Category: Article

The approach to the United Nations climate-change summit in Copenhagen on 7-18 December 2009 is mired in controversy as blocs of states vie with each other to determine the real agenda.  The multiple interests involved range from elite trading-networks and powerful oil-producers to small-island states in the global south. The underlying reality is a deep-seated inequality in bargaining-power in which the United States and leading European Union member-states can assemble delegations of a hundred or more specialist advisers, whereas the poorest states may have two or three diplomats with no special help. The stark injustice is reinforced by the fact that the climate dynamics of the world’s environment put the majority world most at risk.

The beginning of progress in redressing current dangers and unfairness is accurate information and sound analysis. There have great advances here since the significance of atmospheric carbon- accumulation was registered in the mid-1970s, around the time of the original study of The Limits to Growth. At that time, most analyses predicted that climate change would have its dominant impact on the temperate latitudes of north and south. In part this was because very long-term natural changes in climate (across millions of years) appeared to have had little impact on the tropics and sub-tropics. When the British land-mass was covered in ice and snow around 11,000 years ago, for example, the climate of sub-Saharan Africa was not greatly different to what it is today. The conclusion reached was that the regions likely to experience the largest climate- change impacts were also among the world’s richest – and thus would be best able to adjust.

The next generation saw improvements in climate-change modelling that by the early 1990s had overturned this thinking. There was now a recognition that the tropical and sub-tropical land- masses would indeed be greatly affected, though less by a process of warming than by major changes in world rainfall-distribution; the expectation being that more of the world’s rain would fall over the oceans and the northern and southern polar regions, and far less over the tropics and sub-tropics (see David Rind, “Drying out the tropics”, New Scientist, 6 May 1995). This “drying-out” of the tropics would – if not prevented by radical cuts in carbon-emissions – drastically reduce crop-yields. With two-thirds of the world’s people dependent on local food- production, the consequences could be disastrous.  

The sinking road

Some current analysis on climate change also predicts increasing variations in rainfall distribution, part of a damaging global asymmetry in temperature-related trends. A study by Britain’s Met Office made public on 28 September 2009 assesses several recent climate-change models in terms of the consequences of a 4ºC overall rise in temperature (using 1980 as the baseline of comparison). This may seem alarmist; but since average temperatures in 1980-2009 have already risen around 0.7ºC, and since there is a very long time-delay between cutting carbon-emissions and containing climate change, the approach is actually realistic. The projection is quite properly indicative of the world as it could look in 2055, unless there are radical cuts in carbon-emissions that go a very long way beyond current plans (see Shanta Barley, “A World 4ºC Warmer”, New Scientist, 3 October 2009).

The asymmetry of impact predicted by this recent modelling is very significant. Many parts of the world will warm relatively slowly; much of the southern ocean will become only marginally warmer; most other oceans (the Arctic excepted) will warm by 2-3ºC compared with 2009 levels. Some continental land-masses will experience a slightly below-average rise; in this category will be the southern part of south America, parts of southern India, and southeast Asia and Australia. Even so, these regions still face temperature increases of 3ºC or more, leading to dangerous shifts in climate, while the ocean-warming will intensify tropical storms and lift sea-levels.

This is serious enough, but the modelling should cause even greater concern in relation to the projected impact on other land-masses and the Arctic. Much of Amazonia, and central and north America, is expected to warm by around 10ºC on average on current trends; as will southern Africa, central and eastern Europe, much of the middle east, and central and north Asia right through to the Pacific.  The temperature increases across the Arctic could even exceed 12ºC, leading to wholesale melting of the Greenland and Canadian Arctic island icecaps and major increases in sea-levels across the world.  These are potentially catastrophic changes.

It is possible that further modelling will lead to some modification of these results, and there is no pretence that climate-change predictions made at a single point in time are immutable. But the work that has been done suggests with reasonable certainty that the continuation of present trends will carry two major consequences.

The first is that the impact of climate change will be highly variable across the world. Its effect on land-masses will be massive, on the oceans (apart from the Arctic) slightly less so. The most worrying in ecological terms among all the expected outcomes would be the  destruction of the Amazonian rainforest, a process that would accelerate the existing impacts of human activity. 

The second is that many of the poorest regions of the world, those least able to cope with climate change, will suffer the most (see Camilla Toulmin, Climate Change in Africa [Zed Books, 2009]). The severity of the effects can be gauged if it is recalled that the world’s tropical and sub-tropical land-masses are home to a majority of the world’s people and produce almost all of their food.

The saving pressure

What are the implications of this analysis for the Copenhagen summit? It is important to emphasise the context of the meeting, namely that it is part of a process rather than an isolated event. This in turn means that not everything depends on its outcome alone – but the larger picture is such that the process does need to be accelerated in 2010-12 in order to prevent catastrophic impacts by 2040-50. The radical action required includes a reduction in carbon- emissions by industrialised and industrialising states amounting to 40% by 2020 and 80% by 2030.

This may seem from the perspective of the present – including the widespread low expectations of the Copenhagen meeting – impossibly idealistic. But there are also many hopeful indicators, both at grassroots and government levels. The emergence of a new generation of determined and organised climate-change activists in a number of western countries, prepared to take non-violent direct action is one such; the embrace by some politicians of the need for bold action, after the “lost decade” of George W Bush, is another. The developments in China are especially interesting; the official Chinese stance may foreground demands that western states curb their emissions while allowing China’s economy to catch up, but on the ground there are signs of an embrace of wind-power, photovoltaics and solar-thermal systems, as well as efforts at least to curb the increase in carbon-emissions.

But for large-scale and comprehensive progress to occur, nothing less than a reworking of the structures of the global economy that addresses the issues of socio-economic divisions and environmental constraints is needed.  Here too there are positive signals, such as the support by British prime minister Gordon Brown (at the G20 finance ministers’ meeting in Scotland on 7 November 2009) for a Tobin-like tax on financial transactions. This, from the leader of one of the world’s larger economies, represents a near-astonishing breakthrough whose impact among financial analysts is just beginning to be felt (see Saskia Sassen, “A global financial detox”, 3 September 2009).

