With the recent turmoil in North Africa and unrest in the Middle East, we decided to dust off and revisit several previously published articles by friends of Small Wars Journal. The intent is two-fold: 1. To determine if some of these events were predictable given open source research and analysis and 2. To better understand the causal factors leading towards small wars. In the Middle East, some of these factors are self-evident: oppressive regimes, lack of personal and religious freedoms, lack of jobs, and lack of hope in the future; however, scarcity of resources remains an understudied area.
In 2004 two scholars, Jason Morrissette and Douglas Borer, published an article in the US Army War College journal, Parameters. The article entitled, Where Oil and Water Do Mix: Environmental Scarcity and Future Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa, address causes of future conflict in the Middle East, however, it departs from mainstream scholarship by arguing that water (not oil), and water's connection to food supplies, pressures created by increases in population, and the global economy will become a leading cause of war in the future. Morrissette and Borer argue: 1) countries that have sufficient water to grow their own food will be less vulnerable to conflict; 2) countries that do not have sufficient water to grow their own food might avoid resource based conflict if they have sufficient economic capacity to purchase food on the world market; 3) as globalization increases the demand for food, and "free trade" organizations such as the WTO (World Trade Organization) pressure food exporting countries to lower farm subsidies, all countries will see a rise in food prices; 4) Some countries (including Tunisia and Egypt), are highly vulnerable to these structural trends.
Considering that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization announced this week that global food prices have hit a historic high, this essay is worth a read.