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6.1 Energy and Climate Security
General Charles Wald
I have been interested in national security from an energy
standpoint since 1990, when I was at the National War College. As
you may recall, we had just gone into Iraq for the first time. The big
discussion for all of us colonels was, “What are the implications of
the Iraq War going to be for the United States?” When you really
General Charles Wald, Director and Senior Advisor to the Aerospace &
Defense Industry for Deloitte LLP, is responsible for providing senior
leadership in strategy and relationships with defense contractors and
Department of Defense (DoD) program executives. He is a subjectmatter specialist in weapons procurement and deployment; counterterrorism; and national, energy, and international security policy. Prior to
joining Deloitte, General Wald was the Vice President of International
Programs for L-3 Communications Corporation, based in Washington,
DC. Previously, as Deputy Commander of U.S. European Command
(USEUCOM), a position he held from 2002 until his retirement from
the U.S. Air Force in July 2006, he was responsible for all U.S. forces
operating across 91 countries in Europe, Africa, Russia, parts of Asia, the
Middle East, and most of the Atlantic Ocean. Prior to that, he served as
the U.S. Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations
at the Pentagon. With over 35 years of service, General Wald was a
command pilot with more than 3600 flying hours, and 430 combat
hours. As the Supported Commander, he led the coalition air campaign
in Operation Enduring Freedom, leading to the extraction of Taliban
forces in Afghanistan. General Wald has received major military awards
and decorations, including the Defense Distinguished Service Medal,
the Defense Superior Service Medal, and the Distinguished Flying
Cross. He is a graduate of North Dakota State University and received
a master’s degree in international relations from Troy University. He
has also completed coursework at Harvard University and the National
War College. General Wald has been awarded an honorary doctor of
laws degree from North Dakota State University.
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thought about it, you had to ask yourself, “Why were we there in
the first place?” Although you can have all of the opinions you
want, oil was clearly one of the reasons.
In 1978, President Carter announced the Carter Doctrine,
which held as one of its tenets that U.S. national security interests
required that we protect the free flow of oil from the Middle East
with military force, if necessary, against any adversary. Since 1978,
that doctrine has been in place.
About 2 months ago, I testified with President Carter before
the Foreign Relations Committee. It was the first time that a president, or former president, had testified before the Foreign Relations
Committee in 30 years. Interestingly, he reiterated his Carter
Doctrine. Well, where have we been since 1978? For those of
you who are in the Navy, you know full well that the Fifth Fleet
has been in the Persian Gulf or the North Arabian Sea, whichever
name you prefer, since that time protecting, among other things,
the free flow of oil.
There have been studies done over the years that say we are
spending $50 to $60 billion a year just to maintain a military presence in the Persian Gulf, without taking into account the substantial costs for either the first or second Iraq wars. Although one
might reasonably argue that not all of those costs were incurred
because of energy, I am certain that we would not be spending
$50 to $60 billion year if energy were not in the picture.
Of course, one of the things we are doing in the Middle East
is supporting Israel. We are going to do as much as we can within
reason to protect the strategic partnership that we have with that
nation. But after that, there is oil. If it were not for oil, I think we
would probably be defending Israel from the Mediterranean rather
than the Arabian Sea. So you go down this path to 1990, when we
were in Iraq and it seemed the United States was the sole protector
of the lines of communication around the world, particularly for
energy. I used to say that the world expects to dial 1-800-US-NAVY
and that the Navy will show up and ensure the free flow of oil.
There are clearly costs associated with this expectation.
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Now, let’s fast forward to a period closer to today. When I was
at the U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) in 2003, Secretary
Rumsfeld asked the combatant commanders to review the strategic
reasons underlying the way that our forces were postured. At the
time, European Command was under particular scrutiny because
we still had 115,000 U.S. personnel on active duty in Europe. A
reasonable person might ask what was the purpose for 115,000
U.S. military forces in Europe in 2003, including Navy, Marines, Air
Force, and Army, as well as Special Operations forces.
So, under the leadership of General Jim Jones, who was the
commander then, we went through the process. Along the way,
we discovered that we had not reviewed our strategic reasons for
being in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. We still
had war plans on the books that addressed the Soviet Union and
the Warsaw Pact. We did not know what the new world was going
to be like and we could not predict that. So we went through the
review and found that there were reasons for being in Europe.
One of those reasons is that virtual presence is actual absence.
If you are not in place operating with people, making relationships,
your influence wanes very rapidly. Of course, we are very interested and continue to be the leader of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO).
