CHACRDIGEST
2024 continues to cause analysts and citizens of the world to look on aghast at events. In December, in the shadow of a NATO foreign ministers meeting, South Korea’s President unsuccessfully imposed martial law and an Islamist group forced Bashar Al-Assad to flee Damascus. With 2025 rapidly approaching, many commentators are predicting what the new year will bring. The Economist’s The World Ahead 2025 is well worth a read. It warns of threats to Myanmar’s junta, the global fallout of Sudan’s civil war and the potential impact of protests in Georgia on the strategic balance in the Black Sea. Equally, the ongoing evolution in post-coup South Korea and an Israeli strike on Iran are potential flashpoints. More pithily it highlights that three forces will shape 2025 – Donald Trump, technology and radical uncertainty – whilst warning that if Europe wants peace, it must plan for war.
EU / NATO
The recently appointed NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte opened the North Atlantic Council on the 4th December with a declaration that “North America and Europe have always been stronger and safer together in NATO and a strong Transatlantic bond is essential… in an age of global uncertainty” but also warned European countries to dramatically increase defence spending. The message seems to have worked. On the 15th December, Greece almost doubled Defence spending from €3.6 Billion to €6.1 billion. Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock did not rule out sending German troops to Ukraine as part of a wider European deployment to enforce a peace settlement alongside a renewed 700-strong NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine programme based in Wiesbaden. And the German Marshall Fund published an interesting article outlining Poland’s strong defence and security focus for its presidency of the European Union in 2025, a presidency that, for the first time, will work with an EU Commissioner for Defence as outlined by the newly appointed Andrius Kubilius in Politico
However, in the days running up to NATO’s foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on the 10th December, President (elect) Donald Trump’s interview with NBC alarmed leaders across Europe. In response to questions, Trump noted that he would consider reducing military aid to Ukraine, withdrawing from NATO and then demanded on his social media platform, Truth Social, “an immediate ceasefire and negotiations”
Nevertheless, the threat to Europe remains very real. The Czech Foreign Minister declared publicly that up to 100 hybrid attacks including cyber-attacks, arson and sabotage have been conducted by Russia across Europe in 2024. An Institute for the Study of War paper published this month includes declassified Romanian intelligence on Russian interference in the recent Romanian election. In the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre’s Annual Review 2024 reported a three-fold increase in serious cyber-attacks over the past year and warned of underestimating the severity of “real and enduring threats” from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. All of which has prompted NATO to urgently increase intelligence sharing and mutual protection of critical infrastructure, especially after damage to a data cable between Sweden and Finland in early December.
The views expressed in this Digest are not those of the British Army or UK Government. This document cannot be reproduced or used in part or whole without the permission of the CHACR. chacr.org.uk
UNITED KINGDOM
Professor Paul Cornish’s decades of experience in supporting UK Defence policy bears out in his substack “L’Attaque versus Monopoly”. Professor Cornish advocates that the UK Security and Defence Review should focus on output as the best measure of a national defence effort and highlights the UK’s tendency to lurch to one of two extremes; ‘Defence first’, a no resource constraints approach and a ‘Treasury’ approach, which treats defence as if it were just another kind of expenditure. He concludes both are wrong, not least because in Defence, unlike other public policy where agency lies with the government, “antagonists, adversaries and even allies will make decisions that could bear critically on UK national security, without first checking whether the UK has been briefed”.
RUSSIA
In the context of a potential peace deal in Ukraine in 2025, RUSI recognises that “this war is yet another phase in [Ukraine’s] long struggle for statehood against Russian imperialism”. It quotes former President Viktor Yushchenko: “An integral part of Ukrainian identity is to fight for our freedom and democracy, our own language and culture. This is why Ukrainians will never submit to Moscow’s brutal imperialism and tyranny.” However, the authors note with concern that recent US foreign policy has failed to recognise local agency. President Trump sponsored talks with the Taliban without the Afghan government and President Biden abandoned Kabul. They conclude “those trying to cut a deal with Putin cannot expect Kyiv to go along with a version of Taliban redux”. Meanwhile, following the statement at the Collective Security Treaty Organization summit in November that strikes inside Russia using Western long-range weapons would be seen as NATO’s direct involvement in the conflict, Russia has requested a United Nations Security Council meeting on the 20th December to discuss the supply of Western weapons to Ukraine.
However, a RUSI article highlighting the use of 2-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile or riot control agent in Ukraine notes the risks to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ credibility and the potential for allowing a dangerous, normalising precedent.
Events in Syria, covered on the next page, have the potential to have a dramatic effect on Russia. The ability to project naval power into the Mediterranean depends on access to the Tartus naval base in the west of Syria. However, whilst The Economist reports secret talks between Syria’s new leaders and the Kremlin if Syria’s new leadership evict them, it would impact the Russian Navy in the Mediterranean and Red Sea and support to groups such as Wagner in North Africa. As The Economist concludes, in contrast to their article in 2019 entitled The fate of Syria is now in Russia’s hands, Russia’s fate in Syria (and the region) is now in the hands of those who it was only recently fighting against.
