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I would have asked the subject this is I think it was my choice of title. I'm sorry about that is hopelessly vast.

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But I think in a way it's good enough to provoke, I hope,

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some discussion and to get some ideas in discussion which I can then plagiarise mercilessly as I try improve this tool.

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So I hope I do too much injustice to the subject.

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Let me begin by saying you're suggesting that security is achieved through both action and preparation.

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In other words, I think security is about both the present and it's about the near and medium term future.

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I think there are plenty of current security challenges we can talk about.

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The defence budget I think is a pretty pressing security challenge in its own right

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operations in Afghanistan and how to conclude them in three or four years time.

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Piracy. Organised crime. Counter-Terrorism. Trafficking in narcotics and people.

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And so on and so forth. But what I'm going to try and talk about this afternoon,

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what I'm going to try to do is look a little bit further ahead if ultimately I want

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to look at the problem of anticipation and prevention and deterrence and so on,

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and indeed the question of risk. I'm going to be rather gloomy and I'm going to describe a few horrors and a few crises in waiting as I see them.

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But I'm also going to suggest that the real challenge is actually not merely to describe these near term security features,

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complex and volatile, though they are, but to analyse them and to ask what all this means.

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Really, how can we, as they say, get our arms around it?

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Have we, for example, moved into a new paradigm of not just national and international security,

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but I'm also then going to think about the response and what sort of responses or responses might be most appropriate and by whom?

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Bill Wolff So the description of it, which I called here, 21st century security challenges,

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I think they will probably be terrorism, the proliferation of unconventional weapons.

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Seaborne There'll be inter-state conflicts in the 21st century.

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I think there might will be terrorist use of CB devices in crowded places.

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And I think we can all think of other military and semi military scenarios to keep ourselves awake at night.

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But there are also other challenges which might well, I think,

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prove more problematic and which will have effect nationally in Europe and internationally and are listed on.

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The slide and the other offenders on the ticket, I believe it was.

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And I just want to find my.

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Just. Fantastic.

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And you could add to this list, but, you know, it doesn't really have a greater authority.

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You're going to have terrorism, of course, in its own right. So you could have you had you could have tyrants and individuals who decide to, you know,

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to do what tyrants and and despots decide to do, even though they did a very familiar list in order to go through.

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Don't worry. Instead, I'm just going to select four of these topics and.

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And just discuss them very briefly in turn.

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And to give you some sense to relate what I some of the some of the difficulties I think we might be about to encounter.

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I'm got as you can see, I'm going to look at what the Cabinet Office refers to as hazards rather than threats.

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That's to say natural challenges, security challenges, rather than manmade threats.

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But I think all of these could or will or are developing into more more human security problems as opposed to natural hazards.

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Population and demography, first of all, according to the population division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs,

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global population will rise from just under 7 billion last year to a predicted peak of just over nine in 2050.

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The most acute stresses as a result of this, according to the UK CDC, the Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre, the think tank.

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The most acute stresses are likely to arise from competition for energy, food and freshwater, as well as access to the global commerce.

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All fairly obvious. Most of the points these stresses might be felt most closely in those regions of

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the world are those sectors of humanity which already face the greatest economic,

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social and political risks. And they go on to say that if the population of sub-Saharan Africa is almost to double by 2040,

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and if the proportion of that region's population suffering malnutrition remains constant,

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then almost 500 million people are likely to require periodic humanitarian assistance by the middle of the century, almost 500 million.

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Food and fresh water. This is a gulf, according to the World Economic Forum, Global Risks 2010 report.

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Current level of investments in agriculture will not be sufficient to drive a 70%

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increase in food production necessary to feed an expected population of nine.

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I call it 9.1 billion by 2050. So we're all starving.

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Freshwater will also be an increasingly short supply. The US National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025 reported.

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And if you're familiar with that, that's quite a useful document. Not as good as the DC DC one.

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I hasten to add, the lack of access to stable supplies of water is reaching unprecedented proportions in many

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areas of the world and is likely to grow worse owing to rapid urbanisation and population growth.

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And they go on to say that by 2030 there will be a 40% shortfall between the 40% for 0% shortfall between the

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amount of water India requires to meet its own energy and food production needs and the water available to do so.

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40% shortfall. Energy security and the judgement of the International Energy Agency.

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Primary energy demand is expected to increase by 40% between 2017 and 30.

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They go on to say that recoverable oil coal reserves could last for well over another century at current rates of usage.

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Global oil reserves at the end of 39 could last another 40 years of consumption at current rates,

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and proven gas reserves could be sufficient for another 60 years at current rates,

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although that could be an available or recoverable gas resource base something like five times as big.

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So gas is the future, but not for very long. Nevertheless, they say near term energy security concerns.

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So this is the DC, DC.

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Their concern is that the issue of energy security is one in which governments and defence organisations will have to be engaged

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if states are to maintain their standards of living and to ensure adequate supplies of natural resources at reasonable prices.

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Again, fairly obvious conclusion to be drawn climate change.

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DC, DC once again describing climate change as a ring road issue,

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but that they mean one of the four key drivers for change that will affect the lives of everyone on the planet.

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It's difficult, they say, to know how and when life will be affected by climate change.

