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Introduction: Geopolitics in recent U.S. strategic thinking
Geopolitics made their return to American strategic thinking and planning in the post-Cold war era. The last remaining superpower with global ambitions has to adjust and rationalise its military resources. Different to officialdom and public believes, geopolitics never ceased to influence U.S. policy since 1945 as is evidenced by the Domino Theory and the containment strategy to mention but two. More recently, geopolitics left their impact on NATO decision-making as is evidenced by the memberships of former Warsaw pact countries in the alliance. According to US Department of State (The Enlargement of NATO. Washington: State Department, February 1998) "Geopolitically, the new member states of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary add spatial depth to the Alliance. From the strategic perspective the inclusion of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary achieves two prime objectives. First, the addition of these states creates a de jure buffer zone between the historic great powers of continental Europe, Germany and Russia. Second, the inclusion of Hungary creates a firewall against Balkan instability. A drawback is that Hungary will not share a common border with any Alliance member. It has, however, proven useful as a staging area for NATO operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina."
The once moral concerns about a scientific approach that rendered justification for Nazi ideology give way to a more pragmatic attitude at least in official military debates. The Joint Chiefs of Staff in the official Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms from 1994 identify national power as prerequisition for any national strategy: "national power [is defined as the] art and science of developing und using the political, economic, and psychological powers of a nation-state, together with its armed forces during peace and war, to serve national objectives". In other words, the concept of national power remains a key building bloc for understanding and developing strategy. Whether it is consistent with democracy or contemptuous to traditional social values are issues which are not addressed by recent debates. On the contrary, German geopolitik seems to make its re-entrance through the main door. In Parameters, journal of the U.S. Army War College, geopolitics is officially acknowledged as an analytical tool which "has many insights to offer" if not being distorted "into a kind of political metaphysics with a call for adequate national living space (Lebensraum) that was put into ideological service for Nazi Germany". Nevertheless, the U.S. debate shows alarming similarities with its predecessor from which it proclaims to distance itself. To begin with, the concept of national security as basis of American foreign policy is accepted fully. In this logic, national interest is seen as an objective above society, a somewhat unquestioned constant factor. Government performance is measured by its administrative and management skills in using "human and material resources in pursuit of national interests [which are] crucial if a nation is to realize its full power potential". To this adds the quest for "national will and morale" and "national character". History reveals that power politics tend to erode democratic regulations and that optimal power performance is most easily achieved under authoritarian rule. The extent to which the American military subscribes to the historical lesson is disconcerting, indeed. The debates on the importance of natural determinants of power (geography, location, population, and natural resources) and social determinants (economic, military, political, psychological, and informational) borrow from early geopolitical insights. Of course, they adjust the focus on those changes that have occurred since then.
Geopolitical thinking stresses the importance of natural factors for strategic objectives and policy projection in general while human and social aspects are negligible, irritating or even disturbing in this larger game for stability and national grandeur. A nation's perspective is assessed by the ability to foremostly master these natural factors what-in last consequence-will bury democracy and civility. Geopolitics, when applied, is anathema to individual rights and an open society, and thus contradictory to Western civilisation. Nevertheless, the forward march of this mode of strategic thinking to the American polity seems unstoppable, at least for the moment. Our alarmist notion gains evidence when the recurrent debate is examined at close distance.
Against the aforesaid it comes to no surprise that national power and interests dominate the contemporary debate. This leads automatically to national security which in the American case is closely related to maritime issues. As its economic power depends on the global economy regional disturbances-at whatever scale-are treated as potential threats. Water supply is a newly discovered strategic tool which might be deployed for American interests against regional contenders. The ensuing excerpts summarise the debate in Parameters, the theoretical and influential journal of the U.S. military establishment. The simple fact that geopolitics has entered military thinking should give rise to concern. The discussion itself renders these concerns even more disturbing.
Advancing U.S. National Interests (A National Security Strategy for the 21st Century, May 1997)
As stated, the goal of the national security strategy is to ensure the protection of our nation's fundamental and enduring needs: protect the lives and safety of Americans; maintain the sovereignty of the United States, with its values, institutions and territory intact; and provide for the prosperity of the nation and its people.
We seek to create conditions in the world where our interests are rarely threatened, and when they are, we have effective means of addressing those threats. In general, we seek a world in which no critical region is dominated by a power hostile to the United States and regions of greatest importance to the U.S. are stable and at peace. We seek a climate where the global economy and open trade are growing, where democratic norms and respect for human rights are increasingly accepted and where terrorism, drug trafficking and international crime do not undermine stability and peaceful relations. And we seek a world where the spread of nuclear, chemical, biological and other potentially destabilizing technologies is minimized, and the international community is willing and able to prevent or respond to calamitous events. This vision of the world is also one in which the United States has close cooperative relations with the world's most influential countries and has the ability to influence the policies and actions of those who can affect our national well-being. [...]
Maintaining a strong military and the willingness to use it in defense of national and common interests remain essential to a strategy of engagement as we approach the 21st century. Today, the United States has unparalleled military capabilities. We are the only nation in the world able to conduct large-scale, effective joint military operations far beyond its borders. This places us in a unique position. We are the only power in the world that can organize effective military responses to large-scale regional threats, the cornerstone of many mutually beneficial alliances and security partnerships, and the foundation of stability in key regions of the world. To sustain this position of leadership, the United States must maintain ready and versatile forces capable of conducting a wide range of military activities and operations - from deterring and defeating large-scale aggression, to participating in smaller-scale contingencies, to dealing with asymmetric threats like terrorism. [...]
Nevertheless, both U.S. national interests and limited resources argue for the selective use of U.S. forces. The primary purpose of U.S. forces is to deter and defeat the threat of organized violence against the United States and its interests. Decisions about whether and when to use military forces should be guided, first and foremost, by the U.S. national interests at stake - be they vital, important, or humanitarian in nature - and by whether the costs and risks of a particular military involvement are commensurate with those interests. When the interests at stake are vital - that is, they are of broad, overriding importance to the survival, security, and vitality of the United States - we should do whatever it takes to defend them, including, when necessary, the unilateral use of military power. U.S. vital national interests include, but are not limited to: protecting the sovereignty, territory, and population of the United States, and preventing and deterring threats to our homeland, including NBC attacks and terrorism; preventing the emergence of a hostile regional coalition or hegemon; ensuring freedom of the seas and security of international sea lines of communication, airways, and space; ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources; deterring and, if necessary, defeating aggression against U.S. allies and friends.
David Jablonsky, 'National Power', Parameters, Spring 1997, pp. 34-54.
[N]ational power as means or resources to further national strategy, [is] defined by the Department of Defense (DOD) as the "art and science of developing and using the political, economic, and psychological powers of a nation-state, together with its armed forces during peace and war, to serve national objectives."[ Joint Chiefs of Staff, DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, JCS Joint Pub 1-02 (Washington: GPO, 23 March 1994), p. 255] Most scholars, in fact, focus on power as a means, the strength or capacity that provides the "ability to influence the behavior of other actors in accordance with one's own objectives."[...]
