Center for a New American Security

On Wednesday, John Nagl stepped down as President of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Since joining CNAS, John has been an avid supporter of our natural security work, often remarking that while ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the most pressing challenges America faces, the long-term challenges to U.S. security will come from natural resource competition and climate change.

John’s service to the nation as an Army officer and his ability to articulate the importance of non-traditional security challenges in shaping the global security environment has helped put this work on the map for many national security practitioners who may not have been convinced of its importance to U.S. national security policy. We’re indebted to John for his enduring support, from his work on Fueling the Future Force to his impressing the importance of climate change to a room full of flag officers. I could wax poetic, but I won’t (my colleague Andrew Exum has a nice post about John already). I’ll simply say this: thanks boss. We wouldn’t be where we are without you. 

Building off my 2012 policy wish list, here is a post I wrote for the National Journal’s Energy and Environment blog on why the Arctic should be a policy priority for the president and congress in 2012: “Time for Serious Attention to the Arctic.”

This year, the Natural Security blog will feature more posts on the items you read on this year’s wish list. To kick off the New Year, next week CNAS will host an event on the South China Sea where we will formally launch our new report, Cooperation from Strength: The United States, China and the South China Sea. (RSVP to the event here.) The event will feature Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert, CNAS Senior Advisor and Senior Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program Patrick Cronin, CNAS Senior Fellow Robert Kaplan, former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig, and Ambassador Chan Heng Chee, Ambassador of the Republic of Singapore to the United States.  

The report includes a chapter on the role of natural resources in the South China Sea that focuses on more than just the region’s energy resources. It includes an examination of the broad resource and environmental trends affecting the region, from energy to fisheries, from minerals to climate change.   

It’s time again to reflect on our Natural Security policy hopes for the New Year. Some items on this list are more realistic than others, of course – especially considering that it’s a presidential election year and politics will get in the way of some of these goals. But this is always a fun exercise, and we see surprising results each year. For example, on our 2011 wish list we hoped that the Department of Defense would designate a single Combatant Command as lead for the Arctic, and last April the Unified Command Plan shifted major responsibilities for the Arctic to U.S. Northern Command. Will the Natural Security team fare better this year for our policy goals for 2012? Here are 10 items I’d personally like to see this year, in no particular order:  

1. With increasing attention to geoengineering, the U.S. government should do scenario planning to better understand the security implications of engineering the global climate, including the potential security dilemmas that could manifest from states trying to make themselves more “climate secure” (e.g., in the Indian subcontinent). 

2. Building on last year’s wish list…a smart approach to “green alliances” from the Obama administration. Incorporating resources and environmental issues into our international partnerships and formal alliance relationships is necessary and a positive step for a modern U.S. approach to security, and may serve as the cornerstone to lasting partnerships in regions like East Asia, where the administration has recently refocused attention.

3. Continued and improved awareness among civil servants and political appointees about natural security issues, both at home and at our missions abroad, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, where resource challenges will contribute to those countries’ long-term security and stability.

4. A robust strategy for the Arctic that clearly states U.S. priorities and backs those priorities with the appropriate and necessary resources. In particular, U.S. policymakers need to invest in U.S. Coast Guard Arctic capabilities, including more icebreakers and other assets that allow the Coast Guard to accomplish its statutory missions in the High North.  

As we approach the end of the year, it is interesting to reflect on what issues and topics have been the most popular on the blog. Here are the top 5 blog posts of 2011 that our readers were drawn to.

1. Smart Grid Cyber Security Week

Christine Parthemore kicked off our weekly series on smart grid and cyber security by dispelling some of the myths about smart grid technology and its cyber vulnerabilities, and gives a brief overview of some of the U.S. government efforts to mitigate and manage the risks that exist.

2. To Secure U.S. Interests in the Arctic, Ratifying UNCLOS is Key   

In this blog post, I discuss how American interests can be strengthened by ratifying the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, particularly because ratifying UNCLOS would help protect U.S. economic interests and strengthen America’s international role in managing emerging challenges such as territorial disputes in the Arctic and the South China Sea.   

3. Resource Hungry: China’s Strategic Hand in Africa

Former CNAS intern Bailey Culp discusses China’s growing interests in Africa and cautions that Chinese development in Africa could have future diplomatic and economic implications for the United States.

4. Egypt’s Revolution: Resources Edition

Christine Parthemore writes about the role of food prices and other natural resources in Egypt’s Arab Spring uprising and ousting of Hosni Mubarak in February.

5. In Yemen, Water, Fuel and Food Prices Rise as Political Crisis Worsens

In this post, I examine the role that water, fuel and food prices play in exacerbating Yemen’s political turmoil, noting that whatever one’s analytical scope is for assessing Yemen’s political crisis, resource challenges cannot be ignored. 

Happy Thanksgiving from the Natural Security blog! Keep in mind all of those who can't be with their friends and family today. We’ll be taking the rest of the week off, but if we find any interesting news we'll post links on our Facebook page or Twitter (Will). Have a great holiday everyone!

Happy Veterans Day from the Natural Security blog.

We're taking the day to honor all those who have served, and are giving thanks to those who continue to serve the country.

