Assessing Civilian Vulnerabilities and Resource Protection in Conflict

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.

• Belcher, Brandon, "Special Operations in Somalia: Strategies for Success in the Horn of Africa," AFGC, 2025.

  • Focusing on another critical region of interest for USCENTCOM and JSOU, this study explores how Somalia's territorial fragmentation and lack of a functional central government have exacerbated violent clan-based conflicts over scarce resources like water and arable land. Al-Shabaab and other armed groups successfully exploit these resource scarcities, offering financial support and basic governance to disenfranchised locals. To proactively mitigate these issues and minimize the requirement for a long-term U.S. military footprint, the author recommends leveraging Special Operations Forces (SOF) civil affairs and military information support operations to broadcast and deliver State Department-backed humanitarian relief and inclusive economic aid. However, the paper cautions that conducting these operations in non-permissive security environments carries the high risk of pulling U.S. forces into broader kinetic conflicts.

• Bowman, Lt. Col. Thomas R., "Is America Prepared for Great Power Competition? Examining US Policy for a New Era," AWC, 2021.

  • This paper addresses the weaponization and destabilizing effects of mass migration, noting that climate change-induced food and water insecurity is projected to displace over 140 million people by 2050. To prevent these humanitarian crises from overwhelming regional stability and eroding U.S. influence, the paper argues that the military must integrate "adaptive basing" concepts into its Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response (HADR) doctrine. By establishing proactive partnership agreements, the Joint Force can pre-position rapidly deployable resources and equipment in regions vulnerable to severe climatological and social shocks. This proactive posture builds local resilience, streamlines response timelines, and counters the geopolitical influence of competitors who are prepared to exploit resource-driven migration events.

• Buccellato, Greta, "Are Smart Amy Bases a Dumb Idea?" AWC, 2019.

  • This paper directly answers how the Joint Force can systematically assess and prioritize the protection of critical resources and their associated infrastructure. It outlines a core framework centered on five essential systems: security, communication, energy, water, and transportation. Under this framework, resource security and resiliency are assessed and prioritized using the Installation Status Report - Mission Capacity (ISR-MC) metric, which evaluates four key attributes: assured access, infrastructure condition, system operation, and critical mission sustainmen.. This methodology establishes a strict priority of ensuring that facilities can independently sustain their critical missions for a minimum of 14 days during external resource disruptions, leveraging technologies like islandable microgrids, water leak detection, and treated effluent recycling to reduce external resource dependence.

• Cahoon, Lt. Col. Troy L., "Technology in Peacekeeping: How Technology Can Make Peacekeeping Better," AWC EL, 2020. 

  • This paper focuses on how deploying forces can leverage advanced, clean technologies to provide resources to denied or vulnerable areas, thereby developing local resilience and influence while simultaneously mitigating their own resource footprint. To avoid draining local resources in deployed areas, forces can utilize flat-pack, modular, or 3D-printed shelters, implement water-recycling and rain-capture systems, and transition from vulnerable diesel generators to renewable energy (solar/wind) paired with battery storage or micro nuclear reactors. Providing these same sustainable resource-generation capabilities to local populations and refugee camps directly improves their standard of living, secures basic human needs, and fosters deep public trust and influence without relying on costly, vulnerable, and resource-heavy military supply convoys.

• Cherian, Capt. Aksah et al, "BBP on Clean Water Solution in Austere Tropical Environments," SOS AUAR, 2024. 

  • This paper proposes a highly tactical method for deployed forces to achieve water self-sufficiency and avoid draining local host-nation supplies during operations. Cherian et al. advocate for the operational testing and fielding of the portable, lightweight GRAYL water purification unit to Airmen deployed in austere locations. This tool purifies 99.99% of viruses, pathogens, and heavy metals from nearby raw water sources in seconds, allowing warfighters to sustain themselves on-site for up to 60 days. By utilizing local raw water instead of relying on heavy bottled water resupply, this solution eliminates massive aircraft cargo weight (saving 240 lbs of water per airman) and completely removes the local environmental and logistical footprint of U.S. forces, ensuring they do not strain municipal water supplies.

