Defence and Security in the 21st Century

Dr Martin Edmonds
Professorial Fellow and Director, Centre for Defence and International Security Studies, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

Published in Monograph No. 9, Diplomats and Defenders, February 1997


PREAMBLE

Among defence and strategic analysts, 1989 is seen as a watershed. It was the year that effectively marked the end of the Cold War and the bipolar military confrontation that dominated defence and strategic planning, not merely among the superpowers, but equally among their allies and non-aligned states throughout the world. But 1989 did more than mark the end of one era. It has heralded a new problem, one which remains with defence planners today and is far from being satisfactorily resolved. This problem combines the questions around the nature of future defence and security, and the utility of military force in the present world that is permeated by the rapid development of 'information technology'.

To some extent, defence planners and analysts are not equipped to address these problems. The premise of their past work – an imminent threat of a major conventional attack, possibly escalating to limited nuclear exchange between two heavily equipped and standing military alliances – no longer holds true. Indeed, when Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, remarked in 1985, that he was going to cause confusion within the ranks of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) because he would remove the threat, he could never have anticipated how prescient he was.

The year 1989 marks the beginning of a new approach to defence and security planning in a way that has been recognised by the South African Defence Review Working Group. The classical threat-based approach to defence and security planning no longer exclusively applies.1 New approaches have had to be developed.

The certainties of the Cold War enabled previous planners to focus their strategic and defence attention and to calculate, with some degree of confidence, the risks involved and the outcomes of different courses of action. Force postures and structures could be assembled and the personnel, equipment and infrastructures acquired, trained and exercised. Today, the calculation of risk has been substituted by uncertainty, with the prospects of major military confrontation and potential nuclear annihilation receding and the world moving inexorably to one that is more fragmented, volatile and unpredictable. The stakes, in other words, have changed: national survival is no longer immediately at risk. Instead, widely defined national and international interests have become vulnerable, with no clear indication of how these can best be protected.

The post-1989 world might arguably be characterised as one in which the question of 'against' what military force is designed to be, has been replaced with one which asks 'for' what military force is designed to be. In accepting this change in the approach to defence planning, governments have had to recognise that the concept of national security itself has been transmogrified: the paramountcy of territorial integrity and military protection of land boundaries, territorial waters and air space has been overtaken by the recognition of the extent of international interdependence and the concept of security's wider economic, social and political dimensions.2 Perhaps one of the most potent reflections of this change, and one that contrasts with the Cold War era, has been a restoration of a belief in the utility of the United Nations (UN) and the 'internationalisation' of world security issues.

CHANGING APPROACHES TO SECURITY

It is one thing to recognise that the world has changed and that past assumptions about national and international security no longer apply. It is another to project what states, governments, and defence planners might, or should do in the face of a world that is difficult to predict and where different trends point in different directions. Indeed, it would be both fair and accurate to argue that the only thing about which any prediction could safely be made, is that the world is an unpredictable place. To plan national defence forces on the premise that some future event or scenario will happen, or that the probabilities of it happening are high, would neither be a prudent course of action, nor a cost-effective one.

To accommodate this problem, it is argued in this monograph that it would be helpful to return to basic principles and in so doing to try and shed the ontological constraints of earlier strategic thinking and the military accoutrements of Cold War defence establishments. To some extent, all states have been engaged in this essentially cerebral activity since 1989 and there is much evidence of some innovative thinking in this respect. The United States, for example, after an initial response to the collapse of the former Soviet Union, embarked on a national defence review which substantially altered its approach to where, when and why US military forces might be used.3 More recently, the Department of Defense has thoroughly considered the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) in the light of new information technologies, and has begun to draw interesting conclusions on how the US military force will be employed in the future. Likewise, the United Kingdom reassessed its position within the framework of its 'Options for Change' exercise, and made several assumptions about where and when British forces might be employed and the kinds of force structures needed to meet those objectives.4 Similar reassessments were made elsewhere, especially among the aligned states within the bipolar divide.

These reappraisals focused on military priorities and, in their own way, were quite radical – at least as far as their impact on their defence establishments was concerned. However, they have tended to build on the past, and adjust what they already have, rather than to go back to fundamentals. Thus, the US sees the protection of its national interests in terms of promoting international regional stability through the use of conventional interventionary forces and precision weapons, probably in alliance with other states and under international or UN auspices. Britain, France and, to some degree, the Russian Federation have adopted a similar posture. Still unclear, however, is what constitutes international regional stability and what is seen as a threat.

The high cost of defence during the Cold War, and undoubtedly the underlying reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union, have brought home the realisation that military security at the cost of economic stability, if not growth, hardly meets the security criteria. The impressive performance of economies, such as those of Japan, Germany and more recently the states in the Asia-Pacific region, have been closely linked to the absence of a major defence burden in these countries. Although the jury is still out on the extent to which high defence spending is, or has been, an impediment to economic growth, it is certainly the perception among large numbers of people that this is not only the case, but also that persistently high levels of defence spending have carried an unacceptable opportunity cost in terms of social welfare, educational standards, lack of investment, inadequate infrastructure, health provision, and so on. When the opportunity cost is believed to be too great, domestic stability and therefore national security comes under threat, with the consequence that the definition of security has to be widened and made more responsive to threats other than purely military ones.

This argument has been taken a stage further inasmuch as states, in their international relations and foreign policies, should pay greater attention to economic, political and social threats than to strictly military ones. At one level, it is suggested that foreign international aid might be a more fruitful source of future security in the longer term than, for instance, the transfer of military equipment. At another, inward investment and building interdependent economic links with other states might help towards deterring future conflict, as all parties would stand collectively to lose more than they would gain, in line with the logic first advocated by Ivan Bloch in the earlier part of the Century.

