Editor’s Note
This is Part II of the article “Security Challenges: India In A Multipolar World“. In this part, the article continues to analyze the causes of violence in the world and presents its solutions to reform the UN. It uses the existing organization of the IMF to arrive at a remodelled UN.
A World In Turmoil
As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, mankind is facing the spectre of constant conflicts in some or other corner of the world. The optimism of 1990 about a globalised and peaceful world has vaporised. Think tanks worldwide and strategic analysts have been found wanting in ushering in peace in a multipolar world.
Ukraine war has been going on for the last two years, and Israel’s Hamas campaign has been on for over nine months. A rag-tag bunch like Houthi rebels in Yemen regularly target commercial shipping in international waters. Iran-Pakistan and Israel-Iran exchange missile salvos. China blatantly threatens Taiwan and rides roughshod on its neighbours in the South China Sea. The world, indeed, seems to be spinning out of control. The elephant in the room is the missing United Nations in all this turmoil.
Fundamentally, the United Nations Organisation was formed to deal with issues of the 20th century. It is hopelessly out of tune with the world power realities of the 21st century. In the last century, mankind has made tremendous technological progress. As a result, today’s world is economically, politically and militarily interdependent. But, the building blocks of the international state system, nation-states, are a relic of 19th-century Europe. This mismatch between institutions and changed world power balance, on one hand, and technology-driven integration versus narrow nationalism is at the heart of global instability and conflict.
The world prematurely celebrated the arrival of a multipolar world at the turn of the century. The end of the Superpower domination and the ‘Balance of Terror’ removed the restraints on middle powers, who went on to pursue the pre-1914 world politics of carving out spheres of influence. Both the Ukraine war and Hamas’ attack on Israel in 2023 were part of this.
The West, led by NATO, pressed for Eastward expansion, unmindful and in violation of Russia’s pledge. Russia went on to try to stem this but went in for a maximalist strategy rather than a limited one of capturing Russian-predominant Eastern Ukraine. Since the task of overthrowing the regime in Ukraine was beyond its means, the conflict resulted in a stalemate.
In the case of Iranian proxy Hamas’s attack on Israel, it is difficult to see the strategic rationale. Did the Hamas or its Iranian backers expect this to destroy Israel? Instead, a vengeful Israel is now determined to decimate Palestinians in Gaza. While Hamas was over-ambitious in its attack, Israel is equally wrong in expecting a decimation of Gaza!
Much of the turmoil in the Middle East can be attributed to the 1979 Iranian revolution. The Islamic Republic established by Ayatollah Khomeini has ‘export of revolution’ as its national goal – akin to Mao’s strategy of supporting peasants’ revolutions the world over. Support to Palestinians or Syrian rebels and Hezbollah in Lebanon is its manifestation. Iran wants to be the leader of the Islamic world. It is a thoroughly unrealistic goal, as Arabs do not accept Shia Iran. The Sunni-Shia divide is as deep and as potent as the one between Islam and the rest.
Strategic goals chosen beyond capabilities are the reason for the stalemate in the Middle East and on the Russo-Ukraine front.
The current instability in the world is a result of long-term systemic and socio-political problems. Unfortunately, most think tanks the world over start with the notion of wanting to ‘solve’ the problem even before understanding it. Solution-oriented rather than understanding-oriented research is the bane and reason for the world’s inability to find solutions. One has first to know before one can act.
Another significant factor contributing to the world’s instability is the realm of military technology. The proliferation of offensive weapons such as drones and rockets, which are both inexpensive and readily available, has created a severe imbalance. The defensive shield against these weapons, on the other hand, is not only costly but also technologically more challenging. This shift in the military balance has decisively favoured offensive weapons over defensive ones, underscoring the gravity of the situation.
It is not to deny that in the earlier two-powers dominated world – ‘small wars’ were fought from Korea to Vietnam to the Middle East and even our region. But these were also proxy wars between the two superpowers, and it was they who controlled the intensity and spread. The overarching world power architecture of nuclear deterrence limited the conflicts and injected a degree of restraint. After 1992, the Soviet Union was deposed, and the two-powers equation, multipolarity, emerged as the new reality. While this has indeed given greater freedom to more countries to exercise their power, it has also destabilized the world order.
Many countries see this situation as an opportunity to correct historical wrongs. This is indeed a necessary correction. But leaders the world over must pause and ensure that revivalism does not degenerate into revanchism. Realism dictates that it is not always possible to turn back the clock of history.
Another notable feature of the 21st century has been the advance of erstwhile ‘developing countries’ in developing military technology. From what is available in the public domain, it was countries like Iran and Turkey that were supplying weapons to both parties in the Ukraine conflict. The rise of Hamas, or Houthi rebels in Yemen, is in no small measure accreditable to Iranian progress in making modern weapons. India, a long-time importer of weapons, has begun to supply missiles to some countries. This change has enabled many countries to unshackle themselves from Western domination.
Another factor, seldom even mentioned in the elite Western media, from the New York Times to the London Times to La Monde et al., is the impact of shifting demographic balance on internal and external policies of the nations in the so-called developed world. The US and European politics have taken a decisive rightward turn due to fear of erstwhile minorities/immigrants taking over state power. Brexit was a result of xenophobia in the UK. Western media is silent on obnoxious measures like deporting illegal migrants to Rwanda by the UK and similar measures in the US.
