Category: Article

In her seminal 1987 text, Bananas, Beaches and Bases, Cynthia Enloe directs the reader’s attention to the realm of international politics and asks the question “where are the women?”. One might reasonably be expected to answer – they are everywhere. From the political economy, in which women comprise 80% of the global factory workforce and unpaid female domestic labour is estimated to contribute up to 35% of global

GDP, to modern warfare, a theatre wherein the majority of victims are women, gender is centrally implicated in the machinations of the international system. The emergence of critical theory and the encroachment of feminist scholarship into the mainstream International Relations (IR) discourse, along with the ratification of resolution 1325 by the United Nations Security Council in 2000, have gone some way toward highlighting the position of women within the international security framework. And yet, the theoretical perspectives which dominate security studies, specifically realism and neo-realism, have been accused of approaching the study of IR “through a male eye and apprehended by a male sensibility”, neglecting the gender variable. Indeed, out of five thousand articles in the top five security journals, fewer than forty addressed gender issues as an independent theme.

It is the opinion of the author that traditional approaches to security have underestimated, or ignored the role played by gender in international relations. As a result, the existence of gender based hierarchies has been obscured, marginalising the unique security concerns of women.

The narrative will be divided into two constituent parts. Firstly, it will examine the gendered dimensions of states and the state system relating this to the exclusion of women from the domestic and international security discourse. Section two will look at the way in which this impacts on women’s experience of security and insecurity, with reference in particular to violence and conflict.

Read the full article here.

Image source: jrseles

Governments around the world must be prepared for mass migrations caused by rising global temperatures or face the possibility of calamitous results, say University of Florida scientists on a research team reporting in the Oct. 28 edition of Science.

If global temperatures increase by only a few of degrees by 2100, as predicted by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, people around the world will be forced to migrate. But transplanting populations from one location to another is a complicated proposition that has left millions of people impoverished in recent years. The researchers say that a word of caution is in order and that governments should take care to understand the ramifications of forced migration.

A consortium of 12 scientists from around the world, including two UF researchers, gathered last year at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center to review 50 years of research related to population resettlement following natural disasters or the installation of infrastructure development projects such as dams and pipelines. The group determined that resettlement efforts in the past have left communities in ruin, and that policy makers need to use lessons from the past to protect people who are forced to relocate because of climate change.

“The effects of climate change are likely to be experienced by as many people as disasters,” UF anthropologist Anthony Oliver-Smith said. “More people than ever may be moving in response to intense storms, increased flooding and drought that makes living untenable in their current location.”

Article Source: University of Florida. “Governments must plan for migration in response to climate change, researchers say.” ScienceDaily, 27 Oct. 2011. Web. 1 Nov. 2011.

“Sometimes the problem is simply a lack of regard for the people ostensibly in the way of progress,” said Oliver-Smith, an emeritus professor who has researched issues surrounding forced migration for more than 30 years. But resettlements frequently fail because the complexity of the task is underestimated. “Transplanting a population and its culture from one location to another is a complex process — as complicated as brain surgery,” he said.

“It’s going to be a matter of planning ahead now,” said Burt Singer, a courtesy faculty member at the UF Emerging Pathogens Institute who worked with the research group. He too has studied issues related to population resettlement for decades.

Singer said that regulatory efforts promoted by the International Finance Corporation, the corporate lending arm of the World Bank, are helping to ensure the well-being of resettled communities in some cases. But as more people are relocated — especially very poor people with no resources — financing resettlement operations in the wake of a changing climate could become a real challenge.

Planning and paying for resettlement is only part of the challenge, Oliver-Smith said. “You need informed, capable decision makers to carry out these plans,” he said. A lack of training and information can derail the best-laid plans. He said the World Bank increasingly turns to anthropologists to help them evaluate projects and outcomes of resettlement.

“It is a moral imperative,” Oliver-Smith said. Also, a simple cost-benefit analysis shows that doing resettlement poorly adds to costs in the future. Wasted resources and the costs of malnutrition, declining health, infant and elder mortality, and the destruction of families and social networks should be included in the total cost of a failed resettlement, he said.

Oliver-Smith said the cautionary tales of past failures yield valuable lessons for future policy makers, namely because they point out many of the potential pitfalls than can beset resettlement projects. But they also underscore the fact that there is a heavy price paid by resettled people, even in the best-case scenarios.

