National security threats

The National Security Threats You're Underestimating

IN RECENT years, there has been an evolution in the understanding of the nature of security, both national and international. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with it the definition of security as exclusively a military affair, it is becoming clear that threats can come from nature, from technology and from the failure of traditional political structures.

Consider natural threats: first and foremost, climate change and global warming. Despite flat-earther denial, senior military commanders and serious security students agree that appreciable rises in sea levels will be hugely destabilizing in many parts of the world, including in American coastal urban areas. Given widening fractures in the traditional governing consensus, and the power of energy and developmental lobbies, there is little hope for mature policymaking on carbon taxes or other macrodepartures in the short term of a single administration...