• Davis, Maj. Donald A., "Emerging Fronts: A Systematic Approach to Identifying and Addressing Homeland Defense Vulnerabilities," AFGC, 2023.
  • This paper illustrates how hostile state actors, such as Iran, can wage resource warfare by targeting critical maritime chokepoints (like the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb) to disrupt the global flow of petroleum, which indirectly paralyzes the distribution of food, water processing, farming, and electricity. It emphasizes the immense resource requirements of the U.S. military itself, noting that operational energy demands can consume tens of millions of barrels of oil, heavily draining supplies and rendering forces vulnerable to fuel price and logistics disruptions. Preparing for such conflicts requires the Joint Force to safeguard critical infrastructure networks, anticipate supply chain hoarding or looting, and proactively plan for the domestic rationing and prioritization of organic essentials.
• 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.
• Dubytskyi GCPME 2025 How Curtailing USAID Creates Doctrinal Conflict.docx" This study answers how the U.S. can proactively mitigate resource problems to reduce the requirement for long-term military stabilization support. It argues that USAID’s humanitarian and development programs (spanning agriculture, health, water, and governance) are vital soft-power tools that proactively resolve the root causes of instability, manage food crises through early-warning networks like FEWS NET, and mitigate mass migration and displacement. Reorganizing or cutting USAID creates strategic vacuums that China and Russia actively exploit through predatory lending, ultimately forcing the U.S. military to assume long-term civilian stabilization and humanitarian response roles. This overreliance strains military logistics and O&M budgets under restrictive Title 10 laws, ultimately degrading overall warfighting readiness.
• Esch et al TDRTF 2026 Taiwan's Medical Deterrence--Selection of Hardened Medical Facilities.docx" This paper utilizes Thomas Saaty's Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to develop a systematic framework for assessing and prioritizing the protection of critical infrastructure and utilities. Because modern precision strike systems and persistent surveillance heavily threaten healthcare and utility networks, the authors' decision model prioritizes Candidate facilities based on their survivability and utility resilience. Pairs of criteria comparisons establish that "structural hardening and overhead protection" (0.34 global weight) and "electrical power availability and redundancy" (0.17 global weight) dominate the priority structure, making up half of the decision weight. Water supply/wastewater management and CBRN filtration are integrated as crucial enablers to guarantee that self-contained clinical environments remain functional and sterile under blockade conditions.
• Esch ACSC 2025 Bleeding the Fait Accompli (Innovation in Research Award).docx" This paper explores the protection and provision of critical clinical resources—specifically low-titer group O whole blood (LTOWB)—to denied or vulnerable areas to sustain population resilience and military deterrence. Blockade tactics and infrastructure damage threaten central blood banking systems by cutting off civilian donor access and disrupting the fragile electrical cold-chain necessary to store blood. To safeguard this life-saving resource, the paper advocates for decentralized storage using individual refrigeration units and portable thermal containers (maintaining temperatures for 72 hours without power), alongside the implementation of "walking blood banks" at the unit level. Pre-positioning these resources in local shelters enables continuous trauma care for both military personnel and wounded civilians, signaling a resilient defense that denies quick victories to adversaries.

• Gipper, Daniel P., "Innovate with Caution: Culture, (Mis)Calculation, and (In)Capacity," SAASS, 2022.

  • This study demonstrates how the direct provision of essential infrastructure and resources can develop significant population-centric influence and local resilience during stabilization operations. It highlights MG Peter Chiarelli's "SWET" (sewer, water, electricity, and trash) strategy executed by the 1st Cavalry Division in Sadr City, Baghdad. By prioritizing the restoration of these critical local services and employing 18,000 local workers to rebuild their own neighborhood, the division established a peaceful, cooperative environment. This infrastructure-first approach proved that meeting the population's immediate biological and civic needs is a powerful mechanism for stabilizing hostile areas, building trust, and fostering cooperative civil-military relations.