A second reason for being in Europe is that threats were emerging, threats that we had not really addressed very well either internationally or from the U.S. perspective. On September 11, 2001,
we received a wake-up call to which all of us can relate. A terrorist with a weapon of mass destruction is the biggest threat in the
world today.
As it turns out, Europe faces several other emerging threats. For
one, it is very vulnerable to energy disruption. So we started going
through other possibilities: immigration, illegal drugs, and pandemics; the avian flu pandemic is a big thing in Europe, as was severe
acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
So, it became clear that we still have reasons for being in
Europe, the Navy in particular. Nothing has really changed for the
Navy from the standpoint of ensuring the lines of communication
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around the world, 80% of which is covered by water. This concept
is pretty simple to understand. So, ensuring global lines of communication is still a requirement of the Navy.
A somewhat more difficult issue to address is identification of
the conventional threat we face. I would argue today that there
is probably not a near-peer threat to the United States. Now the
problem in military planning is, first, that we are always conservative and, second, it takes a long time to get where you want to
go, so you must plan ahead. So I would say you have to hedge a
little bit on the conventional side, and you have to address new
threats on the nonconventional side, perhaps at the lower end of
the spectrum. And energy security is one of those issues for the
United States.
As Dr. Filadelfo mentioned, in 2007 the Center for Naval
Analyses started to look at different ways of viewing threats in the
world. One of the threats of concern was disruption in the supply
of oil. As we have seen, disruptions eventually lead to substantial
increases in price. Changes in price mean a lot to DoD because it
uses a lot of petroleum. In fact, for every $10 per barrel increase
in fuel cost, DoD’s overall operating costs increase by $1 billion.
Thus, when the cost of oil went from $35 a barrel up to $147
a barrel in 2008, DoD’s annual operating budget increased by
$11 billion.
I will admit that in my new position, I do not get a lot of sympathy when I discuss DoD funding. Yet, the fact of the matter is
that there is a certain amount of discretionary funding. Absorbing
an increase of that size is very difficult for any organization. It certainly wakes you up to the fact that we are vulnerable to disruption
in supply.
Climate change is another area of concern. Although wellintentioned people are still arguing about various aspects of
the science, I happen to believe there is a problem. It does not
matter if that is the case or not, but from a military perspective,
military people look at things not from just 100% or a zero or
black or white; there is gray in there, believe it or not. You would
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certainly do well to address a 50/50 problem that could end up in
catastrophic failure of some sort.
So we have started going down that path. In the CNA study, we
started out with 18 or 20 retired flag officers, all fairly high ranking. [1] Military people happen to be a little bit skeptical, generally. This skepticism is probably a healthy thing. We also realized,
however, that we were not scientists. We have not worked at The
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL),
although there are probably a few in the Navy who have worked at
JHU/APL or in other labs. We did not really know the science, but
we were curious, we could study, and we could listen to briefings.
So, we received briefings and presentations from various people.
Still, our going-in position was, let’s not try to pretend we are scientists and we are the authoritative voice on this. Let’s go into this
from a military standpoint and a planning standpoint and see what
we can come up with.
So, if you take a look at my perspective as a military person
at the time, I was very concerned for the United States from an
energy standpoint. Not just from the standpoint of climate, which
is valid, or say just pure economics, but from a catastrophic disruption of some sort (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Climate Change as a National Security Risk
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In fact, from a national security perspective, I have come to
regard energy disruption as an existential threat to the United States.
Avoiding such disruption is a compelling reason for decreasing our
dependency on places such as the Middle East (Figure 2). In addition, we need to look at the climate implications of using fossil
fuels. In the end, it does not matter whether you are the greenest
environmental activist in the world, the biggest hawk in the world
who cares only about the security of America, or just a pure Adam
Smith economist who cares only about the economy. In this case,
all perspectives intersect. No matter what angle you take on why
we should solve this problem, reducing our demand for foreign oil
provides obvious benefits.
So, we went through this process of rationalizing why we were
going to do the study. I think General Gordon Sullivan said it better
than anyone else. Here, I paraphrase: When military officers start
planning, they need to look at solution sets based not only on
what is 100% certain to happen, but also on the worst thing that
could happen. When you look at the future climate effects that
Figure 2. U.S. Dependence on Foreign Oil
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scientists have predicted, you see that some have truly catastrophic
implications. We have a responsibility to our children to hedge
against the worst case.
