A Turbulent Sea of People

Around the world nations are being seriously destabilized by the combined impacts of climate change and food insecurity.   One factor in this is population density, the number of people a nation must somehow provide for within a fixed area.

Canada has a population density of 9 people per square kilometer.   Australia comes in at 8.   The United States, 34 per sq. km.   Around the world the picture is far different.

Here is a list of countries facing serious population density issues.  I've chosen only nations with populations greater than 20-million and population density greater than 50 per sq. km.   Bangladesh, not suprisingly, tops the rankings at 1,034.  

From 650 to 300, the list comprises Taiwan, South Korea, India, Japan, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

From 300 to 100 in declining order we have Vietnam, the U.K., Germany, Pakistan, Italy, North Korea, Nepal, Nigeria, China, Uganda, Thailand, Indonesia, Poland, Syria, France and Ghana.

From 100 to 50, it's Turkey, Spain, Malaysia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, Ukraine, Morocco, Myanmar, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Uzbekistan, Mexico and Yemen.

What should be sending up the red flag is the number of countries on this density list that are considered most vulnerable, particularly in the short term, to the impacts of climate change and other environmental challenges.   They make up the overwhelming majority of the countries listed.   In other words, around the world the most densely populated countries also appear most likely to take it in the neck from climate change and other ills.  

This list also includes the emerging economic superpowers of India, China and Mexico plus the industrial powerhouses of Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia.   These are also countries where per capita consumption is rising very quickly.  And, leaving the U.K. and France aside, four of them - China, India, Pakistan and North Korea - have nuclear arsenals.

C'mon, You Have to Do Better Than That

What's in a name?   Iran has just unveiled its latest surface-to-surface missile.  It's been given the unfortunate name, Qiyam which, in English, means "Resurrection."  Can we quit with the Apocalyptic names, please?   Just give it a rest.

And from the "Yeah and if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle" file, two stories.  Outgoing US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warns that Hezbollah has a variety of rockets and missiles that could be used to deliver biological or chemical weaponry.  What does "could" mean anyway, other than anything you want it to mean but can't back up with a shred of evidence.  

Not to be outdone, a senior official from the US National Intelligence Director's Office warns that North Korea could eventually develop a ballistic missile capable of reaching America.

"No one is looking at the North Koreans as building these systems to have a first-strike capability or anything like that. That's not what we're really concerned about. But they are certainly building missiles that eventually will be capable of targeting the U.S., and these missiles will be capable of having nuclear weapons."

Tell me, is it budget appropriations time?

Water - Civilization's Trojan Horse

With a rapidly dwindling number of exceptions, nations around the world are consuming water resources they cannot replenish. It's the H2O equivalent of drinking their "seed corn."

Look at it this way. How did the earth's population swell from 2-billion in the aftermath of WWII to the 6.7-billion we number today? The simple answer is by over-exploiting our freshwater resources for everything from crop irrigation to industrial production to basic human consumption.

How can someone over-exploit water? Easy. It's as simple as emptying a bank vault. Bank customers periodically place small amounts of jewelry, stocks and bonds in their safety deposit boxes. It trickles in but after a while there's a lot of wealth amassed in the vault. Then some villain figures a way to blast into that vault and empty those safety deposit boxes and - voila - an empty vault.

Now water isn't just wealth, it's life itself. But a substantial amount of freshwater has, over millenia, trickled into subterranean vaults we call aquifers. From the dawn of civilization man has learned to draw water from the ground by digging wells. A well, a rope, a bucket and you have a public water system. In some cases wells ran dry but in most they didn't because there was enough groundwater seeping down from rainfall to replenish or "recharge" the supply.

In the post-WWII era we've learned to produce a lot of a great many things including an awful lot more of ourselves. All of that growth depended on an abundant supply of water - for sanitation and basic hygiene, for nourishment and hydration, for public safety and to make the stuff we all want to buy. To meet the challenges of mass famine from overpopulation we developed the "green revolution" - new techniques to maximize agricultural production. But there was never enough surface water, enough precipitation, to keep the engine of civilization running so we began tapping groundwater resources on a mega-industrial scale.

Even parts of the United States are running out of water. Take a look at what's happened to the once-mighty Colorado River to get an idea. But the looming problems are even more dire in other parts of the world, especially in the emerging economic superpowers of China and India.

