Constructing the Obama Doctrine: How to Assess and Address Global Warming

Special Guest Essay written by Tarun Galagali of Dartmouth College

There is no doubt that the Obama administration has inherited a considerable number of important and urgent foreign policy challenges, ranging from dealing with a potentially nuclear Iran to preparing for China’s unprecedented economic growth rate. But in constructing a foreign policy agenda of its own, the Obama administration should be careful to avoid making the same mistakes of administrations past. Primarily, it cannot afford to disregard climate change as a speculative issue for future generations to deal with. In writing this paper, I hope to prove that global warming is the greatest foreign policy concern for the administration and that bolstering international institutions is the best strategy for addressing it. In the first part of this paper, I will present the issue of climate and change and introduce four weighing standards that synergistically prove why it is in fact the most important issue. In the second part of this paper, I will explain that the Obama administration should ultimately chose a neoliberal framework for thought since working with international institutions seems to be the most effective and most appropriate way of addressing an issue like global warming.
At a time when only 49%[1] of Americans believe that there is a global environmental crisis to address, there are a few fundamental questions that require an honest and clear answer. The first, what exactly is the greenhouse effect and to what extent is it natural? The second, what about it makes it more important than any other harm? Absent a sufficient answer to these questions, warranting why the United States has a unique responsibility in dealing with this crisis will prove to be very difficult.
The greenhouse effect is indeed a natural process that allows the Earth to experience warmer temperatures. Certain gasses that leave the Earth trap heat and re-emitting it back to the Earth’s surface. There is nothing inherently troubling about this effect; rather, a natural sense of warming is necessary for human beings to maintain their way of life. The problem, otherwise known as global warming, occurs when there is an excess of such gasses in the atmosphere.[2]
The implications of an unrestricted rise in temperature are of paramount concern for four reasons: (1) its severe magnitude, (2) its irreversibility, (3) its indefinite time frame, and (4) its global scope. The magnitude, or the effects of global climate range from “sea level rise, coastal flooding, and extensive glacial deterioration to droughts, heat waves, and desertification,”[3] and all of them are manifesting themselves in our world today. According to scientists at Yale and Columbia, these effects are only expected to “grow in severity”[4] meaning that the harm will only continue to escalate. This is especially true for global warming because warming operates within a positive feedback system, meaning once a cycle is initiated, we risk the possibility of “going over the edge,” in which case, “we will transition to an environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity, and there will be no return.”[5] This point of no return implies that human beings cannot undo the effects of the harm that are being done upon them.
Unlike war or religious and cultural differences, global warming transcends political, subjective, and cultural boundaries; first, it is inherently scientific. That is not to say that there aren’t politicizations of it or that all climate scientists are always truthful. Rather, that is to say that the majority of climate science is objective and devoid of special interests. After all, how much could special interest groups gain from reducing greenhouse gas emissions? But second, and most importantly global warming is not an issue that is discriminate or unique to one group of people; rather, greenhouse gasses have an “impact on global change irrespective of where they are emitted” meaning that cooperation and efforts “must occur at an international level with broad participation.”[6] Rarely, if ever, has there been an issue that affects every nation-state and every civilization. It is indeed the combination of the four factors: the magnitude, the irreversibility, the time frame, and the global scope that warrant primary delegation. But identifying why this problem is important is only the first part of the problem; the second part of the problem is that there still remains the question of which political framework the United States ought to adopt in addressing this issue. For such an inherently international issue, the neo-liberalist doctrine would make most sense.
A neoliberal framework would promote the role of institutions in addressing global warming. Institutions can “provide information, reduce transaction costs, make commitments more credible, establish focal points for coordination, and in general facilitate the operation of reciprocity.”[7] Two of the main existing problems of international cooperation on climate change including the difficulty of getting states to cooperate and the difficulty of ensuring that they don’t cheat[8] could be solved back, or at the very least, minimized by the presence of institutions. Institutions, especially those that are bolstered by the strong presence the United States, could set collective goals, create economic pressures and incentives for lowering GHG emissions, and ultimately crystallize the efforts of the world to fight off a common aggressor: itself.
While the results might not be immediate, the neo-liberalist solution is the best, given the choices or the lack thereof. Similar to the ways in which the WTO has managed to facilitate world trade by reducing tariffs, it is quite possible that an institution perhaps even rooted from the IPCC or supported by the United Nations could facilitate how much carbon dioxide is being emitted into the atmosphere. This issue does indeed carry a great deal of import, and working together multilaterally through an organized system seems to be the most natural and logical solution to the issue. Indeed, the best political systems, and the best political doctrines seem to be ones that govern not merely with good hindsight, but with good foresight. If the Obama administration listens to scientists, works with other nation, it just might deliver the change it promised.

Bibliography:
1. Suzanne Goldenberg, Most Americans Don’t Believe Humans Responsible for Climate Change, July 9, 2009,
2. Class Lecture: February 18th, 2010
3. Yale University and Columbia University, “2008 Environmental Performance Index,” 2008, p.3
4. James E Hanson, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies “Tipping point: Perspective of a Scientist,” 2008, p.3
5. United Nations News Centre, “Evidence is now ‘unequivocal’ that humans are causing global warming – UN Report,” February 2nd 2007, p.1
6. Yale University and Columbia University, “2008 Environmental Performance Index,” 2008, p.3
7. Hans Morgenthau, “Political Power, A Realist Theory of International Politics,” in Vasquez, Classics of International Relations, p.26
8. Gregg Easterbrook, The Atlantic: April 2007 Issue, p.4
9. Class, February 2nd, 2010
10. Robert Keohane and Lisa Martin, “The Promise of Institutionalist Theory,” International Security, Summer 1995, p. 4
11. Class, February 18th, 2010