The Armed Lifeboat: The Dangers of Militarising Climate Adaptation

Jun 21, 2022 | Nick Buxton
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On 7 February 2022, Arizona’s attorney general, Mark Brnovich, released a legal opinion that declared that the refugees trying to cross the heavily fortified US–Mexico border constituted an ‘invasion’ by drug and smuggling cartels, allowing the state’s governor to invoke ‘war powers’ and send the National Guard to defend its 650-kilometre border. The state’s governor, Doug Ducey, who already frequently deploys the National Guard on the border and has increased funding for border enforcement, argued his state was already defending its border effectively. There are signs, however, Republican activists are latching onto the demand for war powers against refugees as they did with Trump’s rallying cry on the border wall.

The case raises questions both not only about public attitudes towards migration but also the direction of policy responses, particularly in the context of rising displacement caused by climate breakdown. Essentially, people who have been forced to leave their home and who need help are met not by emergency health workers but by armed guards who treat them like ‘invaders’. Why have military means become the default response to social crises, leaving aside geopolitical conflagrations such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the forgotten wars in Syria or Yemen? The world is used to treating US politics like a warped outlier, but when the UK’s Home Secretary Priti Patel is proposing using the British Navy to return asylum seekers to France, and Greek coastguards are found to have deliberately left refugees to drown, it is clear that the trend towards militarising the control of migration is expanding apace everywhere.