MINISTRY OF DEFENCE STRATEGIC PANORAMA 2012 SPANISH INSTITUTE OF STRATEGIC STUDIES ELCANO ROYAL INSTITUTE GENERAL CATALOGUE OF OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS http://publicacionesoficiales.boe.es/ Publishes: MINISTERIO SECRETARÍA DE DEFENSA GENERAL TÉCNICA NIPO: 083-12-166-3 (e-book edition) NIPO: 083-12-165-8 (on line edition) ISBN e-book: 978-84-9781-769-1 Publication date: september 2012 The exploitation rights of this work are protected by the Spanish Intellectual Property Act. No part of this publi- cation may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any way nor by any means, electronic, mechanical or print, including photocopies or any other means without prior, express, written consent of the © Copyright holders. The authors are solely responsible for the opinions expressed in the articles in this publication. MINISTRY SPANISH INSTITUTE OF OF DEFENCE STRATEGIC STUDIES Working Group number 02/2011 STRATEGIC PANORAMA 2012 The ideas contained are the responsability their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IEEE and the RIE, which have sponsored their publication. SUMARIO CONTENTS INTRODUCTION By Felipe Sahagún Chapter I A RISKY AND CHANGING GLOBAL ECONOMIC CONTEXT By Federico Steinberg Wechsler Chapter II THE «ARAB SPRING» FREEDOM AND DEVELOPMENT OR FRUSTRATION AND CHAOS? By Haizam Amirah Fernández Chapter III CONFLICTS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD (2011) By Rafael Calduch Cervera Chapter IV AFGHANISTAN: TOWARDS THE END OF THE CONFLICT By Francisco José Berenguer Hernández Chapter V SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA By José Pardo de Santayana Chapter VI LATIN AMERICA 2011: COPING WITH THE EFFECTS OF THE ECONOMIC CRISIS, SEEKING GREATER INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATION By Carlos Malamud Rikles COMPOSITION OF THE WORKING GROUP ÍNDICE INTRODUCTION STRATEGIC PANORAMA 2012 Felipe Sahagún Felipe Sahagún Introduction ■ INTRODUCTION Is the economic crisis of the past years yet another cyclical phenomenon or the start of a structural change that could drag on for years? Has the Eurozone crisis peaked yet? Will we manage to ward off a new recession in 2012? Are we facing the beginning of the end of the Europe progressively constructed over the past half-century or, applying the mechanism of enhanced cooperation, are we about to give fresh impetus to greater political and economic integration leading to the permanent consolidation of Europe, without the United Kingdom and a few other dissidents, as the global power of the twenty-first century? Are China, Latin America and the rest of the world’s emerging regions immune to this latest crisis or beginning to suffer its effects? Or, thanks to a new phase of globalisation, have they become the main strategic beneficiaries of a new power balance comparable in its tectonic effects on the international system to those that took place after the defeat of Napoleon, after the first German unification or in the decade that followed the Second World War? If the latter is true, will this transition be as peaceful as the European system of the nineteenth century or as turbulent as those that led to the First World War and the Cold War? Will the economic logic of the post-Cold War period prevail over the national 11 rivalries of the past, avoiding a return to protectionism, new currency wars, the collapse of the main processes of regional integration, new arms races and growing tensions and disputes between the main international actors over military and economic dominance of the West Pacific and preferential access to the commodities of Africa and Latin America? Are we simply witnessing the first signs of a new and still very uneven bipolarity between the US and China that could condition the coming decades similarly to or more intensely than how Soviet-US bipolarity conditioned the Cold War? «Is the Arab Spring turning into bleak midwinter?», asked The Economist in an editorial column of 10 December following the legislative elections held in Tunisia and Morocco and two of the three phases of the Egyptian legislative elections won by Islamist movements(1). Are the results proving that the sceptics who have always denied the Arabs’ ability to embrace democracy are right? «The answer is no. Until the Brothers [and their equivalents in the neighbouring countries] actually take power, it is hard to say with certainty where the dominant mainstream of political Islam stands», but, until the time comes, «as peaceful political Islam advances, al-Qaeda and its violent jihadi friends have retreated to the remotest patches of Yemen, Somalia and the Sahara desert». (1) «And the winner is…», The Economist, 10 December 2011, p. 16. Felipe Sahagún Introduction Now that some of the prevailing ideas of the past twenty years –North-South confrontation, Japan as a superpower, the clash of civilisations, the end of history, the US as hyper-power, the paralysis of the Arab world– have been refuted by events, the force that best characterises