International Security: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (13 page)

A good example of these points is provided by the issue of water scarcity in the Middle East, one of the most popular examples in the resource wars literature. Evidence to support claims about resource wars in this context is frequently drawn from a number
of key proclamations. These include the claim made by Ariel Sharon in his autobiography that the Six Day War of 1967 fought between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, and Syria actually started two years earlier, with the first act of war being Syria’s decision to divert the flow of two tributaries of the Jordan River, to the detriment of Israel. For Israel, Sharon argued, the water diversion was a matter of national survival that justified military strikes to prevent it. In a similar vein, the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat stated in 1979, after signing a peace accord with Israel, that ‘The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water’. Finally, it is also worth noting that for Palestinians in the West Bank Israel’s ‘security fence’ is not just about grabbing Palestinian territory, but about securing water supplies, while it is also clear that retaining access to its water reserves is also one reason why Israel is reluctant to return to Syria the Golan Heights, which it annexed in the 1967 war.

While in these statements and examples some people see support for the scarcity-conflict thesis, for critics the key point is that while water shortages raise important questions, they are not the key source of tensions in the region, which are rather related to broader issues of Israel’s relations with its neighbours and with the Palestinians. Indeed, contrary to the claim, it is actually more often the case that states reach agreements over the use and sharing of key resources. Moreover, critics argue that the emphasis on securing as much of the resource pie as possible that often flows from debates about resource scarcity can also divert attention away from a range of other possible solutions to problems of scarcity. In arid regions, for example, it is not always the supply of water that is the problem, as opposed to its management. For example, water supply can be expanded through better irrigation, storage, transportation, and recycling schemes and through avoiding the cultivation of water intensive crops and water intensive industries (e.g. steel production), instead purchasing such products from elsewhere.

From an ecological perspective, of course, debates about resource conflicts are missing the point while the world burns. Thus, the issue is not only one of resource distribution, but of how resource exploitation is contributing to global warming and threatening to produce fundamental change in the planetary biosphere. Seen from this standpoint debates about environmental security should be refocused away from trying to secure the state from environmental ‘threats’, towards protecting the global ecosystem from the effects of human activity. Implied, therefore, is a problematization of global capitalism and the consumer culture it feeds, which from an ecological perspective appears increasingly unsustainable.

In the early 1990s the prospects for tackling problems of climate change seemed relatively good. At the 1992 Rio ‘Earth Summit’ (formally called the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) 172 governments met to discuss the state of the global environment. Although many of the resulting commitments and agreements were non-binding the importance attached to the meeting was reflected in that over 100 heads of state attended. Later, Rio also provided the background for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which established formal targets for industrialized countries for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. For some, however, the Kyoto Protocol has proven disappointing. Not only have most industrialized nations failed to meet their targets, but the United States, then the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, never signed up. Indeed, Canada’s withdrawal from the Protocol in 2011 seemed to indicate that the international community’s central agreement on tackling climate change was unravelling. The difficulties in apportioning responsibility and reaching agreements on targets has at times seemed intractable and resulted in subsequent international conferences that are often strong on rhetoric but produce few concrete results. For many the limited progress was crystallized at the Rio + 20 Earth Summit of 2012,
which produced another set of non-binding recommendations, was short on detail, and this time was attended by only a few state leaders, with those from key industrialized nations (e.g. Germany, UK, USA) notably absent; all this despite the fact that since 1992 global emissions have risen by 48 per cent. As noted by one Nicaraguan conference delegate, the final document ‘contributes almost nothing to our struggle to survive as a species’.

Given the potentially devastating effects of global warming for the planet, for states, and for the lives of individuals it is important to consider why collective action in preventing it appears to be so difficult. One explanation is that the state system is to blame as a result of its tendency to foster a competitive logic. A good example is the horse-trading that goes on over emissions cuts. The EU, for example, has previously stated that it would be prepared to reduce its emissions by 30 per cent, but only if everyone else agrees to do likewise. The EU is therefore worried about others gaining benefits by free-riding on its actions, which in view of the environmental catastrophe that may await can seem to some a churlish consideration. The flip side, however, is that such a bargaining strategy also reflects a growing belief (some would say hope) within the industrialized world that ultimately they can afford the costs of adapting to climate change and can therefore afford to adopt tougher tactics in negotiations on potentially preventing or reversing it.

Another argument is that the increasing tendency to discuss climate change through the language of security is itself problematic. While presenting it as a security issue has certainly been effective in generating attention the concern is that it has also resulted in the emergence of ‘us versus them’ mindsets and a slippage towards emphasizing narrower national security concerns, with key environmental threats often depicted as lying beyond the state. This can be seen, for example, in often expressed developed world concerns at the environmental threat posed by the industrialization of China and India. In this way, consumerist
desires in the developing world are presented as a fundamental global security concern, while the consumption and pollution patterns of the developed world are ignored. This is problematic since according to UNDP estimates the average person in the developed world still consumes the resources and produces the pollution of 30–50 people in the developing world.

