War on war! And therefore support for those who are at war against imperialisms!

To “act against war and militarism”, as proposed by Guerre à la Guerre [1], and also put an end to its genocidal uses and ecocidal consequences as this important coalition rightly emphasises, it is necessary to “disarm the war machine and relaunch popular anti-militarism”, and notably “to strike, to desert, to disrupt, to dismantle the logistics of their wars”.

But this is not sufficient, and this text argues that this is not the essential point: attacking the means of war will remain ineffective if we do not attack its causes and if we do not form alliances first with those who suffer its effects. In other words, concrete anti-militarism implies – as the coalition clearly affirms regarding the United States, Israel and France, and the debate must also take place concerning Russia notably – militant anti-imperialism, and therefore aiming to defeat the imperial powers, and the capitalist logic that drives them, and to concretely support those who are on the front line to resist them. Yet for them, the first urgency is to defend themselves, which requires weapons.

This is why it seems urgent to me to put this proposition up for debate: we must include the blocking of military logistics within an ecosocialist strategy of self-defence, support for anti-imperialist resistance, including armed resistance, and therefore also democratic reappropriation and internationalist socialisation of weapons.

This text defends three theses, developed from an ecomarxist point of view, which are contributions to ongoing debates, in this coalition, in the internationalist left and beyond, on the means and ends of anti-militarism and anti-imperialism today.

First, imperialist wars and the military industry and logistics linked to them [2] have played since the 19^th century and still play a major role among the causes of ecological catastrophes but have also become, since the beginning of the 21^st century, one of the principal modalities of response to these catastrophes – this is what we can call environmental militarism [3].

Second, the current wars, and first of all Russia’s imperialist war in Ukraine and the imperialist and genocidal war of Israel, the United States and their allies in Palestine, are inscribed within a new emerging phase of global capitalism that reorganises profit production, the productive apparatus and imperialism around selective adaptation – for the benefit of the rich and sacrificing the popular classes and peoples of countries under imperial domination – to ecological catastrophes, primarily global warming – this is what I propose to call catastrophe capitalism [4].

This catastrophe capitalism must be understood within the framework of the long-term economic crisis of capitalism, and particularly the sequence that followed the 2008 financial crisis, as well as the rise of imperialist rivalry between the United States and China [5], which have constituted major factors in the development of green capitalism [6] and militarisation. But I make the hypothesis that with the “turning point in world history [7]” of the 2020s, taking over from the neoliberal capitalism of the previous period and integrating it into a new economic-political formula, this emerging catastrophe capitalism realises the darkest scenario that Mike Davis [8] anticipated in 2010: “Global mitigation, in this as yet unexplored but not improbable scenario, would be tacitly abandoned — as it already has been to some extent — in favour of accelerated investment in selective adaptation for the Earth’s first-class passengers.” I argue that this logic of selective adaptation allows us to understand the common political economy and ecology of several sets of phenomena typical of the period:

– green capitalism: carbon markets and offsets, green finance, Green Deals, “de-risking” (mitigation of financial risks) of green technologies or materials considered critical, and all the tools of energy “transition”, which is actually an accumulation of energies compatible with the revival of fossil extractivism, as well as green neo-industrialism, led by Big Tech, states and the market...;

– climate techno-solutionism: negative emission technologies, geoengineering, “resilient cities” putting the “smart cities” and “safe cities” model and their connected objects at the service of adaptation to catastrophes...;

– fossil fascism: carbofascist and ecofascist ideologies and governmental practices, neoreactionary accelerationism (“dark Enlightenment” declined into “dark MAGA” [9]), green nationalism...;

– new imperialist wars whose principal stake, as we will show, is the joint reconfiguration of the global energy market, technological hegemony and environmental militarism within this catastrophe capitalism.

Third, precisely because of entry into this catastrophe capitalism, it is today less than ever realistic to call, in the current state of things, for the abolition of war (this is abstract and idealist pacifism, with no grip on reality) but we must collectively build materialist anti-militarism, which also passes centrally through support for armed anti-imperialist resistance of the Palestinian people and Ukrainian people, and requires a strategy allying disarmament of the enemy and popular self-defence. This is not about replacing class struggle and its specifically political dimension, notably at the national scale, with internationalist military combat, but about thinking them together, nor opposing to abstract pacifism a bellicosity that would be equally abstract but not looking away from what anti-imperialist and anti-fascist self-defence concretely implies, particularly regarding the question of armed conflicts. This is what I call an ecosocialist strategy of dismantling, reconversion and socialisation of weapons.

