Category: Security

The Election Question

Presidential election workers in Afghanistan’s Nawa District, courtesy of US Marine Corps/wikimedia commons

NEW DELHI – With street protests roiling democracies from Bangkok to Kyiv, the nature and legitimacy of elections are once again being questioned. Are popular elections an adequate criterion by which to judge a country’s commitment to democracy? Beginning next month, elections in Afghanistan and India will throw this question into even sharper relief.

Afghanistan will hold a presidential election on April 5. But a smooth electoral process is far from guaranteed – especially given that US President Barack Obama has already informed Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the United States and NATO have no choice but to withdraw their troops by the end of this year.

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Which Asian Century?

War Memorial of Korea – honor guard ceremony and museum exhibits – Seoul, South Korea, courtesy of Expert Infantry/Flickr

NEW YORK – It has become something of a cliché to predict that Asia will dominate the twenty-first century. It is a safe prediction, given that Asia is already home to nearly 60% of the world’s population and accounts for roughly 25% of global economic output. Asia is also the region where many of this century’s most influential countries – including China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Indonesia, and the United States – interact.

But to point to Asia’s growing importance says nothing about its character. There can be two, very different Asian centuries, and the one that emerges will have profound consequences for the region’s peoples and governments – and for the world.

One future is an Asia that is relatively familiar: a region whose economies continue to enjoy robust levels of growth and manage to avoid conflict with one another.

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Inevitable Transhumanism? How Emerging Strategic Technologies will affect the Future of Humanity

Military robot
A military robot gets prepared to inspect a bomb. Photo: Kevin L. Moses Sr./Wikimedia Commons.

It is ironic and indeed counterintuitive that our own human nature has a huge potential to drive us towards physical and cognitive enhancements that may completely alter the characteristics of our species. As I have outlined in a previous work, human nature is defined by emotional amoral egoism[i]. Humans are genetically and neuro-chemically programmed to `feel good` and are driven by a number of factors, which I call the “Neuro P5”: “power, profit, pleasure, pride and permanency”. Consequently, if a technology appears which enhances any of these strong motivators, our neurochemically-mediated calculations, emotions and survival instincts will intuitively push us in that direction. I therefore believe such technologies bring us on the brink of inevitable transhumanism. This radical human metamorphosis and enhancement (physical and cognitive), through the convergence of various emerging strategic technologies, is not a question of ‘if’ but of ‘when’, ‘how’, and “at what cost”.

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Climate Change Will Bring More Surprises to Security Community: Interview with Marc Levy

SH-60F Sea Hawk helicopter
An SH-60F Sea Hawk helicopter assigned to Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron (HS) 14, flies around the Bangkok area with members of the humanitarian assessment survey team and the Royal Thai Armed Forces to assess the damage caused by flooding. Photo: /Wikimedia Commons

There are “overwhelmingly strong reasons” to believe that climate change is already triggering security problems, said Marc Levy, a climate scientist and Deputy Director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University.

Mr. Levy said if things are this bad already, it’s probably going to get worse, and quickly. “The next decade is probably going to experience more cases of climate change triggering security breakdowns.”

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French Security Concerns: Urgent vs. Important

In the Ranks of an Ally
A French soldier guards the spectators’ stands during the 2012, 14th of July parade in Paris. Photo: USAFE / AFAFRICA/flickr.

What role does France play in European security? What are the most important security threats the country faces? What security related decisions will President Hollande have to take over the next few months? These are the questions we asked François Heisbourg, a renowned French foreign policy and security expert. Professor Heisbourg, who is chairman of both the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) and the Geneva Center for Security Policy (GCSP), visited ETH Zurich in June 2012. He lectured on “France in European security” as part of the Master in Advanced Studies in Security Policy and Crisis Management (MAS SPCM) course.

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