In the new video “Water Wars or Water Woes? Water Management as Conflict Management,” Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) Director Geoff Dabelko explains that although newspapers and politicians constantly warn of impending “water wars,” water rarely leads to interstate violence. By focusing on “water wars” – which evidence shows are extremely rare – we “are missing a lot of what is important around conflict management around water,” argues Dabelko.

Presidential administrations usually end with sepia retrospectives and long, adulatory lists of accomplishments. The present administration is unlikely to end this way, but it will certainly go out with many “what if” epitaphs. Near the top of my “what if” list is, “What if this administration had taken the threat of global climate change seriously and acted as though our future depended on cutting emissions and cooperating on adaptation?”

From July 27-30, 2008, my organization, the Center for a New American Security, led a consortium of 10 scientific, private, and public policy organizations in an experiment to answer this particular “what if.” The experiment, a climate change “war game,” tested what a change in U.S. position might mean in 2015, when the effects of climate change will likely be more apparent and the global need to act will be more urgent. The participants were scientists, national security strategists, scholars, and members of the business community from China, Europe, India, and the Americas. The variety was intentional: We hoped to leverage a range of expertise and see how these different communities would interact to solve problems.

Climate change may seem a strange subject for a war game, but one of our primary goals was to highlight the ways in which global climate change is, in fact, a national security issue. In our view, climate change is highly likely to provoke conflict—within states, along borders as populations move, and, down the line, possibly between states. Also, the way the military calculates risk and engages in long-term planning lends itself to planning for the climate change that is already locked in (and gives strategic urgency to cutting emissions and preventing future climate change).

The players were asked to confront a near-term future in 2015, in which greenhouse gas emissions have continued to grow and the pattern of volatile and severe weather events has continued. The context of the game was an emergency ad-hoc meeting of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters in 2015—China, the European Union, India, and the United States—to consider future projections (unlike most war games, the projections were real; Oak Ridge National Laboratory analyzed regional-level Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change data from the A1FI series specifically for the game). The “UN Secretary-General” challenged the top emitters to come up with an agreement to deal with increased migration resulting from climate change; resource scarcity; disaster relief; and drastic emissions cuts.

Although the players did reach an agreement, which is an interesting artifact in itself, that was not really the point. The primary objective was to see how the teams interacted and whether we gained any insight into our current situation. While we’re still processing all of our findings, I certainly came away with an interesting answer to that “what if” question. If the United States had been forward-leaning on climate change these past eight years, taking action at home and proposing change internationally, it would have made a difference, but only to a point. As important as American leadership will be on this issue, it is Chinese leadership—or followership—that will be decisive. And it is going to be very, very difficult—perhaps impossible—for China to lead, at least under current circumstances. The tremendous growth of China’s economy has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, but there are hundreds of millions more still to be lifted. The stark reality is that China will be fueling that economic growth with coal, oil, and natural gas—just as the United States did in the 20th century—unless and until there is a viable alternative.

If the next administration hopes to head off the worst effects of global climate change, it will not only have to find a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions at home, it may well have to make it possible for China to do so, too.

Sharon Burke is a national security expert at the Center for a New American Security, where she focuses on energy, climate change, and the Middle East.

Photo: The U.S., EU, and Chinese simulation teams in negotiations. Courtesy of Sharon Burke.

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Europe’s deepening energy insecurity has been acutely demonstrated by the Russia-Georgia conflict, reports Jeff White, correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. Russia’s demonstrated willingness to cut supplies to Europe has prompted the search for alternative sources, including the planned Nabucco pipeline, which bypasses Russia. However, the pipeline “stands little chance of success if this tense situation in Georgia continues,” Zurab Janjgava of Georgian Oil told the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Georgian energy executive Giorgi Vashakmadze expressed his agreement to the Monitor: “Russia is showing it controls this corridor.”

