Green-washing America’s Hegemony:Biden Administration’s Military Climate Strategy and Its Impact

Since coming to office, the Biden administration has made climate a fundamental element of US foreign policy and national security.From September 2021 to October 2022, the US Department of Defense and its subordinate Departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force issued their climate strategies successively, proposing specific goals and action paths, thus building an unprecedented set of policy systems to comprehensively address climate change.

I.Objectives and Action Path of Biden Administration’s Military Climate Strategy

Military climate strategy can be understood as a systematic policy of applying existing military practice to combat climate change and bringing practices from the field of climate policy into the military field.Since the Bush Jr.administration,the United States has been highly concerned about the impact of climate change on military power, and has taken many actions.The biggest difference between the Biden administration’s military climate strategy and that of the previous administration is the combination of “adaptation” and “mitigation” as two core objectives, on the one hand to ensure that troops and facilities can continue to operate effectively in the face of worsening climate impacts, and on the other hand to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from military operations.Both the Army and Navy have proposed net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and the Air Force has proposed net-zero emissions by FY2046.The three services have also proposed detailed supporting targets for vehicles, buildings and electricity supply.

According to the relevant documents released by the US military, the US military’s climate strategy is detailed into the following five main action paths:First, make decisions based on climate information, assess the risk of climate disasters faced by various military facilities and military operations, and propose countermeasures; Second, accelerate the energy transformation of the military,including large-scale development of clean energy projects, promoting the application of lithium battery technology, promoting the clean energy utilization of transportation vehicles, and improving energy efficiency; Third, promote naturebased solutions and implement several projects to enhance the military’s climate adaptation and mitigation effectiveness by improving the natural environment;Fourth, strengthen relevant capacity building to conduct more military training in extreme weather conditions, test the resilience of equipment, and assess logistics and medical needs; Fifth, implement clean procurement, giving priority to the procurement of clean electricity and building materials with low carbon emissions.

II.Motivation of Biden Administration to Implement Military Climate Strategy

The Biden administration’s military climate strategy is not just about “climate”,and there are strategic motivations on multiple levels behind its bold moves.First,dealing with climate change risks is the direct motivation of the US military’s climate strategy, that is, improving the US military’s disaster prevention and mitigation capabilities on the one hand, and preventing resource competition and international conflicts over resources that may be intensified due to climate change on the other hand.Second, accelerating the transformation of energy used in operation is the core demand of the US military’s climate strategy.Specifically,through the operational energy transformation, the US Army hopes to reduce the scale and high cost of fossil fuel supply in military operations, and reduce the probability of logistical supply lines being targeted with decentralized clean energy; the Navy wants to reduce the huge fuel requirements of warships to deal with energy supply risks; and the Air Force hopes the energy transformation will give its fighters greater range.Third, promoting the development of domestic green industries is the economic goal of the US military’s climate strategy.The US military’s climate strategy forms part of the Biden administration’s green industry strategy, and the US military has clearly expressed its willingness to strengthen collaboration with domestic green industries (including lithium batteries, electric vehicles, clean energy equipment, etc.) and boost supply chain reflux.Fourth,climate strategy is an important leverage for the US military to suppress adversaries and win allies.

III.Outlook Assessment of Biden Administration’s Military Climate Strategy

In terms of prospects, the US military is expected to make certain progress in “adaptation”, promoting the exploration and application of technologies that address climate change, enhancing the climate resilience of its military infrastructure and military personnel, stimulating the enthusiasm of other countries’ militaries to carry out climate governance, and providing useful action reference for global military climate governance.However, it will be difficult for the US military to make any positive achievements in “mitigation”, as most of the current mitigation targets proposed are not possible to realize, which can only play the role as a “filter” to “green-wash” US military’s image rather than reverse the US military’s high dependence on carbon-based fuels.

The reasons why the US military is difficult to achieve its mitigation objective include: First, the US military has not really established the determination to reduce carbon emissions and change the military development paradigm, and a large number of mitigation targets lack the necessary feasibility demonstration and financial support.Second, technical obstacles make it difficult for the US military’s climate strategy to be fully implemented.Third, many “adaptation” or “mitigation” initiatives actually create more carbon emissions and environmental harm.All in all, for the US military, only by truly reducing all kinds of military operations and military presence around the world can it really improve carbon emissions and mitigate the process of global climate change.

IV.The Impact of Biden Administration’s Military Climate Strategy

The devastating impact of the US military’s climate strategy on the direction of the global order will gradually become apparent:

A.The military climate strategy is an important part of the Biden administration’s efforts to build its climate hegemony.Specifically, a) To use military’s climate action to exaggerate its “contribution” to climate governance,thus green-washing its national image, and distract the international community’s attention and blame for its failure to shoulder international responsibilities.b)To deliberately create divisions among relevant countries and weaken the trust foundation of the international community for climate governance.The United States attempts to replace its centrality in the international military network with that in the climate governance network, and suppress China’s influence on global climate governance by strengthening military ties with individual countries, which is bound to create more competition and divergence in the already fragile global climate governance.c) The US military’s verbal practice and strong actions in the field of climate will cover up the root causes of many climate problems and lead global climate governance astray.

B.The Biden administration is using climate action to expand its military hegemony.First, the climate crisis is used to demonstrate the legitimacy of the United States as a “world army” and emphasize that the US military is an indispensable actor in global environmental governance.Second, the climate action is used to implement more military expansion activities, especially for proposing to the global South a security cooperation framework centered on the “responsibility to prepare and prevent”(R2P2), the essence of which is to promote green authoritarianism, emphasizing that the Western countries can arbitrarily deal with the possible instability of the South under climate change through escalating armaments and unilateral military means.

C.The US military’s climate strategy will help the US build green economy hegemony, but the process will trigger new competition for resources.At present,the US military is going all out to highlight the risk of external dependence of its lithium battery industry chain, trying to transform the new mission of coping with climate change and accelerating energy transition into a traditional geopolitical issue to win resource wars and defend the development interests of the United States.The US military’s support for the green industries will also strengthen the hegemonic power’s long-standing “resource grabbing” efforts, urging it to carry out more direct or hidden looting of the resource countries in the vast South.In addition, the US military has got deeply involved in the development of domestic green industries in the United States, which is easy to transform the normal industrial competition between major countries into a political game that increasingly relies on security forces and political means, thus bringing more political intervention to technology cooperation as well as economic and trade exchanges that could have been carried out.At present, China is the main object of pressure in this regard.

D.The US military’s pursuit of climate hegemony, military hegemony and green economy hegemony will form a mutually supportive architecture that will promote the Unite States to become a “military-industrial-technology-global governance” complex for the low-carbon era.The US military’s climate strategy is still consolidating the existing political and economic order that creates global power imbalances, security instability, and climate disorder, and even exacerbates the root causes of climate change and the international responsibility deficit.The selfish nature of the US to consolidate the foundation of its hegemony determines its actions not only to suppress rising powers such as China, but also eventually to harm those allies and small and medium-sized countries that follow it.