IR Lecture 21 James Tong Thursday April 16th 4 00pm 5 30pm University Club Banquet Reminder 7 things to facilitate cooperation North Koreans don t cooperate Prisoners Dilemma as a Arms race prisoners dilemma 4 ways military security is different 1 military security issues generate greater competitiveness among states 2 Offensive and defensive security motives often lead to the same behaviors Kim J Il Does he want to defend N Korean or have more aggressive plans in mind 3 stakes are higher in the security realm so that small mistakes can lead to huge consequences 4 Security is difficult to measure creating situations fraught with uncertainty For all of these reasons is difficult to achieve a security regime Robert Jervis says 1 The great powers must want to establish one more subtle than it may sound 2 Actors must believe that other actors share the value they place on mutual security and cooperation 3 state leaders must believe that security is NOT best provided by territorial expansion and violence 4 War must be seen as economically costly not economically beneficial and or morally wrong Security Issues realism is a good one Environmental Scarcity and Conflict between communal groups Thomas Omer Dixon Environment Scarcity and Violence 1 Do environmental scarcities cause violent conflict 2 If so how 1 greenhouse effect induced climate change 2 stratospheric ozone depletion 3 degradation and loss of good agricultural land 4 degradation and removal of forests 5 depletion and pollution of fresh water supplies 6 depletion of fisheries 1 Decreasing supplies of physically controllable resources might provoke interstate simple scarcity conflicts or resource wars 2 Large population movements cause by environmental stress might induce groupidentity conflicts especially ethnic clashes 3 Scarcity could simultaneously increase economic deprivation and disrupt social institutions causing deprivation conflicts reflected in civil strife and insurgency The homer dixon teams 4 preliminary conclusions 1 degradation and depletion of agricultural land forests water and fisheries will contribute MORE to social turmoil in coming decades than will climate change or ozone depletion 2 analysts shouldn t just focus on environmental change itself They should also examin population growth and rescue distribution 3 The three causal paths can intertwine producing two common patterns of interaction resource capture and ecological marginalization 4 conflict isn t inevitable societies can avoid turmoil if they summon social and technical ingenuity Use resources more sensible Switch to exporting products that don t rely on environmentally scare inputs Both require social and technical ingenuity The Key Both technical and social ingenuity the SMART kind are already in short supply in many parts of the world yet demand for them will increase sharply in the coming decades as the world s population approaches 9 billion Its that simple 3 casual paths 1 Simple scarcity conflict between states there is little empirical support for the hypothesis that environmental scarcity causes simple scarcity conflicts between states 2 there is substantial evidence to support the hypothesis that environmental scarcity does cause large population movements which in turn cause group identity conflicts 3 the multiple effects of environmental scarcity appear very likely to weaken sharply the capacity and legitimacy of the State Non renewable Resources 1 non renewable resources are more directly fungible into state power especially military power 2 States suffering from renewable resources scarcities are often too poor to fight river water
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