In the coming years, he said, many projects such as hydroelectric dams and biofuel plantations will be proposed in the name of climate change, but moving people to accommodate these projects may not be the simple solution that policy makers sometimes assume.

A clear-eyed review of the true costs of forced migration could alert governments to the complexities and risks of resettlement.

“If brain surgeons had the sort of success rate that we have had with resettling populations, very few people would opt for brain surgery,” he said.

Article Source: University of Florida. “Governments must plan for migration in response to climate change, researchers say.” ScienceDaily, 27 Oct. 2011. Web. 1 Nov. 2011.

In a small village along the waters of Lake Turkana in northwestern Kenya, two fishermen were murdered last month as they were putting out their nets.

A cascade of retaliatory violence between the Kenyan Turkana and Ethiopian Daasanach (sometimes called Merille) has led to the deaths of at least four Ethiopians and 20 Kenyans ethnic groups, though some Kenyan government officials place the toll as high as 69, according to the Kenya-based Daily Nation. Though the fighting has been localized, it has put pressure on both nations to deal with strife between nomadic groups who are competing for diminishing resources.

Both groups are traditionally pastoral nomads living within the Elemi Triangle—a once disputed area between Kenya, Sudan, and Ethiopia—which has dry pastureland, historically used by both the Turkana and the Daasanach, as well as the Didinga, Toposa, and Inyangatom (also called the Dong’iro) communities.

The Turkana live in northwestern Kenya, making up 2.5 percent of the national population, or close to a million people, according to the 2009 Kenyan census. The Daasanach primarily reside in southern Ethiopia and make up less than 1 percent of the national population, or around 50,000. More recently, the Daasanach have lost significant portions of their lands and animals—in part due to climate change—and have become more agropastoral in nature.

Citing Joseph Nanok, Kenya’s forestry assistant minister, the Daily Nation reported that the traditional border between the Turkana and Daasanach people was located at the Omo River Delta, which flows into Kenya’s Lake Turkana from Ethiopia. This border, however, has been moving south due to receding waters.

According to The Christian Science Monitor, the Daasanach have begun increasingly cultivating the land and fishing the waters of the River Omo-Lake Turkana Delta, where they compete with the Kenyan Turkana people for both land and water resources.

Thus, not surprisingly, the recent attacks coincide with the settlement of an estimated 900 armed militia and 2,500 Ethiopian civilians on Kenyan territory around Lake Turkana. The Kenyan government has made claims that these illegal immigrants have taken control of 10 Kenyan villages and has vowed to send them back to Ethiopia, according to the Daily Nation.

Though this appears to be a territorial dispute, it can be, at least partially, attributed to the sharing of stressed water resources.

“Water exacerbates current tensions,” Aaron Wolf—a leading researcher on global water conflict and resolution and a professor at Oregon State University—told Circle of Blue. “It is very hard to separate a water conflict from a land conflict from an economic conflict, because water is tied to everything we do.”

Wolf’s research team conducted a five-year study about the causes of water conflicts and concluded that there are two major factors that play a role:

• The rate of change within a water basin. Scarcity, economic growth, and population growth can all affect the availability of water resources.
• The institutional capacity of the region; what Wolf calls “the human systems built to mitigate the change.”

It is also important to define a conflict, since people’s interests frequently conflict, while violence is much more rare, Wolf added.

“If someone builds a dam and negotiates with all of the people affected, there probably won’t be a conflict,” Wolf said. “Conflict occurs if there is sudden, rapid change [to the water resource] and an absence of institutional capacity…As you drop in scale, the likelihood of violence increases. Whereas two countries will rarely go to war over water, you see tribal violence quite often, or two farmers who will shoot at each other.”

However, Wolf stressed that, although water can be a source for tension, it can also be the catalyst for creative, peaceful solutions.

“Water brings focus on settings that are stressful, but that same focus is used to create treaties and negotiations—even between people who don’t like each other very much,” he said. “There is a rich history of stakeholders coming together. When countries do anything about water, cooperation outnumbers conflict two to one.”

For more information on water conflicts across the globe, see the Pacific Institute’s Water Conflict Chronology database.