• Henson GCPME 2025 Unifying Joint Logistics against Anti-Access Area Denial.docx" This paper outlines how the Joint Force can mitigate its own resource drain on deployed areas during distributed, expeditionary operations. To prevent forces from depleting local food, water, and fuel supplies, the U.S. Army is investing in advanced, self-sufficient logistics technologies. These critical enablers include fuel-efficient generators, smart-grid power distribution, portable solar panels, advanced rechargeable batteries, and wastewater recycling equipment, which collectively reduce the base camp's energy signature and logistical footprint. Furthermore, the author suggests that joint forces can use commercial partners and "mixed shipments" to blend military food and medical supplies with civilian cargo, simultaneously securing supply lines and avoiding a disruptive military footprint.

• Hess, Alexander J., "Can China Feed Itself Peacefully? China's Food Security Strategy and the Potential for International Conflict," SAASS, 2022.

  • This thesis highlights how resource scarcities—particularly freshwater depletion—threaten agricultural yields, drive Malthusian resource competition, and act as a major catalyst for interstate conflict. When state actors leverage upper-riparian positions to unilaterally divert river flows from lower-riparian nations, water effectively becomes a geopolitical weapon. To proactively mitigate these crises and reduce the need for long-term military stabilization, the paper recommends that the United States make strategic, long-term investments in freshwater development and sustainable desalination technologies. Deploying these freshwater solutions to vulnerable, denied, or partner nations allows the U.S. to build immense regional influence and population resilience, while simultaneously undermining the coercive asymmetric advantages of hostile resource-deniers.

• Higgins, Christopher J., "Strategic Planning for Refugee Integration into the United States: Lessons Learned from Afghan Resettlement Post 2021," SAASS thesis, 2025, 77 pgs. 

  • This thesis explores the domestic security implications of failing to integrate refugees, highlighting how populations displaced by armed conflict or climate change become highly vulnerable to socioeconomic marginalization. Higgins argues that strategic planning—structured through the Joint Planning Process (JPP) Step Two: Mission Analysis and the Theory of Planned Behavior—is an operational and moral necessity to prevent prolonged refugee instability. When interagency coordination falters, legal and housing infrastructures misalign, leaving refugees in "legal limbo" and breeding disillusionment that elevates risks of criminal behavior or radicalization. Conversely, the Joint Force and interagency partners can mitigate these security threats and build population-level resilience by proactively coordinating trauma-informed care, civic mentorship, and rapid professional re-credentialing, transforming refugees from perceived public burdens into productive domestic assets.

• Houk GCPME 2025 Midfield as a Strategy for the Philippines.docx" This paper proposes the "MIDFIELD" framework—adding Financial, Intelligence, Legal, and Development (FI_LD) tools to traditional DIME strategies—to build proactive regional resilience. The "Development" component focuses on addressing the long-term structural vulnerabilities, economic underdevelopment, and local resource dependencies that gray-zone adversaries exploit to gain coercive leverage. For example, the author advocates for the "Maritime Livelihoods and Resilience Initiative," which coordinates microgrants and technical assistance with regional allies (such as Japan and Australia) to support coastal cooperatives and local businesses. This targeted development programming improves household economic resilience, strengthens community cohesion, and undercuts the appeal of adversary-backed infrastructure projects that create long-term dependence.
• Jorgensen GCPME 2025 Integrating Waste to Energy Systems for the Arctic.docx" This research examines how deployed military installations can utilize Waste-to-Energy (WTE) technologies to eliminate their local resource drain and environmental footprint. Traditional disposal methods such as open burn pits, landfilling, and shipping waste generate hazardous air pollutants, contaminate soil and water, and create immense logistical burdens. By integrating adaptable technologies like rotary kiln gasifiers, plasma converters, and anaerobic digestion, installations can process complex, unsegregated solid and biological waste streams near the point of need. These systems reduce overall waste volumes, prevent environmental and health hazards to local communities, and generate supplemental heat and power, which directly enhances base self-sufficiency and resource independence.