There are a number of issues with the potential to threaten the security of states and their peoples that transcend national boundaries. Foremost among these, is the international environment that, according to scientists, is progressively degraded and destroyed. Predictions are that solutions, if there are any, would require widespread international co-operation and a pooling of resources, not confrontation. Furthermore, the implications of these environmental problems and their knock-on effects for particular states, can well be a cause of conflict, leading to full-scale war. It is therefore in the interests of all states to pre-empt that eventuality and to act in concert, sooner rather than later.

The rapid growth of information technology and the further extension of what McLuhan referred to as the "Global Village" has meant that relatively little that happens throughout the world can be shielded from the gaze of the international audience any longer. More significantly, developments anywhere in the world can be witnessed in real time, as a result of the increased power and reach of the international media. Indeed, political leaders and governments now use the media as a major source of intelligence in addition to their dedicated intelligence services. The global media has managed to highlight and expose the infringements on human liberties throughout the world, from East Timor to Bosnia and Rwanda, to Palestine and Columbia. Humanitarian concerns and issues of social justice have become a cause of deep concern among peoples and states. Such treatment of human beings is not new, but it is only recently that it has received such wide exposure. The UN Charter on Human Rights alone places a moral obligation on signatories not to stand idly by, even though interference in the domestic affairs of other states is a precarious path to follow.

Other considerations that transcend purely national interests and require international responses, include the wider issue of population growth and immigration, disease, international crime and illegal narcotic dealings, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction – chemical, nuclear and biological plus their delivery systems – and depleted natural resources. Each brings its own set of attendant problems, most of which have the potential to destabilise states and regions. None is more threatening than another; each brings its unique set of problems. Some can be confined on a national basis, others, less so. It is the opinion of some analysts that these and other global 'threats' require a 'new thinking' on security, premised on greater mutual trust between states and peoples. Others go further, recognising that their prescriptions may well bring populations into direct confrontation with their governments. They argue that the initiative for future security should be seized by the people – "détente from below" – reaching out to co-operate with one another across political divides, and resisting the encroachments of their military establishments.5

RETURN TO BASICS

It is manifestly clear that the world is a changed place since the days of the Cold War. It is equally clear that the focus of attention, as far as security is concerned, has turned away from the dominant question of the deterrence of and defence against a massive and sophisticated attack from an ideologically committed opponent to a multifaceted array of global problems. The likelihood that any or all of these will have an impact on the national interests of any one state, or of assessing how that impact may manifest itself, is difficult to gauge. Equally difficult is the kind of scenario within which these security threats might develop or the most appropriate ways of dealing with them. Unlike in the past, the appropriate response to these multidimensional threats is not necessarily a military one.

To provide some guidelines for a solution for future defence and security needs, it is necessary to go back to basics. Firstly, it is necessary to establish who the principal actors are who have the responsibility, ability or motivation to address these security issues. Secondly, the question of possible options to be entertained by these actors in exercising their responsibilities needs to be addressed. Thirdly, the question of whether they can, in fact, pursue those options in the light of other constraints should also be considered. Finally, the probability that particular security threats may surface and the scenarios that might provide a prediction of what the principal actors are likely to do, are salient issues.

THE PRINCIPAL ACTORS

There is a need to depart from traditional thinking, and to formulate a clearer idea of security in the future, and the contribution 'defence' can make to it. The first basic principle that has to be established is the level of analysis. Who are the salient actors in the security world – international organisations, nation-states, subnational groups, or individuals? As the world as a whole becomes increasingly interdependent, a fact that is reflected in the formation of international regional groupings, the nation-state diminishes in importance. After 1989, the UN witnessed a resurgence in its utility and importance. Within two years, it was involved in more peacekeeping missions than in the previous forty-five years, even though its limitations in terms of performance and outcome, and its dependence on regional groupings and particular states, were quickly exposed.

Regional groupings of states, as the principal security actors, would appear to become more influential as they take on more responsibility for their own stability. Thus, NATO took the initiative to impose some control over the Bosnian crisis that threatened to destabilise Southern Europe and possibly beyond, when both the European Union (EU) and the UN failed in reaching their objectives. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) that was established after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, was initially a loose federation of independent states, many of which retained independent defence capabilities. As their economic and domestic situations have deteriorated, many have elected to reintegrate their defence and security interests with that of the Russian Federation and the CIS, again in the interests of promoting regional stability.

Other regional economic organisations, such as the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the European Union (EU), Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC), the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) and the South American MERCOSUR have the potential, and in some cases have already taken the first step, to incorporate military security within their terms of reference. The focus here is as much to promote stability and security within the region through mutual economic development and military co-operation, as the protection from external threat.6 The trend would suggest that the 'regionalisation' of future international security is more likely, and that regional actors will assume a more prominent role in defence and security issues in the next century.

Strong though these trends towards regionalism are, and notwithstanding the neo functionalists' logic that economic integration will lead inexorably to political and therefore security integration,7 the nation-state remains, and is likely to continue to remain the principal actor on the international stage for the foreseeable future. The fundamental reason is that they are the principal components of the more important international global or regional organisations, whether of an intergovernment political nature (such as the UN), economic (such as the EU), military (such as NATO), commodity (such as the Organisation of Oil Producing Countries (OPEC)), religious, or functional, (such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO)). Without the co operation of and contributions to these international intergovernment organisations by states, these organisations would collapse or fall into virtual abeyance, as the UN did for decades.

Non-government organisations (NGOs) abound and outnumber international intergovernment organisations. Many have wide international – even global – membership and can exercise significant influence. Their influence, however, is mainly on national governments. They act as global interest groups to put pressure on governments to conform to some desirable international norm or code of conduct, or to adopt policies that promote their limited or functional interests. Thus NGOs, such as the International Air Transport Association, the World Council of Churches and Amnesty International, of which many have recognised status in the UN, are able to exercise influence on states and within the global arena from their limited or partial perspectives. The essential point is that the focus of their activities is the governments of nation-states.

