Remarks by Dr John Chipman
Director-General and Chief Executive
The International Institute for Strategic Studies, London
Introduction
Welcome to the launch of the IISS Strategic Survey for 2010. Following this statement, we look forward to your questions and among those providing IISS answers will be Alex Nicoll (Editor of Strategic Survey), Adam Ward, Nigel Inkster, Dana Allin, Oksana Antonenko, Rahul Roy Chaudhury and Toby Dodge.
This year we have special essays on US Nuclear Policy, US Defence Policy and Europe’s Evolving Security Architecture. There is also an extensive examination of Latin America’s growing global influence, an essay on the nature of domestic Iranian politics and its impact on nuclear negotiations, an analysis of the competing agendas within the South African ANC, a survey of the competing interests that China seeks to balance in its external relations, an appreciation of the current situation in Russia and several other chapters on regional politics and security. Our Strategic Geography section assesses subjects as diverse as the extent of India’s Naxalite rebellion, Thailand’s political turmoil, the effects of disasters such as the Chilean and Haitian earthquakes, the position of the so-called BASIC countries on climate change, and the diversity of the territories from which al-Qaeda and its franchises operate.
The IISS 2010 Strategic Survey, like its predecessors, is a comprehensive review of world affairs. This edition is launched some two years into the financial crisis and at a time when numerous countries outside the Western world feel increasingly self-confident about their place in international society. As many Western countries cope with their sense of diminished financial power, others in the G20 and various powers in different regions have begun to strike more independent foreign-policy stances. Strategic Survey 2010 argues that changes in economic and financial power are having geopolitical consequences and the current flux of international affairs is not easily manageable through regional or global institutions. Individual countries are inclined now to make very precise calculations of their particular national interests, and judge the virtues of international cooperation very substantially in light of their national prospects. A sense of financial self-reliance is melting into an appreciation of the need for foreign policy individualism: strategic cooperation is therefore now much more ad hoc than institutional. The trends are clear.
The Economic and Political Context of International Affairs Today
The post-2008 economic crisis at first inspired the near-universal appreciation of a global challenge and the need for a response shaped by intergovernmental coordination. By mid-2010, Asians were referring to the recession as a ‘transatlantic’ financial failing and the G20 had to accept that each country would judge for itself whether it would continue with fiscal stimulus or embark on dramatic austerity budgeting. This geoeconomic international trend also had its geostrategic parallel. International cooperation on large strategic projects began to stutter and a number of countries began to take more national approaches to regional and global security challenges. The international operation in Afghanistan was subject to wide-ranging domestic debate on its sustainability, and diplomacy with Iran fractured as Turkey and Brazil developed their approaches that were ultimately ignored by the UN P5. While the immediate risk of protectionism in the economic realm has so far been averted, strategic protectionism appears on the rise as more countries define their national interests more precisely and act accordingly. This tendency is pronounced in Asia, but also evident elsewhere, and rising and what we call ‘super-middle powers’ are asserting their independent interests more strongly.
The rise of strategic self-confidence in India and China continues, though their diffidence about shaping the international strategic agenda as opposed to just defending their core interests slows that rise. Each, however, is more conscious of the strategic ambitions and reach of the other. They are sometimes brought into uncomfortable strategic contact along their own border, in neighbouring countries including Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, and over competitive activities whether in cyberspace or in Africa. The two nevertheless offer comfort to each other on the climate-change agenda and on the need for differentiated international approaches to developing economies. The political and security architecture of Asia will be much shaped by how these two powers act in the region, but also by how a group of Asian middle powers defend their interests.
More generally, Australia, Indonesia and South Korea appear to be interested in forms of middle-power consultation, to ensure that their interest in a multi-polar Asia is preserved. These three countries may in time become a diplomatic force to be reckoned with inside Asian councils and as a protector of a dynamic Asian polity, combining from time to time with Japan and India. Australia, which like all countries in Asia wants the best possible relations with China, conducts its diplomacy in the ‘proximate region’ mindful that it cannot rely only on the US connection to protect its interests and defend its values. Indonesia, boosted by its G20 status and its domestic successes, while faithful to the rigours and protocols of ASEAN diplomacy, does not want to be uniquely constrained by that structure in developing its wider bilateral relations.
South Korea, in particular, seems to be developing a brand of middle-power activism that extends beyond its own region and mirrors the more individualistic and distinctive approach of middle powers elsewhere. Indeed the successful conclusion of a nuclear-power project with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where South Korea defeated competition from the French nuclear industry, in essence makes South Korea a strategic actor in the Middle East.
