Climate Change and
National Security
An Agenda for Action
Joshua W. Busby
CSR NO. 32, NOVEMBER 2007
COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
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CONTENTS
Foreword v
Acknowledgments vii
Council Special Report 1
Introduction 1
Effects of Climate Change and Consequences for U.S. National Security 4
Principles and Policies for Climate and Security 11
Conclusion 26
About the Author 28
Advisory Committee 29
GEC Mission Statement 30
FOREWORD
Climate change presents a serious threat to the security and prosperity of the United
States and other countries. Recent actions and statements by members of Congress,
members of the UN Security Council, and retired U.S. military officers have drawn
attention to the consequences of climate change, including the destabilizing effects of
storms, droughts, and floods. Domestically, the effects of climate change could
overwhelm disaster-response capabilities. Internationally, climate change may cause
humanitarian disasters, contribute to political violence, and undermine weak
governments.
In this Council Special Report, Joshua W. Busby moves beyond diagnosis of the
threat to recommendations for action. Recognizing that some climate change is
inevitable, he proposes a portfolio of feasible and affordable policy options to reduce the
vulnerability of the United States and other countries to the predictable effects of climate
change. He also draws attention to the strategic dimensions of reducing greenhouse gas
emissions, arguing that sharp reductions in the long run are essential to avoid
unmanageable security problems. He goes on to argue that participation in reducing
emissions can help integrate China and India into the global rules based order, as well as
help stabilize important countries such as Indonesia. And he suggests bureaucratic
reforms that would increase the likelihood that the U.S. government will formulate
effective domestic and foreign policies in this increasingly important realm.
The result is an authoritative, well-written, and practical paper that merits careful
consideration by members of Congress, the administration, and other interested parties in
the United States and internationally.
Richard N. Haass
President
Council on Foreign Relations
November 2007
v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In developing this Council Special Report, I interviewed a number of individuals who
work on climate change, national security, and the intersection between the two. These
included current and former U.S. government officials, former members of the military,
and academics, as well as staff from international organizations, nongovernmental
organizations, and businesses. During the course of writing this report, I consulted with
an advisory group that met to offer constructive feedback. I am grateful to Kurt M.
Campbell for chairing the advisory committee and to Kent Hughes Butts, Helima L.
Croft, John Gannon, Lukas Haynes, Paul F. Herman Jr., Jeff Kojac, Marc A. Levy, Meg
McDonald, Alisa Newman Hood, Stewart M. Patrick, Joseph Wilson Prueher, Nigel
Purvis, P.J. Simmons, and R. James Woolsey for participating. I would also like to thank
Shannon Beebe for his helpful comments and advice on this project.
I thank Council President Richard N. Haass for his support in producing this CSR.
I thank Vice President and Director of Studies Gary Samore for his helpful suggestions. I
am grateful for the advice and support of Sebastian Mallaby, director of the Maurice R.
Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies, and Michael A. Levi, director of the
Program on Energy Security and Climate Change. I also thank the Publications team of
Patricia Dorff and Lia Norton and the Communications team headed by Lisa Shields and
Anya Schmemann. This publication was sponsored by the Geoeconomics Center and was
made possible, in part, by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation. The statements made and views expressed in this report are solely my
responsibility.
Joshua W. Busby
vii
COUNCIL SPECIAL REPORT
INTRODUCTION
When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, Americans witnessed on their own
soil what looked like an overseas humanitarian-relief operation. The storm destroyed
much of the city, causing more than $80 billion in damages, killing more than 1,800
people, and displacing in excess of 270,000. More than 70,000 soldiers were mobilized,
including 22,000 active duty troops and 50,000-plus members of the National Guard
(about 10 percent of the total Guard strength). Katrina also had severe effects on critical
infrastructure, taking crude oil production and refinery capacity off-line for an
unprecedented length of time. At a time when the United States was conducting military
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the country suddenly had to divert its attention and
military resources to respond to a domestic emergency.
Climate change and Katrina cannot be linked directly with each other, but the
storm gave Americans a visual image of what climate change which scientists predict
will exacerbate the severity and number of extreme weather events might mean for the
future.1 It also began to alter the terms of the climate debate. The economics community
has been engaged in an important, ongoing discussion since the early 1990s about
whether early action to prevent climate change is justified; this debate has compared the
potential economy-wide costs of lowering greenhouse gas emissions to the possible
economic costs of climate change. In 2007, the debate turned, broadening beyond
economics to include, in particular, the consequences of climate change for national
security. In March 2007, Senators Richard J. Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE)
introduced a bill requesting a National Intelligence Estimate to assess whether and how
climate change might pose a national security threat. In April 2007, the CNA
Corporation, a think tank funded by the U.S. Navy, released a report on climate change
1
Scientists do not attribute single weather events like Katrina to climate change; at most, they would say
that climate change make extreme storms like Katrina more likely. Whether climate change has been
responsible for an increase in both the severity and number of hurricanes is one of the most hotly debated
subjects in the scientific community.
1
and national security by a panel of retired U.S. generals and admirals that concluded:
Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile
regions of the world, and it presents significant national security challenges for the
United States. That same month, the UN Security Council at the initiative of the UK
government held its first-ever debate on the potential impact of climate change on
peace and security. In October 2007, the Nobel committee recognized this emerging
threat to peace and security by awarding former vice president Al Gore and the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change its peace prize. In November 2007, two
think tanks, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Center for a
New American Security (CNAS), released another report on the issue, concluding from a
range of possible scenarios of climate change that, We already know enough to
appreciate that the cascading consequences of unchecked climate change are to include a
range of security problems that will have dire global consequences. 2
The new interest in climate change and national security has been a valuable
warning about the potential security consequences of global warming, but the proposed
solutions that accompanied recent efforts have emphasized broader climate policy rather
than specific responses to security threats. Because the links between climate change and
national security are worthy of concern in their own right, and because some significant
climate change is inevitable, strategies that go beyond long-run efforts to rein in
greenhouse gas emissions are required. This report sharpens the connections between
climate change and national security and recommends specific policies to address the
security consequences of climate change for the United States.
In all areas of climate change policy, adaptation and mitigation (reducing
greenhouse gas emissions) should be viewed as complements rather than competing
alternatives and the national security dimension is no exception. Some policies will be
targeted at adaptation, most notably risk-reduction and preparedness policies at home and
abroad. These could spare the United States the need to mobilize its military later to
rescue people and to prevent regional disorder and would ensure a more effective
response if such mobilization was nonetheless necessary. Others will focus on mitigation,
2
CSIS/CNAS, The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global
Climate Change, November 2007; available at http://www.cnas.org/climatechange.
2
which is almost universally accepted as an essential part of the response to climate
change. Mitigation efforts will need to be international and involve deep changes in the
world s major economies, such as those of China and India. As a result, the processes of
working together to craft and implement them provide opportunities to advance
American security interests. Such opportunities exist within many areas of climate policy:
military-to-military workshops on emergency management, for example, can help other
states deal with new security threats and, at the same time, cement strong relationships
that can pay off in other national security dimensions.
