Climate Change and Military Power: Hunting for Submarines in the Warming Ocean

Will climate change have direct effects on military power, capabilities, effectiveness, and force employment? Will it strengthen some countries and weaken others? These are pressing policy questions that speak to important debates in the social sciences, such as over the impact of environmental factors on the international distribution of military power.1 Yet, despite the growing attention to climate change in the field of international relations, and the enduring debates about its implications for international security, scholars have paid little attention to how climate change directly affects military power and military operations. This neglect is particularly relevant when we consider that climatic and meteorological events have played an important role in international and military affairs, such as by contributing to the collapse of the Roman Empire, the defeat of the Spanish “Invincible Armada,” or the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.2 In this paper, we address these questions by investigating the effects of climate change on the oceans, and in particular on how sound travels underwater, thus contributing to the academic and public debate about the future of submarine warfare. As we show, climate change is going to affect the ability of submarines to hide from detection, with significant implications for military operations, military technology, and international security.

Submarines exploit the ocean to hide from enemy sensors such as human sight, infrared cameras, and radar systems, which makes them a very effective military platform. This is why submarines represent a particularly credible nuclear deterrent (in the form of ballistic-missile submarines), as well as a serious threat to military and civilian ships, because they can provide coastal defense, interdict strategic lines of communications, impose a naval blockade, and more generally threaten an adversary’s fleet. American naval power, for instance, is a function, at least in part, of the advanced anti-submarine warfare capabilities of the U.S. Navy. American anti-submarine warfare capabilities significantly degrade the effectiveness of one of the most serious threats for any navy: enemy submarines.3

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