Beyond this, the economic shift of the coming generation must be grounded in a serious analysis of the essentials of the new green economy. The work being done by the London-based New Economics Foundation (NEF) – for example, in its new “great transition” project – is just one welcome indicator. Much more research is needed, but even the initial analysis by the NEF is enough to show that “blue-sky” thinking can also be deeply practical.

Copenhagen may not achieve much, but this itself may not be fatal; for in terms of preventing the extremes of climate change, what happens elsewhere may well turn out to be more vital. The work of independent think-tanks (such as Sustainablesecurity.org) and dedicated activists could, in combination, become a singularly powerful force; the response of enlightened political leaderships could prove invaluable. But these agencies will  need an infusion of more energy and broad-based support to enable the pressure for fundamental change to reach a tipping-point.

 

The Nigerian militant group Boko Haram has become one of the most potent examples of the ways in which underlying structural inequalities can drive political violence. The brutal attacks on 25 December last year are only the latest in a number of violent events linked to the group and fighting has continued over the last two months. Writing for Consultancy Africa Intelligence, Ronan Farrell discusses the emergence of Boko Haram against a backdrop of economic growth in Nigeria (on the back of high oil and gas prices) but extreme inequality.

Farrell focuses particularly on the concentration of profits in the south of the country at the expense of the north and the effect of an overly militarised response to the popular protests against inequality and corruption. This he says gave rise to a set of conditions, characterised by repression and marginalisation, out of which Boko Haram have emerged and grown.

The analysis notes that “Although religious identity and extremist beliefs are often cited as the main factors contributing to inter-communal violence in Nigeria, many of these clashes are in reality more rooted in political and economic tensions. Longstanding battles for control over political power, as well as economic rivalries between various ethnic groups often underline this violence.”

Importantly, there is increasing pressure in the United States to add the organisation to the US list of foreign terrorist organisations. Yet as Farrell argues, “Whilst doing so would give the Nigerian Government access to significant resources and funding, the military actions which might follow are unlikely to deal with the underlying reasons for the growth of the movement, including the high level of support it undoubtedly has amongst northern Nigerians given the economic disparities and perceived social injustices in the north.”

The full article can be accessed here.

Image source: pjotter05. 

The doubters of global warming are emboldened by their new ability – as in the “climategate” affair – to put climate researchers on the defensive. But the experience of comparable assaults on the discipline of peace studies in the 1980s suggests that hostile scrutiny can have longer-term benefits for the target.

The articles in this series try to throw light on recent or current developments in international security. Just occasionally an element of personal experience creeps in. This is one of those.

The last weeks of 2009 were difficult for the public face of scientific research into global warming. The failure of the climate-change conference in Copenhagen, the identification of minor flaws in the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC’s) published documentation, and the exposure of email exchanges centred on the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at England’s University of East Anglia – all raised doubts about those charged with presenting scientific evidence about climate change and renewing efforts to address the phenomenon. In the case of the email affair – given an extra conspiratorial frisson by being called “climategate” – the careful selection of damaging details by an evidently well-resourced group made it possible to erect a narrative of deception that found an uncritical welcome among climate “sceptics” and “deniers”.

Soon after the furore, Associated Press tasked a team to examine 1,073 emails from the CRU material in order to provide an independent view of what had happened. The result showed no evidence that climate change was faked (see “’ClimateGate’ Doesn’t Show Global Warming Was Faked, AP Reports”, Huffington Post, 12 December 2009); but amid a deluge of negative comment this attracted little attention, and the impression persists that the whole case for human-induced climate change has been severely hit.

For many of the researchers involved, the period of late 2009-early 2010 has been traumatic; they may have had to contend with controversy over the years, but this is something outside their experience.

The intensity of the coverage, and the zealotry of many sceptics in pressing their case, stem in part from changing global circumstances. There has long been deep opposition to any international move towards a low-carbon economy, from reasons both ideological (free-market true-believers) and commercial (the more retrograde transnational corporations, especially fossil-fuel companies). There was no great risk of such a move as long as George W Bush was in the White House; but the election of Barack Obama and the prospect of Copenhagen agreeing a successor to the Kyoto protocol made 2009 potentially a dangerous year. In this context, “climategate” has been a gift.

The peace benefit

The lesson of my own experience in the 1980s suggests that the longer-term impact might be rather different from what the architects of this affair intend. I got into working in the field of international security from teaching environmental science and resource-conflict at Huddersfield Polytechnic, west Yorkshire, in the early 1970s (and recently came across some of my thirty-five-year-old lecture notes dealing with rising atmospheric CO² levels!). I moved to Bradford’s department of peace studies at the end of the decade, just as the cold war was entering a particularly tense period; from around 1980 onwards, several of us there saw the need for independent research and writing on nuclear issues.

An early outcome (with co-authors Malcolm Dando and Peter van den Dungen) was a book about the risks and consequences of nuclear war: As Lambs to the Slaughter: The Facts About Nuclear War (1981). It struck a chord; 25,000 copies were sold in a few weeks, and that year around 500,000 people purchased an accompanying leaflet published by the environment group Ecoropa.

As Lambs... was part of a wider body of writings, much of it for an academic rather a general readership. This was the case with A Guide to Nuclear Weapons (1981) which ran to several editions and led eventually to a reference work: The Directory of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms and Disarmament 1990. The core purpose of this writing was to be as accurate as possible; this meant (for example) always analysing Soviet as well as western systems and postures, and having a particular focus on the actual consequences of a nuclear war.

What strikes me in retrospect – and when thinking about the problems that climate scientists now face – is how widely varied were the reactions to our work. Military officers, for example, were actually very interested in it and very ready to engage in intensive debates. I was first invited to lecture at the Royal Air Force staff college in 1982 and have continued frequently to lecture at defence colleges to the present day. Senior civil servants in Britain’s ministry of defence were also willing to discuss our work.

