15. Geopolitical Friction

MOST GEOPOLITICAL FRICTION, INCLUDING WARS, ORIGINATES ON LAND OR ALONG LITTORALS WHERE masses of humanity pursue conflicting purposes. Many sore spots and flash points have geographic origins, of which contentious territorial claims and environmental altercations perhaps are most common. Good fences may not always make good neighbors, but mutually agreeable boundaries and environmental practices that avoid adverse regional (even global) side effects generally help reduce the number of potentially explosive international disputes that otherwise could lead to armed combat.

Sparsely settled or empty spaces separated sovereign territories when small human populations were widely scattered, valuable resources were relatively abundant, and surveying skills were rudimentary. The first sharply-defined political boundary appeared on May 4, 1493, when Pope Alexander VI promised Portugal all newly found lands east of a north-south line 100 leagues (300 miles, 483 kilometers) west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands and allocated to Spain all newly-found lands west of that latitude. Brazil formally became a Portuguese possession after the Treaty of Tordesillas drew the line 810 miles (1,285 kilometers) farther west the following year and Pope Julius II approved in 1506. De jure boundaries rapidly replaced de facto borders and ill-defined frontiers early in the 17th century when nation states proliferated.

Boundaries are much easier for cartographers to draw on maps than for statesmen and armed forces to find on Earth's surface, because markers at best are intermittent and at worst are nonexistent. Approximately 8,200 pillars are distributed along the 3,146-mile (5,063-kilometer) border that separates the United States from Canada, for example, whereas only 22 dot the 970-mile (1,560-kilometer) wasteland between Mauritania and Western Sahara, of which half are located around Cap Blanc.

Topographical Boundaries. Easily recognizable topographic features may seem to be ideal boundaries, but marks that follow the loftiest mountain crests displease governments that, for various reasons, want lines along watersheds. River boundaries that stick to either bank, a median line, or the deepest channel are subject to shifts that add territory on one side, subtract from the other, and raise questions concerning islands in stream¹--recurrent clashes between Soviet and Chinese border guards in the Amur and Ussuri Valleys were tightly controlled during tense days after the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, because local brawls could have escalated to dangerous levels.² Lake boundaries cause similar problems that neolithic Nipmuc Indians near present day Webster, Massachusetts, solved when they named their lake Chargoggagoggmanchaugagoggchaubunagungamaugg ("you fish on your side, I'll fish on mine, no one fishes in the middle").

Abstract Boundaries. International boundaries often follow straight lines that cut across landscapes with little or no regard for people who live thereon. Several abstractions of that sort on the Arabian Peninsula disappear without a trace in the Rub' al-Khali (the Empty Quarter), which is lightly populated by only a few Bedouin tribes but contains potentially rich natural resources. European colonists long ago laced Africa with straight lines.³ The 38^th Parallel arbitrarily separated North and South Korea from August 1945 until July 1953, when an armistice line that bisected a demilitarized zone (DMZ) replaced it. The 17^th Parallel and DMZ similarly separated North and South Vietnam for 21 years between July 1954 and April 1975.

Squiggly as well as straight line boundaries sometimes correlate poorly with real world considerations, a fact perhaps best confirmed by Israel, which has been barricaded behind armistice lines and the unofficial borders of occupied territories since 1948. States that contain two or more discontinuous segments seldom enjoy great longevity. Hitler, for example, forcibly reunited East Prussia with the German Fatherland in 1939, just 20 years after the Treaty of Versailles interposed the Danzig Corridor between that province and its parent. East Pakistan and West Pakistan, 900 miles apart (1,450 kilometers), persisted fewer than 25 years from their inception in 1947, when they separated from India, until East Pakistan became politically independent Bangladesh in 1971.

Some terrestrial boundaries drawn with little regard for physiographic, cultural, or economic realities stabilize sooner or later (the United States and Canada settled their last significant border dispute in 1903), but many become geopolitical sore spots. Historical experiences bear close observation, lest troubles erupt unexpectedly.

