Climate, Demographics & Immigration
My Father was a military man and WW2 veteran so naturally I grew-up with quite a positive view of the British armed forces. In spite of years of government cut-backs we are fortunate enough to maintain a small but high-calibre force with intelligent and capable men dedicated to the protection of this country at the officer level who are far from being the stiff-necked, warmongering stereotype and are in the most part well informed and thoughtful men. When the incompetent and dishonest media appeasing politicians let us down we can at least depend on such men as a last bastion in our defence against external threat unencumbered by absurd political correctness. So when the men of arms speak I am inclined to listen carefully.
One such man is Rear Admiral Chris Parry who, tasked with an analysis of the effects of climate change and its impact on the defence of the realm presented his vision of the future at the Royal United Services Institute in central London last week. A summary of his presentation was reproduced in the Sunday Times this weekend; Take cover : the new Goths are coming.
He paints a very worrying picture.
He identified the most dangerous flashpoints by overlaying maps showing the regions most threatened by factors such as agricultural decline, booming youth populations, water shortages, rising sea levels and radical Islam.
This will come as “irregular activity” such as terrorism, organised crime and “white companies” of mercenaries burgeon in lawless areas.
The effects will be magnified as borders become more porous and some areas sink beyond effective government control.
Already we are seeing the start of the following threat as global piracy has reached its highest levels for nearly 100 years, currently mostly in SE Asia its now spreading fast and he predicts a European problem within ten years.
Future migrations would be comparable to the Goths and Vandals while north African “Barbary” pirates could be attacking yachts and beaches in the Mediterranean within 10 years.
To some this may seem far-fetched but already uncontrolled immigration across the Strait of Gibraltar is causing an Andalusian crime wave which is overwhelming local police and immigration services.
His timeline for this is alarmingly short.
He pinpoints 2012 to 2018 as the time when the current global power structure is likely to crumble. Rising nations such as China, India, Brazil and Iran will challenge America’s sole superpower status.
The real challenge is getting the governments to take action before its too late.
Lord Boyce, the former chief of the defence staff, welcomed Parry’s analysis. “Bringing it together in this way shows we have some very serious challenges ahead,” he said. “The real problem is getting them taken seriously at the top of the government.”
Now there are some bloggers who will see this report as a vindication of their fears over radical Islam however I beg to differ slightly in this respect. Not in its consequence but in cause, meaning that I think this logic is somewhat cart before horse, as the following paragraphs suggest :
Parry pointed to the mass migration which disaster in the Third World could unleash. “The diaspora issue is one of my biggest current concerns,” he said. “Globalisation makes assimilation seem redundant and old-fashioned . . . [the process] acts as a sort of reverse colonisation, where groups of people are self-contained, going back and forth between their countries, exploiting sophisticated networks and using instant communication on phones and the internet.”
In an effort to control population growth, some countries may be tempted to copy China’s “one child” policy. This, with the widespread preference for male children, could lead to a ratio of boys to girls of as much as 150 to 100 in some countries. This will produce dangerous surpluses of young men with few economic prospects and no female company.
“When you combine the lower prospects for communal life with macho youth and economic deprivation you tend to get trouble, typified by gangs and organised criminal activity,” said Parry. “When one thinks of 20,000 so-called jihadists currently fly-papered in Iraq, one shudders to think where they might go next.”
- Globalisation reduces assimilation and enflames ethnic hegemony.
- Climate change increases poverty and competition for resources.
- Demographics increase social exclusion and unemployment.
It is these factors which radical Islam exploits and without them there would be little platform for the spread of this ideology* throughout the affected regions. If we are to prevent its spread we need to address these issues first and foremost.
* Note that the causes for the spread of radical Islam within wealthy western countries is quite different and should not be confused.
See also :
Global Guerrillas : The Melted Map
Wolfie,
Thank you for this interesting and complexe post. There are many issues I would like to comment and presently have no time to do so. You will hear from me tomorrow !
Hi Wolfie,
I am travelling today by train and was able to have an internet connection on the train so I am delivering my comments to your post earlier then I expected I could do it.