The question of whether the state-centric view of the world or that of commercial interdependency better reflects the way the world is, is largely irrelevant and should rather be confined to abstract academic debate.8 The fundamental point is that these organisations require resources, since they have none of their own. They can only function if states, the only effective mechanism to raise funding, are prepared to pay. Correspondingly, governments will only part with funds if there is a reasonable chance that the benefits to the state and its citizenry outweigh the cost. Some organisations cost less than others: international political organisations are useful for exchanges of opinions and to reach consensus, and cost relatively little. International military organisations, however, are not only expensive but also, by their nature, infringe on the national sovereignty of states. No international organisation has yet assumed a supranational position of authority over the military forces of its members. Though there is evidence that many states in the EU are committed to political union and would like to see a supranational or single European defence force, it is still a long way off.

When considering future defence and security into the 21st century, the nation-state remains the principal actor, particularly when it comes to the raising and employment of military force. Governments can and do come under domestic and international pressure from a wide range of sources and its responsibility is to judge those pressures in the light of national interests and the particular interests of sections of its population. This fact alone has direct consequences for the wider question of what military force is for, and when and how it should be used.

THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE

The Clausewitzian dictum that war "is not merely a political act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means", is an appropriate point to start any discussion of the use of military force.9 In essence, Clausewitz argues that military force is a resort open to governments when less costly and potentially harmful options have been exhausted. Indeed, as he also observed, "no-one starts a war – or rather no-one in his senses should do so – without being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it." The dilemma in exercising the military option is that there has to be a better than average chance of success, that the act of engaging in military conflict should bring about a resolution of the conflict rather than add to it, and that it should not lead to an attenuated war with a diminished ability to withdraw.

Furthermore, the act of going to war has to be supported by the population, or at least a substantial proportion of it, and that support has to be sustained throughout its duration. As political and military leaders are aware, setbacks in war have a deleterious impact on the commitment of the population to back the policy, and drastic action is often required to restore confidence.10 During the Falklands War, for example, the British Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher demanded some operational success to offset the impact on public morale and support for the war of the loss of HMS Sheffield to an Argentinean Exocet missile, against better military judgement. It is in the nature of war, a fact supported by experiences during this century, to inflict pain and cost without necessarily resolving an issue permanently.

Why then resort to military coercion to resolve conflict of interest, if it is such an unpredictable, risky and costly business? There is no one answer, any more than there is a single explanation for the causes of war in general. However, on Clausewitz's premise that "state policy is the womb in which war develops", some appreciation of why the use of coercive force is chosen can be derived from an understanding of the concept national 'stakes'. As with disputes between individuals and groups within society, there are some matters upon which compromise or accommodation is impossible. These issues require definition.

During the Cold War, the confrontation between the two principal sides was driven by ideological differences that allowed virtually no room for compromise. Compounding the problem was the totalitarian nature of one of the parties, and a high level of secrecy and suspicion on both their parts. Since both were eventually armed with weapons that could assuredly destroy the other and, subsequently both of them, they were both vulnerable. The failure to deter would mean either being absorbed into the other's system, or facing total destruction. There was little room for manoeuvre, other than to keep open lines of communication, avoid misunderstanding, promote arms control measures, and, yet, maintain a high level of military vigilance and military capability. The stakes were high, since defeat in a confrontation would be total. Strategies of 'reassurance' to the population were as important as military strategies, to persuade them that this was the best, if expensive, and most effective way of protecting their 'core values'. The stability and predictability of the years after the equally sobering experience of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, lent credence to this strategy.

The critical consideration is a population's 'core values'. It is axiomatic that core values are those about which people are not prepared to compromise, or sacrifice. These values are relatively easy to identify in religious fundamentalism and in particular in the fanatics who adhere to it. Cultural and racial identity – what Huntington refers to as 'civilisation' – tends to be something about which people feel strongly. Both have been the principal motive behind separatist guerrilla movements, and on a larger scale, clashes of whole civilisations that transcend national boundaries have been predicted.11

One core value that is more difficult to evaluate is that of economic well-being. Violence and riots in the US during the 1960s generated many attempts at an explanation, one being the theory of relative and absolute deprivation. People tend to resort to violence either when their economic expectations are unfulfilled or when, having enjoyed a given standard of living, their lifestyle takes a downward turn. When applied to states, the presence of poverty, declining standards of living, or gross inequalities within the population create the potential for domestic violence. One option for governments is to seek solutions elsewhere by coercive means.

Poor countries with annual birth rates in excess of 2,3 per cent per annum – in other words, they will double their population within twenty years and correspondingly more than sixty per cent of the total population will be teenaged or below – face an acute problem. Most of their populations will be unemployed or unemployable, there will be inadequate food or resources, and standards of education, heath and welfare will be desperately low. It is unlikely that such states will have the resources or the will to embark on any external adventures, but the prospects for mass migration to areas where there are resources to eke out a subsistence existence are high. There are already signs of this trend in North Africa, the Middle East, Central America and Eastern Europe.

Food for survival is clearly a major factor in forcing states to take action, since there is no alternative but to let populations starve. However, food is only one factor in survival: natural resources, such as water, and the technology and education to know how to use these to generate the wealth that could maintain an acceptable level of existence, are also important. For this, the poorer states rely on advanced nations for help, even though, more often than not, the real beneficiaries are the advanced nations themselves, a fact which has been a source of some objection in recent years.

In the 1990-91 Gulf War, oil has already been shown to be a primary motivating factor in the Allies' military intervention. If prognoses of future armed conflict in the South China Seas prove correct, oil will again be a primary motivating factor. Water, however, has the potential to become the major critical issue, not merely because of the demands of population growth rates and industrialisation, but because climatic change and environmental pollution have reduced the number of sources. There are some who anticipate that water access would be one of the more volatile issues in the future, and one that has the potential to lead to armed conflict.

