Showing posts from category security.
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Backdraft: The Conflict Potential of Climate Mitigation and Adaptation
›The European Union’s biofuel goal for 2020 “is a good example of setting a target…without really thinking through [the] secondary, third, or fourth order consequences,” said Alexander Carius, co-founder and managing director of Adelphi Research and Adelphi Consult. While the 2007-2008 global food crisis demonstrated that the growth of crops for fuels has “tremendous effects” in the developing world, analysis of these threats are underdeveloped and are not incorporated into climate change policies, he said. [Video Below]
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New Security Challenges in Obama’s Grand Strategy
›June 4, 2010 // By Schuyler NullPresident Obama’s National Security Strategy (NSS), released last week, reinforces a commitment to the whole of government approach to defense, and highlights the diffuse challenges facing the United States, including international terrorism, globalization, and economic upheaval.
Following the lead of the Quadrennial Defense Review released earlier this year, the NSS for the first time since the Clinton years prominently features non-traditional security concerns such as climate change, population growth, food security, and resource management:Climate change and pandemic disease threaten the security of regions and the health and safety of the American people. Failing states breed conflict and endanger regional and global security… The convergence of wealth and living standards among developed and emerging economies holds out the promise of more balanced global growth, but dramatic inequality persists within and among nations. Profound cultural and demographic tensions, rising demand for resources, and rapid urbanization could reshape single countries and entire regions.
By acknowledging the myriad causes of instability along with more “hard” security issues such as insurgency and nuclear weapons, Obama’s national security strategy takes into account the “soft” problems facing critical yet troubled states – such as Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, and Somalia – which include demographic imbalances, food insecurity, and environmental degradation.
Not surprisingly, Afghanistan in particular is highlighted as an area where soft power could strengthen American security interests. According to the strategy, agricultural development and a commitment to women’s rights “can make an immediate and enduring impact in the lives of the Afghan people” and will help lead to a “strong, stable, and prosperous Afghanistan.”
The unique demographic landscape of the Middle East, which outside of Africa has the fastest growing populations in the world, is also given intentional consideration. “We have a strategic interest in ensuring that the social and economic needs and political rights of people in this region, who represent one of the world’s youngest populations, are met,” the strategy states.
Some critics of that strategy warn that the term “national security” may grow to encompass so much it becomes meaningless. But others argue the administration’s thinking is simply a more nuanced approach that acknowledges the complexity of today’s security challenges.
In a speech on the strategy, Secretary of State Clinton said that one of the administration’s goals was “to begin to make the case that defense, diplomacy, and development were not separate entities either in substance or process, but that indeed they had to be viewed as part of an integrated whole and that the whole of government then had to be enlisted in their pursuit.”
Compare this approach to President Bush’s 2006 National Security Strategy, which began with the simple statement, “America is at war” and focused very directly on terrorism, democracy building, and unilateralism.
Other comparisons are also instructive. The Bush NSS mentions “food” only once (in connection with the administration’s “Initiative to End Hunger in Africa”) and does not mention population, demography, agriculture, or climate change at all. In contrast, the 2010 NSS mentions food nine times, population and demography eight times, agriculture three times, and climate change 23 times – even more than “intelligence,” which is mentioned only 18 times.
For demographers, development specialists, and environmental conflict specialists, the inclusion of “new security” challenges in the National Security Strategy, which had been largely ignored during the Bush era, is a boon – an encouraging sign that soft power may return to prominence in American foreign policy.
The forthcoming first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review by the State Department will help flesh out the strategic framework laid out by the NSS. It is expected to provide more concrete policy for integrating defense, diplomacy, and development. Current on-the-ground examples like USDA embedding in Afghanistan, stepped-up development aid to Pakistan, and the roll-out of the administration’s food security initiative, “Feed the Future,” are encouraging signs that the NSS may already be more than just rhetoric.
Update: The Bush 91′ and 92’ NSS also included environmental considerations, in part due to the influence of then Director of Central Intelligence, Robert Gates.
