But... are there still wars?

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The end of the Cold War has not brought with it a world free of armed conflicts or highly tense scenarios that could evolve towards military confrontation, even between the major powers. For this reason, the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies produces, year after year, its annual Geopolitical Panorama of Conflicts, which analyses the causes and possible evolution of these conflicts.

This analysis document presents the edition of the Panorama corresponding to the year 2021, with the main focus on the distant waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans and the Black Sea. The Sahel, a region of the highest priority for Spain's security, and the Middle East complete the cases chosen on this occasion.

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought a happy ending to four long decades of Cold War. The incipient pax Americana promised a Kantian world of generalised peace, a consequence of the triumph of the global governance model based on liberal democracy. This has not been the case. Fleeing from open and generalised war among themselves, a guarantee of a disaster that is hard to imagine, the great powers, and others not so great, settle their disagreements in multiple armed conflicts through local actors of various kinds: tribes, rival factions, criminal cartels, radical political or religious movements, or mercenary companies. Proxy wars, proxy actors, proxies that avoid direct confrontation and dilute, albeit fictitiously, the responsibilities of their sponsors. These alternatives to a "big" war unfortunately facilitate the proliferation of other wars. According to a United Nations report, "in 2016, the number of countries affected by violent conflict reached the highest level in almost 30 years "1. Faced with this reality, the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies, as a military think tank, produces every year a Geopolitical Panorama of Conflicts, in which it analyses some of them - it would be impossible to analyse them all - and thus offers its readers a collection in which they can find, in one edition or another, the origins, the causes, the actors involved and the prospects for the evolution of the many hotspots around the globe.

The recent G20 summit in Rome in October 2021 left a bittersweet taste in terms of the results achieved. While agreements were reached on tax harmonisation and on extending the vaccination campaign to the countries lagging furthest behind, they were less promising in terms of the fight against global warming. In the latter respect, the 26th Climate Change Conference, COP26, which followed in Glasgow, did not produce any noteworthy decisions either. The absence of Presidents Xi and Putin at both events considerably lowered expectations of a convincing outcome. The persistence with which the two giants, China and the United States, maintain the collision course of their confrontation presents us with a highly worrying global scenario. When the collaboration of all world actors is so necessary to manage shared challenges, such as global warming, transnational terrorism, massive migratory movements, the resurgence of proliferation, both conventional and nuclear, and pandemics, the attitude of the main powers points more towards confrontation. This Great Power Competition is dragging the other medium and small powers into a dynamic of growing tensions in all areas: commercial, economic, technological, cultural, ideological, geopolitical... and also military.

Conflicts, in their more traditional version of armed confrontation, are integrated as another component in the broader concept of conflict. And so they coexist with trade disputes, religious or ideological rivalries, the struggle for technological hegemony, cybernetic attacks, the arms race, domination of outer space... In other words, an intense, permanent and indiscriminate conflict in the grey zone, with all the means available to each and every one of the international actors, state or non-state2 , in which the category of friend or ally is blurred, especially in cyberspace3.

For this reason, in addition to armed conflicts, which are the usual subject of the Geopolitical Overview of Conflicts, we have added on this occasion the analysis of highly tense scenarios that could lead to military confrontation (the world looks with concern to the Asia-Pacific region) and factors that could aggravate existing disputes, such as the diversity of religious beliefs in the Middle East.

Looking to the distant waters of the China Seas highlights the growing naval power of the People's Republic, which is determined to become the absolute master of that theatre by establishing a comprehensive integrated network of anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities. This expanding naval force is merely the spearhead of China's military ordeal, complemented by equally modernised land and air forces, a steadily growing nuclear arsenal, a significant presence in outer space and enormous offensive and defensive capabilities in cyberspace. This powerful military toolkit adds to the commercial, economic, technological and cultural power of the "empire at the centre". The Western presence in these seas, mainly that of the United States, warns of a possible risk of escalation which, although not sought by any of the actors present in the region, cannot be ruled out, even as a simple and undesired consequence of a mistake or a situation out of control. There is no shortage of recent examples of incidents between Chinese and Western military units in the region4.

 

Among the numerous disputes over the control of islands and archipelagos, natural or artificial, in addition to the hotspots of Tibet, Kashmir, Sinkiang, Hong Kong, North Korea, Malacca... the most worrying element on the Western Pacific regional chessboard is undoubtedly Taiwan. It is already evident that the supposed model of "one country, two systems" lacks the slightest credibility after the repression of the protests in Hong Kong, and has also been definitively abandoned by current President Xi, leaving no other option for achieving the desired and proclaimed Chinese territorial integrity than the annexation of the "fiery" island.5 By means of political negotiation mechanisms, a distant possibility that is far from being possible in the future. By political negotiation mechanisms, a distant possibility at present, or by military means, an option that is also difficult to imagine, but not entirely out of the question.

