Russia

Land borders are not what they used to be. Finance and investment values are traded through the ether in what often seems like a new borderless world. Even in terms of physical borders, which of course still exist, the air borders of most countries now seem more important. High value trade comes by air cargo as do the tourist dollars. The new threats, such as pandemic and terrorism, also come across the air border more often than across dry ground. In 2009, EU countries refused entry to more than 50,000 people at their air borders.

But this relationship between air frontiers and the land is worth a second look. In 2009, Spain turned away almost 400,000 people at its land borders, and Poland just over 25,000 people. The bigger pressure for illegal migration is on the ground not by air. And of course pandemics and terrorists do cross land borders.

We can look at the changed military strategic significance of ground and air borders in a similar way. Only a few countries of the world guard their ground borders with divisions and tanks. The ground borders have definitely become much less important, relatively speaking. Modern aircraft and missiles allow attack from remote distances with little effective warning time. And as American military leaders remind us, cyber warfare capabilities allow “global strike in milliseconds”.

How do these changed relationships between air and land boundaries play out in geopolitical terms for Europe? For the moment, Europe (the EU) looks very comfortable. There are no strategic military threats from any bordering country and almost no military defence of any kind for ground borders. The one low intensity exception is Cyprus.

For NATO Europe, the picture is very different. Turkey has land borders with Iran, Iraq and Syria that present a range of low level and high level strategic risk, and an active cross-border threat of terrorism and insurgency.

For OSCE Europe, the picture becomes even more complicated. Not only does that include the Turkish frontier’s challenges, but it raises the stakes considerably. Suddenly there are “European” land borders with Afghanistan, China and North Korea.

What then is the fundamental geopolitical character of Europe’s land borders and where in strategic terms, do these borders actually sit? Few would imagine in strategic terms that the EU is the geopolitical essence of “Europe”. Surely, at the very least, Turkey is part of Europe’s land frontier.  But “strategic Europe” (OSCE Europe) might also include Russia and Ukraine at least, even if more conservative views would be ambivalent or negative about including the Central Asian states that border Afghanistan.

Who is looking after border security of “strategic Europe”? What are the common plans or concepts for geopolitical security in the arc from Antakya to Almaty (via Kirkuk and Kunduz)? As we go into the summit season (NATO in November and OSCE in December), who will take up this question?

It is very plain that the United States will not. It would be seen to be against US interests to do so. That is perhaps understandable at one level. For countries of Europe, however defined, continued collective disregard of the security of their geopolitical land borders on the east and south of both Turkey and Russia, or on the OSCE border with Afghanistan in terms of hard security planning can no longer be justified.

In the 20-30 year time frame to which defence planners must look, these frontiers may well be the biggest source of potential land-based threat to Europe. The prospects of war may remain remote. But, on a balance of reasonable probabilities, in the coming decades, this is the area where Europe’s ground forces will most likely be needed.

“India’s ‘strategic relationship’ with each of these countries requires tending,” states Sibal. 

Sibal discusses the formation of the India-France relationship after India’s 1998 nuclear tests: “France sensed the opportunity that had emerged to forge a strategic relationship with an independent-minded country that could be a partner in promoting multipolarity as a response to U.S. unilateralism.”

The India-Russia relationship, which had drifted during the Yeltsin years, was renewed under Putin: “Putin saw the strategic need for Russia to restore its traditional ties with India as part of a more balanced foreign policy that reflected Russia’s Asia dimension.”

The India-U.S. relationship is complicated by nuclear weapons, U.S. arms supplies to Pakistan, and the growing economic interdependence between the U.S. and China. Despite many shared values such as democracy, religious tolerance and respect for human rights, “the burden of responsibility to eliminate the negative elements from the India-U.S. relationship still remains with the U.S.,” Sibal claims. 

Sibal believes that Barack Obama should announce his support for India’s permanent membership to the Security Council during his upcoming visit, in order to strengthen the bilateral relationship.

