Volume 7, Issue 4, Winter 2022 27 Cross, Mischief, and Subi reefs in the Spratlys as well as on Woody Island in the Paracels. There are additionally many smaller fortified islands each proclaiming and backing up China’s territorial claims.[xlii] That this chain of fortifications is at sea on islands that nature has not intended to be there is testament to Chinese ambition and capacity for engineering mega projects. The strategic logic, however, is no different from that which motivated the construction of great belts of fortresses through Europe over a century ago. Indubitably, these are fortresses: in place of great guns, they deploy anti-ship missiles and military-grade runways; in place of a glacis, they depend upon powerful radars, surface-air missiles, and point-defence artillery; in place of casements, they feature protected magazines and armoured missile and aircraft shelters. One might suggest, too, that Russia today for all its overt belligerency is pursuing essentially a fortification strategy. Secure behind its Kaliningradbastionprojecting into central Europe, protected by batteries of hypersonic missiles capable of threatening deep civil and military targets in the West with powerful conventional strikes in minutes, it has the wherewithal to meddle in the affairs of its close neighbours without too great fear of retaliation. With the completion soon of the Nordstream-2 gas pipeline, it shall also be effectively clear of the threat of siege by sanction. Of course, ultimately, there is no such thing as an impregnable fortress—nor are fortified strategic complexes by any means a sure thing. Chance being a central quality of war, we should be very surprised at the suggestion of anything like surety. In the case of a power consolidating territorial control, a fortification strategy simply increases the cost to any potential attacker of the achievement of their objectives by force. It remains to be seen whether China’s ‘GreatWall at Sea’ will deter or defeat any challenges to their claims. It does not seem, though, a particularly desperate gamble or forlorn hope. Indeed, for the time being no one seems at all eager to test.[xliii] This seems also to be true of Russia. Conclusion Western defence establishments, abetted by the universities and think tanks, are out of step with reality. Their doctrines are based on beliefs and assumptions that are incorrect. For 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the triumph of globalisation we have been told that ours is a time extraordinary openness and mobility. Scholars use the term ‘liquid modernity’ to describe the now ‘fluid’ human condition. According to this thesis, the world ought to look a particular way. In the words of its author, Zygmunt Bauman: …the world must be free of fences, barriers, fortified borders and checkpoints. Any dense and tight network of social bonds, and particularly a territorially rooted tight network, is an obstacle to be cleared out of the way.[xliv] Either by deliberate effect, the conscious policy of powerful people and groups in government and industry, or as a natural expression of the network spirit of our connected age, the long age of walls and barriers, or any sorts of impediment to flows, was supposed to be over. A new age was supposed to have dawned, one in which heavy fortifications rooted in a physical place would be out of place. In various ways, notably the belief that high-tech armies can replace mass with speed and information and the cult-like affirmation of manoeuvre warfare, the theory also has significant purchase on the military mind. The trouble is that while not altogether wrong about the power of information technology, for example, the simple fact is that stuff still matters. Fortified strategic complexes are at the heart of contemporary military affairs. We can see this to be the case when we look without blinders at the way in which we actually fight as opposed to what is taught about how we fight in staff colleges. We can see this in our daily lives as normal citizens every time we cross a frontier, or indeed in these COVID-days, attempt to enter a restaurant or a nightclub. We can see it in the strategies of our most likely opponents, who seem less burdened by flawed assumptions. We should catch up. References [i] George SydenhamClarke, Fortification: Its Past Achievements, Recent Developments, and Future Prospects, 1st Ed (London: John Murray, 1890), p. iii. [ii] See, for e.g., Beatrice Heuser’s characterisation of the science of fortification as ‘not obsolete’ but ‘overtaken’ by technical changes, in The Evolution of Strategy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 82). Fortified Strategic Complexes David Betz
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