If you have been to Paris this year, you will have seen the display of days to go to the Millennium on the Eiffel Tower. I was there last month as we saw it tick over to less than 100 days from the 21st Century. This should mean that forecasting what the world is going to be like in the next century is getting easier. Unfortunately, crises, both natural and manmade, emerge so rapidly that predictions are upset almost as soon as they are made. Putting together my thoughts, last month, I identified Taiwan as a key global issue in its future relations with China and its position in global markets. Yet within days, Taiwan faced a different crisis as it coped with the worst earthquake for a hundred years. Similarly, thinking about nuclear threats to Japan, I had in mind missiles from Korea rather than workers mixing enriched Uranium with nitric acid in a bucket in such large quantities that a critical nuclear reaction was achieved.
Even without earthquakes and homemade nuclear fission, looking to the future is always a somewhat hazardous affair. We extrapolate from recent experience into the unknown, often coming to quite incorrect conclusions. So perhaps what I am going to say should be seen as merely one possible future, and like all security specialists, there may be a touch of worst case analysis, so that we can prepare and prevent it coming to pass. Through recent years, we have seen many predictions of the rise of Asia as an economic power, coupled with a possible decline in Europe and North America. Through much of the Cold War, we at times seemed to think that Communism was unstoppable except by military means:that developing countries would fall like dominoes if not afforded the protection of the West. Sometimes, we see similar views being expressed but with Islam replacing communism as the new unstoppable ideology. Yet the experience of the almost simultaneous widespread death of ideological communism at the end of the 80s, coupled with the fall of Asian markets in the 90s have together given rise to an equally dangerous presumption. There is a complacency in some parts of America and Europe that liberal democracies and market forces are the unstoppable models which will spread peace, harmony and wealth throughout the globe. We may all hope that this will be the case, but it is not yet proven.
Nevertheless, we may be able to dimly see a new pattern of international affairs emerging, which may in the end prove to be a footnote in history, or, as I shall argue, a watershed. This new pattern will have a profound effect on peace and security for the World in the coming years. The 90s have been an interesting decade. The end of the Cold War, the reunification of Germany, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, and the accession this year of Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary into NATO have completely transformed Europe's security. The UK has not been safer from attack on its territory at any time in living memory. It might have been assumed that the disappearance of a real and urgent military threat from the Soviet Union would have decreased the military activity of western European nations. Yet European armed forces have been engaged in more real military operations in this decade than they were in the four decades of the Cold War. It is as though the Cold War gave western democracies an excuse for inaction.
The Gulf War of 1991 set the new agenda for the international community. That it was possible to assemble so many participating nations into the ad hoc coalition was of course made easier by the obvious breach in international law of the invasion of Kuwait. The success of the Gulf War boosted the confidence of the international community, that it could right international wrongs. The effects of the break-up of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia are not yet finished. Nevertheless Bosnia and Kosovo have further reinforced a US/European view of how instability can be contained. The threat and, if necessary, use of force is now less constrained if the aims of the operation are judged by the major western powers to be the promoting of justice for individuals. East Timor is a new adventure.
The previous embargo on intervention in the internal affairs of states has been lifted.
In the UK, our newly elected government in 1997 astonished many by announcing that foreign policy would have an ethical dimension. Britain had always been seen as essentially a pragmatic operator on the international scene. Foreign policy was the promotion of national interest by diplomatic effort with few absolutes. As with many of its policies New Labour was in tune with the times. Kosovo was a humanitarian intervention. A number of speakers for the far Left and the far Right have pointed out, there was no direct UK national interest in the internal arrangements of Kosovo. Such voices were in the minority. Humanitarian action has been cited in the past as a justification for military action, but usually in retrospect or in concert with more traditional justifications of vital interests. Kosovo was different. With a pretty arguable UN authority, NATO nations undertook an air campaign with a stated humanitarian aim.
