Palestine/Israel: Image vs. Reality Part One

Have you ever noticed that the broadcast and print media rarely, if ever, show a detailed map of Israel/Palestine when doing a report on the conflict? This coupled with such nuanced phrases like “the Palestinians must pull back”, leads the audience to believe it is indeed the Palestinians encroaching Israeli territory, not the other way round.

Whose purpose does this serve?

Now, of course, this is intended for a number of reasons but the two that glaringly obvious are to obscure the conflict in such a fashion in our minds that it appears too complex to resolve thus maintaining the status quo – that is the Palestinians living under a constant state of military occupation by Israel.

The second is that it hides the methods of control Israel is using over millions of occupied people. As to show a detailed map would risk revealing the complex network of Israeli garrisons, the rising number of illegal settlements within Palestinian territory, the use of military checkpoints that brings Palestinian day-to-day life to an utter standstill, furthermore, how the checkpoints are used to push and lock in Palestinians within sealed prison-like enclaves. Which is controlled from the outside by the Israel army who then, of course, enter them at will whilst completely restricting the free movement of Palestinian people, goods and services thus destroying the Palestinian economy.

It is not for nothing that the late Israeli academic, Tanya Reinhart, defined Gaza and the West Bank as being the largest open air prison in human history.

The censorship of geography, in the most geographic of conflicts, has allowed a separation wall, something which Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu define as being an ‘apartheid wall’, to be built around the West Bank that has been allowed to go unnoticed and unpunished which Israel has used to annexe more than a quarter of the West Bank.

However, it is not only territorial greed that defines the route of the apartheid wall, geopolitical realities such as the need to be in control of the aquifers in the West Bank are another prime motivating factor for Israel. These lands sit on the western part of the Mountain Groundwater Basin, a large reservoir within the West Bank. The Mountain reservoir provides around 600 million cubic metres of water annually.

So naturally it seemed logical, to Ariel Sharon, for the route of the apartheid wall to criss-cross around aquifers that were once in Palestinian territory and now in the charge of Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, which subsequently gave Israel total access to this much-needed resource.

Israel now creams off 500 million cubic metres of water from the Mountain Groundwater Basin.

My second point highlights something more sinister at work here; that is the total complicity of western media outlets in Israel’s illegal activity.

It is slightly more than a mere coincidence that a detailed map has rarely ever been published or shown on television by the mainstream media, when addressing this conflict. Consequently consolidating Joe Average’s confusion on this issue.

The risk of revealing the true nature of Israel’s subjugation of Palestinian self-determination will lead to the weakening of Israel’s vice-like grip on the moral argument and reveal it for what it is; an asymmetrical conflict. A conflict fought by stone throwers on the one side and one that has complete control of the land, the sea and the sky on the other.

This type of information must be withheld and if it is ever ‘revealed’ must be in such a way that it is spoon-fed to the audience in tiny doses without sentience or detailed imagery.

This complicity has allowed the Palestinians to be held captive within a complex system of prisons, that detach and dislocate one Palestinian area from another, in addition, designed to coop them up in areas barely fit for animals, which in effect are like bantustans. Which were indeed used by the apartheid regime in South Africa to subjugate the self-determination of the indigenous population there.

This Zionization of our media, a media that only allows the narrative of the Israelis whilst demonizing the narrative of the Palestinians, is an abominable shame to our democratic values and goes against the norms of press freedoms and must be resisted.

Just like young Palestinians tired of the daily injustice and repression they experience offer courageous resistance in the face of a demeaning fate meted out to them not just by Israeli soldiers armed and equipped by its American financier but, also, by other treacherous Arab states. A type of resistance that only has one message. A message so eloquent that it need not be spoken in words – that you may murder, maim and kill as many of my people as you desire but my idea of statehood where I am free will continue to live on long after you kill me.

A Question of (In)Security?

A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Islam, in the shape of the veil.

