By Bernard Rowan
The "era of autocracy" is a depressing name for the 21st century. One of its features is strategic gambits by global powers in pursuit of their interests, passions, and opinions. These gambits reflect the actions of autocratic nations and those committed to freedom. They also reflect those of anti-status quo powers and those in favor of the present international order, including its use of capitalism and free markets.
Free markets need free navigation of airspace, waterways, space, cybernetworks, and land routes. The sites for competition and conflict have increased. The United States, China, Russia, the European Union and Great Britain, and the two Koreas (among many others) engage in these gambits. The international order splits. Its new bipolarity hasn't fully formed. Gambits, like a chess tournament's plays, abound and multiply.
Commentary spirals about U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. It was an unnecessary and inflammatory move. Putting a thumb in the eye of Xi Jinping and company in the run-up to his third term as China's leader. This gambit raised tensions unnecessarily.
The Chinese gambit to rattle their sabers aplenty didn't matter. More troubling is the window opened to condition China's increased presence in the Taiwan Strait and Taiwanese airspace. The chances of miscalculations increase. But Pelosi is there and gone. Time to move on. The result, a more destabilized Taiwan Strait, is a loss.
Less rousing is noise over the continuing meetings and communications of Xi Jinping with Vladimir Putin, not to mention all that buying of oil. The Alliance for Freedom feigns to take this all on the chin, hoping to write it off. The war on Ukraine symbolizes how the strategic gambits of military great powers wreak havoc.
It also shows the growing bipolarity and splitting of the international order for trade and commerce. When competition turns to violence, security concerns outpace trade and peaceful exchanges. Countervalue war, propaganda games, war atrocities, and the fallout for alliance partners grow. Suffering economic indices and energy lines are considerable.
Nonetheless, many were glad to see another gambit, namely South Korea's agreement to supply Poland with tanks and howitzers. Putin doesn't care that he's single-handedly nudging the world to more militarization and insecurity. However, Poland should have a robust defense capacity. What will be the gambits for Moldova and other countries on the fringe of Putin's folly?
Similarly, North Korea continues her gambits to use nuclear weapons as a shield to prop up the Kim dynasty in its third evolution. Iran and China provide this autocratic disciple nation with the makings for weapons of mass destruction and associated potentials. And while the conventional weapons threat from Pyongyang deserves even greater attention, the superpower constellations of our world have set the cause of peace back decades yet again.
While it complicates matters, in the present environment the Alliance for Freedom needs a deep bench. Organski and Kugler calculate power as population times GNP, and that means freedom needs friends. Freedom has friends, but its alliance gambit must entail the trade and sharing of means of defense that shore up and extend alliances. Relying on the center of the wheel is inadequate today. Coordination among multiple allies is harder. It's also prone to tactics of "divide and conquer" by autocrats.
Another gambit is the growing use of cyberthreats and cyberattacks. These newer means of violence, intimidation, and power moves by global powers and pretenders increase. With satellite wars in the outer atmosphere, and hypersonic missile technology, the instruments of policy and security continue to multiply. The theaters for engagement, defense, and war do so too.
I'm sorry, but these many strategic gambits will continue. How dissatisfying! I've only named a few of countless possibilities. The world nowadays is less safe than it used to be. What of progress toward the day of enduring peace? We should remain committed, if not for our shame and guilt, then for those to whom we remain responsible, looking for a better era to come.
Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University, a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University. He is also a member of the 2022 class of the Becoming a Provost Academy with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.
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Free markets need free navigation of airspace, waterways, space, cybernetworks, and land routes. The sites for competition and conflict have increased. The United States, China, Russia, the European Union and Great Britain, and the two Koreas (among many others) engage in these gambits. The international order splits. Its new bipolarity hasn't fully formed. Gambits, like a chess tournament's plays, abound and multiply.
Commentary spirals about U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. It was an unnecessary and inflammatory move. Putting a thumb in the eye of Xi Jinping and company in the run-up to his third term as China's leader. This gambit raised tensions unnecessarily.
The Chinese gambit to rattle their sabers aplenty didn't matter. More troubling is the window opened to condition China's increased presence in the Taiwan Strait and Taiwanese airspace. The chances of miscalculations increase. But Pelosi is there and gone. Time to move on. The result, a more destabilized Taiwan Strait, is a loss.
Less rousing is noise over the continuing meetings and communications of Xi Jinping with Vladimir Putin, not to mention all that buying of oil. The Alliance for Freedom feigns to take this all on the chin, hoping to write it off. The war on Ukraine symbolizes how the strategic gambits of military great powers wreak havoc.
It also shows the growing bipolarity and splitting of the international order for trade and commerce. When competition turns to violence, security concerns outpace trade and peaceful exchanges. Countervalue war, propaganda games, war atrocities, and the fallout for alliance partners grow. Suffering economic indices and energy lines are considerable.
Nonetheless, many were glad to see another gambit, namely South Korea's agreement to supply Poland with tanks and howitzers. Putin doesn't care that he's single-handedly nudging the world to more militarization and insecurity. However, Poland should have a robust defense capacity. What will be the gambits for Moldova and other countries on the fringe of Putin's folly?
Similarly, North Korea continues her gambits to use nuclear weapons as a shield to prop up the Kim dynasty in its third evolution. Iran and China provide this autocratic disciple nation with the makings for weapons of mass destruction and associated potentials. And while the conventional weapons threat from Pyongyang deserves even greater attention, the superpower constellations of our world have set the cause of peace back decades yet again.
While it complicates matters, in the present environment the Alliance for Freedom needs a deep bench. Organski and Kugler calculate power as population times GNP, and that means freedom needs friends. Freedom has friends, but its alliance gambit must entail the trade and sharing of means of defense that shore up and extend alliances. Relying on the center of the wheel is inadequate today. Coordination among multiple allies is harder. It's also prone to tactics of "divide and conquer" by autocrats.
Another gambit is the growing use of cyberthreats and cyberattacks. These newer means of violence, intimidation, and power moves by global powers and pretenders increase. With satellite wars in the outer atmosphere, and hypersonic missile technology, the instruments of policy and security continue to multiply. The theaters for engagement, defense, and war do so too.
I'm sorry, but these many strategic gambits will continue. How dissatisfying! I've only named a few of countless possibilities. The world nowadays is less safe than it used to be. What of progress toward the day of enduring peace? We should remain committed, if not for our shame and guilt, then for those to whom we remain responsible, looking for a better era to come.
Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University, a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University. He is also a member of the 2022 class of the Becoming a Provost Academy with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.
