The future of almost eve.., p.14
The Future of Almost Everything, page 14
Daily life in big Russian cities can be expected to be similar to that of many European nations, with vigorous consumerism, capitalist culture, and middle-class wealth. However, we may also see what many Russians would describe as loss of ‘soul’ or ‘dushá’ in smaller cities like Samara or Tolyatti, with very high divorce rates, addiction, depression, and lack of purpose or moral strength.
Russian foreign policy and military renewal
Russian leaders are likely to promote a free-trade area with border nations such as Georgia and Ukraine (but not China), to rival the EU. They will seek to influence former CIS nations with a combination of diplomacy, economic measures, media messages, military pressure and less obvious actions.
President Putin will continue to fret about what he sees as persistent American efforts to undermine Russia, whether economic, diplomatic, military or covert. He will also worry about similar activities by some European nations. The stronger the EU becomes and the more united NATO is, the more threatened Russia will feel.
Russia lost over 20 million lives in the Second World War, which is 60 times the toll of UK military deaths, and 90 times the toll in France. It is very hard for non-Russians to fully grasp the emotional force of that disaster on the national psyche, and on Russian pride. It explains the ‘Never Again’ and ‘Don’t mess with Russia’ mantras that are set to influence foreign policy for several decades. The nation is also deeply scarred by the loss of the Soviet empire, as Britain was with regard to its own empire in the 1950s–1980s, and is fiercely proud of its heritage, culture and military strength.
Deep unease and anxiety over NATO and the EU
Therefore, Russia is likely to remain bitterly opposed to any further extensions of EU or NATO influence or control, close to its borders, and will be easily provoked by fear and mistrust to vigorous actions of many kinds to prevent this. Such steps would be likely to damage Russia’s economic growth, and we will see Russian rhetoric that may feel like a throwback to the Cold War. However, such rhetoric will be popular at home, unless people are hit by major, prolonged declines in living standards that they come to blame on the government rather than on sanctions or other actions by foreign powers.
Russia is likely to want to spend more on defence than any other nation except China and America over the next two decades, and to seek strategic alliances with China, to reduce political and trade risks to the West.
Russia is already an unbeatable power in the wider European region in terms of tanks and rockets, artillery and troop numbers, but also in locally stored tactical nuclear weapons. NATO has little local strength in comparison, without resorting to the threat of first nuclear strike, which is almost unthinkable.
Challenges for Russia
Despite former superpower status, Russia’s economy was only the size of Italy at the start of 2014, and shrunk to the size of Spain with the collapse of oil prices and EU sanctions. A sustained regional conflict would rapidly destroy a significant part of Russia’s wealth.
Internal security will remain a key issue: the interior ministry bill exceeds by far state spending on health. Other challenges include capital flight by Russians moving wealth to ‘safe havens’ – $170bn in 2014 alone; low life expectancy in men (64 years – 50th in world), partly related to alcohol; corruption – ranked 127th in the world by Transparency International; lack of strength in manufacturing; Islamic separatists; threat of a ‘coloured revolution’ inflamed by social media; and a crumbling legacy from tens of thousands of Soviet-era tower blocks.
Despite these things, expect a more vibrant, self-confident, militant and wealthy Russia within 15 years, but still bound tightly to global markets, and constrained by them.
Tribalism will undermine Ukraine
Since Tsarist times, Ukraine has been called the ‘bread-basket of Russia’. It was the wealthiest part of the Soviet Union, with coal mines, heavy industry and large-scale grain production. It declined rapidly after the breakup of the Soviet bloc, due to bankruptcy, under corrupt and incompetent governments, to the point where it refused to pay Gazprom for heavily subsidised Russian gas, on which the entire nation’s survival depends.
The Crimea will remain under Russia’s control following its seizure from Ukraine in 2014. The Crimea contains Russia’s most important naval base and was a highly valued part of the Russian nation, until ceded by treaty to Ukraine in 1957 in exchange for cheaper gas, at a time when such an ‘administrative’ step had limited significance in the context of the wider Soviet empire.
Ukraine is likely to split permanently along tribal ‘fault lines’. People in the east of the country are mainly Russian speakers who feel strongly Russian in culture. Their region is dominated by coal mining, which used to generate most of the nation’s wealth.
As in many other civil wars, the situation has been complicated by volunteer fighters and mercenaries from many nations (particularly Russia), and by maverick local leaders who are difficult for either side to control.
The nation will only be held together if a huge amount of autonomy is granted to eastern areas, in a peace process supported by Russia. Whether this will be within a federal structure of some kind or with the east effectively absorbed into Russia remains to be seen.
We could well see a ‘frozen conflict’ for many years, similar to those still in place today in South Ossetia, Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh and Abkhazia, following their own breakaway votes from post-Soviet republics in 1991–1993.
Impact of tribalism on future conflicts
Across the world there have been hundreds of civil wars since the Second World War, of which twenty are ongoing and most of which have been simmering for two decades or more. But there have been very few traditional wars.
