Prior Editions: Ed. 1 of August 2004 // Ed. 2 of May 2005 // Ed. 3 of November 2005 // Ed. 4 of June 2006 // Ed. 5 of September 2006 // Ed. 6 of August 2007 //

~ TABLE OF CONTENTS ~

Table (1-A) -Effect of Population Growth Rate on the Probability of Civil Conflict 

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Terrorism at the hands of Muslim fundamentalists has its origins in the superposition of the world's highest population growth rate and some of the world's most degraded environments. Economies in which per-capita GDP has fallen 60% during the past two decades cannot afford the cost of the infrastructure growth (44% of GDP) needed to accommodate these high population growth rates. Wretchedness and hope-deprived environments like these offer fertile grounds for fundamentalist clergy with their own religion- and power-oriented agendas. Huge populations of unemployed young men are easily convinced that terrorist training is the only available proxy for the absence of hope. The history of conflict in the Middle East makes matters worse. The only governments that can survive in such environments are brutal, oppressive ones. Religious fundamentalism poses an ever-increasing threat to all governments of the Muslim world. While the West's rage at the "terrorism" (low-capital-intensity warfare) inflicted upon it is understandable, a strategy of military retaliation in this environment offers no potential for positive outcomes, only zero or negative outcomes. If one examines the history of wars over the past century one finds that wars almost invariably arise out of an environment of extreme duress. Arguments and historical evidence are compiled supporting the contention that strategies with more of a "pre-emptive brother's-keeper" orientation aimed at the roots of the duress are more likely to succeed than high-capital-intensity warfare that is ill suited to urban environments. Aiding the Muslim world's growing interest in family planning would have two effects: (1) It would strike directly at the underlying causes of duress out of which "terrorism" arose and (2) It would create a less antagonistic atmosphere in relations between the Muslim world and the West. While the substantial economic and political benefits of such a strategy could take several decades to become evident, the positive effects on Muslim perceptions of Western policies in the Middle East could become apparent far more quickly.

Chapter (1) - INTRODUCTION
[1-A] - Links Among Population Growth, Capital- and Infrastructure Scarcity and Terrorism
[1-B] -Counter-Productivity of a Military Response to Terrorism
[1-C] -The Muslim World Through the Lens of Environmental Determinism Theory
[1-D] -Possibilities for Democracy in the Middle East
[1-E] -Demographic Aggression Along the Muslim World's Periphery
[1-F] -Educating Muslims in an Environment of Infrastructure Deprivation
[1-G] -The Muslim World in an Era of Globalization

The growth in the severity and number of terrorist attacks, worldwide, in recent years has produced responses long on outrage and short on analysis - by victims and terrorists alike. The bulk of the world's supply of terrorist are Muslims, mainly Islamic fundamentalists, and mainly of Middle Eastern origin. Even as early as 1993, the greatest threat of a major war was seen as stemming from a collision of Western arrogance, Muslim intolerance and Sinic assertiveness (93H1). Note the following:

• The region supplying the bulk of the world's terrorists has the world's highest population growth rate (3.5%/ year).
• That region has a predominantly and increasingly arid (and hence fragile) environment with a history of severe land degradation spanning well over a millennium.
• Muslim countries were involved in 75% of the inter-civilizational wars of the late 20^th century (93H1).

Section [1-A] - The Links Among Population Growth, Capital- and Infrastructure Scarcity, and Terrorism

Economist Lester Thurow (95C1) contends that each 1%/ year in population growth rate requires a capital investment of 12.5% of a nation's GNP (GDP) to expand its infrastructure (educational-, industrial-, commercial-, and transportation- infrastructure, plus housing, land development, utilities, judicial and regulatory systems, etc.). So a population growth rate of 3.5%/ year requires about 44% of GNP in infrastructure expansion costs (developing world class infrastructure in the developing world, developed-world-class infrastructure in the developed world). This is money that few, if any, Muslim nations have. Even Saudi Arabia, with its oil wealth, is running large national deficits and is unable to keep up with the infrastructure needs of its rapidly growing population plus the huge and growing costs of keeping terrorists at bay. This translates into severe shortages of financial capital and a resultant lack of investment in human capital (e.g. education), jobs and hope, among numerous other things necessary for a transition to developed-world status. The U.S. CIA (00C1) concluded that a key driving trend for the Middle East in the next 15 years will be population pressure. They point out that, even now, in nearly all Middle Eastern countries, over half of the population is under age 20. "In much of the Middle East, populations will be significantly larger, poorer, more urban and more disillusioned" (00C1). The CIA report concludes that "linear trend analysis shows little positive change in the region, raising the prospects for increased demographic pressures, social unrest, religious and ideological extremism and terrorism directed both at the regimes and at their Western supporters" (00C1).

Note the huge difference of opinion between the CIA and the President it worked under. The president sees terrorism as a product of "evil" terrorist leaders directing "evil" terrorists, both categories of whom could be eliminated by militarily subduing this "evil." The CIA, on the other hand, sees terrorism as a product of an environment - a product likely to be perpetuated as long as the environmental characteristics of the Middle East continue or worsen. The CIA views (viewed?) terrorism through the lens of environmental determinism theory (See Section (4-A) of Ref. (05S1).). President Reagan renounced environmental determinism around 1980, and this viewpoint has strongly influenced the Republican Party's environmental-, population-, and foreign policies to this day.

James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank during 1996-2005, frequently expressed views similar to those in the CIA study (05G1). He offered apocalyptic views of what would happen if world poverty and the lack of equity and social justice were not urgently addressed, e.g. "Unless we look seriously at the issues of poverty and equity, the chances of stability on our planet are very remote." and "A thousand billion dollars spent annually around the world on military spending (05U1) and around $60 billion on development- and humanitarian aid is a huge imbalance. And we think we are dealing with the issue of peace" (05G1). His suggestion that an environment of ever-increasing poverty and hopelessness breeds terrorism annoyed many, including President George W. Bush who nixed a third 5-year term for Wolfensohn (05G1). This was in spite of the fact that views similar to those of Wolfensohn and the CIA have been expressed by UN General Secretary, Kofi Annan, by Egyptian President, Hosmi Mubarak, and by Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf (See below).

A study by Population Action International (04P1) has made the relationship between population growth rate and the probability of civil conflict fairly quantitative. The results of their study are summarized below. These data appear to be consistent with environmental determinism theory.

Section [1-B] - Counter-productivity of a Military Response to Terrorism

The more the West engages in military reprisals against terrorism the more wretched, hopeless and disillusioned Muslims become. Also the greater the risks are for the already scarce critical resource: capital of all types. The strategy of military reprisals is apparently to force wretched, disillusioned, mostly young folk without hope to whimper less noticeably and submit passively to their plight. But the real result is frequently to increase the number of people willing to train for, and engage in, suicidal attacks and other acts of terrorism. The West does not realize that, in the present Middle Eastern environment, the sole source of hope for many young Muslims is acts of terrorism. Environmental determinism theory would suggest that only strategies that provide alternative sources of hope have any chance of success. Both East and West need to consider the inefficiency and counter-productivity of their respective strategies and search for alternate strategies, ideally strategies that get at the roots of the problem. Former US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky stated at a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) conference (http://csis.org/schollchair/020212.htm) that "history gives us absolutely no confidence that either a politics-only approach to Middle East peace or a military-only approach to terrorism is going to work." General Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan's president) said on a BBC News interview of 12/6/04 that:

• The war on terror has made the world less safe.
• The war on terrorism is not addressing the underlying causes of the conflict.
• The social grievances, political disputes, and social inequities than gave rise to extremism and helped recruit terrorists were not being addressed.
• More effort is needed in fighting illiteracy and poverty, and resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• We are fighting the war on terrorism in its immediate context, but not in its strategic, long-term context.

President Musharraf is apparently another believer in environmental determinism theory.

Section [1-C] - The Muslim World through the Lens of Environmental Determinism Theory
Environmental (material) determinism theory (See Section (4-A) in a companion document (05S1)) predicts what the CIA study (00C1) predicts. As per-capita infrastructure shrinks and as financial capital grows ever scarcer, life becomes more wretched and cheap; the struggle for resources and existence becomes more desperate, vicious and bloody. This produces civil unrest and warfare among tribal, ethnic and religious groupings. This makes the environment less safe for financial capital, making already severe shortages of financial capital and human capital even worse. The losers in these struggles for resources, e.g. women, are reduced to little short of domestic animal status. Minorities are subject to persecution or worse. Governments, facing increasingly angry populaces and increasingly severe shortages of funds, find government increasingly hard to administer. As a result, only brutal dictators, or the equivalent warlords and theocracies, can maintain their hold on power for long (since any other law-enforcement strategy is far too expensive in capital-starved environments). Warlordism in Afghanistan created the environment that set the stage for the Taliban theocracy. That theocracy, in turn, provided an environment where training camps for terrorists could proliferate. One reason why Islamic fundamentalism is rising throughout the Middle East and the Muslim world is the social services, medical care and religious education that hard-line Islamic groups provide as alternatives to failed services of failed states (03I1). In essence, this fundamentalism is growing by filling vacuums caused by high population growth rates and the resultant dire shortages of financial capital. The tragedy is that many Muslims don't realize that these high population growth rates were largely created by the restraints on family planning imposed by the more fundamentalism-oriented Islamic fundamentalist clerics, e.g. no tubal ligation and no vasectomies. Fortunately the percentage of fundamentalist clergy taking hard-line approaches to family planning is dropping. The approval (and use) of modern contraceptives and family planning among Muslim laity is rising (08S1).

Section [1-D] - The Possibilities for Democracy in the Middle East
In environments characterizing the bulk of the Muslim world, only the naïve and gullible could believe that democracy could work. Islamic parties, grouped under the Muslim Brotherhood, are the only force with the organization, capability and ambition to take power if democracy were to become a reality in virtually any nation of the Arab world (03I1). The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in the 1930s, helped to give birth to every Muslim radical movement from Osama bin Laden's al Qaida to the Palestinian's Hamas and Islamic Jihad to Lebanon's Hezbola (03I1). Thus any attempt at democracy would likely lead to one-time elections and triumphs for radical Islamists. It happened in Algeria in 1992, forcing the army there to void the election results and to resume its dictatorial rule. The resultant civil war there claimed more than 100,000 lives (03I1). Turkey, too, has had to use its army to avoid becoming a theocracy. It is becoming increasingly likely that the current attempt at democracy in Iraq will meet a similar fate. The only semblance of a democracy in the Arab world is in Egypt and Mali. But Egypt's democracy has a long way to go to rise to the standards of the developed world (04S1). Even then, Egypt must struggle to keep Islamic extremists at bay. Were it not for massive US aid that is used to subsidize food for Egypt's growing masses, it seems unlikely that democracy could survive for long. (Mali's situation appears to be unique to Mali (04T1).) It is ironic that the US chose to take out one of the few large Middle Eastern nations that was relatively immune from the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Those who contend that Western values will prevail through all of this should note that the a review of 100 comparative studies of values in different societies concluded, "The values that are most important in the West are least important worldwide (89T1)." Environmental determinism theory would predict this. Modern democratic government originated in the West. When it has developed in non-Western societies it has usually been the product of Western colonialism or imposition (93H1).

