Description
Along the logic of less fuel, more fight – decarbonising defence to reduce emissions but not missions – military sectors across Europe and North America are presenting military practice as a driver of climate action and centring the arms industry as a guarantor of sustainable development. Yet the trend towards greening is paralleled by a recent historical upsurge in military spending, weapons production and the re-centralisation of military security in national security doctrines. Military sectors are both deepening their fossil fuel lock-in and increasing their reliance on mineral extraction to join the green energy transition – ever-intensifying war and militarism’s dependence on extractivism. Addressing this paradox, the folding of ecological action into military interests and praxis is being met with myriad forms of refusal, contestation and resistance. In this paper I capture the ongoing militarisation of ecological and social (eco-social) crises through the concept of green militarism. I interrogate the consequences of green militarism for eco-social justice and foreground its disruption by resistance movements tackling militarism, extractivism, colonialism and criminalisation as joint harms. Developing a political ecology of green militarism, I ask: which interests and relations are served by the militarisation of eco-social crises, and who/what comes to harm as a result?
