Au commencement était la guerre
In creating this 482-page long book, packed full of biblical references, the criminologist Alain Bauer, lecturer at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, departs from his usual field of expertise – yet temporarily inhabiting one with which he is very familiar – to remind us that there is nothing exceptional about war in the whole of history. The verses he quotes from Ecclesiastes 3 have always been true and always will be: “there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: (…) a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace”. Although the author of this erudite book, who also gave the world his masterful Grand-Orient de France, weaves these variations into a rich illustration of human vanity, he invokes them all the better to denounce the beatific optimism of anybody wishing to believe in the end of History, happy globalisation and peace in perpetuity.
Europeans rediscovered war in February 2022, even though “the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia had taken place less than 30 years previously and very often looked as if they were about to be rekindled” and in Ukraine itself, “there has been bitter fighting in the Donbass region since 2014, with no real interruption and [of] more or less fierce intensity”. “The European Union, so cautious, so measured, so timorous at times, which always sought to use the most diplomatic terms in its public statements, was suddenly reawakened to reality. In the ivory towers of the Berlaymont (…), senior civil servants were rudely awakened and started offering to provide military intelligence or to pay for arms. In a break with the past, Germany has already ploughed more than €100 billion into saving its own army, which had become moribund and obsolete”, writes Bauer, who considers that “the Union has achieved neither peace nor power”. “It consumes, it invents, it buys, it sells. It produces (less and less), remains an oasis (or possibly a mirage?) for a world already torn by war or famine, but it cannot manage its borders, even its humanitarian ones, any more than it can envisage preparing to defend itself”, he states mockingly.
“With the return of conventional, inter-state warfare, the West is reacquainting itself with the most traditional forms of conflict”, Bauer notes, stressing that “by paying close attention to the reaction of the UN member countries, it appears that unequivocal condemnation and the instinct to take sanctions is by no means dominant and that the indignant ‘international community’, remarkably choreographed, is often reduced to an isolated West as has never been the case since 1945”.
Pointing out that it has always been the wealth of Ukrainian resources (nearly a quarter of Europe’s arable land, but also coal, manganese, iron, uranium and potassium) that (with its electrical, steel and industrial potential) have sparked jealousy and greed, the author stresses that the evolution of the strategic context (withdrawal of United States from the ABM Treaty in 2002, enlargement of NATO, deployment of anti-missile systems on the Russian periphery) has made a very considerable contribution to igniting relations between Russia and the West and paving the way for the invasion of Ukraine.
“Starting in April 2022, the West became Ukraine’s strategic depth and the Ukrainian armed forces gradually deprived Russia of the initiative”, Bauer argues, going on to list the “important lessons for the NATO forces to learn from the conflict”: (1) “There is no sanctuary in modern war. The enemy can strike in full operational depth. Survival capacity depends on the distribution and size of stocks of munitions, command and control capabilities, logistical capabilities and domination of the airspace”; (2) “the battlefield, particularly in the east, in the Donbass, and in the south, marks the return of high-intensity warfare”, to which “we can add ‘long-intensity’, since the initial objective of a simple ‘special operation’ of no more than a few days has become a conflict of attrition”, implying a capacity to replace troops, equipment and ammunition over time; (3) “The importance of civil defence, of mobilising the population, the need for operational defence of the territory, has been sacrificed in France over the course of decades of insouciance and has now become vital in Ukraine”; borrowing from the RUSI, the author goes on to state that (4) the imposing command posts are too vulnerable and argues the case for “reducing their footprint and also imposing strict discipline upon personal telephone communications, to avoid being picked up by intelligence resources of electromagnetic origin”; the RUSI researchers also consider that (5) drones should be used in all units and at all levels of troops, with advanced training for operators and greater latitude of action.
“Taken in isolation from any other consideration than itself, war seems to follow its exponential destruction curve in a movement that is precisely the reverse of that anticipated by most governments of Western democracies”, Bauer writes, before adding that “where they had imagined the transformation of the old continuous front into an archipelago of strategic objectives fought out by drones and commandos, thousands of men and women are clashing in entrenched positions, less than a hundred metres apart, like a Verdun from which we can never be released”. As the author summarises, “to put it bluntly, when the West thought they were subcontracting war out to technology, it has returned in its most ancient and virulent form: human, all too human”.
Alain Bauer also stresses that “although the attempt to take control of one of the largest wheat and fertiliser stores in the world looked like a logical strategic objective (…), the structural deficit of an army of raiders and pillagers rapidly showed that the most archaic welfare practices of history (poisoning wells, burning crops (and, more recently, forests: Ed), laying siege to cities, destruction of infrastructure and even deporting populations of kidnapping children, etc. ) have survived”. With regard to the last of these, “according to estimations from various sources, including the Russian government, the Russian authorities have interrogated, detained and forcibly deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens, 260,000 of them children, from their homes to Russia – often to remote regions of the Far East”. Finally, “by stealing works of art from Ukraine, the Russians are also attacking its very identity”, the author notes, adding that “Russian forces have pillaged tens of thousands of articles, modern artworks, but also Scythian gold. According to experts, it is the biggest theft of art since the Nazis in the Second World War, aiming to strip Ukraine of its cultural heritage, the more easily to deny it”.
Although he devotes more than half of the book to Russia and its colonial war on Ukraine, Bauer also discusses imperialist tendencies and manoeuvres on the part of India, the Gulf states and Turkey. He states robustly that “facing the return of the variable of longevity in a world that thought it had ‘speeded up’ for good and all, the European Union has lowered itself and even turned out, moving away from the caricature its fiercest enemies have always painted of it, i.e. nothing but a face of the World Trade Organisation, tasked with deregulating everything and abandoning all logic of sovereignty to the benefit of free trade and nothing but free trade. Even so, it has failed to define itself as a power and, paradoxically, has succeeded in setting in place a Defence Community that is more Atlantic and Western than it is European, ready to come out of the announced ‘brain death’ of NATO to build a tool that is equally imposing in Europe and the Pacific”.