Section [1-E] - Demographic Aggression along the Muslim World's Periphery
High population growth rates in the Muslim world (with its 1.3 billion Muslims) threaten not only the stability of that world but also peace and stability in adjacent nations. The Muslim world's high population growth rates are giving rise to "demographic aggression," and this is producing conflicts all along the border between the Muslim- and non-Muslim worlds. "Islam has bloody borders (93H1)." Examples include Lebanon, Albania, Bosnia, Sarajevo, Serbia, Armenia, Bulgaria, Russia, Chechnya, Dagestan, the Caucasus, Pakistan, India, Burma, China, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Eritrea/ Ethiopia, Sudan and other northeast African countries, Nigeria, Mauritania, and Algeria. For those who dream of peace in Israel and Palestine, note that Israel's surface waters have been reduced to dirty trickles, and its aquifers are shrinking so badly that seawater is intruding. (3% seawater ruins an aquifer.) The population growth rate in the Palestinian territories is larger than of virtually every other Muslim nation in the Middle East - around 4%/ year. It is inconceivable that the Israelis could raise their water allocations to the Palestinians at anything like this rate. Thus Palestinian wretchedness and hopelessness must continually increase, regardless of any peace settlement, and the frequency of terrorist acts can hardly do anything but reflect that growth in wretchedness and hope deprivation. Gaza has essentially no surface waters, and its aquifers are being subject to draw-down and seawater intrusions that are even more extreme (05U2). It could be said that Israel is not doing anything to the Palestinians that Palestinian Mullahs (with their edicts against family planning) are not also doing.

Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" (93H1) provides a wealth of insights into conflicts along the borders between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds. Huntington predicted in the early 1990s that the "fault lines" between civilizations would be the battle lines of the future. A large majority of modern-day conflicts appear to bear him out. Huntington sees the centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam as unlikely to decline, and suggests that it could become more virulent (93H1). Even France faces the possibility of a Muslim majority. Muslims are streaming into England at every opportunity. Throughout nearly all of Western Europe, social-, economic-, and political instabilities are being generated by small but growing populations of Muslims who either aren't interested in assimilating, or are not being allowed to assimilate - depending on who you listen to. US Muslims now constitute a recognized voting block. The US INS is so under-funded and under-staffed that US borders are all but transparent to terrorists.

Section [1-F] - Educating Muslims in an Environment of Infrastructure Deprivation
Islamic fundamentalist clergy find disillusioned Middle Eastern youth easy prey for the theological- and power-oriented agendas of the clergy. The clergy preempt what little financial capital is available for education and limit education mainly to memorizing the Koran. The US even supports such schools, e.g. a $100 million donation to Pakistan's education system, including its religious schools (madrases). The majority of Pakistan's 10,000 or so madrases are believed to have little vocational value, and many are aligned with holy warriors and sectarian parties (03U1). All this makes the already severe scarcity of economically productive human capital even scarcer, creating further downward cycles of poverty, wretchedness, hope deprivation, civil unrest, conflict etc. Who else would volunteer to become a suicide bomber but someone caught up in a society that sees the present filled with wretchedness and the future devoid of hope? Pakistan is short of educational infrastructure and lacks as many as 60,000 middle schools. The average Pakistani boy completes 5 years of schooling, the average girl 2.5 years (03U1). Pakistan's female literacy rate is 42%.

Section [1-G] - The Muslim World in an Era of Globalization
In the last two decades, the Middle East's share of world trade has fallen from 13.5% in 1980, to less than 3.4% in 2000. GDP among Muslim countries dropped 25% during that time. Since the population about doubled in that 20-year period, per-capita GDP has fallen by over 60%. Being starved for financial capital and human capital in a world full of surplus unskilled labor and undergoing globalization is an especially difficult position to be in. Human capital grows even scarcer; political-, social- and economic instabilities get even worse; education degrades in quality, financial capital grows less safe, and capital-starved production facilities become even less competitive in world markets. The resulting situation is preyed upon by Islamic fundamentalists who promote terrorism as a proxy for religious warfare, sop up scarce financial capital for religious structures and personnel, focus education on memorizing the Koran, limit educational and economic opportunities for women and oppose family planning. All this make financial capital and human capital even scarcer.

Because of the lack of human capital and low quality of education, technological spillovers arising from foreign direct investment are much harder for the Arab world to come by. These spillovers are not yet visible in the Arab world (02E2). The well-known lacks of public institutions, physical infrastructure and human resource development, high business costs of corruption and far less safety for financial capital in the Arab world make it far less attractive to foreign investors. As a result, foreign investors demand far more in other terms (subsidies, freedom to repatriate investments, relaxed local content requirements etc.) Yet lowering the Arab world's high tariffs pose far greater threats to under-capitalized Arab industries. Thus globalization poses greater threats in terms of bankrupting local industries and thereby eliminating the scarce financial capital these represent. Poverty and instability also make privatization processes far less appealing to foreign investors. It has become clear to Arab leaders that all the Arab world has to offer foreign investors is cheap, unskilled labor. This is easy to see from the fact that the bulk of what little foreign direct investment there is in the Arab world is directed predominantly to petroleum-related and other natural resource activities (02E2). This translates into subsistence wages, limited opportunities for human capital formation, and little by way of technological spillover. This tells Arab leaders that globalization provides little in terms of prospects for eventually creating strong internal economies independent of export-related activities. This perspective keeps foreign direct investment out of the Arab world, compounding the negative effects of the severe financial capital scarcity of the region. All this more sharply defines the divide between the West and the Middle East.

Go to Table of Contents ~
Go to the top of Chapter (1) -Introduction
Go to the top of Section [1-G] - " The Muslim World in an Era of Globalization"
Go to the top of Section [1-F] - " Educating Muslims in an Environment of Infrastructure Deprivation"
Go to the top of Section [1-E] - " Demographic Aggression along the Muslim World's Periphery"
Go to the top of Section [1-D] - " Possibilities for Democracy in the Middle East"
Go to the top of Section [1-C] - " The Muslim World through the Lens of Environmental Determinism Theory"
Go to the top of Section [1-B] - " Counter-productivity of a Military Response to Terrorism"

Chapter (2) - STRATEGIC ERRORS
The Military Option: In environments such as those described above, the futility of responding to terrorism by military-based crackdowns should be apparent. Such responses only enhance the levels of wretchedness and hope deprivation, increase the supply and dedication of terrorists, and build upon the already negative feelings those in the Muslim world have for the West in general and the US in particular. Particularly absurd is the choice of Iraq for military attack. Probably no other major nation in the Middle East had a lower risk of being taken over by Islamic fundamentalists and their terroristic inclinations. This was widely recognized by the West in the early 1990s when an invasion of Iraq was cut short to enable Iraq to defend itself from neighbor Iran, ruled by Islamic fundamentalists. Even before that, the West supplied Iraq with arms in its war with fundamentalist Iran. Since that time, Islamic fundamentalism has only gotten stronger. Today it poses a significant threat to virtually every nation in the Middle East and North Africa that Islamic fundamentalists do not already control. Even today, the risks of Iraq becoming a theocracy run by Islamic fundamentalists, if not by Iran's fundamentalist government, are hard to ignore.

Choosing Outcomes: Virtually no basis exists for the usually stated "Exit Strategy" of creating a democracy in Iraq and possibly even in the Middle East. Call this the "Positive" Outcome. As the analysis above makes clear, the chances of a democracy developing in the region are near zero. The invasion of Iraq has only reduced those chances. There appear to be only two possible outcomes of the present conflict in Iraq after the US leaves:

1. A violent internal struggle resulting in a takeover by a dictator about as brutal as the previous one. Call this the "Zero" Outcome.
2. A violent or non-violent struggle resulting in a takeover by Islamic fundamentalists who may very well invest oil revenues in terrorist training camps and/or in financing takeovers of Middle East nations not yet under the control of Islamic fundamentalists, e.g. Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Call this the "Negative" Outcome.

The political strategy in the US now appears to be to delay the growing public realization that the "Zero" or "Negative" Outcomes are the only options. One problem with this strategy is the growing public realization that a "Positive" Outcome is inconceivable. Prolonging a bloody and expensive conflict for primarily political ends thus becomes increasingly difficult from a political standpoint.

Urban Warfare: Current difficulties with maintaining security in Iraq are easy to understand. A RAND study of the effects of demographic factors on national security (00N1) provides ample evidence of the strong effect of demographic changes on military security and conflicts. Demographic changes (mainly urbanization) are changing the nature of armed conflict globally. Conflicts are increasingly likely to be in urban settings where the US military's technological advantages in long-range precision fires and information processing are largely nullified by restrictions on movement, short lines of sight, the presence of civilians, and the inability to distinguish friend from foe. The devastating effects of the battle of Grozny on Russia provide a chilling picture of what developed nations will face increasingly often (00N1). One strategy for postponing the realization that a "Zero"- or "Negative" Outcome (defined above) are the only possible end-results of the US invasion/ occupation of Iraq is to contend that an Iraqi "police force" is being trained and armed to maintain order and stability after the US departs. Saddam Hussein maintained order and stability only by a reign of terror. It is hard to believe that the US-trained police force could ever accomplish this same mission without this same strategy (the "Zero" Outcome). The US, with its 100,000+ troops and massive, expensive, technologically sophisticated weaponry, is unable to maintain order and stability for reasons the RAND study (00N1) made clear - US weaponry is virtually worthless in urban environments, US armed personnel are instantly recognizable, while their opponents are virtually invisible. All this points to a "Negative" Outcome to the Iraqi conflict once US troops depart. Why a "Zero" Outcome (the best possible option) might become more likely by prolonging the US occupation is far from clear.

