TRANSNATIONAL SECURITY IS UNIQUE. Where international security involves arrangements between states, each government seeking to achieve its own interests in a Westphalian world of national governments, and national security involves the particulars of any one state’s efforts, matters of transnational security involve those dilemmas that exist across states. Territoriality, nationalism, and borders are all relevant factors in the progression of transnational security threats, but do not define them. An eschatological terrorist bent on exacting harm on civilian populations of any nationality cares no more for nationality than H5N1 bird flu. Yet, in the practical world, models for how one state may address the same phenomenon differs from another. Academic models divorced from particular analysis does little to assist those particular entities striving to cope. In a world of instant communications, migration, and commerce, the transnational dimension may be understood on its own plane, but the solutions to those threats may not be. What makes research conducted by the Transnational Crisis Project unique is that it recognizes this distinction between common modeling and unique solutions. As such, analysis conducted by its Associated Scholars is directed at identifying precise contours of the threat and making tailored recommendations to particular institutions of particular governments or organizations, taking into account the particular conditions, particular resources, and particular policies at play. Precise, practical, and necessary. As issues on the transnational dimension emerge, the Transnational Crisis Project will evolve. Static focus on one area without regard for the needs of decisionmakers would dangerously remove its efforts from the practical to the irrelevant. Nevertheless, six broad areas of concern appear to constitute the principal spheres of core transnational security to date: international terrorism and insurgency, transnational criminal enterprise, pandemic infectious disease, climate change and security, population-centric foreign affairs, and modeling, simulation, and analysis.



INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM & INSURGENCY

There may be no greater immediate transnational security threat to more governments and populations around the world than that posed by militant Islamists. Above all is that particularly virulent strain of militant Islamism broadly referred to as the ‘Global Jihadi Movement;’ a manifold threat presented in a wide range of regional insurgencies, professional terrorist networks like al-Qa’eda, and grassroots or ‘homegrown’ radicalization. Each class of threat poses its own distinct challenges, and each manifestation unique to its own. Chechnya is not Somalia nor Spain. Motivations, modes of operation, strategic intent, narratives, and organizational dynamics differ and therefore so too must the particulars of any successful counterstrategy. Too often analysis blurs these grave distinctions, categorizing the broader mass as ‘militant Salafism’ or, more prosaically, simply dubbing it all al-Qa’eda. Whether subscribing to a model of ‘global insurgency’ or a more multifaceted approach, specifics matter. Associated Scholars of the Transnational Crisis Project are asked to embrace this complexity and provide narrowly tailored, specific, concrete assessments about particular elements of the threat and their relation to broader strategic considerations. Research will focus principally on threat analysis and the concrete, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism instruments through which those threats may be neutralized through practical, comprehensive strategic means.



CLIMATE CHANGE & SECURITY

To whatever cause one points, global warming is real. But beyond concerns of environmentalism and ‘human security’, effects attendant to shifting climates will have an unmistakable and potentially severe impact on the core national security of states worldwide. Consider Bangladesh, where even a one degree Celsius shift in temperature is estimated to cause 11% of the country to be submerged under water, directly endangering the lives of some 55 million people. One must not assume these effects will be contained by lines on a map. Indeed, en masse migration, market fluctuations, and intensification of nascent conflict almost certainly will draw otherwise unaffected parties into the mix. These effects make climate change more than a political football between industrialists and environmentalists; they make climate change a central factor in the core security of the state. Analysts of the Transnational Crisis Project will seek to move beyond the present political deadlock to identify likely effects, their regional and security implications, and devise models and strategies for security institutions to address them.



INFECTIOUS DISEASE

In recent years, officials of the World Health Organization and national medical institutes across the globe have witnessed rapid outbreaks in a number of highly pathogenic strains of H5N1 Avian Influenza. Transmission has occurred both between birds and from birds to humans. Yet, according to these same officials, the realistic prospect that slight mutations will precipitate human-to-human transmission raises the grave spectre of a potentially deadly pandemic, in a worse-case scenario potentially threatening the lives of some 100 to 150 million people worldwide. According to estimates, well over 2/3 of all individuals infected with H5N1 will die, and the attendant psychological and societal ramifications of even a less severe outbreak could seriously frustrate of transportation systems, overload medical institutions, and destabilize considerable portions of the economy. As the transnational movement of populations through the modern international transportation infrastructure expands, prospective catalysts for infectious disease transmission grows exponentially, making the threat of virulent infectious disease a growing national security concern that is unlikely to abate. And yet, despite the severity of threat, significant inadequacies in international cooperation, national detection systems, and rapid response capabilities still remain. The Transnational Crisis Project will attempt to identify these weaknesses and assist in devising for government national security plans to pre-empt, protect, and respond to potential human outbreaks of the H5N1 disease.



TRANSNATIONAL CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE

Be it in the tri-border area of Latin America, across the Balkans and former Soviet satellites, the ‘golden triangle’ of Fareast Asia, or right in the heart of Western Europe and North America, the impact of criminal enterprise on core national security is real. Illicit arms trafficking, human smuggling, elaborate fencing and money laundering schemes, and a wide range of other critical transnational criminal enterprises thrive in a globalizing environment. It is not an issue of ‘human security’ alone. Rather, for many developing states, transnational criminal networks can prove to be an existential threat by destabilizing civil society and fuelling nascent conflict. Elsewhere, in the developed world, transnational crime may serve as a catalyst for other core security considerations, from cybersecurity to terrorism, placing it in an altogether more virulent class than typical street crime. Although, particularly since the 1980’s, governments have increasingly recognized the power of criminal enterprise, few states have instituted comprehensive strategic plans to address them, relying instead on the tyranny of the always reactive case file. Research within this domain will therefore focus on the construction of comprehensive programs to identify threats, and modernize international policing cooperation through information sharing, mutual assistance, and extradition. Only by harmonizing policing instruments of bureaus and states on an interdepartmental and eventually global basis will transnational criminals be unable to move and operate with the fluid impunity that presently permits them to thrive.

POPULATION-CENTRIC FOREIGN POLICY

There may be no more singularly overarching lesson in the modern world than that people, not merely governments, matter. As Western systems of capitalism, democracy, human rights, and social individuality have expanded, matched with an explosion in mass communications that empower and give voice to the otherwise socially excluded, governments have increasingly recognized the importance they must give to addressing policy directly to foreign populations, not their governments alone. This controversial approach, in which a government is asked to tailor its message and efforts to entire classes beyond other governments, or what may be called ‘population-centric’ foreign policy will be central to modern international relations. Within this context, national security policy must equally assume the population-centric responsibilities associated with foreign assistance, public diplomacy, and strategic communications. The Transnational Crisis Project has constructed this unique class of strategic analysis to consider national security strategy through the lens of the population-centric approach. From a review of sanctions regimes to foreign aid, Associated Scholars are asked to consider the ramifications of national security policy on foreign populations relevant to their own security, and are pushed to devise new comprehensive means through which policy may be more suitably adapted to address that audience.



MODELING, SIMULATION, WARGAMING, & ANALYSIS

Whether simulating irregular warfare or modeling a pandemic, conceptual instruments can have considerable practical utility. By harnessing the work of wargamers and network theorists, academics, and technologists, the Transnational Crisis Project embarks to help construct next generation strategic models to assist decision makers in understanding threats and the environment within which counter-strategies may operate.