About a year ago I had a candid conversation with one of my boyhood friends. Over time our paths have diverged, due to life choices, but we have remained friends. You know my background. His has been one of service to the United States, as a career soldier in the Army.
Along with his service dedication he has a sincere and powerful empathy for the well-being of the troops he commands. His motive is not power, but service and protection. He is highly intelligent, well read and informed, politically astute, and actively seeking — if possible — a non-military solution to our radical Islam crisis. I honestly feel a degree of comfort simply knowing soldiers of his stature are counterbalancing our currently poorly-led political administration.
Our conversation was about Africa.
His prediction is Africa could become the next point of military crisis for the United States. Interestingly, his viewpoint coverges with those of conservation biologist Bill Toone, whom I work with through ECOLIFE FOUNDATION and conservationist-paleoanthroplogist Richard Leakey of Wildlife Direct.
The philosophy of both of these scientists has evolved in parallel, leading them to an identical conclusion, that without first addressing human needs, attempts to save endangered habitats or species will always fail.
We face direct military and social consequences for environmental failure:
1. Oil — Africa is rich with oil reserves that are being plundered by Western nations. At some point, indigenous peoples will rise in armed rebellion against their own political structure as well as Western corporations backing those corrupt regimes. Our military could be called upon to intervene.
2. Strategic Minerals — Africa is also rich with raw materials we import for uses from iPods to nuclear missile guidance systems. The United States has a powerful motive for maintaining this strategic supply line. Our military could be called upon to intervene in event of disruption.
3. China — Wants oil. Wants strategic materials to feed their consumer electronics and military electronics demands. Africa. I predict an escalating bidding war, if not armed conflict between groups vying for resource control. Our military could be called upon to intervene.
4. Environmental Crisis — Rapid depletion of Africa's natural resources directly and negatively impacts species conservation and global climate change. Leads to...
5. Humanitarian Crisis — Destruction of Africa's natural resources threatens human survival on the continent, driving mass migration to Europe. Then from Europe to the United States.
6. AIDS — While holding Africa's human overpopulation crisis somewhat in check, tends to kill adults: teachers, parents, workers. The consequence is Africa's median population age becomes younger and younger, and those children have increasingly less guidance and mentorship. Children are easily recruited toward violent manipulation: child soldiers.
All of these problems pour gasoline on the bonfire of radical Islam:
a. Populations in crisis are more easily recruited by fundamentalist religions.
b. Less educated populations are more easily manipulated by the power structure of fundamentalist religions.
Discontented, alienated, non-integrated, geographically-concentrated young Muslim males are high-risk. These principles apply equally to Kenya, and slums in Paris, London, or Buffalo, New York. I would suggest reading:
Sibling Rivalry
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Thinking about this war (Seth Godin)
Solutions?
Breathtakingly simple. And best addressed through conservation, not force...
First. We — you and I — must understand our demand for unsustainable consumer products is a driving force behind this crisis.
Second. We must restructure our lives, our economy, to become ecologically sustainable then model our knowledge for the world to emulate.
There is an African proverb: "The ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people."
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