ABSTRACT
The world has already entered a period during which, in the field of security, 'a line of division between opposed things' has been crossed. Beyond the constant dangers posed by terrorism and other obvious causes of warfare, shortfalls of energy resources, scarcity of non-fuel mineral resources, shortages of food, lack of fresh water, encroachment of desertification, and dangers posed by cyber attacks are increasingly recognized as presenting as much, and over time perhaps even more, of a challenge and threat to security as do guns, bombs, and missiles. Although the dangers of superpower confrontation, nuclear annihilation, and main force warfare have receded into the background, the early twenty-first century world is a world where national and global security are at risk. During the 1980s, concerns about the ability of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to determine oil production levels and prices created consternation in many Western industrialized states.