Away from the events in Ukraine and Syria, systemic issues may have an impact on Russian decision making in 2025. Food security analysts have highlighted the percentage of Russian winter crops for the 2025 harvest in ‘poor condition’ is the largest ever recorded whilst only 31 per cent of crops are in ‘good’ condition compared with 74 per cent last year. According to agriculture experts, the situation is correctable in 90 per cent of cases but nonetheless is likely to have an impact in North Africa and Asia, the largest markets for Russian wheat. Moreover, it is worth remembering that droughts and floods in 2010 caused food prices to soar by 40 per cent and were a causal factor in the Arab Spring. More dramatically, in the Frederick Forsyth novel The Devil’s Alternative, published in 1979, systemic failures in the USSR led to a failure of the wheat crop and rather than suffer political and military concessions in exchange for American wheat, hardline elements recommended an invasion of western Europe.
In monumental events in Syria, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham – a former al-Qaeda affiliate led by Abu Mohammed al-Golani – swept Bashar al-Assad from power. Despite commentators suggesting Russia and Iran would not abandon Assad, demands in Ukraine and the dramatic reduction in Iranian proxy capability in the past year meant that the required support was not provided, and Assad was forced to flee. Shashank Joshi, writing in The Economist, captured events well: “It marks the end of the Assad dynasty’s five-decade grip on Syria and the collapse of Iranian influence in the region; a triumph for Turkey and a disaster for Russia.”
The rapid nature of the success of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham caught many by surprise although Chatham House noted that it shouldn’t have done. Opposition groups recognised that armed resistance was the only way to prevent future regime attacks and therefore the end of the ‘frozen conflict’ was totally predictable, although the pace was not. In complex and fast moving circumstances, commentators have struggled to keep up with events on the ground, however, it is worth looking up the Council on Foreign Relations article on Syria after Assad. Equally, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace article on how Türkiye has the most to gain either by increasing their control over Kurdish armed groups or gaining additional leverage over Russia is well worth a read. One of the more current analysis pieces is provided by RUSI – The Fall of Bashar al-Assad and Syria’s Unfinished Business It notes that “while an offensive out of Idlib had been expected, nothing like this was foreseen, and its catastrophic success is unexpected” – perhaps evidence to disprove commentators who deem surprise, deception and manoeuvre impossible in a 21st century Transparent Battlefield and recognition that mass can provide agility to respond effectively in an era of Polycrisis. As Chatham House point out, the unexpected nature of events in Syria represent the prioritisation of conflict management rather than conflict resolution by the international community – a potentially dangerous trend in the context of Ukraine.
It is also worth reading the IISS article on The Death of Nasrallah and the Fate of Lebanon. It details how Hizbollah and Hassan Nasrallah deeply misread Israel’s mood after the 7th October and suffered the effect of a campaign the superior intelligencegathering and airpower of the Israel Defense Forces had been preparing for since 2006. It concludes that a European and Gulf State sponsored diplomatic settlement and economic assistance, predicated on the difficult political and economic reforms required, may then force Hizbullah to answer for its political and strategic failures.
INDO-PACIFIC REGION
In staggering scenes on the 3rd December, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared “emergency martial law”, accusing the country’s opposition of controlling Parliament, sympathising with North Korea and paralysing the government with anti-state activities (click on the image right to read CHACR’s Commentary on events in Seoul).
Members of the South Korean Parliament voted to overturn the declaration of martial law 190-0 and to impeach Yoon Suk Yeol on the 14th December. While there was speculation that President Yeol’s actions were a response to the growing North Korean nuclear threat, Pyongyang’s attempt to reshape the geopolitical landscape on the Korean Peninsula by deploying North Korean troops to Ukraine or the US presidential election of Donald Trump, it would seem his motivations were largely domestic. However, as Chatham House points out, his actions have focussed attention on internal divisions which threaten to delay South Korean support for Ukraine, whilst the Center for a New American Security, quoting a Bloomberg article, has recently revealed that China is limiting European sales of key unmanned aerial vehicle components. The decision by China is seen as a prelude to broader export restrictions expected in early 2025 that are likely to severely impact Ukraine’s war fighting capability.
USA AND AMERICAS
On the 2nd December, in perhaps his final overseas trip as President, Joe Biden became the first American president ever to visit Angola and the first to visit sub-Saharan Africa since 2015. A two-part analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies highlights the dissonance between official statements that Africa matters to America and the lack of tangible actions to prove it. However, despite significant Cold War arms sales from Russia and huge Chinese debt, Angola and the US have been building a strong relationship over the past decade. The Lobito Corridor, the US flagship rail and port infrastructure project financed through the G7 Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, is designed to increase western access to critical mineral reserves and dilute China’s influence in the region. As with all other US policy, only time will tell if it survives the arrival of the new President.
AFRICA
As a final note of seemingly good news, Somalia and Ethiopia have agreed to a “historic reconciliation” deal brokered by Turkey’s President Erdogan. This will hopefully lead to the resolution of a dispute that, at the beginning of November 2024, threatened to put the region at the edge of war over Ethiopia’s access to the Red Sea, the impact of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the status of the Somaliland region.
This Digest was compiled on the 17th December 2024 to enable publication prior to the Christmas break. Any omissions of Earthshattering events, common in 2024, that occur between this date and the 31st December 2024, will be picked up in January 2025.