National power is contextual in that it can be evaluated only in terms of all the power elements and only in relation to another player or players and the situation in which power is being exercised. A nation may appear powerful because it possesses many military assets, but the assets may be inadequate against those of a potential enemy or inappropriate to the nature of the conflict. The question should always be: power over whom, and with respect to what?[...] [T]he elements of national power, no matter how defined, can be separated only artificially. Together, they constitute the resources for the attainment of national objectives and goals. And while those goals may be judged as moral, immoral, or amoral, the elements of power are simply means to national strategic ends and as such are morally neutral. It is possible, in other words, to reject the cynic's belief that God is on the side of the largest number of battalions, as well as the assumption that the side with the smallest number always fights for the right.[...]
It is convenient to organize the study of national power by distinguishing between natural and social determinants of power. The natural determinants (geography, resources, and population) are concerned with the number of people in a nation and with their physical environment. Social determinants (economic, political, military, psychological, and, more recently, informational) concern the ways in which the people of a nation organize themselves and the manner in which they alter their environment. In practice, it is impossible to make a clear distinction between natural and social elements. For instance, resources are a natural factor, but the degree to which they are used is socially determined. Population factors, in particular, cut across the dividing line between both categories. The number of people of working age in the population affects the degree of industrialization of a nation, but the process of industrialization, in turn, can greatly alter the composition of the population.[...]
Geographical factors, whether they are location and climate or size and topography, influence a nation's outlook and capacity. Location, in particular, is closely tied to the foreign policy of a state. Vulnerable nations, like Poland caught geographically between Russia and Germany, have even had to deal with the loss of national existence. Conversely, Great Britain, the United States, and Japan have been protected by large bodies of water throughout their histories. Each, in turn, used the combination of a large navy and overseas trade to become a great power. With its oceanic moats, the United States was able to follow George Washington's advice to avoid entangling alliances and expand peacefully for almost a century, free of external interference. [...]
Location is also closely tied to climate, which in turn has a significant effect on national power. The poorest and weakest states in modern times have all been located outside the temperate climate zones in either the tropics or in the frigid zone. Even Russia has chronic agricultural problems because all but a small part of that country lies north of the latitude of the US-Canadian border. Russia is also a good example of how geographical factors such as size and topography can have advantages and disadvantages for a nation. The Soviet Union, with its 11 time zones, was able to use its vast size during World War II to repeat the historical Russian military method of trading space for time when invaded. At the same time, that immense size certainly played a role in the complex ethnic and political centrifugal forces that eventually pulled apart the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. [...] Demographics in the form of size, trends, and structure are an important aspect of national power. A large population is a key prerequisite, but not an automatic guarantee of strength. Thus, there is Canada, more powerful than the more populous but less industrialized Mexico. And Japan, with a small population marked by widespread technical skills, has been able to exercise national power far in excess of China for all its masses. [...] In the future, global trends also will affect the structure and balance of national populations, particularly those of the poorest countries. In 1830, the global population reached one billion for the first time; it required 100 years to double. It took only 45 more years (1975) for the population to double again to four billion. In the next 21 years the population increased almost two billion, reflecting a growth rate of about 90 million a year. For the next several decades, 90 percent of this growth will occur in the lesser-developed countries, many already burdened by extreme overpopulation for which there is no remedy in the form of economic infrastructure, skills, and capital.[...] Large amounts of natural resources are essential for a modern nation to wage war, to operate an industrial base, and to reward other international actors through trade and aid, either in modern industrial products or in the raw materials themselves. But these resources, whether they be arable land and water or coal and oil, are unevenly distributed around the world and are becoming increasingly scarce. Moreover, as in the case of the geopolitical ownership of strategic places, the physical possession of natural resources is not necessarily a source of power unless a nation can also develop those resources and maintain political control over their disposition. In their raw state, for example, minerals and energy sources are generally useless. Thus, the Mesabi iron deposits had no value to the Indian tribes near Lake Superior, and Arabian oil a century ago was a matter of indifference to the nomads who roamed above it. Conversely, those nations with great industrial organizations and manufacturing infrastructures have traditionally been able to convert the potential power of natural resources into actual national power. Very few nations, however, are self-sufficient. [...] Nations have traditionally made up for such difficulties in several ways. One time-honored method is to conquer the resources, a principal motivation for the Japanese expansion that led to World War II and the Iraqi invasion that led to the Gulf War. A second method is to develop resources in another country by means of concessions, political manipulation, and even a judicious use of force--all used earlier to considerable effect by the United States in Latin America. In an age of increasing interdependence, this type of economic penetration has long since lost its neocolonial identity, particularly since both of America's principal World War II adversaries now regularly exercise such penetration in the United States. The third and most common method for obtaining natural resources is to buy them. In recent years, however, the combination of rapid industrial growth and decline of resources has changed the global economy into a seller's market, while providing considerable economic leverage to nations in control of vital commodities. OPEC's control of oil, for example, provided its members influence all out of proportion to their economic and military power. A similar transformation may occur in the future with those nations that are major food producers as the so-called "Green Revolution" faces the prospect of more depleted lands and encroaching deserts. Finally, there is the short supply of strategic and often esoteric minerals so necessary for high technology and modern weapons. One consequence of this diminishment of raw materials has been the emergence of the sea bed, with its oil and manganese reserves, as a new venue of international competition, in which those nations with long coastlines and extensive territorial waters have the advantage. Such shortages are a reminder of how closely connected is the acquisition of natural resources to all the elements of power. [...]
Economic capacity and development are key links to both natural and social determinants of power. In terms of natural resources, as we have seen, a nation may be well endowed but lack the ability to convert those resources into military hardware, high-technology exports, and other manifestations of power. Ultimately, however, economic development in a nation flows from the social determinants of power, whether they be political modernization and widespread formal education, or geographic and social mobility and the ready acceptance of innovation. All this, of course, is worked out against the backdrop of balanced military investment. An excess of military spending can erode the underlying basis for a nation's power if it occurs at the expense of a larger economy and reduces the national ability to invest in future economic growth. For developing countries already short of economic investment capital, military spending represents a serious allocation of resources. But even advanced countries, especially since the end of the Cold War, have to make some choices between guns and butter. Because a nation's political stability as well as the legitimacy of its government are increasingly linked to domestic economic performance, excessive military spending, as the former Soviet Union discovered, can be dangerous for large and small countries alike.
Strong domestic economies also produce non-military national power in the international arena. Leading industrial nations have available all the techniques for exercising power, including rewards or punishment by means of foreign trade, foreign aid, and investment and loans, as well as the mere consequences their domestic policies can have on the global economy. This type of power can be weakened, however, if a nation suffers from high inflation, a large foreign debt, or chronic balance-of-payment deficits. In short, the strength of a nation's economy has a direct effect on the variety, resiliency, and credibility of its international economic options. [...] That such economic considerations are closely interrelated to other elements of power is demonstrated by the perennial question of whether most-favored-nation status, which is nothing more than normal access to US markets, should be made conditional on progress in human rights by countries such as China.
