by Alex Evans | Jul 12, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security
Regular readers of GlobalDashboard know that we’re big fans of fourth generation warfare theorists William Lind and John Robb. Both writers have warned persistently that 4GW isn’t just something that happens “over there”, in Anbar or Helmand. It’s “over here”, too, whether “here” is low-intensity war in Mexico (see the Economist on Mexico’s drugs conflict a couple of weeks ago), or proliferating use of 4GW tactics by home-grown insurgents in the UK.
Lind, reviewing John Robb’s new book, summarises the latter’s conclusions approvingly:
Robb correctly finds the antidote to 4GW not in Soviet-style state structures such as the Department of Homeland Security but in de-centralization. What Robb calls “dynamic decentralized resilience” means that, in concrete terms, security is again to be found close to home. Local police departments, local sources of energy such as roof top solar arrays – I would add local farms that use sustainable agricultural practices – are the key to dealing with system perturbations. To the extent we depend on large, globalist, centralized networks we are insecure.
John Robb, though, thinks that as the use of 4GW tactics “over here” proliferates, things will develop much further:
Members of the middle class will (take) matters into their own hands by forming suburban collectives to share the costs of security — as they do now with education – and shore up delivery of critical services. These “armored suburbs” will deploy and maintain backup generators and communications links; they will be patrolled by civilian police auxiliaries that have received corporate training and boost their own state-of-the-art emergency response systems.
And in case you thought the idea of decentralised local energy and food independence was only for survivalists in Michigan: we have news for you.
by Alex Evans | Jul 10, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Global system
Usually when you see phrases like “oil crunch in five years”, you assume that you’re being addressed by a peak-oiler who is about to go on to explain to you the composition of the canned food stash that he’s secured in his attic. So when you realise that you’re actually reading the FT, and the people using the phrase are the International Energy Agency, it’s easy to do a double-take. But there it is, in black and white (well, pink):
In its starkest warning yet on the world’s fuel outlook, the International Energy Agency said “oil looks extremely tight in five years time” and there are “prospects of even tighter natural gas markets at the turn of the decade”.
The IEA said that supply was falling faster than expected in mature areas, such as the North Sea or Mexico, while projects in new provinces such as the Russian Far East, faced long delays. Meanwhile consumption is accelerating on strong economic growth in emerging countries.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that supply from non-members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will increase at an annual pace of 1 per cent, or less than half the rate of the demand rise.
The widening gap between rising consumption and lagging non-Opec supply will force Opec to sharply increase its production in the next five years.
Lawrence Eagles, head of the IEA’s oil market division, told the Financial Times: “If we get to the point were there is insufficient supply, the only way to balance the market will be through higher prices and a drop in demand.
IEA’s gloomy pronouncement comes within a week of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation forecast of food price increases of between 20 and 50 per cent over the next decade, thanks to biofuels, climate change, water scarcity and increased demand (see GlobalDashboard’s one pager on how scarcity trends intersect here).
All of which raises the rather pertinent question: Does anyone, at either national or global level, have a plan to manage all this – or indeed clarity over whose job it is to worry about such a cross-cutting trend?
P.S. If you’re now wondering what you should have stashed in the attic: help is at hand.
by Alex Evans | Jul 9, 2007 | UK
The FT has a big interview with David Miliband this morning (stories here on Iran and here on Britain as a ‘global hub’; transcript here). Most of the FT’s questions are country- or region-specific, but there’s an interestingly candid point at the very end, after the FT have asked him to sum up. Here’s his concluding comment from the transcript (emphasis added):
I know the previous prime minister was a huge admirer of the talent of the Foreign Office but I think, I don’t think he’d think he got the most out of it and I think part of my job is to make sure that Gordon Brown gets the most out of it and that’s what he wants me to do and that’s what I want to try and do.
1. He’s right. 2. It’s interesting that he says it.
by Alex Evans | Jul 9, 2007 | Conflict and security
Catching up with recent posts on John Robb’s Global Guerrillas blog, I find a small ray of sunshine for a bright summer’s day:
We’ve all heard the term “suicide bomber.” So what do you call a person, infected with a deadly biowarfare agent, that travels the public airways from city to city, purposely spreading the contagion until they eventually succumb to the disease themselves? My favorite: a suicide mule. Any additional suggestions?
by Alex Evans | Jul 9, 2007 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, North America
Two great pieces on intelligence in the Washington Post over the weekend. RJ Hillhouse is worried that the US’s national security is being outsourced:
Over the past five years (some say almost a decade), there has been a revolution in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing. Private companies now perform key intelligence-agency functions, to the tune, I’m told, of more than $42 billion a year. Intelligence professionals tell me that more than 50 percent of the National Clandestine Service (NCS) — the heart, brains and soul of the CIA — has been outsourced to private firms such as Abraxas, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon …
As the Los Angeles Times first reported last October, more than half the workforce in two key CIA stations in the fight against terrorism — Baghdad and Islamabad, Pakistan — is made up of industrial contractors, or “green badgers,” in CIA parlance.
Meanwhile, Amy Zegart is furious with America’s “clueless intelligence system”. She argues that books like Bob Woodward’s that discuss the “personal drama” of decisionmaking are beside the point: “The human story is irrelevant. Those who want to learn what went wrong and how to fix it need to understand something far less intriguing: bureaucracy — the organizational weaknesses that cause smart people to make dumb decisions.” She continues:
Public government documents reveal that the CIA and the FBI missed 23 potential opportunities to disrupt the 9/11 attacks. In each case, failure stemmed from the same causes: 1. agency cultures that led officials to resist new ideas, technologies and missions; 2. promotion incentives that rewarded all the wrong things; and 3. structural weaknesses that hampered the CIA and the FBI and prevented all 15 U.S intelligence agencies from working as a unified team.
And here’s the key point. Engrave it in stone and hang it on your wall:
“Meaningful reform will take years, requiring bottom-up cultural transformation as well as top-down policy changes.”
