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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 04/02
International Security in the Early Twenty-First Century
February 2000
Executive Summary
In contrast to the Cold War era, the security issues in the early decades of the next century will arise from an increasingly economically polarised and environmentally constrained world. These two trends further interact with the military legacy of the Cold War where the proliferation of high-technology weapons and weapons of mass destruction enables the weak to take up arms against the strong.
Within this framework of development-environment interaction, four forms of conflict are likely to come to the fore:
1) Migration
Poor countries will face formidable difficulties in dealing with the increasingly severe effects of climate change, particularly the drying out of the tropics. This will translate into migratory pressures from Central into North America and from Africa and Western Asia into Europe. The likely response will be a "close the castle gates" approach to security, leading in turn to human suffering and "militant migration" as marginalised migrants are radicalised.
2) Environmental Conflict
The control of physical resources will be another source of conflict. Locally, over issues such as land and water, it may be restricted primarily to Southern states, with concomitant pressure on migration. Confrontations over strategic resources, such as oil and minerals, (e.g. Gulf War), are also likely.
3) Insurgencies and anti-elite action
Environmental constraints on an economically polarised system will result in competitive and violent responses by the disempowered, both within and between states. Such anti-elite social movements may develop at a sub-state level or they may actually hold power - the so-called 'rogue states' - and direct their responses towards the North.
4) Revolt of the Middle Kingdoms
Beyond the 'rogue states' are much more powerful states that may have their own entrenched elites, yet are unwilling to accept a global polity dominated by a Western military, political and economic alliance. China, India and Iran are all examples of states that seek to challenge Western hegemony, and their attitudes are shared by numerous other Southern states. On issues of trade, environmental problems and weapons proliferation, a broad axis of disagreement has developed between Western and Southern states, encouraging the latter to resent and even threaten the security and economic power of the West.
On present trends, the common response to disorder within states will be one of regaining and maintaining control, if necessary, by the use of military force. This addresses the symptoms rather than the root causes of conflict. However, this approach is no longer sustainable. Trends in asymmetric warfare (made possible by the proliferation of military technologies), together with the security vulnerabilities of urban-industrial states, mean that conventional military approaches to maintaining Western security will not succeed.
It follows that it is in the interest of Western, including European Union (EU), security to address the root causes of conflict by supporting a process of common global security, predicated on action to reverse socio-economic polarisation, enhance environmentally sustainable economic development, and control processes of proliferation.
The EU is well-placed to promote this new agenda of political and economic reforms. It could now take the lead in: restructuring the global trade system; introducing a radical debt cancellation programme; introducing environmentally sustainable activity by the West; promoting sustainable development in less developed countries; developing global regimes to curb weapons proliferation; and promoting the reform of the United Nations.
Introduction
This paper seeks to examine the underlying factors that will influence international security in the next thirty years. In contrast to the Cold War era, two fundamental issues will largely determine the evolution of conflict - the widening socio-economic polarisation and problems of environmental constraints. Taken together with the proliferation of military technologies, the paper argues that attempts to maintain the present world order in the interests of a minority elite are unlikely to succeed, and will, instead, enhance the risks of conflict. A radical re-thinking of Western perceptions of security is necessary - a new approach that will address the core causes of insecurity at their roots.
1. War since 1945In seeking to analyse possible trends in war over the next thirty years, it is worth looking at the experience since 1945. In this period, often considered one of relative peace, there have been at least 120 wars fought in most regions of the world. Over 25 million people have been killed and 75 million seriously injured, not far short of the total casualties in the Second World War 1 . The proportion of civilian to military casualties in war has risen often to a ratio of 10:1.
Many of the early post-1945 conflicts were either wars of decolonisation and liberation or had strong Cold War overtones, some of them being proxy wars. Relatively few were primarily regional, although these include two of the longest-lasting confrontations, between Israel and the Palestinians, and between India and Pakistan.
During the course of the 1990s, although it appeared that a much greater number of conflicts were mainly internal, many displayed marked international dimensions. Globally, there are close to thirty active or suspended conflicts today. The prospects for peace are hardly encouraging.
1.1 Legacies of the Cold War
The Cold War had three features that are relevant to any attempt to discuss future trends in conflict.
The first is that it was an immensely costly venture. At its peak, in the mid-1980s, world military expenditure reached $1,000 billion per annum, of which some 83 per cent was by NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the great majority of it directed towards the East-West confrontation. It was an extraordinary diversion of resources.
Second, this sustained confrontation also resulted in the development of many new military technologies; especially weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - nuclear, chemical and biological. Ballistic and cruise missiles proliferated along with a remarkable array of precision-guided munitions (PGMs), and area-impact munitions.
Light arms proliferated too, often pouring into the hands of proxy armies fighting for East or West. The ending of the Cold War eased the intensity of some of the conflicts, but the weapons themselves remained available, often cascading down to paramilitaries and civilians, especially in Africa, Central Asia and parts of Latin America.
Recently, especially during the 1991 Gulf War, much was made of the accuracy of PGMs. Conflicts could be represented as "media-friendly" - wars against real estate, in which deserted bridges and empty aircraft hangars could be destroyed seemingly at will. Despite advances in the accuracy of some PGMs, however, the characterisation of war as a clean and even bloodless activity is a myth.
The final feature of the Cold War, made more obvious with the benefit of hindsight, was the magnitude of some of the crises and near accidents that occurred during its course 2 . In 1983, for example, at a time of heightened East-West tension, a NATO exercise was mistaken by the Soviets as preparation for war. Though the crisis did not spark a war, it caused such concern and confusion in NATO, that no further exercises of a similar kind were held for the rest of the Cold War 3 .
