Anthropogenic climate change increases the likelihood of large-scale conflicts between and within nations. This expands and intensifies military activities for nations involved in international and domestic engagements, further driving the material- and energy-intensive production of weapons systems and munitions, vehicles, communications equipment, and other related goods in the defense industry and private sector more broadly. Thus, as a threat multiplier, anthropogenic climate change could facilitate a greater occurrence of both domestic and international conflicts, further propelling the relationships between national carbon emissions, economic growth, and militarization.
Jorgenson, et al., 2023, Guns versus climate: how militarization amplifies the effect of economic growth on carbon emissions, in: American Sociological Review
Latest
Strategy Notebook 229-B: Global Nuclear Panorama, Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos, 2025
Bret, 2024, War and technology from 1800 to globalization: Prometheus unbound, in: Global History of Techniques (Nineteenth to Twenty-First Centuries)
*Warren Chin, 2023, War, Technology and the State (review by Stewart, 2025, A timely take on tech-tonic shifts and tomorrow’s wars, in: British Army Review: “Completed in 2022, only a few months after Russia had expanded its war against Ukraine, and with its foundations as a piece of research-led teaching and a course developed at the UK Defence Academy, War, Technology and the State is a book with multiple strands…[including] the degree to which the emergence of technology and the resulting introduction of increasingly novel and exotic weapon systems might well be taking place against a backdrop of fragmentation and decline of the global system of states.”)
Daniels and Krige, 2022, Knowledge Regulation and National Security in Postwar America
Ding, 2021, The Rise and Fall of Great Technologies and Powers (University of Oxford)
2010-2020
Krysko, 2019, Technology and US foreign relations, in: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History
*Warren Chin, 2019, Technology, war and the state: past, present and future, in: International Affairs
Warren Chin, 2019, British Weapons Acquisition Policy and the Futility of Reform
da Silva, 2018, Armas, capital e dependência: um estudo sobre a militarização na América do Sul (Universidade Estadual Paulista)
*Siniša Malešević, 2017, The Rise of Organised Brutality: a Historical Sociology of Violence
Sullivan de Estrada and Basrur, 2017, Chapter 1: strategies of status seeking in world politics: the case of India, in: Rising India: Status and Power
Hirst, 2014, War and Power in the Twenty-first Century: the State, Military power and the International System
*Larson, et al., 2014, Status and world order, in: Status in World Politics. “There is considerable evidence that leaders of the United Kingdom, France, and India sought nuclear weapons to maintain or acquire great-power status, apart from security calculations. Since the 1970s, however, the link between nuclear weapons and status has been somewhat severed in that some technologically capable states have chosen not to acquire them in part to improve their credentials as non-nuclear states. Some indicators of status-seeking such as weapons acquisition or programs for economic development may also serve alternative goals such as security, power, or wealth. Our core research bet is that focusing the analytical lens on status, while considering alternative explanations, will yield added explanatory dividends. One possible indicator of status motivation rather than more instrumental desire for power or wealth is the emphasis on activities and acquisitions that are visible and symbolic. A state seeking to improve its status position is also likely to draw attention to its accomplishments and to make a public claim.”
Buzan and Lawson, 2013, The global transformation: the nineteenth century and the making of modern international relations, in: International Studies Quarterly
Singh, et al. (eds.), 2012, Information Technologies and Global Politics: the Changing Scope of Power and Governance
Brooks, 2011, Producing Security: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and the Changing Calculus of Conflict
[the late] Sai Felicia Krishna-Hensel, 2011, Technology, change, and the international system, in: Order and Disorder in the International System
Edgerton, 2011, Britain’s War Machine: Weapons, Resources, and Experts in the Second World War
*Krishna-Hensel, 2010, Technology and international relations, in: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies
2000-2010
David A. Lake, 2009, Hierarchy in International Relations
Hughes, 2006, Technology, science and war, in: Palgrave Advances in Modern Military History
*Barry O’Neill, 2006, Nuclear Weapons and National Prestige (Cowles Foundation Discussion
Paper)
*Hymans, 2006, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions, and Foreign Policy (reviewed by Lawrence D. Freedman, 2006, in: Foreign Affairs). “This book is an analysis of why some – but only some – political leaders decide to endow their states with nuclear weapons. It finds that decisions to go or not to go nuclear result not from the international structure, but rather from individual hearts. Simply put, some political leaders hold a conception of their nation’s identity that leads them to desire the bomb; and such leaders can be expected to turn that desire into state policy.”
