Showing posts from category security.
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Princeton Project Outlines New National Security Strategy
›March 29, 2007 // By Sean PeoplesAcademics and policymakers alike appreciate the complexity of new threats to national security like non-state actors and global terror networks. But a report released in September 2006 by the Princeton Project on National Security (PPNS) warns that ignoring unfashionable, but long-established geopolitical threats can endanger U.S. foreign policy. Billed as a bipartisan initiative, PPNS is ultimately an academic affair, with members of its group including such luminaries as Francis Fukuyama, G. John Ikenberry, Laurie Garrett, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Tod Lindberg, and Walter Russell Mead, among many others. The initiative engaged these experts to develop a basic framework of principle threats to U.S. national security and potential responses.
The old and new geopolitical dynamics are worth elucidating, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, gives us something to consider:“Old geopolitics has not gone away. China and Asia are rising rapidly, industrially, and economically. However, we are now just as threatened by the inability of governments to address terrorists within their country, prevent spread of disease and take care of the environment.”
The report cites energy independence and increased consumption as the dominant new challenges, particularly as U.S. consumption of oil increases, and in turn increases our dependence on foreign nations (featuring a who’s-who along the continuum of unpredictability). Rightly, the report supports incentives for energy alternatives. It also supports a gasoline tax and stricter fuel efficiency standards as ways to promote smarter approaches to increasing climatic changes.
Promoting these changes is a good start, but convincing policymakers to adopt them may be a greater challenge. -
Seeing is Believing: Environment, Population, and Security in Ethiopia
›March 27, 2007 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoThe vista of Ethiopia’s ancient Rift Valley, speckled with shimmering lakes, stretches before me as our motorized caravan heads south from Lake Langano, part of a study tour on population- health-environment issues organized by the Packard Foundation. Sadly, the country’s unrelenting poverty and insecurity are as breathtaking as the view—Ethiopia currently ranks 170 out of 177 countries on the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Index. These numbers become quite personal when child after child sprints alongside the truck, looking for any morsel. Here, I don’t need to read between the lines of endless reports to see the country’s severe population, health, and environment challenges—they are visible in the protruding ribcages of the cattle and the barren eroding terraces in the nation’s rural highlands.
When analyzing environment, conflict, and cooperation, scholars and practitioners most often focus on organized violence where people die at the business end of a gun. We commonly set aside “little c” conflict where the violence is not organized. However, while the Ethiopian troops fighting the Islamic Courts in Somalia garner the most attention, we should not miss the quieter—yet often more lethal—conflicts. For example, Ethiopia, like much of the Horn of Africa, continues to be beset by pastoralist/farmer conflicts over its shrinking resource base—increasingly exacerbated by population growth, environmental degradation, and likely climate change. In today’s globalized world, these local conflicts may also have larger “neighborhood” effects, contributing to wars and humanitarian disasters, as in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Another classic example of local environmental conflict lies in Ethiopia’s national parks, which successive governments carved from inhabited land in the mid-1960s and 1970s. Those disadvantaged by the parks often took their revenge on the state by burning buildings, cutting trees, and hunting wildlife. Some resettled the parks, bringing cattle and cultivating sorghum. This conflict presents a terrible dilemma, but also an opportunity: if the government and its partners can offer residents secure livelihoods tied to sound environmental practices, “parks versus people” might be transformed into “peace parks.”
These intertwined environment-population-security challenges are daunting and sometimes difficult to grasp. Driving past mile after mile of Ethiopia’s treeless “forests” gave me a dramatic snapshot of the scope of the problem. While no weapons were evident, I could see that the lack of sustainable livelihoods produces plenty of casualties without a single shot. Despite these sobering sights, the people I met gave me hope—particularly the energy and imagination of a small farmers’ support group outside Addis Ababa. With some initial technical assistance from the Ethiopian NGO LEM and the Packard Foundation, this 32-member group is undertaking reforestation projects, producing honey as an alternative livelihood strategy, providing health and family planning services, and employing a more sustainable farming strategy. More efforts like these—and better awareness and promotion of them—could help turn deadly environments into safe, sustainable neighborhoods. -
Environment, Population, Conflict Scholar to Washington
›March 26, 2007 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoThose of you following the new analysis of environment, conflict, and security will know Dr. Colin Kahl’s work, principally his 2006 book States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World. Those of us in the Washington, DC area were pleased to learn recently that Colin will take up an appointment this fall at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program in the School of Foreign Service. He has been a regular writer and speaker for the Environmental Change and Security Program.
Using Kenya and the Philippines as cases, Colin has pushed ahead our understanding of environmental scarcity and conflict links in a number of ways. He showed how top-down exploitation of environment and population linkages pitting one group against another (Moi in Kenya) must be added to our traditional conceptions of bottom-up grievance-based causal connections. He proposed a notion of “groupness” to explain why Moi in the early 1990s was able to use environmental (land) and population concerns to stir up violence in rural areas where tribal affiliations were stronger while lower levels of tribal affiliations or “groupness” in urban areas meant that violent conflict was largely absent between the same groups. Colin also presents a strong critique of the alleged “scarcity versus abundance” dichotomy when explaining resource connections to conflict. His review of Paul Collier et al’s oft-cited treatise on the abundance side of the ledger forcefully argues for viewing scarcity versus abundance as a false dichotomy while taking to task Collier’s operationalization of abundance.
