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Don’t Miss the Bus – Six Big Things for Defence Forces to Think About
The battle between democracy and authoritarianism is a driver of insecurity. It appears that, for the moment, the authoritarians are winning, at least because they are less constrained in their techniques.
The Western failure in Afghanistan, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the disappointment of both African and UN-led peacekeeping efforts in Democratic Republic of the Congo, seemingly endless wars in Sudan and across the Sahel, ratcheting tensions across the Taiwan Strait, the brutal war in Gaza – on both sides of Israel’s border – and the threat of a second northern front with Lebanon, the constant violence in the Red Sea…
The list of security crises is growing at an exponential and apparently unstoppable rate. This helps to explain the clamour in many countries for a significant increase in defence allocation and, in some – the UK and South Africa, for instance – urgent defence reviews.
The answer commonly given to meeting these challenges is that of money – or more money.
In the 32-member Nato alliance, the focus is on increasing defence expenditure to the guideline of 2% of gross domestic product. The average for the decade up to 2021 was 1.7% (excluding the United States) and a whole percentage point more including the United States, an indication of just who (the US taxpayer, in this instance) was bearing the load for European security.
The UK, US and Greece are the only countries to have met Nato’s 2% target every year for the past nine years, though there has been some rise since the Russian invasion of 2022, not least among the Baltic states that border on Russia.
South Africa is not immune to the ‘more money’ argument for equipment and operations, though this is usually set against competing social demands and about the way the defence force cuts its own budget cake – and the related failure to rid its inflated ranks of the infirm and aged.
Still, more radical responses have been called for, especially in the wake of the threat posed by Russia to Europe and the formation of a North Korean-Chinese-Russian axis.
Richard Shirreff, a retired British general, whose last job was as the deputy commander of Nato’s military wing, says that the UK should be looking to spend a minimum of 3% of GDP rather than achieve 2.5% from its current level of 2.3%.
But to do so, not only does “Britain need a massive splurge” of cash and a fundamental change in mindset, it needs, he says, to “look at the output you get from that and that is going to require a fundamental reappraisal of the way defence does it business, procures its weaponry… a mobilisation of defence industries, but above all… a very close analysis of what is wrong, where are the gaps, set against the requirements of 21st-century conflict and the lessons of what we are seeing in Ukraine in terms of the need for mass and presence. And then you have got to try to work out the sums and match the requirement to what is available”.
South Africa’s last defence review was finalised in 2015. It bizarrely (but for politically understandable reasons) did not mention its BRICS ally Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, and was written before the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, and the rash of military coups in parts of Africa. It predates, too, the growing role of Artificial Intelligence and autonomous capabilities, not least in drones, preferring to see defence in terms of personnel and materiel.
‘The Ostrich Scenario’
Of its three optimistic, middle-road and pessimistic scenarios – termed ‘Africa Rising’, ‘Maintaining the Status Quo’, and ‘A Path of Regression’ – the last-named is the closest to that which has come to pass. In this scenario, “The international system is a turbulent and competitive multi-polar system with rising economic and military tension between strong powers.”
In Africa, as “countries try to cope with rapidly increasing populations and youth bulge, urbanisation and mega-cities, they spend less on maintaining and expanding their commercial and industrial infrastructure – resulting in the deterioration of much of Africa’s economic infrastructure”.
It concludes: “A threat to South Africa from external sources beyond Africa constitutes an extreme event that implies major power involvement. Due to the asymmetry this entails, the extreme unlikelihood of such an event and the limited resources available to the SANDF, the SANDF will not specifically make provision for such a threat.”
This has effectively turned out to be the “Ostrich Scenario”.
Six big drivers
Today, any defence review worthy of its title should recognise at the outset the existence of six big drivers of insecurity facing policymakers: division and deglobalisation; demographics; the contest between democracy and authoritarianism; the dangers of confirmation bias; the dysfunction of the multilateral system and the old, related tools of donor aid and diplomacy; and defence disinvestment.
The first of these concerns the return of geopolitical division, both accelerating deglobalisation and localisation. This is a reflection of the inward turn of key globalisers, not least the United States and China, but also the slowing pace of Chinese-led growth, itself a function of the increased maturity of the Chinese market as well as Xi’s own imprint.
