CHAILLOT PAPER / PAPER CHAILLOT 161 CONFLICTS TO COME 15 scenarios for 2030 CONFLICTS TO COME COME TO CONFLICTS Edited by Florence Gaub With contributions from Natasha E. Bajema, Lotje Boswinkel, Daniel Fiott, | Franz-Stefan Gady, Zoe Stanley-Lockman, Kathleen 15 SCENARIOS FOR 2030 J. McInnis, Nicolas Minvielle, Andrew Monaghan, Katariina Mustasilta, Ali Fathollah-Nejad, Patryk Pawlak, Tobias Pietz, Sinikukka Saari, Stanislav Secrieru, Simona R. Soare, Bruno Tertrais and Olivier Wathelet CHAILLOT PAPER / 161 December 2020 European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) 100, avenue de Suffren 75015 Paris http://www.iss.europa.eu Director: Gustav Lindstrom © EU Institute for Security Studies, 2020. Reproduction is authorised, provided the source is acknowledged, save where otherwise stated. The views expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union. print ISBN 978-92-9198-973-7 online ISBN 978-92-9198-972-0 CATALOGUE NUMBER QN-AA-20-005-EN-C CATALOGUE NUMBER QN-AA-20-005-EN-N ISSN 1017-7566 ISSN 1683-4917 DOI 10.2815/101723 DOI 10.2815/966219 Published by the EU Institute for Security Studies and printed in Belgium by Bietlot. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2020. Cover image credit: Daniel Cheung/unsplash CONFLICTS TO COME 15 scenarios for 2030 Edited by Florence Gaub With contributions from Natasha E. Bajema, Lotje Boswinkel, Daniel Fiott, Franz-Stefan Gady, Zoe Stanley-Lockman, Kathleen J. McInnis, Nicolas Minvielle, Andrew Monaghan, Katariina Mustasilta, Ali Fathollah-Nejad, Patryk Pawlak, Tobias Pietz, Sinikukka Saari, Stanislav Secrieru, Simona R. Soare, Bruno Tertrais and Olivier Wathelet CHAILLOT PAPER / 161 December 2020 The editor Florence Gaub is the Deputy Director of the EUISS. She specialises in strategic foresight, as well as security and conflict in the Middle East and North Africa. The EUISS Chaillot Paper series The Chaillot Paper series, launched in 1991, takes its name from the Chaillot hill in the Trocadéro area of Paris, where the Institute’s first premises were located in the building oc- cupied by the Western European Union (WEU). The hill is particularly known for the Palais de Chaillot which was the site of the signing of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and housed NATO’s provisional head- quarters from 1952 until 1959. 1 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION On the future of conflict 2 The Viber invasion 51 Florence Gaub How Russia occupied Montenegro Franz-Stefan Gady On the use of science fiction for conflict foresight 9 Nicolas Minvielle and Olivier Wathelet Taiwan attrition 55 China crosses the Rubicon Bruno Tertrais THE PEOPLE GO TO WAR: OF GRIEF AND Every trick in the book 60 GRIEVANCES A story of Russia and Lithuania Natasha E. Bajema Marx goes Gulf 17 The rise of the working class Ali Fathollah-Nejad THE INGENIOUS CONFLICT: OF ISSUES AND Green terror? 21 METHODS The environment fights back Katariina Mustasilta Hunt for the unmanned Red October 71 The rise of the underwater drone The digital road to ‘hell’ 25 Zoe Stanley-Lockman The people versus tech Stanislav Secrieru Polar power play 76 Chinese-Russian relations on ice Instanarchists.com 30 Bruno Tertrais Culture in the crosshairs Tobias Pietz Virtual Congo 81 Or the limits of technological superiority Chickens coming home to roost 34 Daniel Fiott Mercenaries strike back Syria 85 Sinikukka Saari The Chinese reload Lotje Boswinkel Iran’s Code Revolution 91 THE BIG FIGHT: THE RETURN OF The fight for human cyber rights CONVENTIONAL WAR Patryk Pawlak At long last 41 Policy considerations 96 The US-Russian war Conflict in the age of lost innocence Andrew Monaghan Simona R. Soare Globo-cop’s last fight 46 Abbreviations 103 China and the US clash in Africa Kathleen J. McInnis Notes on the contributors 104 2 INTRODUCTION ON THE FUTURE OF CONFLICT by FLORENCE GAUB There is a rule of thumb in foresight: the larger There have been broadly three approach- the human factor in the field whose future you es used to anticipate conflict: those looking are trying to anticipate, the more difficult it will at push-factors (including aspects such as be to get it right. The reason is simple: our- socio-economic development, political insti- selves. No other future factor is as stubborn to tutions and arms acquisitions), those looking predict, or as hard to understand as the human at pull-factors (including the regional or in- being. Quite in contrast to the bold claims of ternational context), and those trying to un- rational choice theory, human behaviour is not derstand the shape and tactics of conflicts to easily modelled, whether at personal or state come. Whereas the insights of the first two are level. Nowhere does this become more apparent primarily useful to policymakers interested in than in the diverse and contradictory body of conflict prevention, the latter is useful to those