Military as an Institution and Militarization as a Process: Theorizing the U.S. Military and Environmental Justice

Abstract

State reactions to Black Lives Matter demonstrations include heavily militarized domestic police responses and the deployment of the National Guard. These events place emphasis on understanding the U.S. military as an institution and militarization as a process; as well as their corresponding environmental justice (EJ) consequences. In this study, we integrate critical race theory, decolonial thought, carceral geography, and military and environmental sociology to theorize the military and militarization as potentially important and overlooked sources of environmental injustice that ought to concern scholars and activists. We use an interdisciplinary framework to highlight: the historical role of the military in the creation and maintenance of racialized and colonized difference, how the U.S. militarization is connected to localized and national overpolicing and environmental harm, and how the environmental risks of warfare may be transferred from combat zones to civilian EJ communities and sites, both domestically and abroad. We stress that the production of colonized and racialized space-and the criminalization of Black, Indigenous, and other bodies of color-happens within the context of militarization as a process and the U.S. military as an institution so future critical analysis should look to these levels. Our goal is to urge scholars and activists to recognize the military as a potentially significant contributor to environmental injustice and outline avenues for future study.

Analyzing the Military’s Role in Producing Air Toxics Disparities in the United States: A Critical Environmental Justice Approach

“…EJ scholars have long argued that the state is an active or a tacit contributor to environmental inequality (Bullard 1990;Bullard and Wright 2012;Pellow and Brulle 2005;Pulido 2017), thus providing an opportunity to link military activity with approaches to the state developed under critical environmental justice (CEJ) (Pellow 2017;Pulido 2016). The U.S. military has a history of environmental degradation and injustice that results from defense operations and land appropriation, including on the basis of race and colonial history (Alvarez, Theis, and Shtob 2021;Dillon 2015;Smith 2004, 2005;Kuletz 1998;LaDuke 1999;Seager 1993). These environmental injustices may be compounded by the overrepresentation of racial and ethnic minority military personnel in the lower ranks (Armor and Gilroy 2010;Mariscal 2005;Martinez and Huerta 2020;Williams 1998) that may place people of color in closer proximity to risk.…”

A regional approach to militarized riskscapes: An environmental justice analysis of military proximity and air pollution in United States Environmental Protection Agency's regions

“…The dramatic and intensive nature of warfare is commensurate with its impacts to environmental health, and subsequently, human health. However, subtler forms of risk and pollution spatially distant from test sites and battlefields nevertheless are important to understanding the full extent of military pollution (Alvarez et al, 2021(Alvarez et al, , 2022. From increased unexploded ordnances on Native lands (Hooks & Smith, 2004) to increased air toxics exposure for communities with more Latinx and Black residents near domestic military sites (Alvarez et al, 2022) and polluting surface and ground water via firefighting foam (US GAO, 2018), some means in which domestic military activity contributes to the deterioration of environmental health have been documented.…”

“…One recent development is risk-transfer militarism, which observes that as technology advances and certain elements of military action occur remotely, some hazards associated with warfare increasingly manifest away from combatants at the front lines and nearer to civilian and other populations at great distance from battlefields (Alvarez et al, 2021;Smith et al, 2013). A corollary of this development is greater interest in whether and how proximity to military bases in the United States implicates differential exposure to environmental harm-including air pollutionfor military personnel and their families who live on or near bases, as well as nearby civilian populations (Alvarez et al, 2021(Alvarez et al, , 2022.…”

Through the Decades: Critical Race Theory and Pathways Forward in Sport Sociology Research

“…Within a broader context, the framework has the range to influence perspectives on a number of topics. For example, CRT analyses provide valuable insights and nuance into the role of the U.S. military industrial complex-which signals to the racialization and racialized othering within the global context, such as wars and resource exploitation of countries in the Global South and East, while also maintaining hegemonic structures domestically (Alvarez et al, 2021). Going further, CRT also explores the role of those racialized as non-white and their role in perpetuating racially hegemonic structures and systems.…”