Tropic of Chaos (36 page)

2
James Hansen,
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
(New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009).

3
See “About Science and Impacts,” Pew Center on Global Climate Change,
www.pewclimate.org/science-impacts/about
.

4
The IPCC has rather famously lowered its projected sea level rises between its third and fourth assessment reports. But the fourth assessment's lower range of projected rises has been roundly attacked as optimistic because they do not take into account new evidence of very rapid melting in Greenland and Antarctica.
New Scientist
summed up the dilemma of projecting sea level rises as follows: “Because modeling how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will react to rising temperatures is fiendishly complicated, the IPCC did not include either in its estimate. It's no small omission: the Greenland ice cap, the smaller and so far less stable of the two, holds enough water that if it all melted, it would raise sea levels by 6 metres on average across the globe.” The same piece then goes on to quote Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, saying, “As a result of the acceleration of outlet glaciers over large regions, the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are already contributing more and faster to sea level rise than anticipated. . . . If this trend continues, we are likely to witness sea level rise 1 metre or more by year
2100.” See Catherine Brahic, “Sea Level Rise Could Bust IPCC Estimate,”
New Scientist
(March 2009).

5
John Vidal, “Global Warming Causes 300,000 Deaths a Year,”
Guardian
, May 29, 2009.

6
Jianjun Yin et al. “Model Projections of Rapid Sea-Level Rise on the Northeast Coast of the United States,”
Nature Geoscience
2 (March 15, 2009): 262–266. In 2007 the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, based on data that was already several years dated upon publication, projected that neither Greenland nor Antarctica would lose significant mass by 2100. In fact, both are losing mass very quickly. From the new data come the new projections.

7
Koko Warner et al., “In Search of Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human Migration and Displacement,” Earth Institute of Columbia University, May 2009,
http://ciesin.columbia.edu/documents/clim-migr-report-june09_media.pdf
.

8
Kristina Stefanova, “Rising Sea Levels in Pacific Create Wave of Migrants,”
Washington Times
, April 19, 2009.

9
Quoted in Susan George, “Globalisation and War” (paper presented at the International Congress of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, New Delhi, March 10 2008); “Climate Change and Conflict,” International Crisis Group Report, November 2007,
www.crisisgroup.org/en/key-issues/climate-change-and-conflict.aspx
.

10
Dan Smith and Janani Vivekananda,
A Climate of Conflict: The Links Between Climate Change, Peace and War
(Stockholm: Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Febuary 2008), 7. This publication can be downloaded/ordered from
www.sida.se/publications
.

11
Statistically, “battle-related deaths” worldwide have declined since World War II and especially since the end of the Cold War—which in the frontline states of the Global South was often quite hot. But other amorphous types of violence linked to social breakdown are spreading. Take the case of El Salvador: twelve years of civil war ended in 1993, but “deaths by homicide in the postwar era at one point surpassed the death rate during the war.” And they remain almost as high today. Or consider Caracas. In the 1970s Venezuela suffered a series of small guerrilla insurgencies; in fact, the young paratrooper Hugo Chavez fought Maoist guerillas around Lake Maricaibo. Today, Venezuela is “at peace,” but the hillside barrios of Caracas are hyperviolent with crime; Caracas is far more violent than during the era of civil war. The Caracas murder rate is about 130 per 100,000. In 2008 a total of 2,415 people were killed and 5,098 others were injured. See, for example, Sara Miller Llana, “Will Venezuela's Murder Rate Hurt Chávez?”
Christian Science Monitor
, December 3, 2008; “Highlights: Venezuela Crime, Narcotics Issues 29 Jun–5 Jul 09,”
World News Connection
(US Department of Commerce), July 5, 2009.

1
“Statement for the Record of Dr. Thomas Fingar,” Office of the Director of National Intelligence, June 25, 2008,
www.dni.gov/testimonies/20080625_testimony.pdf
(accessed on June 25, 2008); Kevin Whitelaw, “Climate Change Will Have Destabilizing Consequences,
Intelligence Agencies Warn,”
US News
World Report
, June 25, 2008. The report was called “The National Security Implications of Global Climate Change to 2030.”

2
Laura Sullivan, “Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law,”
All Things Considered
(NPR Radio), October 28, 2010.

3
This report is widely available on the Web—for example, on the Global Business Network website at
www.gbn.com/GBNDocumentDisplayServlet.srv?aid=26231&url=/UploadDocumentDisplayServlet.srv?id=28566
.

4
On bombing and Paris negotiations, see Gabriel Kolko,
Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States and the Modern Historical Experience
(New York: New Press, 1985), 440–444; Stanley Karrnow,
Vietnam: A History
(New York: Penguin, 1997).

5
Jeff Goodell,
How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010).

6
For a thorough discussion of the ocean's thermaline circulation system, see the following: Tim Flannery,
The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
(New York: HarperCollins, 2006); Elizabeth Kolbert,
Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change
(New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2006); Eugene Linden,
The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006); Al Gore,
Earth in the Balance
(New York: Plume, 1993); Al Gore,
An Inconvenient Truth
(New York: Rodale Books, 2006); George Monbiot,
Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning
(New York: Doubleday, 2006).