There were also numerous accidents involving nuclear weapons. Some were lost and never recovered; others were severely damaged leading to substantial radioactive contamination. Much more is now known of these events, at least in the West, and there are suspicions of major long-term environmental and human affects from accidents in the former Soviet Union.
Notably, the late 1990s witnessed a call by some of the most senior former military officers for rapid progress in nuclear disarmament.
1.2 Russia After the Cold War
Russia's Cold War legacy has been extremely bitter. This once powerful state has lost much of the territory under its control and experienced a near-catastrophic attempt to rush to a free-market economy that has resulted in stagnation, unemployment, rampant crime, a dismal decline in life expectancy and a rapidly widening rich-poor gap. Having nearly bankrupted itself in its competition with the much more economically powerful NATO states, Russia then had the added indignity of a near-collapse of its armed forces, as demonstrated painfully by its unsuccessful campaign in Chechnya in the mid-1990s.
In terms of future international security, the situation in Russia raises four concerns.
· The risk of a fracturing of the state itself, if conflicts in Chechnya, Dagestan and elsewhere escalate.
· The determination of the crippled Russian defence industries to maximise their arms exports as a means of ensuring their survival.
· That expertise in WMD and missile systems is emigrating to overseas paymasters in the face of low or non-existent salaries in Russia itself. (Western initiatives here have only had limited effect.)
· The poor state of the Russian armed forces, resulting in a greater reliance on nuclear weapons. Most worryingly, this concentrates on tactical nuclear weapons, with recent reports suggesting that Russia may resume development and production of such weapons to replace its large but ageing arsenal.
2. The Security Paradigm at the End of the Old Century
From a Western perspective, none of the ongoing conflicts in the world represent problems of global magnitude. They do present formidable difficulties, especially when Western interests are directly affected, but many of them are ignored or left to the UN to handle - often a recipe for inaction.
Western military power may now be considered pre-eminent in global security but to paraphrase a former CIA Director, "we have slain the dragon but now live in a jungle full of poisonous snakes". 4
In the short term the "snakes" include the activities of "rogue" states such as Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, the risk that Russia may disintegrate, that China may not continue to accept a Western-dominated economy or polity, and that further threats to Western energy resources in the Gulf may arise. They also focus on fundamentalism, usually Islamic, with concern over terrorism in a variety of forms, heightened by worries about WMD proliferation and their means of delivery.
The prevailing orthodoxy is that new forms of military power - driven by the revolution in military affairs - will allow the West to maintain its edge of superiority and therefore to confront these problems comfortably. The Gulf War, Bosnia and even Kosovo are being cited as proof of this enduring potential. Occasional military interventions will be necessary to "keep the violent peace" in the post-Cold War world. Consequently, military forces in most Western countries have modified their capabilities accordingly.
The massive strategic nuclear forces are being cut down to much smaller, if still versatile forces - no longer an emphasis on a central nuclear exchange, more a case of limited regional applications. The huge tank armies in Central Europe have been cut significantly, as have many of the anti-submarine forces. Instead, there is an emphasis on long-range power projection. The army focuses more on special operations forces and its own brand of force projection.
So, the West believes it has the capability to keep the lid on existing problems and thus the early years of the twenty-first century will not see any great changes in the global security environment.
This may be a "reasonably consensual" view, but it is by no means universal. A very different paradigm is beginning to emerge, currently still consigned more to the margins of debate, but attracting increasing attention in some military and strategic circles. This paradigm asserts there are certain major global trends underway that are not traditionally associated with perceptions of international security, but that are likely to be fundamental "drivers" in the coming decades. Furthermore, they are trends that will give rise to conflicts that may initially be thought to be controllable militarily, but may actually require a much more fundamental approach.
3. The Changed Paradigm for the New Century
It is possible to categorise many of the post-1945 conflicts as either 'epilogue' or 'prologue' wars. Epilogue wars are those that illustrate past trends - the wars of decolonisation or liberation in the 1940s and 1950s, and the proxy wars of the Cold War. The 1994 Zapatista revolt in Mexico and the Gulf War of 1991 are both 'prologue' wars, each illustrating a trend in international insecurity that together point to a paradigm shift. The Zapatista revolt is an example of an anti-elite rebellion exacerbated by the growing wealth-poverty divide, and the Gulf War was essentially a resource war, fought over the control of Persian Gulf oil.
The security context for the early decades of the next century is the interaction between a deeply divided world in which the gap between a rich minority and a poor majority is growing, and the effect of environmental constraints on human development. These two factors further interact with a military legacy of the Cold War, expressed by the US defence analyst, Roger Barnett as the:
impact of high-technology weapons and weapons of mass destruction on the ability - and thus the willingness - of the weak to take up arms against the strong. 5
The impact of environmental constraints on an economically divided world has been recognised for several decades, although its reality has only recently become apparent. Unless there is a change in political and economic behaviour, the end result of the growing pressures of human demand, according to Edwin Brooks, would result in a:
crowded, glowering planet of massive inequalities of wealth buttressed by stark force yet endlessly threatened by desperate people in the global ghettos of the underprivileged. 6
At the root of this prognosis lie the themes of socio-economic polarisation and environmental constraints.
3.1 The Wealth-Poverty Divide
For the past century, the people of most states have experienced a mixed capitalist economy. In the last twenty years there has been an acceleration in market and trade liberalisation and a decrease in state activity. This liberal market system has delivered economic growth but has persistently failed to ensure social justice. Put simply, the result has been the success of the few at the expense of the many. Socio-economic disparities are growing and extreme poverty is experienced by a substantial proportion of the world's population - between one and two billion people - and may even rise as the world's population continues to grow by over 80 million each year.
Moreover, international wealth transfers in the past five decades have consistently moved from the poor to the rich, driven mainly by the post-colonial trading system and its endemic imbalances.
