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The Developing Global Crisis: What Security Practitioners and Policy Makers Need to Know

Abstract (d7, for “Global Security and Intelligence Studies” of American Military University.)

General Michael Flynn asks why we don’t win wars anymore.i Director of National Intelligence

James Clapper claims we cannot fix the problems in the Middle East where so many of our troops and related forces have been deployed for so long.ii This essay attempts to explain why.

We have been addressing mainly symptoms instead of causes, and since the causes continue, the wars don’t stop. The “Developing Global Crisis” involves at least six factors that are difficult for anyone to deal with. Each has military consequences, but few respond well to military force.

The result is hundreds of millions of poorly educated teen aged males maturing into desperate circumstances of failed or failing states where they encounter demagogues and WMDs instead of opportunities. The factors I allude to include: 1) population growth and population pressure (not the same things)iii, 2) corruptions of governance that prevent solutions, 3) growing income inequalities within and between nations, 4) militant religion(s), 5) rising authoritarianism in politics worldwide, and 6) global warming. Bombing global warming cools nothing and brings no rain, but global warming can definitely contribute to the collapse of states like , which then export millions of their desperate people into neighbors like , and that are in turn destabilized to some degree. Even Europe feels the stress of a million sudden immigrants, so we will consider the case of Syria in particular. But what is happening there is happening in far too many other desert states today.

Keywords: demographics, failed states, terrorism, intelligence, corruption

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The Developing Global Crisis – as Illustrated by Syria

We will now march through those six very difficult factors that are causing so much chaos today using Syrian metrics wherever possible. So, for example, prior to the collapse of public order in

Syria the CIAiv (and the UN’s population demographics bureau) listed Syria’s population growth rate as 2.4% in 2010. This coincided with four years of the worst drought in Syria’s recorded history, which drove at least 1.5 million people off of now barren farmland into cities where opportunities were already scarce.v 2.4 percent growth per year means that the population would double in less than 30 years if that continued.vi It also means that the “age distribution” of that population will be heavily skewed toward younger members, with an average age under 25 years. Such age distributions are often called “pyramidal” by demographers, and because they include many young who are just entering prime reproductive ages, they have considerable

“momentum of growth.” Here is the CIA’s estimate for Syria’s age distribution as of 2014: vii

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And here is how the CIA defines age distributions for readers of their annual World Factbook:

“A population pyramid illustrates the age and sex structure of a country's population and

may provide insights about political and social stability, as well as economic development.

The population is distributed along the horizontal axis, with males shown on the left and

females on the right. The male and female populations are broken down into 5-year age

groups represented as horizontal bars along the vertical axis, with the youngest age

groups at the bottom and the oldest at the top. The shape of the population pyramid

gradually evolves over time based on fertility, mortality, and international migration trends.

It is very difficult for the CIA or any observers to estimate birth, death and growth rates in active war zones, which Syria has been for several years now. But one can measure other critical demographic variables, numbers of people displaced or fleeing the country as refugees. About half of Syria’s pre-war population of about 22 million have been displaced, with at least five million fleeing as refugees into Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey and about one million more forming a stream into Europe during late 2015 and early 2016.viii,ix These were joined by refugees from other desert war zones, especially Afghanistan and .

Also note that population growth (in numbers) has essentially stopped in Syria in the ages from

0-14 years. This truncates the ends of the population pyramid, making it look more like a

Hershey’s chocolate kiss. That is how this chart displays the ferocious rise in death rates that came with the civil wars (best current estimate in Syria ~ 450,000 killed) and many more babies not born at all due to the general chaos and economic deprivation the wars brought.

How do corruptions of governance and income inequalities factor into this tragic situation? 4

Corruptions of Governance and Income Inequalities

Corruption of governance has been with us since the beginning of time, but it is among the least studied basic causes of war. The main reason for this is that most funding for social science comes from governments, which are generally not interested in people studying corruption of governance. In the context of this paper, this factor is important because it prevents many governments from solving obvious and sometimes even lethal problems for their peoples.

Income inequality is also global and eternal, and is more obviously related to the civil wars that predominate today. The case of Syria is actually a small example of a very global problem.

Some inequality is inevitable and even essential for healthy economies. But in general, the probability of conflict increases with large income inequalities, both within and between nations.

These topics are too complex for a simple review, so I will illustrate them briefly with how both factors affect external actors, specifically the US response to the Syrian crisis.

