Global Security in 2019: Peace amid Turmoil and Crisis
The world in 2019 was generally peaceful and stable. For major countries, despite more confrontations and frictions among them, there was also contact through competition as well as selective cooperation, and the bottom line of no military conflict or war was not crossed. Nevertheless, the global security in 2019 was also marked by chaos and crisis. There were more sources of upheavals and risks, the regional security situations were more complex and severe, and progress of global security governance was obstructed by difficulties. Political and social turmoils in some countries were threatening to spill over to the whole region, even to the whole world. Though Cold-war like wrestling among major countries was rare in the past thirty years, some countries adopted more confrontational and aggressive military strategies, causing enormous difficulties for regional and global security cooperation. Hence, the year 2019 was featured by huge disruptions, big divisions, intense competition and major reform. The global security was characterized by “profound changes unseen in a century”.
Global Security Worsened by Political and Social Turmoils that Expanded to the Entire Region
Latin America was in crisis. Since September 2019, a host of major political incidents happened one after another like a rolling snowball. Violent protests, general strikes and fierce competition among political parties unfolded one after another from Venezuela to Bolivia, Peru to Chile, and Ecuador to Colombia. Compared with previous ones, this crisis showed the following features. First, a wide range of countries were affected. Prolonged crisis haunted Venezuela whereas upheavals occurred in Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia and Colombia. Some were governed by left-wing political parties while others by right-wing ones. Some were impoverished (Nicaragua) but some others were quasi-developed (Chile, for instance, is an OECD member). Some have long been suffering from recession (Venezuela) but some others have been enjoying relatively sound economic growth (Chile, Peru and Bolivia). Second, the triggers varied. There were welfare-related headaches, such as price rises in subway or gasoline; political issues, for instance competition among political fractions as well as disputes over elections; and even external factors, like US interference. Third, the consequences were far-reaching. In Venezuela, the ever-intensifying crisis not only stirred situation of the country and the region, but also entailed competition among major powers. In some other countries, crisis also worsened drastically, developing from regular protests and demonstrations into violent smashing, looting, and burning, from public discontent to furious political battles. Such developments forced Chile to cancel two world summits it had planned to host, and toppled the left-wing government in Bolivia---the biggest black swan event in 2019. Fourth, the turmoils were highly infectious. Within just a little more than one month, turmoils expanded from one country to another. Dominated mostly by young people and flaring through social media, they grew increasingly larger and eventually targeted at incumbent governments. These turmoils developed with similar patterns and fed on each other, and eventu
ally evolved into a regional upheaval. In the past year, political upheavals and disputes rose one after another in Latin America, indicating the ebbing of the once-flourishing left-wing movement in this region.
In the Middle East and Northern Africa, turmoils intensified. Large-scale protests in Algeria from March to April forced the president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was in office for nearly 20 years, to resign. A military coup broke out in Sudan in April, putting an end to the 30-year-long rule of Omar Bashir. Meanwhile, military conflicts in Libya continued to escalate, and situation in Syria kept worsening. Anti-government demonstrations occurred consecutively in Egypt, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon, some engaging a wider range than before. Crisis and uncertainties were also seen in Europe. Mass anti-Brexit demonstrations once paralyzed London’s transportation system in October. The “Black Friday” strike in Italy left Rome piled high with garbage. The verdict of the Spanish Supreme Court on former leaders of the Catalan independence movement triggered the most serious protests in decades. The “Yellow Vest” movement in November caused the biggest turmoil in Paris in 50 years. In South Asia, the Citizenship Amendment Bill that was introduced in December entailed the largest unrest in India since Narendra Modi took office in 2014. Within just 10 days, at least 23 people were killed and 1500 arrested. Modi openly called for the end of violence, saying “Hate me if you want to, but don’t hate India”.
Multiple reasons lie behind these political turmoils in 2019. The direct reasons were economic decline, political corruption, unsuccessful reform, policy mistakes, ethnic/racial conflicts and interference from major countries. The deep-rooted reasons were larger wealth gap entailed by globalization, increasing social injustice, lower capacity for state governance, long-accumulated and intensified structural conflicts in politics, economy and society, as well as the expansion of nationalism-populism mixture. All these different factors came together and eventually dragged some countries and regions into violent upheavals.
Rising Conventional Security Issues Impact Global Strategic Stability
Global military expenditures are rising. According to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in 2019, global military spending had been on the rise for two consecutive years, hitting a total of 1.82 trillion dollars in 2018, up by 2.6% compared with the previous year. The growth rate in 2018 was more than twice of that in 2017 and was the highest since 1988. Statistics for 2019 is not available from this institute yet, but the global military expenditures are expected to make another new record and keep high in 2020 based on the military budget plans released in major countries and regions.
