Financial crisis biggest threat to security: report
LONDON (Reuters) - A global economic downturn caused by the financial crisis is the biggest threat to world security because it will make many hundreds of millions of people poorer and more resentful, a think-tank report said on Thursday.
Job losses and collapsing markets will increase poverty, ill-health and malnutrition in developing countries without effective welfare systems, the Oxford Research Group (ORG) says in its annual security assessment.
This is likely to fuel bitterness and lead to the rise of radical and violent social movements, which will be controlled by the use of force, it says. Early indicators include social unrest in China and India's intensifying Maoist rebellion.
"We are facing the deepest economic crisis for two generations," said author Paul Rogers, ORG consultant and professor at the University of Bradford. "We can either respond as a global community or as a narrow group of rich and powerful countries."
The report says wealthy states have so far concentrated on measures to improve financial cooperation, which have little relevance to poorer countries.
"Instead, the opportunity should be taken to introduce fundamental economic reforms which reverse the wealth-poverty divisions that have got so much worse in the past three decades," Rogers said.
Other major factors making the world less secure are climate change, competition over energy resources and the tendency of powerful elites to maintain security often by military force, the report says.
Avoiding a more divided global system requires a commitment to "emancipation and social justice," including fair trade, debt cancellation, a radical cut in carbon emissions and investment in renewable energy resources, ORG says.
The will to implement these policies could be weakened by tight government finances over the next several years. But if wealthy countries do decide to put more emphasis on helping the world's poor people and tackling climate change, the coming year could be a tipping point toward greater global stability, according to the report.
"The choice we make in the next few months will do much to decide whether the world becomes more or less peaceful over the next ten years," Rogers said.
On Iraq, the report says an increased pace of U.S. troop withdrawals next year under U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and greater regional engagement by Washington could be positive trends.
But the Obama administration may reinforce U.S. military commitments in Afghanistan, which is likely to lead to an intensified war, it says.
(Reporting by Megan Rowling, editing by Richard Williams)
