History,geopolitics and climate security

Abstract

Contemporary debates about climate security should take seriously the historical antecedents in discussions of the role of climate on human civilizations. The revival of geopolitical rivalries draws on some of this earlier literature, but now the crucial point about climate is that policies on fossil fuels determine the future trajectory of climate and hence the hazards and difficulties that policies of climate security must address. The complexities of both responding to climate disruptions and trying to decarbonize energy systems are immense, but both of these need to be tackled urgently in the new Anthropocene circumstances of a climate-disrupted world.

Climate security has come to dominate the discussions of environmental security in recent years, but, as has long been the case with the larger debates, how to think about what needs to be secured, how, by whom and where is a fraught matter. The four volumes considered here tackle the matter from a range of perspectives which, taken together cover much of the debate, but leave at least this reviewer worried that neither the scale of the problem nor the urgency of change are widely enough appreciated. The scientific community has of late become ever more strident in its calls for urgent action (Fletcher et al., 2024), but much of the security community, which supposedly is dealing with risks to modern societies, has been slow to grapple effectively with the changed circumstances of a climate-disrupted world, much less formulate matters in terms of ecological security which takes seriously the biophysical context for the future of humanity (McDonald, 2024). Even member states of the United Nations, and its Security Council, while paying at least lip service to the themes of climate security, are failing to act effectively (Hardt et al., 2023). In part, the volumes reviewed here suggest that, at least as yet, neither the conceptual apparatuses nor the institutions currently available are up to the task.

David Livingstone’s (2024) magnum opus is a useful reminder that climate has long been a matter at the heart of geopolitical thinking. As such, he offers a very valuable cautionary tale in terms of how claims to novelty may in fact reiterate old formulations, even if researchers are not aware of the long history of claims about climate and destiny, or about climate change as factor shaping politics and war. Much of his lengthy story in this comprehensive volume is about the numerous thinkers who have long argued that climate has been a key factor in human history. Modernity had supposedly rendered much of this discussion moot, with industrial systems and modern infrastructure insulating people from the immediate influences of weather, but these old discussions haunt contemporary geopolitical debates. As climate disruptions increase, the promise of modernity is fraying and vulnerabilities are being exposed. Livingstone’s volume in this sense is a cautionary tale in the present circumstances where current security policy must now grapple with the implications of fossil-fuelled modernity changing the earth’s climate. The temptations to fall back on the traditional modes of thought that impute causal responsibility to a climate system beyond human influence may yet be efficacious for some politicians in future crises, but in his comprehensive history, Livingstone has very clearly warned about the inappropriateness of such political framings.

Much of the literature through the centuries that Livingstone reviews in such detail is very slim on the evidential basis for claims about climate causation, a matter paralleled in much of the climate and conflict literature much more recently (Goldberg, 2024). Noteworthy in Livingstone’s account is the case of climate’s supposed role in the rise of Chenggis Khan and the Mongol empire. Historical accounts of this claim both that of a period of normal rainfall allowed the growth of herds of animals and, hence, the possibility of consolidating central power, and that the nomadic herders were forced to innovate and move because drought and grassland desiccation reduced the capabilities of their traditional lands to support the herds. Both are conjectures rather than proven causality, a point that emphasizes the difficulty of imputing climate as a determining factor in human affairs. But from Ibn Khaldun through Montesquieu to Ellsworth Huntingdon, the powerful arguments that climate shape culture as well as politics have been remarkably persistent in Western thinking, and have a pernicious influence in rationalizing both imperial politics and racist practices. ‘Taken in the round though, the history of climatic determinism with its aura of fatalism and functionalism reveals just how crippling a force it can be on human agency, equality and empowerment’ (Livingstone, 2024, p. 412). A salutary warning for all researchers tackling the role of climate in the current circumstances, and a reminder that human agency is key in defining what needs to be secured, and how and where.

Livingston’s warning, coupled with Toal’s (2024) reworking of the legacy of geopolitical thinking and practice with its numerous dangers of determinism and the fatalism that it implies, presents those of us involved in the current climate security debate with an intellectual heritage that has to be tackled directly. If that is, policy and politics are to invoke security in ways that facilitate rapid innovation and a recognition of the novel circumstances of the Anthropocene. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the historical debates about climate having causal effects on civilization, the reverse is now the case; civilization is determining the future of the global climate, and this is the context that matters now for any attempt to reformulate security policy appropriately (Dalby, 2022).

Much of the contemporary literature on climate security poses matters in terms of the implications that climate change has for national security. This relates both to the possibilities that climate change will cause conflict, and that policies to deal with climate may impact traditional defence planning and operations. The opposite question of what the implications of conventional security thinking and practice are for climate is usually neglected. But viewed from the perspective of earth system science, and the key question of the long-term habitability of much of the earth’s terrestrial service, it is the much more apposite and important question as Toal makes very clear. Hence, the key questions in all this concerns fossil fuel production, and whether producer states will either initiate actions to phase out fuel production, or somehow be compelled to do so by international policy, energy markets, or both.