Mehdi Hasan, of the New Statesman, argues that nothing seems to provoke more suspicion of Europe’s 15 million Muslims than the face veil worn by a tiny minority of Muslim women.

In recent months, several European governments have begun to legislate restrictions on the niqab, a face veil that leaves the area around the eyes clear and is usually complemented with a full body covering.

The widely regurgitated argument by policymakers is the “national security” card and then the vacuous use of assimilation is quickly bandied around to help mobilise support for this policy.

However, one can easily see this is more a question of identity, of the self and of the nation, and the unanswerable questions and insecurity that emanate from this. As Islam is the fastest growing religion in Europe, how else can Christian Europe stem this 'scourge'?

In April of this year Belgium, despite the political upheavals afflicting the country, found the time to become the first European country to pass through legislation that imposes a nationwide ban on anyone wearing a full face veil in public.

In real terms, less than 0.01% of Belgium’s 600,000 Muslim population wear the veil, out of a total population of just under 11 million people. The chances of the average Belgian bumping into a niqab-clad woman is virtually zero.

So where’s the logic behind the ban?

The French security services estimate that 2,000 out of around 2 million adult Muslim women in France wear the full face veil, of which a third of whom are thought to be converts to Islam.

Yet despite these lowly figures the French government have acted swiftly to impose bans on the face veil and have been extremely vocal in expressing their vitriolic sentiments, with President Nicolas Sarkozy declaring the burqa is “not welcome” in France and denouncing it as a symbol of female “subservience and debasement”.

In France, the fine for those that flout the new law will be €150 for a first time offender and a man who is found to have forced a woman to wear a full-length veil by “threats and/or violence” will be punished with a €15,000 fine and could face imprisonment.

This and Sarkozy’s comments are particularly revealing.

The idea that millions of Muslim women are being forced into wearing a piece of cloth to cover their faces is nothing but an erroneous belief that is not supported by a shred of empirical evidence.

However, the idea that the white man, and only the white man, can save and liberate the mysterious exotic woman from the depraved heresy of the barbaric savages and the uncivilised primitively-minded men of the East, with their fine clothes and enlightened beliefs is nothing more than an extension of colonialism. As this is consistent with traditional imperialist thought.

Then we come to the contradiction of punishing and criminalising women for choosing to maintain their modesty with a single piece of cloth to cover their faces. Which is, indeed, ironic and paradoxical, using the threat of prison to free women from the seemingly imprisonment of the burqa is illogical and lacks reason.

In Britain, numerous parliamentarians have publicly stated that they would refuse to see women wearing a face veil within their respective surgeries.

One M.P. went as far as to say that he would tell the woman to go home and correspond with him via another medium. Despite tending to ones constituents being a parliamentary duty.

So much for secular and pluralist societies safeguarding the wants and needs and protecting the rights of minority groups.

The champions of fear and hate within Western societies argue that Islam is, and has always been, a threat to enlightened democratic societies of this world. The dominant fallacy is that practitioners of Islam are nothing more than divisive misogynistic parasites hell-bent on destabilizing freethinking liberal Western democracies from within.

Note the type of language used to describe either group. Which is, of course, nothing new. They can easily be found in the much-lauded works of Lewis, Naipaul, Huntington and Hitchens to name but few.

One could argue that this pervasive fear of Islam is merely notional. If Islam was this monolithic beast blinded by rage and feeds on the blood of non-Muslims, namely Westerners, where was this beast in the 50 years between the end of the Second World War and the collapse of the Berlin Wall?

Broadcasters and human rights organisations the world over have denounced the policy of banning of the veil as being fuelled by the ignorance of racism and Islamophobic by design. Which go against the norms of a supposed progressive society.

Unfortunately in this post 9/11 era these attitudes expressed of Islam and Muslims have become commonplace.

In spite of this, the ‘straw man argument’ put forward by proponents of this ban must be debunked in order to preserve the tolerant nature of our society.

'Death Speaks'

The only guarantees in life, as the saying goes, is death and taxes.

