The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security

TLDR

The chapter seeks to connect environmental degradation with national security by examining three specific claims. The authors argue that military violence and environmental degradation are linked through resource diversion for defense, direct war damage, and pollution from war preparation. The analysis concludes that framing environmental degradation as a national security threat is misleading, that nationalist rhetoric may undermine global cooperation, and that such degradation is unlikely to trigger interstate wars, while the evolving discourse is a positive development.

Abstract

This chapter aims to link environmental degradation and national security and it explores three claims. First, it is analytically misleading to think of environmental degradation as a national security threat, because the traditional focus of national security—interstate violence—has little in common with either environmental problems or solutions. Second, the effort to harness the emotive power of nationalism to help mobilize environmental awareness and action may prove counterproductive by undermining globalist political sensibility. Third, environmental degradation which is not very likely to cause interstate wars. The wide-ranging contemporary conceptual ferment in the language used to understand and act upon environmental problems is therefore both a natural and an encouraging development. Military violence and environmental degradation are linked directly in at least three major ways. First, pursuit of national-security-from-violence through military means consumes resources that could be spent on environmental restoration. Second, war is directly destructive of the environment. Third, preparation for war causes pollution and consumes significant quantities of resources.