The Climate General: Weighing the impact of climate change on security and how militaries should evolve

In June 2024, ESD got the chance to sit down with General (ret.) Thomas Antonius Middendorp, of the Royal Netherlands Armed Forces to discuss his thoughts on the links between climate change and security challenges, as well as the benefits to be gained by modern militaries through the adoption of ‘green’ technologies.

General Middendorp has witnessed first-hand the effects of and security risks posed by climate change during his time in uniform. Middendorp has previously served as the Dutch Chief of Defence for five and a half years, he commanded operations in Afghanistan and was responsible for the Dutch contribution to operations in, Bosnia, Iraq, Mali, North Macedonia, and Somalia. He now serves as Chairman of the International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS), and in December 2023, he also published a book titled, ‘The Climate General: Stepping up the fight’ to outline some of the key threats to security and stability posed by climate change.

In an interview with ESD, Middendorp explained how he first became aware of the links between climate change and security: “My first interaction with the issue of climate change was at the rank of Brigadier, when I became task force commander in the South of Afghanistan. Here, I led a multi-national task force, including some French troops, by the way, in the province of Uruzgan in the South. We had daily fights with the Taliban. At one moment we were involved in a very big fight around a district centre to free it from the Taliban. After several days we succeeded in doing that, but only to find out that the tensions in that village remained, and that the Taliban could return any moment. They used those tensions to create kind of a foot on the ground there. It took a while before we found out that water scarcity was the driver of those tensions – they’re all farmers, they need water. When we negotiated a solution to divide the water between the farmers and once that solution was accepted the tensions disappeared. The Taliban could not return and it became very quiet in that district. A year later, I could even walk through the main street of that village with our current King [Willem-Alexander] with limited protection, which showed the enormous turnarounds that happened there – and not because of the fighting, or not just because of the fighting, but because we identified and addressed the root cause. And the root cause had everything to do with a changing climate. For me, that was an eye-opener.”

As an aside, it is worth noting at this point that Afghanistan is no stranger to anthropogenic ecological impacts fuelling conflict. The cultivation of heroin in the country was itself a product of earlier human-caused changes to the local ecology, according to a 2002 article in the Journal of American History, titled ‘Damming Afghanistan: Modernization in a Buffer State’, by Nick Calluther. In 1946, Mohammad Zahir Shah, then King of Afghanistan, hired US firm Morrison Knudsen to construct a network of dams on the Arghandab and Helmand rivers, with the primary dams respectively completed in 1952 and 1953. However, as Calluther noted: “Large reservoirs raise the water table in the surrounding area, a problem worsened by extensive irrigation. Waterlogging itself can destroy harvests, but it produces more permanent damage, too. In waterlogged soils, capillary action pulls soluble salts and alkalies to the surface, leading to desertification.” According to Calluther, these changes to the local ecology were then exacerbated by other factors: “In 1957, floods nearly breached dams in two places, and water tables rose, salinating soils throughout the region. The reservoirs and large canals also lowered the water temperature, making plots that once held vineyards and orchards suitable only for growing grain.” These changes in the soil’s characteristics rendered it unsuitable for growing many types of crops, however, as Calluther pointed out, “[t]he opium poppy grows well in dry climates and in alkaline and saline soils.” This newfound suitability for growing opium poppies, along with their high market value per kilogram compared to other crops, then incentivised farmers to grow it. Opium subsequently became a widely-cultivated crop in southern Afghanistan, particularly in Helmand province, and at various points, served as a lucrative source of funding for the Taliban.

Through his formative experience in Afghanistan, Middendorp became aware of similar scarcity-based patterns cropping up in various other conflict zones, noting: “I have been involved in more than 20 different crisis areas, which gave me a better understanding of the root causes and the dynamics of conflicts and of different types of conflicts. And also here, I increasingly realised that climate change is a factor in driving that conflict. In Iraq, Daesh occupied the Mosul Dam and used water, access to water, as an instrument of power. In Somalia we were countering piracy, but only to find out that many of the pirates that we caught were just poor farmers, driven into the hands of piracy by the increasing droughts. In Mali the increasing droughts in the North fuelled tribal tensions and dissatisfaction, making people more susceptible to extremist influences. I realised that in many of these crisis areas we are addressing symptoms of a deeper problem, and that deeper problem is driven to a large extent, to an increasing extent, by a changing climate. Climate change is acting as a risk multiplier in fragile regions throughout Africa, the Middle East, and also South Asia (because of flooding and extreme weather). This directly affects local and regional stability and causes increasing migration flows and breeding grounds for organised crime and extremism.”