Ukraine has been a manifestation of this global division, and more.
The unrestrained Russian invasion of a sovereign state in 2022 reflects also the failure of Western deterrence, itself undermined by a cascading series of events, including the failure to respond both timeously and decisively to Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the seizure of the Donbas and Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
The robust Russian assistance to the murderous Assad regime in Syria followed, ramping up substantially with the deployment of Russian forces from November 2015. The shame of the Western retreat from Afghanistan in August 2021 could additionally only have made an impression on President Vladimir Putin’s calculus.
It would not be unreasonable of Putin to see the West as politically emasculated and flaky in its commitment to its allies.
Clear signalling
But Putin had much earlier staked out his intent, and the West missed – deliberately or not – his clear signalling. At the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, the Russian president accused the United States of creating a unipolar world “in which there is one master, one sovereign”. The Russian strongman added, “At the end of the day, this is pernicious”.
Putin’s speech should have come as a shock, especially to those who had invested substantial effort in improving the relationship with Russia to incorporate it within a post-Cold War Europe. Subsequent events should also not have come as a surprise since this pattern was made clear in Munich in 2007.
What is more surprising is how the US and Europe, despite Putin’s obvious warning in Munich and Russia’s actions over the subsequent 17 years, have nonetheless clung to the notion that they might somehow work together with Russia on a strategic level.
Western society has misjudged Putin and Russia and continues to do so, informed by its own values and needs more than strategic realities.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi was the Commander in Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces until his firing by President Volodymyr Zelensky in February 2024. Someone had to take the blame for the failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive of June 2023. Now Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, Zaluzhnyi says the problem for the West is that, when the war started in 2014, the West was geared to managing a war against partisans, as in Afghanistan, not concentrated conventional armies.
This has shaped a belief among populations that wars are far away fought by someone else, and has impacted not only the development of weapon types but also the responsiveness of systems of management. Zaluzhnyi was admired for his devolution of authority to lower levels of command, the antithesis of the Soviet way of thinking.
Weaponising challenges
After February 2022, with clear lines drawn, there is a greater likelihood of the weaponisation of pre-existing challenges, not least migration from Syria along with North Africa, parts of the Horn and the Sahel. With expanding Russian influence in these regions with putschist regimes in Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea.
Unchecked or encouraged migration, of course, relates to the second cluster – that of demographics, which poses a threat in several respects. Unchecked population growth is the most obvious dimension. This especially affects Africa, where population numbers are expected to double to 2.5 billion over the next 25 years, minimising the impact of any economic growth.
There is thus more to demographics than numbers alone. It also refers to the threat posed to social cohesion by expectations (or not) of economic wellbeing. More than two-thirds of millennials in Britain surveyed believed, for example, that their generation will be ‘worse off than their parents’, blaming the lack of job opportunities, financial insecurity and rising house prices as the top three factors that will ensure a bleaker future.
This is compounded by an ageing population, where those employed are expected to work for longer, but are doing so not only for their children’s future but also for the wellbeing of parents who are expected to live longer. The consequent stress of ageing on healthcare and financial systems is also moot.
And there is a further demographic threat in the willingness of fighting-age generations to do just that: fight. Recruitment has become a major problem in some armies, amplified by the need for more highly skilled and especially tech-savvy recruits to operate modern weapons systems. This explains the calls in some countries, the UK for example, for the reintroduction of conscription.
Confirmation bias
The third danger is that of confirmation bias; a tendency of people to favour information that confirms or strengthens their beliefs or values. In strategic military terms, this can be equated with preferring to fight the last war, or the war for which you are equipped. Even so, it is crucial not to take the wrong lessons out of past wars just as it is imperative not to imagine unlikely future ones for reasons of institutional interest or inertia.
For example, what is the correct lesson from Afghanistan?
Is it that this war was unwinnable from the outset (indubitably an easy excuse, avoiding the spotlight of responsibility); or that it could have been won in the interests of the majority of Afghans (especially Afghan women) but that really bad strategic mistakes were made, not least the refusal to make peace with the Taliban after Bonn in 2002, or in the decision to go to Helmand and thereby stir up a hornet’s nest, or the failure to leave a small force in place a la South Korea that would act as a deterrent towards the Taliban, all the while boosting the resolve of the Kabul government?
