Council for a Community of Democracies

"Security and the Impacts of Aging," A Speech by CCD Chairman Robert Hunter at the U.S. State Department
March 30, 2007
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CCD Chairman Robert Hunter delivered a speech on March 15 at the Summit on Global Aging, which was held at the State Department. Ambassador Hunter’s speech, Security Impacts of Aging, was a unique perspective on the effects of aging on national security. The speech, reproduced in it’s entirety below, argues that the dimensions of aging should be at the top of the agenda at the upcoming US-European Union summit in Washington, D.C on April 30th. Hunter says that these issues “could become the key security requirements for this century.”

Security Impacts of Aging
Amb. Robert E. Hunter
RAND Corporation

Summit on Global Aging
US State Department

March 15, 2007

It is an honor to be included on this program, with this group of distinguished experts who have presented such a clear and compelling picture of the demands of aging, and from whom I am learning so much.

I have been asked to talk about the security impact of these issues. Only a few years ago, that would have been unheard of in a gathering like this; just as, until a few years ago, it would have been rare to hear anyone talking about a relationship between health and foreign policy – a subject that we have pioneered at RAND.

Demographyis destiny. Indeed, most of history’s conflicts have been about demography, at least as a major factor: the nature and character, the ebb and flow in the shape and size of different societies -- competing for land, for resources, for places to spread expanding populations, and to direct the energies of a vigorous population.

But what does any of this have to do with aging – a very limited part of demographics? And aging with security?

There are at least three linkages.

Aging and “Guns versus Butter.”

First, what may seem to be good news in terms of reducing the store of human conflict and the challenge to security; and which derives from the fact that many societies are aging, and not just in the developed world: Societies that age tend to witness an increasing competition between guns and butter. The demands of aging create political pressures to shift the balance of spending away from armies and toward social services. The needs of aging populations, for pensions, for health, with a declining ratio of producers to consumers of wealth are major elements of these pressures. In country after country, the “welfare state” crowds out defense spending.

But does that mean that “aging” helps to reduce conflict and hence increase security?

Perhaps so. But in most if not all of the developed countries to which this assessment applies, military spending has declined also because of what they perceive to be the relative lack of threats, today, and the searing lessons of the last century’s wars. It may also be true that, the future, there will be fewer requirements for major combat forces to conduct major, conventional wars – as opposed to the challenges of relatively low-intensity “asymmetrical” warfare that has increasingly become the norm and not the exception.

At the same time, it is also possible that calculations about reduced threats to Western, developed states, at least requiring a significant military response, will prove wrong: that other countries that are less burdened with the costs of aging – and other social costs – will be less inhibited in spending money on defense and could thus gain a potential advantage. The issue of military spending is already becoming a significant issue within the NATO Alliance, in general; and the availability of deployable European forces (that can be readily employed) has become an issue in Afghanistan. The US is complaining that, at least in part for social-welfare reasons, many of the European allies don’t pull their military weight in NATO.

Another factor, at least partially offsetting the “aging effect” on damping down military spending, is that the instruments of combat in modern, developed societies are no longer labor intensive but increasingly rely upon capital and, even more, on information technology.

Thus the fact of aging populations, of a declining cohort of military age men and women, is not likely to be an impediment to conflict, as such, or willingness, without some other factors in play, by developed countries to use military force. War is still not cheap; but in few places does it any longer require the economically-debilitating levée en masse.

And in the United States, we can spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined, and yet see little if any effect on the overall performance of our economy and not that much direct impact on our social choices. What limitations there are here on social spending, below what is needed for a healthy, vibrant society, derive from largely independent decisions regarding taxation and national priorities.

The Internal Security Impact of Aging

The second linkage between aging and possible conflict – between aging and security -- is that societies unable to provide for the basic needs of their people – old as well as young – are more likely to be societies in turmoil, turmoil which can spread to other countries. They are thus also more likely to be vulnerable to terrorism’s recruiting sergeants. And as societies with low investments in health care, including against infectious diseases, they are likely to spread disease by the now universal vectors of transport and migration, affecting the security of immediate neighbors and even countries far afield.

Of course, aging is not the sole cause of these challenges to security, and it may not even be a leading cause; but it and its health component are surely part of the overall inability of many societies to meet the economic and social needs of burgeoning populations, with challenges to security, internal and external, as one product. And these challenges can be made worse by the effects of what we used to call the “brain drain,” the out-migration of talented working age people while the elderly remain behind – perhaps kept going with worker remittances, perhaps not.