Yet despite these absolute guarantees we always feel annoyed when we look at our payslip at the end of every month to see how much we’re being fucked by the Chancellor and overcome by that sense of shock and despair at the loss of a loved one.

In spite of these unavoidable occurrences our sense of surprise never seems to diminish when they do occur.

I recently had a chat with a friend about the idea of regret and that vacuous cliché that “hindsight is a wonderful thing…” blah blah blah managed to find its way into the conversation.

But a telling point is made when you think, how are you expected to ‘go back’ and rectify something you did or didn’t do if the intelligence and life experience that you had at that time is the very reason that led you to make that choice which is leading to that sense of regret?

Which is very interesting, as the idea that we are indeed fallible as human beings and our fallibility is almost inevitable and predestined.

As I was walking home from the hospital recently I remembered this brilliant short by the brilliant Somerset Maugham entitled, ‘Death Speaks’;

There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; Master, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.

The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

The Blanche Syndrome

It was Blanche Dubois who said, “I always depend on the kindness of strangers”. Although I wouldn’t say it’s a dependency I would certainly say there is nothing else quite like it.

When my mum was recently in hospital I got to experience it first hand.

My mum was in an all female ward with her bed located at the very corner of the room. Next to her was a Greek-Cypriot woman whom couldn’t speak English, in the bed opposite was an English woman whom couldn’t speak Bengali.

Now although my mum isn’t fluent in English like me (although some people would argue I speak it as though it’s a foreign language) she can fully understand it and still hold conversations with those who can. Even when my siblings or I are not present to help translate.

Yet despite the very obvious language and racial barrier the bond in which these women struck up with each other was heart-warming and extremely humbling.

This was all in the run up to the recent General Election with radical far-right fascist groups aiming to profiteer on the out-pouring of ignorant xenophobia. And where we live in East London, there had been a lot of flaring up of racial tension with Nick Griffin running for the nearby parliamentary seat of Barking and a brainless local councillor expressing Islamophobic sentiments. In addition, with an expected Tory victory the future certainly didn’t appear to be bright.

However, as depressing as being in a hospital can be it was also reassuring to see that despite the political and social backdrop, the wards of the hospital represented the melting pot that London is renowned for.

And the only type of London I know.

Patients of different races and languages finding ways to communicate with each other. Filipino, Creole and African nurses administering the wards with the Indian and Mediterranean doctors tending to their patients.

Where would we be without this? What could we be without this?

The lady opposite my mum, Nicky, was from Bedfordshire and rarely had visitors as the distance between where they lived and the location of the hospital was too vast. At the insistence of my mother I bought her a couple of bottles of Ribena when her supply ran short. This random act of kindness touched her and felt rewarding for me.

Being in hospital can be a frustrating time for both patients and visitors. The waiting around for results, being bed-ridden and that distinctive odour that all hospitals tend to have are not pleasant. But it’s these single moments of generosity that offset the feelings of fear or anxiety that one may feel.

I even gave a couple of cakes and doughnuts to the nurses in a shameless act of bribery so they’d keep an extra look out for my mum outside of visiting hours.

In this particular ward, the women were about to have or were recovering from major surgery. And some were still in very obvious discomfort. So for them to take the time out and find out how each other were doing was very touching.

The day my mother was allowed to leave was happy, as it was sad. It was great for me as I could finally bring my mum home to familiar surroundings.

However, the Greek lady couldn’t stop crying. Probably out of joy, that she’s going home and probably from that despondent empty feeling that you only tend to get when you have to say bye to someone after developing a profound friendship.

In a time where our differences are being amplified and scrutinized to a frightening degree it was heartening to see that the common bond in which strangers share can help to bring people together who may not have met under any other circumstance.

Which means there is hope.

And despite the Tories assuming high office the BNP were emphatically booted out and battered at the ballot box.

Which means there is hope.

