ABSTRACT
Violence has always been surrounded by organic, biological, and natural metaphors. But these longstanding metaphors have now been translated into a systemic vision of political violence as an ‘ecological’ phenomenon. This combines an intellectual theorization through systems theory, complexity theory, and new materialist theory with an embrace of these ontologies by military and security practitioners. Taken together, there is a growing practical understanding of violence as embedded within ecological dynamics stressing its non-linear, emergent, and complex aspects. In this chapter, it is explored how these developments are transforming the future of warfare in four main ways. First, the chapter stresses the risk that this understanding will exacerbate the ‘naturalization’ of war and violence. Second, it suggests the ecological view of war will accelerate a post-humanist reliance on technological fixes. Third, it investigates the challenge that an ecological understanding poses for questions of ethics and responsibility. Finally, it turns to the question of violence prevention and ponder how the danger of a future of warfare is without the capacity to adjudicate responsibility. While this possibility is taken seriously, the chapter concludes in more positive-political terms by suggesting that the shift towards ecological understandings of political violence also presents novel possibilities for preventing global violence.
