CSS Launches Strategic Trends 2013

Jonas Grätz, the first chapter of Strategic Trends 2013 (ST2013) is titled The De-Westernization of Globalization. How has globalization become less ‘Westernized’?

De-Westernization seeks to capture the fact that the world economy is now integrated to an unprecedented extent, yet economic governance shows signs of disintegration. It describes three interrelated developments in the world economy that have been accentuated due to the financial and fiscal crises of the West. The first one is rather obvious, the lesser weight of the developed West in the global economy. It now accounts for only 60 % of global economic activity, down from 75 % in 2005. Economic growth has shifted to Asia. At the same time, the very high indebtedness of many Western governments and private sectors means they can do little to boost the economy. However, De-Westernization does not mean that developed economies have become dispensable in the world economy as a whole. They are still needed as growth motors for other regions, although some diversification has occurred.

Second, the shift of economic activity also translates into greater direct influence of state actors in the world economy, as state-owned enterprises go global and Western corporations are more dependent on access to markets featuring stronger political controls. This contradicts the Western concept of a globalized world with a level playing field populated by private actors. Thus, economic globalization has not led to a convergence towards a Western-style liberal market economy all over the world.

Third, the financial crisis has also put the Western concept of globalization as a positive-sum game into a less favorable light, as the costs of de-industrialization have moved to the forefront in many countries. As the domestic economy has now taken precedence, Western governments have now started to contradict policies they advocated under the globalization agenda. This can be witnessed in growing barriers against investment and capital flows, a stronger regionalization of trade, and unconventional monetary policies that fuel currency volatility and provoke further intervention in emerging markets.

What does this trend mean for policy-makers in the West and elsewhere?

The lessons from the financial and sovereign debt crises are to be taken seriously. The problems of debt-driven economic growth have become clear. Continuing in the same way can only serve to diminish the economic health of Western economies. At the same time, political leaders have not yet found a new blueprint for the economic reforms that reduce debt while enhancing growth. It has to be built on a societal consensus that demands equal shares from all social strata. Otherwise democracies will grow even more unstable.

In foreign policy, the further development of the political relationship between emerging markets, most of all China, and Western countries will be central for the further development of the world economy. In this respect, it will be crucial how US policy-makers manage their security and economic rebalancing towards Asia. If the US will be successful in avoiding conflict and integrating its old allies in Europe into their “pivot”, it is likely to enhance its economic clout towards China as well.

Prem Mahadevan, the first of the two chapters you wrote for ST2013 is on maritime insecurity in East-Asia. Can you summarize the main findings of this chapter for us?

The chapter suggests that maritime tensions in East Asia derive from two main issues: territorial disputes between China and its neighboring states, and the status of Taiwan. Both are relevant to the US, in that they affect the credibility of its global military alliance system, which in turn forms the basis of American predominance.

China has maritime disputes with Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, and with Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea. It has been building up its navy and maritime police agencies at a rate that its neighbors have little prospect of emulating. This is because they either do not have the requisite economic strength, or as with Japan, have tended to de-emphasize military power as a tool of statecraft. There had long been an expectation that, with the Cold War having ended, East Asia would enjoy a peace dividend. This turned out to be a false hope, and with growing uncertainty over China’s long-term intentions, smaller states in the region are looking to the US as a counter-balancing force.

For its part, Washington is unhappy about the basis on which China makes its claims in the South and East China Seas, and the manner in which these claims are being advanced. China claims exceptional historical rights which are not recognized by international law. It seems to be leveraging its superior policing capabilities on the water to establish new political realities by expanding its administrative presence in disputed areas. While being careful not to take sides in territorial disputes, the US has made clear that it will stand by its commitments to regional allies, if they come under attack. China views this as an implicit challenge.

Both sides are reluctant to escalate tensions, but are gearing up for hostilities as a strategic precaution. The main trigger point here would be Taiwan, which China seems determined to occupy at some point, by military force if necessary. Since this would lead to war with the US, the Chinese are working on a doctrine that aims to hit US ships on the high seas through submarines and missiles, before they get within operating range of the Chinese coast. The US is responding with a doctrine of its own, that aims to deny the Chinese any targets, and minimize the vulnerability of US vessels, through electronic warfare.

