Tracing the Preconditions for Specific Discourses

This section sheds light on the historical, cultural and institutional preconditions that enabled the specific securitisation of climate change and its political consequences in the US. Exploring the context provides insights into the questions why certain discourses (and specific variants of

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them) have emerged in the first place at a given point in time as well as why they resonated so well in the US political debate. The contextual preconditions in the US mostly fall into two separate though closely related categories. Firstly, I elaborate on broader underlying characteristics that serve as a relatively stable context in the US case and that have not changed much over the period of investigation. Secondly, I discuss less stable factors that have contributed to the changes over time in the discursive representation of climate change.

US National Security Culture

A first relatively stable precondition concerns the specific history and political culture of the US when it comes to questions of security, defence and foreign policy. According to large parts of the public and political actors, the US stood on the right side of history in many of its wars (the struggle for independence from Great Britain, WWI and II, the Cold War, the first Iraq War etc.). Together with its origins as a nation of settlers who escaped problematic political circumstances in Europe, this has fuelled a discourse of exceptionalism according to which the US is constructed as a ‘shining city upon the hill’, as the indispensable nation and ‘chosen country’ that ensures order and peace around the world (Kutz 2011; Koschut 2011: 31). Based on this narrative, many people have an overly positive opinion of the defence sector, the military and about questions of national security. Talking about issues of national security, about the self-interest of the US and the direct projection of its political and military power to advance its righteous goals is a normal political position and does not spark much resistance (Sperling 2010: 174; Dalby 1990).

This stands in stark contrast to for example Germany, where such questions are much more delicate because of its troubled history of abusing political and military power in the past (Wagner 2008; Kirchner and Sperling 2010; Harnisch and Wolf 2010). Moreover, questions of national security have been a central factor in the construction of the US identity in general (Bialasiewicz et al. 2007; Campbell 1992). Lacking a homogenous people and long-reaching common ancestry, patriotism and political unity especially in times of crisis have been a recurring element in the US (Kutz 2011: 43). Thus, ‘rallying around the flag’ and supporting the troops against a dangerous ‘other’ have always played an important role in constituting US identity and to distinguish the domestic from the outside (Campbell 1992: 3; Sperling 2010:

174). They represent a crucial cornerstone that holds together the country as a nation, but which has to be renewed constantly (Campbell 1992: 13) often with reference to broad ‘discourses of danger’ (Campbell 1992: 57), such as the Cold War, islamist terrorism or even, at least to a

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certain extent, environmental security and climate change (Floyd 2010: 65). Consequently, the sovereign discourse has resonated well in the country and the invocation of climate change as threat to national security has been a powerful tool to overcome ideological and partisan differences and to increase attention for the issue.

The Role of the Military

Closely connected, actors in the defence and security sector, such as think tanks focusing on security policy, but especially the armed forces themselves have a remarkably favourable reputation in the US today (Gallup 2014; Sperling 2010: 173). Many perceive the military as positive, pragmatic and neutral actor that stands above the political turf wars in Washington DC or as the sole voice of reason that only problematises the issues that really matter, or in this case, defines ‘real threats’. Consequently, the opinion of the military or retired military personnel carries a huge weight and thus was a crucial component in generating attention for the sovereign climate security discourse from 2007 on. Moreover, even though it is supposed to be neutral, the military and the defence sector take a much more active role in political debates then in other countries (Rid 2011: 113). While active military officials have to be careful not to take sides in partisan debates, they do participate in political debates if they think something could represent a national security threat or directly affect the military (Interview 2014j). Beyond that, retired military personnel are less restraint to express their opinion and even in retirement their voice carries a lot of weight (Rid 2011: 114), as illustrated by the impact of the two MAB-CNA reports and other discursive interventions of former military officials.

