Description
This paper critically examines the recent interest of Western militaries in the development of “green” practices, technologies and institutions to face the impending challenges of climate change. Reading these tendencies through the lens of decolonial and environmental political thought, I trace the emergence of an “ecological way of war” as an extension, rather than limitation, of Western (il)liberal and colonial modes of martial violence. First, I discuss how efforts to “green” warfare are not diverging from the history of Western military power. Instead, they relate to a strong colonial legacy of war as a tool to control and manipulate ecologies, environments and atmospheres. Second, I explore the ethical stakes of making martial violence “sustainable”. Against liberal democratic dreams of conflict prevention, the grammar of sustainability seems to conjure images of “carbon neutral” permanent war where destructive violence becomes less costly and total war inceasingly excusable.
