Center for a New American Security

  Photo: Navy News Service/Tech Sgt. Cohen A. Young USAF

Yesterday The Washington Post reported that US gasoline prices have hit an 8-month low.  The article reports that “the sagging commodity market price for gasoline is good news for American motorists, promising a mild easing in pump prices. It also marks the end of a summer of relative stability for retail gasoline prices, which have fluctuated by about 20 cents per gallon since the beginning of the year and have stayed in an 8-cent range for the past 69 days.”  But the drop in oil prices may ultimately prove to be a bad thing for America’s energy policy, and particularly for the way that DOD shapes its energy strategy.

That’s because the high and volatile price of petroleum serves as a major incentive for DOD to switch to a greater use of alternative fuel sources.  In 2008, according to the US Department of Energy, about 78 percent of DOD’s total fuel use was petroleum. Since DOD is so reliant on petroleum as a fuel source, even small price fluctuations can have major budget effects: for example, in 2008 Defense Secretary Gates said “every time the price of oil goes up by $1 per barrel, it costs us about $130 million, and frankly, my credit card limit is getting narrow on that.”

The National Academies Press recently released an overview and summary of “America's Energy Future: Technology and Transformation,” a study by the National Research Council published last year jointly by National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.  Although the report looks at U.S. national energy consumption generally, it makes some interesting recommendations in light of some of the thinking that we’ve been doing on DOD’s fuel use. Look out for our report to be released this fall.

The report’s key findings included three points that are particularly interesting with regard to DOD’s fuel use.  On the first, energy efficiency potential, the report says:

The deployment of existing energy efficiency technologies is the nearest-term and lowest-cost option for moderating the U.S. consumption of energy, especially over the next decade. In fact, the full deployment of cost-effective energy efficiency technologies in buildings alone could eliminate the need to construct any new electricity-generating plants in the United States except to address regional supply imbalances, replace obsolete power generation assets, or substitute more environmentally benign sources of electricity.  Accelerated deployment of these technologies in the buildings, transportation, and industrial sectors could reduce energy use in 2020 by about 15 percent (15–17 quads), relative to current projections, and by about 30 percent (32–35 quads) in 2030.

A few months ago Will wrote about climate skepticism and the relationship between scientists and the public, explaining that individual consumers of information often view scientific information about climate change through a lens of personal interests.  This raises the question: what does it take to change peoples’ minds – people who have a vested personal or political interest in burying their heads in the sand?  Perhaps it takes seeing the effects of climate change with their own eyes.

Yesterday, Joss Garmen wrote on ClimateProgress about a recent article by Michael Hanlon, one of the UK’s most prominent climate skeptics.  Writing for The Daily Mail, where he is the Science Editor, Hanlon acknowledged blatantly in the title that, “yes, global warming is real – and deeply worrying.”  What prompted Hanlon’s about-face? A week-long trip to the Arctic where Hanlon accompanied a British science team investigating increases in summer ice melt.  Of the trip Hanlon said, “I have long been something of a climate-change skeptic, but my views in recent years have shifted.  For me, the most convincing evidence that something worrying is going on lies right here in the Arctic.”

In a year-long study that we completed back in April, Broadening Horizons: Climate Change and the U.S. Armed Forces, we noticed similar parallels when it came to the military’s engagement on climate change. In particular, the Navy to date has been the most forward leaning service to take hold of the implications of climate change, standing up its own Take Force Climate Change to study the impacts on U.S. naval forces. But why was the Navy the first and most active service to engage climate change? The Navy noticed measurable changes in its operating environment as a consequence of climate change, including a melting Arctic.

Last week, the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Review Panel released its final report on the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The five-month review of the QDR was an opportunity for a panel of national security and defense experts (including CNAS Commander-in-Chief Dr. John Nagl) to assess the shortcomings of the QDR and its processes, and to analyze U.S. national security priorities and challenges from outside the Department of Defense bureaucracy. According to the report:

The issues raised in the body of this Report are sufficiently serious that we believe an explicit warning is appropriate.  The aging of the inventories and equipment used by the services, the decline in the size of the Navy, escalating personnel entitlements, overhead and procurement costs, and the growing stress on the force means that a train wreck is coming in the areas of personnel, acquisition, and force structure. (Emphasis mine)

When I hear train wreck I think Li Lo or Mel Gibson. Despite that distraction, I kept reading.

The panel of experts identified four key national interests that have shaped U.S. national security policy since WWII:

Since 1945, the United States has been the principal architect and remains the principal leader of a durable and desirable international system. American security rests on four principles: the defense of the American homeland; assured access to the sea, air, space, and cyberspace; the preservation of a favorable balance of power across Eurasia that prevents authoritarian domination of that region; and provision for the global “common good” through such actions as humanitarian aid, development assistance, and disaster relief. (P. 25) 

Yesterday, I attended a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on “Climate Change Finance: Providing Assistance for Vulnerable Countries.”  The committee witnessed testimony from eight individuals on two panels: the first panel included The Honorable Lael Brainard, Under Secretary for International Affairs at the Treasury Department, Dr. Jonathan Pershing, Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change with the State Department, Rear Admiral David. W. Titley, Oceanographer and Navigator of the Navy and Dr. Maura O’Neill, Senior Counselor to the Administration and Chief Innovation Office at USAID; the second panel included The Honorable Nancy E. Soderberg, President of the Connect U.S. Fund, Elliot Diringer, Vice President of International Strategies with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, The Honorable Reed E. Hunt, CEO of the Coalition for Green Capital and Dr. Redmond Clark, Chairman and CEO of CBL Industrial Services.

The hearing itself tended to range far and wide, with representatives using their Q/A time to opine on whether climate change is real, or not; anthropogenic, or not. But there were several parts of the testimony that stood out as particularly interesting for someone who is interested in Natural Security issues.

