By Tom Rogan
China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran pose enduring challenges to international peace. But five other possible flashpoints loom.
1) India-Pakistan in/over Kashmir
Claimed by Pakistan, India’s Jammu and Kashmir province has long been a center for terrorist activity. In early 2019, a major attack on Indian security forces threatened to provoke a war . Considering India and Pakistan are nuclear-armed powers sharing a sectarian and theological hatred for one another, the stakes of what happens in Kashmir reach far beyond the province’s borders.
In recent weeks, the tensions have again spilled over. A number of migrant workers have been assassinated, forcing Indian authorities to relocate thousands of others into protected accommodation. Indian authorities blame an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group. That matters because Lashkar-e-Taiba is a proxy of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service. The latest attacks also evince a measure of intelligence targeting that could indicate the ISI’s guidance.
ISI-related tensions between Pakistan’s politically powerful army and the civilian government in Islamabad might also give the ISI cause to stir up trouble with India. Tension is high. Pakistan says it blocked an Indian submarine from entering its waters last weekend. If attacks in Kashmir or beyond keep occurring and links to Pakistan emerge, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will face pressure to retaliate against Pakistan. Side note: Kashmir is also home to a China-India military standoff over the contested Himalayan border.
2) Lebanon
The Lebanese Hezbollah has a problem. Facing an economic implosion, soaring inflation, and collapsing supplies of fuel and other basic goods, Lebanese are enraged. They have called for a new government freed from the shackles of sectarian patronage networks that have long held power in Beirut. But Hezbollah and its geriatric Christian ally, President Michel Aoun, are blocking reform efforts. With the international community refusing to provide a much-needed financial bailout until political reform occurs, things seem set to get worse.
Seven Hezbollah supporters were gunned down last week while protesting against a judge investigating last August’s Beirut port explosion. The risk is clear: As the economy worsens and hope evaporates, something will give. Some may come to see a civil war as the only way to alter the status quo. In 2021, the bonds of the post-civil war Lebanese state are fragile.
3) Turkey-Syrian Kurds
Following a recent Kurdish attack on Turkish security forces in Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is threatening a new incursion against Syrian Kurdistan. While Erdogan faces escalating pressure from Vladimir Putin (who dominates Erdogan ) in relation to Turkish activity in Syria’s western Idlib province, the unstable Turkish leader may decide to act regardless. Desperate to be perceived as a strongman, Erdogan’s political base also revels in nationalist hatred of the Kurds. Amid growing currency weakness and inflation domestically, Erdogan may decide that laying waste to northern Syria will serve to rally the political troops.
3B) Turkey-Greece
In 2020, attempting to advance his dream of a new Ottoman empire, Erdogan ordered energy surveys within Greece’s exclusive economic zone. In response, the United States and France bolstered their support for Athens with defense commitments and, in France’s case, shows of force in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. While Erdogan has pared back his surveys this year, he is stirring up nationalist and religious sectarianism against Greece. This is most notable on the divided island of Cyprus and along the land border of northern Greece and Turkey. Erdogan may miscalculate.
4) Serbia-Kosovo tensions
Disagreements over vehicle license plate rules and smuggling might not seem to offer casus belli. Perhaps not when it comes to Serbia and Kosovo. Low-level skirmishes have broken out in recent weeks over just these issues. International peacekeepers have been deployed, but there’s a real threat of new bloodshed in the Balkans. Pushed by its Moscow master, the Serbian government of Aleksandar Vucic seems keen to stoke the fire. Serbian officials are upping their sectarian rhetoric, painting the tensions as a sacred struggle for the honor of the Serbian nation and people. Historically, these circumstances don’t portend well for peace.
5) Ethiopia-Egypt
Not content with waging a generally indiscriminate starvation war against the separatist Tigray province, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed risks a separate conflict with Egypt. At dispute is Ethiopia’s construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Egypt and Sudan fear that the dam will deny them critical water supplies. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el Sisi has warned that “all options” are under consideration to resolve the crisis. Addressing the United Nations General Assembly last month, Sisi warned that the “river Nile has been Egypt’s only lifeline throughout history … [Ethiopia] has chosen unilateralism and a policy of imposing the fait accompli, which threatens the stability and security of the entire region.” Egypt’s military, especially in the most dam-relevant field of air power, is significantly stronger than that of Ethiopia. What if Ethiopia fails to make concessions? Will this dispute spark the first 21st-century water war?