Browsing by Subject "developing global crisis"

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    Causes of Wars and the Developing Global Crisis
    (2018-06-15) Andregg, Michael M.
    This paper connects some ultimate causes of wars through history with a set of contemporary problems we have been calling the “Developing Global Crisis” for about 20 years. Therefore, one first step is identifying what that crisis entails. Very briefly, the living system that sustains all of our global civilizations is in great distress these days. This leads to many armed conflicts and even “failed states.” Sometimes failed states produce terrorists and large numbers of other desperate people who flee the chaos that results. Former US Director of National Intelligence, General James Clapper provides an apt description of the Developing Global Crisis on page 157 of his 2018 memoirs: “Factors like food and water shortages and poor living conditions – increasingly driven by climate change – oppression of political freedoms, corruption by autocratic governments and rulers who had been in place for decades … made them (North African and some Middle Eastern states) extremely unstable. The spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) threatens Everything under Heaven, because many terrorists want WMD and are not deterred by threats of retaliation. There are at least 40 recurring causes of wars through history, so we cannot consider them all in the time available. Today we will focus on four especially important ultimate causes of wars. They are Population Pressure, Militant Religion, Authoritarian Law, and Corruptions of Governance. The case of contemporary Syria will be examined briefly to illustrate connections between these causes of organized armed conflict and many other problems. There is also a particular reason why I came to China. This is called “Thucydides’ Trap” which is a theory about great power relations of Harvard political scientist Graham Allison, inspired by an ancient Greek historian named Thucydides. Thucydides wrote about the Peloponnesian War that ended Greece’s dominance of the Eastern Mediterranean and Western civilization about the same time that Sun Tzu wrote his incomparable “Art of War.” Allison’s more recent theory suggests that when one “great power” declines while another great power rises, war between them is almost inevitable.
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    The Developing Global Crisis and the Current Wave of Migrant / Refugees heading for Europe
    (National Intelligence Academy of Romania (Mihai Viteazul), 2015-10-16) Andregg, Michael M.
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    The Developing Global Crisis and the Future of Global Security
    (Journal of Global Security Studies, 2014-08-07) Andregg, Michael M.
    The Developing Global Crisis and the Future of Global Security For the JoGSS group, by Michael Andregg, mmandregg@stthomas.edu, Aug. 7, 2014, d1c “The Developing Global Crisis” is a term we use to label a bewildering array of old and emerging problems with large security consequences. Only some are military per se, but all have significant implications for human security and most have big impacts on conventional military issues as well. Examples include: Climate change, population pressure, failed and failing states, emerging diseases, transnational crime, terrorism, cyberwarfare, globalized economics that promotes severe income inequality and social unrest, peak oil transformations of the global energy system, and most important in our opinion, corruption of governance which frustrates solution to many of the other problems. All these together are ‘the developing global crisis.’
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    The Developing Global Crisis: A Strategic Paradigm for Understanding Global Conflicts Today
    (2017-02-25) Andregg, Michael M.
    The Developing Global Crisis: A Strategic Paradigm for Understanding Global Conflicts Today by Michael Andregg, University of St. Thomas, mmandregg@stthomas.edu For the ISA/ISS meetings in Baltimore, MD, USA, Feb. 22-25, 2017 Scheduled for SA-28, Feb. 25, in 326 BCC, -- draft 7 abstract The US Air Force has been at war continuously for over 25 years now, and large areas of its operation like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya are still convulsed by wars. Those zones of conflict have grown, adding Syria, Yemen, Somalia and ‘tribal areas’ of Pakistan to the regular Air Force target lists. Dozens of other countries in Asia, Latin America and especially Africa see more discrete visits by US Special Forces with occasionally lethal consequences. Many Americans, including some troops who have deployed into war zones that their parents fought in, are starting to wonder why these wars do not end. The “Developing Global Crisis” is a strategic paradigm that tries to answer that question with a focus on why the wars are starting in the first place, and how to better address their ultimate causes, instead of just symptoms. That is the strategic “solution” to this problem, focus on ultimate causes instead of just symptoms. Those ultimate causes of organized, armed conflict present a disturbing picture because militaries cannot easily influence many of them. This is a main reason such wars are so hard to stop once started. Those forces, or ultimate causes, include population pressure, corruptions of governance, rising authoritarian law and militant religions that interact synergistically, severe and growing income inequalities, and derivative factors like climate change (a consequence of the ever-growing population pressures and corruptions of governance in addition to the obvious burning of fossil fuels and forests). That is six, very tough problems facing human civilization today. Basically, there are too many people trying to live on too little land in most conflict zones today, so genocide or at least ethnic “cleansing” is an option contemplated by far too many people and politicians. Fear of genocides, so amply illustrated by the ancient histories of such areas, also fuels violent resistance to elites. Syria provides an exceptionally vivid case with relatively hard numbers that can illustrate this “Developing Global Crisis” and why that resists solution by ancient and modern military methods. The confluence of WMDs and hundreds of millions of teen-aged males maturing into such desperate circumstances provides real urgency to the task of rethinking the old ways of conceptualizing global conflicts and how to solve them.
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    Engaging Intelligence Agencies to Support Sustainable Peace and Development in Failed States
    (2003-11) Andregg, Michael M.
