Malign actors, strategic competitors

OPINION:

The malign actors and strategic competitors that departing Defense Secretary James Mattis wrote about in his resignation letter vary greatly in their intentions and capabilities. We don’t know what they will do next year, and predictions — like battle plans — almost never survive the enemy’s imagination and thinking.

Nevertheless, it’s not hard to identify the four adversaries who are most likely to cause major crises next year: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

There are others, such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and fugitive al Qaeda boss Ayman al-Zawahiri, who are working diligently to become serious threats but aren’t yet in the same league. Significant terrorist attacks in major cities from European capitals to India and elsewhere are certain to happen.

Mr. Putin, despite Russia’s weak ruble and other economic problems, is busily modernizing the Russian military and using it aggressively. In addition to large infusions of new weapons ranging from regiments of the S-400 anti-air/anti-missile missiles to new aircraft and tanks, Russia is transforming its forces with the intention of shifting the way wars will be fought in Europe and elsewhere.

According to the boss of U.S. Strategic Command, Air Force Gen. John Hyten, we have no defense against weapons such as Russia’s new Avangard nuclear-capable hypersonic missile. Russia is also deploying the new Sarmats ICBM, the first such weapon developed in post-Soviet Russia.

The American military has been losing its technological edge through eight years of neglect under former President Obama and is not yet catching up to what adversaries such as Russia and China are doing. There’s an arms race that we’ve not been running.

The November incident in the Kerch Strait, in which three Ukrainian ships were seized and their crews imprisoned, demonstrated Mr. Putin’s loss of patience with the slowness of the effort to conquer Ukraine. Russia’s aggression in Ukraine will very likely accelerate in 2019. Ukraine, not a NATO member, will probably seek NATO help — even intervention — in the ongoing war against Russian and Russian-backed forces.

Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei used 2018 to intensify opposition to Saudi Arabia’s war to free Yemen from Iranian-backed rebels and to harass U.S. naval vessels in the Persian Gulf. More importantly, he began increasing the threat Iran’s proxy terrorist force, Hezbollah, poses against Israel by beginning to convert its missile force to precision-guided weapons.

Israel has launched small, calibrated attacks on Iran’s forces in Syria, some of which are sitting on Israel’s northern borders. Israel and Hezbollah have often fought small, sporadic actions but haven’t been at war for 12 years. That period of relative peace will very probably end in 2019.

Whether the Israelis will launch a pre-emptive war against Hezbollah’s missile forces in Lebanon is largely dependent on the April Israeli election. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — if he isn’t greatly weakened by the election and (or) the corruption charges being built against him and his wife — may want to strike Hezbollah in Lebanon before its missile threat grows more severe. Conversely, if Mr. Netanyahu is greatly weakened, Mr. Khamenei may see it as an opportunity for Hezbollah to attack Israel with severe effect.

In either event, the resulting war will take many Israeli lives and may spread beyond Lebanon.

Mr. Xi has slightly more patience than Mr. Putin but likely will be just as aggressive. Like Russia, China has been modernizing its military in ways that change the way wars will be fought, in addition to employing cyber espionage and cyber war on a massive scale.

Before taking his post as commander of Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip Davidson told Congress that Beijing is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in every scenario short of war. At the very least, Mr. Xi will continue harassment of U.S. ships and aircraft there.

It is more likely that Mr. Xi would seize islands claimed by Japan and other nations around the South China Sea and near Japan. He could, as the Chinese did in 2001, force a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft down and hold the crew hostage for a time. Such actions could occur if there is no resolution to the nascent trade war between the United States and China.

Mr. Kim will be less of a wild card than he has been before. There’s little likelihood of another North Korean nuclear test because the nuclear test site at Punggye-ri had basically collapsed on itself before Mr. Kim made a great ceremony of dynamiting its entrance. There will be more tests as soon as another site is prepared. Moreover, activity at North Korean missile sites indicates Mr. Kim will resume testing ICBMs very soon. That will, as usual, be accompanied by a lot of belligerent rhetoric and threats against U.S. territory. The generals who run the Kim regime, and Mr. Kim himself, still believe that belligerence is the key to unlocking U.S. sanctions.

Any of these actions would create a crisis testing President Trump. They won’t come in any particular order and may come separately or together. Some may not happen and others — especially those we haven’t foreseen — will pose great dangers. Next year will be neither safe nor entirely predictable. But we can, and must, in Mr. Mattis’ words, be resolute and unambiguous in dealing with those malign actors and strategic competitors.

• Jed Babbin, a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration, is the author of “In the Words of Our Enemies.”