All great wars are existential. They reshape the way people live, think, compete and consume. The 20th century understood this after the two world wars and the horrors that accompanied them. Since then, the barriers collectively constructed to prevent conflict and its tragic spillover have fragmented into a postmodern strategic cauldron of the new wars we witness with horror. Its strategic, political and human costs are calculated and questioned in real time.
Machine learning, automation, massive precision options, cyber, space and information systems have entered the mix of postmodern arsenals to wreak a new arc of potentially irreversible havoc, compounded by legacy hardware on the map of a burning world. Elite aircraft carriers and stealth bombers strike alongside low-cost unmanned craft in the air and water. Supply chains, energy lifelines, water, food, and public truths now rival blood and treasure in any measure of finite and potential losses.
The 21st century is turning out to be almost as violent as the horrific one that preceded it. Aside from the 61 active conflicts that define the human experience around the world, the West Asian war has shifted global action to the most strategic geopolitical theater. The Hormuz economy, a choke point, asserts its central importance at the center of the global oil disruption, while investment futures built around stability in the GCC are under challenge between a staunch Iran and its escalating war with Israel and its backers, primarily the United States. GCC states need the blocked strait to import food and export oil, while oil-importing economies around the world continue to brace for the price impact of war, shipping surcharges and even rationing of petroleum products.
For now, Tehran has secured its management of the strait and, from its stated position, will not give up options, even if the war escalates in ways that impose formidable costs. At the same time, a rapid spiral of strategic volatility is setting new benchmarks for regional and global danger in more ways than one. Although it will eventually be rebuilt, the bombing of US bases in neighboring Gulf countries has opened the door to a new fragility of geopolitical trust based on hydrocarbons, Western protection and limited predictability. For the main combatants, notions of sovereignty and resilience will likely determine outcomes rather than clear victories. Unthinkable tactical implementations also fill the new landscape as war options in the realm of a dangerous new normal.
However, headline impacts and contingency responses are taking up most of the public oxygen on this war. Peace has lost its luster in times of epoch rupture. The rules that protected the weak have taken a sabbatical. It is not only the traditionally vulnerable groups of the poor, displaced women and missing children, who cause collateral damage in this conflict. This time, it is the air, soil and water that we regularly expect to be recharged or made available as global commons that are at serious risk of contamination, irradiation and shortages.
In Tehran, black rain is a dark marker of the looming crisis after this largest disruption to oil supply lines in history. Experts say this means that carcinogenic compounds, ultrafine particles and PAHs have already reached acid rain, which is the tip of the dark iceberg. It will not only affect Iran. The environmental crisis could cause catastrophic impacts on ocean coastlines, marine life and even drinking water in a region that depends on seawater through desalination plants. The toxins will seep into the soil, causing untold damage to the quality of groundwater and the food grown in it.
The warnings are everywhere. The Conflict and Environment Observatory warns that a high incidence of air and missile activity, as well as attacks on energy infrastructure, is creating cross-border public health impacts that will continue long after the war ends. The scale and enormity of contemporary war is so staggering that it defies calculation of its long-term damage. The risks also do not calculate the dangers of a staggering rate of burning carbon emissions. Since emissions from war are not included in the Paris Agreement, the math on global warming is already way off for a world accelerating past its climate tipping points. Just for context, GHG emissions from the Ukraine war in its first two years reached the entire annual emissions of France.
All these calculations are important for Pakistan, which is suffering on the front line with scorching temperatures of up to 53 degrees Celsius in the summer. Although “scorched earth” has been a tactical strategy used as soon as iron arrowheads in human conflict, noncombatants in today’s accelerated warfare will suffer in ways they did not in conventional wars. Today, despite quantum technological advances, instead of conserving water, soil and air, new weapons and AI almost guarantee that their lethality is extended to the elegant agnosticism of being free of consequences. In this amoral multiverse, the environment becomes a vast theater of casual collateral damage. Simply put, that means more hunger, more shortages, more inequality, more sick people with no safety net. It is certainly not the prosperous future that is advertised at conferences with big LED screens and elegant white flowers.
For Pakistan, with a shared coastline with Iran and proximity to Gulf countries, the dangers are real, but they will continue to be seen as third-tier threats until the coast turns oily or Karachi’s air turns a dark gray hue. In any case, there is little Islamabad can do immediately except treat resilience as a multidimensional challenge, with climate performance benchmarks for all strategic ministries. In the short term, in the hierarchy of disruptions caused by this war, Pakistan’s anxiety threshold will be common to many countries facing potential reckonings at the petrol pumps and gas stoves. It will not just be a transportation crisis. Or LNG deficits. Diesel shortages in countries like Pakistan that grow food may materially affect the upcoming planting season.
As the government struggles to protect the public from further pain, a prolonged war of attrition in the Gulf – even with reduced levels of violence – will be problematic. All executive bandwidth will be dedicated to maintaining a regime of exchange stability, covering essential imports and managing oil reserves. Pakistan has so far cushioned extreme shocks, but exposure to exogenous shocks will be difficult to contain if the war lasts more than 60 days.
In this vortex of strategic global crises, Pakistan’s challenges are complex. Even without a war, the barrier between America’s options and an unbreakable relationship with China has not been easy. Today, its diplomacy is tested daily between neighborly compulsions with Iran, defense pacts and vital economic ties with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, exposure to remittances in the GCC, large domestic Shia cohorts, kinetic pressures from an intransigent Taliban regime in Afghanistan, a predatory India meddling in Balochistan and KP, and enduring notions of legitimacy.
On Pakistani streets, no matter how pragmatic the government becomes in making difficult decisions for the greater public good, no foreign policy can expect to be stripped of moral options. The alleged use of white phosphorus in Lebanon and the genocidal land grab and trauma of the Palestinians are not to anyone’s liking. Nor are attacks on the sovereignty of any country or bombings of desalination plants.
That is why Pakistan was the first Muslim country to condemn such actions, including the tragic assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei. Despite vulnerability in multilateral forums controlled by the Bretton Woods financial establishment, Islamabad did not join the ISF as a combatant but also rightly condemned the recent attacks on GCC countries.
In a world where the fragile unity of the Muslim world has melted faster than a missile capsule after an intercept, Pakistan has remained on the front line holding the flag for the longest time. A deep national commitment to Muslim suffering in both occupied Kashmir and Palestine has led Islamabad to take clear and consistent positions against forced colonization in both illegal gulags. However, the limits of Pakistan’s diplomacy must continue to adhere to the first overarching objective of any foreign policy, which is to protect its populations and not feed into justified anger or commit troops in danger. Our capabilities have been decisively demonstrated in wars that landed in our airspace. Let’s keep that sky blue as long as possible.
The writer is a former ambassador to the United States and chairman of the Standing Committee on Climate in the Senate of Pakistan.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of PakGazette.tv.
