THE RT HON LORD ROBERTSON OF PORT ELLEN PC,GCMG
New threats - new responses
( This article is based upon a public lecture given by Lord Robertson on 23 October 2004 to the 150th Anniversary Conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, Edinburgh)
The question I pose today is this. Have we got a proper grasp of the range of threats and risks facing us as individuals, as companies, as countries, or as an international community?
Take the rising tide of illegality. Organised crime has made a mockery of
national borders. There is a Single Black Market from Dover to Dushambe,
from Amsterdam to Almaty but there is no Single Legal Market beyond the
EU. That is because the forces of law, order, sovereignty and national
interest cannot find the same identity of interest as the smugglers and
traffickers whose net worth eclipses that of many nation states.
They trade in people, prostitutes, asylum seekers and economic migrants; they trade in guns, cigarettes, in drugs and alcohol. In power and wealth they dwarf countries and legitimate companies. They feed on their greed and corruption and they breed in ethnic and religious conflicts even when the participants are blind to ethnic origin and have no religion except money and hate. They are the forces of disorder and chaos. Their strength is our weakness and a qualitatively new danger.
The dark side of globalisation is that security threats too are networking and going global.
Al-Qaida offers the most obvious illustration. First it proved conclusively that terrorism had gone global. Al-Qaida was based in Central Asia, led by a wealthy Saudi, trained its personnel in Europe, and carried out its operations from Africa to the United States. It used the Internet and powerful new encryption software, to communicate freely anywhere in the world.
To add to the danger, global terrorism is linked up to proliferation. Laxer
border controls and increasing travel make it easier for terrorists and
terrorist states to get their hands on weapons, including weapons of mass
destruction. Access to the Internet gives them the information they need to make
what they can't buy or steal. The information found by the US-led coalition in
Afghanistan leaves no doubt of that.
As we saw on September 11th, the new
global terrorist wants blood - as much as possible. Which means that the nexus
between global terrorism and proliferation has taken on a new, much more deadly
nature.
To compound the agony, terrorism is getting new funding from
organised crime. Just as an illustration, of the 24 terrorist organisations
identified by the US State Department, 12 have links to international drug
trafficking. That is no coincidence. Furthermore, international criminal cartels
are themselves increasingly engaging in trafficking weapons, and selling them to
very nasty people.
This international power grid of terrorism, proliferation
and organised crime is nourished by another characteristic of today's world: the
plethora of regional conflicts. These conflict zones, from the Balkans, to the
Caucasus and Central Asia to Africa, have become centres where terrorists find
recruits. Where organised crime traffics drugs and weapons. Where loss of state
control can mean loss of control over lethal weapons themselves.
And behind
it all is money. Globalization has made illegal money the lifeblood of the new
network of security threats. Over and over, throughout the past decade, regional
conflicts, narcotics trafficking, arms smuggling, civil war and terrorism have
been facilitated and sustained by illicit financial networks embedded in the
world's legal financial system.
How easy it was for Al-Qaida's bankers to
have five hundred thousand dollars wired from a bank in Dubai for anonymous use
in automatic teller machines in Florida and Maine. How difficult it has been,
even with the backing of United Nations resolutions and 150 nations, to find out
who raised or sent those dollars.
And when it comes to money, the knife cuts
both ways. Because illegal money doesn't just feed other security threats - it
also causes them.
Illicit finance has made possible the trade in diamonds
that fuelled civil wars in Liberia, Angola and Sierra Leone. It allows countries
surrounding Congo to engage in relentless asset stripping under the cover of
war. A fraudulent pyramid scheme caused a financial collapse in Albania that led
directly to civil chaos, and the proliferation of small arms throughout the
Balkans. We still see the effects today, in increased tension and the occasional
explosion of armed conflict.
This is a complex set of interrelationships -
but the overall pattern is clear. Today's security threats have taken advantage
of the infrastructure of globalization - to support each other, to feed each
other, to build on each other. They have networked. The result is a clear and
present danger to our citizens, and to the stability of the international
system.