Refugees and Migration

Third, the most important impact that aging populations have on security is indirect. We now see a world on the move: migrants by choice; refugees by compulsion – the latter both across borders and as “internally displaced persons.” Together, there are today more refugees and migrants ”on the move” that at any other time since at least the end of World War II.

Refugees do not move by choice; and when they do, they are more likely than economic migrants to be at risk from malnutrition, disease, loss of income, and other threats to their well-being. The elderly among them are particularly vulnerable; the costs of providing for them are potentially significant – and, in general, the direct costs and responsibilities of caring for refugees, both young and old, are most often imposed on developing countries that are least able to cope. The associated risks of tensions, reduced capacities of the receiving states for effective governance, even conflict are obvious.

With migrants, there are many reasons to move – especially the desire to seek better economic opportunities and to improve the quality of life for themselves and their families.

At the same time, there are many reasons for developed societies to seek to attract immigrants, sometimes in large numbers. But increasingly, this economic, demand-driven migration is being fueled by the aging of societies. In almost all of Europe and in Japan (less so in the United States), the ratio between the “young” and the “old” -- the “net producers” and the “net consumers” of economic output and of expensive social services like health care -- is shifting rapidly, especially with falling birth rates and increasing longevity.

In an increasing number of countries, there are simply not enough young people to produce the goods and services for an aging population, even if there were a shrinking of the welfare state. By 2050, more than 20% of Americans will be over 65 years of age; in Europe, it will be 28%; in Japan 34%; -- and even in China nearly 25%.

Between now and 2050, in order to prevent a decline in working-age population, the United States would have to “import” up to 360,000 immigrants a year; in Japan, an “immigration resistant” society, it would be 650,000 a year; and In Europe, it would be a staggering 1.6 million immigrants a year!

Apparent need, however, does not mean the most sensible policy. Migrants age like everyone else; the “remedy” of recruiting younger workers to make up for the upward shift in the age distribution of native populations is a wasting asset! Nonetheless, the migrant-option will likely still be widely followed.

These projections – and the migrant policy response they will provoke, at least in Europe -- suggest several impacts with a security dimension, especially in Europe:

The problems of absorbing large numbers of immigrants, especially from different cultures, with the high risk of social tensions, especially in countries that do not have much of a history of immigration, certain not of a large-scale – as opposed to the United States, which has had long experience, if sometimes rough experience, of incorporating migrants and refugees from other cultures;

Increases in cross-border crime, human trafficking, and drugs – particularly emanating from Central Europe and Russia on the backs of migrant flows;

Particular sensitivities, some merited, most not, about Moslems migrating from North Africa and the Middle East – a limited number, in fact, engaged in terrorism or vulnerable to terrorist recruiters. And most European countries have been slow to adapt and to make possible either assimilation or mutually-tolerant parallel lives;

Increased sensitivities in some migrant-receiving countries about conflicts, tensions, and instabilities in the sending countries, especially in the Middle East and different parts of Africa; and

Even gradual shifts – for good or ill -- in government attitudes and foreign policies in migrant-receiving countries toward factors like the Arab-Israeli conflict, because of the steep rise of immigration from the Middle East and the political impact of the Diasporas from different countries and cultures.

All these “security” issues are no doubt leading to new requirements, relating to the aging of societies, beyond existing social needs and responses that are pursued for other reasons -- such as progressively raising the age of retirement, investing more heavily in health-related issues, and exploiting high technology answers for increased productivity. These added requirements include:

Better efforts for effective absorption of immigrants;

Placing emphasis on guest worker programs, where this is politically and socially palatable, itself fraught with difficulties;

Prosecuting peace and stability in sending regions and countries, above all the Middle East, while building the needed social and cultural bridges between societies and religions; and

Helping to shape conditions – for these “aging-related” and many other reasons – in so many places in the developing world in terms of basic social needs. There is certainly a need, among other things, to forge a US-European Union “strategic partnership” in health, education, job creation, governance, and all the other elements of what is sometimes in short-hand called “nation building” – and where the US and Europe have such capabilities to act. By only one measure, the US and the EU have great capacities in health: indeed, if the US health care system were a country, its “gross domestic product” would be the 7th largest in the world! Even without the challenge of aging, this US-EU strategic partnership would be needed, for security as well as economic, political, and humanitarian reasons.

With this final point in mind, there is a major opportunity in the offing: the US-European Union summit in Washington on April 30. The president of the United States will meet with his EU counterparts. These issues – including the issue of aging in all of its dimensions, and especially its health dimension -- should be driven toward the top of the agenda and made the focus of a new strategic partnership in meeting the full range of human needs that could become the key security requirements for this century.