America’s military spending increased for the first time in 7 years in 2018, reaching 649 billion dollars, an increase of 4.6% compared with 2017. According to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, military expenditures of the US continued to rise to 738 billion dollars, up by 2.8% year-on-year. Not only does the US remain the largest spender (more than 700 billion dollars annually) in the world to uphold its military advantages, it keeps pressing its NATO and AsiaPacific allies to increase their defense budget for burden sharing. Military spending rises were also witnessed in such major countries as Japan, South Korea, India, Germany and France, with some rises being remarkable. The only exception, though, was Russia, whose military expenditures have decreased in the past two years. This is mainly due to a budget shortage entailed by the sluggish Russian economy, according to general international opinion.
Arms race in artificial intelligence (AI) has been booming. On February 11, 2019, American president Donald Trump signed an executive order announcing the American AI Initiative. In this initiative, it was stressed that “Continued American leadership in AI is of paramount importance to maintaining the economic and national security of the United States”. On June 21, the Trump
Administration’s National AI R&D Strategic Plan: 2019 Update was released. The R&D and military use of AI have already been unfolding in Department of Defense (DoD) and various service branches in the US. Based on the first five-year-plan released by the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, DoD, around 600 AI programs will be jointly promoted by the US military and another 17 institutions with an investment of 1.7 billion dollars in the coming five years. In the application of AI technologies, American land force is developing AI bombs that can carry out more precise long-distance strikes, and the Navy is working to set up a “Ghost Fleet” that consists of 10 unmanned vessels. For the part of Russia, as early as 2015, the military application of its AI technologies had stood the test of Syrian battlefields. Ground-force robots independently developed by Russia were capable of patrolling, investigating, mine-clearance and short-distance fire support. Russia’s unmanned underwater vehicles could work in groups to monitor underwater and seabed environment, searching for suspicious objects so as to bomb them. Russia’s biggest edge lies in military AI drones, where it is leading in the world. Meanwhile, other major countries have also stepped their efforts. The UK, France, Germany and India have prioritized military application of AI in their national strategies by increasing investment and setting up specialized institutions. It is generally believed in the international community that AI will dominate future battlefields and intelligence attack is already shaping wars.
The US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) has been causing severe consequences. Immediately after it walked out of this treaty, America kicked off an “R&D--deployment--application” process of the hitherto-banned missiles, and carried out two land-based INF-range missile tests in a row from August to December 2019. As a response to America’s withdrawal, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ordered relevant departments in his country to develop a ground-based version of
the Kalibr cruise missile system, and a ground-based system with long-range hypersonic missile, by the end of 2020. So far, two out of three pillars backing the US-Russia /USSR bilateral nuclear disarmament---INF Treaty, ABM treaty (Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems), and New START (New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty)-are null and void. The only functional one, the New START, is due to expire in 2021, after which year it could be extended for another five years. Nevertheless, the New START is also doomed, given Trump’s claim that it is “one of several bad deals”. With US pulling out of treaties, other countries will be under more pressure to develop intermediaterange missiles, thus piling up risks of confrontations and conflicts in Eurasia.
War in space has been brought on the agenda of major countries’ military strategies. America sped up military arrangements for the space in 2019. It intensified investment in space programs, quickly established space-related institutions, and actively worked on offensive space weapons, including unmanned spaceplanes, anti-satellite weapons and spacebased offensive weapon systems. America has also carried out secret military drills for space wars. As a matter of fact, a military drill was conducted within less than 10 days since the US Space Command was set up, reflecting America’s haste of promoting space militarization and sense of urgency to gear up for potential space wars. In December 2019, the
Senate and Congress of America passed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, announcing the formation of Space Force, the sixth branch of US Armed Forces. Meanwhile, NATO has blazed the trail of space militarization. In a meeting for foreign ministers in Belgium in November and at the 2019 London Summit, NATO formally declared space as an operational domain. In July 2019, France announced the creation of a French space force command within the French air force, and planned to develop an Air and Space Force. In Japan’s Defense of Japan 2019, outer space was deemed as a new domain of key and strategic significance. Japan also announced plans to build the first “space self-defense force” of 70 people by 2020 to cooperate with US forces. In the meantime, India has carried out its first test of anti-satellite weapon, which destroyed a low-Earth orbit satellite. Prime Minister Narendra Modi thus claimed India as a “space power”. Space, therefore, has become a new battlefield for arms race.
The Gulf region, normally regarded as an oasis of peace, has become more prone to military conflicts as local confrontations intensify. Iran attracted the world’s attention again. With its tense relationship with America continuing, Iran is faced with more risks of military conflicts. Navigation security of Strait of Hormuz is under severe threat. A series of attacks on merchant ships and oil tankers in the Persian Gulf has forced many navies to begin escort. War in Yemen is spilling deep into the region, endangering in many ways the territorial security of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Arms race in this region keeps escalating. Countries compete with each other in purchasing weapons and developing national defense industry. Development of nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and drones risks spiraling out of control.