The reaction on the political right – then very much in the ascendancy during Margaret Thatcher’s long premiership (1979-1990) – was very different; it was bitter and sustained opposition to what we were doing. In the Thatcherite view of the world, peace studies was “appeasement studies”, indulgent to official enemies and undermining of the nation’s moral fibre. Many articles and pamphlets were written about the Bradford department’s dangerous and subversive nature; one noble member of the House of Lords (the upper chamber of Britain’s parliament) even described us as a “rest home for urban guerrillas”. Some critics preferred a more personal touch: I was called “Dr Death”, and we regularly got abusive mail (which, on one or two occasions, went as far as death-threats).

It was known that Margaret Thatcher wished “something to be done” about peace studies; but this was politically difficult, since universities still retained considerably more independence (a situation that subsequent governments have done much to redress) than now. But the University Grants Committee (UGC) came under pressure to investigate us and to its credit agreed to do so only if Bradford’s vice-chancellor allowed it; he too was prepared to say yes, but – also to his credit – only if the peace-studies staff gave their consent. We certainly would! What followed was the equivalent of today’s “subject review”. It was thorough and exacting, and the UGC made public its verdict – that the department was maintaining high standards.

That outcome lifted the pressure off peace studies for the rest of the 1980s. With the end of the cold war by the end of the decade, much of the other work our staff and research students already did – on peacekeeping, environmental conflict, and mediation, among other issues – came to the fore; this created the foundation for an expansion of our work in the 1990s.

The landscape after battle

How does this relate to “climategate”? A key factor is that we were exposed to intensive criticism and persistent scrutiny of our work virtually from day one, and this in direct consequence made us hugely aware of the need for very high levels of accuracy and impeccable referencing of sources. Access to a wide range of military and defence journals, and a huge amount of information in the public domain, meant that this was actually not so difficult; but under so much external pressure we learned to be very cautious in our analysis at a time when exaggeration on the issues we addressed was common enough.Many of us now think that the experience made us better academics. If almost everything you write is going to be exposed to detailed examination by relentless and often politically-motivated critics, then you have to set unusually exacting standards for your work. The likely – and beneficial – implication is that climate researchers who have gone through their own test-by-fire will in future take even greater care over published assessments and analyses.

In many ways we were luckier than today’s climate researchers: for there was an intense focus on our peace-studies work from the very beginning – whereas critics of climate science are able to retrieve work published a decade and more ago, when the issue was far less controversial, in order to pinpoint a minor laxity and use it to great effect to damn the whole enterprise.

The overall effect of the setbacks to climate-science’s public face may amount to the loss of a year in the transition to a low-carbon future, but the good work being done in this area offers many grounds for optimism. The New Economic Foundation’s The Great Transition project, and Tim Jackson’s book Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (Earthscan 2009) are but two examples. Alongside the evidence that continues to emerge about the accelerating impact of climate change, the flow of impressive research and compelling argument based on even more rigorous standards will ensure that the refusenik stance will in future become harder to make.

In the end, peace studies was made stronger by those who sought to expose it. In a similar way, the travails of climate researchers may well end up reinforcing the integrity of the science and the necessity of the low-carbon transition.

Climate Change and its variability is a phenomenon that cannot be pushed aside because of its potentail consequences and global scale. Its impacts have been suggested at different times by researchers to have favorable and unfavorable implications in different parts of the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to about 635.2 million people (cited in Oduaran & Nenty, 2008), and is always in the world’s news, being the hot zone of the African continent that has been noted for its volatility and instability. Some of its countries are in protracted conflict. Climate change has been implicated by many literatures to multiply these tensions.

Natural resources are supposed to be the economic backbone of Sub-Saharan African countries. Some of these natural resources are also expected to be vulnerable to climate change. Experiments have suggested that conflict can be driven by natural resource degradation, scarcity and by competitive control of areas where resources are abundant (Myers 2004). Several researchers and authors have corroborated this position, with particular emphasis on water resources. Water is a natural resource of immense importance for every facet of life. Therefore, its potential distortion by climate change may interfere with human security, which has been proposed to be connected to water security.

This conflict tendency of the imminent effects of climate change in the world was also supported by the statement made by United Nations Secretary General, Ban ki Moon in March 1, 2007, when he said:

“The majority of the United Nations’ work still focuses on preventing and ending conflict, but the danger posed by war to all of humanity and to our planet is at least matched by the climate crisis and global warming… [the effects of climate change are] likely to become a major driver of war and conflict.”

This statement shows why climate change should be given utmost research and policy consideration in every facets of our society.

This paper identifies poverty as a threat in Sub-Saharan Africa countries that will be exacerbated by water scarcity, analyzes the conflict implications of the supposed effects of climate change on water security in Sub-Saharan Africa, and advocates for sustainable water management as an ameliorative and mitigation approach to water security in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Poverty, Water Security and Climate Change in Sub-Sahara Africa

Many countries and its people in Sub-Saharan Africa are regarded as poor. These poverty levels are in variations. Poverty is a threat that affects every facets of human society, including water security. Poverty and conflict are sometimes linked together by researchers, conflict having been seen as both a cause and a consequence of poverty (Brown and Crawford, 2009). At the same time, human dignity and development have at most times been hindered in Sub-Saharan Africa by continued conflict.

The World Bank (2010) Poverty Data gives the statistical data of the Sub-Saharan Africa poverty headcount ratio in 2005 as $1.25 a day (PPP): 50.9%, and $2 a day (PPP): 72.9%. This data attetsts to the extraordiary level of poverty being witnessed in the region. The conflict atmosphere in some of the nations in the Sub-Sahara Africa has visible socio-economic implications on sustainable development and invariably exacerbates the impoverishment of the people.

Laplante (2009) surmised that there is existing empirical evidence clearly demonstrating a positive correlation between poverty (or economic development) and the impacts of climate change. Several researchers have also interlinked poverty to climate change vulnerability and adaptation (Mckee and Suhriki, 2005 cited in Confalonieri, 2005, Watson et. al., 1997 cited in O’Brien and Leicheko 2002, AFP, 2007). This poverty and climate change nexus may have implications for water security, thereby instigating stress on the people.

