As I prepared for this lecture last weekend, I took out my new edition of Chatham House's World Today. The lead article, by Dr Rosemary Hollis, the Director of Research, is headlined "Conflict Coming", and against a photograph of a blazing British Council office is says: "Europeans will look back on the late twentieth century as an interlude between the Second World War and the sectarian war that will soon engulf what was once the Ottoman Empire and spill over into what is now the EU. It will not be a war between states, or superpower blocs or empires. it will be more like a civil war."
It is ten years since I would speak from this stage each day as Commandant of the Royal College of Defence Studies. The audience that I would look out on was made up of some 80 senior military, diplomatic, police, industrialists and government officials from 35 different countries. We would discuss how the world had changed in the early 90s since the end of the Cold War, such that the course now included Russian, Ukranian, Bulgarian and other former Warsaw Pact members.
We took a pretty optimistic view of the way the world was going. The 1991 Gulf War had shown that the UN could galvanise action to rectify a breach of international law; and that allies as unlikely as the USA and Syria could come together to oust the invader from Kuwait. In Africa there was new hope. I travelled with a party from the College in 1994 to the new South Africa just after the memorable elections that had people queuing in their millions. Mozambique was looking forward to ending its years of civil war with democratic elections.
With the 1995 Course, I went to the Middle East and talked with Rabin about how peace would come and Palestine would have its state, even at the price of removing the West Bank settlers. A few weeks later, he was assassinated. King Hussein would come and talk to the course of his vision for a peaceful and successful Middle East. The enlargement of the European Union showed that we could convert totalitarian regimes to market economy democracies without bloodshed. Something we should never forget when we criticise the EU for its many bureaucratic shortcomings. The Balkans were the troublesome exception, but even there the application of a little force brought the warring factions to an uneasy settlement for Bosnia-Herzogovina at Dayton, and NATO found itself a new role in policing the uneasy peace.
So when I handed over the College in December 1995 to my successor and retired from the military, I could look back on a career as a Cold War warrior who had preserved the peace as a nuclear bomber pilot for long enough for a new more hopeful world to emerge. Democracy and freedom seemed to be on a roll, with totalitarian repressive regimes in retreat. Ten years later the international scene is much darker. We have found ourselves in conflicts over Kosovo, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq. We have seen nearly 3000 people murdered on a single day from a terrorist attack against the USA . And in Europe, Madrid and London have had their local 9/11s. People are fearful for the future, and the security challenges that governments must face are more complex than the past threat of the Soviet Union's military might. Let me just indicate the litany of threats that worry strategic planners.
Environmental issues are major challenges for this century. Some like the Tsunami we can only prepare to manage the consequences, others like global warming, we seem unable to control despite a growing recognition that it is perhaps the most threatening long term problem that we face. We have seen the US isolated over Kyoto, but there remains the problem of what to do about the rapidly developing parts of the world like China and India. Global warming will affect available land in places like Bangladesh, or cause unexpected disasters in Mozambique. Even the developed world is experiencing costly weather disasters with much greater frequency as we have seen so graphically in this hurricane season. 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, and in which Europe feels it has an interest.
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, and securing supply, without the burning of carbon - and that for some nations will mean a renaissance of nuclear energy, which brings with another series of potential problems, not least in terms of the availability of the necessary materials for nuclear weapons.
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 this 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 may be further exacerbated by environmental problems. Economic refugees as well as political refugees are already a serious security issue for many countries. Refugees are an emotional political issue in most Western European countries today.
We should also worry about the global implications of disease. We may have passed through a relatively golden age in the 20th century in terms of the tools to fight disease. Aids and TB are taking their toll. Malaria areas will increase with global warming. The current major global concern is an influenza pandemic, perhaps caused by the mutation of avian flu to a human form. This would result in millions of deaths world wide, spread by global travel.
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 a serious concern, as the US has experienced with what was a relatively small scale attack. If you add the prospect of genetic modification to the design of biological warfare, you have a very bleak prospect for the future. It would however be fair to say, it is one which Europe would prefer to deal with through arms control measures rather than greater military expenditure. A rigorous CWC and BWC regime is the European way, but not perhaps attractive to the US.
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. 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 might argue that they have improved deterrence by their tests. Yet it is a poor example to other potential proliferators. North Korea has been working hard to achieve a nuclear capability, and probably has a limited one. Israel is probably a bigger nuclear power than the UK today.
The current focus is on Iran, which seems to be persuing a nuclear option. The 2005 conference on the nuclear non proliferation treaty was a failure, and it looks increasingly likely that nuclear aspirations will be the cause of conflicts in the future.
These challenges are all trends towards insecurity which may change for better or worse in the decades ahead. It is of course much easier to try to effect those changes before a crisis develops, although it is usually more difficult to get the political consensus to make hard choices. When things are left they develop into much more urgent security challenges, and we have plenty of those on our plate at the moment.
The rushed intervention in Iraq of March 2003 resulted in new regional security problems, and an extended commitment for both military and overseas aid. The 2001/2002 US intervention in Afghanistan has also generated an increasing demand for security assistance, and this is set to grow later this year. The Balkans are not yet finished, and Kosovo remains a concern. The al-Qaeda threat from suicidal terrorism has not diminished. Conflict in sub-Saharan Africa has also continued, and at times has required forces to be deployed under UN, EU, NATO, African Union or national auspices. Iran continues to take actions in the nuclear enrichment area of concern to the international community. The revelations of the illegal nuclear activities of A Q Khan have also illustrated the limitations of international controls. The Israel-Palestine peace process has become yet more difficult with the election of Hamas to power and the newly forming government in Israel, with their effect on the geography and viability of a Palestinian state.
