
Army War College paper predicts possible collapse of US military within 20 years - low_common
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbmkz8/us-military-could-collapse-within-20-years-due-to-climate-change-report-commissioned-by-pentagon-says
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grouseway
"Water is currently 30-40 percent of the costs required to sustain a US
military force operating abroad, according to the new Army report. A huge
infrastructure is needed to transport bottled water for Army units"

Is this for real? It seems like a gross exageration given how many man-hours
of maintenance are needed to keep a plane in the air for 1 hour, or the cost
of fuel, or the cost of ordinance, or a hundred other things.

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stevenwoo
It depends on the theater of deployment and mission but the majority of
deployed troops are support and not combat. The Army would have the lowest
percentage but the Navy in WW2 had something like 10 to 1 support to combat
and the Air Force was higher but numbers have trended lower since then. I
remember this from reading a lot of military history when I was younger for
some reason. [http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-
bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA472467](http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA472467)

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unlinked_dll
The potential "collapse" of the US Military (and what does that mean,
specifically?) hinders on the assumption that the US will be engaged in
foreign conflicts across the globe.

I think we'll turn isolationist well before that becomes a reality. Foreign
policy wonks can talk up and down about the necessity of American troops to
protect human interests in Bangladesh, and to prevent destabilization of
neighbors, potential conflict involving nuclear states... but I have trouble
seeing the Senate voting to deploy troops when their constituency thinks, "who
gives a shit about Bangladesh?"

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mnm1
True, but since the Senate (or house) hasn't been needed to deploy troops for
decades, I don't think their viewpoints will matter.

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unlinked_dll
The War Powers Resolution [1] requires Congressional notification within 48
hours and limits engagements to 60 days without further approval.

Congress hasn't declared war since WW2, but they have been required to both
approve military deployment and spending for every conflict since. Most
controversially, the Authorization for Use of Force in Iraq [2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution#Question...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution#Questions_regarding_constitutionality)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Iraq_Resolution_of_2002)

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anigbrowl
The title rewrite obscures the significance: an Army War College paper points
to a possible collapse of the US military within 20 years.

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low_common
Thanks, I updated the title because I completely agree.

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thrower123
At least for the United States, most of the dire consequences are entirely
avoidable; we just have to get off our duffs and do some work, and not idle
away.

Like the example given in the article of PG&E's rolling blackouts, these are
mostly self-inflicted problems that are completely within our technical
abilities to fix, we just have to do the work and spend the money
intelligently to fix things that we've let go to seed.

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jmann99999
"The report also warns that the US military should prepare for new foreign
interventions in Syria-style conflicts, triggered due to climate-related
impacts. Bangladesh in particular is highlighted as the most vulnerable
country to climate collapse in the world."

This opening sentence of the VICE article is what gives me pause. It seems to
imply that the US military will be intervening in all sorts of theaters due to
climate change. What?

While I'm sure that the US powers will take every opportunity to increase
influence, I don't believe most US citizens would support that. Especially if
there were costs at home.

This feels like a report designed to keep military spending at all-time highs.
Yes, climate change is an issue that must be addressed now. Contemplating
"invading" Bangladesh on the pretense of climate change seems like a bridge
too far.

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unlinked_dll
I agree with you, but climate change isn't the casus belli here. It's more of
the buildup of tinder that gets sparked by the proverbial assassination of an
Archduke. Examples of this recently are the Arab Spring and Syrian Civil War.

The US didn't become involved in Syria _because of_ climate change - rather
climate change caused the conditions for the conflict to erupt, and at the
time, it made sense for the US to deploy ground troops and get involved in
that conflict as it aligned with foreign policy goals in the region.

With Bangladesh, you essentially have (edit:) 160 million people in a country
where a third of it floods each year. Tens of millions on floodplains at sea
level. Their political, ethnic, and religious borders are historically tense.
When sea levels rise it will displace many of those people into Northern
India, and possibly southern China.

The question to ask is what will the political response from the regional
powers be when this happens? And how does it affect US goals in the region?
What foreign policy tools will be available to realize those goals? This
report points to the idea that the US military will not be one of them, which
means if conflict erupts the US will be on the sidelines. Whether or not
that's a good thing is impossible to predict.

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Mediterraneo10
> The US didn't become involved in Syria because of climate change - rather
> climate change caused the conditions for the conflict to erupt

The Syrian conflict has nothing to do with climate change. There has been
longstanding discontent among the Syrian population with the Assad family,
namely 1) like his father, Bashar al-Assad is a dictator with a secret police
that is quite nosy and bothersome in Syrians’ everyday lives, and 2) Assad
comes from a minority sect of Islam that most Syrians are not sympathetic to
(and he has given important positions and financial opportunities to other
members of his minority sect). The country was already a powder keg of sorts,
and gradual radicalization of the Muslim population and social media lit the
match.

Then, once the conflict broke out, the Syrian regime began forcibly
conscripting Syrian young men to fight on the regime’s side. This was not an
attractive prospect, to say the least, and so a lot of them began to flee the
country, joining those who were forced out by the fighting itself, and some of
them took up arms against the regime.

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kdmccormick
Stop linking to shitty news sites with clickbait headlines.

Start just posting the link to the study/report.

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Ch3cksum
"Well that is where we are. You say we are on the brink of destruction and you
are right. But it is only on the brink that people find the will to change.
Only at the precipice do we evolve. This is our moment."

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gigatexal
And what of the cause missing in your title that cause being climate change?

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throwaway5752
The people that wrote this are serious people, and the person that
commissioned it is a Trump appointee. It's bad that so many crises are
happening at once. This can't be procrastinated on even one more year. This
article links to a pdf report. The report is just as dire as the article. Your
life is directly or indirectly in danger. This is no exaggeration.

Fight against climate change and the interests that minimize it like your life
and the life of your children depend on it.

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balt_s
> Your life is directly or indirectly in danger

Should I be concerned? Did they say Texas was hosed?

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opsiprogram
Pretty sure that is the point...? The United States won't be safe. So I'd
assume if you accept this paper, the answer is yes you should be.

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notus
I guess the army war college is like grad school for military. I thought
University of Phoenix was their grad school. The more you know.

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ncmncm
With any luck, civilization will collapse before 2040, and then supporting the
US military will be the least of our problems.

We are well along that path. When ocean acidification collapses the fish
nurseries, and large parts of the tropics become uninhabitable by humans as
temperature/humidity goes high enough to cause heat stroke from normal
walking, global thermonuclear war is not far off.

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anonuser123456
Or maybe humans will just adapt like we always have?

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flukus
Humanity adapts, humans die en masse and take societies and nations with them.