• Klase GCPME 2025 Advancing Agile Combat Employment through Construction Innovation.docx" This paper discusses how rapidly deployable energy solutions can be integrated into expeditionary infrastructure to minimize the logistical and resource footprint of military forces. Technologies such as containerized microgrids, portable solar arrays, and advanced battery storage systems enable Agile Combat Employment (ACE) locations to generate and manage power locally. By reducing the need for large, detectable fuel convoys (which historically present high operational risks and signatures), these smart energy grids enhance base survivability and self-sufficiency. This allows dispersed military forces to operate autonomously without straining regional host-nation power grids or local fuel reserves.

• Kroll, Maj. Steven J., "A Novel Solution to Power Generation on Austere Air Bases," AFGC, 2024.

  • This research addresses how the military can prepare for contested environments where adversaries aggressively target traditional logistical supply routes, such as the fuel lines required to power military installations. Kroll highlights that traditional reciprocating diesel generators are highly resource-intensive and create massive vulnerabilities, as fuel convoy operations historically account for a high portion of casualties. To mitigate the U.S. military's own drain on local resources in deployed areas and achieve energy independence, the author recommends immediately adopting scalable, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solar generation paired with battery energy storage systems (BESS). For long-term sustainment, the Joint Force should invest in small modular reactors (SMRs) or microreactors and construct pre-planned renewable energy infrastructure (like hydro, geothermal, or tidal systems) in strategically vital regions to ensure continuous, low-maintenance baseload power without taxing local networks.

• Lee, Maj. Shaun, "When the Ducks Migrated West: Russian Information Confrontation and the 2014-2017 European Refugee Crisis" AF Fellows, 2020.

  • This paper documents the geopolitical and cognitive vulnerabilities associated with mass displacement, detailing how adversaries can actively weaponize "Coercive Engineered Migration" to achieve hostile objectives. During the 2014–2017 European refugee crisis, Russia exploited the influx of over one million Middle Eastern refugees fleeing the Syrian Civil War. By executing a massive, coordinated "firehose of falsehood" campaign via social media, bots, and state-backed outlets, Russia amplified public fears of immigration, sowed deep societal divisions, and bolstered Eurosceptic populist political movements. This strategic manipulation successfully weakened Western security alliances (NATO and the EU) and eroded democratic cohesion, proving that mass migration driven by environmental or physical conflict can be readily exploited as a potent tool of asymmetric warfare.

• Lowrie, Lt. Col. Jacob, "Defending the Gate: Exploring the US Military's Role in Homeland Defense," SAASS, 2024.

  • This study directly addresses how adversaries utilize mass migration and resource-driven displacement as "coercive weapons" below the threshold of armed conflict. Lowrie uncovers how hostile states (such as China, Mexico, and Venezuela) and criminal cartels exploit porous borders and mass migration crises to induce domestic chaos and divisions within target Western nations. By weaponizing the desperation of refugees driven by environmental and economic scarcities, adversaries seek to degrade U.S. national security, strain public resources, and level the geopolitical playing field. To prevent and mitigate this weaponization of refugees, U.S. homeland defense and Joint Force planners must reassess border security frameworks, actively target the sub-threshold strategies of complicit governments, and address the underlying transnational drivers of forced migration.