Such happens when hubris is substituted for intelligence and the posing of difficult questions, and politicians do not seek and take heed of sound if dissenting advice.
This has long been an issue. Count Karl Max Lichnowsky served as the German ambassador to Britain from 1912 to 1914. He tried to warn Berlin about the British willingness to fight in the event of a European conflict, advice that was ignored. His memoirs, My Mission to London 1912-1914, detailed his efforts to prevent the war, offering a critical view of German foreign policy. But rather than vindicating him, it only further cemented his controversial status in Germany.
The same questions of prejudice might be asked about South Africa’s mission to the Congo, which is heading for an ignominious failure as Rwandan-backed rebel forces (or Rwandese forces themselves, it is deliberately unclear) run circles around the peacekeepers, and with increasing costs in South African blood and treasure.
Similar queries should be posed about the failure of Ukraine’s 2023 counter-offensive with much-vaunted Western-trained troops. Was this because it went too early or too late, giving the Russians more time to prepare their defensive lines?
Confirmation bias is also present in critical procurement decisions. The UK’s decision to order two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers in an $8-billion contract in 2008 is a case in point, at a time when the utility of the carrier had arguably already peaked. Not only are these 65,000-tonne ships probably indefensible in combat operations against a major power, and thus have to stand a long way off to ensure their own safety, but the Navy possesses insufficient aircraft for both to be operated simultaneously.
Presumably not for nothing were the carriers assembled in Rosyth, bordering on the constituency of Gordon Brown who, at the time of the signing of the procurement, was the British prime minister.
There is a lot of inertia, political and otherwise, in equipment decisions, not least given the long lead times and vast costs involved. Ukraine and AI may together be answering some of these big questions in ways beyond the immediate interests and extant R&D capability of the arms industry.
Democracy vs authoritarianism
The battle between democracy and authoritarianism is another driver of insecurity. It appears that, for the moment, the authoritarians are winning, at least because they are less constrained in their techniques.
As Freedom House reported in its 2024 review, global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year in 2023. A “destructive race to the bottom” with power grabs (including coups), rigged elections and entrenched authoritarianism was more prevalent in Africa, Freedom House notes, than in other regions, leading to a “downward spiral of authoritarian abuses”.
This matters to Africans in at least two respects: African democracies routinely economically outperform more authoritarian states in addition to their relative human rights and political performance. Moreover, most Africans, probably understandably, prefer democracy to the alternative – two-thirds to one-third, at last count.
The impact of a Russian victory in Ukraine would draw, once more, an iron curtain across Europe. But Africa is unlikely to remain immune, not least democratic Africa, whether this be in terms of the impact on food prices for those not aligned with Russia or support for authoritarian tendencies.
A further consequence of a more divided world, especially one concerned with a green energy transition, is the replacement of concerns about democracy and human rights (at least by the West) by access to mineral resources. This plays out, for instance, in the relatively free hand given to the Rwandans in eastern Congo, in part because of the Rwandans’ related access to Congolese coltan, and continued donor support.
The paradox is that this drives the Congolese in Kinshasa into the hands of the West’s geopolitical rivals. No fewer than 15 of 19 cobalt mines in Congo are owned by China. It also plays out in other markets, not least in lithium-rich Zimbabwe and everything-rich Angola.
The dysfunction of multilateral structures has been clear for much of the post-Cold War period. Just how dysfunctional has recently once more been confirmed not just by the general ineffectiveness of UN peacekeeping missions, or of the mismatch between multilateral promises and delivery. It is when Russia, as the chair of the UN Security Council of which it is a permanent member and a signatory to the UN Human Rights Charter bombs a children’s hospital without any moral compunction to justify its actions, as it did on 8 July 2024 at Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv.
The inability of outsiders to positively influence regime trajectory relates to this dimension. In part, this is because the traditional tool of donor aid has been so badly directed, spread thin in those countries (and in sectors) which could have used it well (because they were not a problem, per se) and spent badly on those countries which have squandered these resources (because the donors recognised in giving it that they would).