Sibal concludes, “India would need to finely tune the balance of its defense ties with each of these strategic partners to ensure that all three contribute to India security optimally.”

Click here to read Sibal's piece in The Telegraph

"We haven't seen in the international community much appreciation for what multilateral diplomacy in cybersecurity means," EWI Vice President Greg Austin says in an interview for Homeland Security Today. "Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom have come to terms fully what is needed globally in conversations with countries like Russia, China, and India to provide for their own national cybersecurity."

“In theory these three countries forging a true partnership could start a new chapter in world history,” states Sibal.

But Sibal maintains that the RIC dialogue may not have as much promise as originally anticipated because “the validity of most of the premises underlying it has been shaken.”  Now that the United State’s sole superpower status has waned, as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the 2008 financial crisis, there is not as much need for Russia, India and China to come together to balance the global power structure.

China provides the most dramatic example of the current realignment in geopolitics. As Sibal puts it: “Since the RIC dialogue began China’s economic rise has been spectacular, with its economy now overtaking Japan’s in size.  China’s self-confidence has bounded and nationalist feelings are being fed at home.”

Despite its rapidly growing economy and population, Sibal believes India is in many ways the weakest member of the RIC dialogue.  Though India is a member of the G20, it is not a permanent member of the Security Council, which limits its role in the RIC in key decisions on global peace and security issues. 

Of the three countries, India and Russia have the most common interests—especially when it come to countering the terrorism and religious extremism that is ravaging Afghanistan and Pakistan, endangering Central Asia and even southern Russia.  Even so, this bond may not prove strong enough to successfully maintain the RIC dialogue.

Sibal concludes: “The RIC dialogue was a grand idea that failed to live up to expectations because the conditions in which it was set up changed rapidly.”

Photo: "Moscow Kremlin" (CC BY-NC 2.0) by Alexey Kljatov (ChaoticMind75)

EastWest Institute Global Security fellow, Danila Bochkarev, writes an article in The Moscow Times discussing Russia's increasing role of power in the Arctic.

“An attack on Russia would be regarded as an attack on NATO!” In November 2013, ten months after being sworn in as President of the United States for a second term, this is President Obama’s declaration to the NATO summit.

The United States and NATO had provided a similar security guarantee to Japan for decades, which in the 1980s was often called the “sixteenth member” of NATO. In 1969, the United States gave a similar private assurance to the Soviet Union when Moscow was considering nuclear retaliation against an increasingly belligerent China in the grip of the Cultural Revolution.  

In 2009, under a new wave of military reforms instituted by President Medvedev, and backed by Prime Minister Putin, Russia began dismantling what was left of its capability for protracted conventional war. By 2012, Russia certainly needed NATO, and the latter needed reassurance that Russia’s almost exclusive reliance on nuclear weapons alone for its defence would not be called into play in potential conflicts in Northeast Asia.
The 2013 decision to align so closely with Russia grew out of three broad commitments in NATO’s 2010 security concept.

The first was affirmation that while NATO is a defensive regional military alliance, there were several “out of area” developments that directly brought into play its security interests. This had been evident even before 2010. In the 1987 war on shipping in the Persian Gulf, several NATO allies used the fig-leaf of the moribund 1948 Western European Union defence treaty to provide legal cover for a joint military operation to protect oil tankers “an ocean away” from NATO territory.  The direct security interests of NATO in remote areas had also been manifested in the acceptance by it in 2003 of the UN mandate to undertake defence of the Afghanistan government. As one diplomat put it prophetically in 2010, “Afghanistan changed NATO forever”.

