GLOBAL CHALLENGES AND GEOPOLITICS

 In his 2017 award-winning book The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost, military historian Cathal J Nolan writes, “The allure of battle would matter little had not the long wars it led to altered the course of world history in conflicts of prolonged destruction and suffering, in wars… that lasted many years or even many decades.”

Humans seek clarity. The desire for a decisive battle to end violence and achieve security — what the Germans called Entscheidungsschlacht — is therefore understandable. When dealing with complexity, we try to parse and find that one factor that can solve the puzzle for us.

On September 14, 2001, then-US President George W Bush signed off on America’s National Security Strategy, detailing the conduct of what was then called the ‘Global War on Terror’. While the strategy conceded that “the struggle against global terrorism is different from any other war in our history”, it nonetheless expressed the confidence that “progress will come through the persistent accumulation of successes.”

Since then, much has changed but has also remained unchanged. The ability of terrorist groups to target the US has diminished, but the periphery remains unstable. These groups have continued to spawn regional franchises that continue to keep states in West and Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Sahel destabilised.

The situation is exacerbated by civil wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Sudan etc. Other states, such as Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, remain weak for a number of reasons, providing ideal ecosystems for the resurgence of terrorist groups.

Four Strategic Challenges

The post-Cold War era and the American unipolar moment are over. A global competition is underway between the United States and China and, to a lesser extent, between Russia and the US. The Russo-Ukraine War will continue to keep Ukraine and, with it, Europe destabilised. The ongoing genocide in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is fast driving a wedge between America and what has come to be loosely described as the Global South.

Democracies, even in the developed world, are witnessing the rise of majoritarianism, along religious and ethno-racial faultlines. These developments, especially in regions with historical conflicts, are likely to spill over.

Emerging technologies, especially artificial intelligence and its military applications, present another challenge. So far, there are no international legal mechanisms to govern and regulate research and development in these technologies. Combined with the unintended consequences of what these technologies might entail, the world faces a number of security, legal and moral-ethical challenges and dilemmas.

Multiple reports by top scientists across the world have made it clear that states and societies face an impending climate disaster. This necessitates global cooperation which, given various factors, is hard to come by. Climate change would lead to water shortages, food insecurity, rise of communicable diseases and energy shortages. Conflicts will further increase the severity of the situation and result in disruptions of global supply chains and increases in international commodity prices.

This will result in a dispiriting cycle of geopolitics impacting these shared challenges and these challenges, in turn, impacting geopolitics negatively. These shared challenges are not marginal issues secondary to geopolitics. They are at the very core of national and international security and must be addressed with great urgency.

Unfortunately, we will have to tackle these challenges within a competitive international environment, where heightened geopolitical competition, nationalism and populism render this cooperation even more difficult and will require us to think and act in new ways.