First, Rear Admiral Titley had two particularly interesting points which resonated with several of our recent blog posts on the Arctic and a DOD energy event that we hosted last Tuesday.  Titley testified that the Navy is watching changes in the Arctic environment with interest, particularly shrinking levels of ice extent and volume.  He stated that “the changing Arctic has national security implications for the Navy,” and that the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review directs DOD to address gaps in the United States’ Arctic capabilities.  The Navy’s Maritime Strategy, for example, recognizes that the potential opening of new shipping routes could generate potential sources of competition for access to the High North, as well as to natural resources beneath the ice.  He mentioned the Bering Strait as one area among many that has the potential to become strategically significant over the next few decades.  He also mentioned that this summer, the Navy “will participate in Canada’s largest annual Arctic exercise, Operation NANOOK.”   While the United States has been increasingly active in the Arctic, with the Navy, Coast Guard and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force (which just recently released its final recommendations) being a visible presence, the United States hasn’t given the Arctic perhaps as much attention as it deserves as it grows in strategic importance, even allowing the only two Coastguard heavy icebreaking ships to fall into disrepair.

Last night, we hosted a top secret, off-the-record, “this didn’t happen” energy event with government and private sector experts who have a broad range of energy and national security expertise. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t as top secret as we’re making it out to be given the fact that we’re touting it on the blog this morning. But for the 42 of you reading this post this morning, certainly consider yourself in the know.

What follows below are some brief thoughts on the future of the military, the Department of Defense and our energy needs. We offer these points up as some food for thought as we take a step back from the event last night and go easy on the writing this morning:

We are all here because we care about energy security – finding reliably available, affordable, and sustainable supplies sufficient to meet our demand. DOD’s energy security is a more complex concept perhaps than that of the rest of the economy: our operations depend on global supply availability, adaptability for use in multiple platforms, and infrastructure resiliency. The ability of our soldiers, sailors and Marines to do their jobs is on the line. And as we were reminded last week by the news of refined fuel being smuggled from our allies in Iraq to Iran, in defiance of new U.S. sanctions, the geopolitical impacts of our current energy system often hit U.S. security and foreign policy interests particularly hard.

A few months back, my colleague Shannon popped into my office with a review copy of a new book that someone had sent to CNAS. The word “Arctic” popped out in the title, causing me to sigh, “Not more about the Arctic.” Don’t get me wrong. It is a subject very important to our work. It’s just that most work on the Arctic is so boring; nothing new that we haven’t heard a million times already. We here tread somewhat lightly on the subject ourselves just to avoid parroting all that has long been repeated.

I eventually picked up this book as I was cleaning my messy desk, where it had rested for a few months, and decided to give it a shot. The Future History of the Arctic. Great title. Author: Charles Emmerson, an alum of the World Economic Forum and International Crisis Group. In other words, a credible decipherer and distiller of information.

As I read, I was quite happily surprised – more than happily, actually. This is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. It reads like travel writing: the perfect balance of history, first-person anecdotes from interesting places, current events, and the context of where trends are pointing for the future. The text provides important information, but it is also highly entertaining. Though it would be a good read for anyone, its detail would prove especially useful for anyone in the national security field. I had marked about 10 percent of the pages in this book by the time I’d finished it, a high percentage for me.

In recognition of the new, thought provoking CNAS publications released yesterday ahead of our Fourth Annual Conference, the Natural Security team will be analyzing our colleagues’ work this week on the blog, providing, of course, a Natural Security spin on the reports. Today’s featured report: To Serve the Nation: U.S. Special Operations Forces in an Era of Persistent Conflict, by Michele L. Malvesti.   

“[Special Operations Forces] are in the midst of a resurgence, with their core capabilities aligning with the irregular and potentially catastrophic security threats of today’s geostrategic environment,” writes Michele L. Malvesti in her recent report, To Serve the Nation: U.S. Special Operations Forces in an Era of Persistent Conflict.

When it comes to Natural Security, it may not be obvious how natural resources issues and climate change engage Special Operations Forces (SOF), their interests and core capabilities. But as Malvesti points out in her report, “U.S. Special Operation Forces are ideally suited to help protect and advance U.S. security interests in an increasingly complex geostrategic environment,” including, perhaps, the complex challenges associated with climate change and natural resource issues.  

Take climate change in particular. We have reported here on the blog before that SOF already play a role in responding to humanitarian crises in the wake of severe natural disasters, such as tropical storms. In fact, in a previous post here, I shared a Defense Department photo of U.S. Navy SEALs providing humanitarian relief to Filipinos in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Ketsana that left nearly a half-million displaced in the Philippines last September.

• Forbes covers the role of alternative energy in the U.S. military on its Business in the Beltway blog.
• Iraq has plans to fund its national reconstruction by boosting oil production from 2.1million barrels per day to 10-12 million, reports UPI.
• Longtime CNAS friend Andrew Bacevich weighs in on U.S. security priorities, identifying environmental issues such as the Gulf oil spill as a key concern, in today's Boston Globe.
• The president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo calls for the removal of all U.N. forces, adding accusations that the U.N. wants to seize the country's mineral deposits, reports The National. 
• Check out Politico for some commentary on food issues and stability.

We take today to remember the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces who have sacrificed their lives in service to our nation. And we thank the U.S. military men and women who, every day, continue to risk their lives to protect the United States - and their families who endure.

Photo: Flags of the U.S. Navy's Task Force Trident fly at half-mast in respect of two American and one Romanian NATO service members at Camp Mogensen at Forward Operating Base Lagman, Afghanistan on May 13, 2010. Courtesy of Chief Mass Communication Specialist Jeremy L. Wood and the U.S. Navy.