DOD creates new Arctic Center

The Defense Department announced today the creation of a new DOD center to focus on issues related to the Arctic. All reporting DOD

The Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies will be the sixth such regional center for the department, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a briefing today at the Pentagon.

“The Ted Stevens Center will provide a new venue to collaborate across the U.S. government and with our allies and partners to advance shared interests for a peaceful and prosperous Arctic,” Kirby said. “Defense Department regional centers are international academic venues for bilateral and multilateral research, communication and training, with the goal of building strong, sustainable, international networks of security leaders.”

The center’s focus will support U.S. Interim National Security Strategic Guidance and will work with partner nations to ensure that a stable, rules-based order in the Arctic will benefit the United States and all Arctic nations, including Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States.

Like existing Defense Department Regional Centers, the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies will fall under the oversight and management of the undersecretary of defense for policy.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said the center will facilitate close partnerships between the U.S. and Arctic nations with shared values.

“The center will support the U.S. Interim National Security Strategic Guidance direction to work with like-minded partners and across the interagency to pool our collective strength and advance shared interests,” Austin said. “It will address the need for U.S. engagement and international cooperation to strengthen the rules-based order in the region and tackle shared challenges such as climate change.”

Other regional centers include the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany; the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii; as well as the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, and the Near East-South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, all three of which are in Washington D.C.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has said there is little that the department does that isn’t impacted by climate change. The President’s Fiscal 2022 Defense Budget Request reflects that reality. Spotlight: FY 2022 Defense Budget

Droughts, wildfires, sea level rise, increasing numbers of destructive storms and more are concerns for DOD. “If you think about what generates missions, we know that extreme weather events … are affecting conditions on the ground in lots of places around the world,” Joe Bryan, DOD’s senior climate advisor, said.

The Defense Department must take climate change under consideration in forming strategy, conducting operations and buying equipment and capabilities. In one of his first executive orders, President Joe Biden said climate change will be a fundamental part of national security planning. 

From Africa to the Middle East to Central America, the impacts of climate change are already being felt, Bryan said. Climate events can affect millions of people and challenge the abilities of local governments to respond. Mass movements in the Americas, across the Mediterranean, in the Horn of Africa, and in other areas are contributing to instability. Bryan said such movements can feed criminal and terrorist networks that find displaced people either to exploit and abuse or recruit.

Bryan said climate change is also a factor in relationships between the U.S. and its near-peer competitors. Changes in the Arctic, sea level changes in the South China Sea and temperature changes in the oceans create new challenges for the U.S., allies and partners to face, Bryan said. 

“Climate change is also driving new areas of geopolitical competition, such as in the Arctic. We are being asked to meet this expanded mission set even while climate change impedes our training and readiness. Climate-induced extreme weather is already a major drain on our budget. Every dollar that we spend addressing the effects of climate change is a dollar that we are not putting toward other priorities, like meeting the challenge posed by China and modernizing our forces,” deputy defense secretary Kathleen Hicks said. 

Right now, no location has been chosen for the new arctic center.