Finally, increasing interdependence has caused major changes in the economic element of national power. National economies have become more dependent on international trade and on financial markets that have become truly global in scope. This in turn makes it more difficult for a nation to raise short-term interest rates or to coordinate monetary policy with other international actors. In a similar manner, the ability of nations to use exchange rates to further their national interests has declined as governments deal more and more with international capital flows that dwarf the resources available to any nation to defend its currency. From a security perspective, this type of economic interpenetration is reflected in the mutual vulnerability of national economies. Moreover, a nation's economic policy is now influenced by myriad international governmental organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), while multinational corporations stand ready to manipulate the domestic politics of nation-states to further their transnational interests....
Military strength is historically the gauge for national power. Defeat in war has normally signaled the decline if not the end of a nation's power, while military victory has usually heralded the ascent of a new power. But military power is more than just the aggregation of personnel, equipment, and weaponry. Leadership, morale, and discipline also remain vital factors of military power. Despite rough quantitative parity between the Iraqi military and the allied coalition, the dismal Iraqi performance in the Gulf War demonstrated the enduring relevance of those intangibles. That performance also showed how political interference or the gradual infection of a nation or its military by incompetence, waste, and corruption can weaken a nation's armed forces. By contrast, there is the example of the US military working over the years in tandem with political authorities to move from the hollow force of the immediate post-Vietnam period to the joint military machine of Desert Storm.[...]
[The political] element of power addresses key questions, many of which are related to the psychological element: What is the form of government, what is the attitude of the population toward it, how strong do the people want it to be, and how strong and efficient is it? These questions cannot be answered with simple statistics, yet they may be paramount in any assessment of national power. If a government is inadequate and cannot bring the nation's potential power to bear upon an issue, that power might as well not exist. Nor can an analysis turn upon the type of government a state claims to have, for even the constitution of a state may be misleading. [...] What is clear is that the actual forms of government, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, play a role in the application of national power. An authoritarian system, for instance, restricts in varying degrees individual freedom and initiative, but permits formulation of a highly organized state strategy. Democratic systems, by comparison, require policy formation by consensus-building and persuasion in an open, pluralistic society. Consequently, it is extremely difficult for democracies to develop and implement a long-range state strategy or to change policy direction as abruptly as, for example, Nazi Germany and the USSR did in the ideological volte-face marked by the August 1939 non-aggression treaty. In addition, the level of political development within a state is also important. This development involves both the capability, and more particularly the efficiency and effectiveness, of a national government in using its human and material resources in pursuit of national interests. Thus, administrative and management skills are crucial if a nation is to realize its full power potential. [...] The psychological element of power consists of national will and morale, national character, and degree of national integration. It is this most ephemeral of the social power determinants that has repeatedly caused nations with superior economic and military power to be defeated or have their policies frustrated by less capable actors. Thus there was Mao's defeat of Chiang Kai-shek when Chiang at least initially possessed most of China's wealth and military capability, the ability of Gandhi to drive the British from India, and that of Khomeni to undermine the Shah. [...]
National will and morale are defined as the degree of determination that any actor manifests in the pursuit of its internal or external objectives. [...] National character has an equally complex relation to national power inasmuch as that character favors or proscribes certain policies and strategies. [...] The elevation of "moralism" in the conduct of foreign policy, in turn, diminishes the ability of the United States to initiate a truly preemptive action. In the Cuban missile crisis, for example, the choice of a blockade over an air strike was based in part on the argument that from the standpoint of both morality and tradition, the United States could not perpetrate a "Pearl Harbor in reverse."... In all such cases, as with will and morale, it is extremely difficult to identify the constituent parts of and sources behind national character. Historical experiences and traditional values undoubtedly are important, as are such factors as geographic location and environment. Russian mistrust of the external world, for instance, is historically verifiable as part of the national character, whether it is because of the centuries of Tartar rule, three invasions from Western Europe in little more than a century, or something else. And Russian stoicism is a character trait, whether the cause is Russian Orthodox Christianity, communism, or the long Russian winters.... Finally, there is the degree of integration, which refers simply to the sense of belonging and identification of a nation's people. In many ways, this contributes to both national will and morale as well as character. In most cases there is a direct correlation between the degree of perceived integration and the extent of ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural homogeneity, all of which contribute to a sense of belonging, manifested in a sense of citizenship. [...] Nowhere is the effect of developments in communications and access to information more far-reaching than on warfare. In the purely military realm, information dominance can create operational synergies by allowing those systems that provide battlespace awareness, enhance command and control, and create precision force to be integrated into the so-called "system of systems." One result of all this is to compress the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war, previously considered as separate and distinct loci of command and functional responsibilities. The commander will be faced in the future with the much more complex job of recognizing those events occurring simultaneously at all three levels and integrating them into the calculation that results from the traditional consideration at the operational level of which tactical battles and engagements to join and which to avoid. Equally important, shorter time for decisions--occasioned by both the compressed continuum of war and electronically gathered information--means less time to discover ambiguities or to analyze those ambiguities that are already apparent. At the higher level of cyberwar, the two-edged potential of communications and information is even more evident. In the future, nations will wage offensive information warfare on another state's computer systems, targeting assets ranging from telecommunications and power to safety and banking. Such an onslaught could undermine the more advanced aspects of an adversary's economy, interrupt its mobilization of military power, and by affecting the integrity of highly visible services to the population, create almost immediate pressure on government at all levels. As activities rely increasingly on information systems rather than manual processes and procedures, information infrastructures of the most developed nations, such as the United States, become progressively more vulnerable to state and non-state actors. Even as there are advances in information security technologies, hacker tools are becoming more sophisticated and easier to obtain and use. One analyst concludes in this regard that, for the United States, "the possibility of a digital Pearl Harbor cannot be dismissed out of hand."[...]
Evaluation of national power is difficult. The basic problem, as we have seen, is that all elements of power are interrelated. Where people live will influence what they possess; how many they are will influence how much they possess; what their historical experience has been will affect how they look at life; how they look at life will influence how they organize and govern themselves; and all these elements weighed in relation to the problem of national security will influence the nature, size, and effectiveness of the armed forces. As a consequence, not only must each separate element be analyzed, but the effects of those elements on one another must be considered. These complexities are compounded because national power is both dynamic and relative. Nation-states and other international actors change each day in potential and realized power, although the rate of change may vary from one actor to another. And because these changes go on continually, an estimate of a state's national power vis-à-vis the power of another actor is obsolescent even as the estimate is made. The greater the rate of change in the actors being compared, the greater the obsolescence of the estimate. In other words, like all strategic endeavors, more art than science is involved in the evaluation of where one nation-state stands in relation to the power of other regional and global actors. [...]
The focus on these elements of national power as means to national strategic ends also serves as an organizational link to the overall strategic formulation process. That process begins by demonstrating how national strategic objectives are derived from national interests, which in turn owe their articulation and degree of intensity to national values. This linkage is also a useful reminder that power, the "means" in the strategic equation, ultimately takes its meaning from the values it serves. Absent the legitimation provided by this connection to national values, national power may come to be perceived as a resource or means that invites suspicion and challenge; at worst it could be associated with tyranny and aggrandizement. Without the bond of popular support and the justification that comes from an overarching purpose, national power can be quick to erode and ephemeral as a source of national security.