You write that the United States’ Air-Sea Battle doctrine aims to capitalize upon the US Navy’s superiority in anti-submarine warfare, local intelligence support, and the technical weakness of China’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) doctrine. Which of these factors is the most important and why?

The specifics of both doctrines are of course, completely secret. What has emerged in the public domain clearly indicates that the US navy is closely tracking Chinese war-fighting doctrine in the maritime domain and identifying technical weaknesses. These apply across a range of issues: the qualitative superiority of US submarines, if combined with intelligence support from local partners, would substantially degrade Chinese undersea capabilities that might otherwise interfere with American force projection efforts. The US is also unlikely to do what the Chinese expect: impulsively dash across the western Pacific into a land-based missile shield. With its substantial regional presence, and declaration of a strategic ‘pivot’ or ‘rebalancing’, it does not seem to be interested in fighting the kind of short, sharp war that China envisages. Rather, it appears that the US intends to pursue a multi-pronged strategy that seeks to avoid war, but simultaneously builds up alliances that could encircle and strangulate China over a period of time, if war actually does break out. Meanwhile, efforts to defeat the A2/AD doctrine at a purely technical level indicate that the US is intent on mirroring Chinese moves and maximizing its strategic options. Whether latent weaknesses in the A2/AD doctrine would be correctly identified by the US, or would be exploitable even if they are identified, is difficult to predict.

Andrea Baumann, you examine changes in military crisis management, particularly by Western states. What are the characteristics of this trend?

The characteristics of a new trend in military crisis management become apparent with regard to levels of ambition, the nature of capabilities and institutional roles preferred by Western states. First, ambitions to tackle the root causes of conflict and eradicate future threats by (re-)building states and transforming societies are giving way to more limited strategies for containing conflict and managing threats. The focus is on empowering others – local and regional actors – to take care of their own security problems before they spill across borders. External military involvement is limited to reducing the intensity of a crisis or altering the balance of power, so that local stakeholders can manage it without outside help. Expansive state- and nation-building agendas have been adjusted toward the less ambitious goals of ‘stabilization’. Second, Western military contributions are oriented toward providing alternatives to boots on the ground by leveraging the capabilities of partner forces and by operating from a distance. This requires advanced military assets such as air-to-air refueling and transport capabilities, as well as sophisticated intelligence, surveillance, target ac­quisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) capabilities in support of precision-guided, air-launched weapons. The face of so-called ‘light footprint’ interventions are not heavy infantry forces, but covert elite teams who advise local stakeholders, provide training and logistics to partner forces, and guide air strikes. Third, Western states have displayed a preference for enabling and supporting functions within hybrid institutional arrangements that combine bilateral and UN-led arrangements. By providing funding, training, technical assistance, strategic airlift and surveillance technology they have, for instance, acted as force multipliers for African troops supplied by regional security organizations like the African Union.

It appears that the principle of ‘leading from behind’ now dominates Western thinking regarding major international military operations. You identify lessons learned from past experience and contemporary political and financial constraints as the main drivers of this shift in strategic thinking. Which of these factors do you consider to be more important?

