The Impact of the Ukraine Conflict on Sino-Russian Entente in Central Asia by Philip Reid

Between the No Limits Partnership: The Impact of the Ukraine Conflict on Sino-Russian Entente in Central Asia

Philip Reid

While its precise origin might be argued with respect to any point in the post-Soviet period, from the middle of the last decade, a strategic entente of sorts between the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation, has been widely acknowledged in academic studies and media. Presenting a politically-unified Eurasia, has become an important element of Chinese diplomacy vis-à-vis the United States and refusal to condemn Russia's invasion of the Ukraine in February 2022 has placed Beijing in the global minority. For a number of reasons, Central Asia may be considered a bell-weather for the bilateral relationship. It was the demarcation and demilitarization of China’s borders with the newly-established Russian Federation and three Central Asian Republics, that lead to the institutionalization of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, China’s most successful multilateral project to date. These 'borderlands' are again attracting attention due to the vital role they are playing in facilitating shipments of industrial inputs sustaining the Russian war economy. A narrative has emerged however suggesting an accelerated displacement of Russian by Chinese influence in Central Asia by comparison with the 2010s, when an equilibrium between the two powers' security and economic interests, had been posited by observers. This appears to have received considerable amplification following the convening of an inaugural summit in May 2023, between Xi Jinping and the five Central Asian heads of state. The following sections will examine the observable trends in the relations of both countries with the five Central Asian Republics since February 2022, and weigh the accuracy of the suggestion that, in this strategically-important geographical region, Beijing has benefited from the conflict, at Moscow’s expense.

Philip Reid held a Visiting Research Fellowship at CCW in 2021-22. His contemporary research encompasses Chinese Foreign and Defence Policy, including People’s Liberation Army (PLA) doctrine and force development, and China’s use of Private Security Companies (PSCs) in Central Asia. Philip recently served as a MOD Regional Adviser on China and Central Asia, and his sixteen-year service career saw near-continuous deployment to Afghanistan. Philip is presently a Visiting Research Fellow with the Centre for Historical Analyses and Conflict Research (CHACR) and has held fellowships and residencies with the Kazakh National Defence University (KNDU), the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom (DAUK), the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in New Delhi and the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. Philip speaks Russian and Persian, and read Classical Persian Literature for his MA.

Reflexive Control: Influencing Strategic Behavior by Maria de Goeij

Maria de Goeij has published an article in the US Army War College Quarterly on “Reflective Control”.

Abstract: Decisionmakers can use reflexive control to change the other’s perceptions about their utility sets. Reflexive control contains underlying elements that could help give structure to analyses of strategic behavior by using a nonlinear approach that aims to improve the quality of assessments. This exploratory literature study reviews the interpretations of the concept of reflexive control, how elements of reflexive control link to the more widely accepted existing body of knowledge, and how they could be valuable additions to the current work on the analysis of strategic behavior.

Contractors and Contiguity: Assessing China’s Private Security presence in Kyrgyzstan by Philip Reid

China’s economic liberalization since the early-1980s has brought about a revival of its private security industry, once a despised symbol of the country’s ‘century of humiliation’. As a result of successive high-profile attacks against State-Owned Enterprises operating abroad during the 2000s, China’s Private Security Companies began to globalize and drew academic attention partly as an extension of the lively discourse surrounding the Belt and Road Initiative. The BRI approach to crisis management has been characterised predominantly by bilateral agreements with host governments. Where states have lacked either the capacity or will to protect Chinese interests however, the use of private contractors has filled the gap in local security provision and statements by Chinese officials have increasingly referenced the sector. Yet Beijing’s efforts to codify armed security provision overseas have been vague and several ministries appear to have competing claims to oversight of the sector. Signs of ideological flexibility towards the use of force to protect ‘overseas interests’, has lead to speculation that the PRC’s private contractors may yet serve as an amenable ‘grey zone’ foreign policy tool. Chinese PSCs do not typically provide services such as armed response, local force training or support to combat operations and there is a notable absence of any Chinese analogue to the more conspicuous Western and Russian Private Military Companies. The Zhongjun Junhong Group however, has attracted the attention of researchers, due to the company’s unusual local privileges in Kyrgyzstan, its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party and its large market penetration relative to the country’s size and population. Central Asia is an important constituency-region of the BRI’s Eurasian pillar – the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), and the two countries’ proximity, separated by a porous and historically-contested border, means that the normalization on Kyrgyzstan’s politically fragmented territory, of these former-PLA and PAP servicemen, some of whom will have served in neighbouring Xinjiang, is significant and a potentially instructive case study for China’s use of armed non-state actors in the developing world.