So, we started looking at the world again, with all its geopolitical and economic interconnections. Along the way, we thought
about eventualities that would never have bothered us before. We
looked, for example, at the potential for a bird flu pandemic starting in Russia and Asia and then sweeping across Europe and then
down into Africa. It would be catastrophic.
But why should we care about that? Well, first of all we care
about human beings. Second, who usually responds in catastrophic events? I guarantee it is the Navy and the Air Force, Army,
and Marines. Who responded after the catastrophic earthquake in
Haiti? The U.S. military responded. We are glad we can do that.
And by the way, it is interesting that this happened during a period
in which people are saying that the U.S. military is stretched so thin
we cannot go any further. We went into Haiti without blinking an
eye. I think this will always be the case. So we need to be prepared
for the climate effects that may come down the road.
In 1996, Mozambique was struck by two nearly simultaneous
typhoons that ended up flooding the whole country. Think about
it. Mozambique is a large country. The only organization that could
respond rapidly was the U.S. military. Within a very short period of
time, our forces rescued some 250,000 people. We must be able
to do that more and more in the future.
There are currently some 6.5 billion people in the world. The
number continues to grow. By 2015, India will have passed China
to become the most populous country in the world. By 2045, the
Earth’s population is expected to grow to 9 billion; that means
2.5 billion more people to feed.
Although China and India have laid different paths to where they
are going, both have the ultimate goal of raising around 600 million people out of poverty by 2030—600 million each, which is
1.2 billion, into the middle class. That is four times the population of the United States. Just think about the impending resource
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competition, whether for food, water, or energy. China today owns
or has access to 90% of the rare earth minerals in the world.
I see a trend here that is not very good for our country. We
need to start looking at how we put ourselves in a more competitive position. One of the ways to make the United States more
competitive, in my estimation one of the huge ways to do this, is to
do something about energy.
As we well know, other types of climate-related problems
plague Africa. We have all heard about the human tragedy occurring in Darfur. Let’s take a quick look at the problem, using a map
of Africa (Figure 3). Darfur is part of the Sudan, and Sudan alone
is as large as the United States east of the Mississippi. The Darfur
region is as large as Texas. There are 7000 United Nations (UN)
troops in that area. By way of contrast, there are 55,000 police in
New York. So, we should not expect that the UN troops are doing
much in Darfur. The conflict there is not over who should be in
charge, but it is over access to arable land. The Black Africans are
farmers; the Arabic Africans in the same area are herders. They
were fighting over land. Climatologists tell us that we are going to
have more of that.
Figure 3. The Case of Darfur
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As it turns out, Sudan is interesting from another perspective
as well. It seems that China is interested in Sudan. Why, you might
ask? The answer is oil. China has made substantial investments in
Sudan for oil. China is also considering working with Saudi Arabia’s
Bin Laden family to build a bridge across the Red Sea. They are
also going to build a city in Yemen and one in Djibouti. Overall,
they expect to spend $200 billion in the region. Their plans have
been delayed by the world recession, but they are still expected to
happen. Why are they doing all this? China takes the competition
for resources very seriously.
Let’s take a quick look at water. You know, one of the ultimate
ironies to me is that although 80% of the world is covered by water
we are hurting for water now. I think one of the big breakthroughs
in the world will be whether we make desalinization more affordable. One possibility for providing the necessary power is the
fusion reactor that they are working on at the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory. If it works, it has the potential to change the
way we live. The basic idea is to use lasers to compress deuterium
molecules into tritium and then use the neutrons that come out to
heat a sleeve of molten salt. The heated salt is used to turn water
into steam that can then be used to power an electrical generator.
The process would be self-sustaining, would have very little waste,
and would be relatively low cost. It is projected that it would cost
about $4 billion to build a plant that would provide the electrical
energy required for a city the size of San Francisco.
Still, $4 billion is not chump change, although it is less than the
$10 to $12 billion required today to build a new nuclear reaction
that relies on fission. So it is reasonably affordable. We could use
this type of capability to make clean water, although perhaps only
in the United States or the Arab Emirates or other places that can
afford it. In places that have far fewer resources, such as Africa, we
will need to look for other ways to provide clean water.
A few months ago, I attended a Marine Corps symposium and
in the process learned that, by 2025, the majority of the world’s
population will live in the littorals, along the coastlines of the world.
Many of those people will live in massive cities with populations
as large as 40 million. And many of those 40 million people will
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live in slums. Those of you who have been to Lagos, Nigeria, have
some idea of what these places might look like. Imagine 40 million
people living in a city, many of them in destitute poverty, not a lot
of hope for young people growing up. As we well know, this is a
very good recipe for extremism. We should expect that we will see
more of that as the norm.
