COEUR d'ALENE - Whether it was on his high school or college debate teams or now as a colonel in the Army Reserve, Miller Belmont has always been inquisitive about where the opposition stands.

Part of the Coeur d'Alene High graduate's job for the 2400th Military Intelligence Group in the Reserve is to predict what wars will look like in 2020 and make recommendations on how to tweak training for those.

"It comes naturally for me to dig down on this stuff," said Belmont, adding that he has always been interested in debate and being an information sponge. "I think it's fascinating. I have my biases, but I try to expose myself to everything that's going on."

Belmont said he believes urbanization - a trend that has been going on for decades - will only intensify in the years ahead across the globe.

"Most of the populations are moving to cities," he said. "This is where the jobs are and where you can make more money.

"As cities face rapid urbanization, you'll have problems that come with that."

The 46-year-old said "food deserts" will form as the population gets farther away from farms. With urbanization, more problems with pollution and water systems will arise. There will also become a greater lack of governance in cities.

"All of that creates stress," he said. "Some of these problems exist now, but will only intensify. That's the model we need to look at with greater detail."

He said crime will get more difficult to root out and criminal networks will continue to form with technological tools.

In spite of the poverty, Belmont said that when he left serving in Iraq in 2007 and 2008, 90 percent of the residents there had satellite TV.

Belmont said he believes the Army will have to learn how to fight better in cities.

"When the Army rolled into Iraq it thought that it would be a big tank battle (in the desert) and it learned quickly that this was not the case," Belmont said. "The Army is slowly catching up to the Marines (on war strategies)."

Belmont said the Army will need to study urban planning more to maximize its efforts.

"We need to get into the nitty gritty of how cities operate," he said. "We've got to go back to the basic fundamental skills with map reading that we've gotten lazy with."

Belmont said, if you track where the instability and youth bulges are, those are indications of where the next major battles may be.

"Where you have a large number of unemployed youth, you have a greater chance of war," he said.

North Africa is one of the regions being closely watched.

"There's no future or no life there," he said.

The Nile River region, where there are environmental stresses such as water and food shortages, is another tender spot.

"Obviously, we don't know where the next war is going to be, but you can do the math," Belmont said.

Belmont, who was recently in Coeur d'Alene visiting family, said his civilian job as a project manager for small-scale space projects at the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Colorado Springs goes hand-in-hand with his Reserve duties.

Belmont, in his fourth year of command in the Reserves, said he has increasingly dealt with suicides or suicidal thoughts of military personnel.

He said that, contrary to popular belief, there isn't a clear indicator that most of those situations involve those who have served overseas.

"(Having served overseas) is not the definitive factor," Belmont said.

Belmont said that oftentimes the first clues of suicidal thoughts show up on social media.

"It's the responsibility of the chain of command to stay in touch with social media," he said. "It's the most effective way to deal with the first signs of trouble."

Belmont said that youth of today are accustomed to getting a trophy for everything, so they're not used to failure and their introduction to the military can be tough as a result.

"Failure is a good thing," Belmont said. "You learn more from failure than you do success. Some younger troops don't understand this."

However, troops today have it tougher economically than some others did, so there's added pressure that way.

"Back in the '90s markets recovered quickly," he said. "There's added stress on these guys. Guys are living out of their cars. Jobs aren't there."