Abstract
Over the last decades, the United States Department of Defense has started to think about climate change and its implications for national and global politics. Following Donald Trump’s elections, many commentators predicted a substantial revising of both environmental and defense policies at the federal level, which would represent a radical change in comparison to the policies implemented under the Obama administration. Regarding environmental policies within the Department of Defense, we could argue that, if we can identify substantial changes, many programs, bureaus and policies initiated under the Obama administration are still in operation. It is possible to explain this apparent paradox through a brief history of how environmental and climate-related issues became relevant for the military. In the 90s and the 2000s, the military, under increasing normative pressure, began to adapt its equipment, procedures and doctrines to new sustainable norms (a “greening” of the military). These efforts began in the 80s and the 90s and peaked in the early 2000s with the creation of environmental bureaus charged with enforcing ecological norms and codes of conduct, on both material and operational levels. The most important element, however, is that the Department of Defense started to incorporate climate change into its strategic doctrine. This is partly the consequence of the work of military analysts, think tanks and research centers close to the military establishment. This translation of the issue into military terms stay relevant under the current administration. This paper will present the result of a fieldwork conducted in April 2019 in the United States.
Panel: Climate Change and Security Actors
Cite this presentation
@inproceedings{eiss-2019-climate-change-and-the-us-military-changes-and-continuities-under-the-trump-admi,
author = {Adrien Estève},
title = {Climate Change and the US Military: Changes and Continuities Under the Trump Administration},
booktitle = {European Security Studies Conference 2019},
year = {2019},
url = {https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-climate-change-and-the-us-military-changes-and-continuities-under-the-trump-admi.html}
}