Memorandum by the Oxford Research Group
CONTEXT
The European Security Strategy, published in
2003, sought to propose a broad strategy for responding to threats
to European security. It was established in the context of a relatively
peaceful Europe, declaring that:
"Europe has never been so prosperous, so
secure nor so free. The violence of the first half of the 20th
Century has given way to a period of peace and stability unprecedented
in European history".
The Call for Evidence points to the changing
international security environment and also a recognition within
the EU of issues such as climate change and energy security. It
therefore "has decided to review the usefulness of the European
Security Strategy and the extent to which it informs policy-making
in the European Institutions and the EU member states".
This note takes as its starting point the 2003
statement, but also recognises the significant developments in
UK security policy, especially the new National Security Strategy
published earlier this year.
GLOBAL CHALLENGES
AND GLOBAL
RESPONSES
The European Security Strategy (1) pointed to
the major issues of underdevelopment and made some reference to
resource security, but it described the "key threats"
to European security (as seen in 2003) as:
— Proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction.
While all of these issues remain pertinent,
Oxford Research Group would argue that they are not necessarily
central to long-term European security concerns. Although most
military and strategic thinking still relates to states and terrorist
groups as being the major problems for the future, there are indications
that some of the more thoughtful analysis goes beyond such issues
to look at other more significant global trends. In the United
States there is at last some concern over the security implications
of climate change and some European security think tanks have
undertaken studies on future security trends that put some emphasis
on socio-economic divisions and environmental constraints.(2)
The UK government, in particular, has sought a rather wider understanding
of security in its recently published National Security Strategy.
While these do represent a degree of new thinking, they are essentially
focused on maintaining the security of particular states. As such,
they concentrate primarily on the responses required to meet threats
and maintain security for the states concerned rather than placing
an emphasis on preventing the threats developing in the first
place.
Taking a more holistic approach to new challenges
tends to be mainly concentrated in some independent think tanks,
with some evidence that an approach that is being termed "sustainable
security" is attracting attention.(3) This new thinking focuses
on three main trends that are together likely to influence international
peace and security over the period through to around 2040—socio-economic
divisions, environmental constraints and militarisation.
Socio-economic Divisions
The period since the collapse of the Soviet
Union has seen the global economic system embrace a market economy
mode of operation, with centrally planned economies in retreat.
Even China has moved towards a mixed economy and the overall result
has been reasonably sustained economic growth, sometimes reaching
8-10% per annum increases in GNP. This impressive overall trend
is seriously marred in two ways. One is that major regions of
the world have not experienced even more modest rates of growth,
including most of sub-Saharan Africa, parts of the Middle East
and South Asia and significant parts of the former Soviet Union.
The second trend, which is of even greater concern,
is that the economic growth that is being achieved is singularly
failing to deliver socio-economic justice. What is happening,
instead, is that much of the increase in wealth is being excessively
concentrated in about one fifth of the global population, while
the gap between that group of rather more than a billion people
and the remaining 5.5 billion is widening steadily. The extent
of the socio-economic divide is startling and remains largely
unrecognised, as does the fact that it has increased markedly
in recent decades. The period from 1965 to 1990 was particularly
acute—in 1960 the average GNP per capita for the richest
20% of the world's population was 30 times that of the poorest
20%. By 1995 this had widened to 60 times. More recently, a detailed
study from the World Institute for Development Economics Research
(WIDER), a research and training centre of the United Nations
University, has published an analysis of the global distribution
of household wealth. By 2000, the richest 10% of the world owned
85% of household wealth whereas the poorest 50% owned barely 1%
of the wealth.(4)
The "elite" community is very substantial
and is not rigidly concentrated in a few geographical areas. While
many of the North Atlantic and West Pacific states have most of
their populations among this elite, there are substantial wealthy
elites in India, China and Brazil, and most Southern countries
have smaller elites. It is much more of a trans-national phenomenon
than 40 years ago, but the entire process has been accompanied
by substantial and greatly welcome improvements in education,
literacy and communications among the majority of the world's
people. This has been one of the major success stories of international
development in recent decades but it carries with it the implication
that it is far easier for marginalised peoples to be more readily
aware of their own marginalisation. The old idea of a "revolution
of rising expectations" of the consumer society era of the
1970s now risks being replaced by a revolution of frustrated expectations.
While the most immediate effect of the brutal
divisions of wealth and poverty is continual marginalisation,
ill-health and suffering, it also leads to insecurity in the form
of petty crime and, frequently, a desire to migrate in the hope
of an improved standard of living. It can also lead to the development
of radical and even extreme social movements, as has been the
experience in countries such as Peru, Mexico and Nepal, as well
as unexpected reactions in countries experiencing very rapid growth.
