A near-term scenario of climate change, in which the world warms 1-2°C/1.8-3.6°F over pre-industrial levels by mid-century, would pose ‘High’ to ‘Very High’ security threats. A medium-to-long term scenario in which the world warms as high as 2-4+°C/3.6-7.2°F would pose a ‘Very High’ to ‘Catastrophic’ threat to global and national security. The world has already warmed to slightly below 1°C compared to pre-industrial temperatures.
At all levels of warming (1-4+°C/1.8-7.2+°F), climate change will pose significant and evolving threats to global security environments, infrastructure, and institutions.
While at lower warming thresholds, the most fragile parts of the world are the most at risk, all regions of the world will face serious implications. High warming scenarios could bring about catastrophic security impacts across the globe.
These threats could come about rapidly, destabilizing the regions and relationships on which U.S. and international security depend.
Climate change will present significant threats to U.S. military missions across all of its geographic areas of responsibility (AORs), as well as to regional security institutions and infrastructure that are critical for maintaining global security.
The report is broken down by the regions in the world that have central commands:
• U.S. African Command (AFRICOM): Africa • U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM): Middle East and Central Asia • U.S. European Command (EUCOM): Europe and Russia • U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM): Indo-Asia-Pacific • U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM): North American and the Polar Regions • U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM): South and Central America and Caribbean
The breakdown reflects the strategic threats to the US posed by climate change, not the most useful framework for analyzing climate change. But it identifies the major changes that climate change will force: food, water, and resources stress; extreme weather; sea level rise; migration; health; and state fragility and conflict. The conclusions of the report are straigtforward but unlikely to be implemented under the current Administration:
“Mitigating these risks requires quickly reducing and phasing out global greenhouse gas emissions. As there are numerous policy options for doing so, we refrain from recommending a single course of action. Instead, we call for the world to achieve net-zero global emissions in a manner that is ambitious, safe, equitable, and well-governed.
The world must also rapidly build resilience to the impacts of climate change that we are already experiencing, by “climate-proofing” infrastructure, institutions, and systems on which human security depends. With future oriented investments in adaptation, disaster response, and peacebuilding efforts, we will be better able to recover from tragedies that strike and to contain effects from spiraling downward into deeper instability.
It is possible to prevent the worst of the scenarios laid out in this report, but this will not happen without clearsighted, dedicated leadership. In the United States, we call for renewed efforts to prioritize, communicate, and respond to climate security threats, and to integrate these considerations across all security considerations.
It is difficult for me to think that even this tight link between climate change and national security will have any effect on the policies of the current administration in the US.
I have had a difficult time trying to assess how dangerous the coronavirus (now identified as COVID-19) is to global stability. The Washington Post ran a very helpful article on the virus that I think I actually understood. Much of the uncertainty stems from my own ignorance of biology but I have also been flummoxed by the inconsistent reporting by China–it appears to be constantly redefining how to identify who has been infected. On the one hand, it seems to be highly contagious (particularly if one has the misfortune to be on a cruise ship). Outbreaks have occurred in South Korea and Italy (and, seemingly, Iran, but the information is spotty from there). Fergus Walsh, the medical correspondent for the BBC writes:
“The combined situation in South Korea, Iran and Italy points to the early stages of pandemic. This means a global outbreak, with the coronavirus spreading in the community in multiple parts of the world.
“In each of these countries we are seeing spread of the virus with no connection to China. The lockdown efforts in Italy mirror those that have happened in China.
“The situation in Iran is especially worrying because the health authorities have reportedly said the virus has spread to multiple cities, and it appears the first case in Lebanon is linked to a traveller from Iran.
“If we have a pandemic, it will still be important to limit the speed of spread of the virus. If countries could hold it somewhat at bay until the end of winter, there is a hope that warmer temperatures will reduce the time the virus can survive in the air, as we see with seasonal flu. But this may not be certain.”
