Nos gustó, por lo breve y lúcida, una nota de Artyom Lukin publicada hoy en Russia Today. Lukin es profesor de Relaciones Internacionales en la Universidad Federal del Este, en Vladivostok, Rusia. Acá va:
Título: Split societies, global chaos and World War Three: We could be in for the most tumultuous era in modern history
Texto: As we cross into the second half of 2020, there is little hope left that our misfortunes will end when this annus horribilis goes out. We may be entering one of the most cataclysmic and fateful periods in the history of humankind.
There is the growing realization that humanity is in for an extremely rough ride that could last at least a decade.
This sense of uncertainty has been building up for years. It probably began with the global financial crisis of 2008-09. Yet, until 2020, there was hope that the world would somehow return to the right track and regain stability. Covid-19 ended this hope, devastating the global economy and exacerbating the pre-existing tensions between the incumbent hegemon (the United States) and a new super-power contender (China).
The state of angst has descended upon many. In most countries, including Russia, the plague continues to circulate, killing people with terrifying randomness. Even if we win the battle against the latest coronavirus, the mega-trends in global politics that point to more trouble and disorder are not going to dissipate and will likely only intensify. When trying to rationally break down my personal angst, as a political scientist, I perceive at least four such mega-trends.
Split societies
I remember a chat with a Russian colleague in Vladivostok a few years ago. She lamented that she felt as if she was living in a country which contains several parallel societies rather than a single one, with members of those ‘societies’ speaking completely different languages and espousing divergent values. Of course, there have always been divisions within nations. But, as a rule, one set of values and beliefs was dominant, with dissenting groups more or less marginalized. Today the societal consensus increasingly seems an exception rather than the rule. Across much of the world one can see quasi civil wars raging, with societies often split into halves. The main divide runs between the camp of social conservatism and nativism and the supporters of progressive-liberal values. The latest manifestation of this antagonism came in Poland, where the incumbent right-wing conservative won elections over his liberal opponent with a wafer-thin margin.
The revolt of the masses
On May 25, 2020, a black American George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis by a white police officer. His death triggered mass protests that quickly spread across the United States. On July 9, in the Russian Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk, the regional governor, Sergey Furgal, was arrested on charges of having organized the assassination of business rivals back in 2004 and 2005. Furgal was immediately flown to Moscow and placed in a jail there. His arrest sparked unprecedented massive rallies in Khabarovsk, a sleepy provincial place on the border with China, that have now continued for two weeks. The tens of thousands of people who’ve joined the rallies in support of Furgal believe the actual reason behind his arrest was his landslide win over the Kremlin-backed incumbent in gubernatorial elections in 2018, and his subsequent refusals to bow to diktats from Moscow.
Granted, the protests in Khabarovsk over the fate of a popular local leader are nowhere near the scale of the American race protests. And, unlike in the United States, the marches and rallies in the Russian Far East are, so far, entirely peaceful. They do have one common thread: people in America, Russia, and other countries who defy the covid risks and take to the streets are demanding dignity. Most of them are protesting against what they see as structural injustice and the arrogance of power. Their protest is ultimately about the alienation between the ruling class and the ordinary people, the institutions of power and the governed. This protest is part of the global wave of popular uprisings that has been swelling over the past decade, starting with the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements. Trump’s victory in 2016, as well as Brexit, can also be seen as part of the global revolt against incumbent elites.
The end of hegemony and a rudderless world
Simultaneously with upheavals in the domestic politics of many countries, the international system, too, is undergoing tectonic shifts. Pax Americana, a.k.a. the ‘international liberal order,’ is unraveling. Just a few years ago, it appeared the decline of US global hegemony could still be reversible. Today not many people outside the Beltway believe it can be salvaged. Even if Joe Biden replaces the wrecking ball Trump in the White House, the days of American pre-eminence seem numbered. There is a classic “revolutionary situation” in the present-day international system. To paraphrase Vladimir Lenin, Washington is “unable to rule and govern in the old way” while much of the rest of the world does “not want to live in the old way.”
