– JUNE 4, 2014 BY PETER APPS
WASHINGTON (Reuters)
– After more than a decade focused on combating Islamist militancy, Western
military planners are once again contemplating potential war between major
powers – and how to prevent one happening by accident.
Although the Cold War
rivalry with Moscow has never been forgotten, current and former Western
officials say Russia’s annexation of Crimea has NATO powers tearing up
strategic assumptions and grimly considering both conventional and nuclear
fights.
As late as March,
most NATO powers – with the exception of eastern members such as the Baltic
States long worried by Moscow – had assumed Europe itself faced no imminent
military threat.
It is still the case
that few believe Russia would attack any NATO state, but, in order to deter,
Western officials say they must consider and plan for the contingency.
The threat to U.S.
allies in the Pacific from a stronger China has also focused military minds on
how to contain the risks there, and ensure any localized conflict does not
spill over into global war.
In a major foreign
policy speech at the West Point military academy last month, President Barack
Obama spoke mostly on counterterrorism and the Afghanistan withdrawal. But
while he said the risk from other nations was now much lower than before the
Berlin Wall fell, he made clear it still existed.
“Regional aggression
that goes unchecked, whether in southern Ukraine or the South China Sea or
anywhere else in the world, will ultimately impact our allies and could draw in
our military,” he told graduating cadets.
Tensions with Moscow
and Beijing have increased faster than almost anyone in government in
Washington expected. They are expected to dominate a meeting between Obama and
Russian President Vladimir Putin in Normandy for the 70th anniversary of D-Day
later this week.
Last weekend’s annual
Shangri-La Dialogue strategic conference in Singapore, meanwhile, showcased the
growing gulf between Washington and Beijing on issues from regional maritime
disputes to cyber security.
In recent weeks,
current and former officials say, the Obama administration has been insistently
reassuring allies and signaling foes where Washington’s true red lines are.
Washington might not
be prepared to act militarily in Ukraine but an attack on a NATO state such as
one of the Baltics or a formal Asian ally like Japan, the Philippines or
Australia would commit it irrevocably to war. Those treaty obligations are not
new, but U.S. officials say it is important to make clear that they are taken
extremely seriously.
They hope that will
reduce the risk of an accidental war where a state takes action wrongly
assuming other powers will not respond.
“It’s not that the
leadership in Russia or China is looking for a war – and the United States
certainly isn’t,” says Kathleen Hicks, a U.S. undersecretary for defense until
last July who now works for the Center for Strategic and International Studies
in Washington.
“The real worry is
miscalculation.”
GREAT WAR
One hundred years
after the start of World War One, books on the period have become increasingly
popular in Washington, Whitehall and NATO headquarters in Brussels, current and
former officials say, and not purely for their historical interest.
In June 1914, the
killing of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb nationalist triggered
actions and alliances that brought war in barely a month.
Now, experts say
flashpoints could range from a clash over disputed South China Sea islands or
ethnic strife in Russia’s former Soviet neighbors to a wrongly attributed cyber
attack.
Even as Washington
reassures allies, Moscow and Beijing have asserted their might against Ukraine
and Vietnam which lack such formal alliances. The risk, experts say, is that
they become overconfident and misjudge.
“The parallels with
1914 can definitely be overstated,” said Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national
security studies at the U.S. Naval War College.
“But they do show us
that war can start through unintended consequences and an economically
interdependent world does not necessarily stop it from happening.”
As in 1914, no one
really knows what a modern great war would be like.
While much military
thinking assumes conflict would remain conventional, nuclear powers have kept
their atomic war planning up to date, maintaining target lists for mutually
assured destruction, current and former officials say.
Cyber attacks, some
experts say, could be almost as destructive, as could the effects on global
trade in an unprecedentedly interconnected world.
Meanwhile, some of
the systems supposed to prevent conflict may be starting to weaken.
WEAKENED LINKS
U.S. officials had
embarked on a campaign to build formal and informal communications channels
with Beijing, mimicking the hotlines and procedures set up with Russia.
Moscow and Washington
have used those systems themselves in recent months to notify each other of
missile tests and reconnaissance flights over each other’s territory.
Links with Russia,
however, have weakened this year as NATO states canceled conferences and
military exchanges with Moscow in protest at the annexation of Crimea.
Contacts with China
have also deteriorated in the last month, particularly since Washington indicted
five Chinese officials for cyber espionage, a charge Beijing denies.
A near collision
between U.S. and Chinese warships in January, a mock Russian attack on a U.S.
destroyer in the Black Sea in April and periodic confrontations between
long-range bombers and other aircraft show the risks, experts warn.
Last week on Japan
and China accused each other of “dangerous” and “over the top” actions after
warplanes came within a few dozen meters.
Any additional
challenge to the West, some analysts say, is that both Russia and China know
Washington would struggle to handle simultaneous confrontations.
U.S. forces are
spread around the world while Moscow’s and Beijing’s, while smaller, are almost
exclusively focused on their immediate neighborhood. Since 2008, they have
increased military spending 30 and 40 percent respectively, according to
London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The 2012 Asia
“pivot”, which saw the U.S. Navy in particular moving to increase its Pacific
footprint, aimed to make crisis response easier.
In Europe, in
contrast, NATO has little developed thinking beyond its post-Crimea strategy of
putting small numbers of U.S. troops and jets on the frontline in eastern
member states they fear Moscow might target next.
Until Ukraine,
European states had viewed their primary military focus as occasional
intervention, peacekeeping and counterinsurgency in the Middle East and Africa.
“We are in uncharted
territory,” said one senior Western official who spoke on condition of
anonymity. “It means … reconstituting high end fighting skills and properly
thought through doctrine for both conventional and nuclear deterrence.”
No comments:
Post a Comment