Aside from questions of reputation and political influence, the US military – as largest military in the world (Sperling 2010: 172, 197) – plays a much more active role on the domestic and global level compared to other countries (Rid 2011: 107). As the world’s most powerful military with hundreds of bases and naval unites around the globe (D'Efilippo and Ball 2013), the US armed forces perceive themselves as one the most important forces for global order and beyond that are often the first actors that are able to react in situations of crisis (Interview 2014t;

Sperling 2010: 172, 197). Be it humanitarian aid after extreme weather events, such as in the case of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 or the cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008 (Interview 2014t), or robust interventions in countries destabilised by the predicted ‘resource wars’ to come. Thus, it is a widely shared belief amongst US politician and the general public that the military can play an important role in resolving crises all around the globe (Rid 2011:

112). Accordingly, the US military is well aware that they will have to deal with the effects of

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climate change in one way or another and therefore have a pronounced self-interest to plan ahead for these situations (Interview 2014r, 2014o; US Navy 2009). Moreover, the military – for instance the Army Corps of Engineers (2015) and the National Guard – plays a vital role in the domestic disaster response and reconstruction efforts. One fairly recent example is the National Guard’s involvement in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in 2005 with the deployment of over 50,000 troops (US National Guard 2015), even though it also attracted criticism as excessive militarisation and victimisation of affected citizens and thus exemplified the problems securitising natural disasters (Tierney et al. 2006; Giroux 2006; Masquelier 2006). Thus, it is understandable that the armed forces play a much more active role in the US climate security debates than in other countries and that hence the sovereign discourse and especially the focus on security and defence policy found such a resonance in the country.

The Institutional Setup

Another stable precondition is the specific institutional setup of the US political system. On the one hand, the presidential system gives the President as commander in chief a considerable degree of freedom in foreign and defence policy (Oldopp 2014: 59). This reinforces sovereign power tendencies and certainly contributes to the political value of designating something as issue of national security (Interview 2014o). On the other hand, lacking an automatic parliamentary majority, the President and his political party have much less direct influence when it comes to domestic politics and to ratifying binding international commitments. Thus, getting climate legislation through Congress can be a tiresome task (Oldopp 2014: 62). Even a majority of the own party does not guarantee success due to the fact that members of Congress first of all must answer to their local constituency, which weakens party discipline considerably (Braml 2011: 123). This situation can give incentive to govern issues through executive orders and regulations – as has happened under Obama in relation to the Clean Air Act and EPA regulations –, but also to approach them by integrating them into the planning processes of the governmental agencies over which one wields some control such as the DOD and the intelligence agencies. Beyond that, the armed forces themselves had an incentive to construct climate change as a threat to US national security to be able to integrate the issue into their planning and to spend money on it (Interview 2014o).

A further peculiarity is the de facto two party system that follows from the majority vote electoral law (Gellner and Kleiber 2012: 142). This often leaves less room for political compromises and contributes to the polarisation of certain issues such as climate change

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(Gellner and Kleiber 2012: 171). It certainly contributed to the widespread polarisation between Republicans and Democrats concerning climate change, especially from the mid-1990s on (McCright and Dunlap 2011: 156; Grundmann and Scott 2014: 233). This was further fuelled by the Clinton/Gore administration’s aggressive campaigning for environmental regulation, which rendered environmental and climate issues as distinctly liberal (Falkner 2005; McCright and Dunlap 2011; Interview 2014t). Thus, appealing to the unifying qualities of national security was one of the few options to overcome the seemingly unbridgeable divide between the two camps concerning climate change.

Perceptions of Nature

The last fairly stable precondition of the US is also connected to its specific historical experience, namely its origins as a nation of settlers and explorers who in their drive west had to fight for their survival in an untamed and unhospitable environment (Merchant 2007;

Steinberg 2013). In contrast to the crowded European countries and especially to Germany, the US always was and still is a very sparsely populated country in which nature often can be dangerous and intimidating rather than something that is scarce and has to be protected (Ulbert 1997: 22). Although there have been conservation movements in the opposite direction and the US once was leading concerning environmental regulation, this specific experience still is engrained in the collective memory and has given pure environmentalist discourses that want to save and preserve nature as such a hard time (Isenberg 2017; Turner 2009). Nature, hence, is primarily conceptualised as something that has to be tamed and made useful for the benefit of humans and their economic development (Ulbert 1997: 22–23). These cultural factors explain to a certain extent why discourses (and actors pursuing them) that frame climate change primarily as environmental issue were not able to generate widespread support in the country.

