The Navy’s Misplaced Prioritization of Climate Ahead of China
By Tim Gallaudet
October 31, 2023
Last week Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro released his updated strategic guidance on the long-term transformation and modernization of the service branch. Del Toro rightly addresses the Department of the Navy’s mission to recruit, train, equip, and organize to deliver combat-ready naval forces. Additionally, the top priority in the guidance is well placed - to strengthen our maritime dominance to deter potential adversaries, and if called upon, fight and decisively win our Nation’s wars. Under that top priority, the document includes combatting climate change as one of four actions required to strengthen the Navy’s maritime dominance. Citing climate change as “one of the most destabilizing forces of our time”, Del Toro curiously claims that achieving the Biden Administration’s commitment to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 will enable the Navy to become a more agile, capable, and lethal fighting force. Including the questionable connection between emissions reductions and combat capability is enough to undermine his guidance, but there is an even greater deficiency – nowhere in the guidance is there a direct mention of China and our urgent need to outcompete that country in the race for maritime superiority.
I have written elsewhere about the Navy’s misguided emphasis on climate mitigation rather than adaptation. Even if all human emissions of heat-trapping gases were to stop today, the Earth’s temperature would continue to rise for a few decades. I do not dispute that increasing the use of renewables while maintaining energy independence is necessary for America’s national, natural, and economic security. For our Navy, however, focusing on emissions reductions is a dangerous distraction at a time of increasing threat levels. The Navy’s climate approach should focus on adaption to the impacts of climate change in ways that make it more effective in modern warfighting.
The failure to directly name China in the Navy’s strategic guidance is even more difficult to defend. Out-competing China has already been identified as a top global priority by the Biden Administration in the 2022 National Security Strategy. Why merely mention a “rapidly improving peer competitor” in the introduction of the Navy’s strategy? Just last week the Pentagon released its annual report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China (PRC), and the picture it paints is not pretty. The PRC is embarked on a campaign to: expand its national power; “revise the international order” in support of its national interests; increase military coercion against the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific region; strengthen its nuclear, space, and counterspace capabilities; intensify its pressure against Taiwan; deepen its ties with Russia; and resist military-to-military with the U.S
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/10/31/the_navys_misplaced_prioritization_of_climate_ahead_of_china_989545.html