My Top 5 Greatest PlayStation 2 Games

1) Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Game of the Year 2003, those of you who have played it will know why. In an era when the ‘open world’ concept was still relatively new, gamers felt liberated by its non-linear approach. Purists to the late 80s classic loved the new parkour skilled Prince with a hugely impressive repertoire of combat skills that did not involve a gun. The music that was true to the setting and original PC game as well as mind-boggling puzzles that certainly had me up all night when I was at university!

2) Scarface: The World Is Yours (2006) A quasi-sequel to the legendary film, this game had me addicted! The dialogue is hilarious, the gamplay awesome with brilliantly thought out in-game challenges. In fact I found navigating the cars on this was infinitely better and a whole lot easier than most racing games namely Gran Turismo 4. However, some of the graphics in some challenges did appear to be weak but the classic 80s soundtrack more than made up for it. And if you’re an 80s cat like me that goes some way to quell any unrest.

3) Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004) Slightly controversial to feature this low in my list as many hardcore fans would dub this by far and away the greatest PS2 game of all time. This game was certainly addictive to anyone who played it! With a well thought out eclectic soundtrack, never-ending places to roam with endless challenges and minigames, I know men-folk who have still yet to complete it! The dialogue was witty and controversial as GTA always is with that notorious sex scene. A landmark in ‘open world’ gaming as players could choose how they explore and play the game. A required addition to any serious gamer’s collection.

4) The Warriors (2005) Based on Walter Hill’s 1970s cult classic. For purists like me the game stayed true to the film with excellent focus on New York in this period and the rival gangs competing for territory with their unique fighting traits and distinctive ensemble. The fact that the entire game is set at night further adds to its character and charm with the fisticuffs and brawling a breath of fresh air to the usual shoot-em-ups. However, as much as I loved playing this game there were a lot of things that jarred me about too. Maybe the developer, Rockstar Games, knew that the game would only appeal to a niche market so deciding not to invest heavily during the game’s development stage. The graphics on some of the levels is truly awful and basic, the soundtrack is woeful and the fact that I completed the game in a couple of weekends left a rather sour taste in my mouth. I found some of the minigames boring but overall the game is at least an 8 outta 10.

5) Fifa 2005 No list is complete without a football game and as I’m not a ‘Pro Evo’ man it’s gotta be Fifa! The thing with football games is that they are either awesome to play and simple to navigate the players or rubbish graphics with overly complex controls. Fifa 2005 is certainly the former. It’s predecessors were good but not great but this instalment was a very welcome addition to the franchise. The introduction of ‘first-touch’ was warmly received and many of the world’s great players were still in their prime, which meant they were still very good in this game. In fact when I first played this version and found the gameplay a joy to behold I was actually thinking Fifa 2006 is going to off the hook! As progress and the Enlightenment would dictate that one should positively build on any accomplishments you manage to achieve. Unfortunately EA Sports didn’t see it like that, and Fifa 2006 and Fifa 2007 were pants.

The Myth of Benevolence in International Affairs

Idealism has no place in foreign policy. This is a fact I have begrudgingly grown to accept.

Whilst I was a young idealist I believed morality and ethics were a central facet when states interacted with each other. However, being an historian and someone who is pretty clued up on current affairs I find it extremely difficult to think of an instance when this has been the case.

Within the framework of international politics the concept of realpolitik has always been the key-governing factor on how policy is determined. That is to say national interest, economic gain and risk take precedence over moral and ethical considerations.

Whilst discussing the content of this article with friends many believed the topic to be very pessimistic in outlook. Indeed, on the face of it it clearly is. However, this is indeed the realist approach on global affairs, an approach that has held a position of absolute dominance in foreign policy planning in the post-Second World War era.

