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	Redefining Security for the 21st Century by Lester R. Brown Earth Policy Institute USA   One of our legacies from the last century, which was dominated by two world wars and the cold war, is a sense of security that is defined almost exclusively in military terms. It so dominates Washington thinking that the U.S. foreign affairs budget of $701 billion in 2009 consisted of $661 billion for military purposes and $40 billion for foreign assistance and diplomatic programs.   But the situation in which we find ourselves pushes us to redefine security in twenty-first century terms. The time when military forces were the prime threat to security has faded into the past. The threats now are climate volatility, spreading water shortages, continuing population growth, spreading hunger, and failing states. The challenge is to devise new fiscal priorities that match these new security threats.   Douglas Alexander, former U.K. Secretary of State for International Development, put it well in 2007: “In the 20th century a country’s might was too often measured in what they could destroy. In the 21st century strength should be measured by what we can build together.”   The good news is that in the United States the concept of redefining security is now permeating not only various independent think tanks but the Pentagon itself. A number of studies have looked at threats to U.S. interests posed by climate change, population growth, water shortages, and food shortages-—key trends that contribute to political instability and lead to social collapse.   Although security is starting to be redefined in a conceptual sense, we have not redefined it in fiscal terms. The United States still has a huge military budget, committed to developing and manufacturing technologically sophisticated and costly weapon systems. Since there is no other heavily armed superpower, the United States is essentially in an arms race with itself. What if the next war is fought in cyberspace or with terrorist insurgents? Vast investments in conventional weapons systems will be of limited use.   The far-flung U.S. military establishment, including hundreds of military bases scattered around the world, will not save civilization. It belongs to another era. We can most effectively achieve our security goals by helping to expand food production, by filling the family planning gap, by building wind farms and solar power plants, and by building schools and clinics.   We can calculate roughly the costs of the changes needed to move our twenty-first century civilization off the decline-and-collapse path and onto a path that will sustain civilization. This is what we call “Plan B.” What we cannot calculate is the cost of not adopting Plan B. How do you put a price tag on social collapse and the massive die-off that it invariably brings?   When we crunch the numbers, the external funding needed to eradicate poverty and stabilize population requires $75 billion per year beyond what countries around the world are already spending. These measures will also help prevent state failure by alleviating its root social causes.   Meanwhile, efforts to eradicate poverty and rescue failing states that are not accompanied by an earth restoration effort are doomed to fail. Protecting topsoil, reforesting the earth, restoring oceanic fisheries, and other needed measures will cost an estimated $110 billion in additional expenditures per year.   Combining both social goals and earth restoration goals into a Plan B budget yields an additional annual expenditure of $185 billion. This is the new defense budget, the one that addresses the most serious threats to both national and global security. It is equal to 12 percent of global military expenditures and 28 percent of U.S. military expenditures. Given the enormity of the antiquated military budget, no one can argue that we do not have the resources to rescue civilization. (For more details on the required spending see Chapters 10 and 11 in World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse).   Unfortunately, the United States continues to focus its fiscal resources on building an ever-stronger military, largely ignoring the threats posed by continuing environmental deterioration, poverty, and population growth. Its 2009 military expenditures accounted for 43 percent of the global total of $1,522 billion. Other leading spenders included China ($100 billion), France ($64 billion), the United Kingdom ($58 billion), and Russia ($53 billion).   For less than $200 billion of additional funding per year worldwide, we can get rid of hunger, illiteracy, disease, and poverty, and we can restore the earth’s soils, forests, and fisheries. We can build a global community where the basic needs of all people are satisfied—a world that will allow us to think of ourselves as civilized. Visit the related web page
	Civilians account for 71 percent of people killed and injured by explosive weapons by International Network on Explosive Weapons (INEW)   27 Mar 2012   Civilians accounted for 71 percent of people killed and injured by explosive weapons in 2011, with most of such casualties taking place in Iraq, according to a report released on Tuesday.   At least 21,499 civilians were reported killed or injured over a 12-month period in 68 countries and territories, according to data gathered from news sources on 2,522 incidents of explosive violence, the report by non-profit group Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) said.   More than 18,000 of the civilian casualties were reported in populated areas, the report said.   Of all casualties recorded in populated areas, 84 percent were civilians, according to the group, which is a member of non-governmental organisation International Network on Explosive Weapons (INEW).   Casualties recorded in the report were caused by such conventional military explosive weapons as mortars, rockets, artillery and such improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as car and suicide bombs.   More than half of all recorded civilian casualties caused by explosive devices were the result of IEDs, used mostly by non-state armed groups, it added.   "We need to see this as a moral issue and use our common sense that using these types of weapons in densely populated areas is going to be unacceptable and is going to cause unacceptable harm," said Thomas Nash, joint coordinator of INEW and director of Article 36, a UK-based non-profit organisation working to prevent unintended, unnecessary or unacceptable harm caused by certain weapons.   "It''s got to go beyond existing international humanitarian law and look at what''s killing people and what sort of practice we need to change."   Article 36 is urging Britain''s government to lead a discussion at the U.N. Security Council, in June, on how to protect civilians from bombing in populated areas.   Many people think that in war it''s normal for towns and cities to be bombed, Nash said in an interview with AlertNet.   But the Geneva conventions, which outline legal standards of humanitarian treatment for people in war zones, are there to help protect civilians from bombardment, he added.   Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya and Somalia were the top five most dangerous places in the world for explosive violence last year, incurring 71 percent of all recorded civilian casualties, the report said.   In Iraq, almost 5,700 civilians were either killed or injured by explosive weapons last year, nearly 100 each month in the capital Baghdad, indicating an “unacceptable continuing risk to the lives of civilians,” the report said.   The last convoy of U.S. soldiers pulled out of Iraq in December, after nine years of war.   But violence continues in Iraq, where on March 20, more than 40 bombs were planted in 20 towns and cities across the country.   In 2011, the use of explosive weapons by a state within its own territory among its own citizens was seen in the shelling of cities in Syria, Libya and Yemen, marking a breakdown in accountability between the state and its citizens, accompanied by a humanitarian crisis, the report said.   AOAV has been collecting data on incidents of explosive weapons use through the Explosive Violence Monitoring Project since October 2010.   (Source: alertnet: Julie Mollins) Visit the related web page
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