Linking climate to conventional notions of national security provides an institutionalization that doesn’t solve the problem (Hardt et al., 2024). Indeed, as Toal’s book emphasizes, it is more likely to aggravate rather than ameliorate matters. While American thinking, in particular, may raise climate security to a top political priority, this particular mode of securitizing climate isn’t providing the answer, or at least, it won’t unless, it is tied into both the urgent need to decarbonize, and a recognition that unilateral action premised on competition rather than cooperation is part of the problem. Implicit assumptions of American virtue, and the so-called ‘liberal international order’ as the only feasible arrangement for stable global politics, frequently disguise the simple but obvious fact that it is this order, and its mode of fossil–fuel- powered economy that has generated the climate crisis in the first place. Toal emphasizes the key political point, that despite huge increases in the use of fossil fuels by China and India in recent decades, America remains both the largest historical contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and the largest per capita emitter. Contemporary geopolitical rhetoric and the persistent assumptions that politics at the largest scale can only be understood accurately as a matter of competition, undergirded in the last analysis by military capability, precludes focusing on the urgent necessity of reducing the use of fossil fuels quickly, and simultaneously acting to ensure that the transition doesn’t so disrupt political arrangements that it generates war.

Looking at both Schloten’s (2023) Transitions and Clack et al.’s (2024)Hot War edited volumes, what becomes clear is the immense complexity of the links between climate and security practices. The sheer diversity of human contexts makes generalizations about policies and practices, and the politics tied into both, very difficult. And yet as both Toal and Livingston’s volumes also make clear, how the politics plays out will matter both in specific contexts as well as in terms of the planetary future.

In the Hot War volume, a wide-ranging collection of views that arrange matters in three sections loosely focused on contexts, security and defence responses and framings and reflections, the diversity of the issues and the necessity of both linking practices in multiple institutions and perspectives from both researchers and practitioners are usefully emphasized. The cover image of a British long-range reconnaissance vehicle, with a UN logo painted on the armour, and a military helicopter in a desert landscape, immediately pose questions of what the role of the military might be in grappling with climate change. This is fitting as the editors work with the climate change and (in)security project in Oxford which collaborates with the British Army centre for Historical and Armed Conflict Research. But the chapters in this volume draw on contributors from Canada, Australia and the United States too, making this very much an Anglosphere volume, and in parallel, it should be noted in most of the climate security discussions. There is little here from the global south where different perspectives might be expected, not least the issue of climate justice where compensation for damage inflicted by climate change remains a key theme.

The introduction to ‘Hot War’ reminds the reader of the military interpretations of climate matters in some crucial parts of the security debate. The starting point is key, for notably in climate change discussions, the long term so often gets pushed aside by politicians and policymakers focused on the urgent as a matter of priority. In military terms, the strategic focus, on goals and end points, gets lost in immediate operational and tactical matters. Tim Benton, Neil Morisetti and Oli Brown offer a comprehensive overview of the cascading and systemic risks related to environmental change which spill over territorial borders in a globally interconnected world. Strategic resilience, not just case-by-case adaptations will be needed they argue. Kimberley Marten focuses on the Arctic, where rapid environmental change has raised various alarms, and the war in Ukraine has reduced cooperation between NATO countries and Russia.

Other chapters focus on other regions, the Antarctic, where the treaty regime is fraying, the Levant, where environmental and refugee issues highlight the difficulties of providing human security in the region, and environmental risks and migration in Central America and the need to rethink risk analysis. Tom Deligiannis offers a short reflective chapter reminding readers that while climate change is a key consideration, it should not be tackled in isolation from the other environmental disruptions currently underway. He reminds the reader of the importance of distinguishing between short-term rapid onset disasters and the longer-term slow onset disruptions of environmental change, both of which need to be addressed in any comprehensive attempt to grapple with climate security. Matthew Paterson emphasizes the big picture in terms of what kind of economy will shape the future of the climate. The fossil fuelled one of the present is leading to ever-larger climate disruptions; the need to think about a post-fossil-fuelled one is essential to any serious attempt to think about the long-term future of humanity.

The chapters in the second section address the military and defence implications of these larger considerations. Addressed in turn are matters of the greening of NATO operations, British military preparations, maritime security in a changing world, agricultural and health impacts of climate change, what is now increasingly called ‘climate intelligence’ and finally how climate change will impact current efforts at conservation on military properties. The last few chapters of the volume provide some useful reflections on the scale and urgency of the climate crisis. Thammy Evans and Gary Lewis focus on ecological security, reminding readers that humanitarian crises and pandemics too are part of what militaries may be called on to tackle. Elizabeth Boulton extends these considerations in theoretical terms building on her work on hyperthreats (Boulton, 2022) to suggest that security is entangled in numerous aspects of the current crisis, and crucially suggesting how the defence sector might be reformulated if the hyperthreat were to be taken seriously as the new context for planning and operations.