In this vein, NATO came to understand that its explicit commit to “exporting security” was a deeper commitment than a temporary, “out of area” deployment of troops or the coordination of security sector reform in what were then called “partner” countries. In fact, the idea that NATO involvement in reforming the military establishment of distant countries was somehow apolitical had by 2012 become widely acknowledged as a big illusion. There is nothing more profoundly political and more potentially entangling in security terms that a commitment by one country to shore up the military establishment of another.  The second stream of policy development that contributed to the NATO decision to offer a security guarantee to Russia was the determination to respond positively to the growing demand from “out of area” countries for close ties that represented, as for Japan, de facto but non-voting membership of NATO. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia had been de facto members since 1990 when NATO forces joined those of many others in Operation “Desert Shield”, which a year later became the “Desert Storm” that liberated Kuwait. By 2012, other tiny and defenceless Arab states were all too willing to sign up as “partners”, and NATO’s heavy dependence on their oil and the value of their investment capital sealed the deal.

The third stream of NATO policy development that led to the security guarantee for Russia was not as explicit in the 2010 security review, but the seeds of it were there in several ways. The foundation was recognition of the treaty commitment of all NATO countries to finding security “with Russia”, not “against it”. If NATO was the cornerstone of European security and European security (including Russia) was “indivisible”, then NATO had to be at least one cornerstone of Russian security. But that was only a “legal” explanation. NATO extended the security guarantee to Russia in 2013 because of a shared sense of urgent need to protect common security interests in the Korean peninsula, Central and South Asia, the Red Sea hinterland – and cyber space.

They unanimously adopted  a final document, including an ambitious 64-point action plan that detailed steps for strengthening  non-proliferation norms, reducing nuclear dangers and eventually eliminating nuclear weapons. Perhaps the most ambitious agenda ever produced by an NPT Review Conference, the plan still did not address some pressing challenges, such as the North Korea’s nuclear weapon capabilities and status. The plan also poses tough questions: which of the 64 steps should be given priority and how to undertake them?

To address this issue and help put the plan into action, the EastWest Institute and the Permanent Mission of Kazakhstan held a High Level Consultation on “Prioritizing the NPT Action Plan” at the United Nations on September 9.

The event opened with remarks by Francis Finlay, EWI’s Chairman of the Board, and His Excellency Kairat Umarov, Kazakhstan’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. Recognizing Kazakhstan’s precedent-setting elimination of nuclear arms in 1991, Finlay further identified Umarov as a “leader in nonproliferation and disarmament efforts.” (click here for remarks by Francis Finlay and Kairat Umarov)

Kairat Umarov and Francis Finlay

Umarov spoke on issues he called vital for the success of the next NPT Review Conference in 2015, three of which became focus points in the discussion, namely: the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) by “influential states”; the creation of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East; and the support of regulated, peaceful use of nuclear power.

The following panel of experts, all of whom were involved in the successfully concluded NPT Rev Con, included:

• His Excellency Libran N. Cabactulan, Ambassador E. and P. and Permanent Representative, Permanent Mission of the Republic of the Philippines to the United Nations (speech)

• Mr. Sergio Duarte, High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, United Nations (speech, courtesy of the United Nations)

•  His Excellency Ambassador Tibor Tóth, Executive Secretary, Preparatory Commission of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO)  (speech)

• The Honorable Susan F. Burk, Special Representative of the President for Nuclear Nonproliferation, Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, United States Department of State (speech)

• His Excellency Maged A. Abdelaziz, Ambassador E. and P. and Permanent Representative, Permanent Mission of the Arab Republic of Egypt to the United Nations

The panel members, moderated by Dr. W. Pal Sidhu, EWI’s Vice President of Programs, identified their “top three priorities” among the final document’s 64 point action plan.  All panelists agreed that the 2010 final document was a “historical achievement” and had helped to “reset” the Treaty. However, there was also concern that if progress was not made following the reset it would seriously endanger the future of the Treaty.

Action 5, which calls for the nuclear-weapon States to “commit to accelerate concrete progress on the steps leading to nuclear disarmament,” emerged as the highest priority. Significantly, Action 5 asks states to report progress on specific tasks to a Preparatory Committee at 2014 – showing a commitment not only to accountability and transparency, but to the NPT’s ongoing process.  In fact, prioritizing the continued health of the NPT – which once broken, as an audience member pointed out, would be impossible to reconstitute – became one of the afternoon’s few clear guiding ideas.

