CFR Luncheon Discussion at ISA: Strategic Frontiers in U.S. Foreign Policy: Arctic, Climate, and Space

The CFR luncheon event held in conjunction with the International Studies Association featured a discussion on Strategic Frontiers in U.S. Foreign Policy: Arctic, Climate, and Space on Monday, March 23, in Columbus.

The conversation featured Nina M. Armagno, retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Space Force and cochair of the CFR Task Force on Securing Space; Todd Eisenstadt, professor and research director of the Center for Environmental Policy at American University; and Kathryn C. Lavelle, the Ellen and Dixon Long professor in world affairs at Case Western Reserve University. Esther Brimmer, the James H. Binger Senior Fellow in Global Governance at CFR, moderated the discussion.

Transcript

BRIMMER: Ultimately, as I say, technology is in the service of people and dialogue. So, things need to get to a point—(laughs)—to a microphone that actually works.

Again, my name is Esther Brimmer. It is my honor to welcome you to this Council on Foreign Relations session on strategic frontiers in U.S. foreign policy: the Arctic, climate, and space.

I’m delighted to be joined by this distinguished panel. On my immediate left is Professor Kathryn Lavelle. Welcome.

LAVELLE: Thank you. It’s wonderful to be here.

BRIMMER: And to her left is Professor Todd Eisenstadt. Welcome. 

EISENSTADT: Thank you. 

BRIMMER: And to his left is Lieutenant General Nina Armagno. Welcome. As you know, the general was also part of our Task Force on space issues. So welcome.

ARMAGNO: Thank you. And O-H!

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I-O!

ARMAGNO: Yeah. (Applauds, laughter.)

BRIMMER: Now, of course, international relations policy often deals with sovereignty and borders, but areas beyond national jurisdiction are also crucial for international relations. Managing interactions in these zones has been the bedrock of international studies for hundreds of years, as you well know, at least since Hugo Grotius’ Mare Liberum, Freedom of the Seas, published in 1609. And, of course, there were many scholars of that time in societies who were thinking about maritime issues. So, some of these questions are classic questions of international relations. 

And, as you know, United States foreign policy does not deal just with government-to-government exchanges. Foreign policy also contends with the management of borders, the exchange of goods and services across borders, and the management of global spaces. Indeed, movement through the oceans or airspace is also important issues in international affairs. And human activity in all the regions that we will discuss today is changing, and changing rapidly. Whether it’s the Arctic, changing climate, or the challenges of human activity in space, there’s some serious questions about management of international affairs. And, indeed, these issues are enduring and, I would suggest, accelerating. And the challenges are becoming even more pressing. So, I’m delighted to be able to raise, discuss these issues with this panel in particular. 

What we’ll do first is I’ll have a conversation with each of our distinguished experts. Then, we’ll have a conversation amongst the four of us. And then we’ll open it to the floor for your questions and discussion. So, I’ll keep an eye on the clock here as well. If I may start with Professor Lavelle, to talk about the Arctic. The Arctic is warming faster than any part of the globe. Why don’t you start off and talk a bit about how you see climate change, of course, affecting life in the region, and the diplomacy of the region?

LAVELLE: Well, thank you for the question. And also thank you for the invitation, because it’s really an honor to be here with my copanelists, with the work that Dr. Brimmer has done. But also I’d like to point out that the Council on Foreign Relations was out front on the issue of how important the melting in the Arctic is and will be in the future. So, there’s a lot of great resources and studies that they’ve done as well. 

And I think you’ve raised a really good question about the interaction between the politics and what is going on in the region. So usually we think of this in three kind of clusters of interests or problem areas that are going to develop. The first of—the first of them has to do with the melting permafrost. So permafrost, permanently frozen ground for those of you who—depending on how new this issue is to you. As it melts, it releases toxins, it releases stored pathogens. And these dangers are immediate to the people in the area. And so, mercury poisoning is one of the first effects we’re seeing. We expect to see many more as the process develops.

The second area has to do with climate patterns, like so many other parts of the world. And I know we have experts on that on the panel. The changing climate means one thing for people who live there, and then other things for those of us who are out a little further away in places like Ohio, and even further away. So, what it means is, on one hand, we know there’s these changing storm patterns. So, the way my colleagues in meteorology and geology have described all of this to me is that it affects—it destabilizes the jet streams. And what that means is we get fire smoke trapped in places like Ohio and New York City. We get arctic blasts. We get different kinds of—we’ve always had cold weather in Cleveland. We’ve always shoveled snow. But now we’re getting these different sources of these different climate patterns.

For the people who live there, of course, it means something even more immediate, because what it means is that they’re experiencing storms of the type that they haven’t had ever in their history. So, we saw the recent storms in Alaska in the fall of this year, and the kinds of dilemmas that that poses for the indigenous population, who interact with their environment in a much more immediate fashion than those of us do who are in the more industrialized parts of the world. What that means is they have to make very difficult decisions about whether or not to relocate, because it’s expected that these storm patterns will continue, or are they going to just rebuild and rebuild in a more resilient capacity? So that is another set of problems. 