There are serious effects associated with the containment measures designed to stop the spread of the virus. Many businesses in China have closed due to those measures, and the closures are beginning to affect the supply of manufactured inputs to many products. According to Reuters: “The International Monetary Fund’s chief said China’s 2020 growth would likely be lower at 5.6%, down 0.4 percentage points from its January outlook, with 0.1 percentage points shaved from global growth”. Even in those countries which have yet to see many cases, the economic effects have been substantial. In France, for example:
“’We have less tourists, of course, in France, about 30%, 40% less than expected,’ Bruno Le Maire told CNBC on Sunday at the G-20 meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
“Tourism accounts for nearly 8% of France’s gross domestic product. It welcomes around 2.7 million Chinese tourists each year, which Le Maire said ‘won’t be the same, of course, in 2020.’ France has reported 12 confirmed cases of the virus and one death, according to a WHO report dated Feb. 22.“
But it also does not seem to be as lethal as other viruses such as SARS: “Between November 2002 and July 2003, an outbreak of SARS in southern China caused an eventual 8,098 cases, resulting in 774 deaths reported in 17 countries (9.6% fatality rate)”. There have been 2,236 deaths reported so far, but it is hard to be sure that that count is accurate. The death rate is the most important issue and it may be the case that the COVID-19 virus does not merit the containment measures introduced so far. The data from China is somewhat encouraging:
“A recent study of nearly 140 patients at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University identified a typical pattern of symptoms associated with the virus, which causes a disease known as COVID-19. Around 99% of the patients developed a high temperature, while more than half experienced fatigue and a dry cough. About a third also experienced muscle pain and difficulty breathing.
“Research from the Chinese Center for Disease Control suggests that around 80% of coronavirus cases are mild. Around 15% of patients have gotten severe cases, and 5% have become critically ill.”
But it is hard to be sure and there is little question that taking the virus seriously is the only viable option.
“An analysis of millions of tweets from around the period when Donald Trump announced the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement found that bots tended to applaud the president for his actions and spread misinformation about the science.
“The study of Twitter bots and climate was undertaken by Brown University and has yet to be published. Bots are a type of software that can be directed to autonomously tweet, retweet, like or direct message on Twitter, under the guise of a human-fronted account.
“’These findings suggest a substantial impact of mechanized bots in amplifying denialist messages about climate change, including support for Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement,’ states the draft study, seen by the Guardian.”
Slow wage growth persists: Consistent positive wage growth has occurred in only 10 of the last 40 years.
Inequality continues: The highest earners (95th percentile) continue to pull away from middle- and low-wage workers.
Policy matters: Wage growth at the bottom was strongest in states with minimum wage increases in 2019.
Black–white wage gaps persist: In 2019, black wages exceeded their 2000 and 2007 levels across the wage distribution for the first time in this recovery. Even so, black–white wage gaps are significantly wider now than in 2000.
The US economy has been good to those who hold stocks. But for those who rely upon a wage, the situation is stagnant. Except for those who live in states that legislated an increase in the minimum wage.
The US, Afghanistan, and the Taliban have announced a “seven-day reduction in violence” that may lead to a more robust agreement among the parties to a civil war that has been going on since 2001. The US and the Taliban have been conducting negotiations in Qatar for the last two years, and there have been similar glimmers of hope in that period that have not been realized. But the US seems committed to signing a cease-fire with the Taliban on 29 February:
“If deemed a success, the weeklong reduction in violence, or RIV, which will be monitored by U.S. forces, will lead next to the Feb. 29 signing in Qatar between U.S. Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and representatives of the Afghan government and the Taliban. That deal is aimed at a phased American military withdrawal — including cease-fires and talks between the Taliban and other Afghans on the future of the country.”