Photo: President Eisenhower signing HR7786, changing Armistice Day to Veterans Day. Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

The decline of Arctic summer sea ice and the opening of passage to commercial travel for at least one month of the year have been pointed to as the silver lining of a dark cloud that has cast a shadow over a world experiencing global climate change. And while it may be true that Arctic ice melt could be a boon to the commercial shippers plying the High North, climate change is likely to pose challenges to the same industry elsewhere.

Experts caution that climate change could disrupt global trade by impacting sea ports in key cities around the world. In September, The New York Times reported that port operators have done little to prepare for such potential climate effects. “Though the impacts of climate change have been extensively studied in other areas, especially in agriculture and for flood zones, up to now there has been little comprehensive investigation into how shipping ports will be affected,” The New York Times reported.

But the slow call to action is worrying given the cities likely to be disrupted by climate change, specifically by sea level rise. A new report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that the majority of cities most vulnerable to economic disruption from climate change lie in developed countries, with American cities like Miami, the greater New York area (New York and Newark), New Orleans and other bustling international hubs like Tokyo ranking among the top 15 most vulnerable. Developing countries are also exposed, with quickly emerging economic hubs like Mumbai, Calcutta, Bangkok and Guangzhou, China extremely vulnerable to sea level rise.

These trends are quite unsettling when one considers that nearly 80 percent of global trade is done by sea. “With hundreds of ports tied to one another in often intricate and complex trade links, even a temporary disruption to one far-flung port facility can have wide-ranging implications on all global trade if there are no suitable alternative ports nearby,” according to The New York Times. With global climate mitigation efforts potentially stalled in the near term (we’ll find out for sure in Durban), port operators and the authorities governing them will likely need to invest in climate adaptation programs to hedge against these kinds of potential disruptions.  

The UN Conference on Trade and Development held a meeting September 29-30 with experts to discuss the potential impacts of climate change on existing ports and port development in some of these key cities, and how to adapt to the changing environment. (A number of presentations made at the meeting are available online.)

Despite the vast amount of water on Earth, demands for human consumption are reaching constraints with regard to accessibility, quality and use. This concept of “peak ecological water” – limitations to the regional availability of water – has been developed by MacArthur Genius Fellow Peter Gleick in his biennial report The World’s Water, which was launched this past Tuesday at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Now in its seventh volume, The World’s Water continues to build on a diverse set of issues centering on water and its implications for energy security, including the necessity of reforming U.S. water policy and the implications of water contamination as a result of producing alternative energy sources.

The U.S. government’s lack of vision is in part to blame for America’s current inability to revamp aging laws and infrastructure for a 21^st century environment. In The World’s Water, Volume 7, Gleick and his colleagues devote a chapter to the need to reform outdated water laws and policies. Policymakers working on water issues across the U.S. government have not sufficiently worked together to develop coherent legislation, in part because most of over 30 federal agencies and programs with water-related responsibilities do not view water as their central mission. For example, Gleick recommends improved collaboration, especially between the Farm Service Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency and State Revolving Loans, in prioritizing projects that better manage the country’s river basins. Concerns over internationally shared water systems with Mexico and Canada will also require increased planning and diplomacy in order to reduce tensions among neighboring countries. According to Gleick, as demands for water increase alongside the growing population, a more integrated water policy that includes all relevant stakeholders in the U.S. government is needed in order to sculpt a more sustainable approach to federal water management.

On Monday, I attended an event sponsored by the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.  Dr. Gary Machlis, the Science Advisor to the Director of the National Park Service, spoke on his experience as the lead scientist for the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Strategic Sciences Working Group during the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.  This was an experimental working group designed to aid in the natural resource damage assessment process.  Because it was experimental, it was conducted outside the standard response structure mandated for oil spills by the National Contingency Plan, the Incident Command System (ICS). The ICS is also the standard command structure under the National Response Framework and National Incident Management System for all domestic incidents and offers the benefit of a known cadre of key positions and structure that is easily recognizable across first responders from the federal, state and local governments. It does not, however, currently call for a strategic science working group either within the command staff or within the general staff.  Having this group outside the formal ICS did not prohibit them from briefing key leaders within the organization on their findings, but they were not staffed or funded by the formal ICS process.

One of Dr. Machlis’ most interesting points was the concept of incorporating strategic science within crisis response.  From his presentation I took strategic science to mean a methodology by which an environmental system can be evaluated based on the best available interdisciplinary science being used to assign a likelihood of occurrence to cascading events under desired scenarios.  It is not the tactical science used to develop the capping stack, or monitor the flow of oil.  His group modeled the impacted human ecosystem, including biophysical resources, socioeconomic resources and cultural resources, and examined the expected impacts across three scenarios: oil flow containment until recovery began; short term and long term recovery and restoration; and recovery and restoration where stress on the human ecological system was declining.  Each scenario was based upon the best available scientific information and included variables such as flow rate from the well, time to contain the oil flow, length of time for recovery and others.  Each potential event was assigned a probability of occurrence.  The likelihood of occurrence drove subsequent events until the scenario had been played out.

The Natural Security bloggers are on holiday today, so there won't be a new post this morning. Have a great Monday everyone!