In recent months, the United States Department of Defense spoke out on climate change. While many seemed surprised that the DoD had quietly been thinking about and planning for the effects of climate, the US military’s concern for weather conditions and climate change is actually nothing new. Military strategy has always tried to take into account weather conditions and their impact on battlefield conditions, troop morale, logistics, and the ability to maneuver. What is interesting about the US military’s concern with climate change is that it has been seemingly at odds with the “official” position of many of its key governmental supporters. While members of Congress and the Senate and members of the conservative or anti-science chattering classes may continue to deny the reality of climate change or the role of human activity in bringing about a new geo/environmental era, the military has quietly gone about studying and planning for the impact of this new reality for decades. Two recent reports, the “2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap” and the “Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan FY 2014,” detail the military’s thinking about climate change, how changing environmental conditions will impact its ability to carry out missions, and how the DoD will also create new forms of missions and operations stresses and challenges.
These two reports alone list a wide range of climate change concerns identified by the military as major problems that must be addressed. Some of the key concerns about how climate change will impinge upon the military, and some of the more important matters highlighted in the reports, focus on the following areas:
- The impact of climate change on national security
- The impact of climate change on US military bases and installations around the world
- Climate change and instability within and among nations/states
- Climate change and forced movement of people
- How climate change shapes, limits, or constrains the battlefield
- How climate change impacts logistics and supply lines
- How climate change impacts operational planning and strategy
- How the military trains for different weather conditions
- How equipment is designed for different weather conditions
- How soldiers will be “made” to better withstand heat and cold through pharmaceutical interventions and biotechnology to keep up with new weather patterns
- How changing weather patterns and climate change open up new potential conflict zones—i.e., access to resources previously inaccessible
- How climate change will lead to increased levels of poverty in parts of the world with water shortages
- Increased focus on the Artic as an area of potential conflict over resources
The military’s concerns range from the macro to the micro, from broad concerns of strategy, access, and resources and potential battlefields to the impact of climate change on individual soldiers. For example, a key component of my current research project—examining how the US military is developing new forms of psychopharmaceutical and biotechnical “armor” and “enhancements” —focuses on how new technologies will allow soldiers to fight more efficiently and for longer periods of time in adverse climates and weather conditions, as well as in climates and regions not previously seen as “threat” areas. Another key concern of the military is the impact of climate change on bases and logistics: How will this change the military’s ability to utilize certain bases? Resupply these bases? Will the military be forced to close existing bases and find new ones? How will the shift in bases impact its global (re)supply network? The military’s concerns for the impact of climate change on operational effectiveness also include the development of new weapons systems and platforms, new types of fuels and the ability to utilize fuel more efficiently, and figuring out how to deploy soldiers in increasingly hostile environments. And these are just the unclassified concerns made public by the military; classified assessments of climate change impacts may in fact be far graver than what’s released, but there’s no way to know for sure.
The important thing to keep in mind is that the US military is taking climate change very seriously and planning for how it can operate in a very different world. Regardless of how you feel about the military, the fact that it has been thinking about how to fight in a completely different climate epoch is telling and troubling. This should make us think about the confluence of military planning and climate change research and funding, as well as the implications for research, fieldwork, and ethnography. Global political and military frameworks and struggles have always shaped anthropology, whether we like to think about this or not; now these frameworks are shifting and morphing due to climate change. As the military strategizes how to respond to new “threats” and challenges, where and how we do our work will invariably change in terms of access, opportunities, and funding, not to mention topics and research sites. In a strange way, the military’s concerns about climate change are an uncomfortable bellwether or a canary in a coalmine—as the military changes and adapts to climate change, so too will anthropology. How the military plans for and responds to climate change will have an impact on how we conduct anthropology. This is a broad claim, and hopefully not as straightforward and mechanical as it appears, but the new global political and military realities brought on by the anthropocene will have an impact on how we do our work. We need to think about, theorize, and study the impacts of climate change, and we need to think about how the military is responding to it as well. The confluence of the two presents both important and pressing opportunities for research and troubling contexts in which to do it.
During last week’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama addressed climate change. His remarks were met with silence or an occasional tepid applause until he made the following comment: “The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it.” Unlike Obama’s other points, this brought about thunderous, bipartisan applause.
The military’s climate change reports and Obama’s remark during his address mark an important moment in both military and environmental studies, as they publically link a concern for climate change with national security—a concern that might otherwise not be there, or only on one side of the aisle. Policy makers—those who control the purse strings for funding and procurement—can get behind climate change as long as it’s framed as a national security issue, a framing that fits a worldview of protection, power projection, and profit.
Those who conduct environmental research should think about the connections to the military—and those who study the military need to start thinking about climate change. As the military gears up to confront climate change, but not necessarily to help address or reverse it, this change in the military’s thinking about the world and its climate will have an impact on anthropology. If the military is developing militarized responses to climate change, we’ll need to think about how these militarized—or at least military-influenced—responses will potentially result in a militarization of climate change research, and how that in turn will impact an anthropology of the anthropocene and the military. As national security interests, the Cold War, and the War on Terror have all shaped and influenced funding and research opportunities—shown by David Price, Hugh Gusterson, and others—it’s a safe bet that the military’s concern for climate change will have an impact on both funding for environmental research and possible sites, even as climate change presents new issues and problems to research. The military’s interest and concern in climate change is a strange indicator of the “veracity” of the truth of climate change. Political debate aside, they’re taking it seriously and planning for it. We need to evaluate how we’re going to think about the military’s planning and thinking about climate change, and how this will affect our research opportunities and efforts and, more importantly, the people and communities we work with.
Andrew Bickford is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University and a 2014–15 Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. His research focuses on the military and militarization, and his current project examines psychopharmacology, biotechnology, and plans to develop “super soldiers” in the US military.
Cite as: Bickford, Andrew. 2015. “Anthropology, the Anthropocene, and the Military.” 31 January. www.envirosociety.org/2015/02/anthropology-the-anthropocene-and-the-military.