As I have argued in previous papers, “Water is practically an issue tied with the existence of life because of its importance in nearly every area of development including sustaining life on the planet earth” (Akiyode, 2010). Water security is important to environmental sustainability and paramount to the sustenance of societal peace. Therefore, the goal of human society and challenges of the world’s poor countries including Sub-Saharan Africa must be to achieve water security (Grey and Sadoff 2007).

Read the rest of the article at peace and conflict monitor

Image source: Abdurrahman Warsameh for the International Relations and Security Network

The atrocities in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 led to protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ten years after the attacks, this briefing assesses the consequences of the response from the United States and its coalition partners. It questions whether the response was either appropriate or wise and whether the results so far have been counterproductive and may indicate the need for a changed security paradigm.

Such a fundamental rethink of the way western governments respond to insecurity must go beyond the current approach in which intelligence, counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism are all beginning to merge into a seamless web of a single security posture. Such a posture is likely to be no more successful than the policies adopted in 2001.

The Context of 9/11

Prior to the Bush administration being formed in January 2001, the Republican Party had become strongly influenced by neoconservative thinking, much of it embodied in the Project for the New American Century. This saw the United States playing a role of sustained world economic and political leadership in the unipolar world of the 21st Century. With the fall of the Soviet Union and with China embracing many elements of a mixed economy, the view from Washington was that free market democracy was the only way forward and that the United States had a duty to lead.

After the election, the administration made a series of decisions that demonstrated that in foreign and defence matters there would be a strongly unilateral approach when this was considered in US interests. In the early months of 2001, it became clear that there would be no ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the United States would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and there would be reduced support for strengthening the Biological Weapons Treaty. Caution over negotiations on preventing the weaponisation of space and establishing an International Criminal Court were evident, and, in a move that surprised many European governments, the US withdrew from the Kyoto Climate Change Protocols. By September of that year, the determination of the Bush administration to pursue the idea of a New American Century was clearly established, and there seemed little to hinder what was honestly seen as a noble aim that would benefit the world community.

In such a context, the 9/11 attacks were particularly visceral in their impact and there was little doubt that the administration would respond with great vigour, including large-scale military action against the defined enemy of the al-Qaida movement and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan. Those few analysts and organisations that counselled caution, including Oxford Research Group, received scant attention. Their view was that the 9/11 attacks should be seen as appalling examples of transnational criminality, the response being rooted in policing and international legal processes aimed at bringing to justice those behind the attacks. Furthermore, to see the attacks as requiring a major military response – a “war on terror” – would be assigning to the perpetrators precisely the attention that they sought, and would likely prove deeply counter-productive.

Military Responses

The initial intentions of the coalition military action in Afghanistan were to terminate the Taliban regime and destroy the core of the al-Qaida movement, with the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, and the head of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, being key targets. While neither was killed nor captured during the successful termination of the Taliban regime, the early fall of that regime and the dispersal of al-Qaida meant that considerable success had been achieved by the end of 2001. In his first State of the Union address, in January 2002, President Bush was able to point to this success as proof of the rightness of US policy, and he went on to extend the war on terror to encompass an “Axis of Evil” of three states. These were Iraq, Iran and North Korea, with all three seen as sponsors of terrorism and seekers of weapons of mass destruction. In this address and in his graduation speech at the West Point Military Academy five months later, President Bush argued forcefully that the United States had the right to pre-empt future threats, with this even including further regime terminations.

In March 2003, coalition operations to terminate the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq commenced and the regime fell within three weeks. Once again, some independent analysts, including Oxford Research Group, warned of the dangers of enforced regime termination, and there was much public opposition in Europe, but the determination of the Bush administration, aided by support from some allies, notably the Blair government in Britain, ensured that the war would proceed. By 1 May 2003, the combination of the success in Afghanistan and the apparent military victory in Iraq meant that President Bush could deliver his “Mission Accomplished” speech on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.

War Aims

By the middle of 2003, there were clear US policy aims in terms of the military action to respond to the 9/11 atrocities. These can be summarised as follows:

• Maintain control in Afghanistan, including the development of two large military bases at Bagram and Kandahar.
• Facilitate Afghanistan’s transition to a pro-western developing society while expecting most of the support for this to come from European allies.
• Consolidate basing arrangements established during the Afghan War with Central Asian republics, ensuring a US military presence in a geo-strategically important region.
• Continue counter-terror operations against the remnants of al-Qaida and similar movements.
• Develop a long-term military presence in what would become a peaceful pro-Western Iraq, not least to limit Iranian influence in the region.
• Ensure that the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq oversees the development of a free-market economy with wholesale privatisation of state assets, especially oil facilities, a flat-rate tax system and minimal financial regulation.

Three elements of these aims deserve elaboration. One is that there was a confidence in Washington that the Afghan War was over, that the Taliban would not re-emerge and that European allies would bear the brunt of reconstruction and development. The second was the emphasis on creating a model free market society in Iraq, an ideological project that was seen as providing an example that would prove so successful that other states in the region would surely follow suit. The third, and possibly most important, was that by maintaining a substantial military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and controlling the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea through the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, Iran would be thoroughly constrained. Given that Iran was seen as the most serious of all threats to US interests in the region, this would be a hugely positive outcome.

The 9/11 attacks had a deep and persistent impact within the United States, and many of the subsequent actions, including regime termination in Iraq, could be presented as utterly necessary responses to the atrocities. The confidence of the administration in mid-2003 stemmed from the belief that the terrible setback for US security demonstrated by the attacks had been turned round. Indeed, the Middle East and South-West Asia were being made safe in a manner which would clearly get the New American Century back on track, an outcome that was sure to prove very positive for world security.