Sources: Center for Global Development, CNAS, Los Angeles Times, State Department, USAID, White House, World Politics Review.
Photo Credit: “Human, Food, and Demographic Security” collage by Schuyler Null from “Children stop tending to the crop to watch the patrol” courtesy of flickr user isafmedia, “Combing Wheat” courtesy of flickr user AfghanistanMatters, and “Old Town Sanaa – Yemen 49” courtesy of flickr user Richard Messenger. -
Can Food Security Stop Terrorism?
›May 28, 2010 // By Schuyler Null
USAID’s “Feed the Future” initiative is being touted for its potential to help stabilize failing states and dampen simmering civil conflicts. Speaking at a packed symposium on food security hosted by the Chicago Council last week, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah called food security “the foundation for peace and opportunity – and therefore a foundation for our own national security.”
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USDA v. Taliban
›May 28, 2010 // By Dan AsinAgricultural development is the “top non-security priority” in Afghanistan, said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, in a recent speech. “Unemployment is the best recruiting tool for the Taliban,” he told the Des Moines Register.
Sixty USDA experts are working with their partners in State, USAID, DOD, and other members of U.S. government to increase agricultural opportunities in rural areas of the country. Embedded in small civil-military units of 15-100 people, USDA experts have worked on projects of all scales: installing windmill water pumps, training veterinarians, refurbishing university research laboratories, stabilizing river banks and irrigation canals, and developing storage facilities.
In his keynote speech at the Feed the Future launch, Vilsack emphasized the need to build markets. In Afghanistan, USDA is focusing on improving infrastructure so farmers can receive deliveries and ship produce, and boosting credit vehicles to help farmers purchase the inputs to grow crops. Opium traders provide seeds to the farmers and pick up the crops at the farms, he said, which makes opium easier to produce than legal crops.
Alternative crops could be just as or more valuable, Vilsack told NPR:Table grapes are in some cases perhaps four and five times more valuable than poppy. Saffron, almonds, pomegranates, a number of fruits are significantly more profitable. What we have to do is we have to establish that the reward of putting those crops in the ground is greater and the risk is equal to or less than poppy production.
On the same NPR program, Vilsack’s counterpart agreed: “Agriculture growth means employment and employment means security. They’re so much related to each other. In places where the military operates, if you do not offer people the future, just by military means, security and stability will be a very far-reaching dream,” said Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock Mohammad Asif Rahimi.
But the Afghan government faces an immense challenge: Afghanistan’s unemployment rate is estimated at 35 percent, which ranks it in the bottom 20 countries in the world. With a population growth rate of 3.5 percent and nearly half the population already under the age of 15, the need for job creation is only set to increase.
While agricultural development and food security are essential, Rahimi acknowledged, alone they are not enough. The Afghan government needs a “whole of government approach,” he said. To win the hearts of its people the government must offer “an alternative to what the Talibans were offering to people…more livelihood and security and education and health, and also a better and more secure future.”
Both Vilsack and Rahimi avoid the common trap of equating hunger with conflict, instead emphasizing agricultural employment and economic opportunities as key to solving that intractable conflict.
But it’s not the only piece of the puzzle. I hope the Feed the Future’s “whole of government” approach in Afghanistan will emphasize not only agriculture, but also the environmental policies and health services, such as family planning, that can ensure that agricultural gains are sustainable even after the troops leave.
Sources: Central Intelligence Agency, Des Moines Register, NPR, United Nations Statistics Division, United Nations Population Division, U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of State.
