A Sustainable National Security Posture?
[ by Charles Cameron — and what about climate change, Mike Mazarr? ]
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Is there even a Cheney-esque one-percent possibility that 97% of climate scientists (NASA’s estimate) are right?
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I just opened up Michael Mazarr‘s NDU Strategy Study Group report, Discriminate Power: A Strategy for a Sustainable National Security Posture. It’s quite far from my usual apocalyptic and more generally religious interests, but he and I once co-led a Y2K scenario role-playing game at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, so I have a friendly interest in what he’s up to.
What interested me next, though, was the overview to their report that Mazarr and company present in their Introduction. Their purview:
In the coming decade, the constraints on U.S. foreign and defense policy — fiscal, social, Geopolitical — are likely to intensify. At the same time, the security environment is evolving in ways that pose a more diverse array of risks, threats and opportunities. While foreign threats have dominated national security planning in the past, for example, future wars may more typically involve nontraditional foes and means threatening the homeland. This will change how we perceive and provide for national security, even as we confront new constraints.
This paper summarizes the work of a study group chartered to assess strategy under austerity for the next ten years. A core conclusion was that the United States is buying systems, forces and capabilities increasingly mismatched to the challenges, threats, and opportunities of the emerging environment. Military power, for example, cannot resolve many of the most complex and pressing challenges we confront — and yet our investments in national security remain vastly over-weighted to military instruments. The most likely threats to the U.S. homeland will come from nontraditional challenges such as biological pathogens, terrorism, cyber, and financial instruments, and yet resources for these issues remain minimal compared to traditional military instruments. At the same time, on our current trajectory, we will end up with a national security establishment dominated by salaries, health care, retirement costs, and a handful of staggeringly expensive major weapons systems. We are spending more and more to get less and less, in terms of relevant tools and influence.
There’s some ambiguity in here. There’s a segue from “foreign threats” to “future wars” without so much as a hiccup — but the actual threats our National Security strategy will need to address are presented as “nontraditional challenges such as biological pathogens, terrorism, cyber, and financial instruments”.
That’s a far broader array than “future wars” to be sure — but maybe still within the ambit of “foreign threats”. What I’m interested in, in the present context, however, is climate change. And unless my .pdf search function is deceiving me, I can find no mention of either “climate” or “warming” in the entire report.
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Compare these Remarks by Tom Donilon, National Security Advisor to the President At the Launch of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy from a month ago:
The national security impacts of climate change stem from the increasingly severe environmental impacts it is having on countries and people around the world. Last year, the lower 48 U.S. states endured the warmest year on record. At one point, two-thirds of the contiguous United States was in a state of drought, and almost 10 million acres of the West were charred from wildfires. And while no single weather event can be directly attributed to climate change, we know that climate change is fueling more frequent extreme weather events. Last year alone, we endured 11 weather-related disasters that inflicted a $1 billion or more in damages – including Hurricane Sandy.
Internationally, we have seen the same: the first twelve years of this century are all among the fourteen warmest years on record.
Or the White House’s National Security Strategy of 2010:
Climate Change: The danger from climate change is real, urgent, and severe. The change wrought by a warming planet will lead to new conflicts over refugees and resources; new suffering from drought and famine; catastrophic natural disasters; and the degradation of land across the globe. The United States will therefore confront climate change based upon clear guidance from the science, and in cooperation with all nations — for there is no effective solution to climate change that does not depend upon all nations taking responsibility for their own actions and for the planet we will leave behind.
And given what WSJ SWJ calls the Obama administration’s strategic shift to the East — what about Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III?
America’s top military officer in charge of monitoring hostile actions by North Korea, escalating tensions between China and Japan, and a spike in computer attacks traced to China provides an unexpected answer when asked what is the biggest long-term security threat in the Pacific region: climate change.
Harvard’s 2012 Climate Extremes: Recent Trends with Implications for National Security report?
