The Threat Environment: Regional Violence
The new security environment is characterized by often senseless violence and human suffering that defy traditional political and military solutions. Anarchy and flagrant violations of human rights outside the US may not threaten traditional security interests, but most Americans will not tolerate them, and the media will not let us ignore them.
One common characteristic of primalism is intolerance and its corollaries - prejudice, bigotry and hate - which produce the most intractable violence. The volatile mix of religion and politics underlies conflict around the globe. From Northern Ireland to northern Africa, India, throughout Eurasia, Eastern Europe, and back to the crucible of religious conflict in the Middle East, increasingly militant religious fundamentalism - whether Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu or Confucian - threatens liberty and life.
This is especially true in the case of Islamic fundamentalism. In its milder form it shares the fundamentalist belief that God has ordained a fixed set of rules and condemns divergent opinions and behavior. Virtually all militant Islamics oppose democracy and human rights.2 The more radical elements represent an even greater threat if they ever have nuclear weapons. The damage caused by the bombing of the New York World Trade Towers was light compared to what could have been done by a tactical nuclear device.
The violent fragmentation of the former Yugoslavia has been along the medieval cultural and religious fault line separating Western and Eastern Orthodox Christianity (the Croats and Serbs) and Islam. It has been described as a clash of civilizations, and a paradigm for future conflict.3 In nearby Germany the resurgence of neo-Nazism in response to a flood of refugees from the Balkans is an ominous indicator of renewed ethnic violence.
Russia remains the real wild card in the evolving security environment.
The rise of a nationalist movement in a humiliated Russia is the most immediate threat to world peace.4 A return to brutal autocracy would destabilize Eurasia and Eastern Europe. But at minimum, the hostility of former Soviet republics will continue toward 'Mother' Russia and those ethnic Russians living within their borders, and vice-versa. Conflict and human suffering are all but inevitable in that part of the world.In the Pacific Rim, Japan can be expected to assume a more aggressive foreign policy role. In addition to developing new markets, Japan is likely to strengthen its defense force to provide a military capability to protect expanding security and economic interests in the region. As with Germany in Western Europe and Russia in Eurasia, the US will be obliged to respect, if not encourage, an increasing security role for Japan in the Pacific.
Africa has been unable to break a tragic cycle of civil war and natural disaster since freedom from colonial rule. Uncontrolled tribal rivalries have produced anarchy,5 most recently at a terrible cost of lives in Rwanda. Throughout Asia, primalism has been exacerbated by the dissolution of the Soviet Union, once a stabilizing force in the region. And US humanitarian assistance to the Kurds in Operation Provide Comfort has strengthened their desire for a homeland, undermining political stability in Turkey as well as Iraq.
Closer to home, experiments with democracy are more promising, but problems remain. Mexico is experiencing civil violence. Panama, Nicaragua and El Salvador have made some progress toward democracy, human rights and the rule of law; but the political prognosis remains uncertain. Further South, in Venezuela, Colombia and Peru, drug wars sponsored by the US have had little success in stemming the flow of drugs into the US and have not contributed to political legitimacy in the host countries. In the Caribbean, Cuba's communist government is foundering without Soviet support, and in Haiti it is too soon to determine whether President Aristide can make democracy a practical reality.
The contemporary strategic environment presents a disturbing scenario: primal violence in the Third World, a resurgent Germany, a more aggressive Japan, a frustrated Russian Bear nursing visions of lost empire, and political oppression in the Caribbean. But external violence is only part of the threat environment. There are troubling trends within the US that could mature to threaten democracy, human rights and the rule of law.