There are other straws in the wind. The establishment of the International Criminal Court is one. The indictment of General Pinochet is another. The steady arrest of people for war crimes in Bosnia is a third.I would argue that this is the start of a new dimension to international relations which will have implications for global security. It is of course possible to argue that none of this is new. Indeed the protection of human rights is fundamental to the United Nations. That may be true in treaty language, but the reality has been far short of it over the years. The first change for the new millennium may then be a much greater emphasis on human and individual rights by the major democratic powers. If this is so, then there are some fairly major implications for how we deal with a number of places around the world- not least China, but I shall return to this in a moment. For security is not just about military and diplomatic activity. Many of the world's problems stem from other factors, and in particular from economic issues.
We seem for the moment to have survived the Asian markets crisis with confidence on the mend. Yet economic issues shape our security thinking. The moves we are making in Europe towards an integrated economic structure are inevitably leading to debate on the next stage of foreign policy and security integration. Our economic competition with the US, and of course the Asian competition with the US, will have implications for the military support that we can both (Europe and Asia) expect in the future from America. The economy of Russia is a security issue for us in Europe . Most of all the economic success of the US is a key to the sort of world we can expect. There is no reason to assume that the US has managed to break out of the cycles of growth and depression, however much the investment analysts might want to believe it. The internet stocks of today may be the tulips or south sea investment opportunities of yesterday.
Global markets give a global interdependence. Again economists are still arguing whether this gives the global economy a new robustness or a new vulnerability. The rapid recovery of the Asian markets is seen as a sign of the benefits of global markets - but there are those that would argue that the current recovery has slowed the market reforms that were needed in Asia in general, and Japan in particular, thus setting the world up for a deeper depression when the next fall comes. What no one disputes is the importance of Asian economies to the rest of the world's markets. Financial crashes, corruption and crime can give rise quite rapidly to instability. Albania was destablised by pyramid selling schemes which required a European intervention force. Russia seems to be drifting deeper into financial chaos, which may lead to political chaos. Riots in Indonesia, anti-democratic moves in Malaysia, tensions in Korea, all stemmed from the financial meltdown in the region two years ago. So economic stability is important for global security, and both are affected by another major world issue - that of population.
India passed the one billion people mark sometime in August 1999. Together with China, it represents a third of the world's population. Growth rates are declining everywhere, yet for the developing world they remain positive. The world's population looks set to stabilise and even start to decline by the end of the next century, but in the meantime there will have been some significant demographic changes. India will probably become the most populous country around 2030. The European countries may be having a different sort of population crisis if they continue to have negative growth rates. The divide between rich and poor states may be magnified by these differential population growth rates. All of these strains, with their security implications may be further exacerbated by environmental problems. Economic refugees as well as political refugees are already a security issue for many countries. I was interested to hear from a senior Swiss diplomat that Switzerland was having to think about its lofty neutrality after Kosovo. The massive influx of refugees into the country, showed that Switzerland had a direct security interest in the future of the Balkans.
Environmental issues are becoming a growing part of the wider definition of security. Global warming may affect available land in places like Bangladesh. It may affect food availability in developing countries more adversely. Pollution of air or water can become a threat to neighbours. Availability of fresh water is another growing cause of friction between states. The forest fires of Indonesia hardly help relations with its neighbours, but may also have wider implications for the atmosphere - as is of course also the case with the Brazilian rain forests. We have seen that industrial fishing can take fish stocks below the level of viability. The Labrador fisheries are now dead. Again this can be a source for conflict. The intensity of commercial operations, the need for fresh water, the growing populations and the need to raise living standards are problems which come together across much of the poorer parts of the world.
It will not be possible for the rich nations to hold back the aspirations of the poor nations. Yet the consequences in terms of just energy requirements are of great concern. We shall need to look at ways of providing the necessary energy without the burning of carbon - and that probably means a renaissance of nuclear energy, which brings with another series of potential problems, even without the recent Japanese accident, not least in terms of the availability of the necessary materials for nuclear weapons.
Speaking here at the Nuffield Trust, I would be wrong not to mention the security implications of disease. We may have passed through a relatively golden age this century in terms of the tools to fight disease. Aids and TB are taking their toll. Malaria areas will increase with global warming. This would be reason for concern enough, but to it we must add the growing perception of biological weapons as the poor man's nuclear bomb. Even in the old fashioned anthrax aerosol, this prospect is causing great alarm, and considerable expenditure, in the US. If you add the prospect of genetic modification to the design of biological warfare, you have a very bleak prospect for the future.
