Even before a war breaks out, the Earth suffers. Minerals, chemicals, and fuels are violently wrested from Earth’s forests, plains, and mountains. Much of this bounty is transformed into aircraft, gunboats, bullets, and bombs that further crater, sear, and poison the land, air, and water of our living planet. War is nature’s nemesis. This certainly, is a good-enough green rationale, for us to celebrate ‘the international day for preventing the exploitation of the environment in war and armed conflict’, on November 6th.
A FRANCIS OFM
Nature and War
Nature and its bounties, from time immemorial, have been transposed as an integral strategic component in warfare and militarism. Obviously, this transposition of nature is not an unintended mishmash! From the first cave dweller who picked the twig from nature to fight against his neighbour, to us who resort to the highly sophisticated lethal weapons, have intentionally forced this timeless curse on nature! On the one hand, wars have been fought to satisfy man’s misguided greed to appropriate and control natural resources. A 2013 UN Environment Programme report highlighted that ‘40 percent of all intrastate conflicts are connected with the exploitation of natural resources — land, water, diamonds, timber, minerals, and, oil.’ On the other hand, in war, nature becomes the silent victim that suffers atrocious devastations. Gar Smith, an international environmental activist and author, presents a realistic impression on the continuum of war-related atrocities on nature, “Even before a war breaks out, the Earth suffers. Minerals, chemicals, and fuels are violently wrested from Earth’s forests, plains, and mountains. Much of this bounty is transformed into aircraft, gunboats, bullets, and bombs that further crater, sear, and poison the land, air, and water of our living planet.” He contends that war is nature’s nemesis.
Warfare and militarism have the notorious history of inflicting brutal destruction on nature in measures we could never fully imagine. It is little surprise that the details of these accounts don’t make headlines in popular media and in nation-state briefings. Thankfully, environmental activists constantly lay bare the truth about the massive volume of destruction committed during wars, and in excessive militarism, even, in the time of peace. Robert Ross Brower, the founder of the Friends of the Earth International, telegrammed President Richard Nixon in 1970, protesting the US army’s use of ‘Agent Orange’ during Vietnam war. ‘Agent Orange’, is a defoliant chemical, which destroyed over 3,100,000 hectares, approximately, 31,000 sq. km of forest with its wildlife species diversity.
Ecocide, which refers to the destruction of nature, is an intended effort in warfare and ironically, it has been a time-honoured wartime custom since ancient times. The early Roman and Assyrian armies were accused of committing the brutality of sowing salt in the farmlands of their enemies, turning them into barren wasteland unproductive for any agricultural purpose. The term “scorched earth” appeared in the lexicon as a war-related act. It refers to the intentional act of a warring army burning the crops and buildings that sustain their enemies. There are more heinous acts of ecocide committed during wars in our times. How will we ever forget the images of the 630 burning oilwells in Kuwait, that were torched by the retreating Iraqi army in 1991. The British daily newspaper, ‘The Guardian’ described this most inhuman act as ‘advertising the inherent ecocide of war’.
Warfare and Militarism will Lead to Planetary ‘Holocaust’
The modern warfare has, superseded all parameters of ecocide, qualifying itself capable of wreaking extreme levels of terracide, that is, the destruction of the whole earth - the planet, with its variety of life forms. Hiroshima and Nagasaki will always loom in front of us as humanity’s collective trauma that triggers endless pangs of conscience, until the last human on earth! There had been shocking reports during the first gulf war, that the US used 320 tons of depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq. As a by-product of the uranium-enrichment process, DU is potential to contaminate land, water and air! In 2017, Foreign Policy (FP), an American news publication, reported the finding of a study undertaken collaboratively by FP and Airwars, another independent monitoring group, accusing the US army of firing depleted uranium munitions, in Syria.
The environmental damage, mounting to the proportion of ecocide and terracide, takes place not only in time of wars alone, but even in the so-called peace time, too, due to our involvement in excessive militarism. A 2019 study published by Brown University, throws light on the massive emission of Carbon dioxide by the U.S. military. As an institutional user, the U.S. Department of Defense leaves a larger carbon footprint than many nation-states in the world. Excessive militarism involves excessive emission of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases.
Warmongers postulate many misleading platitudes for promoting wars and excessive militarism. The one most saleable, is the argument in favor of enhancing the security of nation-states. A dismal political cliché, indeed! Unfortunately, the morass of this political cliché seldom gets exposed and even the most reflective and the healthy minded fall for it.
The repeatedly asked question “How long could the nature go on with such extreme levels of destructions?” is not poignant anymore, except for its rhetoric nuance. We already know the answer, despite our denial of it! In an open letter to President Regan, Robert Ross Brower, shouted it aloud to the whole world that our acts of warfare and militarism are leading us to a planetary ‘Holocaust’. Rabindranath Tagore, the poet, cultural reformer and Nobel prize winner who vigorously opposed militarism, wrote about it most eloquently, a century ago in the book, ‘On Nationalism’, “If this persists indefinitely and armaments go on exaggerating themselves to unimaginable absurdities, and machines and storehouses envelop this fair earth with their dirt and smoke and ugliness, then it will end in a conflagration of suicide.”
No doubt, the present-day warfare and militarism are ultimately pushing humanity to a one big self-defeating and self-destructive act of Suicide! Our so-called glamorous wars and militarism are navigating us to our own grave - yours, mine and everyone’s! Paradoxical it is, as much as it could sound that although war turns nature into a ‘silent casualty’, as Ban Ki-moon, the former UN secretary General warned us, we the humans are the ultimate Victims! Call it, the ultimate boomerang of human brutality!
Human existence is deeply interconnected with the existence of nature. Our combined destinies, as intertwined as they are, demand that we treat nature not as a mere resource, but as the sustaining source for every form of life on the planet. This is the reason the wisdom traditions of indigenous cultures and most ancient spiritual traditions attributed the ‘mother archetype’ to nature and respectfully addressed nature as ‘Mother Nature’. This certainly, is a good-enough green rationale, for us to celebrate ‘the international day for preventing the exploitation of the environment in war and armed conflict’, on November 6th.∎
A Francis is a certified clinician and supervisor in psychotherapy, and marriage, family and couple therapy and works in a multicultural community setting of the Greater Toronto, Canada.
