The Center for Global Security and Stabilization
(CGSS) will cross-sectors – it is to be multidisciplinary,
joint, interagency, civil-military, and international
in content. CGSS’s cooperative programs will aim
to foster innovation, to nurture future leaders,
and to promote conflict prevention and mitigation.
A strategic-level collaborative educational initiative
among U.S. institutions, and with international
partners situated at key technological, humanitarian,
economic, military and diplomatic hubs is intended
to address issues of global transformation and
stabilization, with new multinational and cross-sector
approaches to developing economic models, risk
management, technical innovations and social networks
for peace building and global security. Peace
and Security through Engagement Much good has
come of American ingenuity and cultural inclusiveness,
but many challenges now confront this powerful
nation. In the past, when the nation or its friends
have been endangered by forces of tyranny, Americans
have shifted their ingenuity and hard work into
a war machinery to liberate the oppressed and
ensure freedom of ideas and commerce.
As a leading force in international institutions,
the United States promoted global cooperation
for peace and prosperity among nations. These
ideals have been underpinned by a view of cause
and effect in the way the world works, that through
hard work, creativity and respect, the individual
and nation find prosperity and harmony with neighbors.
Information and communications technologies accelerated
these processes, and made opportunities to engage
in economic and social development more widely
available. According to this view, the ideals
of democracy, like American technological innovations
and entertainments, could be expected to flourish
in the global marketplace, and peace and security
assured through global engagement. A series of
recent events signify the degree to which these
ideals are now put to the test. Emerging Security
Challenges As the last century closed, the moral
imperative to relieve human suffering prompted
the United Sates and other leaders of the international
community to organize collective responses to
crises in Somalia, Haiti, East Timor, the Balkans
and other war torn societies. Discussion about
American national security depicted a trade-off
between nourishing a force capable of responding
to humanitarian crises and strengthening a conventional
and nuclear force to fight rising peer national
competitors. Although humanitarian engagements
produced mixed success, subsequent events demonstrated
the increasing demand for the force structure,
technology, and approach to the civil dimension
of strategy and global cooperation that accompanied
them. It became more obvious that prevention as
well as response mechanisms were needed.
On September 11, 2001, the United States leadership,
indeed every American, more fully recognized that
the world had changed. The motivations of the
terrorists who attacked that day, like others
of our generation, were not like a previous generation
of terrorism aimed at overthrowing particular
governments; these attacks expressed a rejection
of an international system and with it, the United
States and American ideals. In 2003, the threat
of proliferation of pernicious nuclear weapons
technology prompted the United States to act pre-emptively
against the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
The primary cost and duration of the war was not
borne in combat by a rallied nation at arms but
mostly in the wake of major combat operations
by a cadre of military professionals and civilian
contractors supported by an ballooning national
debt.
In 2007, the Center for Naval Analysis released
a report signed by eleven retired three-star and
four-star general officers proclaiming that energy
dependence and climate nature are related global
challenges that threaten American national security.
This realization, that nature now also rebels
against the American way of life, is devastating.
The burning of fossil fuels and production of
greenhouse gasses in production and transportation
of goods and people that are so intimately connected
to American and global exchange is no longer ecologically
sustainable. Energy security, extreme weather
events, and global health crises will hit developing
nations with disproportionate intensity, adding
to tensions in already unstable parts of the globe.
These factors have already put American military
forces onto the front line of disaster relief,
stability, security, transition and reconstruction
missions, as national leaders sought remedies
to sub-national and trans-national crises and
citizens have grown increasingly uneasy about
the future. These challenges are linked in the
broader context of globalization - generally defined
as interconnectedness that transcends borders,
including economic and social relations.
Globalization as a major phenomenon of the 21st
Century is having a dramatic impact on local and
worldwide stability and security. Globalization
has seemingly contradictory effects – integration
and disintegration – producing closer ties and
violent schisms. It is not evident that greater
interactions among global corporations lead to
reductions in poverty, decreases in terrorist
activities and increased security for individuals,
organizations and nation states. The world faces
increasing risk of instability due to climate
shifts and other dislocations that follow from
technological, cultural and economic effects of
globalization. These effects include increased
relevance of non-state actors in international
politics, greater disparities in wealth, crises
of identity, and the fragmentation of violence.
Negative effects of globalization, particularly
in the developing world, include dislocations
and even support for terrorist activities.
These effects challenge American ideals to persevere
in a context in which the pace of change requires
rapid learning and production of new capabilities.
The political, economic, sociological, military
and environmental effects of globalization require
innovative and integrated approaches to promoting
human security. Failures of Conventional Thought
Conventional thinking is predisposed toward closure,
sealing of borders, and compartmentalizing responses.
Bureaucratic incentives prompt the construction
of stove-pipes and rice bowls around particular
symptoms of the challenge without addressing the
system as a whole. Conventional approaches have
to date produced a number of critical gaps in
responding to emerging security challenges:
An institutional learning gap. We are bleeding
lessons in the absence of institutionalization
of knowledge. Knowledge development is particularly
challenging in peace building efforts due to
the nature of the institutions themselves, which
are diverse organizations, where personnel rotate
in any given operation, across sectors (e.g.
public private or multinational), and from one
operation to another.
A paradigm gap. Security and development go
hand in hand, yet our integration of these in
scholarly research and in the field is a critical
gap. Civilian and military personnel, public
and private actors, are predisposed to define
and attack different types of problem sets with
different kinds of methodologies.
A gap in vision. Civilian and military participants
in peace and relief operations are not able
to visualize the environment in a way that is
useful to work together, much less to develop
integrated strategies to effectively address
challenges posed by political violence in response
to globalization.
An education delivery gap. Many of the NGO
civilians and international military participants
who urgently need advanced education and training
are separated from existing options by time,
distance and/or money.
GCSS Events
Jan 14 - 17, 2008
Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey
Measuring
Progress in Conflict Environments (MPICE)