In the final analysis, the study of national power is a valuable educational objective because it is so difficult. Aspiring strategists must grapple with concepts that overlap, that are subjective in many cases, that are relative and situational, and that defy scientific measurement. All this teaches flexible thinking--the sine qua non for a strategist. In short, it is this very complexity that causes students to mature intellectually, to understand that within the box there is no such thing as a free strategic lunch. Equally important, students learn that they cannot escape these limitations by moving outside the box, a lesson that many futurists need to absorb.
David G. Hansen, 'The Immutable Importance of Geography', Parameters, Spring 1997, pp. 55-64.
This article seeks to demonstrate the immutable importance of geography for strategists. [...] Strategists need to familiarize themselves with the diverse sub-fields of geography as well as the traditional concerns of physical geography. Doing so will help them to understand intertwining nation and state relationships. For example, a knowledge of environmental geography can help one understand the potential for conflict based on environmental issues. A persuasive argument has been made that environmental change could shift the balance of power between states, regionally or globally, causing instabilities that might lead to armed conflict.[...] And if recent interpretations of the effects of "global warming" are even close to accurate, the implications for the national security of the United States are staggering. [David Wirth, "Climate Chaos," Foreign Policy, 74 (Spring 1989), 3-22] has put it this way: "The United States has a particularly large investment in the status quo. Its current preeminence in world affairs ultimately derives from the strength of the country's economy. The productivity of the country's natural resources, such as the incomparably valuable farmland of the Midwest, was a prerequisite to America's elevation as a dominant superpower in the latter half of the 20th century. Impending climate change means this productivity can no longer be taken for granted. The greenhouse effect threatens the overall health of the American economy and will require a massive diversion of resources to non-production adaptive activities. Among the other aspects of geography that concern contemporary strategists is the issue of international water passages. There are more than 100 international straits used for navigation that are between six and 24 miles wide. These passages can correctly be called strategic choke points. The Law of the Sea Convention spells out an elaborate regime to prevent states that border these important straits from closing them to innocent passage. The United States has failed to agree to this convention, however, something that has more to do with the future exploitability of undersea manganese nodules, a potentially important economic consideration, than with national security. Still, strategists considering plans for moving forces around the globe need to be familiar with the fact that we might not have free access to get to where we need to fight, including overflight permission. [The authors refers to the 1986 U.S. air raid against Libya when the United States was unable to overfly the land territory of France and Spain.] All too often we take for granted the right of free access in planning for and sustaining interventions. Consider just the tonnage of munitions that was moved by sea to Saudi Arabia in 1990-91. Then calculate the number of air sorties that would have been required to move only the highest priority munitions had we been denied access to the Straits of Gibraltar and Hormuz.[...] Interrupting historical water sources is another issue that could lead to conflict. Norman Myers ('Environment and Security', Foreign Policy, 74, Spring 1989, p. 28) argues that "so critical are assured water supplies to Israel that one reason it went to war in 1967 was that Syria and Jordan were trying to divert flows of the Jordan River. Israel receives about 60 percent of its water from the Jordan River, [but] only three percent of the river's basin lies within the country's pre-1967 territory."[...] Another serious contemporary geographical issue is that of world food production. Our recent inconclusive involvement in Somalia was a direct result of public pressure to alleviate suffering by the inhabitants of that state. There, as in many other situations, the world has seen that a drop in food production will result in waves of refugees which can possibly lead to conflicts. However, how many strategists will consider such issues when they wrestle with America's security policies in the next century?
Despite the propensity of the United States to use or threaten the application of military force since becoming the world's sole surviving superpower, international conflicts will inevitably involve allies or friends on the other side of the problem. For example, understanding where the major river systems in the Middle East flow, and through which countries they travel, can help strategists foresee problems that could arise from dams being constructed in Turkey and elsewhere. Issues such as these require a knowledge of geography if they are to be anticipated, understood, and settled to our advantage. [...] Deep and abiding interest in all forms of geography, however, can help the strategist address problems in ways that involve all the elements of national power in a search for peaceful outcomes. [...] Consideration of the many subfields of geography may help US national leaders and military strategists both to develop sound policy and to focus and explain our national strategies in terms acceptable to the American public. Recently, we have seen America's reluctance to intervene militarily in states whose behavior does not seem to threaten our national security. This attitude can be traced to the concept that our military forces exist to protect and uphold our national purposes. Our national security leaders have had to scramble to justify costly foreign interventions because they have been unable to articulate how such adventures serve our national values and purposes. As a result, they have sometimes appealed either to the country's lack of understanding of world geography or tried to stimulate a messianic excuse for the resulting operation.
If Americans had realized where Somalia was located, or how large it is (placed on a map of the United States, it covers an area from southern Michigan east to Maine and south to northern Florida), would they have been so passive about sending our forces to that country? Today, two years after thousands of personnel were deployed to the former Yugoslavia, how many US citizens can identify the nationalities involved or articulate how our national purpose is served other than to "prevent further fighting between the various factions"? Until the public decides to learn for itself what it needs to know about security issues, our long-standing ignorance of all aspects of geography will keep us equally ignorant of the real issues in such decisions. Strategists need to assume the responsibility to educate themselves so that they can provide effective counsel in the development of national security policy. No one is going to show them why it is that our ability to intervene militarily (as we discovered in Somalia) is constrained by geography. [...] It is important for strategists to refamiliarize themselves with the physical makeup of our globe--with distances, populations, cities, transportation hubs, routes of communication, and cultures. The wise questions used to develop strategy--the reasons why and where the United States will go to war in the coming years--will need to be probed by military strategists. They, along with our political leaders and the public, need to resist the temptation to believe that the American military can do anything, anywhere. It can't. Geography should be among the prominent disciplines that strategists use to determine just what we can do, and where.
The importance of the control of the seas is discussed in an article by Reynold S. Peele in Parameters, Summer 1997, pp. 61-74. The journal published by one the US Army War College at Carlisle is influential on military debate and related strategic evaluation. "More than 80 percent of global trade still moves by sea, and the United States depends on the free and unimpeded movement of its share of that commerce. Further, with its power-projection land forces and seemingly unending international commitments, the United States and its allies depend on access to the seas to ensure their security. The ability to guarantee an unimpeded flow of seagoing commerce remains for America a major geopolitical component of national power. [...] The inescapable connection between commerce and warmaking continues to shape US policy toward open access to the world's oceans and seas. The economic growth of the United States is closely linked to the world economy as a whole, and most of that trade is carried on and over the world's oceans;... seaborne commerce exceeds 3.5 billion tons annually and accounts for over 80 percent of trade among nations.[according to US Department of Defense, National Security and the Convention on the Law of the Sea (2d ed.; Washington: DOD, January 1996), p. 11] Virtually every aspect of the daily lives of most people is touched by goods and services that are ultimately connected to free trade by sea. [US Navy, "Freedom of Navigation to Trade, Freedom to Fish," All Hands Magazine, January 1995, p. 21.] At the same time, sea lines of communication directly affect the US ability to get forces, equipment, and supplies to crisis areas. The issues associated with sea lines of communication (SLOCs) and chokepoints include unimpeded transit on, under, and over these areas. Eight international regions--called the "US Lifelines and Transit Regions" by the Department of Defense--contain chokepoints that require our attention:[ US Department of Defense, p. 6.]