Your post is an echo to thoughts I have since last saturday when we went my husband and I to watch Al Gore’s documentary on climate change: ‘An inconvenient truth’. The documentary is excellent, it is made for a classroom, it adresses the many issues of this multifaceted problem except the political one. In Al Gore’s documentary, which I think is a must see, there is little politics. We know very little about the people, corporations, political parties, governments who can take the big decisions as to reverse climate change and we know very little about what these people are doing in order to anticipate the likely catastrophes that will result from the change. What we know for sure is the science of climate change but given the complexity of the subject we are actually unable to foresee, let alone modelise, what will result from this. Not only we are unable to do this but we are leaving in a state of denial (this was one of Gore’s main points) because we experience, at the individual level, very little of those changes. I must admit that the situation is alarming and people from my generation could already worry for their children’s future.
Now, colonel Parry is doing his job as a military who is in charge of the security of the people of his country. One thing he might be right on is the fact that poor countries are not prepared to face the catastrophes that might result from climate changes, drought, floods, tsunamis and the scarcity of resources that will likely result from this and people in these countries will be living more and more in a Darwinian world; survival of the fittiest. However I don’t think that it will be them who will be the fittiest, so we have less to worry about than they have actually. Unequalities will increase and tensions will rise. The point Parry is making is more about diasporas of third world countries than actually people from third world countries and here we come to the sensitive problem of immigration and assimilation. When I became a french citizen, I was pregnant with my first child. The civil servant who was interviewing me remarked that there were more and more births of darkskinned babies in France. Although I am not dark skinned, I took the remark for me. I was also asked by this racist person on which side I will stand if there was a war between Muslims and French. I kid you not, that was back in 1984 ! Of course I answered correctly because I wanted to have my citizenship, otherwise I would have walked outside with indignation ! So as only Muslims seem to stay unassimilated in western countries, the problem of the huamn consequences of climate changes is brought down to Muslims and the West !
Althought I agree with your analysis that we have to treat some problems related to:
” Globalisation reduces assimilation and enflames ethnic hegemony.
Climate change increases poverty and competition for resources.
Demographics increase social exclusion and unemployment.”
I think that they don’t contribute eqaully to radical Islam.
The first point is radicalising not only Isalm but all other local communities with local values different from those of the West and i am thinking of Latin America. Threats produce always a better cohesion in a community because people feel more secure fighting the threats this way, so there is one threat reinforcing radical Islam and the communautarist aspect of this religion you didn’t mention, western colonialism, exploitation of Middle eastern countries resources and Israel. Look at the Isalm of the east, Indonesia for example, it is not radical. I think Muslims were prevented from assimilation because of the continual threat on their communities. An individual cannot emancipate himself from community values unbless he feels secure to do so, to meet the different Other..
The other two points are related, climate change will increase unequalities. But this will not be specific to Islam only.
I agree with Parry’s remarks and with your ananlysis but I think focusing on radical Islam as the biggest threat resulting from climate change is erroneous in my opinion. Climate change will bring about many other threats which will make you forget radical Islam and the logical relation between the two is not specific. However I see a denial in the fact that radical Islam is feeding on the War the Bush adminstration and Israel is waging on Muslims and Palestinians and this is a problem we can define better than climate change and treat it if we want to or if we had the political will to do so.
I think also that the kind of causal relations Parry is making between climate change and radical Islam is dangerous because it build on two fears, one feeding another without taking up to the real problems and their solutions in adressing these fears. This kind off approach is also filling the void our politicians are creating willingly in not adressing the real issues of climate changes.
Hello Sophia,
Thank you very much for your thoughtful comments.
Rear Admiral Parry’s analysis is given within a tight remit and I have addressed my views in a similar fashion. These are :
1) Security threats to the United Kingdom and the EU.
2) Security threats which are caused by or related to climate change.
There are other issues involved but I think he, as I tend to, takes a scientific approach in that he attempts to isolate factors into their most discrete components. By taking too broad a brush it becomes too difficult to find viable solutions and its solutions we need.
This is why both of us have identified radical Islam as a possible conduit for exploiting hostilities amongst Diaspora migrants. Its about geography and for us Europeans its Africa and the Middle East which is on our doorstep, making these regions our most immediate concerns from a security standpoint. It is somewhat similar to the way that communism exploited disaffected youth in depression hit Europe in the 1930’s and in that there is a parallel in the way that more educated Bolsheviks with a political agenda mobilised the proletariat by offering them a focus to their anger and a mobilising command structure supported with arms from existing communist states.
