Posted by Michael Klare at
7:29am, December 10, 2019.
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In case you hadn’t noticed,
the climate change news is anything but good. There was that dismal
recent United Nations Emissions Gap Report on how far so many
countries are from meeting their Paris climate accord commitments on staunching
greenhouse gas emissions. Then there was the World Meteorological
Organization’s latest global climate report predicting that this decade will “almost certainly be
the warmest” on record, with its second half proving significantly warmer than
its first. Finally, the Global Carbon Project just reported new carbon-dioxide emissions figures for 2019
and, for the third year in a row, they’re on track to cumulatively hit a record
high. Yes, the actual gain, 0.6% this year, was lower than the 2.1% increase of
2018. Still, at a moment when any climate scientist will tell you that greenhouse
gas emissions should be significantly on the decline if our children and
grandchildren are to inherit a truly habitable planet, they’re still going up
(and up). And with the TV “news” yakking nonstop about impeachment and related Trumpian
matters, this isn’t even considered a major story in much of the media. In my
daily New York Times (which this old guy still reads in a paper
format), the Global Carbon Project story was relegated to page
12, while the front page that day highlighted the report by the
House Intelligence Committee on presidential behavior re: Ukraine (“a sweeping
indictment”) and how, at the recent NATO meeting, Europe’s leaders turned “the
tables on the Great Disrupter.”
And so it goes on planet Earth
in 2019. In the context of the grim heating of this planet, TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author of the
just published book All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate
Change, focuses today on an organization that, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown
University, has historically been the largest institutional user of petroleum
and “the single largest producer of greenhouse gases.” It has also, as Klare
indicates in his new book, been one of the earliest government institutions to
focus on the devastation climate change could bring our way. The question he
considers today: How will that very institution, the Pentagon, adapt to this
new future at a time when the American people chose (or at least the Electoral
College chose for them) to put an arsonist in the White House as commander-in-chief?
In this century, it seems that the phrase “firing squad” is gaining a new
meaning as the almost perfect definition of the actions of the Trump
administration and what the rest of us face. Tom
Insignia, Badges, and Medals
for a Climate-Wracked Era
The U.S. Military on a Planet From Hell
By Michael T. Klare
The U.S. Military on a Planet From Hell
By Michael T. Klare
It was Monday, March 1, 2032,
and the top uniformed officers of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps
were poised, as they are every year around this time, to deliver their annual
“posture statement” on military readiness before the Senate Armed Services
Committee. As the officers waited for the committee members to take their
seats, journalists covering the event conferred among themselves on the meaning
of all the badges and insignia worn by the top brass. Each of the officers
testifying that day -- Generals Richard Sheldon of the Army, Roberto Gonzalez
of the Marine Corps, and Shalaya Wright of the Air Force, along with Admiral
Daniel Brixton of the Navy -- sported chestfuls of multicolored ribbons and
medals. What did all those emblems signify?
Easy to spot were the Defense
Distinguished Service and Legion of Merit medals worn by all four officers. No
less obvious was the parachutist badge worn by General Sheldon and the
submarine warfare insignia sported by Admiral Brixton. As young officers, all
four had, of course, served in the “Forever Wars” of the earlier years of this
century and so each displayed the Global War on Terror Service Medal. But all
four also bore service ribbons -- those small horizontal bars worn over the
left pocket -- for campaigns of more recent vintage, and these required closer
examination.
Although
similar in appearance to the service ribbons of previous decades, the more
recent ones worn by these commanders were for an entirely new set of military
operations, reflecting a changing global environment: disaster-relief missions
occasioned by extreme climate events, critical infrastructure protection and
repair, domestic firefighting activities, and police operations in foreign
countries ruptured by fighting over increasingly scarce food and water
supplies. All four of the officers testifying that day displayed emblems
signifying their engagement in multiple operations of those types at home and
abroad.
Several, for example, wore the
red-black-yellow-and-blue ribbon signifying their participation in relief
operations following the staggering one-two punch of Hurricanes Geraldo and
Helene in August 2027. Those back-to-back storms, as few present in 2032 could
forget, had inundated the coasts of Virginia and Maryland (from whose state
flags the colors were derived), causing catastrophic damage and killing
hundreds of people. Transportation and communication infrastructure throughout
the mid-Atlantic region had been shattered by the two hurricanes, which also
caused widespread flooding in Washington, D.C. itself. In response, more than
100,000 active-duty troops had been committed to relief operations across the
region, often performing heroic measures to clear roads and restore power.
