Description
In this paper I will interrogate the emergence of green militarism in UK national security policy (2021 and onwards) and its implications for alternative security narratives and practices rooted in eco-social justice over state-centric national, military, market and energy security frames. I develop the concept of green militarism to capture the launch of strategic environmental sustainability agendas by the British military sector (including the MOD, armed forces, military industry and think tanks) and the narrative and practical pushes toward positioning the sector as a driver of climate action and a frontrunner in the green transition. To capture green militarism from ‘above’ and ‘below’ I will triangulate critical policy analysis, in-depth interviews (with actors belonging to and organising against the UK military sector) and autoethnography from my own participation in organising against militarism and extractivism and for eco-social justice in the UK and globally. I aim to 1) push back against the emerging myths around "environmentally sustainable war" and military action as compatible with ecological care, and 2) foreground the need for supporting non-military understandings of, responses to and solutions for social and ecological crises as the only viable security frameworks in an age of global war and ecological collapse.