Economic and military issues alike are important in shaping US strategy toward unobstructed passage of these eight major SLOCs and the associated chokepoints. According to the American Petroleum Institute, 1994 marked the first year that more than half the oil used in the United States was imported. The largest supplier, Saudi Arabia, provides 18.5 percent of the United States' petroleum needs. Any Saudi oil reaching the United States has to travel more than 8000 sea miles via the SLOCs in the regions of the Western Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean-Black Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico-Caribbean Sea. Disruption of this movement can affect not only the United States but the global economy as well, as was demonstrated during the 1980-1988 "tanker war" between Iran and Iraq. US interest during that period of Middle East conflict was to insure the safe passage of non-belligerent ships moving petroleum from the Persian Gulf to Western economies, including the United States. This eight-year conflict produced 543 attacks on ships, with approximately 200 merchant sailors killed. Fifty-three American lives were lost as a result of attacks on US military vessels in the region. It is important to note that most of the ships that were attacked flew flags of nations not associated with the conflict between Iran and Iraq. More than 80 of these ships were sunk or declared a total loss, resulting in more than $2 billion in direct losses to cargo and hulls. This in turn caused worldwide hull insurance rates to increase 200 percent, which was passed on to consumers in higher prices for petroleum products. Fears that the tanker war would result in serious disruption of available oil supplies helped to push the price of crude oil from approximately $13 to $31 per barrel; [following US Department of Defense, p. 12] the net cost to the world economy of these price increases has been estimated at more than $200 billion.... Heavy US dependence on Persian Gulf oil, currently in the vicinity of 9.8 million barrels per day, may be irreversible. With the odds in favor of that part of the world remaining unstable and potentially volatile, US national security strategy will undoubtedly continue to focus on free access to crude oil from the region. Measured by the sheer volume of merchant shipping transiting it, the region that includes the Southeast Asian Seas and the Straits of Malacca, Sunda, and Lombok is the most prominent of all the eight regions. The region also encompasses the SLOC in the South China Sea past the Spratly Islands. These sea lanes carry almost half the world's merchant shipping and large percentages of Asian trade through a few key straits. In 1993, over half the world's merchant fleet capacity and more than one-third of the world's ships sailed through the Straits of Malacca, Sunda, or Lombok, or sailed past the Spratly Islands.[John H. Noer and David Gregory, Chokepoints: Maritime Economic Concerns in Southeast Asia (Washington: National Defense Univ. Press, 1996), p. 3.] Shipping traffic through Malacca is several times greater than the traffic through either the Suez or Panama canals.... The aggregate numbers portray the significance of this region to ocean-borne commerce. More than one-half trillion dollars ($568 billion) of long haul interregional seaborne shipments passed through these chokepoints in 1993,... representing over 15 percent of all the world's cross-border trade, excluding trade within the region. More than 40 percent of the trade from Japan, Australia, and the nations of Southeast Asia, as well as one quarter of the imports of the Newly Industrialized Economies of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea, pass through these chokepoints.... The economic strength of these countries and their trading partners depends on unimpeded passage in the region. In 1993, the United States was third in terms of owned "capacity ships" passing through the Strait of Malacca, behind Japan and Greece in the number of such ships transiting the region. The volume of merchant shipping in the area and the associated significance of these SLOCs can be summarized as follows: Over half of all interregional tonnage passing through Malacca is either coming from or going to the Arab Gulf (Western Indian Ocean Region). About half of interregional tonnage through Malacca is either coming from or going to Southeast Asia. Over a third of [the] tonnage is going to or coming from Japan, and next in shipping volume are the Newly Industrialized Economies (NIEs) of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea.[Noer and Gregory, p. 9] In 1993, US maritime exports--valued at $15 billion and exceeding 11 million tons--represented 3.3 percent of the tonnage that traversed the SLOCs in this region.... The region is not without security concerns that may affect the SLOCs. Several nations claim part or all of the Spratly Islands and, by extension, rights over the waters adjacent to the islands.... China, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam have garrisons on some of the atolls and have claimed sovereignty over the adjacent waters. Indonesia is one of 17 states declaring sovereignty over the waters and SLOCs which are enclosed within its archipelagic state; it has considered seeking control of shipping among its islands under a doctrine of "archipelagic sea lines." The straits in the Indonesian Archipelago are important for direct and cost-effective maritime activity, as they link the Pacific and Indian oceans. Finally, because of oil spills associated with accidents in the Strait of Malacca, the international community has considered regulating shipping for environmental concerns and maritime safety.... There is no way to separate commerce from the defense of US interests in the South China Sea and nearby waters. Recent events in North Korea, Haiti, Rwanda, Iraq, and the Balkans remind us how dangerous and uncertain it can be to consider trade apart from national security strategy. In National Security and the Convention on the Law of the Sea, the US Department of Defense [op.cit., p. 9] identifies the following post-Cold War threats to US interests and world order relative to these countries:...
The end of the Cold War did not alter the fact that the United States remains a maritime nation with global security concerns. These concerns oblige the United States to maintain the capacity to project and sustain its forces throughout the world in defense of its own interests and those of its allies. US responses to threats must be unobstructed and rapid; our 1994 deployment of troops and equipment in response to saber-rattling by Iraq is but one example of the need to be able to deploy efficiently in response to such threats. Other examples in the DOD document include:[p. 5]...
The United States considers it important that SLOCs remain open, not merely because passage is essential for implementing the national security strategy, but as a matter of international right.[US Department of Defense, p. 9] The United States does not want to see passage through the SLOCs become contingent upon approval by coastal or island nations.... Such impediments to global mobility through key chokepoints could delay response in crises; transit time from the US east coast to the Persian Gulf is 20 days via the Suez Canal, 26 days via South Africa. The United States can ill afford a strategy that fails to ensure unobstructed passage over, under, and through key SLOCs. The examples also suggest that costs associated with the loss of access to key chokepoints--time, fuel, and opportunity costs--could be unacceptable. These are matters that must be attended to; they cannot be allowed to accumulate until a crisis forces their resolution.
Regional Threats: There are presently six significant regional economic and military concerns that require constant strategic focus on free access to sea lines of communication. • In the Middle East, Saddam Hussein's hegemonic activities remain a threat to regional economic and political stability. State-sponsored terrorism originating in Libya and Iran contributes to concerns about regional, as well as European, stability. • In Northeast Asia, North Korea's pursuit of a nuclear capability exacerbates regional tension. For nearly 50 years, the United States has been committed to the defense of South Korea, helping to maintain the balance of power and stability on the Korean peninsula. Also, the growth of Asia as a trading partner requires the United States to discourage prospective regional hegemons.[37] • Stability within the Western Hemisphere is an enduring concern. Examples include the need for stable democracies in Haiti and Cuba, while stability remains important if El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala are to emerge from recent insurgencies with reasonable prospects for economic growth. Problems posed by the international drug trade are addressed below. • Unrest in Bosnia and elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia continues to disrupt regional stability. The United States remains committed to ongoing peacekeeping operations in the search for peace in the Balkans. • Interventions in Africa to prevent or end genocide (Rwanda and Somalia), support of UN efforts to reduce tensions between warring states (Angola and Mozambique), and efforts to calm civil strife (South Africa and Namibia) can preclude second- or third-order effects of massive population shifts that have plagued the region for nearly a decade. SLOCs are important if the United States is to shape favorable outcomes in such circumstances. • The United States remains concerned about the regional dispute over the Spratly Islands. While it seems unlikely at present that a direct threat to free access to the regional SLOCs will emerge, the statistics above demonstrate the importance of the South China Sea to our own trade as well as that of our allies and trading partners.
