United States: Climate Change, National Security and the Climatisation of the Defence Sector

Abstract

This chapter explores the securitisation of climate change in the US. It finds that while all three climate security discourses played a role, from the mid-2000s onwards climate change was predominately constructed as an immediate threat to US national security and linked to the exercise of sovereign power. Apart from raising attention and helping to bridge political divides, this led to a ‘climatisation’ of the security and defence sector by incorporating climate threats into key policies and practices. It also helped to constitute defence institutions as legitimate and influential actors in the ‘fight’ against climate change. Besides some positive effects on US climate policy, this mainly focused the debate on the symptoms of climate change, hence neglecting long-term, multilateral solutions to tackle its root causes.