Tomorrow's world war

Book review of '2020: World of War'

2020: World of War

Paul Cornish and Kingsley Donaldson

Hachette

298 pages; Rs 699

In spite of the bewildering complexity of our world, predicting the future remains a delicious pastime for the global commentariat. So, we are told that driverless cars will take over our roads by 2030, a colony on Mars for survival (and even leisure) is inevitable, and that global warming will make the planet inhospitable over the next 50 years (which is when the Mars idea may come in handy, for those who can afford it).

Military conflict and strategy is a prolific sub-genre of this category, with no dearth of books on the possible war scenarios of the future. Last year’s Ghost Fleet was a runaway success in the American security establishment for its detailed imagining of a conflict between America on the one hand and China and Russia on the other. Before that, the works of Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton have provided rich pickings for readers eager for conspiracy and sabotage.

Even the non-fiction in this genre must bow to the slipperiness of fiction for obvious reasons. In 2020, World of War, writers Paul Cornish and Kingsley Donaldson let their imagination soar as they think up war scenarios of the coming decade. From cybersecurity to old-style military stand-offs, they hop from one geopolitical nightmare to the next as they regale, or more accurately, frighten the reader with all that could transpire in the near future.

The main villain is expectedly Russia, which has given ample reasons to the international community to wonder what its ambition under Vladimir Putin are. From its annexation of Crimea to its meddling in Syria, Russian action in the recent past has bordered on adventurism that most analysts believe is aimed at reinvigorating lost Soviet glory. Especially in Syria, where the country ensured the continued reign of Bashar al-Assad, Russian intervention has caused grievous harm.

While Messrs Cornish and Donaldson restate all these problems, they skip the role the country may have played in the last Presidential election. If Donald Trump indeed benefitted from Russian meddling in the polls, it is unlikely that he would target that country openly. Indeed, since he took over, he has spoken against both China and North Korea, but has been loud in his silence on the third pole of the Communist axis.

It is China, then, that presents a far more potent threat to the prevailing world order. With its expansionist designs and mollycoddling of Pakistan, the country’s aims are dramatically at odds with those of the West and of saner regimes in the east. Messrs Cornish and Donaldson imagine a scenario where the nation tests the limits of NATO solidarity by attacking Australia. In a book teeming with outrageous scenarios, this one isn’t the least plausible, as borne out by Doklam and the Chinese encircling of the South China Sea.

Besides, the threat from China is not merely on the ground; it extends to cyberspace where Chinese hackers have shown remarkable agility in wrecking government websites in the West. Messrs Cornish and Donaldson take this threat to its logical conclusion as they visualise the Chinese state hacking into and disabling the opponent’s military hardware in the event of war. This chapter highlights the dangers of too much reliance on technology, especially for conventional warfare.

The authors are also impressive in detailing the threat from non-state actors, particularly with regard to Islamic extremism. Picking up from the migrant crisis that has lashed Europe since 2015, they envision a time when disparate Sunni groups, headed by IS and al Qaeda, unite to launch a caliphate in Europe whose modus operandi will continue to be the lone wolf attacks that the IS has championed. And then, there is Pakistan, which gets a chapter on its misadventure in Afghanistan where it has funded and trained Taliban fighters. Messrs Cornish and Donaldson segue that conflict into the India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir, and envisage what may already be a reality: A highly radicalised Pakistan Army. Blasts rip through the country, Westerners are kidnapped, and demands are made on India to give up its claim on Kashmir. The proxy war suddenly turns hot but even so, the willingness of the Indian Cabinet to reconsider its no-first-use of nuclear weapons comes as a surprise. 

Given the nature of the beast, 2020 can sometimes read outlandish. But if there is one thing the 21st century, whose beginning was marked by an unimaginable and unimaginably bold attack on the world’s greatest superpower, teaches us, it is that modernity, democracy and the other comforting systems we propagate as the solution to deprivation and strife, are incapable of realising these lofty ideals. We will always live in a world of conflicts, and while we may not know how or when they come to pass, this book is a knowing primer on all that is plausible.