Eco-Disarmament: Clinton-Gore’s Global Warming Crusade Threatens U.S. Military — As Well As The Nation’s Economy

(Washington, D.C.): A new front has
just been opened in what promises to
become one of the great political battles
of the late 20^th Century: the
Luddite Clinton-Gore campaign to subject
the U.S. economy to potentially crippling
international regulation in the name of
reducing global warming — a threat that
remains, at best unproven, at worst
non-existent.

Ground Zero: The Pentagon

It seems the Administration is
thinking about issuing an Executive Order
directing federal agencies to start
reducing their emissions of so-called
“greenhouse gases” even before
it commits the Nation as a whole to doing
so as part of a treaty to be signed next
December in Kyoto, Japan. Now, there
is one federal agency whose greenhouse
gas emissions dwarf those of the rest of
the government: the Department of
Defense. If the Clinton-Gore
team has its way, eco-disarmament will
now be added to the other jihads
(severe budget cuts, demoralizing social
experimentation, open-ended peacekeeping
missions, rash arms control initiatives,
etc.) that it has been waging with
devastating effect against the U.S.
military.

According to the 12 September edition
of the trade publication Inside EPA,
“White House sources say the order
could be issued as early as October, when
the Administration plans to host a
high-profile climate change
conference.” The purpose of such
taxpayer-underwritten extravaganzas, of
which this “summit” will be
just one element, is to propagandize the
public about the supposed danger posed by
global warming — and the need the
Administration consequently sees for
draconian steps to cut America’s
energy-consumption.

What Clinton-Gore’s
Initiative Would Mean for the National
Security

While it is unclear precisely what
would be required by the executive order,
worst-case planners in the Pentagon must
anticipate that Clinton-Gore will demand
actual reductions in the armed forces’
emissions. The following could be among
the repercussions of such a
enviro-diktat:

• Military readiness will
  have to be subordinated to
  greenhouse gas impact.
  Operational deployments of
  gas-guzzling ground, sea and air
  units will have to be cut back.
  We must hope that those disposed
  to threaten U.S. interests will
  not mistake the diminished
  American forward presence and
  power projection capabilities
  that ensue as evidence of
  exploitable weakness and/or lack
  of resolve that invites attack.
• Realistic training —
  already suffering from the
  cumulative effects of more than a
  decade of budget cuts — will
  assuredly be reduced still
  further. Even before the
  “big green de-machine”
  took on the U.S. military, there
  were horror stories about troops
  at installations like Fort Hood
  in Texas running uphill and down
  making noises like the tanks they
  were supposed to be driving. Who
  cares if such exercises sap esprit
  de corps and combat
  performance? The important thing
  is that the only gas they emit
  will be carbon dioxide from
  exhaling “grunts.”

Of course, there will be a
premium in the future on more
fuel-efficient military hardware.
For example, the thickness of a tank’s
armor, the size of its gun or the speed
with which it can maneuver will no longer
be the critical criterion. From now on
the Army will have to buy smaller,
lighter-weight machines in the interest
of reducing emissions. The increased
carnage on the Nation’s highways arising
from such an investment strategy will
pale by comparison with the toll likely
to be taken on the battlefields of the
future.

• Perhaps none of this will
  matter very much though since it
  will probably be the case that
  the United States will not be
  able to afford to fight wars
  under the new Kyoto regime.
  After all, practically any
  contingency would require lots of
  fossil fuels to be burned up as
  the U.S. military prepares to go
  and gets to the theater of
  operations, to say nothing of any
  combat it actually engages in.
  The public may oppose practically
  any future action in defense of
  American interests overseas if,
  in addition to the potential loss
  of life and national treasure
  entailed, the conflict can be
  fought only by denying the Nation
  the opportunity to produce
  greenhouse emissions associated
  with economic growth.

• Those who believe that wars might
  nonetheless have to be fought
  should take no comfort from an
  absurd scenario that could arise
  under the Kyoto treaty:
  Developing nations — if they
  are covered at all by the accord
  (a big “if”) — may be
  awarded some kind of pollution
  credit which they can barter or
  sell to dastardly developed
  nations who need to emit more
  than the permitted quantity of
  greenhouse gasses. In theory,
  then, if the United States finds
  itself obliged to fight say,
  China or North Korea or Iran, it
  could ask them (or their friends
  in the so-called
  “non-aligned movement”)
  to give us the enviro-chits
  America needs to go to war. Fat
  chance!

The New ‘Commissars’

It is hardly an exaggeration to
project that where all this will lead is
toward a system like that of the
communist political commissars assigned
to the old Red Army. In the future, an
environmental monitor might have to be
assigned to every unit of the U.S.
military to ensure compliance with
domestic or international pollution
limitations. Perhaps they will be
accompanied by international lawyers
charged with assuring adherence to the
myriad arms control obligations that will
increasingly constrain American, but not
enemy, operations.

The one possible up-side is that the
environmental and legal commissars would
almost certainly have to be conscripted;
few if any would volunteer to serve in
the dangerous conditions they will be
imposing on the U.S. armed forces. Such
assignments should have the twin benefits
of keeping them away from the negotiating
table and sensitizing them to the
deplorable practical effects of their
well-intentioned policies.

The Bottom Line

Of course, President Clinton
might yet choose to finesse all these
problems for the national security by
exempting the Defense Department from his
executive order and, for that matter,
from the Kyoto treaty. A still
better approach, though, would be to
spare the Nation as a whole the severe
and unjustifiable costs associated with
what can only be called a
“scientifically challenged”
scheme for global climate control.