Lessons from Afghanistan: The de facto return of Afghanistan to the warlords is also making the possibility of a "Positive" Outcome there increasingly remote. Public realization of this is also growing. Recall that it was a warlord-dominated environment that set up Afghanistan for a takeover by Taliban fundamentalists with inclinations toward terrorism. An article in New Internationalist Magazine ("Afghanistan: Rule of the Rapists, 2/12/04), summarized here, makes the Afghanistan failure clear. In Afghanistan the transitional administration, led by President Hamid Karzai, has proved unable to protect women. (From 1992 to 2001 Afghan women were treated as cattle by (Taliban) fundamentalists.) The risk of rape and sexual violence is still high. Forced marriage of girl children and violence against women are widespread. Girls and women in some cities go to school and have jobs but this is not the case in most parts of Afghanistan. In the province of Herat, the warlord imposes Taliban-like decrees. Many women have no access to education, are banned from working in foreign offices, and hardly any women work in government offices. Women cannot take a taxi or walk unless accompanied by a close male relative. If seen with men who are not close relatives, women can be arrested and forced to undergo an examination to see if they have recently had sexual intercourse. Even in Kabul, women do not feel safe and continue to wear the burka. In some areas parents are afraid to allow their daughters to get educated following the burning down of several dozen girls' schools. Sexual assaults on children of both sexes are commonplace. Women cannot find jobs, and girls' schools lack basic materials. There is no legal protection for women. There are complaints that money given to the women's ministry has been taken by warlords in the Karzai cabinet. Bringing the warlords back to power has replaced one fundamentalist regime with another. The US supports the Northern Alliance, which was responsible for killing more than 50,000 civilians during its rule. Those in power today were those who imposed anti-women restrictions and started a reign of terror throughout Afghanistan. Neither opium cultivation nor Warlordism and terrorism have been uprooted. President Karzai is the nominal head of a regime in which former Northern Alliance commanders hold the real power. In such a climate, elections will give legitimacy to the Northern Alliance and its bloody rule. A CIA study covering more than 50 years reported that the Number One predictor of a country's instability was its infant mortality rate. Afghanistan's infant mortality rate is 154/ 1000 births, nearly three times higher than the worldwide rate of 56/1000 (DallasNews.com (11/04/01)).

Defense Strategy: One possible reason for the military response to terrorism is the unstated realization that a purely defensive strategy for combating terrorism is unworkable in the long term, and hopelessly expensive. Imagine defending

• Every mile of railroad track and every train,
• Every large building - even every foreign embassy and every hospital,
• Every airport and every large aircraft,
• Every mile of subway and every subway train,
• Every building in every school and university,
• Every sports stadium and sporting event,
• Every mile of road and every truck and bus,
• Every oil tanker and every liquefied natural gas ship (effectively floating atomic bombs),
• Every mile of power transmission line,
• Every oil refinery, every natural gas transmission facility and every mile of natural gas line,
• Every chemical plant producing or using hazardous chemicals,
• Every nuclear power plant, every coal-fired power plant and every essential cooling tower,
• Every water supply system and countless other systems

This is physically impossible on a round-the-clock and perpetual basis. Even controlling the entry of terrorists into the US is impossible. Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants enter the US every year without detection. This is not to say there is no point in trying a defensive strategy against terrorism - only that even a mediocre "batting average" with such a strategy is impossible. It would appear then that both anti-terrorist strategies - a military offense and a domestic defense - are either counterproductive or border on the unworkable, at least in the long term.

A Four-Step Approach to Terrorism: What should have been done was to settle on the root causes of terrorism early on, and to take steps to nip these root-causes in the bud. Since this was not done, all that seems possible now is to belatedly:

• Come to an understanding of root causes.
• Suggest steps to eliminate these root causes.
• Strengthen defenses aimed at minimizing what will probably be major future losses to terrorism.
• Critique the processes, misconceptions and philosophies that resulted in serious delays in the analyses and actions related to root causes.

Losses while root causes are eliminated will just have to be chalked up to a failure to keep ahead of the game in terms of root causes. Hopefully these will inspire badly needed critiques. Below, the first, second and fourth of the above four steps are elaborated upon. The third step is well under way and receiving broad public attention. It is the remaining steps that have been essentially ignored by nearly everyone, including the media, political parties and national leadership.

Go to Table of Contents ~
Go to the top of Chapter (2) - Strategic Errors

The Links: The analysis the root causes of terrorism was laid out generally in the introduction of this document. The analysis can be summarized as follows (starting from the basics and working upward to terrorism).

• A badly degraded system of natural capital - croplands, irrigation systems, grazing lands and forests - a result of centuries of deforestation, overgrazing, irrigation system salination and abuses of low grade soils typical of arid- and tropical climates - all largely population-motivated.
• A fundamentalist theology that promotes high population growth rates, although this situation is improving.
• Population growth rates so large that a large fraction of financial capital creation is consumed in providing, inadequately, for the growth of basic infrastructure necessary to accommodate population growth.
• The financial drain on governments of the Middle East caused by the need to finance the public facilities component of infrastructure-growth required by high rates of population growth.
• The inability of governments of the Middle East to afford the cost of basic government services - largely due to the financial drain mentioned above.
• The inability of governments of the Middle East to afford the costs of providing social, economic, political, judicial and military stability without resorting to oppressive and terroristic measures - largely due to the financial drain mentioned above.
• The drain on the financial assets of governments of the Middle East resulting from armed conflict that result from the financial inability to maintain the stabilities mentioned above.
• The inability of the business world of the Middle East to fund the expansion required by population growth. This problem is exacerbated by the above-mentioned instabilities producing environments unsafe for financial capital, thereby raising the cost of capital.
• The financial drain on families of the Middle East caused by the need to finance the high rates of growth of family size.
• A shortage of economically useful human capital (education), and the resultant inability to advance technologically and be competitive in the global economy. This is largely due to the above-mentioned financial drains on governments, business and families.
• Limited financial resources for economically useful public education (human capital creation) being diverted to theological ends, e.g. memorizing the Koran.
• General feelings of wretchedness and hope deprivation that are caused by the above-mentioned capital-related problems, but that are being magnified by (a) comparisons of the Muslim world with the West, (b) the West's predominantly military response to terrorism and (c) the West apparently enriching itself by controlling the natural resources of the Middle East.
• Fundamentalist clergy translating the general feelings of wretchedness and hope deprivation into rage against the West as a means of furthering their theology-, power- and wealth-related agendas.

Making Muslims Richer: It seems clear that the effects of reducing population growth rates in the Muslim world (the world's highest such rates) could work their way down the above list of causes/ effects and impact the supply and motivation of terrorists. "Population momentum" effects might require a generation or more for this. But this is not necessarily so. Once there is broad recognition that things are headed in the right direction, hopes for the future grow. Also, the fact that the West would be playing a "brother's keeper" role in trying to make Muslims richer and renouncing the strategy of taking revenge militarily could change attitudes toward the West fairly quickly. In Iran, where a crash program in population-growth-rate reduction was instituted over a decade ago, the increased quality of life gave Iranian lifestyles a decidedly Western character. It also produced a public opinion with a decidedly pro-Western-anti-fundamentalist-clergy outlook. Today Iran's fundamentalist clergy are forced to rule Iran at gunpoint - a precarious hold on power. Population momentum effects have only begun to die out in Iran, but the desired end effects are already visible. All that is required of the West is that it aid the Muslim world in following in Iran's footsteps. Once the average Muslim realizes that the Muslim world's wretchedness, feelings of hope-deprivation, military feebleness etc. are direct consequences of the extreme financial capital deprivation caused by the dictates of fundamentalist clergy against modern contraception, family planning, tubal ligation, vasectomies, etc. the politics of the region could change dramatically over a far shorter time-frame.

Carrying Capacity Issues Could be Overcome: It is also clear that the badly degraded croplands, irrigation systems, grazing lands, forests, surface waters and ground waters of the Arab world cannot support the present populations of these lands. Reviews (07S4), (07S5), (07S6), (07S7) of the global literature, some 900 pages in total hardcopy length, on the degradation of the world's croplands, irrigation systems, grazing lands and forests, plus an analysis of the sustainability of the world's outputs of food, wood and freshwater (08S2), provide ample data on this point. However it is probably not necessary to bring the population of the Muslim world and the carrying capacity of Muslim lands into balance before the rate of creation of terrorists can be significantly reduced. The carrying capacity of the land in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong also cannot support the current populations. But active family planning programs beginning in the 1960s enabled these nations to develop the financial capital and human capital sufficient to create dynamic, technically advanced industries that enabled them to sell manufactured goods on the world market in return for food and fiber and thereby change from developing nations to, or nearly to, developed nations in terms of wages, etc. The Muslim world could, with very little help, follow in the footsteps of these five nations. (See Section (4-C) and Ref. (08S1)) As population growth rates fall, personal wealth and well-being increase. This decreases the cost of containing instabilities, allowing more oil revenues to be spent on human capital development and industrial development. This oil advantage could produce a climate unsuitable for terrorist development far faster than from a purely family-planning approach in the Middle East.

Alternative Understandings of the Root Causes of Terrorism: No one should stoop to simplistic "good vs. evil" explanations of terrorism. Nor should anyone attribute terrorism to "bad leadership" in the nations from which terrorists seem to originate. Thus issue was examined in great detail in this paper's companion document (05S1). There it was shown that "bad leadership" is an effect of the wretchedness that is borne of the financial capital starvation that is caused by population growth. (The common misconception is that "bad leadership" is the cause of this wretchedness.) However other cause-effect analyses do need to be taken seriously. Perhaps the most comprehensive examination of these analyses was done by Milanovic (05M2).

Milanovic examined the various theories as to why the poorest countries are failing to catch up, economically, with the rest of the world -which is what some current theories of the effects of globalization say should be happening. In fact, the poorest countries have been falling further behind the middle-income and rich countries. The median per-capita growth of the poorest countries during the past 20 years has been zero. Milanovic examined the following popular possible explanations of this:

• Slower reforms in poor countries than in middle-income countries;
• Slower foreign investment flows from multilateral lenders to poor countries than to other countries;
• Less democratization and educational attainment in poor countries than in other countries;
• Greater likelihood of poor countries being involved in wars and civil conflicts than other countries.

