Global Security and Stability

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.