Hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Harold Stark promulgated his guidance through a famous cable: “EXECUTE AGAINST JAPAN UNRESTRICTED AIR AND SUBMARINE WARFARE.” Although the attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise, the idea of war with Japan was not. The war in the Pacific was guided by War Plan Orange, a secret strategy the U.S. military had been developing, refining, and updating since 1906.
Evolving through many iterations, War Plan Orange described the major phases anticipated in a war in the Pacific. The plan identified required capabilities, informed force structure planning, and justified budget submissions. In general, the war played out as expected, and War Plan Orange proved a blueprint for victory.
Planning for the long-term implications of climate change today is as important as planning for a major Pacific conflict was in the last century. To address climate change, the Department of Defense (DoD) and Pacific Command (PaCom) in particular need a 21st-century War Plan Orange.
Climate Change and Conflict
A rapidly growing body of research links climate change to unrest and conflict around the world. While climate change is rarely seen as the only cause, it is frequently considered a “threat multiplier” that exacerbates preexisting issues and contributes to both intra- and interstate conflict. Its far-reaching effects are summarized in the “2014 DoD Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap”:
Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict. They will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe.
Some of the most profound effects will be felt in the Asia-Pacific. In 2013, then-PaCom Commander Admiral Samuel Locklear identified climate change as the biggest long-term security threat in his area of responsibility. He explained that the associated upheaval “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.” 1
Rising Temperatures, Rising Threats
The planet is warming. According to the World Meteorological Organization, 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000. 2 Increasing temperatures affect human health through heat stress, decreased agricultural yields, and expanded geographic ranges of disease vectors (rodents and insects). 3Rising temperatures also will take an economic toll on the Asia-Pacific. By 2030, India and China could see annual gross domestic product losses totaling $450 billion resulting from the impact of summertime heat on human work capacity. 4 The heat also will increase the demand for cooling and air conditioning, challenging fragile, overworked power grids and stressing energy supplies. 5
In 2016, the National Academy of Sciences released a report titled “Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change,” which not only linked episodes of extreme temperature to climate change, but also extremes in precipitation. Precipitation patterns likely will continue to change temporally and spatially, with more pronounced and longer-lasting droughts in some locations and more intense highly localized precipitation in other areas, leading to significant flooding. 6 Besides threatening life and property, these events threaten agriculture and food security. 7
Climate change also drives slower-acting threats like sea level rise. 8 Melting polar ice sheets, thermal expansion of seawater, and other dynamic changes will increase water levels around the world, inundating low-lying coastal areas. 9 Even if these areas remain above the high-water line, they will be more susceptible to abnormally high tides and storm surges. Across the Asia-Pacific, populations are shifting from rural to urban areas, many of which lie along the water. As of 2014, almost 48 percent of the Asia-Pacific population was living in cities (compared to 26 percent in 1970), and many of the poorest settle in the most vulnerable areas like flood plains, raising the potential for acute humanitarian crises. 10
In addition, there are less obvious effects of climate change, such as retreating glaciers, which decrease the availability of freshwater downstream. Follow-on effects include reduced water to irrigate agriculture and decreased river flow at dams for hydroelectric power generation. 11 Offshore, rising temperatures bleach coral reefs (coral mortality has reached 50 percent in northern parts of the Great Barrier Reef) and oceanic uptake of CO2 is making the seawater more acidic, affecting the fisheries many nations rely on for food and livelihoods. 12
PaCom already faces the full range of natural disasters in the Asia-Pacific. Between 1970 and 2014, natural disasters accounted for more than 2 million deaths in the Asia-Pacific, 57 percent of the global total. 13 Admiral Locklear routinely told his subordinate commanders, “While you’re here you may not have a conflict with another military, but you will have a natural disaster that you have to either assist in or be prepared to manage the consequences on the other side.” The vastness of PaCom’s area of responsibility coupled with the increased frequency of natural disasters may spread thin PaCom’s forces as they execute humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HADR) operations. These response operations are critical, as the emergent needs of domestic populations and/or migration of displaced persons can stress fragile governments beyond their ability to cope. This breakdown of the social contract sets conditions that lead to instability, which can quickly spread across national boundaries and lead to wider conflict. PaCom has a vested interest in maintaining stability: five of the seven U.S. collective defense treaties apply to nations in the region.
These climate change effects are not part of a distant future; they are happening now. Current PaCom issues include:
• Displaced people. In 2015 (the latest year with complete data), 19.2 million people were displaced by weather, water, climate, and geophysical hazards in 113 countries, more than twice as many as for conflict and violence. The majority were in South and East Asia. 14
• Water rights. Water rights associated with the rivers fed by shrinking Himalayan glaciers are coming into question as China dams the upper Mekong, which feeds Cambodia and Vietnam downstream. 15
• Water access. In September 2016, India threatened to suspend the Indus Waters Treaty over violence in Kashmir. If India suspends the treaty, which specifies how India and Pakistan (both nuclear powers) manage the Indus River Basin’s rivers and tributaries, it will cut off the flow to Pakistan and deny entire provinces already stressed by prolonged drought their sole water source. 16
• Food security. Warming western Pacific waters are driving vital fish stocks northward. In the South China Sea, this is bringing Vietnamese fishermen into Chinese-claimed waters. 17 In the Yellow Sea, this is bringing Chinese fishermen into contact with South Koreans, resulting in the October 2016 ramming and sinking of a South Korean Coast Guard boat by a 100-ton Chinese fishing vessel. 18
• Mass migration. From the Maldives in the Indian Ocean to Vanuatu in the Pacific, island nations are being threatened and populations are beginning to be displaced by rising sea levels. 19
While PaCom cannot address the root causes of climate change, it can posture itself to actively mitigate its effects and assist partners. There is sufficient guidance already in force to do so.