TERRITORIAL WATERS
Offshore boundaries that separate territorial waters from high seas and limit the sovereignty of adjacent coastal states raise highly-charged political-military and economic questions for which statesmen and lawyers have not yet found universally acceptable answers, even though 112 states and other entities by 1997 had ratified a comprehensive United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which included the following provisions:⁴

Loopholes nevertheless remain. Each coastal state is free to define "innocent passage" in ways that promote its interests. Sovereignty claims still range from 3 to 200 nautical miles (5.5 to 370 kilometers), with several African and South American countries in the latter category. The Maldives and Philippines both profess territorial water rights within boundaries that include their outermost islands and atolls. The United States, which opposes provisions that deter development of deep sea-bed mineral resources, has not ratified the Convention.⁵

"How high is up?" will remain an enigma until laws of air and space complement laws of the sea, which seek to answer the question, "How far is out?" The atmosphere over every country to some unspecified altitude currently is sovereign territory that allows owners to forbid transit without their approval, which is not always forthcoming.⁶ Italy, Greece, Austria, and Switzerland denied U.S. Armed Forces direct routes from Germany to staging bases in Turkey when the President of Lebanon requested military help in 1958.⁷ U.S. attack aircraft based in Britain had to take long detours around France and Spain en route to Libya, where they bombed parts of Tripoli and Benghazi on April 15, 1986, in retaliation for a terrorist attack that "Revolutionary Leader" Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi previously backed in Berlin.⁸ The spectacularly successful hostage rescue operation at Entebbe, Uganda, in July 1976 was possible only because Israeli flight crews violated the air space of African countries that lacked modern air defense systems.⁹ No document yet prescribes vertical or horizontal boundaries that define territorial sovereignty on the moon or in free space.

Ancient words warn, "You shall hear of wars and rumors of wars . . . for nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom."¹⁰ Certainly, there is no shortage of geopolitical friction as the 20th century draws to a close, nor any sign that armed conflicts will soon cease (table 24).¹¹ Boundary disputes, contentious sovereignty claims, galloping population growth, insufficient natural resources, drought-induced starvation, resultant mass migrations, religious rivalries, racial-ethnic-tribal tensions, and intolerable environmental conditions are contributing factors. Contingency planners who try to put the lot in rough priority concentrate on embranglements that could endanger the globe, followed by apparent threats to regional security. Altercations that seem to have strictly local implications get shorter shrift, but accurate determinations often are elusive, because even small civil wars are liable to spread with little warning and unintended consequences.

Afghanistan
Algeria
Bosnia
Burundi
Cambodia
Congo
Kurdistan

Mexico
Northern Ireland
Peru
Rwanda
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Timor

Argentina vs. Chile
Britain vs. Spain
China vs. India
China vs. Russia
China vs. Taiwan
China vs. Vietnam
Cuba vs. United States
Ecuador vs. Peru
Egypt vs. Sudan
Ethiopia vs. Somalia
Greece vs. Turkey

India vs. Pakistan
Indonesia vs. Malaysia
Iran vs. United Arab Emirates
Iraq vs. Iran
Iraq vs. Kuwait
Iraq vs. Saudi Arabia
Israel vs. Palestinians
Israel vs. Syria
Libya vs. Chad
North vs. South Korea
Russia vs. Japan

Two strategic altercations on a grand scale are described below. One involved the Soviet absorption of buffer states in Central Europe, the other concerns simmering disputes between China and its Soviet neighbor. Disputes about the control of key straits illustrate strategic standoffs at a lower level.

