General article

Published in Edition 16

2023, a confrontation with reality

The world cannot afford to lose focus or allow perception to be clouded as a result of incomplete analyses hampered by a lack of geographic scope. The year-long war in Ukraine tends to dominate geopolitical dynamics in the insatiable maw of mediatized information, even though other, more distant wars, are associated with the current armed conflict in Western Europe. It is a worthwhile exercise to journey across continents, oceans, parallel crises, leaders out of the spotlight, short- and long-term trends, and less obvious thinking to achieve a richer palette of contemporary international politics, eschewing monochrome visions of what is an increasingly complex, poorly understood reality.

War in Europe enters its second year

The global strategic environment has undergone a vertiginous transformation over the last few years. Competition among great powers, the erosion of multilateral order and the pandemic crisis all preceded the war in Ukraine, which itself marked the end of European peace and the harmony defined in the years that followed the end of the Cold War. Over thirty years, the reigning order sought to accommodate emerging powers, welcoming them into international organizations (China into the WTO), aligning interests in multilateral forums (Russia-NATO Council) or through agreements backed by the UN (Iran nuclear agreement; Paris Climate Agreement), growing alliances and organizations, extending them to former adversary nations (as happened with NATO and the EU to the east) under a logic of moving on from the rules and institutions that globalization and liberal international liberal order have relied on.

Today international politics is however largely being framed by polarization between those states that uphold, and those that contest, the principles that legitimize that order. Even the merits of democracy are being undermined through populist authoritarians with nationalistic views on free trade, immigrant integration or the role of institutional multilateralism. 2023 sees the world move forward with that systemic shock - and with Ukraine the epicenter for global impacts.

As the war enters its second year, after months of heroic resistance and territorial recovery, Kyiv is entering a new decisive period. On the one hand, it needs the rigors of winter to stay out of the way when it redeploys assets and troops in the more hostile areas of the Donbas. On the other, it must pray that Western faltering doesn’t end up hampering the recovery of what Ukraine legitimately considers sovereign soil.

It will need three hundred combat vehicles from the West plus a few tens of thousands of men trained in NATO countries, a substantial resupply of anti-missile defenses from the US, and will hope that Germany, Poland, France, the UK, and other allies are all able to co-ordinate better and faster. Failure will crystallize 20% of a strategic territory on the Russian side, benefiting the aggressor through a lasting solution, conditioning future bargaining and defining the future terms of security for the European continent and its democracies.

Security never centres

Whilst Europe’s security imperative has its epicenter in Ukraine (although the Balkans deserve more thorough political scrutiny) the expanded analysis referred to earlier does not suggest that understanding of the war or other dynamics evolving on European soil should be frozen. Rather, it is imperative to look for nodes that connect to that geopolitical epicenter.

The most important situation is unfolding in Southeast Asia, namely in Japan. Motivated by Russian aggression, Japan has reviewed its core security and defence strategies, overhauling what had been a solidly defensive, non-belligerent doctrine since the end of World War II. If the Russian invasion of Ukraine has revived collective defensive instincts at NATO, accelerating investments and doctrinal reviews among allies and neighbours, it has also reignited security imperatives on Asian borders among countries with whom the Kremlin shares a history and latent strategic tensions.

Japan looks at its triple threat - Pyongyang, Moscow, and Beijing - and concludes that its post-war doctrine has been emptied of minimal guarantees of the country’s independence and security. This interpretation of the reformist imperative appears aligned with a 70% approval rate from the population, converging on the notion that deterrent military power is indispensable  if Tokyo wants to remain one of the world’s great

2023 has what it takes to lead to an analytic convergence and, inevitably, a head-on collision with a hardening, complexifying reality which demands that there is a lot more scrutiny, knowledge-sharing, and common sense underpinning each decision-making process. Be it in government, organizations, companies, or as individuals all policy is international.

economies, a centre for technological excellence, regional stronghold for democracy and a staunch supporter of free maritime travel in an area abounding in congested straits, including the Taiwan strait. So Japan is set to invest $320bn over the next five years in new cybernetic capabilities, a sixth generation of fighter planes with backing from the UK and Italy, long-range American missiles supported by technologically advanced naval platforms, stabilizing its investment within the NATO standard of 2% GDP for Defence.

It’s no mere coincidence, but the explicit desire to share in doctrine and means with transatlantic allies with whom Tokyo has made common cause since day one, approving sanctions against Russia at the G7.

It’s these two security complexes, European and Asian, which should hold our attention moving forward.

Preferably in parallel, given the existence of a shared bulwark of security, the US. Russia’s behaviour has materialized into an actual threat and China now figures as “the greatest strategic challenge”. This year also marks the 40th anniversary of the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship. It is key to preserve forums for dialogue that can relieve regional tension without settling into pacifist denial, neglecting the connection between credible military deterrence and more constructive diplomatic capabilities in a world which insists on reviving Hobbesian proclivities despite itself.
 

Old dilemmas in multilateral co-operation

 

Clearly the world’s security troubles do not end with Europe and Asia. Unfortunately, the ongoing civil wars in the Middle East and Africa also contribute toward the deterioration of peace and stability between states. There are two aspects, however, that keep pulling our focus back to Europe and Asia. Firstly, these are regions where the parties in conflict (whether they trade ideological or physical blows) possess highly destructive nuclear capabilities and, secondly, because the Western political community has manifestly proven that its skill and cunning do little to resolve grievous security crises in the Sahel, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Horn of Africa, or the Levant. Which is to say, on top of the attrition to international security you can add an inability to co-operate in the resolution of lasting conflicts, which diminishes the merits of liberal order and its multilateral organizations.

But it is not just an inability to resolve conflicts. There is also the inability of governments and multilateral organizations to improve humanitarian management of deadly, forced migration that fills the Mediterranean with the bodies of those who fall victim to war, persecution, and organized crime. There is also the minimalistic approach to extremely short-term goals in the fight against climate change, often framing its lasting global impact as a need to adjust economic frameworks in the great industrialized nations, as if the effects of climate variations haven’t long been threatening the survival of coastal states and peoples, brutal price hikes on staple foods and other essentials, armed conflict over natural resources, devastating civil wars and profound imbalance in biodiversity.

It is clear that there are no hermetically sealed subjects, compartmentalized dilemmas, individual solutions, infinite resources, or options that can be postponed. There is crisis piling onto crisis, uncertainty as to mapped-out trends, difficult strategic choices entailing global, local, business and individual impacts.

All of which is why 2023 has what it takes to lead to an analytic convergence and, inevitably, a head-on collision with a hardening, complexifying reality which demands that there is a lot more scrutiny, knowledge-sharing, and common sense underpinning each decision- making process. Be it in government, organizations, companies, or as individuals all policy is international.

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AUTHORS

Bernardo Pires de Lima

Bernardo Pires de Lima

Associate Fellow - IPRI-NOVA University

Bernardo Pires de Lima  is Political Adviser to the President of the Portuguese Republic. He is also a Research Fellow at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations, IPRI-NOVA, an international politics analyst for the national Portuguese television channel RTP, for radio station Antena 1 and the Portuguese daily Diário de Notícias. He chairs the Luso-American Development Foundation’s (FLAD) Curators Council and has been a Research Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Transatlantic Relations in Washington DC and at the National Defense Institute in Lisbon, Portugal. He has penned eight books on contemporary international politics, the most recent being Portugal na Era dos Homens Fortes: Democracia e Autoritarismo em Tempos de Covid (Portugal in a time of strongmen: Democracy and authoritarianism in a time of Covid), published by Tinta-da- China in September 2020.