The third big set of problems has to do with just the whole question of the melting ice. So, again, I don’t think you have to go too far into science to know ice melts. And when that much ice, when we’re talking about the Greenland ice sheet, and we’re talking about the amount of ice that is in the Arctic Ocean melts, it means that sea levels will rise. And rising sea levels means that land will not be habitable. It means that there will be greater incidents of refugees. So, again, this is a political science audience. Many of you understand the problems of refugees everywhere in the world, and how what is happening in the Arctic will propel that growth of refugees and put further stressors on the international system. So, those are—there’s many more, but I would probably just group them in those three areas.

BRIMMER: Thank you. One of the areas we also see is also the changing political dynamics out in the Arctic. So, it used to benefit from being High North, low tensions, or something along that line. And so could you talk about the changing diplomacy? We used to talk particularly about the Arctic Council. Now we have to worry about the relationship among NATO allies. What do you see and what does it mean? 

LAVELLE: Right? What isn’t changing? (Laughs.) Everything seems to be changing, and changing even from day to day. So, an awful lot of the political and diplomatic activity, as Dr. Brimmer pointed out, in the Arctic region was centered around the Arctic Council. So, the Arctic Council was a coordinating mechanism that built very strongly on the existing working groups that predated the Arctic Council itself. By design, it excluded military affairs. And the participants in that diplomatic structure were primarily scientific agencies in the United States, chiefly NASA, that runs the satellites that could do the observations, NOAA, that runs the buoys and the ability to actually do the—

BRIMMER: (Off mic.)

LAVELLE: Oh, good point. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. So, the NASA program, like I say, the satellite component. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that runs more the buoys and the observation out on the ocean. And the National Science Foundation, of course, the NSF, that really played more of a coordinating role but also runs a lot of the basic science and a lot of the—I’m sure you probably in this crowd have the most experience with the NSF grantmaking procedure. 

So, the way the Arctic Council worked, it worked with the component parts of the government to coordinate with our partners overseas, and then the Arctic Council was over the whole thing. So, whoever was the chair of the Arctic Council, very important position. Maybe not because it was powerful, but because they set the agenda and because they could determine where and when the meetings would be held. The Russian invasion of Ukraine occurred when Russia took over the Russian chair. So, as Dr. Brimmer pointed out, put incredible amount of stress on Arctic diplomacy, because this had been such a big, successful area. And so much optimism. People talked about the notion of Arctic exceptionalism, that this was one part of the world where we could maybe operate apart from the day-to-day kinds of things we learned about with realism and Hugo Grotius. (Laughter.) And there was going to be more environmental cooperation. 

So, the initial stressor was there, but I think that what—the way it worked through the Arctic Council was such that, depending on how much the working group was funded, whether or not the United States or some of the countries where Russia was a part of that, they rose and fell based on that, on how much of it was coming, and how much bilateral—or, how much participation there was from Russia. Now we know that we have an additional stressor in the region, which is the American situation with Greenland. Again, it’s difficult to tell, because the initial estimates were that these, these agencies that I’ve talked about—NASA, NOAA, and the NSF—the initial budget cuts you probably heard were for dramatic cuts. So, for example, the administration proposed last year a 55 percent cut to the National Science Foundation. 

Now, I can’t tell you definitively the day-to-day gritty work of the working groups because we know that the funding is literally in process, as we see it. We also know that some parts of the scientific project folded, which is distressing for the Arctic Council and for those of us who care about scientific cooperation. The only good news, though, that I can offer is that the dramatic cuts that we expected actually didn’t materialize in the funding bill that was passed in January. So, for example, I’m going to remember—the exact percentages I might not have right—but NSF was only cut. 

I want to say, something like 2 percent or 3 percent. NASA in one—NOAA received more funding, and an awful lot of funding for meteorological work because of the problems that we’ve had in this country in the lower—so-called lower forty-eight with weather prediction. And in the same with the third, which NASA, NOAA—oh, and NASA might have even gotten more. So, you know, 1 percent more, 2 percent more. So, the actual overall cuts didn’t materialize. We’re waiting to see how it filters down. EPA just issued a report. EPA is actually still cooperating through the Arctic Council, working on the Arctic contaminants program. And that seems to be working pretty well.

BRIMMER: Great. Thank you. I’m going to bring in our colleagues to talk about other domains. And we’ll then come back to some of the challenges of overlap in the Arctic, and some of the political dynamics as well—whether it’s Greenland or other issues as well. Thank you for introducing that as a topic. If I may turn to you, Professor Eisenstadt, what do you see as the major changes? There have been so many important changes in U.S. policy on climate issues. Maybe, why don’t you give us an update to start our conversation?