States will resort to military force when they perceive their core interests to be in jeopardy. Such considerations as 'rogue' leadership, national pride, breaches of international law, and 'special' economic interests are secondary, contributory factors. When projecting defence and security into the next century, these 'core values' will have to be weighed, their vulnerability to change will have to be established or their possibility to form the basis of a threat, carefully assessed in respect of each country. They will give an indication of the likelihood that disputing parties would resort to armed conflict, or that scope for compromise and accommodation could be found.

MILITARY FORCE AS AN OPTION

Threats to core values may be the root causes of a state being prepared to use military force for their protection. However, this is not the same as a state either having the capability or the will to do so. In reality, there are many constraints that mitigate against the use of military force. As governments have to weigh the costs of such adventures in the short and long term, war and military force have declined appreciably as options, even when the core values of states are threatened. This is more acute among the richer, advanced nations, than among the poorer ones, largely because of the extent to which issues, such as the defence of territorial integrity, maintenance of standards of living, protection of cultural identity, and the prospect of a physical invasion, have receded significantly. More at risk are their particular and sectional economic and political interests, their investments, and the protection of their citizens abroad.

A further factor among the more advanced states that mitigates against their using military force against one another, is the degree to which their respective political and economic interests are bound together. It is not simply a matter of common markets and trade, but one of cross-investment, industrial rationalisation and mergers, and collaboration in science, research and development. Issues such as common currencies are secondary to the reality that most industrial states in Europe and North America have created an interdependency in terms of industry and commerce that puts constraints on what national governments in extremis can entertain. In a manner of speaking, when states share intellectual property rights, they all have to agree.

The richer nations that continue to get proportionally richer in comparison with poor nations, display a further characteristic that will help inhibit the option of using military force. In addition, the reasons for doing so are receding. Since 1989, most of the richer nations have substantially reduced the size of their armed forces, their annual defence budgets and, correspondingly, their military capabilities to engage in a major military conflict and sustain it for any length of time. The more advanced countries, such as the US, France and the UK, have argued that, although fewer resources are now devoted to defence, this has not appreciably reduced military capability because of enhanced efficiency, the substitution of personnel with high technology weapons, and greater flexibility and mobility. The lumbering conventional armies and the formations of the Cold War have been replaced by leaner, better equipped and more mobile formations with highly trained personnel.

A concomitant of this change in the force postures of the advanced states is the tacit assumption that none of them will commit themselves to the use of military force without the support and participation of allies. This fact alone has tended to limit the number and type of intervention force that can be entertained, since the prerequisites of an effective command and control infrastructure and procedures can only effectively be met either through NATO or with the direct assistance of the US. The establishment of the Combined Joint Task Forces (CJFT) by the European states – to enable them to engage in operations without the US, but with their C3 assistance – is an acknowledgement of this reality.

Except in relatively minor conflicts on the American continent, this assumption also applies to the US, arguably the largest and most technically advanced professional military force in the world. If this is indeed the case, and on the assumption that there has to be both consensus between allies and a critical mass to embark on an operation, constraints will immediately surface regarding the political and military objectives, duration, cost, command, and termination of the engagement. The entire Bosnian experience has served to demonstrate the problems encountered through the joint use of military force, and those that will likely have to be addressed in future.

The replacement of men with highly sophisticated weapons and equipment may well enhance the destructive capability of the individual soldier, sailor or airman, but there is also a significant opportunity cost. Most seriously, redundancy, the capacity to absorb losses, and to reinforce units in the field, have virtually been eliminated. For reasons of economy, reserve forces in their specialist capacities have now become as much part of the line of battle as the full-time professionals, and are no longer, in the strictest sense, reserves. They have restricted terms of engagement that place a limit on the duration of any military operation or engagement. Furthermore, modern weaponry is expensive and, again for reasons of economy, training with new equipment has to be limited or resorted to simulation. Nor is it possible to keep adequate stockpiles of modern weapons, since they would tie up too many scarce resources. Both in the 1990/91 Gulf War and the 1982 Falklands War, supplies of munitions ran out and in the former case, forced a change of strategic timing by bringing the land battle forward as the air bombardment could no longer be waged.

There are other hindrances to the exercise of military force which have either emerged or intensified in the last decade. These have to do with the degree to which they generate public support. There is a substantial difference between public acceptance of high military spending and levels of readiness when there is an acceptance of a significant and potentially imminent threat to the security of the state, compared to a situation where threats are believed to be remote or non-existent. There is also a difference in public perceptions of the defence of state borders and the use of military force in pursuit of other national interests. UN peacekeeping operations and military intervention for humanitarian reasons can and have commanded public support, but this has proved vulnerable when the costs of these operations have mounted, the engagement became extended over long periods, or there has been loss of life. The US withdrew very rapidly from operations in Somalia when the situation degenerated into armed conflict.

In establishing the readiness, or ability, of states to deploy military force, the changes within the armed forces of those states able to use force have to be taken into consideration. As societies have changed their attitudes towards military force for political purposes, so have armed forces also changed. They no longer consist of the same kind of people as in the past, and their terms of engagement have also changed. International law governing rules of engagement and crimes against humanity have strengthened, as have laws that govern the use and discipline of states' military forces. The old assumptions that the military is separated from society and government by martial law and therefore have a right to be different no longer apply. Cases have proliferated where servicemen and women have resorted to the law to seek redress against their employers in efforts to exercise their right to refuse service in a conflict with which they have political or moral scruples. In peacekeeping operations, where war has not been declared formally, service personnel or their dependents have taken to the courts to sue for compensation for injury. Currently, the most publicised case for compensation is that of Gulf War service personnel who have allegedly suffered from a debilitating illness directly attributed to either pesticides or anti-biological and chemical warfare inoculation.