The foregoing list of US security and economic foreign policy interests is neither exhaustive nor prioritized. The underpinning in each statement is an immediate or potential requirement to deploy and sustain substantial military force in the interest of free access to SLOCs or in response to threats to US interests or those of its allies. The effects of disruptions within the associated SLOCs range from significant in the Middle East and Southeast Asia to minimal around the coastal areas of Africa. However, all six would likely require the movement of land or naval forces and equipment to crisis areas along key SLOCs to ensure that US security and economic interests can be protected. [...]
The Freedom of Navigation program has provided the basis for US responses to excessive maritime claims since 1979. Such claims include various attempts to control oceans to a distance of 200 nautical miles from coastal boundaries. More recently, US national security strategy for ensuring unobstructed transit through chokepoints and sea lines of communication is reflected in the international Convention on the Law of the Sea. And although the issue of seabed mining remains the bar to US ratification of the treaty--it is under consideration in the Congress--we have agreed to apply the treaty provisionally. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry described the Administration's position: "We support the Convention because it confirms traditional high seas freedoms of navigation and overflight; it details passage rights through international straits (chokepoints); and it reduces prospects for disagreements with coastal states during operations." [Institute for National Strategic Studies, "U.S. Security Challenges in Transition, Oceans and the Law," Strategic Assessment 1995, p. 40] The Law of the Sea treaty supports uniform standards and the means for resolving conflict, replacing traditional diplomatic and operational crisis management approaches to disputes. [...]
The three essential components of the US National Security Strategy--peacetime engagement, deterrence and conflict prevention, and fighting and winning the nation's wars--all assume that we can deploy forces to any region of the world in a timely and effective manner. Forward-deployed maritime forces--the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard-- ensure that SLOCs remain open in order to carry out this strategy. Navy and Marine forces are strategically located in regions of special interest to the United States; their inherent mobility ensures our ability to deploy from forward locations to potential crisis areas. However, several forces are reshaping US security interests in the seas and the corresponding naval strategy. [According to Ann L. Hollick, "Ocean Law: Senate Approval of the UN Convention," Strategic Forum, No. 41 (August 1995), pp. 2-3:] First, the post-Cold War US military strategy has adjusted to address multiple regional interests and challenges. US maritime forces redefined their focus to emphasize power projection, initially described in the 1992 Navy and Marine Corps white paper, "From the Sea", and later in Forward "From the Sea in 1994". The missions projected in both documents included traditional roles such as presence, strategic deterrence, sea control (SLOC passage), crisis response, power projection, and sealift. Embargoes, counternarcotics, and humanitarian operations define the peacetime roles. Second, US naval forces are adjusting to the realities of budget cuts and their consequences for naval operations. The Navy is reducing personnel and operating expenses by one-third from the Base Force established in 1990; the drawdown will leave a Navy of about 330 ships, a little more than half of the nearly 600-ship force of 1988. Integration of naval forces with other services, interoperability with allied forces, and redesign of fundamental operations are being emphasized to offset this decline. Sea lines of communication are essential geopolitical considerations for economic and military strategy. Mahan understood their importance; have his intellectual successors developed a comparable strategic perspective? An affirmative answer can be found in National Security and the Convention of the Law of the Sea: National security interests in having a stable oceans regime are, if anything, even more important today than in 1982, when the world had a roughly bipolar political dimension and the US had more abundant forces to project power to wherever it was needed. Without international respect for the freedoms of navigation and overflight set forth in the [Law of the Sea] Convention, exercise of our forces' mobility rights would be jeopardized. Disputes with littoral states could delay action and be resolved only by protracted political discussions. The response time for US and allied/coalition forces based away from potential areas of conflict could lengthen. Forces may arrive on the scene too late to make a difference, affecting our ability to influence the course of events consistent with our interest and treaty obligations.[ Institute for National Strategic Studies, p. 2]
US maritime forces will remain flexible in preparing for current missions, including the guarantee of unhindered SLOC passage, and in adapting to new ones. Our naval forces could find themselves stretched thin were several crises to require near-simultaneous responses by a small fleet scattered in sensitive regions around the globe. Nevertheless, the importance of secure SLOCs is a constant feature of peacetime naval engagement in support of the National Military Strategy. [...] The political, economic, and military importance of the sea lines of communication has remained fundamentally unchanged since Mahan shaped the issue more than a century ago. The United States clearly understands their importance and is actively pursuing policies that will ensure the right to unimpeded access for military and commercial vessels.
Kent Hughes Butts, 'The Strategic Importance of Water', Parameters, Spring 1997, pp. 65-83.
[...] Geographical variables and their importance to international relations and political military affairs are easily ignored, even though two events of the 1970s drew the attention of policymakers to the issue of resource availability with an urgency unknown in peacetime. The first was the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74; the second was the 1978 invasion of Zaire's Shaba province by Angola-based guerrillas. The former quadrupled petroleum prices and reminded producers and consumers alike that the world economy depended on the highly concentrated deposits of this increasingly scarce fossil fuel. In the latter case, even the brief curtailment of cobalt shipments from Zaire caused prices to escalate from $6 to over $50 per pound on the spot market. Disruption of the cobalt market forced a wide-scale reevaluation of the concept of strategic resources. In the United States, the review included non-fuel minerals essential to US industry, such as chrome, manganese, and platinum group metals, virtually 100 percent of which are imported. Analysts were reminded that, as with petroleum, world reserves of these minerals were not evenly distributed but were largely concentrated in politically unstable regions. Policymakers, in turn, acknowledged that the destabilizing imbalance of natural resource supply and demand can have profound consequences for US security interests. [...] [I]n terms of its relative scarcity and the ability of economics and technology to mitigate the imbalance of its supply and demand, water poses different and potentially more difficult problems for strategists. Efforts to manipulate the global supply of petroleum have been a leading phenomenon of the final decades of the 20th century. Control of the sources of fresh water could be equally significant in the opening decades of the next. The insufficiency of fresh water has in the past led to violent conflict, and is currently the source of international tensions, but one should not simply assume that population growth will inevitably lead to war over water. Technology, pricing, conservation, trade, and industrial and agricultural policy changes may mitigate water scarcity and alter the prescription for conflict. Research on environmental security issues generally accepts the multiple causes of conflict, but fresh water is undeniably an important variable. Given assumed population growth, changes in climatic conditions, and the imbalance of water resource supply and demand, it will continue as a source of tensions; it could become the determinant variable in future international conflict. This article examines the strategically important environmental security issue of water resource scarcity, imbalances in fresh water supply and demand, methods of mitigating water scarcity, conditions that are likely to signal when water resources may lead to conflict, and policy options that might help us to change that equation. [...] Most of the water on the earth, some 97 percent, is contained in the world's oceans and is therefore of little use for essential agriculture, drinking, or most industrial uses. Only three percent of the water on the earth is fresh and, of this, more than two percent is locked away in the polar ice caps, glaciers, or deep groundwater aquifers, and is therefore unavailable to satisfy the needs of man. Furthermore, only 0.36 percent of the world's water in rivers, lakes, and swamps is sufficiently accessible to be considered a renewable fresh water resource.... The supplies of useful fresh water are finite, and most of the forms in which it is used have no substitute. Our fresh water is made available through the hydrologic cycle in which solar radiation evaporates ocean water, which subsequently falls to land as rain and returns to the sea as runoff through rivers or aquifers. Precipitation, then, is the original source of all fresh water; it is highly variable in its geographical occurrence. [...] The uneven global distribution of fresh water is striking. Most global rainfall occurs in the equatorial zone that stretches from South and Southeast Asia across Africa into Central America and the Amazon Basin. In general, rainfall decreases north and south of this zone. By itself, the Amazon River accounts for 20 percent of average global runoff, compared to all of Europe with only seven percent. The Zaire river basin accounts for 30 percent of Africa's total runoff.... Areas chronically short of fresh water include parts of the western United States and northern Mexico; much of Africa, the Middle East, and central Asia; and small portions of South and Central America. Water-scarce countries should receive close examination, because of the rainfall variability within the borders of a given country. [...] Unlike the case of other natural resources, it is sometimes difficult to declare that certain countries do or don't meet standards for water sufficiency. Nevertheless, World Bank statistics identify approximately 20 countries that have been declared chronically water scarce. The list includes Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, Kenya, Somalia, and Singapore.... Other strategically significant countries with pronounced rainfall variability include Pakistan, Mexico, and India.
