Meta-Conflict: Territorial and Maritime Expansion by Turkey, Russia, and China
Co-Principal Investigator: Amy Holmes, George Washington University and Andrew Novo, National Defense University
Years of Award: 2024-2026
Managing Service Agency: Army Research Office
Project Description:
Territorial and maritime expansion by revisionist powers is one of the key factors shaping the current and future operating environment. America’s “strategic competitors” like China and Russia are unified by their revisionist agendas. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and China’s increasing naval power have prompted close scrutiny by both scholars and policymakers. Less attention has been paid to how other rising or middle powers, including some American allies or partners, have also ratcheted up their power projection efforts in a variety of ways, ranging from gray zone activities to overt military action. Turkey’s territorial expansion in the Middle East and maritime expansion in the Eastern Mediterranean has been described as Neo-Ottomanism. Yet we lack both empirical data on the full extent of Ankara’s revisionism, and conceptual clarity on what this means for intra-alliance tensions. Our project will fill this lacuna by creating original datasets and advancing innovative approaches to deterrence.
Until now, the vast literature on deterrence, ranging from theories of conventional, nuclear, and cyber deterrence, has focused on the deterrence of adversaries. The question of how to deter problematic behavior by allied powers has been addressed mainly in case studies, such as tensions between Greece and Turkey within NATO and between Japan and South Korea in the Pacific. However, the growth of a multi-polar world and the return of Great Power or “strategic” competition necessitates new thinking. Precisely because Integrated Deterrence relies on coordinating between US government agencies, as well as allies, and partners—the need for improving our ability to manage challenges with allies is greater than ever before. Our project will address these shortcomings by creating original datasets that will allow us to analyze intersecting conflicts as “Meta-Conflicts.”
The first dataset will track efforts at maritime expansion in the Eastern Mediterranean. We will also develop a second dataset on territorial expansion in the Middle East, which has occurred via overlapping armed conflicts in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. The geo-located data will enable investigation, documentation, and litigation of ceasefire violations, as well as violations of maritime boundaries. The application of quantitative data science techniques on these novel datasets will offer unique insights on temporal trends and enable the forecasting of future conflict.
Select Publications:
Statelet of Survivors: The Making of a Semi-Autonomous Region in Northeast Syria, Oxford University Press, Amy Austin Holmes, 2024
Turbulence Across the Sea: Transatlantic Relations and Strategic Competition , University of Michigan Press, Edited by Elie Baranets and Andrew Novo, November 2024