I recently came across an article on the NPR website examining how India's "green revolution" has turned into a national, Trojan Horse:

Farmers in the state of Punjab abandoned traditional farming methods in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the national program called the "Green Revolution," backed by advisers from the U.S. and other countries.

Indian farmers started growing crops the American way — with chemicals, high-yield seeds and irrigation.

Since then, India has gone from importing grain like a beggar, to often exporting it.

But studies show the Green Revolution is heading for collapse.

When India's government launched the Green Revolution more than 40 years ago, it pressured farmers to grow only high-yield wheat, rice and cotton instead of their traditional mix of crops.

The new miracle seeds could produce far bigger yields than farmers had ever seen, but they came with a catch: The thirsty crops needed much more water than natural rainfall could provide, so farmers had to dig wells and irrigate with groundwater.

The system worked well for years, but government studies show that farmers have pumped so much groundwater to irrigate their crops that the water table is dropping dramatically, as much as 3 feet every year.

...Another side effect of the groundwater crisis is evident at the edge of the fields — thin straggly rows of wheat and a whitish powder scattered across the soil.

The white substance is salt residue. Drilling deep wells to find fresh water often taps brackish underground pools, and the salty water poisons the crops.

"The salt causes root injuries," Palwinder says. "The root cannot take the nutrients from the soil."

...In the village of Chotia Khurd, farmers agree that the Green Revolution used to work miracles for many of them. But now, it's like financial quicksand.

Studies show that their intensive farming methods, which government policies subsidize, are destroying the soil. The high-yield crops gobble up nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorous, iron and manganese, making the soil anemic.

The farmers say they must use three times as much fertilizer as they used to, to produce the same amount of crops — yet another drain on their finances.

...Some leading officials in the farming industry wonder when this house of cards might collapse.

"The state and farmers are now faced with a crisis," warns a report by the Punjab State Farmers Commission.

India's population is growing faster than any country on Earth, and domestic food production is vital.

But the commission's director, G.S. Kalkat, says Punjab's farmers are committing ecological and economic "suicide."

If he is correct, suicide is coming through national policies that reward farmers for the very practices that destroy the environment and trap them in debt.

Unfortunately, India's groundwater crisis and the associated soil exhaustion and salination are but one part of what that country is facing. India's other freshwater source, the Himalayan glaciers, are in headlong retreat. Essential agricultural rivers, like the mighty Ganges, are at risk of being transformed into seasonal rivers, full only during the Monsoons when they're not needed for irrigation.

Draining groundwater is like defying gravity. You are bound to fall to earth and your landing can be very, very unpleasant. Over just a few generations you have created a society you simply do not have the essential resources to sustain. When food production fails it triggers a whole set of social reactions and dynamics that can be quite ugly and destabilizing and, sometimes, even impossible to control.

The thing to bear in mind is that much of the world is facing similar problems to those building in India. China is in the same boat. Pakistan is in the same boat. Much of Africa and the Middle East (including Lebanon, Syria, Israel and the Palestinian territories) are in similar peril. Most of the world's global security "hot spots" are facing severe and abrupt freshwater shortfalls.

What is the answer? I don't know and nobody else seems to know either. One potentially ominous solution being floated is to treat water as a commodity of commerce. This is being pitched as an "only way out" solution that in fact means handing over mankind's single most precious asset, literally giving it away, to "for profit" corporations which we're supposed to blindly trust to be both honest and benevolent in distributing the resource fairly and at a fair price. Maybe we could give the water to Halliburton and they could sub-contract the distribution to Blackwater.

But what does this mean to Canada? It means a great deal, more than most could imagine. Social upheaval and political instability throughout East and South Asia, the Middle East, vast swathes of Africa, parts of Latin and most of Central America, will inevitably impact Canada and the rest of the Western world.

The only political party in our country capable of addressing these problems is the Liberal Party of Canada but, sadly, the LPC has lost its way. The next two decades will redefine our world - politically, socially, economically and, unfortunately, militarily. These are challenges of a genuinely existential scope. We need to be exploring these issues now, preparing our nation and our people to meet them. Why, then, are we instead so preoccupied on whether to criticize Harper for spending too much or too little on stimulus and recovery projects or absorbed on how to call an election or prevent Harper from calling one? Harper is a man of low vision. Why do we have to set our sights to meet his?