Generalissimo Joseph Stalin annexed three countries and parts of five others to provide a buffer zone between the Soviet Union and perceived enemies in Western Europe beginning in 1939 (map 44). Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, Western Belorussia and Galicia (stripped from Poland), together with Northern Bukovina and most of Bessarabia (wrested from Romania), gave the Soviet Union relatively ice-free windows on the Baltic Sea and added depth farther south before Hitler invaded in June 1941. Soviet Armed Forces occupied all direct approaches to Leningrad from the west after Stalin acquired Karelia and the Vyborg District from defeated Finland in 1940. Finland's Pechenga Territory, 60 miles (95 kilometers) west of Murmansk, afforded a bit more breathing room between that crucial port and Nazi-occupied Norway in 1944. The absorption of Ruthenia (Transcarpathian

Czechoslovakia) in 1945 not only extended the Soviet buffer zone all the way from the Baltic to the Black Sea but, as a bonus, united Slavic minorities with kindred Ukranians.¹²

Stalin thereafter swallowed most of Central Europe, then rang down an infamous Iron Curtain. Seven countries with communist-dominated regimes--Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania--signed the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance in 1955, after which all but one served as Soviet cat's paws and pawns until a bit before the Warsaw Pact formally disintegrated in July 1991 (Albania severed ties in 1968 because of policy disputes).¹³ East and West Germany reunited on October 3, 1990; Russia soon thereafter relinquished the three Baltic States and annexed lands in what now are Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldavia; several nations, despite Russian objections, sought membership in NATO, most notably Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia¹⁴ The buffer zone that Stalin had assembled so methodically forty some years earlier in short disappeared.

Boundaries that Chinese emperors and Russian tsars established in the mid-1800s gave Russia sovereignty over 185,000 square miles (480,000 square kilometers) north of the Amur River, huge maritime territories east of the Ussuri, and 350,000 square miles (900,000 square kilometers) in Central Asia (map 45). Subsequently installed regimes in the Soviet Union and Republic of China agreed to reconsider mutual boundaries in 1924, but related actions remained in abeyance for the next 25 years, because Chinese leaders were preoccupied with civil wars and Japanese invaders. Eleven more years passed peacefully after Communist China emerged victorious in 1949 and established strong links with Moscow, even though A Short History of Modern China, published in Beijing, laid claim to large parts of the Soviet Far East, Kazakstan, Kirghistan, and Tajikistan as "Chinese territories taken by imperialism."¹⁵

Boundary disputes bubbled in earnest about 1960, when the Sino-Soviet entente started to split. The first large-scale clashes occurred in Xinjiang Province during early autumn 1964, when Muslim resentment against repressive Chinese rule motivated about 50,000 Kazakhs, Uighurs, and other ethnic groups to riot, then take shelter in the Soviet Union. Tensions along the Far Eastern frontier reached a fever pitch in 1967 after howling mobs besieged the Soviet Embassy in Beijing for more than 2 weeks. Both sides briefly massed a total of 600,000 troops along the border--nearly 40 divisions on the Soviet side and perhaps 50 or 60 Chinese counterparts. Damansky Island (Zhanbao to the Chinese) was twice the site of stiff fighting in March 1969, followed in August by confrontations at Xinjiang's Dzungarian Gate, after which both sides took pains to defuse situations, partly because each at that point possessed nuclear weapons with delivery systems that could reach the other's core areas.¹⁶ China, however, has never renounced its claims, which future leaders might vigorously pursue if Chinese military power continues to expand while Russian armed strength subsides.

Arguments between Iran and the United Arab Emirates over control of Abu Musa, a tiny island that sits in the Strait of Hormuz like a cork in a bottle,¹⁷ and squabbles between Britain and Spain about Gibraltar, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea,¹⁸typify trouble spots that are of less strategic significance to disputants than to bystanders who routinely rely on sea lanes that pass through. Controversies that involve Argentina and Chile, both of whom claim sovereignty over the Strait of Magellan,¹⁹ and rancorous relations between Russia, which has held the Kuril Islands since World War II, and Japan, typify quarrels that are of greater interest to the contestants than to outsiders.²⁰