Photo Credit: Colonel Stephen Redman and John Van Horn of the USDA discuss crop plans with local residents while surveying the site of the Arkansas Agribusiness Development Team’s (ADT)demonstration farm plot near Shahr-e-Safa, Afghanistan, courtesy Flickr user isafmedia. -
‘NATO 2020’ Recommendations Avoid “New Security” Challenges
›May 25, 2010 // By Schuyler NullA recently released report, NATO 2020, outlines expert recommendations for the alliance’s new strategic concept. However, while pointing to a nighttime satellite image of the globe at a Wilson Center conference last week, Professor Peter Liotta of Salve Regina University said the report focuses too much on conventional self-defense, when most of the new security challenges of the 21st century will come from areas of the world “where the lights are out.”
In an interview with New Security Beat, Liotta criticized NATO 2020’s emphasis on what he sees as a reactive, rather than a proactive, stance. By ignoring “new security” vulnerabilities such as environmental and demographic challenges, NATO may end up creating more threats for itself down the line, he said.
The report briefly acknowledges that demographic change and environmental degradation represent sources of uncertainty in forecasting global trends. However, neither are included as major threats to the alliance. Instead, the authors say the most probable threats are nuclear or non-nuclear armed ballistic missiles, terror attacks, and cyber intrusion.
Discussions about non-traditional security vulnerabilities often produce contentious and conflicting viewpoints, which makes it easier to ignore them, said Liotta. However, it is important for NATO to realize that security threats – even more conventional ones – do not exist in isolation.
Liotta said the continued focus on NATO’s Article 5, the invocation of collective self-defense, overshadows other important foundations of the alliance. For example, Article 2, which encourages “promoting conditions of stability,” could be invoked to help the alliance address non-traditional security threats.
In his presentation, Liotta, formerly of the U.S. Naval War College, cited mass migration, water scarcity, and low probability, high-risk events, such as rapid sea-level rise from Arctic ice melt, as examples of challenges that NATO should be preparing to meet. He also drew attention to the security challenges of a burgeoning global population, saying that rapid growth and urbanization will produce 600 cities with more than one million people by 2025.
Such extreme events as the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China, which killed about 90,000 people and left five million homeless, might be a symptom of the strain our growing population has placed on the Earth’s natural systems, said Liotta. Scientists point out that an earthquake of such magnitude has never been seen in Sichuan and that large construction projects – particularly a large dam and reservoir that lie within 550 yards of the fault line – have likely had a considerable effect on local geology.
In Europe’s current deployment-adverse, difficult fiscal environment, it is perhaps understandable that NATO planners would focus on concrete threats rather than emerging vulnerabilities. But, as Liotta argues, the consequences for ignoring these new security challenges could be no less dire.
Sources: Daily Mail, Foreign Policy, NATO, Telegraph.
Photo Credit: “The Night Lights of Planet Earth” courtesy of flickr user woodleywonderworks. -
‘Campus Beat:’ Finding a Home for Political Demography
›May 13, 2010 // By Richard CincottaDoes political and security demography have a professional society that it can call “home”? Research in this field—the study of the political and security-related consequences of demographic conditions and trends—already has an intellectual home within the Environmental Change and Security Program. But has it secured a place for itself among disciplinary academic societies?
In search of an answer, I undertook some serious “conference stalking” over the past year, attending the annual meetings of the International Studies Association (ISA), and the American Political Science Association (APSA). At the end of April, I returned from two more—the Population Association of America (PAA), held in Dallas, TX; and the American Association of Geographers (AAG), in Washington, DC.
International Studies Association
From my perspective, ISA currently offers the most promise for graduate students and young analysts who would like to participate in, or use results from, political and security demography. While the audiences at ISA’s political demography sessions have not been spectacularly large (usually fewer than 20 people), ISA is the only academic society, to my knowledge, that has organized a formal “Political Demography Section” to advance the field. (Former ISA president Jacek Kugler of Claremont Graduate University led the charge last year.)
(Editor’s note: At the 2010 ISA conference, ECSP organized a roundtable on “Strategies for Bridging Research and Policy in the Classroom: Teaching Environment, Population, Conflict, and Security.” A panel of four educators discussed the unique challenges facing those that attempt to teach hybrid security issues. Panelist Jennifer Sciubba’s presentation, in which she shared techniques for bridging the gaps that exist between the study of political science and issues of population and environment, is posted on the New Security Beat.)