At a recent Wilson Center event, Marshall Goldman of Harvard University explained that Russian influence is wide and expanding because of their energy supplies. One illustration is the German natural gas supply, which is 40% Russian and growing. Russia’s phenomenal economic comeback since 1998 is due almost entirely to the strength of its energy sector. “Putin made a difference, but oil and gas made an even more important difference,” explained Goldman. He warned of the danger of Moscow’s strong control over vital energy supplies to Europe. Said Goldman, “Russia is indeed a petrostate and is very closely tied to the fate of energy.” Europe – and the West – can no longer hold any illusions to the contrary.

Sonia Schmanski contributed to this post.

The New York Times reports that Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev has “ordered a halt to his country’s military operation in Georgia”; however, “he did not say that troops were pulling out and he insisted that Russian forces were still authorized to fire on enemies in South Ossetia.” Despite the ceasefire, a New York Times reporter said bombing continued.

As posted last week in the New Security Beat, the conflict in Ossetia has significant natural resources elements, as the region is rich in timber, manganese, iron ore, and copper and coal deposits. In a Foreign Affairs article last winter (which to a large extent predicted the current conflict), Nixon Center President Dimitri K. Simes pointed out that high energy prices have granted Russia newfound economic and political independence: “Energy exports finance about 30 percent of the Kremlin’s budget”—and this was at $61 per barrel.

By positioning itself as the major energy supplier to Europe, Russia is attempting to regain much of its sphere of influence. However, Georgia maintains oil and gas pipelines to Europe that offer alternatives to the Russian supplies. Some of these, such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, were built at the strong urging of the United States.

Reuters reports that Georgia “accused Russia of bombing its fuel lines on Tuesday.” However, while British Petroleum “has closed two oil and gas pipelines [including BTC] running from its Caspian Sea fields through Georgia,” according to inspections “neither has been damaged by recent fighting in the country.”

The BTC pipeline is “the only major conduit for Central Asian resources not under Russian control,” notes The Telegraph, which quotes the Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili on Russia’s motivation: “They need control of energy routes.”

Earlier today, Russian tanks attacked Georgian positions in South Ossetia, the much-disputed Georgian territory sandwiched between Georgia and Russia. With a population of around 70,000, the region has not known peace since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia’s actions came in response to the Georgian army’s attacks on Russian-backed separatists. Hostilities between Georgian troops and the separatists had been rising since six people died during a skirmish between the two in early July, with Russia and Georgia subsequently accusing each other of violating the ceasefire by flying jets over South Ossetian territory.

The conflict has significant natural resource and environmental aspects. South Ossetia possesses rich stores of natural resources (including timber, manganese, iron ore, and copper and coal deposits), although it remains an economically isolated and depressed region. Also, its location is geopolitically strategic: It houses “[t]wo of the four major border crossings among the mountains separating Russia and Georgia,” along with several other critical roads, and is next to two vital oil pipelines, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and the Baku-Supsa, which run from Azerbaijan to Turkey’s Black Sea ports and provide oil for numerous European countries, as well as the United States. These pipelines, in addition to Georgia’s “pivotal role in the global energy market,” render this newest iteration of the conflict cause for international concern.

There are additional environmental concerns in this region. The long-simmering conflict in South Ossetia has left a former Russian industrial complex categorized as “still generating pollution” and a nuclear waste site both untended. With no one to secure, assess, monitor, or remove the hazardous material, regional water sources and arable land are threatened. Lack of economic opportunity in Georgia, and particularly in South Ossetia, has led to illegal logging; “[i]ncentives for illegal export of valuable timber and endemic tree species from the conflict areas…are exacerbating deforestation.”

Economic desperation—combined with a lack of natural resource monitoring—can lead to conflict as people vie for use of a limited resource. A 2004 report from the Environmental Security Initiative (a joint program of UNEP, UNDP, and OSCE) on the South Caucasus region warned that “[u]ncontrolled exploitation of forests, combined with outdated farming practices, are contributing to land degradation and desertification, threatening agricultural productivity.” Indeed, these factors did lead to further trouble for South Ossetia. When Georgia tried to clamp down on “the significant black market trade [in everything from vegetables to illegal arms] going on between South Ossetia and Russia” in 2004, violence quickly re-emerged.