These considerations should not be dismissed as minor inconveniences. Governments faced with legal challenges arising from their policies to use military force in pursuit of national interests, must first think carefully. The armed services are no longer a compliant institution of the state, and those who serve in them, rather than as people, separate from society, who have joined up, perhaps for vocational reasons, and have accepted an 'unlimited liability', are encouraged to think of themselves as citizens in uniform. In a manner of speaking, the changes in the composition of the armed services and in the relationship between armed services and society, have introduced a form of structural disarmament in which the use of military force is less likely to be the first resort in the prosecution of the defence and security of the state.12 In countries such as South Africa, where constitutional change has introduced sets of legal civil-military arrangements that prescribe and proscribe what can and cannot be done with and by the armed forces, these constraints on the utility of military force are even more evident.

THE TOFFLERS' DILEMMA

The above discussion is directed, for the most part, at the richer, more advanced states, those that more or less come within Alvin and Heidi Tofflers' Third Wave category of warfighting ability. Essentially, they argue that there is an immutable relationship between the manner in which societies create wealth and the way in which they fight wars. Thus, the first wave of war was fought between nations, groups or states, whose productive capacity was essentially agrarian, and whose weapons of war were handcrafted, personally owned and used. Payment for military service was irregular, poor and invariably in kind. This changed dramatically with the industrial revolution that introduced the mass production assembly line and correspondingly mass armies equipped with mass-produced weapons.13 Generally speaking, the First and Second World Wars were of this type, with corresponding massive loss of life in front-line combat. The Tofflers also attribute the creation of huge overseas empires, such as those of Britain and France, to the simple fact that they, as second wave states, expanded at the expense of first wave nations, who had neither the wealth nor the military capability to resist. The conflict was therefore grossly uneven, with the result that overseas expansion and colonialism were both relatively easy to achieve and the resultant empires, for a while, moderately easy to control.14

It is the Tofflers' contention that some states, principally the US, have moved beyond the second wave of warfare, largely as a consequence of the fact that their wealth is no longer generated by mass industrial production, but out of the revolution in information technology. Huge industrial enterprises have been replaced by smaller, more dynamic companies that are able to adapt to changing market situations with new products and services. Correspondingly, the weapons and the way these states prepare for military conflict have also changed.15 These include the increased use of the sophisticated and precision weapons referred to above, an essential element in the debate over the Revolution in Military Affairs that has occupied strategists and military analysts over the past six or so years.16

The US is clearly in the vanguard, at least as far as 'smart' military weapons and strategic and tactical thinking are concerned, although the Russian Federation, an onlooker during the Gulf War, has given long and serious thought on the implications for the Federation's future policy in terms of weapons, doctrine and strategy. Britain and France, buying into US weapons technology, have also engaged in a longer term doctrinal debate on their implications in the changed international environment.17 The rapidly expanding economies of the Asia Pacific states, in particular those of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, with China rapidly making progress in information technology areas as much as the more traditional industrial ones, will have the capacity to develop the 'smart' weapons that characterise the third wave of military conflict by the first quarter of the 21st Century. These developments must give the richer states of Europe and North American food for thought.18

Change, however, takes time to accommodate. Even though the US possesses many of these third wave/information technology weapons and is increasingly aware of their implications on strategic thinking, the rate at which these changes have been absorbed by the US armed services in their staff college teaching and in organisational reform is considerably slower. A full transformation is unlikely until well into the next century, and many of the vestiges of the 'second wave' industrial, as opposed to 'technological', wave of war will remain.19

However, as the Tofflers noted the disparity in conflict between first and second wave armies during the 18th and 19th centuries, the question arose of what would happen if conflict developed between second wave and third wave armed forces. This question is considerably more critical than might appear at first sight: firstly, many emergent, developing or third world states, some that do not yet possess the productive capacities characteristic of second wave states, have acquired second wave military weapons in recent years, as the leading industrial states have dispensed their military arsenals at relatively low cost following the end of the Cold War and in line with recent arms control agreements. No one state is above this practice in the international arms market. The states of the former Soviet Union, whose arsenals of conventional weapons were overbearing and where economic circumstances dictated an imperative to earn foreign currency, were major contributors to this wide distribution of weapons. Some of the more complex of these weapons have proved beyond the level of development and therefore the competence of the recipient states. Others have not, and more disturbingly, have given a military capability to some states and leaders, particularly in missiles and CBW warheads, that can at least pose a threat to Europe, if not yet to the US.20

The second reason why the problem is critical, is because third wave states are likely to intervene in concert in regional security situations with particular types of weapons and force structures. These have the potential to pit them against forces that are equipped with less sophisticated weapons. They are massed in considerably greater numbers, and their governments and peoples have the determination and will to sustain conflict for long periods. Alternatively, third wave forces may well find themselves facing unconventional terrorist or guerrilla forces that have weapons, doctrines and tactics that have already ensured success against conventional second wave forces and tactics in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. They are likely to prove equally difficult to defeat and again should give cause for thought. In other words, the old maxim applies that there is no substitute for the soldier who is on the spot to take and hold ground, if the political objectives for the use of military force are to be achieved.

Globally, there is an emerging dichotomy in the array of states at different levels of development and wealth creation that increasingly display marked differences in military capability. Mix this complex hierarchy of armed forces and states with a break down in the old Cold War bipolar system and the emergence of disputes and conflicts that have either been suppressed or lain dormant for the past half-century, and a scenario emerges which is both potentially volatile and uncontrollable. It is little wonder that analysts are reluctant to predict future defence and security, beyond the caution that it is uncertain and that regional security arrangements are one of the most likely ways forward.

