Facing Continual Change
By Harry Chenevix-Trench
2016 so far has been a year of remarkable instability, filled with events that would have been unthinkable 10 or 15 years ago. Britain’s exit from the EU, once a pipe dream for Eurosceptic’s has now come to pass. France and Germany, once liberal bastions of multiculturalism and inclusiveness have seen their societies sorely tested by multiple terrorist attacks inspired by the Islamic State. The North African coast (with the exception of a few nations) seems to be close to tearing itself apart, whilst Turkey has seemingly abandoned secular democracy for Islam tinged authoritarianism. It is a time where the EU needs to be stronger than it ever has been before to face the perils ahead, yet has never been more fractured, divided and weak.
There are many factors that have played in to the current state of affairs; climate change, stretching resources, weak economies and the role of technology have all had their role to play. But all that has happened in 2016 perhaps could be summarised by the following: The institutions, ideals and geopolitical structures that began with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1988 have come to an abrupt and sudden end.
The world is moving towards a Tripolar system where Russia, Europe/America and China hold the world in balance. Though a new cold war is unlikely, it would be safe to say that unrivalled supremacy that was enjoyed by the US post the Berlin wall is now over.
Problems that were delayed or ignored by a combination of European strength, Russian weakness and the Pax Americana have suddenly entered the geopolitical foreground.
Though Erdogan’s grisly pact with ISIS, Libya and Tunisia’s instability or Putin’s grab for the Crimea may all seem like unusual or new behaviours, in actual fact they are linked to extremely old strategic imperatives or political problems. Even Europe, once thought immune to conflict due to the calming influence of the EU, is starting to see an increased number of far right, far left and nationalist movements calling for states to abandon the EU and go their separate ways once more.
The changing situation has meant that it perhaps has never been more important to be informed. The instability that comes from major geo-political changes can raise the risk of even previously secure areas. In order to help businesses and individuals to keep abreast of events, Blackstone Consultancy can provide tailored threat reports and security analysis to navigate different countries. These reports are bespoke to each client and analyse not only major geopolitical and social changes, but also help clients avoid the risks posed by petty crime as well as showing locations for hospitals and consulates. Dependent on country, the reports also offer appropriate guidance on how to extricate oneself from potentially hazardous situations.
So how has Europe and the surrounding area changed, why, and perhaps most importantly what lies in store in the future? The following is an extremely brief summary of the geopolitical issues facing Europe and the surrounding area.
Europe
Europe geographically has been triple blessed by a temperate climate, good soil and numerous rivers forming natural boundaries between it’s various states. This good fortune has meant that Europe (for better or worse) kick-started the modern world during the Renaissance and industrial revolutions and the continents high level of development ensured that European powers colonised the globe.
The large number of nations all crammed within such a small space also led to near constant warfare. Though, it is easy to forget in today’s climate, the 19th Century saw at least one state in Europe in a position of armed conflict for 100 years, almost non-stop. The 20th Century was hardly more peaceful with the First World War (WWI), the Russian Revolution and then the Second World War (WWII) culminating in the Cold War and the Iron Curtain.
The rise of Communism after WWII combined with the scars of conflict post 1945 caused a new word to enter the European vocabulary ‘cooperation’. The EU has (for now) eradicated armed conflict between member states and the continents two greatest belligerents; Germany and France now see themselves as partners rather than enemies. As long as Europe remains united as a whole, the continent remains strong, though the EU may not have a standing army the combined economic might of it’s member states can bludgeon opposition with surprising effectiveness.
Europe’s opponents (such as Russia) know this and would prefer a return to the pre EU Europe of the early 20th Century with every state making and breaking alliances when it suits them. It is after all much easier to dominate the area when each state looks after it’s own interests rather than the wider whole. This process has in many ways already begun in the UK, France and Germany as large segments of the population feel that their wants and needs have been sacrificed on the altar of globalised liberalism.