EISENSTADT: Thank you. And I want to thank the Council on Foreign Relations. Can everybody hear me? No? Thanks. We’ll pass the mic around if we need to. Yes, just to say thank you to all of you for coming to join us today, and also to the Council on Foreign Relations. And to, I think, convey some pessimism about the changes in the climate policy area that have been the result of some of the Trump administration policies. Emissions last year, for the first time in the U.S., have been gauged to have risen by about 2 percent—over 2 percent, in part based on datacenters for AI, which can consume an awful lot of power, but also based in part on the return to coal more prominently and other forms of heating oil needed this winter, because the winter was actually colder than we usually expect. 

The U.S. emissions are still well, well below what they were fifteen years ago. So, it’s perhaps a bit of a blip, and an anomaly more than a pattern. But we’ll have to wait and see. We have to get our—perhaps, some of our older policies back. I’ll talk about those in a second. But I also just want to say that if there is some reasonably good news, or at least better news than expected, it is that the world is on track to have climate temperature increases from the sort of 1850s, the beginning of the industrial era, to the end of this century at about 2.0 or 2.1 degrees Celsius. Which is not good news, but about five or ten years ago many of the models were estimating over three degrees Celsius. So, you know, and that’s four degrees or so Fahrenheit that we’re talking about here. Which is a lot, but it’s considerably better than the worst outcomes that we imagined. So that, I guess, is what passes these days for good news.

To get to Esther’s point more directly, and very briefly, what has the U.S. done? As you know, the U.S. pulled out of the Paris Agreement immediately on day one of the Trump administration, causing yet more whiplash. After Trump withdrew us in 2016, Biden reentered us, and then Trump withdrew us again. As you know, the Paris Agreement signed in 2015 is the regime of voluntary emissions reductions by countries around the world. It’s not working very well because, again, the emissions cuts are voluntary. And it’s a bottom-up system where countries pledge how much they’re going to reduce emissions, and there’s no real enforcement mechanism and there’s no accountability. But it is a discussion space. And it is a place to at least discuss in the public realm how to solve problems which are not otherwise being fully addressed by the whole world. So, that was one.

Another one—another policy by the Trump administration was to reverse some of the EPA’s authority with regard to policing and regulating emissions. It was called—it was part of the—it was the endangerment aspect of EPA authority, which goes back to the Clean Air and the Clean Water Act of the 1970s, which were actually put into place by President Richard Nixon, a Republican president, to show that environmental issues have been bipartisan in the past, and that only lately have they become much less so. Which I think is an important factor for us to consider. So, we have the pull out of Paris. We have the repeal of the endangerment finding from the EPA. We have the repeal and reversal of Inflation Reduction Act programs which were mostly related to clean energy. But they were not specified that way because the way the bill got through the Senate was to be the Inflation Reduction Act. That’s what it’s called. But President Trump has reversed and cut funding from many of the clean energy kind of policies that were to bring more solar and electric vehicle types of programs back to the U.S. So, that’s a third area. 

Very quickly, a fourth might be considered the stepped up—stepped up oil production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the return to coal, not only as a tolerated source of energy but as one that is promoted and subsidized by the U.S. government. In fact, the Department of Defense has been granted contracts for coal-generated energy, which previous presidents had been backing away from for some time. So, I think that summarizes a good part of the unfortunate policies that the Trump administration has put into place. And perhaps more importantly is just a disregard for the issue entirely. And I think we’re going to arrive at a discussion about how the U.S. needs to participate worldwide, because once you leave and lose leadership, it will take years, if not generations, to get the credibility of our erstwhile allies back so that we can help lead again. And it’s unfortunate, but here we are.

BRIMMER: And, indeed, as you indicate, that what is happening on the Arctic issues are affected, obviously, by the climate issues as well. So, there’s this interrelationship between those. As you mentioned, the United States has actually, obviously, pulled out of the Paris accords. Are there other places or other agreements where there’s—where discussion, serious discussion, on climate issues is continuing to occur?

EISENSTADT: There are fora internationally as part of the UN system. I mean, there’s the Montreal Protocol meetings, where, in fact, some of the frustrated Paris negotiators and their governments are trying to find some sort of ability to negotiate pathways forward in other sectoral fora. You know, in the U.S. the argument during the first Trump administration, when President Trump—who’s on record denying climate change altogether—when he was president the first time and the Paris Agreement was closed to the U.S., there were efforts and statements that the subnational level was going to take up that slack. I think that’s wonderful, that effort’s being made by—you know, California is cited as an environmental leader. And it is, in many regards.

But subnational efforts don’t scale. And even in California, which everyone always says is by itself, you know, the ninth-largest economy in the world, and it is. And that’s—and they are doing a good deal of work on emission standards for vehicles and a range of other things. But the U.S. has had leadership. President Obama helped negotiate the Paris Agreement. From 2015 to 2018, the U.S. presence at that conference—the United Nations annual conference on climate, dropped dramatically. And observers, academics, and researchers had to say, as I recall after 2015, “we’re still here,” every time we went to those meetings. But the allies around the world may have gone for that the first time, but I’m not sure that “we’re still here” still works in Trump two, unfortunately. I’m going this year for the first time in several years. And I’ll let you know. (Laughter.)