China has witnessed many thousands of instances of riots and other
forms of social unrest in towns, villages and cities away from
those few metropolitan centres in which so much of the national
growth is concentrated. In India, the quasi-Maoist Naxalite rebellions
of the 1970s were thought to have disappeared but they have made
a remarkable comeback and now affect a third of all of India's
states. While there are many reasons for the development of radical
Islamist movements such as al-Qaida, a very strong element is
the perception of marginalisation.
One of the clearest statements of a revolt from
the margins came at the start of the Zapatista rebellion in Mexico.
On 1 January 1994, a rebellion broke out in the southern Mexican
province of Chiapas. It was timed to coincide with the coming
into force of the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), an agreement
between the United States, Canada and Mexico that was seen by
the rebels as another example of the free market trends that would
further marginalise the majority of the people of Chiapas into
greater poverty. A rebel source gave the reasons for the revolt:
We have nothing, absolutely nothing—not
decent shelter, nor land, nor work, nor health, nor food, for
education. We do not have the right to choose freely and democratically
our education. We have neither peace nor justice for ourselves
and our children. But today we say enough!(5)
Overall, a developing response from the margins
does not necessarily involve a revolt from the poorest of the
poor—more commonly it is to be found among educated people
who do not share in the fruits of economic growth. Nor is it true
to describe this phenomenon as a single global movement, even
though some movements, such as al-Qaida, do have trans-national
aspects. At the same time, the perception of global inequalities
feeds into many radical social movements, as does the belief that
a small group of countries, led predominantly by the United States
and the countries of the European Community, seek to maintain
the socio-economic status quo. It is probable that the trend towards
radical reaction has some similarities to the global anti-colonial
movement of the 1940s and 1950s. There was no single tightly organised
international movement, but there was a commonality that was pervasive
and strengthened individual components. Similarly, as anti-elite
movements develop, whether rooted in political, religious, nationalist
or racial aspects of human identity, one should expect a certain
trans-national solidarity to develop, providing considerable empowerment
to individual movements.
Environmental Constraints
Although the original Limits to Growth Study
of 1971 was widely derided by traditional economists, its
central thesis, that the global ecosystem would not be able to
handle the increasing impact of human activities within 70 years,
has a much greater resonance over 35 years later. In terms both
of resource depletion and pollution, it is becoming more obvious
that the entire biosphere is now subject to human impact. In relation
to resources, there may be problems over competition for gems,
some high-value minerals and water, but the major issue is oil,
with its extraordinary concentration in the Persian Gulf and the
increasing dependence of almost every industrialised and industrialising
state, not least those of Europe, on imported oil.
Even more significant as an aspect of environmental
constraints on development is the impact of climate change, with
a subtle but crucial difference in likely effects now apparent.
Until around a decade ago, climate change induced by carbon dioxide
and methane releases was expected to have its main impact on relatively
wealthy temperate and near-polar latitudes. While the impact might
be considerable, these regions had a much greater capacity to
adapt and cope than poorer countries of the South. What became
clearer from the mid-1990s was that the economically weaker tropical
and sub-tropical regions would also be greatly affected. Three
impacts were likely. One would be an increase in the severity
of tropical storms, likely to have severe impacts on heavily populated
coastal cities and on some of the world's most fertile croplands
in major river deltas. The second would be the impact of rising
sea levels leading to the inundation of such cities and deltas.
The third would be the most serious of all—a tendency towards
a drying out of the tropical and subtropical regions with relatively
more rainfall over the oceans and the polar regions.(6)
The implications of all of these trends on countries
badly equipped to adjust and cope, would be considerable, but
a "drying out" could be wholly catastrophic. If those
land masses that support the majority of the world's 6.5 billion
people are likely to dry out over the next 30-40 years, when the
population of these regions is already set to increase substantially,
then there will be endemic suffering, frustration, a desperate
urge to migrate to more tolerable localities—from North
Africa to Southern Europe, for example—and intense anger
if the response of the elite states is to "close the castle
gates". It is when the trends towards majority marginalisation
and environmental constraints increasingly interact that we see
a combination of factors that will cause a degree of insecurity
that will be far greater in scale than any current issue. Moreover,
these are issues of direct relevance to Europe, not just in terms
of energy insecurity or much increased migratory pressures but,
as was seen in the 9/11 attacks, the capacity for violent social
movements to directly affect the security of advanced industrialised
states no matter how strong their military capabilities.
What has to be stressed is that this combination
involves two very clear trends that have already been sustained
for some decades and, at least for now, show no sign of change.