Image source: Aocrane

Article source: Circle of Blue

The link between volatility in financial markets and volatility in energy prices is poorly understood. Nevertheless, it is possible to understand certain aspects of the relationship between the two. First, we know that as cheap and easy access to conventional fossil fuel supplies diminishes due to rapidly rising demand in the majority world, the process of extracting resources from remaining reserves (or ‘provinces’) is prone to what the Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security has called ‘peaky behaviour’. The so-called peaky behaviour of lesser-known provinces is erratic and naturally less predictable than the usual behaviour of known provinces. This matters a lot in the case of oil extraction, as price stability in oil markets is predicated on understanding and making informed guesses about the rate at which oil can be brought to market.

As access to predictable supply declines and new sources are sought offshore in the deep seas, among Arctic ice or onshore in untapped kerogen rock, the ability of retailers and speculators to understand the oil market is hindered by an added layer of uncertainty. Experimenting with new methods of extracting oil lacks a historical track record, which normally provides a more stable framework for making sound decisions about supply and demand management – decisions which oil companies, traders and regulators are usually adept at making. Industry professionals must now cope with attempts to acquire a more nuanced understanding of the impact which erratic rates of extraction can have on oil markets. They must also cope indirectly with volatility in consumer demand for oil-based products.

Financing an oil shock?
Volatility in financial markets, due to unsustainable lending practices and the rise in use of exotic trading instruments, affects consumer demand for everyday products, particularly in oil-importing nations such as the United States and Britain. Because oil is the lifeblood of the modern industrial economy on which all businesses in the supply chain depend, when oil prices increase, so too do the prices of mainstay consumer goods. In the West, we are dependent on our thriving oil-driven economies, where the transport of goods and services are very closely linked to oil prices. So when global oil prices rise or fall, foreign and domestic businesses transfer the added costs downstream to consumers who feel the impact. Or, in cases where the added expense cannot be borne by consumers, businesses may either attempt to reduce wages or absorb the price shocks internally, which can lead to downsizing and layoffs. When the prices of consumer goods increase, we also use more of our income to pay for oil-derived products, and as a result our spending on other goods and services declines. This means that demand for many types of non-essential goods and services drops, including holiday travel, dining out, new cars, computers and more expensive homes. These impacts have a compound effect on prospects for a speedy economic recovery, making it more difficult for growth to be restored post-crisis and threatening longer-term stability.

Betting on volatility
It may be a coincidence that at the height of the most recent stock market crash in July 2008, oil prices skyrocketed to $147 dollars per barrel. However, it wouldn’t seem so on the basis of an article in the Guardian published one month earlier, in which billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros , predicted that the price of oil had become a bubble that could trigger a stock market crash. On 3 June, Soros informed the US Senate commerce committee that oil had been ‘pushed to its $135 a barrel mark’ – at that time a record high – by a ‘new wave of speculators’. Soros claimed that the doubling in the price of oil from 2006-08 was partly due to investment institutions, such as pension funds, channelling money into indexes that link to the cost of crude. Soros proceeded to warn the committee that, “there could be very serious consequences for global stock markets if the institutions suddenly began betting on a fall in the oil price.” Finally, he compared the speculative pressures being forced by institutional investors on oil prices in 2008 with the stock market crash of 1987, which was partly caused by a sudden rush of money into portfolio insurance – which institutions used to hedge themselves against a fall in share prices. According to Soros, institutional investors have been engaged in propping up one side of the market so as to give them sufficient weight to unbalance it if so decided. “If the trend were reversed and the institutions as a group headed for the exit as they did in 1987 there would be a crash”, he said.

A more recent example of energy market manipulation on a regional scale is that of Barclays’ involvement in manipulating California power markets. The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has recently proposed a total $470 million fine on Barclays for its actions – the largest ever by the agency – revealed partly on the basis of communications by four traders at Barclays’ West Coast power desk. The trading activity allegedly took place over two years from late 2006, in which the team exchanged messages explaining how they would ‘crap on’ prices in one market in order to profit in another. The traders stand accused of having wilfully manipulated energy prices, i.e. ‘driving up or down physical power prices to make money with their financial swap positions’. Their actions, if proven true, may have resulted in losses for other traders amounting to $139 million, netting Barclays gains upwards of $34.9 million.