We have probably seen around 30 million conflict-related deaths since 1945, compared with 100 million between 1914 and 1945. So our world as a whole has been relatively peaceful, and continues to be, despite news headlines.
Most current conflicts are in poor nations in Africa, the Middle East and places like Ukraine – which together produce less than 7% of global output. Therefore the impact on profits of global corporations has been very small over the last two decades. Only 2% of American, British and Japanese foreign investment is in such places, for example. Yet the risks of conflict remain and indeed may be growing.
American supremacy will continue to create tension
More than $1.8 trillion is spent every year on weapons and other defence costs, or 2.5% of global GDP, down from 4% in the last days of the Cold War, equivalent to $250 per person on earth. Combined sales of the largest 100 arms companies is around $320bn a year.
However, 40% of all global military spending is by one nation alone: America, which burns up more in this way than the next 15 highest-spending nations combined. This is a truly spectacular imbalance of military fire-power, and will be unsustainable in the longer term, as we will see. Next is China with 9.5% of global military spending, followed by Russia at 5.2%, UK 3.5% and Japan 3.4%.
America needs to spend just 3% of GDP on arms to achieve such dominance – compared to Russia, which today spends 4% of a much smaller economy, China 2%, India 2%, UK 2%, France 2%, Israel 6%, Saudi Arabia 9% and Oman 12%.
This relentless build-up of ultra-powerful weaponry will continue to feed tension, resentment and fear over the next two decades. America’s army, navy and air force will be dominant globally for the next 15–20 years, despite rapidly increasing military budgets in Russia and China.
However, the perceived ‘moral strength’ of America and its reputation as the world’s ‘police force’ is likely to continue to weaken rapidly around the world, following adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, news reports on abuse or torture of prisoners, held sometimes for years without trial, and because of routine killings using drones of foreign citizens in other nations.
China and Russia will enter a new arms race
So how long will it take China to catch up with the global military power of America? The answer depends on whether you measure this in size of armies or smartness of missiles and other tech. Even if China were to raise military spending from 2% to 5% of GDP, and even if China’s GDP were to grow 4% faster each year than America’s, it would probably take over two decades for overall capability to catch up with US military might, unless America slashed spending.
Russia will not be able to create such global strength in 40 years, but within 5 years could easily mass a million troops in Eastern Europe, up from half a million today, backed by huge numbers of lower-tech weapons, and smart tactical nuclear delivery systems. So, then, both China and Russia will be able to engage in significant military excursions in their own regions, if they choose, even if far-flung conflicts of any size will be difficult to sustain should they act alone. Only America will have the global power to try to stop them, which, on the whole, it will be very reluctant to try to do.
New nuclear threats and the Space Race
Expect to see major nuclear scares over the next 30 years as various countries or groups claim to have got hold of nuclear weapons or material, or to have developed their own, and threaten to use them.
We will see an accelerating nuclear arms race in a growing number of emerging nations, with rapid upgrades of small tactical nuclear weapons by Russia and America.
America will really struggle to develop an effective anti-ballistic missile defence, following many failed attempts to shoot down intercontinental rockets in tests, despite spending almost $100bn in 12 years. Russia and China will also try to crack this problem. The trouble is that intercontinental missiles travel at 10km per second, and can release large numbers of decoys in flight. And ‘ordinary’ looking satellites could also be launched, containing hidden nuclear devices that could be detonated while flying over a country like America or Russia.
No nuclear warhead has been used in anger since 1945. As I say, expect someone to use this threat somewhere and for massive international confusion about how to respond. Do other countries threaten to go to war against a nuclear weapon-using nation, if a warhead is used by such a country in self-defence, after repeated warnings to an aggressor? How would such a war be waged? Where do you target your first or second strike(s)? How many warheads do you retaliate with, of what size, and how rapidly do you press the fire button? How do you counterstrike against an invisible terrorist group that has no national support base? What happens if a group threatens again, and explodes a second warhead?
Countries in such a crisis may have only hours or at most a couple of days to work out how to respond.
National arms industries
As I predicted, there has been significant consolidation in the arms industry, and there will be more to come. Defence research is only cost-effective when there are large economies of scale. That means selling to other nations whose policies and behaviour may make many uneasy, despite the argument that if one country doesn’t sell to them, then another will just step in.
Rethink about high-tech weapons
High-tech weaponry will not be enough to win future wars. Most wars will be much more ordinary: guerrilla wars fought wall by wall and house by house, ethnic conflicts or terrorist attacks; mucky wars where tank commanders park their vehicles inside a large children’s hospital, where civilians are caught up in bombing attacks; traditional military hardware, fired in shopping precincts, around public libraries, by ancient stone bridges and in fields of corn.
Landmines and other messy weapons
New weapons replace old, which move down the arms chain, into the hands of the poorest (and often most unstable) nations where they are frequently used for internal repression. Then arms fall into the hands of criminals.