The widening wealth-poverty divide and consequent majority marginalisation
has developed over at least 40 years, and climate change has accelerated
over a similar period. None of the economic policies currently
in existence appear to likely to make substantive differences
to the wealth-poverty divide, and the responses to climate change,
while welcome, remain minimal compared with what is required to
curb the trend.(7)
Militarisation
Although global military spending fell at the
end of the Cold War, mainly because of the collapse of the Soviet
military budgets, there was a transformation in the military outlook
of the United States, and to a lesser extent of allies such as
Britain and France, to a posture focused on maintaining security
in a world of disparate threats—a matter of "taming
the jungle".(8) This trend received an extraordinary boost
in the wake of the 9/11 atrocities, leading to enforced regime
termination in two countries, and a robust global campaign against
the al-Qaida movement. In essence, the response to 9/11 was the
rigorous implementation of what might best be termed a control
paradigm. It was led initially by the United States, but with
support from a number of Western countries, although that support
has weakened in recent years.
Even so, the vigorous military response has
been maintained in the face of intense problems, especially in
Iraq but also in Afghanistan where many European states are engaged,
but the control paradigm will not easily be abandoned. In terms
of future instability arising out of an environmentally constrained
and economically divided world community, including mass migratory
pressures and the rise of radical and extreme social movements,
that paradigm will result, at least on present trends, in the
securitisation of these issues and a determined effort to maintain
the status quo. Much as the war on terror has emphasised the regaining
of control—rather than an exploration of the motives and
mindsets of radical Islamist movements together with determined
efforts to counter the factors that are ensuring they thrive—so
the tendency will be to do likewise in the face of future problems
rather than see them as capable of amelioration.
EFFECTING CHANGE
More than 30 years ago, the economic geographer
Edwin Brooks feared a scenario of "a crowded glowering planet
of massive inequalities of wealth, buttressed by stark force yet
endlessly threatened by desperate people in the global ghettoes
..."(9) While that looks more likely now than then, there
are numerous changes in policy that can greatly decrease the risk
of such a societal dystopia. Reversing the widening socio-economic
divisions will require policy changes in three broad areas:
— One will be comprehensive debt cancellation,
given that Southern indebtedness remains a persistent obstacle
to development in spite of many fine words and some limited action.
— A second will be a wide-ranging reform
of North-South trading relations towards a genuine fair trade
agenda, reversing those aspects of the world economy that still
date largely from the colonial era and have persistently limited
the development prospects of the majority of the world's people.
— Finally there is an urgent requirement
for direct assistance in developing gendered and sustainable development
processes that aid the poorest while being environmentally sound.
Preventing the worst effects of climate change
will require three forms of action:
— One is that the main polluters, primarily
the industrialised states of the North, will need to lead in cutting
back carbon emissions to a level far lower than is now envisaged
and in a much tighter timescale. Something of the order of 60%
cuts by 2020, and 80% by 2030 will be essential, with this to
be achieved by a combination of huge improvements in the efficiency
of energy use and a much higher reliance on renewable energy resources.
The European Community has a pivotal role to play in this transformation.
One major effect of such a change will be a markedly decreased
reliance on fossil fuels, including oil. Decreasing the dependence
of major industrialised states on Persian Gulf oil will substantially
decrease the risk of further conflict in the region.
— The second form of action is that
countries now engaged in industrialisation will need to be consistently
aided to develop forms of industrialisation that have a low environmental
impact.
— Finally, even the most rapid transformation
of economies away from current impacts on climate change cannot
happen in time to prevent a degree of such change. As a consequence,
direct assistance will be required to aid communities in the South
as they are forced to respond to some degree of environmental
impact, including storm intensity, coastal inundation and persistent
drought.
SUSTAINABLE SECURITY
These approaches embody the principles of "sustainable
security", a concept developed by Oxford Research Group that
focuses on a sustainable approach to global security using the
long-term resolution of interconnected root causes of insecurity
and conflict, with an emphasis on preventative rather than reactive
strategies. It has the following features:
— Focus on ordinary people and their
needs
A fundamental priority of security policy should
be to protect people, their families and their livelihoods. State
security is only a legitimate goal to the extent that it promotes
human security.
— Address the most serious threats
Security priorities need to take account of the
most serous and long-term threats to human security, such as climate
change, resource competition, poverty and marginalisation, as
well as the spread of weapons of mass destruction and other high-tech
weaponry.
— Prioritise preventative approaches
The major threats to security should be prevented
by removing their causes rather than by controlling their consequences.
— Promote a comprehensive approach
The main security threats interact with one another
and therefore solutions must address all the threats in an integrated
fashion rather than in a piecemeal or fragmented manner.
CHANGING PARADIGMS
One of the main critiques of the traditionally
state-centred approach to international security has been the
idea of "common security", which is predicated on a
high level of state cooperation for addressing common problems.
