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2022-08-31t203529z_1860405723_rc2h7w9w10bm_rtrmadp_3_pakistan-weather-floods-scaled

Climate change is a national security issue

The flooding in Pakistan is far more destructive than most conventional threats. It’s time for the world to take notice.

Analysis | Global Crises

For twenty years, the United States and its close allies have focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan largely due to the threat of terrorism. But the climate change show of force unleashed on Pakistan this August should raise alarms in capitals the world over. Its destructive power dwarfs the conventional threats that preoccupy world leaders. 

Immediate aid is a welcome first step. This week, the United States announced that it is providing $30,000,000 USD to Pakistan for flood relief —  still less than the $70 million pledged in 2010, but not insignificant. But this must be accompanied by serious structural reforms in the West and coordination with frontline countries most immediately impacted by climate change. If not, Washington is merely paying interest on a fast accruing climate time bomb. The effects of climate change on North America and Europe are noteworthy but not yet severe enough to wake us from our collective slumber on this issue. The horrors faced by the people of Pakistan should be our wake-up call.

Ideally, we should assist the people of Pakistan out of a sense of collective global responsibility for a climate change crisis that is largely driven by the world’s most industrialized nations. But if altruism and humanitarian incentives are not enough, then we should take action for our own security. 

Pakistan’s 2010 floods occurred in the backdrop of the U.S. surge in Afghanistan. This is important for two reasons: A large U.S. troop presence next door made the logistics of helping out easier, and Washington had an incentive to improve ties with Pakistan. But there are still many reasons for Washington to be concerned about the stability of Pakistan and other countries disproportionately impacted by climate change. The current floods in Pakistan have directly affected over 33 million people and that number is climbing. Tent cities have popped up along the sides of highways and entire communities have been erased from the map. This will have troubling long-term effects that extend for years to come. Crops were destroyed, which will assuredly increase food insecurity. Mass migration to urban centers will place increased stress on infrastructure already teetering on the edge. Extremists and non-state actors may capitalize on resentment felt by the displaced. As the worst effects of climate change become irreversible, these events will spread across the world.

The hard choices of what to do about climate change will always occur in the backdrop of seemingly high priority threats and goals. This is what makes climate change so dangerous. It requires collective and sustained global action — something that has historically been difficult to achieve. It is time that we accept that climate change presents an existential threat to life as we know it and is already here.


A flood victim wades through flood water, following rains and floods during the monsoon season in Bajara village, Sehwan, Pakistan, August 31, 2022. REUTERS/Yasir Rajput
Analysis | Global Crises
Daniel Noboa, Xi Jinping
Top photo credit: Beijing, China.- In the photos, Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) and his Ecuadorian counterpart, Daniel Noboa (left), during a meeting in the Great Hall of the People, the venue for the main protocol events of the Chinese government on June 26, 2025 (Isaac Castillo/Pool / Latin America News Agency via Reuters Connect)

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Latin America

Marco Rubio is visiting Mexico and Ecuador this week, his third visit as Secretary of State to Latin America.

While his sojourn in Mexico is likely to grab the most headlines given all the attention the Trump administration has devoted to immigration and Mexican drug cartels, the one to Ecuador is primarily designed to “counter malign extra continental actors,” according to a State Department press release.The reference appears to be China, an increasingly important trading and investment partner for Ecuador.

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Top image credit: Lucky-photographer via shutterstock.com

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While much of the focus will be on a showdown between Senate Democrats and Donald Trump, a subplot is brewing as the House and Senate, led by Republicans but supported by far too many Democrats, fight over how big the Pentagon’s budget should be. The House voted to give Trump his requested trillion dollar budget, while the Senate is demanding $22 billion more.

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Israel playing with fire in Yemen

Middle East

“The war has entered a new phase,” declared Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior official in Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, after Israeli jets streaked across the Arabian Peninsula to kill the group’s prime minister and a swathe of his cabinet in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a.

The senior official from Ansar Allah, the movement commonly known as the Houthis, was not wrong. The strike, which Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz promised was “just the beginning,” signaled a fundamental shift in the cartography of a two-year war of attrition between the region’s most technologically advanced military and its most resilient guerrilla force.

The retaliation was swift, if militarily ineffective: missiles launched towards Israel disintegrated over Saudi Arabia. Internally, a paranoid crackdown ensued on perceived spies. Houthi security forces stormed the offices of the World Food Programme and UNICEF, detaining at least 11 U.N. personnel in a sweep immediately condemned by the U.N. Secretary General.

The catalyst for this confrontation was the war in Gaza, unleashed by Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, which provided the Houthis with the ideological fuel and political opportunity to transform themselves. Seizing the mantle of Palestinian solidarity — a cause their leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, frames as a “sacrifice in the cause of God Almighty ” — they graduated from a menacing regional actor into a global disruptor, launching missiles toward Israel just weeks after Hamas’s attacks and holding one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes hostage.

The chessboard was dangerously rearranged in May, when the Trump administration, eager for an off-ramp from a costly and ineffective air campaign, brokered a surprise truce with the Houthis. Mediated by Oman, the deal was simple: the U.S. would stop bombing Houthi targets, and the Houthis would stop attacking American ships. President Trump, in his characteristic style, claimed the Houthis had “capitulated” while also praising their “bravery.”

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