For instance, the key line of argument to legitimate the case for the ‘war’ in Iraq was weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the “45 minute” claim; that is to say that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to strike a major Western city within 45 minutes. After the invasion met little or no resistance from Iraqi forces and it quickly became apparent that Saddam’s regime did not possess WMD’s, which also confirmed the assertions of Hans Blix the UN’s Chief Weapons inspector in Iraq, then the military objective quickly switched to ‘regime change’ and all was seemingly justified. Despite this policy to be strictly against international law it has been flouted on numerous occasions by the United States in Latin America, the Middle East and South East Asia, and Western European states namely in North Africa and Asia was primarily undertaken for our own interest rather than the interest of the indigenous population of these states.

However the point I wish to make with the Iraq example; was that there were other motivational factors at play other than removing a dictator that ruled his people with an iron fist for altruistic motives. As Saddam’s human rights abuses and other crimes against humanity were the very least of our concerns. Whereas geopolitical realities enthused us more.

Most industrialized states’ thirst for energy resources and fossil fuels borders on crack-like dependency. Now as most Western states’ economies are tied in with their aviation and/or their automobile industries access to resources such as oil is seemingly vital. Access to cheap oil is all the more attractive.

During the lead up to the invasion of Iraq I remember a debate taking place in Britain discussing the legalities of such an invasion. With most journalists, that can be seen as being the mouthpiece of the right, opting to dishonestly argue that “Saddam must be removed to save the Iraqi people” etc. Other informed dissident voices, like that of Jeremy Corbyn MP, arguing that within twenty years America’s oil reserves within its own territory would have completely dried up. This was in 2002.

I was the chair of the group of students that invited the Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen, Claude Moraes MEP, whom I cornered to admit that British and American policy to have established diplomatic ties with the military dictatorship of Pakistan was indeed “hypocritical”, which admittedly was a coup for me at that point in time, (however as this policy served our national interest the moral argument was once again sidelined) and Jeremy Corbyn MP to our Sixth Form Centre in Islington, which is where he asserted the above fact.

As Western dependence on oil was growing and its own reserves significantly depleting the need to find new locales of reserves was of paramount importance for its economy, its security and to maintain its global hegemony. Western imposed Iraqi sanctions during the 1990’s not only rendered half a million Iraqi children under the age of 5 to an early grave but the sanctions also prevented Iraq from drilling into its vast oil reserves with some analysts stating that Iraq’s huge reserves was second to only Saudi America… er… I mean… Arabia. Typo obviously. Since Iraq was a country “floating on oil”, as Tony Blair said at the time, it made perfect sense to tell an ignorant people hungry for blood after 9/11 that al-Qaeda and Saddam’s Iraq were one and the same. Despite them both being as diametrically opposed as let’s say George Bush and speaking in coherent sentences are. So engaging with Iraq militarily seemed the most obvious course of action.

Here is where I make the crux of my argument; the application of military force in Iraq seemed extremely feasible to our political leaders, as the economic and human cost of the war would be offset by the trillions of dollars worth of untapped oil, that would naturally belong to us, and the geopolitical importance a huge Western presence would make to the Middle East as well as strengthen and consolidate the existence of the State of Israel. At the same time the ability to mobilize a greater amount of troops when the need to attack Iran arises, as Tehran pose a greater military threat.

If the case for war was truly about spreading democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people, preserving human rights and stop the mass slaughter of a people why didn’t Western forces intervene in Darfur, Sudan when an obvious genocide was taking place at the very same time as our military expeditions in Iraq were underway? Why did we allow 500,000 Rwandans to be slaughtered in the less than 6 months back in 1994? Notwithstanding inaction with Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

Could it possibly be because we have absolutely nothing to gain from these countries if we were to intervene? These countries lack vital natural resources so we will foot the entire economic cost of the war, and of course how unpopular our military casualties would be back home as they could cost the ruling government important votes come election time.

Some people would argue that military intervention in Kosovo in the late 1990’s is an example of morality being at the forefront of foreign policy. However, the mass slaughter of innocent Muslims by the likes of Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic was and is the worst acts of ethnic cleansing on European soil since the Second World War. After the atrocities of Srebrenica were allowed to happen under the watchful eye of Dutch peacekeepers some four years previous some could easily argue that the policy of intervention was merely carried out to save face. After all if we really wanted to catch the perpetrators of these massacres why did it take so long to capture Milosevic and Karadzic with Mladic still at large?

