[Jim Sciutto, The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America. Hasper-Collins. New York, 2019. 308 p.]

review / Álvaro de Lecea

With the end of the Cold War, which pitted the former Soviet Union against the victorious United States of America, the international system went from being bipolar to a hegemony led by the latter. With the United States in the lead, the West focused on the spread of democracy and commercial globalization, and if anything concentrated its geostrategic concern on the Al-Qaeda attacks on the Twin Towers on 9/11, so the focus shifted and today's Russia was put on the back burner. However, Russia continued to slowly reconstitute itself, in the shadow of its former enemy, which no longer showed much interest in it. Russia was joined by China, which began to grow by leaps and bounds. At this point, the United States began to realize that it had two great powers nipping at its heels and that it was engaged in a war it did not even know existed, the Shadow War.

This is the term used by Jim Sciutto, CNN's chief national security correspondent, to designate what he describes in detail throughout his book and which has largely come to be known as hybrid or gray zone warfare. Sciutto prefers to speak of Shadow War, which could be translated as war in the shadows, because this better denotes its character of invisibility under the radar of open or conventional warfare.

This new war was started by Russia and China, not as allies, but as powers with a common enemy: the United States. It is a subject of hybrid warfare, so it contains both military and non-military methods. On the other hand, it does not contemplate a direct military confrontation between the two blocs. In The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America, Sciutto explains seven situations in which one can clearly observe the strategies that China and Russia are following to defeat the United States in order to become the major world powers and to be able to impose their own international rules.

First of all, it is important to note that Russia and China, while pursuing similar strategies, are different types of adversaries: on the one hand, China is a rising power, while Russia is more of a declining power that is trying to return to what it was before. Nevertheless, both share a number of similarities. First, both seek to expand their influence in their own regions. Second, they are suffering from a crisis of legitimacy within their borders. Third, both seek to right the wrongs of history and restore what they perceive as their countries' rightful positions as world leaders. And finally, they possess great national unity, so the majority of their people would do whatever it takes for their nation.

In the shadow war, thanks to the rules established by Russia and China, any major player can win, regardless of the power it has or the influence it exerts on the other international players. Following the theories of international relations, one could consider that these rules follow a very realistic patron saint , since, in a way, anything goes to win. The power of lies and deception is the daily bread, and lines that were thought to be unthinkable are crossed. Examples of this, as the book explains and elaborates on, are the militarization of the artificial islands built by China in the South China Sea when Xi Jinping himself had promised not to do so, or the hacking of the Democratic Party's computer system in the 2016 US election campaign by Russian hackers, which could have helped Donald Trump to emerge victorious.

To all this must be added an essential part of what is happening in this context of non-traditional warfare: the particularly mistaken idea that the United States has about everything that is happening. To begin with, the first mistake made by the United States, as Sciutto explains, was to set aside Russia as a relevant focus in the international arena. It believed that, having defeated it in the Cold War, the country would no longer re-emerge as a power, and so it failed to see the clear clues that it was slowly growing, led by President Vladimir Putin. Similarly, it failed to understand the true intentions of the Chinese government in situations such as the South China Sea or the submarine degree program . All this can be summed up by the fact that the United States believed that all international actors would play by the rules established by Washington after the Cold War, without imagining that they would create a new scenario. In conclusion, the United States did not understand its opponents.

In his latest chapter, Sciutto makes it clear that the United States is currently losing the war. Its biggest mistake was not realizing the status until it was in front of it, and now it finds itself playing on a disadvantaged stage. It is true that the United States is still the world leader in many respects, but Russia and China are overtaking it in others, following the new rules they themselves have set. However, a change of attitude in U.S. policies could turn the tables completely. Thus, the author proposes a number of solutions that could help the United States get back in the lead.

The solutions he proposes focus, in the first place, on total knowledge of the enemy and his strategy. This has always been their great disadvantage and would be the first step to begin to control the status. In the same way, he recommends a greater unity within the allied block, as well as an improvement of their own defenses. He also recommends a better understanding of the new scenario in which the whole conflict is taking place, so that a series of international treaties regulating these new spaces, such as cyberspace, would be of great financial aid. Further on, he proposes setting clear limits on enemy actions, raising the costs and consequences of such actions. And finally, he encourages the United States to exercise clear leadership.

In conclusion, Sciutto's thesis is that the United States finds itself fighting a war whose existence it has just discovered. It is a subject of a war it is not accustomed to and with a set of rules that are alien to what it preaches. Although it is still the leader of the current international system, it finds itself losing the game because China and Russia have been able to discover its rival's weaknesses and use them to their advantage. The biggest mistake of the United States was to ignore all the signs of this shadow war and to do nothing about it. New scenarios have been introduced and the rules of the game have been changed, so the United States, if it wants to turn the status quo around and once again emerge as the victor, the author argues, will have to unite more than ever internally as a nation and strengthen its alliances, and know its enemies and their intentions better than ever before.