When 1.5 million left unproductive agricultural lands, they went to cities for opportunity.

But the Assad family had run Syria like a Mafia estate for decades, and most of the good opportunities in were reserved for children of Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect, and favored minorities like the 10% in Syria. There were not enough opportunities for all of the large numbers of young people graduating from colleges already, much less for poorly educated new arrivals from rural areas. So Assad’s security forces used the old methods against what started as mainly peaceful protests.

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As the civil wars unfolded and metastasized in Syria, the USA wondered what to do. But its frame of reference for understanding the conflict had to be military. And because of our own domestic political dynamics it had to focus on personalities like Bashar al-Assad and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (the barbaric leader of ISIS/ISIL to whom we will return) rather than impersonal forces like population growth, systemic corruptions of governance, or climate change. So rather than deal with any of those expensive and very difficult problems, the practical question in the

USA was and has been whether to bomb targets, and if so which ones?

The fact that military responses, especially bombs, have zero positive effect on climate change, produce no jobs for teenagers in targeted areas, and have no therapeutic value when applied to mass migrations and income inequality does not even cross most Congressmen’s minds. They prefer simple good-and-evil stories. Meanwhile, failures of US policy pile up along with failed states in the Middle East, while forces of tribal rebellion against corrupt governments there grow inexorably. So, hundreds of millions of very poorly educated teen aged males are now maturing into desperate circumstances where demagogues like Baghdadi are eager to focus their anger.

Militant Religions and Rising Authoritarianism Worldwide x

Authoritarian Law is not the same as Militant Religion, but they both increase the probability of organized armed conflict in several ways. As importantly, they react synergistically such that both in combination are more dangerous than either alone. I dealt with this in more detail in a book on the causes of war in 2001 (chapter 13) xi but the essence is that authoritarian law provides the practical means for political repression or conquest, with or without justification, while militant religion provides “moral” rationales for the use of state violence against others. 6

Consider ISIS for one current example, or Al Qaeda for another. But there have been many other moral crusades in history based on some theory of religion that designates enemies (like, the

Islamists point out, the medieval Crusades to free Jerusalem during the 11th – 13th centuries CE).

In the Syrian case, the government of Bashar al-Assad always was authoritarian (his father Hafez infamously killed an estimated 20,000 people in for resisting his rule in February, 1982).xii

That authoritarian law legitimized violence for the son Bashar as well, and funded well-armed police and soldiers who repressed the early protests in 2011. After years of abuse, barrel bombs on neighborhoods, chemical attacks, and funded by a lot of Saudi money, ISIS arose in both Iraq and Syria on the principle of militant religion, claiming that the regimes they opposed were agents of Shaytan (Satan) and that “good ” had a responsibility to attack such evil regimes.xiii If you are Muslim but don’t agree, well you are a “bad” Muslim, subject to execution, and they have executed thousands. If you are Shi’ite, you are infidel to them, almost worse than a Christian or Jew. There is no middle ground with ISIS; you are with them or against them, but cannot be neutral. The current ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, takes this goal and style to its limit by claiming a mission from “god” to rule everyone on earth under a “new Caliphate.”

Either factor is very dangerous. Put the two together and you can get intense reactions, like sodium with water, because both authoritarian law and militant religion intend to be the only legitimate user of violent methods in the countries they claim to own. They cannot tolerate each other, much less democratic alternatives, and innocents in their territories are always at risk. The most dangerous of all is when religious moral zealotry and authoritarian political power fuse.

Those dictators think they actually are God’s designated rulers of the earth. Such people know no shame in their abuse of others to “accomplish god’s will.” They also dream of having dozens 7 of sons (45) from many women as the founder of (Abdulaziz Ibn Saud) did long ago.xiv Or raping thousands of women captured from Yazidi villages, for another example, and selling or giving them to fighters as sex slaves as ISIS did in 2014. The promise of 72 virgins in paradise for martyrs of such causes resonates deeply with young men who have little hope of attracting a regular wife by traditional methods like earning a living able to support a family.

As many know, King Saud made a deal long ago with his ultra-conservative Wahhabi clerics to fund them lavishly if, and only if, they caused trouble entirely outside of the Kingdom of Saudi

Arabia.xv So they in turn funded thousands of “madrassas” in other countries, and taught a rabidly intolerant brand of Islam, without cost to male students who might need lunch as well as

‘education.’ When such young men find there is no economic opportunity in the area, and no practical application for Islamic scholarship, they provide fertile fuel for “demagogues” a particularly dangerous type of political personality.