Justice was clearly not on the agenda here with the façade of military force highlighting to the Serbs that NATO is the dominant military power acting without its approval or authority will only have negative repercussions. As Noam Chomsky eloquently argued at the time.

Indeed putting the wants and needs of the state ahead of moral considerations in relation to international politics is nothing new. The United States stayed well out of the two World Wars until it saw it was safe to enter.

For instance, America did not enter the First World War until 1917; the war was officially over the following year. As with the Second World War President Roosevelt only felt compelled to join the war after they had declared war on Japan after the attacks on Pearl Harbour, which is worth noting, were not directly against Nazi Germany. The Pact Germany, Italy and Japan had in place meant a declaration of war on one of them was a declaration on all of them (now you know where Tony Blair got that from) so Germany and Italy were obliged to declare war on the Americans.

This example merely highlights the moral case for war against Nazi Germany not even figuring in the minds of American policymakers despite the continual cries for help and assistance from the Allied powers. Historians and journalists that spuriously argue that America was an isolationist power during this period are merely drawing attention to their own intellectual dishonesty. Throughout the two World Wars and the inter-war period America conducted extensive military operations in the South Pacific and made it quite clear to the existing European powers at the time that the South Pacific was its domain whilst trying to get a foothold into the Middle East.

There are so many areas in the world today where morality and ethics should play a greater role in policymaking. Israel’s continual human rights violations in the Occupied Territories are a prime example. At a time when our leaders should be pushing Israel to stop its settlement expansion policy we allow it to commit acts of genocide in Gaza as seen in January 2009. Burma’s internment of Aung San Sui Kyi continues to only draw hollow words from Western powers, despite being elected Prime Minister in 1990 she has been under house arrest for almost fourteen of the past twenty years.

These are merely two examples of many one could easily give, however, as intervening in these areas do not fit in with our long-term security and economic ambitions moral, ethical and principled arguments will continue to not feature in our foreign policy. With my pessimism proving to be justified.

The Environment and its threat to Human Security

Traditional notions of what ‘security’ is and what it ought to be centres on the state, its borders, its institutions, its people and its values, whilst the state reserves the right to use military force in order to maintain its primacy over those components. So if, for instance, a threat is posed to any of these components by a state or non-state actor(s), whether justified or otherwise, then the application of military force will be utilized to re-assert its authority and dominance within its defined borders. With the states' propagandists then working overtime to mobilize support for the use of extreme violence.

Which is why the supposed fight against ‘terrorism’ appears to be highly justified in the psyche of the general public. After all ‘they’ want to kill ‘us’ so lets get them first! Right?

So what about other menaces that pose a threat to global, national and human security?

I would argue the single greatest threat to man today, aside from American imperialist ambitions, is that of climate change. Compounded with increasing population growth coinciding with the depletion of vital natural resources, conflict emanating from such realities threatens to further destabilize political orders throughout the world.

For instance, Israel, Jordan and the West Bank border the Dead Sea, in the Middle East, the sea is supplied by the River Jordan, but Israel and Jordan divert 90% of its flow. However, the sea could disappear in the next 50 years if water diversion is not reduced and as many of these states are dependent upon the access to clean water for economic and population growth, the scarcity of this resource has the potential of exacerbating historical conflict. Ariel Sharon, in his 2001 autobiography, goes as far as to reveal that the 1967 Six-Day War with its Arab neighbours actually began more than two years before when it decided to act against the diversion of the River Jordan as the matter of water diversion was “a stark issue of life and death”.[1]

The Middle East is another perfect example of how the access to vital natural energy resources can lead to an invasion of a sovereign state against the norms and values of international law and its protocols.