Philip Reid held a Visiting Research Fellowship at CCW in 2021-22. His research examines China’s use of Private Security Companies (PSCs) in Central Asia as well as the People’s Liberation Army and Chinese Foreign Policy more broadly. Philip recently served as a MOD Regional Adviser on China and Central Asia, and his sixteen-year service career saw near-continuous deployment to Afghanistan. Philip is presently based at the Kazakh National Defence University and has held fellowships with the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in New Delhi and the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. Philip speaks Russian and Persian and read Classical Persian Literature for his MA.

Fascism’s Centennial Legacy by Scott Atran

Professor Scott Atran has written a paper on Fascism’s Centennial Legacy, with consideration to current western attitudes about democracy.

One hundred years ago, in late October 1922, Italian Fascists under the leadership of Benito Mussolini, a former socialist newspaper editor and politician, marched on Rome and onto the world stage. The goal was to make Italy and its capital great again, as under the Caesars. When the fascist supporters and Blackshirt militia entered the city, King Victor Emmanuel II, transferred power to Mussolini to avoid fascist promises of violence should rule be denied them. The New Order’s watchwords were “belief” and “obedience”: belief in fascism’s spiritual values, rooted in religious readiness to sacrifice the self for the Nation to save it both from the materialism of socialism’s egalitarian descent to mediocrity and from democracy’s apparent weakness, chaos and corruption; and obedience to the cult of the leader, Il Duce (or Der Fuehrer, El Caudillo, and the like), who alone could impart revolutionary enthusiasm to the people, imbuing them with the faith to overcome and even despise rational doubts, the country’s existing institutions, and the indiscipline of dissent that comes with disbelief…..

Cyber Collateral: WannaCry & the impact of cyberattacks on the mental health of critical infrastructure defenders” by Tarah Wheeler and John Alderdice

Tarah Wheeler and John, Lord Alderdice, “Cyber Collateral: WannaCry & the impact of cyberattacks on the mental health of critical infrastructure defenders”

On May 12th, 2017, North Korea unleashed a cyberattack of devastating size and impact on the United States. WannaCry was a ransomware attack that cost up to USD 4 billion, crippled law firms,­­ rerouted ambulances, shut down one of the largest mobile communications operators in Europe, and (spilling outside the bounds of any intended cyber war zone) damaged the UK National Health Service with effects still felt today. Patients were turned away from hospitals, 13,500 outpatient appointments were cancelled including 139 screenings for cancer, and the information security professionals who responded that day remember it like the afternoon in 1963 that US President John F. Kennedy was sh­­ot or the morning of 9/11 when the Twin Towers came down. Overloaded technicians at British hospitals spent a week trying to keep emergency rooms open, doctors safe, and networks online. These frontline defenders kept the hospitals running, often by yanking laptops out of the hands of staff and replacing them with updated hardware as they ran through hospitals seeing a deadly red screen in office after office, patient room after patient room. Until a young British security researcher in rural Devonshire found a means to stop the attack, WannaCry infected computers faster than people could blink…..

Reading the Wind: What makes UN Special Political Missions effective? by Raja Gundu

Reading the Wind: What makes UN Special Political Missions effective?

Raja Gundu

UN Special Political Missions (SPMs) are funded out of the UN’s regular budget and do not contain peacekeepers/“blue helmets”. As a result, they tend to be smaller in logistical footprint and budgets than peacekeeping missions . In recent years, the Security Council has been increasingly inclined to establish Special Political Missions. Over the past decade (2012-2022), the Security Council only established two peacekeeping missions but mandated 11 Special Political Missions. As of April 2022, there are 25 UN Special Political Missions deployed across the world. This study focused on country-specific missions and regional offices. The author interviewed 12 senior leadership and/or senior substantive mission personnel (of grade P5 – ASG, with a quarter of those interviewed being women) involved with 11 SPMs for this study, to discover what makes a SPM effective. The average UN experience of those interviewed was 18 years.

This study defines Effectiveness of a SPM as the successful delivery of the mission’s mandate in the eyes of the host country’s population. Guided by faculty of the University of Oxford, responses from the interviews suggested that Effectiveness of SPMs consists of six dimensions: Mission Environment, Mission Leadership, Mission Management, Mission Approach, Mission Communications and Mission Measurement (encompassing the preceding five dimensions).

Raja Gundu is a Political Affairs Officer in the United Nations Secretariat supporting the General Assembly's deliberations on the Middle East. He has previously served with UN special political missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and led the Global Programme on Preventing Violent Extremism at the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism where he supported governments across Asia and Africa in developing inclusive policies to counter violent extremism. Raja was a Visiting Research Fellow at CCW between October 2021 and January 2022.

