What is the biggest threat facing the world today?
Big Question: From Vladimir Putin's expansionist aims to the advances of Islamic State, the news is full of threats to global stability - but what do specialists in war studies think we should fear most?
By King's College London
3:42PM BST 17 Apr 2015
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), close to Europe via its growth inLibya, the greatest threat to global stability? Or is China's rise more to be feared than Vladimir Putin's involvement in the Ukraine crisis?
The World Economic Forum annually produces its list of the threats the world faces and at the top of this year's list was state conflict. So what are the threats to global stability that should really worry us, according to specialists in conflict studies?
The following is a list of what current and former academics at the Department of War Studies at King's College London believe to be the areas of most concern:
Russian and Chinese expansionism v Western disarmament
Alexander Clarke, a PhD graduate, believes that Russia and China's desire for territory or more control of resources is a threat that will bring conflict.
Russia and China are big nations, and whether they seek more territory out of nationalist pride, increased security or a desire for control of more resources, their expansion is always going to bring conflict – conflict which due to alliances and friendships, will always contain the potential to explode into worldwide conflicts.
Russia and China are big nations, and whether they seek more territory out of nationalist pride, increased security or a desire for control of more resources, their expansion is always going to bring conflict – conflict which due to alliances and friendships, will always contain the potential to explode into worldwide conflicts.
"This potential is in part a product of the emergence of collective security; a phenomenon that has grown from the peace-time alliances that emerged from the First World War, and which has been cemented by time, becoming in the post-Cold War era the norm. This has produced problems, as it has often induced nations to reduce defence expenditure for budgetary reasons - considering it safe to do because they feel secure in the group.
"The result of this is weakness; and responding to expansion events, or potential expansion events, from a position of weakness makes conflict more likely because forces will have to be handled more aggressively to create the same level of deterrence."
Russia's revisionism
Dalibor Rohac, a King's graduate and now research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Washington DC, fears that Vladimir Putin's aggression in the Ukraine crisis could be a sign of worse to come.
Mr Putin's aggression in Crimea and eastern Ukraine contravened not just international law but also the security guarantees that the West extended to Ukraine in the form of the Budapest Memorandum in 1994. Mr Putin's harassment of the Baltic states may call into question the credibility of Article 5 of Nato's founding document, effectively eroding the security order existing in the West.
"There is little indication that Mr Putin's ambitions stop in Donbas, yet the West's response so far has been amazingly ineffective. Unless serious efforts are undertaken to contain and deter the regime, one ought to worry about the future of the hundred million people that liberated themselves from the shackles of Soviet dominance 25 years ago."
Fighters from the Ukrainian volunteer Donbas battalion take part in military drills not far from the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol
China’s rise and power shifting in the Indo-Pacific
Harsh V. Pant, professor of international relations at King's, believes China's rise should be feared more than Mr Putin or Isil.
Forget the present turmoil in the Middle East and Putin’s shenanigans, the biggest challenge to global stability will come from the unfolding transition of power in the larger Indo-Pacific in the coming years. The Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu Islands) in the East China Sea have become emblematic of the bitter rivalry between Beijing and Tokyo.
"Chinese revisionism is also evident in the South China Sea where recent reports indicate that China is making rapid progress on building an airstrip on a reef, thereby reclaiming land and changing realities on the ground to the detriment of other regional states.
"China’s revisionist forays are not restricted to east and southeast Asia alone; the contested Himalayan border with India has also seen a number of crises in recent times. Repeated transgressions by the People’s Liberation Army into the Indian side of the frontier have become the norm, rather than the exception.
"The Indo-Pacific, from the waters of the Indian Ocean to the farthest ends of the Pacific, is becoming a cauldron of major power politics with significant implications for the future of the world."
Unfinished business in the Taiwan Strait
Jeroen Gelsing, a PhD candidate in War Studies at King's, says the undetermined status of Taiwan is what threatens the world's stability.
Looming ever larger as a threat to the balance of power in the Pacific – and world stability – is the undetermined status of Taiwan. Even as Taiwanese public opinion drifts towards continued independence from China, Beijing is having none of this – it brands recovery of Taiwan a ‘core interest’. The force that stands between it and fulfilment is the American commitment to Taiwan’s defence, and more specifically, the might of its Seventh Fleet, anchored in Japan. Yet the time is fast approaching where China’s military is strong enough to deploy force against Taiwan and see off a US military response, should it decide to do so. This critical point could be reached by 2020, Taiwan defence reports say.
