when it went ahead and purchased the S-400 air defence system from Russia. Like the neutrality posture in the current Iran War, Turkey opted for a compromise posture after the purchase of S-400 from Russia. It never backed off from the deal to make sure it did not annoy Russia, but it also never activated the S-400 air defence system to make sure it didn't invite further worsening sanctions from the US. Seven years after the purchase of this system, it is being termed as Turkey's 'stored deterrence', owned but unable to use, given the threat of sanctions. So, Turkey, caught in the middle, is treading a path in this war where it doesn't allow the US and Israel to use its airspace to strike Iran, but houses a NATO base which has already been targeted by Iranian missile strikes.

There is also the Kurdish problem that Turkey faces, and it fears that any further escalation of war may reignite a new life in the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) with which Turkey is presently negotiating peace. In the early days of war, President Trump had floated the idea of using Iranian Kurdish forces to help ignite an uprising in Iran. During the Syrian civil war, the US armed Syrian Kurdish forces linked to the PKK and sent its troops to fight alongside them against ISIS. Turkey doesn't want any of this happening again and wants to avoid a nightmarish scenario of not only millions of refugees flooding in from Iran but also the Kurdish movement getting a new lease of life.

President Tayyip Erdogan has also reached his constitutional term limit and would now need the support of the pro-Kurdish party in the parliament if he is to change the law to allow him to run again in Turkey's elections. He cannot run in the 2028 scheduled elections unless the rule changes. This political situation suggests two things. One, that the KPP extends no such political support to the Turkish president and brings an end to Erdogan's long tenure in power; or it can draw favourable concessions from President Erdogan to allow him to amend the constitution. Even after declaring neutrality in the current conflict, geopolitically, Turkey is definitely caught in uneasy circumstances in this war. Only time will tell whether it emerges more secure or more vulnerable from this growing turmoil.