The first three of these explanations were shown to offer no statistically significant explanation for why the poorest countries have been failing to catch up with the rest of the world during 1980-2002. The main reason for this failure was found to be the fourth explanation - involvement in wars and civil conflicts (05M2).

What Milanovic failed to do was to consider population growth rates as a fifth possible explanation for the failure of the poorest countries to catch up with the rest of the world economically. Nor did he examine what possible effect population growth rates may have played in the greater likelihood of poor countries being involved in wars and civil conflicts. Had he done this, he would have noted that the region of the world with the highest population growth rate (the Muslim world) was the scene of the overwhelming bulk of the world's wars and internal conflicts. He would also have noted that the region of the world with the second highest population growth rate (Africa) was the scene of the bulk of the remaining wars and internal conflicts. His conclusion would then have almost certainly have been that wars and civil conflicts are the main reason why the poorest countries are falling further and further behind the rest of the world (as he did conclude) but also that population growth was the primary cause of these wars and civil conflicts (which he did not do because he failed to consider that possibility). Milanovic's conclusion about wars and internal conflicts is virtually useless in terms of devising strategies for addressing the problem. On the other hand, a conclusion as to the effects of population growth rate could have led to a number of inexpensive and effective strategies for solving the economic problems of the world's poorest countries.

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Chapter (4) - ELIMINATING ROOT CAUSES OF TERRORISM
[4-A] - Changing Views in the Muslim World toward Family Planning,
[4-B] - Contrasting the Views of the New World and the Old,
[4-C] - A "Pre-emptive Brother's Keeper" Strategy,

The contents of this Section [4-A] are now contained in a separate document (08S1) with the same title as above. 
To go to that document click here.

The New World View: The evidence given in Ref. (08S1) suggests that the old Islamic clerical view that contraception is immoral is now in a state of rapid decline within the Muslim laity, and even among Islamic clergy. Islamic clergy (at least in Iran) once considered population growth to be good, i.e. essential for building the "Armies of Islam". But it is becoming clear that the amount of cannon fodder a nation can field is less important to military prowess than the amount of financial capital available for investing in sophisticated military technology, so population growth (and its resultant need for infrastructure capital) is more likely to weaken a nation militarily than to strengthen it. The reversal of ideologies seems to be spreading slowly among Islamic clerics. Perhaps they realize that the laity could conclude that the wretchedness, social-, economic-, political-, and military instability (and military weakness) they have endured for centuries are consequences of the personal wealth- and power-related agendas of the clergy instead of being solely the fault of the West. Were that to happen, the politics of the Middle East could undergo major changes, and fundamentalist mullahs (which tend to be active recruiters of terrorists) could be in trouble.

Christian clergy once held the same negative views on contraception and family planning as many fundamentalist Islamic clerics hold now. However those views died out among the Protestant clergy over four decades ago (at least in the U.S.). Catholic laity now have views and practices on contraception and family planning that are almost identical to those of Protestants. However it may take a few new popes before the Catholic clergy come to the same view (86M1). The reason why the ideology reversal occurred sooner among Christians is probably because Christianity occupied the world's newer, more temperate, and hence less degraded and more fertile lands. Thus the Christian laity was wealthier. As a result, the clergy had less power over them, forcing the clergy to fall in line with the views of the laity sooner.

The devastating effects of population growth on living standards, financial capital creation, human capital creation, and natural capital are becoming broadly recognized worldwide. At the first world population conference in 1974, African nations saw international family planning as a sinister plot by the West to keep Africa weak. Over the next two decades, African nations did a complete about-face and now actively support international family planning programs. The Far East and Europe have been active supporters and practitioners of family planning since the mid-20^th century. The tide is turning. In the last hundred years, no nation on Earth has moved from the poor- and less developed status to prosperous and developed nation status until it reduced its total fertility rate to 2.3 (97P1).

The Old World View: Perhaps the last holdouts unable to recognize the negative aspects of population growth are the Vatican and the Republican Party leadership in the US. President Reagan renounced environmental determinism theory in the early 1980s. As a result, President Reagan stated, at the 1984 Second UN International Conference on Population in Mexico City, that population growth is a "neutral" phenomenon (01N1). To the extent that population growth could be considered a problem, "market forces" would solve that problem. These same views and resulting policies have persisted within much of the Republican Party to this day. All Republican presidents since Reagan have stated this same view, and their population-, environmental-, and foreign policies have reflected this. All this raises an interesting question. Could resistance to expanded support for family planning in the Middle East come more from Washington than from the Middle East itself? Arguments disputing the Republican ideology are given in a companion document (05S1).

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Section [4-C] - A "Pre-emptive Brother's Keeper" Strategy

Supporting family planning in the Middle East could be the most effective strategy for reducing or eliminating terrorism. It gets directly at the roots of terrorism and allows for the accumulation of financial capital and human capital, both of which are essential if the Muslim nations of the Middle East are to achieve developed world status. Military measures only make matters worse in terms of increasing wretchedness, hope deprivation, risks to capital, and increasing levels of social-, economic-, political- and military instability. Recent experiences in Iraq and Palestine show this clearly. Also family planning is much cheaper than military action, and it's getting cheaper as technology advances, e.g. quinacrine sterilization that is expected to reduce the cost of female sterilization (the world's most popular form of contraception) by 90% (06I1) (07S2). Also it holds the potential for greatly improving relations between the Middle East and the West - and doing so quickly. An analysis of the financial benefits to both the Middle East and the Western world is available in a companion document (Section [5-A] of Ref. (05S1)). That analysis shows that investing in family planning would be a profit-making venture, not an expense, for both East and West.

Family planning reduces the huge costs of creating the infrastructure needed to accommodate population growth. This, in turn, reduces the huge shortages of financial capital and human capital that currently prevents the Middle East and the rest of the developing world from achieving developed world status. These capital shortages are what ultimately cause the wretchedness and hope deprivation that creates a willingness to engage in terrorism. In addition, improved relations between the Middle East and West could produce major added benefits for both. Serving a "pre-emptive brother's keeper" role in making Muslims prosperous cannot help but enhance the image of the West in the Middle East, besides expanding markets for Western goods and services. Also "image" effects work rapidly, while clearly identifiable economic benefits would take over a decade. Improved East-West relations would also make the Middle East safer for financial capital, resulting in additional financial benefits for both East and West. Perhaps most important of all, at least in the long run, would be the slowing or reversing the degradation of the natural capital of the Middle East, i. e. its croplands, forests, grazing lands, irrigation systems and fisheries.

Some may be quick to point out that causing the Middle East (or any other part of the developing world for that matter) to prosper increases demands for energy and other natural resources, with obvious effects on prices. However this eventuality is bound to happen anyway, since nearly the entire developing world now has falling fertility rates (07S2) and understands the link between capital scarcity and population growth. By assisting developing world governments and NGOs in their family planning programs, the developed world increases the rate at which total fertility rates decline. This reduces the eventual population levels at which populations stabilize, and this reduces the rate of natural capital degradation and depletion. This is the only real solution to the problem - bite the bullet and proceed quickly to not only slow population growth but also to reduce steady-state human populations. This is something that now lies within the realm of the possible now that the cost of averting births has dropped to such low values (05S1) (07S3).

Others may point out that helping the Muslim World to prosper also helps it to increase its military might, given that the capital-intensiveness of military power has grown far greater than its labor-intensiveness. But making Muslim nation economies more capital-intensive causes them to see greater risks in engaging in warfare. As nations grow richer there appears to be a natural tendency to become less warlike. All the nations that have graduated from developing world status to developed-world status during the past century are now militarily benign. Wars tend to be fought over resources (common sources of the problems that create states of extreme duress that provide the environments from which wars are precipitated. The richer a nation (i.e. the more capital-intensive its economy is) the less desperate it is for resources (since it can more easily afford to simply buy them on the open market) and the greater the risks to its huge capital infrastructure associated with going to war.

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Chapter (5) - A CRITIQUE OF THE "BROTHER'S KEEPER" STRATEGY
[5-A] -The Political Environment,
[5-B] -Faulty Views and Ideologies,
- - - - [B1] Cornucopian Ideology,
- - - - [B2] The "Bad Leader/Bad Government" Ideology,
- - - - [B3] Misapplication of Adam Smith Economics to the Real World,
- - - - [B4] Environmental Determinism Theory
[5-C] -The "Brother's Keeper" Strategy in Perspective,
- - - - [C1] Testing "Pre-emptive Brother's Keeper,"
- - - - [C2] Incompetent Brothers' Keepers,
- - - - [C3] Worse than Incompetent? ,
- - - - [C4] "Informalization" of the Developing World's Work Force,
- - - - [C5] Religion and "Pre-emptive Brothers' Keepers" - The Changing Landscape,
[5-D] -Where a "Pre-emptive Brother's Keeper Strategy" Might have Produced Better Outcomes,
- - - - [D1] The Developing World Generally,
- - - - [D2] The Gaza Strip,
- - - - [D3] Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Rwanda,
- - - - [D4] Communist Insurgencies,
- - - - [D5] Class Warfare in Latin America,
- - - - [D6] Russia,
- - - - [D7] The First Half of the 20^th Century,
- - - - [D8] China's Demographic Aggression,
- - - - [D9] Poor U.S. Women,
- - - - [D10] Nepal,
- - - - [D11] Peace-Keeping and Emergency Aid,
- - - - [D12] The Middle East,
- - - - [D13]~ The Rural-to-Urban Migration and the Informal Economy in Developing Nations
[5-E] -The "Pre-emptive Brother's Keeper" Strategy's Potential

Section [5-A] - The Political Environment
Acts of terrorism perpetrated by Islamic extremists seem unlikely to diminish over time under the current US strategy (as pointed out by numerous friends of the US noted above). Mistakes in responding to terrorism could wind up putting fundamentalist mullahs and Islamic extremists in control of the entire Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere, creating problems for the West that are far more difficult and serious than those the West faces today. So US responses to terrorism ought to be critiqued to determine if future responses could be made more effective and less error-prone. Previous sections of this document have pointed out some of these mistakes and have pointed to a better strategy. Sections below elaborate on the strategy. However, any national strategy for responding to terrorism must pass through the political process, so any critique must examine this process to identify political constraints on strategies for dealing with terrorism.

