Book Review: 'All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change'

[Mike 03]

This review is from September but the book was released last Tuesday. It's rather good for the reasons stated in this review; however the reviewer is right about its faults: it is repetitive, long-winded (although it's a short book), and inferior to his prior books. But several of the chapters are gems, especially the chapters about potential regional conflicts in the Arctic and the Indo-Pacific zone. Personally, I think Klare is intentionally going after a different audience than he usually does--potential skeptics who are unaware how seriously the military takes global warming. For that reason I think this book has some value (not necessarily for DUers, who probably know much of this material).

Source: San Francisco Review of Books
Book: All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change
Author: Michael T. Klare

Reporters, researchers and other scribes have long noted the biggest block of attendees at environmental conferences have been military. If it’s environmental, they want to know about it. In Michael Klare’s All Hell Breaking Loose, we learn the finer points of why.

]The armed forces need to be prepared for any number of contingencies. They need to be ready for war, obviously, but they are also focused on their own bases, supplies, equipment and people. Plus, as more and more “natural” disasters occur with ever fiercer destructive force, the armed forces get called in to rescue, remove, restore, feed and help. They can end up having to deploy to three different theaters in the same month. None of which was a planned operation. This has already happened, as hurricanes battered Puerto Rico as well as Texas, and wildfires raged in California. It will happen again, and they know it.

To all these ends, the military brass has wisely focused on climate change. Klare gives the interesting example of Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation on the verge of collapse. A killer typhoon, sandstorm, heatwave or flood could tip the balance to chaos there. The government is so weak, it wouldn’t be able to deliver on a rescue or evacuation, let alone a rebuild. US forces have plans laid out to essentially take over in such a case, parachuting in, rolling in, and sailing in to secure the nation from itself. Similarly all over the world, the US military is continually preparing for environmental disaster. It’s a major reason why they have more than 840 overseas bases.

Snip

But the most striking thing about All Hell Breaking Loose is political, rather than environmental, though Klare downplays it. Despite the president’s direction to eliminate all references to climate change, the military is focused on it. Despite rollbacks of rules and laws and gagging of science and scientists, which the president characterizes as a Chinese hoax, the military says there is no alternative for them; it’s what they face in the world and they need to master it. Wisely, they don’t flaunt it, but the orders, manuals, strategies, roadmaps and buildouts are clearly climate change oriented, in total defiance of their commander in chief. Operating a base under water is not an option, regardless of political fashion. The top brass stand their ground in Congressional hearings, despite badgering by the more extreme lawmakers, as Klare shows. The military sees climate as a real threat and possibly the biggest threat on a global scale. Therefore it must focus on it, cope with it and seek to overcome it. Or at least remediate the damage from it.

“At some point, officers who view national security as a sacred obligation will have no choice but to confront those who persist in climate denial,” Klare says at his most definitive. I wish the whole book was written like that.

Link to full review: http://www.sanfranciscoreviewofbooks.com/2019/09/book-review-all-hell-breaking-loose.html

Klare's prior books, especially The Race for What's Left are IMO better, but this book is interesting in that it seems to appeal to a different audience whose opinions might be changed as they realize our Armed Forces are taking global warming deadly seriously.

EDIT TO FIX FORMATTING

[Ghost Dog]

1. I will be more definitive:

As in the Pakistani example provided, the United States military plans, perhaps perceiving opportunity, to override and overrule civilian government as this becomes necessary.