SECURITY

As demonstrated by international events over the past two decades, global governance and post-9/11 security challenges are testing the capacities of societies and states to ensure public safety and welfare. Even as the Global War on Terror is prosecuted military style, and the U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan go badly, the recruitment strategies and practices of disruptive forces are largely ignored. Human security--health, welfare, food, housing, well-being-- is also a pressing 21st century problem that must be better understood and addressed if global and societal security are to be ensured.

Projects in this area of focus include:

  • Oil, Africa, and the Global War on Terror
    Africa has become a new strategic interest for the United States, which is eyeing oil from the region centered on the Gulf of Guinea as a supplement or even replacement for the Persian Gulf. At the same time, the Pentagon is concerned that the “empty spaces” of the Sahara Desert and Sahel to its south are the locus of terrorist organizing and mobilization. In an effort to balance economic and strategic interests, and dressing these up in humanitarian terms, the U.S. military recently created a new “African Command” (AFRICOM) that, even now, is seeking a home in northern Africa (so far, with little success). During Winter Quarter 2008, CGIRS organized a series of symposia on the topic. These can be found on-line, along with other information and resources. [more]

  • Energy Security, AFRICOM and Democracy in the Gulf of Guinea involves assessment of the intersection of U.S. dependence on imported oil, instability and violence in oil-producing countries of West Africa, and American military strategy in the Sahara and Sahel regions. American corporations and its military have turned to the West African region centered on the Gulf of Guinea as a new source of supplies for the oil-hungry U.S. market. In response to domestic violence in some of the countries of the “Oil Triangle,” the Pentagon has begun to incorporate U.S. energy security policy into the Global War on Terror and the mission of the newly- established “African Command” (AFRICOM). In doing so, they ignore the devastation and disruption caused by the “resource curse” in oil producing countries such as Nigeria and the violence and environmental damage which results from the operations of the global oil complex in developing countries. This project also studies local development and accumulation strategies as approaches to societal stabilization and democratization. "Trouble in the Oil Triangle" summarizes the project's focus. In February 2007, a report on this topic written by CGIRS-affiliated faculty was issued by the Center for International Policy: “Convergent Interests: U.S. energy security and the 'securing' of Nigerian democracy," which has been republished in Spanish and elsewhere.

  • Alternatives to the Militarization of American Foreign Policy is a new project, in collaboration with the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC, to investigate the economic, political and strategic consequences of a militarized foreign policy, and to formulate alternative and more effective approaches to U.S. diplomacy and international relations in the 21st century. To a growing and increasingly problematic degree, U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy are being subsumed within the country’s military infrastructure. The standard understanding of foreign policymaking is that military power is one of a number of tools that can be considered and deployed in pursuit of a country’s international goals. At the same time, the limits to force are only too evident, in both the short- and long-terms. Now the world’s sole remaining superpower, American defense spending has not only continued to increase, it is equal to or greater than the combined military expenditures of the rest of the world combined. At the same time, however, growing numbers of countries and regimes are resisting U.S. pressures to conform to its global policies, rules, and demands.

    In this context, military power has begun to look like the only effective tool in the American policy arsenal and it is seen not only as necessary to back but, in many instances, to trump diplomacy. As a result, with visible consequences in Iraq, the Defense Department and Pentagon are taking the lead in foreign policymaking and implementation, with the State Department serving as a relatively impotent auxiliary. This shift has also resulted in major flows of funding to various Administration-friendly defense and construction corporations as well as an ever-more intensive “revolving door” of personnel between the military and Washington consulting firms.This project will generate a series of analyses and papers to be disseminated via the on-line California Digital Library and CIP’s Policy Brief series to scholars, policymakers, think tanks and foreign service officers.

  • Securing the Global Future is a new project with the goal of assessing global security and human welfare in light of the need for a transition to a sustainable society. This project will examine the interactions of three areas of human endeavor: politics, economy, and environment. A paper on the topic, "A Security Agenda for the 21st Century: Global Politics in the Naked City,' addresses some of the relevant issues.

Related publications:

"Convergent Interests: U.S. energy security and the 'securing' of Nigerian democracy," by Paul Lubeck, Michael Watts and Ronnie Lipschutz, February 2007
WP #2004-9 American Thinking About Violence in the Middle East, Alan Richards
On Security, Ronnie D. Lipschutz (ed.), Columbia University Press, 1995.