Population Association of America
In terms of fostering political demography, PAA, the professional organization for American demographers, currently ranks second. Despite the lack of a formal section, PAA’s 2010 conference included several sessions on research germane to politics and security, including “Demographic Determinants and Consequences of War, Conflict and Terrorism; “21st Century Refugee Policy and Refugee Demography”; and “Population, Politics, and Conflict in the Middle East.”
The session on the Middle East, which was moderately well attended and fostered an animated discussion, featured papers on: internal migration during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War (Marwan Khawaja and Shireen Assaf); demographic projections for Israeli ethnoreligious groups (Eric Kaufman and myself); and a discussion of possible demographic outcomes from the creation of a Palestinian state (Uzi Rebhun).
The PAA session on the demographic determinants and consequences of violent conflict focused on the human costs: forced migration’s impact on child survival in Angola (Winifred Avogo); impact of terror on birth rates in Israel (Guy Stecklov); the death toll in Cambodia (Patrick Heuvaline); and long-term consequences of war and genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda (Sarah Statveig).
While these topics—the demographic consequences of conflict—are important to international health and relief organizations, they don’t fit well within (my conceptualization of) political and security demography. In introducing the session, its chair, CUNY’s Neil Bennett, called attention to the absence of this perspective, by noting that he received over a dozen submissions on the demographic consequences of conflict, but only one submission (which was not selected for presentation) that hypothesized demography as a determinant of conflict.
The ebbing of political demography among demographers is a legacy of demography’s development over the past generation. Today, PAA annual meetings and the society’s journal, Demography, are dominated by what I call “passive demography”—programs hypothesizing the influence of social, health, economic, or political conditions on demographic trends; or research that employs demographic characteristics as categories for which sociological and health conditions are assessed (as in studies of the aged, urban residents, ethnoreligious groups, women of childbearing age, school-age children, etc.).
But even as the majority of academic demographers were settling into this approach, another group—mostly theoreticians—were digging through census and hospital records to identify how populations entered and passed through the demographic transition. Their efforts ultimately produced today’s population estimates and projections (published by the UN Population Division and U.S. Census Bureau’s International Program Center).
The parallel development of these perspectives produced a somewhat schizophrenic discipline. While demography is unmatched in its abilities among peer social sciences to project—with surprising accuracy and clarity—two to three decades into the future, most demographers are uncomfortable ascribing meaning to demographic conditions or trends.
There are, of course, exceptions: active approaches that hypothesize influences of demographic factors on non-demographic conditions. For example, economic demography, which owes its origins to Ansley Coale’s early theorization of the demographic bonus, is focused on the influences of age structural changes on the economy of states. More recently, PAA organized a section that combines economic demography, population-environment studies, and other active demographic fields into the Population, Environment, and Development Section.
American Association of Geographers
The annual conference of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) seemed like a good fit. Geographers are interdisciplinary by training, and AAG has already organized formal “specialty groups” on political geography and population geography. Despite these advantages, few senior geographers (if any) have worked at the intersection of these two specialties.
For AAG 2010, Col. Laurel Hummel (USMA, West Point) and I organized a session titled “Demography as a Dynamic Predictor of Political, Developmental and Security Outcomes.” The four presentations included: liberal democracy and demography (John Doces and myself); the evolution of urban and rural age structures during the demographic transition (Elizabeth Leahy Madsen); and a demographic study of a voting in the U.S. Upper Midwest (Peter Camilli). Unfortunately, our session was scheduled on the final day and poorly attended.
Nonetheless, I was impressed at the number of population-related sessions at AAG 2010, including several related to population’s interactions with environmental conditions (tropical forest settlement; climate change’s possible health and demographic impacts) and on demographic issues of political consequence (China’s one-child policy; the geography of Sweden’s conscription and its future).
