Human security assessment in modern conflicts
Security assessment used to be a term used only referring to states, while a more thorough analysis illustrated more aspects of security assessment , leading to a brader conception. In a process that begun with the Human Development Report of 1994 human security assessment was embroiled with economical, food, health, environmental, personal, communal and political dimensions.
Harbom and Wallensteen (2005) clearly demonstrate that the number of inter-state conflicts in the 70s and 80s fluctuated from 3 to 8 wars per years, while in 90s, from 0 to 2 (Harbom&Wallensteen, 2005: 624). This is an obvious decline. On the other hand the intrastate conflicts started rising from the 70s (about 25 conflicts) to reach their top in the beginning of 90s, while the whole decade to 2004 they have been diminishing down to the pre-70s levels (Harbom&Wallensteen, 2005: 624). In sum conflicts, both interstate and intrastate, have decreased during the 90s. Facing a lack of inter-state conflicts and due to the rise of neo-liberal approach in the international relations, the academic discourse focused on the intrastate conflict, assuming that conflict has changed. Partly this is true, as far as the almost-extinction of one of the types of conflict can justify a total shift in the way academics look at the world. Along with the almost-extinction of the interstate conflict the discourse on security assessment came up. It is natural that conflict and security assessment walk one by the other and since the focus is on intrastate conflict new types of security assessment came up. Security assessment used to be a term used only referring to states, while a more thorough analysis illustrated more aspects of security assessment , almost unknown before. In a process that begun with the 1994 Human Development Report human security assessment was embroiled with economical, food, health, environmental, personal, communal and political dimensions (Zaal, 2007). As clearly indicated by Domini et al (2005), the local communities living in a conflict, understand that peace and security assessment are build on the concepts of economic growth, functioning government and participation. Many would disagree in giving security assessment such a broad uncontrollable definition (Zaal, 2007) but undoubtedly security assessment broadened in order to encompass non-military factors, along with the existing military ones, and deepened in order to accommodate individual, community and other micro-levels, along with the existing state macro-level, (Zaal, 2007). To clarify even more Domini et al (2005) have conducted a research on understanding security assessment through the eyes of state and military authorities (PSOs), Humanitarian Organizations (AAs) and local communities. The military authorities are concerned primarily about the ‘force security assessment ’ (Domini et al, 2005: v-xii), using the CIMIC framework, the PRTs, in exchange of intelligence on insurgents or to ‘build consent’, to legitimize their military presence (Domini et al, 2005: vii). The NGOs are concerned about their role in the CIMIC; “mixing soldiers with aid workers is just asking for trouble’ (Domini et al, 2005: 15). They are concerned about their ability to reach their goals; “an environment [to allow] them to work according to plan (Domini et al, 2005: 28). That is freedom to move, access to communities and absence of physical harm. Alongside with their functioning they are also concerned about the local community’s needs of provision of employment, basic amenities, poverty alleviation, crime fighting, corruption fighting and the like, which are recognized as the roots of conflict (Domini et al, 2005). Therefore the extinction of the causes of conflict would provide a positive sustainable peace instead of a negative peace, defined as the mere absence of war conflict (Domini et al, 2005: viii).
Concluding, the almost extinct interstate war and the diminishing number of active conflicts in general shifted the interest of the conflict-related discourse from the interstate to the intrastate conflicts. Consequently this shift gave to the security assessment a broader and deeper definition accommodating together the old perception of security assessment on state-level and the new perception on micro-level. In the field, the PSOs are still more concerned about the threat of an armed attack, using the PRTs to rise the‘force’s security assessment ’, through intelligence seeking and legitimization rising, while the local communities are concerned about finding ways to achieve a positive peace. NGOs stand in the between, both concerned about their personnel’s security assessment and the local community’s needs.
Energy Security assessment Is it desirable?
It is energy insecurity assessment that we should seek.
The pursuit of "energy security assessment " has brought us to the brink. It is directly responsible for numerous wars, big and small; for unprecedented environmental degradation; for global financial imbalances and meltdowns; for growing income disparities; and for ubiquitous unsustainable development.