Unsustainable finance and the threat to energy security?
The critical importance of predictable access to reliable energy supplies to meet electricity and fuel demand have been well documented in previous articles published by SustainableSecurity.org contributors. Economic recession, while potentially offsetting oil demand, could stand to make diminishing supplies last longer, buying time for other alternative clean energy sources to comprise a wider portion of overall generation. But economic recession also has another more subtle impact on energy production – it rattles investor confidence in innovative technologies that might otherwise stand to make oil-dependent economies more energy secure. Currently, a hot debate is raging in the UK and US on the future of conventional oil and gas, as well as nuclear energy, in curbing global demand for fossil fuels. This added uncertainty deters renewable energy investments while forecasts for economic recovery remain dismal. General volatility in financial markets, fuelled by irresponsible lending and trading practices, has an effect on oil prices as well, which further stifles economic growth. While the complexity of global markets demands wider investigation into the causes and effects of finance in relation to oil prices, evidence of market manipulation is unsettling. A sustainable and secure future, where a wider energy mix has been developed to meet rising demand, will no doubt require a more sustainable financial system which can service the real needs of citizens.

Phillip Bruner is Founder of the Green Investment Forum and a guest lecturer in global political economy at the University of Edinburgh
 

Image source: Heatingoil

Amongst the online flurry of activity and debate over the Invisible Children video campaign to make the Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony ‘famous’ in 2012, Al Jazeera have published an interesting op-ed piece on the dangers of the Kony 2012 campaign adding to the growing militarisation of Uganda.

It is written by Adam Branch who is a senior research fellow at the Makerere Institute of Social Research, Uganda, and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University. Branch argues that the campaign is “not about Uganda, but about America. Uganda is largely just the stage for a debate over the meaning of political activism in the US today.” While this may be true, in itself it is not necessarily a reason be concerned about the effect of the viral video and associated campaign. In principle, positive change can still come about from a social movement regardless of its aims and deep motives (however unlikely this is). The problem that Branch identifies with Kony 2012 is that it is “being used by those in the US government who seek to militarise Africa, to send more and more weapons and military aid, and to bolster the power of states who are US allies.” He argues that “The hunt for Joseph Kony is the perfect excuse for this strategy – how often does the US government find millions of young Americans pleading that they intervene militarily in a place rich in oil and other resources? The US government would be pursuing this militarisation with or without Invisible Children – Kony 2012 just makes it a little easier.”

While all the other issues that have been raised about the campaign (eg. its lack of effect ‘on the ground’ in addressing the reasons and drivers of conflict in Uganda, the hypocrisy of a US citizen-led campaign to bring someone to justice at the International Criminal Court when the US itself still refuses to ratify the Rome Statute etc.) are no doubt important, perhaps it is the issue of militarisation that is least understood but most dangerous over the long-term.

The article suggests a number of ways that people can more effectively engage on this issue so that “in our desire to ameliorate suffering, we must not be complicit in making it worse.”

 

The full article is available here

Image source: debobhappy

 

There were many positives in Barrack Obama’s speech to the United Nations on the 24th September. The US President outlined the importance of the UN as an institution and more importantly its function as a forum through which the nations of the world can collectively address shared problems. He reaffirmed America’s commitment to an “era of engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect” and to seeking “the goal of a world without nuclear weapons”.

However… 

As Joshua Keating points out on his Foreign Policy blog, “it seems telling that President Obama ended his first major address on climate change not with a stirring call to action, but by urging pragmatism and compromise”. Obama’s assertion that “if we are flexible and pragmatic; if we can resolve to work tirelessly in common effort, then we will achieve our common purpose” will certainly ring alarm bells regarding the nature of a US climate bill which may not be comprehensive enough to inspire the required outcome at Copenhagen. For although Obama is correct that nations must address problems collectively, he is equally correct in highlighting the existence of, ” hope that real change is possible and the hope that America will be a leader in bringing about such change.”

The following article from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars highlights the uncertainty attached to predicting the effects of climate change. Focusing on the phenomena of glacial lakes in Nepal and Peru, it begins to explore the extreme complexity that characterises the relationship between climate change and other drivers of instability, as well as what is required to manage the risk with the help of local communities.

The article is frank in acknowledging that there is still much that we do not know about glacial lakes and outburst flooding, a knowledge gap that has discouraged risk management; but it concludes that uncertainty is no reason not to take sensible action now, because perfect information could well arrive too late.

 

Glacial Lake Outburst Floods: “The Threat from Above” – Lessons from Peru to Nepal

By Kate Diamond

“We have never experienced so many potentially dangerous lakes in such a short period of time,” said Alton Byers of The Mountain Institute during a roundtable discussion on glacial melt, glacial lakes, and downstream consequences at the Wilson Center on October 26. “There have always been glacial lake outburst floods,” said Byers. What has changed is how quickly these lakes now grow. “Suddenly, you wake up in the morning, and now there are hundreds and hundreds of these lakes above you – the threat from above,” he said.