Looking to the future, it is highly unlikely that the EU will break up despite Brexit and the on-going sovereign debt crisis in Italy, Spain and Greece. However, it is clear that urgent reform is needed. The EU needs to start listening to the citizens of the countries that compose it or risk greater weakness. In addition, some states that are a part of the EU (such as Greece) are far too weak to contribute to the union in any meaningful way. The EU must therefore draw together, formulate a clear plan for the future and listen to it’s people. Brexit may have been a disaster for the EU but the fallout has meant for the first time in 20 years Brussels is listening, one can hope that it chooses to act.
North Africa and Egypt
North Africa contains some of the oldest civilisations in the planet, countries like Egypt and the Kingdom of Morocco are some of the oldest civilised sites in the world. Due to the rich history of the area, one would have thought that stability (if not peace) would be the prevalent state of the area. This however has not come to pass for the reasons described below.
When the European powers divided up Africa during the colonial era, they thought a great deal about how Africa’s territory would change the balance of power between European states. Little thought was therefore given as to how the drawing of these largely artificial lines would impact the people caught between them. A clear example of the artificiality of these borders is Libya.
Libya in reality is three separate territories, all of them extremely different from the other. Tripolitanaia (the region surrounding Tripoli) always looked to southern Europe whist the region encompassing Benghazi (known to the Romans as Cyrenaica) traditionally looked to Egypt and other Arab powers. In the south lies the region of Fezzan, which for hundreds of years has been the home of the nomadic Toureg and Bedouin who have little in common with the communities on the coast.
Such wide swathes of territory encompassing so many different cultural and ethnic groups often required extremely strong even oppressive rulers to hold them together. Men like Gaddafi in Libya and Ben Ali in Tunisia committed grievous abuses of power against their people and thought they were never able to unify them they were able to freeze them from fear.
The status quo persisted for many years and perhaps would have remained for many more, were it not for two things; the rise of modern communications (such as Twitter), which allowed people to rapidly circumvent attempts at Government censorship and the cost of wheat (a basic commodity for those in poverty throughout Africa)[1]. In 2011, the cost of wheat spiked abruptly due to a combination of poor weather, failed harvests and the changing use of crops to create Bio-fuels[2]. This combination of a huge rise in basic food prices and the arrival of a generation who had grown up alongside social media was fatal. The rest of the world witnessed the fall of one dictator after another and the regimes of Ben Ali, Gaddafi and Mubarak came to an end. Other countries only escaped thanks to judicious handling of internal affairs (in the case of Morocco) and the fact that there had already been enough bloodshed (Algeria).
Sadly North Africa’s pain has no end in sight as the chances of any country re-drawing its borders or splitting into component parts is slim to none. The damage done by the European partition of Africa is too far-gone to change and new solutions need to be found. If states like Libya are to have any hope of success then they need to forge a new national culture that encompasses every group and tribe. Otherwise the only hope of national stability lies with a dictator keeping the people in line through fear and terror.
Turkey
Turkey deserves a special mention, as there are few nations on earth that more perfectly represent the changing geopolitical reality of the world more starkly than Turkey. It once sought EU membership but this position has now been reversed. It is also clear that president Recip Tayyip Erdogan has little faith or interest in western institutions and sees them mostly as a handicap standing in the way of Turkish dominance and stability.
Turkey is a NATO member, though AKP ruled, Turkey has little in common with other members of the NATO alliance and Erdogan cannot be seen to be pandering to the West and America in front of his religious conservative voters. There is however, another great power that cares little about how Erdogan and the AKP run Turkey and that is Russia.
In the mind of Vladimir Putin, Russian weakness under Gorbachev and Yeltsin endangered the stability and security of the Russian state and allowed the US to station troops in Poland (a mere 400 miles from Moscow). This is on top of NATO members such as Latvia having borders that abut Russia. The Russian state must therefore meet these threats and re-assert global dominance. One of the key parts of this plan is the use of warm water ports.
The fact that Russia has only has two ports that do not freeze in the winter has long been a preoccupation of Russia’s rulers. Fears over a pro-western government in Ukraine would not renew Russia’s lease of the use of Sebastopol’s naval facilities was a key reason for the Russian invasion of the Crimea in 2014. The recent construction of the Naval refuelling facilities in Tartus in Syria are also a part of an attempt to remedy this problem but there is one key flaw.
