Former Military Officers Urge American Leadership In Global Green Movement

Taking a step back from the global anti-climate change movement will allow our biggest rivals to fill the leadership vacuum, which is against American national security interests, according to a new report written by 15 former military officials.

“As new energy options emerge to meet global demand, nations that lead stand to gain; should the U.S. sit on the sidelines, it does so at considerable risk to our national security,” a letter to the reader at the beginning of the report says. “We find that a U.S. energy stance centered on fossil fuels should not delay our planning for, development of, and investment in advanced energy systems at home and abroad.”

Restructured trade ties, forged by economic partnerships regarding solar, wind, and other green energies—all characterized as forms of “advanced energy” in the report—have changed the network of allegiances on which the U.S. has previously based its foreign policy agenda.

“Ceding U.S. leadership here has inherent national security risk,” the authors of the CNA Military Advisory Board document, warn, “including loss of global influence and diplomatic leverage, as well as forgone economic opportunities.”

Soviet-era oil and gas infrastructure has allowed Moscow to control the energy flow of countries in its sphere of influence. As the same Soviet republics go green, Mother Russia will lose its control over small neighboring nations, paving way for a new era in Asian politics.

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“[A]dvanced energy will weaken traditional oil exporters’ (in particular Russia's) potential ability to hold dependent nations hostage to petroleum” by using energy exports “as a tool of coercion,” the report notes.

Western European nations have already begun searching for new sources of oil and natural gas, though a string of deals between Gazprom, Rosneft, and European oil majors signed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum slowed that trend.

The U.S. military itself consumes 100 million barrels of oil every year to power its vehicles, bases and other operations.

By Zainab Calcuttawala for Oilprice.com

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