*Edkins and Pin-Fat, 2004, Introduction: life, power, resistance, in: Sovereign Lives: Power in Global Politics. “Because of the way in which they conceptualize power as an object to be possessed by someone or something, the traditional images of world politics that we started with focus on institutions that are assumed to be the holders of power: the sovereign state, international organizations, social movements perhaps, and multinational corporations. They are concerned to ask about the relative significance of these institutions in the contemporary world. In contrast, the contributors to this volume are not interested so much in institutions themselves as in what they see as the prior question of the forms of power relation that give rise to and sustain particular institutions in the first place…The second claim motivating this collection is that sovereign power is far from dead…We want to break away from a notion of ‘sovereignty’ as synonymous with ‘sovereign statehood’ that often appears at the center of analysis. Instead we want to insist upon an engagement with the term ‘sovereign power'”.
McMahon, 2002, Global control: information technology and globalization since 1845, in: Global Control
Porter, 2002, Technology, Governance and Political Conflict in International Industries
*Brooks, 2001, The Globalization of Production and International Security (Yale University)
*Jensen and Wiest (eds.), 2001, War in the Age of Technology: Myriad Faces of Modern Armed Conflict
Gerace, 2000, State interests, military power and international commerce: some cross‐national evidence, in: Geopolitics
Chong, 2000, High technology developments: new challenges and policy responses, in: Canadian Foreign Policy Journal
Scott D. Sagan, 2000, Rethinking the causes of nuclear proliferation: three models in search of a bomb, in: The Coming Crisis: Nuclear Proliferation, US Interests, and World Order
1990-2000
*Buzan and Herring, 1998, The Arms Dynamic in World Politics
*Boyce, 1998, In defence of the Maginot Line, in: French Foreign and Defence Policy, 1918-1940
Edgerton, 1996, Science and war, in: Companion to the History of Modern Science
Herrera, 1995, The Mobility of Power: Technology, Diffusion, and International System Change
Arkin, 1994, The Sky-Is-Still-Falling Profession, in: Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
Hacker, 1994, Military institutions, weapons, and social change: toward a new history of military technology, in: Technology and Culture
Hacker, 1993, Engineering a new order: military institutions, technical education, and the rise of the industrial state, in: Technology and Culture
Roland, 1993, Technology and war: the historiographical revolution of the 1980s, in: Technology and Culture
Colonel Eric N. Johnson, 1992, Sun Tzu in the Age of Technology (United States Air Force). “All warfare is based on deception. Therefore, when capable, feign incapacity; when active, inactivity. When near, make it appear that you are far away: when far away, that you are near. Offer the enemy a bait to lure him; feign disorder and strike him. Where he concentrates, prepare against him; where he is strong, avoid him.”
*De Landa, 1991, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines
*Moravcsik, 1991, Arms and autarky in modern European history, in: Daedalus
Buzan and Sen, 1990, The impact of military research and development priorities on the evolution of the civil economy in capitalist states, in: Review of International Studies
1980-1990
Lee Choon Kun, 1988, War in the Confucian international order (University of Texas at Austin)
*Shaw, 1987, The rise and fall of the military-democratic state: Britain 1940-85, in: The Sociology of War and Peace
*Howard, 1987, War and technology, in: RUSI Journal
*Buzan, 1987, An Introduction to Strategic Studies: Military Technology and International Relations
Handel, 1986, Clausewitz in the Age of Technology, in: Journal of Strategic Studies
Pearton, 1984, Diplomacy, War, and Technology since 1830
Douhet (trans. Ferrari), 1983, The Command of the Air (United States Air Force)
*Pearton, 1982, The Knowledgeable State: Diplomacy, War, and Technology since 1830
*McNeill, 1982, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 (reviewed by Thomas P. Hughes, 1984, in: Isis)
Hedley Bull, 1977, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics
Weigley, 1973, The American Way of War: a History of United States Military Strategy and Policy
Before 1980
Bell, et al., 1969, Political Power: a Reader in Theory and Research
*Leon Trotsky, 1934, Nationalism and Economic Life, in: Foreign Affairs. “How may the economic unit of Europe be guaranteed, while preserving complete freedom of cultural development to the people living there? How may unified Europe be included within a coordinated world economy? The solution to this question may be reached not by deifying the nation, but on the contrary by completely liberating productive forces from the fetters imposed upon them by the national state. But the ruling classes of Europe, demoralized by the bankruptcy of military and diplomatic methods, approach the task today from the opposite end, that is, they attempt by force to subordinate economy to the outdated national state…In its day economic nationalist led mankind forward. Even now, it is still capable of playing a progressive role in the colonial countries of the East. But decadent fascist nationalism, preparing volcanic explosions and grandiose clashes in the world arena, bears nothing except ruin. All our experiences on this score during the last 25 or 30 years will seem only an idyllic overture compared to the music of hell that is impending. And this time it is not a temporary economic decline which is involved but complete economic devastation and the destruction of an entire culture in the event that toiling and thinking humanity proves capable of grasping in time the reins of its own productive forces and of organizing those forces correctly on a European and a world scale.”
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