We do not know the specifics of the agreement and it may be the case that we will never know the concessions that all sides are promising to make in order to achieve the cease-fire. The Washington Post provides only the rough outlines of a possible agreement:
“What we know from news reports and sources close to the negotiations is that the United States has committed to reducing the U.S. troop level to 8,600, from the current level of about 13,000, in the first 135 days of the agreement. During that time, the Taliban is to renounce al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups and open negotiations with an Afghan committee, including government officials as well as other leaders. If the United States concludes those pledges have been met, the withdrawal will continue; the administration reportedly committed to a full pullout over time.”
There is little to show for the 18 years that the US has been fighting in Afghanistan. The US has poured $2 trillion into the country, but most of that money has been concentrated on the elites in the capital city of Kabul. The Taliban control much of the countryside and there is nothing in the proposed agreement that will alter that reality. The It is difficult to shake the notion that the US is simply looking for a face-saving way to exit the country. The war is one that should never have been fought and it is probably for the best that the US will leave the theater. But the US departure will only highlight the pointlessness of the action, and the costs to the Afghan people of the ill-advised intervention can never be erased.
East Africa is being battered by an infestation of locusts. So far, the countries affected are South Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti. CNBC notes: “Desert locusts can travel up to 150km (95 miles) a day, and a one-square-kilometer swarm can devour as much food as 35,000 people in a single day, according to the UN”. The UN is worried that as many as 25 million people could be food short because of the destruction of crops. These countries are already experiencing food insecurity because of violent conflicts in the region. The locust swarms have also spread into Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and Jordan is concerned that the swarms may reach that far north. There are also concerns that the swarms may reach South Asia: “By June, the locust population is set to grow 500 times spreading to West Asia”. Switzerland, China, and the US are rendering assistance to the affected countries, and the UN is trying to raise money to support the countries. But it is a plague that is very difficult to combat.
The is a desperate humanitarian crisis in the Idlib Province of Syria. It is one of the few areas in Syria still held by opposition forces to the Assad regime in Syria. Since the withdrawal of US forces from Syria, the Syrian government, backed by Russian airpower, has pummeled the province with little attention to civilians and other protected agents such as hospitalsand schools. About 900,000 people, 500,000 of them children, have been displaced by the violence and the numbers of people living in tents with no heat in the bitter cold have overwhelmed the humanitarian relief organizations. From a strategic point of view, the opposition forces have little hope of resisting the Syrian attacks, but there is no place for the people to go. Turkey closed its border to refugees in 2015 and the Syrian/Russian attacks seemed designed to cut off any supplies to the civilian population from Turkey. The New York Times reports:
“Russian and Syrian forces, advancing rapidly from the south and east of Idlib, have reached the town of Al Atarib, barely 15 miles from the Turkish border.
“The attack seems to be a bid to cut supply lines from Turkey to areas held by the opposition forces or even an effort to encircle and besiege the city of Idlib itself, where some 700,000 people live, aid organizations said.
“The Turkish army has deployed hundreds of troops and armor in the north of the province to protect the approaches to the Turkish border. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has demanded that Syrian government troops withdraw to previously agreed positions by the end of February or be forced to do so by Turkish forces.”
Turkey and Russia have been conducting talks to resolve some of these issues, but their efforts have failed. There was an attempt to create a “de-escalation” area in Idlib which was signed by Russia and Turkey in Sochi, Russia in 2018. But both sides support factions in the Syrian civil war which have no interest in reconciliation or in easing the violence against civilians. Over the last few weeks, the rhetoric coming out of Turkey has become increasingly strident, raising fears that Turkey may decide that its only choice would be to confront the Syrian forces. Those forces are backed by significant Russian air power which might lead to rapid escalation if the Turks choose to intervene militarily.
NATO has made it clear that it does not wish to become involved and President Trump lacks any clear policy in Syria other than the ad hoc defense of Syrian oil fields. The United Nations has tried to keep the catastrophe visible, perhaps hoping that other states would take action rather than be accused of doing nothing in the face of such a large humanitarian crisis.