The earthquake induced Tsunami that struck the countries around the Indian Ocean without warning on the 26^th December 2004 killed 300,000 people, Although I don’t want to appear to be insensitive, the fact remains that the impact of the Tsunami was a thousand times more devastating than the atrocities committed on September 11^th 2001.

Moreover, what is frightening here is that the colossal amount of human casualties that this natural disaster claimed in a relative short amount of time is not unprecedented. The Tangshan earthquake in China had killed hundreds of thousands in 1976, and cyclones killed more than 300,000 people in Bangladesh in 1970 and 138,000 in 1991[2]. This highlights that a single environmental catastrophe can be just as devastating as any prolonged case of armed conflict, not just to human life but it can also damage the structures and apparatus of political governance of which a state depends upon.

The human ‘cost’ of the Tsunami on Sri Lanka was 37,000 deaths, however, ‘only’ 4,000 people have been killed over the preceding twelve months in the armed struggle between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan government[3]. Emphasizing the devastating impact that non-military threats can have.

This is why it should be a matter of urgency to upgrade the environment from a peripheral issue in domestic and foreign policy planning to an issue that should be at the very core of policy-making. As this will induce multilateral action among states on an issue that has no regard for territorial boundaries, religious or ethnic difference.

One of the worst arguments I have ever heard against the case of climate change was argued by a colleague when I used to work for Apple. My colleague genuinely believed that climate change was merely a “theory” and cannot be proved. However, I counter argued that as climate change appears to be a gradual process over a period of decades as oppose to the immediate and visual impact that the Tsunami or an earthquake, as the recent one in Haiti can have, many tend to be dismissive of its importance as an issue, but nonetheless, the importance of climate change cannot be understated.

We are pumping tens of millions of cubic tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and this will continue to grow due to the unrestricted burning of fossil fuels and unless the worst polluting nations in the world curtail their actions then generations to come will have to deal with the receding rivers in densely populated areas and rising water levels due to the melting ice glaciers. Sir David King, Tony Blair’s once chief scientific advisor commented that; “Greenland’s [ice glaciers] melting will cause us to re-draw the map of the world”.

Indeed, climate change is having the same impact on human suffering as a conventional war would traditionally have had. Tens of thousands of lives are being lost every year due to erratic weather patterns and mass displacement is disrupting the lives of millions across the globe. This has been witnessed in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the summer of 2006, which had also caused billions of dollars worth of damage. It is also worth noting that due to the sheer size and capacity of the United States military, only the environment is capable of committing damage of this magnitude on American soil. So surely it would be essential for the United States to accept that the environment poses a legitimate security threat to its national interests?

However, due to the American economy being tied to its automobile and aviation industry ‘fears’ of China taking control of American dominated markets action on climate change may not become a reality due to heavy lobbying by groups with enormous financial muscle.

But what if the environment, climate change and resource scarcity was seen to be a genuine security threat by the international community?

I would argue that multilateral action throughout the world would become a reality, as many states would work together to tackle a common problem.

This was seen in the wake of the Tsunami crisis, when many states pledged financial and/or emergency assistance. Financial pledges rose to more than $2.7 billion dollars in what became the most impressive international response ever to a natural disaster, only to be eclipsed by the response to the devastation unfolding in Haiti.

Multilateral action could become the norm if the security field were to undertake an overhaul. Instead of focusing on issues that may have had greater resonance in a bygone era, the theorists within the security field should accept that in the modern world non-military threats, such as climate change and resource scarcity, may pose a greater danger to population centres around the globe.

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[1] Sharon, Ariel. Warrior. (New York, Simon & Schuster: 2001) pp: 182.

[2] Huxley, Tim. ‘The Tsunami and Security: Asia’s 9/11?’ Survival. Vol. 47. No. 1 (2005) pp: 123.

[3] Ramesh, Randeep. ‘Between Troops and Tigers: Refugees caught in Sri Lanka’s bloody crossfire’ http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2046084,00.html