Or the Council for Foreign Relations report, Climate Change and National Security: An Agenda for Action — from 2007?
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I know, the CIA has (quietly) closed its Center on Climate Change and National Security, although as the NYT’s Green blog told us:
Todd Ebitz, a C.I.A. spokesman, said that the agency would continue to monitor the security and humanitarian challenges posed by climate change as part of its focus on economic security, but not in a stand-alone office.
But if you’re still interested, take a look at The Center for Climate & Security’s page On the Record: Climate Change as a Security Risk According to U.S. Administration Officials.
Their list is far more comprehensive than mine.
Okay. I know Mazarr’s report will have been written to fulfill certain criteria, specified or unspecified, and I’m not the one who set them — but isn’t climate change a part of the context that would need to be addressed, if “how we perceive and provide for national security, even as we confront new constraints” is the topic under discussion?
May 22nd, 2013 at 3:37 am
Still the coolest spring on record since the 1910s in the northern Plains of the U.S.
Oh, and now we know why Sens. McCain and Graham will NEVER investigate why Amb. Stevens was in Benghazi on the night of 9/11/2012, because the Amb. was just doing ‘prematurely’ what they and Sen. Rubio just voted to do: arm Syria jihadists.
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/r2013/05/21/rand_paul_my_colleagues_just_voted_to_arm_the_allies_of_al_qaeda
We are betrayed and screwed at so many levels many people I know cannot even fathom it. They still think Benghazi is about R’s vs. D’s. No it’s about a corrupt Washington Establishment with shadowy Islamist funders (Qatar and Saudi Arabia) and globalists hellbent on overthrowing Assad by any means necessary, ignoring the blowback from the al-jihad lung and heart eater brigades getting these weapons, and ignoring clear warnings from the Russians and Chinese that overthrowing Assad is a red line for them.
How do I expect Putin to respond? Probably make public the fact that the Russians have already shipped deadly accurate Iskander missiles to Assad capable of wiping out any NATO HQ within 400 miles of the mobile launch location. But hell, why should McCain mind? If Assad uses one, it will simply give him the WWIII he’s lusted for since forever against the Russians — what a sick, twisted old man.
May 22nd, 2013 at 4:57 am
I’ve corrected a typo —
WSJto SWJ — and note that what I called (following SWJ) a “strategic shift to the East” is better known as the “pivot to Asia” by those not suffering from the aging process.May 22nd, 2013 at 11:43 am
I could be wrong but climate change will lead to more extreme weather events, the planet will warm, but depending on where you are this will lead to hotter summers or colder winters.
Do you have any sources for the Islander missiles story?
May 22nd, 2013 at 2:46 pm
The problem with addressing the constraints of climate change involves a misapprehension of what is occurring and the best way of addressing what is occurring.
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For instance, Mr. X’s reference to an isolated bit of data in an apparent attempt to universalize that bit: “Nothing happening here; move along.” One takes from this an image of bystanders at a severe traffic accident who can do nothing constructive in response to the accident—who indeed can take nothing or learn nothing from their observations of the traffic accident and so are essentially wasting their time in observation, perhaps out of some hedonistic, self-interested fascination.
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My impression is that the climate change deniers deny not climate change, but something extraneous: They would deny those they perceive to be Leftists angling for business-destroying Big Government socialism who speak of a demon called Climate Change in order to gin up fear in the public. Data relating to actual climate change is irrelevant; what is important is an utter denial of Climate Change, the demon, the talking point, in order to disarm that Leftist agenda.
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Many on the Left do something similar. Yes, there are those on the Left who really do use Climate Change as a talking point, or an excuse for enacting various favored policies and social change.
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Since you like musical metaphors, Charles, I’ll put it this way: Those on the Right and those on the Left are fiddling a lively tune similar to what you might hear in The Devil Went Down to Georgia, contesting supremacy over the song; and they may continue to fiddle while the world burns.