BRIMMER: I look forward to talking to you about that. So, if I turn to General Armagno, if we also talk about areas of which there have been dramatic change one is, of course, in space, and driven by innovative technology, both in the private sector and important national security issues, space is very much on the agenda. So, what do you see? Basically, how has the expansion in space changed life on Earth? What’s been the big development and the impact that it’s had here on Earth? 

ARMAGNO: Thank you, Esther. And thank you to the Council on Foreign Relations for this wonderful lunch and panel. Thanks for inviting me. I love talking about space, so. I think space is very exciting. And it’s not just, you know, looking up at the stars and dreaming of what might be out there. It’s essential. The capabilities that come from space are essential to our daily lives. If you used your phone at all, or are right now, you’re using the timing signal that comes from the GPS constellation, the Global Positioning System, that supplies position, navigation, and timing. That timing signal is so important to coordinate the timing of everything. If you stopped at a traffic light, likely the City of Columbus has their traffic system, you know, fueled by GPS, in terms of timing, synchronization, and coordination. The uses of space are everywhere. We’ve been talking a lot about weather and weather satellites. Those are incredibly important to our daily life. 

But I think what you’re talking about, Esther, is this boom. Oh, am I coming in and out? This boom of activity. Largely driven by SpaceX and the commercialization of space, but it’s—and it’s not just the number of satellites. There are about 16,000 satellites in space today. Ten thousand of those are SpaceX Starlink satellites. That’s a lot. And those are all in low Earth orbit. There are three major orbits that we talk about, but Space X is in low Earth orbit. And this boom is not just with SpaceX. There are many companies that are emerging. There’s an estimate that the economy, space economy will be $1.8 trillion by the year 2030. That’s remarkable. So, you have our daily use. We have emerging markets. And, of course, what I know best is how the military uses space. 

It has been our advantage for many decades now, where not only—well, any operation, and you can—you can just look at any single operation during Operation Epic Fury, but any training exercise or any mission in air, land, sea, under sea, or even in the space domain itself, relies on those exquisite capabilities that we get from space. Communications, the navigation I spoke about, weather, missile warning satellites, and intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance. No single operation anymore can happen without space. So, it’s just absolutely vital. If we had a quote/unquote “day without space,” you may not recognize your life. You may not recognize your day because of how reliant we’ve become on the space domain. And it’s exciting, if you—if you work in it, and have had this passion for space like I do and so many others do, it’s actually an exciting domain to talk about.

BRIMMER: Exciting, yet crowded, as you indicate. When we look at efforts for greater space traffic situational awareness, or, you know, traffic management, or debris management, what do you see? And what do you think needs to be done? 

ARMAGNO: Yeah. Esther and I worked on the space Task Force Report that I think was handed out earlier, or something like that. But our space task force talked about the current situation, with space growing and then, you know the issues that go with that, which include debris And the fact that, you know, commanding and controlling, if you will, 16,000 satellites is becoming more and more difficult. Right now, the United States is the only country that provides to the world the data on all the satellites that we can track, and all the pieces of debris we can track. And that entity sits in Colorado Springs. It is a squadron of Guardians—United States Space Force Guardians—who use data that comes in from radars and optical telescopes. Academia is now, you know, include advancing data into the system. But it is tracking what we can see.

And we’re only really good into low Earth orbit, but you can’t see everything. There are 40,000 pieces of debris that are about one centimeter in size or greater that we can track. And there are estimates of a million pieces of debris that we cannot see. And debris is damaging in space. If you saw the movie Gravity, some people, you know, pooh-poohed it because George Clooney was—you know, reappeared, you know, out of the spacecraft. And I don’t think that would be possible. But the essence of what was happening with the debris affecting human spaceflight, this is a real issue. And in our report, we come to the conclusion that we cannot deny that China and Russia are major players in the space domain. And that we need to work together, you know, put an international group together, to take on space traffic management and debris mitigation. 

BRIMMER: It is quite a challenge as well because—we debated whether is China a peer competitor of the United States? What do you see the challenges for the United States on working with China on space issues?

ARMAGNO: The challenge with working with China is that they are also producing threatening types of systems—that the United States sees as threats. They have dual-use capabilities that they have demonstrated and used. For example, they have a satellite with a robotic arm. And they claim that it is for maintenance. And my first argument, this was several years ago, you can’t claim that this thing is for maintenance if your satellite is not maintainable. You know, satellites have been designed to have a finite lifespan. They’re not designed to have, you know, a wrench go in there, or even a refueling port. They are starting to now, and this is good. This is good for longevity. But we saw right through the argument. And they have used this robotic arm to take a defunct Baidu satellite, which is their GPS, and move it to—move it out of orbit, and put it into another orbit that we call it the graveyard orbit. 