In Europe, it is Turkey’s diplomatic activism and individualism that has most caught the eye. Ankara has worked hard to improve its relations with all of its neighbours. It has also taken a more independent line in pursuing its interests in the Middle East. It is regarded by many, especially in the Gulf, as an important strategic partner. Relations with Europe and the US have sometimes been strained as a consequence of the occasionally strident attitude that Turkey has taken towards Middle East issues and its souring relations with Israel. That has not much worried Ankara, whose leadership perceive larger advantages in being seen as a sovereign actor than as constrained diplomatically by alliance obligations. Indeed, while Turkey remains very committed to its long-term ambition of EU accession, its almost Gaullist approach to foreign policy might not be quite so easy to blend in to a common European foreign policy, were it ever in a position to do so.
With so many pieces of the international strategic puzzle moving simultaneously, countries small, medium and large are all banking more on their own strategic initiative than on formal alliance or institutional relationships to defend their interests and advance their goals. No one is even pretending to make a bet only on regional or global institutions to do this for them.
The financial crisis has certainly energised national reflexes. With economies and nerves frayed, and the nationalisation of foreign policy all the rage, the appetite for very ambitious collective long-term political-military goals is limited in the West. Liberal interventionism is hardly much trumpeted, but more significantly, security operations generally are going to undergo a much stricter test of necessity if they are to be pursued and if public support for them is to be garnered and sustained.
Afghanistan
It is therefore to be expected that the mission in Afghanistan will undergo more public scrutiny and re-examination. The counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy approved by President Obama was in sum a grand strategy for Afghanistan. The goal was very little short of a secure and stable Afghanistan. As the campaign passes the ten-year mark, public tolerance for the generation-length commitment that political and military leaders in the West have sometimes spoken about is waning. The original strategic goal was to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and prevent its return. War aims traditionally expand, but in Afghanistan they ballooned into a comprehensive strategy to develop and modernise the country and its government. Defeat of the Taliban insurgency was seen as virtually synonymous with the defeat of al-Qaeda, even though much of its organised capacities had been displaced to Pakistan. Many worry that the large presence of foreign troops is what sustains and fuels the Taliban fighters. Reconciling the insurgents to a distant government in Kabul whose legitimacy is questioned and authority weak will be hard. Finding a constitutional dispensation that recognises the very loosely federal reality of Afghan regional fealty and governance structures would require an enormous political effort that included not just all local actors but all regional states. That in time might be necessary. In the interim, and as the military surge reaches its peak and begins to wind down, it is necessary and advisable for outside powers to move to a containment and deterrence policy to deal with the international terrorist threat from the Afghan/Pakistan border regions. At present, the COIN strategy is too ambitious, too removed from the core security goals that need to be met, and too sapping of diplomatic and military energies needed both in the region and elsewhere.
Let us recall what British Prime Minister David Cameron said on 14 June in a statement to the House of Commons: ‘I am advised that the threat from al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and Pakistan has reduced, but I am also advised that if it were not for the current presence of UK and international coalition forces, al-Qaeda would return to Afghanistan and the threat to the UK would rise.’ The first part of this statement is clearly a fact as the specific international threat from Afghanistan itself is insignificant while that from Pakistan is being dealt with partly by the Pakistani military and partly by the decapitating drone strikes against elements of the al-Qaeda leadership and other ‘high value targets’ in Pakistan that are being carried out by international forces. The second part of this statement is more of a judgement. It is not clear why it should be axiomatically obvious that an Afghanistan freed of an international combat presence in the south would be an automatic magnet for al-Qaeda’s concentrated reconstruction. Al-Qaeda leadership, such as it is, may be quite content to stay where it is, while Taliban leaders who remained in Afghanistan might think twice of the advantages to them of inviting al-Qaeda back given the experience of the last decade. At least they could be made to think twice. The problem with judging that al-Qaeda would just return or that the Taliban would turn itself into an international or global threat following a major withdrawal of coalition forces is that this presumes that no other policies would be implemented to contain the terrorist threat from the Afghan/Pakistan border areas or to deter it.
