Climate Change, National Security, and the Quadrennial Defense Review. Avoiding the Perfect Storm

The emergence of harmful nonlinear, long-term, cumulative, anthropogenically generated changes to the Earth's climate and natural environment pose a serious threat to America's national security. The changes are increasing risks and vulnerabilities across the strategic foundation identified by the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). Irregular, disruptive, traditional, and catastrophic challenges are surfacing as a result of global climate change and could merge into a perfect storm with disastrous consequences. In response, the Department of Defense (DoD) must blend the sustainability tenets of environmental security, ecological economics, and social/environmental equity with the pillars of the democratic peace theory. The conflict ameliorating powers of democracy, economic interdependence, and international organizations operating within the finite environmental, economic, and social limits of the sustainability tenets will enable the DoD to mitigate and adapt to the multiple challenges from climate change and build for the United States and for all other democratic states sustainable security. Importantly, US leadership toward sustainable security will enhance freedom, justice, and human dignity around the Earth; grow the community of democracies sustain stability, prosperity, and security; and make it possible for the global community to avoid the unmanageable and manage the unavoidable consequences of global climate change. The 6 February 2006 QDR explains the current position and future direction for the DoD as the department fulfills its responsibilities to the people of the United States. Published in Strategic Studies Quarterly, p56-96, Spring 2008.