The uncertainty incumbent in phenomena such "peak oil", or in the preponderance of hydrocarbon fuels in failed states fosters innovation. The more insecure we get, the more we invest in the recycling of energy-rich products; the more substitutes we find for energy-intensive foods; the more we conserve energy; the more we switch to alternatives energy; the more we encourage international collaboration; and the more we optimize energy outputs per unit of fuel input.
A world in which energy (of whatever source) will be abundant and predictably available would suffer from entropy, both physical and mental. The vast majority of human efforts revolve around the need to deploy our meager resources wisely. Energy also serves as a geopolitical "organizing principle" and disciplinary rod. Countries which waste energy (and the money it takes to buy it), pollute, and conflict with energy suppliers end up facing diverse crises, both domestic and foreign. Profligacy is punished precisely because energy in insecure. Energy scarcity and precariousness thus serves a global regulatory mechanism.
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| Modern conflicts and security assessment |
But the obsession with "energy security assessment " is only one example of the almost religious belief in "scarcity".
It is only a mild overstatement to say that the science of economics, such as it is, revolves around the Malthusian concept of scarcity. Our infinite wants, the finiteness of our resources and the bad job we too often make of allocating them efficiently and optimally - lead to mismatches between supply and demand. We are forever forced to choose between opportunities, between alternative uses of resources, painfully mindful of their costs.
This is how the perennial textbook "Economics" (seventeenth edition), authored by Nobel prizewinner Paul Samuelson and William Nordhaus, defines the dismal science:
"Economics is the study of how societies use scarce resources to produce valuable commodities and distribute them among different people."
The classical concept of scarcity - unlimited wants vs. limited resources - is lacking. Anticipating much-feared scarcity encourages hoarding which engenders the very evil it was meant to fend off. Ideas and knowledge - inputs as important as land and water - are not subject to scarcity, as work done by Nobel laureate Robert Solow and, more importantly, by Paul Romer, an economist from the University of California at Berkeley, clearly demonstrates. Additionally, it is useful to distinguish natural from synthetic resources.
The scarcity of most natural resources (a type of "external scarcity") is only theoretical at present. Granted, many resources are unevenly distributed and badly managed. But this is man-made ("internal") scarcity and can be undone by Man. It is truer to assume, for practical purposes, that most natural resources - when not egregiously abused and when freely priced - are infinite rather than scarce. The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins discovered that primitive peoples he has studied had no concept of "scarcity" - only of "satiety". He called them the first "affluent societies".
This is because, fortunately, the number of people on Earth is finite - and manageable - while most resources can either be replenished or substituted. Alarmist claims to the contrary by environmentalists have been convincingly debunked by the likes of Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist".
Equally, it is true that manufactured goods, agricultural produce, money, and services are scarce. The number of industrialists, service providers, or farmers is limited - as is their life span. The quantities of raw materials, machinery and plant are constrained. Contrary to classic economic teaching, human wants are limited - only so many people exist at any given time and not all them desire everything all the time. But, even so, the demand for man-made goods and services far exceeds the supply.
Scarcity is the attribute of a "closed" economic universe. But it can be alleviated either by increasing the supply of goods and services (and human beings) - or by improving the efficiency of the allocation of economic resources. Technology and innovation are supposed to achieve the former - rational governance, free trade, and free markets the latter.
The telegraph, the telephone, electricity, the train, the car, the agricultural revolution, information technology and, now, biotechnology have all increased our resources, seemingly ex nihilo. This multiplication of wherewithal falsified all apocalyptic Malthusian scenarios hitherto. Operations research, mathematical modeling, transparent decision making, free trade, and professional management - help better allocate these increased resources to yield optimal results.
Markets are supposed to regulate scarcity by storing information about our wants and needs. Markets harmonize supply and demand. They do so through the price mechanism. Money is, thus, a unit of information and a conveyor or conduit of the price signal - as well as a store of value and a means of exchange.