Weapons are also lost or unaccounted for, like the machine gun I stumbled across in woodland near London one day. Landmines are a global menace, designed to be hidden and ‘lost’ from the moment they are scattered. Tens of thousands of square miles will remain uninhabitable because of the indiscriminate use of anti-personnel devices, which will remain dangerous for at least three more decades.
Over 110 million mines have been laid and lost, affecting at least 70 countries, and 2 million more are planted each year. Each mine costs $700 to detect and recover, in work that kills many experts every year. A million ordinary people have been injured or killed in 25 years, mainly children (who often pick them up as toys), women and old people.
A further 100 million landmines are neatly boxed in military stores across the world, waiting to be used. Landmines will continue to be scattered widely, not only to protect bases and kill armed men, but also to stop farming, travel and trade.
Power of the few will break the mighty
Gigantic military strength is almost useless in delivering many types of strategic objectives – as America has repeatedly discovered.
For 50 years, America has struggled to ‘win’ a single ‘foreign’ war, and even more to ‘win’ a lasting peace, whether in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. This will reduce America’s willingness to embark on yet another major war in the next 10–15 years, barring a NATO-triggered response to a major Russian offensive against Europe, or more major terror attacks.
As Stalin once said: ‘A single death is a tragedy, but a million deaths are just a statistic’. Surveys show that Americans paid more attention to the beheadings of two US journalists in the Middle East than to any other news report over the previous 5 years. As a direct result, 75% of Americans said they supported air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq, with 66% supporting air strikes against rebels in Syria. This was a complete reversal – 12 months earlier, only 20% supported missile attacks on the Syrian government after chemical weapons were used.
Such huge emotional reactions to tiny numbers of American deaths are proof of how vulnerable the nation is to being provoked and goaded into large-scale military reactions. This makes further beheadings of hostages or similar atrocities inevitable. Enemies of the US will ask: ‘What will it take to tempt America into another asymmetric conflict that will wear it down further? Another ten journalists beheaded, or would it take twenty, or a larger attack on US soil?’ The answer of course is that it will depend on many different factors, but probably far fewer deaths than many might suppose.
Fewer unilateral decisions to embark on major wars
As we have seen, by 2030, global military power will be more equally distributed, with the relative decline of American military dominance, and this will also result in an eventual restructuring of the old UN security council.
Individual nations will be less able or likely to embark on major military action some distance from their borders, without acting jointly with several other nations. This also means that major multinational wars (or a Third World War) will become less likely, but expect many minor conflicts over resources/borders/sea-bed rights and other similar issues.
Worrying results from war games
Every large nation in the world is playing war games on a regular basis, the Pentagon more than most, exploring outcomes of imaginary conflicts in faraway places.
However, many such war games reveal the same pattern as in the Middle East. Small, highly motivated groups on the ground, with tiny budgets, easily provoking large, foreign military powers into long-term fighting at enormous cost. War games also show rather worrying outcomes from any scenarios that begin with a sudden, major Russian assault.
The greatest weakness of American military strategy is that the public is not usually prepared for more than a handful of American forces to be killed abroad. Servicemen are rarely motivated enough by the ‘cause’ to engage in widespread suicide missions. Therefore, future military strategies will be based mainly on technical power, firing long-distance weapons, at eye-watering cost, using very few human beings on the ground.
So a young drone operator sits in an American city watching live video, firing smart missiles into targets in a nation he has never visited, on the other side of the world. He thinks the enemy are terrorists that could threaten America.
On the other side, perhaps, is a young man with a gun who will soon sacrifice his own life as a local hero, for his own people, and for the ‘rightness’ of his cause. He thinks that he is a freedom fighter.
The trouble is that the history of warfare shows that those who fight with greatest passion for the ‘rightness’ of their cause tend to win in the long term. So which of the above has the strongest passion?
Terrorist or freedom fighter? This battle over perception will be central to many future conflicts, as during the Second World War with the French Resistance, and with the Nicaraguan Contra movement that was covertly funded by America in the 1980s, along with the Afghan mujahideen.
More double and treble agents – with strange results
America’s intelligence agency budget has more than doubled in real terms since 2001, to $75bn a year, while Russia’s intelligence spending has also soared. Expect huge growth in double agents, treble agents, quadruple agents – people or networks working for more than one intelligence service, infiltrating activists and militia groups, playing one off against the other with disinformation and subterfuge (such as sending a fake report to a drone operator, hoping that women and children will be killed ‘by mistake’).
Expect many strange events and news headlines. At times the numbers of spies planted inside some smaller terrorist cells may form a very significant proportion of the number of genuine members, as has already happened from time to time in Northern Ireland. Expect many moral dilemmas, and legal action in future – spies will often have to prove they are not spies by carrying out attacks or atrocities themselves. And one day the shocking truth will be revealed… with ethical and legal questions.
This strange world is being shaped further by the massive expansion of cyber-monitoring and surveillance, which in future will be added to by many tens of thousands of tiny low-cost drones, to watch us from the skies. (See Chapter 1 for more on cyber-crime and state monitoring).