3
EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND
CONSEQUENCES FOR U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY
The 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the
leading expert body in this field, summarizes the effects of climate change by kind,
likelihood, and impact on different sectors such as agriculture and human health (see
Table 1). Its main conclusion is that some weather events and extremes will become
more frequent, more widespread, and/or more intense during the 21st century. 3
Table 1: Summary of Expected Effects in IPCC 2007 Report
21st Century
Phenomenon and Direction of Trend
Likelihood
Over most land areas, warmer and fewer cold days and nights, warmer
Virtually certain
and more frequent hot days and nights
Warm spells/heat waves. Frequency increases over most land areas Very likely
Heavy precipitation events. Frequency increases over most areas Very likely
Area affected by drought increases Likely
Intense tropical cyclone activity increases Likely
Increased incidence of extreme high sea level (excluding tsunamis) Likely
Sources: IPCC Interim Working Group Report 1, April 2007; IPCC Synthesis Report, November 2007.
While some areas in northern Europe, Russia, and the Arctic may experience
more positive effects of a warming climate in the short run, the long-run net
consequences for all regions are likely to be negative if nothing at all is done to reduce
emissions of greenhouse gases. Africa and parts of Asia are particularly vulnerable, given
their locations and their limited governmental capacities to respond to flooding, droughts,
and declining food production. Even the United States will face negative impacts from
3
This report focuses on physical effects that scientists already regard as those most likely to surface in the
coming decades, rather than more long-term, uncertain, or unlikely effects, which would include abrupt
climate change and the scenario of a twenty-foot sea-level rise popularized in former U.S. vice president Al
Gore s film An Inconvenient Truth.
4
droughts, heat waves, and storms. Each of these has potential consequences, direct and
indirect, for national security.
National security extends well beyond protecting the homeland against armed
attack by other states, and indeed, beyond threats from people who purposefully seek to
damage or destroy states. Phenomena like pandemic disease, natural disasters, and
climate change, despite lacking human intentionality, can threaten national security. For
example, the 2006 U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) notes that the Department of
Defense has been charged to plan for deadly pandemics and other natural disasters that
can produce WMD-like effects. It also notes that environmental destruction, whether
caused by human behavior or cataclysmic mega-disasters such as floods, hurricanes,
earthquakes, or tsunamis & may overwhelm the capacity of local authorities to respond,
and may even overtax national militaries, requiring a larger international response. Like
armed attacks, some of the effects of climate change could swiftly kill or endanger large
numbers of people and cause such large-scale disruption that local public health, law
enforcement, and emergency response units would not be able to contain the threat.
Climate change does not pose an existential risk for a country as large as the
United States. Moreover, while Washington, DC, has had its share of storms, the nation s
political and military command-and-control center is not as vulnerable to extreme
weather events as other parts of the country. However, Hurricane Katrina demonstrated
all too well the possibility that an extreme weather event could kill and endanger large
numbers of people, cause civil disorder, and damage critical infrastructure in other parts
of the country. It would be easy to dismiss that storm s effects as the result of a
particularly vulnerable city and an extraordinarily damaging hurricane. But the 2007
IPCC report explicitly warns that coastal populations in North America will be
increasingly vulnerable to climate change and nearly 50 percent of Americans live
within fifty miles of the coast. While the Gulf Coast s vulnerability is well known, other
densely populated coastal areas are also at risk. For example, a NASA simulation that
combined a modest forty-centimeter sea-level rise by 2050 with storm surges from a
Category Three hurricane found that, without new adaptive measures, large parts of New
5
York City would be inundated, including much of southern Brooklyn and Queens and
portions of lower Manhattan.4
Climate change could, through extreme weather events, have a more direct impact
on national security by severely damaging critical military bases, thereby diverting or
severely undermining significant national defense resources. This could have a
compound effect: in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, the Department of Defense
recognized that military assets would likely be called upon in the event of future domestic
emergencies. Its consequences might also ripple abroad: for example, Tampa Bay, the
site of MacDill Air Force Base and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), the center of
strategic operations in Iraq, is extremely vulnerable to hurricane damage. A University of
South Florida simulation found that the base would likely be inundated if the region were
struck by a Category Three hurricane.5 Other military assets located in Florida are also
vulnerable to extreme weather events. U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), the
strategic command for Latin America, is in Miami, another of the cities identified as most
vulnerable to hurricane storm damage. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew did such damage to
Homestead Air Force Base in Miami that it never reopened. In 2004, damage from
Hurricane Ivan kept Pensacola Naval Air Station closed for almost a year. Given the
kinds of effects hurricanes have historically had on military bases in the region, it is not
farfetched to imagine serious impairment to U.S. national security as Florida sustains
further hurricane disasters and climate change will make such events more severe and
potentially more likely.
The effects of climate change on America s neighbors could also be severe, with
spillover security effects on the United States. Caribbean countries such as Haiti and
Cuba could be hard hit by extreme weather events, contributing to humanitarian disasters
as well as the possibility of large-scale refugee flows and state failure. Both Haiti and
Cuba have historically used the threat of migration to extract concessions from the United
States. In 1980, Fidel Castro forced the United States to accept more than 100,000
Cubans after he encouraged tens of thousands to migrate to Florida during the Mariel
4
Vivien Gornitz and Cynthia Rosenzweig, Hurricanes, Sea Level Rise, and New York City (Columbia
University, Center for Climate Systems Research, 2006); available at http://www.ccsr.columbia.edu/information/
hurricanes/.
5
Kevin Duffy, Could Tampa Bay Be the Next New Orleans? (Palm Beach Post, July 9, 2006); available
at http://www.palmbeachpost.com/storm/content/state/epaper/2006/07/09/m1a_TAMPA_CANE_0709.html.
6
boat lift. In 1994, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in exchange for U.S. intervention to restore him
to power, was able to dissuade thousands of Haitians who had constructed makeshift rafts
from emigrating to the United States. In the absence of U.S. action to address climate
change or support risk reduction, countries in the region could be increasingly tempted to
use the threat of migration again.
The United States also faces the likelihood that summer sea ice in the Arctic will
be gone by the middle of the century. This will open up the Northern Sea route (north of
Russia) and the Northwest Passage (through the Canadian archipelago) to shipping, at
least for parts of the year. Both would be attractive for shipping, as they would provide
much shorter routes between Europe and Asia than the Panama Canal 4,000 nautical
miles less in the case of the Northwest Passage. While this is one of the potential benefits
of global warming, the issue threatens to become caught up in interstate disputes over
sovereign control over those waters. Canada has claimed the Northwest Passage as
internal waters while the United States has asserted they are international waters through
which free passage should be permitted. Another concern is contested control of potential
petroleum reserves in the area that have heretofore been inaccessible. In the summer of
2007, the Russians raised the stakes by laying claim to the North Pole and the resources
underlying it, setting in motion a scramble by other national governments. Though armed
confrontation remains unlikely, tensions over territorial waters hearken back to the kinds
of border disputes that once led to interstate war.