So, they have—they have actually used it for what they said. But you can easily see that if they can go grab a BeiDou satellite, they can go grab any other satellite in orbit. And this is just one example. I mean, they have ground-based missiles, which they have used to destroy satellites from the ground in space. They have ground-based lasers and jammers. They have space-based antisatellite attackers as well, space-based lasers and jammers, and they have demonstrated this. The most concerning thing that I have seen most recently is that China is practicing tactics, techniques, and procedures. They’re showing—well, they’re practicing it for themselves, but they’re also showing the United States that they are becoming quite capable in intercepting and potentially damaging, or at least making it nonfunctional, you know, our satellites in space. Russia used to be the pacing threat. But now it’s China. 

So, that’s the rub. We know they’re capable. We’ve seen their threatening capabilities and behaviors. But our report still concludes that we need to work together because you can’t divide space up. There are no borders. It is—it is a global commons. And although I’m going to argue that—I’m going to argue against myself later. No. Right, it is a global commons. It is a place we want—we all want to explore. I mean, for goodness sakes, there’s a company called Varda who is manufacturing pharmaceuticals in space. I mean, that’s a benefit for the world, as is the space domain a benefit for our planet. So, we concluded that we need to actually work with China and Russia to go after what we call the low-hanging fruit, which is the fact that there is debris. It affects everybody. And we need to be more responsible when we launch. We need to be more responsible when we deploy satellites. We need to be more responsible at the end of life of a satellite. You can’t just leave it there, as—because then it becomes debris. And so these kinds of things we can work on together. And I think, you know this poor squadron in Colorado Springs shouldn’t be the responsibility of the world to do all of this work.

BRIMMER: Thank you for explaining, say, the challenges in managing space. And you talk about the different aspects that are—that are involved in the management of space issues. But I actually went back and looked at, of course, our space task force report. And, yes, these are rare, the Arctic Task Force Report. And one of the things that’s common to both is that we talk about the lack of organization within the United States government, because authority spills over multiple agencies. And we argue in each of those reports for a greater White House role. There’s a challenge in each of these. Are we actually organized in the United States to address these issues? And China does actually have an integrated policy, a new frontiers policy it’s had for over a decade on the different domains. What do you see in terms of our organization as a country to be able to address these issues? And then I’ll ask you one more question, then we’ll open it up to our participants. Please. Would you like to start?

LAVELLE: Sure. In the United States we didn’t have an Arctic policy until relatively late in the game. The Nixon administration formed the first Arctic policy. And it was a very vague kind of document. A lot of it had to do with the resolution of the Alaska land claim and the building of the pipeline, for those of you who remember that. It became more developed because of the scientific component that was in the 1980s and the climate, as we began to understand the problems of comprehensive climate change. And then in the Obama administration, it moved into the senior role at the White House, where there was a more strategic and directed and higher-level approach to the policymaking. So, like, I’m in a room full of people who study this, and they know very well, American foreign policy responds to the person who’s in the office. 

So, the last Trump administration, the White House committee, for lack of a—I don’t want to use the acronyms, because I get even worse than—the White House committee was dormant. The Biden administration reestablished it. The current administration has put a degree of emphasis on it but has not used that. They have made some appointments, though, at the State Department. And, as I said, what’s going to happen at the National Science Foundation remains to be seen. You know, the policy that holds all this together is that what we’re talking about is a scientific construct that’s overlapped with a political construct. So, like, I wasn’t involved in that particular report, but when I’ve written about it, you know, science needs the biggest possible operating space, and needs to have China treated the same way as the United States. 

You know, in political science we’re all about boundaries, we’re all about borders. And this is my part of the world and your part. So, like you’re pointing out, it’s certainly a challenge because these new domains operate completely differently.

EISENSTADT: Yeah. The U.S. is widely known to not have the most coherent climate policy between administrations, within administrations. With colleagues and National Science Foundation support, I am doing a survey in about eighty countries with a bunch of colleagues to try to see how climate policy is integrated across different spheres of government in other countries as well. And if there are people here from other countries who would be willing to take the survey or help in any way, I would love to talk to you after the event. But thank you for the segue into that. 

But I think the main answer to the question of how do we—how do we get some sort of coherence across agencies we have to work hard to make climate, and many other issues, not sources of polarization within our country, but at least partial answers to the polarization. I think groups like ISA and the Council do a great service by encouraging fact-based research—and who knew we would have to qualify research with fact-based, but we do—to try to solve problems through dialogue. And so thank all of you for that. 

With regard to climate, it is worth noting that authoritarian regimes do not have some of the public opinion differences and some of the obstacles that we have, sometimes as a result of healthy debate in more democratic countries, but sometimes as a result of polarization which hits hard in democratic countries. And that may be obstructing our ability to find broader, more coherent policies. So, I think we need to fight to reduce polarization broadly. That’s one thing. I think a second thing we can do is try to insulate climate governance and governance of some of these other issues, like the Arctic and space. Long-term issues could use some insulation from day-to-day politics, such as we have at the Federal Reserve, or at least should have at the Federal Reserve, where politics is not supposed to enter into, say, monetary discussions. 

