Black Sky Hazard: Coronavirus causing geopolitical fragmentation
With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic are we facing a “Black Sky Hazard” moment? The new buzzword, borrowed from the lexicon of electronic warfare, was mentioned by Karin Von Hippel, DG of the Royal United Services Institute in her latest blog.
“Black Sky Hazards,” she writes, “are natural man-made threats that can disrupt systems and resource-infrastructure interdependencies upon which most of the planet depends – that includes not just pandemics, but other threats such as a massive cyber-attack that crashes the internet or collapses the electricity grid.”
Given the widespread social disruption still latent in the Covid-19 spread, the Black Sky Hazard label is attractive. It is only helpful up to a point, however. Other buzzword-clichés of geopolitics are being called into service too. Have the virus cultures from the live game markets of Wuhan produced a “butterfly effect”? Or is the advent of this particular version of coronavirus a “black swan” phenomenon, and, given the general consternation and chaos, isn’t it all a bit of a “perfect storm”?
I could go further and suggest that given the general muddle about remedies and recovery strategies, we could be facing what might be termed a “wicked problem”?
But let’s put a brake on the jargonistic meanderings. A wicked problem is a precise term for a problem or crisis that has no solution. “We certainly aren’t there,” Karin Von Hippel explains, “there are ways through this pandemic – first through mitigation and then through long-term containment.”
Dr Von Hippel and her colleague Dr Randolph Kent, an expert in electronic warfare, have borrowed the Black Sky Hazard tag to highlight the lack of resilience in the preparations and policies of national governments, and the weaknesses exposed in international organisations such as the UN and the World Health Organisation since Covid-19 went global.
The expression Black Sky Hazard first achieved fame in the context of the use of Electromagnetic Pulse weapons – a weapon discharged high above the Earth generating electromagnetic waves that can take out whole systems such as the electricity grid, the internet included.
While the pandemic cannot be compared to a Black Sky Hazard in terms of sudden devastating shock, there are plenty of unknowns, both known and unknown, that make it a world-turning event. Crucially, we don’t really know whether it is a perennial, or a one-off, in terms of epidemiology. Can it be eradicated by some good tough medical science, like malaria in large parts of the world, and smallpox? Or will it be more like the common cold and many influenzas, destined to repeat and recur, by a process of mutation and variation, which means it will live with us for many years yet?
The geopolitical impact is already becoming evident. This was addressed in an extraordinarily powerful, no-nonsense seminar by RUSI, the Royal United Services Institute, conducted through webinair conference on 2 April. If you can catch a repeat of “Mapping A Pandemic: The Geopolitics of Coronavirus”, on YouTube, do.
The discussion looked at four regions and states – the EU, China, Russia and Afghanistan – but took in other states and regimes in the debate as well, the UK, USA, and medium powers such as Iran and the Gulf states.
Countries that have tried to tackle the crisis centrally, from national capitals in the main, have had difficulty in maintaining consistency and credibility in their actions. This applies especially to China and Russia, but to a degree in the UK, America, and the EU. Local disquiet and protest are appearing in both Russia and China – which is shaking the self-confidence of the regimes.
Both Beijing and Moscow have been sending muddled messages – especially to where it counts, their domestic audiences. Both regimes are building up to major celebrations of milestones, in which they hope to demonstrate their superiority to a fractured and diseased West. China is now in the run up to the commemoration of the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party, which falls next year.
Next month Russia was due to hold to a huge Victory Parade, marking the 75th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War against the Axis powers.
The Chinese state is under growing domestic scrutiny, said Veerle Nouwens, the RUSI Asia-Pacific specialist, particularly at a local level. The official statistics of the number of cases and mortality figures have been criticized on social media – and the propaganda campaign of reassurance has been clumsy.
Veerle Nouwens suggested that the WHO had been too quick to accept China’s own statistics and version of events. The news that the virus has again flared in Hubei province with areas sealed off again, will have added to this.
“Covid-19 has shaken China,” Nouwens told us. “It has impacted everybody and promoted growing distrust of government.” It has damaged the two elements on which the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, has based its success – the continuing growth of the economy, and the security and stability of the Chinese people. Growth is down, and perhaps going lower to below 5%, supply chains are now in jeopardy, and the lack of resolution of the trade war with the US is only making things worse – for both parties, and the global economy.
A catalogue of irritants is undermining the legitimacy as well as credibility of the CCP, ranging from questions over the social credit system, to troubles in Hong Kong, to the re-election of the pro-independence president of Taiwan, and increasing regional and local criticism of the flagship Belt and Road Initiative.
Most important – as ever, she said, is the posture of the Peoples Liberation Army, the lynchpin of the whole regime setup. Despite the virus shutdown, the PLA has continued major ground manoeuvres in Cambodia, and intensive training to be “mission ready.”
“They seem ready to test the waters with what they can get away with,” said Nouwens, though she excluded a major adventure like a move on Taiwan or aggression across the South China Sea.
