The authors of the NATO-commissioned report I mentioned in the post below have listed what they believe are the most potentially dangerous threats to international security. If you’d like, you can choose to select one of these as your blog project for the semester.
Once more, from the Guardian:
The authors – General John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff and Nato’s ex-supreme commander in Europe, General Klaus Naumann, Germany’s former top soldier and ex-chairman of Nato’s military committee, General Henk van den Breemen, a former Dutch chief of staff, Admiral Jacques Lanxade, a former French chief of staff, and Lord Inge, field marshal and ex-chief of the general staff and the defence staff in the UK – paint an alarming picture of the threats and challenges confronting the west in the post-9/11 world and deliver a withering verdict on the ability to cope.
The five commanders argue that the west’s values and way of life are under threat, but the west is struggling to summon the will to defend them. The key threats are:
- Political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism.
- The “dark side” of globalisation, meaning international terrorism, organised crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
- Climate change and energy security, entailing a contest for resources and potential “environmental” migration on a mass scale.
- The weakening of the nation state as well as of organisations such as the UN, Nato and the EU.
We will address the impact of environmental change on migration later in the semester when we read the work of Thomas Homer-Dixon.
Clouds, Clocks, and Sitting at Tables 