It is important to note that water scarcity from a lack of precipitation can be mitigated through desalinization and external annual river flows. Desalinization plants require substantial investments of energy, technology, and capital; as a result, most of the world's desalinization plants are located in the energy-rich Middle East. Desalinization is not a practical solution for most water-scarce regions. More important, from both historical and practical perspectives, are the countries that share access to major rivers. Syria, Egypt (the heart of the Roman Empire's granary), and Iraq, where the Tigris-Euphrates Valley gave birth to modern civilization, had dominating cultures throughout much of their history because of waters originating in upstream countries. Decisions by upstream countries to develop the heretofore common water resources, however, can have major implications for the economic viability and continued cultural existence of those downstream. Tensions currently exist within all these countries, and between them and their neighbors, as a result of upstream user decisions. [...] Increased development, industrialization, and growing affluence expand the per capita demand for water, in part because increased wealth generates demand for animal protein, such as beef and chicken, which require greater quantities of grain to produce similar amounts of calories for human consumption. An increasing population requires increased irrigation and dams, and generates ever-increasing quantities of untreated pollutants, both of which can affect adversely the quality of water in a state or region. Thus, water passed to downstream users, even in water-rich regions, is often contaminated by toxic and hazardous wastes, pesticides, and fertilizer; its use may also be limited by increased salinity due to multiple iterations of irrigation. Some recent statistics indicate that global demand for water for irrigation, household, and industrial use will increase faster than the rate of population growth.[...] By the year 2000, fully 50 percent of the world's population is expected to be living in urban areas, where demand for fresh water even now cannot be met consistently. The new century will be characterized by increased urbanization, caused primarily by rural dwellers flocking to the cities to take advantage of presumed job opportunities. Because economic growth is the pulse taken almost daily to determine the health of a country and the ability of an administration to govern, governments tend to favor industrialization over water quality, despite the fact that water-borne health threats can often create long-term health problems. And the very countries in which most population growth will occur will be unable to fund both economic growth and adequate social infrastructure for the uncontrolled influx of people to the cities. [...] In spite of concerted efforts by the UN and the World Health Organization, in 1990 some 1.2 billion people lacked a safe supply of water and 1.7 billion had inadequate sanitation. Given anticipated growth rates in urban areas and pressures on poorly performing governments, the situation is not likely to improve.... The availability of fresh water in certain parts of the globe is already a problem, one for which there appears to be no immediate solution. [...] Water is an essential resource for which there are no substitutes. The fact that water does not lend itself to international trade complicates the water resource scarcity problem. Unlike metals, grain, timber, coal, or petroleum, water cannot be transported economically in large quantities, certainly not in the quantities necessary to satisfy the demands of even a small country. While there are schemes to divert major rivers, create long canals, tow icebergs, or desalinize water, such schemes have substantial economic and political costs. They appear to be sustainable solutions to water scarcity problems only in rare situations.... The supply of fresh water is limited by the hydrologic cycle and general climatic conditions, and demand for water as an agricultural, industrial, or urban resource is increasing exponentially with the rising global population.
If conflict over this scarce resource is to be averted, steps must be taken to allow for fair and equitable resolutions of conflicts over it. [...] Unfortunately, in the international milieu water law is not nearly as robust or useful in settling conflict. The method of determining sovereignty over international or transboundary rivers remains contentious throughout the international community. Most water law developed since 1800 has focused on freedom of navigation rather than water sovereignty. Difficulty in developing consensus on water law often turns on simple definitional issues. In addition, two competing doctrines of international water law have developed. The first is that of absolute state sovereignty, derived from the Harmon Doctrine, in which the upstream state has absolute sovereignty over its territory and the waters therein. The alternative doctrine is absolute integrity, which looks upon a river basin in a way that favors the downstream states by suggesting that the waters be apportioned in an equitable and reasonable fashion. Quite predictably then, when looking at the Tigris-Euphrates waters conflict, Turkey takes the position that it has absolute state sovereignty over the river waters because it is the upstream state, while Iraq and Syria champion the doctrine of absolute integrity, insisting on a reasonable and equitable apportionment of water from those rivers. Conspicuously absent, and a guarantee that international water law will remain ineffectual, is an enforcement mechanism. While an arbitrator or an international court may make a decision on a particular water dispute, that decision does not establish an enforceable precedent; enforcement depends on the good will of the parties involved. Most international water disputes are approached through bilateral or multilateral negotiations rather than legal precedents.[...] Water conflict is most likely when rivers are shared by multiple users and downstream users are vulnerable to decisions made by upstream states. Twenty percent of the world's population is supported by the 200 largest river systems; 150 of the systems are shared by two nations, with the remaining 50 shared by three to ten nations. Particularly important river systems and the number of countries that share their river basin are: the Nile, nine; Zaire (Congo), nine; Tigris-Euphrates, four; Mekong, six; Amazon, seven; and the Zambeze, eight.... From a strategic perspective, upstream states have an advantage in the control of water; downstream states generally remain vulnerable to the political decisions of those upstream. [...] Water conflict in [the Middle East] has a long history, and there is great potential for renewed conflict. Since political borders in the Middle East are artificial and divide various ethnic and religious groups, all Middle East rivers and most major aquifers are international and shared by multiple states. Industrial and agricultural growth is already constrained by the lack of water. The population growth rate is among the highest in the world; by the turn of the century the population will reach 423 million, and it is expected to double in the 25 years thereafter.... Water disputes in the region are complicated by ongoing conflict, war, large areas of desert, climate, and political instability. There are four distinct Middle East water sources over which potential conflict looms: the Tigris-Euphrates River basin, the Jordan River basin, the West Bank ground water aquifer, and the Nile River. In each instance water represents an essential resource for the security for all involved states [...] The Nile River is the heart of Egypt; from an airplane, one can see the green strip of agriculture and civilization that the Nile brings to what is otherwise an inhospitable desert. In 1898, Britain threatened military action when the French sent an expedition to gain control of territory that constituted the headwaters of the White Nile. The importance of upstream sources of the Nile has not been lost on subsequent Egyptian governments; Egypt has made quite clear its willingness to go to war to preserve its portion of the Nile River.... Egypt depends on the Nile for 97 percent of its water supplies, yet it contributes virtually no water to the Nile. Egypt is the last downstream state on the world's longest river, which has an additional eight upstream countries with the potential to withdraw water supplies before the Nile reaches Egypt. Precipitation in the Ethiopian highlands is the source of water for the Blue Nile, which