Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map
If melting ice animates environmentalists, it also galvanizes the thoughts of geostrategists such as Paskal. The prospect of a navigable Northwest Passage is one of many specific effects of climate change that she discusses in this provocative overview of the future of international politics. Rising sea levels and shifting precipitation patterns also auger implications that Paskal elucidates with sardonic readability. Her wry asides lighten a serious forecast that rough political weather portends. China and the U.S. will contest control of the Pacific Ocean; India and China will vie for the watershed of the Himalayas; and Russia will capitalize on foreign covetousness for its vast resources. Paskal’s survey covers the elementary security situation of each of the great powers; assesses the adaptability of each one’s government to climatic alteration; and outlines their general strategy. In this way China’s interest in Pacific microstates becomes clear and—to American strategists paying attention to China’s brand of nationalistic capitalism—worrying. By extending contemporary anxiety about the climate’s future to traditional worry about international security, Paskal taps into two disparate audiences. --Gilbert Taylor