Two of the many consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have been the release of vast amounts of climate-damaging carbon and the reconsolidation of the NATO alliance. Ian Davis reflects on two recent reports that illustrate how the world’s revived obsession with military ‘deterrence’ and protracted war heightens the risk of more than one type of existential catastrophe.
In an article published in Foreign Affairs a week before the NATO Washington Summit in early July, the alliance’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, “the best way to maintain peace is to be prepared for war. To be clear, NATO is not strengthening its defences to provoke war. It is doing so to protect peace”.
An assessment of NATO’s efforts to strengthen its defences is provided in a June report by the Center for Strategic Studies (CSIS), Is NATO Ready for War? It found that NATO has made “substantial progress” since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 on defence spending, forward defence, high-readiness forces, command and control, collective defence exercises and the integration of Sweden and Finland. However, while the report concludes that NATO may be ready to “fight tonight”, it questions “whether it is ready to fight—and thereby deter—a protracted war”. The authors believe that any “permutation of a serious Russia-NATO conflict that does not end quickly will become a clash of not just armies, but societies”.
Meanwhile, a report titled Climate Damage Caused by Russia’s War in Ukraine by the Initiative on Greenhouse Gas Accounting of War (IGGAW)—a research collective partly funded by the German and Swedish governments, and the European Climate Foundation—maps out the climate cost of the first two years of Russia’s war on Ukraine. The war has cost at least 175 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, amid a surge in emissions from direct warfare (51.6 million tonnes), landscape fires (22.9 million), rerouted flights (24 million), forced migration (3.3 million) and leaks caused by military attacks on fossil fuel infrastructure (17.2 million), as well as the future carbon cost of reconstruction (56 million). This was greater than the annual greenhouse gas emissions generated by the Netherlands. The IGGAW report, drawing on a recent peer-reviewed study that calculated the social cost of carbon as $185 for every ton of greenhouse gas emissions, estimates that Russia should face a $32 billion climate reparations bill from its first 24 months of war.
Despite the groundbreaking nature of the report, overall, the climate consequences of war and preparations for war are poorly understood. Official reporting of military emissions is voluntary and data is extremely patchy or non-existent due to military secrecy. One study by Scientists for Global Responsibility and CEOBS in 2022 found that militaries account for almost 5.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions annually, which is more than the aviation and shipping industries combined. This makes the global military carbon footprint—even without including conflict-related emission surges—larger than that of all countries except the United States, China and India.
Clearly the Russia-Ukraine war is harming both Ukraine (and to a lesser extent Russia), but also our climate. While this ‘conflict carbon’ is sizeable and will be felt globally, it would likely grow substantially, perhaps catastrophically, were the war to spill over into a Russia-NATO conflict. However, none of this (nor the human cost of war) is factored into the thinking set out in the CSIS report.
If you want peace, prepare for war
The CSIS report says that a long-term conflict with Russia would inevitably expose gaps that will require allies “to spend more, boost industrial capacity, address critical capability gaps and bolster resilience”. It makes no reference, however, to how this increased demand for explosives, steel and other carbon-intensive materials will inevitably lead to more military emissions. It is not unusual, of course, to find a US think tank that receives considerable defence sector funding talking up a military threat and advocating for even more militarised responses. In the introduction, the report draws on a much-used Latin phrase, Si vis pacem, para bellum (‘if you want peace, prepare for war’), arguing that, as a “piece of timeless deterrence logic: preparing for war might be the best way of averting it”.
Dating back to Roman historian Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus in 4th century AD, this has become a common maxim in contemporary international affairs. In his recent speech at the US Army War College, for example, the Chair of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, reflected on the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings before outlining how NATO has responded to the war in Ukraine and the “Russia problem”. Towards the end of his address he reached for the same Latin phrase (and it was also the title of his earlier speech, appropriately enough for the Machiavelli Lecture in February 2023). Today, it is a view shared widely within security think tanks, NATO and even EU institutions, but we tend to call it by another name: ‘deterrence’. Within the context of great power rivalry, this theory also has a nuclear component, with some experts therefore stressing that ‘If you want peace, prepare for nuclear war’.
Despite the NATO Secretary General recently acknowledging that NATO is already “by far the strongest military force in the world”, representing “50% of the world’s military might”, this demand to further strengthen deterrence largely stems from growing concerns about real and perceived threats from Russia and China. The main response is to build what member states see as a countervailing military strength collectively within NATO. They fear that failure to do so would signal weakness and might only invite further aggression from Russia, and potentially embolden China to use military force against Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea.
Stronger deterrence is NATO’s default response since it is credited with avoiding a major East-West conflict during the Cold War. But a strategy of deterrence, and especially nuclear deterrence, is not without major risks—including the existential risk of nuclear war. Strengthening military preparations to deter an opponent may be read by the other side as preparations for the use of force and a serious threat to its own security. The opponent may respond by further building up its own capabilities or by carrying out pre-emptive military strikes. Russia has sought to justify its full-scale invasion of Ukraine partly on these terms.
The result has been the most dangerous and destructive war in Europe since 1945 and an expensive and destabilising arms race—one that has had a major impact on the climate, reinforced resentments, spread confrontation to other international fora, including the UN Security Council, and made resolution of underlying conflicts elsewhere even more difficult.