"Have not" nations, like children with noses against candy store windows, hunger for what "have" nations have. Speculation about what would happen after Hong Kong passed from British to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997, centered on that city's commercial value as a trading center at international crossroads.²¹ The destitute Democratic People's Republic of Korea clearly would like to embellish its economic power base by absorbing diversified industries, rich agricultural lands, and technologically advanced work forces south of the demilitarized zone, where the poorest inhabitants of South Korea are infinitely better off than all but elitists up north.²²

Two economically driven trouble spots deserve elaboration, because both involve several competitors and both are barren on the surface. Six countries currently covet all or some of the Spratly Islands essentially because geological surveys suggest vast untapped oil and gas reservoirs offshore. Seven countries eventually could collide in Antarctica if, as expected, natural resources beneath the ice prove extensive, scientists devise cost-effective extraction procedures, and conflicting real estate claims prove irreconcilable.

The Spratly Islands consist of 12 main islets and 600-odd cays, rocky outcroppings, coral reefs, atolls, sand bars, banks, and shoals in the South China Sea about 250 miles (360 kilometers) east and southeast of Ho Chi Minh City, which most outsiders remember as Saigon (map 46).²³ The total land area, some of which is visible only at low tide, covers less than one square mile (about 2.3 square kilometers)--Ito Abu, the largest islet, occupies 90 acres. Few creatures other than turtles and sea fowl were fond of that forbidding habitat before competition for potentially rich oil reserves turned the Spratly Island complex into a Southeast Asian flashpoint. China, Taiwan, and Vietnam claim the Spratlys in toto, the Philippines seek entitlements to most of them, while Brunei and Malaysia covet small segments in the southern sector, although no nation maintains civilian settlements anywhere and none established a continuous military presence until after World War II. Taiwan, however, currently deploys a battalion-sized force on Ito Abu, where it built what passes for a small port and a short airstrip. All other contenders except Brunei position troops on several islets, and all take great pains to mark their claims prominently. The sharpest skirmish thus far occurred in March 1988, when Chinese gunboats sank three Vietnamese ships that together lost 77 sailors, but most claimants continue to destroy rival markers, arrest rival fishermen, and take other actions that infuriate adversaries.²⁴

Prospects that China might seek sovereignty over the entire South China Sea, as its spokesmen repeatedly imply, couples strategic with economic friction, because lifelines between Middle East oil fields and Northeast Asia pass through that body of water. Reconciliation of disputes in the Spratlys, perhaps by military means, consequently could some day have destabilizing effects that reach far beyond the immediate region.

Isolated Antarctica, which surrounds the South Pole, is twice the size of Europe during its "summer" season and four times as large in winter, when ice shelves form along peripheries. No native land-based vertebrates save penguins brave the brutal cold that frequently dips below -100 ⁰F (-73.3⁰C) and blizzards whipped by winds that sometimes surpass 200 miles per hour (320 kilometers per hour), but economically valuable whales, food fish, and protein-rich crustaceans called krill teem in the frigid waters, while some explorers suspect the presence of lucrative oil reserves as well as abundant mineral deposits.

Argentina, Australia, Britain, Chile, France, New Zealand, and Norway currently claim slices of Antarctica that, in several instances, overlap. Argentina and Chile additionally declare 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs) off the sectors they say they own; the South Shetland Islands are subjects of tripartite disputes by Argentina, Britain, and Chile; and Argentina and Britain contest possession of the South Orkneys, South Georgia, and South Sandwich Islands, plus tiny Shag Rocks (map 47).²⁵

The Antarctic Treaty of 1961, signed by 42 nations as of 1997, froze existing territorial claims for 30 years, forbade new ones, banned military operations, outlawed nuclear weapons, and prohibited the disposal of radioactive waste anywhere on that continent to maintain in a pristine state the only place on Planet Earth that has escaped war, pestilence, and environmental pollution. Amendments in 1980 restricted the exploitation of marine resources and in 1991 imposed a 50-year ban on mining. Loose ends dangle nonetheless, because neither Argentina nor Chile has relinquished territorial claims that coincide with those of Britain, and neither the United States nor Russia recognizes the claims of other powers or waives the right to establish its own. Ice-cold Antarctica could heat up if confirmed natural resources make neutral positions unprofitable.