The final chapter is a series of reflections on three decades of work on climate and conflict by Thomas Homer-Dixon, one of the original researchers from the 1990s work on environmental conflict. His sanguine reflections on the scale and urgency of tackling climate and other disruptions is a fitting conclusion to this volume. He summarises matters at the end of his chapter, and the book, as ‘Climate change, once considered as a “threat multiplier”, is now a direct threat to global security in itself’ (p. 364). This nicely summarises how the focus has shifted over recent decades, and succinctly ties up the diverse themes in this edited collection.

Schloten’s ‘Transitions’ is a very large volume with thirty chapters and numerous contributions focused on the themes of the geopolitics of the energy transition, the many pitfalls awaiting transitions, the implications of novel technologies for geopolitics and a final section grappling with the necessity of recalibrating industry as well as security and foreign policy in the new circumstances of a climate-disrupted world. States are facing a variety of contexts and opportunities in a transition, and mounting dangers should they fail to prepare for the future. Even a handbook of this size can’t grapple with every case, although it makes a brave effort to be comprehensive; kudos to the editor for producing such an informative collection.

The sheer amount of detail here makes this volume a very valuable contribution to the climate security debate, although Schloten is unnecessarily apologetic in his introduction about the inability of this volume to effectively provide a roadmap for a smooth energy transition. Reading Jacopo Maria Pepe, Julian Grinschgl and Kirsten Westphal’s analysis of the key China-U.S. relationship and just how fraught it is on energy and climate matters one cannot help but suggest, drawing on Toal’s analysis, that a smooth transition is unlikely. The emergence of cheap renewable energy technology recently has opened up new opportunities, but as with so much of the discussions of climate and energy transitions, a more explicit focus on fuel as the problem due to combustion causing emissions, and electrical energy as the solution because mostly it doesn’t involve greenhouse gases, would help clarify what is at stake (Dalby, 2024).

Noteworthy in this volume are the chapters that suggest the complexity of institutions involved in the energy transition, whether, as in Colin Nolden’s focus on cooperatives and cities, or Christine Milchram and Morena Skalamera’s analysis of energy justice which points out that Russia miscalculated the importance of the European Union as an actor in climate policy. On the other side of the issue are matters of petrostates, and how they will fare which Thijs van de Graaf cleverly summarises in terms of ‘barrels, booms and busts’. One of the really hard cases is Iraq, a state hugely dependent on oil revenues, and one that has, to put it mildly, a troubled recent history (Kli et al., 2024). Crises caused by declining revenues and the instabilities as a result of fluctuating petroleum prices highlight the vulnerabilities faced by petrostates in the face of existing market mechanisms. Something that suggests clearly the necessity of careful planning for future declining petroleum consumption, if, and it is the big if that underlies the contributions to Schloten’s volume, climate policies and the energy transitions lead to reductions in demand for petroleum and other fossil fuels very soon.

Wisely, perhaps, Scholten (2023) doesn’t provide a conclusion to this volume where he tries to tie the various themes together – given the variety of perspectives and topics. This is a daunting task – but the volume taken as a whole makes it clear that the energy transition is upon us, and it is a very complicated business; energy geopolitics is going to look rather different one way or the other in coming decades (Kuzemko et al., 2024). The smooth transition that Scholten wishes for is a difficult prospect. However, sensible international cooperation does offer the possibilities of at least reducing the size of the bumps, always assuming that political leaders can be made to understand the world in ways that don’t fall back into the competitive geopolitics that Toal warns about, or fatalistic imputations of external causation that Livingstone addresses.

Here too Toal’s emphasis on the fact that the United States has historically used the most fossil fuel per capita (the only cross-national comparison that really counts in terms of climate change) and hence, has the largest responsibility to act on climate, needs to be remembered. Not least because there is always a temptation in security thinking within the Anglosphere to focus on external dangers to internal order within modern states, rather than framing matters in global terms, and understanding that viewed from elsewhere, basic justice requires those who have caused the climate crisis should take the initiative to address it, rather than just dealing with its symptoms, whether in the African deserts, or elsewhere.

Most societies now face direct risks from not addressing climate change, but as Schloten’s contributors make clear, also risks and uncertainties generated by attempts to do so. Here lies the crucial issue now at the heart of security politics; business as usual is no longer an option if accelerating climate disruptions are to be addressed. Political choices about which insecurities are most important are now crucial. Transition strategies must confront the powerful lobbies of the fossil fuel industry which insists that business as usual, with energy provision interpreted in terms of fuel supply, actually provides security. Tackling both forms of risks, those that come from climate generated hazards, and those difficulties that may follow from policy choices, is now unavoidable.

Practical actions will work effectively if the big picture and the need for overall rapid reductions in the use of fossil fuels are kept clearly in mind in policy formulation; all four of the volumes discussed here provide useful contextualizations for considering necessary political innovations. None of this is easy, but the overarching priority for any serious engagement with security in present circumstances must be shaping institutions and economies to ensure a viable world for future generations (Scheffran et al., 2024). In Livingstone’s (2024, pp. 406–407) apt phrasing: ‘Just how the human race should take responsibility for its destructive actions and pursue more ecologically accountable behaviour remains crucial to the ethics of twenty first century living’.