The only thing more dangerous for nature and the climate than war is peace. This is the hypothesis explored by Pierre Charbonnier, philosopher and researcher at the CNRS and teacher at Sciences Po, in his work Vers l’écologie de guerre, published by Editions La Découverte. We are in fact the heirs of an intellectual and political history that has repeatedly reiterated that creating the conditions for peace between humans requires the exploitation of nature. Below we publish part of his introduction.
The twenties of this century mark the beginning of a new era in climate policy. After warnings, scientific and diplomatic conferences, awareness campaigns and the fight against denial, the climate issue is now at the heart of international relations, at the heart of power relations. The planet’s disease has reached the central nervous system and decisions are no longer made before this problem looms on the horizon.
We don’t yet know whether these developments will be good news or bad news, but we do know that the future of power relations will depend to a large extent on the choices that will be made to combat climate catastrophe. So we know that a strong link has now been established between war, peace and climate.
The year 2022 alone has brought us to a magnificent turning point. While decarbonization of the economy has raised fears in general because of the economic backwardness and geopolitical weakening it is expected to bring, Vladimir Putin’s Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed Europe to accelerate the decarbonization of the economy from fossil fuels, first coming from the Russian Empire, then perhaps others in the process.
This process is not as great a success as one might hope for at present, but its direct negative economic impact, especially on German industry, is actually put into perspective by the real military threat of Petro-Russian aggression against Russia on the Union’s eastern borders. In a world that we think of as being largely governed by economics, and indeed in peacetime at least, the principle of security can, if only momentarily, override the imperative of growth.
[Déjà plus de 120 000 abonnements aux newsletters The Conversation. Et vous ? Abonnez-vous aujourd’hui pour mieux comprendre les grands enjeux du monde.]
According to this logic, the European energy revolution has found a new legitimacy beyond the usual environmental and scientific arguments. Energy and climate are now an integral part of geopolitics. Acting for the climate no longer means acting disinterestedly for the abstract good of humanity; it means defending power competition and the security of a nation or an international alliance.
The great paradox of this situation is that we need to be well positioned in this “net zero” race. We need to compete, slow others down, set our own terms and thus potentially compromise the coherence of collective action. In order for the new energy order to benefit from its ecological (who exploits the resources, who suffers the environmental consequences?), technological (who develops the patents and know-how needed for the transition?), diplomatic (who will do it?) aura, power strategies remain valid. Can the status of “climate champion” be exploited?
Read more: How do we escape the curse of fossil fuel rent?
We use the tools of trade, scientific innovations, the creation of international coalitions, technical and normative infrastructures, and sometimes pure and simple pressure. To continue the situation created by the war in Ukraine, the sanctions imposed on Russian oil and gas have created an opportunity for the countries of the South, especially India, which can buy large quantities of this energy sold on international markets. To the horror of Western powers. The fault lines of world politics therefore tend to align with the attitude towards the climate crisis, because everyone positions themselves according to their immediate interests, strengths and weaknesses, against fossil states such as Russia or Saudi Arabia.
This is the situation I suggest looking for war ecology. This expression refers to the moment when sustainability and security no longer appear as contradictory imperatives, but rather merge, at least in discourse, to refer to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. When the ecology of war emerges, the energy and industrial order changes less because of scientific warnings, social mobilizations, or a sense of justice, than because of security and power imperatives deeply tied to the State. We find elements of this war ecology in the main foreign policy discourses that have developed since the early 2020s.
One of the most notable examples is the US government’s post-Trump stance: foreign policy strategists surrounding Joe Biden have developed the idea that the US should enter the race to net zero in order to reap economic and political benefits; all geopolitical ones. This should in fact make it possible to limit the influence of the Chinese rival (already very much involved in the renewable energy sector) and to mitigate the country’s vulnerability to future climate risks. The ecology of war brings us to a logic in which the search for power on the international stage, even the search for hegemony in the American case, is fed by a discourse on responding to the climate crisis.
It should be emphasized here that this is a strategy whose results on greenhouse gas emission curves we cannot yet see. Glaciers continue to melt, extreme weather events increase, but the inclusion of climate policy on the list of realism still changes the situation.
Read more: Fossil-based CO₂ emissions hit new record in 2023
One of the characteristics of political ecology in the past was precisely its reluctance to speak the language of power. The environmental movement spontaneously associated energy, big technology, ecological destruction and war. Oil and atom are in fact the driving forces and interests of conflict, and it is easy to conclude that the protection of nature cannot coexist with the pursuit of these competing logics, or, on the contrary, that the energy of reducing tension is a condition for peace.
We could even say that it was the spectacle of military destruction of the 20th century.to This is one of the sources of the antimilitarist movement in the 20th century. But the ecological critique of power has so far been tragically translated into the impotence of ecology: incapable of challenging the real interests of the key actors of geopolitics (the State and its military-industrial complex, large multinational corporations) by displacing environmentalism. Without effective control over the causes of conflicts, it is confined to peace discourse.
So should we consider the contradiction between ecology and power insurmountable? Will power always be destructive and ecology always powerless? Not necessarily. But to overcome or even eliminate this apparent contradiction, we must take a historical and philosophical detour, return to the sources of the connection between international politics and material development, peace and prosperity, and consider how the balances come together in global markets and energy and material infrastructure.
International relations theory can provide us with very effective tools to evaluate these issues. Security, escalation and de-escalation issues, alliance building, negotiation between powers, peace conditions are in fact its natural domain, and the climate crisis brings these structuring elements of the life of nations into play. For example, we owe the concept of the “security dilemma”, which can serve as an entry point to the discussion, to the German-American theorist John H. Herz.
According to this principle, every political formation must ensure its survival against a certain number of external threats, and to do so, it must consolidate its power and protect itself from the influence of rival powers. This search for security sets in motion a dynamic in which everyone seeks to protect themselves and in doing so has no choice but to create a threat that fuels insecurity and instability in the world order.
This structuring dilemma, which we may think is not an ideal outcome, gives meaning to the study of international relations as a specific field of science. Indeed, aggression shows that the possibility of destroying the other always hovers over political life, that this gives rise to certain rules in international politics, and that the modes of destruction are at least as important as the modes of production in understanding.
But what is striking about the climate crisis is that the distinction between modes of production and modes of destruction is increasingly blurred. Oil and fossil fuels in general represent the vast majority of our energy supply and in this sense support the productive effort that is generally associated with development and prosperity. But greenhouse gas emissions and their ecological consequences, the disruptions they cause to the Earth system, are more like a capacity for destruction. So fossil fuels and all the factors that put pressure on the terrestrial biosphere can be considered weapons.
Editions La Découverte
The security dilemma therefore no longer has the same meaning as it did in the past, because it is becoming increasingly difficult to establish a clear boundary between what guarantees our livelihood and standard of living, what moves our ships and construction machinery, and what moves our construction machinery. It endangers our security and our future. The proliferation of energy infrastructures was considered a factor of peace, especially after the Second World War, as a means of easing the growing tension of competition by offering an economic diversion from the desire for power and creating ‘interdependence’.
If these same infrastructures are now seen as weapons against the target, then indeed the guarantees of peace and international security come into question. Where we thought we had established productive collaboration systemAfter all, we receive an inheritance. mutually assured destruction system.