As well as endemic deep poverty, there is a steadily widening gap between a rich minority of the world's population, located primarily in North America, Western Europe and Japan, and most of the rest. In 1960, the richest 20 per cent of humanity had 70 per cent of the income; by 1991 its share had risen to 85 per cent while the share of the poorest 20 per cent had declined from 2.3 per cent to 1.7 per cent. 7
This rich/poor gap widened more rapidly in the 1980s, as free market liberalisation increased and early indications suggest there has been a further widening in the late 1990s.
More than three-quarters of the new investment into the developing world goes into China and nine other rapidly growing countries. A new global apartheid of 24 richer countries, a dozen rapidly developing countries and 140 that are growing slowly or not at all becomes one of the major new threats to global security. 8
All the indications are that this will continue over the next 30 years, and may even accelerate, with the development of a trans-state global elite surging ahead of the rest.
Neither is the distribution of wealth within regions uniform. There are substantial problems of poverty in a number of advanced industrialised states and the poorer states of the South are not uniformly poor. In some countries, the rich elites represent a tiny minority of the population, but others such as Brazil have quite substantial middle and upper classes, living apart from the majority poor and ever-conscious of their own security vulnerabilities.
Southern elites frequently work very closely with the business interests of major trans-national corporations (TNCs) based primarily in the North, and these too put a premium on the security of their expatriate personnel and local associates. With certain energy and mining companies, this will commonly extend to maintaining their own security forces - private armies that ensure the safety of their operations, usually comprising ex-members of special operations forces and others from the North.
3.2 Revolution of unfulfilled expectations
Despite the systemic bias in favour of Northern interests, substantial progress in some aspects of development in the South has been achieved. Progress has been particularly marked in the field of education and literacy and there is now progress in communications too.
An effect of this is that an increasing number of marginalised people in the South are aware of their marginalisation and of the rich-poor gap. This combination has led to a "revolution of unfulfilled expectations" - an increasingly prominent feature of insurgencies and instability in Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East.
Hamas, the radical Palestinian group, is one organisation leading a revolt from the margins, offering a way out of exclusion. It derives its strength from the tens of thousands of young Palestinians growing up in the fifty-year-old refugee camps of the Gaza strip.
Another example is the bitter civil war in Algeria that has claimed over 60,000 lives in little more than five years. It has been a war fought between a repressive government and radical fundamentalist groups who gather support from among the millions of people who are largely excluded from the Algerian economy. The Algerian conflict, with its violent effects felt in France, may well be a prototype conflict for the next several decades.
One of the most spectacular examples of a revolt from the margins was the uprising in many parts of Indonesia in 1998, with incidents in Djakarta described as 'the dispossessed rising out of the shanty towns to loot the shopping malls of the rich'. Mexico, Algeria, Peru and Indonesia are among the increasing number of states in which anti-elite action and insurgencies occur. On present trends such activities look likely to spread to many other countries - not so much a clash of civilisations, more an age of insurgencies.
3.3 Environmental Limitations
The second, parallel global trend is the growing impact of environmental constraints on human activity. In essence, the global ecosystem's limitations now look likely to make it very difficult if not impossible for human well-being to be continually improved by current forms of economic growth.
This is certainly not a new prognosis, and formed a central part of the "limits to growth" ideas of the early 1970s. Those ideas stemmed from some of the early experiences of human/environment interaction, notably the problems of pesticide toxicity, land dereliction and air pollution, all initially significant problems in industrialised countries.
In the past two decades these early signs of environmental limits have been joined by the much more significant issues of air pollution (a regional phenomenon recognised through acid rain), and the depletion of the ozone layer. Ozone depletion represented the first major global environmental effect, threatening a potentially devastating impact on the entire ecosystem. Although, in the late 1980s, some degree of control was agreed through banning the most damaging pollutants, the problem remains.
Other problems developing on a global scale also rose to prominence, including desertification, deforestation - that had an immediate effect in terms of soil erosion and flooding - and the salinisation of soils, especially in semi-arid areas. Other forms of resource depletion became evident, most notably the decline in the resources of some of the world's richest fishing grounds. Problems of water shortages and water quality are already severe in many parts of the world. Around half of the population of Southern Asia and Africa does not have access to safe drinking water, from which 80 per cent of diseases in these areas stem.
In some parts of the world a persistent failure to come to terms with human environmental impacts produced near-catastrophic results. Nowhere was this clearer than in many parts of the former-Soviet Union, with a drying-out of the Aral Sea, massive problems of pesticide pollution and the radioactive contamination of Arctic environments, for example.
Of all the environmental impacts now being witnessed, the most significant is the climate change resulting from the release of so-called greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide (primarily caused by the combustion of fossil fuels) and methane. Among the many effects already apparent and likely to accelerate are changes in temperature, rainfall patterns and the intensity of storms.
While rich industrialised countries may be able to cope, albeit at a cost, the changes affecting poor countries will be well beyond their capabilities to handle. In 1992, Hurricane 'Andrew' hit parts of the US, killing 52 people and causing damage estimated at $22 billion, over 70 per cent of it covered by insurance. When, six years later, Hurricane 'Mitch' hit Honduras and Nicaragua, the death toll was 11,000, and less than 3 per cent of the $7 billion damages were insured.
4. Forms of Conflict
To summarise crudely, the current economic system is not delivering economic justice, and even if it were, there are indications that it would not be environmentally sustainable. This combination of wealth disparities and limits to current forms of economic growth is likely to lead to a crisis of unsatisfied expectations within an increasingly informed global majority of the disempowered.
In the eyes of Northern elites such a crisis is threatening. As Wolfgang Sachs puts it:
The North now glowers at the South from behind fortress walls. It no longer talks of the South as a cluster of young nations with a bright future, but views it with suspicion as a breeding ground for crises.