Some more engaged than I in Liberal politics contend that the current, multi-party parliamentary reality all but rules out majority government. If they're right and that is the case then we have an enormous problem because preparing ourselves and adapting our Canada to the changes that are coming will require strong government leadership. You can't look ahead if you're always looking over your shoulder. If we can't get a majority we had damned well better work on forging a strong, meaningful coalition.

There is ample precedent for coalition governments functioning quite well in times of national difficulty. What is required is a general acknowledgement of unavoidable challenges of a significance dwarfing partisan political interests. What we need is a Liberal leader capable of creating that consensus and, unfortunately, that's not the guy we have right now. That's not to say that the New Democrats have anything better in Layton, they don't. That guy is hyper-partisan.

Somehow Liberals need to find a leader who can reach out to New Democrats, the rank and file, and lead them to understand the need for a genuine coalition, one based on good faith, cooperation instead of capitulation and an acceptance that the times we're entering upon leave a limited scope for partisanship.

We need to come to this epiphany relatively soon. Events around the world are overtaking us. We can't control them but we can prepare for them. Unfortunately there's a shelf life for each of our options for adaptation and remediation. The best options have already expired and are now lost to us. The next best options are steadily being foreclosed. The only way to get the best options remaining to us is to act now. It's tragic that our leaders have no grasp of that.

Global Warming, Military Style

Those Looney Lefties also known as Pentagon analysts are again warning of global wars driven by climate change. From the Environmental News Network:

"...governments in the US and UK are already being briefed by their own military strategists about how to prepare for a world of mass famine, floods of refugees and even nuclear conflicts over resources.

Gwynne Dyer is a military analyst and author who served in three navies and has held academic posts at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst and at Oxford.

"[There will be] huge falls in the amount of crops that you can grow because there isn't the rain and it's too hot," he said. "That will apply particularly to the Mediterranean... and so not just the north African countries, but also the ones on the northern side of the Mediterranean. "The ones in the European Union like Spain and Italy and Greece and the Balkans and Turkey are going to be suffering huge losses in their ability to support their populations.

Climate refugees.

He says a fall in crops and food production means there will be refugees, people who are desperate. "It may mean the collapse in the global trade of food because while some countries still have enough, there is still a global food shortage," he said. "If you can't buy food internationally and you can't raise enough at home, what do you do? You move.
So refugee pressures - huge ones - are one of the things that drives these security considerations."

In Climate Wars, even the most hopeful scenarios about the impact of climate change have hundreds of millions of people dying of starvation, mass displacement of people and conflict between countries competing for basic resources like water. "India and Pakistan are both nuclear-armed countries. All of the agriculture in Pakistan and all of the agriculture in northern India depend on glacier-fed rivers that come off the Himalayas from the Tibetan plateau. Those glaciers are melting," Dr Dyer said.

"They're melting according to Chinese scientists to 7 per cent a year, which means they're half gone in 10 years. "India has a problem with this. Pakistan faces an absolutely lethal emergency because Pakistan is basically a desert with a braid of rivers running through it.

"Those rivers all start with one exception in Indian-controlled territory and there's a complex series of deals between the two countries about who gets to take so much water out of the river. Those deals break down when there's not that much water in the rivers." And then you have got the prospect of a nuclear confrontation, Dr Dyer says.

"It's unthinkable but yet it's entirely possible. So these are the prices you start to pay if you get this wrong," he said. "Some of them, actually, I'm afraid we've already got them wrong in the sense that there is going to be some major climate change." Dr Dyer explains the least alarmist scenario for the next couple of decades still involves enormous pressures on the US border. "That border's going to be militarised. I think there's almost no question about it because the alternative is an inundation of the United States by what will be, effectively, climate refugees," he said. "

http://www.enn.com/lifestyle/article/38054

If you're interested in global warming as a source for global conflict you might also check out the speech given by Gareth Evans (president of International Crisis Group) on this subject:

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5648&l=1

Water, It's the New Oil

Looking for a good investment? Have a look at the leading companies in the rapidly expanding, global water supply industry. There are a lot of places in the world where people lack access to clean, fresh water and that's a growing market at least for the century to come. What's more, people who need fresh water will pay what it takes to get it. Life itself doesn't really work too well without it.

Water as a commodity. It's something a lot of Canadians have fretted over for years, the idea of somebody selling our stock of freshwater to foreign bidders. Keep your eye on that.

