Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren has rolled out a new proposal — the Defense Climate Resiliency and Readiness Act (DCRRA) — with the declaration that “our military can help lead the fight against climate change.” The proposal is actually a series of distinct initiatives that, in tandem, would create what she calls a “green military”: one that runs on clean energy, that monitors and reports on its environmental impacts, and one that remains “effective.”

So far, the response to Warren’s proposal has largely revolved around two debates. The first simply asks whether the bill would make meaningful progress in the fight against climate change. The second asks whether it is in some sense complicit in US militarism. Both of these debates, however, have remained gridlocked in an exchange of abstractions and truisms: “militarism is incompatible with ecosocialism,” “yes but we must be pragmatic,” etc.

Fortunately, both of these debates can be quickly resolved if we look at the specifics of the legislation. The language of the bill guarantees that it cannot succeed even on its own narrow terms — precisely because it includes loopholes that seek to preserve the US military’s dominant position in the world.