Our challenge, as an international community, is to dismantle this
network. To prevent, or stop, regional conflicts. To stop the proliferation of
nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. To defeat terrorism. To control
organised crime. And to ensure that the international financial system is used
for the good of the international community, not exploited to undermine
it.
To accomplish this, we need an international security network. Diplomats,
militaries, international security organisations, financial institutions, law
enforcement officials, and arms control experts must move beyond narrow
definitions of their mandates. They must adapt to take on new challenges. And
more and more, they must identify common challenges, and work together to solve
them.
Addressing terrorism, for example, can no longer be a job only for law
enforcement officials. Now, our militaries must also be prepared to tackle this
challenge, both to protect themselves and to help protect our populations.
Financial institutions must track, and freeze, terrorist money. Arms control
experts must stop proliferation into the hands of terrorists, and alert our
militaries when it does occur.
Similarly, stopping regional conflicts must
be a job for more than just the military. Law enforcement officials must also be
deployed into conflict zones, to prevent organised crime from taking hold.
Financial experts must also be available to stop corruption. Civilian
institutions in post-conflict areas must be supported, to preclude the
instability that is the hothouse for so many other threats.
All of these
changes require new thinking, new ways of doing business. Outdated Cold War
habits and capacities do us no good against 21st century threats unless we adapt
them to meet these new challenges. We need a global, integrated response, with
deep co-operation between states, international organisations, international
financial institutions, the private sector, and non-governmental organisations -
all working together, in new ways, to meet this new network of security
threats.
And it can be done.
I am at the moment both depressed AND optimistic - and that is no contradiction in terms. I have offered you today a bleak analysis and one designed to make you think and reflect, but I contend we need not be pessimistic if we do the right things in the light of the analysis, and we do them now.
I submit to you one example of how it can be done.
In NATO we did learned the lessons of 9/11, and of Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Afghanistan and what's more, we set about applying them.
We brought in 12 new members to the 50 year-old Alliance - including the nations of the Warsaw Pact and even the three ex-Soviet Baltic States. That made us politically stronger and it added new niche military skills.
We developed new relationships - with Russia, with Ukraine and with the countries of the Caucuses and Central Asia. We drew up complex, but workable new working links with the European Union which will allow, among other things, the EU to take over from NATO in Bosnia at the end of the year.
We created new capacities to meet the emerging new threats and risks. A new cutting edge, high intensity NATO Response Force to go far, hit hard and stay long. We built in the first ever multinational Chemical, Biological and Radiological Battalion to collectively meet the newest and most deadly dangers.
We took our warships of the Mediterranean fleet away from submarine detection and set them to patrolling the sea-lanes used as the trafficker's superhighway. Our collectively owned airborne early warning planes left Europe for the fist time and secured the skies over the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and then came back to do the same for the Summer games in Athens this year.
And in one of the biggest changes of all we took the old Cold War Allied Command, Atlantic, based in Norfolk, Virginia and created a brand new Supreme Commander - for Transformation. New thinking and new capacities all joined together - uniting and keeping in step the militaries on both sides of the Atlantic.
This dramatic modernisation of NATO, from the shield which protected our freedom and democracy throughout the Cold War to the key political/military instrument of dealing with tomorrow's dangers and risks, shows what can be done.
Institutions can be reformed and re-forged. Diplomacy can be re-energised. Conflicts like Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Afghanistan and yes, even Iraq, can be tackled and sorted - if the political will is there.
However, stove-piping, turf protection, exaggerated sovereignties and political feebleness will be a recipe for the worst of all outcomes. Future generations will be the ones to suffer and they will never forgive us.
The accountancy profession, with its special Scottish rigour and intensity, has its role to play in all this. Honest accounting, ruthless and open-eyed auditing of public accounts and governmental processes can underpin the institutions of integrity and good faith. These values - of transparency, honesty, integrity and accountability are essential pre-requisite values of an ordered, decent and safe society.
We must never allow these standards and these essential values to drop or be compromised. We are simply the custodians of what our children will inherit and that obligation should keep us awake every night.