Due to research for my Junior Theme, I had the displeasure of encountering an article by the Editorial Board of the National Review discussing Biden’s National Security Strategy. The article states that “The new Biden strategy lays out what we already knew to be the case — that this administration considers confronting climate change to be at least as much a priority as any of the true threats that Americans face.” 

And here is where the problem lies. Despite the well-known security implications of unchecked warming, many conservatives continue to deny the facts around climate change and national security.  For example, Micheal Klare, a professor emeritus on security and world studies at Hampshire College, found that global warming could have nuclear implications: climate-induced droughts in Pakistan could allow for civil unrest and capture of its nuclear weapons by Islamist extremists. Furthermore, changing climates will undermine agricultural productivity, which could lead to wars over food and empower our enemies. According to Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND):  “Selling food abroad is one of the most effective tools we have to reduce the need for future military intervention in unstable regions. Bad actors use hungry people as pawns in their geopolitical conquests.” 

Similar to wars over food, resources wars could also exacerbate competition over water, including between nuclear powers like India and China, with each facing enormous domestic pressure that will “make any water-related disputes between them a potential flash point for escalation.” The melting of the Arctic could also lead to increased competition over now-accessible resources, the absence of which has been key in preventing conflict in the High North, with a general increase in competition as “nations will try to exploit lucrative new trade routes and extract natural resources.” And, even before Biden, the Department of Defense has recognized the negative implications of warming, increasing maintenance costs and decreasing our ability to contain primary threats, such as China. Therefore, climate change should be considered in current and future national security threat assessments, as an exacerbating factor for other crises and as an existential threat in its own right. Biden, stay the course.