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But the consensus among international security forecasters rather gloomy. So that's me neither.

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Typical of the mood, I've just extracted a bit from the 2009 UK National Security Strategy.

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Not the latest one, obviously, but I think it gets into this rather well.

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They said a wide range of social, economic and political problems such as large scale migration, water stress, crop failure and food shortages,

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faster and wider spread of diseases, increased scarcity of resources, economic instability, and the possibility of new geopolitical disputes.

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Climate changes will increase poverty in the developing world, and though the links are complex, could to fragile states and to instability,

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conflict and state failure, it sort of makes you wonder what the Cabinet Office chats about in a coffee,

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you know, when they would use things like that. I mean, it's so utterly dismal.

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I don't know if you've read Solo, the latest novel by Ian McEwan, as I just finished reading and enjoyed enormously.

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At one point, McEwan refers to quote the indistinct cartoon of a calamitous future in which all must beg, shiver or drown.

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Later in the novel, his anti-hero Beard reassures his colleague Toby They've got this deal going to make solar panels.

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And Toby is quite anxious. He's heard doubts about climate change, about whether it's happening.

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There's concern that there's this in Silicon City as doubts about climate change will affect the sales of the solar panels, Toby listens as beard.

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It's a catastrophe. Relax.

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The causes and effects of climate change seem suddenly open to debate, I think, and I don't want to get drawn into this debate at all,

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but I think it is fair to say that there is debate about whether it's happening and if it is happening, whether we're causing it.

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I simply don't have the scientific knowledge and the training to form my own judgement and I'm

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wary actually being sort of expected to take a leap of faith in either one direction or another.

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I like to see myself sceptical of these things,

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but probably sceptical of these things I simply don't know, but I'm open minded and trying to find out,

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etc. Nevertheless, I think it's important to know that in the end I see the US and I see National Intelligence Council again.

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Global Trends 25 2025.

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They make a key point that just worries inquests about these effects may cause nations to take unilateral actions to secure resources,

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territory and other interests. In other words, it doesn't even need to be happening.

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We're fairly confident that something is going on and we're going to see nation states and governments acting as if it were imminent.

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I think a few paragraphs, these points I've been through, describe a future that is so singularly unattractive as to provoke a sort of innovating.

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Pessimism of the sort that W.H. Auden describes almost 40 years ago when he said, Our world rapidly worsens.

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Nothing now is so horrid or silly it can't occur.

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I think the more prosaic point to make is that these security challenges and the threats and the hazards could either be expressed in military terms,

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either directly or indirectly, or they could require a military response of some of some description,

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or they can contribute to general turbulence, instability and insecurity.

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And I think, taken together, all these security challenges make the more traditionally conceived Cold War and post-Cold War threats inter-state war,

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terrorism, proliferation and so on pale somewhat into insignificance.

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So not insignificant. But when you put them against the sorts of things that might be coming, they do look relatively less important.

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What is needed, I think, is a response which is appropriate, comprehensive, decisive and above all, anticipatory and preventive.

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Very, very easy to insist upon, but immensely difficult to organise in in policymaking terms.

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Where on earth do we begin? When do we act? What should we do?

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A recent document produced by the European Defence Agency sets out the scale of the task.

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So forgive me, I'll quote this again.

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The global context is sobering, with the central predictions of demography and economics foreshadowing a Europe which two decades hence will be older,

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less pre-eminently, prosperous and surrounded by regions including Africa and the Middle East,

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which may struggle to cope with the consequences of globalisation.

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Defence will need to contend with public finances under pressure from a growing pension burden,

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a shrinking recruitment pool and society's increasingly cautious about intervention in operations,

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concerned with issues of legitimacy in the use of force, and inclined to favour security in inverted commas over defence, in inverted commas spending.

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So that's the description full of gloom. What does it all mean?

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So let me move on to the analysis bit.

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I think the question here is how much of what I just described can be understood and managed through the prism of 20th century security and strategy,

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which, whether we like it or not, is still pretty much the the prism with within within which we work.

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The next slide shows some of the the typical features of 20th century strategic thinking as I see it.

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Now there's even less authority on this.

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And it's I think every time I come back to it, I change it and I, I bits and the more lines coming in and off all the time.

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But as I did, I just simply trying to list the things that struck me as being typical of late 20th century strategic thinking.

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And then and you've got the idea, I wondered how they how they might look in the 21st century,

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how old strategy, in a sense, strains to meet the new adversary, in inverted commas.

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I think the point here is that the old strategy might have to contend with the old adversary as well.

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In other words, we might conceivably see the recrudescence of inter-state warfare within the way we already have.

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George 28. So the list of scenarios and problems, it seems to me, keeps growing, and it's increasingly difficult to chop anything off the list.

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It's, as I say, it seems unwise or even unsafe to eliminate anything from that list.

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And for those responsible for national strategy and its implication, they can neither merely describe this future,

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nor can they allow themselves to be overwhelmed by it, no matter how dismal it might be.

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I think it has to be worthy of the name of its name.

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The national strategy has to engage as fully as possible with scenarios of the sort described here,

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no matter how uncertain, how dark and how overwhelming they might be.

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National strategy, I think, should not only show not only that the preparations have been made to, it's to me expect.