The Pax Americana might have been flawed and unfair to many, but there is no denying it did provide a significant degree of international stability. With the end of US hegemony, who will maintain international law and order? There is no answer thus far. Existing collective institutions, such as G20 or the UN P5, are not even remotely capable of performing effective global governance. And, despite Washington’s suspicions, there is no credible evidence as yet that the emerging superpower China is keen to police the world. One thing is clear, though. The vacuum of governance will lead to more chaos in global politics.
Premonitions of war
In 2014, I wrote an essay about the possibility of World War III around 2030, arising out of a clash between the U.S. and China. Six years later I would make two corrections to that article. First, a Sino-American war now looks not just possible, but almost inevitable. Second, the situation preceding the US-China clash will not resemble the world of the early twentieth century, pre-WWI, with its rapidly growing prosperity due to what is now considered the first era of globalization. Rather, the atmosphere of the 2020s will be more akin to that of the 1930s, with the global economy in the doldrums and the rise of authoritarian and neo-totalitarian regimes. The most important question, though, is whether the US-China war will be a relatively limited one. If not, could it lead to a global conflagration, drawing in other players such as Russia, India, Japan and Europe?
The history of mankind has never lacked in conflicts over values and power, both within societies and among them. Yet the present moment is rather unique because of the convergence at one point in time of several profound and explosive societal contradictions, with the threat of pandemics and climate change as the background. China is perhaps the only major island of relative stability in the global tempest, which, incidentally, amplifies the fears that Beijing would try to reach for the scepter of global power.
In due time, the current contradictions and conflicts will run their course and be resolved. A new equilibrium will set in. Until it does, however, we will be living in very interesting times. Perhaps, not angst but, rather, excitement should be the main mood of our era.
Te paso esta entrevista que apareció en Technology Review, de un profesor universitario ex-paracaidista militar US, ex-mercenario, lejos de poder catalogarlo como anti-sistema. Lo interesante es su cruda descripción de las nuevas artes de la guerra.
ResponderEliminarhttps://www.technologyreview.com/2019/10/24/132194/america-isnt-equipped-for-shadow-war-disinformation-sean-mcfate/
Why America isn’t equipped for the new rules of war
“They’re all doing it: Russia, China, Iran … They’re all fighting these things called shadow wars, and they’re very effective,” says an ex-paratrooper and academic.
by Janine di Giovanni archive page
October 24, 2019
Sean McFate is a former paratrooper in the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division; he’s also worked as a private military contractor in West Africa. Today he’s a professor at the National Defense University and Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service.
His book The New Rules of War, published earlier this year, dissects the ways warfare must change in order for America to succeed. War reporter Janine di Giovanni sat down to ask him about his vision for the future of conflict.
Q: What are you calling for? What’s your manifesto?
A: I wrote this book because I was angry. I’ve lost good friends in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a taxpayer, we’ve flushed six trillion dollars down the toilet. And as a vet, it hurts me to see our national image tarnished. Yet we have the best military in the world—even our adversaries know that. So what’s the problem?
It’s not the military—we have a great military. The problem is that our strategic IQ is low. War is won and lost at the strategic level—not the tactical level, not the operational level. So where do you send people to train to think strategically to win? We have a dearth of that. The war colleges are moribund, civilian universities usually don’t touch it.
We get lucky, not smart.
Q: What do you mean?
A: Why are we doing things like buying more Ford-class aircraft carriers, or F35s? That stuff should be slashed. I would cut away the expensive conventional weapons, and beef up the things that are very effective in modern war: political warfare, strategic influence, lawfare, economic might, and deception. Want to blunt Russian encroachment in the Baltics? Forget shows of force—military deterrence is obsolete. Instead, start a “color revolution” on their border. Moscow is paranoid and would shift resources to squashing it. Want China out of the South China Sea? Stop throwing carrier groups into the region. Instead, covertly support the Uighur insurgency. Internal regime security will steal Beijing’s attention away.
