![]() Farley is the author of "Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force" (University Press of Kentucky, 2014), "the Battleship Book" (Wildside, 2016), "Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology" (University of Chicago, 2020), and most recently " Waging War with Gold: National Security and the Finance Domain Across the Ages" (Lynne Rienner, 2023). ![]() from the University of Washington in 2004. He received his bachelor's from the University of Oregon in 1997, and his Ph.D. Robert Farley has taught security and diplomacy courses at the Patterson School since 2005. ![]() We can hope that the leaders of the world's great powers will take care over the coming year with the vast stockpiles of weapons that they control.ġ9FortyFive's defense and national security contributing editor, Dr. Maintaining peace requires careful statesmanship managing escalation during war requires extraordinary skill. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has, if nothing else, demonstrated that major wars can still happen despite the best efforts of the international community. It remains unlikely that any of these disputes will develop into a global conflict, although the Ukraine War already has some aspects of great power war. Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images If war does break out it could rapidly become more destructive than the Russia-Ukraine War, with conventional and nuclear weapons exacting a horrific toll on both sides.ĭestroyed apartments in Lyman after the Ukrainian city was recaptured from Russia forces in November 2022. The first is gone and the second is fraying, to the extent that Pyongyang may feel like it has a moment and Seoul may struggle to find the patience to tolerate the antics of its neighbor. These tensions aren't new, but historically they have been constrained by the Cold War and by the post-Cold War liberal international order. The dynamic between the two states seems driven by impatience an impatience in the North that the world still refuses to take it seriously despite its magnificent nuclear weapons, and an impatience in the South that a nation of great significance remains burdened by its inept and retrograde sibling. Over the past several months tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang have grown steadily, with North Korean provocations (often themselves driven by the Kim regime's idiosyncratic and cryptic assessments of the international environment) incurring aggressive rhetorical responses from the South. While it seems unlikely that a NATO ally would openly attack another NATO ally, past conflicts have brought the two countries up to the brink of war (and sometimes slightly beyond) notwithstanding their alliance commitments.Īny fight between Turkey and Greece would immediately involve NATO, and would almost certainly result in some degree of opportunistic intervention by Russia.Ī North Korean missile is launched in October 2022. Disputes between Athens and Ankara over energy exploration in the Aegean have driven the current tension, although the territorial disagreement underlying the argument have existed for decades. Over the past year tensions between Greece and Turkey have increased substantially, driven in large part by Turkey's assertive foreign policy turn and by the domestic vulnerability of the Erdogan regime. Lost in all of the discussion of the revitalization of NATO in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been a simmering crisis on the alliance's southern flank. Kostas Pikoulas/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images Almost any imaginable conflict, however, would end up including the United States and very likely Japan, and would thus constitute a great power war.Ī Greek tank in a military parade for Greece's Independence Day on March 25, 2018. ![]() At the same time, these statements (and unwise stunts such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei) run the risk of triggering Chinese escalation.įortunately, there is good reason to believe that we will have some warning of war as was the case along the Ukrainian border, Chinese preparation for conflict would be glaringly visible to everyone concerned. The willingness of the Biden administration to take risky rhetorical positions on the defense of Taiwan indicates that Washington has real concern over the prospects of a Chinese attack. However, there is little doubt that cross-strait tensions remain significant. Worry about the immediacy of war between Taiwan and China has waned a bit in the past months, in large part because of China's catastrophic covid experience. Taiwanese troops during an exercise simulating an attempted amphibious landing by Chinese forces in May 2019. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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