As Clinton Pushes for Radical Approach to Global Warming, Will Impacts on U.S. National Security Be Frozen Out?
(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, it was
the “media meteorologists”
turn; today, it is the Big Three
auto-makers; next Monday, it will be an
Amen Chorus drawn from the environmental
movement, academe and industries hoping
to capitalize on the economic dislocation
arising from President Clinton’s radical
response to the claimed threat of Global
Warming.(1)
Curiously absent, however, from the
high-profile “consultations”
the Clinton Administration is conducting
in the run-up to the Kyoto signing
ceremony in December are folks likely to
be particularly hard hit by draconian
reductions in American greenhouse gas
emissions — arguably with the most
serious repercussions of all:
the U.S. military.
As the attached
remarks delivered by Center for
Security Policy director Frank J.
Gaffney, Jr. at a Capitol Hill briefing
on Monday make clear, U.S. national
security may be jeopardized in numerous
ways by mandatory near-term reductions in
fossil fuel consumption. These include:
still further degradation of military readiness;
curtailed overseas presence;
diminished willingness
on the part of the American people to
support the defense of U.S. interests
if doing so risks crippling the country’s
economy as a whole; serious implications
for the quality and costs of
weapons procured by the armed
forces; further exacerbation of the trend
toward undue dependency on
foreign sources for materiel
critical to preparedness for warfighting;
and impingements on American
sovereignty that could
conceivably constrain the Nation’s
ability to go to war should the need
arise. As Mr. Gaffney concluded:
“Perhaps the
greatest danger of all is that
the cumulative effect of these
impacts could be to create the
impression in the minds of
prospective adversaries that the
United States is unable or
unwilling to protect its
interests around the world.
History suggests that such a
perception is an invitation to
aggression, making war more
likely and adding further, albeit
utterly unquantifiable costs to
the potential bill associated
with greenhouse gas emission
control regimes.”
No Time to Be Taking Such
Risks
The seriousness of
this danger was underscored in remarks by
General Binford Peay, on the occasion of
his 26 September retirement as
Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Central
Command. According to today’s Washington
Times, Gen. Peay said:
“I am convinced that
we are living in the ‘interwar
years’ — a period akin in so
many ways to that of the 1920s
and ’30s, when Americans
failed to recognize the war
clouds gathering in Europe and
Asia, embraced isolationism and
refused to maintain a properly
equipped, trained and ready
military.”(2)
Such a warning from a respected military
commander should assure that actions
which would compound the already serious
problems associated with
“maintain[ing] a properly equipped,
trained and ready military” are not
taken without the most rigorous
deliberation and debate. Unfortunately,
while there is evidence that the Clinton
Administration is increasingly wracked by
disagreements between the in-house
environmentalists and officials
responsible for the American economy,(3)
those responsible for safeguarding the
national security — and the
survivability and effectiveness of the
forces maintained toward that end — have
not been much in evidence to date.
This is all the more remarkable in light of
the explicit commitment made recently by
President Clinton with regard to the
latters’ views. In explaining his refusal
to accept a defective ban on
anti-personnel landmines, Mr. Clinton
said on 17 September 1997:
“As Commander-in-Chief, I
will not send our soldiers to
defend the freedom of our people
and the freedom of others without
doing everything we can to make
them as secure as
possible….There is a line that
I simply cannot cross, and that
line is the safety and security
of our men and women in
uniform.”
The Bottom Line
As the experience in the landmine fight made
clear, opposition from the U.S.
military to harebrained schemes can have
a salutary effect on President Clinton,
even in the face of intense pressure from
some of his core constituencies.
Given what is at stake for the national
security, it behooves the armed forces to
engage directly and promptly in
Administration deliberations about global
warming — not simply react to an
Executive Order or Global Climate Change
Treaty that will have widespread and
deleterious, if as yet largely
unquantifiable, impacts on their ability
to survive and prevail in the Nation’s
future conflicts. It equally behooves the
President, Vice President and others
fashioning U.S. policy in this area to
give great weight not only to the
economic arguments against radical and
unjustified action on global warming
but also to those that should now be
forthcoming from the national security
community.
– 30 –
1. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Center Asks: Are
White House Climate Change Extravaganzas
Meant To Facilitate Informed Debate — Or
Just The Party Line? (
September 1997).
2. The Center has
reached a similar conclusion. See its Decision
Brief entitled Clinton
Legacy Watch # 5: Welcome To The New
Inter-War Era (
September 1997).
3. See, for
example, “Clinton Aides Duel Over
Global Warming Action,” in today’s Wall
Street Journal, which depicts an
Administration “roiled by
differences between economic and
environmental teams over just what U.S.
policy for reducing carbon emissions
should be. The team’s daily deliberations
amount to a disaster, as some officials
see it: behind schedule, buffeted by
domestic and foreign pressures and
unlikely to please anyone in the
end.”
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