Nepal’s Fastest Growing Glacial Lake

The Imja Glacier in Nepal has been receding since the 1960s which has made Imja Lake the fastest growing lake in the country, if not the entire Hindu Kush Himalayas, said Byers in a short film produced by The Mountain Institute (TMI) about the group’s recent expedition to the region (watch below). The lake is now “more than a square kilometer in size, has more than 35 million cubic meters of water, and continues to grow at an alarming 35 meters per year,” he said.

The lake’s terminal moraine – the buildup of glacial debris that acts as a retaining wall holding the lake waters back – is all that keeps Imja from flooding the valley below, home to a number of Sherpa communities and the starting point for many climbers scaling Mount Everest.

When these moraines break, the result is a glacial lake outburst flood (or GLOF). And “these aren’t floods in the normal sense,” said Campbell. “These are floods that carry boulders the size of houses,” because of all the debris that gets lodged in glaciers.

Critical Need for Research

It is tempting to say that what is happening at Imja Lake is representative of the thousands of glacial lakes believed to exist throughout the Himalayas, but the fact is that “at this point in time, we don’t really know that much about these lakes,” or how to control them, said Byers.

Glacial melting “is an extraordinarily complicated story,” said ClimateWire’s Lisa Friedman, who joined the Imja expedition for part of the trip. There is no “clear understanding yet of how fast glaciers are melting, of where they’re melting, of whether greenhouse gases or black carbon soot is primarily responsible.”

There is considerable disagreement over how many glacial lakes are even in the Himalayas, TMI Executive Director Andrew Taber added, simply because of how prohibitively remote their locations often are. Byers explained that it can take as many as 10 days, plus semi-technical climbing, to reach these places, and even then some glaciers still aren’t accessible. The Siachen Glacier, for instance, has the distinction of being the world’s highest battleground (India and Pakistan have had troops stationed on the glacier since 1984).

And yet understanding what is happening not just at Imja, but throughout the Himalayas, has continental implications. Himalayan glaciers feed nine of Asia’s largest rivers: the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Syr Darya, and Amu Darya. Those rivers, in turn, feed some of Asia’s largest population centers. The sheer number of people who depend on these rivers mean that even minor changes in glaciers’ sizes can have exponentially huge impacts downstream.

Adapting Lessons Learned from Peru

The Mountain Institute’s expedition was aimed at bringing lessons learned about managing glacial change from Peru to Nepal. Peru is home to 70 percent of the world’s tropical glaciers, but those glaciers are melting so quickly that some have predicted within 15 years, they could disappear entirely.

Peru has been working to mitigate the threat of glacial melt since 1941, when a GLOF killed thousands and devastated the capital of Ancash, said César Portocarrero of the Peruvian National Water Authority (also a member of the expedition to Imja). At first, risk management meant simply diverting water from glacial lakes to lower the risk of GLOFs. Over time, though, and with community input, that strategy has expanded to include more comprehensive resource management, so that water being diverted from lakes can be captured and put to use downstream.

Just as Peru’s mitigation work is a reflection of local needs, finding a long-term solution for Imja Lake will depend on local involvement. “When you think about science, and when you think about change, there’s something to be said for more demand driven approaches,” Taber said. “Working with local people…is more likely to lead to solutions and answers that will actually be picked up.”

And yet, Byers said, local people have often been marginalized in research on glacial melt in the Himalayas. “There’s been 30 years of research on this and other lakes and yet no researcher has ever involved them in their research, and they had no idea what the results were,” he said. The TMI expedition made a point of incorporating local residents throughout the process.

Acting in Spite of Uncertainty

Portocarrero said that convincing people of the need for risk management can be difficult. “Around the world, it seems that people don’t want to work in risk management because we don’t have tangible results,” said Portocarrero. And when risk is mired in uncertainty – as it is in the Himalayas – getting people to invest in risk management becomes even harder.

Portocarrero warned it might take a decade or more for people downstream to realize Imja and other glacial lakes pose a big enough danger and galvanize into action. “But the big question is,” he added, “are we going to wait 10 years to see the real danger?”

Sherri Goodman, who led the CNA Military Advisory Board during its 2007 report on national security and climate change, said action can’t wait for perfect information.