The rise of authoritarian politics is not confined to countries with high birth rates and tribal traditions. It is happening all over Europe as we write,xvi and to degrees elsewhere, a response to those waves of Islamic immigrants fleeing their countries of desperation. Human history is littered with examples of peoples who exist no more because they suffered genocide when large numbers of aggressive others with high birth rates appeared on their borders. However natural that response to a recurring stress, it will not preserve human civilization if that also requires killing millions of desperate young men every year for the rest of recorded history. The presence of WMDs suggests that history will be short unless someone breaks out of the growing madness.

Global Warming (or Climate Change – the academic language does not matter much) xvii 8

Climate change matters today because we already have over 60 million permanent refugees on earth, most of whom have fled violent conflicts or desperate poverty in their nations of origin.xviii

Many millions more are on the move, migrants of one kind or another. Huge reference works like the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change xix indicate that as the earth warms droughts will become more common in many places, flooding in others, storms will become more energetic on average, oceans will acidify as CO2 is absorbed, and rise as glaciers and polar ice melts. These have vast implications for international security. Syria is just one example of an arc of instability currently running along North Africa xx and through the Middle

East into Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia. It should worry everyone.

And yet, opposition to the very concept of global warming was so intense in the United States that a long campaign to discredit it was launched by powerful companies like Exxon and individuals like the Koch Brothers of Wichita, Kansas that was effective enough to delay response to this formerly academic problem for about 30 years.xxi As recently as 2005 I was told by a senior CIA executive at the National Intelligence University (then called JMIC) that they had been forbidden from discussing this topic in their global threat assessments by the national command. And as recently as 2012, most Congressmen and women of the dominant party were on record as doubting the reality of either climate change or global warming, as if such terms mattered more than what one can see with eyes and record with thermometers.

It is difficult to overstate the power of organized money to retard solutions to common problems, or even to corrupt thinking clearly about them. Corruption of governance is not confined to failing Third World states, and it can have vast consequences for even the richest and most powerful of nations on earth. 9

Solutions for Practitioners and Policy Makers

What can a Colonel do about such difficult issues, caught in the field between powers that be who decide policies, and troops ordered to execute them? A very short answer is to develop global vision so you can see how any conflict fits into the global crisis, and support things and actions that deal with causes rather than just symptoms of national and global distress. Like:

1. Remember always that the strategic struggle of our time is between civilizations and

barbarism. There are always many very good people trapped in war zones who are very

good (Muslims or whatever) just trying to survive. Therefore information operations are

at least as important as kinetic ones, and protecting innocence is imperative always.

There is a messianic wing to every religion, not just Islam, but there are children of God

in each as well trying hard to heal the earth and care for the suffering. Do not forget them.

2. Become an advocate for Civil Affairs troops and units. Of course this is among the least

sexy career fields in the current Army, but they are critically important to the task of

building or at least encouraging good governments in recovering states rather than

corrupt ones as prone to failures as our last allies. When battlefield commanders call for

more ISR (as they do every day) the system eventually responds. And if you called for

more and better Civil Affairs troops as urgently, it would eventually respond to that too.

3. Recognize differences between symptoms and cause so that you can wholeheartedly

support revolutionary concepts like education of women and birth control in your areas of

operations. In the long run these are essential solutions to the population growth and

pressure factors, especially in the current context of surging Islamic terrorism. Do not 10

expect powers that be to take leads on this, because they are politicians well aware of

opposition to 21st century concepts like birth control by medieval institutions at home.

4. Finally, know the long term reasons behind rules of war, both U.S. and international,

because items like “proportionality” and “discrimination” between combatants and

innocents become critically, practically important in the very long process of rebuilding

failed states. Careful application of military force will be necessary in many places for as

long as I can see ahead. But when bombs (or drones) or troops on unending missions

create more enemies than they kill, that alone is a formula for long term failure. Very

painful failures for our troops, and very expensive failures for our country and the world.

