Population Change and National Security
Article Summary and Author Biography
It is not so much a question of how population growth threatens world security, so much as of how fertility differentials between rich and poor countries will threaten the developed world, by producing resource scarcities and irresistible migration pressures. The fastest-growing Third World areas are those least likely to share Western values, and could produce "a fractious, contentious and inhumane international order" rather more dangerous than the Cold War. Rather than pursue pro-natalist policies to bring Western birth rates up to close the gap, the West should consider ways to improve the export of Western values.
Nicholas Eberstadt is a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard University Center for Population Studies and a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This article is adapted from a paper presented at the U.S. Army Conference on Long Range Planning. Copyright (c) 1991 by Nicholas Eberstadt.
We're sorry, but Foreign Affairs does not have the copyright to display this article online.