We complete our approach to the Indian Ocean with an analysis of the incipient civil war that looms over Myanmar after the February 2021 coup d'état that put an end to the flimsy democracy in the former Burma. The absence of the US leaves the field wide open for Beijing's penetration and influence. Through Myanmar, and from the neighbouring Chinese region of Yunnan, the New Silk Road seeks access to the sea west of the Strait of Malacca in order to avoid the risk of closure of this narrow passage through which most of China's exports and the resources that the Asian giant desperately needs to maintain the activity and progress on which the Communist Party's legitimacy depends. The hope is that the efforts of the major regional association, ASEAN, to stabilise the situation and avoid collapse will succeed, a scenario that is also of Chinese convenience.

Other hotspots on the western Pacific rim are on the Korean peninsula, where attempts to reach some sort of agreement with the North Korean president over his nuclear arsenal have failed. Japan continues to reorganise and reinforce its armed forces. ASEAN member states fear that the confrontation between the two majors will drag them into an unwanted stance on the side of one of them and, consequently, on the other. Australia, after happy years of smooth diplomatic and trade relations with China, has signed the controversial AUKUS technology and military cooperation agreement with the United States and the United Kingdom, provoking an angry reaction from Beijing. And in the Indian Ocean, recent events in Afghanistan will prompt a repositioning of all neighbouring powers, large and medium-sized. The stance taken by India, also a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) with the United States, Japan and Australia, will be particularly noteworthy.

Closer to home, our neighbourhood is rife with conflict and unrest. In the long-simmering Middle East, religious differences do not explain everything, but they are a factor whose analysis goes a long way towards understanding the dynamics in the region and the reasons for the many active and simmering conflicts. The specific case of Yemen does not hold out good prospects for a solution, quite the contrary. The country controls the vital passage through the Bab el Mandeb strait to the east, which makes it a theatre of conflict between the major global and regional powers. The warring factions (government forces, rebels and separatists) are strongly backed by geographically close actors in what is a clear example of proxy wars, so common year after year in our Panoramas.

These cases do not exhaust the conflicts in and around the Middle East. The war in Syria is far from reaching a peaceful outcome. It remains to be seen how the situation in Iraq will develop after the US withdrawal. In Iran, a new conservative president has taken office, who needs to find a way out of the extremely difficult situation the country has been going through since the US pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal. To make matters worse for Iran's leaders, the Abraham Accords6 are leading to a realignment of the neighbourhood, including Israel, with the aim of pushing Tehran into a corner. Lebanon, unfortunately, is sliding down a slope of political decomposition and institutional crisis that can only lead to fragmentation and, ultimately, a new civil war. 

There is no active armed conflict in the Black Sea - for the time being. It is not China, of course, that is disputing the regional hegemony of the Western countries, led by the United States, but Russia. Or, if you prefer, the collision course in these waters is between NATO and Russia. The precedent of the unilateral annexation of Crimea in 2014 is very much present in this complex scenario. Turkey (which controls the straits connecting this sea to the Mediterranean), Bulgaria and Romania belong to NATO; and Georgia would like to, as would Ukraine, all of which makes for a very demanding scenario for Russia. China, though not through hard power, does have commercial interests in this region through trade corridors through the Caucasus that open the door, yet again, to European markets. The Black Sea is a large inland lake, most of whose shores belong to NATO countries, much to Russia's displeasure.

In the heart of Europe, the border between Belarus and Poland is strained as a result of the former's use of migrants seeking access to the European Union in an attempt to put pressure on and divert international attention from President Lukashenko's domestic problems. In Ukraine, the apparent build-up of Russian troops in the vicinity of Donbass is a cause for concern.7 The Balkans have not yet closed their doors. The Balkans have not yet closed the wounds opened in the 1990s. The intention of the Bosnian Serb side8 to disassociate itself from the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, agreed in Dayton 1995, has reopened a conflict that is still simmering, in addition to the frozen case of Kosovo. Difficulties in EU integration for those countries that have not yet done so, especially Serbia, open the door wide to Russian influence and Chinese penetration.

