How can the military prepare for conflicts where the objectives may include hostile actions intended to disrupt civilian supplies of food, water, and energy locally, regionally, and globally? Severe environmental deficits—using water scarcity and desertification in Northern Africa or the Middle East as a primary example—can heavily exacerbate these vulnerabilities. How might such resource constraints affect post-conflict stabilization and development efforts in conflict-prone regions?
To allow for a reduced requirement for long-term U.S. military support for security and stabilization, what can be done to proactively mitigate these broader resource problems? Specifically, how should the protection of critical resources and their associated infrastructure be assessed and prioritized by the Joint Force? Can the provision of energy, food, and water resources to denied or vulnerable areas provide a useful means of developing influence or resilience within a population?
Furthermore, what can the military do to prevent or mitigate the weaponization of refugees driven by environmental and resource scarcities? Finally, as the military conducts these regional stabilization efforts, how can U.S. forces, in conjunction with conventional forces, mitigate their own requirements to ensure that they are not a further drain on local resources in a deployed area?
- Barry, Lt. Col. Tonya N., "The Silent Deterrence Failure: Hospital Power Loss in a Prolonged Blockade," AWC RTF, 2026.
- Answered by Barry’s analysis of how a potential Chinese blockade of Taiwan would disrupt critical civilian lifelines—specifically energy and water—and how these vulnerabilities threaten Taiwan's healthcare system. She notes that Taiwan is highly vulnerable to energy coercion because it imports 98% of its energy and has recently phased out its nuclear capacity. In a prolonged blockade scenario, CSIS wargaming predicts Taiwan's electrical grid could degrade to just 20% of baseline capacity by week 12, at which point all manufacturing ceases and power is restricted only to emergency services. Consequently, hospitals will be forced to compete aggressively for resources as their power consumption relative to the remaining grid load increases by 350%. Furthermore, water distribution is heavily dependent on electricity-driven high-pressure pumps to push water to upper hospital floors. To protect these civilian vulnerabilities and maintain population resilience, Barry emphasizes the critical need for hospitals to develop site-specific, scalable contingency plans, including maintaining a 3-day on-site water storage capacity (amounting to approximately 25.6 million liters across Taiwan's 468 hospitals) to sustain life-saving procedures like hemodialysis.
- De Luca-Johnson M.D., LCDR Javier N., "Violent Ceasefires: Adverse Effects of Frozen Conflict on Population Health," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- De Luca answers this by demonstrating that civilian populations become uniquely vulnerable to disease and mortality when a prolonged lack of security prevents the development of interdependent infrastructure sectors, such as energy, transportation, and education. Because modern healthcare is a highly complex system reliant on these external sectors, De Luca shows that the systemic instability of a frozen conflict effectively cripples civilian health capacity, forcing affected populations to rely heavily on international aid and outside referrals for definitive medical care. Ultimately, the paper answers how civilian vulnerabilities must be assessed by proving that physical violence and persistent security threats systemically destroy the foundational infrastructure required to sustain population health.
- Higgins, Christopher J., "Strategic Planning for Refugee Integration into the United States: Lessons Learned from Afghan Resettlement Post 2021," SAASS thesis, 2025, 77 pgs.
- Higgins addresses the mitigation of refugee weaponization by framing domestic refugee integration as a critical security imperative that prevents marginalized populations from being exploited or radicalized. He asserts that when refugees are economically, socially, or institutionally excluded, their alienation elevates the risk of them being drawn into criminal behavior or extremist narratives. To proactively counter this weaponization, Higgins recommends implementing strategic integration programs—such as trauma-informed care, civic mentorship, and employment alignment—which reduce psychological vulnerabilities and foster social cohesion. By treating integration as a counter-radicalization strategy and incorporating credible refugee messengers into community policing and civic engagement efforts, the U.S. can effectively transform displaced and vulnerable individuals from potential security threats into invested stakeholders who bolster national resilience.
- Moncier, Lt. Col. Benjamin S., "The Least Worst Reality: Responsibly Ensuring Partner Conflict Civilian Casualty Mitigation," GCPME thesis, 2023, 37 pgs.