So, as we did our study for CNA, we soon reached the conclusion that climate change and energy are actually threat multipliers that will increase the severity of our future problems. Issues
related to demographics, human migrations, and competition for
resources are going to cause more and more volatility. And like
it or not, we are not going to be able to identify just a selective
few crises that are strategically important to the United States. The
world is increasingly interconnected. A significant crisis anywhere
eventually affects all of us (Figure 4).
My experience has been that we respond to virtually every crisis
that occurs. We responded in a major way after the Indonesian
tsunami. We responded after the earthquakes in Pakistan, Turkey,
and Morocco. The latter case actually provides an interesting perspective. When the earthquake occurred in Morocco, one of our
Air National Guard units that is matched up with the Moroccan Air
Force was able to respond almost immediately. They flew over in
Figure 4. Interrelation of Challenges Related to
National Security
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their KC-135 tankers to start helping with humanitarian aid before
the U.S. government gave them approval. Although the ambassador did not like it too much, that is how DoD reacts, and we will
continue to react to those types of things in the future. To those
who argue that we need to be more selective in what we do and
where we go, all I can say is it is not going to happen.
Okay, so what should DoD do about addressing the climate
and energy concerns? We think it is an urgent threat. One of
the things I hope will happen is that Ms. Sharon Burke, the new
Director of Operational Energy Plans and Programs in the Office
of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), will be able to pull together the
Air Force, the Marines, the Army, the Navy, and maybe even the
Department of Energy, to develop a true joint approach to DoD’s
energy problem. Although I like the Navy’s approach, there is no
reason the Air Force, the Navy, and everybody else should not do
this as a group. I think it is urgent and we need to do something
about it now.
Although I love free markets, I do not think we have time for
the free markets to fix this one alone. I think we are going to need
a little nudge from maybe the military’s ability to do some research
and development, help set the market, and see what happens
from there.
So again, we see that the combination of geopolitical considerations, climate change, and economics has placed us in a vulnerable position, I think, as a military.
Energy is playing a part in our decision making regarding Iran
and underlies a lot of what we have done in recent years in the
Middle East. It weakens our leverage. If Iran did not have any
energy, it would be in a tougher spot. Energy is why the Chinese
are not with us on sanctions; China wants to get energy from Iran
and the Middle East. Energy concerns entangle us with hostile
regimes. Now, if you look at who owns the world’s petroleum
reserves, the 10 largest are nationally owned. Number 11 is Exxon.
Exxon had the largest single profit in the world during the third
quarter of 2008, $25 billion.
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Now I do not begrudge that, I am just telling you they are the
11th largest holder of petroleum reserves in the world. All of the
other large reserves are nationally owned, which means, for those
who believe in free markets, the free market is not the Organization
of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), I guarantee you.
FedEx is committed to shifting over to biomass, probably something such as algae, by 2025. So is Virgin Airways, by the way. That
is a big commitment. Those are market indicators that I think will
start helping us quite a bit.
But in 2008 when oil went up to $4 a gallon, which seems
to be some trigger for some reason, the result was an additional
expense of about $3500 per family. For those who were right on
the edge as far as qualifying for home loans, $3500 is about what
they would need to make it. Now that is not why we have an economic problem, but what triggered it was energy cost. The Venn
diagram (Figure 4) has a real sweet spot in it, and although you can
argue all you want, it is time to get on with it.
Fortunately, there are a lot of potential solutions; I will describe
just a couple. An oil pipeline was being built from Kazakhstan to
deliver some 1.5 million barrels of petroleum a day. The United
States strongly supported this from a strategic standpoint. In fact,
the USEUCOM commander at the time was tasked with helping
set up protocols to ensure that the pipeline was adequately protected. At that point, the United States had put in $350 million to
make sure the countries that owned that resource had the capacity
to protect it. Although we can argue about whether this investment
is in our strategic interest, it is worth noting that no one else was
out there.
We went out to Azerbaijan to talk to the British Petroleum personnel who were running the consortium. They were leading a
$20 billion program to build this 1700-mile pipeline. After listening
to their presentation, I asked the project director, “Why do you
think a four-star general is out here getting this briefing from you?”
He said, “That is a good question.” So I asked him a rhetorical
question: “You are a British company. Has anybody from the U.K.
military been here? No? How about NATO? No? Okay, the United
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States is here. You know why? Because we are putting $350 million into protecting the pipeline.” From that time on, whenever I
visited I could not get enough attention.
