Defense Focus: Warming wars – Part 1

Global warming already is changing the way global wars are going to be fought — and the weapons they are going to be fought with.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States, as the global hyperpower, has set the fashion for military establishments around the world. The tradition of American war-making has always been high-tech, at least back to President Abraham Lincoln’s enthusiasm for every form of new technology during the Civil War.


…But the now well-documented phenomenon of global climate change has transformed all these calculations. Combined with continuing global population growth, especially in the developing world, climate changes have made much of sub-Saharan Africa unsustainable for the scale of population it supports. Prosperous nations and regions like the European Union, the United States and Saudi Arabia are now forced to deal with enormous influxes of illegal immigrants every year. The United States and Saudi Arabia, in particular, have reacted to this by strengthening their border barriers and defenses. But having effective borders requires lots of soldiers to man them.

UPI