Consequences

Al-Qaida. For the first five years after 9/11, the loose affiliates clustered around the al-Qaida movement were actually far more active than in the five years before. As well as many incidents in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, the movement was involved in attacks in Istanbul, Jakarta, Bali, Sinai, Amman, Mombasa, Casablanca, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, northern Tunisia, Madrid and London. There were failed attempts at major attacks in France, Italy, the UK and the United States, and many of the actual attacks involved overseas US interests, especially hotels. The death of Osama bin Laden in May of this year was seen in the United States as marking the end of a long war, but there are still active paramilitary groups with regular attempts at attacks on western interests. Islamist paramilitaries based in Pakistan and Yemen are of particular concern, and the Mumbai attack nearly three years ago had a profound effect on Indian perceptions of security. Groups linked loosely to the al-Qaida movement have been particularly active in Iraq in recent months, and the attack on the UN offices in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, by Boko Haram paramilitaries is an indication of the growth of yet another movement, as was the attack on the Algerian Military Academy at Cherchell in August.

Iraq. Far from seeing Iraq make a transition to a peaceful pro-western state, the outcome was a bitter seven-year insurgency combined with persistent inter-communal violence. At times during the war coalition forces had close to 200,000 troops in the country with many thousands of private security contractors also deployed. While the violence lessened in 2009 and 2010, recent reports, in mid-2011, point to a deteriorating security environment, with increased losses among US troops and the likelihood that a substantial military presence will have to be maintained. Moreover, the war has left a potent legacy of large numbers of young paramilitaries with experience of insurgency in urban environments against well-trained and well-armed professional US troops.

Afghanistan. By 2006, Taliban and other armed opposition groups (AOG) had re-emerged and established control of substantial parts of the country, leading to a steady increase in NATO forces from a base figure of around 30,000. By mid-2010, numbers had risen to 140,000, all but 40,000 being US troops. In spite of this massive surge in troops, Taliban and other AOG paramilitaries maintained control of substantial parts of the country and, when pushed back, turned to other tactics including assassinations of Afghan government officials and security personnel. The extensive use of Special Forces in night raids and of armed drones both in Afghanistan and Pakistan became tactics of choice for the US forces. While many paramilitaries were killed or captured, both tactics were deeply controversial, not least because of civilian deaths and injuries. With the 2012 re-election campaign approaching, the Obama administration declared a willingness to negotiate with Taliban and AOG elements in order to draw down force levels, but by mid-2011 it was far from clear that the opponents were serious about such engagement. Moreover, there were reports that some senior US military commanders were critical of troop withdrawals, fearing another Taliban resurgence.

Iran. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the post-9/11 wars has been the increased influence of Iran. Far from being constrained by US actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the problems that arose in both countries have meant that Iran has more freedom to exert influence. While this is noticeable in western Afghanistan it is far more prominent in Iraq where the Shi’a majority has sought close links with Tehran. It is not a case of Iran dominating Iraqi politics since nationalist and other attitudes limit that. What is clear, though, is that the current Iraqi government is happy to maintain substantial economic and political relations with Iran and is almost certain to continue to do so in the coming years.

Costs of War

In addition to these outcomes – wholly unexpected by the wars’ architects – there is the issue of the direct human and economic costs of the wars. In mid-2011, the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University in the United States published an assessment of these aspects of the post 9/11 conflicts. Among its conclusions were the following:

• The overall death toll, including civilians, uniformed personnel and contractors is 225,000.
• If the long term care of thousands of maimed US personnel is included, the wars have so far cost between $3.2 and $4.0 trillion dollars. This includes the estimated $600 to $950 billion federal obligations to veterans, a cost rarely included in other analyses.
• There have been 7.8 million refugees created among Iraqis, Afghans and Pakistanis.
• The wars are being funded substantially by borrowing, with $185 billion in interest already paid and another $1 trillion likely by 2020 (Source: Brown University Press Notice, 29 June 2011).

Conclusion

This briefing has sought to compare the original war aims of the Bush administration in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack with the actual outcomes. Only by doing that is it possible to get a clear idea of the unexpected consequences in terms of the longevity of the conflicts, the human costs, the financial implications and the political developments.

While the original war aims may be explainable, given the horror of the attacks and the attitudes of the Bush administration, the unexpected consequences of the decisions taken have been remarkable.

A brief war in Afghanistan is shortly to enter its second decade, seven years of war in Iraq have yet to bring a lasting peace, and Pakistan remains deeply unstable. Meanwhile, groups linked loosely with the al-Qaida movement make progress in Yemen, Nigeria, Algeria and the Horn of Africa.

Unless a comprehensive assessment of the wars is made, along the lines of this brief review but in much greater depth, it is not at all clear that lessons will be learnt in a manner likely to increase caution in responding too readily and rapidly to difficult circumstances in the future with military force.

It has become increasingly clear over the last decade that the United States and its partners must learn from the evident failure of the “war on terror” by paying more attention to the underlying causes of the conflicts, especially the factors motivating young paramilitaries to take extreme action.

Such a shift in thinking about global security should lead to efforts to avert “revolts from the margins” amid a divided and ecologically constrained world at the root: via emancipatory social-economic action, and making a transition to low-carbon economies and other forms of what is now known as ‘sustainable security.’ The anniversary of the 9/11 attacks provides an important opportunity to engage in exactly this kind of honest reflection and long-term thinking.

At present, the outlook is somewhat bleak. The United States and its coalition allies have indeed started to learn from a decade’s failures; but the lessons they are drawing show them still to be rooted in a “control paradigm”: keeping the lid on conflicts (“liddism”) rather than preventing their emergence. The control paradigm still dominates, albeit in a slightly different form. Rather than a reliance on “boots on the ground” and troop “surges”, and the sustained use of air-power and precision-guided munitions, we are likely to witness a blurring of the roles between the military and agencies such as the CIA; an assumption of paramilitary roles by intelligence agencies; and a deployment of the military’s special forces in “taking out” threats whenever and wherever they arise.

In the context of an increasingly fragile and uncertain world, and of a situation where radical groups and individuals from marginalised communities are capable of probing the innate weaknesses of advanced industrial states, these measures are seriously misconceived in terms of finding solutions to the problems western states are facing. This new way of attempting to “control” global insecurity, exemplified in the reaction to Osama bin Laden’s death, may initially prove popular. But so, once, were the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is difficult to imagine that the newer type of “transnational” warfare will be any more successful than the failed policies of the last decade.

Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford and Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group (ORG). His international security monthly briefings are available from www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk, where visitors can sign-up to receive them via email each month with the ORG newsletter. These briefings are circulated free of charge for non-profit use, but please consider making a donation to ORG, if you are able to do so.

Photo credit: Brian Boyd

The interlocking relationship between the United States’s military-led strategy in its global conflict and the violent opposition to it from al-Qaida and related groups is a persistent theme of this series. This is again evident in a number of incidents at the start of 2011, in ways that reinforce the need for fresh ways of thinking about the endless war.

The bombers who killed twenty-one worshippers and injured scores more at a Coptic church in Alexandria early on 1 January 2011 may not be directly connected to the al-Qaida movement. But there is evidence that they, like individuals and small groups responsible for comparable attacks elsewhere, do justify their actions by invoking the enduring narrative – strongly articulated by al-Qaida – that Islam is under siege from the west.

The most potent reference-point and driver of support today for actions such as the assault in Egypt are the United States-led wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The reverberations of those wars (as with the one in Iraq) are felt across the Muslim world, and decisions taken in Washington about the way they are conducted also become part of the calculations of those in other regions of “greater west Asia” and beyond.

It is becoming ever clearer that the US military is intent on intensifying the “AfPak” wars. It is less obvious whether the core purpose is to negotiate a withdrawal from a position of strength or to demonstrate the military’s capacity to defeat the Taliban outright – but the effect is the same, a more violent campaign in which night-raids and drone-attacks are increasing.

In Pakistan itself, the assassination on 4 January of the governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, by one of his own security guards highlights the deep tensions in that country. In northern Mali and elsewhere in the Sahel, the authorities are struggling to contain al-Qaida’s influence. Somalia and Yemen are riven by deep insecurities, and the intelligence agencies in western states are in overdrive to counter threatened attacks.

These incidents and trends suggest that – as the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches – the focus on military solutions to the global conflict is exhausted, and the need for different ways forward is urgent.

A Different Mindset

A most significant contribution in this respect is a joint study by the LSE professor (and openDemocracy’s human-security consultant) Mary Kaldor and the United States army colonel Shannon D Beebe: The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon: Human Security and the New Rules of War and Peace (Public Affairs, 2010).

The authors cite a remark made by Condoleezza Rice (then George W Bush’s advisor on national security) a year before 9/11 which emphasised the need for the military to concentrate on winning wars in the traditional manner, rather than engage in peacebuilding. That the latter is not “proper soldiering” was encapsulated in Rice’s memorable phrase: “We don’t need to have the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten”.

Shannon D Beebe and Mary Kaldor use multiple experiences drawn from the two post-war decades to argue that this kind of neo-realist attitude to security is obsolete and must be replaced by a more human-centred approach. In building a strong case for conflict-prevention, they argue that military structures and mindsets have to change radically; this will entail being prepared to engage fully in human security – and, yes, that could well mean “escorting kids to kindergarten”.

A graphic illustration of their approach relates to the cost of the latest US strike-aircraft, the F-22 Raptor.The cost of developing this, the world’s most advanced warplane, and of manufacturing just 183 models, is nearly $70 billion. By contrast, expenditure on global peacekeeping amounts to barely 0.55% of the US defence budget – and a fraction of what this single weapon-system costs. Yet almost all the emphasis in current approaches to international security, especially within Nato in general and the US in particular, is on military power.

What makes the Beebe-Kaldor analysis of particular interest is that it moves beyond the familiar (civilian-orientated) soft-power vs (military-focused) hard-power division. Instead, they make the case that modern-day conflicts rarely conform to traditional state-on-state models but tend to be variable and complex. Thus the military has to transform itself to cope with this reality by developing a mindset concentrated less on “winning” against an opponent and much more on human security. In turn this requires necessary adjustments in civilian engagement in peacebuilding, and integration of these elements into altogether different approaches.

A Text for the Times

A possible reaction is to see this analysis as a recipe for western military intervention to secure hegemonic policy objectives. The authors acknowledge the risk, but insist that the dominant security paradigm remains so stuck in the cold-war era that a radical reappraisal of current attitudes is essential.

Shannon D Beebe and Mary Kaldor conclude:

“The strategic Cold War algebra of counting planes and tanks and ascertaining military budgets must be swapped for a discrete calculus based on the conditions underlying instability, in which there is no smart bomb or bomber that will offer a solution, and no room to squabble over traditional roles. There is no ultimate weapon of war in twentieth-century terms that will defeat the hybrid threats of the future. The ultimate weapons of the twenty-first century are, in fact, not weapons in the military sense at all.”

A near-certain prospect for the still-young century is that a dangerous conflation of socio-economic divisions and environmental constraints will trigger fragility, instability and conflict. To understand what is happening and to provide solutions, there is an urgent need for the kind of analysis that The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon provides. If prophecy is indeed “suggesting the possible” then this book is a much-needed example.

 

This article originally appeared on openDemocracy where Professor Paul Rogers writes a regular column on global security.  

Climate change has been a key factor in the rise and fall of societies and states from prehistory to the recent fighting in the Sudanese state of Darfur. It drives instability, conflict and collapse, but also expansion and reorganisation. The ways cultures have met the climate challenge provide object lessons for how the modern world can handle the new security threats posed by unprecedented global warming.

Combining historical precedents with current thinking on state stability, internal conflict and state failure suggests that overcoming cultural, social, political and economic barriers to successful adaptation to a changing climate is the most important factor in avoiding instability in a warming world. The countries which will face increased risk are not necessarily the most fragile, nor those which will suffer the greatest physical effects of climate change.

The global security threat posed by fragile and failing states is well known. It is in the interest of the world’s more affluent countries to take measures both to reduce the degree of global warming and climate change and to cushion the impact in those parts of the world where climate change will increase that threat. Neither course of action will be cheap, but inaction will be costlier. Providing the right kind of assistance to the people and places it is most needed is one way of reducing the cost, and understanding how and why different societies respond to climate change is one way of making that possible. 