Paul Pillar has written an essay on the perils of the Trump Administration’s plan for a settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As I have written before, the plan really does not offer a basis for a lasting settlement to the dispute–it rather poses new problems for both the Israelis and Palestinians. Pillar writes:
“But dreams can only support a position so far, especially when a dream runs up against the full ugliness of formal subjugation of one nation by another nation. Palestinian nationalism will not go away. It will not be bought off with enticements in glossy brochures about economic development. Support for it will not be abandoned by other Arabs—as demonstrated by the firm position on the subject that Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has repeatedly expressed. Regardless of what is done in future years by whatever passes for the Palestinian leadership, terrorists and other extremists will continue to exploit for their own purposes an unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Another element of Israeli strategy—also underlying the Kushner plan—is still intact, which is to use the inevitable Palestinian rejection of the plan as an opportunity to add to the mythology about the Palestinians, and not Israel, supposedly always being responsible for missing opportunities for peace. Many who are not familiar with the long and tragic history of this conflict will continue to believe the mythology. Those who are familiar with that history know that it is a myth. (To cite just one chapter in that history, when the two sides, nineteen years ago, were last close to reaching a comprehensive peace agreement, it was the Israelis, not the Palestinians, who walked away from the negotiating table, never to return.)
“Whatever the remaining power of the mythology, by making the apparent death of the two-state solution more visible, the Kushner plan will encourage people, both inside and outside Palestine, to think and act less in terms of two states and more in terms of advocating for the rights of Palestinian Arabs within a binational state. That shift will make it harder than ever to avoid comparisons between the Israeli version of apartheid and the earlier South African one, and to the sorts of international pressures that helped to end the latter injustice.”
Israelis and many others find the comparison to Apartheid to be very offensive, but the Kushner plan, with its emphasis on a fragmented Palestinian entity whose existence only comes into play if and only if the Israelis decide that the Palestinians have “earned” a state, makes the comparison inevitable. Seraj Assi writes for The Foreign Policy Journal:
“The irony is that the idea of evoking the term “apartheid” to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians was not invented by Israel’s enemies, let alone Arabs and Palestinians, but by Israel itself. For decades, Israeli officials have employed the Hebrew term Hafrada (“Separation” or “Segregation”) to describe Israel’s governing policy in the West Bank and Gaza, and its attempts to separate the Palestinian population from both the Israeli population and the Jewish settlers population in the occupied Palestinian territories. The so-called Israeli West Bank Barrier, known in Hebrew as “Gader Ha-Hafrada” (“Separation Fence”), was built on this Hafrada vision.
“But the magic has apparently turned over the magician: By citing the term “apartheid” to describe Israel’s official policy towards Palestinians, Israel’s critics are simply using Israel’s own terminology against it. They have at their disposal a long series of official declarations, platforms and plans predicated on Israel’s commitment to the principle of Hafrada.”
“(c) Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
“d) Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;”
The separations between Israelis and Palestinians is certainly not based upon racial distinctions and in this respect using the term apartheid is not justified. But the political, economic, social, and legal distinctions are clear in the Kushner program. By giving Israel the right to determine whether the Palestinians have “satisfied” the interests of Israel and thereby have earned the right to a state, the plan clearly places the Palestinians in a position of subjugation. Hafrada means “separation”; Apartheid means “apartness”. I am not sure how to differentiate the two concepts.
In a breathtaking act of hypocrisy, the Trump Administration has decided to defund its contribution to a State Department program created to honor the memory of Ambassador Christopher Stevens who was killed in an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya in 2012. The current US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, made headlines at the time by his relentless attacks on the then-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, for what Pompeo described as putting “political expediency and politics ahead of the men and women on the ground”. The US House of Representative conducted three sets of hearings on the Benghazi tragedy and, at one point, subjected Secretary Clinton to an 11 hour grilling. Talk–grandstanding–is cheap.