Bloodlines foster enduring enmities when cultural interests and lifestyles collide, because blood indeed is thicker than water. Catholics and Protestants have not yet found a formula that lets them coexist peacefully in Northern Ireland.²⁷ Stateless Kurds beset by all and befriended by none wander ceaselessly across mountainous frontiers in southeastern Turkey, northeastern Iraq, and northwestern Iran in search of a homeland.²⁸ Genocidal combat between Hutu and Tutsi tribes continues in Rwanda and Burundi, with spillovers into eastern Congo, where refugee camps became death traps in 1996-97.²⁹ Ancient ethnic, religious, and linguistic animosities, accompanied by "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia-Herzegovina, flared throughout former Yugoslavia in the 1990s among Orthodox Christian Serbs, Roman Catholic Croats, Slovines, Slavic Muslims, Albanians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, and perhaps 15 smaller groups.³⁰

Some cultural conflicts are local or regional, while others have widespread ramifications. Uncordial relations that involve conventionally-armed Ethiopians, Somalis, Kenyans, and Sudanese in the Horn of Africa, for example, seem unlikely to spread far beyond present boundaries, whereas altercations in Kashmir could quickly escalate in scope as well as intensity, because China, India, and Pakistan brandish nuclear weapons.

The Horn of Africa, which British military historian John Keegan with good reason calls "the hungry lands," has long been a hazardous place to live (map 48).³¹ Starvation stalks, racial, linguistic, and religious antagonisms are rife, mutually exclusive social systems are endemic.

Cultural Friction in Ethiopia. Nine states with ethnic groups as their nuclei, at least 70 languages spoken as the mother tongue, and two distinctive religions make Ethiopia less cohesive than it seems on small-scale maps. Amharic-speaking Christians in the north, most of whom who practice subsistence agriculture, oppose nomadic Muslims in the Ogaden who have more in common with Islamic Somalia than with the government in Addis Ababa. Several insurgent and secessionist movements are active or waiting in the wings.

Eritreans fought for freedom from 1961 until they finally formed a separate state in 1991, but sporadic combat continued into the 1980s, related problems continue to fester, and malcontents in both countries could upset fragile relationships. The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which in 1991 ousted the detested Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, subsequently approved a constitution that grants special rights to ethnic minorities, but it will take deeds as well as words to unite so many disparate factions on peaceful terms.³² As if domestic troubles were not enough to keep the new government gainfully employed, strife along the western border began to brew in 1996 when Ethiopia and Eritria (both slated to receive U.S. military assistance) decided to assist Sudanese insurgents who oppose the radical regime in Khartoum.³³

Cultural Friction in Somalia. Poverty-stricken Somalia, which is much more homogeneous than Ethiopia, is populated primarily by Sunni Muslims who are ethnic Somalis, speak one of three main Somali dialects and, except for refugee-crowded Mogadishu, are pastoral peoples. A volatile mixture nonetheless is present, because six major clan families that revel in warrior traditions vie for internal control. Connivance and cunning are stocks in trade. The meek by no means inherit any part of their earth, as United Nations "peacekeepers" with no peace to keep discovered in 1993, when they tried unsuccessfully to impose law and order.³⁴ Wars over water, cattle, wives, land, and political "turf" (not necessarily in that order) are national pastimes. Irredentist claims in the Ogaden and parts of Kenya where Somali kinsmen live and the status of splinter groups who have proclaimed an independent Republic of Somaliland along the Gulf of Aden are muted but unrevolved.³⁵

Prospects for Peace. Combustible situations that involve Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, and the Sudan consequently could develop in Africa's hazardous horn. Dangerous escalation could occur if, as some suspect, Islamic fundamentalists in Iran and elsewhere foment a jihad (holy war) in retaliation against Ethiopian and Eritrean intervention in Sudan.

