Demography and Security
Christian Leuprecht: International security strategy: The socio-demographic and economic dawn of a new day, AIES Studien 3/2011, ISSN 2222-9841.
21.12.2011 / Vorige / Nächste Publikation
The world's socio-demographic and economic plates are undergoing a shift of tectonic
proportions. On the one hand, three types of socio-demographic worlds appear to be
emerging (see Figure 1): An affluent first world of aging and declining populations, a
second world composed of economically dynamic emerging countries with fairly
balanced population dynamics that is urbanizing rapidly but risks growing old before it
grows rich, and a third world composed of a rump of impoverished states with youthful
populations that are growing at exponential rates, especially in urban areas with wholly
inadequate infrastructure and services where lagging economies, ethnic affiliations,
intense religious convictions, and youth bulges will align to create a "perfect storm" for
internal conflict in the near future (National Intelligence Council 2005: 97). Similar to
the youthful populations, rapid development, and urbanization of the first half of the
nineteenth century, the pressure demographic developments of the twenty-first century
are exerting on education, sanitation, energy supply, transportation, food storage and
distribution, let alone interethnic relations are raising the spectre of systemic disorder,
civil war, and political instability.