There is little point in having a port for your fleet if you can’t move the fleet.
In years past, Turkey stood as the NATO’s watchdog, guarding the Dardanelles and the Bospherous and preventing the free movement of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. This was an extremely effective tactic, but one that will likely no longer work as Turkey drifts further from Europe and closer to Russia. There is a possible scenario whereby Turkey’s recent calls to extradite the Turkish government critic and cleric Fethullah Gullen from the US (which the US will likely refuse) could lead to a withdrawal of Turkey from NATO. Should this all come to pass, Russia will have free access to the Mediterranean for the first time since 1952. The Russians are not about to let this opportunity slip and wish to expand the Black sea fleet with 80 new warships by 2020[3].
Russian assistance also lends itself to another long-standing Turkish problem. The Kurds. The Kurds are people without a country and though they have a clearly defined culture, they are spread between Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Between 15 – 25% of the Turkish population are ethnically Kurdish and Turkey fears and loathes the concept of an independent Kurdish state more than anything else[4].
Recent attempts by Kurds in Syria to build a Kurdish autonomous region (named Rojava) are another area where Russian and Turkish interests align. Russia supports the Assad Government in Syria and therefore treats all non-Assad groups as ‘rebels’ and will launch airstrikes against them. Turkey wants to destroy any attempts at the creation of a Kurdish state and therefore is happy to help damage Rojava with Russian assistance.
Inside Turkey, the armed Kurdish nationalists are led by the PKK with whom Turkey has engaged in armed conflict for decades. In Erdogan’s mind, Turkey could not spare the resources to defeat them through military means and negotiations though possible, were undesirable, therefore a new solution was required. Enter the Islamic State.
ISIS (it was thought) could do what Erdogan could not, pacify the Kurds with extreme brutality and force the PKK and the Kurds of Iraq and Syria to turn their guns to face the fanatics rather than Turkish troops. Once both sides had exhausted each other, Turkey would move to destroy both. Erdogan is not interested in championing ISIS, nor are their ideals but he is prepared to allow their fighters to cross Turkish territory and perhaps even arm them if it serves his agenda.[5] This tactic however, has come at a great cost. As the Turkish security services have ignored ISIS in favour of the Kurds, when Turkey began to strike against ISIS a series of terror attacks was the inevitable result.
It remains to be seen if Erdogan can bring the situation under control. Much as though European leaders may lament his policies, given Turkey’s delicate internal structure they may privately give a sigh of relief that Turkey is under close and centralised control.
Conclusion
It is clear that A brave new world is coming together, one that is much more divided and restrictive than the recent past. As the various nations that make up the world re-align and ideas and attitudes change, instability and insecurity will be the natural result. Old alliances are breaking down and ideologies once thought robust are found to have distinct failings.
What is also true is that many of the root causes of the problems facing Nations such as Turkey, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt are old indeed. Issues like the haphazard nature of colonial borders, or what to do with a population where almost a quarter would rather have their own nation seem unlikely to be solved anytime soon. Political strongmen such as Erdogan can delay or wallpaper over some of these problems, but as has been seen in nations such as Libya, this cannot be sustained indefinitely.
Given the changing nature of the world, learning about the situation on the ground before one travels is becoming progressively more important. Taking the time to read even a brief report on a country may save a great deal of trouble before you even arrive. If you or your business colleagues are travelling, Blackstone Consultancy can access a global intelligence platform based not only on mainstream media, but also on crowd-sourced intelligence and social media. This allows Blackstone Consultancy to provide clients with up-to-date, relevant and timely intelligence and risk analysis on any country or region they choose to visit.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/17/bread-food-arab-spring
[2] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-and-rising-food-prices-heightened-arab-spring/
[3] http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-russia-navy-ships-idUSKCN0HI16K20140923
[4] http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/trouble-turkey-erdogan-isis-and-kurds
[5] https://www.rt.com/news/338038-isis-weapons-turkey-churkin/