At first, developed nations saw the South as a colonial area, then as a developing one. Now it is viewed as a risk-prone zone, suffering from epidemics, violence, desertification, over-population and corruption.
The North has unified its vision of these diverse Southern nations by cramming them into a category called "risk". It has moved from the idea of hegemony for progress to hegemony for stability. 9 In Sach's view, the North has utilised the resources of the South for generations but has now come up against environmental limits to growth:
Having enjoyed the fruits of development, that same small portion of the world is now trying to contain the explosion of demands on the global environment. To manage the planet has become a matter of security to the North. 10
Managing the planet means, in the final analysis, controlling conflict, and within the framework of the development/environment interaction, three forms of conflict are likely to come to the fore, stemming from migratory pressures, environmental conflict and anti-elite violence.
4.1 Migration
The first arises from a greater likelihood of increased human migration for economic, social and environmental motives. This movement will focus on regions of relative wealth and is already leading to shifts in the political spectrum in recipient regions, including the increased prevalence of nationalist attitudes and cultural conflict.
Such tendencies are often most pronounced in the most vulnerable and disempowered populations within the recipient regions, with extremist political leaders ready to play on fears of unemployment. This trend is seen clearly in Western Europe, especially in countries such as France and Austria, where antagonism towards migrants from neighbouring regions such as North Africa and Western Asia has increased markedly. It also figures in the defence postures of a number of countries, with several southern European states reconfiguring their armed forces towards a "threat from the South" across the Mediterranean.
There are already some 40 million people displaced either across state boundaries or within states, and this figure is expected to rise dramatically as one fundamental consequence of global climate change begins to have an effect. Until quite recently, it was thought that climate change would primarily affect Northern temperate regions, with a tendency towards more violent weather and progressive warming. The tropics, by contrast, were expected to experience relatively little change. However, climate modelling studies now suggest that there will be major shifts in tropical climates, most significantly involving marked decreases in rainfall in many of the most populated areas.
Globally, there is expected to be a change in world rainfall patterns, with more rain falling over the oceans and polar regions and less over the tropics. Areas affected will include most of South and Central America, almost the whole of Southern and South-East Asia and the majority of Africa.
The impact is likely to be felt in the early decades of the new century with a "drying out" of many of those parts of the humid and semi-humid tropics that currently support the majority of humanity, much of which is living by subsistence agriculture. As a result, the ecological carrying capacity of the land itself will decline sharply, putting a greater pressure on migration and internal insecurity as poorer people become further marginalised. One assessment suggests that migration could increase ten-fold to 400 million people. 11
Wealthy countries will certainly feel the effects of climate change, but their money, resources and technical capabilities vastly improve their capacity to cope. Poor countries, by contrast, will face formidable difficulties, many of them translated into migratory pressures. The pressures are likely to be particularly intense from Central into North America, Africa and Western Asia into Europe and South-East Asia towards Australia. The likely response will be a "close the castle gates" approach to security, leading in turn to much suffering and "militant migration" as marginalised migrants are radicalised.
4.2 Environmental Conflict
The second area of conflict concerns environmental issues, especially the control of physical resources. Locally, over issues such as land and water, it may be restricted primarily to Southern states, though even this could have an indirect impact on Western interests by exacerbating socio-economic marginalisation with concomitant pressure on migration.
First, a number of key resources are located primarily outside the West (which for this purpose includes Japan). This is not an historical accident, but rather a part of the overall resource shift that has gathered pace over the past century. Industrialisation in Western states, which was initially based in part on the availability of domestic physical resources, now looks much further afield.
By far the most important strategic resource now is oil. The Persian Gulf region has rapidly become the world's key energy resource zone, providing some 70 per cent of the world's oil reserves. The Gulf now provides vital support for oil-based economies in the US and China, as well as the even more heavily dependent economies of Western Europe and Japan.
Other significant strategic resources include minerals yielding ferro-alloy metals such as cobalt and tungsten, catalytic metals such as platinum and anti-corrosion metals, together with certain non-metallic minerals such as rock phosphate and industrial diamonds. Here again, resources are increasingly located outside the industrialised countries, even including the US, Canada and Russia.
Several recent confrontations have centred on strategic resource location. They include the protracted conflict over Western Sahara, with its remarkable reserves of rock phosphate (a key constituent of compound fertilisers used throughout world agriculture). And the Franco-Belgian interventions in Shaba Province of Zaire/Congo since the mid-1970s, closely related to the cobalt resources of the Central African Copper Belt. These amount to some two-thirds of known world cobalt reserves (cobalt being a key ferro-alloy metal whose uses include missile motors and electronics).
Perhaps the most obvious resource conflict was the 1990/91 Gulf War. When Iraq invaded Kuwait it doubled the proportion of world oil reserves it controlled to one fifth, with the possibility of a threat to a further quarter held in Saudi Arabia.
4.3 Insurgencies and anti-elite action
Perhaps least easy to assess is the manner in which environmental constraints on an economically polarised global system will result in competitive and violent responses by the disempowered, both within and between states.
At an individual and local level, much of the response from the margins takes the form of criminality, usually by young adult males and directed not just against wealthier sectors of society but often against the poor and unprotected. For middle-class elites in many Southern states, though, security concerns are an everyday fact of life, with people moving from secure work places travelling in private cars to gated communities and leisure facilities with 24-hour protection. For the richest sectors of society, security extends to armed bodyguards and stringent anti-kidnapping precautions, with a host of specialist companies offering their services.
This is already the norm throughout most countries of the South, and the widening rich/poor gap suggests it will get worse. But the more difficult and potentially more important problem stems from substantial new social movements directed, often with violence, against the elites. Predictions are difficult but we should expect that new social movements will develop that are essentially anti-elite in nature and draw their support from people on the margins.