American Political Science Association
I’ve been most surprised to find that efforts to spark interest in political demography at APSA conferences have not been overly successful. Sessions that focus on the implications of religious demographic differences have gained some support from APSA’s Religion and Politics Section, but in general, political scientists have yet to embrace either political demography’s methods or its findings. In a 2005 interview with Robert Putnam and M. Kent Jennings, both past presidents of APSA, demographic change was identified as being among the most predictable of future trends, yet the least studied by political scientists.
A recent article in Foreign Affairs, “The Next Population Bomb” by Jack Goldstone (George Mason U.), could break down a few of political science’s disciplinary barriers. However, the fences seem exceptionally high. Despite being identified as a session “of special interest” at the 2009 APSA conference, “Demography and Security: The Politics of Population Change in an Age of Turbulence” (organized by Eric Kaufmann, U. London) was sparsely attended.
Political and security demography’s progress is as erratic as it is paradoxical. While demand in the security community grows for the field’s products, they appear to pass virtually unnoticed in academic circles.
But there’s a bright side to this puzzle. ISA draws a substantial portion of its membership from analysts in security think-tanks and among intelligence and defense-related agencies—and for that reason it may, after all, be the most comfortable spot for analysts pursuing political and security demography to call “home.”
Richard Cincotta is a consultant with the Environmental Change and Security Program and the demographer-in-residence at the H.L. Stimson Center in Washington, DC.
Photo Credit: “World population” courtesy of Flickr user Arenamontanus. -
Parched and Hoarse, Indus Negotiations Continue to Simmer
›April 30, 2010 // By Julien KatchinoffBrewing conflicts over water in South Asia are not new to the readers of the New Security Beat. Violence due to variations in the monsoon season , high tensions over water and energy diplomacy, and pressures stemming from mismanaged groundwater stocks in the face of burgeoning population growth have all been reported on before.
The latest addition to this thread is disappointingly familiar: escalating tensions between Pakistan and India over the Indus river basin. Pakistan views Indian plans to construct the Nimoo-Bazgo, Chutak, and Kishanganga power plants as threatening the crucial water flows of an already parched nation according to objections voiced by the Pakistani Water Commission at the annual meeting of the Indus Water Commission in March. As a result, all efforts to reach an agreement on India’s plans for expanded hydroelectric and storage facilities in the basin’s upstream highlands failed.
In a recent editorial in the Pakistani newspaper The Dawn , former Indus River System Authority Chairman Fateh Gandapur claimed that new construction amounts to a clear violation of the Indus Water Treaty (IWT):“India is building large numbers of dams …on the rivers Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej and Beas, including on their tributaries in Indian-administered Kashmir. Together, these will have the effect of virtually stopping the perennial flow of water into Pakistan during a period of six to seven months that include the winter season. Not only will this be a blatant violation of the IWT and international laws on water rights of lower riparian areas, it will also amount to making Pakistan dry and, in the future, causing water losses that will deprive this country of its rabi and kharif crops. Our part of Punjab, which has a contiguous canal irrigation system that is amongst the largest in the world, will be turned into a desert.”
Gandapur’s fears, shared by many in Pakistan, are borne out of the desperate situation in which many of their compatriots live. As noted in Running on Empty: Pakistan’s Water Crisis, a report by the Wilson Center’s Asia program, water availability in the country has plummeted from about 5,000 cubic meters (m3) per capita in the early 1950s to less than 1,500 m3 per capita today–making Pakistan the most water stressed country in Asia. With more than 90% of these water flows destined for agricultural use, only 10% remains to meet the daily needs of the region’s booming population. This harmful combination of low supplies and growing demand is untenable and in Karachi results in 30,000 deaths–the majority of which are children–from water-borne illnesses each year.
This harmful combination of low supplies and growing demand is untenable, and may be get worse before it gets better, as Pakistan’s population is projected to almost double by 2050. At an upcoming conference at the Wilson Center, “Defusing the Bomb: Pakistan’s Population Challenge,” demographic experts on Pakistan will address this issue in greater detail.
