Although wars are often jus­ti­fied under the ban­ners of lofty tenets, they are just as often fought over resources. And as the Associated Press reports today, it’s not unthink­able that as global warm­ing changes the resource sta­tus quo, con­flicts will erupt between peo­ples com­pet­ing for those resources.

A few high­lights from the article:

“One of the biggest likely areas of con­flict is going to be over water,” said [retired General Charles] Wald, for­mer deputy com­man­der of U.S. European Command. He pointed to the Middle East and Africa.

The mil­i­tary report’s co-author, for­mer Army Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, also pointed to sea-level rise floods as poten­tially desta­bi­liz­ing South Asia coun­tries of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Lack of water and food in places already the most volatile will make those regions even more unsta­ble with global warm­ing and “fos­ter the con­di­tions for inter­nal con­flicts, extrem­ism and move­ment toward increased author­i­tar­i­an­ism and rad­i­cal ide­olo­gies,” states the 63-page mil­i­tary report, issued by the CNA Corp., an Alexandria, Va.-based national secu­rity think tank.

Mother Nature’s poten­tial WMD sort of raises the bar of immi­nent threat, doesn’t it?

– Ward