In different contexts and circumstances they may have their roots in political ideologies, religious beliefs, ethnic, nationalist or cultural identities, or a complex combination of several of these. Although much recent Western analysis has concentrated on the "Islamic threat" this is a dangerous simplification of a much more complex set of processes.
They may be focussed on individuals or groups but the most common feature is likely to be an opposition to existing centres of power. They may be sub-state groups directed at the elites in their own state or foreign interests, or they may actually hold power - the so-called 'rogue states' - as they direct their responses towards the North.
The second feature is that although most anti-elite movements may be more prevalent in the poorer states, in an era of globalisation the impact of the instability they can cause can have a considerable effect on world financial markets. Fifty years ago, a civil disturbance in a country of the South might have its effect in the North within weeks. Now, it can be within minutes. Wealthy states are dependent on resources from the South, on cheap labour supplies and on the development of new markets for their advanced industrial products. This makes the security of local elites of real concern to the West.
4.4 Revolt of the Middle Kingdoms
Beyond the 'rogue states' are much more powerful states that may have their own entrenched elites, yet are unwilling to accept a global polity dominated by a Western military, political and economic alliance. China, India and Iran are all examples of states that, in many ways, seek to challenge a Western hegemony.
Many of their attitudes and outlooks are shared by numerous other Southern states. For example, opposition to the further development of trade reforms through the World Trade Organisation because these are seen primarily to benefit powerful Western market economies and transnational corporations (TNCs). There remains resentment also at the attempts to force through a Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) with its "small print" likely to disadvantage weaker Southern states in their dealings with TNCs.
Bitterness at the entrenched attitudes of the North towards global environmental problems persists too. Many in the South believe that it is the North that has been primarily responsible for the development of these problems yet it is deeply reluctant to accept responsibility or to take remedial action. In particular, as climate change takes effect, due primarily to greenhouse gas emissions from the industrialised world, poorer countries, who will be far less able to cope with the impact of climate changes, are expected to curb or limit their industrial development. Meanwhile, the North pays little more than lip-service to the critical need to curb its own polluting profligacy.
The perception of hypocrisy also extends to the arena of weapons proliferation and arms control, where many consider Western attitudes to controlling nuclear proliferation as a case of "do as we say, not as we do".
The 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was almost universally condemned, yet the subsequent Gulf War was widely seen in the South as a Western military action that had far more to do with maintaining control of Gulf oil than correcting a wrong.
There are similar views with regard to the Serbia/Kosovo war. Whilst many in the West regarded this as a just war against an aggressive regime, much of the rest of the world saw it as a war against an objectionable regime that was no worse than many that continue to maintain friendly relations with the West. In both wars the UN was sidelined into the bargain.
Many of the new parameters of insecurity may operate at sub-state level, and will be directed at local elites and their collaborative western interests, but they will operate within the context of a broader "axis of disagreement" between Western governments and leading Southern states. While this may not deteriorate into conflict, it could further encourage a perception of "them and us" - a combination of insurgencies and competitive Southern states threatening the peace, security and economic well-being of the "civilised" West.
5. Responding to Insecurity
While predicting the precise nature and occurrence of rebellions, insurgencies and anti-elite action is impossible, it is a reasonable prognosis that underlying trends will lead to many such crises.
On present trends, the common response to disorder within states will be one of regaining and maintaining control, rather than addressing root causes. This will depend on the maintenance of appropriate security and intelligence capabilities. A feature of the recent post-Cold War years has been the reconfiguring of Western military forces towards long-range intervention with rapid deployment capabilities. But such forces are essentially weapons of last resort, and two other levers of control are often utilised first.
One is the increasing use of private security organisations that go well beyond the level of personal bodyguards and local protection of key facilities. Privatised security now extends to the provision of what are essentially well-equipped mercenary armies and paramilitaries, employed by local elites, TNCs or even governments. Such mercenary forces are not new, and were a fairly common feature of the final stages of decolonisation, but they have increased in power and capability in a number of Southern countries, notably in Latin America.
The second lever of control is the provision of intensive counter-insurgency training by Western states, especially the US. Again, this is not new - during the Cold War, anti-communist counter-insurgency was a key feature of US security policy and, to an extent, several European members of NATO, with the French especially active in Africa and the British in the Persian Gulf.
The motivation now is to maintain local elites and the considerable Western economic interests with which they are so commonly associated, against a wide variety of threats from the margins.
Overall, the process is one of keeping the lid on dissent and instability - "liddism" - by means of public order control that will, if necessary, extend to the use of military force. For the most part, little attention is being paid to the fundamental causes of instability, the economic processes that continue to ensure the marginalisation of the majority world, and the failure to address core problems of the global environment. The old security paradigm survives - the maintenance of control and the status quo, without addressing the underlying problems.
6. An Obsolete Paradigm
Quite apart from the raw injustices of the present world order, such a paradigm is threatened with obsolescence on its own terms in that it fails to recognise the innate vulnerabilities of Western elite society. Industrial societies have become more susceptible to disruption, and proliferation of military technologies is providing "force equalisers" - weapons that are within the reach of intermediate states and can counter much more advanced military power.
To illustrate this trend, two examples are worthy of mention. One concerns the potential for states to develop relatively cheap WMD, principally BW. The other focuses on developments in political violence, and especially the use of conventional explosives against vulnerable sources of elite power.
6.1 The Iraqi BW Programme and its Implications
The uncovering of the extensive, clandestine Iraqi BW programme by UN inspectors is significant in two respects. The first is that it demonstrates the potential for a weak power to deter a coalition of very powerful states. 12 Secondly, it shows how a state with an intermediate technical capability can develop WMD in a relatively short period of time - Iraq's entire BW programme was the result of a process of research, development and production undertaken in just five years. Taken together, they illustrate the "equaliser" effect of technology proliferation, an approach readily available to other states and also to sub-state groups, whether acting on their own or as states' clients.