 

 

‘Dr Mazo authoritatively tackles a much overlooked, yet pivotal dimension of the broader climate change debate – the security implications of evolving climate trends. He makes a strong case, anchored in both contemporary developments and historical analysis, that climate change can serve as a “threat multiplier”, contributing to instability, exacerbating conflicts and complicating foreign-policy decision-making. This book is a must read for foreign-policy professionals.’

Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky, former US Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs

Available here.

To browse a list of all of the articles EXCLUSIVELY written for sustainablesecurity.org – follow this link

South Sudan’s referendum has come and gone. What lies ahead post-independence in terms of peace, development and security is however still to be determined. The 15 years of war left over one million people dead and more than three million displaced. Negotiations led to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, which included provision for a referendum on independence for the Southerners.  The referendum was held in January, with overwhelming support for succession. But serious challenges face South Sudan as it prepares for independence on 9 July 2011.

The challenges facing a new nation

A range of challenges are present themselves with this new nation attempting to stand on its own. Aside from the issues of governance and poor service delivery, the most serious is the seemingly unending internal conflicts. Hence, the government of the new South Sudan should consider:

• Embracing pluralism by allowing political participation of the citizenry. To do otherwise could pave the way for more conflicts through insurgencies, militia activities, army defections, and latent grievances within the security sector.

• Post-referendum negotiations between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and National Party Congress (NCP) should focus on ensuring a peaceful separation and a constructive North-South relationship based on mutual benefit from the oil resources, averting the ‘resource curse’.

• South Sudan has to cooperate with its neighbours to overcome security threats by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and other militia, as well as cross border conflicts. The state of Western Equatoria is particularly suffering under rampaging LRA troops, displacing farmers, and potentially leading to a humanitarian crisis due to heightened food insecurity. Communities will increasingly turn to militia groups for protection if government security is absent.

• At the national level, the significant role of opposition parties and civil society in the forthcoming transition needs to be acknowledged. There is thus a need for an inclusive constitutional review committee adhering to the agreements of the CPA.

The gravity of violence needs further deliberate and integrated efforts. The 2010 Human Rights Report: South Sudan noted the abuses and internal conflicts South Sudan faces at independence. Inter-ethnic fighting, post-election militia attacks, cattle rustling, and LRA attacks, all resulted in deaths and displacement in the South since the referendum.

Coupled with the violence, 2 million Internally Displace Persons (IDPs) and 350,000 refugees have returned to the South since 2005. Given the lessons learnt from the returnees of Liberia, there is a need to find ways of enhancing co-existence between host communities and returnees.

What role can grassroots peacebuilding play here?

Enhancing grassroots peacebuilding

Grassroots peacebuilding encompasses efforts of enhancing localised structures and mechanisms of constructively responding to violence, aiding relief, and conflict transformation. This vital approach is the social fabric that builds durable peace. It is the people at the grassroots who have suffered most from the war, and continue to suffer through displacement, grief, trauma and day-to-day community clashes. Peace is a common good that we must promote and guard.

March was characterised by community clashes in Mvolo between the Jur and the Dingas in Western Equatoria. Over 60 died and many more internally displaced. With a history of tribal clashes, cattle rustling, and growing insecurity, one would ask: what can be done at a grassroots level to enhance peacebuilding?

Improving accountability of security forces

One option for grassroots level work is the improvement of security forces. There are several cases where security forces were blamed for instigating or participating in violence. As illustrated by these incidents, it becomes imperative for a new country to respect the rights and rule of law. It is through the promotion and protection of human rights that peace among the people is enhanced across all sectors and levels.

When looking at peacebuilding and security reforms in prior post-conflict zones, three lessons are obvious:

• A lack of governance of the security sector is often a source of conflict and forms a key obstacle to peacebuilding.

• Security institutions can play an effective, legitimate and democratically accountable role in society.

• If law-breakers face prosecution and social disapproval, people will be discouraged from engaging in armed violence. This is underlined by the 2011 Word Development Report, with the call for citizen security and justice in order to break the cycle of violence. Indeed, there is need to improve accountability among the security forces and fostering restorative justice in South Sudan so as to prevent and manage a relapse into violence.

Realise the role of religion

A second option for grassroots engagement is to work with and through religious communities and structures. In many cases the Church seems to have greater leverage than almost anybody else in brokering peace talks between warring factions. The historical, cultural and traditional embeddedness of the Church has credibility and relevance to the community. It’s extensive network reaches even into the most remote areas. Further, the Church has an integration of social and pastoral work focusing on the psycho-social and spiritual dimension of conflict transformation, although the church is at times blamed for exlusionist tendencies. As an indicator for church influence, around 40% of the population of South Sudan regard themselves Catholics and 30% Anglicans.

Quiet diplomacy

A third grassroots option is quiet diplomacy. Influential civil society leaders, among them high profile religious leaders, have the potential of applying preventative diplomacy mechanisms in cooperation with the government.

This back door approach is suggested because the state is still young. It is further backed up by the cultural background, suggesting that a leader should not be degraded in public. Instead of undermining transparency, this approach acknowledges the huge expectations of a new nation. Normal and open confrontation may be acceptable to the public, but may not bring about the desired democratic state.

Conclusion and recommendations

Grassroots peacebuilding has to be enhanced across South Sudan. This can be done through holding the security forces and leaders accountable; realising the essential (commending, condemning, correcting and coalescing) role of the Church, and the application of quiet diplomacy. It is hoped that localised and indigenous peacebuilding efforts can consolidate peace, stability, security and development. Therefore, I would like to make the  following recommendations:

1. People, parties and civil society to:

   • strengthen women, youth, and community participation in peacebuilding;
   • empower local government structures;
   • invest in education and especially adult literacy;
   • adopt a comprehensive security framework of human security;
   • continue applying corrective and commending public figures through quiet diplomacy.

2. The government of South Sudan to:

   • build supporting impartial partnerships towards grassroots peacebuilding;
   • enhance trauma healing across all sectors and levels of the country;
   • establish and empower local government structures so as to enhance accountability among county and state executives;
   • deploy security personnel, especially the police, to actively protect the citizenry from community clashes, militia attacks, and the LRA;
   • invest in education in every village;
   • retain and emphasise the rule of law across the country.