The traditional international structures to promote peace and security have also suffered setbacks. Reform of the UN makes little progress. NATO has been damaged, perhaps fatally, by the tensions between members over the Iraq intervention. The US has only recently realised, perhaps too late, the costs of failure to consult with allies. European defence co-operation has also been hampered by Iraq, but also by the failure to agree a new EU constitution. The divide between the rich and poor peoples of the world widens both through increasing protectionism by the rich and inadequate governance in the poor. Poverty, repression, disease and ethnic disputes increase the sense of despair amongst the developing world, and will lead to more security challenges.
Natural catastrophes are also presenting increasing challenges to governments. They have much in common with the manmade problems which stem from conflict. As climate change increases the intensity and frequency of some environmental disasters, governments will be under pressure to provide more reliable responses than the current ad hoc arrangements. International crime and corruption flourish, fuelled by drug and people traficing profits, and undermine democracy and governance.
Finally, in Europe and the US, the new form of international terrorism is the overwhelming security concern of the moment. It is a form of conflict which has bubbled up around the world for centuries. Modern society makes new vulnerable targets for terrorist acts. The conflicts which I have been talking about can sow the seeds which lead to terrorist activity. The key area of difference between Europe and the US approach is on the balance between the effectiveness of short term military action against longer term strategies to resolve conflicts which lead to terrorism. Keeping a sense of proportion about the risks from international terrorism is difficult for democracies. Yet the numbers killed in global terms are really very small. What is a worry is the small but finite risk of suicidal fanatical terrorism coupled with mass destruction techniques.
Four years ago President Bush promoted Iran to the "axis of evil", alongside Iraq and North Korea. This was unfortunate as Iran was a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and had a more developed form of governance than many nations of the region. Nevertheless, it was entirely likely that it wanted to keep a nuclear option open. It had fought a bloody war of attrition with Iraq in the '80s, and Iraq was said by the West to be arming itself with WMD. It had nuclear neighbours in Pakistan, Russia, and Israel. It also feared intervention by the US. However, it might have been that with Iraq neutralised, the diplomatic and economic route adopted for disarming Libya could have worked with Iran.
Meanwhile, western entanglement in Iraq has given a new dimension to the regional strategic balance. Iran presumably feared the rise of a reconstructed Iraq under US influence, which could threaten it again. It has watched the growing power of the Shia community through the Iraqi elections with relief. If anarchy were to lead to fragmentation, Iran would see advantage in aligning with the Shias to form an enlarged Islamic state. It can therefore see advantage whether Iraq is stable or not.
Iranian politics are complex. However, it is likely that President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad would consolidate his position further if Iran were isolated or suffered attack. It may therefore be to his personal advantage to be confrontational is his dealings with the international community.
It is time to stand back and take a long look at progress so far. Is the piecemeal strategy working for the West? Tony Blair in his speech on intervention last week seems to think it is. Yet to most observers, the threat from extremist terrorism is now worse than it was five years ago. More Muslims have been radicalised. Afghanistan is supplying Europe's heroin and thus increasing international crime and corruption, as well as still providing safe havens for terrorists. Iraq is broken and lawless in some parts. Its citizens die violently at the hands of extremists, criminals and insurgents.
Iran makes threats to Israel, and flaunts its nuclear enrichment aspirations. It threatens to use its energy exports as a counter to any international sanctions regime. It can incite violence in Iraq without difficulty. Meanwhile, the Israel-Palestine problem fires radicalism further, and the success of Hamas in the Palestinian election adds another problem.
While it is clearer now than ever that the intervention in Iraq is the major cause of our many difficulties, we have to deal with world as it now is. Afghanistan must be helped, and it will cost more in cash and casualties than it need have done. But we cannot ignore it as it is remains a twofold threat from drugs as well as terrorism. Iraq and Iran cannot be compartmentalised given the geography and history. Isolating Iran and a long term occupation in Iraq will deepen the problems. Difficult as it is, a way to re-engage with Iran must be found.
Unfortunately, the signs are that little has been learned by the key decision makers over the past 5 years. While we advocate the ballot box for the countries of the region, we refuse to face up to the consequences of uncongenial outcomes. Nor do we treat the people as our equals. Injustice turns to anger, and anger to violence. Meeting this with military intervention can only perpetuate the cycle.
Despite the best efforts of the international community to promote multicultural liberal democracies, we seem to be causing a move towards ethnic, religious or cultural self determination. If this proves to be the case, there will be a long queue of disputes, with the Kurds near the top, particularly if Iraq descends into civil war. 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.
There are nevertheless some hopeful signs for the new century. The Cold War has ended. Despite the fears of terrorism, we in the West live in greater security than ever before. Economies may fluctuate, but the global economy grows. 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 in the longer term. Environmental issues are recognised if not yet effectively addressed.
There are great reasons to be cautiously 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 nations are fixed only on their own short term self interest. In Europe, we need to face up to our responsibilities as a region which is as wealthy and more populous than the United States, and we need to take on a more equitable share of the global security burden. Managing risk in international security is not a game, the future safety of people around the world depends on it.