6.2 Economic Targeting by Paramilitaries
The second "pointer" to the fracturing of military power relates to the recent instances of violent sub-state actions in recent years. Many could be cited. In Britain, the Provisional IRA developed the tactic of city centre bombing, coupled with wholesale disruption of transport. In the mid-1990s five huge bombs caused nearly £2 billion of damage and killed and injured many people. In the US, the Oklahoma bomb caused mass casualties and lead to much soul-searching.
Both instances had substantial effects on the security thinking of the states concerned, although much of it was conducted privately. In 1999, a series of bombings of apartment blocks in Russia caused hundreds of deaths, were blamed on Chechen rebels and influenced the subsequent brutal Russian assaults on Chechnya later in the year.
In the context of the changing security paradigm, however, five other incidents are indicative.
6.2.1 Colombo
In 1996, the Tamil Tigers launched a suicide truck-bomb, containing around half a ton of high explosive, into Colombo's Central Bank, killing nearly 100 people and injuring 1,400. Many other key buildings were destroyed or severely damaged. While vigorously denied by the Sri Lankan government, the bombing had a considerable effect on business confidence, made worse by a further bombing of the World Trade Centre nearly two years later. 13
6.2.2 Paris
In 1994, a French airliner was hi-jacked by four members of a radical Algerian group. Their aim was reported to be to destroy the aircraft in mid-air over Paris, killing all those on board, as well as causing heavy casualties on the ground. If the plan had succeeded, the death toll could have been many hundreds. In the event, a French commando unit stormed the aircraft and all of the hi-jackers were killed.
6.2.3 Tokyo
The Tokyo subway incident in 1995 is notable as the first large-scale incident by a non-state group (the Aum Shinrikyo sect) employing chemical weapons intending to cause mass casualties. The sect released sarin nerve gas at numerous points on the Tokyo subway, affecting a distance of more than eight miles. Twelve people died and 5,500 were made ill, some of them seriously. As well as the terrible human costs, the effect on business confidence would have been extreme had the nerve gas worked as intended.
The attack, though, was bungled - the nerve agent was impure, its dispersal inefficient and the ventilation system of the subway seems to have diluted the gas far more rapidly than anticipated. Police investigations later revealed that the sect was also working on other potential weapons of mass destruction, including anthrax.
6.2.4 Dhahran
In 1996, a truck bomb was detonated outside a building housing US troops in Dhahran. The devastation was considerable and there were over 500 casualties, including 19 US soldiers killed.
As a result, the Dhahran base was shut down and many of the forces were moved to a new base at a secure and remote site, constructed at a cost of $500 million. US forces, ostensibly in Saudi Arabia to protect that country were themselves under such threat from paramilitaries that they were virtually in a state of siege. 14
6.2.5 New York
Perhaps the most revealing incident of current trends was the attack on the New York World Trade Centre, a building complex usually occupied by 50,000. In 1993, a large van bomb of some 1.5 tons of explosive, detonated in an underground car park. The bomb comprised home-manufactured explosive and is believed to have been surrounded by hydrogen gas cylinders to amplify the explosion by creating a fuel-air effect. This is a process that had been employed in the bombing of a barracks in Beirut in October 1983 when 241 US Marines were killed.
The bomb failed to collapse either the North Tower or the hotel, but damage was severe - six people were killed and over 1,000 injured. It was later concluded that a catastrophic failure of either the hotel or the North Tower had been avoided, in part because the bomb was incorrectly positioned and insufficiently powerful, but primarily because the complex had been built to standards in excess of those required at the time of construction.
If the bomb had succeeded in its purpose, the North Tower would have collapsed on to the Vista Hotel and the South Tower and casualties could have been around 30,000 killed. A number of people, widely described as Islamic fundamentalists acting from broadly anti-US motives, were later convicted, although there were also unconfirmed reports of an Iraqi connection.
The Tamil Tiger attack in Colombo succeeded in its aim but its significance was not widely recognised, and the impact of the Dharhan bomb was mainly within the US military. The Tokyo, Paris and New York incidents all failed to achieve their aims. This "run of luck" is hugely welcome, but may have served to obscure a trend.
In the coming decades, counter-state and counter-society abilities are likely to become progressively more available to radical groups. In part, this will be due to acquired knowledge and experience of economic targeting using conventional forms of destruction. In part, it will be due to the availability of BW and CW and possibly crude radiological and nuclear devices. Overall, these trends suggest that seemingly invulnerable states, however powerful and wealthy, have innate weaknesses that can be readily exploited in an era of asymmetric warfare.
6.3 Business - and Thinking - As Usual
Whilst some military analysts are aware of these trends and, for the most part, are seriously worried, many others are failing to recognise what is happening, and have yet to move beyond a reliance on military superiority.
A graphic illustration of this was the US's Global 95 Wargame in which a Gulf crisis escalated and a resurgent Iraq used BW to devastating effect against US forces and Saudi civilians. The US responded with a nuclear attack on Baghdad, ending the war. Indeed, it had virtually no other response options, according to a Joint Staff official.
But, he added, unless the US was willing to take the difficult moral step of destroying a city, it was unclear whether even nuclear weapons would provide a deterrent. On the other hand, if it did do so, "no country would use those weapons for the next 100 years," he concluded. 15
Would that really have been the result of such an action? No doubt, the nuclear bombing of Baghdad would have ended the war, and perhaps destroyed the Iraqi leadership, but the destruction of an historic Arab city, and the first use of nuclear weapons since 1945, would surely have occasioned retaliation directly against the US.
