2 - Creating Cold War Climates: The Laboratories of American Globalism

Summary

Since any aspect of environment (in its widest sense) may be significant to military activities, the designer of equipment, as well as the military planner and operator, must consider all the implications of man-machine-environment interrelationships if the full potential of military power is to be realized.

– Southwest Asia: Environment and Its Relationship to Military Activities (1959)

On coming into the Arctic a man from a warm climate must learn a new set of templates for processing the routine data of living. If he has previously learned to learn – that is, to commit himself to the environment and to act with it, rather than fearing-fighting it – the transition period is rapid.

– David McK. Rioch, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, 1960

THE NATURE OF WAR

In an October 2005 New York Times op-ed titled “Next: A War against Nature,” the well-traveled correspondent and commentator Robert Kaplan, famous for his coming-anarchy thesis of the 1990s, argued that “[the] rest of the world and even quite a few Americans are uncomfortable with the globe-trotting United States military. But in future years they will see much more of it. The causes will be more related to the natural environment than to terrorism.” He went on to describe the United States military as “the world's most effective relief organization,” having recently dispensed aid in Pakistan and the Philippines.