Strategy in the Peloponnesian War and Contemporary Military Strategy by Dr Iacovos Kareklas

Strategy in the Peloponnesian War and Contemporary Military Strategy

Dr Iacovos Kareklas

The contribution of Thucydides in strategic studies is due to the fact that he analyzed, for the first time in history, the two most important forms of strategy: the strategy of exhaustion and the strategy of nullification.

Philosophy of Just War in Ancient Greece and Causes of War in Thucydides by Dr Iacovos Kareklas

Philosophy of Just War in Ancient Greece and Causes of War in Thucydides

Dr Iacovos Kareklas

The aim of the present article is, firstly, to unearth the philosophical grounds of just war in classical Greece. Secondly, to indicate specifically that neither the causes nor the theoretical grounds of the Peloponnesian War in the History of Thucydides are in conformity with previously established grounds of warfare. Thirdly, it shall be proved that the philosophical underpinnings of war in Thucydides have formed the theoretical and legal basis of contemporary kinds of military intervention in International Law. In this context, the contribution of Thucydides in the Theory of the International Law of War will be duly emphasized.

International Law on the Turkish Military Intervention of Cyprus by Dr Iacovos Kareklas

International Law on the Turkish Military Intervention of Cyprus: the Argument from the Treaty of Guarantee

Dr Iacvos Kareklas

The present article examines the legal context to the Turkish invasion in Cyprus 1974. On the one hand, the main legal argument put forward by Turkey in order to justify the intervention, which was based on the Republic of Cyprus Treaty of Guarantee, is put under scrutiny; international legal theories on the legality of intervention envisaged by Treaty are judiciously presented. On the other, the diplomatic background to the Treaty in question is explored in the light of UN documents, UK Parliamentary Debates, available Foreign Office Files in an effort to verify whether a right to military intervention was expressly provided for. Then the conduct of Turkey is tackled on the hypothesis that she did have a right to intervene, though it is hereby proved that the Guarantee Treaty does not expressly provide for a right of military intervention. Finally, it is stressed how the preceding discussion can be useful for security arrangements in the context of the current negotiations for a settlement to the pending international Cyprus question.

Ius ad bellum and ius in bello by Dr Iacovos Kareklas

Ius Ad Bellum and Ius In Bello: Humanitarian Law of Armed Conflict

Dr Iacovos Kareklas

This chapter on International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law deals firstly with the rules governing the conduct of hostilities, once an armed conflict has erupted. The term in latin for this body of law is “ius in bello” and is distinguished from the rules of the International Law relating to the use of armed force, which is the other category of the Law of War. The rationale behind the existence of this body of law lies in the fact that, if it is not possible to achieve deterrence of war (and international history shows that it is not really possible), at least the armed conflict must be subject to certain humanitarian rules and limitations, in order to protect, for example, prisoners, wounded soldiers and civilian population, and to prohibit the use of certain weapons systems.

Willing Suspension of Disbelief? A Critique of Operational Art by Dr Steven Coulson

Willing Suspension of Disbelief? A Critique of Operational Art

Dr Steven Coulson

Sitting somewhere between the strategic and the tactical, the operational level is a somewhat abstract, intangible concept. Indeed, one commentator has dismissed it as a “mere pretension and an artificial creation imposed between tactics and strategy that had no content or merit”. Others have argued that stressing the idea of the operation has come to overwhelm that of strategy.

 To begin with let's think about the problem of determining if the operational level really does exist. Is strategy more than the sum of tactics? Or is a successful military campaign really just the aggregation of winning battles to ensure victory?

On (the Likelihood of) War by Dr Steven Coulson

On (the Likelihood of) War

Dr Steven Coulson

The Breke (1999) Conflict Catalogue is used to analyse trends in conflict.  It is found that contrary to earlier research, the likelihood of war occurring has not decreased and that the outbreak of conflict is not random.  There is no evidence to support claims that the world is getting more peaceful.  The outbreak of large scale war is statistically possible with a frequency of greater than one per ninety years and the likelihood of smaller conflicts breaking out is much greater with at least one likely to occur every year. 

The implications of this study are that there is no evidence to support claims that the world is getting more peaceful.  The outbreak of large scale war is statistically possible with a frequency of greater than one per ninety years and that the likelihood of smaller conflicts is much greater, with an expected occurrence of at least one per year.

