Green Military New Deal

Abstract

Among the most decisive challenges that the climate crisis will bring during up coming decades will be the necessity to overcome the current lack of planetary ecosystem governance. The void that exists where proper geopolitics should reside demands a recalibration of the focus of design towards the conception, implementation, and support of new institutional models capable of reconfiguring established infrastructural, ecosystem and governance structures. The rising awareness of the lack of ecological agency has recently led to the emergence of several proto-policies branded under the name of “Green New Deals” (GNDs): the green proposals across the world that aim to address climate change and economic inequality. However, the implementation of the GND’s goals requires not only the necessary infrastructural means for decarbonisation but also a set of social insurance mechanisms able to guarantee social stability during the transition to a new energy regime. The complexity that this task poses in relation to society, the economy, manufacturing industries and goods and information logistics will require the establishment of an institution capable of intervening in the regulation and coordination of all the parties involved. Green Military New Deal (GMND) is a research proposal that lies between the legislative models of ecosystem governance and the institutions capable of enforcing them. It speculates about the military establishment as a proto-platform that could fulfil the institutional gap created by the GND’s demands. Would it be possible to reimagine the military establishment as a trans-national ecological force capable of mobilising and enforcing proper ecosystem management, conscious of its ability to act as a welfare provider while deploying its technological resources? Our research offers an informed approach toward this counterintuitive premise, uncomfortable as it may be, by forcing us to question how certain existing institutions could be properly repurposed to address issues of global necessity.