Climate Change

Climate change is a second threat multiplier that affects both traditionally stable places and exacerbates instability in some of the world's most volatile regions. The direct effects of global warming are well-known: more extreme weather events like hurricanes, prolonged drought, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, and melting of the Arctic, which is already generating conflict over newly accessible shipping routes and natural resources.

The indirect effects of climate change are less discussed but equally severe. Climate change threatens to inflame social stresses and undermine governance in already fragile states, creating "ungoverned spaces" that are the breeding grounds for international terror, crime, and unrest. Consider this: Climate change is expected to produce up to a 30 percent drop in agricultural yields in Central and South Asia; severe water stress which will affect two billion people, including many in South Asian and African nations already on high alert for state failure; increases in disease outbreaks as water-deprived populations rely on unsafe sources of drinking water; and an estimated displacement of 200 million people living in low-lying coastal areas, particularly in Asia. Importantly, climate change also diminishes response capacity because its effects are regional, making neighbors less able to aid one another.

Technology

The third threat multiplier is technology. The one sure thing about technology is that nobody can predict just how it will be used or by whom. Facebook began as a Harvard student social site and ended up toppling regimes in the Arab spring. Drones used to be the surveillance and killing tools of advanced industrialized states. Now they are being used by rebel groups and built by teenagers. Will drones prolong civil conflict by enabling both sides to see who's around the corner and pick their battles more carefully? Or will they strengthen international peacekeeping by providing a low-risk substitute for "boots on the ground?" Nobody really knows.

What is known, however, is that we live in the early days of a profound new technological era that has three key attributes: lower costs of collective action, which gives civil society far more power against the state; diffuse, often unrecognized vulnerabilities as more systems -- from banks to dams to weapons -- become networked; and technical capabilities that have developed far faster than laws, policies, and international frameworks to manage their use.

In Washington, it is often said that the urgent crowds out the important. Unless the Obama administration does more serious thinking about how to handle these three threat multipliers, the White House's urgent list will only grow bigger.

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