Similarly, we should have, perhaps, as a few countries have discussed, a kind of climate ministry with perhaps a ten-year appointment, where, you know, it is outside the scope of the next election and worrying about what happens in two years or four years, and perhaps with a dedicated budget that might be less accessible to political forces. If we had such a body, such an institution, with checks and balances and accountability, we may have a better chance of representing the U.S. with meaningful leadership internationally and of solving our problems, despite all of the work of special interests mitigating against solving the climate problem in the U.S. Thanks.

ARMAGNO: In the space domain, it’s pretty much the Wild West. I mean, there are definitely no institutions that govern the space domain. There’s no major policy. And, even more importantly, there are no rules of the road. So, countries are taking advantage of that. A rule could be, you don’t get closer than ten kilometers to another satellite in orbit. Something simple like that is—it’s not—it doesn’t exist. A few years ago, Secretary Austin, who was our Department of Defense—Secretary of Defense, said—or gave us about five different kind of loose rules to follow, very loose. But this is something that’s direly needed in the space domain. We advocated in our report for the Trump administration to make space a top national priority, to reinvigorate the National Space Council, which would work right under the National Security Council, and, you know, work on all the issues that we think are important. 

In fact, in his first administration, he created the National Space Council but, to this day, has not reinvigorated that council. But we think that would be a fantastic approach, at least nationally, to get our arms around the kinds of policies we want to put in place for the space domain. Another thing that was born out of the first Trump administration were the Artemis Accords, different from the Artemis rocket that’s about to launch in a few days, hopefully. Different. Same name. But these accords have fifty-six—over sixty signatories around the world. Fantastic. But we’re not doing anything with this collection of signatures. We could operationalize the accords. We could put together kind of an executive body, representative with some—at least some of these—a sampling of the countries, put action items down, and get to work. But yet we haven’t. So those two recommendations—National Space Council and the Artemis Accords—we thought were pretty easy lifts to get moving, at least for the space domain.

BRIMMER: Thank you. I’d like to open the floor to questions. Are there questions? OK, I see the gentleman in the back. And then I see the two ladies there. So let’s take the gentleman there, and then there, and there. 

Q: (Off mic)—Air Force Academy.

BRIMMER: Oh, is that on?

ARMAGNO: I heard “Air Force Academy.”

EISENSTADT: Yeah.

Q: I can shout.

BRIMMER: I hear you.

Q: I’m David Blott from the Air Force Academy. Shoutout to General Armagno—(off mic).

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can you use a mic?

Q: The question is for all three of the panelists. And we’ve been talking about institutional capacity for global governance on transnational issues. And I wanted to see if I could connect that to central dilemmas of strategy. It seems like our three panelists have a timing consistency problem. When we play CFR scenarios at the academy, it’s a situation in Taiwan, or Europe, or perhaps the Middle East have to happen very quickly, but a lot of the issues here have long-term implications. So, the question is, do they have any ideas—you all have any ideas about how we might integrate these concerns about Arctic, climate change, space into our current scenarios?

ARMAGNO: What kind of scenarios are you running?

BRIMMER: What we—

Q: These are CFR-type scenarios that we play for educational purposes. I think they’re played all around the country, but especially at the academies. And we usually ask students to decide what the threat is, frame the threat and come up with policy solutions as part of their class. 

BRIMMER: One option—one activity is for us actually to take your question back to our colleagues at CFR Education and say, there’s an interest in how we might integrate these longer-term issues into that. But that’s—please.

EISENSTADT: OK. So, that’s a great question. I think a couple of partial answers. One is that, with regard to climate, perhaps it needs to be mainstreamed into the scenario of most of these roleplaying exercises. And indeed, most government considerations. I spent 2019 on a Council on Foreign Relations grant for faculty at the World Bank where they were trying to mainstream adaptation—the effects of climate change and accepting them—into all of their lending projects and their assistance projects. And I think that that was fruitful, although they had a hard time deciding how to exactly measure the effects of climate on economies and on human survival and happiness. So, that’s part of the problem, but we need to try. And students should have to reckon with these issues. 

I think a broader point about all three of our areas, which we talked about a little bit beforehand at lunch, is that the predominant view of these kind of long-term, collective action issues in international relations, these kinds of collective goods of a regime for the Arctic, for space, for climate, are viewed as a commons problem. There’s a revisionist view, at least in the climate space, by authors increasingly that it really isn’t a commons problem. That we’re not all in this together. That in the short term, that special interests, like fossil fuel companies, benefit at the expense of many others. And that, therefore, it needs to be thought of—the climate problem does—as a distributive conflict, much like other zero-sum games in politics. 

That is, you know, there’s resources available to subsidize sources of energy. Where should those resources go? You know, they need to be reconsidered. We can’t just create norms without teeth to try to govern the climate space. We cannot create feckless enforcement mechanisms, as is the classic commons issue that, you know, great scholars have written about, the sort of the, you know, problems of coastal waters and fishing and how do we protect the commons of the oceans, right? Elinor Ostrom and a range of other scholars have addressed this. And it was—those works remain pivotal and inspiring. But, you know, the climate space is becoming increasingly recognized as one of realpolitik because, frankly, it’s all about the short term, unfortunately. 

