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USA TODAY: Two words and a big threat missing from 2018 National Defense Strategy: Climate change
Our military must prepare for climate change if we are to compete with Russia and China. Omitting it from new US defense strategy is a critical error.
(Photo: John McConnico, AP file photo)
The National Defense Strategy is the primary
planning document that guides decision making within the United States military. This year, there’s a critical term missing from that document: climate change.
The 2018 NDS outlines the priorities of the U.S. within the framework of great power competition, particularly focusing on China and Russia in addition to threats from North Korea,
Iran, and terrorists. The document notes the challenges of an “increasingly complex security environment,” but leaves out climate change entirely. This is especially alarming because the 2018 National Defense Strategy replaced the 2014 Quadrennial
Defense Review — a document which clearly outlined the threats associated with climate change.
"The impacts of climate change may increase the frequency, scale, and complexity of future missions, including defense support to civil authorities, while at the same time undermining
the capacity of our domestic installations to support training activities,” the QDR said.
China, Russia are flexing muscles in the Arctic
The omission of climate change in the 2018 NDS is a critical error. Climate change is a major factor in our changing security environment, and our military must prepare for the realities
of climate change if we are to compete with other great powers on the world stage.
For example, as storms become more extreme and more frequent, and as global temperatures change, U.S. military personnel will be called on to respond. Melting permafrost, increasingly
intense hurricanes and flooding bases will make operations that much more difficult. As such, our military must incorporate climate change into its planning processes and budget requests if it hopes to mitigate the effects of these changes.
Climate change also affects how we plan to compete with other great powers on the international stage. Today, China and Russia are flexing their muscles in the increasingly open Arctic
— an area where access to natural resources are abundant and access to new trade routes are obvious advantage. While not an Arctic nation, China’s icebreaker fleet is already superior to America’s, and it is developing plans for a nuclear
icebreaker. Moreover, Russia recently hosted its largest war games since the Cold War.
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In response, NATO has announced it will also conduct its largest
military exercise since the end of the Cold War in the Arctic region. However, we can’t rely solely on NATO. If we hope to maintain our lethality as the world’s greatest military force, the U.S. must plan for the challenges of what the NDS calls
an “increasingly complex security environment.”
The Marines are already looking to update
equipment that can handle both ice and mud. The NDS should reflect what many of our troops already know: that we must plan — and plan extensively — to deal with the effects of climate change.
I’ve seen the effects of climate change up close. In 1999, I served as the commander of Parris Island when Hurricane Floyd narrowly missed the island. The hurricane required the evacuation
of 7,000 recruits and Marines, and devastated North Carolina. Today, the effects of climate change have only become more extreme, and the threats have multiplied.
How climate change is a national security threat
As threats manifest in new and unanticipated ways, our military will have to respond. In a recent workshop, the American Security Project I lead examined how climate change will impact
the national security of our nation, particularly in regard to China and Russia. We identified three main areas of concern.
First, climate change will undermine the existing international order. Second, weak states will be more vulnerable to great power influence. And
third, threats will move closer to home and become less concrete, allowing them to permeate our borders. We have just seen this with Hurricane Michael, which devastated
Tyndall Air Force Base. As noted in the NDS, “the homeland is no longer a sanctuary.”
Climate change must be included in our national defense strategy in order to safeguard future generations.
Stephen A. Cheney, a retired Marine Corps brigadier general, is CEO of the American Security Project.
Follow him on Twitter: @SCheney71
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