Markets and scarcity are intimately related. The former would be rendered irrelevant and unnecessary in the absence of the latter. Assets increase in value in line with their scarcity - i.e., in line with either increasing demand or decreasing supply. When scarcity decreases - i.e., when demand drops or supply surges - asset prices collapse. When a resource is thought to be infinitely abundant (e.g., air) - its price is zero.
Armed with these simple and intuitive observations, we can now survey the dismal economic landscape.
The abolition of scarcity was a pillar of the paradigm shift to the "new economy". The marginal costs of producing and distributing intangible goods, such as intellectual property, are negligible. Returns increase - rather than decrease - with each additional copy. An original software retains its quality even if copied numerous times. The very distinction between "original" and "copy" becomes obsolete and meaningless. Knowledge products are "non-rival goods" (i.e., can be used by everyone simultaneously).
Such ease of replication gives rise to network effects and awards first movers with a monopolistic or oligopolistic position. Oligopolies are better placed to invest excess profits in expensive research and development in order to achieve product differentiation. Indeed, such firms justify charging money for their "new economy" products with the huge sunken costs they incur - the initial expenditures and investments in research and development, machine tools, plant, and branding.
To sum, though financial and human resources as well as content may have remained scarce - the quantity of intellectual property goods is potentially infinite because they are essentially cost-free to reproduce. Plummeting production costs also translate to enhanced productivity and wealth formation. It looked like a virtuous cycle.
But the abolition of scarcity implied the abolition of value. Value and scarcity are two sides of the same coin. Prices reflect scarcity. Abundant products are cheap. Infinitely abundant products - however useful - are complimentary. Consider money. Abundant money - an intangible commodity - leads to depreciation against other currencies and inflation at home. This is why central banks intentionally foster money scarcity.
But if intellectual property goods are so abundant and cost-free - why were distributors of intellectual property so valued, not least by investors in the stock exchange? Was it gullibility or ignorance of basic economic rules?
Not so. Even "new economists" admitted to temporary shortages and "bottlenecks" on the way to their utopian paradise of cost-free abundance. Demand always initially exceeds supply. Internet backbone capacity, software programmers, servers are all scarce to start with - in the old economy sense.
This scarcity accounts for the stratospheric erstwhile valuations of dotcoms and telecoms. Stock prices were driven by projected ever-growing demand and not by projected ever-growing supply of asymptotically-free goods and services. "The Economist" describes how WorldCom executives flaunted the cornucopian doubling of Internet traffic every 100 days. Telecoms predicted a tsunami of clients clamoring for G3 wireless Internet services. Electronic publishers gleefully foresaw the replacement of the print book with the much heralded e-book.
The irony is that the new economy self-destructed because most of its assumptions were spot on. The bottlenecks were, indeed, temporary. Technology, indeed, delivered near-cost-free products in endless quantities. Scarcity was, indeed, vanquished.
Per the same cost, the amount of information one can transfer through a single fiber optic swelled 100 times. Computer storage catapulted 80,000 times. Broadband and cable modems let computers communicate at 300 times their speed only 5 years ago. Scarcity turned to glut. Demand failed to catch up with supply. In the absence of clear price signals - the outcomes of scarcity - the match between the two went awry.
One innovation the "new economy" has wrought is "inverse scarcity" - unlimited resources (or products) vs. limited wants. Asset exchanges the world over are now adjusting to this harrowing realization - that cost free goods are worth little in terms of revenues and that people are badly disposed to react to zero marginal costs.
The new economy caused a massive disorientation and dislocation of the market and the price mechanism. Hence the asset bubble. Reverting to an economy of scarcity is our only hope. If we don't do so deliberately - the markets will do it for us, mercilessly.
A Comment on "Manufactured Scarcity"
Conspiracy theorists have long alleged that manufacturers foster scarcity by building into their products mechanisms of programmed obsolescence and apoptosis (self-destruction). But scarcity is artificially manufactured in less obvious (and far less criminal) ways.