The most probable pattern would have been the acquisition by paramilitary groups of appropriate WMD for use against targets in the US. In 1995, the Pentagon conducted a planning exercise that posited one such attack. In this scenario, a terrorist group introduced anthrax into the ventilation system of the New York Stock Exchange, aiming to infect those who run the world's largest stock exchange.
Many forms of retaliation would be possible, including radiological, nerve gas or anthrax attacks on centres of population, commerce or government. They might occur many months or even years after the war. The idea of "scaring off" states or paramilitaries, as suggested by the commentator on the Global 95 Wargame, is an extreme example of "liddism", a dangerous approach that indicates a potentially fatal misunderstanding of the ways of the post-Cold War world.
7. Shifting the Paradigm
This analysis so far argues three points.
· The factors most likely to influence the development of conflict in the coming decades are the socio-economic divide, environmental constraints and the spread of military technologies, not least WMD.
· This is likely to lead to conflicts involving anti-elite action from within the marginalised majority, rapidly increasing migratory pressures and conflict concerning environmental factors, especially strategic resources, all within the context of many Southern states increasingly unwilling to accept a Western hegemony.
· The western perception that the status quo can be maintained, if need be by military means, is unsustainable, given the vulnerabilities of advanced wealthy states to paramilitary action and asymmetric warfare.
It follows that it is necessary to develop a new paradigm around the policies likely to enhance peace and limit conflict. Such a paradigm should place far more emphasis on a process of common global security predicated on action to be taken to reverse the socio-economic polarisation, enhance sustainable economic development and control processes of proliferation and militarisation.
The aim of the final two sections of this paper is to provide a brief sketch of the broad features of such an approach and how they might be supported by the European Union (EU) and its member states.
At the global level, the general policy shifts are relatively straightforward. Reversing the trend towards a great wealth-poverty divide requires some key changes in Western policy. Most important of all is to introduce trade reforms that reverse several decades of obstacles to third world development. 16 Such reform has been advocated by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and other global bodies for nearly forty years, but there has been a consistent unwillingness by wealthy Northern states to accept it. Nevertheless, a re-structuring of world trade that provides economic advantage to Southern states rather than handicap is urgently required. Southern economic development could be stimulated by a comprehensive integrated commodities programme and a broad pattern of trade preferences, including invisibles (like insurance).
A second policy development would be a radical programme of debt cancellation, going far beyond the welcome but limited advances of 1999. Trade reform and debt cancellation could be linked to good governance and socially just internal development policies, though such policies must recognise that many problems in third world states stem from transnational corporations seeking cheap labour markets.
There is also a role for direct official and non-governmental assistance, especially in areas of extreme need. Even meeting the official UN target of 0.7 per cent of GNP as official development assistance would represent real progress, although much more is actually needed.
Responses to environmental constraints need to focus initially and primarily on the activities of wealthy industrialised states. The control of greenhouse gases - probably the most important single issue on the security agenda for the next half century - requires rapid progress. Beyond that, further measures towards environmentally sustainable economic activity, especially in energy conservation, use of renewable energy resources, low-impact transport and materials recycling, would be beneficial.
As the excessive environmental impact of industrial economies is curbed, a parallel process of enhancing the sustainable development in less developed countries is required. While most of the initiatives and capabilities will emanate from within such states, one of the most valuable functions of development assistance will be to aid this process.
Finally, the curbing of weapons proliferation may be dealing more with a symptom than a cause of conflict, yet it has an important role that has been badly damaged by recent reverses. 17 The strategic arms reduction process requires rejuvenation, the implementation of the CWC needs continued effort and the negotiation of the verification protocol for the BTWC is the top arms control priority for 2000. Cementing codes of conduct aiming to control and curb the trade in light weapons remain important.
In more general terms, the UN and the EU need to enhance their conflict prevention, peacekeeping and post-conflict peace-building capabilities. Within Europe, this also involves raising the relative importance of the OSCE and strengthening EU-OSCE co-opreration.
Overall, this brief review entails a radically different approach to international peace and security than that currently on offer. It advocates major changes in trade, development and environmental responses but sees these as essential features of common security - policies that are necessary in the interests of human justice but are also in the long-term interests of the current wealthier parts of humanity.
8. Policies for the EU and its members
The changes in policy being suggested represent a radical change of direction, especially for the more powerful industrialised Northern states. Yet this is likely to appear increasingly more attractive than the current paradigm of "top down" international security control as the signs of insecurity, instability and conflict grow.
Those who seek to challenge the existing paradigm come largely from the South, along with some Northern NGOs. But they can be assisted by even minor changes in policies in individual Northern countries and in interstate organisations such as the EU.
A role for the EU and its member states in promoting peace with justice in the early 21st century would have two components: changes in domestic and foreign policy that demonstrate a commitment to an equitable world order, and a programme of agenda setting in the international community. There are many potential policy initiatives that would contribute to these goals:
- enhance the recent government debt relief policies and advocate them forcefully within the EU, OECD and G8, encourage a positive attitude from the financial sector;
- develop an international trade policy designed specifically to help the poorest nations and promote it in the EU and WTO;
- increase international development budgets still further - moving progressively towards the UN target of 0.7 per cent of GNP, and direct these budgets even more towards poverty relief and sustainable self-reliance while working to encourage good governance;
- encourage and accelerate the take-up of new technologies to counter greenhouse gas emissions, invest vigorously in better energy efficiency and develop major national and EU programmes on renewable energy resources;
- ensure that issues of climate change, especially in relation to development, are kept high on the international political agenda, within the EU as well as the G8 and OECD;
- give the EU a leadership role in climate change research by instituting a high-powered programme of research into countering the effects of such change in poor countries;
- develop Europe's role in peacekeeping training, conflict prevention, conflict resolution and post-conflict peace-building to make it an acknowledged world leader in this field. Work to enhance the role of the OSCE and improve the UN's capabilities in pursuing the Agenda for Peace;
- enhance arms control policies by promoting the early conclusion of negotiations towards a verification protocol for the BTWC, re-invigorate the NPT and CTBT, encourage the START process and defend the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty more actively;
- enhance and aid the development of the EU Code on arms transfers as a basis for national policy and Anglo-American co-operation.
