The silent rush to war
How governments are globally rebuilding their arsenals in the public eye
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO-Russia relations constantly improved, and on May 27th 1997 NATO leaders and Russian President Boris Yeltsin reached a major result. They signed the NATO-Russia Founding Act, whose aim was the development of “ a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security.”
Today, twenty-three years after that historic moment, the international effort towards peacekeeping and disarmament could hardly offer a bleaker picture. All around the world a new arms race is accelerating, while the treaties that tried to prevent it are withering away.
Let us start with a few data. The map below shows the main shifts in military spending in the world between 2005 and 2014.
Although the map already shows unsettling developments, even more disquieting results showed up between 2014 and today.
Europe
One first example of that is Europe. Indeed, precisely in 2014 European NATO executives’ chiefs committed to raising their defence budgets again.
Some examples: Germany announced in 2019 its biggest increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War; Spain has planned an 80% increase in defence spending by 2024; in 2019, France launched the first of six new nuclear submarines and announced the creation of a space command, which will be equipped with surveillance satellites and laser weapons. Sweden, even if not part of NATO, is also stepping up its military effort, by reintroducing military conscription in 2017 and by re-militarising a strategically placed island in the Baltic Sea.
At supranational level, the von der Leyen Commission established a new Directorate-General dedicated to defence industry and space. This is the first time that the EU executive acquires a defence branch.
Besides, the European continent is becoming host for harshening tensions between Western countries and the Russian Federation. An example is Russia’s growing transfer of weapons and soldiers to Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave inside the EU between Lithuania and Poland. On the other side, the USA are increasing their military presence in NATO countries, for instance through the 20.000 soldiers that were supposed to reach Europe for the military exercise Defender Europe, which should have taken place mostly on borders with Russia. Already in October 2018, NATO had organised Trident Juncture 18, the biggest military exercise since the Cold War, involving 50.000 soldiers. Furthermore, at the beginning of May 2020, British and US destroyers sailed into the Barents Sea, “the heart of Russian naval power”, for the first time since the Cold War. The move led Russia to announce live-fire exercises in the Barents Sea.
USA
Just like European countries, the downwards trend depicted in the map above has been rapidly and steeply corrected upwards. As of today, US military spending has never been this high since the Second World War — if we exclude a couple of years during the Iraq war — as exemplified below.
First off, in 2019 the USA have started producing new low-yield nuclear weapons, which would have approximately the power of a third of the Hiroshima bomb. According to the Trump Administration, these new weapons would improve nuclear deterrence thanks to their flexibility. However, many experts claim that they will trigger the opposite effect due to several reasons, among which the fact that such weapons would lower the threshold for the use of nuclear power in wars.
Moreover, the USA have been the first country in the world to set up a space command, in August 2018. Finally, they are producing hypersonic missiles, which US President Donald Trump presented as “super duper missile[s]”. Hypersonic missiles can fly at least five times faster than the speed of sound and can be maneuvered during the whole flight.
Russia
In 2019, Russia fielded the first hypersonic missiles of the world. They are said to fly at 27 times the speed of sound, transporting a nuclear bomb of two megatons, which means around 150 times the Hiroshima bomb. Besides, Russia is said to possess a big stock of low-yield nuclear weapons and it is also building five new nuclear submarines capable of carrying supersonic missiles.
China
Today, the People’s Republic boasts hypersonic missiles, too. Furthermore, the editor of the Global Times newspaper, published by the Chinese Communist Party, claimed that China should increase the number of its nuclear warheads to 1,000 (in July 2019 China had 290). According to Reuters, “the party has been known to float ideas and guide public sentiments via the Global Times”.
China is also significantly aggressive in the South Chinese Sea. That area teems with reefs on which most countries facing that sea lay claim for political reasons. Recently, the People’s Republic has started directly taking those reefs over, in order to cover them with sand and set up military bases. This growing Chinese warmongering has led the USA to increase their presence in that area.
Dismantling disarmament
While countries produce new and increasingly destructive weapons, international disarmament is tumbling down.
In 2018, the USA decided to withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which forbade the production and use of short-, medium- and intermediate-range missiles, together with in-flight tests. Signed in 1987 between USA and USSR (and then Russia), it marked the end of the Cold War.
The USA motivated their move by accusing Russia of violating the treaty, an allegation which is probably true. According to some experts, the withdrawal also aimed at getting rid of rearming boundaries, in order to counterbalance the growing Chinese nuclear power. The USA are already testing new missiles produced thanks to the abolition of the INF.
Adding to that, according to Donald Trump’s nuclear policy, the USA may make use of nuclear weapons as a response against “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks”.
US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signing the INF Treaty in 1987
Now, between USA and Russia there is just one treaty on nuclear weapons: the New START Treaty, which limits the number of strategic nuclear weapons. It will expire in February 2021, and, should this happen, there will be no obstacle to the growth of Russian and US arsenals. Former Trump Administration National Security Advisor John Bolton recently claimed that a treaty extension is “unlikely” because the USA would like to include China in a new, trilateral arms control structure. However, the latter has claimed it has “no intention” of joining such talks.
Moreover, on the 21st of May 2020 Donald Trump decided to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty. Signed in 1992, it allows state-parties to “conduct short-notice, unarmed, reconnaissance flights over the others’ entire territories to collect data on military forces and activities”. Its aims at minimising sources of conflict by building international transparency. The USA justified their position with Russian violations of the treaty.
Finally, there is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which prohibits “any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion” in any part of the world. To enter into force, it needs ratification by 44 specific countries, eight of which — such as China and the USA — have not done so yet. However, every nation possessing nuclear weapons except for North Korea has officially been complying with it since 1998.
The USA has started accusing Russia in 2019 and China in April 2020 of violating CTBT provisions, but both times experts and international organisations pointed at the thinness of the allegations’ proofs or at the direct contradiction of previous US statements. In mid-May the Trump administration discussed a proposal to conduct a new nuclear test, which is now considered “an ongoing conversation”.
In the words of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg: “the global arms control architecture that has served us so well is eroding”.
“Great power competition” and “constant conflict”
The head of the British Armed Forces General Sir Nicholas Carter claims that “we have returned to an era of great power competition, even constant conflict”. And many other countries are preparing for it, such as Japan, Vietnam, Australia, Egypt.
However, despite several warnings, the topic has largely remained absent from public debate, even long before the Covid-19 outbreak. The world is packed with fearful devices that are increasingly precise and destructive, while the treaties that hindered all this are getting demolished. It is time we acknowledged the immense danger represented by the current arms race, if we want to stop it.
by Riccardo Rastello