An interesting development in the US southwest where water is becoming increasingly scarce. It arises out of the apportionment of water between agriculture and domestic use. About three-quarters of their fresh water supply is earmarked for agriculture. People gotta eat - or do they? Some clever farmers in the region are reportedly now getting into the business of selling water they might otherwise be putting on their fields. They're not selling their quota, just the water. That means they're taking a common resource, privatizing it and putting it onto the commercial market. The best thing is they never pay dime one for the water itself. They get it so they can grow crops. The new way, however, cuts out all the bother of planting and irrigating and harvesting. You simply sell what you never produced in the first place. Neat trick, eh?

"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink."

For some people - a lot of people actually - the danger is too much water, sea water to be specific. Rising sea levels forecast to result from global warming pose an enormous problem to the Middle East. Egypt's Nile River is especially vulnerable to rising water levels and the associated infusion of salt and brackish water. The UN Environment Programme estimates it could result in the displacement of between two and four million Egyptians by 2050.

Sea water levels don't have to rise very much at all before they begin salinating the groundwater supplies of particularly vulnerable spots like Gaza. A little salinity in groundwater can be incredibly destructive. It's widely believed that the ancient Mesopotamian civilization was destroyed when they rendered the once richly fertile lands of the Tigris and Euphrates delta utterly sterile by centuries of irrigating with brackish water. The salts don't wash away. Instead they accumulate over time until the soil becomes incapable of supporting plant life. Remember how the Romans took revenge on Carthage?

Sea water levels are also expected to wreak proper hell on security in the Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian areas (and, please, don't send me e-mails screaming that there is no Palestine).

The report entitled Climate Change: A New Threat to Middle East Security, by the non-governmental organisation Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME), was presented at the annual UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia.

It believes climate change could act as a “threat multiplier”, exacerbating water scarcity and tensions over water between nations linked by hydrological resources, geography and shared borders, particularly in Jordan, Gaza and Egypt.

“Poor and vulnerable populations, which exist in significant numbers throughout the region, will likely face the greatest risk”, says the study.

Okay, this isn't the delusional ranting of some whacko, leftie NGO. It's a reality already recognized in studies by very hard-nosed Israeli hydrologists who argue fiercely that Israel needs to keep a permanent hold on the Golan Heights and the West Bank for its own hydrological survival. They worry that a Palestinian West Bank and a Syrian-controlled Golan will leave Israel at the mercy of its enemies for essential access to freshwater.

Of course there's always desalination plants. Sure, but not really. Desalination plants use a lot of fossil fuel and generate a lot of contamination of coastal waters but the product they produce, while economically feasible for urban consumption, is way too expensive to quench the enormous thirst of the agricultural sector.

“Economic unrest across the region, due to a decline in agricultural production from climate impacts on water resources, could also lead to greater political unrest, posing a threat to current regimes and, thereby, affecting internal and cross-border relations,” the FOEME report claims.

Mission Accomplished, Jerk. Russia Suspends CFE Treaty

Dammit, where is Lee Harvey Oswald now that we need him?

You may never have heard of the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty but it was a critical element in easing of military tensions between West and East at the end of the Cold War. That was the deal where we all said we were going to play nice for a change so that we could get a good night's sleep at long last.

It worked real well for a while until a moronic frat boy and his diseased, demonic sidekick arrived on the scene and decided to stir things up by putting missiles and radars on the other side's doorstep.

The upshot of this Oval Office lunacy? Big Vlad Putin has signed a law suspending the CFE. From the New York Times:

"The treaty, signed in the last days of the Cold War, limited the number of tanks, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, artillery and other heavy weapons that both NATO and Russia could deploy in Western Europe and the western part of Russia.

The U.S., the European Union and NATO had all urged Russia not to suspend the treaty, which was regarded in Europe as a cornerstone agreement in maintaining security on the continent."

America's Number One Nitwit has done a truly monstrous job at shredding the fabric of peace woven with enormous effort by his predecessors. Like an unruly little punk he got away with it because there was no one around able to slap him down when he needed it.

Now we have arms races foraging ahead in every corner of the northern hemisphere. Why? So these despicable Chickenhawks who ducked the fight at every turn when it was their turn can now act tough, maybe even manly. What a joke.

Has It Really Come to This?

Is the best way to deal with climate change to arm ourselves to kill off those we've harmed most?

