What are the effects of globalized communication, migration and trade on security demand?

In some respects, the needs of international security and global trade are clearly in tension. Modern shipping containers, while being highly efficient and indispensible to modern world commerce, can be used to smuggle drugs, contraband, illegal immigrants, nuclear bomb components, and well equipped terrorists, efficiently and securely (The Economist, 2002). At the moment only 2% of shipping containers get screened; in large part because screening all containers, with presently employed methods, would take a heavy toll on the supply chains of most industries, which require rapid and continuous flow of goods (The Economist, 2002).

On the other hand, when it comes to individual nations posing a threat to international security, global trade may have the exact opposite effect:

A nation’s security increases (decreases) as its interdependence with the rest of the world increases (decreases). Proponents of this view hypothesize that with greater interdependence, the opportunity costs (to all concerned nations) of a disruption in trade are greater. Higher opportunity costs in turn make it less likely that any single nation will undertake action – be it economic, diplomatic, or military – that disrupts trade and threatens the minimally acceptable level of economic welfare (Herander, 1993)

The Internet is one of the hallmarks of new means of global communication. And while having many positive effects on commerce, politics, education, and a host of other areas of human endeavour, it also has some negative effects on security, from the individual to the global level. “The presence of subversive groups and organizations on the internet has grown, and continues to grow at an alarming pace.” Such groups use the internet to plan and coordinate violent attacks in the real world, and/or engage in cyber attacks on targeted websites, computers, or electronic command systems (Nordeste & Carment, 2006). Profit-seeking criminals are also turning to the internet and other means of global communication, more and more.

Fraudsters can conduct schemes remotely using telemarketing techniques and Internet promotions in conjunction with virtual marketplaces, electronic trading systems and wire remittances. Technology enables perpetrators to undertake criminal activities anonymously, transfer funds quickly, and target victims over a broad geographic area. Many securities fraud schemes are national or transnational in scope, potentially targeting thousands of investors from multiple countries (CISC, 2010).

Increases in global migration have, not surprisingly, led to increases in many security threats. Aside from fueling such prominent illegal activities as terrorism and organized crime, increased global migration also led to increases in global health threats. Aside from contributing to the spread of local epidemics across the world, it also led to the emergence of new ones as “Travelers to and from previously isolated regions may distribute previously contained microorganisms into the global population, many of whom will be immunologically naïve to the emerging infectious agent” (Price-Smith, 2002, p. 41).

References

CISC (2010), “2010 Report on Organized Crime” http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2010/grc-rcmp/PS61-1-2010-eng.pdf

Herander, M. (1993), “International trade relations, trade policy, and national security: The role of economic analysis”, in Leitzel (1993), Economics and National Security.

Nordeste, B. & D. Carment (2006), “A framework for understanding terrorist use of the internet”, Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies 2006-2, The Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton Univ., http://www4.carleton.ca/cifp/app/serve.php/1121.pdf.

Price-Smith, A. T. (2002). The Health of Nations. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

The Economist (2002), “When trade and security clash”, April 6.

What are the channels of policy intervention for the prevention of terrorism by groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban?

• Factors that raise the probability of apprehension of an attacker, “such as topography, strong government, and easily-profiled rebels, limit the targets that an insurgency can aspire to attack without operatives defecting. Conventional insurgency is then limited to low damage activities” (Berman & Laitin, 2008).
• Increasing economic opportunities in the area where insurgents operate will increase the chances of insurgents defecting, especially from suicide missions, because insurgents with strong outside options are far more likely to defect (Berman & Laitin, 2008).
• Since subsidies to terrorist organizations are known to increase the frequency of terrorist acts by such organizations, blocking the transfer of funds to such organizations will reduce their terrorist activities (Berman & Laitin, 2008).
• Since terrorist organizations attract new members and maintain the loyalty of old ones through provision of essential public services to them in areas where the government does not; improving the local provision of identical government or NGO provided public services (so as to create direct competition), to both members and non-members of terrorist organizations, will undermine the support base of terrorist organizations which recruit members from the same territory (Berman & Laitin, 2008). This will of course likely lead to attacks by those terrorist organizations on the government agencies and NGOs that are providing identical public services. So both should be actively protected. A more radical policy along the same lines, with an even greater anti-terrorist effect, would consist of making it illegal for any local ‘clubs’ to provide public goods (Berman & Laitin, 2008).