The reason I am telling you this story is that the United States
is doing this again and we have to get off this kind of cycle. As
another example, let’s look at what is going on along the west
coast of Africa where we have helped set up the Gulf of Guinea
initiative. Fifteen countries are along the west coast of Africa talking about the $100 billion U.S. investment to extract oil from
the area.
Although we have known for some time that substantial oil was
there, we have begun to extract it only recently. In the past, we
did not have the technology to drill deep enough to reach the oil.
It turns out that you need to go down to depths of roughly 25,000
feet. The oil companies have now developed the technologies to
do that. The problem is there is no protection there for the drill rigs
or the pipelines.
Figure 5 shows several photographs from Nigeria that put into
perspective why there are so many problems out there. This is
the enemy for the Nigerian Navy. The Nigerian Navy has nothing
like that; of course, they would not want it. The right-hand side of
Figure 5 depicts what is called the Militia for the Emancipation of
the Niger Delta. Nigeria is a huge country, with 166 million people.
It is the fourth most populous nation in the world, half Muslim, half
Figure 5. The Case of Nigeria
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Christian. All the oil is in the southern half, all in the delta in very,
very complex fingers of water. It is tough to get the oil out, and
you’ve got these pipelines all over.
The way the Nigerian government works is that the central
government, which is now in Abuja in the central part of the country, collects the revenue and then distributes it to the states. And
when they distribute it to the states, the constitution of Nigeria says
that the governor of the state does not have to be accountable for
where it goes. So where do you think it goes other than right into
his pocket?
So this money goes to the central government, not back to the
south. The people in the south, who are living as shown in the
right-hand side of Figure 5, end up not getting any of the money.
So they basically became Robin Hood. They started tapping into
these pipelines.
In 2003 when oil was $35 a barrel, the cartel was tapping in
for about $3 to $4 billion a year. At $147 a barrel, you do the math.
They went from being Robin Hood and giving money back to the
people, to simply being “robbers” and keeping it. Now they are
out there kidnapping and attacking drilling rigs and storage bunkers. Where is the security? This is what we are depending on right
here—a lot of instability.
The Marines gave me the picture shown in Figure 6. It is one
of my favorite pictures from the last couple of years. The photo
depicts the Khyber Pass going into Afghanistan. I was at the Khyber
Pass, ironically, 7 days before 9/11 and I was getting a briefing from
the Pakistanis. We had just taken sanctions off Pakistan for detonating a nuclear weapon some years previously and they were allowing U.S. military people to start going back in. I was lucky enough
to be one of the first ones. While I was there, I said that I wanted
to go up to the Khyber Pass; it is a historical spot. They agreed to
take me there.
So we flew from Islamabad to Peshawar, got into a Russian
ZIL limousine with trucks filled with soldiers in front and back.
When we reached the pass, we received a briefing presentation
from a Pakistani colonel. A general officer was there as well; they
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were all very proper because they had been trained by the Brits,
bless their hearts. And at the end of this presentation, this guy is
flipping over the butcher paper, which is a typically British way to
brief, which I love. The last slide the guy flips over says Attila the
Hun, Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, the British Empire,
the Russians all lost. And the message is, do not ever come here.
Where are we now?
Well, one of the problems in Afghanistan is the logistics. There
are two ways to get into Afghanistan on the ground. They are
working on more, but for now there are just two main roads. One
goes through the Khyber Pass. You see fuel trucks all interspersed
in here. The Marines told me that 80% of the tonnage that has to
be carried to the battlefield in Afghanistan is liquid, either fuel or
water. It is an interesting coincidence that 80% of the casualties
are caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and attacks on
convoys; many of these are civilian convoys, but many are not.
They had an article in the paper 2 days ago stating that the
number of IEDs in Afghanistan has doubled in the last year and the
number of casualties has quadrupled. Now that is a bad combination. And so the Commandant of the Marine Corps has told Colonel
Bob Charette, the Marine Corps Director of Expeditionary Energy,
Figure 6. The Khyber Pass
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that his job is to do whatever he can do today to reduce the requirement to get fuel out there and, by doing so, save some Marines.
The Marines recently conducted an industry day at Quantico
to talk about commercial off-the-shelf technology that could be
used to reduce the demand for fuel. Improving energy efficiency
is fairly easy for fixed installations. We know how to do that; it
is just a matter of will. In the case of expeditionary forces, it is
much more difficult. But there are good reasons for doing so. We
have talked about the cost, but we should also consider the sheer
complexity of the task, especially in a place like Afghanistan. The
terrain in Afghanistan, for those who have not been there, is just
unbelievable. It is the worst in the world. The existing infrastructure
is very poor. As a result, it is very difficult to get around.
