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Preliminaries
Geopolitical tensions will only continue to increase in the decades to come in Asia. Beneath the headlines we see day to day, there are trends and structural issues that gently nudge leaders into particular kinds of decisions. What do I mean?
Leaders have to respond to the issues faced by their own countries, and also to respond to international issues, but the former will always outweigh the latter. Leaders have to take care of their own people and their own economies. This makes for decisions with n-limmas, not just di-lemmas, or tri-lemmas.
Foreign and international policies are not just about international cooperation to solve problems together with other countries, but about securing interests in the midst of international competition. Security policies are about meeting goals with the resources on hand. The United States can spend so much on the military because they can afford to.
Countries thus pursue goals with the means they have, usually not wanting to divert too much resources away from their economy, although in wartime, these resources are diverted to produce war equipment.
International relations is also dependent on the security of the governing elite — how secure they feel and the levers they can use to enhance security of their rule. Yes, wars do happen as a result of traditional factors of diplomacy — obtaining resources and ideological conflicts. However another dynamic that leads to wars is the insecurity of the governing elite — the governing elite is always finding ways to shore up their legitimacy and their mandate to govern.
The reason I’m puttin all these preconditions upfront is to describe how international relations should be viewed. For many political leaders around the world, international relations and foreign policy are just extensions of domestic policy.
The reason why we see the tensions during moments of great powers negotiations (such as the time we’re in) is due to how popular perceptions of power might not always reflect genuine national capabilities of power. We see moments of crisis when the governing elite feels insecure about their standing in front of their people, especially at a time when their public might also either have strong feelings of nationalism, or when they are angry at the governing elite over crises.
In times of crises, political leaders might find it expedient to launch limited military attacks to probe the will of an adversary. This is unfortunate, but a short, limited, and hopefully, victorious campaign gives the belligerent population something to feel satisfied about and to rally support around. This might temporarily distract the population while other plans and measures are worked out.
Applying to the Present
That there are geopolitical tensions in 2020 when the pandemic broke out should not have been surprising. Chinese leaders, then American leaders, faced with a pandemic, have had to resort to various measures to distract their public. China’s military pattern of probing (disputed islands with Japan; sending the navy and bombers near Taiwan; harassing fishermen from other countries in the South China Sea) also comes at a time of extreme stress as experienced by the political leaders. Faced with the prospect of losing legitimacy from economic growth due to the pandemic, China’s leaders have to fall back on military skirmishes to demonstrate political resolve to the public — to show that China’s military is capable and ready to carry out national missions.
The future: More Tensions to Come
There will be further geopolitical tensions in the years to come as China’s leaders will have to carry out urgent reforms to their social welfare and fiscal system. China’s rapidly ageing population means that more funds will be drawn from pensions than will contributions can replenish. At some point in the very near future, the pension fund will be depleted. This will mean that the Chinese state will have to make unpopular reforms — raise taxes, lower pensions, raise retirement age, or some combination of the three measures. All of these three are unpopular measures, and will spark criticisms of some kind. At the same time, we know that innovation is a really difficult task. Even in advanced countries that are at the frontier of innovation, a nice bit of technology does not necessarily find its way into corporate practice instantaneously. Instead, there is a process of adoption and change in companies to exploit appropriate technologies and practices. For the ageing population this means that economic growth will slow, and crises will grow in magnitude. There are a few ways for the Communist Party to address this crisis. It can of course, take the political risk and address the problem of pensions. It can also, through a combination of physical and economic pressures, to force countries to surrender their claims of potential resources. Perhaps the Belt and Road Initiative is a plank in this — China’s political, diplomatic and economic influence used wisely today can lock in resources for the next 20–50 years — bringing in funds that can stave off this pension crisis. Perhaps the attempts to change the facts on the ground in the South China Sea is another campaign for the same. Whatever the cause, the urgent pressure of socio-economic crisis makes political leaders insecure, and makes military skirmishes more palatable as a political option to distract the population.
Escalations
Given that we know that the next few decades will see more and more disasters and events happening — probably from climate-related causes, or from techno-economic reasons, the next decades will be difficult for the Communist Party of China. What better way to rally people around the Party than to contribute to military skirmishes? That is not to say that other belligerents around these events will not be at fault; but given the way how the CPC has almost complete control in the media environment around these events, it would be all too easy to constantly paint the other side as the aggressor, while China will always be on the ‘backfoot’, trying to ‘reclaim’ something ‘lost’.
It will be all too easy for any of these military skirmishes to escalate into a full-scale war. A hot-tempered soldier or a local commander takes ‘initiative’ and does something disproportionate to the action done. A spark of overreaction leads leaders down a spiral of escalation, with the publics of the respective country unwilling to take a step down. Political leaders will be at a loss; they will neither be able to take steps to de-escalate tensions for fear of being seen to be weak; on the other hand maintaining military activities could end up in conflict. And so both sides take reluctant steps towards a full-scale war until some other ill-defined conditions.
Not their Fault
Most of the states in Asia derive their legitimacy from economic growth, and nationalism. The evidence we have seen around the world is that governments will be happy to forego economic growth if they can rely on nationalism to sustain their power base and their own grip on power. What this means is that nationalism will continue to be a driving force in how political leaders go about making decisions in their domestic arena and their international arena.
As we enter the next decades and reckon with more crises, expect that countries will increasingly turn to military skirmishes to embellish their credentials.
With China’s political leaders using nationalism as the way to establish their legitimacy, they might also start military skirmishes as a way to distract their population from current problems, or to serve as a legitimating device. The problem comes when they encounter a conflict that they cannot step away from.
What happens then?