The world of 2014 witnessed remarkable changes in politics and military. In spite of the fact that peace, cooperation, and development are the main trend, armed and ethnic conflicts, terrorism, separatism, geostrategic competition, and sea, island disputes are still complicated and seriously challenging the world’s peace and security. The most prominent events can be used as tones of intertwined “dark and light” to draw the world’s paranomic “picture” in 2014.
1. The rise of self-proclaimed Islamic State’s (IS) and the challenging US-led war against IS
Abruptly rising, attacking, and invading a number of large cities of Iraq and Syria with barbarous crime and atrocities, IS has put the world in a new peril even which is more dangerous than the notorious terrorist organization of al-Qaeda. It was thought for many years that terrorism was almost wiped out; however, it now has a new variant that is more brutal and dangerous. According to international political and military experts, IS has more advantages than al-Qaeda, namely huge financial resources (from seizing oil wells in North Iraq and East Syria, and black money in donations); being rather regular, equipped with various modern arms, and battle-tested. Notably, by its jihadist ideology “the world belongs to Muslims, thus Islamists must fight to control the whole world”, IS has attracted lots of believers all over the world. That helps the organization not only powerfully operate in the Middle East and North Africa, but also expand to other regions. It is estimated that IS now has hundred thousands of militants from various countries, including those from the West, and that the number is rapidly increasing.
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IS militants in Raqqa province, North Syria (source: Reuters) |
To protect its national interests in the Middle East, the U.S. had to adjust its anti-terrorism strategy to counter IS. To this end, the U.S. and a number of its allies have launched air attacks on IS targets in Iraq and Syria; at the same time, strengthening financial support for Iraqi security forces and Kurdistan groups in Syria, providing arms and training them to fight IS. The U.S., through international conferences, urged for an International Coalition against IS. According to military experts, the US strategy against IS is by its nature “new wine in the old bottle”, and has shortcomings. In their opinion, in the context of Iraqi security forces’ weakness and Syria’s unrest, the US air strikes are not enough to defeat IS unless they deploy ground forces. However, after 10 years being “bogged down” in Iraq, it is a really thorny issue for the White House to send its troops back. On the other hand, so far, the US and Western anti-terrorism operations have shown that focusing on military measures without paying enough attention to synchronous solutions to root cause of the terrorism, namely poverty, injustice, inequality, especially the US hegemonic policies and its intervention to destabilize countries and regions, did not help defeat terrorism but facilitate terrorist proliferation, development, and fierceness. On the military operations against IS over the past months, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reported that air campaigns by the U.S. and its allies in Iraq and Syria have not yet resulted as expected; the number of foreign militiants joining IS has non-stoppingly increased, and the organization is planning to expand its presence in other regions such as Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and so on.
2. Ukraine’s political crisis brought about a “shock” in the geo-political competition between Russia and the US and the West
The crisis of Ukraine, in 2014, experienced a more complex and dangerous new twist. On February 2nd, 2014, Ukrainian Parliament voted to oust President Yanukovych and form a new pro-Western Government, bringing the country to deeper chaos and divisions than ever before. In East Ukraine, Crimea’s government held a referendum on joining Russian Federation; other regions (Donetsk and Lugansk) broke out the idea of separating from Ukraine. In spite of the fact that efforts have been made to resolve the problem by parties in Ukraine and international community, conflicts between the Government’s troops and separatist forces have been fierce, claiming thousands of lives of innocent people. Recently, rejecting elections taking place in the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, President P.O. Poroshenko cancelled the Special Status for the Eastern region. He also said that Kiev would rearm and prepare for a war. All of which have made the crisis in Ukraine more severe.