In this text, I propose to make some reminders about the ecocidal character of war by inscribing it in the development of environmental militarism in the era of catastrophe capitalism (I), then to analyse the imperialist war in Ukraine (II) and the genocidal war in Palestine (III) from this perspective, before finishing by presenting some elements of ecosocialist strategy aimed at allying anti-militarism and anti-imperialism (IV).

I. War, Anthropocene and Environmental Militarism

In their reference work, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz [10] and Christophe Bonneuil [11] supported the argument that “the Anthropocene is also (and perhaps above all) a thanatocene [12]”, to underline the importance of war among the causes of the Anthropocene – which can be reformulated in a Marxist perspective in terms of the double centrality of (imperialist) war and (capitalist) labour among the causes of ecological catastrophes. I will limit myself here to showing that 1. imperialist wars and military industry have played since the 19^th century and still play a major role among the causes of global warming, and 2. military strategy and intervention are today one of the principal modalities of reaction to ecological catastrophes.

First, military activity is one of the principal causes of exceeding planetary boundaries, and primarily of climate change. Let us recall some facts. It is estimated that in 2022 “the totality of the military carbon footprint represents about 5.5% of global emissions [13]”, counting only the military industry and not the wars themselves nor the reconstructions made necessary by military destruction. This represents, for example, more emissions than the entire African continent, or than the civil aviation and maritime transport sectors combined. The world’s largest army, that of the United States, consumed in 2019 as much fossil fuel as a country like Portugal [14] – counting both weapons production and subsequent military interventions and strategic operations as well as the production, use and maintenance of the global network of container ships, cargo planes, tanks and trucks, etc. Going back to the period of the first “great acceleration” of ecological catastrophes (after 1945), estimates indicate that, during the Cold War, between 10 to 15% of all US emissions were from the military-industrial complex.

Regarding wars themselves, we will only recall that it was about the Vietnam War that the category of ecocide was developed (see Tom’s text from the Vietnam Dioxin collective in this same series of articles on Contretemps), and on the other hand, as we will also show regarding Ukraine and Palestine, that all wars have ecocidal effects, destroying, polluting and degrading the lives of human beings, living beings and ecosystems.

However, it is not only directly that the military-industrial complex has contributed to the Anthropocene, but also indirectly, due to the role that armies have played in the expansion of fossil energies from which they derive essentially their power. Numerous recent research, in the field of ecological Marxism notably, has shown this driving role of Western military industries linked to their imperialisms – in the first rank of which those of the United Kingdom in the 19^th century and the United States in the 20^th century – in the development of fossil energies within civilian sectors. We can, for example, underline the moments of the conversion of the UK fleet to oil in 1911, or the Korean War (1950-1953) during which hundreds of billions of dollars devoted to arms production constituted as many investments that served the subsequent development of civilian fossil industry, particularly the petrol car and energy infrastructures. We will finally recall the major role of the military industry in the invention and development of ecocidal agricultural technologies, extractivism and polluting chemical processes and compounds, such as PFAS [15], developed initially in the 1940s by US chemical industry for military use or the insecticide DDT, about which Rachel Carson [16] published, in the classic work of political ecology Silent Spring, her plea against the “war against nature”.

Second, war is today one of the principal modalities of response to ecological catastrophes. Since the 1990s, military institutions, notably US but also French, have produced analyses of climate change and its consequences in terms of security that place the army on the front line of response to the consequences of ecological catastrophes. This is the case for example of the White House report of 1993 which gives the army responsibility for anticipating and responding to “the range of environmental risks sufficiently serious to compromise international stability ranging from massive population migrations due to human or natural catastrophes, such as Chernobyl or East African drought, to large-scale ecological damage caused by industrial pollution, deforestation, biodiversity loss, ozone depletion, and ultimately climate change.”

As Razmig Keucheyan [17] has shown from an analysis of a series of military discourses on war, the “militarisation of ecology” is, with its financialisation, one of the two principal responses of capitalism faced with ecological crisis. It is mainly about anticipating and organising a military response to the catastrophes that are the “surplus of natural catastrophes, the rarefaction of certain resources, food crises, destabilisation of poles and oceans, and ’climate refugees’ by tens of millions by 2050”. This environmental militarism, which expresses a logic of “environmental racism” but also potentially “environmental apartheid”, is the military dimension of catastrophe capitalism.