The United States also has national security interests farther afield, and some of
the countries that are vulnerable to climate change may, in particular, be of national
security concern to the United States, as sites of U.S. military bases and embassies, allies,
potential global or peer competitors, sources of raw materials and/or significant economic
partners, sites of major transportation corridors (ports, straits), or places where blowback
from events could have an impact on the U.S. homeland. A few specific examples are
illustrative.
Indonesia has the world s largest Muslim population about 88 percent of its
245.5 million people. Some have been radicalized, but most have not. Indonesia is also a
fragile democracy and politically unstable with a history of separatist movements.
Meanwhile, as an island archipelago with large forest reserves, the country is both
7
vulnerable to climate change and important for climate mitigation. Climate change,
through drought conditions or storms, might further destabilize Indonesia, and if the
government provided a weak response to a future weather disaster, this could encourage
separatists or radicals to challenge the state or launch attacks on Western interests. In a
foretaste of what may be to come, the Indonesian government s weak response to the
tsunami of 2004 damaged its authority in the province of Aceh.6
Similarly, China is a major economic partner and potential peer competitor. While
its authoritarian government currently has a firm grasp on power, rapid social change and
widening economic inequality make future instability possible. The country is vulnerable
to climate change, as a result of both potential freshwater shortages and storm damage
along its densely populated coast. The immense human costs of extreme weather events
in cities such as Shanghai and Tianjin could also damage China s industrial production
capacity and ports, with knock-on effects on the global economy. An unstable China
might also have a less predictable foreign policy.
Other countries with less obvious strategic importance also have large, vulnerable
coastal populations. One recent study from the International Institute for Environment
and Development found that a tenth of the world s population 634 million people live
in coastal areas that lie between zero and ten meters above sea level.7 (Storm surges make
low-lying coastal areas vulnerable even if sea levels rise only modestly.) Fully 75 percent
of those live in Asia. Bangladesh, for example, has 46 percent of its population located in
low elevation areas, many of them living in areas less than five meters above sea level. Its
capital, Dhaka, with about 12.6 million people, is also one of the most vulnerable cities to
flooding. Devastating floods in Bangladesh could send tens of thousands of refugees
across the border to India, potentially leading to tension between the refugees and
recipient communities in India. In the event of such an emergency, the United States
would likely be called upon, given its relief efforts in the region after the 2004 tsunami
and the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. Even if the United States has limited strategic stakes
6
Ironically, the tsunami also contributed to a peace settlement between the government and separatists.
Unlike most natural disasters, the effects of the 2004 tsunami were so severe that Aceh separatists decided
to hand in their weapons and end their demands for independence.
7
International Institute for Environment and Development, Climate Change: Study Maps Those at Greatest
Risk from Cyclones and Rising Seas (2007); available at http://www.iied.org/mediaroom/releases/
070328coastal.html.
8
in Bangladesh, support for adaptation measures would still be the right thing to do and
much less costly than disaster response.
Sub-Saharan Africa is also particularly vulnerable to climate change. While U.S.
strategic interests in the region have historically been limited, Africa s growing oil
exports to the United States and worries about terrorism have strengthened U.S. interests
in the continent.8 The United States has supported two major antiterrorism efforts in
Africa in recent years one in the Sahel and the other in the Horn of Africa. With the
designation of a new U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007, Africa will have an
institutional anchor in the military hierarchy. The CNA report concluded that declining
food production, extreme weather events, and drought from climate change could further
inflame tensions in Africa, weaken governance and economic growth, and contribute to
massive migration and possibly state failure, leaving ungoverned spaces where
terrorists can organize.9
The United States has other compelling reasons to be concerned about Africa. The
continent s vulnerability to climate change on top of its other problems makes the region
especially susceptible to humanitarian disasters with some African governments either
unwilling or unable to protect their citizens from floods, famine, drought, and disease.
The region is home to a number of unstable regimes and ongoing conflicts, in Somalia,
Ethiopia, and the Darfur region of Sudan, with spillover effects on neighboring Chad.
Countries in the region are already vulnerable to water shortages, which can exacerbate
local grievances and contribute to conflict over scarce resources. Drought conditions
(which memorably affected Ethiopia in the 1980s and Somalia in the early 1990s) may be
increasingly normal in a world of climate change. Since the United States will be
pressured to deploy military forces or at least provide lift and logistic support for large-
scale humanitarian emergencies, it has an interest in helping countries minimize the
adverse effects of climate change through enhanced local capacity to respond to natural
disasters.
8
More Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach toward Africa, Anthony Lake and Christine
Todd Whitman, chairs (Council on Foreign Relations Press, 2006); available at http://www.cfr.org/
publication/9302/more_than_humanitarianism.html.
9
A 2007 RAND report looks at indicators of ungovernability and conduciveness to terrorism in a number
of regions. See Ungoverned Territories: Understanding and Reducing Terrorism Risks; available at
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2007/RAND_MG561.pdf.
9
These regional examples provide only a partial glimpse of the intersection of U.S.
strategic interests, climate vulnerability, and political risk. Nonetheless, they are
illustrative of the kinds of complex national security challenges the United States will
face as climate change intensifies.
10
PRINCIPLES AND POLICIES FOR CLIMATE AND SECURITY
Responding to the security consequences of climate change will require the United States
to support policies that will insulate it as well as countries of strategic concern from the
most severe effects of climate change. At the same time, climate policy will also provide
the United States with opportunities to improve its relationship with important countries,
both rising powers as well as those most vulnerable to environmental damage.
IDENTIFY NO-REGRETS POLICIES
The United States should prioritize so-called no-regrets policies, those that it would not
regret having pursued even if the consequences of climate change prove less severe than
feared.
Domestically, the concentration of human settlements near the coasts justifies
many risk-reduction and adaptation policies even if the effects of climate change are
modest. Coastal populations are already vulnerable to hurricanes and floods, and policies
such as improved building codes make sense irrespective of climate change. Likewise,
investments in evacuation and relocation strategies could save lives in the event of
terrorist attacks or non-climate-related natural disasters, such as fires or earthquakes.
Among other programs that will be beneficial regardless is water conservation, since
water scarcity poses a threat to agriculture and human consumption patterns.
Internationally, military-to-military environmental security initiatives (on disaster
management, emergency response, and scarce water resources) such as those the U.S.
military has sponsored in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia are worthwhile even if the
environmental benefits are minimal. U.S. Central Command deputy commander
Lieutenant General Michael P. DeLong underscored this point in a 2001 speech: The
United States would not have had access to Central Asia bases to fight the war on
terrorism were it not for the relationship established through environmental security
programs.
