Description
Military Training Areas (MTAs) occupy a crucial position in the geographies of war preparation, materially, symbolically and ecologically. Over the past decades, they have been variously conceptualized: as sites of conflictual heritage and collective memory; as normalized spaces within discourses of green militarization (Woodward, 2001); as banal outposts of militarization serving nation-state or imperial agendas (Davis, 2011); and as terminal nodes in weapons logistics chains and loci of slow violence (Martini, 2015). This paper advances an alternative reading of MTAs as socio-ecological formations that exceed conventional binaries such as war–peace and civil–military. Drawing on the frameworks of military–civil entanglements (Woodward, Jenkings & Mulvihill, 2023) and geontological thinking (Griffiths, 2022), we examine how institutional practices, nonhuman ecologies, and discursive regimes converge to shape what we term the ecologies of war preparation.
While acknowledging the need for a processual reconstruction of key elements, we recognize that MTAs evolve through non-linear and often contradictory relationships among actors and natures. This complexity calls for empirical engagement with, rather than mere reproduction of, commonly used binary distinctions. After reviewing the multiple approaches adopted by critical military studies in defining the spatial dimension of MTAs, we analyze the Capo Teulada MTA in Sardinia, Italy. Currently used by Italian and NATO forces, Capo Teulada has in recent decades become a strategic asset in Italy’s participation in the NATO alliance (Esu & Maddanu, 2025). The area has also become a focal point of legal disputes and local mobilizations, largely due to the enduring environmental impacts of weapons testing and training activities. Here, environmental, health, and political justice concerns intersect with broader debates on militarism and the environmental consequences of military activity.
