Becoming war: Ecology, ethics, and the globalization of violence

This dissertation is about the increasing difficulty in defining the difference between war and peace. In the first section the dissertation lays out what it calls an ecological approach to war. An ecological approach is an attempt to capture the entangled and highly globalized nature of contemporary conflict. The dissertation sidesteps Realist and Liberal International Relations theory debates about the causes of war and instead focuses on the 'bows' of war, in other words how increasingly small states and non-state groups are able to mobilize violence at levels that compete directly with states. The second section of the dissertation provides a critique of attempts to explain these dispersed organizations of violence as personality led networks. The focus is on the U.S. anti-terror campaigns between 1980 and 1988 and the contemporary net-centric approach in Afghanistan and Iraq under the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. The dissertation offers the alternative of an ecological approach for understanding the larger theater of conflict as part of a global and technological environment rather than a personality driven war. The third section of the dissertation challenges Liberal Internationalist proposals for a cosmopolitan ethic as an alternative to war. The argument is made that claims to universal or cosmopolitan obligation are actually in concert with the global war on terrorism rather than contrary to it. In conclusion, an alternative ethics is offered that hopes to unlearn the habits and practices that sustain global warfare from inside the complex of warfare. It is argued that an ecological approach makes apparent opportunities for change by showing the more subtle everyday practices involved in the making of war and peace.