In military strategy, its trendy to talk about Fourth Generation Warfare (4Gw) and the notion of the “multi-dimensional battlefield”, where understanding religion, social dynamics, culture, economics is as important as counting a state’s number of tanks and airplanes.

Back in November 2005, StrategyUnit discussed posed the question of obesity as a security threat and pointed to the “French Solution” as a possible method to combat obesity in the United States.

The Governor Huckabee of Arkansas (a Republican) seems to be following the same lines of thinking and tackling obesity as an issue of financial and economic security. Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times, writes the following in “Mike Huckabee Lost 110 Pounds. Ask Him How“:

Arkansas has become a national laboratory for using policy levers to try to encourage healthier lifestyles. Other states and the federal government should adopt the same steps — like curbing soft drinks in schools, informing all parents of their children’s body mass index as a step to encouraging fitness, giving exercise breaks as well as smoking breaks, paying for preventive health checks like mammograms and prostate examinations, subsidizing efforts to quit smoking and seeking to give food stamps more purchasing power when they are used to buy fruits or vegetables.
…
Repeatedly, Mr. Huckabee came back to the same argument: Obesity is reducing not only the quality of life of Americans, but also the fiscal soundness of our government and the competitiveness of our businesses.

‘’This year, G.M. will spend more on health care for employees and pensioners than on steel,’’ Mr. Huckabee noted. ‘’Starbucks will spend more on health care than on coffee beans.’’

Obesity is linked to 112,000 deaths a year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and leads to an extra $75 billion in direct medical costs. Mr. Mike Huckabee [Governor of Arkansas] argues that it would be worth paying small sums — for a session with a fitness trainer or a diet counselor — to avoid paying the far greater costs of heart disease and diabetes later.

Consider type 2 diabetes — the ailment that afflicted Mr. Huckabee (but which has now gone away, thanks to his regimen of salads and exercise). It has increased tenfold among children in just the last 20 years. (Emphasis Mine)

In today’s State of the Union Address (SotU), President Bush spoke of the need to keep America competitive in the global marketplace. While obesity will not be the singular or the biggest factor in determining a state’s power and competitiveness, we would be foolish to ignore expanding the concept of security and consider a full “multi-dimensional” approach to security and the variables that go into that equation - from sea lanes that carry oil supplies to our diet.

If we are seeing the benefits of approach war studies from a “multi-dimensional” perspective,than why not for the whole realm of security issues?

Its good to see Gov. Huckabee leading the way with Kristoff bringing this up in the media, hopefully more leaders, politicans and pundits will follow suit.