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One problem with addressing the future constraints caused by actual climate change, particularly on the Left, is the belief that Climate Change (a wicked problem, surely?) can be “solved” so as to disappear. Rather than address future constraints, climate change itself is targeted. A belief that its cause is anthropogenic—man-made—leads to a belief that it can be stopped and reversed if only that cause can be changed, eliminated. This is not a program to address the future constraints caused by climate change—because it denies those future constraints! It is instead a program to eliminate a future substantially altered by climate change.
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Even assuming a human cause to climate change, even going so far as to say that a change in human behaviors can mitigate future harm resulting from climate change — there is still a question of whether such a program can successfully remove the future constraints. Subscribers to this plan would fiddle with the rest of the world — success requires that the world of humans alters behaviors — and who’s to say that the song will end soon enough for them to claim victory, even should they be able to claim victory over the song? The world may be burning by then. Metaphorically speaking.
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The Right meanwhile, in refusing to believe in an anthropogenic climate change, do what they often do: Abdicate all unto God. Or merely throw up their hands; the future is out of their hands, and maybe significant changes to the climate aren’t even happening. The denial of data means having nothing to work with, after all, but faith.
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Seen this way, we could say that the Left and Right cannot address the future constraints because they are both too busy denying the existence of a future that has said constraints. Of course, there are many in the middle, and even some on the Left and Right, growing weary of the fiddling while the world burns around them. It is easier to address the constraints when faced with them in the present tense.
May 22nd, 2013 at 3:53 pm
The denial of data means having nothing to work with, after all, but faith
What data exctly?
The data that confirms that sea surface temperatures are dropping
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/RSS_mwSST_2002_thru_Apr_2013.png
or the data showing average atmospheric temperatures peaked in 1998 and are dropping
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Apr_2013_v5.5.png
or maybe the data that shows no clear trend in temperatures over the past few centuries
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/steig-2013-modern.png
http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/23/steigs-bladeless-hockey-stick/
Who’s really working on faith?
May 22nd, 2013 at 4:55 pm
Hmmm, how do you fit a hundreds of years long carbon cycle into a 4 year election cycle?
How do you get the general population to care about something that wont have its full impact until generations down the road?
This is why nobody gives a fuck about unfunded governmental liabilities.
In all lightly hood why worry about something that will have a very negligible impact on your life?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that climate change is one of those problems that currently we are intellectually incapable of solving.
We just can’t think and act on a multi-generational global problem. That is beyond us as a species at the moment.
Certainly there are groups and individuals that can see global problems that could beset future generations, but humanity as a whole lacks that ability.
With climate change we have ran into a problem that defeats our emotional and intellectual abilities. Its happening too slowly, and with enough short term variability to allow our common sense to cloud our judgement.
May 22nd, 2013 at 7:16 pm
BTW, here’s something I was fishing for as I wrote this piece, but didn’t find until today — when I stumbled on a mention of it in my RSS feed: the Climate Security Report of the American Security Project’s Consensus for American Security.
May 22nd, 2013 at 8:03 pm
I wasn’t denying that ‘climate change’ was taking place. I only speak as one with historian’s training who recalls the Dust Bowl, the Little Ice Age/freezing of the Thames, and the Vikings abandoning Greenland after temporarily settling there during the late middle ages, just to speak of several civilization-impacting climate events that had nothing to do with man-made carbon emissions.
“One problem with addressing the future constraints caused by actual climate change, particularly on the Left, is the belief that Climate Change (a wicked problem, surely?) can be “solved” so as to disappear. Rather than address future constraints, climate change itself is targeted. A belief that its cause is anthropogenic—man-made—leads to a belief that it can be stopped and reversed if only that cause can be changed, eliminated. This is not a program to address the future constraints caused by climate change—because it denies those future constraints! It is instead a program to eliminate a future substantially altered by climate change.”