Some have ventured into the minefield of prediction, with varying degrees of success, but their focus seems to lie more in general trends than in specifics. The Tofflers themselves foresee a rather pessimistic future in which global revolutionary changes have created a high-risk environment. 'Small wars', they believe, can snowball into gigantic confrontation, because of the world's 'Prigogine' dissipated structures: all parts of the global system are in constant fluctuation and extremely vulnerable to external influences, ranging from religious fanaticism, environmental problems, and oil price changes, to changes in the balance of weapons, the population explosion and ethnic vendettas. Military force is but one way of preventing these from escalating, though it can also be a contributory factor in that escalation. According to them, the solution is a change in attitude, and an understanding of how the world has recently changed and of the link between knowledge, wealth and war.21

Paul Kennedy, following his major study of the rise and fall of the great powers, in which he recognised both the connection between economic and military strength and counselled against committing too much of a state's resources on military matters, turned his attention to defence and security in the next century in his book, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century. Like the Tofflers, his prognosis is pessimistic, focusing on the simple projection that there are environmental and technological changes that will put pressures on human society. Furthermore, with too many people and not enough resources, the world will spin out of control. More seriously, the mechanisms that enabled some degree of control over these two developments would no longer be available, and worse still, the move towards liberalism and free markets could not be relied upon to solve these problems. If anything, the information revolution has served to exacerbate the situation by encouraging high expectations among poorer countries and stimulating ethnic, racial and religious animosities between states. He sees the state as having to assume greater responsibility, because people will increasingly see it as the only foundation of their security, irrespective of transnational trends.22

The third major contributor to the debate on future defence and security is Martin van Creveld. His forecast is likewise somewhat doom-laden, inasmuch as he foresees, that "[w]e are entering an era, not of peaceful economic competition between trading blocks but of warfare between ethnic and religious groups. Even as familiar forms of armed conflict are sinking into the dustbin of the past, radically new ones are raising their heads ready to take their place ... Unless societies are willing to adjust both thought and action to the rapidly changing new realities, they are likely to reach a point there they will no longer be capable of employing organised violence at all."23

He anticipates that conventional warfare is in its final stages as an instrument of state policy, and 'organised violence' is coming to an end. It will be replaced by low intensity conflict, national sovereignty will be undermined, and today's armed forces will be replaced by "police forces and bands of ruffians." Although his argument is not dissimilar to others' who have seen the increase in irregular warfare replacing conventional confrontation throughout the world,24 it is debatable whether the world has reached that stage, as emergent states such as India, Pakistan, China, and most states in Africa, Central and South America and central Asia expand their conventional military capabilities.

On a less abstract level, the question of who will fight future wars and why, has been addressed by Trevor Dupuy. His approach was the application of quantitative historical analyses through the use of a computer combat simulation model of future conflict to areas throughout the world where there were unresolved differences both between states and ethnic groups. The means of combat were conventional between states and unconventional where conflict was civil or internal, in each case examined. Interestingly, none of the ten wars examined out of the more than twenty candidates he identified in the model, involved any intervention by the UN or alliances, despite predictions of significant knock-on effects for international and regional stability.25

Finally, there has been the work of the US National Defense University Institute for National Strategic Studies Advanced Concepts, Technologies and Information Strategies. Such as the strategic importance to the US that much of their work is now prevented from being disseminated in the public domain, though some has been accessible – for example, the Joint Operations Symposium held in Washington in August 1996. In a paper presented to the symposium, entitled Threats to Security Other than War: The Never-ending Story, the authors recognised, among others, that threats to international security manifested the following characteristics: "Actors are multiplying, diversifying, miniaturising and becoming more mobile; threats to security are becoming increasingly ambiguous; the means of attack and access to these have also multiplied; avenues of attack are proliferating and becoming more interdependent; [and] threats to security are enormously complex with important side-effects."26

Their conclusion was that states – including the US – could not meet these threats to world stability or security independently: the ramifications were too great. Intelligence gathering would therefore take on a new dimension and significance, markedly different from the 'dominant battlespace awareness', characteristic of conventional operations. They concluded that the US military had accomplished its mission of deterring traditional warfare so well, that "its force structure had become irrelevant to most prevalent current and foreseeable military missions."27 Operations other than war to promote security required either substantial changes to force structures, strategies and doctrines, or the creation of other organisations more suited to the task.

FUTURE DEFENCE AND SECURITY AND THE UTILITY OF NAVAL FORCE

There is clearly little consensus on future defence and security in the world, apart from an acceptance that there is rapid change. Such is the extent and variation of change that the future stability of the world is judged to be under threat, although there is little agreement from where, when and by whom it will first come. Such is the nature of the challenge and the lack of any clear projection on what the future has in store, that considerable time and resources have been devoted in recent years to address the problem. This has not been so much a matter of addressing the question of how to identify the probable or likely causes of future instability and conflict in the next twenty to thirty years for planning purposes, but the intellectual challenge of finding a satisfactory methodology that will enable analysts and forecasters to arrive at plausible and convincing answers.28

Decision-makers charged with the immediate responsibility for the defence and security of the state, and indirectly with contributing to the promotion of collective security under the terms of the UN Charter, are well aware that difficult choices will have to be made in times of change and uncertainty, regarding future force structures, weapons systems, equipment and military doctrine. Without the certainties that have focused their task in the past, the conclusions of forecasting exercises of future international security are guides that can assist them in their task. However, these prognoses come without guarantee and, at best, merely offer degrees of probability. Any unforeseen, unanticipated or misunderstood development can blow any forecast off course, with huge potential consequences.

