Environment & Climate Change

Stephen Walt provides A realist POV on the war in Ukraine, competition with China, COVID, and more in the second part of an interview with Foreign Policy Editor-in-Chief Ravi Agrawal.

NATO aspires to take the lead in understanding and adapting to the impact of climate change on security. The new Strategic Concept declares that climate change is a defining challenge of our time, with a profound impact on Allied security. Now, the Alliance and the Allies must “walk the talk” by preparing to face the emerging climate change-driven challenges and adapting their armed forces to the new climate conditions created by global warming. This paper will begin by answering the most pressing questions about NATO and climate change: Is climate change a security threat? Does climate security fit into NATO’s mission? And is NATO the best forum to address climate change? It will then review NATO’s current actions on the climate, and finally make some proposals for the Alliance to implement a climatized perspective on security to climate-proof its assets and capacities and effectively accomplish its mission and tasks.

Stephen Walt enumerates the challenges the U.S. president should prepare for in 2021.

Ambassador Nicholas Burns speaks about the "devastating portrait" of President Trump's leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This essay makes three arguments. First, the US government will need to establish a coronavirus commission, similar to the 9/11 commission, to determine why, since April 2020, the United States has suffered more coronavirus fatalities than any other country in the world. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic represents a watershed for what will be a major national security theme this century: biological threats, both from naturally occurring pathogens and from synthesized biology. Third, intelligence about globalized challenges, such as pandemics, needs to be dramatically reconceptualized, stripping away outmoded levels of secrecy.

Joseph Nye writes that the world is increasingly obsessed with the ongoing power struggle between the United States and China. But the technology-driven shift of power away from states to transnational actors and global forces brings a new and unfamiliar complexity to global affairs.

Arctic Innovator Jenna Stark recommends closing the crisis-related collaboration gap in the polar region. Greater communication between emergency response specialists is needed both for the Arctic to weather the current coronavirus crisis and also to prepare for and mitigate future disasters, such as assuring food security for remote communities in the event of a wildlife disease outbreak.

Kaveri Iychettira and Afreen Siddiqi explain why computational modelling is a useful tool, especially when stakes are high and resources are constrained, and detail why developing countries should build capacity for it. 

Stephen Walt offers what he considers to be the top five silver linings from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Joel Clement appeared on CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront on April 23, 2020.  In this blog post for the Union of Concerned Scientists, he elaborates on what he wishes he had said during that interview.