As these impacts became more apparent, Middendorp began to incorporate these into Dutch defence strategies, “When I became Chief of Defence I was also responsible for the design of our future forces. In that Defence review process, we recognised climate change as one of the drivers of change to our security environment. The US called it a ‘risk multiplier’, and I think we recognised the relevance of that. So it became a factor in designing our future strategies.”

However, as Middendorp stated, despite the very real security implications of a changing climate, it has been a challenge for militaries to recognise and respond to: “I also realised that this is a topic that has never been recognised by militaries. There have been many reports, and especially the US intelligence was the first, I think two decades ago, to publish reports on the nexus between the two, but within the defence communities the relevance of this was never really recognised. In all the NATO- and EU-meetings that I attended, the word ‘climate’ has not been mentioned once. I was the first active serving general within NATO to address this publicly, which attracted a lot of attention, to put it mildly. Especially in my own country, there was a lot of fuss, political debates, screaming headlines in the media and I went viral on social media. It gave me the nickname, ‘Climate General’. I decided to embrace that nickname as a title of honour and to dedicate my post-military life to this topic, because I was convinced that climate change might be the biggest challenge that we are facing on this planet, that will probably lead to much instability in the regions I mentioned before and can develop into a driver of conflicts around the world. This makes it very, very relevant also from a security perspective.”

By approaching the topic of climate change from a security perspective, Middendorp has found that many audiences can become more receptive to the topic, as the focus shifts toward its wider impacts beyond the purely ecological. As Middendorp explained, “I also realised that addressing climate change from a security perspective can help depoliticise the whole debate around climate change. Until recently climate change was mainly seen as an environmental issue for left-wing (green) parties and many people just don’t feel part of that and don’t want to recognise that. But when you show the relevance from the security impact side, then suddenly people start listening. People in the private sector, people in the public sector, people from more of the right-wing parties, they start listening and start realising that there is something at stake here. It’s not just environment – it’s also economics, it’s also security, it’s also societal resilience that is at stake. So it helps to broaden discussion and get it out of the political realm to create more momentum.”

Assessing the impact on militaries

In July 2024, the International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS), of which Gen Middendorp is Chairman, recently released their ‘World Climate and Security Report 2024’, which sought to investigate, among other things, how military research and development efforts could be used to enable emissions reduction while also improving the self-sufficiency of military units and facilities.

While many previous discussions of militaries ‘going green’ have focussed on the procurement and operational burdens imposed by the introduction of green technologies, the IMCCS report still places a strong emphasis on the importance of measures not diminishing mission effectiveness, noting that, “Investments, including the research investments upon which this report focuses, prioritize missions over emissions, though smart investments can address both without imposing a trade-off. In essence, the military must be able to “walk and chew gum at the same time,” when it comes to reducing climate risk and meeting mission requirements. Both are necessary. Furthermore, a longer-term look at mission requirements reveals that reducing climate impacts that may exacerbate future security risks is itself an important contribution to mission success.”

However, the report further points to the recent past and current physical impacts of climate change-driven extreme weather on overall force readiness. As examples of the damage extreme weather events can cause, the report notes: “Damage from the worst of these events has imposed billions of dollars of costs in addition to forcing personnel and missions to relocate. Within the United States, frequently cited examples are hurricane damage at Tyndall Air Force Base (AFB) in Florida and flood damage at Offutt AFB in Nebraska. More recent examples include the impact of Hurricane Sally on Pensacola Naval Air Station and Typhoon Mawar, which did more than 10 billion dollars of damage to military installations across Guam.”

Indeed, these incidents can prove costly – for instance, following Hurricane Michael hitting Tyndall AFB in 2018, according to Florida’s Senator (Rep) Marco Rubio, 31% of the base’s F-22 Raptor fleet (equating to some 17 airframes) were designated non-mission capable and could not be flown out of the base to avoid the hurricane and had to be left behind to face the storm. Although the US Air Force (USAF) did not confirmed how many were damaged and to what degree, post-incident reports have revealed that while no airframe was destroyed, a number did indeed suffer some damage, with an 8 May 2019 Lockheed Martin press release indicating that least four “sustained damage in multiple areas including coatings, doors, canopies, leading edge and engine inlet.”

