Michael T. Klare’s new book, All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change, is based on impressive in-depth research. One of central points of the book is that the US military is ignoring Trump’s policies that demand that all federal agencies disregard the climate crisis and do what they can to advance policies that favor fossil fuel interests and development, the major sources of the climate crisis.
We should bear in mind that the DoD’s acknowledgement of the climate crisis is recent. Klare traces the Pentagon’s awakening concern with global warming to the 2007 publication of by the Pentagon funded CNA Corporation. Naomi Oreskes points out in an article on Common Dreams (Nov. 11) that “Scientists have been seriously investigating the subject of human-made climate change since the late 1950s and political leaders have been discussing it for nearly as long.”
A central part of the book is organized around "the new ladder of escalation," ” a DoD concept that captures climate-related challenges facing the US military, challenges that are expected to require large and rising military resources. This ladder of escalation includes: (1) humanitarian disasters (climate disasters, civil disorder, and US military relief operations) , (2) states on the brink of failing or already failing states, where “humanitarian aid needs to be combined with counterinsurgency missions, (3) “global shock waves” spanning multiple countries(food shortages, energy crises, pandemics, and mass migrations), (4) great power clashes stemming from international competition and potential military conflict rooted in the melting of Kthe arctic and associated opportunities for trade routes and the extraction of oil and minerals, and (5) “the homeland at risk” (increasing domestic climate disasters and the military’s strategic predicament in coping with them).
DoD officials are taking steps to address these challenges and, Klare writes they are doing more than other institutional sectors of American society to reduce its own carbon footprint. For example, the Navy has begun using a blend of petroleum and liquefied beef fat to fuel some of its ships (p. 205). The Marine Corps has introduced energy efficiency and renewable energy equipment for combat troops in Iraq, beginning in 2006 - “a project to swap gas-guzzling power generators at forward operating bases with energy-efficient replacements” fueled by “a mix of solar and wind power to augment diesel energy” (212). The US Army is testing its transportation requirements “advanced vehicle power and technology including fuel cells, hybrid systems, battery technologies and alternative fuels” (215). As a result of these innovations, the DoD could report in its Fiscal Year 2016 Operational Energy Annual Report that the DoD’s “total petroleum consumption by the DoD’s operating forces declined by nearly 20 percent over the preceding five-year period from approximately 112 million barrels in FY 2011 to 86 million in FY 2016.” Domestically, base commanders are working to reduce their dependence on the electricity grid.
Yes, applaud that the DoD acknowledges the reality of climate change and is taking steps to address it. Another takeaway from Klare's book is that the military is not going to save us or itself from the increasingly cataclysmic and accelerating climate crises that scientists and others are documenting. Indeed, in the absence of radical change, US military forces will go on adding to the problem.
The US military’s main objectives, certainly over the past 60+ years, have been to protect the national interest, and this is an “interest” defined by the President, often with the bipartisan support of the US Congress and the Pentagon itself. The overriding objective have been to protect the foreign economic interests of US corporations, to protect corporate supply chains, to keep the resources of “developing countries” available to corporations, to support countries that are viewed as allies, and to counter any forces that seek to challenge these goals, whether they be groups identified as “terrorists,” extreme Islamists, or nation states such as Russia, China, North Korea, Iran. And, like other institutions in the US capitalist system, the military and military contractors want to keep growing. This is so although the US already spends more on the military than any other country in the world, far more than Russia and China. The US Congress is about to buttress the DoD base budget by over $20 billion bringing the total to over $750 billion for FY2020. Overall, military-related expenditures exceed $1 trillion. The US has huge military force levels, including more than two million personnel, 11 nuclear aircraft carriers, and the most advanced military aircraft. And, despite its humanitarian efforts, the US has been continuously at war since late 2001 and have combat or counterterror operations in more than 80 countries. Neta C. Crawford for Brown University’s “Costs of War” writes, “Although the Pentagon has, in recent years, increasingly emphasized what it calls energy security – energy resilience and conservation – it is still a significant consumer of fossil fuel energy. Indeed, the DOD is the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum and correspondingly, the single largest producer of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world.”
The outcomes of America’s “defense” policies are well known. The US armed forces, under orders, have been the spearhead in waging unnecessary, destructive, and very costly wars that have caused widespread civilian casualties, exacerbated ethnic and religious divisions, undermined governing institutions, crippled economies, deepened poverty, contributed to the conditions that have produced an unprecedented number of displaced people, and created out of all of this the conditions that have destabilized governments and given rise to extremist movements.
While “green” initiatives by the DoD should be welcome, what is needed is a progressive national government in the US that finds ways to reduce the military budget and to work with other countries diplomatically, while at the same time addressing the climate crisis comprehensively through a Green New Deal, rejoining and giving new life to the Paris Climate Agreement, and supporting financial and technological efforts in the Global South to develop sustainable energy systems. Presently, such changes seem remote.
Klare is aware of the anti-democratic thrust of US foreign policy, the intensifying resource wars, and the endless US wars, but the focus of this book , based on laudable research and analysis, is narrowly focused on the military's "perspective" of climate change. It is an important contribution. But if the reader fails to understand the larger context, she/he may be misled into believing that the Military is part of the solution rather than a major contributor to the problem
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