Militaries can no longer kill their way out of problems in a global information age, and this is driving war into the shadows. Today, plausible deniability is more potent than firepower: winners and losers are no longer decided on the battlefield, but by those who can discern truth from lies. The best weapons today don’t fire bullets.
(sigue)
Q: So let’s say you were appointed national security advisor tomorrow. What would be different?
ResponderEliminarA: The first thing that I would do is I would push to slash the Department of Defense budget in half. And then I would pump up things like the State Department, which has been left to die on the vine. But the State Department needs a cultural revolution of its own.
We have to think about what is war and what is warfare, and then: How do we achieve our strategic effects? Why is Iran a national security threat? We think of it as existential—and it is if you’re like Israel or Saudi Arabia, but not the United States. We’ve forgotten what an existential threat is.
I would implement strategies across the globe that utilize and harness the new rules of war for us. They’re all doing it: Russia, China, Iran… They’re all fighting these things called shadow wars, and they’re very effective. We need to get back in that. And we used to do this during the Cold War, but we’ve forgotten how.
Q: What is a shadow war? How would you describe it?
A: Shadow wars are a certain type of war where plausible deniability eclipses firepower in terms of effectiveness. Think about how Russia was in Crimea. In older war tactics, when they would put their heel on another state, they’d send in the tanks. Now, in 2019, that’s not how they do it. They have military backup, but they use covert and clandestine means. They use special forces, they use mercenaries, they use proxies, they use propaganda—things that give them plausible deniability. They manufacture the fog of war and then exploit it for victory.
Q: So we should go back, in a way, to the tactics of the Cold War?
A: I don’t want to go down the trap of a new Cold War … but we have done these things in the past.
One of the concerns that I highlight in the book but don’t pose an answer to is this: as a war expert and observer, I’m observing that war is getting more sneaky. How do we, as a democracy, follow war into the shadows without losing our democratic soul? We learned during the Church hearings of 1975 and 1976 that secrets and democracy are not compatible. Do we fight that? This should not be a one branch-only operation.
Q: Your idea that there will be more ‘shadow wars’ or proxy wars in the future: Is this being accepted, or shoved aside?
ResponderEliminarA: It’s being shoved aside. I mean, true war prophets are like Cassandra from Greek mythology: she had the gift of foresight, but the curse was that nobody could believe her. There’s examples of that throughout my book: Billy Mitchell, JC Fuller—there’s a guy called William Olson in the 1980s in the height of the Cold War. He saw past the US-Soviet rivalry and saw a post 9/11 world. And there are others!.
Q: The stories you tell of these men and women are some of the most touching parts of your book. They were visionaries, but punished for it. Some of the passages are disturbing—the case of Billy Mitchell, for example, who predicted air power and was mocked, scorned.
A: Yeah, and it was done with extreme prejudice. But meanwhile you have the think tanks, the multi-national companies in DC. They’re pushing for a vision of war that is comfortable to them and that they can frankly, in my opinion, profit from. And this is extremely dangerous. But my book is making its way through the Department of Defense, through national security establishments. I know this because I keep on getting invited by two star, three star generals, to brief their command. They do it because they agree with it, but they don’t want to be caught saying it themselves.
Q: So who gets it? Who is listening to what the new rules of war are? And who are your foes?
A: The CIA likes it, Special Operations commands like it, Special Operations units love it, vets love it, Marines and Army land forces generally love it. Who doesn’t like it? Air Force and Navy, the high tech services, Lockheed Martin, and of course think tanks. Most think tanks in DC get money from Raytheon and all these players. A lot of them love and fetishize technology. But as you know, one of the things that Africa has taught me is that ultimately wars are politics and there is no technological solution to it. There is no missile that will fix the political circumstances on the ground of Syria or Taiwan. But that’s how we think. That’s why we struggle.