the international situation at the start of 2012 is a flexible multilateralism that is increasingly less controlled. As Pierre Hassner has pointed out, each of the so-called emerging powers –China, Iran, Turkey, Brazil, India and Indonesia– «is emerging in its own way»(2). Starting to be equally or more important than the frail but useful commitments of the BRIC countries towards legalising intervention in Libya with a UN mandate but preventing it in Syria are the new strategic pairs –India and the US, Pakistan and China, Russia and Germany– and the burdensome heritage of unresolved historical disputes: China-Japan, India-Pakistan, Iran- Saudi Arabia and Israel-Arab world… ■ 10 YEARS ON FROM 11 SEPTEMBER Of the many lessons taught by the events of 11 September and gradually revised since then and updated in the recent months to mark the tenth anniversary of the attacks, perhaps the most important is the Bush Administration’s initial 12 response: intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq and an indefinite war on international terrorism based on prevention and the consideration of jihadist terrorism as the product of a despotic and ailing, albeit minority, political culture in the Islamic world, prepared to destroy pro-Western regimes of the Arab world and the system of freedoms upheld by democracies. After several months of euphoria over the speed and ease with which the regimes of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein were overthrown –Charles Krauthammer’s unipolar world without rivals– cracks began to appear in vice- president Dick Cheney’s One Percent security doctrine according to which the US must respond to the very small risk of terrorists obtaining weapons of mass destruction as if it had the absolute certainty that they will obtain and use them sooner or later(3). The difficulty of converting triumphal interventions with very few casualties into permanent victories, the impossibility of quickly reconstructing and democratising countries without basic minimum security conditions, the growing cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Pakistan’s three-sided game with the US, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the transformation of jihadist terrorism into a network of franchises and lone wolves that are harder to detect, the growing influence of China, India and other emerging powers while the West (2) HASSNER, Pierre, «Emergents et submergés», LETTRE de l’IRSEM, No. 9, 2011. (3) RACHMAN, Gideon, «World has changed in surprising ways», 9/11: Ten Years On, Financial Times Special Report. 9 September 2011, p. 1-3. Felipe Sahagún Introduction concentrated its efforts on these wars, and, finally, the financial crisis triggered a change of priorities in Bush’s second mandate and led to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008. Obama has not managed to fulfil many of the promises he brought to the White House, but on 31 December 2011, with the withdrawal of the last American soldiers, he finished implementing the agreement signed by his predecessor for the withdrawal from Iraq and has begun a similar process with respect to Afghanistan. Election years, when presidents are preoccupied with re-election, are never conducive to radical changes in foreign and security policy, but 2012, with presidential elections scheduled in four of the five of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, might prove to be an exception. Although likely, the re-election of Obama and Sarkozy cannot be taken for granted(4). It might depend on developments in the European economic crisis. At least this is what their main advisors believe. If the price Sarkozy has to pay for his re-election is a German Europe that many are already clearly envisaging, he, like the lesser European powers, seems willing to accept this. The December legislative election in Russia showed that Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency on 4 March, which seemed a foregone conclusion, may 13 come up against heavy resistance and cast a shadow over strategic relations with the West. Putin again reacted to the demonstrations and accusations of fraud in December by resorting to the foreign enemy, while his deputies threatened to put up firmer opposition to the NATO missile defence programme in which Spain has offered to take part from the Rota base. The agreement of 5 October between Spain, the US and NATO which, when it enters into force, will allow the US to deploy four ships equipped with the AEGIS antimissile system from the Spanish base makes Spain the cornerstone of NATO’s naval air defence system in this region, but, as Rafael Calduch has pointed out, it complicates NATO’s and Spain’s relations with Russia owing to the haste and lack of transparency with which the agreement was concluded(5). Difficulties aside, it is the most important measure adopted by Spain in 2011 in its relations with the allies, together with the choice of Torrejón de Ardoz airbase as one of the Alliance’s two Combined Air Operations Centres.