7
Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, “Report on Abrupt Climate Change and Its Implications for the United States National Security” (report prepared for the Pentagon Office of Net Assessment, Global Business Network, February 2003), 2.

8
CNA Corporation,
National Security and the Threat of Climate Change
(Alexandria, VA: CNA Corporation, 2007), 44.

9
CNA Corporation,
National Security and the Threat of Climate Change
, 16.

10
CNA Corporation,
National Security and the Threat of Climate Change
, 60.

11
Kurt M. Campbell et al.,
The Age of Consequences: The Foreign-Policy National Security Implications of Global Climate Change
(Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for New American Security, 2007), 35.

12
Campbell et al.,
Age of Consequences
, 9.

13
Campbell et al.,
Age of Consequences
, 85–86.

14
Jonathan Pearlman and Ben Cubby, “Defense Warns of Climate Conflict,”
Sydney Morning Herald,
January 7, 2009; the Australian Defense Forces analysis, titled
Climate Change: The Environment, Resources and Conflict
, was completed in November 2007.

15
“Climate Change and International Security” (paper from the High Representative and the European Commission to the European Council, S113/08, March 14, 2008), 1–2. This report is available online at
www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/reports/99387.pdf
.

16
“Climate Change and International Security,” 3–5.

17
Thomas Barnett, “The Pentagon's New Map,”
Esquire
, March 2003. It is tempting to give American foreign policy an intellectual coherence that it doesn't necessarily have. Although general goals are agreed on, namely projecting American power for the sake of American business, policy circles are divided into different schools of thought, cliques, and networks that compete for the influence of opposing visions.

18
Immanuel Wallerstein,
The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century
(New York: Academic Press, 1974).

19
John Stuart Mill,
Principles of Political Economy
(New York: Longman, Green and Co., 1909), 685.

20
Larry Elliott and Mark Tran, “UN Report Warns of Threat to Human Progress from Climate Change,”
Guardian
, November 4, 2010.

1
Interview with Colonel Gary Anderson, USMC, March 1999; Frank L. Jones, “Marine Corps Civil Affairs and the Three Block War,”
Marine Corps Gazette
86, no. 3 (March 1, 2002). Derek Summerfield, “The Psychosocial Effects of Conflict in the Third World,”
Development in Practice
1, no. 3 (autumn 1991): 159–173: 2.

2
CNA Corporation,
National Security and the Threat of Climate Change
(Alexandria, VA: CNA Corporation, 2007), 44. Emphasis added. That was Gen. Anthony Zini (Ret.) reflecting on the military implications of climate change, but Woolsey, Panetta, and the others all make similar statements.

3
Tactics in Counterinsurgency
(FM 3–24.2). US Military Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2009), p. viii.

4
John A. Nagl,
Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); David Kilcullen,
The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Thomas Ricks,
The Gamble: General David Patraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006–2008
(New York: Penguin Press, 2009). For an excellent and critical history of counterinsurgency in Colombia see, Forrest Hylton, “Plan Colombia: The Measure of Success,”
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Vol. XVII, no. I (Fall/Winter 2010): 99115.

5
For the classic discussion of anomie, see Robert K. Merton, “Social Structure and Anomie,”
American Sociological Review
3, no. 5 (October 1938): 672–682.

6
Jose Harris, “War and Social History: Britain and the Home Front During the Second World War,”
Contemporary European History
1, no. 1 (March 1992): 17–35: 18.

7
Indeed, that is what unlucky “guests” of the Taliban, like Jerey van Dyke, describe. By his account, the Taliban give the impression that drone strikes build unity on the ground, even if they fray and wear upon the Taliban leadership networks. Jerey Van Dyke,
Captive: My Time As a Prisoner of the Taliban
(New York: Times Books, 2010).

8
Summerfield, “The Psychosocial Effects of Conflict,” 159–173: 2.

9
I am thinking here most specifically of political Islam. See Oliver Roy,
The Failures of Political Islam
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), in which French scholar Roy argues that political Islam, once in power, necessarily tempers its radicalism, for there is no “Islamic” way to run a modern economy or state because Islam is not a social theory but a moral theory.

10
Robert J. Bunker, “Epochal Change: War over Social and Political Organization,”
Parameters
27 (summer 1997): 15–25.

11
As often happens in colonial situations, there were both resistance and creative adaptation on the part of the colonized people. As explained in Theda Perdue and Michael Green's excellent
The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears
, the Cherokees used the “civilizing” process, turning it to their own national ends. They adopted modern farming methods and tools, as well as created a Cherokee script, newspapers, a constitution, and a modern sovereign state. They engaged in long-distance trade and the cash economy, even buying and owning slaves, and brought in white indentured servants to work their lands. But they resisted efforts to privatize their land holdings and hung on to their language and customs and thereby, through partial acculturation, thwarted conquest. Interestingly, the Kikuyu of Kenya and the Chagga of Tanzania also both resisted and adapted to colonialism in a similar fashion to the Cherokee. On the Cherokee, see Theda Perdue and Michael Green,
The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears
(New York: Viking, 2007).