Fruitless and counter-productive strategies of recent years should perhaps have been expected, given the knee-jerk rage, devoid of logic, analysis and coherence that consumed the national psyche early on. It is so easy to blame the present Executive branch and its advisors and leaders within the president's party in the Legislative branch. But the mood of the times demanded military action. Anything else would have been seen as weak and indecisive. But at least some evidence of logic, analysis, and a coherent strategy should be in evidence by now, over six years after 9/11/01. Aside from deck-chair rearrangement (e.g. a "Homeland Security" agency), reports of information-flow problems within national security agencies (which have been known and on-going for decades), and pious but absurd hopes of establishing democracy in Iraq and the Middle East (where a suitable environment for democracy is a long way from becoming a reality) no significant departures from strategies born of knee-jerk rage are yet in evidence.

The time delay problem appears to be a result of the fact that the US is trapped in a de facto war that has no exit strategy that would not reveal the pointlessness and counter-productivity of continuing the war after no evidence of weapons of mass destruction could be found. The real political errors were made years earlier however. Anti-US sentiments have been growing in the Middle East for decades. The 60% drop in per-capita GDP during 1980-2000 in a region of rapid population growth and badly degraded natural capital should have set off alarm bells somewhere. That did not happen, except for some CIA and RAND reports (00C1) (00N1) that ran afoul of Republican ideology. US humanitarian- and development foreign aid has been largely focused on trying to accommodate population growth rather than to reduce it. The fruitlessness of this approach (throwing $60 billion/ year at a $1200 billion/ year problem) has led to the tragic conclusion that such foreign aid should be reduced rather than being better-focused. The process of reducing foreign aid has been ongoing since about the mid-1990s.

In recent decades the ills of the developing world have been increasingly attributed to "bad leaders" or "bad government." This view has justified reduced foreign aid, reduced aid for international family planning, and applying more military-oriented responses to those developing world problems that appear to threaten the national interests. Iraq is but one of a number of possible examples. Sections [4-A], [4-B] and [5-B] of a companion document (05S1) argue the case against the "bad-leader-bad-government" hypotheses in considerable detail. This argument is also briefly summarized below. All responses to the bad-leader-bad-government theory have turned out to be counter-productive. The situation was made even worse by the Reagan administration's cornucopian theories and arguments that population-related problems, if any, could be handled via free-market mechanisms. These theories have persisted within the Republican Party to this day, and have never been challenged directly by the Democratic Party. These elements of the public mindset and the resulting political environment have produced a nation incapable of any sound understanding of the problems of the developing world, and this has produced increasingly isolationist attitudes. All this should be seen as at least an unindicted co-conspirator in the events of 9/11/01.

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Section [5-B] - Faulty Views and Ideologies
[5B1] Cornucopian Ideology,
[5B2] The "Bad Leader/Bad Government" Ideology,
[5B3] Misapplication of Adam Smith Economics to the Real World,
[5B4] Environmental Determinism Theory
Here we examine the faulty views and ideologies of the Reagan administration and subsequent Republican presidents that lie at the heart of the errors in responding to terrorism. In a companion document (05S1), Sections [4-A], [4-B] and [5-B] examine these views and ideologies in greater detail. Below is a summary.

Part [5B1] - Cornucopian Ideology: In the early 1980s the Reagan administration argued that the scale of natural systems is vastly greater than the scale of human activity. This renunciation of environmental determinism theory implies that human activity cannot significantly degrade natural systems and thus that concerns over over-population are baseless. This Cornucopian viewpoint provided the basis of Republican Party foreign policies, environmental policies, and population policies to this day. This view is also is a necessary prop for the post-Carter Republican view that population is a "neutral" issue, and that any problems related to population could (would) be solved with market forces. The view also requires a second theory that attributes the problems of the developing world to "bad leadership." Such an theory would argue that merely removing Saddam Hussein would delight Iraqis, cause the US military to be welcomed in Iraq with open arms, and cause democracy to bloom forth with little guidance from the West. The Cornucopian ideology is also needed to refute any connection between high population growth rates in the environmentally degraded Arab world and the willingness of Muslims to volunteer for suicidal terrorist attacks. This produces the view, frequently stated or implied by all post-Carter Republican presidents, that terrorism is simply an "evil" without rational or physical basis.

A massive body of scientific and technical literature refutes Cornucopian ideology. The key facts, figures and summaries of arguments and analyses contained in a small portion of this scientific and technical literature are briefly summarized in five reviews of the global literature on the degradation of croplands (07S4), forestlands (07S7) (07S7), grazing lands (07S6), irrigated lands (07S5) and fisheries (07S8) totaling about 900 pages in hardcopy units. In addition, an analysis of the sustainability of the world's outputs of food, wood and freshwater has also been done (08S2). Also, a recent type of analysis computes the ecological "footprint" of Man - the average amount of productive land and shallow sea appropriated by each person for food, water, housing, energy, transportation, commerce and waste absorption. The current world population, living at the current standard of living, has a total footprint of about the Earth's total area of productive land and shallow sea (02W1) - not a very small fraction of this area as the Cornucopian ideology suggests (07S9). Another type of analysis computes what fraction of terrestrial Net Primary Production (NPP) (the known rate of photosynthesis on Earth) is consumed directly or co-opted because of human activity (86V1). After correcting for some errors (07S9), this analysis computes that about 90% of terrestrial NPP is consumed directly or co-opted by human activity - not a small fraction of NPP as the Cornucopian ideology contends.

Part [5B2] - The "Bad Leader/ Bad Government" Ideology: Post-Carter Republican presidents had to explain the problems of the developing world as simply a matter of bad leadership and/or bad government. This enables them to refute arguments that over-population and/or population growth may explain the problems of the developing world. (See Section [4-A] of a companion document (05S1)) This is one of the arguments that enable them to oppose, or reduce, US support for international family planning. The ideology also enables them to blame Iraq's ills on Saddam Hussein instead of problems with population growth and natural capital degradation. This makes democracy sound like a real possibility for Iraq, making it easier to justify invading Iraq. The CIA obviously attaches far greater importance to population issues as the cause of the problems of the Middle East (00C1), but the second Bush administration apparently ignored this warning, like it ignored the CIA's warning that the US would not be welcomed in Iraq with open arms. The ills of the developing world have also been attributed to over-population and population growth by such entities as the World Bank, the RAND Corporation (98B3), (00A1), (00N1), (00U1), the National Security Agency, numerous government agencies of developed and developing nations, about 70% of the American people (See Appendix B of a companion document (05S1)), an even larger fraction of the rest of the developed world, and probably a larger fraction of non-governmental organizations globally.

Attributing the ills of the developing world to bad leadership or bad government is confusing cause and effect. It is the ills of the developing world that make government increasingly difficult to both administer and finance and hence "bad". Arguments for this are given in much greater detail in a companion document (05S1) in Sections [4-A] and [4-B]. Among the numerous arguments there:

• The bad government theory would suggest that the ills of the developing world ought to show no particular time dependence, whereas these ills are increasing over time - just as one might expect in a world of population-driven degradation of key life support systems. A bad-government theory would show no such dependence.
• The bad government theory would suggest that bad governments ought to be relatively randomly located about the Earth. In fact, the nations of the developing world are almost invariably found in tropical climates where soils are poor and population growth rates high. Otherwise they are found in regions occupied by ancient civilizations where environments have been badly degraded by centuries of population-driven abuse - e.g. most of the Middle East. These patterns are easily explained by attributing the ills of the developing world to over-population, high population growth rates and their effects.
• The Muslim world, with the world's highest population growth rates and some of the world's most degraded lands, has the bulk of the world's turmoil and conflict along its periphery as Muslims are pushed into acts of "demographic aggression" by physical and environmental realities. Africa, with the world's second-highest population growth rate and among the world's worst soils, is the location of the bulk of the world's civil wars. A "bad government" theory of the developing world's ills can explain none of this. Attributing the developing world's ills to population-related causes provides a sound basis for explaining all of this.

Part [5B3] - Misapplication of Adam Smith Economics to the Real World: President Reagan stated, at the 1984 Second UN International Conference on Population in Mexico City, that population growth is a "neutral" phenomenon (01N1). "To the extent that population growth could be considered a problem, "market forces" would solve that problem." These same views and resulting policies have persisted within much of the Republican Party to this day. Relying on free-market economics in general has been a fundamental principal of the Republican Party for decades. The problem is that this idealization is only applicable to a market in which all "externalities" have been "internalized", i.e. all government- and public subsidies have been eliminated and willing buyers and willing sellers negotiate at arms-length. Only then does a free market have any potential for maximizing economic efficiency. The problem is that the real world economy and environment is full of subsidies - government and public. In such situations, blindly applying free market economics leads to absurd results. In many cases free market approaches would not even pass muster within the Republican Party. In international family planning and other population-related issues, conditions for a free market are rarely encountered. Declaring that, if any of the Middle East's problems are population-related, they can be solved with a free market approach is a grotesque absurdity. More details on the free market issue and examples of non-internalized externalities are given in Section [4-B] of a companion document (05S1).

Part [5B4] - Environmental Determinism Theory: The linkage (See Section [C-3] ) between population-related problems in the Middle East and an environment conducive to creating terrorists is one application of environmental determinism theory. The theory is described in Section [4-A] of a companion document (05S1). Anthropologists (77H1) find that material determinism theory offers explanations for a large range of evolutionary changes in human culture - the structures, traditions, and policies of family-, social-, economic-, religious-, and political units. This theory says that evolutionary changes in human cultures reflect, primarily, adaptations to changing forms and degrees of environmental stress. While few people are familiar with the theory, indirect evidence indicates that something on the order of 70% of Americans would find agreement with the theory (See Appendix B of a companion document (05S1)) and probably a far larger fraction of those outside the US would agree with it. The Cornucopian belief that natural systems are vastly larger than human systems would suggest that environmental determinism theory is applicable to nothing and explains nothing. The long-term Republican belief in the "bad government" theory of the developing world's ills has obviously met dead-ends in Afghanistan and Iraq if not also Palestine, as well it should, being wrong. The current administration's simplistic explanation of terrorist acts as "evil" has gut-level appeal. Also it gets around having to delve into environmental determinism theory (or anything else) to understand the origins and root causes of terrorism in order to develop effective strategies for responding to it. The public reaction to the events of 9/11/01 was one of rage, so war was the obvious choice of responses. This may have been good politics but it is unlikely to set the stage for getting at the heart of the problem and developing effective strategies for reducing terrorism.

