Browsing by Author "Verklan, Christopher"

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    Rethinking Grand Strategy for an Era of Climate Change
    (2024-01-15) Verklan, Christopher; Huebert, Robert Neil; Huebert, Robert Neil; Ferris, John Robert; Terriff, Terry Richard
    The strategic security environment has changed drastically over the last decade, with the passing of the American unipolar moment leading to the beginnings of a new era of strategic inter-state competition. However, unlike past eras of competition, this iteration will see states compete within an increasingly destabilized climate system because of climate change. This thesis explores how the impacts of climate change will shape the upcoming era of competition, focusing on its effects on grand strategy, given the latter’s important role as a ‘bridge’ that links the means and ways of a state to its ends. In particular, the central question addressed by this thesis is as follows: Do the observed global environmental changes because of climate change necessitate the broadening of the geographic understanding of grand strategy? This thesis argues that climate change has and will continue to impact the conduct of strategy in the future. It also argues that climate change must be explicitly incorporated into modern understandings of grand strategy given its ability to undermine the economic underpinnings of states that enable the pursuit of their goals in a feasible and sustainable manner. In making this argument, this thesis develops a conceptual framework linking climate change through to the implementation of grand strategy, using the case of the 2022 Pakistani floods as a demonstrative case study to show how climate change can generate significant impacts on the grand strategies of states.