Collide-a-scape

It’s called the Center on Climate Change and National Security. This strikes me as huge news, not so much because it further institutionalizes and legitimizes climate change as a national security issue, but because the center’s mission will necessarily overlap with a broader suite of environmental issues, as indicated by the CIA’s own press release:

Its charter is not the science of climate change, but the national security impact of phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts, and heightened competition for natural resources.

Obviously climate change is the rubric and impetus for opening this CIA shop. But even if anthropogenic climate change didn’t exist, there would still be a need for such a center, due to the national security implications of drought, over-exploitation of natural resources, population pressures, etc.

Yes, that’s a complicated equation in of itself. And adding climate change (and its rubbery timescales and environmental uncertainties) is tricky and open to manipulation, as environmental security advocate Geoff Dabelko cautioned here last month:

it is important to remember that in the mid-1990s, advocates oversold our understanding of enviromental links to security,  creating a backlash that ultimately undermined policymakers’ support for meeting the very real connections between environment and conflict head-on. Today, ‘climate security’ is in danger of becoming merely a political argument that understates the complexity of climate’s security challenges.

The CIA has a real chance to analyze and communicate that complexity in ways that could enhance climate change as a credible national security issue, but only if it can avoid the pitfalls of politicization.

H/T: Natural Security

Who knew (or remembers) that George Kennan, the father of U.S. containment policy, once argued for a world environmental organization?

Will Rogers over at Natural Security has a nice retrospective post on Kennan’s 1970s clarion call, which appeared in the pages of Foreign Policy. As Rogers summarizes,

Kennan notably advanced the international environmental governance debate by giving weight to the idea that environmental degradation – while by and large managed at the national level through legislation and enforcement – is not contained within national boundaries. “The entire ecology of the planet is not arranged in national compartments,” he wrote. For Kennan, the “crisis of human environment” was a challenge that would have to be met and managed at the international level.

If you are wondering what prompted one of America’s seminal defense strategists to sound like a charter member of the environmental movement, remember the context of the time. The first Earth Day was in 1970; EPA was born that same year.

Back then, environmentalism was all the rage. Climate advocates today no doubt wish they could recreate that same sense of widespread urgency and passion. Alas, melting ice caps in remote regions of the world do not pack the same punch as fiery rivers in metropolitan areas and oil slicks off the coast of suburban California.

The nascent field of environmental security better be ready for prime time, because this front-page NYT story on Sunday is sure to inject the national security/climate change nexus into the public debate.

It’ll be interesting to see how the leading environmental security advocates respond to John Broder’s NYT article. (Keep an eye here and here.) I’ll wager that they are overjoyed by the sudden spotlight but also nervous about having to defend climate change as their premier issue. To understand their dilemma, all you need to do is read Broder’s opening graph:

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Guess what: violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics already occur without climate change. (They always have throughout history.) Now throw in shaky governments, civil wars and terrorism. All these volatile forces, in some combination, adds up to what many nation-states face daily.  The problem, according to environmental security advocates, is that U.S. policymakers and military planners haven’t focused enough on the environmental side of the equation. True, that’s slowly changing. But it’s also not so easy to tease out the multiple factors responsible for a country’s descent into disorder and assign which is most responsible.

Hopping aboard the climate change bandwagon makes that task much easier. It’s risky, though. Some environmental security experts, such as Geoff Dabelko, recognize this:

While climate change is expected to exacerbate conditions that can contribute to intrastate conflict, it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of conflict. For example, simply labeling the genocide in Darfur a “climate conflict” is both wrong and counterproductive: It ignores political and economic motivations for the fighting—and can be perceived as a way to let the regime in Khartoum off the hook. To fully understand how the conflict between  Sudanese pastoralists and agriculturalists reached this extreme, we must not only examine the interplay between environmental issues like desertification, drought, and declining agricultural productivity, but also political relationships, power struggles, and ethnic grievances

What should be of more immediate concern to Dabelko and his colleagues, which they are likely waking up to this morning, is how quickly their work will become political fodder in the furious climate policy debate. Witness for example, the two responses published hours after Broder’s story appeared, from two people who represent the extreme ends of this debate. (See here and here.)

Interestingly, the person who has best analyzed Broder’s story (so far) is Andy Revkin over at Dot Earth. Part of Broder’s piece discusses how the security angle is being used to sell pending cap and trade legislation in Congress. But as Revkin notes,

Even if the legislation took effect and emissions were curtailed, the world would still see disruptive pressures building in places already facing severe drought and flood risks with or without the added kick from greenhouse warming. Africa’s population could easily double by midcentury, and recent research has shown that its most volatile region, along the south flank of the Sahara, faces the inevitability of epic droughts.

Revkin thus sets the stage for the focus of the next Times story on climate change and national security: adaptation.

The print media may be on life-support but they still have the capacity to influence policymakers. Check out this neat catch by Christine Parthemore over at Natural Security. Her post is

a brief tale of two seemingly unremarkable Time magazine articles that appear to have had undue influence on two members (including the chairman) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

BTW, Natural Security is a smart new blog from the Center for a New American Security. I especially love their fresh look at older media, everything from a 1970s sci-fi movie to a 1999 scholarly article on the emerging environmental security discipline.