While there are many other potential developments, these indicate major examples of policy initiatives that would systematically demonstrate best practice and give the EU the political authority to propose numerous other international initiatives.
It has to be recognised, though, that the developing problems of international security cannot be considered specific to individual government departments or EU Directorate Generals (DGs). An international security policy demands 'joined up government' more than most.
There is an urgent need for co-ordination across departments and DGs, including an integrated capacity to think through issues that cut across current areas of government. There is certainly a need for a central strategic policy organisation focussing specifically on the looming issues of international security concern.
If, over the next five years, the EU and its member states were to embrace this new agenda it could discover a role for itself that would not only enhance its international reputation but might also prove popular, benefiting the entire European project.
9. Conclusion
Writers on international security in the 1990s were liable to moan about the complexity of the new global security environment, contrasting it with the much more simple "them and us" structure of the Cold War era. This analysis suggests that the new security agenda is hardly more complex. A deeply divided world faces environmental constraints and, unless the divisions are healed and sustainable development is at the core of that process, we face a deeply unstable and potentially conflict-ridden world in the early decades of this century.
There are two main obstacles to facing up to this challenge. The first, and by far the most substantial, is that the necessary response will involve considerable limits being placed on the wealth and power of the elite global minority, requiring radical economic and political changes that are substantially greater than anything experienced in the last half century. The second is that most Western thinking and writing on international security is deeply ethnocentric and conservative. With few exceptions it seems incapable of rising above a narrow concern with Western elite security and well-being, yet this paradigm shift has to take place if the new thinking on security is to be embraced and developed.
We are left with a challenge that may seem insuperable, yet there are many early signs of a change in thinking. A number of leading Cold War figures now accept that it was a highly dangerous era, and some now advocate policies of nuclear disarmament that in a previous era would have been regarded as wildly radical.
A substantial public campaign across many Western countries on the debt crisis has begun to translate into government action. Issues of fair trade, particularly around the much-criticised policies of the WTO, are coming to the fore, and crude attempts by some multinationals to dominate the development of genetically modified crops have been met with unexpected, yet highly effective, opposition. There is an increasingly effective environmental lobby in many countries of the North, and a developing recognition in the South, of the essential need for sustainable development. These are, in themselves, fairly small signs, but, taken together, they indicate a growing awareness of some of the key global issues now emerging.
The early decades of the 21st Century could be an era in which deep divisions in the world community lead to instability and violence that will transcend boundaries and affect rich and poor alike. They could also be an era in which major efforts are made that succeed in developing a socially just and environmentally sustainable world order.
Endnotes
Note 1: For data on wars and casualties of war, see successive editions of Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military Expenditure, especially 1996 edition, World Priorities Inc., Washington, DC.Back.
Note 2: A recent re-assessment of the Cold War, including information on crises and nuclear accidents, is: Alan P. Dobson (Ed), Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Cold War, Ashgate Press, Aldershot, 1999. Back.
Note 3: Information concerning the NATO Operation Able Archer was first reported by: Gordon Brook-Shepherd, "When the World Almost Went to War", Sunday Telegraph, 16 October 1988. Back.
Note 4: Statement by James Woolsey at Senate Hearings, Washington DC, February 1993. Back.
Note 5: Roger W Barnett, "Regional Conflict: Requires Naval Forces", Proceedings of the US Naval Institute, June 1992, pp. 28-33. Back.
Note 6: Edwin Brooks, "The Implications of Ecological Limits to Growth in Terms of Expectations and Aspirations in Developed and Less Developed Countries", chapter in Human Ecology and World Development, Anthony Vann and Paul Rogers (editors), Plenum Press, London and New York, 1974. Back.
Note 7: Figures from: Bimal Ghosh, "Glaring Inequality is Growing Between and Inside Countries", International Herald Tribune, 11 December 1996 Back.
Note 8: John Cavanagh, "Globalization: Fine for Some and Bad for Many, International Herald Tribune, 24 January 1997. Back.
Note 9: Reported in: Susan Litherland, "North-South: Global Security Elbows Out Development", Inter Press Service International News, London, 2 December 1993. Back.
Note 11: David Rind, "Drying Out the Tropics", New Scientist, 6 May 1995. Back.
Note 12: The US intelligence community was aware of the major features of the Iraqi BW programme, including the assessment that the Iraqis were likely to use WMD if the survival of the regime was threatened. The US-led coalition may have stopped the war at Basra because of the fear of casualties, or the need to maintain the integrity of Iraq, or because of the Iraqi BW deterrent. Whatever the reason, or reasons, the deterrent's presence gave the regime a final form of protection. Back.
Note 13: Details of the Colombo, Paris, Tokyo and new York incidents, and an analysis of economic targeting by paramilitary groups is in: Paul Rogers, "Economic Targeting and Provisional IRA Strategy", Studies in Political Violence, 96.1, University of Bradford, 1996. Back.
Note 14: Steven Lee Meyers, "In the Arabian Desert, a Home Secure Home for GIs", International Herald Tribune, 30 December 1997. Back.
Note 15: Theresa Hitchens, "Wargame Finds US Falls Short in Biowar", Defense News, 28 August 1995. Back.
Note 16: For a detailed account of attempts to re-balance the North-South trading relationship, see: Nassau Adams, Worlds Apart, Zed Press, 1999. See also: Belinda Coote, The Trade Trap, Oxfam Publications, 1996. Back.
Note 17: Not least the US Senate's CTBT vote and the deterioration in East-West relations. Back.
