Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Dempsey's Paradox The world is getting less violent. So why do we feel so threatened?


This is an interesting paradox.  I think one explanation is that despite apparent declining levels of violence, violent acts are magnified and achieve greater impact because of the global information network.  More people have knowledge of, if not affected by, violent actions around the world.  And these violent acts may be able to achieve greater effects than just on the "tactical target," they may have much greater diplomatic and economic effects rather than simply security implications.  Zenko offers an interesting strategy and commentary on the US military in his conclusion:

Not only have humans never been less at risk from dying at the hands of another human, but we know more and more about what early risk factors make individuals more likely to use violence and which preventive efforts are most effective at reducing criminal violence -- by far the leading of all non-self-inflicted deaths. It boils down to four major prevention strategies: developmental (interventions in early development when criminal potential is identified), situational (reducing opportunities to commit crime and increasing the risks of criminal activities), community (fostering positive social conditions and institutions), and criminal justice. If policymakers were interested in protecting people from "the chance of violence," as Dempsey terms it, they might want to divert their time and resources away from aircraft carriers and into these preventive programs.

At the end of the day, despite Dempsey's security paradox warnings, the U.S. military plays a minimal role in preventing, responding to, and addressing the vast majority of lethal violence in the world. Yet the United States remains structured, funded, and predisposed to seek military, rather than developmental or diplomatic solutions to many foreign-policy challenges, including reducing the likelihood and severity of all forms of lethal violence. In an April 2009 exchange about how to deepen cooperation between the Pentagon and the State Department, Gen. David Petraeus acknowledged: "Sir, again when it comes to the conflict prevention, that one I have to put my thinking cap on and figure out."

Of course we should not forget that if (or when) war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula it will skew the analysis on the levels of violence.
V/R
Dave

The world is getting less violent. So why do we feel so threatened?
BY MICAH ZENKO | NOVEMBER 13, 2012


Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has leveraged his authority to tackle some tough questions. Much like his predecessor, Adm. Mike Mullen (and the former vice chairman, Gen. James Cartwright), Dempsey has not shied away from controversial topics, ranging from what the Israeli military could do to Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program (delay "probably for a couple of years") to the growing scourge of sexual assaults in the military (which "deeply scar our profession"). You might question some of what Dempsey says (I have), but he deserves credit for raising the public profile of critical issues to a degree that is rare among his civilian counterparts.

One of his favorite and oft-repeated issues is the security paradox, which he expanded on in a public speech in October:
We live in an era where we're at an evolutionary low in violence.… State-on-state conflict is far less likely than it has been in the past. The problem is that other kinds of conflict, other kinds of violence, are exponentially more likely as technology spreads, as the information age allows organizations and individuals, middleweight nations, if you will, to have capabilities that heretofore were the purview of major nation-states. So it's a paradox … -- large conflict is less likely … but the chance of violence and those using violence for ideological and other purposes is exponentially greater.
(Continued at the above link)

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