Manish Tewari | Balance of power key to leashing China, Russia, Israel

History tells us that geo-strategic transitions are never easy. They are always accompanied by uncertainty, fear, insecurity and bloodshed — not necessarily in that order. However, what every transition brings with itself are certain conceptual constructs that then underpin the strategic landscape over the next decade or even centuries that usher in an era of sustainable tranquility that is usually accompanied by prosperity, the forward march of the human race and above all stability and a modicum of happiness.

If one takes a deep dive into history, the Thirty Year War that commenced in 1618 between the Roman Catholics and Protestants devastated much of Central Europe. Out of the ashes of that destruction that attained quietus with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, a new principle emerged that underpinned European statecraft for a century or more. It is called called raison d’état. Coined by a prince of the church Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu, First Minister of France from 1624-1642, it was practised by most European powers for an epoch thereafter.

Raison d’etat was premised on the fact that security and primacy of a nation state warranted the deployment of all means essential to preserve, protect and promote it. It envisaged that supreme national interest must eschew all archaic notions of universal morality.

Raison d’etat, therefore, was predicated on a convoluted hypothesis that every nation state while pursuing its own selfish and narrow interests would in some manner underwrite the collective safety and progress of all the others.

However, by the 18th century, Great Britan had articulated the concept of balance of power that then dominated European diplomacy for the next two hundred years. It had its genesis in the British desire to prevent any one single European power from dominating the European continent. In pursuit of maintaining an equilibrium it required Great Britan to throw its weight behind the vulnerable or the more feebler side in any conflict.

The concept of balance of power was utilised by Prince Von Metternich of Austria and other European statespersons to construct the concert of Europe at the Congress of Vienna in September 1814. It ensured that no war at all took place among the Great Powers for 40 years and after the Crimean War of 1854 there was no general war for another 60, thereby ensuring a century of relative peace that helped Europe to materially, culturally and imperially flourish.  Unfortunately, a subsequent German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck disassembled the Concert of Europe and recast European high statecraft into a ruthless pursuit of power politics a-la “realpolitik”.

The reason I have chosen to enunciate these three principles, namely, raison d’etat, balance of power and realpolitik, is because many centuries after they were conceptualised and applied by statespersons of that era, they still continue to operate, albeit under different nomenclatures, as the world faces perhaps its biggest challenge to collective peace after the Second World War in the form of active conflicts across three continents.

In the case of the Russia-Ukraine conflict or the Russian aggression on Ukraine, both the classical concepts of raison d’etat and balance of power are at play. A concerned or even overly distrustful Russia at the ostensibly eastward expansion of Nato decided to put its narrow national interest above everything else, thereby violating the sovergnity of Ukraine. While that fulfills the first part of the the raison d’etat postulate, as far as the second leg of that hypothesis is concerned, i.e., it should underwrite the collective safety of others, if it would lead to the reordering of the security architecture of Europe, thereby bringing back sustainable peace in Europe, remains to be seen. The jury would be out on that for quite a while.

Conversely, in this very conflict, you also have the template of the balance of power at play. Nato has weighed in squarely on Ukraine’s side as have other democratic nations around the world. Given that Ukraine is the weaker power, the balance of power in Europe has to be maintained. The desire to maintain this European equilibrium has in fact impelled both Finland and Sweden to become members of Nato. Something both refrained from doing after the devastating Second World War.

In the Israel-Hamas conflict, you see the first postulate of the raison d’etat squarely at play with Israel deploying elevated levels of violence to neutralise the Hamas threat even if it involves the bombing of hospitals and the wanton killing of innocent men, women and children.

This, by no means, should be construed as any justification of the horrific terror attack by Hamas on innocent Israeli civilians or the taking of hostages, the argument simply being that the Israeli response, disproportionate in every sense of the word, is predicated upon the fact that security and primacy of the  nation state justifies the employment of every imperative howsoever iniquitous  considered essential to defend it.  

Paradoxically, you do not have the balance of power paradigm at play in the Israel-Hamas conflict for no nation state of any consequence in the greater Middle East has even attempted to weigh in on the side of Hamas, leaving aside Iran and Syria that both support the Hamas and Hezbollah. However, that hardly qualifies as any substantive balancing of power in the purely classical sense of the term.

Coming to the Chinese power play on the Line of Actual Control qua India and its belligerence in the larger Indo-Pacific region, both ruthless realpolitik and raison d’etat are at play insofar as China is concerned. Fuelled by three-and-a-half decades of unprecedented economic growth, China has established a power differential across the board qua its neighbors.

Even though its economy is slowing down now the legacy buoyancy that translated into hefty military spending is now being leveraged by China to reclaim its mythical status as the Middle Kingdom that, in its estimation, was disrupted by the century of humiliation in 1839-1949.  

Apposite to that, the principle of balance of power is also operating in the Indo-Pacific, with the QUAD, AUKUS, ASEAN Regional Forum and various other groupings and quasi-alliances being energised to ensure that the Chinese influence, malefic that it is, does not become toxic to the extent that it leads to an eminently avoidable conflict.

As the adage goes, the more things change the more they remain the same.  Situations may change, times may move on, but grundnorm concepts endure.