The Military Balance 2014

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000674217
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Contrôle de l'armement

The Military Balance 2014 contains region-by-region analysis of the major military and economic developments affecting defence and security policies and the trade in weapons and other military equipment. Detailed entries describe the military capabilities of 171 countries, displaying key equipment inventories and defence economics. Comprehensive tables detail major training activities, UN and non-UN deployments, and international comparisons of defence expenditure and military personnel.

Chapter One

Conflict analysis and conflict trends

Learning lessons and building capabilities

As the war in Afghanistan enters it thirteenth year, and two years after the final exit from Iraq, military thinking in the West is motivated by a range of imperatives. Some are rooted in financial stringencies; others derive from a desire to leave behind the most difficult aspects of those military experiences. That desire has also helped resurrect thinking that in future, armed conflict might be waged quickly, cheaply and efficiently, or at least without an enduring military presence.

In the United States, concepts similar to the 1990s prediction of a ‘revolution in military affairs’, touting advanced military technology as a means to achieve a high degree of certainty in war, have reappeared under new guises such as Air-Sea Battle’. Fiscal constraints and the associated need to reduce defence budgets – as well as successful unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) strikes against terrorist cells in places like Yemen and the frontier provinces of Pakistan – have strengthened the lure of long-range strikes as a cost-effective answer to security threats.

While opinions might be mixed about the relative value of these concepts and nascent doctrines, defence planning must account for and embrace technological change; there is no doubt that rapidly developing technologies are affecting military modernisation by state and non-state actors alike. Of course, the degree to which this is the case varies according to contextual factors – such as geography, defence ambition and financial resources – but armed forces are increasingly dependent on capabilities ranging from networked systems at the high-end, to section-level hand-thrown UAVs, and even commercially available communications at the lower end. But overly high expectations of technology could leave military forces, both Western and non-Western, ill-prepared to deter conflict, respond to security threats as they emerge and cope with countermeasures that potential enemies may employ against them.

For that reason, it is increasingly important that Western defence planners look to the ‘wars of 9/11’ and other conflicts across the globe – as well as wider geopolitical dynamics – in order to discern whether these display continuities with the past and whether there are enduring trends that should form part of defence-planning processes. Indeed, consideration of continuities, as well as anticipated changes in geopolitical priorities, threats to international security and military capabilities are essential to the development of defence and military capability and strategy. As Sir Michael Howard observed in The Causes of War and Other Essays (p. 195), the challenge is to ‘steer between the danger of repeating the errors of the past … and the danger of remaining bound by theories deduced from past history although changes in conditions have rendered these theories obsolete’.

Geopolitical priorities

Since late 2011, US defence policy has emphasised change in its strategic priorities with its much-publicised ‘rebalance’ to the Asia-Pacific. Trends such as China’s continued rise as an economic and military power, tensions over competing territorial claims in Northeast and Southeast Asia, increasing competition for resources, North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons – and its frequent provocative behaviour – seem to validate that shift.

However, even as US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel toured Asia in September 2013, the emerging evidence of the use of chemical weapons (CW) by the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria highlighted the enduring threats to international security from the Middle East. The Syrian civil war is one of several interconnected conflicts that grew out of the Arab Spring and highlight the unpredictability of the region’s security environment. While local dynamics vary across those conflicts, terrorists, extremists, and proxy forces have viewed them opportunistically, taking advantage of weak governance, mobilising disenfranchised youth, and exacerbating communal conflicts to advance their agendas. This is particularly true of organisations affiliated with al-Qaeda, as well as militias associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The civil war in Syria has become a regional conflict contributing to large-scale communal violence in Iraq, generating vast numbers of refugees in neighbouring countries, and expanding the transnational movement of fighters, not only across the Middle East but also between the region and Western countries. While the Obama administration may remain determined to emphasise Asia-Pacific regional security, both the US and Europe are aware that the Middle East region remains a priority for improving security, as well as planning for crisis response.

The utility of prioritising security efforts mainly by region is limited due to the interconnected nature of modern conflicts. Problems in the Middle East and Africa, for example, are linked with those in Central and South Asia; this interconnection highlights the need to view security problems such as transnational terrorism holistically, while remaining sensitive to local realities.

While NATO and other ISAF partners are anxious to reduce their military commitment in Afghanistan, it will certainly continue beyond 2014. Security problems in, and emanating from, the Middle East could slow the ‘rebalance’ toward the Asia-Pacific, and a security collapse in Afghanistan after 2014 would generate threats far beyond the South and Central Asian region.

The stakes for international security in Afghanistan and Pakistan remain high not only because of the potential local consequences of a collapse in security there, but also because of the power that transnational terrorists could gain from control of territory and access to financial resources associated with the narcotics trade and other illicit activity.