Nevertheless, some world developments can be forecast with some certainty and these can be used as a baseline from which to make forecasts and upon which to base defence and security choices. These include
  • increases in the population and the corresponding shift in the demography of most states: poorer states will increase their populations and become younger on average, and the richer will remain static or decline and grow proportionately older;

  • increases in the world's population that live within 25 miles of the sea coast is forecasted to rise from today's fifty per cent to 75 per cent by the year 2025;

  • water becoming a strategic resource that will diminish in supply as population and industrial demands increase exponentially;

  • food will likewise be under pressure, as demand increases and cultivable land and sustainable fish stocks diminish;

  • the extent of urbanisation will continue to increase rapidly as populations migrate from the rural areas;

  • without international controls, pollution will continue to rise with all its attendant implications for the weather and the habitable environment; and

  • the gap between rich states and poor states will widen, as will the height of stratification within states.
These factors determine the context within which human society will have to operate or adapt. States have different capacities to adjust, either for cultural or geostrategic reasons. They all have a range of alternative strategies for survival, from international integration at one extreme, to belligerence and aggression at the other. To many, the world's future is on something of a knife-edge, and it can go one way or the other. In a somewhat Manichean way, some have attempted to see the future in terms of different scenarios, based on these probabilities, and to plan their future defence and security forces around these projections. Others have focused their attention on building suboptimal flexible military capabilities that can serve the interests of the state or the international community, should the occasion arise.

Whatever the underlying approach that state decision-makers choose to adopt, a number of developments are emerging on which there seems to be a degree of consensus. The first is that the kind of large scale interstate war that has been anticipated on the plains of northern Europe during the Cold War – with or without the use of tactical or nuclear weapons – is judged to be very unlikely. The second is that belief in the utility of military force has changed from territorial defence and conventional deterrence against an aggressor, to one of intervention in situations short of armed conflict elsewhere in the world. A third is that the use of armed forces, when intervening in a situation abroad, requires international endorsement if it is to be considered legitimate. It is for this reason, aside from the sheer expense involved, that states no longer anticipate deploying their armed forces independent of a coalition or alliance. Fourthly, the international arms control regimes, constraining the possession and use of weapons of mass destruction, have made significant progress in recent years, thereby changing the nature of military operations, should armed force be used. Armed conflict is also as likely, if not more so, to be against non-statutory forces, such as terrorist organisations, international crime syndicates and pirates, as against the statutory forces of other states. In this scenario, highly sophisticated and heavy weaponry would not be the most suitable equipment for the state forces involved. Finally, the use of armed forces in a range of operations short of war, including peacekeeping, maintaining peace, humanitarian aid, infrastructural support for vulnerable societies, supervising democratic processes, etc., require professional skills beyond the traditional military ones of the constrained management of violence.

There is a real danger that – as with the enthusiastic espousal of strategic theories and doctrines during the Cold War that served the interests of states with armed services – defining future international security scenarios will serve other purposes than those with which they ostensibly are expected to cope. Shifts in populations' attitudes towards military expenditure, and their greater awareness of other threats to their security, well-being and values, have already led to an extreme sensitivity to loss of life during military engagements, opposition to high levels of military expenditure, disapproval of practices within armed forces to impose and maintain discipline, and expectations of military conduct that mirrors civilian, rather than military employment. These considerations have hastened the restructuring of tomorrow's armed forces, changes in recruitment and terms of employment, and adjustments to the balance between personnel and equipment. If trends continue, future weapons will be capital intensive, smart, hands-off and long range: the automated battlefield has not yet arrived, but the time is not far off when this will be the case in combat scenarios.Personnel matters most in operations short of war.

If these future scenarios convince decision-makers, and the trends that have been identified, continue – and ontologically they will continue as identified, since state decision-making has the effect of turning them into self-fulfilling prophesies – a number of projections can be made regarding the composition of future force structures and their probable equipment. It is within this framework that prognoses can be made about the role and function of future navies and the utility of naval, as distinct from military, force. Within these prognoses, some assumptions have to be made about maritime power, naval doctrine, combined operations, joint forces, as well as the purpose and goal of using coercive force.

The change in the international environment, from one of major military risk to one of multivariate uncertainty, plays significantly to the strength of maritime power. The former demanded forces with a high degree of readiness to react to military threats to the home territory with relatively little advance warning. The latter multivariate scenario does not require instant response – the substance of air power and mobile armoured forces. The lead time for action is considerably longer, the risks much less, and the response, involving political, social and economic, as well as military considerations, is more sensitive to public resistance at home and abroad. In his book, Gunboat Diplomacy, Sir James Cable observed that "[i]f instances of gunboat diplomacy towards the end of this era prove comparable with those at the beginning, it becomes arguable that this technique has already been successfully adapted to changes in the international environment and is capable of further evolution in the future."29

The remarkable aspect of Cable's observation was that it was made in 1971 at the height of the Cold War. His confidence in the flexibility of the use of naval power for diplomatic, humanitarian, commercial, and peacetime operations, as well as always having a purely military function in reserve, was such that he believed that navies would always have a future, even when dominant military hostilities subsided.

Navies are more or less ubiquitous. Their value lies in their flexibility and their relevance to the kinds of future world security scenarios that are being projected among leading decision-makers. This is not to reject the utility of land or air forces, or their importance in certain categories of operations short of war. Air forces can and have been used to deny airspace to governments and states that have used airpower to coerce or intimidate both other states and their own populations. Without adequate air cover, the rapid movement of aid and logistics support with freight aircraft in emergencies would be both dangerous and vulnerable. Peacekeeping, humanitarian aid and even peace enforcement are, and will always be tasks for land forces. But, by way of generalisation, the deployment of land and air forces – both of which a well structured navy should also possess – is a remedial or restorative action. It is not preventive to the degree that the deployment, presence and use of naval power can be. Furthermore, navies are accepted as a benign form of power, operating in international space (unlike airspace or land), a diplomatic high value asset in a world where the emphasis is on avoiding the coercive use of military force.

Conventional naval capabilities are generally characteristic of second wave military technology, inasmuch as they are complex systems produced from industrial, rather than information technologies. Apart from those of the US and, in the near future, the UK, most of the world's navies are not equipped with long-range, stand-off, precision guided weapons that enable intervention in conflict situations, without the forces concerned necessarily being directly involved in front-line conflict. Naval vessels can provide the platform for such weapons, but for the most part, they operate around the world within close distance of other states. It is both their potential power and their vulnerability that make them such valuable diplomatic and military tools. As far as the future is concerned, the question of how and where navies will be used, will depend on which states are involved, what the postures of their navies are, and what decision-makers hope to gain by their use.