Jammu and Kashmir, which nestle beneath south slopes of the Hindu Kush, Pamirs, Karakorum Mountains, and Himalayas, possess some of the world's most spectacular scenery (map 49). Pakistani farmers depend extensively on irrigation waters from the Indus, Chenab, and Jhulum Rivers, but religious disputes rather than land rights make the region a perennial trouble spot.

The Schism. The populations of Jammu and Kashmir were overwhelmingly Muslim (77 percent) whereas Hindus (20 percent) comprised a clear majority mainly in Jammu City when India and Pakistan became independent nations on August 15, 1947. The local maharajah nevertheless was loath to decide on accession to either side until impatient Pakistani tribesmen applied pressure the following October, whereupon he formally asked then Governor-General Lord Louis Mountbatten for help from the Indian Dominion, acknowledging that "naturally they cannot send help asked for by me without my state [Jammu and Kashmir] acceding to India. I have accordingly decided to do so and attach the Instrument of Accession." The newly formed Pakistani government predictably found that "the accession of Kasmir to India is based on fraud . . . and as such cannot be recognized."³⁶ Repetitious violence followed.

Elusive Reconciliation. A U.N. commission arranged a cease-fire that terminated the first Indo-Pakistani war on January 1, 1949, and later established a 480-mile (770-kilometer) control line that allocated a bit more than one-third of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan and left the heavily Islamic Vale of Kashmir in Hindu hands. Further combat ensued in 1965, 1971, and 1990 after repeated mediations failed. The presence of several hundred thousand Indian troops and terrorist attacks by militant Islamic separatist groups against targets in the beautiful Vale have devastated tourist trade that might benefit Muslims.³⁷

Sovereignty over the Aksai Chin salient, once described as a frozen, uninhabited wilderness without a blade of grass, has been subject to dispute since the 1950s when China occupied about 6,000 square miles (15,000 square kilometers) and built a road that connects Tibet with Xinjiang Province. Chinese Armed Forces consolidated their positions in 1962 after fierce fighting with Indian troops and have remained solidly ensconced ever since. Additional Sino-Indian border disputes developed in 1963 because Pakistan, despite Indian objections, ceded to China a sizable chunk of its sector in Kashmir. Neither that bit nor the Aksai Chin boundary has ever been demarked to the satisfaction of all concerned.³⁸

How long the current hiatus will last is subject to speculation. Deep-seated grievances, strong emotions, and possibilities that nuclear warfare might some day erupt meanwhile make Jammu and Kashmir a tinderbox, arguably one of the most perilous trouble spots anywhere on this globe.³⁹

Humanity needs habitats that ensure passably clean air, potable water, sources of sustenance, and sufficient wherewithal to make life worth living, but pollution, despoliation, and other degradations make it ever more difficult for Planet Earth to satisfy even minimum requirements of rapidly expanding world populations.⁴⁰ Befouled atmosphere, deforestation, agricultural mismanagement, over-harvested fisheries, oil spills, wanton use of water, and careless waste disposal typify environmental practices that degrade local, regional, even global habitats with short-, intermediate-, and long-term effects on ecosystems and human living conditions.⁴¹

Some consequences are clear, while the full relevance of others awaits further investigation.Corrective actions that increase short-term costs, exact sacrifices, exacerbate inequities, limit national power, or place lids on political ambitions are sourly received in every country that believes it might lose leverage. Acrimonies already have triggered trade conflicts that conceivably could culminate in armed combat.⁴²

Atmospheric pollutants travel freely wherever capricious winds take them, without regard for international boundaries, checkpoints, or toll gates. Radioactive nuclear fallout periodically circled the globe during a 35-year period, mainly between 1955 and 1966, then ceased in October 1980, when China conducted the last atmospheric test in the desert near Lop Nor,⁴³ but fossil fuels annually pump several billion tons of carbon dioxide, sulfur, and nitrogen into the air. Acid rain had damaged almost one-fourth of all woodlands in Europe by 1990, according to a U.N. survey, and some lakes are so acidic that fish find them intolerable. Stratospheric ozone depletion, probably caused by manmade chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), decreases the ability of Earth's atmosphere to shield the surface from ultraviolet radiation which, in turn, increases risks of cancer, cataracts, and respiratory ailments as well as lower crop yields.⁴⁴

