Description
This paper examines NATO’s military exercises in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in order to develop the study of war preparations in Critical Military Studies (CMS). It argues that war preparations are (geo)political practices of power that produce identity, space, and violence. In order to support this argument, the paper studies visual representations of the Romanian armed forces’ participation at NATO’s exercises. Drawing on visual geopolitics, this paper makes a three-fold contribution to the study of space and war preparedness in CMS. Firstly, it argues that military preparedness is a spatial practice that links, crosscuts, and reverberates across different scales thereby carrying military and non-military implications from the personal to the international level. Secondly, this paper claims that war preparations produce spaces of ambiguous security by blurring the distinction between war and peace insofar as military exercises simultaneously anticipate, project, and resolve military threats. Lastly, the study of military preparedness as a diffusive process within and beyond the (in)secure space of CEE illuminates the intersection between militarism, postsocialism, and postcolonialism thus broadening the scope of CMS beyond the Global North and Western military practices. The paper concludes with suggesting areas for further research on military preparedness in CMS and beyond.