• Marmino TDRTF 2026 Response to Shock Lessons from COVID19 for Taiwan.docx" This paper outlines how the military can repurpose pandemic-era resource tracking and coordination systems to distribute food, water, and medical supplies under intense conflict pressure. Repurposing digital National Health Insurance (NHI) cards and digital ID databases into emergency ration tools allows the state to link real-time inventories to a National Resource Map, transforming a dense network of local convenience stores into "Civilian Resilience Nodes". This radical transparency prevents public panic, stops resource hoarding, and ensures equitable distribution. Additionally, embedding geofencing safety alerts on mobile networks transforms citizens into a decentralized, resilient intelligence web, maximizing population survivability and social cohesion during a siege.

• McBride, Maj. Lukhma, "The Chadian Way of War: Implications for Operations in the Sahel," SAASS, 2025.

  • This thesis analyzes how the Chadian military successfully conducts combat operations under conditions of extreme resource constraint and environmental hardship in hyper-arid desert terrains. McBride demonstrates that Chadian forces survive on minimal logistics by relying on local resources and traditional, low-tech environmental adaptation methods, such as utilizing guerba goatskin pouches that use evaporative cooling to sustain fifty soldiers on just half a liter of water a day. Chadian "nakedness as an asset" minimalism eliminates the massive logistical tails that conventional Western armies require, which heavily reduces their vulnerability to supply line disruptions. By studying these indigenous, culturally grounded practices, the U.S. military can develop lighter, highly mobile tactical concepts and design sustainable security assistance programs that do not drain local resources or require high-maintenance, costly equipment.

• McLaren GCPME 2025 Military and Government Support for Peacetime Private Industry for National Security.docx" This paper addresses how geopolitical conflicts can disrupt civilian food, water, and energy supplies regionally and globally, utilizing the war in Ukraine as a prime example. It highlights how Russian missile attacks on agricultural cargo export ships severely disrupted regional food supplies, putting up to 30% of the populations of Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, and Lebanon at risk of hunger and causing global cereal grain costs to spike by 70%. Furthermore, the study notes how adversaries deploy non-kinetic methods, such as the Chinese state-sponsored cyber group "Salt Typhoon," to actively target and disrupt civilian critical household utilities—including internet, power, water, and natural gas. To mitigate these vulnerabilities, the author argues that the U.S. government must proactively leverage legal authorities to support domestic manufacturing and secure strategic maritime chokepoints rather than relying on reactive measures.

• Moore, Maj. Autumn B., "Powering the Fight: Alternative Energy Solutions for Contingency Basing," AFGC, 2021.

  • This research examines how transitioning to renewable and alternative energy sources can eliminate the military’s dependence on fossil fuels and mitigate the joint force's operational footprint. It evaluates technologies such as solar, wind, and geothermal power—including mobile systems like the Air Force Research Laboratory's Swift Standalone Solar and Storage (4S) unit and portable wind turbines like the Njord and Freya. Shifting to these self-sustaining systems allows forward operating units to maintain a "light, agile logistics footprint," eliminating dangerous fuel convoys and the risk of prime power cuts by hostile actors. Furthermore, the paper highlights emerging carbon-capture technologies that can synthesize E-Jet aviation fuel "out of thin air", demonstrating how deployed forces can operate entirely untethered from external supply lines and local resource grids.

• Moncier, Lt. Col. Benjamin S., "The Least Worst Reality: Responsibly Ensuring Partner Conflict Civilian Casualty Mitigation," GCPME thesis, 2023, 37 pgs. 

  • Addresses these challenges by proposing that critical infrastructure, such as water treatment plants and hospitals, must be prioritized and protected by placing them on No-strike Lists (NSLs) and designating nearby targets on Restricted Target Lists (RTLs). However, Moncier cautions against using direct casualty metrics to assess the secondary civilian impacts of degraded infrastructure capacity, arguing that such data is nearly impossible to quantify accurately due to confounding battlefield factors and can demoralize partner forces if they feel trapped in a no-win scenario. To proactively stabilize regions and reduce the long-term U.S. military footprint, the Joint Force should "offload active warfighting" to local allies by leveraging "tailored conditionality" on Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and security cooperation. Tying arms transfers to peacetime training, senior-leader advisory programs, and end-use monitoring by U.S. liaisons enables the U.S. to build partner capacity, establish jus in bello ethical norms, and secure regional influence without deploying a heavy physical footprint

• Morris, Lt. Col. Paul, "Russian Deep Operations: A Contemporary Application," AWC, 2020.