We rightly feel much less at risk from nuclear weapons today than we did through the Cold War period. It is certainly true that there are far fewer nuclear warheads now than there were in the 1980s. But there are still an enormous number held by the US and Russia. Russia is a particular problem with a decaying military infrastructure, it is by no means clear that control of the tactical nuclear weapon arsenal can be maintained.
India and Pakistan have been nuclear weapon states for a long time, but neither had previously felt it necessary to declare themselves as such. The optimist would argue that they have improved deterrence by their tests; the pessimists would say that they are their systems are not well controlled and a nuclear war has become more likely. North Korea has been working hard to achieve a nuclear capability. It has almost certainly a biological and chemical capability, and the targets in South Korea are not difficult to reach. Of great concern has been its recent involvement of Japan by testing its new missiles in that direction. Japan must be feeling increasingly beleaguered both with this and internal threats. The cult, who used sarin gas in the Tokyo underground, had also tried to get samples of the ebola virus for biological attacks. Japan will also worry about the China - Taiwan situation.
It appears that China is having a considerable internal debate over how to handle Taiwan. If it were to attack, it would place not just the United States but also Europe in a very interesting position. The states that came together to throw Iraq out of Kuwait are also largely the same states that went to war in Kosovo for human rights. Taiwan is a vibrant democratic place with a great deal of commercial activity in America and Europe. China continues to fall far short of the norms of human rights that the world community now expects. It is difficult to see how the states who fought for the Kosovar Albanians could stand by and watch the military conquest of Taiwan. The consequences of such a confrontation are incalculable.
Indeed in any look to the future the developments in China are key. The West often seems to work on the principle of hope rather than realism. We are in a difficult period at the moment where the US is becoming more cautious in its relationships with China, and China is flexing its muscles. The parades to celebrate 50 years of the Peoples' Republic of China were very reminiscent of the shows of military prowess much favoured by the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Whether, this can be made even more difficult by a warming of Sino-Russian relationships is questionable, and we see the first joint military exercises now taking place. We should not forget that whatever their economic situation both remain nuclear powers.
So is the future to be all fear and no hope? For addressing most of these global security problems, individual States are no longer able to act alone. Even the United States is constrained in what it can do by itself, and for a number of issues the US is a major part of the problem. The United Nations is a wonderful ideal, but is much hampered in practice. Work is needed to make it better able to meet its obligations. Regional groupings should be effective in dealing with local troubles. Of these groupings, the EU is the most mature, but lacks a coherent foreign and security policy. If it were to develop one, and the diplomatic and military tools to underpin such a policy, it could be a very powerful agent for stability. In its absence, NATO has taken on the role, but has a problem of legitimacy for authorising interventions, and as we saw in Kosovo loses some of its efficiency operating as a consensus organisation of 19 states. Despite the best efforts of the international community to promote multicultural liberal democracies, we seem to be developing a move towards rights for ethnic, religious or cultural self determination, whether in the former Yugoslavia or in East Timor. If this proves to be the case, there will be a long queue of disputes, with the Kurds near the top. Africa is still riven by civil warfare and ethnic cleansing of the worst kind, and suffers from most of the other troubles that I touched on:poor economy, high population growth rates, disease, famine and corruption.
As I said when I began, security specialists look at the black side in order to give advice on how to prevent the worst case coming to pass. There are many hopeful signs as we enter the new century. The Cold War has ended. Economies are vibrant. Technology is allowing individuals access to more information than ever before, and the ability to operate on a global basis. International Law is beginning to bring pressure to bear on abusers of human rights. Population growth is declining. Environmental issues are recognised.
There are great reasons to be optimistic for the prospects of greater peace and prosperity in the 21st Century, but only if people and their governments face up to their global responsibilities. The dangers are real and many if nations are fixed only on their own self interest.
Sir Timothy Garden undertook the MPhil in International Relations at Magdalene College from 1981-82.