That's Naomi Klein's take on an apparent recent surge in investment bucks, not toward green technologies, but into the weapons and security industries.

Klein gets this hot tip from "Douglas Lloyd, a director of Venture Business Research, which tracks trends in venture capitalism. 'I expect investment activity in this sector to remain buoyant,' he said recently. Lloyd's bouncy mood was inspired by the money that is gushing into private security and defence companies. He added: 'I also see this as a more attractive sector, as many do, than clean energy.'"

"According to Lloyd, the really big money - despite all the government incentives - is turning away from clean-energy technologies, and is banking instead on gadgets that promise to seal wealthy countries and individuals into hi-tech fortresses.

"So why is "homeland security", not green energy, the hot new sector? Perhaps because there are two distinct business models that can respond to our climate and energy crisis. We can develop policies and technologies to get us off this disastrous course. Or we can develop policies and technologies to protect us from those we have enraged through resource wars and displaced through climate change, while simultaneously shielding ourselves from the worst of both war and weather. (The ultimate expression of this second option is in Hummer's new television adverts: the gas-guzzler is seen carrying its cargo to safety in various disaster zones, followed by the slogan "HOPE: Hummer Owners Prepared for Emergencies". It's a bit like the Marlboro man doing grief counselling in a cancer ward.) In short, we can choose to fix, or we can choose to fortress. Environmental activists and scientists have been yelling for the fix. The homeland security sector, on the other hand, believes the future lies in fortresses.

"As Lloyd explains: 'The failure rate of security businesses is much lower than clean-tech ones; and, as important, the capital investment required to build a successful security business is also much lower.' In other words, finding solutions for real problems is hard, but turning a profit from those problems is easy.

"Bush wants to leave our climate crisis to the ingenuity of the market. Well, the market has spoken: it will not take us off this disastrous course. In fact, the smart money is betting that we will stay on it."

Is Klein just some Doomsday fantasist? I wish but I don't think so. This is a candle we're burning at both ends - increasing carbon emissions at one end, time to implement practical solutions at the other. As those two ends draw ever nearer, the pressures of climate change(compounded by other environmental challenges such as desertification, water exhaustion, resource depletion, peak oil and all the other problems) will inevitably draw more and more support toward defensive options over the remedial alternatives.

Unfortunately, I agree with Mr. Lloyd. In the West, too many people don't want to really think about these problems and what is really needed to deal with them. If you want examples of how populations in great nations from the past either didn't see or chose to simply ignore what was consuming their civilizations, read Jared Diamond's great book "Collapse." As a species, we're quite capable of doing ourselves in, we really are. We're also capable of overcoming enormous challenges, but only when we make conscious decisions - in time - to solve our problems.

Speaking Truth to Power

I wish Harpo was in Chicago. If he was, maybe he'd load up on a lot of wisdom about the international turmoil now underway in Afghanistan and elsewhere. There's plenty of it to be had in the Windy City from the roughly 3,000 international affairs thinkers gathered there for the annual, International Studies Association convention.
Here, according to James Travers, writing in the Toronto Star, are some of the words of wisdom Harper could find helpful:

"Politicians stiffening national backbones won't find renewed strength in this sampler drawn from four intensive days. There's no guarantee imposing democracy controls terrorism, that being over there necessarily makes us safer over here or, most importantly, that the hope of reconstructing Afghanistan as a stable, modern state is guided by a common blueprint.

"None of that is idle musing. Academic and think tank business is booming in the failed states/security sector and the result is a lot of empirical holes in subjective cloth.

"For example, research predicts that violent groups will cling to their methods even after becoming political parties, Western powers become targets by intervening in essentially local conflicts, and practical short-term tactics make nonsense of the theoretical long-term Afghanistan strategy."

"A steady supply of walk-in suicide bomber recruits is a product of new anger over infidel boots on Islamic soil and not just a manifestation of more deeply rooted grievances.

"And in Afghanistan the goal of winning hearts and minds is being pushed further over the horizon by the day-to-day damage of air strikes in a war fought among the people and by anti-drug policies that make farmers poorer and more vulnerable to corrupt officials."

This isn't revolutionary thinking, far from it. It's actually very conventional wisdom that is simply not heard very often and even more rarely heeded.