“Ukraine is holding on and, with it, the camp of the liberal democracies, and Russia is becoming exhausted, thereby making China hesitate”, Bauer assesses, adding: “the authoritarian regimes are finding themselves less efficient than they thought, and the democratic regimes less weak than they feared”. True, but where do we go from here? (Olivier Jehin)
Alain Bauer. Au commencement était la guerre (available in French only). Fayard. ISBN: 978-2-2137-2580-2. 482 pages. €29,90
Le multilatéralisme à l’épreuve
In this analysis published by the Jean Monnet Foundation, the Swiss former diplomat Jean Zwahlen charts the history of multilateralism since the end of the Second World War and the way it has gradually been called into question with the rise in power of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) since 2010. Put together, these countries represent 42% of the world population, 31% of global GDP, 26% of the surface area of the world, 25% of the volume of global production, 10% of the volume of trade and 25% of the volume of foreign investments. The “ascendancy of BRICS is starting to inspire imitations”, as became apparent at their summit in South Africa (from 22 to 24 August in Johannesburg), when the accession of six new countries (Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) was announced, to take effect from January 2024.
“When they created their ‘New Bank of Development (NBD) in 2014, BRICS became new independent players on the international stage”, the author observes, pointing out that “this bank, which is headquartered in Shanghai, has capital of $100 billion to finance infrastructure and sustainable development projects. Its equal structure means that its five founder members, BRICS, contributed equally to the constitution of its capital, in other words $20 billion each, and therefore all enjoy the same number of votes; they have also instituted a rotating presidency (five years)”. However, the “NBD is different from the IMF and the IBRD in that it is able to grant cheap loans or loans with no strings attached”, and even though it “was not conceived as a competitor or rival to the Bretton Woods institutions, it could become one, depending on how international relations develop”, Zwahlen stresses.
“BRICS is not a structured institutional organisation. As it stands, their cohesion on the international scene is limited to a desire to reform the multilateral order, which is still unequal, as it has yet to recognise their ascendancy as new major players. However, things are changing driven by China, which intends to create a South-South cooperation expanded to global South its responsibility”, Zwahlen writes. He goes on to point out that “we should be wondering what this means for the Western world and post-war liberalism, particularly as China’s ambition to extend the BRICS+ group will afford it the opportunity to extend its sphere of influence and promote its foreign policy by creating a more credible economic and political counterpoint to the West”.
China’s aim is to consolidate its new status as a major power, also reform a world that it feels is too Western, by giving greater primacy to Asia, the author explains, reminding us that the country has developed various other instruments in parallel to its standing within BRICS. Worthy of mention is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which currently brings together 40% of the world’s population and whose activities extend to fighting terrorism, military cooperation, sharing intelligence, the environment, science, technology and education. “The SCO is exposed to the rebalancing of power between Russia, which is declining, and China, which is in the ascendant, a rise which is feared by certain members of the SCO because of its policy towards the Uyghurs. The SCO is the first international organisation inspired and created by China (1986) and also the first under its leadership”, Zwahlen writes, going on to observe that “although the SCO is not strictly speaking anti-West, it nonetheless intends to create an alternative to American hegemony and to fight the influence and values of the West in Asia and promote authoritarian regimes. The principles on which the SCO is founded (trust, equality, mutual interest, respecting the diversity of civilisations) are vaguer than those that underpin the Western order”.
Next on the list is the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB; 2016), which has its headquarters in Beijing and counts 106 members, with capital that is 50%-owned by China. According to the author, “the AIIB has made the EU more aware that it needs to be more unified in order to be stronger, in view of China’s increasing grip on global mining resources”. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP; 2022), on the other hand, has 15 member countries (the member countries of the Association of South-Eastern Asian nations plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand). This deal was of great concern to the West, as it creates a giant economic zone that includes the United States.
Finally, the web woven since 2013 with the new silk road, all Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), rounds off this situation by creating a vast network of land (rail and road) and maritime corridors connecting China to Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, to “export its products and services, open up markets to its businesses, diversify and secure its sources of supply and, finally, increase its influence in the broader sense”. “The initiative concerns many countries of the European Union. While some of them welcomed it with enthusiasm, such as Portugal, allowing China to acquire stakes in the port of Sines and in companies, including Redes Energeticas Nacionais, others, Spain in particular, refused to sign up to it. Overall, however, most EU countries have joined”, Zwahlen reports.
“The BRI has a particularly strong hold over the EU as regards ports”, the author stressing, pointing out that China holds stakes in more than 10 European ports (including Antwerp, Zeebrugge, Rotterdam, Marseille, Trieste, Venice, Bilbao, Saragossa and Piraeus), for instance through the China Ocean Shipping Company and the China Communications Construction Company. “Standing in the opposite corner to these two mastodons of the maritime world, the EU needs to be unified to talk to China as, divided, it does not make the weight”, the author argues, stressing that there is one more cause for concern: the 16+1 cooperation format, created by China in 2012 and bringing together 16 countries from central and eastern Europe: Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, North Montenegro, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. (OJ)
Jean Zwahlen. Le multilatéralisme à l’épreuve (available in friendly). Fondation Jean Monnet. Débats et documents collection no. 28, June 2023. ISSN: 2296-7710. 53 pages. This analysis can be downloaded free of charge from the website of the Foundation at: https://aeur.eu/f/8f4