Notably, the annexation of Crimea by Russia has made Russia-Ukraine relations extremely intense; at the same time, caused a “shock” in the geo-political competition between Russia, the U.S. and European Union (EU). According to observers, the reason why Ukraine fell into severe crisis, which is hard to solve, is that the country is placed in the US and Western strategy to capture the “post-Soviet” space, contain, and lay siege to Russia. To realize it, they conducted the 2004 “orange revolution” but failed after Viktor Yanukovych (a pro-Russia person) became the President of Ukraine in 2009. In November, 2013, taking avantage of Kiev’s refusal to sign the EU Association Agreement, they backed opposition forces to conduct the “second orange revolution” to topple President Yanukovych and establish a new pro-Western government. For Russia, Ukraine is the strategic area of paramount importance; the bridge for Russia’s petroleum export to Europe; Russia’s vital strategic buffer area when North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) military encirclement against Russia is increasingly tight. Russia’s annexation of Crimea (where Russia positions its Black Sea Fleet), in fact is a risky move in order to protect its national security and core interests. The U.S. and the West considered Crimea annexation “unacceptable” and have continuously imposed sanctions on Russia. They accused Russia of violating international law, causing instability in East Ukraine. At present, the U.S. and EU still continue their economic sanctions against Russia. NATO has held several military exercises near Russia’s borders to display their strength and militarily deter Moscow. For its part, Russia declared its determination to protect national security and interests, including those of Russian speaking community in Ukraine. Russian leaders demanded that the West and Ukraine respect political choice of the people in East Ukraine and regard this as a necessary condition to stabilize the country. There is concern that tensions caused by the crisis in Ukraine might push relations between Russia and the U.S. and NATO towards a new “cold war”, even a dangerous “hot” confrontation.
3. The picture of global security in dark colour because of an increase in armed conflicts and disputes over seas and islands
International analysts believe that in 2014, while long-lasting conflicts in Central Asia, Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia remain unsolved, many armed conflicts, military coups, and disputes over seas and islands occur, which pose major risks to global and regional security and stability. Among those, the most prominent is Israel’s military attacks in the Gaza Strip to fight Hamas movement. The attacks took place in a short time (around 7 weeks) but caused an extremely terrible humanitarian disaster for Palestinians with more than 2,200 killed, 9,500 wounded and nearly 10,000 demolished houses. The United Nations accused Israel of war crime. On August 5th, 2014 Israel and Hamas suddenly reached a long-term ceasefire; however the bottleneck of the conflict between the two sides has not been eliminated yet. There is concern that the ceasefire is just a “break” for the two sides to prepare for a more intense new war which could break out at anytime.
Additionally, there exist other hard-to-solve international issues, especially military coups in Thailand and Burkina Faso; tensions caused by disputes in the East Sea and the East China Sea; the nuclear issue on Korean Peninsula and in Iran; peace process in the Middle Eas etc. Those issues have made the world security picture 2014 gloomier with the main tone of “dark”.
4. The trend of integration, global and regional cooperation has more substantive new developments
Besides complex events and unstable security, the world, in 2014, also has many positive “bright spots”. Global, inter-regional, regional cooperation and integration are carried out in a rush with various forms, in many fields, at different levels. Notably, to fulfill the objective of building an ASEAN Community by 2015, ASEAN, in 2014, has focused on accelerating cooperation and connection within the bloc and with its dialogue partners in 3 pillars, namely economic cooperation, political-security cooperation, socio-cutural cooperation. Simultaneously, ASEAN has also promoted its centrality and responsibility in the structure of regional and inter-regional cooperation by multilateral dialogues such as ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), East Asia Summit (EAS), Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM +), to some extent the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and so on. Particularly, solidarity and unity within the Association have significantly improved. In response to China’s illegal placement of Haiyang 981 oil rig in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, ASEAN released a statement on the East Sea issue; which clearly stated the importance of maintenance of peace, stability, security, maritime and air safety and freedom; demanded that all relevant parties restrain, not use or threaten to use force, peacefully address disputes on the basis of fully undertaking the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), the Statement on ASEAN’s six-point Principles on the East Sea (2012), international law, particularly United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982). ASEAN statement on the East Sea issue is highly and widely appreciated, which reflected the Association’s consensus, solidarity, responsibility, and centrality towards issues relating to regional peace, security, and stability.
In 2014, dynamics of cooperation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is of public concern especially when Russia-US relations are “frozen”. SCO Summit (September, 2014) approved new membership admission in 2015, and agreed to strengthen cooperation in defence, especially holding military exercises, developing defence industry, and supporting one another in regional and global important issues. Many experts believe that SCO plays an increasingly important role in global and regional security structure.
According to analysts’ evaluation on the political and military paranomic picture of the world, 2014 is the year that the world’s peace and security have been most seriously challenged since the end of “Cold War”. How does the situation affect the year 2015? What is the world situation like in 2015? There is no answer at this moment, but certainty that it depends on efforts of each country and the whole international community.
Dong Van