As was mentioned, one of the major uses of energy in
Afghanistan is powering electrical generators. It gets hot in
Afghanistan, and it gets awfully cold in the winter, by the way. So,
you need to have cooling and sometimes you need to have heat;
both require a lot of energy. The Marines are doing some creative
things now, such as spraying insulation on their tents to improve
energy efficiency. Over the long term, we need to be a lot better
at making sure that we have the capacity to go out and fight and
sustain ourselves in more energy-efficient ways.
The Marines or soldiers on the ground, it does not matter
which, carry about 100 pounds of weight on the field. Amazingly,
10 pounds of that weight is made up of batteries. Almost every soldier or marine has a radio, everyone has to be able to download a
Predator video, power his or her night vision goggles, you name it.
All of these devices require a lot of power. So there is an imperative to do something in the near term to provide portable power for
our expeditionary forces.
But the real muscle mover for the DoD is providing fuel for
combat aircraft, ships, tanks, and other vehicles. You need an
energy source that can give you lots of power in a relatively small
volume. It is quite probable that the only thing that is going to do
that is something like fossil fuel. The task of finding acceptable
alternatives should be an imperative.
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So I think the U.S. solution will be to electrify a major fraction of our vehicle fleet. I participated in a study called Securing
America’s Future Energy, which, among other things, recommended that we jumpstart electrifying the U.S. vehicle fleet. [2]
The majority of the fuel that we use in the United States is used
for transportation, and 70% of that is basically oil-based fossil fuel.
That is not a very good thing.
If we say to ourselves, let’s just change over to battery vehicles.
The technology is there; you can plug it in. I went out and drove a
Tesla in California the other day. It had been plugged into a regular
110-V outlet on the showroom floor. We unplugged and I got in
the car, went out on the road, and accelerated from 0 to 60 miles
per hour in 5.6 seconds. It is impressive—all battery. It is kind of
expensive, but by 2011 Tesla Motors is going to have a sedan that
costs $50,000 and goes 500 miles on a single charge. It will carry
five people and will go from 0 to 60 in 5.8 seconds. That will probably work. And it can plug into a 110-V or 220-V outlet. I think we
need to go down that road in a very fast way.
The electrical grid is a key component of our critical infrastructure. To reduce the vulnerability of the grid and improve its efficiency, we need to make it “smart” (Figure 7). Our study showed
Figure 7. A Smart Grid Is Necessary
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that, by 2050, we could go to about 75% electrical vehicles and
save 75% of the fossil fuel we use today.
For those of you who ask why we do not we just do it tomorrow, the answer is we have 250 million cars in America. That is an
amazing number. It is equally amazing, I think, that we have 1200
vehicles for every 1000 drivers. Every time I look outside, I notice
that there are cars and gas stations all over the place. I do not know
how many gas stations exist in the United States, but sometimes it
seems like there are at least a billion. It is clear that moving to alternate energy sources will be a big shift. And studies show that if we
were directed to shift to electrical vehicles if they were available
today, it would take us 10 years just to swap out the fleet.
There are four vehicles per 1000 eligible drivers in China. In
India, lots of new $2500 cars are being built. The idea was to build
a car that was comparable in price to the cost of the mopeds that
Indians currently use for transportation. Within the next few years,
Tata hopes to be able to sell 2 million little cars every year. They
will all have combustion engines that emit greenhouse gases. So,
the cars will be adding more CO2 to the atmosphere.
It has been mentioned that fuel costs a lot of money. Delivering
fuel to the most remote forward operating bases in Afghanistan
really costs a lot of money because you not only have to buy
the fuel and ship it to Pakistan, but you then must deliver it into
Afghanistan and protect it along the way. When you finally add it
all up, you think, “Criminy, we’ve got to do something about this.”
One of my concerns today is that I’m not sure that we are
moving out rapidly enough to beat the race for the climate problem. The national security advisor in Germany told me a couple
of years ago that the only way Europe can ever make a decision is
in crisis. I am not sure that is not the way we are looking at it, too.
But if we wait too long, there may be no hope of recovery. That is
not a good way.