Somehow I don’t think that a Diaspora North African is going to give a fig about Israel or other political issues he just wants to take what he needs to survive but he can be mobilised through his anger. That is why when viewing the future security of Europe Parry identifies the connection of these groups as an issue, I know we don’t hear much about this in the news but even now light arms and radical leaders are flooding North-East Africa from their ME sponsors and whatever you think of the politics/religion its just another face of exploitation.
In other regions the path of conflict will certainly be different, maybe a resurgence of communism - who knows.
Wolfie,
”Its about geography and for us Europeans its Africa and the Middle East which is on our doorstep, making these regions our most immediate concerns from a security standpoint”
I agree. This is why Europe should have a different policy towards Arab and Muslim cpuntries and toward the conflicts in the ME. Tony Blair’s decision to participate ion the Iraq war was a bad one. Arabs and Mulsims perceive most of EU policies toward them as aligned with those of the US and Israel, this does not facilitate integration of Arab and Mulsim immigrants in EU countries. For to integarte you have to live the empathy between the Self and the Other. When you are surrounded by hostility, you cannot feel this empathy. Also, the Iraq war, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib have created a virtual threat on Islam. Individual Mulsim emancipation in the West is conditioned, in my opinion by this threat. When you feel hostility from your host community, you are inclined to adopt the values of your community of origin. I think the number one factor that is hindering Mulsim emancipationand allegiance to their host countries is the threat they feel about their community coming from the west.
As for new immigration to Europe from Arab and North African countries, Europe should adopt a common policy and debates should take palce in european soicties about this issue. I think the absence of debate about the issue by mainstream political parties or as you say ‘political correctness’ has given the european extreme right the forefont on this issue and they are not in my opinion the ones who are qualified to fioster the debate about the immkigration issue because they are full of préjugés and racism.
Ah Sophia, issues regarding the integration of existing Arab migrants and current wars in the ME are a separate subject. What you say is true and this observation did not escape the minds of the British people who protested strongly when the plans for war in Iraq were first announced by Tony Blair, they too could see that this venture would complicate the struggle against domestic terrorism and harm the progress of assimilation. Their motives may have been self-interested but nevertheless they were correct.
When I was a boy and throughout my teenage years London received quite a large influx of Arab migrants from places such as Iran, following the death of the Shah, and the Lebanon. These people were for the most part well educated and middle-class and have integrated well however in more recent years we have been receiving less educated people who seem unwilling to blend in and its this latter group which have been causing some problems.
The new migrations which Parry refers to are of serious concern, not just for our security but should be of paramount concern for existing Arab migrants because they will be “tarred with the same brush” should things get out of hand. Some of my Arab colleagues have expressed their concerns over this too and I am of a mind that it may be time to instigate a “Fortress Europe” policy as for future migration for everyone’s good.
I too have a higher respect for experienced military men over your average politician or journalist. I might not always agree with what they have to say but I respect their experience and insight.
However, whilst I share concerns about large-scale migration I totally disagree with most of the causes cited. I’d argue that the major upsurge in migration into developing countries has biff all to do with climate change, political correctness or miliant Islam. These are all smokescreens.
It is happening because it is being permitted to happen. It is being permitted to happen because it is profitable and because it will enable those currently in power to consolidate their power.
Look at the UK. We don’t have a huge land border, nor are we in paddling distance of the Middle East or Africa. The vast bulk of migrants come in via half a dozen points of entry which could be easily controlled, given a will to do so. It doesn’t take much research to establish that our current government dropped the national drawbridge as soon as it took power and has resolutely kept that drawbridge down.
Migration benefits the ‘globalists’ because it
- reduces labour costs
- minimises any chance of large numbers of people in lower income groups joining together and acheiving political influence. A fractured underclass is a lot less scary to Those Who Rule than an homogenous underclass
- creates a political climate where large numbers of people will be willing to trade a reduction in civil liberties for security
The politically correct crowd are being totally suckered on this one.
Wolfie,
Thanks for your answer and I agree that it is much more harder to integrate non educated people but it seems that these non educated people have their place in the global economy. I think that Stef’s comment is correct because non educated people benefit the globalised economy. It is like reverse outsourcing. And in the globalised economy, nations don’t have their say. Everybody knows well that corporations have the upper hand.