Recent talk of ‘water wars’ and ‘Indian water jihad’ from Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba and head of Jamaat-ud-Dawah, have played upon popular sentiments of distrust and risk inflaming volatile emotions, the South Asian News reports.
Harvard’s John Briscoe, an expert with long-time ties to both sides of this dispute, sees such statements as the inevitable result of the media-reinforced mutual mistrust that pervades the relationship of the two nations and plays on continued false rumors of Indian water theft and Pakistani mischief. “If you want to give Lashkar-e-Taiba and other Pakistani militants an issue that really rallies people, give them water,” he told the Associated Press.
The rising tensions have echoed strongly throughout the region. For the first time in its 25-year history, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has raised the water issue (long thought to be a major political impediment and contributor to SAARC’s stagnation) among its members during its meeting this week. “I hope neighbors can find ways to compartmentalize their differences while finding ways to move forward. I am of course referring to India and Pakistan,” said Maldives President Mohammed Nasheed, during his address on Wednesday. “I hope this summit will lead to greater dialogue between (them.)”
Prime ministers Manmohan Singh and Yousuf Raza Gilani heeded the calls and responded with a hastily arranged in-person meeting on the sidelines of the SAARC conference. The emerging agreement targeted a comprehensive set of issues, including water and terrorism, and, while unsurprisingly weak on action, set a path upon which the nations can begin to move forward. Speaking about the agreement’s significance, Indian Foreign Secretary Nirumpama Rao told the Los Angeles Times, “There’s been a lot of soul-searching here. We need to take things forward. This is good for the two countries and good for the region.”
The fragile détente faces great hurdles in the months to come, especially if rainfall remains scarce as forecasters predict. Already, local communities in India and Pakistan are venting frustrations over water shortages. On Thursday, just one day after the agreement between Prime ministers Singh and Gilani, several Bangalore suburbs staged protests at the offices of the local water authorities, complaining loudly about persistent failures of delivery services to produce alternative arrangements for water provision despite regular payments by local citizens. Whether local civil action ultimately helps or hinders bilateral water cooperation between India and Pakistan will be interesting to track in the near future and we at the New Security Beat look forward to continuing to engage with readers on the latest developments.
Photo Credit: Mahe Zehra Husain Transboundary Water Resources Spring 2010 -
Climate Change and U.S. Military Strategy
›Promoting the Dialogue: Climate Change and U.S. Ground Forces, a new working paper by Christine Parthemore of the Center for New American Security (CNAS), delves into how climate change will affect future operating environments, related missions, equipment, and capabilities of U.S. ground forces. The working paper, part of “Promoting the Dialogue” series, is based on interviews, research, and site visits. The paper follows Promoting the Dialogue: Climate Change and the Maritime Services, also by Parthemore, and a publication on climate change’s implications for air missions is forthcoming. Parthemore concludes with recommendations for areas of future research and a call for “[d]eeper intellectual study of how climate change is likely to affect the U.S. ground forces.”
Neil Morisetti, U.K. rear admiral and climate and energy security envoy, and Amanda Dory, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, published an article in Defense News discussing the inclusion of climate change as a new variable in strategic planning. “The Climate Variable: World Militaries Grapple With New Security Calculus” labels climate change a “threat multiplier,” noting that “[c]limate change will amplify the impact of some of the world’s most difficult and common challenges.” Morisetti and Dory call for greater military-to-military engagement concerning disaster response, studies into at-risk military infrastructure, and efforts to foster innovative energy technologies. “Current military operations must continue to be our highest priority, but we also have a responsibility to assess the future security environment, including the impacts of climate change and other key trends such as energy, demographics, economics and science/technology,” they conclude.
Morisetti and Dory recently spoke at the Wilson Center as part of a panel discussing climate change and energy in defense doctrine.