"Conflict in the Taiwan Strait would shatter the US and China’s uncomfortable co-existence in the Asia-Pacific and might turn ‘strategic rivalry’ into outright superpower conflict, with reverberations across the globe."
Anti-Japanese protesters marched through the streets of Datong in protest at the Japanese claim to the Senkaku islands
Unbridled nuclear proliferation
Richard Brown, non-proliferation analyst, International Centre for Security Analysis, fears the rise of nuclear technology around the world.
The Iran negotiations have gone about as well as could have been hoped, but it remains the case that the spread of nuclear technology around the world - and the concomitant risk of those technologies being deployed for the purposes of nuclear weapons development - has not been adequately reduced.
"The list of states seeking high-risk 'dual-use' technologies is troublingly long, and all will have been watching the Iran case for precedents. Ultimately, the tensions and contradictions inherent in the present non-proliferation regime can only be glossed over for so long; they can't, under current conditions, be resolved. In the near term, more and more states will reach a latent 'hedging' capability: the effect is inherently destabilising."
Political transition in the Middle East
Jonathan Hill, a reader in postcolonialism and the Maghreb, believes that democracy is important for the Middle East but fears that it gives a voice to those hostile to the West.
The West has to be seen to support it yet democratisation is a difficult and unsettling process, and also provides opportunities to groups and figures which are suspicious and hostile to the West."
Eugenio Lilli, a researcher, agrees with Mr Hill.
Unless these demands for freedom and economic opportunities are earnestly addressed, the Middle East will remain a region exposed to the risk of cyclical waves of unrest. Meanwhile, the failed uprisings created the enabling environment that, in turn, led to the rise of serious threats. Peaceful popular protests have been replaced by bloody conflicts among armed groups and militias in Libya, Syria, and Yemen.
"The terrorists’ narrative, holding that change in the Middle East can be achieved only through violence has gained new currency. Tellingly, old (al-Qaeda) and new (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) extremist organisations have intensified their activity across the region."
Fighters with Northern Storm guard the Sharia court that was previously controlled by Isis in Azaz, Syria
The rise of nationalism and other politics of identity
Pablo de Orellana, teaching fellow, department of War Studies, says the growing nationalist ideologies encouraged by world leaders threatens the world.
Nationalism links exasperation with grievances such as social dislocation, lack of opportunity, economic dissatisfaction, even demographic and health threats, to divisions among social, racial or national identities. At the same time nationalist ideologies delimit identities: defining who is or isn't of a certain group, be it by birthright like Ukip or Lega Nord, ethnic group like BNP and 1930s fascists or claims upon the political meaning of culture and history as Ukrainian and Russian nationalists do today.
"In sum the subject excluded by nationalist ideas becomes the bearer of different, lesser, rights. He can be governed differently, as recent anti-immigration European nationalists demand, or he can be killed, expelled, enslaved or brutalised as we are seeing in Ukraine. Nationalism is the greatest single political idea in terms of mobilising large-scale political support worldwide; it has and will continue to lead to acts of war, terror and political dislocation."
Russian infiltration in Western politics
Giorgio Bertolin, PhD candidate in the defence studies department, believes Russia funds fringe movements to undermine European stability.
The co-opting of Western leaders is an integral part of Russia’s hybrid warfare. In an attempt to undermine the system containing its aggressive expansionism, the Kremlin directly funds a plethora of fringe movements that leverage the frustration of large segments of the population with Western institutions.
"This approach jeopardises the basic architecture of European and Atlantic stability from within. This represents a threat at all levels, with national as much as international effects."
Corruption
Katherine Stone, MPhil/PhD War Studies candidate, believes corruption is linked to and exacerbates every major security threat in the world.
Corruption is a threat to every aspect of peace and stability - political, economic, developmental, environmental and military. Corruption underpins and exacerbates every major security threat. It undermines public trust in governments and institutions and is a catalyst for violent revolutions such as those that have made up the Arab Spring. It is a key driver and enabler of insurgency, including those of Isil and Boko Haram, and a core source of funding for international terrorism and organised crime.