I’d say that it isn’t *like* reversed outsourcing it *is* reversed outsourcing. And it’s deliberate. Migrants are being brought in to do those jobs that physically cannot be exported to developing countries. Instead of exporting wealth and wealth creating opportunities to the developed world we’re importing poverty instead. Ultimately only one group of people will benefit.
The NHS is a case in point. Where’s the sense or morality in recruiting nurses and doctors from Africa to work in the UK? They’re already a scarce resource in their home countries and we’re just making the situation worse. I remember the days when we used to train healthcare professionals to work in the developing world not poach them.
Wolfie, Stef,
The more I read the comment, the article of reference and the exchange we had about this, I feel that issues of immigration and integration should absolutely be immediately adressed in Europe with frank talk and no political correctness. However, I still feel unconfortable with Parry’s analysis because it needs and misses the wider picture of present debates about Islam in the west and I won’t be surprised if this kind of analysis is used by Muslim bashers and haters and could appear soon on the website of the neo-con, ardent Israel defender, Muslim hater and basher, Daniel Pipes…
Maybe, Sophia, but it does no good to to hide the truth because it might be misused.
Agree with stef on causes. The “politically correct” are often blamed for uncontrolled migration, but as Enoch Powell once said about the Trades Unions on inflation, “They are as pure as the driven snow”. The real driver is short term greed.
You’re a boss who cannot make a profit by paying wages the British expect? easy, import those who work for much less. Those cheap workers then need to claim benefits to get by. The jobs are therefore subsidised by the taxpayer with no net benefit to Britain, just as British Leyland jobs were in the 70s. In a free market, essential and low paid are largely contradictions.
Worse in fact, as much of the money these migrants do get is sent abroad instead of being spent here to stimulate the British economy. There is no escaping from one basic mathematical point. Those of lower than average economic performance cannot raise the average.
Wolfie,
I was at Admiral Parry’s lecture and you are the only site I have seen on the Internet that has got close to what the Admiral was actually saying and predicting.
Intelligent blog conversation all round I thought.
You just cannot believe all that is printed in the Press.
JT
Ah but… Sophie…. Most people do in fact believe the slanted reports and outright lies of the media. Al Gore is quite correct in his concern over climate change, yet the media portrays him as a far-left Chicken Little, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling”, and I’m seeing blog comments all over the Internet that parrot this derision of a man who is only trying to save humanity from itself.
Just a note on this issue: The perma-frost all over, Alaska, Canada etcetera, is thawing. It contains vast amounts of carbon in frozen plant and animal material that is now entering the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. This reduces the available oxygen and iincreases the greenhouse effect, causing further warming and thawing and release of carbon. In other words, global warming is now out of control and feeding on itself and cannot be stopped. There is now seen to be a good chance that Earths oceans may rise 20 feet in the next 20 years or less, with the result that many insurance companies are now backing off from issuing new policies on coastal property.
Back to the point of this, I too take what military commanders say much more to heart than what politicians say. Politicians lie to keep their jobs whereas military people must speak truth to survive and prosper, if they say anything at all. The military tends to promote honesty, by its nature.
About Islam, I’m beginning to think that a crack has appeared in the latest quest for world domination, as I see the first signs that Muslims are separating into two basic camps, those who are hell-bent on jihad and those who want nothing to do with it. They all want to see the world become entirely Islamic, but not all want to go to war to achieve this. Just how big the split will be, that is, which side will be the larger, remains to be seen. The latter depends on how scared they are of US. Us Westerners. For all the ranting about being the “fastest spreading religion”, they are still minoriities in Western nations where it matters, and the West is starting to get pretty sick and tired of them.
No doubt there are going to be big changes ahead on all fronts. Prophecies can only reach so far based on current trends though, as the only real constant is change and trends do shift and change. One thing is sure, it’s going to be interesting.
re. global warming
The weather and sea level has always shown variation. The implicit assumption made by the Global Warming lobby that there is one correct climate for the Earth is plain arrogant. And instead of encouraging debate about whether we should ease off developing and populating coastal and other marginal regions all we ever hear about is curbing hydrocarbon consumption and how we have to expect to pay more for those hydrocarbons - I’m sure the oil and nuclear industries are crying into their beer over that one.
re. global domination
The day I start seeing Islamic troops coming anywhere near to occupying Western countries plus Islamic corporate interests propping up dictatorships in the Western World is the day I’ll start worrying about that little canard.
great post, really deep writing