References

Berman, E. & D.D. Laitin (2008), “Religion, Terrorism and Public Goods: Testing the Club Model”, J. Public Economics 92, 1942-1967 http://research.create.usc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=nonpublished_reports.

Did Securing an Open Society present adequate responses to existing and emerging threats before and after its publication (i.e. does it still remain a valid framework)?

Securing an Open Society was nothing more than an attempt to outline a National Security Strategy (NSS). And its publication must have been a difficult government decision because articulating an NSS “can be interpreted [by the public] as excessive defence spending at the expense of more popular domestic programs” (Devlin, 2005). However, the benefits of a formal NSS likely outweigh its disadvantages, especially those perceived by the Canadian public. A formal NSS is important for minimizing existing and emerging security threats, as well as giving further credence to Canada’s claim of being a middle power. It “promotes understanding and unity of effort throughout government departments, with a clear articulation of both the direction that the nation is moving, and how the nation intends to move there” (Devlin, 2005).   

Despite doing a good “job of providing the necessary background to underpin a NSS,” Securing an Open Society does a fairly poor job of completing a strategic assessment, and instead presents various unevenly detailed and mostly vague proposals (Devlin, 2005). 

References

Devlin, P. J. (2005). Securing an Open Society - Required and Valid? Strategy Research Project. Available at: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA434647&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf. 

Which current threats to Canada's national security have been inherited from the Cold War era?

Street security:

                Street security threats most likely refer to the various crimes that take place on the streets (e.g. threats, assaults, mugging, car theft, etc.), as well as various other street dangers such as traffic accidents, accidents stemming from poor street maintenance (e.g. icy roads), and so on. Such security threats have always existed, changing little in their nature, over time.

Food and health security:

Many infectious diseases have existed for millennia and caused countless deaths and suffering to citizens of innumerable societies. In the 20th century, however, the prevalence of many such diseases has been greatly reduced, with a few being completely eradicated in the developed world (Price-Smith, 2002). However, in the mid 1970s dozens of new pathogens began to emerge, rapidly spreading all over the world in the following decades. Adding to the threat was (and continues to be) the development of drug resistance in the long existing pathogens that have formerly been successfully kept at bay through the use of drugs (Price-Smith, 2002).

Canadian Government endorses the definition of food security which emphasizes three dimensions: access, availability, and utilization (Power, 2008). The access dimension refers to “the economic ability of individuals and households to purchase food in the market (or retail) food system.” The availability dimension is restricted to the supply and production of food. While utilization “is concerned with Canadians’ ability to make healthy food selections in their local environments, such as schools and workplaces” (Power, 2008). And according to McIntyre (2003), though food insecurity in Canada has a long history, it officially was ‘discovered’ and became a subject of study in the 1980s, “when food banks began to emerge and children’s feeding programs in schools became more common.” The problem remains unsolved to this day, despite various efforts to do so. For example, “a total of 1,800 new food banks opened between 1997 and 2002.” However, these and similar initiatives “have failed to eliminate or even significantly reduce hunger and food insecurity” (McIntyre, 2003).

Organized crime:

                Organized crime refers to the activities of a group of people, which was formed primarily in order to commit criminal offences that tend to bring material benefits to the members of this group. In present-day Canada, organized crime groups range from highly sophisticated groups involved in securities frauds to street gangs involved in illegal drug trafficking (CISC, 2010).

                A large variety of criminal organizations started to grow and spread in Canada starting in the 1970s, gathering speed in the 1980s and 1990s (Schneider, 2009, p. 343). Starting in the 1980s Canadian organized crime groups became transnational for the first time. Feeding these developments was the fact that Canada has long established itself as a prime center for the production, distribution or sale of illegal and contraband goods, a practice which, not surprisingly, only grew, developed and diversified from the 1970s onwards (Schneider, 2009, p. 344).

Border security:

While there appears to be no consensus on what border security actually is (McCombs, 2011); a simple definition may be something like the following. A border is 100% secure when no ‘unwanted’ people, machines (e.g. aircraft), or goods, as specified by the state, manage to cross it. Since someone or something always manages to cross any border, border security has always been an issue; especially for Canada, with its vast borders and comparatively small national security agencies.