carries 85 percent of the Nile into Sudan. At Khartoum, the White Nile provides the additional 15 percent, and the remainder flows downstream into Egypt. Fortunately for Egypt, the upstream users have been unable to mount serious development schemes that would draw upon the Nile. [...] As Ethiopia recovers from the Mengistu regime and seeks to promote development, it will inevitably look toward the waters of the Blue Nile. Dams could provide irrigation to lands that are fertile but dry, and hydroelectric power to sustain new industries. Egypt's aggressive stance has been able to keep such schemes in the planning stage, and keep donors such as the World Bank from funding Ethiopian development projects. However, the region's heavy population growth, droughts in northern Africa, bad relations between Egypt and Sudan's radical Muslim government, and political pressures on newly democratic Ethiopia to satisfy the demands of its constituents portend increased conflict over this important river. [...] While the Middle East has been the focus of most attention, several locations in Asia also have water resource problems. The Indus River basin, which begins in Tibet and has the downstream riparian states of India and Pakistan, has long been a source of conflict between those two states. [...] India has struggled elsewhere with artificial colonial borders and riparian environments. In the east, conflict exists between India and Bangladesh concerning the Ganges River, which flows from the Himalayas through India and Bangladesh, where it joins the Brahmaputra to finally empty through multiple delta exits into the Bay of Bengal.... In 1975, India began diverting water from the Ganges upstream from Bangladesh; the latter, deprived of Ganges water, took the dispute to the United Nations. As a result of the United Nations' examining the issue, a settlement was reached in 1977 called The Agreement on Sharing of the Ganges Waters. [...] Although Asia and Africa, because of their high population growth rates and strategic importance, have been the focus of world attention on water conflict, other river basins have been the subject of dispute. The damming of the Parana River brought Argentina and Brazil to the conference table to resolve a difficult dispute in the 1970s. Damming and salinization were also the cause of disagreement between Chile and Bolivia over the Lauca. The United States and Mexico have been at odds over salinization and water flow quantity in the Rio Grande, while industrial pollution has caused substantial disagreement among European riparian states on the Elbe, Szamos, and Werra/Weser....
From a strategic perspective, competition over scarce water resources is taking on increased importance due to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The leakage of fissile materials from Russia is thought to continue, and the availability of technology to produce chemical and biological weapons is more problematic today than at any other time. Population pressures will continue to complicate the search for solutions to regional, ethnic, religious, and resource problems; any competition over regional water resources can escalate quickly from noteworthy to significant. Because the availability of water determines the production of food, and the latest grain technologies emphasize irrigation as well as pesticides and fertilizers--all of which create water pollution problems--one can expect conflict over scarce water resources in the future. Such conflicts will have international security implications beyond their regional origins....
The linkage between water scarcity and conflict is clear; given this fact, what can be done that might modify the conditions that could lead to conflict? The answer to this question traditionally was increasing sources of supply, primarily through irrigation. However, the best thinking on the subject now argues that water demand management is the key to improving the balance of supply and demand and mitigating conflict in the future. It is in the best interest of the United States, other donor nations, multinational groups, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to promote technologies and policies with the potential to reduce, at least at the margin, aspects of demand in situations of water resource scarcity. The best approach to reducing demand may be an integrated demand management system instituted by a government or regional commission. Such a policy looks at demand across all uses (agricultural, industrial, and urban) and uses incentives such as pricing, investment credits, and penalties to promote efficient water use. [...]
Strategic Implications: With current population trends, the worldwide per capita supply of water will be reduced by approximately 33 percent by the year 2025.... If this situation comes to pass, one can expect additional competition for scarce resources, territorial encroachment, regional instability, and conflict. In such an environment, certain concepts should be of importance to strategists. Geopolitical thinking will increase in importance in the post-Cold War environment, where regional issues have become--and seem destined to remain--the chief concern of US security interests. Saul Cohen [Saul B. Cohen, Geography and Politics in a World Divided (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975), p. 29] described geopolitics as "the relation of international political power to the geographical setting,"... while Peter Jay ["Regionalism as Geopolitics," Foreign Affairs, 58 (No. 3, 1980), p. 486] refined the term to "the art and process of managing global rivalry."... Geopolitics is the marriage of geography and grand strategy. In today's regional security milieu, geographical variables can be ignored only at the strategist's peril. Although "the geographical setting does not determine the course of history, it is fundamental to all that happens within its borders"[in the words of Colin S. Gray, "The Continued Primacy of Geography," Orbis, 40 (Spring 1996), p. 248]. Homer Lea [The Valor of Ignorance (New York: Harper Brothers, 1909), p. 45], the American who became a general in the Chinese army, wrote in 1909 that "only as long as man or nation continues to grow and expand, do they nourish the vitality that wards off disease and decay."... The Darwinesque pattern of expanding nation-state borders and territorial conquest characterized by early geopoliticians is, in general, no longer considered acceptable [as Derwent Whittlesey observed: "Haushofer: The Geopoliticians," Makers of Modern Strategy, ed. Edward Mead Earle (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1943), pp. 388-411]. This lack of physical expansion does not, however, mean that the vitality or competitive drive of the major states has withered. Indeed, it may be argued that Lea remains essentially correct, and that competition between the major powers is more intense now than ever. It may be that the form of competition has changed: from a quest for territorial expansion and defensible borders to a struggle for economic power, increasing gross national products, and access to the resources on which they depend. In that form, it may be the need for access to natural resources that should help underpin geopolitical strategy. [...] Because "no country can be economically or socially stable without an assured water supply,"... strategists assessing regional threats to US security interests would be wise to determine whether the countries of the region have access to adequate fresh water resources, as well as the policies to ensure that access, and know how their efforts to secure access might affect regional stability. [...] Water resource scarcity is an environmental security issue that currently exercises considerable influence on regional stability, particularly in arid regions. Trends in population growth, water demand, and climatic weather irregularities could make water resource scarcity more influential in geopolitical matters than heretofore has been the case. Fresh water--who has it, who needs it--could approach access to oil in its effects on national and international security policies. The implications of this heightened importance will be noteworthy for US domestic agricultural policy, the behavior of powerful Asian states, and US efforts to encourage peace in the Middle East. [...] [W]ater issues will continue to be a strategically important variable in foreign policy development, and they should be used as an indicator of potential regional instability and a constant reminder of the importance of geographical variables to international relations and political military affairs.
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