Perhaps a bit of insider baseball but let me just urge those interested in really understanding these links to check out Colin’s work and say those of us working in DC welcome the opportunity to call on him as a local. -
A Diversified Agenda for the New Africa Command
›March 5, 2007 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoBuilding things rather than blowing them up is how New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof describes a primary approach of one U.S. military base in the Horn of Africa. In his March 3 column, Kristof, who regularly writes on humanitarian, poverty, health, and development issues in the region, writes approvingly of the recognition within the U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) that force and fear alone are not going to win the war on terror. As evidence Kristof cites the actions and words of the U.S. military.“The U.S. started to realize that there’s more to counterterrorism than capture-kill kinetics,” said Capt. Patrick Myers of the Navy, director of plans and policy here. “Our mission is 95 percent at least civil affairs. … It’s trying to get at the root causes of why people want to take on the U.S.”
Kristof describes the possibility of the traditional warfighting mission coexisting alongside increased humanitarian roles.The 1,800 troops here do serve a traditional military purpose, for the base was used to support operations against terrorists in Somalia recently and is available to reach Sudan, Yemen or other hot spots. But the forces here spend much of their time drilling wells or building hospitals; they rushed to respond when a building collapsed in Kenya and when a passenger ferry capsized in Djibouti.
Kristof suggests this muscular humanitarian mission should be central to the new Africa Command the U.S. military recently announced. Standing up this regional command will mean breaking most of sub-Saharan Africa out of European Command where most of it save the Horn and North Africa has historically been situated. While some may question whether outside military interventions aren’t more the problem than the solution, the emphasis on a military humanitarian role recognizes security and stability as a necessary precondition for lasting development.
Rear Adm. James Hart, commander of the task force at Camp Lemonier, suggested that if people in nearby countries feel they have opportunities to improve their lives, then “the chance of extremism being welcomed greatly, if not completely, diminishes.”
For the historically inclined, it is worth remembering that General Anthony Zinni, the Marine four star who headed CENTCOM just before the war in Iraq, had internalized these lessons and practiced humanitarian and development engagement to support his stability missions. Unfortunately it was thinking like his that was jettisoned when the Iraq war started. -
U.S. Forgives Liberian Debt; Now Only a Few Billion More to Go
›February 14, 2007 // By Alison WilliamsPresident of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf—the first elected female head of state in Africa—spoke in Washington on Monday about the progress and challenges to development in her country. Efforts to expand development beyond the capital city of Monrovia (electricity and running water only recently returned after a 15-year hiatus) have been hampered by time spent pleading with international lenders to forgive the odious debt incurred during Charles Taylor’s regime.
Debt forgiveness seems like a no-brainer for a country that has shown remarkable progress in development and democracy, despite being written off not long ago as a decidedly failed state. So I was pleased to see Condoleeza Rice’s statement today, announcing that the United States will cancel $391 million of Liberia’s debt.
This is only a start though. Liberia’s total external debt is 3,000 times greater than the revenue of its exports. Without further forgiveness, the country will not be able to implement many (or any) of the plans Johnson Sirleaf spoke so passionately about during her U.S. visit: secondary road construction to revive trade in natural resources and agriculture, health care and education, and increased stability and security.
Surprisingly, Johnson Sirleaf focused very little on the role environmental resources played in Liberia’s decline. Charles Taylor partly financed his dictatorship and the war with Sierra Leone with revenues from timber, and the lifting of timber sanctions by the UN Security Council is arguably one of Johnson Sirleaf’s greatest accomplishments. Yet reference to timber was oblique; committing to better overall resource management, she said: “We are trying to build a country where our natural resources are used for the benefit of all.”
Similarly, diamonds—for which sanctions have yet to be lifted—were only briefly discussed. Johnson Sirleaf acknowledged the country is still struggling to comply with the Kimberly Process. And finally on the resource angle, Mittal Steel’s new contract for iron ore was a big focus point. It is an interesting new development if only because the company is one of the country’s few private investors—and at $1 billion, the contract is by far the largest. -
Will Climate Change Ignite Terrorism?
›February 5, 2007 // By Alison WilliamsThe effects of climate change could launch a new wave of conflict and terrorism, say climate and security experts. Increased drought and refugee migration resulting from rising sea levels could lead to conflict in the countries worst affected by global warming.
Sir Crispin Tickell, Britain’s former ambassador to the United Nations, said terrorists might exploit these tensions, reported Reuters:“Those who are short of food, those who are short of water, those who can’t move to countries where it looks as if everything is marvelous are going to be people who are going to adopt desperate measures to try and make their point.”
Crispin says the world “must accept” the likely increase of violence within and between states at the hands of environmental change. -
Pentagon Source on Environmental Activities
›January 25, 2007 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoNeed to know what the Department of Defense is doing on the environment? The official version is readily accessible at the Defense Environmental Network & Information eXchange (DENIX). Lots on the mess DOD makes, the rules and regs for making less of a mess, and their steps to lower their ecological footprint.
Give us your comments on DENIX and tell us your favorite sites inside or outside the government. -
Environment, Poverty, Security: What’s Population Got to Do With It? ‘(Online Discussion)’
›January 22, 2007 // By Wilson Center StaffPopulation Reference Bureau (PRB) will host an online discussion of environment, poverty, and security trends and the ways in which they are affected by population dynamics on Thursday, January 25, from 1 – 2 p.m. (EST).
The discussion will be moderated by PRB Technical Director Roger-Mark De Souza. Questions can be submitted in advance.
