JOINT OPERATING ENVIRONMENT THREATS

I find that the military has some of the best minds thinking about future issues confronting America. The JOE Report issued by the US Military in February 2010 is a fascinating assessment of the world we live in. Here is a link to the report.

http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf

Below, I’ve selected the key points from the report about potential threats to our country. I believe one or more of these threats will be major factors in the unfolding of the current Fourth Turning.

OIL

• A severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity. While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions, push fragile and failing states further down the path toward collapse, and perhaps have serious economic impact on both China and India. At best, it would lead to periods of harsh economic adjustment. To what extent conservation measures, investments in alternative energy production, and efforts to expand petroleum production from tar sands and shale would mitigate such a period of adjustment is difficult to predict. One should not forget that the Great Depression spawned a number of totalitarian regimes that sought economic prosperity for their nations by ruthless conquest.
• To generate the energy required worldwide by the 2030s would require us to find an additional 1.4 MBD every year until then.
• During the next twenty-five years, coal, oil, and natural gas will remain indispensable to meet energy requirements. The discovery rate for new petroleum and gas fields over the past two decades (with the possible exception of Brazil) provides little reason for optimism that future efforts will find major new fields.
• At present, investment in oil production is only beginning to pick up, with the result that production could reach a prolonged plateau. By 2030, the world will require production of 118 MBD, but energy producers may only be producing 100 MBD unless there are major changes in current investment and drilling capacity.
• By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 MBD.
• Energy production and distribution infrastructure must see significant new investment if energy demand is to be satisfied at a cost compatible with economic growth and prosperity. Efficient hybrid, electric, and flex-fuel vehicles will likely dominate light-duty vehicle sales by 2035 and much of the growth in gasoline demand may be met through increases in biofuels production. Renewed interest in nuclear power and green energy sources such as solar power, wind, or geothermal may blunt rising prices for fossil fuels should business interest become actual investment. However, capital costs in some power-generation and distribution sectors are also rising, reflecting global demand for alternative energy sources and hindering their ability to compete effectively with relatively cheap fossil fuels. Fossil fuels will very likely remain the predominant energy source going forward.

FOOD

• The main pressures on sufficient food supplies will remain in countries with persistently high population growth and a lack of arable land, in most cases exacerbated by desertification and shortages in rainfall.
• Blights threatening basic food crops such as potatoes and corn would have destabilizing effects on nations close to the subsistence level. Food crises have led in the past to famine, internal and external conflicts, the collapse of governing authority, migrations, and social disorder. In such cases, many people in the crisis zone may be well-armed and dangerous, making the task of the Joint Force in providing relief that much more difficult. In a society confronted with starvation, food becomes a weapon every bit as important as ammunition.
• Over-fishing and depletion of fisheries and competition over those that remain have the potential for causing serious confrontations in the future.

 WATER

• As we approach the 2030s, the world’s clean water supply will be increasingly at risk. Growing populations and increasing pollution, especially in developing nations, are likely to make water shortages more acute. Most estimates indicate nearly 3 billion (40%) of the world’s population will experience water stress or scarcity. Absent new technology, water scarcity and contamination have human and economic costs that are likely to prevent developing nations from making significant progress in economic growth and poverty reduction.
• The unreliability of an assured supply of rainwater has forced farmers to turn more to groundwater in many areas. As a result, aquifer levels are declining at rates between one and three meters per year. The impact of such declines on agricultural production could be profound, especially since aquifers, once drained, may not refill for centuries.
• One should not minimize the prospect of wars over water. In 1967, Jordanian and Syrian efforts to dam the Jordan river were a contributing cause of the Six-Day War between Israel and its neighbors. Today Turkish dams on the upper Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, the source of water for the Mesopotamian basin pose similar problems for Syria and Iraq.
• Whether the United States would find itself drawn into such conflicts is uncertain, but what is certain is that future Joint Force commanders will find conflict over water endemic to their world, whether as the spark or the underlying cause of conflicts among various racial, tribal, or political groups. Were they called on to intervene in a catastrophic water crisis, they might well confront chaos, with collapsing or impotent social networks and governmental services. Anarchy could prevail, with armed groups controlling or warring over remaining water, while the specter of disease resulting from unsanitary conditions would hover in the background. 
• Beyond the problems of water scarcity will be those associated with water pollution, whether from uncontrolled industrialization, as in China, or from the human sewage expelled by the mega-cities and slums of the world. The dumping of vast amounts of waste into the world’s rivers and oceans threatens the health and welfare of large portions of the human race, to say nothing of the affected ecosystems.

 CLIMATE CHANGE

• Should global sea levels continue to rise at current rates, these areas will see more extensive flooding and increased saltwater intrusion into coastal aquifers upon which coastal populations rely, compounding the impact of increasing shortages of fresh water. Additionally, local population pressures will increase as people move away from inundated areas and settle farther up-country.
• Furthermore, if such a catastrophe occurs within the United States itself – particularly when the nation’s economy is in a fragile state or where U.S. military bases or key civilian infrastructure are broadly affected – the damage to U.S. security could be considerable. Areas of the U.S. where the potential is great to suffer large-scale effects from these natural disasters are the hurricane prone areas of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, and the earthquake zones on the west coast and along the New Madrid fault.

PANDEMICS

• One of the fears haunting policy makers is the appearance of a pathogen, either manmade or natural, able to devastate mankind, as the “Black Death” did in the Middle East and Europe in the middle of the Fourteenth Century. Within barely a year, approximately a third of Europe’s population died. The secondand third-order effects of the pandemic on society, religion, and economics were devastating. In effect, the Black Death destroyed the sureties undergirding Medieval European civilization.
• A repetition of the 1918 influenza pandemic, which led to the deaths of millions world-wide, would have the most serious consequences for the United States and the world politically as well as socially. The dangers posed by the natural emergence of a disease capable of launching a global pandemic are serious enough, but the possibility exists also that a terrorist organization might acquire a dangerous pathogen.
• Thucydides captured the moral, political, and psychological dangers that a global pandemic would cause in his description of the plague’s impact on Athens: “For the catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion or of law.”

CYBER

• The open and free flow of information favored by the West will allow adversaries an unprecedented ability to gather intelligence. Other nations without the legal and cultural restraints found in the U.S. may excel at capturing, assessing, or even manipulating this information for military purposes as an aid to waging the “Battle of Narratives.”
• With very little investment, and cloaked in a veil of anonymity, our adversaries will inevitably attempt to harm our national interests. Cyberspace will become a main front in both irregular and traditional conflicts. Enemies in cyberspace will include both states and non-states and will range from the unsophisticated amateur to highly trained professional hackers. Through cyberspace, enemies will target industry, academia, government, as well as the military in the air, land, maritime, and space domains. In much the same way that airpower transformed the battlefield of World War II, cyberspace has fractured the physical barriers that shield a nation from attacks on its commerce and communication. Indeed, adversaries have already taken advantage of computer networks and the power of information technology not only to plan and execute savage acts of terrorism, but also to influence directly the perceptions and will of the U.S. Government and the American population.

SPACE

• China’s 2007 successful test of a direct-ascent anti-satellite weapon sent shock waves throughout the international community and created tens of thousands of pieces of space debris. Then in 2009, a commercial telecommunications satellite was destroyed in a collision with a defunct Russian satellite, raising further concerns about the vulnerability of low-earth orbit systems.