It’s Not Just Ukraine and Gaza : War Is on the Rise Everywhere - Bloomberg
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An authoritative new study finds there are 183 regional and local conflicts underway in 2023, the highest number in three decades.
Although the world is not immediately threatened by a great war, such as those of 1914-18 and 1939-45, tensions are rising, especially between the US and China. I would identify an issue that seems to me, as a historian, especially important and dangerous. One of the primary reasons Europe went to war in 1914 is that none of the big players were as frightened as they should have been, of conflict as a supreme human catastrophe. After a century in which the continent had experienced only limited wars, from which Prussia had been an especially conspicuous profiteer, too many statesmen viewed war as a usable instrument of policy, which proved a catastrophic misjudgment.
Today, we see Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, sharing this delusion. His lunges into Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014 and now mainland Ukraine argue a reckless embrace of the risks of interstate violence. He is confident, and becoming more so as American and European popular support for Ukraine weakens, that he and his people are tougher than us decadent Westerners.
The increasingly assertive policies of authoritarian states — notably China, Russia, Iran, Turkey and the Gulf states — “is one of the main causes of the demise of traditional conflict-resolution and peacemaking processes …. These powers often prop up authoritarian regimes and disregard fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.”
Complicating things, “the divide between Russia and Western powers has become unbridgeable and securing allies has become a strategic imperative.” In other words, the democracies feel increasingly obliged to seek friends wherever they can find them, ignoring — for instance — the ghastly cruelties institutionalized in Saudi Arabia.
The scale of violence in Mexico, especially, is terrifying. On June 26, 2022, heavily armed gangsters attacked a group of 10 policemen near the town of Colombia on the US border, killing six and wounding two. Two months later, organized crime groups staged orchestrated attacks on security forces in five different Mexican states. In significant areas of that vast country, the rule of law is non-existent.
The IISS survey was compiled before the murderous events in Israel two months ago and what has followed, but it records rising tensions driven by extremists on both sides there, including the armed settler movement in the West Bank: “These new cycles of violence in Israel and the occupied territories are prompting speculation of a new intifada.”
Yet former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon complained in 2014 that some peacekeepers were stationed “where there is no peace to keep.” In Mali, jihadists have killed 300 UN personnel over a decade. Amid acute new geopolitical tensions between the major powers, the UN’s influence has shriveled. In the UN Security Council, China, Russia and the US repeatedly veto each other’s declared purposes, or at least cause each other to abandon any prospect of securing a mandate in a given situation, most conspicuously Ukraine.
The Ukraine experience makes a good case that Rehman, whose research has been supported by the Pentagon’s immensely influential Office of Net Assessment, is right. The current US mindset seems to confuse planning to win a mere battle or limited campaign with the demands of protracted conflict. The author quotes a French history of the 14th century Hundred Years’ War between Britain and France, which he believes offers a template for 21st century superpower conflict. Temporary truces or even peace treaties between the rival monarchies merely “provided an opportunity for the protagonists to regain their breath” — to rearm for the next round of war.
