POPULATION CHANGE & EUROPEAN SECURI - Hardcover

In Thomas Malthus' day national security was seen in terms of protection from attack by hostile nations. Yet despite the broadening of the security umbrella to encompass social and economic competition as well as purely military concerns, the Malthusian influence on national policy seems to have diminished little: Hitler's claims of a lack of 'living space' in Germany gained much credence at a time when, in reality, population density was almost twice as high in England.
Today, politicians are increasingly aware of the important relationship between population change and international security. However, the exact nature of this relationship remains elusive, and while the demographer is in a rare position of being able to forecast with some confidence when and where problems such as shortages in the workforce are going to happen, even his predictions can be overturned by an unexpected political upheaval.
Focusing on Europe and its internal and external security concerns, this volume represents the latest thought on the influence of population change and the nature of demographic study itself. It begins with an examination of the broader implications of current demographic trends in Europe and the Soviet Union as they relate to society and the labour force. The close link between population and economic growth in the past is emphasised - a fact that should be of great concern to leaders of the Western European countries where fertility rates are declining - as is the importance of immigration in the equation.
The later chapters shift the balance towards a more detailed analysis of the relationship between demographic changes and strategic calculations, including a reassessment of the importance of troop numbers in the post-nuclear world and a discussion of how demographic trends in the Soviet Union will affect the Soviet Armed Forces.
The conclusion underlines how widely population size can impact the broad canvas of the sociological, political and strategic scene. The widening North-South divide seems likely to spawn an era of frequent, localised and painful encounters in which the technological advantages possessed by the West will not necessarily prevail in the way they did in the Gulf War. That mass armies may now be becoming obsolete in the West as technology compensates for numerical inferiority, may, on the evidence of this book, be just as well.