    Engaging Intelligence Agencies in Supporting Sustainable Peace and Development in Failed States abstract for the 19th annual conference of the Wisconsin Institute, Nov. 6-8, 2003. Relations between the peace community and official intelligence agencies have never been great. Sometimes they are awful. Natural antipathies can get worse in war zones, where peace activists are generally interested in ending the conflict while intelligence agencies are focused on winning it. Nevertheless there is room for real progress if a common ground can be established that enables collaboration on constructive goals. The emergence of “failed states” as an exceptional national security problem has opened a window of opportunity for cultivating that kind of constructive collaboration. One of the most central objectives should be infusing the concept of sustainable development as a national security goal throughout the ‘thinking organs’ of the nation-states, their intelligence agencies. This correlates internationally with the progressive strategy of some local police forces called “community policing.” I have spent over twenty years sponsoring various kinds of collaborative education involving peace and military groups, and in recent years intelligence agencies. It is a delicate business, because not ALL differences of worldview and goals are bridgeable. But when the right people are involved, and the topics are truly within the domain of shared goals, many good results can be obtained including one ultimate goal of cultivating military officers and intelligence analysts who genuinely understand and share some of the peace movement’s longer term and generally more global goals. One example is a panel I am sponsoring next spring at the annual International Studies Association conference in Montreal, Canada. That includes three representatives of a Human Security project headquartered at the University of Hiroshima, Japan, and three representatives of National Security institutions, specifically West Point, the Defense Intelligence Agency and Britain’s Joint Military Intelligence College. The most general difference between those two terms, “Human Security” and “National Security” is the time frame involved (longer versus shorter) and the domain of concern (broader versus more narrow). If accepted, the paper I would present on this topic would elaborate more fully the predictable problems of such endeavors, solutions that have worked in the past, and the manifold benefits for both peace activists and military or intelligence professionals of such collaborations. In addition to getting some rare but real opportunities to influence both worldview and operations on the other side, the peace community benefits from more detailed and timely access to inside information on military and IC (intelligence community) thinking about contemporary problems. This also helps in many ways to make our efforts to affect real policies effective.
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    Just War Theory, the Developing Global Crisis and the Syrian Migration
    (U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (or it's ethics symposium) eventually published most of these papers., 2016-03-30) Andregg, Michael M.
    This is a short review of Just War Theory (since it was at a military ethics conference) combined with much deeper connections to "The Developing Global Crisis" which is a theory of modern, civilization level conflict we have been discussing at military and intelligence colleges for about 20 years. The Case of Syria is carefully considered, both the genesis of its devastating civil wars and subsequent migrations of millions of Syrians to neighbors and even to Europe. What is offered here is the PowerPoint presentation. The accompanying paper will come later.
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    Nuclear Security Issues: 2017 and long term
    (2017-11-16) Andregg, Michael M.
    This is a 30-slide PowerPoint presentation on nuclear security issues originally created for Minnesota Great Decisions groups at the U of MN, Grand Marais and Mankato, then modified slightly (updated mainly) for the Air Force ROTC detachment at the University of St. Thomas.
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    Solutions for Key Aspects of the Developing Global Crisis
    (2017-06-20) Andregg, Michael M.
    This is an eleven slide PowerPoint presentation for an ISCSC conference in 2017 which systematically works through the largest aspects of "The Developing Global Crisis" with a focus on solutions.
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    Sustainable Development: What is it, Why Care, and How can Korean businesses Profit from it?
    (Pusan National University, 2007-11) Andregg, Michael M.
    This is a 26 slide PowerPoint presentation on Sustainable Economic Development that accompanied the 11 page academic paper on same presented at the same South Korean Universities and trade associations.
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    Why Population Pressure and Militant Religion are the most Important Causes of the Developing Global Crisis
    (2009-06-04) Andregg, Michael M.
    Population pressure and militant religion are the most important causes of the crisis before us today because we can do something about them, and if we don’t we are doomed. The history of the earth is vast and many civilizations have risen, fallen, transformed, and sometimes collapsed catastrophically. All of this is extremely complicated, so to boil it down to a couple of variables is ridiculously simplistic. That is, however, one role of theory for complex processes, reducing dozens or even hundreds of variables into a smaller number that minds can more easily manage. So this is a position paper, not empirical research. Controversies accompany definition of many key terms like “civilization,” “religion” (militant and otherwise), “genocide,” “human nature,” “population pressure” and so forth. These will be set aside so that the key thesis can be presented in the space available. I encourage anyone to disprove or improve on these ideas, because however you describe it our global civilization is entering a period of profound crisis. Practical answers matter more than words, and accuracy matters more than ideology. In the past, as cases here show, some civilizations facing similar challenges survived while others perished forever from this earth. So the question of why some fail and why others succeed is not a mere theoretical question. There are many other variables important to the rise and fall of civilizations, but most will not destroy you if neglected. Population pressure and militant religion can. Plus, we can affect these factors, while goals like changing human nature or eliminating sin are ephemeral. This paper is built on foundations laid by authors like Clive Ponting, Jared Dimond and Tatu Vanhanen (of Britain, the USA and Finland respectively). But almost every concept is disputable, from the definition of civilizations to the “evolutionary roots of politics” that Vanhanen discusses (and Azar Gat elaborates, 2006) which drive some of their political science colleagues into vehement denials that biology has anything at all to do with politics. The critics are wrong, but rather than argue each of these and many other relevant items extensively here, I will just declare my opinion. Having considered these complex and sensitive topics as carefully as I can, these are my conclusions. Readers may critique and prove or disprove them as they like. My goal is human survival, which I think is at risk to these two factors specifically.