So I personally think the DoD needs to be a catalyst with private
industry by sending market signals to enable us to start going down
the path in a more rapid way. We are also likely to need some new
regulations. Those who remember the chlorofluorocarbon (CFC)
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issue from several years ago will recall that, once we learned what
they were doing to the ozone layer, we took the CFCs out of our
refrigerators and out of our air conditioners. That was a good thing,
but there was a regulation that said you had to do that. So, we may
require similar regulations now.
I am very heartened that the DoD is finally going to have a
Director of Operational Energy. That is something that has been
needed for years. And, I have to applaud the Navy. I think the Navy
is way ahead because, first of all, their leadership is committed. As
we’ve heard, Secretary Mabus and Rear Admiral Cullom are committed. The Navy has assigned some sharp people to look at this
problem. But all of the Services should be looking for efficiencies.
So the bottom line is, the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR)
actually said what our report said, that this is a problem and we’ve
got to do something about it (Figure 8). [3] One of the things that
we think needs to be done is better planning, which is happening. We also need to reduce the burden imposed by DoD. We
need the military to be more aware. When the Secretary of the
Navy says we are going to reduce our carbon emissions by 50%
Figure 8. QDR Climate and Energy Recommendations
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by 2020, that probably gets people’s attention because you know
you are probably going to be graded on that.
When reducing energy consumption means something to
commanders in the field, it is going to make a difference. We need
to get on with this as rapidly as we can. Although there is no single
solution—a silver bullet as it were—there are a large number of
partial solutions that we need to consider.
What we are going to need to do is use every bit of energy we
possibly can to make electricity. We will need to make the electric
grid more robust. We will need to transfer ourselves off fossil fuel
as much as we can through efficiencies and through use of alternative fuels.
So, I hope I have made it clear that we need to get started
down this road. Today the United States consumes approximately
21 or 22 million barrels of oil per day. As we have heard, U.S.
consumption amounts to one fourth of the petroleum consumed
worldwide. That is pretty amazing when you think about it. We
have only 5% of the world’s population, but we use 25% of the
world’s petroleum.
If the economy starts going the way it is predicted to go, and
it probably will, by 2025 we will need 27 million barrels of oil a
day—5 million barrels more than we use today. Even if we succeed
in finding alternative sources to replace as much as 5 million barrels of oil, we will still be at the same point we are today. We will
still require 22 million barrels of oil. And even if we drill offshore or
in the Arctic, we will be able to satisfy only a relatively small part of
that demand. If we look at other types of fuels or energy sources,
we discover that only about 1.7% of our energy comes from alternatives. So we have a lot to do to get to where we want to be. Still,
we’ve got to get there.
References
1. Military Advisory Board, National Security and the Threat of
Climate Change, Alexandria, Virginia: CNA, 2007, http://
securityandclimate.cna.org/report/.
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2. Energy Security Leadership Council, A National Strategy for
Energy Security: Recommendations to the Nation on Reducing
U.S. Oil Dependence, Sep 2008, http://www.secureenergy.
org/sites/default/files/936_A_National_Strategy_for_Energy_
Security.pdf.
3. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report,
Feb 2010, http://www.defense.gov/qdr/.
Q&
A
with Gener al Charles Wald
heard a lot about how our energy posture is a serious
Q: We’ve
and urgent threat and how we have operational energy and
installation energy issues. But I sense that we are doing a lot of things
around the margins. What I have not heard a lot about is how we use the
Joint Requirements Process to actually get things that are energy efficient
or improve our energy posture.
For example, Marine Corps installations are typically funded
through the the Marine Corps’ Military Construction (MILCON) funding line, which means that we have a hard time going back and retrofitting previously existing budgetary items to make our buildings more
energy efficient. When we look at our acquisition process, we get things
like the tanker that does not use the fully burdened cost of fuel; we get the
Littoral Combat Ship, which is probably going to be the most fuel intensive ship the Navy has in some time. So what role do you think the Joint
Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) or the Joint Urgent Operational
Needs process can play to help us solve our problems?
General Charles Wald: I sat on the JROC often. I think it is a
great concept and I really admire the leadership that we have in
the military today, both in the services and in the Joint Staff. I do
not think the JROC does much. I’m sorry. They should; they are the
ones that should be doing this. They should be making it an issue.
Every time you go down this path, we are going to have this—it is
going to be energy efficient, it is going to make a difference, and,
by the way, it is going to be Machiavellian, those that compete with
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good systems that can do the combat mission. Remember that—
we still need to do the mission. If that did not matter, we would just
throw away half our ships and airplanes and do something else.