Gigantic rain forests, such as those in the Amazon Basin, Equatorial Africa, and Southeast Asia, are disappearing at a rate that knowledgeable observers estimate to be about 16,750 square miles (46,000 square kilometers) each year, with monetary rewards from harvested timber and newly-available agricultural lands as basic objectives. Additional carbon dioxide emissions, soil erosion, and floods that often follow encourage mass migrations from poverty-stricken regions to destinations where governmental leaders have neither suitable spaces within which to accommodate many penniless immigrants nor the inclination to accept them. The extinction of countless plant and animal species that depend on woodland habitats moreover may have consequences that as yet are incalculable.⁴⁵

Environmental warfare was widespread in the jungles of Vietnam, where something like 46,000 toxic tons of a U.S. herbicide called Agent Orange defoliated woodland refuges in the 1960s. Rome Plows uprooted vegetation to eliminate enemy ambush sites along-heavily traveled roads and remove covered enemy approaches to isolated U.S. fire bases.⁴⁶ The Principle of Military Necessity, which legally concedes "the right to apply that amount and kind of force [required] to compel submission of the enemy with the least possible expenditure of time, life, and money," implicitly justified those practices,⁴⁷ but the extent to which Agent Orange unintentionally afflicted U.S. military personnel and Vietnamese civilians as well as crops and livestock still prompts debates about relations between environmental costs and military benefits.⁴⁸

Accidental oil spills in the Age of Supertankers (250,000 to 400,000 deadweight tons), the largest of which carry nearly 3 million barrels of crude oil apiece, understandably cause consternation among coastal countries that could suffer the loss of fisheries, tourist trade, other economically attractive advantages, and catastrophic environmental deprivation. The ill-starred U.S. tanker Exxon Valdez, for example, leaked 260,000 barrels into Alaska's Prince William Sound after it hit a reef in March 1989. Damage was confined only because the crew safely transferred another million barrels to sister tankers, but even so the slick eventually coated 1,100 miles (1,770 kilometers) of pristine shoreline and islands. Marine birds and mammals perished wholesale, sludge seriously threatened salmon and herring schools, and restitution payments totaled more than $1 billion.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in January 1991 made the Exxon Valdez accident seem picayune when he dumped several million barrels of crude oil into the Persian Gulf from his Sea Island transshipment terminal, from five tankers tied up in port at Mina al-Ahmadi, and from huge storage tanks ashore. He eclipsed those abominations soon thereafter when he ordered henchmen to torch more than 650 producing wells and dynamite 82 others in Kuwait. Oily lakes formed death traps for birds around sabotaged wells, a sickening stench made human stomachs churn, 200-foot (60-meter) tongues of flame fed half a million tons of pollutants per day into the atmosphere, and greasy clouds towered 100 times that high before they wafted with winds that deposited "black rain" in Iran. Overall results, according to speculation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, may represent "one of the most extraordinary manmade environmental disasters in recorded history."⁴⁹

Water requirements often outstrip sources in regions where agricultural and industrial expansion coincide with arid climates and rampant population growth creates unprecedented demands. Poor sanitation practices, contaminated runoff from tilled fields, industrial pollutants, and raw sewage discharged upstream make potable supplies a luxury in many such countries.⁵⁰

Scarcities accompanied by fierce competition have spawned the term "hydropolitics" in the Middle East, where more than half of the people depend on water that originates in or passes through at least one foreign country before it reaches consumers. Twenty-one dams and 17 hydroelectric power stations under construction along the upper Euphrates River in Turkey provoke protests by the Governments of Syria and Iraq, whose senior officials foresee future deprivation. Uncoordinated water control projects in Syria cause additional complaints in Baghdad. Nearly all water in Egypt flows down the Nile from catch basins in eight other countries that include unfriendly Sudan.⁵¹