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Section [5-C] - The "Brother's Keeper" Strategy in Perspective
[5C1] Testing "Brother's Keeper,"
[5C2] Incompetent Brothers' Keepers,
[5C3] Worse than Incompetent? ,
[5C4] "Informalization" of the Developing World's Work Force,
[5C5] Religion and "Brothers' Keepers" - The Changing Landscape

The response to terrorism proposed in Section [4-C] involves assisting governments and NGOs in the Middle East in their active, on-going efforts at promoting family planning in order to hasten the trends in family planning already evident there - and to earn the good will of the Muslim world. As Section [4-C] (bottom) notes, the sizeable economic benefits to the Middle East in terms of greatly reducing the shortages of financial and human capital could take a decade or more to become evident. However the resultant change in Middle East attitudes toward the developed world could reduce interest in terrorism faster. The present image of the US is one of a powerful world leader with a strategy of attempting to beat the Muslims of the Middle East into submission by force of arms so they won't dare be a party to terrorism and, instead, submit passively to ever-deeper levels of wretchedness and hope deprivation. Experiences thus far in Afghanistan and Iraq, if not also Palestine, demonstrate that this strategy is not likely to work, and is more likely to be counter-productive. An alternative strategy of helping Middle Easterners to prosper and to be more hopeful carries with it improved East-West relations. It might appropriately be called a "pre-emptive brother's keeper" strategy. It would also benefit the Middle East by making the region safer for, and more attractive to, foreign direct investments, further reducing the severe shortage of the crucial resource - capital of all types.

Some may think of the "Pre-emptive Brother's Keeper" strategy as a sort of novel, untried approach to conflict resolution. This is not the case. Environmental conflict resolution has been studied extensively. It has been found that the basis for all effective conflict prevention is deeply rooted in approaches that detect potential conflicts in their early stages and that take action early-on to address the root causes of the conflict long before tempers flare, positions harden, and acts of violence and armed conflicts occur. That strategy even has a name - "Upstream Environmental Conflict Resolution" (03O1) (06H1). Those two attributes characterize all of the examples (See Section [5-D] below.) of what "pre-emptive brother's keeper" strategies might have accomplished in terms of eliminating or reducing conflicts. Even courses in management training argue that good managers ought to address conflicts within their area of responsibility in depth, head-on and early-on. In the case of terrorism, how "in-depth" is it to conclude that acts of terrorism are nothing but acts of "evil?" How "head-on" is it to take out a government with few, if any, clear links to terrorism? And how "early-on" are many years of awareness of the growing antagonism of Middle East Muslims toward the West before undertaking any sort of response?

Part [5C1] - Testing "Brother's Keeper": One is tempted to examine "pre-emptive brother's keeper"-type strategies of the past to determine how well they have worked. The problem is that there have been so few of them. The Marshall Plan following WWII is perhaps the most noteworthy example of such a strategy. It is generally believed to have been extremely successful. Other examples might include the developed world's programs of loans and development- and humanitarian aid to developing nations over the past four or so decades. These have gotten mixed reviews. Much of the developing world is now saddled with huge loan repayments that many could wind up defaulting on. These repayments are also causing extreme economic hardship that may more than offset the benefits from what the loans were invested in. Much doubt has been expressed, particularly in the US, that development- and humanitarian aid to developing nations has done any significant good. This, plus the erroneous belief that "bad government" is the cause of the ills of the developing world, is perhaps why the amount of development- and humanitarian aid given by the US has been dropping over the past decade.

Part [5C2] - Incompetent Brothers' Keepers: Before one concludes that the developed world's programs of loans and development- and humanitarian aid are examples of "pre-emptive brother's keeper" strategies gone awry, these programs need to be examined to make sure the "brother's keeper" was/ is not guilty of mismanagement. Developed nations have been handing out about $60 billion per year in development- and humanitarian aid to the developing world in the most recent decade. But the problems this aid was meant to address have been largely those associated with accommodating the infrastructure- and other needs required by the developing world's 1.3%/ year population growth. These needs total about $1200 billion per year for the developing world as a whole (05S1). Those who wonder out loud why development and humanitarian aid doesn't seem to be working need only compare $60 billion to $1200 billion to understand why. Had the aid been focused upon slowing the rate of population growth instead of accommodating it, the analysis in Section [5-A] of a companion document (05S1) suggests that this aid would have been extremely successful. Some numbers: The global population growth rate is about 78 million per year, almost entirely in the developing world. The cost of averting a birth through a family-planning/ maternal-health-care approach is roughly $60. The cost of averting one birth via a purely family planning (contraception) approach is a fraction of $60. The cost of averting a birth via "social-content documentary drama" (soap opera) broadcasts via radio or TV in developing nations is something on the order of $10 (05S1). The cost of averting a birth via quinacrine sterilization is on the order of $3 (07S2). (The cost of averting a case of AIDS by this strategy is a few dollars.) So the cost of stopping population growth in the developing world ranges from about $0.8 to $8 billion/ year, depending on the strategy chosen. Had the $60 billion/ year in foreign aid been allocated 90% to infrastructure development and 10% to birth aversion (instead of spending 97% on accommodating population growth and 3% on slowing it), the $60 billion/ year foreign aid program would have been heralded as an unqualified success since it would have freed the developing world of a burden of $1200 billion/ year in actual and foregone infrastructure expansion costs. Much of the aid and loans to developing nations went to current consumption, e.g. food, bus rides and corruption. No competent banker would lend money for current consumption. Clearly, declaring the developed world's "brother's keeper" loan/ aid programs to be failures is not fair. Had the developed world managed these loan/ aid programs competently they would have been extremely successful.

Part [5C3] - Worse than Incompetent? In recent years several analyses have appeared that compile evidence for their conclusion that US foreign loan policies were not well-intended errors that just were not up to the tasks they were expected to address. Instead they were deliberate strategies aimed mainly at benefiting the US to the detriment of developing nations - a sort-of Robin-Hood-in-reverse strategy. See a book by John Perkins (04P2) and an analysis by George Monbiot (05M1). The resultant wretchedness, hate and resentment generated in parts of the developing world could have contributed to the terrorism inflicted on the West over the past decade or more.

The IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) used the leverage they had via their loans to developing nations and globalization treaties to impose some extreme hardships on developing nations. They forced developing nations to devalue currencies, privatize state infrastructure and services, remove import controls and food subsidies, charge consumers the full cost of health- and education services and generally downsize the public sector. All this was designed to make these economies more "efficient" and thereby enhance the economic well being of the citizenry involved. These imposed policies are often collectively termed "Structural Adjustment Programs - SAPs. Some nations (e.g. Chile, China, Viet Nam) were able to avoid serious harm by instituting policies that ran counter to the "free trade" spirit and intent of globalization treaties and to the demands of the IMF et al. Other nations were devastated. (See Section [4-C] of Ref. (07S9).) It is interesting to note that protectionist tariffs and subsidies were the mechanisms used by today's wealthy nations to climb from agriculture-based economies to economies based on urban, high-value goods and services (03C1). The UN's major study of urbanization (03U2) concluded that the main single cause of increases in poverty and inequality in developing nations during the 1980s and 1990s was the "retreat" of the state (i.e. privatization). The middle class disappeared, and the brain drain to oil-rich Arab countries and to the West increased dramatically (95B1). In Africa, SAPs resulted in capital flight, collapse of manufactures, marginal or negative increases in export income, drastic cutbacks in public services, soaring prices, and steep declines in real wages (97R1). SAPs devastated rural smallholders by eliminating government subsidies and pushing them into global commodity markets that were dominated by First World agribusinesses (which were/are often subsidized by developed-world governments) (00B1). Developing world economies tend to be predominantly (e.g. 70%) agriculture-based. Hence, during the past few decades, SAPs were one of the causes of mass migrations to the wretched slums that ring nearly all large urban areas in developing nations. (See data below.) It is interesting to note that in South America during 1970-1990, food supplies per capita increased by almost 8%; yet the number of hungry people increased by 19%. In South Asia during 1970-1990, food supplies per capita increased by 9%; yet the number of hungry people also increased by 9% (00R1). In contrast, China (not affected by SAPs), the number of hungry people dropped from 406 million to 189 million during 1970-1990. (00R1).

It might not have been so bad had some efficiencies actually been produced. But privatization was frequently accomplished by selling off state-owned industries to people who were well-connected politically. They frequently became billionaires as a result of their ownership of a monopoly. Carlos Slim, owner of Mexico's Telmex, is the world's richest man ($59 billion). Mexicans pay well above average for landline, cellphone and Internet access. Numerous other Mexican industries have also become monopolies, with similar effects of consumers (07P1).

• Globally, there were at least 921 million slum dwellers in 2001 (03U2);
• Slum residents constitute 78.2% of urban populations of the least-developed countries ((03U2), p. 2-3);
• Slum residents constitute a third of urban populations globally ((03U2), p.2-3);
• 85% of urban residents of the developing world occupy property illegally (03K1).
• The World Bank estimated that, in 1985, there were 330 million urban poor people in less developed countries, using an income cut-off of US$370/ year (about $1/ capita/ day) (90W1).
• The World Bank estimated that in 1994 roughly 450 million urban dwellers (25% of the less-developed world's 1994 urban population) lacked access even to the simplest latrines (00W1).
• The UN Population Fund concluded in 1996 that 28% of urbanites in less developed countries were living in poverty, including 41% in sub-Saharan Africa (96U1).
• The World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Center for Human Settlements estimated in 1990 that 600 million urban dwellers (42% of the Third World urban population in 1990) live in "life- and health-threatening" homes or neighborhoods (90C1).
• Latin America's urban areas contained 36% of that region's poor in 1970, and 60% in 1990 (96M1).
• The World Bank estimates that, by 2025, the majority of the world's urban population will be living in poverty (99W1). (That fraction will be larger in the developing world.)

One should hasten to note that the developing world's subsidies of food, education, health-care, utilities, etc. were financed largely by borrowing from external sources. Hence they were not sustainable and were bound to collapse anyway. The real mistake was that the IMF, World Bank and WTO viewed these subsidies as "bad economics" caused by "bad government" (at least according to one author of Reference (03U2)). They therefore concluded that, by removing these subsidies, developing world economies would become more "efficient." This, they allegedly believed, would improve the lives of developing world folk. The real cause of the external loans and the subsidies they financed was the extreme capital scarcity cause by the costs of infrastructure growth necessitated by population growth. So it would have been just as hard for developing world folk to pay the unsubsidized cost of food, health care, education and utilities as to repay their massive external debts. Both options were impossible, so SAPs and trade liberalization simply bought the non-sustainability issue to a head sooner, but otherwise accomplished nothing for those nations having nothing to offer the global marketplace but unskilled labor.