“Climate change is a threat multiplier for instability in fragile regions of the world,” said Goodman. Considering those stakes, uncertainty “can’t stop you from making smart decisions based on today’s information for adaptation.”

Article Source: New Security Beat

Image Source: Oxfam International

Are countries poor because they are violent or violent because they are poor?

Yesterday it was Afghanistan and Congo. Today it is Côte d’Ivoire and Libya. Violence, it seems, is always with us, like poverty. And that might seem all there is to be said: violence is bad, it is worse in poor countries and it makes them poorer.

But this year’s World Development Report, the flagship publication of the World Bank, suggests there is a lot more to say. Violence, the authors argue, is not just one cause of poverty among many: it is becoming the primary cause. Countries that are prey to violence are often trapped in it. Those that are not are escaping poverty. This has profound implications both for poor countries trying to pull themselves together and for rich ones trying to help.

Many think that development is mainly hampered by what is known as a “poverty trap”. Farmers do not buy fertiliser even though they know it will produce a better harvest. If there is no road, they reason, their bumper crop will just rot in the field. The way out of such a trap is to build a road. And if poor countries cannot build it themselves, rich donors should step in.

Yet the World Development Report suggests that the main constraint on development these days may not be a poverty trap but a violence trap. Peaceful countries are managing to escape poverty—which is becoming concentrated in countries riven by civil war, ethnic conflict and organised crime. Violence and bad government prevent them from escaping the trap.

Read the full article here.

Image source: B.R.Q.

Australia has recently begun to remilitarize in contrast to global trends of cuts in spending. As geopolitics shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the rise of China dominates concerns over the balance of global power, Australian investment in the military – and the navy in particular – shows a change in attitude towards security in the region.  However, as the following article from Foreign Policy in Focus demonstrates, China has not reacted positively to the change in gear in military development nor to Australian intentions to reopen uranium sales to India. Moreover, a 2009 White Paper refers to potential Australian aspirations “…to have greater strategic influence beyond our immediate neighborhood”. While an escalation of regional tensions is not inevitable, cooperation in the western Pacific region may be under threat.

 

Derek Bolton, 7 December 2011

In the realm of geopolitics, Australia has often been the overlooked continent – a benign haven for rowdy cricket fans and sunburned tourists resting safely under a U.S. security umbrella.

However, recent transformations in the international system, notably the rise of China and an economic slump in the West, are rapidly ushering in a new age in Australian foreign policy. Slowly the sleeping continent has awoken to the din of machinery in uranium mines, shipbuilders in dry docks, and the arrival of a new contingent of U.S. Marines – the latter only the most recent indication of a re-posturing of the country’s foreign policy against perceived Chinese expansionism.

Force 2030

In 2009, Australia’s Ministry of Defense issued a White Paper entitled “Defending Australia in the Asia-Pacific Century: Force 2030,” which outlines an aggressive plan for Australian military expansion. Although economic woes have induced talk of military cutbacks in the United States and much of Western Europe, Australia’s own initiatives have run counter to this trend. “The 2009 White Paper was developed in the midst of a global recession,” notes the document’s preface. “The Government has demonstrated the premium it puts on our national security by not allowing the financial impact of the global recession on its budget to affect its commitment to our Defense needs.” Hinting at an expansionist current, it adds, “The more Australia aspires to have greater strategic influence beyond our immediate neighborhood…the greater level of spending on defense we need to be prepared to undertake.”

The White Paper says that the government will introduce a “comprehensive set of reforms that will fundamentally overhaul the entire Defense enterprise, producing efficiency and creating savings of about 20 billion.” However, reforms should in no way be interpreted as cuts — a sentiment reinforced by the planned expansion of Australian defense capabilities, with a particular emphasis on naval warfare.

Indeed, the document promises “a significant focus on enhancing our maritime capabilities. By the mid-2030s, we will have a heavier and more potent maritime force.” This will include 12 new submarines, three destroyers equipped with SM-6 long-range anti-aircraft missiles, eight new frigates, and Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) amphibious ships.

China

Australia has done little to hide the motivations behind this current mobilization. Outlining the rationale behind the formation of the White Paper, the authors write, “Changes in the distribution of global power have become obvious in the past decades. China’s rise in economic, political and military terms has become more evident. Pronounced military modernization in the Asia-Pacific region is having significant implications for our strategic outlook.”