Technological advances, product revisions, new features, and novel editions render successive generations of products obsolete. Consumerism encourages owners to rid themselves of their possessions and replace them with newer, more gleaming, status-enhancing substitutes offered by design departments and engineering workshops worldwide. Cherished values of narcissistic competitiveness and malignant individualism play an important socio-cultural role in this semipternal game of musical chairs.
Many products have a limited shelf life or an expiry date (rarely supported by solid and rigorous research). They are to be promptly disposed of and, presumably, instantaneously replaced with new ones.
Finally, manufacturers often knowingly produce scarcity by limiting their output or by restricting access to their goods. "Limited editions" of works of art and books are prime examples of this stratagem.
Political Geography and the Israeli Security assessment Fence
Concepts in Political Geography and the Israeli Security assessment Fence
An examination of the language of the Israeli separation wall from a geopolitical perspective.
Palestine, The Holy Land, Israel; No matter how you refer to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, it’s bound to raise emotions and opinions, rarely indifference, amoung politically minded folk. Since the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, geography has been everything to the people of the region. Security assessment , environment, identity has been all been dependant on the control and sovereignty over hills, rivers, wells, territories and borders. In this essay I will take some political geography concepts and, using contemporary news articles, apply them to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with particular regard to the building of the “West Bank Security assessment Fence”. In an attempt to use politically neutral language, expanded on later in this essay, I will refer to this contentious work asthe construction. I will conclude, not by commenting on the morality or legality of the work, but on its effect on the heart of political geography, national identity itself.
The rivalry of State against Nation (Muir, 1997, pg 38) seems to sum up the West Bank. The powerful State of Israel holding back a nation, Palestinian Arabs, from their goal of statehood. Israel itself is an example of the evolution of nations from ethnies. Driven by a nationalism spurred by ancient culture, powerful iconography and biblical folklore, the Jewish vertical ethny politically and culturally mobilised into the active state of Israel (Muir, 1997, pg 39). As Muir notes, Jews were “physically dispersed, partially divided by language” but inexorably connected by the dream of “recovering Israel, a precisely located territory” (Muir, 1997, pg 51). In the light of the “indigenous” Palestinian Arabs struggle to gain autonomy over “historic Palestine” (PLO, 2003, pg 3), it is interesting to contrast Muir’s statements about Jewish territoriality with his view of the innate relation to territory by Middle Eastern Arabs. He notes that the traditional Arab bond was to the nomadic lifestyle, family and ancestry not to specific places or territories (Muir, 1997, pg 64). Could it be that the successful emergence of a Jewish state and the non-emergence of a Palestinian one is in some way connected to each groups varying sense of territoriality?
The current debate about the construction of the barrier through the West Bank is loaded with “geographical descriptions used to influence political perception” (Sharp, 1999, pg 185). The Israeli government refers to the project as a security assessment fence, stressing its protective purpose, shielding Israeli citizens from suicide bombers and protecting strategic targets like Ben-Gurion Airport from terrorist missile attacks (Shuman, 2003, pg 1). Even the term fence has benign, flimsy connotations. This is in sharp contrast to the language used by opponents of the construction. They range from the subtly negative security assessment barrier (Reuters, 2003, Olive) and separation wall (Cook, 2003, pg 1) of the international media, to the highly emotive Apartheid Wall of partisan opponents (Mair and Long, 2003, pg 1). These terms have oppressive, malign connotations. This sense is compounded by comparisons of the construction with the infamous Berlin Wall (Perry, 2003, pg 1). Israeli critics evoke images of geographical white elephants like the Maginot Line and Chinese Great Wall
giving the construction the feel of an ill-fated folly (Anbar, 2003, pg 1). As Sharp points out, geographical descriptions can be used subtly or blatantly to influence an audiences political perception through their geographic imagination (Sharp, 1999, pg 185).