In the 1960s, and even later, many scholars of international relations pinned their hopes on increasing free world trade to usher in global peace. Economic linkages were thought to promote peace. Many statesmen, notably President John F Kennedy, in collaboration with economist John Kenneth Galbraith, had strived to increase world trade as an anti-dote to international conflicts. The idea was that once world trade flourishes, all countries will have an economic stake in world peace. WTO, or the World Trade Organisation, evolved out of the GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariff) and the Kennedy Round of 1962. Unfortunately for the world, peace born out of economic interests got sabotaged due to a watered-down WTO charter that left loopholes for nations to take measures to protect ‘national security’ and disregard the philosophy of free trade. The recent imposition of economic sanctions by the G-7 on Russia and Iran has sounded the death knell on WTO, much like the UN.
The greatest danger the world faces today is the possible ‘USE’ of nuclear weapons either in the Middle East or in Ukraine. True, the use of nukes in both these cases would be confined to tactical or small-yield nuclear weapons, and one does not envisage a doomsday scenario like a nuclear war between major powers. But once the taboo on nuclear weapons use, in force since 1945, is broken, we are looking at nuclear anarchy in the world. If this happens, many other regions that have nuclear-armed states may follow suit.
It would be akin to a slow death for the world as we know it. This danger is real and cannot be wished away.
Back to Basics: Man, the State, and the State System
As an observer of world events and a military historian, this author feels that the fault lies in our lack of understanding of the roots of conflicts. Strategic studies research is more focussed on solutions rather than grasping the fundamentals. This is like hoping to create new technology without understanding fundamental sciences. Applied research has severe limitations without the basic understanding of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of human conflicts.
Man is a social animal and lives in groups. As time passed, tribes gave way to kingdoms, empires and republics. But, at the base was a human being. States are thus a social organisation that exhibit all the traits of humans. Since recorded and unrecorded history, human beings have been killing each other due to greed, jealousy, fear, for revenge, as a profession or simply as a sport. Some socio-biologists believe it to be in our genes. Political and Social scientists attribute it to existing political and social organisations. The Marxists attribute violence to the existing relationship between production and consumption, which is inequitable. System theorists blame it on the anarchy prevalent at the international state system level. Over 2000 years ago, Indian thinker Chanakya wrote about it in Artha Shastra as well as Rousseau in the modern era.
An Interstate conflict can be attributed to any or all of these factors in various permutations and combinations. Each of these factors that causes conflict has its own merit and logic in explanatory terms. The history of various conflicts corroborates this relationship. Thus, to understand any given conflict, there is no escape from giving due consideration to all these aspects: history, social organisations, geography, philosophy, and culture.
Even when factors responsible for a conflict have been identified, there is no way to know the exact gradation in importance in a given situation. This uncertainty underscores the need for further research and exploration. There is also no guarantee that these conclusions are replicable and help us understand a similar situation.
If we could identify and eliminate all these factors that cause conflict, we could usher in the ideal of a peaceful world. However, this is virtually impossible, and sages and prophets have been trying for thousands of years and have failed. The truth or conclusion emerging from the above discussion is that international conflict is with us to stay for the foreseeable future.
As our discussion has shown, the complete elimination of conflict is an unrealistic goal. Instead, we should focus on a more practical and achievable aim: conflict control and management. This shift from idealism to realism is not a compromise, but a strategic decision based on the moral and ethical superiority of this approach. By aiming for a partial solution, we increase our chances of success. The key is to establish systems and rules that can effectively contain and reduce the impact of conflicts.
Now is the Time for Action
The two institutions that can be modified for conflict management are the UN and the WTO. While the first deals with the political issue of the use of force and its limitations, the latter deals with the economic causes that underlie many global conflicts.
The organisation of UN itself was based on realism as it created the Security Council and in effect created two classes of states, ordinary and super powers. To further cement this divide, veto power was given to permeant members. Veto power to permanent members made sense in the world power balance of 1945-46. In 2024, many of the so-called great powers are today a shadow of their former self. Countries like UK or France are no longer ‘great’. In the multipolar world rising powers like Japan, Germany, India, Brazil, South Africa and groupings like the Arab League, African Union and ASEAN, need representation.
In place of veto power, a system of ‘graded’ vote sharing, practised in IMF, must be introduced. Thus, the US, the predominant military and economic power, may allot X votes. China, the No. 2 world power, could be allotted x-1 votes. A complex matrix of the world power index can be created for this purpose. Such reformed and rejuvenated Security Council should then make decisions based on a 2/3 majority vote on issues of war and peace. These decisions should then be mandatory and binding on all members. It will help consensus building and aid conflict management.
A similar mechanism should be implemented for the functioning of WTO and economic dispute resolution.
It indeed violates the idealist fiction of ‘sovereign equality of nations.’ But realism dictates that equating a city-state like Singapore with, say, an economic giant like China is fanciful. The UN General Assembly should also have graded membership and similar discriminatory voting powers.
Reform of these two key institutions is the first step to bring in conflict control and management in a multi polar world. It is crucial that we learn from the past, particularly the horrors of World War I when conflict went out of hand with no one to stop it, to prevent its repetition.
Conclusion
Indian security challenges are mainly domestic in nature and require ideologies to be reconciled to find a compromise and consensus. Cultural nationalists must accept the present divisions, and so-called integrationists must acknowledge that India is a civilizational state with a living tradition going back 5000 years. It is difficult but not impossible.
On the global stage, reform of the UN and WTO is the answer. Parallel structures like the G7, G20, BRICKS, etc., have mushroomed precisely due to the failure of the UN system. The bottom line is that if the world has to survive multiple crises, there is no shortcut to states shedding a part of their sovereignty to Global organisations.
None of the suggestions are even remotely a panacea. It will take work to flesh out a workable solution. This paper is only meant as a catalyst to promote fresh thinking on the world’s burning issues.
Col. Anil Athale, Ph D (Retd), (The author is a military historian.)