And unless and until incentives are created to force actors to think about the longer term, now in the shorter term, we’re going to continue to have this kind of problem and an inability to come to any sort of common solution. Because, as authors have been saying over the last five or six years in political science, again, you know, we’re not all in this together. And we can create regimes, as Jessica Green wrote in a new book, to manage tons. That is, to trade carbon emissions around the world. But we’re not going to reduce emissions overall until we make a commitment to that that includes resources and power behind it. Thank you. 

LAVELLE: Yeah, I think my—I would just—

BRIMMER: And I can add—I just wanted to add to, do we still have—do we believe that the role of global commons is relevant to the areas you discuss? And do we—does the U.S. still have command of the commons? So, but please.

LAVELLE: Oh, I was just going to add on to the previous question about—a little bit about outside-in and inside-out. I think when we think about the Arctic one of the first things we usually say is that, unfortunately, the challenge is that most of the things that happen don’t happen there. And then the actors in the region have to respond to that. But the inside-out part of it that I would just point out has to do with the fact that an awful lot of our best practices in international organizations with respect to indigenous people and how to participate more broadly has come from the experience of participation, the end of the Cold War, and the great work that people have done to develop participation in the Arctic Council initially as permanent participants, and to create this understanding of how important it is because of their unique place, that is both transnational and also national. So, that was just all I was going to add about that.

ARMAGNO: And I just want to add that no matter what scenario you might be dealing with, a country becomes a regional issue, and a regional issue becomes a global issue, as we’re seeing today. Which involves all of our domains. And I think that’s probably where every one of your scenarios will end up. 

BRIMMER: I want to be sure we get to several questions. I want to take several questions, so people have a chance to speak. The lady here.

Q: Hi. Thank you for this. My name is Professor Heidi Hardt. And I’m from the University of California, Irvine. 

I’m doing a lot of research on NATO right now and looking at kind of impacts of major crises. And I also have a workstream related to NATO and climate security. And this question is for Professor Lavelle. One of the things that I’m really curious about is, from your perspective, especially since having written your book, how you think the Trump administration, in version 2.0 if we can call it, what has been the biggest impact, in your view, to military-to-military cooperation among our allies? Both, you know, what is continuing and that we’re seeing in terms of cooperation, you know, operationally, intelligence sharing, et cetera. But then which are the areas that you feel we’re seeing most of the kind of barriers? Thank you.

BRIMMER: So, you have a question? And are there—I’d like to take two other questions. The gentleman at this table.

Q: Fen Hampson from Canada. 

We have a new prime minister who’s seen as a bit of a shining knight in a white snow suit. (Laughter.) And I’d like to ask the general, Canada is a signatory to—we were one of the first seven signatories to the Artemis Accords. Mark Carney has talked about forming middle power coalitions to try to keep the liberal international order alive and well, until the next incumbent of the White House is ready to take their seat again in supporting it. What would you like to see like-minded countries doing on the space front in terms of those accords? There is a legal committee that is doing some work. Do you envisage some sort of treaty that you would like to see come out of that? I wonder if I could just push you a bit on what might be done there. And, similarly for the other panelists, if there are middle powers who are coalitions of the willing and the capable, are there things that they could and should be doing to keep the regimes that you talked about alive and well?

BRIMMER: Thank you. One last question there. I may give a shoutout to Professor—recommend a—no, no.

Q: Oh, OK.

BRIMMER: From our task force.

Q: Thank you so much for this wonderful panel. I have just one question for the whole panel, and then a question directly for General Armagno.

So, you have pointed out some strategic challenges for the United States at a time that diplomacy itself is under stress in the United States. So I’m wondering, do you have any thoughts about how we can—what we can do to ensure that the United States does remain at the frontier of all these challenges, which will still be there when we get out from whatever time that we are in? Nina, to continue on that for you, I also wanted to ask the—you know, the whole emphasis on MDOs, multidomain operations, also requires a diplomatic environment. And I’m wondering if you can discuss some of the challenges that having multidomain operations around the world in the space domain presents, and what we can do to sort of ensure that they continue to safeguard civilian realities as well as military operations around the world. 

BRIMMER: Thank you. What I’d like you—since we just have a little bit more time, if each of our panelists could respond to the question that was posed to you, and any final remarks. I’ll start with the general and work back this way.

ARMAGNO: Well, I have the hardest questions. (Laughter.) I could talk about the Arctic and—well, not the Arctic, but NATO. No, Canada, our dear friends to the north, if you’re talking militarily we have worked together defending North America for decades. And in fact, my very first assignment at Beale Air Force Base in 1988, we had Canadians as part of our crew force. The only difference was we were wearing different uniforms. I had a Canadian boss. I mean, they were—they were totally integrated. And so I think, you know, despite diplomacy issues and challenges in that regard, I have seen that our militaries are very, very tight. When you, you know, fight together and defend something together, those bonds are very, very deep. 