Unilateralism and Protectionism Keep Growing, Security Cooperation among Major Countries Moves Backwards
Scars in the relations between Amer
ica and its traditional allies have run deeper. Quarrels continued between the US and European countries over trade, Iranian nuclear issue, and strategy in the Middle East. Europe has grown more dissatisfied with America due to the latter’s unilateral acts: pulling out of the Paris Agreement and the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), pushing European countries to pay their “fair share”, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US embassy there, as well as challenging the international trading system. In his speech during commemorations marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, French president Emmanuel Macron openly criticized Trump’s unilateral and bullying policies, and called on European countries to be independent and create a “true European army”. Strongly irritated by Macron’s comments, Trump sent five tweets in a row to hit back. America’s decision to withdraw from the INF Treaty was a big slap in the face of its European allies. It not only cast yet another shadow over US-Europe relations, but also opened the “Pandora’s box” of arms race. International arms control therefore was faced with a major historic setback, and the global system for arms control risked collapsing. In November, without consulting their European allies, US announced withdrawal of its troops in northern Syria and Turkish forces shortly thereafter launched their incursion. Responding to such behaviors, Macron suggested that NATO was experiencing “brain death”, ringing a clear “warning bell” for the cross-Atlantic alliance. However, conflicts within NATO didn’t stop there. In December, at the NATO 70th Anniversary Summit in London, America and European countries debated heatedly on military burden-sharing, and Turkey was persistent in purchasing the Russian-made anti-aircraft S-400 missile system. Meanwhile, the prolonged Brexit drama, which seemed to never end, kept disrupting the UK-EU relations. At present, given an America that is increasingly irrational, a France-Germany relationship that is not all harmonious, a UK that is deeply stuck in Brexit, as well as its less-developed members that are hesitant, NATO is confronted with unprecedented challenges in strategic positioning, guiding strategies, development plans and future approaches. Although the traditional alliance between America and its allies may not fall apart, the consequences brought by America’s bullying policies, including unilateralism and protectionism, are taking their toll. It is indisputable that the alliance is marred by lack of mutual trust, increasing differences, and deeper scars.
Competition between the US and Russia in the Middle East has become more complex and dramatic. Russia made good use of several incidents, including the shoot-down of an American drone, escalation of US-Iran tensions, as well as America’s withdrawal of US troops in northern Syria and abandonment of its years-long alliance--the Kurdish forces. Russia took those opportunities to engage more actively in Middle East affairs, and reached consensus with President Erdogan of Turkey on securing a buffer zone along the Turkey-Syria border. Russia’s intermediation successfully made various parties in the conflict to depend on it--the Assad regime, Turkish government, and even the Kurdish forces, who used to be an
American ally. As a result, Russia not only consolidated its strategic barriers in the Middle East, but also won more friends. In October 2019, Russian President, Vladimir Putin, successfully visited Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which are America’s allies in the Middle East, and was warmly received. The special status of Russia in the Middle East was again demonstrated.
Strategic competition between China and US has increased. In the end of 2019, after more than a year of difficult negotiations, the two countries finally reached a “phase one” trade deal. This was good news to the two economies and the global economy. Nevertheless, ChinaUS relations in 2019 were marked by cold currents. America’s policies towards China stressed more on competition and confrontation, and became more hawkish and less cool-headed. The US waged a “cold war of science and technology” against China and blacklisted a host of Chinese hi-tech companies. The FBI and several American security institutions investigated Chinese scholars and students and restrained their activities, blocking normal people-to-people exchanges between China and the US. In order to isolate China, “hawkish forces” in the US even forced various countries, including US allies, to choose sides between America and China. In addition, America constantly meddled in China’s domestic affairs related to Taiwan, Hongkong and Xinjiang, promoting power politics and bullying acts. In the US, it seems that the new “political correctness” is to step up competition with China, and restrain and contain China’s rising.
In 2019, exchanges and cooperation among major countries shrank remarkably. Competition, confrontations and uncertainties all increased. International cooperation in security moved backwards, and the global security governance was faced with more difficulties.