11
Costs for these conferences were likely in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a
small price to pay. Institutionalizing a series of annual regional conferences at which
militaries can discuss natural hazards and disaster preparedness would be among the
cheapest investments that the U.S. government could support. For about $100 million, the
U.S. government could develop a multiyear program with militaries from Africa, Central
Asia, South Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.10 At the very least, the meetings
could potentially facilitate better ties between militaries (and thereby dampen the
possibilities of interstate mistrust). They could also inform the U.S. military about
emerging threats, independent of environmental concerns.
No-regrets policies will pay off even if climate change proves less worrisome
than many now fear. But given that the worries about climate change are likely to be
proved right, policymakers need to go beyond these minimal measures.
DEVELOP POLICIES THAT ADDRESS PROBLEMS IN MULTIPLE DOMAINS
The strongest policies will simultaneously address problems in multiple domains.
Policies should address climate security challenges but could also help reduce greenhouse
gas emissions, shore up energy security, or provide economic benefits.
Stephen E. Flynn of the Council on Foreign Relations has made a strong case for
investments in U.S. physical infrastructure and disaster response capabilities to reduce
the potential for catastrophic damage from terrorism, natural disasters, and pandemics.
Drawing on a recommendation from the American Society of Civil Engineers, Flynn
suggests that an investment in our infrastructure of $295 billion per year for five years
will create spillover benefits to the national economy, in the same way the Interstate
Highway System did in the 1950s.11 The United States should support this infrastructure
10
One 2002 study estimated a five-year Central Asia environmental security program (including
conferences, staff, exchanges, and small projects) would cost $18 million. Updating for inflation and
multiplying by five, a similar initiative today would likely cost $100 million. R.B. Knapp, Central Asia
Environmental Security Technical Workshop: Responding to the Centcom Vision (Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, August 1, 2002); available at http://www.llnl.gov/tid/lof/documents/pdf/240886.pdf.
11
See page xxi in Stephen Flynn, The Edge of Disaster (New York: Random House, 2007).
12
investment program and dedicate a healthy portion to climate proof vulnerable
infrastructure, particularly in coastal areas.
Another example comes from the Law of the Sea Treaty. As argued earlier, the
melting of Arctic ice puts U.S. interests in jeopardy. However, by not ratifying the Law
of the Sea Treaty, the United States risks not being party to the adjudicating body that
will determine which countries have rights to the region s resources. The Law of the Sea
Treaty has been strongly supported by American commercial interests, environmentalists,
and the military, all of which see their specific concerns enhanced by ratification. As of
this writing, however, a highly motivated few who see treaties as infringements on
national sovereignty have stymied final approval. In light of new security concerns from
climate change in the Arctic, the U.S. Senate should overcome this inertia and provide its
consent to the treaty.
AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION
Reducing risks ahead of time is almost always less costly than responding to disasters
after the fact. One estimate from the U.S. Geological Survey and the World Bank
suggested an investment of $40 billion would have prevented disaster losses of $280
billion in the 1990s. Between 1960 and 2000, the Chinese spent $3.15 billion on flood
control, and averted losses of an estimated $12 billion.12 Yet the world currently spends
too little on adaptive strategies that would reduce climate risk because adaptation has
been wrongly perceived as a competitor to mitigation. Supporters of a more robust
climate policy have been unenthusiastic about adaptation because they fear it would
signal that the world had given up on greenhouse gas emission reductions. This attitude is
starting to change, but unless the change is accelerated, the United States and its allies
will be forced to expend greater effort later on, including calling upon military assets, to
compensate for inadequate risk reduction and disaster response capabilities.
12
See DFID, Natural Disaster and Disaster Risk Reduction Measures, December 8, 2005; available at
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/disaster-risk-reduction-study.pdf.
13
The government effort should begin by providing incentives for individuals and
firms to reduce risk, particularly through building codes and ensuring that federally
funded disaster insurance discourages dangerous coastal settlements. The latter might be
done, for example, by limiting government guarantees to rebuild homes and
infrastructure that are situated in vulnerable places. The Stern Review, a report by
economist Nicholas Stern to the UK government, estimated that the additional resources
required to insulate new infrastructure in the United States from climate risk would be on
the order of $5 billion to $50 billion per year.13 Since this estimate includes only new
infrastructure, it likely understates the total need. Stephen Flynn s proposal for an
infrastructure investment program of $295 billion per year for five years would probably
be adequate to climate proof critical infrastructure and serve other vital public
purposes. While not all of the costs of climate risk reduction will ultimately have to be
shouldered by the government, some public resources will be needed, even if these are
financed by revenues from a carbon tax or from the auctioning of permits in a cap-and-
trade system.
Internationally, there are also scant funds for risk reduction. The World Bank s
Global Environmental Facility (GEF) administers two adaptation-related funds for
developing countries: the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) and the Least Developed
Country Fund (LDCF). Together, pledges to GEF adaptation programs cumulatively
amount to about $215 million, and although other resources for adaptation exist within
the World Bank Group, their scale should be dramatically expanded.14 Though the United
States is a donor to the GEF, the United States has not contributed to either adaptation
fund. The Stern Review estimated that it would cost developing countries between $4
billion and $37 billion per year to minimize the climate damage to new investments. Of
that total, between $2 billion and $7 billion can be expected to come from external
13
HM Treasury. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, 2006; available at http://www.hm-
treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/sternreview_index.cfm.
14
In April 2007, for example, the LDCF had total pledges of $115.8 million and the SCCF had pledges of
$62 million. Another $50 million was available for the Strategic Priority on Adaptation under the GEF
Trust Fund. The December 2007 climate negotiations in Bali will discuss the institutional home for the
Adaptation Fund, another funding source derived from a portion of the proceeds from Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM) projects. The CDM is one of the Kyoto Protocol s flexibility mechanisms. Global
Environmental Facility, Status Report on the Climate Change Funds (GEF, June 6 9, 2006); available at
http://thegef.org/Documents/Council_Documents/GEF_C28/documents/C.28.4. Rev.1ClimateChange.pdf.
14
finance to cover direct foreign investments vulnerable to climate change. But the balance
of developing countries infrastructure investments needs to be protected, too. Given poor
countries resource constraints, foreign aid should cover at least part of the cost. A
modest investment in adaptation in poor countries will likely be much more cost-effective
than responding to state failure or humanitarian disasters through military and relief
operations.
The United States should take the lead on adaptation by supporting a Climate
Change and Natural Disaster Risk Reduction initiative on a scale similar to President
George W. Bush s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. The president s AIDS plan
delivered $15 billion over five years through a combination of bilateral programs and
support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. Based on the initial
estimates of the adaptation costs for poor countries, climate risk reduction should have at
least that level of support, divided between bilateral and multilateral programs. The bulk
of this support should finance adaptation programs by vulnerable governments. It should
go beyond the protection of new infrastructure and include agricultural research and
planning for emergencies. The previously mentioned military-to-military workshops for
disaster management should form part of this effort, too. The United States should take
advantage of the creation of AFRICOM to create a multiagency African Risk Reduction
Pool with a budget of at least $100 million per year. AFRICOM may develop new ways
of incorporating climate and other environmental concerns into conflict prevention. It
may also serve as a model for interagency coordination that is applicable to other regions.