Central and South Asia experience similar water supply problems. Deforestation in Nepal intensifies flooding along the Ganges while India, in turn, pursues water diversion projects that deprive delta dwellers in Bangladesh. The Aral Sea, once the world's fourth largest inland body of water, has split into two sections that altogether cover half as much area, contain one-fourth the volume, and are three times as saline as in 1960, because irrigation programs siphon so much water from the Amu and Syr Darya Rivers, which are its only feeders. Frequent dust storms full of salty sediments, toxic fertilizers, and pesticide residues from the exposed sea bed contribute to high infant mortality and low life expectancy rates in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, where impure water causes typhoid fever, hepatitis, and kidney disorders.⁵²

Fishermen the world over quadrupled their catch between 1950 and 1990, after which takes slumped largely because the best spots were "over fished." Coast guards deployed to protect dwindling resources work overtime to ward off plundering fleets equipped with fish-finding sonars and nets that can haul in tens of tons on a single outing. Acrimonious encounters commonly occur 200 miles or so offshore in gaps that contain some of the globe's most lucrative fishing grounds between Exclusive Economic Zones. Poachers, well aware that increasing demands coupled with declining supplies cause prices to soar, penetrate far into EEZs when anticipated gains seem to outweigh risks, but international efforts to establish legal limits on harvests thus far fall on deaf ears.⁵³

Toxic and infectious wastes in sufficient quantities or concentrations may cause or exacerbate insidious, often incapacitating (even irreversible) illnesses when improperly treated, stored, transported, or otherwise mismanaged. Flammable, corrosive, explosive, and radioactive substances also qualify as hazardous materials (HAZMAT). Means of disposal range from land fills and incineration to chemical conversion, burial underground or beneath the sea, and indiscriminate dumping.⁵⁴ Imprudent methods in many instances cause solely domestic concerns, but HAZMATs that contaminate other countries or international waters are increasingly sources of friction.

Some authorities believe that the safest disposition of the most harmful HAZMAT may be watertight canisters buried on abyssal plains at the bottom of oceans where extremely deep, sticky sediments would seal them in protective cocoons that precipitating silts and decomposing organisms would strengthen eternally. One Texas-sized plot under consideration lies 600 miles (965 kilometers) north of Hawaii several miles below the surface on a seabed that has been geologically stable for the last 65 million years.⁵⁵

Unwanted chemical warfare munitions ⁵⁶ and nuclear materials ⁵⁷ are exceedingly difficult to discard safely at acceptable costs. The former Soviet Union, indifferent to consequences at home and abroad, was one of the worst offenders. Feckless overseers dumped outdated nuclear reactors, spent fuel, and other radioactive waste along the coast of Novaya Zemlya, in the Kara Sea, and in the Seas of Okhotsk and Japan, where fragile ecosystems are especially sensitive to environmental insults. Few pollutants apparently have migrated from those locales thus far, but leakage and contamination of marine food chains eventually could be extensive.⁵⁸

Members of the world community who view environmental plunder as a problem that threatens their respective lifestyles seek sensible solutions,⁵⁹ whereas exploiters who see opportunities for enrichment employ rapacious practices. U.S. National Security Strategy in 1995 warned that "increasing competition for the dwindling resources of uncontaminated air, arable land, fisheries, other food sources, and water, once considered 'free goods'" have become "a very real risk to regional stability around the world." Its authors predicted that "environmental depredation and resource depletion . . . will feed into immense social unrest and make the world substantially more vulnerable to serious internal frictions," despite generous allowances for scientific and technological countermeasures.⁶⁰ U.S. Armed Forces, which intend to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, have begun to reexamine doctrines, tactics, techniques, targeting procedures, and rules of engagement that perhaps gratuitously endanger environments.⁶¹