As for an evaluation of the book, it can be stated that it manages to convey in a clear and concise manner the most relevant points of this new contest. It manages to make clear the strengths and weaknesses of each actor and to make a general assessment of the current status . However, the author does not manage to be too goal in his judgments. Although he admits the failures committed by the United States, he offers a negative image of its rivals, taking for granted who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. That objectivity is lacking in some cases, since neither the good guys are always so good nor the bad guys are always so bad. That said, Sciutto does a great analysis of the current international status of the world's major powers.

[Graham Allison, Destined for War. Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Boston, 2017. 364 pages]

review / Emili J. Blasco [English version].

It is what has been called the Thucydides trap: the dilemma faced by a hegemonic power and a rising power that threatens that hegemony. Is war inevitable? When Thucydides narrated the Peloponnesian War, he wrote of the inevitability for dominant Sparta and rising Athens to think of armed confrontation as a means of settling the conflict.

That these two Greek polis necessarily thought of war, and eventually came to it, does not mean that they had no other options. History has shown that there are: when Wilhelmine Germany threatened to overtake Britain's naval strength, the attempted sorpasso (accompanied by various circumstances) led to World War I, but when Portugal was overtaken by Spain in overseas possessions in the 16th century, or when the United States replaced Britain as the world's leading power in the late 19th century, the handover was peaceful.

The call for Washington and Beijing to do all they can to avoid falling into the trap described by the Greek historian is made by Graham Allison in Destined for War. Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? The founding Dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government reviews in his book several historical precedents. The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs of the same University, of which Allison is director, has researched these precedents in a program called Thucydides's Trap.

This concept is defined by Allison as "the strong structural stress caused when an emerging power threatens to unseat a reigning power. In such a status, not only extraordinary or unexpected events, but even ordinary hotspots of tension in international affairs can trigger large-scale conflicts".

This structural stress is produced by the clash of two profound sensitivities: the emerging power syndrome ("the reinforced sense that an emerging state has of itself, its interests and its right to recognition and respect"), and its inverse image, the reigning power syndrome ("the established power exhibits a heightened sense of fear and insecurity as it faces signs of decline").

Alongside the syndromes both rival powers also experience a security dilemma: "a rising power may disregard the fear and insecurity of a leading state because it knows that it itself is well-intentioned. Meanwhile, its opponent misinterprets even positive initiatives, taking them as excessively demanding or even threatening".

The use of military force

Allison starts from the fact that China is already catching up with the US as a power. It has done so in terms of its Economics Issue (China has already surpassed the U.S. in Purchasing Power Parity) and in relation to some aspects of military strength (a Rand Corporation report predicted that in 2017 China would have "advantage" or "rough parity" in 6 of 9 areas of conventional capability. The author's assumption is that China will soon be in a position to wrest the scepter of major superpower from the United States. Faced with this status, how will both countries react?

In the case of China, its millennial perspective will probably lead it to an attitude of patience, provided that there is some small progress in its purpose to increase its specific world weight. Since 1949, China has resorted to force in only three out of 33 territorial disputes. In those cases, China's leaders waged war - limited wars, conceived as notice to their opponents - despite the fact that the enemy was equal or greater, urged on by a domestic unrest status .

For Allison, "as long as events in the South China Sea generally move in China's favor, it seems unlikely that China will use military force. But if trends in the correlation of power were to turn against it, particularly at a time of domestic political instability, China would initiate a limited military conflict against an even larger and more powerful state such as the United States.

For its part, the United States can opt for several strategies, according to Allison: adapt to the new reality, undermine Chinese power (trade war, encourage provincial separatism), negotiate a lasting peace and redefine the relationship. The author does not give a firm committee , but seems to suggest that Washington should move between the last two options.

He recalls how Great Britain realized that it could not compete with the United States in the Western Hemisphere, and how this led to a partnership between the two countries, which became evident in the First and Second World Wars. This would have to involve accepting that the South China Sea is an area of Chinese influence. And this is not out of mere condescension, but because the United States is proceeding with a real clarification of its vital interests.

Despite its positive tone, Destined for War is one of the essays of the American establishment that most openly announces the end of the American era and the passing of the baton to China (it does not seem to envision a multipolar or bipolar world, but rather the primacy of the Asian power). It is also one of those that places less emphasis - certainly less than it should - on the strengths of the United States and the problems that could undermine China's coronation.