Also displayed on their
heavily decorated uniforms were patches attesting to their membership in elite
units and squadrons. General Sheldon, for example, had spent part of his
military career as a member of the Army’s Rangers and so wore that unit’s
distinctive insignia. But Sheldon, along with General Wright of the Air Force,
also sported the bright red patch signifying membership in the military’s elite
Firefighting Brigade, established in 2026 to counter the annual conflagrations
erupting across California and the Pacific Northwest. Similarly, both General
Gonzalez and Admiral Brixton sported the dark-blue patch of the Coastal Relief
and Rescue Command, created in 2028 for military support of disaster-relief
operations along America’s increasingly storm-ravaged coastlines.
Medal Mania
The media, politicians, and
the general public have always been fascinated by the medals and badges worn by
the nation’s military leaders. This obsession intensified in November 2019 when
two events received national attention.
The first was the testimony on
President Donald Trump’s possible impeachable offenses before the House
Intelligence Committee by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the top expert
on Ukraine at the National Security Council. During that testimony --
which confirmed some of the claims made by an unnamed
whistle-blower that the president had conditioned the release of U.S. military
aid to Ukraine on an investigation of the alleged financial wrongdoing of his
presumed electoral rival, Joe Biden (and his son) -- Vindman wore a full-dress
uniform. It bore a purple heart (awarded for a combat wound
received in Iraq) and other ribbons signifying his participation in the war on
terror and the defense of South Korea. Following his appearance, Trump
supporters promptly challenged his patriotism, while many other observers affirmed that his calm assertions of loyalty in
response to such charges and all those medals on his uniform accorded him
unusual credibility.
The second episode occurred
just a few weeks later when President Trump intervened in a formal Navy
proceeding to allow Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher -- once on trial for
serious war crimes -- to retain his “Trident” pin, the symbol of his membership
in the Navy’s elite SEAL commando unit. Gallagher had served multiple tours of
duty in the country’s twenty-first-century “forever wars.” He had also
been accused by fellow SEALs of murdering a wounded and
unconscious enemy combatant and then having himself photographed while proudly
holding the dead body up by the hair.
When tried by fellow officers last June, Gallagher
was acquitted of the murder charge after a key witness
changed his story. He was, however, found guilty of taking a “trophy” photo of
a dead enemy, a violation of military rules. When, on this basis, the Navy
sought to eject Gallagher from the SEALs and strip him of his Trident pin,
President Trump, egged on by conservative pundits, overruled the top brass and allowed him to keep that
insignia. “The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie
Gallagher’s Trident Pin,” Trump tweeted on November 21st.
Like Lt. Col. Vindman, Chief
Petty Officer Gallagher wore numerous service ribbons in his courtroom and public
appearances and, in his case, too, they signified participation in the forever
wars of the twenty-teens. A quick look at the badges borne by most other senior
officers today would similarly reveal participation in those conflicts, as
almost every senior commander has been obliged to serve several tours of duty
in Iraq and/or Afghanistan.
By 2019, however, public
support for engagement in those conflicts had largely evaporated and -- to again peer into the
future -- during the 2020s, U.S. military involvement in such seemingly endless
and futile contests would diminish sharply. Defense against China and Russia
would remain a major military concern, but it would generate relatively little
actual military activity, other than an ever-growing investment in high-tech weaponry. Instead, in those years, on a
distinctly changing planet, the military mission would begin to change
radically as well. Protecting the homeland from climate disasters and providing
support to climate-ravaged allies abroad would become the main focus of
American military operations and so the medals and ribbons awarded to those who
displayed meritorious service in performing such duties would only multiply.
Medals for a Climate-Wracked
Century
I can only speculate, of
course, about the particular contingencies that will lead to the designation of
special military insignia for participation in the climate battles of the
decades ahead. Nevertheless, it’s possible, by extrapolating from recent
events, to imagine what these might look like, even though the Department of Defense
(DoD) does not yet award such ribbons.
Consider, for example, the
Pentagon’s response to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, all of which hit
parts of the United States between August and September 2017. In reaction to
those mega-storms, which battered eastern Texas, southern Florida, and
virtually all of Puerto Rico, the DoD deployed tens of thousands of active-duty
troops to assist relief operations, along with a flotilla of naval vessels and
a slew of helicopters and cargo aircraft. In addition, to help restore power
and water supplies in Puerto Rico, it mobilized 11,400 active-duty and National
Guard troops -- many of whom were still engaged in such activities six months after
Maria’s disastrous passage across that island. Given the extent of the
military’s involvement in such rescue-and-relief operations -- often conducted
under hazardous conditions -- it would certainly have been fitting had the
Pentagon awarded a special service ribbon for participation in those
triple-hurricane responses, using colors drawn from the Texas, Florida, and
Puerto Rican flags.