But, frankly, I fully agree with you. I think the JROC should have
more teeth; I really do. Basically, it is a matter of leadership and
will and if the OSD guys want to give the JROC more power, then
they should do that.
very much appreciate your describing climate change as a
Q: Inational
security issue. My concern is that our national secu-
rity structure under the 1947 National Security Act is antiquated. In
my civilian job, I am in the reserve component; I work for the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). I participated in
trying to get the Department of Commerce and NOAA to respond to the
Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, and now I am living the same frustrations in Haiti. How do you get the whole of government to respond? You
talked about Darfur, and, in my view, the Department of Agriculture
is essentially playing a national security role there. But our laws, our
structures, our appropriations and authorizing structures really are not
responsive or structured to deal with these nonmilitary-type missions.
Could you perhaps comment on that?
General Charles Wald: I think from the broad perspective that
is probably in the context of what we need to address. For those
of you who are going to have another career after the military, it
is kind of fun because you get involved in things that I would consider important and probably could make a difference. So some of
the studies I am involved with are talking about stabilizing fragile
states, the reorganization of the national security apparatus to better respond to growing threats.
General Jim Jones, for those who know him, believes that we
need to have a different approach to national security issues, one
that involves the whole of government. You are now seeing this in
the QDR. We talked about this in European Command, maybe not
in the same exact terms, but about how do you use all the tools
of government to address issues? I was on the Hill yesterday talking about this with several senators and congressmen, and they
all kind of get it. Today, of course, we are doing this mostly in
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the context of post-crisis reconstruction given our ongoing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We need to do better; people are often critical of the State
Department—they do not have the responsive team they need,
they do not have enough people who can go work in foreign countries. Finding people to staff such positions is going to be difficult, I
agree, but we also need to do it up front. In my view, there are two
ways to look at this—there is post-crisis response, which is cumbersome and expedient and not efficient.
We had the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)
and the European Command do a study for us that aimed to tell us
what benefit we get for a dollar of prevention if we, for example,
build a partnership, stabilize the fragile states, invest in infrastructure and better governance, build a place where an economy can
actually grow versus simply responding. [1] And the reason we initially looked at it is that if you look at UN Peacekeeping missions
around the world—at that time there were some 16 or 17 missions—13 of them were in Africa.
The way I look at it is when a crisis occurs and you finally
respond, you are invariably a little late. It is cumbersome to get
where you need to go, but you send 7000 troops to Darfur, let’s
say. And then they stay there forever, and the costs mount up, and
all you are really doing is keeping people from killing each other;
you are not fixing anything. That is a bad business case. By the
way, the United States pays 27% of all the UN costs. We pay 27%
of NATO costs, too. These are costs that mean something.
The question we should be addressing is: How do we prevent such situations from occurring in the first place? We need to
be able to stabilize fragile states, a task that requires the whole of
government. Today we rely heavily on our combatant commanders. As a result, they are some of the most influential individuals in the world today. When the combatant command (COCOM)
commander goes out to a country in his area of responsibility, he
invariably gets to meet with the national leader. When that leader
says, “What do you think, what should we do?” the COCOM commander gets to say, ”I think we should do this.” Although I love our
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ambassadors, they are often unable to meet with the host-nation
leadership with the same frequency.
I do not think that is the way it should be. We do not need
Roman pro counsels out there; we need U.S. government representatives. Why don’t we have a senior ambassador who can do
the same thing, for example, and have power and then use all our
tools in a better way? We need to start thinking in those terms. We
are talking about it; the QDR has addressed it significantly from
the standpoint of building partnerships, relationships, and stabilizing fragile states, all of the things that we have talked about before.
I think we are going to get there.
I think the U.S. military’s senior leadership is about as enlightened as you can get, frankly. The Hill has huge respect for the U.S.
military leadership, and the military leadership today is saying we
want more government–U.S. civilian involvement in decisions. We
want more civilian leadership out there. We need to start getting
preventative. For every dollar spent on prevention, you save $10 in
reaction. There is a business case to be made.
So I gave that speech to the parliamentarians in the European
Union one day. When we were having lunch afterwards, one of the
parliamentarians said, “Hey, General Wald, you know, that business case about $1 per $10, that is a good one, I like that. The
problem is I cannot sell it. With prevention, nothing happens. So,
my people will not buy it. It is a leadership issue.”
References
1. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Combating Terrorism:
Actions Needed To Enhance Implementation of Trans-Sahara
Counterterrorism Partnership, July 2008, http://www.gao.gov/
new.items/d08860.pdf.