AFRICOM is already structured to have a State Department official as the deputy.
There is a danger, however, that the mission will be conceived narrowly as capturing and
killing terrorists. While important, another component should be conflict prevention to
address the underlying causes of political instability, including the potential for climate
change to contribute to refugee crises and water and resource scarcity, among other
problems. For conflict prevention, most environmental adaptation programming will be
development work rather than traditional security initiatives, necessitating greater on-the-
ground coordination between civilian and military agencies.
The idea of a risk-reduction pool is based on the African Conflict Prevention Pool
(ACPP), a collaborative effort by the United Kingdom s Department for International
15
Development (DFID), the Ministry of Defence (MOD), and the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (FCO), which is equivalent to the U.S. State Department. The
three agencies pool their funds for conflict prevention. The ACPP, with a subsidy from
the UK Treasury, has a budget of more than Ł60 million per year ($120 million). Funds
are administered by all three agencies in a joined-up field operation where interagency
teams collaborate on a common strategy. Depending upon their area of expertise and
comparative advantage, individual agencies draw down resources for different purposes
(such as security sector reform, demobilization of soldiers, efforts to control small arms,
and programs addressing the economic and social causes of conflict). This model offers
great potential for enhanced interagency collaboration in the field and can minimize
duplicative programming. The U.S. version, likewise, should draw upon a broader
number of civilian agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the
Department of Agriculture, NASA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and NOAA
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). The pool should finance a number
of climate security initiatives, including early warning systems of extreme weather events
as well as investments in coastal defenses, water conservation, dispute settlement
systems, and drought-resistant crops. Whatever climate changes come to pass, these
measures would be designed to minimize the potential consequences for political stability
and social strife.
Even a successful portfolio of risk-reduction and conflict prevention strategies
will experience an occasional failure. When crises do strike, the pool approach would
facilitate rapid response and better integration of military and civilian efforts to move
quickly from emergency to postcrisis. The pool should finance contingency plans for
humanitarian relief operations and purchase some relief supplies in the event of crises,
including surplus grains from African farmers. While African countries may resist a
heavy U.S. footprint, the United States should consider some pre-positioning of lift
capabilities and ground transport for emergency situations either at the main base in
Africa, once established, or distributed throughout the region as needed. The Africa
example is a model of what potentially could be extended to other vulnerable regions.
16
SUPPORT RESEARCH ON CLIMATE VULNERABILITY
At the domestic level, the absence of a federal policy on climate change has paralyzed
more proactive efforts to insulate the United States from climate risks, and this extends
even to efforts to document the problem. As of October 2007, the House of
Representatives had appropriated $50 million for an innovative two-year Commission on
Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation for fiscal year 2008. The Senate had not
appropriated any support for the commission. An important complement to the ongoing
National Intelligence Estimate on climate and security, the commission would allow the
EPA to fund studies by a number of federal agencies. Studies could also consider the
cost-effectiveness of different policy remedies, including improved sea defenses, building
codes, emergency response plans, and even relocation strategies. Congress should fully
fund the commission s activities. Research should focus on whether and where extreme
weather events could cause localized humanitarian crises, divert or disable national
security instruments, or contribute to regional disorder.
Internationally, the first priority should be to generate more precise estimates of
adaptation costs. The United States, perhaps acting in coordination with the IPCC or
World Bank, should take existing studies of coastal areas vulnerable to climate change
and evaluate which strategies are likely to yield the most damage reduction at the least
cost. A similar analysis should be conducted for food production and freshwater
availability. A global assessment from the Bank might identify countries most vulnerable
to climate change without regard to their underlying geopolitical importance. A U.S. risk
assessment might be more targeted, focusing on countries that are of more obvious
national security concern to the United States. The National Intelligence Council is
preparing an analysis on climate change and national security that may provide a first
assessment of this challenge. More global studies would have the advantage of pooling
expertise and potentially identifying areas of non-obvious security significance.
Analysis and projections should be supplemented with more sophisticated real-
time information on changing climate conditions. While meteorological information
about the United States is extensive, satellite coverage in other parts of the globe is
patchy. One asset that would be valuable, particularly in the African context, is the High
17
Altitude Airship (HAA), an unmanned blimp that can be positioned for months at a time
to monitor weather systems and provide more continuous surveillance than a satellite.
Unfortunately, funding for an HAA prototype from the Missile Defense Agency has been
cut in recent years and is scheduled for elimination in 2008. For this worthwhile program
to continue, Congress should appropriate $100 million over the next three fiscal years to
ensure that the prototype is ready by the end of fiscal year 2010.
MITIGATION POLICY AS DIPLOMACY
While risk reduction is essential, climate damages are likely to exceed most
governments adaptive capacities unless a major reduction in greenhouse gases takes
place before the mid-twenty-first century. For example, the IPCC reports that by 2050,
three coastal deltas the Nile, the Mekong, and Ganges-Brahmaputra will be extremely
vulnerable to climate change, meaning that more than a million people could be
displaced.15 And just as many adaptation policies have clear national security dimensions,
so do many possible mitigation initiatives. Consider three cases that illustrate this: China,
India, and Indonesia.
Engagement remains the most important strategy to encourage China to become a
status quo power and reduce the risk that China s rise leads to confrontation between the
great powers. Climate policy provides a valuable avenue for such engagement. While
advanced industrialized countries bear historic responsibility for existing concentrations
of greenhouse gases, China will be increasingly fingered as a climate culprit in the future.
This will create a common interest between the United States and China in avoiding
world condemnation for being climate villains. Enlightened climate diplomacy could
build on that common interest to improve U.S.-China relations.
At the same time, climate change could also possibly become a wedge issue in the
U.S.-China relationship. For example, a climate bill currently before Congress would
15
R.J. Nicholls, et al. Coastal systems and low-lying areas. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation
and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2007);
available at http://www.gtp89.dial.pipex.com/06.pdf.
18
allow the president, if he or she deems a country s climate efforts to be inadequate, to
impose tariff-like fees on carbon-intensive imports such as steel beginning in 2019. Such
legislation, if passed, would probably be used against China, adding to existing frictions
over trade, intellectual property, and the level of China s currency. So just as climate
change presents an opportunity to solidify relations with China, so too does it present the
possibility of new tensions in the relationship. Deft handling of the climate dimension of
the U.S.-China relationship could have profound implications.
Once the United States joins other rich countries in adopting a domestic regime to
control carbon emissions, climate change will become an important part of the global
rules based order. Whether China chooses to remain engaged depends on whether it can
meet its perceived needs inside the system. A climate policy that induces China to join
the rules-based global regime for dealing with global warming independent of the fine
details of that policy would contribute to the broader project of cementing China s
commitment to the world order, which in turn could create payoffs in building a positive
security relationship. At the same time, clumsy handling of climate issues could sour
relations more broadly, damaging American security interests well beyond the climate
sphere.