The press release further noted that while the base’s Raptors appeared to have been largely fortunate and avoided major harm, the damage to the base’s building was more extensive, noting that “Tyndall’s flightline was decimated. Large roof sections were ripped from aircraft hangars and several buildings completely collapsed as sustained winds of up to 155 mph [249 km/h] pummelled the base. Hurricane Michael damaged 95 percent of the buildings at Tyndall.” The release further cited Brett Haswell, then director of F-22/F-16 Field and Depot Operations at Lockheed Martin, as stating that some 70% of the buildings would need to be bulldozed.

Going beyond immediate physical impacts, the IMCCS report notes that extreme weather events are also increasingly resulting in militaries being called in to respond to climate-related disasters occurring within their borders, with at least 250 such instances (a conservative estimate, as the report notes) identified since June 2022.

It would seem fairly evident that pulling military personnel away from their core tasks to fight disasters will put a strain on many militaries’ resources and readiness, as well as the possibility for disrupting training cycles or planned deployments. To better illustrate the latter point, one should consider the difficulties faced by small and mid-sized militaries to conduct effective training exercises, or to carry out an operational deployment, when a large portion of their logistics vehicles and/or aircraft are otherwise preoccupied with delivering disaster relief, or engineer units are being used to provide civilians with alternatives to flood or storm-damaged bridges. This is especially problematic considering that many militaries already have trouble with maintaining sufficient numbers of operationally-ready vehicles.

Global, regional, and local impacts

The multiple challenges brought by climate change can be understood at various different levels, from the global to the regional, to the local. Looking at the problem at the global level, Middendorp explained: “I think climate change should be seen in a wider context of increasing populations around the world. The world population is increasing to almost 11 billion people [by 2100]. It’s enormous. After that, it will go down, but we are facing an almost doubling of the world population within this century, which means a doubling demand for space, water, for food, for all kinds of goods. On the other side, we have increasing resource scarcity, as you mentioned. And climate change plays negative on both trends. Climate change reduces the liveable, usable space in the world, reduces the availability of resources like water and food, and negatively affects this growing global gap between demand and supply. We have a doubling demand and we have a dropping ability to meet that demand. And to me, that is the big challenge of this century – how are we going to sustain a growing world population in a way that we don’t end up fighting all kinds of conflicts?”

Regarding the regional level, Middendorp stated: “I just visited Somalia…and I saw deserted villages. There are farmers who have been living in those areas for centuries. They know how to deal with the heat, and they know how to deal with droughts. They’ve been living there for centuries, but they can’t live there anymore. Because the one certainty that they had is gone. And that one certainty was a rain season every year. During the last five years, they had two rain seasons, which means that they their cattle is dying and their farmlands become unusable. In the end they have no choice but to move away. So they move to the cities. They can’t find work in the cities, these cities become a kind of breeding grounds for all kinds of negative influences, like extremism and organised crime. The majority of this population is young, still minors. They lose the perspective of life in their home country and they lose the faith in their governments that are not able to solve those problems. This causes an increasing instability and many of them just want to flee away, become migrants in their regions or outside the regions towards other continents. And this is not just happening in Somalia, but also in many other countries in Northern Africa and the Middle East. Those are the indirect security effects of climate change and it is happening right at the borders of Europe. So for Europe, this is very, very crucial. We can expect a lot of instability around Europe that will affect us, that will bring all these negative effects to our streets, that will affect the supply chains to our industries and the offset markets of our products. So there is a big thing at stake here for Europe as well. And that’s the regional dimension.”

Rounding out the lowest level of the effects of climate change, Middendorp explained: “On the more local level we witness the impacts of natural disasters becoming more intense and frequent. We are confronted with larger periods of increasing droughts and shorter periods of more intense rainfalls. Our climate is becoming less moderate, which means that we need to adapt – we need to adapt our water management systems and our energy systems, which comes with a price and also has an economic dimension. This need for adaptation and mitigation also brings more social unrest in our in our countries with people protesting for or against climate-related policy-changes.”