It is the outlines of a containment and deterrence strategy that need now to be more firmly drawn. This is a strategy that at some point will need to be implemented. It will be needed as combat forces withdraw, and is one towards which the international community could move quickly if it was judged that there was sufficient local and regional support for a containment and deterrence approach. Containing the international threat from the Afghan/Pakistan border and deterring the reconstitution of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan would, like all such strategies, have political, diplomatic, economic and military elements. It would require political deals in Afghanistan and among key regional powers including India, Pakistan, Iran and the Central Asian states. It would entail promises of economic and development support to its supporters as well as the threat of military strikes against any re-concentration of international terrorist forces. It too would be a grand strategy of sorts, but unlike the counter-insurgency grand strategy, would not be so dependent on orchestrating near-ideal internal political and developmental outcomes in Afghanistan. Nor would it necessarily require the degradation of Taliban capacities to the point of near surrender, a prospect that is by no means immediate. A containment and deterrence approach would be a strategy that was limited to dealing with the threat as originally defined by the coalition forces that intervened in Afghanistan. Outlining such an approach earlier rather than later would demonstrate that the long-term strategy need not depend on winning an ever-lengthening succession of tactical local battles against an enemy incentivised by the presence of foreign forces. It would replace the impression that an eventual drawdown of combat forces from Afghanistan would constitute victory for the enemy, with the reality of a strategy that could be maintained for a longer period while meeting the principal security goal.
The strategic debate on how to progress in Afghanistan must be focused on:
First, structuring combat forces in Afghanistan to deter and prevent the reconstitution of an organised terrorist threat from within Afghanistan. This would mean their organised redeployment to the north and the arrangement of a status of forces agreement that would allow their intervention in the south against any reconstitution of al-Qaeda jihadist capacities that could pose an international threat. That may include continued precise operations, for example, against elements of the Haqqani network, but would not include attacks on Taliban forces that posed no extra-provincial threat and were open to compromises on the reach of their power and ambitions. The military effort will have to be concentrated on developing within Afghanistan the rapid-reaction capacity to prevent the Taliban cooperating with al-Qaeda in areas that they control, defend against any Taliban effort to extend control to non-Pashtun provinces or Kabul, and to frustrate any efforts by Taliban in Afghanistan from effectively supporting anti-government forces in Pakistan. The direct combat role in Afghanistan is out of proportion to the threat that the Afghan Taliban pose outside Afghanistan.
Second, orchestrating a more con-federal Afghanistan, where the provinces accept that formal rule and external authority resides in the capital and the capital cedes practical sovereignty on most issues to the provinces. A more balanced power-sharing system would invite a less contested political-security space. However paradoxical it may sound, a balance of weakness between the capital and the provinces may be more conducive to Afghan stability. It would allow all the international cooperation in Afghanistan that remains necessary, without investing more power in a central government that cannot deliver. Ultimately, formal constitutional change to acknowledge this reality, and create a structure that simultaneously reflects Afghan provincial primacy while supporting the strong sense of Afghan nationhood, is vitally necessary. The political dispensation must in effect move to a situation where the provinces have control of their destiny but pretend to be ruled by the centre, and the centre retains power over broad international and financial policy but does not seek to interfere in most areas of provincial government.
Third, the new strategy should accept that the Afghan National Army will itself need to have a con-federal character to it. Local forces with genuine local roots willing and able to provide security could be badged ANA and have a stronger chance of being successful. General Petreus has discussed with President Karzai the creation of uniformed local security forces already. Giving national recognition to them is a way of demonstrating that the central government respects localism and contributes to the respect for regional variations by a distant central authority that is necessary.
Fourth, the US and others will have to further deepen the engagement with Pakistan and convince Islamabad that contact with a wide variety of actors in Afghanistan is necessary to create a more sustainable national order. Managing Indian and Pakistani strategic goals in the country needs to be an important priority. A tripartite dialogue between Afghanistan, India and Pakistan is desirable; not least to diminish risks that enduring conflict could escalate to civil-war proportions. Central Asian states, Russia and Iran will have competing concerns in Afghanistan that will have to be reconciled, but a less ambitious coalition military posture in Afghanistan should be used to make this possible.
Conclusion
Strategic Survey 2010 does not seek to lay out a new comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan. It does however argue that for Western states to be pinned down militarily and psychologically in Afghanistan will not be in the service of their wider political and security interests. The challenge of Afghanistan must be viewed and addressed in proportion to the other threats to international security and the other requirements for foreign-policy investment. With economic, financial and diplomatic activity moving at such a pace and with such varied outcomes internationally, military operations in general have to be all the more carefully considered. Precision and adaptability will be essential watchwords. For heavy, large, military deployment, the longue durée will be seen as an attitude for other times, other centuries.
The Afghan campaign has involved not just mission creep but mission multiplication; narrowing the political-military engagement to core goals as described will allow for proper attention to be paid to other areas posing international terrorist risks, and indeed to other matters affecting international security.