The same is true of India. While the 2006 nuclear agreement with India was
designed to reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation,16 from a security-oriented climate
perspective, the nuclear deal also has the potential to restrain the country s greenhouse
gas emissions. David G. Victor of Stanford University and the Council on Foreign
Relations estimates that if India were to build twenty gigawatts of nuclear power as
envisioned in the 2006 agreement, this could save 145 million tonnes per year of carbon
dioxide emissions that would otherwise have been belched from coal-generating plants.17
As part of this broader strategy of geopolitically informed climate policy, the
United States should make sure that enhancing formal participation by China and India in
16
Michael A. Levi and Charles D. Ferguson, U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation (Council on Foreign
Relations, June 2006;); available at http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/USIndiaNuclear
CSR.pdf.
17
David G. Victor, The India Nuclear Deal: Implications for Global Climate Change, testimony
before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (Stanford University Program
on Energy and Sustainable Development, July 18, 2006); available at http://pesd.stanford.edu/
publications/india_nuclear_deal.
19
important global institutions is a part of its climate change mitigation strategy. In
particular, it should promote closer engagement between China and India and the
International Energy Agency (IEA), a body that currently excludes both countries from
its membership. The IEA is an important organization for building trust and cooperation
among energy consumers. It will also be increasingly significant in helping countries
reduce greenhouse gases.18 Already, the IEA has memoranda of understanding with both
countries to enhance cooperation on climate change; were the U.S. government to support
the deepening of these ties with an eye toward eventual membership, it would help
advance climate goals while further integrating China and India into the rules-based
global order.
Indonesia provides another example. Indonesia is a major player in climate
change because of deforestation, which releases carbon stored in plant matter and the
soil: deforestation and forest fires in Indonesia helped make it the third-largest
contributor of greenhouse gases behind the United States and China. Paying Indonesia to
keep its forests would likely be a much cheaper way for rich countries to avoid emitting
greenhouse gases than retrofitting existing industrial infrastructure or seeking a rapid
change in transportation fuels. But there is a security angle here, too. Indonesia s political
instability has fostered terrorist groups that may have global ambitions. Managing
forestry payments deftly could help to solidify Indonesia s social order and discourage
radicals. In Aceh, for example, the provincial government, led by a former rebel, is
seeking support for avoided deforestation as a means of persuading former separatists to
protect the forests and refrain from picking up their guns; providing him with the
resources he seeks could mitigate both climate change and separatism. Similar win-win
opportunities may exist in other strategically important countries, including Brazil and
the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The idea of compensating other countries for avoided deforestation has gained
attention in recent years, spurred by a proposal from Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea
on behalf of forest-rich countries at the 2005 Conference of Parties (COP) in Montreal.
However, the Kyoto Protocol, largely because of worries about problems monitoring and
18
IEA membership is linked to membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD). The OECD has ongoing discussions about making both China and India members,
though the lack of democracy in China may prove an impediment to formal membership.
20
charting actual savings, did not allow avoided deforestation to generate tradable
emissions credits. Thus, countries can get paid for replanting forests but not for
preventing them from being cut down in the first place. At the 2007 G8 Summit, the
World Bank achieved agreement on a $250 million pilot project for avoided deforestation
in five countries.19 The Bank is now seeking funding for the pilot; the program s official
launch is supposed to take place at the climate negotiations in Bali in December 2007.
However, if countries like Indonesia are to benefit and if savings from avoided emissions
from forestry are to materialize, the United States must play an active role in addressing
the remaining technical issues and ensure the pilot program is fully funded.20 At the same
time, the U.S. has an opportunity to shape future climate negotiations by insisting that
credits from avoided deforestation be included in a successor agreement to the Kyoto
Protocol.
19
Avoided deforestation is now also referred to as reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation
(REDD). The World Bank estimates that the pilot program could result in about 40 million tonnes in
avoided carbon dioxide emissions between 2008 and 2012, conserving about 100,000 hectares of forest.
The World Bank has proposed an ambitious Global Forest Alliance (GFA), partnering with large
environmental nongovernmental organizations like the Nature Conservancy to implement the program, the
so-called Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.
20
Among the main technical issues that need to be determined are how to develop baselines for emissions
reductions and how to compensate states and individual forest owners for their actions.
21
INSTITUTIONAL REFORMS
The importance of climate policy to national security demands that it receive much
greater prioritization across the U.S. federal government. In the current administration,
climate policy is largely run by two players: the head of the White House Council on
Environmental Quality cooperates with the senior climate negotiator at the State
Department in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific
Affairs. Other players in the federal government have largely been sidelined. There are
few efforts to integrate climate concerns into top-level decision-making.
Several positions created during the 1990s but abolished in recent years could be
useful templates for the future. A special assistant position on climate change, focused
only on climate rather than on the broad range of environmental questions that fall under
the purview of the director of the Council on Environmental Quality, was tasked to
oversee interagency cooperation. The NSC also had a senior director for environmental
affairs, a position that was later eliminated and folded under International Trade, Energy,
and the Environment. The Department of Defense created a deputy undersecretary of
defense for environmental security tasked to deal both with the environmental footprint
of the military and the emerging security concerns associated with environmental harms
and natural hazards. The military s environmental impact was later subsumed into the
portfolio of the deputy undersecretary for installations and environment; the substantive
policy focus was dropped.
Given the strong links between climate change and security, the rebuilding of a
cadre of officials focused on climate should begin at the Pentagon. A new deputy
undersecretary of defense position for environmental security (under the broader mandate
of OSD s policy office) should be created to redress the insufficient institutionalization of
climate and environmental concerns in DOD decision-making.21 With a small staff of
roughly two dozen people, that office could provide constant attention to the strategic
dimensions of emerging environmental security threats and champion specific proposals
21
Environmental cleanup and conservation should remain in a separate office on the logistics and
installations side of DOD.
22
like the military-to-military workshops, the African Risk Reduction Pool, and investment
in the High-Altitude Airship. At the same time, the environmental security outfit could
ensure that other offices charged to deal with homeland security look beyond terrorism to
consider environmental threats like extreme weather events. Concerns about emerging
environmental harms should also be integrated into the planning and operations of the
regional combatant commands. Unless these issues are perceived to be a priority by DOD
leadership at the highest levels, regional commanders might treat environmental security
as solely the preserve of this small new office. That would be a mistake. The next
president can ensure the issue gets the priority it deserves by integrating climate security
concerns centrally into its National Security Strategy.22
It would be counterproductive, though, to treat climate security concerns solely or
even primarily with the traditional tools of national defense. These instruments may not
be best suited for the purposes of reducing the vulnerability of countries to natural
hazards made worse by climate change. While greater integration of the military into
coordinated disaster planning will be useful and necessary, there is a tendency to confuse
national defense with what the military can do. Adaptation policies, both at home and
abroad, will likely be supported by non-Defense Department agencies.
