Climate Change and Ecological Security Must Be at the Center of Our National Defense Strategy

Dec 15, 2021 | Holly Kaufman, Sherri Goodman, and John Conger
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At a United Nations Security Council meeting in September 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken asserted, “Look at almost every place where you see threats to international peace and security today – and you’ll find that climate change is making things less peaceful, less secure, and rendering our response even more challenging.”  Earlier that month, in the U.S. Department of Defense’s Climate Adaptation Plan, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin similarly declared climate change to be a “destabilizing force” that is “demanding new missions” of the Department and “altering the operational environment.”  These leaders are exactly right. 

In this context it is imperative that the Biden Administration places the destabilizing role of climate change–and ecological security more broadly — at the center of the new National Defense Strategy (NDS). In fact, any NDS that does not consider climate change a central variable — as we have long recommended — will get things wrong when it comes to other core U.S. interests such as China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, terrorism and cybersecurity.