Global Development: Views from the Center
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April 18, 2007
Climate Change and National Security: U.S. Military Brass Sound the Tocsin
Posted by Stewart Patrick at 03:44 PM
In a remarkable document released Monday, National Security and the Threat of Global Climate Change, eleven retired U.S. generals and admirals devote their considerable prestige and credibility to making the case that global warming is not merely a threat to the survival of polar bears but a grave and growing threat to U.S. national security. Their main thesis is that rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses will exacerbate instability and state failure “in some of the most volatile regions of the world.” While no country will remain untouched, the authors note,
Many developing countries do not have the government and social infrastructures in place to cope with the types of stressors that could be brought on by global climate change.
The spillover affects, the authors predict, will range from uncontrolled migration to pandemic disease, violent conflict, and transnational terrorism. Such transnational threats have often been associated with state failure. (See for example, my CGD working paper Weak States and Global Threats: Assessing Evidence of Spillovers).
The most striking aspect of this document is the readiness of senior former U.S. military officials to connect the dots between long-term development trends, on the one hand, and U.S. grand strategy and military posture on the other. This is a sea change from the 1990s. Back then, “serious” strategic thinkers dismissed concerns about environmental degradation, global health, demographic stresses, resource scarcity, and humanitarian crisis as mere “social work.” No longer. This call to arms -- by people who have actually borne them, like retired CENTCOM commander Tony Zinni and former Army Chief of Staff Gordon Sullivan -- signals a new era of understanding within the U.S. military. For advocates of action on global warming, the report is priceless.
That said, a couple of quibbles: First, some of the more dire scenarios presuppose a complex -- and contestable -- set of causal linkages. An example is the sweeping claim by retired Admiral T. Joseph Lopez that “climate change will provide the conditions that will extend the war on terror.” Such a contention requires accepting a host of causal assumptions regarding the underlying causes of terrorism, not least the presumed linkages among climate stresses, poverty, social upheaval, political extremism, and the mobilization of transnational terrorist networks. One can spin a plausible narrative here, but it requires a lot of assumptions.
Second, the report is quick to presume that environmental scarcity and stress will engender violent conflict. And yet -- as the report acknowledges -- there is ample evidence that such conditions often stimulate inter-group cooperation and even “environmental peace-making,” particularly when it comes to competition over shared water resources (see the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Peacemaking, for example). As political scientist Colin Kahl reminds us in his recent book, States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World, the connection between environmental stress and violent conflict is neither direct nor inevitable: it is mediated by the resilience, inclusiveness and responsiveness of state institutions, as well as by the presence (or absence) of existing social cleavages that can be exploited by opportunistic political leaders. While there are no grounds for complacency, the fact that the many of the impacts of climate change will be felt gradually may provide opportunity for local, national, regional, and international-level mediation and resolution of emerging conflicts.
These are minor complaints, however. Overall this new report from respected retired U.S. military leaders is a timely reminder of the risks for the United States and the world community in the unprecedented ecological experiment that humanity is now conducting.
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Comments
The report by these retired military officers is a clear signal of what climate change can do to our National security and offers credible lessons to many of our leaders in the developing countries who are very obsessed with development, let alone the fact majority of them are not trained economists but military celebrities. Our leaders have been telling of thier fight for development and prosperity with due disregard to the environmental survival. In Uganda for instance, this scenario is still contested with two contrasting cabinet papers on the planned give-away of 70,000+ hectares of the country's largest natural forest and catchment for lake victoria to sugar cane growing. Two weeks ago, this culminated into a bloody demonstration and the infamous attack on some Indians, an incident not seen since 1970's when former president Iddi Amin expelled Asians.
No one has thought about this decission in terms of National Security. In many developing countries, National security is still traditionally regarded and safeguarded-external threats and internal dissent from opposition and civil groups. The report by these U.S military heros is a challenge into a new paradigm of contemporary security-environmental security, social security, e.t.c which when not considered produces dire results. One of the issues that clearly comes from this report is the idea of 'enviromental peace making' and in the case of Mabira which is a catchment zone for transboundary water source and channel-Lake victoria for Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania : and River Nile for Uganda, Sudan and Egypt. What will be the impact of degazzeting Uganda's largest natural forest on the water cycle and patterns of the shared bodies?. Do we in any way risk an environmental induced security threat from our neighbours?. Obviously, the impact will be reduced rainfall patterns leading to reduced water levels internally affecting rainfall based production and worsening the already bad power generation. Externally, irrigation based production in Sudan and Egypt will fall tremendously, besides the disorienting of marine life in the Lake Victoria and River Nile.
Paul Mayende,
Student, M.A International Relations
Makerere University-Uganda.
Posted by: Paul Mayende at April 25, 2007 03:11 AM
Stewart, as usual, you are an astute observer. Thanks for the references to our Woodrow Wilson Center environmental peacemaking work. I agree that too often the peace and confidence-building potential of environmental interdependencies are neglected as tactics for achieving stability and security ends.
I agree this CNA report is a significant development in achieving wider acceptance for considering environmental issues within a traditional security frame. The 1990s did have some in the security world seriously examining environmental issues for their security linkages, but not surprisingly environmental security did not measure up as a successor paradigm to containment. Seems unrealistic to think that was a serious possibility but with Robert Kaplan's "Coming Anarchy" piece in the Atlantic Monthly (1994) calling environment THE national security threat of the 21st century, there was inevitably a rise and fall of expectations when environmental security wasn't a silver bullet to our post-Cold War doctrinal floundering. Couple of future opportunities to see the CNA authors - May 9 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and May 14th 3-5pm EST at the Wilson Center and live online.
Geoff Dabelko
Director, Environmental Change and Security Program
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Posted by: Geoff Dabelko at May 4, 2007 03:30 PM