And the same with our bonds in space. We work very closely together with Canadians. You asked me about a very particular thing, you know, we could get after out of the Artemis Accords. I mean, really our report just talked about starting—getting an executive committee together to choose those very—you know, some specifics to go do. And, I mean, I personally would start with space traffic management. I mean, I can envision a global operations center someday where our allies are together, our Artemis Accord signatories are together, in an op center, at the very least sharing data and information. And then, you know, you talked about safeguarding civilians. And, I mean, it really is difficult to watch what’s going on right now. 

And I got to tell you, you know, you all might not know this, but there is no military general who wants war. None. So, I can imagine there were hundreds of discussions of roadblocks, of why we should not do certain things. And yet, the decision is made by the decider, and then the military falls in line and does—you know, operates their legal orders. So, the challenge with multidomain operations is, you know, how do you, as quickly as possible, finish your military objectives and get beyond it to the end state? Whatever that end state is needs to be clearly articulated and defined. And then—and then the military—and the military portion of the war is over, and it’s time to rebuild. 

EISENSTADT: The eighty years since World War II, in an international system mostly designed by the U.S. and World War II allies, brought perhaps a higher standard of living and pursuit of knowledge than we’ve had previously. But no one has made it more clear that that period is coming to an end than Prime Minister Carney in his Davos speech, which was a masterful speech. And so, I guess the question of what should other middle powers do, and I guess also the question of what should we in the U.S. do to try to help restore, kind of, a, you know, stronger sense of cooperation and movement towards progress in the world order? 

I think I would end with an appeal to us as professors, because I think that, you know, we need to bring back moderate and—you know, moderate discourse. We need to try to encourage more fact-based findings, and how those apply more broadly. I think that, you know the question of what has the U.S. achieved? The U.S.—and what can an international regime, epistemic communities, international knowledge, what can we continue to contribute, if we have such a thing which is a collective good? We can contribute a lot. We need regimes to manage satellite debris, to manage what happens in the Arctic, to decide how to advance and what the limits are on artificial intelligence, and to help solve the climate change problem. The U.S., at its best moments, has done a fair job of this, in conjunction with allies—who we need more than ever. 

I’m not advocating for, you know, a pure realist world, as I might have implied in my last answer. I’m just saying that we want to have, in IR terms, this liberal world, but we’re stuck where the leadership takes us. And right now, as has been made clear by the Trump administration, it’s in a very, very realist place. We need to accept that and deal with it with countervailing tools and strategies, but try and move back towards a collective spirit, and a collective domain of inquiry and shared knowledge. So, I hope we can do that. And just want to thank all of you, because part of that, I think, is on us as professors. And it’s on—it’s on teachers even earlier than us. And it’s on policymakers and NGOs, and on the private sector as well. Thank you.

BRIMMER: Professor Lavelle. 

LAVELLE: Yeah, so thank you for that question, Heidi. I’m sure you’re well aware already that one of the exciting things when Finland and Sweden joined NATO was that they were going to bring their capabilities and their expertise in terms of warfighting and in those climates to the table. My understanding would be pretty much in line with what Nina said about the cooperation, once you get outside the headlights and outside the political speeches, that that’s going on. That actually I just saw that it’s going on today, that at NATO there’s a current set of cold war exercises going on. 

I would also point out that the Coast Guard put in an offer for the icebreakers. So, that’s not NATO, but that’s the icepack agreement. That was a difficult agreement because of the inability right now of the United States to manufacture ships. So, getting that expertise from Finland and getting the American component and the Canadian component, that’s all been really important. Historically, the allies have preferred not to handle Arctic issues through NATO, for reasons that are specific to each one of the allies, but I know we’re running out of time. 

Just by way of conclusion, what I would say is that we have to look to the interconnection of these issues on this panel. We have to keep remembering that none of them go forward without scientific research, and the role that scientists can play in cutting some of these—you know, present some countervailing forces here, because of the strong degree of unity and esprit de corps of the scientific community. And I’ve certainly seen that in the Arctic. And it’s very inspiring when you do the historical research and you see the cooperation between American and Russian scientists, who were just, you know, helping each other out, saving lives on an ice floe. So, I think the human spirit prevails. 

I think it’s really difficult times. But I also think that, you know, we found ways before. And that maybe the bureaucratic arrangements are not going to come out and look the way that they are, but certainly—the price of oil goes up. And what is happening with people making individual decisions about whether or not they want to buy an electric car, that’s an ongoing discussion I have with students. And it’s just changed dramatically, you know, in the last week. So, I haven’t given up hope. But certainly, I echo everyone else on the panel, I should say, who’s looking to, all of us, to play a role in having a better outcome.

BRIMMER: Thank you for concluding us on the human spirit. Great way to end the panel. Thank you to the panelists. Thank you to all of you for your questions. Thank you. (Applause.)

(END)