Factoring environmental security issues into national security threat assessments: The case of global warming

Evidence suggests that climate change is significantly detrimental to U.S. national security when measured against current intelligence assessment criteria. Two subsidiary questions follow from this hypothesis. (1) Is global warming a suitable issue to be considered a threat to U.S. national security? (2) Is an NIE a suitable format for assessing the security threat of global warming?;In the pages that follow, I seek to understand the extent to which environmental security issues could or should be incorporated into national security threat assessments such as the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). The thesis answers the central question of whether the evidence I have collected suggests that global warming is detrimental to U.S. national security under the realist national security paradigm that forms the basis the intelligence community works from. Therefore, national security is the dependent variable and global warming is the independent variable.;In chapter one, I posit the national security paradigm currently used by the Bush Administration most closely resembles offensive (neo) realism. Next, I establish my operational definitions of national and environmental security and assert that they are compatible with that paradigm.;In chapter two I present data on global warming's direct impact on the United States. I used the heuristic device of breaking up the consequences between physical, strategic and political. Chapter three is composed of the Bangladesh, Mexico, Egypt case studies. These countries were chosen due to their regional diversity and potential that developments in these countries may have a strategic impact on U.S. interests.;Chapter four analyses the history and methods of estimative intelligence and their applicability to environmental security issues such as global warming. My methodology in this chapter included interviewing a range of current and former practitioners from a former Director of Central Intelligence to a junior analyst through a structured questionnaire designed to lead me to more sources and a deeper background understanding of the topic. I critique the NIE methodology pointing out ways in which in could be altered to better apply to the global warming.;The fifth chapter presents the findings from chapters two and three in a format recognizable by the intelligence community and the policymaker. In this chapter, I use the terminology and some of the methodology of the intelligence community to suggest whether global warming's threat to national security warrants an assessment such as the NIE. In the conclusion I find that I have amassed sufficient evidence that an NIE should be performed but that the NIE is not warranted based on physical impacts of global warming alone. It is the political and strategic impacts of global warming make this issue most worthy of consideration by the Intelligence Community.