In short, this ‘peace through strength’ view has not brought peace: conflicts have increased both in number and scale in recent years. According to the latest Global Peace Index, over the last 15 years the world has become less peaceful, with peacefulness deteriorating in thirteen of the last fifteen years. Similarly, a review of conflict trends since 1946, found that in 2023, 59 state-based conflicts were recorded in 34 countries, the highest number of conflicts registered since 1946.
NATO’s existing military dominance has not upheld global order, nor will investing in more of it solve the myriad of global challenges that the member states will face in the years ahead – from climate change to rising inequalities. These are complex challenges that threaten public health, security and livelihoods, and will not be resolved by reaching for even more military tools, which have limited application and all too often, counterproductive impacts, including for the environment.
If you want peace, prepare for peace
Comparing such challenges, not least climate breakdown, with a major war may appear to be like measuring apples against oranges. When a military crisis boils over into war, it feels existential to those involved in the fight, and the last thing they worry about is the impact on planetary ecosystems. But at a time when the climate crisis presents a greater common threat than the specific threats triggering a particular war, the costs of distraction and failure to act make it essential that we expand our understanding of security to accommodate this plurality of existential risk.
The need for an alternative, systemic response to building peace is urgent: Si vis pacem, para pacem (‘If you want peace, prepare for peace’). This ‘strength-through-peace’ view does not deny the existence of armed conflict or the need for military tools. But it recognises that the threat and use of violence is not the only (and rarely the best) means of resolving conflict and generating peace. Diplomacy, cooperation and peacebuilding requires a diverse set of skills and tools that need to be identified and cultivated over time. It is also a view that elevates the individual (human security), over the state (national security), as the central source of peace.
When people are allowed to shape their own definitions of security—as was done in some recent innovative public opinion polling by Rethinking Security—they are much more likely to be concerned about their own wellbeing and socioeconomic conditions than about external threats and the protection nominally provided to them by the state. Building the conditions for peace requires investing in peace. As Martin Luther King said in his 1964 Nobel Lecture, “we must shift the arms race into a ‘peace race’”. This means giving diplomacy and conflict prevention and resolution the kind of political, financial and public support that preparations for war have received.
Regrettably, countries that have long been leaders in peacebuilding (most of them members of NATO) have made major cuts to their programmes in recent years. UK spending on civilian peacebuilding, conflict prevention and resolution fell by over $300 million (a cut of 64%) between 2016 and 2021, while the Swedish government, which provides significant core funding to many peacebuilding organisations, announced a 40% cut to its strategy for sustainable peace in 2023 despite the country’s economy growing 2.4% in 2022.
Here are just four ideas for moving the dial in the direction of preparing for peace.
First, instead of rushing towards a new nuclear arms race, existing plans to upgrade nuclear weapons need to be rethought. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in diplomacy to moderate and stabilise their competition, limit and reduce their nuclear forces, adopt transparency and confidence-building measures to avoid dangerous miscalculations. A similar effort is needed today. Negotiations to eliminate ICBMs, for example, may be the easiest and fastest way to reduce the overall danger of nuclear war, perhaps as part of mutual minimum deterrence strategies.
Second, NATO should look to collaborate with China to discuss the risks of artificial intelligence (AI) and the creation of some form of global AI governance. There has been some cooperation already between the US and China on this issue, but to avoid an ‘AI race’ with China, new collaborative approaches will need to be fostered.
Third, the urgency of the climate crisis makes it vital that the military emissions gap is plugged. NATO has already acknowledged that it needs to reduce its emissions and should support its member states to do so.
Finally, NATO member states could work together to support and shape the UN Secretary General’s ambitious, unifying ‘New Agenda for Peace’ at the United Nations. The report makes clear that peace will be built on sound principles such as justice, shared interests and sustainability, rather than preparing for war.
Dr Ian Davis is the founder of NATO Watch, a website platform to promote a more transparent and accountable NATO. He is also the Executive Editor of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Yearbook and an Associate Senior Fellow within Conflict and Peace at SIPRI. Prior to joining SIPRI, he held several senior positions, including Executive Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), 2001-2007.
The views and opinions expressed in posts on the Rethinking Security blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the network and its broader membership.
Image Credit: Deep State via Telegram. Smoke rises from a chemical plant in Niu-York, Donetsk oblast, Ukraine, after Russian shelling of the town, July 2024.
Thank you for this. It would make broad ‘sense’ in your context to refer to Mikhail Gorbachev’s “What Is At Stake Now: My Appeal for Peace and freedom”, 2020, just before his death. In his Part II he appeals that (his) “The Earth Charter”, be actively pursued in keeping with Maurice Strong’s “Green Cross International & Earth Council” initiative p44). With all good wishes Thomas Albert Fox,
Clearly both war and climate change are making insecurity for most worse. To the first of the four points made here for moving towards peace, the argument could be strengthened by linking the point about arms control and ICBM reduction to the emerging discussion about supply side climate change actions. Fossil fuel non-proliferation initiatives parallel cold war arms control efforts by preventing the production of dangerous things, warheads and oil wells. Both are forms of firepower, although the term isn’t widely used for fossil fuels, it is apt. My much delayed article making this case very briefly has finally appeared in the Canadian Military Journal special issue on climate change. http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/cmj-article-en-page42.html. I will happily follow up with a more detailed discussion.