Zero-sum game: How selfish strategies undermine global security
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Roger Gomm QPM is an advisor, trainer, consultant, Associate Lecturer, and Cabinet Office Emergency Planning College in the UK, and is a part of CRJ’s Advisory Panel.
Gomm reviews the annual Munich Security Report 2024, launched recently at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) held in Berlin, for CRJ. The report is set out in chapters on specific areas and subjects; it makes for interesting and, at times, gloomy reading, providing a global overview of the issues and challenges faced but not the solution.
MSC aims to debate the world's most relevant security challenges, not only the most urgent security challenges, but also draws attention to issues that might not yet be on the top of the security community's agenda. Importantly, the MSC embraces a comprehensive definition of security, which encompasses not only traditional national or military security but also considers the economic, environmental and human dimensions of security.
Chapter 1 of the Munich Security Report 2024 sets the scene and introduces the subject. Amid growing geopolitical tensions and rising economic uncertainty, many governments are no longer focusing on the absolute benefits of global co-operation, but are increasingly concerned that they are gaining less than others. Prioritising relative payoffs may well spur lose-lose dynamics, jeopardising co-operation and undermining an order that, despite its obvious flaws, can still help grow the proverbial pie for the benefit of all. The transatlantic partners and like-minded states now face a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, they have to brace for a much more competitive geopolitical environment, where relative-gain thinking is unavoidable. On the other hand, they have to revive positive-sum co-operation, without which more inclusive global growth and solutions to pressing global problems can hardly be attained.
In absolute terms, the period that followed the end of the Cold War was a success story. The risk of a great-power war seemed remote, but multilateral co-operation flourished, democracy and human rights spread, and global poverty declined. The open, rules-based international order that emerged allowed the ‘pie’ of global prosperity to grow substantially. However, pessimism has crowded out the optimism of the early post-Cold War era. Amid increasing geopolitical rivalry and a global economic slowdown, key actors in the transatlantic community, in powerful autocracies, and in the so-called Global South have become dissatisfied with what they perceive to be an unequal distribution of the absolute benefits of the international order.
From the perspective of many developing states, the international order has never delivered on its promise to grow the pie for the benefit of all. China, perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the liberal economic order, and other autocratic challengers feel that the US is curtailing their legitimate aspirations and are forcefully pushing for an even bigger share of the pie. And even the traditional custodians of the order are no longer satisfied, as they see their own shares shrinking.
In fact, people in all G7 countries polled for the Munich Security Index 2024 expect China and other powers from the Global South to become much more powerful in the next ten years, while they see their own countries stagnating or declining. As more and more states define their success relative to others, a vicious cycle of relative-gains thinking, prosperity losses, and growing geopolitical tensions threatens to unfold. The resulting lose-lose dynamics are already unfolding in many policy fields and engulfing various regions.
At their extreme, relative-gains concerns take the shape of zero-sum beliefs – the conviction that another actor’s gains necessarily entail losses for oneself. This thinking is nowhere more pronounced than in autocracies’ quests for their own spheres of influence. In Eastern Europe, Moscow’s imperial ambitions have already resulted in war and undermined all visions for a co-operative security order for the foreseeable future (Chapter 2: Eastern Europe). The result is a lose-lose situation in which Ukraine risks losing the most, with its very survival as an independent country at stake, while Putin’s war is also taking a massive toll on the Russian population. And Europeans can no longer reap the peace dividend, having to spend more on their own defence and in support of Ukraine.
Many observers fear a similar escalation of violence in the Indo-Pacific (Chapter 3: Indo-Pacific), where different visions of order are clashing in an increasingly zero-sum fashion. China’s growing militarisation of its maritime periphery is already raising fears that Beijing is trying to convert East Asia into its exclusive sphere of influence. As a result, many countries in the region are seeking closer security ties with the US and are trying to reduce their economic dependency on China. But decisively reduced co-operation with China hurts both them and Beijing. Moreover, if great-power rivalry in the region escalates, everyone loses.
Everyone is losing to the escalation of violence in the Middle East (Chapter 4: Middle East). The terrorist attacks by Hamas have caused immense suffering in Israel and dealt a blow to the country’s very sense of security. Gaza fell into despair as a result of Israel's response, which resulted in significant civilian casualties, destroyed infrastructure, and a humanitarian crisis. The war may also upend the regional rapprochement that had gathered momentum and began shifting zero-sum mindsets among regional powers. At worst, the war could spread further, with Iranian proxies threatening to kindle a conflagration.
In the Sahel, the semiarid region of western and north-central Africa extending from Senegal eastward to Sudan, a series of coups has also compounded lose-lose dynamics (Chapter 5: Sahel). In Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, where military juntas have recently assumed power, Europe and the US have lost partners for promoting development, democracy, and good governance, fighting terrorism, and managing migration. The populations of the Sahel, in turn, are losing the chance for peace and democratic progress. Meanwhile, in Sudan, the deadly power struggle that succeeded the 2021 coup has provoked an epic humanitarian crisis.
Geopolitical tensions are also transforming globalisation (Chapter 6: Economics). States around the world are increasingly pursuing economic security against coercion rather than maximising mutual gains. As a result, capital and trade flows are beginning to fragment along geopolitical lines. De-risking economic relationships could reduce vulnerabilities and thus the potential for conflict among rivals. But a fragmentation of the world economy would also involve significant costs, especially for low-income countries.
Even climate policy (Chapter 7: Climate), the quintessential positive-sum area where everyone benefits from co-operation, risks becoming engulfed in geopolitical tensions. Despite the growing alignment of climate, economic, and geopolitical goals, tensions between China and the US, differences between low- and high-income countries, including disagreements over adequate climate financing, and transatlantic disagreements over trade and subsidy rules could impede the adoption of green technologies and the transition to net zero.
Long a driver of global prosperity, technological progress is increasingly being instrumentalised by rivals (Chapter 8: Technology). China, the US, and others want to dominate strategic technologies such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence (AI). In doing so, they accept the fact that they will fragment the tech sector and incur incidental welfare losses. Much-needed global regulations on AI and data security risk falling prey to the securitisation of tech.
Rather than reforming the open and rules-based international order so that it better delivers on its promised mutual benefits, the international community is currently moving in the opposite direction. The transatlantic partners and like-minded states thus face a difficult balancing act. They must invest in defence and deterrence while selectively restricting the pursuit of mutual benefits to politically like-minded states, yet this must not result in a vicious cycle where fears of unequal payoffs engulf ever more issues and positive-sum co-operation is limited to fewer and fewer states. Above all, the course corrections must not undermine transatlantic efforts to build stronger partnerships with countries in the Global South and jointly reform the existing order so that it works to the advantage of a much broader global constituency. But this is easier said than done in an election year that may even see the tangible benefits of close co-operation among democracies come under further pressure. There is thus a real risk that more and more countries end up in a lose-lose situation, which is no longer about who gains more but only about who loses less.
The full report can be found at: securityconference.org