What is to be done?

Given what is at stake, in recent years, there has been increasing interest in tackling climate change within military and security circles, as Middendorp explained: “I also realised that there are more people like me, military leaders who are concerned. So we raised this International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS), which now has experts, military and other security experts, from all over the world from more than 40 countries as a member. This network is much broader than NATO and EU. The interesting thing is that it combines the experiences from these experts with research. So we have a nucleus of four research institutes in France, in the US, and in the Netherlands. But around that, the whole research network is also developing with 26 other institutes that are affiliating themselves. So we have two networks now, an expert network and a research network, that reinforce each other, and that creates a lot more understanding and insights in the nexus between climate and security.”

Beyond purely military and security-focussed organisations, cooperation with civilian organisations can also help to expedite efforts to enact change on the military side. Europe already has a large ecosystem of cross-sectoral collaboration efforts, including various civil organisations, industry associations, and advocacy groups tackling the problem of climate change or related factors such as energy demand reduction, from the civil side. Examples at the European level include the Cool Heating Coalition, the Coalition for Energy Savings, Clean Heat Europe, along with various others. I asked Middendorp what in his opinion would be the best ways for organisations such as these to engage with the defence and security aspects of Europe’s energy transition.

Middendorp replied: “The key-word is co-operation. We can reinforce each other. Defence can be a test bed and a platform for innovation and the private sector can bring new technologies to the table that can help defence to become more self-sufficient. Institutions like NATO and EU can play a big role to connect the different worlds of defence and technology. These worlds are now often separated. For the EU, it’s important to create more synergy between functional areas and breach the functional stovepipes; different Commissioners run different functional programmes. These programs can reinforce each other if we create more unity of effort and overarching focus. More concretely, if we recognise climate change and increasing resource scarcity as main European challenges, then we need to identify overarching goals on these areas and mainstream that in the policy development in all functional areas. Climate goals can be integrated into goals of the European Defence Fund, for instance, and by integrating those goals into other programmes you create more synergy, and more collective strength.”

Pivoting back to the military side, Middendorp emphasised the operational benefits that embracing such technologies could provide: “A second one is on the military side; by understanding the need to participate in it and also the opportunities that it gives. Many military leaders don’t see the relevance of climate change for their work and they often experience new climate related policies as new obligations that draw away money from other necessary operational investments. It is important to look at new green technologies from an opportunity perspective. To operate in any area the Military needs huge logistics on fossil fuels and other supplies. Logistics is the biggest cost driver and also the biggest vulnerability of a mission, with long supply chains running through hazardous areas.
New ‘green’ technologies can help deployed units to reduce that logistical burden and become more autonomous. If you can produce and store your own energy, you can take away that vulnerable dependency and become more self-sufficient. Militaries around the world have always been the first to embrace new technologies and I think the military needs to embrace and look for the opportunities that new civil technologies on green energy bring us. It can help us become more autonomous, it can help us reduce the logistical footprint, it can even help to reduce the noise- and heat-signature of our units. There is a lot of potential benefit if we look at climate goals from a more operational perspective.”

Pushing for a clearer picture of the concrete steps which would realistically be acceptable right now to a modern military, I asked Middendorp about some of the current objections to militaries taking steps to decarbonise. These included the frequent lack of infrastructure in-theatre to support battery electric vehicle (BEV) fleets, along with the supply chain risks of new critical raw material dependencies on other countries to produce such vehicles, along with the seeming impossibility to make certain items ‘green’, such as rocket motors and explosives. Responding to this, Middendorp said:

“It is important to approach this very pragmatically. You cannot make a turnaround in one step, that’s impossible. You need the technology that doesn’t negatively affect operational readiness, you need the logistical support for it and you need to redesign your forces and the way they operate. In the past we went from the horse to steam, from steam to fossil fuels, and now we have to move to other new technologies. Such changes always come with resistance, so you have to do it smarty, by starting with proven technology that’s already out there, like the military real estate. Adapt your infrastructure in such a way that it is more climate resilient, that you’re not susceptible for flooding, or wildfires etc. and whether you create local smart energy hubs using existing civil technologies and proven concepts. If you look at the US, they are now establishing smart grids in all their military bases in the US, so they’re completely making that turn towards green energy in their military bases and that’s one big step. Existing green technologies can also be used in light military vehicles and unmanned systems without negatively affecting their operational effectiveness. For the more heavy equipment like tanks, naval vessels and fighter planes, these technologies aren’t developed far enough to replace current systems. On these areas, the military can start with using biofuels. This is also an area of cooperation with the private sector. Defence can be a testbed for the development of alternative propulsion systems, for instance future naval vessels. So there is an increasing range of possibilities where current technologies can be part of that solution, or where we can help find future solutions.”