The immediate advantage of second wave navies is that they can be used on the high seas as a political statement of a state of affairs, without either infringing upon other states' rights or putting their own servicemen and women in immediate danger. The deployment of naval surface ships is, in effect, a potent military move, but one far short of war and essentially non-provocative. A ship is also a manifestation of the state, a symbolic statement of its political position in a crisis. There is another advantage in ships that, in alliance or in coalition with other states' navies, have the ability to operate alongside others – a basic feature of navigation at sea – without the elaborate command and control measures that are needed when forces operate on land or are involved in joint land/air operations. Submarines are different: not only do they place states in a different international league, but they also provide a psychological dimension to international conflict that can serve as a constraint or deterrent against adventurism or outright aggression.

As the world edges towards a period of increasingly greater uncertainty, the relative slowness of naval reaction to political crises around the world becomes an asset rather than a liability. The deliberate nature of their use and the symbolic significance of dispatching a national capital asset to regions of conflict, provide tools of national and international diplomacy that no other action can match. To that extent, either as an action by the state or in support of an international initiative, navies can and do make a wider contribution to international security. With the international legal obligations that states are expected to honour, following from their signing of the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) that provides for a 200 nautical mile Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ), navies have also become a front-line source of national economic, commercial, political and industrial defence.

While the world becomes more uncertain, and decision-makers are confronted by a range of future scenarios, each with the potential to predict instability in the world, efforts are made to develop and acquire the means to counteract their effects. Naval forces are emerging as one of the more valuable tools for the promotion of international stability.

With international trade an important ingredient in increasing world interdependence and the promotion of domestic growth, the protection of shipping and of sea lines of communication, has become increasingly important. This has been recognised among a growing number of states, not merely those with access to the sea. As land-locked states experience their legitimate trade being interrupted by territorial disputes, relations with states with access to the sea become an important lifeline.

The evidence is that huge capital investments are made in maritime assets, both merchant and naval. From the perspective of future international security, this must be a welcome development and one which, in spite of the projected uncertainties and difficulties as the world moves into the second millennium, must be taken as an encouraging sign.

ENDNOTES

  1. Defence Review Working Group, Defining Defence Interests and Responsibilities: Explanatory Notes on the Model adopted by the DRWG, DS/DEFREV/521/2/1/56, Department of Defence, Pretoria, 27 May 1996.

  2. B Buzan, Is International Security Possible?, in K Booth (ed.), New Thinking about Strategy and International Security, Harper Collins, London, 1991, pp. 31-55.

  3. United States Department of Defense, Bottom-up Review, Department of Defense, Washington DC, 1992.

  4. R Mottram, Options for Change, RUSI, Spring 1991, pp. 22-27.

  5. M Hugh, New Visions, New Voices, in Booth, op. cit., pp. 309-10.

  6. R Hormats, The Regional Way to Global Order, in C Kegley and E Wittkopf (eds.), The Global Agenda: Issues and Perspectives, McGraw Hill, New York, 1995, pp. 289- 297.

  7. E Haas, International Political Communities, Doubleday, New York, 1966, pp. 93-130.

  8. R Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State, Basic Books, New York, 1986; also R Keohane, Neo-Realism and its Critics, Columbia, New York, 1986.

  9. Cited in R T Collins, Dictionary of Military Quotations, Harper Collins, London, 1990, p. 14.

  10. R Beaumont, Military Elites, Bobbs-Merrill, New York, 1974.

  11. S Huntington, Clash of Civilisations, Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993.

  12. For a discussion of these changes and their impact on the British Armed Services, see M Edmonds, British Army 2000, CSCI Occasional Paper, 23, CSCI, Camberley, July 1996, p. 76.

  13. See for example, J Ellis’s excellent and enlightening study of the ‘industrialisation of war’ in Social History of the Machine Gun, Croom Helm, New York, 1975.

  14. A & H Toffler, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century, Warner Books, London, 1993, pp. 33-50 and 104-110.

  15. A & H Toffler, ibid., pp 69-103.

  16. M C Fitzgerald, The New Revolution in Russian Military Affairs, RUSI Whitehall Paper Series, RUSI, London, 1994, pp. 21-52.

  17. For example, Britain has purchased the Tomahawk sea launched precision guided cruise missile and France has bought the advanced AWACS airborne command system from the US.

  18. M Edmonds, Military Technology and South East Asian Security, in Z Hj Ahman (ed.), Asia Defence Review, October 1996 (forthcoming).

  19. For a perceptive discussion of the extent to which strategic thinking bounds ahead of organisational reform, see P Bracken, The Military after Next, Washington Quarterly, 16(4), Autumn 1993, pp. 163-174.

  20. See for example, D Bosdet, H Crum Ewing & R Ranger, Ballistic Missiles the Impending Threat, Bailrigg Memorandum, 11, CDISS, Lancaster, 1995.

  21. A & H Toffler, op. cit., pp. 331-3.

  22. P Kennedy, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century, Harper Collins, London, 1993, pp. 133-134.

  23. M van Creveld, Future War, Brassey’s, London, 1991, p. ix.

  24. For example, see F Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, Faber, London, 1971.

  25. T Dupuy, Future Wars, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1992, pp. xiii-xvii

  26. R Hayes, Threats to Security other than War: The Never-ending Story, paper presented to the 1996 Joint Operations Symposium, Norfolk, Va., 14-15 August 1996, pp. 8-19.

  27. Ibid., p. 4.

  28. See, for example, the Insight programme, conducted by the Royal Institute for International Affairs, London, Chatham House, 1995-1996.

  29. J Cable, Gunboat Diplomacy, Chatto & Windus, London, 1971, p. 12.