Change With Chinese Characteristics: Modernization and Orthodoxy in The People’s Liberation Army

Change With Chinese Characteristics: Modernization and Orthodoxy in The People’s Liberation Army

Philip Reid

As the modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continues in the ‘period of strategic opportunity’, Chinese defence writings and official statements have disavowed the legacy of the early communist era when national strategy relied on the country’s traditional demographic and territorial advantages. The 2013 Science of Military Strategy published by the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences (AMS) for example, states a need to change the concept of a ‘continental military’. The government’s 2015 Defence White Paper proposes eschewing the ‘traditional mentality that land outweighs sea’. These statements have been embellished by a strand of Western commentary that, in sensationalizing Chinese ‘pockets of excellence’, has contributed to the PLA’s modernization being perceived as a fait accompli. The PLA’s ‘continental’ legacy however is less attributable to its early-revolutionary leadership, than the embodiment of a much deeper tradition. The five centuries of internecine conflict that preceded the establishment of the Han dynasty, would produce a body of literature that has for more than two millennia informed the use of terrain, deception and manoeuvre, and located the halcyon reference for China’s ‘lost martial culture’ firmly in the country’s vast interior.

Systematic Failure: Afghanistan Endgame by Rob Johnson

Systematic Failure: Afghanistan Endgame

Dr Rob Johnson

The rapid collapse of the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan provoked a welter of think tank analyses, political recriminations, and breathless media coverage, with responsibility pinned either onto the hasty manner of the United States’ withdrawal, faulty intelligence, or the alleged inadequacy of the Afghan security forces. Regardless of these assessments, the events in Afghanistan constitute a systemic failure. But it was avoidable….

Changing Character of Russia’s Understanding of War by Dr Andrew Foxall

Changing Character of Russia’s Understanding of War: Policy Implications for the UK and Its Allies

Dr Andrew Foxall

Russia’s current leaders believe their country is at war with the Euro-Atlantic, whether the countries of the Euro-Atlantic recognise this or not. This belief is deep-seated and reflects an incompatibility between how Russia views the world and how the countries of the Euro-Atlantic view the world. It is this belief that drives Russia’s hostile actions across a range of domains -including in cyberspace, in disinformation campaigns, in assassinations of its own citizens as well as foreign citizens abroad, and in attempts to destabilise countries.

Russia's Strategic Culture and Worldview by Andrew Foxall

It has been apparent since 2014, if not before, that Russia’s current leadership views the world in terms that are very different to those familiar to us in the Euro-Atlantic more than twenty-five years after the end of the Soviet Union. Seen from the Kremlin, the post-Cold War international system is illegitimate and unfair, and has been forced on the world by the West. This view was articulated most clearly in Vladimir Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, and has only been reinforced by events since then.

Russia’s rejection of the post-Cold War international system is based in large part on a belief that the West, led by the United States, denies Moscow its rightful place in global affairs. Russia’s leaders believe that their country is a ‘great power’, or one of the most important countries globally. Proceeding from this self-perception, they believe that Russia has more rights than other countries, including the right to a ‘buffer zone’ along its borders and the right to have a say over global events. While these views are held by Russia’s current leadership, they are not specific to them. Instead, these views have been consistently held -- to a greater or lesser extent -- by Russia’s rulers over centuries.

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014, including the annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine, was a shock to many in the Euro-Atlantic region; so too has Russia’s subversion and destabilisation of Euro-Atlantic countries and institutions in the years since dismayed many. However, when considered in the context of Russia’s worldview its actions should be no surprise. This paper offers an overview of the key components of Russian strategic culture as it relates to Russia’s worldview, and assesses their policy implications for the UK and its allies…….

Dr Andrew Foxall is Senior Research Fellow in Russian Strategy at the Changing Character of War (CCW) Centre at the University of Oxford. Between 2013 and 2020, he was Director of the Russia and Eurasia Studies Centre at the Henry Jackson Society. Before that, he held academic positions at Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Oxford. He holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford.

Biden time for the transatlantic relationship?

Dr William James has published a short article on the likely changes and continuities in the transatlantic relationship under President Biden.

Joe Biden’s electoral victory was initially met with relief in most European capitals but has since triggered some deeper soul-searching. French President Emmanuel Macron sparked a rather extraordinary row last week by rebuking German Defence Minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, for her critique of European strategic autonomy and defence of the US role in the continent’s security. Their public spat masks an uncomfortable truth: Europeans are unsure about the future orientation of US grand strategy. Was Donald Trump’s eventful tenure an aberration or a symptom of deeper structural issues not just in American domestic politics but also in the US-Europe relationship? The time is ripe to assess the likely changes and continuities in the transatlantic partnership under President Biden.