I was lucky enough recently to vacation in Israel—and I still have the jet lag to prove it. On the second day of the trip, as we crossed the Jordan River and entered the Golan Heights, our guide explained that people have fought over water throughout history—especially in the Middle East. “Aha!” I thought to myself. “Another example of how the average person mistakenly believes that water scarcity leads to conflict—whereas, as an Environmental Change and Security Program staff member, I know that interstate ‘water wars’ are actually incredibly rare.”

Yet our guide proceeded to describe several water-related conflicts between Israel and its neighbors before and after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. So when I returned to the States, I was inspired to look up these events in the Pacific Institute’s Water Conflict Chronology and in Oregon State University’s Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database. I found that Israel and its neighbors were frequently engaged in violent conflict with one another over water during the 1960s and early 1970s. For instance, after Syria began diverting the headwaters of the Jordan River in 1965—a project that would have deprived Israel’s National Water Carrier of approximately 35 percent of its water and the country as a whole of around 11 percent of its water—Israel responded with a series of military strikes against the diversion works. The back-and-forth attacks helped instigate the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

Another example: In 1969, Israel, which believed that Jordan was overdiverting the Yarmouk River, bombed Jordan’s East Ghor Canal. The United States mediated secret negotiations in 1969-1970, and the Jordanians were allowed to repair the canal in exchange for abiding by Johnston Plan water quotas and expelling the Palestinian Liberation Organization from Jordan.

So how do we explain the apparent disconnect between the numerous instances of violent conflict over water in the Middle East and political scientists’ insistence that water rarely leads to interstate conflict? I think the answer is twofold. First, I happened to be standing in the region of the world that is by far the most prone to conflict over water. There were only 37 violent interactions over water between 1946 and 1999, and 30 of these were between Israel and a neighbor. Water experts recognize that the Middle East is the exception to the general pattern of water disputes leading to cooperation, not conflict. But to Middle Easterners like my Israeli guide, it may indeed seem that water frequently leads to conflict.

Second, the devil is in the definitions. The Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database classifies events according to its Water Event Intensity Scale, which runs from -7 (“formal declaration of war”) to 7 (“voluntary unification into one nation”). The East Ghor incident is classified as -6 (“extensive war acts causing deaths, dislocation or high strategic cost”). Events classified as -6 can include “use of nuclear weapons; full scale air, naval, or land battles; invasion of territory; occupation of territory; massive bombing of civilian areas; capturing of soldiers in battle; large scale bombing of military installations; [and] chemical or biological warfare,” so they seem to differ from war only in that war has not been formally declared.

Perhaps this is where much of the confusion comes from: Political scientists studying water conflict use a very narrow definition of war—probably a lot narrower than that of most non-experts. So while the average interested citizen would likely call the 1965-1967 conflict between Israel and Syria over the National Water Carrier and the Headwater Diversion project a war—or at least a high-level interstate conflict—the political scientist studying water conflict and cooperation would not.

Now, as a general principle, I’m all in favor of precise language and definitions. But formal declarations of war seem to have gone out of fashion over the past half century; the United States, for instance, has not formally declared war against another country since World War II. If the current war in Afghanistan were over water—which it decidedly is not—would it still merit only a -6 on the Water Event Intensity Scale because the United States has not formally declared war against the Taliban? It seems that requiring a formal declaration of war to classify a conflict as a war is perhaps defining the term too narrowly.

But although political scientists may be to blame for clinging to a somewhat outdated definition of war, the media are perhaps at fault for using the word too broadly in an attempt to make their headlines more enticing. This editor concludes—only somewhat self-servingly—that we would all benefit from using language more precisely. I welcome your responses.

Photo: The Golan Heights landscape still bears scars from the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Courtesy of Rachel Weisshaar.