We have already noted the Israeli government’s emphasis on the security assessment essence of the construction. This legitimises the exercise, the state providing an internal security assessment instrument for the protection of the inhabitants of Israeli jurisdiction. To invoke Dalby, this is an Israeli exercise of sovereignty, using state power to combat external violations of Israeli territory (Dalby, 1992, 505). If Herz’s prediction of the disappearance of the state by causes including new missile technology (Taylor, 1995, pg 11) is rashly premature, Muir certainly regards territorial boundaries defended by frontier work like the construction as “paper thin” in the current technological age (Muir, 1997, pg 52). However, regardless of the desire of groups like Hamas for Israel to disappear through the use of human missiles, the construction may, ironically, lead to the disappearance of any chance of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and, in fact, strengthen Israeli nationalism. If the construction is one price Palestinians are paying for terrorism (Halevi, 2003, pg 4), there may well be many others.
Any look at the current and potential route of the construction (Arab Media Network, 2003) must invite questions as to the territorial status of the West Bank. Halevi argues that “legally, the West Bank is extraterritorial: the international community didn’t recognize Jordan’s annexation....Palestine isn’t being restored, but invented, it’s borders are negotiable”, (Halevi, 2003, pg 3). Cohen may have seen the West Bank as a gateway state in 1990, potentially achieving actual statehood (Cohen, 1990, pg 10), but the devastation caused by both intafadas (Mair and Long, 2003) point more to the condition described by another geographer. Taylor described the concept of the fictitious state; territories run by groups of armed men with no functioning state structure (Taylor, 1995, pg 9). Whether the Israeli Defence Force and armed Jewish Settler groups or Hamas and Al Fatah run the West Bank, is irrelevant. The presence of any multiple of armed groups, coupled with the territory’s complete subsistence to the Israeli economy, qualifies it, for some years to come, as a fictitious state, a mere colour on a map, another post-colonial state development myth (Taylor, 1995, pg 10). With all this in mind and leaving political opinions to one side, we can regard the West Bank without interterritoriality. Is the West bank a microcosmic version of the indivisible spatial regard of the old world empires? As Taylor points out, wall builders of old were not defining sovereign limits, merely creating arrangements for the administration of frontier regions (Taylor, 1995, pg 8). Considering Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s statements that the construction is not a permanent border (Burston, 2003, pg 4) and the existence of numerous well-established Jewish settlements in the region, should we not regard the West Bank in neo-feudal terms? While it may be parcelled up into multiple jurisdictions, these are by no means multiple sovereignties. Without the conversion of these juridical lines into modern boundaries, the West Bank remains a fluid neo-feudal frontier (Taylor, 1995, pg 8). We read of many examples where the construction is converting juridical lines to modern boundaries, radically changing the whole nature of areas. The district of A-Ram is a notable example. Long a suburb of Jerusalem, the construction is due to separate the area from its hinterland. Whether this is to protect the battered capital from further suicide bombers or a blatant example of gerrymandering, reducing the probability of a future Arab majority in the city, is moot (Levy, 2003). Regardless, the effect of creating a de facto boundary along a city’s old juridical lines, turns this once-suburb into a disembodied outland mired in isolated stasis.
Environmental geography is apparently playing a part in the constructions progress through the West Bank. Dalby predicts intra-state conflict over water shortages in the Middle East (Dalby, 1992, 508). Some commentators highlight the constructions envelopment of the water wells so vital to sustainable agriculture in the West Bank and allege land grab and a covetous eye to future water sources are the prime motivators behind the development (Cook, 2003, pg 2). Not only is the construction having a detrimental effect on Arab agriculture, but also the health of the farmers through malnutrition worries some aid agencies (Christian Aid, 2003).
More than, arguably, any other region on Earth, two things, people and geography define the history of the Middle East. Whether you call it a fence, a wall or a barrier, the construction rising throughout the West Bank is a creature of geography, illustrating or disproving many theories of geopolitics and political and human geography. Whether it is influencing language or raising questions of sovereignty, this construction shows the inexorable hold of geography over the conduct of human life. In this long-troubled region, this geographic work is not just reflecting divisions but also helping to create them. Sharp believes that national identity can be defined by defining those who exist outside as different from those members of a nation on the inside (Sharp, 1999, pg 185). For the Arabs, if they are outside the fence are they Palestinians? If they are, what are those inside the fence to call themselves?