  • Complementing the concept of engineered migration, this paper details how hostile states can employ "reflexive control" to orchestrate and weaponize refugee flows as a form of hybrid warfare. It outlines a notional threat scenario where criminal elements and hidden hostile special forces deliberately destabilize Central American regions to incite mass migrant caravans to move toward the U.S. southern border. Simultaneously, coordinated foreign disinformation campaigns are used to fuel domestic extremist groups and polarize public opinion, creating an engineered "no-win" strategic and domestic dilemma for U.S. decision-makers. To counter these threats, the author emphasizes the need for Joint planners to develop robust information requirement frameworks and integrate non-traditional, hybrid migration scenarios into formal military wargames.

• Natalini, Maj. Amy et al, "Human Security and Great Power Competition in Africa: Balancing the Future Needs of USAFRICOM" ACSC, 2020.

  • This paper addresses how severe environmental deficits, such as water scarcity and desertification in the Sahel region (specifically Mali, Niger, and Chad), destroy local economies, trigger agricultural crises, and exacerbate deep poverty. In these fragile, deeply rural areas, bad governance and resource constraints prevent state institutions from providing basic services, leaving the population in a desperate fight for survival. These hardships are heavily exploited by violent extremist organizations (VEOs) who use public frustration to recruit young people with promises of pay and de facto authority. To stabilize these conflict-prone regions and reduce the need for long-term foreign military containment, the authors recommend that the international community shift away from repressive counterterrorism policies and redirect aid directly to local and regional organizations to improve standard of living, invest in human capital, and create formal employment.

• O'Connor, Maj. Jesse, "Great Power Competition Demands Great Power Production: Bolstering DAF Energy Security for the Age of Electronic Warfare," AFGC, 2025

  • Examines how the military can transition away from traditional, fuel-heavy, high-manpower diesel generators at austere bases to self-sustaining alternative energy systems to avoid draining local resources and reduce logistics casualties. They analyze deploying solar-BESS systems, Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), wind, geothermal, and microgrids to ensure operational continuity. Crucially, the authors highlight that deploying an SMR (such as a 10 MW(e) microreactor) paired with a reverse osmosis water purification unit allows U.S. forces to autonomously generate electricity and desalinate or treat water. This integrated technology completely eliminates the need to haul water or fuel, preventing U.S. forces from competing with or draining local municipal resource grids during regional stabilization operations.

• Richardson, Lt. Col. Danele, "Tunisia's Water Insecurity: A Threat to US National Interests," AWC RSS, 2024.

  • This paper demonstrates how severe environmental deficits, specifically absolute water scarcity and desertification in North Africa, act as primary catalysts for regional instability and directly compromise post-conflict stabilization. The author notes that by 2030, the Middle East and North Africa region is projected to fall below the absolute water scarcity threshold, a crisis exacerbated by poor governance, lack of administrative accountability, and unsustainable agricultural water consumption. This water stress fuels massive irregular migration, reduces public service accessibility, and nourishes an optimal environment for violent extremist organization (VEO) recruitment as local economic opportunities collapse. To mitigate these broader resource problems proactively and reduce the need for long-term U.S. military intervention, the study recommends targeted U.S. actions: providing financial aid for advanced drought monitoring, improving municipal waste and landfill infrastructure, and expanding security cooperation with local militaries to build regional capacity.

• Satchell, Bachar N., "Alabama to Afghanistan: Optimizing Counterinsurgency through a Strategy of Organizing," SAASS, 2024. 

