The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been regarded by international society as a major policy tool in China's geo-economic strategy. Under this policy platform, Beijing has pledged to invest billions of dollars in the infrastructure and industrial sectors across Eurasia and in the Indo-Pacific nations. It is widely believed that such huge amount of investment will inevitably generate significant geostrategic repercussions in these regions. In response to the BRI, the United States and other powers have come up with a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ strategy. This article attempts to address the following question: what impact is the BRI likely to have on the security ties between China and the other major players in the Indo-Pacific? The author finds that the BRI may significantly transform China's international security policy and the expansion of Beijing's security influence may further intensify the security competition between China and other major powers in the Indo-Pacific region. The article also proposes a new analytical angle for the study of geo-economics that unpacks the role of economic activities and processes in generating geopolitical intentions and catalysing geopolitical competition.

Several disciplines outside the natural sciences, including International Relations (IR), have engaged with the Anthropocene discourse in order to theorize their relevance and translate their practical value in this new phase of the Earth's history. Some IR scholars have called for a post-humanist IR, planet politics, a cosmopolitan view, and ecological security, among other approaches, to recalibrate the theoretical foundations of the discipline, making it more attuned to the realities of the Anthropocene. Existing discussions, however, tend to universalize human experience and gravitate towards western ontologies and epistemologies of living in the Anthropocene. Within this burgeoning scholarship, how is the IR discipline engaging with the Anthropocene discourse? Although the Anthropocene has become a new theoretical landscape for the conceptual broadening of conventional IR subjects, this review reveals the need for sustained discussion that highlights the differentiated human experiences in the Anthropocene. The existing IR publications on the Anthropocene locates the non-spatial narratives of vulnerability and historical injustice, the non-modernist understanding of nature, the agency of the vulnerable, and the amplification of security issues in the Anthropocene. It is in amplifying these narratives that the IR discipline can broaden and diversify the discourse on the Anthropocene and, therefore, affirm its relevance in this new geological age.

The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated geopolitical tensions that, in part, have arisen from US-China tensions. At a time when the world needs strong and collective leadership to fight the coronavirus, both countries have been locked in a battle of words characterized by escalating hostility, polarizing narratives, blame and misinformation. Caught in the crossfire, many people of Chinese descent across differing countries have reported an increase in xenophobic attacks.

Middle powers such as the UK and Australia have swerved between recognition of the global collaboration needed to solve this pandemic and calls for China to be held ‘accountable’ for its initial response. Others such, as France and Japan, have been trying to foster international cooperation. 

Against this context, speakers will discuss China’s response to the crisis, including the initial delay and Beijing’s later containment strategies. How do we best assess the delay amidst all the heated rhetoric? What was the response of people within China to the measures? Does COVID-19 mark a point of no return for US-China relations? How might this impact on relations between US allies and China? And what kind of China will emerge from this current crisis?

The coronavirus pandemic continues to claim lives around the world. As countries grapple with how best to tackle the virus and the reverberations the pandemic is sending through their societies and economies, scientific understanding of how the coronavirus is behaving, and what measures might best combat it, continues to advance.

Join us for the seventh in a weekly series of interactive webinars on the coronavirus with Professor David Heymann and special guest Professor Ilona Kickbusch helping us to understand the facts and make sense of the latest developments in the global crisis.

What will the geopolitics of the pandemic mean for multilateralism? As the US retreats, what dynamics are emerging around other actors and what are the implications for the World Health Organization? Is the EU stepping up to play a bigger role in global health? Will the pandemic galvanize the global cooperation long called for?

Professor Heymann is a world-leading authority on infectious disease outbreaks. He led the World Health Organization’s response to SARS and has been advising the organization on its response to the coronavirus. 

Professor Kickbusch is one of the world’s leading experts in global health diplomacy and governance. She advises international organizations, national governments, NGOs and the private sector on new directions and innovations in global health, governance for health and health promotion.

Loss of territory to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and the mass executions of Shia have undoubtedly had an impact on the mobilization of fighters inside Iraq opposing the group. But after the capture of Mosul and Tikrit by ISIS, a message from the group’s spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, highlighted the power of religion as a mobilizing force in armed conflict. In the audio message Adnani addressed Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki as ‘Rafidi’, a derogatory term for Shia meaning rejectionist. He pledged that ‘the settling of debts will not be in Samarra and Baghdad, rather in Karbala al-munajjasah [Karbala the defiled] and Najaf al-ashrak [Najaf the most polytheistic]’.

His use of the words ‘munajjasah’ and ‘ashrak’ was a sectarian play on words referring to the two cities viewed by the Shia as being the most important cities in Islam after Mecca and Medina. Karbala is also known as Karbala al-Muqaddasa (Karbala the Holy), and contains the mausoleum of the third Shia Imam, Hussein ibn Ali. Najaf is commonly referred to as Najaf al-Ashraf (Najaf the Most Honourable), and contains the mausoleum of the first Shia Imam and fourth ‘rightly guided’ caliph, Ali ibn Abi Talib.

