“Humanity faces two catastrophic, indeed existential, threats—climate change and nuclear war. These risks play out before us as if on split screen. Though ostensibly discrete, the events playing out on the split screen are linked. This new nexus between geostrategic competition and climate change must be understood and integrated in policy if the twin threats are to be averted,” writes Wilson Center Senior Vice President, Robert Litwak, in the latest contribution to 21st Century Diplomacy: Foreign Policy is Climate Policy.
Litwak argues that the avoidance of unconstrained geostrategic competition is a prerequisite for managing the climate threat, and lays out a case for why the linkage between geostrategic competition and climate change is unavoidable.