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“The U.S. military recognizes that the use of conventional military force is of limited use” in advancing U.S. national security, said Reuben Brigety II, director of the Sustainable Security Program at the Center for American Progress (CAP), at a July 18 launch of his report Humanity as a Weapon of War: Sustainable Security and the Role of the U.S. Military. The tragedy of 9/11, as well as the setbacks experienced in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, emphasized to the U.S. defense community that although combat operations remain critical to its mission, the military must also strive to “prevent conflict from emerging in the first place” through activities that stabilize societies, economies, and governments.

Brigety cited efforts by the Combined Joint Task Force for the Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), the nascent U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), and the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) as examples of the U.S. military’s growing appreciation of how development assistance can help stabilize countries, build goodwill toward the United States, and increase U.S. understanding of local socio-political and economic conditions. In recent years, CJTF-HOA has dug wells, vaccinated livestock, and provided health services, while SOUTHCOM has a long track record of providing humanitarian assistance in Central and South America, particularly in the wake of natural disasters.

Although Brigety asserted that it is nothing “new for the military to be involved in addressing basic human needs,” he and his fellow presenters—Elisabeth Kvitashvili of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), James Schear of the Institute for National Security Studies, and Stewart Patrick of the Council on Foreign Relations—agreed that the Department of Defense (DoD) has been undertaking an increasing share of the U.S. government’s development activities in recent years. As Brigety’s report notes, the “share of the U.S. government’s official development assistance, or ODA, spent by the Defense Department increased to 22 percent in 2005, the last year for which complete data is available, from 3.5 percent in 1998. Over the same time period, USAID’s share of ODA fell to less than 40 percent from 65 percent.”

Earlier this week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made waves when he said that “the United States military has become more involved in a range of activities that in the past were perceived to be the exclusive province of civilian agencies and organizations. This has led to concern among many organizations…about what’s seen as a creeping ‘militarization’ of some aspects of America’s foreign policy. This is not an entirely unreasonable sentiment.”

At the CAP launch, Patrick asserted that one reason why the DoD has become increasingly involved in development activities—in peaceful regions as well as violent ones—is the “massive budgetary asymmetry” between the DoD and the State Department and USAID. Gates made a similar point: “America’s civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long—relative to what we spend on the military, and more important, relative to the responsibilities and challenges our nation has around the world.”

Kvitashvili agreed that USAID is underfunded and understaffed, but said the solution was not having the military take the lead in development activities. She argued that the military—which, unlike USAID, is not staffed by development professionals—tends to engage in “feel-good, short-term, one-off” projects that do not lead to sustainable gains for local populations. Instead, she welcomed a stepped-up supporting role for the military in development activities.

In a foreign policy speech on Tuesday attended by several of the New Security Beat’s authors, Senator Barack Obama said the danger posed by the price of oil “is eclipsed only by the long-term threat from climate change, which will lead to devastating weather patterns, terrible storms, drought, and famine. That means people competing for food and water in the next 50 years in the very places that have known horrific violence in the last fifty: Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Most disastrously, that could mean destructive storms on our shores, and the disappearance of our coastline. This is not just an economic issue or an environmental concern—this is a national security crisis.”

“The US security community has been looking at environment and security links for much longer than the current attention around climate/security linkages would suggest,” ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko told the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, which published a piece examining climate change and national security earlier this week.

“The next president must strengthen civilian professional capacity to carry out diplomatic and development operations. More funding is needed to address the current 17 to 1 spending imbalance in staffing and resources between defense and diplomatic/development operations, and to reduce the use of contractors in foreign assistance programs,” argues a report from Refugees International, U.S. Civil-Military Imbalance for Global Engagement: Lessons From the Operational Level in Africa.

An opinion piece by Laurie Mazur and Priscilla Huang argues against blaming immigrants for environmental degradation. “Environmental impact is determined not just by our numbers, but by how we use resources—our systems of production and consumption and the policies that shape them,” they write. “It’s laughable to blame immigrants and population growth for traffic, as the [anti-immigrant] ads do, without mentioning, say, our chronic neglect of public transportation.”