What critics suggest, therefore, is that what all this ultimately highlights is how debates about environmental security and global climate change have actually been hijacked by an alternative security agenda designed to preserve the sanctity of the very consumerist global economic system that is largely responsible for the environmental degradation and emissions driving climate change in the first place. This view, for example, was made clear even in the context of the first Earth Summit in 1992 at which US President George H. W. Bush declared that ‘the American way of life is not up for negotiation’. Preserving this way of life and its emphasis on constant consumption is, of course, also what drives much of the quest for resource security. Meanwhile, even though the outcome document of the Rio + 20 Earth Summit acknowledged that ‘fundamental changes in the way societies consume and produce are indispensable for achieving global sustainable development’, quite what this might mean was not spelt out. It is also contradicted by the emphasis on stimulating more production and consumption advocated by those very same developed world politicians who absented themselves from attending, but who are now looking to drag their countries out of the grip of the 2008 economic crisis. The consequences of this view, however, are stark especially if seen in the context of an increasing global population and what this might mean for the nature of relations between the haves and have-nots in the system. In a world of finite resources and global warming the contention of critics is that the preservation of consumerist lifestyles in the developed world will ultimately depend on the active denial of those lifestyles to the majority of the rest of humanity.

A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.

(Ronald Reagan)

Territorial borders are inextricably connected with questions of security. Traditionally understood it is at the territorial border that the state’s jurisdiction reaches its limit, and the safe and ordered world of the domestic sphere confronts the less certain international realm. As indicated by former US President Ronald Reagan, this makes borders important, since states unable to control their borders will be at greater risk from transnational threats that may also make it harder to maintain control domestically. Indeed, states unable to control their borders are often deemed at risk of ‘failing’ entirely. The permeable border zone between Pakistan and Afghanistan is a case in point, and where the inability of both states to control the movement of people and goods across the border has not only provided the Taleban insurgency within Afghanistan with supply routes, but has also destabilized Pakistan’s border regions. Indeed, with Islamabad deemed largely unable to control activities along the border, America and NATO have further emphasized the limited authority of Pakistan’s government by themselves launching incursions into Pakistan in pursuit of Taleban militants. While such missions generate much anger in Pakistan, they are also symbolic of the weak nature of Pakistan’s sovereignty.

However, if border control is central to state sovereignty and security then America itself can also appear vulnerable. For example, every year an estimated 500,000 people attempt unauthorized crossings of the 2,000 mile long USA–Mexico border. While many are caught and deported, in 2012 the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that since 1970 around six million undocumented Mexicans had successfully made the trip, with the total number of undocumented (illegal) immigrants living in the USA estimated at around 11.2 million. The national security implications of such movements were brought home in the wake of the attacks on 11 September 2001, when it emerged that the perpetrators were all either temporary or unauthorized immigrants. One result was a renewed focus on the security implications of immigration led by the newly created Department for Homeland Security, a key role of which has become tightening border controls and identifying threatening individuals, and which in the context of the USA–Mexico border has included the building of a 700-mile fence to try and prevent unauthorized entries.

The challenge of controlling the movement of people and goods across borders is formidable, with numbers of migrants increasing every year. For example, according to the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, in 2010 the total number of international immigrants stood at approximately 214 million, up from 155 million in 1990. As noted by the International Organization of Migration (IOM) this means that 1 in every 33 persons is a migrant, although the distribution of migrants around the world is very uneven. The most popular destinations include the USA, Russia, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and the UK. However, as a percentage of overall population the country with the highest number of migrants is Qatar (86.5 per cent), while at the other end of the scale are countries like Indonesia (0.1 per cent), Romania (0.6 per cent), and Nigeria (0.7 per cent).

The increase in migration has been driven by several factors. First, the world’s growing population has an obvious impact on the
number of people able to move. Second, the end of the Cold War and the break-up of the Soviet Union facilitated migration across the former East–West divide which had previously been heavily restricted. Third, global economic disparities and problems of development, highlighted in
Chapters 6
and
7
, have in turn become a considerable push factor for migrants, many of whom are willing to take significant risks in the hope of bettering their lives. For example, from 1996 to 2006 an estimated 4,000 people died trying to gain unauthorized entry to the USA. Every year, meanwhile, hundreds of Africans die trying to get to Europe, either by crossing the Mediterranean or by crossing from West Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands. Fourth, globalization and enhanced transportation links are also making it easier for people to move around the globe. However, while globalization and enhanced communications have raised people’s aspirations, encouraged new trade links, and facilitated the emergence of a highly mobile global business elite, they have also provided an infrastructure readily exploited by transnational criminal organizations. While such organizations partake in smuggling narcotics and weapons, there has also been a significant increase in people trafficking. While many of those trafficked willingly pay traffickers for their services, the slave trade in trafficking, with women and girls forced into prostitution, for example, is significant. UNICEF, for instance, estimates that up to 120,000 women and children are illegally trafficked into the EU each year. Finally, population movements are also sparked by the outbreak of conflicts and political persecution. For example, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that in 2010 there were 15.4 million refugees and a further 27.5 million internally displaced persons.

The different causes of migration and the statistics just noted also indicate that migration is a complex phenomenon drawing in people for many different reasons and raising a complex web of
security questions, not only for states trying to control the movement of people across their borders, but also for those individuals moving. One result of attempts to understand the dynamics driving international migration patterns, however, has been the proliferation of labels designed to differentiate between different categories of migrants. Such categories include asylum seekers/refugees, economic, voluntary, forced, family based, legal, illegal, transitory, or temporary, with such labels indicating that people might be migrating to escape political oppression, war, natural disasters, or to make a better life, be near family, or to engage in temporary employment.