Infrastructure security:

“Infrastructure security is the security provided to protect infrastructure, especially critical infrastructure, such as airports, highways, rail transport, hospitals, bridges, transport hubs, network communications, media, the electricity grid, dams, power plants, seaports, oil refineries, and water systems. Infrastructure security seeks to limit vulnerability of these structures and systems to sabotage, terrorism, and contamination.”[1] Canadian infrastructure has always been in need of protection, whether from perceived attacks by Soviet sympathizers or direct attacks by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, or from international terrorists, more recently.

Terrorism:

The type of terrorism that currently presents a threat to Canadian security is the post-9/11 type, which is different and has no roots in the terrorism that plagued Canada in earlier decades and started to break down in the 1980s (Leman-Langlois & Brodeur, 2005). Hence, the terrorism that presents a current threat to Canada was not inherited from the Cold War era.

References

CISC. (2010). 2010 Report on Organized Crime. Retrieved from http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2010/grc-rcmp/PS61-1-2010-eng.pdf.

Leman-Langlois, S. and Brodeur, J. (2005). Terrorism Old and New: Counterterrorism in Canada. Police Practice and Research, 6 (2), 121–140. Retrieved from http://www.crime-reg.com/textes/terrorismoldandnew.pdf.

McCombs, B. (2011). Border is a clear line; 'control' is a gray area. Arizona Daily Star. Retrieved from http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/article_bfe40b78-ef21-538c-93a3-9017c4163dab.html?mode=story.

McIntyre, L. (2003). Food security: More than a determinant of health. Policy Options. Retrieved from http://www.chumirethicsfoundation.ca/files/pdf/FoodSecurity-MorethanDeterminantofHealth.pdf.  

Power, E. M. (2008). Commentary: Conceptualizing Food Security for Aboriginal People in Canada. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 99(2), 95-97. Retrieved from http://qspace.library.queensu.ca/jspui/bitstream/1974/1224/1/CJPH%20Aboriginal%20food%20security.pdf.

Price-Smith, A. T. (2002). The Health of Nations. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Schneider, S. (2009). Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada. Mississauga: John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure_security

Can anything, other than the reserves, provide the military with surge-ability?

A simple, better alternative to reserves, whether when it comes to surge-ability or otherwise, is battlefield contractors. Though no democratic state has yet allowed defense contractors to take on all functions of reserves, the potential is clearly there. Contractors for the US military, for example, are already active on the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they perform a number of essential military functions. The services they provide include reconstruction, logistics and base support, interpreting, advising, and facilities and personal security (Cancian, 2008).

“Contractors provide a number of advantages over military personnel or civil servants—speed of deployment, continuity, reduction of troop requirements, reduction of military casualties, economic inputs to local economies, and, in some cases, executing tasks the military and civilian workforce simply cannot” (Hammes, 2011).

When it comes to achieving cost-effectiveness and surge-ability with battlefield contractors, the way the US government employs them, proves to be highly instructive. The defense contractor, who has been hired for a certain number of years, keeps a list of qualified personnel, willing to be deployed on short notice (Cancian, 2008). Unlike the training and personnel costs associated with reserve units, the services of the contractor, during peacetime, effectively cost nothing to the government. But when the conflict occurs and the military needs quick support, the contractor delivers the required personnel to the required location (Cancian, 2008).

Unlike the military, which often has the policy of rotating its personnel every 6 to 12 months, contractors are often willing to stay in the same battlefield for much longer periods (Hammes, 2011). Defence contracting companies are willing to offer increased pay to those who will stay longer, and many contractors are willing to take that opportunity. Prolonged stay often leads to a better understanding of the situation and better decision making capability (Hammes, 2011).

Defense contractors are also more efficient than the military, since they maintain a much lower support-to-operator ratio; in effect, replacing a certain number of troops with a smaller number of employees (Hammes, 2011). Also, when it comes to battlefield contractor deployment and casualties, there is no real impact on the political aspects of the war. While the reported death toll of the military personnel frequently reduces public support for the war, contractor casualties are not counted in the official death tolls. In present-day democracies “the decision to hire contractors can be taken out of view of the public while decisions to increase troop strength are usually subject to intense debate” (Hammes, 2011).

Defense contracting provides economic inputs into local economies by creating jobs and hiring locals to fill them. And this happens to be an effective method for population-centric counter-insurgency. Moreover, local power structures can be co-opted into supporting the new government through carefully targeted contracts (Hammes, 2011). And finally, locally hired contractors can execute tasks that neither the military nor the civilian workforce can. For example, supply lines to the occupying forces frequently run through highly volatile, highly contested, uncontrolled areas. Consequently, even stationing one’s military to protect them would not be very effective as they would be subjected to constant assaults from all sides. On the other hand, locally hired contractors have shown their ability to maintain such supply lines without any problems, through their combination of force, personal connections, and negotiation skills (Hammes, 2011).

