PETER LAYTON |

A month on from my earlier post on bringing the Australian Defence Force into the global warming fight, a lot has changed. Responding to the national bushfire catastrophe, the government has deployed more than 6,000 ADF personnel together with armoured vehicles, amphibious ships and transport aircraft. Even so, this is a stopgap measure. There remain the customary arguments opposing such ADF involvement, including that the ADF is solely a warfighting force and there’s no money.

Such issues hinge on a compelling strategic narrative. Robert Glasser is right in pointing out that we’re entering a new national security era in Australia. The problem is that global warming is wholly novel. There is no historical analogy to fall back on to give us cognitive assistance. However, we do know what it’s not: it is not a transnational criminal threat and neither is it a biohazard that governments everywhere cooperate on to defeat. It is, though, an almost totally externally generated threat and effectively forever.

Please click here to read the full “Keeping the Australian Defence Force in the climate-change fight” article published at The Strategist, written by Griffith Asia Institute Visiting Fellow, Dr Peter Layton.