They add, “China is likely to be able to continue to afford its foreshadowed core military modernizations. Over the long term, this could affect the strategic reach and global postures of the major powers. Reflecting on the possibility of U.S. military cutbacks, the report assesses that “Any future that might see a potential contraction of US strategic presence in the Asia-Pacific region, with a requirement for its allies and friends to do more in their own regions, would adversely affect Australian interests, regional stability and global security.”

Given Australia’s qualms over Chinese expansion in the region and fear of possible abandonment by the United States, the recent deployment of U.S. forces to the continent should come as little surprise, for it addresses concerns dating back to 2009.

Alliances 2030

Australia has similarly undertaken new initiatives on the diplomatic front with equal fervor. Possibly the most significant move has been Australia’s outreach to India, a longtime regional rival of China. The recent announcement by Prime Minister Julia Gillard that she will reopen uranium sales to India is a prime example, part of the new “trilateral security pact” that has been in the works between Australia, India, and the United States.

Although Chinese diplomats have remained cool toward the security pact, elements within the People’s Liberation Army have voiced their strong opposition to the Australian moves. General Geng voiced grave concern in response to the pact, noting, “This is not in keeping with the tide of the era of peace, development and cooperation and does not help to enhance mutual trust and cooperation between countries in the region, and could ultimately harm the common interests of all concerned.” Geng went on to comment that the notion of U.S. and Australian officials seeking to advance “integrated air and sea combat” amounted to “trumpeting confrontation and sacrificing others’ security for the sake of one’s own security.” Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has responded in the face of such condemnation, “We are not going to have our national security policy dictated by any other external power. That’s a sovereign matter for Australia.”

So far Sino-Australian exchanges have remained strictly verbal, and not all signs point to confrontation. “Exercise Co-operation Spirit,” a recent joint Chinese-Australian military exercise focused on earthquake disaster response, shows that the two countries have remained generally cordial despite increasing tensions. However, given renewed U.S. initiatives in East Asia in conjunction with Australia’s apparent ambitions to curb Chinese expansion, such joint cooperation may be short-lived.
 

Article Source: Foreign Policy in Focus

Image Source: Australian Defence Force

 After decades on the periphery, climate change has made its way onto the national security stage. Yet, while the worlds of science, policy, and defense are awakening to the threats of rising sea levels, stronger storms, and record temperatures, debate continues over the means and extent of adaptation and mitigation programs. In a world of possibilities, how to decide which paddle to use to navigate uncertain waters?

A report from E3G titled, Degrees of Risk: Defining a Risk Management Framework for Climate Security, contends that a more rigorous risk management approach is needed to deal with the security implications of climate change, and cues should be taken from the risk management approach of the national security community. Risk management, while not a “panacea” for divisive climate change politics, “provides a way to frame these debates around a careful consideration of all the available information.”

The report calls for a three-tier, “ABC” framework for international planning:

1) Aim to stay below 2°C (3.6°F) of warming
2) Build and budget assuming 3-4°C (5.4-7.2°F) of warming
3) Contingency plan for 5-7°C (9-12.6°F) of warming

Authors Nick Mabey, Jay Gulledge, Bernard Finel, and Katherine Silverthorne write, “Absolutes are a rarity in national security and decisions are generally a matter of managing and balancing various forms of risk.” Climate change adaptation and mitigation, they say, is no different. “There are multiple levels of uncertainty involved in addressing and planning for climate change…such as how much global temperatures will rise, what the impact of more rapid regional climate change will be, and how effective countries will be in agreeing to and implementing adaptation and emissions reduction plans?”

The security community “need[s] to go out and tell leaders that they will not be able to guarantee security in a world where we don’t control climate change, and that controlling climate change means radical changes – not just more incremental progress,” argued Mabey, the Founding Director and Chief Executive of E3G, in a video interview with ECSP in May 2009.

Preparing for the effects of climate change is certainly a daunting task given the complexity and scope of the system – the entire planet. It is therefore important to gather as much information as possible and to “look in the dark spaces” of our knowledge gap. 

But, “uncertainty per se cannot be a barrier to action,” write Mabey et al. “Uncertainty doesn’t mean we know nothing, just that we do not know precisely what the future may hold. Risk management is both an art and a science. It depends on using the best data possible, but also being aware of what we do not know and cannot know.”

Article source: The New Security Beat

Image source: Pondspider