Another example would have been
Super Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013, which pulverized parts of the
Philippines, a long-time ally, killing more than 6,000 people and destroying a
million homes. With the Filipino government essentially immobilized by the
scale of the disaster, President Barack Obama ordered the U.S. military to
mount a massive relief operation, which it called Damayan. At its peak,
it involved some 14,000 U.S. military personnel, a dozen
major warships -- including the carrier USS George Washington -- and
66 aircraft. This effort, too, deserved recognition in the form of a
distinctive service ribbon.
Now, let’s jump a decade or
more into the future. By the early 2030s, with global temperatures
significantly higher than they are today, extreme storms like Harvey, Irma,
Maria, and Haiyan are likely to be occurring more frequently and to be
even more powerful. With sea levels rising worldwide and ever
more people living in low-lying coastal areas around the globe, the damage
caused by such extreme weather is bound to increase exponentially, regularly
overwhelming the response capabilities of civilian authorities. The result:
ever increasing calls on the armed forces to provide relief-and-rescue
services. “More frequent and/or more severe extreme weather events... may require
substantial involvement of DoD units, personnel, and assets in humanitarian
assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) abroad and in Defense Support of Civil
Authorities (DSCA) at home,” the Pentagon was already informing Congress back in 2015.
Historically, it has viewed
such activities as a “lesser included case”; that is, the military has not
allocated specific troops or equipment for HA/DR and DSCA operations ahead of
time, but used whatever combat forces it had on hand for such missions.
Typical, for instance, was the use of an aircraft carrier already in the region
to deal with the results of Super Typhoon Haiyan. As such events only grow in
intensity and frequency, however, the Pentagon will find it increasingly
necessary to establish dedicated units like the hypothetical “Coastal Relief
and Rescue Command” (whose insignia General Gonzalez and Admiral Brixton were
wearing in “2032”).
This will become essential as
multiple coastal storms coincide with other extreme events, including massive
wildfires or severe inland flooding, creating a “complex catastrophe” that
could someday threaten the economy and political cohesion of the United States
itself.
“Complex Catastrophes”
The DoD first envisioned the
possibility of a “complex catastrophe” in 2012, after Superstorm Sandy hit the
East Coast that October. Sandy, as many readers will recall, knocked out power
in lower Manhattan and disrupted commerce and transportation throughout the New
York Metropolitan Area. On that occasion, the DoD mobilized more than 14,000
military personnel for relief-and-rescue operations and provided a variety of
critical support services. In the wake of that storm, Secretary of Defense Leon
Panetta commanded his staff to consider the possibility of even more damaging
versions of the same and how these might affect the military’s future roles and
mission.
The Pentagon’s response came
in a 2013 handbook, Strategy for Homeland Defense and Defense Support of Civil
Authorities, warning the military to start anticipating and preparing for
“complex catastrophes,” which, in an ominous breathful, it defined as
“cascading failures of multiple, interdependent, critical, life-sustaining
infrastructure sectors [causing] extraordinary levels of mass casualties,
damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, environment, economy,
public health, national morale, response efforts, and/or government functions.”
While recognizing that civil authorities must remain the first line of defense
in such calamities, the handbook indicated that, if civil institutions are
overwhelmed -- an increasingly likely reality -- the armed forces must be
prepared to assume many key governmental functions, possibly for an extended
period of time.
In the future, in other words,
all senior commanders and other officers can expect to participate in major
HA/DR and DSCA operations during their careers, possibly involving extended
deployments and hazardous missions. In 2017, for instance, many soldiers were
deployed in Houston for rescue operations after Hurricane Harvey had drenched
the region and, in the process, were exposed to toxic chemicals in the knee-deep
floodwaters because some of the area’s petrochemical plants had been
inundated. Looting has also been a recurring feature of major
weather disasters, sometimes involving gunfire or other threats to life.
Increasingly frequent and
savage wildfires in the American West are another climate-related peril likely to impinge on the
military’s future operational posture. As temperatures rise and forests dry
out, fires, once started, often spread with a daunting rapidity, overpowering
firefighters and other local defenses. California and the Pacific Northwest are
at particular risk, as severe drought has been a persistent problem in the
region, while people have moved their homes ever deeper into the forests. In
recent years, the National Guard in those states has been called up on numerous
occasions to help battle such fires and active-duty troops have increasingly
been deployed on the fire lines as well.
The proliferation of ever more
severe wildfires in the American West -- combined with similar devastating
outbreaks in Australia and the rainforests of Indonesia and the Amazon -- have
led to a global shortage of the giant air tankers used to fight them. In
November 2019, for example, Australia was pleading for the loan of water tankers still needed in
California to cope with a deadly fire season that had lasted far longer than
usual. It’s easy to imagine, then, that the U.S. Air Force will one day be
compelled by Congress to establish a dedicated fleet of water tankers to fight
fires around the country -- what I chose to call the U.S. Firefighting Brigade
in my own futuristic imaginings.