Numerous experts knew that "bad governments" were only marginally relevant, and that the demands of population growth were both the main culprit and the cause of "bad government." Billions of people have been paying a terrible price over the past two decades for this largely ideology-based error. What is even more tragic is that population growth and the bulk of the resultant developing world ills could have been greatly reduced by relatively insignificant investments in contraception, family planning, and the marketing of the virtues of small families etc. Substitution of ideology for analysis has almost certainly contributed significantly to environments dominated by wretchedness and hope deprivation - environments where terrorists are easy to recruit. The actions by the IMF, World Bank and WTO, assuming they were well-intended, have got to be the worst and farthest reaching blunder by a "brother's keeper" ever committed.

Part [5C4] - "Informalization" of the Developing World's Work Force: This is not the first time a brother's keeper-related blunder of such an extreme magnitude has been committed. During the late Victorian globalization (1870-1900) a huge number of subsistence peasantries of Asia and Africa were forcibly incorporated into the world marketplace. Millions died of famine, and tens of millions more were uprooted from traditional lifestyles. Latin America saw the creation of a huge class of increasingly wretched semi-peasants and farm laborers who lacked any sort of secure means of subsistence (01D2). The major UN study of urbanization (03U2) concluded that, in modern times, instead of becoming a source for growth and prosperity, SAPs and trade liberalization (globalization) have caused cities of the developing world to become "dumping grounds" for surplus populations working in unskilled, unprotected, and low-wage "informal" service industries and trades. The huge growth of this "informal" labor sector was concluded to be a direct result of trade liberalization (globalization) (p. 40 and 46 of Ref. (03U2)). This global informal working class is now almost one billion strong: making it the fastest growing and most unprecedented social class on earth. According to the UN study of urbanization (03U2), "informal" workers are now about 40% of the economically active population of the developing world. (Labor laws and standards do not protect members of the informal labor force.) In Latin America, both state employees and the more formal work force have declined in every country of the region since the 1970s. At the same time, the "informal" sector of the economy has dramatically expanded (03P1). If someone is looking for a cause of the leftward drift of Latin American politics in recent years, they might want to ponder the effects of the growth of the informal sector there. The huge contacts to sell oil and other natural resources of Latin America to China portend significant effects on the US. An inexpensive pre-emptive brother's keeper approach to US relations with Latin America might have avoided all this.

The UN study of urbanization (03U2) estimates that 90% of urban Africa's new jobs over the next decade will come from the "informal" sector. This same study cites research finding that "informal" economic activity now accounts for 33-40% of urban employment in Asia, 60-75% in Central America and 60% in Africa. Incomes generated from informal enterprises usually cannot support even a minimum living standard. Informal enterprises involve little capital investment, virtually no skills training, and few opportunities for expansion into a viable business since the needs of bare subsistence require any capital that is created.

As the world becomes more urbanized, the "informal" sector of the developing world's economy continually increases in size. At the same time, this same urbanization process causes the West's sophisticated military weaponry to grow increasingly useless. The net result is that the expensiveness and riskiness of military strategies continually increase, and all those with real or imagined grievances against the West see it as growing increasingly vulnerable.

Almost half of the world's population works in "informal economies." These people generally lack birth certificates, legal addresses or, crucially, deeds to their shacks and market stalls. Without legal documents, they live in constant fear of being evicted by local officials or landlords. As a result, the poor are unable to invest in, or even plan for, their future. In many countries, 80% of homes and businesses are "unregistered", while about a third of the developing world's GDP is generated in the informal economy. Would-be entrepreneurs in developing countries attempting to move out of the informal economy often face a tangle of bureaucratic requirements and high fees that discourage them from seeking legal status - or make such a move impossible. As a result, these small-scale business people can't obtain legal loans, enforce contracts, or develop their businesses beyond a narrow sphere (07A1). A far more detailed analysis of the "informal economy" of the developing world is found in Ref. (08S3) on this website.

Part [5C5] - Religion and "Brothers' Keepers" - The Changing Landscape: Even the more established Christian religions might want to take note of the growth of the "informal" sector of economic activity in the developing world. Christianity and Islam got their start by providing social welfare services during a millennium when "safety net" was an unknown concept. Modern-day fundamentalist Christian churches have, to a significant degree, forgotten their early, brother's-keeper-oriented roots, despite the admonitions of over 2000 verses in the bible. Latin America's Catholic church seems more concerned about the welfare of the quasi-feudal landlords than the region's wretched, hope-deprived peasantry and squatters. The more fundamentalist and evangelical churches in the US seem more concerned about issues such as the legitimacy of gays and family planning - issues their Bible scarcely mentions. Perhaps, as a result of this trend, a relatively new Protestant Christian denomination, Pentecostalism, has evolved. Pentecostalism has been growing into the largest self-organized movement of urban poor people on the planet - the "informal" work force. Its appeal comes from people helping each other survive in the lowest economic levels of the developing world where even the median income is barely at subsistence level. According to Wagner (97W2) "In all of human history, no other non-political, non-militaristic, voluntary human movement has grown as rapidly as the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement in the last 20 years." Pentecostalism has grown to include 25% of Christians worldwide -about 0.5 billion people (06G1). "Renewalists" (an umbrella term covering Pentecostalists and Charismatics) now comprise 49% of the population of Brazil, 30% of Chile, 60% of Guatemala, 56% of Kenya, 26% of Nigeria, 34% of South Africa, 44% of the Philippines, and 5% of India (06G1).

The growing popularity of groupings like Pentecostalism is just a reflection of what people do naturally as their situations grow more wretched and more hope-deprived - they seek out groupings of similarly situated people in hopes of bettering their condition and gaining the strength in numbers that they need for redressing their real or imagined grievances. In essence, they resort, out of desperation, to a "brother's keeper" strategy. The informal economy of the developing world appears to be destined to grow to on the order of two-thirds of the developing world's economy (08S3). As that happens it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the real or imagined grievances of those people being forced to remain in the informal economy. Such a large domain of extreme duress represents a significant danger to the remainder of the developing world's economy. A strategy of beating these wretched and hope-deprived people into submission in the apparent expectation that they will submit more passively to their ever-worsening condition is probably not going to work. A pre-emptive brother's keeper is likely to work far better and cost a lot less.

Go to Table of Contents ~
Return to the top of Chapter 5 - "Critique of the Brother's Keeper Strategy"
Return to the top of Section [5-B] - "Faulty Views and Ideologies".
Return to the top of Section [5-C] - "The Pre-emptive Brother's Keeper Strategy in Perspective."

Section [5-D] - Where "Brother's Keeper" Might have Produced better Outcomes
[5D1]~ The Developing World Generally, [5D2]~ The Gaza Strip,
[5D3]~ Africa - Land of Opportunities, [5D4]~ Communist Insurgencies,
[5D5]~ Class Warfare in Latin America, [5D6]~ Russia,
[5D7]~ The First Half of the 20^th Century, [5D8]~ China's Demographic Aggression,
[5D9]~ Poor U.S. Women, [5D10]~ Nepal,
[5D11]~ Peace-Keeping and Emergency Aid, [5D12]~ The Middle East,
[5D13]~ The Rural-to-Urban Migration and the Informal Economy in Developing Nations

Finding other examples of past "brother's keeper" strategies and evaluating the results is difficult because of a shortage of such examples, good or bad. The only alternative is to seek out examples of situations where "brother's keeper" strategies were not used but where the known circumstances would allow a comparison with the more brutal, indifferent, and revengeful strategies that were used. Below are some examples.

Part [5D1] - The Developing World Generally:
A number nations have made the transition from developing nation to developed nation or nearly so. These include South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong (98B3), Tunisia (03N1), Barbados and the Bahamas (04R1). They all made the transition during aggressive efforts to reduce birth rates (98B3) (03N1) (04R1). It has also been found that, in the last hundred years, no nation on Earth has moved from developing status to developed status until it reduced its total fertility rate to 2.3 (97P1). All this would suggest that all the developed world needs to do to eliminate the

• Poverty, illiteracy, hunger, crime and over-crowding, environmental degradation,
• Sex/ race/ religious/ ethnic discrimination and oppression,
• Disease, maternity-related problems (mortality, sepsis, fistula, anemia), lack of health-care,
• Social/ political/ economic instabilities, hyperinflation, staggering external debt,
• Civil/ class/ religious/ ethnic warfare, genocides, democides, infanticides, slave labor,
• Torture chambers, death squads, communism, socialism, feudalism, and dictatorships.

that characterizes the developing world is to help that world achieve total fertility rates of something around replacement level, or even a little above that. This effort need not be a slow or expensive process. Research at the University of Sao Paulo Brazil studying TV-Globo's "telenovelas" and their impact, found that telenovelas have been the principle force driving Brazil's total fertility rate down from 3.4 in 1989 to 2.3 in 1996 (97P1). Telenovelas (or "social content serial dramas" or "soap operas" as you prefer) cost only a few dollars per birth averted - a small fraction of the cost of averting a birth by any other means, except possibly quinacrine sterilization (07S2). The humanitarian and development aid that the developed world gives to developing nations is largely (97%) devoted to the hopeless task of accommodating population growth and only minimally (3%) on reducing population growth. Diverting just a small fraction of population-growth-accommodation funds to population-growth reduction could go a long way toward eliminating the ills mentioned above. Yet trends in US foreign policy, and even World Bank policy, in recent decades have been in the opposite direction.