However, some changes would simply take time, as Middendorp noted, “It is important to realise that we are at the beginning of a huge transition and that there is a lot of innovation underway. Within the EU we need ten years to make the shift towards electrification of our vehicles, and we need another five to ten years for our heavy trucking, and another five years for our shipping. So, also on the civil side you see a phased approach based on the speed of development of technology and I think the military can – and should – change in that same speed. They are not leading the energy transition, but should be a smart user and integrator of new civil technologies on that area, utilising the enormous amount of innovation that’s happening now in the civil side, but translating that – and that is the innovation that the military can bring – to the more mobile environment.”

Expounding his vision for what a more sustainable and ‘green’ military deployment could look like, Middendorp explained, “If you can produce your own drinking water in a mission area, you don’t need to transport millions of bottles of water. If you can print your spare parts there, you don’t need to transport thousands of containers with spare parts to mission areas. So you can create self-sufficiency of military units in many ways using the new technologies that are out there, and that’s the change that the military needs to adapt and accept.”

While advocating the adoption of green technologies by militaries, Middendorp had no illusions about the highly polluting nature of war as a practice, noting, “Of course, war is always a polluting effort, war involves a lot of destruction that you need to rebuild. Rebuilding Ukraine will cost an enormous amount of efforts, which also has a climate price, so yes, war per definition is destructive and per definition is a negative influence on climate goals. So the best thing we can do is prevent wars from happening, and when they happen, make them as short as possible. My concern is that because of climate change, we will see more wars and more conflicts, which only makes it more important to address this.”

Starting somewhere

Fully taking on board Gen Middendorp’s advice will seem a daunting prospect for many militaries, particularly in an era of stretched budgets, and deep concerns about Russia as a threat actor dominating European thinking in the defence and security sphere. However, it is important to recap the plethora of potential benefits to be gained by militaries if climate change mitigation measures are implemented, as noted by Gen Middendorp and the IMCSS report. These include:

• Decreasing the rise of scarcity-driven extremism and conflict abroad, thereby reducing the need for expeditionary counter-insurgency/counter-piracy operations, while also decreasing refugee flows.
• Decreasing the frequency with which militaries need to be deployed on disaster relief missions, either internally or abroad.
• Increasing the resilience of our economies and power infrastructure, as well as decreasing the exposure level of base infrastructure to natural disasters.
• Decreasing the degree of leverage held by hydrocarbon-exporting powers over our economies and foreign policy.
• Decreasing deployment costs, and consequently providing the budgetary headroom to reallocate these resources to other priority areas if needed.
• Decreasing logistical footprints, making deployment and sustainment in-theatre less reliant on external resupply. Not having to wait for spare parts to be shipped could greatly decrease repair and maintenance times, thereby improving platform availability rates and increasing the overall combat effectiveness of the force over time.
• Platform-level benefits such as decreased acoustic and thermal signatures, along with the capability to be recharged without depending on fuel resupply.

The steps taken should, however, ensure that they do not lead to a reduction in capability or combat effectiveness, as noted by Middendorp, “You need to introduce green technologies in such a way that it does not affect the effectiveness of military units but if possible even increases the military effectiveness, and that’s the balance we need to find.”

These changes will not be simple, they will require the integration of new technologies, as well as the implementation of new logistical systems, new supply chains for critical raw materials, new manufacturing processes, and not everything will be possible all at once. So while there will doubtless be challenges encountered along the way, the benefits on the table are hard to argue with, and small steps can be taken in the present. Perhaps the best advice in terms of getting started can be found in Middendorp’s maxim: “Think big, act small, start somewhere.”

Mark Cazalet