Defense Planning Implications of Climate Change for U.S. Central Command

"Over the coming decades, stressors from climate change will become more intense and more frequent in the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility (AOR). This development will likely contribute to CENTCOM's broader shift from a warfighting-focused command to a command that will have to reprioritize and balance how it responds to and conducts both traditional and nontraditional security missions. This report addresses how CENTCOM planners can use operations, activities, and investments to prevent -- or mitigate the intensity of -- climate-related conflict. Climate change, along with other transnational threats, is often discussed as part of a broader concept known as nontraditional security. Many of the threats that are part of the nontraditional security concept, such as infectious disease and large-scale migration, are exacerbated by climate change. This report examines which traditional military tools can be applied to this nontraditional security threat and which new tools can be developed to address the implications of climate change for CENTCOM. The aim of this report is to help CENTCOM planners prepare for a future security environment that is affected by climate change. Even with preventive action, the command will face additional requirements from climate stress. To provide context for resource prioritization discussions, this report presents an analysis of the frequency and the conditions under which the United States has traditionally intervened militarily in the CENTCOM theater and rough order of magnitude costs of interventions by type. This report is the fifth and final in a series focused on climate change and the security environment."--