Mobilization of all the tools in the U.S. government s arsenal will require high-
level attention to climate change among White House officials who lead the interagency
process. Since climate change is an issue that straddles domestic and international
domains, neither the National Security Council nor the Domestic Policy Council is
equipped on its own to develop a coherent response across the federal government. The
president should direct the leadership of both agencies to work together to clarify
responsibilities and coordination mechanisms so that climate security concerns do not fall
through the cracks.
Leadership from the White House could take several forms. The president could
re-create a senior director position at the NSC and a small number of supporting directors
to deal with climate change and the environment. Given the cross-cutting nature of the
22
That, in turn, will set the stage for broader climate security concerns to cascade down, as they should,
into other planning efforts like the Quadrennial Defense Review and Theater Security Cooperation Plans.
Theater Security Cooperation Plans are documents that combatant commands use to coordinate regional
security cooperation during peacetime.
23
issue, that senior director should be appointed to the NSC, the Council on Environmental
Quality, and the National Economic Council. But since these officials would not control
agency budgets, additional senior NSC staff might be needed to ensure that the security
dimensions of climate policy get sufficient attention. One possibility is to create a deputy
national security adviser (DNSA) position for sustainable development, tasked to oversee
foreign assistance, humanitarian issues, pandemic disease, and also emerging
environmental threats like climate change. The DNSA and the senior director for
environmental affairs at the NSC would be well placed to guide the interagency process.
Even with these recommendations, the links between climate and security still
might not get sufficient attention. One additional institutional change could overcome this
problem by placing climate change closer to the president. Special advisers to the
president with some budgetary authority can be especially effective. President Bush
created positions for a global AIDS coordinator and a director of foreign assistance.
Presidents have long had drug czars. President Bill Clinton had a special assistant for
climate change. Re-creation of this post with actual budgetary authority would go a long
way to driving interagency coordination and ensuring more coherence between the
national security pieces of this problem and those related to energy and environmental
protection.
Congress should adopt a more limited agenda of institutional change to increase
the visibility of climate security. Climate security touches on the potential jurisdiction of
a number of different committees, and given the fractious nature of the legislative branch,
it may be difficult to channel climate security concerns in a way that boosts their salience.
The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Climate Change was
created to focus climate and energy policy, but its mandate is set to expire at the end of
October 2008. It may be helpful to make this committee permanent while tasking it to
identify appropriate policies to reduce U.S. vulnerability to climate security risks. Since
this committee is new and has no legislative authority, it is unclear if it will be a useful
vehicle even before it expires. Congress should wait to evaluate its success before making
it permanent.
Congressional oversight, though, will be important regardless. The assessment of
climate and security that is being prepared by the National Intelligence Council (NIC)
24
should be provided to the relevant committees in Congress, including the House and
Senate Committees on Appropriations, Armed Services, and the Select Committees on
Intelligence. Congress should ask the NIC to provide regular updates on climate and
security risks. At the very least, it would be useful for Congress to get updated
assessments after the release of important peer-review reports of climate science, like the
IPCC assessments or those the president may request from the National Academy of
Sciences.
25
CONCLUSION
Until recently, the debate about climate change has emphasized how large the economic
consequences are, how these compare to the costs of action, and whether the United
States or other nations can afford to address the issue. Extreme weather events such as
Hurricane Katrina, the fires in Greece, and the floods in Africa and Asia suggest a
different way of thinking about the issue. The macroeconomic costs of Hurricane Katrina
were minimal in the context of a large and resilient U.S. economy, but the human and
political consequences were significant and painful. Whether or not Katrina was linked to
global warming, climate change will likely yield more of these kinds of episodes, which
are characterized by concentrated costs to particular places and people, leading to severe
local impacts and cascading consequences for others.
The concentrated impacts of climate change will have important national security
implications, both in terms of the direct threat from extreme weather events as well as
broader challenges to U.S. interests in strategically important countries. Domestically,
extreme weather events made more likely by climate change could endanger large
numbers of people, damage critical infrastructure (including military installations), and
require mobilization and diversion of military assets. Internationally, a number of
countries of strategic concern are likely to be vulnerable to climate change, which could
lead to refugee and humanitarian crises and, by immiserating tens of thousands,
contribute to domestic and regional instability.
Climate policy should seek to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
It should start with no-regrets measures that make sense even if the consequences of
climate change prove less than severe. These include coastal protection at home and
support for military-to-military environmental security conferences overseas. In addition,
the United States should support policies that simultaneously address multiple problems,
such as those that reduce security risks but also provide economic benefits investments
in infrastructure, for example. The United States must also recognize that the existing
concentration of greenhouse gases guarantees that some climate change is inevitable.
U.S. policies should thus support risk reduction and adaptation at home and abroad.
26
Specific adaptation policies that could be supported are early warning systems, building
codes, emergency response plans, coastal defenses, and evacuation and relocation
schemes.
While risk-reduction programs are a necessary component of a climate policy that
addresses national security, the United States and the world will need to move to a
decarbonized energy future before century s end it is widely agreed that a major push to
support new technologies to lower greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon is
essential. But policymakers must recognize that mitigation policies involve not only costs
but also opportunities to strengthen national security. A new compact on clean energy
technology transfer to China and India would bolster support for the rules-based global
order that the United States has nurtured since World War II. An avoided deforestation
scheme, particularly in strategically important countries such as Indonesia, could not only
reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also support stability and conflict resolution.
Finally, for these policy recommendations to have traction, institutional reform is needed.
To give voice to climate and security concerns, several new positions should be created
across the executive branch in the Department of Defense, in the National Security
Council, and in the Office of the President.
The policy proposals presented here are illustrative rather than exhaustive, but
they have the potential to strengthen national security by reducing U.S. vulnerabilities to
climate change at home and abroad, securing and stabilizing important partners, and
contributing to other goals such as energy security and industrial revitalization. In a world
of new security challenges, forging a climate policy along these lines must be a national
priority.
27
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joshua W. Busby is an assistant professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public
Affairs and is affiliated with the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and
Law, both at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2004, Dr. Busby and Nigel Purvis of
the Brookings Institution contributed a paper for the UN High-Level Panel on Threats,
Challenges, and Change titled The Security Implications of Climate Change for the UN
System. A forthcoming article, Who Cares About the Weather? Climate Change and
U.S National Security, will appear in Security Studies.
Dr. Busby has been a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, Harvard
University s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Princeton
University s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. His work has
appeared in International Studies Quarterly and Current History, among other
publications. He served in the Peace Corps in Ecuador from 1997 to 1999. Dr. Busby is a
term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the International
Institute for Strategic Studies. He has a BA from both the University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill and the University of East Anglia, where he was a British Marshall Scholar,
and he received his MA and PhD from Georgetown University.
28
ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR
CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATIONAL SECURITY
Meg McDonald
Kent Hughes Butts
ALCOA, INC.
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE
Alisa Newman Hood
Kurt M. Campbell, Chair
WHITE & CASE LLP
CENTER FOR A NEW AMERICAN SECURITY
Stewart M. Patrick
Helima L. Croft
CENTER FOR GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
LEHMAN BROTHERS
.