Similarly, while ratification of the CTBT by key states and its entry into force was considered a priority, there was also an appreciation that this could not be guaranteed in the near future.

Finally, the proposed 2012 Middle East conference to implement the 1995 NPT Rev Con resolution on establishing a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons was also identified as a high priority. The panelist discussed the significant challenges in this endeavor, particularly the constructive participation of Iran and Israel. The speakers also identified key actions which would be essential to ensure that the conference is held at all. One such was the requirement of the appointment of a high-profile facilitator who did not come from either the permanent member states of the UN Security Council or the middle and who would be equally acceptable to Iran, Israel or the Arab states. There was a consensus that to ensure a successful conference, the states involved will have to address the various challenges either formally or informally at the track 2 level.

As readers of this newspaper will know, the OSCE spans three continents, brings together about 15 per cent of humanity, has 56 members, and has four out of five permanent seats in the UNSC. There is another regional organization that also spans three continents, represents the aspirations of a bigger slice of humanity (about 25 per cent), and has 57 countries as members, but none with a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.

The group in question is the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), the world’s only “regional organization” based around a religious attribution. Apart from its 57 members (Muslim majority states), there are a number of states or entities as observers: Bosnia and Hercegovina, Thailand, Russia, the Central African Republic and the Turkish Cypriot government.

The OIC has its own Development Bank, its Islamic UNESCO (ISESCO), the Islamic International Court, the International Islamic News Agency, and a host of subsidiary and affiliated organizations. It does not of course represent in a direct political sense all Muslims, but it does purport to speak on behalf of the “umma” (the community of Muslim believers worldwide).

Osama bin Laden wrote often of the Umma, expressing on occasion the hope that it would rise again to a prominent place in world political affairs, and be recognized again for high achievement in the arts and sciences. I mention that not to credit the source in any way, but to demonstrate that the sentiment about an organized Islamic resurgence is seen as a good mobilizing tool. That aspiration is shared by many leaders in the Islamic world, and it is captured in the Charter of the OIC: “to work for revitalizing Islam’s pioneering role in the world”. This vision, one I share, is the departure point of this analysis.

There are other high ambitions expressed in the OIC charter, including the more familiar idea of a “common market”, albeit an “Islamic Common Market”. Turkey, also an aspirant for EU membership, is actively promoting both parts of this OIC agenda: scientific and technological advance and regional economic integration.

The OIC revised its original 1972 Charter only in 2008. At the time, Indonesia’s President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, declared that as a result of the new charter "the possibility of an Islamic Renaissance lies before us".

The OIC is a leading force in the fight globally against violent extremism.  In 2008, the conference declaration noted: “We continue to strongly condemn all forms of extremism and dogmatism which are incompatible with Islam”. The OIC is also leading a global campaign against rising Islamophobia around the world, a phenomenon documented by independent sources.

To many observers, the OIC is an imperfect organization, to be faulted for its internal divisions, for its hostile attitude to Israel, for what some see as its ingrained anti-semitism, and for its extreme political diversity (from monarchies, dictatorships, and radical regimes to democracies of varying stripe).

That view does not capture the essential dynamism and progressive character of the evolutionary path on which the OIC has been set for number of years. Nor does it speak to the sense of injustice over Palestine that for its part, it carries into many political forums.

A full assessment of the trajectory of this interesting organization would be very useful. One thing is clear. The OIC wants a new partnership with the West, and some countries are beginning to respond to that. The path to regional and wider international power and authority may be long and rocky, but the OIC and its member states have a vision for regional and global economic and scientific development that is definitely beginning to change the world for the better. Let’s work with them.

Writing for the Huffington Post, Fred Teng, CEO of NewsChina magazine, discusses EWI’s emphasis on cybersecurity and maritime security.  Referring to EWI’s Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit in Dallas as well as its study of undersea communications cables, Teng analyzes the intrinsic connections between cybersecurity and maritime security, and how that impacts overall security around the globe.