It is worth recalling that the term ‘leading from behind’ does not describe an official doctrine or principle. It was popularized after an unnamed official used it to describe the Obama administration’s thinking on Libya in 2011. It has since acquired negative connotations as a passive, reactive stance in the face of pressing crises, or as a cover for dealing with global issues “on the cheap”. Whether and when “leading from behind” represents a viable strategy is open to debate. The term embodies the idea of empowering partners – allies, regional organizations and/or local forces – to take the lead in dealing with a situation. As a wanted side-effect, operations, which could be resented if seen as overtly “Western”, or “US-led”, acquire a local face. Leadership becomes less visible and, so the argument runs, less offensive to local stakeholders in the area of intervention, as well as less controversial in the domestic politics of the intervening states.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq left the United States and its Western allies, in particular the United Kingdom, with exhausted armies and war-wary electorates in times of fiscal austerity. Public support for the resource-intensive effort to build viable states abroad had dwindled. Leaders were called to shift their focus on “nation-building at home”, as US President Obama called it. Yet it is uncertain how long this intervention fatigue will last, as threat perceptions and events change. France’s surprise decision to intervene militarily in Mali is a case in point. Hard lessons from past interventions could have a more lasting impact on strategic thinking. A key conclusion drawn by Western decision-makers from Afghanistan was that the heavy military footprint had proved counterproductive in several ways. The decade-long campaign exemplified the limits of military power where no meaningful political process was in place. Foreign security forces could neither build the host government’s legitimacy nor compensate for the lack of it. Moreover, the visible long-term presence of foreign troops alienated the local population and provided extremists with recruitment propaganda. Western soldiers and aid agencies (and whoever worked for them) became prime targets. The current emphasis on partnerships and multilateral frameworks for intervention can thus be traced to lessons learned from unilateral engagements that provoked resentment. At the same time, partnering also provides opportunities to share the risks and costs of crisis management more broadly, as global power dynamics are shifting and governments turn inward to tend to economic and political problems at home.

Prem Mahadevan, last but not least, you also wrote a chapter on the Glocalisation of Al-Qaedaism. What does that mean?

The term ‘glocalisation’ is an amalgam of ‘globalization’ and ‘localization’. It was originally developed to describe the process by which global consumer brands make inroads into hitherto closed, local markets. Of late, the term has been applied to al Qaeda’s efforts to popularize its ideology among other jihadist groups that were, and still are, potential rivals. We tend to forget that al Qaeda is only one among many anti-Western terrorist organizations in the developing world, and that in the 1990s it spent a lot of time in obscurity before it acquired international attention. Attacking the US was in part, a publicity gimmick – a growth strategy for a group whose claim to global jihadist leadership was shaky, and was not taken very seriously by its peers.

Osama Bin Laden strongly opposed any jihadist strategy that would result in Muslims killing other Muslims. He chose the United States as an enemy because he felt that would keep jihadists of different nationalities united in a common cause. This approach had its detractors: some of Bin Laden’s associates, like current al Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri, were more interested in fighting ‘near enemies’. Their priority was to topple Arab regimes that suppressed radical Islamism and they only went along with Bin Laden’s American obsession in order to expose the ties between Washington and unpopular Middle Eastern governments, thereby discrediting the latter. With some of these governments having come under siege since 2011, or even being toppled, al Qaeda strategists are now claiming that their cause is in the ascendant. They argue that the United States has suffered grievous defeats at the hands of jihadist groups and is losing the ability to control the Middle East through puppet regimes. So, the anti-American jihad is closely tied to events and trends that are playing out far from US shores, at a local level in many Arab countries.

Has terrorism become a bigger threat as a result of this trend, and how do you expect policymakers to respond to this?

It is not a bigger threat, but a different and perhaps more resilient kind of threat. The problem is that if Western governments seek to stabilize friendly regimes in the Middle East and North Africa, they risk undermining the local credibility of ruling elites, which is exactly what al Qaeda wants. On the other hand, merely retreating behind well-policed borders and leaving jihadists to gain ideological space in ungoverned regions is not a viable option. We have already seen the result in the 1990s, when Afghanistan turned into a terrorist sanctuary where training facilities could be based and operational planning for large-scale attacks could be safely conducted.

Looking at US counter-terrorist policy, it seems clear that Washington prioritizes going after those jihadists who plan long-distance attacks on American interests. So, jihadists in Pakistan or the Arabian peninsula are relatively safe if they stick to targeting Americans in their immediate neighborhood and desist from attacking the US homeland. While there would certainly be a strenuous intelligence effort to monitor these individuals, it is difficult to see how the US can neutralize them without relying on weak and possibly hostile local intelligence partners. Drone strikes would only work against top-level leaders, not the actual organizers of terrorist attacks, who tend to be lower-ranking jihadists and are relatively unknown. At the organizational level, jihadists are also taking advantage of governance failures in their host societies to portray themselves as social welfare organizations and create a popular support base. This means that attacks on their leadership generate a public backlash. A lot will depend on the quality of intelligence that can be gathered on local jihadist groups, by Western governments and their local partners.