Foreign Climate Wars
Yet another climate-related
mission likely to be undertaken by U.S. forces in the years ahead will be armed
intervention in foreign civil conflicts triggered by severe drought, food
shortages, or other resource scarcities. American military and intelligence
analysts believe that rising world temperatures will result in
widespread shortages of food and water in crucial areas of the planet like the
Middle East, only exacerbating preexisting hostilities to the breaking point.
When governments fail to respond in an efficient and equitable manner, conflict
is likely to erupt, possibly resulting in state collapse, warlordism, and mass
migrations -- outcomes that could pose a significant threat to global
stability. (Keep in mind, for instance, that the horrific Syrian civil war,
still ongoing, was preceded by an “extreme drought,” the worst in modern
times and believed to be climate-change induced.)
“Climate change is an urgent
and growing threat to our national security,” the DoD stated in its 2015 report
to Congress, “contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and
conflicts over basic resources such as food and water.”
One area where these forces
can be witnessed today is the Lake Chad region of northern Nigeria, where severe drought conditions have produced widespread
hardship and discontent that a variety of insurgent groups have sought to
exploit. Once a thriving locale for fishing and irrigated agriculture, Lake
Chad has shrunk to less than a fifth of its original size due to global warming
and water mismanagement. With people’s livelihoods in jeopardy and the central
government providing little reliable assistance, the terror group Boko Haram
has been able to attract significant local support.
“Economic conditions in the
region have become increasingly dire, creating resentment, grievances, and
tensions within and among populations,” the CNA Corporation, a Pentagon-funded
think tank, noted as early as 2017. “Boko Haram exploits this
situation to recruit followers, offering them economic opportunity and secured
livelihoods.”
Given Nigeria’s strategic
importance as a major oil producer and bulwark of African Union peacekeeping
forces, the United States has long assisted the Nigerian military with arms and training
support. Were Boko Haram to begin to attack Abuja, the capital, or pose a
threat to the survival of the Nigerian government, it’s entirely plausible that
the Pentagon would be called upon to deploy forces there.
Were such a thing to happen, a
service ribbon for participation in “Operation Yanci” (Hausa for “freedom”),
the 2024 mission to crush Boko Haram and save the Nigerian state, might have
the green and white bands of the Nigerian flag and be worn -- at least in my
imaginings -- by two of the generals present at that hearing in 2032.
Another plausible future
mission for the U.S. military: to help the government of the Philippines
reassert control over its southern island of Mindanao after a typhoon even more
destructive than 2013's Haiyan struck the region in 2026. With the government
in nearly complete disarray, as after Haiyan's landfall, militant separatists
that year seized control of the country's second largest island. Unable to
overcome the rebels on its own, Manila called on Washington to bolster its
forces. Mindanao has long experienced revolts focused on a central government
widely viewed as prejudiced against the island's 20 million people, a
significant number of them Muslim. In May 2017, for instance, radical Islamist
groups seized control of Marawi, a Muslim-majority city of about 200,000 in
western Mindanao. Only after five months of fighting in which 168 government
soldiers died and 1,400 were wounded was the city completely retaken. The
United States aided Filipino forces with arms and intelligence
during that struggle and has continued to provide them with counterinsurgency training ever
since.
As global warming advances and
Pacific typhoons grow more intense, the Philippines will be hit again and again
by catastrophic, Haiyan-level storms like Kammuri this December. So it's not hard to envision a
future storm severe enough to completely paralyze government services and
provide an opening for another Marawi-style event on an even larger scale. For
those American soldiers who will participate in Operation Kalayaan (Tagalog for
"Liberty"), the 2026 campaign to liberate Mindinao from rebel forces,
there will undoubtedly be a ribbon of red, blue, white, and gold, the colors of
the Filipino flag.
The Military on a New Planet
All this, of course, is
speculation, but given how rapidly the planetary environment is being altered
by global warming and its disruptive effects, climate change will become a
major factor in U.S. strategic planning. That, in turn, will mean the setting
up of specialized commands to deal with such contingencies and the earmarking
of specific resources -- troops and equipment -- for domestic and foreign
disaster-relief missions.
The Department of Defense will
similarly have to step up its efforts to harden its own domestic and foreign bases
against severe storms and flooding, while beginning to develop plans to
relocate those that will be inundated as sea levels rise. In a similar fashion,
count on fire protection becoming a major concern for base commanders across
the American West. Efforts now under way at significant installations to reduce
the U.S. military’s prodigious consumption of fossil fuels and to increase
reliance on renewables will undoubtedly be part of the package as
well. And with all of this will surely go plans to devise new medals and honors
for military personnel who exhibit meritorious service in protecting the nation
against the extreme climate perils to come. In a world in which all hell is going to break loose, everything will change
and the military will be no exception.
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