As a chess player I cannot help, but compare our current state of affairs relative to climate change and national security to playing a game of chess against a Grandmaster. Climate Change (the grandmaster) is arranging itself to hit us with a powerful combination of mass migration, increased conflict over resources, terrorism, and political instability. In the past our national security community has been able to strategically position itself in such a way as to avoid direct engagement with the onset of climate change. However, this time is different, notably because those in the scientific community openly acknowledge that we are losing ground on mitigation tactics and are now posturing for adaptation. As a result, those in the defense and intelligence communities are forced to change their strategy in effort to avoid the “double threat” that climate change poses not just in affecting Mother Nature, but also affecting the US in matters of national security. 

In chess a double threat is a single move made by a player that delivers two distinct dangers to its opponent. This in turn forces the opponent to make a move that will avoid the danger of highest order.

In the case of the environmental and national security double threat elicited by climate change, the time has come for national security to assume legislative highest order, yet deplorably it has not.

Significant steps have been made already that acknowledge the need to assimilate climate change in national security. In the past several years, numerous assessments have been successful in marrying national security issues and climate change. In 2008 the National Intelligence Community launched a detailed assessment, “National Security Implications of Global Climate Change Through 2030.” Current efforts are underway by the State Department to integrate climate change in its upcoming Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development review, similarly officials in the Pentagon plan to adopt the issue in their Quadrennial Defense Review.

On the legislative front, attempts have been made, notably in the Warner-Lieberman Climate Security Act and most recently the Waxman-Markey sponsored American Clean Energy and Security Act. In spite of both bills linking energy and security, neither has directly addressed national security and climate change as a correlated integral issue.

While recent efforts to address and integrate climate change into defense planning and legislation have been successful in laying a foundation, there still remains significant ground to cover in effort to bring climate change from sidelines to center stage, from fragmented integration to full integration, from posture to move. Fruitfully doing so, will require legislation that acknowledges national security as a constituent of climate change.

Recent joint efforts by Senator John Kerry (D-MA), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former Senator and Secretary of the Navy, John Warner(R-VA) are working to achieve such a thing. Both have been strong advocates on the issue and have worked diligently to highlight the connection between the issues of climate change and national security.

At a landmark Senate Foreign Relations hearing on the issue entitled “Climate Change and National Security,” Senator Warner urgently conveyed the need to act now in matters of climate change and national security.

“This is the time Congress has to forcibly lead,” he affirmed. “We can’t follow the public. We’ve got to lead the public.”

In a separate address to the Council on Foreign Relations, Senator Kerry hinted at the notion of a permanent national security strategy centered in climate change.

“We need a new environmental diplomacy—a commitment to make the fight against global warming an integral part of our foreign relations and our national security strategy.”

This fall the Senate will reconvene to address the heavily contested Waxman-Markey bill head on. With 6o being the magic number needed to overcome a Republican filibuster, a wave of bi-partisan support serves to be the most viable counter tactic.

In chess a double threat is distinguished as a very dominant move, and is considered by players to be one of the most effective ploys used to bring the opponent to endgame.

Failure to make national security a component in the Waxman-Markey bill that will acknowledge and implement polices based upon the co-dependency of climate change and national security as a central and critical issue will most certainly force it to checkmate on the Senate floor.

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