Threats against Karbala and Najaf have prompted an immediate reaction from Shia both inside Iraq and beyond its borders. When a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most influential living Shia religious authority, called on all able-bodied Iraqis to ’confront and fight the terrorists’, Sistani was compelled to reiterate that the subject of his call were Iraqis, and not just Shia. Ayatollah Fadhil al-Milani, Sistani’s representative in London, also released a video message clarifying that there was no need for Shia outside of Iraq to confront ISIS.

Fighters are already mobilized in Syria on the basis that Shia shrines in Damascus such as the Sayyidah Zainab Mosque are under threat from extremist ‘Takfiri’ militant groups intent on destroying these holy sites. The narrative of protecting Zainab’s shrine is a potent one: militias in the country bear names such as the Brigade of Zainab’s Protector and the Abu al-Fadhl Abbas Brigades. In 2013, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah warned that the destruction of Zainab’s shrine would ‘carry with it grave consequences’, and that ‘countries supporting these groups [would] be held responsible for this crime if it takes place.’ Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has also stated unequivocally on live television that ‘regarding the holy Shia shines in Karbala, Najaf, Khadhimiya and Samarra, we announce to the killers and terrorists that the big Iranian nation will not hesitate to protect holy shrines’.

Understanding sacred geography in conflict

The explicit threat against the sacred geography of Najaf and Karbala has the potential to escalate the crisis in Iraq from a domestic to transnational conflict, drawing in fighters from around the world. For this reason, there should be a greater attempt to understand how sacred geography can transform the stakes of armed conflict.

In 2001, UN General Assembly Resolution 55/254 called upon states to ‘exert their utmost efforts to ensure that religious sites are fully respected and protected’ and ‘adopt adequate measures aimed at preventing […] acts or threats of violence’. Just what these ‘adequate measures’ should be remains unclear. Armed forces across the world often need to operate in religious sites but at the risk of undermining long-term relations with the local population; and those making the calculations are often unaware of the repercussions.

This is not to assert that sacred geography is the only factor to look at when assessing militant mobilization in Iraq and elsewhere. Nevertheless, incorporating a less secular lens for analysing international security would be useful and working through the practical implications of the UN resolution – and setting firmer guidelines − should therefore become a priority.

To comment on this article, please contact Chatham House Feedback

This event is part of the Inaugural Virtual Roundtable Series on the US, Americas and the State of the World and will take place virtually only. Participants should not come to Chatham House for these events.

The coronavirus pandemic continues to claim lives around the world. As countries grapple with how best to tackle the virus and the reverberations the pandemic is sending through their societies and economies, scientific understanding of how the coronavirus is behaving, and what measures might best combat it, continues to advance.

Join us for the seventh in a weekly series of interactive webinars on the coronavirus with Professor David Heymann and special guest Professor Ilona Kickbusch helping us to understand the facts and make sense of the latest developments in the global crisis.

What will the geopolitics of the pandemic mean for multilateralism? As the US retreats, what dynamics are emerging around other actors and what are the implications for the World Health Organization? Is the EU stepping up to play a bigger role in global health? Will the pandemic galvanize the global cooperation long called for?

Professor Heymann is a world-leading authority on infectious disease outbreaks. He led the World Health Organization’s response to SARS and has been advising the organization on its response to the coronavirus. 

Professor Kickbusch is one of the world’s leading experts in global health diplomacy and governance. She advises international organizations, national governments, NGOs and the private sector on new directions and innovations in global health, governance for health and health promotion.

This closed-door roundtable explores possible strategic shifts in the Indo-Pacific between now and 2024. Focusing on trade security, climate change disruptions and security cooperation, it aims to enhance the understanding of the regional goals of, and strategic relationships between, the key countries active in the region.

The workshop is part of a larger project funded by the Strategic Policy Division of the Australian Department of Defence. The project includes workshops in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, India and the Pacific Islands (Tonga).

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

Several disciplines outside the natural sciences, including International Relations (IR), have engaged with the Anthropocene discourse in order to theorize their relevance and translate their practical value in this new phase of the Earth's history. Some IR scholars have called for a post-humanist IR, planet politics, a cosmopolitan view, and ecological security, among other approaches, to recalibrate the theoretical foundations of the discipline, making it more attuned to the realities of the Anthropocene. Existing discussions, however, tend to universalize human experience and gravitate towards western ontologies and epistemologies of living in the Anthropocene. Within this burgeoning scholarship, how is the IR discipline engaging with the Anthropocene discourse? Although the Anthropocene has become a new theoretical landscape for the conceptual broadening of conventional IR subjects, this review reveals the need for sustained discussion that highlights the differentiated human experiences in the Anthropocene. The existing IR publications on the Anthropocene locates the non-spatial narratives of vulnerability and historical injustice, the non-modernist understanding of nature, the agency of the vulnerable, and the amplification of security issues in the Anthropocene. It is in amplifying these narratives that the IR discipline can broaden and diversify the discourse on the Anthropocene and, therefore, affirm its relevance in this new geological age.