 

For Europe, and certainly for Spain, the evolution of the situation in the Sahel is and will continue to be a cause for deep concern. Here too, the outlook is not optimistic. The "perfect storm" is not letting up: institutional and governance weaknesses (two coups d'état in Mali in less than a year), illicit trafficking of all kinds, extreme weather phenomena, rising terrorist activity and, as if all this were not enough, the effects of the pandemic. The European Union's efforts, led by France, are not enough to stabilise the region and make way for progress that is as necessary as it is improbable. This latter circumstance leaves the way open for the arrival of other powers: China, Russia (Wagner paramilitary company9 ), Turkey, Israel, the Emirates... Not only the Sahel but the entire region, the so-called "southern flank", will undoubtedly be a key element of discussion in the elaboration of the new Strategic Concept of the Atlantic Alliance that is expected to be presented and approved by the European Union. 

Alliance Strategic Concept that is expected to be presented and approved at the summit to be held in Madrid at the end of June 2022. It remains to be seen whether the Mediterranean allies' call for NATO to also look south, a 360º approach, will not once again be pushed to a secondary position in the face of the persistent priority on the eastern flank.

In the neighbouring Maghreb, the struggle for regional hegemony between Morocco and Algeria is intensifying and has even led to a breakdown in diplomatic relations and clashes near their common border. The rearmament undertaken by both countries will only increase tensions across the region. The Libyan war hopes that recent agreements and the December 2021 elections will mark the beginning of the end of the conflict. Finally, the emergence of significant natural gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean basin has triggered disputes that have even pitted elements of the navies of NATO-allied countries such as France, Greece and Turkey against each other.10 The EU's role in the region's security situation has also been underlined.

Without completely leaving the Sahelian strip, in the Horn of Africa, the conflict between the Addis Ababa government and the rebel province of Tigray has already become a serious humanitarian crisis, has dashed the hopes that the election of President Abiy Ahmed had raised, not only in Ethiopia, and threatens to destabilise the whole region, already highly volatile in its own right. Only the unanimity of all external actors, both neighbours and global powers, in preserving this stability allows for reasonable expectations of a solution that, in any case, seems neither easy nor immediate.

These are the conflicts we have included in the next edition of the Geopolitical Overview of Conflicts 2021, which you will be holding in your hands in the coming weeks. Many more are missing, which we will address on future occasions, or which we have analysed in recent editions. All of them are available on the website of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies11. We hope they will be of interest to you.

Francisco José Dacoba Cerviño*
Brigadier General ET Director of the IEEE @fran_dacoba

Francisco José Dacoba Cerviño*
General de Brigada ET Director del IEEE @fran_dacoba

Bibliography

1    Naciones    Unidas:    Una    nueva    era    de    conflictos    y    violencia.    Disponible    en: https://www.un.org/es/un75/new-era-conflict-and-violence Consultado el 10 de diciembre de 2021.

2 Para más detalle, consultar: DACOBA CERVIÑO, Francisco José. Conflictividad s. XXI: los grandes suben la apuesta. Documento de Análisis IEEE 30/2021. Disponible en: http://www.ieee.es/Galerias/fichero/docs_analisis/2021/DIEEEA30_2021_FRADAC_Conflictivid ad.pdf

3 “Una vuelta de tuerca al caso de espionaje de EEUU a Merkel implica a Dinamarca”, El Confidencial (31 de mayo de 2021). Disponible en: https://www.elconfidencial.com/mundo/europa/2021-05-31/una-vuelta-

4 “US submarine hits ‘object’ while underwater in South China Sea”, Al Jazeera (8 de octubre de 2021). Disponible en: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/8/us-submarine-hits-object-while-underwater-in-

5 “Nuestro Ejército derrotará resueltamente a cualquiera que intente separar a Taiwán de China y defenderá la unidad nacional a toda costa”. Libro Blanco de la República Popular de China sobre la Defensa Nacional en la nueva era 2019. Disponible en: https://www.dsn.gob.es/en/actualidad/sala-

6 PRIEGO, Alberto. La nueva política de Israel hacia el golfo Pérsico. Documento de Opinión IEEE 147/2020.

7 “Satellite images show new Russian military buildup near Ukraine”, Politico (11 de noviembre de 2021).

8 “Las maniobras rusas en apoyo de los serbios ponen a Bosnia al borde del precipicio”, ABC (3 de noviembre de 2021). Disponible en: https://www.abc.es/internacional/abci-maniobras-rusas-apoyo- serbios-ponen-bosnia-borde-precipicio-202111030108_noticia.html

9 “Crise au Mali: l’intervention de mercenaires russes pour remplacer les troupes françaises divise”, BBC

10 “Grèce - Turquie: escalade des tensions en Méditerranée orientale”, France24 (1 de septiembre de 2020). Disponible en: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKo9vpEN74c

11 Disponible en www.ieee.es