Kuecker: The Pentagon’s Top Security Threat

The Christian Science Monitor, in its October 24, 2013 issue, explored the question, “What sorts of threats will the US Military face in the ‘deep future’?” The question was raised at the Association of the US Army 2014 conference.  The conference identified “The growth of cities – and of slums” as the “top future threat,” beating out Sunni-Shiite violence in the Middle East as well as “the revolution in personal communications” and drones-robotics.  Their urban concern was focused on the security threat presumably posed by 2 billion slum dwellers.  According to a former Pentagon official, Kathleen Hicks, slums present a “very high potential for lack of governance” due to their anticipated population growth.  Hicks highlighted the lack of “governance structures” as well as the shortage of basics services as the root cause of the security risk.  Weak urban governance she maintains, provides opportunities for alternatives to fill the void, such as gangs and narco-traffickers, or “Hamas-like organizations.”  

Hicks' line of analysis, although generated from a distinct political position, reflects the dystopian vision of the 21^st century urban form presented by Mike Davis in his Planet of Slums.  In the book’s concluding chapter, Davis outlines the security challenge slums present to empire, and suggests that the geography of 21^st century warfare will be located in the urban slum.  While planning for Habitat III seldom broaches the topic of urban warfare, its development-centered approach toward building resilience strongly hints at the close correlation between development and military strategy, especially the finer art of counterinsurgency.  Capacity building, a central development goal within Habitat III, concerns issues of “good governance” and the delivery of basic services, which correlates nicely with US military planner’s concerns about the urban form.  Recent events in Iraq, of course, illustrate how the Pentagon’s threat landscape merges both slums and Sunni-Shiite conflict to generate complex challenges to empire that have the potential to overwhelm the Global North’s capacity to police the 21^st century, a point clearly made in Davis’ Planet of Slums.  How Habitat III planning will engage its security shadow constitutes an important line of analysis in thinking about the evolution of the 21^st century urban form.  

Sources:

Anna Mulrine, “The Growth of Cities and of Slums” The Christian Science Monitor, October 24, 2013. 

http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/World/Security-Watch/2013/...p-three-threats-in-the-deep-future/The-growth-of-cities-and-of-slums

Davis, Mike. Planet of Slums.  New York: Verso, 2007.