The predicament of China has echoes in Putin’s Russia, said Emily Ferris, a Russian specialist at RUSI. Things are not going well for the Putin regime, nor for him personally. He had blundered by pretending Russia was largely unaffected, and that the Coronavirus chaos was largely of Western confection.
“The tactics were diversion, re-diagnosis and delay,” said Emily Ferris. The first diversion was to blame the West and focus on the West. Next came the re-diagnosis ploy – to say a lot of the deaths weren’t due to the virus, but other respiratory conditions. This backfired, and reluctantly Putin began to go for lockdowns, first in St Petersburg and Moscow – which the Duma rejected, at first.”
The legislators were then forced to back the Mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin who said there were many more victims than the published figures – the initial count of 3,500 victims had seemed suspiciously low to a chorus of critics on social media.
Putin has conspicuously left the Mayor and the Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin, to take the lead on the virus campaign. The lack of coordination has caused local authorities and community groups to take matters into their own hands. Many are angry that internal flights have been running this week, unchecked.
Putin is giving the impression of tiptoeing off the stage, and leaving his prime minister and the mayor to be the fall guys if things get worse. Emily Ferris hinted that this may be no temporary ploy. The vote scheduled for 22 April enhancing Putin’s powers and a possibly extension of his presidency into the horizon of 2036 is now likely to be dumped. The vote was unlikely to reach the necessary 60 per cent, on roughly the same turnout, so wouldn’t meet the requirements for a major constitutional change.
Ferris hazarded the possibility that Putin may not take up the option of extending his term: “In his forthcoming broadcast I wonder if he’ll mention the presidency at all. He may leave the option to remain in power on the table. His main aim now is to avoid the effects of the disease.”
As with Xi in China, Ferris believed that Russia wouldn’t risk a further foreign adventure, at least nothing compared to the annexation of Crimea, the insertion in Syria from 2015 and the Ukraine imbroglio. “Russia just doesn’t have the capacity at the moment.”
Like Russia and China, the EU approach to the pandemic is riven with ambiguity, according to RUSI International Security Fellow, Dr Neil Melvin.
Europe is now divided into camps – the creditors and budget recipients – and they are not coming together on much. It is, perhaps, the biggest turning point since the community began in the 1950s. Coronavirus, along with Brexit, was a severe test of the system altogether. “The barriers are going up, with borders closed and the Schengen arrangement suspended,” said Melvin. They must decide whether to go for a leap of faith and greater integration or become more fragmented into individual nations.”
The suspension of constitutional liberties in Hungary could prove a big problem, though it isn’t a priority yet. The epidemic has put more focus on Brussels and what it can do to help. Health provision on a cross EU plan would now take priority of any boosting of the European Defence Initiative – defence would have to take a back seat now.
If the EU is to integrate, he suggested, it would have to opt for some form of equalization policy “real mutuality” and the helping out of weaker members. This hasn’t been too conspicuous so far – and the Right in both Germany and the Netherlands aren’t buying it.
The most sobering part of the discussion was on Afghanistan, presented by the Terrorism and Conflict fellow at RUSI, Emily Winterbotham. The plight of Afghanistan in the Covid-19 crisis is no parochial or regional matter. The epidemic is in its early stages, testing a fragile health service in a fragmented and divided polity, with two claimants to be the elected president. Afghans, some 130,000 of them were returning from Iran, are now in the throes of full virus epidemic.
An acute point of concern is the release of prisoners as part of a peace deal with the Taliban. President Ghani has agreed 1,500 to be freed, though the Taliban have called for 5,000. The release is problematic, either way, because the prisons are “hot spots for contagion,” she said.
The onset of the virus has thrown out of gear two sets of talks for peace – the 29 February accord between the Americans and the Taliban, and the intra-Afghan talks between the regime, such that it is, and the Taliban. The peace process is stalling on both fronts – making the reduction of the US forces to 8,500 all but irrelevant. More significant is the cut of American aid by $1 billion a year.
America was pulling out and not committing to help the physically ailing Afghans and their politically ailing country. This was one of the most powerful lines of discussion in the seminar – the absence of American global leadership in the pandemic, which was weakening the leadership of global organisations like the UN and World Health Organisation.
“We are witnessing US withdrawal and the populist parties closing borders,” said Karin Von Hippel in conclusion. “The need to cooperate and collaborate is clear: the scientists do collaborate and cooperate. But the international architecture headed by the US and UN is not working to help prevent this.”
She instanced her work with the Obama administration to tackle ISIL and the global terror threat it posed, after the new caliphate was declared in Mosul in June 2014. They promoted the counter ISIL committee with half a dozen separate working groups looking at specific areas like security and supply chains. “There is now a need to syndicate and cooperate on the UN model, for investigation, preparing and understanding the crisis.”
Most important was a clear information and communication strategy. The muddle and inconsistency of messages from all the central governments under discussion, UK included, had undermined their credibility.
So, while it may not quite be a Black Sky Hazard, the coronavirus crisis is leaving a more confused and geopolitically fragmented world.