Threats

Connections between local conflicts and transnational terrorists are found in areas as diverse as the Sinai, Mali, Nigeria, Libya, Kenya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. Terrorist organisations continue to demonstrate the ability to communicate, mobilise resources, train, move freely across international boundaries and gain access to weapons – and they are increasingly using technology to do so. Alliances between these groups and transnational criminal organisations add degrees of complexity and risk. Illicit trafficking – including narcotics, weapons, money and people – strengthens criminal and insurgent groups and perpetuates state weakness in critical regions. For example, alliances of convenience between terrorist organisations, other illegal armed groups and criminal networks are prominent features of the conflict in Mali, as well as in piracy in the Indian Ocean and along the West African coast. The various Taliban-affiliated, transnational terrorist groups located in Pakistan use the narcotics trade and other trafficking to fund operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and internationally. The diffuse and interconnected nature of these conflicts means that armed forces must remain prepared not only to conduct raids and expeditionary operations against terrorist networks, but also to integrate military intelligence and operations much more closely with law-enforcement efforts. Also important is developing partner-nation capacity in these areas, as well as in coping with illegal armed groups and organised crime.

The necessary focus on transnational threats in Western defence strategies has been accompanied by a reduced emphasis on preparedness for conflict between states; among some Western armed forces recently deployed on operations, mission priorities have meant greater focus on skills associated with counter-insurgency, to the detriment, in some cases, of combat skills associated with combined-arms manoeuvre. The withdrawal from the major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is giving some forces the chance to rebalance back towards full-spectrum training, though in many cases this is limited by the effect of defence cuts. While focus might sharpen on inter-state conflict, Mali demonstrated that Western armed forces will need to remain prepared for operations against non-state actors. The 2013 French White Paper on Defence and National Security demonstrates this dual focus by noting Russia’s rapidly expanding military budget as well as ‘increasing displays of strength’, but also the threat that non-state actors pose to French security interests.

A key risk to international security lies at the intersection between hostile states and terrorist organisations. The most dangerous terrorist and armed groups enjoy safe havens within the boundaries of nation-states and receive direct assistance from governments that use them as arms of their foreign policy. For example, Iran’s support is a critical source of strength for Hizbullah in Lebanon and Syria, while the Pakistan military’s relationship with Kashmiri groups, the Haqqani Network, Hizb-e-Islami Gulbuddin and the Quetta Shura Taliban, as well as its selective pursuit of transnational terrorist organisations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, perpetuate threats to its own security as well as transnational threats originating from its territory.

Perhaps the greatest threat from nation-states, which could generate the greatest discontinuity with the contemporary security environment, is the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, including the means to deliver them at long range. Threats to cyber security are another challenge. The nuclear threat seems particularly acute in North Korea and Iran, although the Syrian regime’s use of CW highlights another hazard. Multiple Israeli strikes on Syrian and Iranian weapons transfers to Hizbullah also highlight concern over non-state actors receiving particularly destructive weapons, such as long-range surface-to-surface missiles, from hostile states. Protecting societies from terrorist threats will continue to require military forces capable of action against those organisations, as well as deterring or confronting nations that harbour and support them.

While there has been a focus on the proliferation of long-range precision missiles in potentially hostile states, more attention has arguably been given to countering the anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) problems these systems pose than to the offensive and coercive threats they represent. North Korea and Iran’s nuclear programmes, for example, combined with their efforts to develop long-range delivery systems, pose threats across the globe. This contributes to the risk that other regional non-nuclear states might feel compelled to develop similar capabilities to deter that threat.

For Western armed forces, there will continue to be a focus on developing missile defences and long-range strike capabilities to deter, pre-empt or respond to aggression (though the utility of current capabilities is questionable given the difficulty of identifying and destroying targets that are possibly hardened, buried or mobile). However, there could still be a role for mobile land forces; before the international agreement that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) could start destroying Syria’s CW arsenal, there had been much talk of how Western forces could either destroy or seize the stockpile. Options included offensive air and missile operations, but discussion also focused on the potential deployment of substantial ground forces to secure suspected sites and seize CW agents and munitions.

What military capabilities?

Defence establishments in the West need to balance strategic priorities against fiscal constraints imposed on them in the wake of the financial crisis. In many cases, this is leading to reductions not just in military capability, but also in defence ambition. At the same time, it is spurring moves to develop closer defence cooperation among Western states, both bilaterally and multilaterally. While there are practical benefits to such cooperation (as demonstrated by the rapid assistance rendered by partners to France’s Mali mission in early 2013), the financial benefits – including from such initiatives as pooling and sharing – are so far less certain (see p. 59).

Another outcome of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is that Western states have become more cautious about intervention. This certainly influenced the UK Parliament’s vote on Syria on 29 August 2013, with Secretary of State for Defence Philip Hammond stating that ‘there is a deep well of suspicion about military involvement in the Middle East stemming largely from the experiences of Iraq’. But other states may perceive different lessons from these wars. For insta...