Battlefield contractors, however, do pose some problems which the regular military does not. Quality control is a major issue. While unarmed contractors, employed by the US government to help with the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan, have often been found guilty of substandard construction, fraud, and theft; armed contractors have been known to be under-equipped and untrained (Hammes, 2011). However, it seems that these problems are temporary. Defence contracting companies that don’t deliver the products and services of the desired quality, will not see their contracts renewed and will soon be out of business; while the government will start hiring only those contractors with a proven record of high quality performance. Moreover, such problems may also be solved, in the short-term, through the drafting of more stringent contracts and/or an enactment of more stringent procurement laws, such that the profits of contracting companies will take a strong hit should they fail to deliver the goods and services at the expected level of quality.

Also there is some risk that armed defense contractors will terrorize and kill civilians of the occupied country, especially if that makes accomplishing their missions easier, and thus cause many political problems to the country that employs them. A few such isolated cases, involving personal security contractors for the US State Department, have occurred (Cancian, 2008). This was however largely due to the fact that they were allowed to operate independently, instead of being under the control of the local US military; as well as because they were neither monitored nor given instructions of what they can and cannot do during their missions, regardless of their objectives or problems they may encounter (Cancian, 2008). Consequently, US government has demonstrated that it is possible to avoid these problems by putting battlefield contractors under the control of the military, having government security officials accompany every convoy, installing video cameras in the vehicles of battlefield contractors, and issuing strict guidelines to contractors regarding what, for the purposes of their job, will constitute allowable and unallowable use of force (Cancian, 2008).

References

Cancian, M. (2008). Contractors: The new element of military force structure. Parameters 38, 61-77. Retrieved from http://www.carlisle.army.mil/uSaWc/Parameters/Articles/08autumn/cancian.pdf.

Hammes, T. X. (2011). Private Contractors in Conflict Zones: The Good, the Bad, and the Strategic Impact. Joint Force Quarterly, 60(1), 26-37. Retrieved from http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA536906.

How can military service retention policies internalize the informational asymmetry over individuals’ preferences over pay and non-pay remuneration?

For an all volunteer force, one of the key determinants of retention is military pay. Military pay is determined by a number of factors, including various market forces, relative scarcities of required personnel, earnings in similar civilian occupations, and special features of the military job. The military salary frequently consists of pay, allowances, and benefits-in-kind (Sandler & Hartley, 1995). The last one frequently includes housing, medical support, training, recreational activities, etc. Thus, the military employer should strive to make the net market value of military benefits equal to the net benefits of a similar civilian job (Sandler & Hartley, 1995). Since different recruits to the military will prefer different wages-benefits combinations, the military employer should attempt to select the cheapest compensation package satisfactory to each individual recruit. This may be very difficult, however, whenever it is costly or impossible to discriminate between individual preferences (Sandler & Hartley, 1995).

One economic model of military compensation suggests several complementary approaches for mitigating such difficulties. One, is to separate military occupations that have close civilian equivalents from those that don’t (Sandler & Hartley, 1995). Another, is to convert nonmonetary military compensation into monetary form, to make the comparisons easier. And the final approach, is to make sure that the military employees are paid according to their contribution, at levels comparable to their civilian counterparts (Sandler & Hartley, 1995).

References

Sandler, T., & Hartley, K. (1995). The Economics of Defense. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Can a recession negatively affect military recruitment?

A major economic recession in the early 1970s, which was caused by the first oil crisis, resulted in mass unemployment among young people. While this was the case, the armed forces found it relatively easy to meet their recruiting goals. Not surprisingly, during that time, the idea of a lifetime military career was seen as being very attractive (Lescreve, 2000). On the other hand, the end of the 1990s saw a rapid growth in the economies of most Western countries. At the same time the armed forces of those countries were experiencing increasing difficulties in recruiting required numbers for their ranks (Lescreve, 2000). Hence, in most cases, a recession doesn’t seem to be able to have a negative effect on military recruitment.

References

Lescreve, F. (2000). Recruiting for the military when the economy is booming. In: Changing Mission for the 21^st century. 36th International Applied Military Psychology Symposium. Croatia, Split. Retrieved from http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA412525#page=146.