Foreign Policy Between Interventionism and Isolationism

Besides these relatively stable characteristics, there are several contextual factors that have changed over the study period and to a certain extent help to understand the changes in the dominant climate security discourses. A first factor concerns the US-American tradition to oscillate between phases of isolationism and interventionism concerning its foreign policy and overall dedication to international regimes (Cox and Stokes 2012; Roskin 1974; Koschut 2011:

33). This also applies to its climate policies and the commitment to the international negotiation process (Harris 2000a, 2001, 2009). While the US was highly involved during the founding

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days of the IPCC and UNFCCC, the concern for the international dimension of climate change and international solutions decreased considerably towards the end of the 1990s. The specific focus and argumentation of Congressional debates underlines this observation. Thus, the US climate security debate in the 2000s was much more focused on the US itself and less influenced by international or intergovernmental actors than in other countries. Towards the end of the second Obama administration, this changed again to a certain extent and made possible several bilateral arrangements on climate change with China and the approval of the Paris Agreement in 2015. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the subsequent announcement to drop out of the Paris Agreement in 2017 as well as to delete climate change from the NSS (Borger 2017) again point into the opposite direction.

The Value of Different Forms of Knowledgeand the Role of Think Tanks

During the beginning of the study period in the 1990s, politicians regularly referred to scientific findings (e.g. from the National Academy of Sciences, later the IPCC or the NOAA) on climate change to justify their securitising articulations in Congressional debates. This contributed to the prevalence of more cautions risk-based discourses at that time. Hence climate change was often depicted as an important though still distant environmental problem (see Oels 2011: 21–

22). Some actors such as Gore kept pursuing this line of argumentation during the 2000s, however, they increasingly had problems to convince the relevant audiences. The reason was that lobbyists sceptical of climate change and several Republican politicians had successfully linked scientific findings to liberal, left-wing and environmentalist positions (Eshelman 2014).

Thus, many conservatives perceived an argumentation based on scientific findings not as apolitical and neutral expert information, but as clearly aligned with a specific political position.

This anti-scientific sentiment grew even stronger in the 2000s with the formation of the tea party movement. Ultimately, it culminated in the ‘post factual’ or ‘post truth’ age of the 2016 Presidential election and the subsequent behaviour of the Trump administration (Pazzanese 2016), which in the end led to the abandonment of the Paris Agreement in June 2017. In connection with the tradition of the US-American media for ‘balanced’ reporting – which often culminates in giving mainstream positions and fairly obscure climate sceptical theories an equal amount of coverage – this considerably devalued scientific findings in the political debate (Eshelman 2014).

At the same time, and partly as a result of this development, think tanks specialised in security policy and associated forms of knowledge – and thus engaging in the more popular

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national security discourse – began to fill the gap. They replaced the findings of climate science or at least got into the mediator position and ‘translated’ these findings into a more appealing political language. This development laid the ground for the success of the sovereign discourse from the mid-2000s on. It also helps to understand the For one thing, these organisations and their arguments were too close to climate science and actors such as Gore and hence increasingly perceived as partisan actors from the liberal, left-wing spectrum. Apart from that, lacking any background or credibility in security and defence policy they could not provide the at that time ‘correct’ kind of knowledge. Consequently, they could not have participated in the climate security debate without hurting the argumentative strategy that tried to overcome the polarisation by securitising climate change as threat to the national security of the US (Interview 2014m, 2014g).

Finally, the success of the sovereign discourse in the 2000s was closely linked to the specific role of the mentioned think tanks in the US political system, which clearly distinguishes this case from my other two country cases (McGann 2007; Braml 2011: 117). Due to the high value of questions of national security, but also less strictly organised political parties, these security policy focused think tanks are very well networked to political circles and exert a considerable degree of influence (Abelson 2006, 2010; Interview 2014u). This applies especially to more or less non-partisan think tanks such as CNA, CSIS, the Council on Foreign Relations, CCS, the Wilson Centre and the Brookings Foundation, which are citable for government agencies. It even more so relates to those that have a security clearance thus carry our classified work for the government, for instance CNA or RAND (Interview 2014u).

Politicians currently not working in the government often stay a few years in one of these think tanks to stay connected and to later take on a position in government again after the next elections (Interview 2014u, 2014h; Braml 2011: 117). Moreover, these think tanks often carry out the development of certain policies for politicians who – as isolated political entrepreneurs – do not have the time to dig into a topic in this depth (Braml 2011: 123). At the same time, they can provide cover for politicians that come out with a new policy by organising media coverage and support for the proposal (Interview 2014g; Braml 2011: 123). This very active and important role of political think tanks, especially concerning security and defence policy, is not as common in Germany and Mexico (see Gellner 1995).

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