EMERGING SECURITY TRENDS
Charting the nation’s security environment is a veritable conundrum in today’s complex web of threats. SYNERGIA FOUNDATION RE S E A RCH
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This article is based on the 113th Forum on the ‘Future of Warfare’, organised in collaboration with the Ministry of Defence.
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s a think tank, we consider it our primary duty to ideate on security-related issues and align our national leadership, the military leadership, the defence research community and the defence production sector to their respective strategies for the future. All decisions concerning procurement of strategic weapons and decisions that have a bearing on indigenising production must be anchored around what, where and how conflicts will be fought in the future. More importantly, companies that are at the forefront of 21st-century warfare must be helped to better understand the nature of conflicts in the region.
CATCHING THE TREND
The past is not a very good model to predict the future because the future turns out always in ways that we do not anticipate. No wonder militaries are always blamed for preparing for wars that have already been fought and then getting surprised in the next one! However, if security pundits look at current trends and extrapolate them for the future, they may be able to foretell future conflict outcomes with a degree of accuracy. Future conflicts are unlikely to arise out of a clash of ideology, say like the Cold War when communism was pitched against capitalism. Even the so-called ‘clash of civilisations’ being propagated by those who predict radical Islam trying
To overcome the domestic abhorrence for combat mortalities and returning body bags, western military powers are investing heavily in private military contractors. The Iraq war and Afghanistan witnessed the private military contractor business reaching record highs - with the ratio of regular military to private contractor crossing over 75 per cent. to overwhelm the so-called ‘civilised’ world is more of an idea that has been on the wane, once Al Qaeda and ISIS were decisively crushed. The conflict is more likely to be over regions that are stores of valuable resources. Water and clean air themselves may become a source of conflict if their scarcity threatens civilisation. Rising water levels or shrinking habitable and cultivable areas may also spark conflicts. As global power dynamics change, friends and allies will shift loyalties. Pakistan, which was staunchly in the American camp during the Cold War, is today a close ally of China. Even if we look at India, from maintaining a strong strategic autonomy (with a perceptible tilt towards the USSR) for over four decades, it now looks at the U.S. to anchor a strategic partnership in the Indo-Pacific to counter the Chinese. However, one sphere where conflict will rage across all regions and spectrums unabated will be the battle to win perceptions and minds of the global audience. Social me-