These are my opinions on the Developing Global Crisis at this time. This crisis is extraordinarily difficult because so many of its causes are complex, long-term, and resistant to simple military solutions even though military force is often necessary to contain the chaos, much less to solve local conflicts. Do not be tempted by the false idea that one can simply build a wall between affluent, comfortable nations and the global dispossessed. They will find ways around or through any wall, and to maintain that by force could soon require killing millions each year, not mere thousands. And still the problems would thrive until someone deals with causes like the population growth, corruptions of governance, and drivers of militant religion and authoritarian politics that lie below the obvious aspects of the global crises we address here today.

i Michael T. Flynn (2016). “How About Winning Our Nation’s Wars Instead of Just Participating in Them?” in Military Review, (Ft. Leavenworth, KS: Army Command and General Staff College, March-April, 2016), 8-15. ii David Ignatius (2016). “’The U.S. can’t fix it’: James Clapper on America’s Role in the Middle East” in the Washington Post, May 10, 2016, an op-ed accessible at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-cant- fix-it-james-clapper-on-americas-role-in-the-middle-east/2016/05/10/377666a8-16ea-11e6-9e16- 2e5a123aac62_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines . 11

iii Population growth is absolute numbers, and rates like birth rates, death rates, growth rates and migrations. Population pressure is how much these motivate people to migrate along opportunity gradients, which is more a function of military factors, technology, levels of development, and national wealth than just numbers of people. iv CIA World Factbook (2010) demographics of Syria. v Andrew Liverani (2015, October 21). “A Syrian Refugee at COP21” accessible at the World Bank Blogs at http://blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove/syrian-refugee-cop21 . vi Michael Andregg (2016). “Demographics of Conflict” in the American Intelligence Journal, Vol. 34, No. 3. vii IndexMundi (2014) provides the latest data on Syrian age distributions from the CIA World Factbook of 2014 at: http://www.indexmundi.com/syria/age_structure.html . viii UN High Commissioner for Refugees, (2016, May 15). “Report on Total Persons of Concern, Syria Regional Refugee Response” at: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php . ix Economist (2016, May 28). “Looking for a Home” special section on migration, p. 3. x Carl Bildt, (2016, May 27). “Austria’s narrow election is a warning to us all” Washington Post, at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/carl-bildt-austrias-narrow-election-is-a-warning-signal-to- all/2016/05/27/90d4626a-2381-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines . xi Michael Andregg (2001, third edition) On the Causes of War, St. Paul, MN: Ground Zero Minnesota, especially Chapter 13 on Authoritarian Law and Militant Religion, pp. 74-83. xii Jason Rodriguez, (2011, August 1). 1982: Syria’s President Hafez al-Assad crushes rebellion in Hama, in The Guardian, UK, London, accessible at: http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive- blog/2011/aug/01/hama-syria-massacre-1982-archive . xiii Martin Smith and Linda Hirsch of PBS Frontline (2014, October 28) “The Rise of ISIS” accessible at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/rise-of-isis/ . xiv King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, genealogy profiled at geni.com, at https://www.geni.com/people/King- Ibn-Saud-of-Saudi-Arabia/6000000011163912267 . xv Editors of the New York Times (2016, May 28). “The World Reaps What the Saudi’s Sow,” accessible at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/28/opinion/the-world-reaps-what-the-saudis- sow.html?emc=edit_th_20160528&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=17479356&_r=0 . xvi Economist (2016, May 28). “Disaster Averted – for Now: Europe’s far right is no longer a fringe.” p. 12. xvii Nathan Halverson (2016, April 15). “We’re Running Out of Water, and It’s Causing Countries to Fall into Chaos,” Reveal News, and Newsweek, accessible at: https://www.revealnews.org/article/were-running-out-of-water-and- the-worlds-powers-are-very-worried/ . xviii Mircea Mocanu (2015) of the International Organization for Migration. “Valuing Migration: Benefits and Challenges,” a paper presented at the 21st annual “Information in the Knowledge Society” Conference at Romania’s National Intelligence Academy, Mihai Viteazul, on October 17, 2015, in Bucharest, Romania. This will be published in their proceedings in October, 2016. xix The UN affiliated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (http://www.ipcc.ch/) reports on findings from hundreds of scientists around the world. The 2014 assessment is available at: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/ . xx Helene Cooper (2016, May 26) “U.S. Increases Antiterrorism Exercises with African Militaries” in the New York Times, accessible at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/world/africa/us-increases-antiterrorism-exercises-with- african-militaries.html?emc=edit_th_20160527&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=17479356&_r=0 . xxi Riley E. Dunlap and Aaron M. McCright (2011). “Organized Climate Change Denial,” Ch. 10 in The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, edited by John S. Dryzek, Richard Norgaard and David Schlosberg, London: Oxford University Press, 2011.