This selective adaptation, which is first an accumulation strategy of capital also implies a specific ideology. According to this ideology “planning adaptation” requires not only renouncing containing global warming and therefore decarbonising the economy but also accepting its catastrophic consequences, unequally distributed: “Overshooting 1.5°C does not condemn the planet. But it is a death sentence for certain people, ways of life, ecosystems, even certain countries [18]”. Yet this objective of adaptation serving the richest and abandonment or sacrifice of the popular classes, notably in the global South, also has, this is the main object of this text, military implications: “because they expect an exacerbation of conflicts in a world redefined by climate change, the military powers of the North have opted for military adaptation [19]”. Contrary to most analyses of green capitalism, which do not think its warlike and imperialist dimension, and to dominant ecological approaches to current wars, which do not place them back in the dynamic of evolution of capitalism and its unequal ecological exchanges, this analysis in terms of catastrophe capitalism therefore also allows thinking the ongoing renewal of imperialism and grasping its ecological stakes.

Regarding imperialist wars, we will therefore make the hypothesis here that to 1. ecocidal imperialism which kills populations, destroys their subsistence economies and conquers their lands for the project of settler colonialism or slavery; and to 2. green imperialism, which aims to control and profit from productions and wealth from working the land by the colonised people, succeeds today 3. ecological imperialism, which aims at reconfiguring the global energy market and constitutes a laboratory of selective adaptation to ecological catastrophes. In other words: imperialist wars no longer only aim at predation for profit within a finite world but also henceforth the survival and preservation of the capitalist way of life, and no longer only function to destroy nature and administer it, but to adapt to its degradation the conditions of existence of imperial powers, and within them of the richest.

II. Political Ecology of the Imperialist War in Ukraine

The imperialist war waged by Russia in Ukraine since the invasion of 24 February 2022 has caused human, natural and infrastructural destruction of very great scale. It has caused to date — end of August 2025 — more than one million victims, dead or wounded, has given rise to countless war crimes committed by the Russian army, including rapes and deportations of children perpetrated as systematic weapons of war. It has caused very numerous destructions of cities, protected natural habitats, vital infrastructure and Ukrainian agricultural lands — as during the intentional destruction by the Russian army of the Kakhovka Dam [20] on 6 June 2023 —, multiplied forest fires, killed countless animals, contaminated air, waters and soils.

Regarding the political ecology of the war’s motives, whilst the invasion and war can be explained by numerous factors — the history of Russia’s colonial domination over Ukraine, the expansionist and supremacist ideology of Vladimir Putin’s regime, fear of collapse of regional support for Russia in other satellite countries, interimperialist competition with other major world powers (and primarily the United States within the framework of rivalry now overdetermining with China), an authoritarian flight forward on the domestic politics level, etc. — we will maintain that the overdetermining factor is linked to the future of Russian fossil capitalism within catastrophe capitalism.

The war’s objectives have been expressed clearly by Putin’s regime: it involves annexing all of Ukraine if possible, otherwise replacing the regime with another favourable to Russian interests, otherwise annexing part of Ukrainian national territory, beginning with Crimea and Donbass [21]. The hypothesis developed here is that this is not only a classic imperialist war of predation of natural resources (notably agricultural lands and rare or critical metals such as titanium indispensable for “energy transition” as well as civil and military aviation, zirconium, molybdenum and purified neon gas used in electronic chips and semiconductors) and control of infrastructure (notably energy, nuclear and electrical), but also a hegemony war within capitalism’s new period, to avoid the decline of Russian fossil capitalism by reorienting its oil and gas exports and positioning itself in the race of global energy mix upheavals.

Let us recall that Russia produced, in 2022, 13% of global oil production, thus placing itself third, Russian fossil capitalism being considered by the US leader as “a junior partner, not a political enemy”. This integration into the global fossil economy has been the subject of important political conflicts in post-Soviet Russia, for example between Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky [22], imprisoned in 2003 when he was organising massive entry into the capital of oil company Yukos by US giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron-Texaco. We must add that immense gas deposits were discovered, in 2012, in the Black Sea in the Ukrainian exclusive zone, whilst Ukraine turned to British Royal Dutch Shell rather than to Russian oil companies to drill in another deposit east of the country — making Ukraine a competitor whose political subjection or partial annexation constitute major objectives for Russian fossil capital. This immediate context must however be placed within the broader framework of capitalist adaptation to ecological catastrophes.

In Klimat. Russia in the Age of Climate Wars [23], published some months before the invasion of Ukraine, political scientist Thane Gustafson provides decisive arguments in this regard by answering these questions:

“How will Russia’s territory — as well as its political system, economy and society — be affected by climate change? How will these climate-related changes modify Russia’s status as a great power? What will, in effect, be the sources of a power’s ’greatness’ by 2050? Will Russia’s future role in the global economy allow it to compete as a great power? And how will it react if it fails to do so?”

