Sustainability, Ethics and War
Publisher: Canadian Military Journal
Author(s): Peter Denton
Date: 2017
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Prevention, Governance, Peace and Security Operations
As we mark the centenary of the Great War (1914–1918), it is hard not to think that every generation faces its own unique challenge, its own defining struggle. For our generation, it is to create the foundations for a sustainable future in the midst of a climate-changing world. Other generations had to meet their challenge through force of arms; we are effectively required to find other ways than force to solve the problem of sustainability for everyone, not just for ourselves. The future will be sustainable for all of us or for none. Sustainability is, at heart, a social and cultural problem, not a technical problem. Its solution requires developments in society and culture, not in science and technology. To talk about sustainability in a military context is paradoxical, because it can easily be argued that the human propensity for conflict and the vast sums of money currently spent on militaries around the world make a sustainable future utterly impossible. The answer is not to turn the proverbial ‘Red Force/Blue Force’ split into some combined global ‘Purple Force’ for peace, however, because the historical reasons for current conflict are not so easily overcome. What instead the world needs is a new ‘Green Force,’ recognizing the ethical imperative on all sides to find some other way to solve the urgent problem of sustainability at local levels, globally.