Security Environment in China’s Neighborhood Becoming More Stable with Increasing Potential Hotspot Issues and Uncertainties
In 2019, the security environment of China’s neighborhood was basically
Although the traditional alliance between America and its allies may not fall apart, the consequences brought by America’s bullying policies, including unilateralism and protectionism, are taking their toll.
stable. There were no major disputes or conflicts in central, southern and eastern Asia, and some hot-spot issues cooled down. The biggest highlight was that China-Russia relationship was elevated to a comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era. It marked a new high of strategic mutual trust between China and Russia, and offered strong strategic support for China to strengthen security in its neighborhood and stability of the world. As diplomatic ties between China and DPRK came to its 70th anniversary, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, visited DPRK. Xi’s visit consolidated and promoted traditional friendship between the two countries, and made fresh and important contribution to the stability of Korean Peninsula and peaceful resolution of the DPRK nuclear issue. Meanwhile, China and Japan reached a 10-point consensus on improving bilateral relations. As a result, situation of the East China Sea was relatively tranquil, and China and Japan managed to coexist peacefully and jointly handle relevant affairs on Diaoyu Islands. In October 2019, state leaders of China and India met for the second time, promoting steady development of bilateral relations. New prospects were opened for win-win cooperation, and border area between the two countries was generally stable. The upgraded protocol of the free trade agreement between China and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) fully came into force. The first reading of the Single Draft Negotiating Text of the COC in the South China Sea was finished ahead of schedule, and COC consultations were undertaken on all fronts. The China-ASEAN relationship entered a new era. Disputes over South China Sea were under control, and no major frictions or conflicts broke out. In December, the 8th China-Japan South Korea trilateral summit was held in Chengdu, China, which released the Trilateral Cooperation Vision for the Next Decade. In this document, the three countries stressed that they will jointly promote regional development, prosperity, peace and stability. In a word, China enhanced its relations with neighboring countries on all fronts in 2019, and thus stabilized and promoted the security environment in its neighborhood.
In the meantime, there have been more destabilizing factors and uncertainties surrounding China, and some potential hot-spot issues still risk spiraling out of control. The biggest among them is in-depth engagement and strong interference of external powers. In 2019, DoD and State Department of the US respectively issued policy reports on “Indo-Pacific Strategy”, and the quadrilateral meeting mechanism among America, Japan, India and Australia was elevated to ministerlevel. On its economic front, the “IndoPacific Strategy” focuses on infrastructure, energy security and digital economy, and aims to push back the influence of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. On its security front, this strategy prioritizes critical geopolitical focal points, including countries along the Mekong River and Bay of Bengal, as well as Pacific Island countries. In addition, Taiwan region is becoming one point for implementing the “IndoPacific Strategy”.
The negative effects on security of America’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty are unfolding in China’s neighborhood. Proliferation of land-based missiles risks intensifying. Namely, land-based missile systems that target China could be developed by the US and deployed in territories of US allies. Or there may be missile systems independently developed by Asia-Pacific countries. Both situations will make China’s neighborhood less safe.
America and its allies have been monitoring DPRK’s “smuggling” on the Yellow Sea and East China Sea since 2018 with military forces. Such activities are the biggest military mobilization in China’s neighborhood in recent years. The military aircrafts and warships deployed are even more active than those in South China Sea, and it is possible that they are also conducting investigation on China. Such activities have posed direct threat over China’s coastal areas. America’s overall military engagement in South China Sea increased in 2019, including military deployment, as well as frequency, degree and targeting of military activities. “Navigation freedom” was only a slight part in America’s moves. In the meantime, Japan has accelerated its military arrangement in South China Sea. Several external major countries are showing constant military presence in South China Sea. Disputes over islands and reefs have cooled down, but boundary questions, usually focusing on fishery, oil and gas resources, have become more acute. This shows that disputes over South China Sea are longterm and complex in nature.
For the part of the Korean Peninsula, despite a dramatic ease in 2018, it was under stalemate again in 2019. In the year’s end, DPRK reminded the US of the imminent deadline to improve US-DPRK relations and showed its strong stance on several occasions. DPRK and the US kept criticizing each other. Situation of the Korean Peninsula remains unstable, and may fall into a new round of “cyclical period”.
Taiwan Straits were faced with the biggest potential threat on security in China’s neighborhood in 2019. Taiwan authorities represented by Tsai Ing-wen stubbornly stick to a “Taiwan independence” stance and refuse to acknowledge the 1992 Consensus. Such actions forced the yearslong institutionalized consultation across the Straits to halt, restrained people-to-people exchanges, and posed subversive damage on peaceful development of cross-Straits relations. Tsai and her team are willing to be used as a “chess piece” by America’s hawkish anti-China forces. They created anti-China sentiments by leveraging current chaos in Hong Kong, stirred up hostility across the Straits, and tried to instigate cross-Straits confrontation on all fronts. As both America and Taiwan region are entering a year of elections, Trump administration is playing the “Taiwan card” more frequently, and Tsai the “America card”. America keeps challenging abruptly the redline of “one China principle”, which has not only dealt a heavy blow to the political foundation of China-US relations, but also become the biggest hidden risk in cross-Straits relations. In 2019, several hot-spot and sensitive issues in China’s neighborhood were used by the US to cause trouble on China’s doorway.