Congressman Mike Pompeo and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
The Munich Security Conference is an annual event where analysts, governmental officials, and journalists get together and hold discussions about the state of security in various parts of the world. The topic this year was “Westlessness” and the question posed to the conference was whether the multilateral institutions created by liberal democracies after World War II are still relevant and useful. The report defines the “West” in these terms:
“Despite its widespread use as a shorthand for a community of mostly North American and European liberal democracies as well as a normative project, the ‘West’ is a concept that is not always easy to pin down. The ‘West’ has never been a monolithic concept but rather an amalgam of different traditions, the mix of which changed over time. Yet, for the past decades, the answer to the question what it was that kept the West together was straightforward: a commitment to liberal democracy and human rights, to a market-based economy, and to international cooperation in international institutions. Today, the meaning of the West is increasingly contested again. We are witnessing ‘the decay of ‘the West’ as a relatively cohesive geopolitical configuration anchoring a normative model of global order in which commitments to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law are central.'”
The report does an excellent job of framing the debate, quoting statespeople like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban, who have both argued that the liberal idea is no longer valid. On the other side, US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, delivered a speech entitled “The West is Winning”. It is fair to say that the speech was not well-received by many in the audience, particularly by French President Macron who warned of a “weakening of the West.” Secretary Pompeo also displayed extraordinary chutzpah when he remarked:
“You know, just 15 days ago I was in Kyiv, Ukraine. I visited a hospital where Ukrainian service members who had been injured in the conflict, who had been wounded in the fight against Russian-backed aggression, were being convalesced. There was a young, brave warrior there – we had a conversation – who had sustained a serious injury and he was in significant pain. We spoke for a few moments. He, through the translator, told me that he was a captain. I reminded him that several decades ago I, too, was a captain.
“And as we were getting ready to leave, he got up. He grabbed his crutches. He moved across the room and he went to his wall locker, grabbed his uniform, pulled off his patch, and he handed me his unit logo. He told me to keep it; he wanted me to have it.
“That moment hit home for me. It reminded me that sovereignty is worth fighting for and that it’s real, that we’re all in this fight together.”
It is hard to believe that Pompeo would use the example of aid to Ukraine to prove the unshakable commitment of the US to freedom after the revelations about how the aid was used as a political weapon.
Marie Yovanovich, the former US Ambassador to Ukraine, received the Trainor Award from Georgetown University. The award is given annually to “an outstanding American or foreigner for distinction in the conduct of diplomacy.” Her speech, an excerpt from which is below, gave a frank and sober analysis of the difficulties facing the US State Department in the Trump Administration. The full speech is on You Tube and can be accessed here. She is a disciplined and thoughtful analyst and her words resonate strongly with those of us who wish that the US would pursue its interests in line with a vision of a more just and more peaceful world: “At a certain point, it is harder to do the wrong thing than the right thing”. President Trump’s proposed federal budget also weakens the State Department. The New York Times reports: “Funding for the State Department and international aid programs would be cut by $3.7 billion, or nearly 8 percent, from current spending levels. It would dramatically reduce or eliminate aid to international organizations, including the United Nations. The hollowing out of the State Department is mirrored by the dramatic changes to the National Security Council staff which has lost almost 70 people, many of whom have been replaced by political appointees. National Security Adviser, Robert O’Brien, has managed that change and MSN reports:
“O’Brien had dismissed or transferred about 70 people, or about one-third of those employed by or temporarily assigned to the NSC, according to senior administration officials.
“O’Brien told a Washington think tank Tuesday that his efforts to trim the staff would conclude this week, and aides said the final cuts would involve only a few more employees. O’Brien denied that his downsizing of the NSC was an effort to dismantle what Trump has called the ‘deep state.’
“O’Brien said his primary aim isn’t to remove career government employees and other professionals in favor of Trump loyalists. But he conceded that the realignment has increased the proportion of politically appointed staffers.”
In the absence of a strong diplomatic corps, the military options begin to take on a much larger role. That type of default policy option is dangerous and short-sighted.
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