It has been paralleled by "critical security studies"
which is more directly critical of the state-centred approach
and also embraces an emancipatory agenda, not dissimilar to elements
of peace research. Also in parallel, there has been the development
of the "human security" approach which prioritises the
value of individuals, groups and communities.
Sustainable security does no more than combine
elements of the common and human security approaches while ensuring
that policies adopted build in a capacity for long-term resilience.
In the broadest terms, the combination of socio-economic divisions
and environmental constraints is the core global security predicament
and provides a unique circumstance. Unless current trends are
reversed, there is a very high probability of exceptional levels
of insecurity over the next three decades and beyond. The traditional
state-centred approach will be to prioritise maintaining security
by military and related means, with inadequate attention to altering
the trends. Sustainable security involves adopting the policies
outlined above to do just that. The timescale for the required
changes is essentially the period through to around 2015.
While there were indications in the late 1990s
of a recognition of failings both in free market globalisation
and environmental impacts, one of the main effects of the 9/11
attacks was to reinforce the control paradigm, setting back by
five years or more the possibility of embracing the sustainable
security approach. At the same time, the first few years of the
war on terror have been notable for the systematic failure of
the control paradigm. This therefore provides for the possibility
of a re-thinking of the paradigm not just as it applies specifically
to the war on terror but also to overall global trends. In one
sense it is a contest between a very deeply embedded outlook,
supported by some of the world's most powerful lobbies, and a
recognition that global security has to be approached in entirely
new ways—in effect a paradigm shift.
Three aspects of the current predicament give
some cause for optimism. One is the growing awareness of the confluence
of environmental constraints and socio-economic divisions as the
core drivers of future insecurity. The second is the palpable
failure of current security policies since one of the most powerful
inducements for new thinking is that the very approach to the
war on terror is increasingly recognised as a lost cause. Finally,
there is immense scope for the European Community to play a pivotal
role in responding to these drivers of insecurity. In a real sense
the Community has its origins in some of the visionary political
thinking of the early 1950s on the need to prevent a third European
civil war. It now has the potential to respond to an even greater
issue—a global rather than a continental predicament.
June 2008
NOTES
(1) "A Secure Europe in a Better World"
European Security Strategy, Brussels, 12 December 2003.
(2) An example is the work of the Development,
Concepts and Doctrine Centre, a UK Government defence think tank
which has published Global Strategic Trends 2007-2036,
(DCDC, The Defence Academy, Shrivenham, Swindon, Wiltshire, 2007).
(3) This section seeks to summarise a more detailed
analysis developed by the Oxford Research Group: Chris Abbott,
Paul Rogers and John Sloboda, "Global Responses to Global
Threats: Sustainable Security for the 21st Century", ORG
Briefing Paper, June 2006, Oxford Research Group, London.
This was subsequently developed into a short book, Beyond Terror,
by the same authors, published by the Rider Books division of
Random House, April 2007 and since translated into German, Dutch,
Spanish and Portuguese.
(4) James Davies, Susanna Sandstrom, Anthony
Shorrocks and Edwars N Wolff, "The Global Distribution of
Household Wealth", WIDER Angle, No 2, 2006, World
Institute for Development Economics Research, Helsinki.
(5) Quoted in: James Stephenson, "The 1994
Zapatista Rebellion in Southern Mexico—an Analysis and Assessment"
Occasional Paper Number 12, (Camberley: Strategic and Combat
Studies Institute, The Army Staff College, 1995). Stephenson's
paper is unusual as a military analysis of a conflict in that
it pays particular attention to the social and economic conditions
underlying the rebellion.
(6) One of the early accounts of this issue was:
David Rind, "Drying Out the Tropics", New Scientist,
6 May 1995.
(7) Although the reports of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change have sounded frequent warnings, they
tend to be consensus documents, primarily to ensure a degree of
scientific authority. One effect is to err on the side of caution
whereas there are indications that climate change is actually
happening faster than predicted by the IPCC. An example
is the rate of melting of Arctic sea ice where there are indications
that this is, on average, happening at three times the rate predicted
by the 18 climate models used by the IPCC. See: Richard
A Lovett, "Arctic Ice Melting Much Faster Than Predicted",
National Geographic News, 1 May 2007.
(8) In 1993, President Clinton's newly appointed
Director of Central Intelligence, James Woolsey, characterised
the ending of the Cold War by saying that the United States and
its allies had tamed the dragon but now faced a jungle full of
poisonous snakes. Taming the jungle would therefore be a security
priority.
(9) Edwin Brooks, "The Implications of Ecological
Limits to Growth in Terms of Expectations and Aspirations in Developed
and Less Developed Countries", chapter in Anthony Vann and
Paul Rogers (eds), Human Ecology and World Development,
Plenumn Press, London and New York, 1974.
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