Accidental war: The dangers of unintended escalation

In India, a terrorist attack—especially on a religious symbol— can lead to primordial violence through the unleashing of the forces of hatred and hostility. The call for revenge would be irresistible for the political leadership.

By Lt. Gen Prakash Menon (retd.)

he virtual meeting on 15 November between Presidents Joe Biden of the US and Xi Jinping of China could hopefully be the forerunner to a dialogue process that was so far missing in action. The relationship had turned openly hostile, and the drift towards armed conflict due to misjudgement and miscommunication needed repair. Some political and military leaders had been warning of the risk of an accidental war—a possibility that could have driven both leaders to acknowledge the danger.

Violence, hatred, enmity: trinity of war

A mere understanding of the nature of the beast that resides surreptitiously in incidents between adversarial military entities is necessary but insufficient to prevent them. Prevention demands political rationale to prevail over the forces that pull in the direction of escalation. Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz’s theory of escalation in the form of a ‘trinity’ of forces, which prevails in nations that interact with each other, is probably an explanation that has stood the test of time. According to the ‘trinity’ theory, the prime escalatory force originates as a result of primordial violence unleashed by hatred and hostility between societies of the belligerents. The second force is of the play of chance and probability resulting in uncertainty and the near impossibility of forecasting actionreaction produced by adversarial military forces in contact. This is also accentuated by misperceptions, miscommunications, and misjudgements and described as the ‘fog of war.’ The main characteristic of this force is that it could acquire a logic of its own, be beyond human control, and may unpredictably act to strengthen escalation. The third force is political rationality that resides in the decision-making of the leadership. This is the force that can contain escalation through decisions that are driven by caution. But the overall danger is that this force could uncontrollably be overwhelmed by both or either of the other two forces.

A danger that was averted

In India, a terrorist attack—especially on a religious symbol— can lead to primordial violence through the unleashing of the forces of hatred and hostility. The call for revenge would be irresistible for the political leadership. Military forces applied in retaliation would get into an action-reaction scenario, which acquires its own military logic that is unbridled by political rationale. The post-Balakote dog fight that resulted in the play of chance and the loss of aircraft and capture of an Indian pilot could have escalated. But political rationale on both sides prevailed with possibly a little help from the US.

‘Accidental wars’ world over

The terrorist attack scenario described above has deliberate initiation of violence as the detonator. In an accidental war, the detonator is an accident. During the Cold War, technical glitches in the early warning radars that were deployed to watch for missiles could have resulted in nuclear exchanges. Each time, the play of chance and probability saved the day. The scale and pace of the current unbridled global arms race, which now also includes space and cyberspace, is coupled with deployments of technological products that promise to exploit the vulnerabilities of the adversaries and are supposedly able to triumph in militant engagements. China in particular is engaged in frantic moves at military modernisation that have been driven by Xi Jingping, who never fails to remind his domestic audience of the need for military power to defend its interests. In Asia, adversarial military forces of China and the US, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are interfacing in the air, sea, space, and cyberspace. Chinese forces are also in close contact with Ladakh and other places on the India-China border. A similar interface is prevailing in Europe between Russia, the US and the European Union. The military build-up and growing tensions in the Donbass region of Ukraine are of particular concern. The interface is mostly aimed to strengthen territorial or maritime claims and is carried out without any mutual understanding of the rules of the road.The situation is layered with leaders who rely on their ‘strongman’ image and have a greater proclivity to undertake risks. Such risk-taking behaviour could be the detonators for accidental war. During the Biden-Xi virtual dialogue, there was more than a hint that some level of talks on strategic stabili