ABSTRACT
The relationship between the military and the environment is a complex one, although superficially very simple. Clearly, bombs can have a detrimental effect, whether exploding and destroying urban environments or by not exploding (especially landmines) and making agricultural land unusable. Wars pollute rivers, contaminate soil and obliterate landscapes. The nature of modern weaponry only exacerbates some of these problems. It is not difficult to see how military activities cause environmental stresses. However, the complication emerges initially in the sense that it is doubtful whether extensive defoliation in the Vietnam War, the destruction of oilfields in Iraq, uranium contamination in Kosovo and all the other war damage combined adds up to the environmental destruction caused by the normal practices of modern industrial society (including, of course, the production and maintenance of military hardware in peacetime). More complicating still is the fact that war can even have some environmentally positive impacts, with countries ‘putting themselves on a war footing’ by becoming more frugal, resourceful and so, in some ways, ecological. So in assessing ‘the spoils of war’ we need to consider a variety of environmental consequences of conflict on and off the battlefield, as well as the whole process of preparing for such eventualities (see Box 5.1).
