Climate change as a national security threat

Abstract

Within a week of assuming office, President Biden signed an executive order which declared that climate change is an “essential element of United States … national security”.³ In recognising that climate change had “become a climate crisis” and that “the scale and speed of necessary action is greater than previously believed”, the order directed the federal government to place climate change at the “forefront of … national security planning”.⁴

Biden's executive order mobilised the highest levels of the US intelligence and security communities to assess and prepare for the threats posed by the climate crisis. Risk assessments were commissioned, including the first national intelligence estimate on climate change⁵ – the highest level of assessment undertaken by the US intelligence community. Changes were made to the machinery of government, such as the creation of the Climate Security Advisory Council in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.⁶ A renewed focus was given to global leadership, including rejoining the Paris Agreement and appointing John Kerry as special presidential envoy for climate with a seat on the US National Security Council.⁷ This was a reordering of priorities, a deliberate strategy to insert the causes and consequences of the climate crisis into the key strategic decision-making structures of America's federal government.

The carrot approach also provides a natural home for the climate security agenda. ‘Bidenomics’ has been variously framed as a programme to rebuild the economy after the Covid-19 pandemic, to capitalise on the economic opportunity of green industry and as a moral imperative to tackle the effects of climate change. Yet at its heart, Bidenomics is also a strategic economic and geopolitical programme, which aims to secure American hegemony in response to the shifting realities of the 21st century.

Biden's instruction to treat climate change as an “essential element of United States … national security”¹⁴ has succeeded in yoking together his administration's more interventionist economic approach with the concerns of America's intelligence and security communities. This fusion of productivist economics, decarbonisation and geopolitical strategy was laid out by Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan: “Clean-energy supply chains are at risk of being weaponized in the same way as oil in the 1970s, or natural gas in Europe in 2022. So through the investments in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we're taking action.”¹⁵ This was a speech about ‘renewing American economic leadership’ being delivered by a ranking national security official at the Brookings Institution, a pillar of the US strategic establishment.

These arguments have had some success across party lines. Biden's legislative agenda has three main Acts: the CHIPS and Science Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. The first of these provides around $280 billion to boost American semiconductor manufacturing, which will benefit renewables and electric vehicle (EV) rollout. It was framed as an opportunity to “counter China”, passing with support on both sides of the aisle.¹⁶ The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the ‘bipartisan infrastructure deal’, received similar cross-party support. Yet the Inflation Reduction Act, which entwined investments in clean energy with restrictions on how much pharmaceutical companies can charge for medicines, was fully partisan, passing the Senate only through a tie-breaking vote from vice president Kamala Harris.

This is a mixed record. On the one hand, elements of the climate security frame have given the administration political cover to make investments that will directly benefit the cause of decarbonisation by couching these as critical to national security and strategic advantage. What's more, by couching the specific causes and impacts of climate change as national security priorities – as opposed to labelling them specifically as climate issues – the climate security agenda might more deeply embed climate action into the US state in a way that will be harder for a future Republican president to unpick. We may find out as early as 2025.

On the other hand, climate action requires far more than the US establishment to buy into a vision of the green industrial revolution as a means to secure American leadership. Instead, it demands a deeper shift in the country's economic settlement, which has anyway failed to build prosperity and security for decades. Biden's attempt to marry action on climate change with a wider range of progressive causes struggled to pass America's political litmus test. The first draft of what became the Inflation Reduction Act – the doomed Build Back Better Act – proposed $2.2 trillion of investment in clean energy, childcare, housing, healthcare and education.¹⁷ These were seized upon by recalcitrant Republicans and centrist Democrats. In this way, it seems that climate security provides little ability to boost progressive political ends on climate action.

So, the next iteration of climate security must be progressive. In a world of escalating climate and ecological chaos, distractions from the task of delivering an equitable transition can be minimised by having more resilient societies. Better flood barriers, more robust food systems and high-quality public services mean less crisis situations and more energy and focus for delivering the transition. More equal, more democratic societies might also be more cohesive and less susceptible to defensive reactions that come at the cost of sustainability. Better international institutions and fewer global power imbalances can protect cooperation.

This will require progressive green agendas – like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US and in the UK the Labour party's proposed Green Prosperity Plan – to create greater synergy between mitigation and adaptation. Their predominant focus on mitigation is understandable; this is the crucial decade of action on climate change, after all. But as the world is made less stable, the differences between adaptation and mitigation will become blurred. Protecting people, places and nature offers a route for transformation toward a more sustainable and equitable future. This is now an urgent priority.