Contemporary challenges

War today

Lecture 12
Monday March 28, 2011

PEACE ST 2BB3: Introduction to the Study of War

Dr Colin Salter, Centre for Peace Studies, McMaster University

1
 Outline

• Peacekeeping and intervention

• Environmental security
• Environmental refugees

2
 Peacekeeping

• Military success, diplomatic failure

3
4
 Peacekeeping

• Military success, diplomatic failure

• Criteria for success?

5
Why is it so hard for Canadian leaders to forthrightly
champion what used to be our bread and butter —
creative, committed efforts to build a just and lasting
peace through sustained, impartial, inspired diplomatic
engagement.
Peggy Mason (2009)

6
 Article 3

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of

person.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

7
if we can be said to have a right to security, then it
follows that we have a right to certain environmental
goods that are crucial to our security.
John Barry and Kerri Woods (2009)

8
It is increasingly acknowledged that human-induced
climate change represents a far more serious and
enduring threat to national and global security than
terrorism or the possession of weapons of mass
destruction by so-called ‘rogue states’.
Robyn Eckersley (2009)

9
 Environmental refugees

• A result of or source • A source of conflict?

of environmental and
human insecurity? • An opportunity

• What scale of ‘threat’?

10
 Summary

• What way forward for intervention?

• ‘environmental refugees’: a new problem?

11
 Citations & further reading
John Barry and Kerri Woods (2009) ‘The Environment’ in Michael Goodhart (ed)
Human Rights: politics and practice, Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 316-333.

Robyn Eckersley (2009) ‘Environmental security, climate change, and globalizing

terrorism’, in Damian Grenfell and Paul James (eds.), Rethinking Insecurity, War and
Violence: Beyond Savage globalization? pp. 85-97.

Peggy Mason (2009) ‘Back to the “Peace” in Peacebuilding: an old/new role for
Canada’, in Lucia Kowaluk & Steven Staples (eds.) Afghanistan and Canada, Montreal:
Black Rose Books. pp. 304-319.

12
 Image sources
Pablo Picasso (1937) Guernica. Oil on canvas.
Unknown soldier in Iraq. Date unknown. sourced from http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2007/06/09/
some-interior-situational-sources-war-–-part-v/
Carlos Latuff (2003) War 2. Sourced from http://latuff2.deviantart.com/art/War-2-27832944
Crimethinc (undated) War on Terror/Drugs. http://www.crimethinc.com/tools/downloads/

13