First the "Bush Doctrine", Now This

I've written several comments about the quiet arms races underway - in the United States, China, India and even Russia. In no small part, these have been - if not triggered, certain accelerated - by America's unilateralism under George Bush and the infrequently mentioned, bellicose "Bush Doctrine" in conjunction with lesser provocations such as Bush's space doctrine.

George Cheney-Bush has done a great deal of damage to multilateralism and global order. His foreign policy is built on coercive acquiesence ("you're either with us or against us"), not concensus. It is premised on "strength beyond challenge" and not just pre-emptive war but preventative war - war on the pretext of preventing war even if the perceived threat is only "emerging." These are the policies of mad men, something that hasn't gone unnoticed in Beijing and Moscow.

Everybody that matters is going for their guns, strapping on the six-shooters, and, while no one is willing to admit it, they're beginning to mosey on down to the corral.

Now it's Russia's turn. According to The Guardian, Russia is about to unveil a new military doctrine of its own, one that holds NATO and the West as Russia's greatest danger.

In a statement posted on its website, Russia's powerful security council said it no longer considered global terrorism as its biggest danger. Instead, Russia was developing a new national security strategy which reflected changing "geo-political" realities, and the fact that rival military alliances were becoming "stronger" - "especially Nato".

There have been changes in the character of the threat to the military security of Russia. More and more leading world states are seeking to upgrade their national armed forces. The configuration has changed," the council said.

"In particular Russia has been incensed by the US administration's plans to site two new missile interceptor and radar bases in Poland and the Czech Republic.

"Senior figures in the Russian military yesterday told the Guardian they were infuriated by what they regard as Nato's "relentless expansion" into "post-Soviet space" - the countries of former communist eastern Europe and the Baltic. Russia felt increasingly "encircled" by hostile neighbours, they said.

"Yesterday Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Washington had failed to explain why it wanted to site missile bases on Russia's doorstep. President Putin has ridiculed the US claim that the bases are designed to shoot down rogue missiles from Iran or North Korea, claiming their real target is Russia's nuclear arsenal.

"'We have been discussing this issue with our American colleagues. But most of our questions have remained without coherent answers,' Mr Lavrov said.

"The chairman of Russia's academy of military science, Mahmoud Garayev, said Russia could no longer afford to ignore the threat from Nato. Drugs and terrorism were an irrelevance, he said."

It's not as though no once could've seen this coming. George H.W. Bush presided over the end of the Cold War. His Frat Boy kid may have just brought Cold War back from the grave.

Putin Blasts America - Huh?

Vlad Putin has rebuked the US for its ''almost uncontained'' use of force in the world, and for encouraging other countries to acquire nuclear weapons. Coming from a guy whose country has been steamrollering the Chechens for more than a decade, it's hard to tell whether that's a criticism or a compliment.

According to The New York Times:

"Putin told a security forum attracting top officials that ''we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations'' and that ''one state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.

'''This is very dangerous, nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law,' Putin told the gathering.

"Putin did not elaborate on specifics and did not mention the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.
But he voiced concern about U.S. plans to build a missile defense system in eastern Europe -- likely in Poland and the Czech Republic -- and the expansion of NATO as possible challenges to Russia.

"On the missile defense system, Putin said: 'I don't want to accuse anyone of being aggressive' but suggested it would seriously change the balance of power and could provoke an unspecified response.

"The annual Munich Conference on Security Policy, now in its 43rd year, is often used as an opportunity for officials to conduct diplomacy in an informal setting.

"The conference this year focuses on ''Global Crises -- Global Responsibilities,'' looking at NATO's changing role, the Middle East peace process, the West's relations with Russia and the fight against terrorism."

Much as it is easy to criticize Putin, his main point is right. Washington's aggressive international posture and its unilateralism is destabilizing global security and triggering reactions in other states, some big, some not so big. Iran isn't the only smaller state pursuing nuclear technology (i.e. weaponry). In fact, Iran is an exception in that the West is intervening before Tehran can build a nuclear weapon. We missed that boat with Pakistan, India and, for all practical purposes, North Korea.

Big and emerging powers such as Russia, China and India are also pursuing major rearmament programmes inevitably focusing on acquiring arsenals of modern, high-tech weaponry. These moves are coupled with a responsive departure from the international control mechanisms. Bush dropped the gloves and now others are taking theirs off. This is very much part of the Bush legacy, one more thing to thank him for, global insecurity.