We can summarise thus the book’s arguments that illuminate the inscription of the war in Ukraine within catastrophe capitalism. 1. The Russian economy is directly threatened by the probable fall of its hydrocarbon exports, and by the prospect of peak oil in coming years or decades. Yet it is mainly the importing powers of Russian oil, the EU and China, who hold the cards in this regard since they carry projects for fossil energy regulation and energy transition that threaten Russian capitalism. To this problem, war brings a short-term response, as it gives the opportunity for new outlets for Russian fossil capitalism, notably towards the global South, whilst aiming at consolidation of flows towards China. 2. A new contradiction has appeared in this context between the Russian fossil sector and new actors of renewable energies and green capitalism, such as Anatoly Chubais [24], favourable to development of “green technologies” in Russia. The current war allows asphyxiation of such a project within the framework of an ultra-carbonised war economy. 3. Russia must face climate risks implying large-scale catastrophes by 2050, with notably worsening permafrost melting [25], which covers two-thirds of Russian territory, and risks provoking infrastructure collapse (roads, pipelines, bridges, buildings) on a vast scale. In this regard too, the adaptation strategy privileged by Putin’s regime for its Arctic peripheries is very offensive: rather than investing massively in infrastructure across the Siberian hinterland to enable it to resist the effects of global warming, the privileged option is that of opening economic development of the Arctic coast permitted by ice melting along Russia’s northern coast, opening the prospect of a new major maritime route towards Asia, which shared control of Alaska with the United States could facilitate. War thus allows opening the way to annexation projects beyond Ukraine, positioning as a partner of size alongside expansionist projects of the US partner, and also reinforcing the state authoritarianism necessary to impose this type of socio-economic choices and correlative sacrifices for the population.

In his book’s conclusion, Gustafson underlines the two major stakes for stemming what he sees as already begun and inevitable short-term decline of Russian capitalism: military force and new technologies. These are the two principal motors of catastrophe capitalism: environmental militarism and techno-solutionist adaptation. The aggressive expansionist strategy of Putin’s regime, which aims to curb the economic decline of its fossil capital and re-establish its state as a major imperialist actor, is explained by competition between great powers for hegemony within catastrophe capitalism.

III. Political Ecology of the Genocidal War in Palestine

The war waged by Israel in Gaza and Palestine constitutes genocide, notably in the sense of the first three articles of the 1948 Genocide Convention: “murder, serious bodily or mental harm, as well as the deliberate imposition on Palestinians in Gaza of living conditions aimed at bringing about their physical destruction, in whole or in part”. In June 2025, the Gaza Ministry of Health estimated that the war had caused more than 132,000 injured and caused the death of more than 56,000 Palestinian people, including more than 18,000 children, not counting missing and unidentified people nor deaths linked to destruction of hospitals and vital infrastructure and famine organised by the Israeli army. The war has provoked displacement of several hundred thousand inhabitants of Gaza, considered a tactical objective by Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime. It has given rise to countless cases of torture, rape and sexual violence, and notably involves what can be qualified as “femi-genocide” and reproductive genocide, insofar as maternity wards and gynaecological care infrastructure and reproductive health support have been systematically targeted to prevent reproduction of the Palestinian people. It is also a war against Palestinian agriculture prolonging the war against subsistence inherent to colonisation of Palestine since the first Nakba [26]. And this war is also, inseparably, ecocidal:

“In Gaza, where it has now lasted for months, this destruction takes apocalyptic proportions: people who have not yet been killed by bombs live on a wasteland expanse of undrinkable water, unexploded munitions, untreated sewage effluents, overflowing dumps, contaminated soil, toxic rubble, orchards and fields reduced to dust. On this basis of hyper-polluted earth, human life is made impossible long-term. Ecocide and genocide merge here as never before.”

This destruction of the people of Palestine and Palestinian lands by Israel can only be understood within the framework of its long-term policy of colonisation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid, as well as the racist and supremacist ideology of the Netanyahu government and part of the Israeli people. But there are also, in this genocidal war announced by a continuous process of atrocities and catastrophes, new elements linked to development of fossil capitalism and implementation of environmental militarism by Israel, the United States and their allies.

