Daily Times

An existential threat — an expression that gained prominence in the early 1990s — is a threat to people’s existence or survival. However, politicians, leaders, opinion makers, scholars and bureaucrats routinely bracket all crises, problems and struggles as being existential in nature. States have relied on existential threats, fabricated perils and exaggerated fears that are just plausible enough to be believed. As national problems mount, these threats help hold state and society together. And they keep external diplomatic, military and economic support coming. This support is expected to enhance deterrence, preemption, defence and war-fighting capabilities.

Existential threats can feed off false narratives, ultimate fear-mongering and clever posturing. They accentuate existing religious, national, cultural and social conflicts. A threat is always a perception. It is about emotion, understanding, feeling, sentiment and construction, both cognitive and emotional. In this context, an existential threat — literally a challenge to continued existence — means implicitly likening the enemy or explicitly equating it with evil as leaders has done for many years. Existential threats construct an enemy by combining emotion, fear, anger and resentment. Speeches and statements are crafted with memorable sentiments such as the risk of annihilation by rapacious and genocidal enemies, terror-sponsoring regimes with expansionist ambitions and threats to global security, to our whole being, our way of life and the security of our loved ones. Existential threats are often based on unsupportable premises that enemy states are irrational, suicidal and unconcerned about their own survival. The argument made is that an adversary who is not rational cannot be deterred or contained because such an actor, by definition, does not make decisions based on a cost-benefit analysis.

Some recent examples of existential threats are: Israel considers Iran’s nascent nuclear programme an existential threat. Russia’s aggressive posturing in the Ukraine is deemed an existential threat to Europe. India regularly labels Pakistan as an unstable state sponsor of terrorism and a nuclear proliferation threat to the world. Pakistan portrays India as a mortal enemy — an existential threat — waiting to destroy Pakistan at a moment’s notice. By definition, an existential threat justifies any action that might forestall it, from preemptive military strikes to efforts at torpedoing an unacceptable diplomatic deal. It also tries to make all compromises suspect. It seeks to eliminate all options with the exception of preventive military action. Once the foe is presented as an existential threat, then preventive action is the sole rational response. These assumptions short cut the entire policy process and skip all the steps that normally are taken before a state determines that force is necessary.

The building of existential threats through false narratives can go horribly wrong. Conflating Iraq’s chemical weapons capability and nuclear weapons, supported by the constant insinuations that Iraq was somehow behind 9/11, led to the disastrous US invasion of Iraq. Today, the invasion and the subsequent US occupation of Iraq are considered a terrible mistake. They led to the creation of Islamic State (IS), an Islamic extremist group controlling territory in Iraq and Syria. The leaders of IS are remnants of Saddam’s well-trained army and officer corps who were ushered into the chaos of post-invasion unemployment and, of course, insurgency. Some have suggested that the Iraq war was not an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. The US invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts and the existential threat from Saddam’s Iraq was in fact a lie.

This discussion of existential threats is not intended to minimise the real global threat from the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The larger threat associated with additional nuclear powers is that it might trigger an arms race that would be deeply destabilising and would dramatically increase the risk of a weapon falling into the wrong hands. Instead of unilateral action, however, this threat can be best addressed by putting teeth into a proposal that would get countries threatened by emerging nuclear powers in their midst to agree to respond collectively to any such threat. Not only would this create meaningful deterrence but it might also help extract promises from participating states not to go nuclear. Indeed, were they to do so, they would be expelled and become not a beneficiary but a target of the programme. Such an approach, particularly should it involve the participation of more than one or several of the world’s leading nuclear powers, would address both proliferation and containment simultaneously.

The other consideration is that by focusing and obsessing on existential threats, states ignore the opportunities that could be created from resolving long festering disputes such as Palestine and Kashmir. Peace requires brotherhood and amity, an environment free of fear and paranoia, an appreciation of massive power imbalances and strategic insecurities. Also, states tend to take the eye off the ball from real existential risks developing into threats on and within their own borders, demographic, social and economic. These existential risks include poverty, malnutrition and hunger, infant mortality, and health and gender issues. Large-scale socio-economic programmes and interventions are required to address these risks before they turn into significant threats.

The writer can be reached at shgcci@gmail.com