The Middle East has the world's highest rate of unemployment. Africa has the world's second-highest rate of unemployment (10.9% in Sub-Saharan Africa and 10.4% in North Africa). These data do not include the large numbers of working poor ("informal" labor) and those who have given up trying to find employment and are therefore not counted (05A1). Note the correlation: The Middle East, besides having the world's highest rate of unemployment, also has the world's highest rate of population growth, and the largest portion of the world's armed conflicts. Africa, besides having the world's second-highest unemployment rate, also has the world's second-highest rate of population growth and the world's second-largest portion of armed conflicts. All this is not coincidence. High population growth rates result in a dire scarcity of financial capital since any financial capital creation is absorbed in the costs of the infrastructure needed to accommodate population growth. The scarcity of financial capital translates into scarcities of transportation systems, communication systems, electric power systems, human capital and sound legal systems - all of which are essential for attracting capital from external sources. The lack of capital, external or internal, thus translates into a lack of jobs, which translates into high unemployment rates. The resultant desperate poverty produces desperate struggles for the basic necessities. Desperate folk soon develop organized groups centered on common religions, tribes, ethnicities, etc. to further their pursuit of necessities by increasingly bloody means. The result is high levels of armed conflict and decreasing levels of safety for capital investments of all types. Could all this be prevented by a brothers' keeper approach, i.e. by small investments in family planning services in Africa? Results from Tunisia strongly suggest it could. (See Section [4-A] .) It is also interesting to note that during the past 6 years, the number of African nations in conflict fell from 13 to 5 (06W1). Africa's population growth rate has also been dropping during this period. Africa's per-capita GDP has been rising by 1.5%/ year during this period (05A1). However this has had no effect on African standards of living (05A1) for reasons that are explained elsewhere in this document. It is also instructive to note that, of the 41 countries designated as "heavily indebted poor countries" by the World Bank, 39 fall into the category of high-fertility nations, where women, on average, bear four or more children. Similarly, the 48 countries identified by the UN as "least developed" are expected to triple their population by 2050 (02H1).

Part [5D2] - The Gaza Strip:
Gaza receives an annual average of 33 cm. of rainfall, 117 million m³/ year. Much of this is lost to evaporation, so the sustainable productivity of Gaza's aquifers is around 65 million m³/ year (05U2). Ref. (05U2) tallies the inputs to, and outputs from, Gaza's aquifers. This data (from 1995) is obsolete, given the huge population growth rate in Gaza (about the highest in the Muslim world). If the return flows and abstraction rates are corrected to an estimated 50% population growth since 1995, the drop in groundwater table would, in 2005, be 74 million m³/ year (vs. 2 million m³ in 1995) assuming no increase in brackish water inflow. Such drops in the groundwater table suggest significant increases in brackish water inflow, which endanger the integrity of the aquifer (See below). The population of Gaza is expected to nearly double between 2000 and 2020.

Ground water in Gaza, (sustainable productivity: 65 million m³/ year) is Gaza's only source for fresh water. At present, more than 100 million m³/ year are pumped from these aquifers. This is resulting in the invasion of seawater into Gaza Strip aquifers. Many hydrologists believe that the Gaza Strip aquifers have already passed the point of no return (05U2). Tests show increased salinity levels to, in some cases, greater than 1500 p.p.m. of chloride, making the water unsuitable for drinking (1993 data). Salt levels today must be much higher.

Contemplate now the proposed peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians in the light of the above. Within a decade or so, Gaza's only water supply will be too salty for human consumption or even irrigation. Do the Israelis really believe that, after the peace treaty goes into effect, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are going to die by the thousands from salt-water ingestion without putting up some sort of struggle? Do the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip really believe that a program of terrorism has any conceivable hope of solving their water supply problems? Israel is certain to have serious water problems by then also. Instead of dealing in mindless, visionless, callously indifferent, unworkable peace treaties, would it not be better for the Israelis and Palestinians to face the fundamental problem together in a Brother's Keeper mode and figure out some way of financing and developing a program of family planning that could bring Gaza's population down to a level that is in harmony with its aquifers? Not just the water problems could be solved. The problem of infrastructure funding could also be solved, enabling Palestinians to develop the human capital they need to contribute something other than unskilled labor to a global marketplace that suffers from a glut of such labor.

Part [5D3] - Africa - Land of Opportunities:
In the formative years of Zimbabwe, for whatever reasons, white farmers got all the level, bottom-land farmlands, while black Africans got steep, rocky hillsides to farm - where extreme erosion rates on low-grade, highly erodible tropical soils severely limit cropland lifetimes. Considering Zimbabwe's high population growth rate and badly degraded environments, the hunger and the recent bloody conflicts over croplands were easily predictable. And it is far from clear that any government, however capable, could have prevented the bloodletting. When black farmers recently (2003-04) took over the better farms of deposed (shot?) white farmers, they lacked the capital and know-how for capital-intensive agriculture. The result: even more hunger, starvation and a counterproductive prohibition against owning land. An aggressive family planning program early on could have provided some, if not most, of the financial capital to black farmers that would have enabled them to develop the human capital needed to get non-agricultural jobs in urban areas. Instead, their only option was/is to migrate to the huge, wretched slums ringing essentially all of the large urban areas in the developing world. There the only option is the informal economy.

African soils are, by nature, poor in terms of both organic matter and nutrients. Food production per capita has been dropping in Africa since the 1970s. (Foreign food donations cover only 20% of the food deficit (02K1) and one third of the 590 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa are chronically undernourished.) Yet, inorganic fertilizer consumption in Africa is less than virtually anywhere else in the world. In the 1990s, inorganic fertilizer consumption in China was 240 kg./ ha/ year, 110 in India, but about 8 in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, some Sub-Saharan African soils have nutrient losses exceeding 60 kg./ha/ year of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (02F1). Essentially, Africans are mining the minerals in their croplands, virtually insuring a continuation of falling food production per capita (and per acre). The reason for this is that inorganic fertilizer prices in Sub-Saharan Africa are six times greater than in Asia, Europe and North America. On the basis of hours of labor to purchase a tonne of fertilizer, that factor of six increased to roughly 60. The low investment in transportation infrastructure is the cause of much of the problem. Much of Africa has less than 10% of the road density of India or China (02F1). These infrastructure problems result from a shortage of financial capital. This can be traced to high population growth rates (2.5%/ year in Africa) that create huge demands for infrastructural capital that is needed to accommodate this high rate of population growth.

Sub-Saharan African farm soils are also poor in organic matter, but African farmers cannot raise livestock (manure source) because of high population pressures on the land. Also, instead of putting manure and crop residue into soils, people must burn them for fuel because they cannot afford to import fossil fuels - yet another consequence of population pressures (02F1). Shortage of organic matter in soils reduces drought resistance and increases inorganic fertilizer runoff. For this and other reasons, low organic matter worsens the economics of inorganic (inorganic) fertilizer consumption (02F1). Shortages of organic matter and nutrients also greatly reduce the efficiency of water use, making the economics of irrigation marginal (02F1). So in theory, there is still much untapped potential for inorganic fertilizers in Sub-Saharan Africa. But the reason it remains untapped is high population growth rates that require huge amounts of financial capital to pay for the infrastructure growth needed to accommodate that population growth.

Norman E. Borlaug contends that Africa's grain productivity could be doubled or tripled in three years (02K1) - probably through increased consumption of chemical fertilizers and increased use of genetically improved crops that increased fertilizer consumption allows. Africa's present food deficit, plus its expected population doubling over the next 3-4 decades, demands at least a tripling. Borlaug seems to be suggesting that African farmers should stop being so dumb and import more fertilizer - at a price about 60 times greater (in tons per hour of labor). Borlaug should perhaps first ask American farmers how much inorganic fertilizer they would use if the price increased by a factor of 60. The only workable approach is to reduce population growth rates so that financial capital supplies can be increased, enabling improved and expanded transportation infrastructure to be built. A slight shift in the way developed-world development- and humanitarian foreign aid is allocated would do the trick.

In Ethiopia, foreign lenders' emphasis on miracle strains of grains and obliviousness to the cost of getting food to market via inadequate transportation infrastructure has resulted in agricultural price collapses in good years and food shortages in bad years (03T1). The result: croplands lay idle while millions starve because farming has become a money-losing business in both good crop-years and bad. These are just a few reasons why Africa is unique in that food production per capita has been falling for over three decades. This is probably one reason for the social-, political-, economic-, and military instability (and the high frequency of civil conflicts) in Africa. Misallocation of financial capital and the lack of financial capital as a result of high population growth rates lie at the bottom of all this too. Inept brother's keepers cause those in the developed world to question the value of foreign aid, resulting in a downward spiral that would be so easy to reverse if the brothers' keepers could just get their acts together and stop blaming African farmers for the incompetence of others.

The latest (1994) of several genocides in Rwanda claimed over 900,000 people - 14% of Rwanda's population. The overwhelming majority of them were Tutsis, but in northwestern Rwanda at least 5% of the residents were slaughtered even though there were no Tutsis. Rwanda contained 2040 people per square mile, twice the population density of the Netherlands (a nation that has far better soils, far more fertilizer, and far greater ability to import food). The average Rwandan farmer worked 0.07 acre of land with agricultural practices not far removed from those of the Stone Age. Much of this cropland is on highly erodible, rocky hillsides because that is all that is left. Rwandan farmers could not afford organic or inorganic fertilizer for the same reasons as those mentioned above. By 1990, 40% of Rwanda's population was living on less than 1600 calories per day - famine level. A team of Belgian economists concluded that the outbreak of fighting "provided a unique opportunity to settle scores or reshuffle land properties, even among Hutus." It is not rare to hear Rwandans argue that the war was necessary to wipe out an excess population and bring numbers in line with the available land resources (04D1). The developed world could easily have gotten itself entangled in a messy peacekeeping operation. It would have been far less risky and far cheaper and far better for everyone if the developed world could have taken on a pre-emptive brother's keeper role early on and provided family-planning programs as soon as the natural resource issues became obvious. Also - better late than never.

Part [5D4] - Communist Insurgencies:
A problem with a context similar to that in Zimbabwe (noted above) also occurred in the post-World War II Philippines. This led, in the 1980s, to groups like the Marxist New People's Army that threatened US interests (00N1). Many communist insurgencies in Latin America in recent decades are probably of the same or similar origins:

• High population growth rates, and a ballooning youth population;
• Badly degraded environments and intrinsically low productivity (tropical) soils,
• The absence of accessible, undeveloped land that is reasonably suited to sustainable agriculture, resulting in non-sustainable farming on steep hillsides of rocky, eroding soil, followed by migrations to the huge slums that ring most urban areas of the tropics, and from there into the informal economy.
• Conversion of labor-intensive agriculture and fisheries to capital-intensive agriculture and fisheries in economies where agriculture and agricultural labor is by far the largest component.

More recently, many left-leaning Latin American governments (2004-2006) were voted into office by popular elections. These events appear to have their origin in public outrage over what the voters see as wretchedness created as a result of trade agreements, i.e. globalization and expansion of the informal economy (08S3). The fact that this trend is so widespread suggests that the cause is a