ARGUMENT: Climate & national securityNational Security Agencies Must Include Climate Risks and Their Analyses

The Pentagon and other federal agencies were given a July deadline to draw up plans for potential climate risks, under an executive order by President Biden. Antonio Busalacchi and Sherri Goodman write in Lawfare that such plans are an essential first step, but the greater challenge for national security agencies is to continue to redirect their focus to changing climate conditions that pose a complex, two-pronged threat: social and political instability overseas and damage to U.S. infrastructure.

Climate change is accelerating geopolitical tensions in many regions of core strategic interest to the United States. Increasingly destructive storms, rising seas and the melting Arctic are fueling global tensions, with nations bracing for mass migrations of displaced people and vying to take advantage of newly accessible natural resources. Changing climate patterns have become a catalyst for internal conflicts and international unrest, with severe droughts playing a role in setting the stage for the Syrian civil war and shrinking lake levels in Lake Chad contributing to widespread violence across the four African nations of the lake’s basin.

Even in places where climate change has not sparked conflicts directly, it looms as a threat multiplier, exacerbating competition for food and water and worsening ethnic tensions.

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Closer to home, altered weather patterns and warming temperatures are battering military installations across the nation. From the devastating impacts of Hurricane Michael on Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida to the thawing and erosionin Alaska that is undermining the foundations of vital radar facilities, climate change is costing billions of dollars while degrading U.S. military readiness. More broadly, coastal surges, floods, heat waves and wildfires are exacting a toll on U.S. transportation networks and energy systems, threatening supply disruptions and increasing the cost and complexity of potential defense operations.

Busalacchi and Goodman write that they have been encouraged by developments in recent months at the Pentagon and other national security agencies that are taking the complex threat of climate seriously. “A forward-looking policy, although challenging to implement, is the country’s best strategy for countering the most dangerous national security impacts of climate change that threaten both overseas stability and U.S. infrastructure, thereby helping to safeguard the country’s future.”