This closed-door roundtable explores possible strategic shifts in the Indo-Pacific between now and 2024.

Focusing on trade security, climate change disruptions and security cooperation, it aims to enhance the understanding of the regional goals of, and strategic relationships between, the key countries active in the region.

The workshop is part of a larger project funded by the Strategic Policy Division of the Australian Department of Defence.

The project includes workshops in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, India and the Pacific Islands (Tonga).

This roundtable explores possible strategic shifts in the Indo-Pacific between now and 2024. Focusing on trade security, climate change disruptions and security cooperation, it aims to enhance the understanding of the regional goals of, and strategic relationships between, the key countries active in the region.

The workshop is part of a larger project funded by the Strategic Policy Division of the Australian Department of Defence. The project includes workshops in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, India and the Pacific Islands (Tonga).
 

The ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) strategy, actively promoted by the United States with support from its allies and partners, is a significant geopolitical response to China's growing power and expanding influence in Asia and beyond. Beijing has adopted various new strategies to cope with the challenges related to FOIP. One of these strategies is to secure a robust relationship with south-east Asia in order to make these regional states either neutral to or less supportive of the Indo-Pacific vision. In addition to economic statecraft and soft power, Beijing believes that it can also tap into the domain of non-traditional security (NTS) to strengthen relations with this region to position itself better in the intensifying regional geopolitical competition. The article addresses the following question: what is the impact of China's NTS cooperation with south-east Asia on Beijing's geopolitical rivalry with other major powers in the Indo-Pacific region? The article argues that China's NTS cooperation with south-east Asian countries may help China maintain its geopolitical standing in the region, but it is unlikely to lead to any dramatic increase of China's strategic influence in the region. This essentially means that Beijing may be able to prevent ASEAN or most ASEAN member states from lending substantive and strong support to the Indo-Pacific construct, but it will not be able to stop ASEAN states from supporting some elements of the FOIP.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been regarded by international society as a major policy tool in China's geo-economic strategy. Under this policy platform, Beijing has pledged to invest billions of dollars in the infrastructure and industrial sectors across Eurasia and in the Indo-Pacific nations. It is widely believed that such huge amount of investment will inevitably generate significant geostrategic repercussions in these regions. In response to the BRI, the United States and other powers have come up with a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ strategy. This article attempts to address the following question: what impact is the BRI likely to have on the security ties between China and the other major players in the Indo-Pacific? The author finds that the BRI may significantly transform China's international security policy and the expansion of Beijing's security influence may further intensify the security competition between China and other major powers in the Indo-Pacific region. The article also proposes a new analytical angle for the study of geo-economics that unpacks the role of economic activities and processes in generating geopolitical intentions and catalysing geopolitical competition.

This closed-door roundtable explores possible strategic shifts in the Indo-Pacific between now and 2024.

Focusing on trade security, climate change disruptions and security cooperation, it aims to enhance the understanding of the regional goals of, and strategic relationships between, the key countries active in the region.

The workshop is part of a larger project funded by the Strategic Policy Division of the Australian Department of Defence.

The project includes workshops in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, India and the Pacific Islands (Tonga).

This roundtable explores possible strategic shifts in the Indo-Pacific between now and 2024. Focusing on trade security, climate change disruptions and security cooperation, it aims to enhance the understanding of the regional goals of, and strategic relationships between, the key countries active in the region.

The workshop is part of a larger project funded by the Strategic Policy Division of the Australian Department of Defence. The project includes workshops in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, India and the Pacific Islands (Tonga).
 

This event is part of the Inaugural Virtual Roundtable Series on the US, Americas and the State of the World and will take place virtually only. Participants should not come to Chatham House for these events.

The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated geopolitical tensions that, in part, have arisen from US-China tensions. At a time when the world needs strong and collective leadership to fight the coronavirus, both countries have been locked in a battle of words characterized by escalating hostility, polarizing narratives, blame and misinformation. Caught in the crossfire, many people of Chinese descent across differing countries have reported an increase in xenophobic attacks.

Middle powers such as the UK and Australia have swerved between recognition of the global collaboration needed to solve this pandemic and calls for China to be held ‘accountable’ for its initial response. Others such, as France and Japan, have been trying to foster international cooperation. 

Against this context, speakers will discuss China’s response to the crisis, including the initial delay and Beijing’s later containment strategies. How do we best assess the delay amidst all the heated rhetoric? What was the response of people within China to the measures? Does COVID-19 mark a point of no return for US-China relations? How might this impact on relations between US allies and China? And what kind of China will emerge from this current crisis?