The corollary to donor aid – diplomacy – has also generally been ineffective, micro-managed by the capitals in the interests of their domestic constituencies rather than the target country itself.
This does not make diplomacy redundant; indeed, its contemporary failings and lack of integration with military and other tools stress just how important it is. In an era where data is abundant, intelligence is scarce. The proliferation of information sources and actors confuses this environment, placing a premium on the role of clear, strategic thinkers who can translate data into actionable intelligence.
Diplomacy can make things better and aims clearer, but its absence can make things a lot worse. Just think of the impact of Western forces reaching out to their Russian counterparts over Afghanistan circa 2001. Not only might they have discovered they were attempting many of the same things at which the Russians failed, but the strategic implications of reaching out may have derived other benefits, not least improved friendships and understanding.
Defence disinvestment
The last big challenge is the tendency towards disinvestment in defence, or the substitution of the hard, grinding stuff of training and logistics by one Wunderwaffe or another, which it is believed can instantly turn the tide of war. No such thing exists and if they did, both sides would be likely to have access to these bits of technology. This includes cyberwarfare.
The key lesson of Ukraine is that conventional war is back, reinforcing the need for more empirical science and less art in the development and application of strategy.
Put simply, it’s about numbers of personnel, the extent of reserves of both supplies and people, and the logistics and system capabilities required to get them to and sustain them on the battlefield. Russia has so far won this battle, not least since it seems much more willing to lose people than does Ukraine, with more than 560,000 Russian casualties at last count.
“For Russians, brought up on the bloodshed of the Patriotic War in its 27 million Soviet military and civilian deaths, half a million casualties probably seems little more than a skirmish,” says one Nato officer.
“We forget at our peril that the Soviets liquidated the same number as their current losses in Ukraine of their own POWs and alleged deserters and cowards in the Second World War,” he added, “which provides some grim perspective.”
Moscow has also, by activating its own axis, obtained at least one million rounds of heavy artillery from North Korea since August 2023, and 300,000 from Iran in 2023. Russia itself is producing about 250,000 artillery shells per month, or three million annually. The US and Europe together have a capacity to produce about 1.2 million shells annually, while the US has set itself a goal to produce 100,000 rounds of artillery a month by the end of 2025.
Russia is reported to be running artillery factories 24/7 on rotating 12-hour shifts, with an estimated 3.5 million Russians now working in the sector, up from around 2-2.5 million before the war.
There are fewer limits to what authoritarians might do to prevail, at home and abroad.
An effective response demands recalibrating defence, and the public to defence. There has to be a security narrative which resonates across generations in convincing sceptics that there is something worth fighting for. And it will have to improve the sanctions regime to isolate malign actors, state and non-state, without which the incentive and means to remain in power remain unchecked.
Leadership
Of course, there are some constants. Speed and mass are of the essence, of which Ukraine again reminds. And amid all of this change, there is a need for leadership that is up to the task.
In 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said of Adolf Hitler in April 1940 that the German Führer had “missed the bus” by delaying his start to the war.
“Whatever reason Hitler had for not making an immediate endeavour to overwhelm us, one thing is certain – he has missed the bus,” declared the prime minister addressing the annual conference of the Conservative Party.
“Those seven months’ delay have enabled us,” said Chamberlain, “to remove weaknesses and so enormously add to our fighting strength that the future can be faced with a calm mind.”
General Zahulznyi argues that, like Chamberlain with Hitler, the West should have responded to Putin’s speech in Munich. But this moment has not, he says, passed entirely. “We still have a chance to deter the carnage of World War 2, to avoid 60 million deaths. This war is just starting.”
The phrase ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ is found in the Satires, the work of the Roman poet Juvenal. Translated as, ‘Who will guard the guards themselves?’ it is generally used to warn against the costs of unrestrained governance; of the need for a moral component to government when the enforcers (custodes) are corruptible.
This control, in a modern context, is imperative to avoid the sort of groupthink and hubris that led to the Afghan and Iraqi fiascos. But, equally, it might be asked, who will protect the protectors in the battle for resources so that they can do their job properly?
This article originally appeared on the Daily Maverick
Photo: Wikimedia
