The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War by Neta C. Crawford

Author:Neta C. Crawford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIT Press

The DOD defines advantage as “the advantage anticipated from an attack when considered as a whole, and not only from its isolated or particular parts. The advantage need not be immediate.” The concept of military advantage is illustrated by examples: “The military advantage in the attack of an individual bridge may not be seen immediately (particularly if, at the time of the attack, there is no military traffic in the area), but can be established by the overall effort against bridges in order to isolate enemy military forces on the battlefield. Similarly, military advantage is not restricted to tactical gains, but is linked to the full context of war strategy. It may involve a variety of considerations, including the security of the attacking force.”109 If that were not clear enough, the Joint Chiefs of Staff note that there should be an effort to minimize civilian casualties. “Unless otherwise prohibited by ROE, attacks are not prohibited against military targets even if they might cause incidental injury or damage to civilians or civilian objects. In spite of precautions, such incidental casualties are inevitable during armed conflict.”110 Since at least the 1990s, the military tends to avoid targets or may even call off a strike where there is a high likelihood of harming civilians. But the military is less restrictive when it is evaluating a “high value and high payoff targets” such as an adversary’s weapons of mass destruction or “target systems” such as their “petroleum, oils, and lubricants industry.”111 In sum, the basic targeting guidance does not mention that planners should consider lasting implications of greenhouse gas emissions—most importantly the uncontrolled release of methane—that will result from attacking oil infrastructure.

Finally, in addition to these direct sources of emissions, one cannot discount the consequences of the loss of carbon gas sinks as they are destroyed to make way for military bases or destroyed because the enemy lives in those areas. While the United States is not alone in using “scorched earth” tactics, the American military has a long history, since George Washington sent the military against the Iroquois and Kit Carson marched against the Navajo, of destroying Native American forests and orchards. The aim is to eliminate hiding places of the adversary and to destroy the food that could be sustaining adversaries and their civilian supporters. Elimination of trees and forests was also part of U.S. doctrine in the Civil War and the counterinsurgencies in the Philippines and Vietnam. When the United States targeted the forests of South Vietnam in Operation Ranch Hand, the motto was, “Only you can prevent a forest.” Forests are also lost inadvertently, due to fires that are sparked by bombing and as displaced people destroy trees to make firewood. An assessment of the climate change consequences of recent U.S. wars would include the loss of carbon sequestration due to war-related deforestation, which may occur as people displaced by war use forests for shelter and fuel. In Afghanistan, war-induced migration and illegal logging were among the chief causes of deforestation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.