3. The international community:

   • to support grassroots peacebuilding through partnerships;
   • to encourage and facilitate continued dialogue and cooperation between the governments of Sudan and South Sudan.
   • to build impartial supportive partnership with the people of South Sudan and its government, while drawing a clear line between the government and the SPLM.

Article source: Insight on Conflict

Image source: United Nations Photo

The role of climate change in exacerbating conflict situations has been confirmed by various recent studies, as reported by Theresa Polk at New Security Beat. Studies include research into the effects of the short-term weather systems El Niño and La Niña, which have shown to increase the risk of conflict in troubled areas such as Somalia. The first conclusion to draw from these studies is that climate change acts as a threat -multiplier in places that are already affected by issues such as poor governance or ethnic division; conversely, countries and regions that do have effective conflict-prevention mechanisms are generally able to withstand the extra stresses caused by climate change. The second conclusion is that there is no one-size-fits-all policy that can be applied to different communities coping with climate change and conflict risk, thereby showing the need for further context-specific research.

 

New Research on Climate and Conflict Links Shows Challenges for the Field

“We know that there will be more conflicts in the future as a result of climate change than there would have been in a hypothetic world without climate change,” said Marc Levy, deputy director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, although existing data and methodologies cannot predict how many additional conflicts there will be, or which causal factors will matter most.

Levy spoke at a December 19 panel at the Wilson Center on new research on the linkages between climate change and conflict. He was joined by Joseph Hewitt, technical team leader for USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation; Joshua Busby, assistant professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin; and Solomon Hsiang, postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Linking El Niño to Civil Conflict

Princeton University’s Solomon Hsiang recently co-authored a study published in Nature that used statistical analysis to link observable changes in the global climate to conflict outcomes on the ground. The researchers looked at countries strongly impacted by the El Niño/Southern Oscillation and compared the onset of civil conflict in those countries during El Niño, relative to the La Niña state.

“[El Niño] is the single dominant pattern of the entire planet’s climate on annual timescales,” said Hsiang. “So what is convenient here from a statistical standpoint is that the climate is going back and forth very rapidly…so there haven’t been major socio-political changes over that time horizon.”

The study found that conflict risk for a given region doubled during the hotter and drier El Niño state, from an average of around three percent to six percent. “You can make a variety of different assumptions about what kind of statistical model you are using and you generally always get the same estimate,” said Hsiang. “The correlation between the global climate and conflict seems to be very, very robust to a variety of choices…It’s one of the most robust results I have seen in any of the statistical literature.”

Nevertheless, “our study doesn’t say anything about why El Niño might be linked to conflict,” Hsiang clarified. “We are just showing an association. Climate is not the only thing driving conflict in these countries…it exacerbates an existing problem.”

Identifying Chronic Vulnerability in Africa

Working at the University of Texas at Austin, Josh Busby presented the Climate Change and African Political Stability program, a composite index mapping climate security vulnerability in a region with rising strategic significance and low adaptive capacity. The index incorporates not only physical exposure but also demographic, socio-economic, and political indicators.

“We focus on situations where large numbers of people could be exposed to mass death from climate-related hazards,” said Busby. He identified southern Somalia, South Sudan, and much of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as among the most vulnerable regions, relative to the rest of Africa.

These areas might not necessarily appear as the most vulnerable from a strictly climatic point of view, Busby said, but the composite analysis brings them into focus. For instance, many factors, including governance and a strong La Niña year, contributed to the famine Somalia experienced this year. Although the precise role of climate change is unclear, from a chronic vulnerability perspective, southern Somalia remains an area of concern, he said.

Understanding Pre-Existing Conditions in Vulnerable States

The Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation at USAID has commissioned research looking at the relationship between countries that are conflict affected, countries that are fragile, and countries that are highly vulnerable to climate threats, said Hewitt: “We wanted to better understand which countries are likely not to have the capacity, or likely not to have the ability, to manage the stresses and strains of climate threat.”

“[Fragile states] are already characterized by many, many different challenges that contribute to causes of conflict, just aside from climate change itself,” Hewitt pointed out. “Any understanding of the relationship between climate change and conflict needs to understand how climate change is in some sense filtered through all of these existing characteristics.”

On the other hand, many countries identified as highly vulnerable to climate change are not necessarily considered fragile. Despite the predicted changes in climate for these places, they have sources of conflict mitigation and resilience that will likely be able to handle the strains posed by climate change, Hewitt said. “We really want to try and understand what is happening in these countries. How are those countries positioned to confront those stresses, identify coping strategies, and adapt?”

“Any programming that is done to address the consequences of climate threats needs to be attentive to the connections between the program and any pre-existing characteristics that either mitigate conflict or in some sense make the society more vulnerable to conflict” said Hewitt.

Projecting Into the Future

Columbia University’s Marc Levy noted that a strong case for linking climate stress to increased risk of conflict can be made by better explaining the causal chain that leads from environmental change to societal stress. According to the 4th IPCC Assessment, climate change will increase stress on a number of biophysical processes and systems relevant to human societies, such as agriculture, water, ecosystems, and disease. A body of research shows that these natural stresses make societies more vulnerable, consequently increasing their risk of conflict.

Nevertheless, these conclusions are limited by data, according to Levy. Referencing Hsiang et al.’s study, he noted that “there are very few other things that you could measure in a large-end statistical global time series test than inter-annual variability and civil war.” And, importantly, climate change will alter the conditions that the study focused on. “By focusing on variability we know what happens to societies when you get variations around a mean, but we have almost no basis for figuring out what happens when the mean changes,” he said.

“I think we need to firm up our knowledge base by looking more explicitly at how these things operate in high-risk countries. And perhaps start thinking about some customized approaches that might be relevant in high conflict risk countries that wouldn’t necessarily be on the radar outside of those countries,” Levy concluded.

 

Article Source: New Security Beat

Image Source:CMagdalin