UPDATE: [Here are some stories on the CNA report from BusinessWeek,  DefenseNews, and ClimateWire. Additionally, the DOD Energy Blog weighs in, and so does The New Security Beat.]

Nice timing by CNA, issuing this new report today by its Military Advisory Board, entitled, “Powering America’s Defense: Energy and Risks to National Security.”

Climate change is tagged as a big national security concern, as it was in CNA’s landmark 2007 report. There was a press reception at Newseum this morning, so there’s bound to be media coverage later on and tomorrow, which will be a welcome diversion from the Waxman-Markey lulapalooza.

But can CNA sustain the buzz beyond the 24-48 hour news cycle? If climate change should be regarded as a true military concnern, then why aren’t these guys out more on the climate politics and policy front-lines? That’s where the war is being fought.

I’ve just started reading the new report, but a quick scan delivered up these two notable quotes:

From retired Air Force General Chuck Wald:

An unstable climate, which is what we’re creating now with global warming, will make for unstable civilizations.   It will involve more surprises.  It will involve more people needing to move or make huge changes in their lives.  It pushes us into a period of non-linear change. That is hugely destabilizing.

From former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Gordon R. Sullivan:

There is a relationship between the major challenges we’re facing. Energy, security, economics, climate change—these things are connected. And the extent to which these things really do affect one another is becoming more apparent.

Why aren’t these guys on Fox News, CNN and Jon Stewart?  Shouldn’t they be regulars at Capitol Hill? On a college circuit tour? Why can’t one of them be blogging for Foreign Policy Magazine? Let’s go guys, get engaged every day if you want to make a difference.

It’s not news that some sectors (and top brass) in the U.S. military are taking environmental issues seriously.

But what’s news to me is that a legendary Vietnamese war general–someone who played an instrumental role in defeating France and then the U.S.– has suddenly gone green. According to this Grist story, Gen.Vo Nguyen Giap is opposed to a chinese mining project in Vietnam’s central highlands. Giap, who is 97, says:

The exploitation will cause serious consequences on the environment, society and national defense.

I can imagine what the ecological and social concerns might be, but it’s not clear from the Grist story what the national security concern is.

There is growing belief within U.S. military and foreign policy circles that global climate change could potentially trigger widespread geopolitical instability. So I get that national security connection. But why would a Vietnemese general contend that mining in his country poses a threat to its national defense?

This op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor suggests that “environmental engagement” could serve as sort of a back-door channel for easing U.S.-China tensions:

Environmental collaboration is unlikely to hit politically sensitive buttons, and thus offers great potential to deepen dialogue and cooperation. Military-to-military dialogue can facilitate the sharing of best practices on a range of environmental security issues. It can help both nations and their regional partners prepare for natural disasters – which are expected to intensify in a warming world – and improve the ability of civilian agencies and militaries to adapt to the impacts of climate change. It can also develop personal relationships that can provide deeper understanding in times of crisis.

This is a good example of the nexus between the maturing field of environmental security and foreign policy.

However, in terms of any future global agreement limiting carbon emissions, climate change is a sensitive issue for China that could also further complicate U.S.-China relations, something the op-ed authors gloss over.

Still, I think they are on to something:

Environmental security issues – and climate change in particular – could be among the most productive avenues for US-China military cooperation. The world’s largest per capita emitter (the United States) and its largest total emitter (China) of greenhouse gases should identify specific areas for cooperation before the upcoming climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Environmentalists recognize the upside too, with some offering a detailed set of recommendations here, on how the U.S. and China can engage on climate change-related issues in advance of the Copenhagen meeting.

UPDATE: As the Guardian reported earlier this week, perhaps China is softening its position on climate change.

Is there a difference between non-military experts serving alongside combatant soldiers in a war and those that are part of a peacekeeping force in a war-torn country?

I wondered about this today after reading about plans to add  “green” advisors to U.N peacekeeping operations in countries where chronic instability is fueled by over-exploitation of the environment and/or bloody conflicts over natural resources.

If you’re the U.N. and your aim is to reduce war and suffering in impoverished countries, of which some of the root causes are degraded agricultural land, water scarcity, and pandemic disease, then it seems to make good sense to embed a few scientists with those peacekeepers.

And wouldn’t the same go for social scientists serving alongside U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, where an understanding of the language and culture can potentially help bring the wars there to a quicker end?

This is not to minimize the problems, “growing pains“, and tragedies associated with the Pentagon’s Human Terrain teams. (The Danger Room blog at Wired has consistently provided the fullest perspective of the controversial military program.)

Academic anthroplogists have been queasy about the Human Terrain program from its inception. Lately, criticism has come from once cautious boosters and from within the military.

But let’s say Human Terrain’s defects can be fixed. Can anthropologists serving in a military capacity be a force for good in wartime, in the same way that environmental experts serving with peacekeepers can be a force for good in war-torn countries?

Environmental security is a topic rarely discussed outside Washington think tanks.

Not anymore.

This semester, the U.S. Academy at West Point is offering a course to Geography majors that examines “how the environment can act as a catalyst for conflict or simply as an amplifier of existing problems.”  The goal is

to educate future Army leaders on the interrelatedness of the environment and human activities, because these are issues they are likely to face in their careers.

And if that’s not change enough, the 11 West Point cadets enrolled in the course will be blogging too.