Joseph Wilson Prueher
John Gannon
ADMIRAL, USN (RET.)
FORMER CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL
INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL
Nigel Purvis
UNITED NATIONS FOUNDATION
Lukas Haynes
MERTZ GILMORE FOUNDATION
P.J. Simmons
SEA STUDIOS FOUNDATION
Paul F. Herman Jr.
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL
R. James Woolsey
FORMER DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL
Jeff Kojac
INTELLIGENCE
LIEUTENANT COLONEL
U.S. MARINE CORPS
Marc A. Levy
CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL EARTH
SCIENCE INFORMATION NETWORK,
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Note: Council Special Reports reflect the judgments and recommendations of the author(s). They do not
necessarily represent the views of members of the advisory committee, whose involvement in no way
should be interpreted as an endorsement of the report by either themselves or the organizations with which
they are affiliated.
29
MISSION STATEMENT OF THE MAURICE R. GREENBERG
CENTER FOR GEOECONOMIC STUDIES
Founded in 2000, the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the
Council on Foreign Relations works to promote a better understanding among
policymakers, academic specialists, and the interested public of how economic and
political forces interact to influence world affairs. Globalization is fast erasing the
boundaries that have traditionally separated economics from foreign policy and national
security issues. The growing integration of national economies is increasingly
constraining the policy options that government leaders can consider, while government
decisions are shaping the pace and course of global economic interactions. It is essential
that policymakers and the public have access to rigorous analysis from an independent,
nonpartisan source so that they can better comprehend our interconnected world and the
foreign policy choices facing the United States and other governments.
The center pursues its aims through:
" Research carried out by Council fellows and adjunct fellows of outstanding
merit and expertise in economics and foreign policy, disseminated through
books, articles, and other mass media;
" Meetings in New York, Washington, DC, and other select American cities
where the world s most important economic policymakers and scholars address
critical issues in a discussion or debate format, all involving direct interaction
with Council members;
" Sponsorship of roundtables and Independent Task Forces whose aims are to
inform and help to set the public foreign policy agenda in areas in which an
economic component is integral; and
" Training of the next generation of policymakers, who will require fluency in
the workings of markets as well as the mechanics of international relations.
30
COUNCIL SPECIAL REPORTS
SPONSORED BY THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
Planning for a Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe
Michelle D. Gavin; CSR No. 31, October 2007
A Center for Preventive Action Report
The Case for Wage Insurance
Robert J. LaLonde; CSR No. 30, September 2007
A Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies Report
Reform of the International Monetary Fund
Peter B. Kenen; CSR No. 29, May 2007
A Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies Report
Nuclear Energy: Balancing Benefits and Risks
Charles D. Ferguson; CSR No. 28, April 2007
Nigeria: Elections and Continuing Challenges
Robert I. Rotberg; CSR No. 27, April 2007
A Center for Preventive Action Report
The Economic Logic of Illegal Immigration
Gordon H. Hanson; CSR No. 26, April 2007
A Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies Report
The United States and the WTO Dispute Settlement System
Robert Z. Lawrence; CSR No. 25, March 2007
A Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies Report
Bolivia on the Brink
Eduardo A. Gamarra; CSR No. 24, February 2007
A Center for Preventive Action Report
After the Surge: The Case for U.S. Military Disengagement from Iraq
Steven N. Simon; CSR No. 23, February 2007
Darfur and Beyond: What Is Needed to Prevent Mass Atrocities
Lee Feinstein; CSR No. 22, January 2007
Avoiding Conflict in the Horn of Africa: U.S. Policy Toward Ethiopia and Eritrea
Terrence Lyons; CSR No. 21, December 2006
A Center for Preventive Action Report
Living with Hugo: U.S. Policy Toward Hugo Chvez s Venezuela
Richard Lapper; CSR No. 20, November 2006
A Center for Preventive Action Report
Reforming U.S. Patent Policy: Getting the Incentives Right
Keith E. Maskus; CSR No. 19, November 2006
A Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies Report
Foreign Investment and National Security: Getting the Balance Right
Alan P. Larson, David M. Marchick; CSR No. 18, July 2006
A Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies Report
Challenges for a Postelection Mexico: Issues for U.S. Policy
Pamela K. Starr; CSR No. 17, June 2006 (web-only release) and November 2006
31
U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation: A Strategy for Moving Forward
Michael A. Levi and Charles D. Ferguson; CSR No. 16, June 2006
Generating Momentum for a New Era in U.S.-Turkey Relations
Steven A. Cook and Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall; CSR No. 15, June 2006
Peace in Papua: Widening a Window of Opportunity
Blair A. King; CSR No. 14, March 2006
A Center for Preventive Action Report
Neglected Defense: Mobilizing the Private Sector to Support Homeland Security
Stephen E. Flynn and Daniel B. Prieto; CSR No. 13, March 2006
Afghanistan s Uncertain Transition From Turmoil to Normalcy
Barnett R. Rubin; CSR No. 12, March 2006
A Center for Preventive Action Report
Preventing Catastrophic Nuclear Terrorism
Charles D. Ferguson; CSR No. 11, March 2006
Getting Serious About the Twin Deficits
Menzie D. Chinn; CSR No. 10, September 2005
A Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies Report
Both Sides of the Aisle: A Call for Bipartisan Foreign Policy
Nancy E. Roman; CSR No. 9, September 2005
Forgotten Intervention? What the United States Needs to Do in the Western Balkans
Amelia Branczik and William L. Nash; CSR No. 8, June 2005
A Center for Preventive Action Report
A New Beginning: Strategies for a More Fruitful Dialogue with the Muslim World
Craig Charney and Nicole Yakatan; CSR No. 7, May 2005
Power-Sharing in Iraq
David L. Phillips; CSR No. 6, April 2005
A Center for Preventive Action Report
Giving Meaning to Never Again : Seeking an Effective Response to the Crisis in Darfur and Beyond
Cheryl O. Igiri and Princeton N. Lyman; CSR No. 5, September 2004
Freedom, Prosperity, and Security: The G8 Partnership with Africa: Sea Island 2004 and Beyond
J. Brian Atwood, Robert S. Browne, and Princeton N. Lyman; CSR No. 4, May 2004
Addressing the HIV/AIDS Pandemic: A U.S. Global AIDS Strategy for the Long Term
Daniel M. Fox and Princeton N. Lyman; CSR No. 3, May 2004
Cosponsored with the Milbank Memorial Fund
Challenges for a Post-Election Philippines
Catharin E. Dalpino; CSR No. 2, May 2004
A Center for Preventive Action Report
Stability, Security, and Sovereignty in the Republic of Georgia
David L. Phillips; CSR No. 1, January 2004
A Center for Preventive Action Report
To purchase a printed copy, call the Brookings Institution Press: 800-537-5487.
Note: Council Special Reports are available to download from the Council s website, CFR.org.
For more information, contact publications@cfr.org.
32
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