  • This study contrasts traditional, top-down military directives with a downtime, bottom-up "strategy of organizing" to assess and prioritize critical civilian resources. Satchell argues that instead of imposing generic basic services, the Joint Force must collaborate directly with the local population to let them define their own emergent resource grievances and needs. Delivering targeted essential services like clean water, electricity, and medical care in coordination with local tribal or village leaders establishes profound trust and institutional legitimacy for the intervening force. Proactively providing these vital resources to denied or vulnerable areas serves as a powerful mechanism to build population-level resilience and secure the local population's buy-in, directly undermining the insurgents' strategic narratives and reducing the requirement for long-term U.S. military enforcement.

• Smiley GCPME 2025 ADAPTING U.S. POLICY TO COUNTER CHINA’S BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE.pdf" This paper explains how the U.S. can counter adversarial influence (like China's Belt and Road Initiative) by providing transparent, locally driven development programs in agriculture, public health, and disaster preparedness to foster self-reliance rather than dependence. By training foreign nationals and building local administrative capacity, the U.S. can stabilize fragile areas, manage disasters, and reduce the regional resource pressures that drive mass migration. Drawing on lessons from the 20-year reconstruction of Afghanistan, the author emphasizes that the Joint Force and Department of State must establish clear boundaries regarding the scope, scale, and timelines of these commitments from the outset to prevent unending resource drain and ensure long-term, partner-led sustainability.

• Taku, Lt. Col. Epan Gerald, "Regional Integration in the Lake Chad Basin," AWC, 2019.

  • This paper discusses how shifting climate patterns, desertification, and human water misuse have drastically shrunk Lake Chad, creating a complex social-ecological crisis of food insecurity, poverty, and violence. To proactively mitigate these broader resource problems and foster post-conflict stabilization, the paper suggests that regional security frameworks emulate the Horn of Africa's Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Instead of reacting with post-crisis relief, the Joint Force and regional coalitions should adopt a proactive "drought risk management" model that emphasizes environmental management, sustainable resource use, and early-warning networks (such as CEWARN) to build population resilience and reduce long-term security requirements..

• Umar, Gp. Capt. Mohammed Bello Umar (Nigerian Air Force), "Recalibrating International Peace and Security Efforts in the Sahel," AWC, 2022. 

  • This paper addresses how severe environmental deficits and resource constraints, such as climate change and demographic pressures, heavily exacerbate regional vulnerabilities and hinder post-conflict stabilization efforts. In the Central Sahel, water and land scarcities fuel intense disputes between agricultural and pastoral communities, which violent extremist organizations (VEOs) systematically exploit to recruit marginalized populations by offering protection, dispute resolution, and resource access. To proactively mitigate these vulnerabilities and reduce long-term military requirements, the paper highlights Mauritania’s strategy of consolidating sparse, rural populations into larger settlements, allowing for more defensible communities and the efficient delivery of critical public services like education and water. Ultimately, the paper warns that international interventions focusing primarily on counterterrorism and poorly thought-out development risk causing further damage, as lasting stability requires addressing these underlying governance and resource-sharing challenges.

• Yousefi, Elias, "A Narrow Path: Superpowers in the Decisive Decade of Climate Change," SAASS, 2024. 

  This thesis frames climate change and severe environmental stressors as a direct "threat multiplier" that compounds risk, uncertainty, and the potential for conflict in fragile states. Yousefi establishes the "climate-security nexus," explaining how climate-related hazards—such as extreme heat, floods, and droughts—directly threaten basic civilian food, water, and energy supplies. Using frameworks like the Hague Center's seven climate-conflict pathologies, the study shows that resource scarcity pushes populations to desperate measures to secure access, which heavily complicates post-conflict stabilization and development. The author argues that because these environmental systems are shared, superpowers like the United States and China cannot rely on unilateral security moves; instead, they must implement interdependent and cooperative strategies within the global commons to proactively manage resource crises before they escalate into open warfare.