Sustainability And National Security

Sustaining security : rethinking American national security strategy / Jeremi Suri and Benjamin Valentino -- Dollar diminution and new macroeconomic constraints on American power / Jonathan Kirshner -- Does American military power attract foreign investment? / Daniel Drezner and Nancy Hite-Rubin -- Preserving national strength in a period of fiscal restraint / Cindy Williams -- State finance and national power : Great Britain, China, and the United States in historical perspective / Jeremi Suri -- Reforming American power : civilian national security institutions in the early cold war and beyond / William Inboden -- To starve an army : how great power armies respond to austerity / John W. Hall -- Climate change and US national security : sustaining security amidst unsustainability / Joshua William Busby -- At home abroad : public attitudes towards America's overseas commitments / Benjamin Valentino -- The right choice for NATO / William Wohlforth -- The United States and the Middle East : interests, risks, and costs / Daniel Byman and Sara Bjerg Moller -- Keep, toss, or fix? : assessing US alliances in East Asia / Jennifer Lind -- Terminating the interminable? / Sumit Ganguly -- Neutralization as a sustainable approach to Afghanistan / Audrey Kurth Cronin -- Conclusion / Jeremi Suri and Benjamin Valentino

In today's transnational world, a sustainable national security policy cannot be achieved through national capabilities alone. Sustainable national security instead rests on three pillars: 1) a multi-sum security principle based on justice at all levels, multilateralism and multidimensionality (including human, environmental, national, transnational and transcultural/transcivilizational security); 2) symbiotic realism in international relations, whereby mutual cooperation among states results in non- conflictual absolute gains; and 3) transcivilizational synergy which results from mutual respect, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism and cross-fertilization, and will lead to global justice, security and prosperity. This well-written and cogently-argued book captures the complex challenges facing our leaders today and in the future, and it delivers a strong set of recommendations for a much-needed reorganisation of national security decision making to make it more responsive and effective. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in an innovative approach to the complex yet central subject of sustainable national security.

As the world shifts away from the unquestioned American hegemony that followed in the wake of the Cold War, the United States is likely to face new kinds of threats and sharper resource constraints than it has in the past. However, the country's alliances, military institutions, and national security strategy have changed little since the Cold War. American foreign and defense policies, therefore, should be assessed for their fitness for achieving sustainable national security amidst the dynamism of the international political economy, changing domestic politics, and even a changing climate. This book brings together sixteen leading scholars from across political science, history, and political economy to highlight a range of American security considerations that deserve a larger role in both scholarship and strategic decision-making. In these chapters, scholars of political economy and the American defense budget examine the economic engine that underlies U.S. military might and the ways the country deploys these vast (but finite) resources. Historians illuminate how past great powers coped with changing international orders through strategic and institutional innovations. And regional experts assess America's current long-term engagements, from NATO to the chaos of the Middle East to the web of alliances in Asia, deepening understandings that help guard against both costly commitments and short-sighted retrenchments. This interdisciplinary volume sets an agenda for future scholarship that links politics, economics, and history in pursuit of sustainable security for the United States - and greater peace and stability for Americans and non-Americans alike.

With the importance of sustainability and its impact on the Department of Defense, CSL's National Security Issues Branch has collected works from subject matter experts who cover the topic in a variety of ways in everything from sustainability and national security to sustainability of installations. In particular, Dr. Jim Hartman's chapter, "Sustainability and National Security", examines the evolution of the Army's sustainability program and its contributions to the national strategic security objectives. The growing world population and imbalance of natural resources are expected to affect US, as well as Army, interests. Dr. Hartman asserts sustainability is the nexus to ensure future security, which can only be achieved through the development and implementation of sound business practices. Dr. Hartman opines the Army, as a large institution, is well suited to lead a whole of government approach to sustainability.

The aim of this book is to demonstrate how environmental factors have caused an evolution in the landscape of national security since the end of the Cold War. Through relevant case studies, the scope of the problem on the national security landscape due to environmental stressors is illuminated, examined, and synthesized with climate-related data. Human variables such as governance, GDP, and vulnerability are taken into account, and are compared against environmental factors to more accurately determine the causative agents of regional conflicts which threaten national security. These case studies comprise the majority of the text, and they show how individual conflicts are uniquely influenced by environmental stress with variations from situation to situation. This book will be of interest to government and military professionals, and may serve as a resource for college courses in the areas of military geography, international affairs, and sustainability studies.

This book explores the sustainability concept at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. At the strategic level the book explores the importance of focusing international and national priorities on identifying and preserving the resource base necessary to maintain security and stability and discusses the importance of proactively mitigating threats to these resources. At the operational level it examines the great savings that can be achieved by applying sustainable principles and practices throughout military installations, systems, and operations; Operational Energy is a fine example. At the tactical level sustainability is reducing risks to military war fighters by reducing the logistic burden of transporting fuel and water to the tip of the fighting spear, and by minimizing the overall logistics footprint at base camps. In the field, the military is additionally a catalyst for the enhancement of sustainable communities through its application of green technologies and human capacity building.

Climate change can reasonably be expected to increase the frequency and intensity of a variety of potentially disruptive environmental events-slowly at first, but then more quickly. It is prudent to expect to be surprised by the way in which these events may cascade, or have far-reaching effects. During the coming decade, certain climate-related events will produce consequences that exceed the capacity of the affected societies or global systems to manage; these may have global security implications. Although focused on events outside the United States, Climate and Social Stress: Implications for Security Analysis recommends a range of research and policy actions to create a whole-of-government approach to increasing understanding of complex and contingent connections between climate and security, and to inform choices about adapting to and reducing vulnerability to climate change.