Opportunities for Power Projection
While climate change is divisive in U.S. politics, it is a unifying international theme. By stressing local governments beyond their capability and/or capacity to respond, it provides a new opportunity for PaCom’s international engagement and assistance. This will give PaCom access, which over time can become influence.
Even with a “whole of government” approach led by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the face of operations likely will be PaCom forces. Only the military has the logistics, manpower, command and control, and overall organization to execute major operations. This military visibility provides a messaging opportunity that can boost PaCom’s image as the trusted partner of choice, while at the same time provide presence and increase stability during times of crisis.
Climate change also is a challenge against which the United States can partner with other nations where it is in search of common ground, like China. Opportunities for engagement and cooperation open dialog and build relationships and understanding that can help avoid future miscalculation.
PaCom should seize this opportunity for power projection. Per the “2015 Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower,” HADR is power projection, and hospital ships like the USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) and Mercy (T-AH-19) executing medical aid missions can have as large an effect as kinetic operations. China has taken note and launched the Peace Ark with similar tasking. If PaCom does not respond to climate-related challenges in the Pacific, China will fill the vacuum, gaining prestige and influence at U.S. expense.
A Climate Change War Plan
PaCom should consider the following responses to prepare for climate change effects:
• Build flexible partnerships, agreements, and contingency plans to deal with the spectrum of climate-related disasters. This will avoid delays in responding to events, particularly in the early stages when critical infrastructure and communications may be unavailable. By preparing in advance, PaCom can establish regional logistics hubs, preposition supplies, create and rehearse rapid distribution plans, and reach agreements regarding the logistics of refugee movement and sustainment.
• Build partner resilience to the longer-term, slower-acting effects of climate change. PaCom should assist partner nations in building their capacity for “self-help” and mutual assistance. PaCom experts can work with partner nations to identify critical infrastructure at risk to sea level rise. Expanded assistance could include assisting partners in developing strategies to mitigate these vulnerabilities or even assisting in the construction of levees, breakwaters, or relocation to higher ground.
• Expand collective HADR expertise. The best way to prepare for HADR, as a unilateral force or as part of a coalition, is to train. Existing PaCom exercises like Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) and Cooperative Afloat Readiness Training are venues where HADR missions can be rehearsed. This will confirm interoperability of communications protocols, tactics, techniques, and procedures before the crisis. PaCom should seek inclusion of smaller nations, even those with modest capabilities. These overtures may increase U.S. access and these nations’ receptiveness to hosting temporary basing or logistics hubs in support of future military operations.
• Focus on the “enablers.” PaCom should advocate for investments that target HADR capability gaps. This should extend to nontraditional logistics and distribution capabilities. Recognizing the worldwide shortfall of amphibious combatants, PaCom should advocate for capabilities such as the expeditionary fast transport or expeditionary transfer dock that can deliver aid without tying up traditional amphibious ships, which are needed to meet global force management requirements elsewhere. 20 Likewise, PaCom should pursue enhanced environmental monitoring and prediction capabilities, to include long-range seasonal forecasting capabilities to identify hazardous environmental conditions in advance, giving longer lead times to stage equipment and forces for prompt response.
• Develop new concepts of operations (ConOps). Through iterative war gaming and experimentation, PaCom should develop ConOps to respond to the range of climate threats, including evaluating vulnerability and mitigating risk to PaCom bases, installations, supply chains, and training ranges. Responses should be customized, necessitating the creation, deployment, and employment of adaptive force packages (AFPs—tailored detachments made up of specific capabilities). AFPs ensure appropriate resources for the situation and allow husbanding of other capabilities for deployment elsewhere. 21
An Opportunity
Climate change effects will play an ever-increasing role in shaping the security environment. On 7 September 2016, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper offered his assessment at the Intelligence and National Security Summit:
In the coming decades, an underlying meta-driver of unpredictable instability will be, I believe, climate change. Major population centers will compete for ever-diminishing food and water resources and governments will have an increasingly difficult time controlling their territories.
Neither DoD nor PaCom can negotiate with, deter, or preemptively attack a changing environment. They can, however, anticipate changes, posture forces, and develop capabilities to mitigate threats and seize emerging opportunities. War Plan Orange was successful because it bounded the problem and provided focus to prepare for war with Japan. Likewise, DoD and PaCom need a coherent and comprehensive planning effort both to prepare for the upheaval caused by climate change and to seek competitive advantages the situation may present. As Sun Tzu wrote, “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”
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