knowledge seeking to understand why conflicts preparing for the worst-case scenario, war. among humans emerge, continue or end, and how they are being fought. As one study put it, The first area, looking primarily at internal “history is littered with mistaken predictions causes for conflict, has made remarkable pro- about the future of warfare”.1 gress over the last decade thanks to Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Models such as Because conflict is deeply existential, de- the Early Warning Project or Uppsala Universi- stroying lives and livelihoods, it is also a phe- ty’s ViEWS, Lockheed Martin’s Integrated Cri- nomenon that many researchers have tried to sis Early Warning System, or the EU’s Conflict understand better in order to make it more pre- Early Warning System (CEWS) use historical dictable – and, indeed, they should continue to data on conflicts and their (assumed) drivers do so. After all, despite claims that conflict will and statistical inferences and machine learning soon disappear altogether, it is still very much techniques to forecast future conflict trends.3 present today – and the last decade in particu- Working within a window of 1-36 months be- lar has seen an increase in the number of violent fore conflict onset, their predictive accuracy conflicts around the world.2 Since 2010, nearly can reach 80% – but they are better at forecast- 900,000 lives were lost to politically motivated ing the continuation of a conflict or spill-over violence, and in 2019 alone the world witnessed of conflicts than anticipating new conflicts. 121 active conflicts. 1 Raphael S. Cohen et al., The Future of Warfare in 2030: Project Overview and Conclusions (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2020), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2849z1.html. 2 Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Penguin, 2011); Aaron Clauset, “Trends and fluctuations in the severity of interstate wars”,Science Advances, February 2018, https://advances.sciencemag.org/lens/ advances/4/2/eaao3580#toc. 3 Tate Ryan Mosley, “We are finally getting better at predicting organized conflict”,MIT Technology Review, October 24, 2019, https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/10/24/238426/predicting-organized-conflict-ensemble-modeling-ethiopia-ahmed/; Matina Halkia et al, ”The Global Conflict Risk Index: Artificial Intelligence for Conflict Prevention”, JRC Technical Reports, 2020, https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC118746/ai_gcri_technical_report.pdf. On the future of conflict Conflict−related 3 deaths But for the time being, they are only of limit- Conflict-related deaths ed use to policymakers. One of the reasons is 2010−2019, thousand 2010−2019, thousand that they focus on conflict probability, but not on conflict pathways. Rather than measure 150 how a conflict unfolds, these models measure under what conditions it is likely to erupt. For policymakers wishing to prevent a conflict, this 100 is of limited use: they will need to know exact- ly where the pressure needs to be relieved in the instant, a qualitative question these mod- 50 els cannot answer.4 In addition, these models cannot offer insights into how the conflict will be fought. This is important to know because it could indicate the lethality of the conflict and 0 2010 2013 2016 2019 the impact on the economy and people’s live- lihoods. Lastly, these models mainly aim at Data: Uppsala Conflict Data Programme, 2020 forecasting armed violence within a state, rath- er than between states. Even though the latter might be less frequent today, it is still of im- meaning of contemporary events, and foresee portance for decision-makers. Perhaps most and influence the future”, as the founder of the importantly, these models cannot incorporate discipline, Hans Morgenthau, stated.6 His main novelty: because they are based on data relating assumption was that the international state to past conflicts, they have no room for hitherto system was anarchic, and as a result insecure. unknown drivers of conflict. Because states can never be sure about the be- haviour of other states, they are in a ‘security In sum, these models are not yet ready to dilemma’: no war is certainly the best option, serve as a basis for decision-making – here, but it is not the most certain one.7 When ap- old-fashioned qualitative analysis on drivers plied in hindsight, this theory seemed to explain and possible solutions will be the safer bet for a host of conflicts such as World War I, the or- the time being.5 igins and end of the Cold War, and conflicts in Yugoslavia and Africa.8 The second approach, largely established dur- ing the Cold War, posits that conflict likelihood But in this theoretical field, too, prediction depends on the international or regional sys- quality was low and, worse, policy recom- tem of which a state is part.