I actually agree with this. Whatever is occuring in the Earth’s atmosphere is likely beyond the world’s leading nations to address — unless the Lefties are actually on board with the Coast to Coast AM crowd that geoengineering technologies HAARP etc exist and are already in use (see ‘chemtrails’, which I’m convinced there’s enough evidence of not to dismiss entirely out of hand though it would be impossible to mask the chemical signatures on the scale the spraying is said to be taking place).
In terms of the Iskanders, Fox News reported in late 2012 that 24 missiles had been shipped. Xinhua quoted the Russians in February denying that had occurred, so that’s where it stands.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2013-02/13/c_132167677.htm
May 22nd, 2013 at 8:42 pm
On the Iskanders, the Syrians don’t have em, its as simple as that. There a theater level ballistic missile system capable of posting one through Bibi’s letter box. The Russians haven’t sold them to anyone, and frankly I can’t see them ever selling them.
The Fox news report was wrong.
May 23rd, 2013 at 2:19 am
Even if they have not yet been shipped, if Sens. McCain, Graham and Mendendez get their way, Iskanders are on the table for the Russians should the U.S. simply cut out the Qatari/Saudi/Turkish/Croatian/Ukrainian middlemen and just go directly for arming the al-jihad heart and lung eaters brigades.
June 3rd, 2013 at 11:10 pm
Thanks for the post! We did discuss climate change. The main reason we didn’t include it as a major factor was our time frame–next seven to ten years. In that period, we thought, looking at a few competing analyses, the impact of climate won’t (yet) be dominant. Moreover, here’s the way I see it: Climate certainly affects security broadly defined, and in some of the same ways we scoped it in the report–homeland societal safety. But (1) it’s not an intentional threat wielded by potential adversaries or other agents; and (2) the required changes are so far apart from self-defense that I personally believe it just belongs in another category. Yes, urgent; yes, we should have dramatic policies to deal with it; yes, it may do more to determine our survival than anything else … and it should be discussed on its own hook, not as a “security” issue.
Mike Mazarr
June 4th, 2013 at 1:09 am
Thanks — and points taken.
This is the thing that interests me — a threat that’s that major, coming to us at the wrong tempo and in the wrong category for our usual modes of response to be activated.
June 4th, 2013 at 7:44 pm
I think that you’ve got a major framing mistake going on here.
If the sorts of things that climate change is advertised as going to do happen, then we’re positing a national security response (among others). That’s fine as far as it goes but you have to answer why? The only reason I can see is that the changes will kill people and break capital assets. But nobody seems to ask the question whether climate kills people and breaks capital assets on a regular basis. The answer is, of course, that it does. There needs to be a threshold condition below which mobilizing doesn’t make sense and that should cause us to demobilize if we cross those well understood conditions. And there need to be thresholds and tripwires at which point we ramp up our response.
Right now we’re in one way ratchet land on our response but the weather’s been going the other way so long that it’s reasonable to start saying that the climate is going the other way. I don’t have any problem with prepping for real future threats but when reality isn’t following the models, I would home we choose reality over the model and that includes any sort of sustainable national security posture. In fact having conditions for escalating and de-escalating the posture based on real world conditions will be essential for anything sustainable.
June 5th, 2013 at 1:15 am
Hi TM:
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It’s my understanding that a perturbed system is liable to wobble, so extreme or increasing cold, drought, flooding, fires, heat etc can all be expected. From my POV, that makes “climate change” in some ways a better term than “global warming” though there’s politics afoot as well.
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There’s a great deal that goes into the phrase “prepping for real future threats but when reality isn’t following the models” especially when the models are futures-based and that’s the one thing “reality” can’t be, at least not yet!
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I’m not sure how broad your use of the term “mobilizing” is — but threshold conditions of the sort you suggest might well be good to think about.
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I guess my own skillset makes me want to figure out how a hierarchical and disciplinarily-siloed world should best prepare itself to think and respond, if there does turn out to be one single threat that outdistances all others.