On one hand, this war was triggered whilst Israel positions itself as a major actor of fossil capitalism at the global level. In 2022, the same year as the beginning of the war in Ukraine and therefore of crisis on the gas market, Israel imposed itself as a major exporter of fossil fuels, supplying Germany and the EU with crude gas and oil extracted from the Leviathan and Karish sites, recently discovered and claimed by Lebanon. At the end of October 2023, Israel granted twelve licences for exploration of new gas fields, notably to British oil giant BP, whilst a company based in Tel Aviv, Ithaca Energy, invested in oil exploration in the British sector of the North Sea. In other words, “genocide unfolds at a time when the Israeli state is more deeply integrated into primitive accumulation of fossil capital than ever”. This orientation of the Israeli economy must itself be understood within the framework of US policy of economic partnership and political alliance with Gulf oil powers, guaranteed notably by the free trade agreement and diplomatic normalisation of the Abraham Accords [27] between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020. This explains why “in the current context of ongoing genocide, a normalisation agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel undoubtedly constitutes the main objective of American strategy for the post-war period”. The announced project of Gaza Strip control by an alliance of Arab states partners of Israel (associated where appropriate with certain Palestinian organisations and completed by recognition of a Palestinian state reduced to certain parts of the West Bank) would thus allow, for example, developing a rail network between Gaza and the futuristic urban project Neom [28] under development on the shores of the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia — and, beyond, consolidating this reconfiguration of fossil capitalism at the global level.

On the other hand, certain aspects of the genocidal war in Gaza can be understood within the framework of environmental militarism and techno-solutionism characteristic of capitalism’s adaptation to ecological catastrophes. This is the case of the project, highlighted by Donald Trump, of taking control of the Gaza Strip by the United States to build a “magnificent Middle Eastern Riviera”, thus taking up the “Gaza 2035” project designed by the Netanyahu administration to develop on Gaza’s ruins a futuristic urban project combining fossil energy extraction, green neotechnologies (such as “electronic car manufacturing cities”) and luxury tourism economy, which would realise the scenario of complete tabula rasa of territories and cultures of the poor to replace them with a hyper-technicised paradise of the rich. If this project has been analysed in terms of “new neoliberal experimentation”, it must be understood in continuity with the military and technological laboratory of Israeli colonialism in Gaza. Thus, in the context of water shortages provoked and expected in the region due to acceleration of global warming, colonial control of access to water then destruction of hydraulic infrastructure constitute a laboratory of environmental apartheid allowing ensuring climate adaptation of some at the expense of others’ lives:

“Occupation has thus engendered inadequate policies and practices that compromise Palestinians’ resilience and their capacity to face threats linked to climate change. In contrast, Israel is much better prepared to adapt to climate change effects and finds itself, therefore, less vulnerable.”

Regarding war, if one of its objectives is to prove Israeli and US “technological supremacy” through “uninhibited exhibition of destruction capacities” of their armies, this demonstration of force must not be understood only in the context of the long-term history of fossil imperialism and Western colonisation of Palestine, but also of realisation of contemporary environmental militarism. Thus, forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Gaza inhabitants and management of refugee camps surviving in apocalyptic conditions strengthen military experience of migration control, major stake of environmental militarism that anticipates massive increase in the number of climate refugees in coming decades. War has also permitted military use of new surveillance technologies implemented by colonial administration: thus, artificial intelligence systems “Gospel”, “Lavender” and “Where’s Daddy?” process mass data about individuals and infrastructure to propose targets to the occupation army and bombardments. Yet this military laboratory of catastrophe capitalism is a source of profit for a large number of Israeli, US and Western companies, as shown by a recent report by Francesca Albanese [29], UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, on the political economy of occupation and genocide:

“By highlighting the political economy of an occupation become genocidal, the report reveals how this perpetual occupation has become an ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and major technology companies — offering unlimited demand and supply, little surveillance and no accountability — whilst investors as well as public and private institutions freely profit from it.”

This report thus allows constituting the list of an important part of the constellation of international economic and political actors who today have an interest in development of environmental militarism and catastrophe capitalism. We see that analysis of political economy and ecology of war in Gaza can also contribute to illuminating the reasons for complicity or passivity of the vast majority of world states faced with genocide of the Palestinian people.

IV. What Ecosocialist Strategy Faced with Wars Today?

I come to some strategic consequences of these analyses, which I will summarise in the form of three propositions:

1. As long as capitalism lasts, and in particular catastrophe capitalism, imperialist wars will be inevitable, so that we will have to defend against them, including by arms. There will be other wars, even if we do not want them, because imperialism is henceforth multipolar, geopolitics unstable, environmental militarism already inseparable from climate techno-solutionism – in other words, as I showed in the first part, due to the selective adaptation strategy to ecological catastrophes chosen by capitalist powers. We have entered, to take up Claude Serfati’s [30] words, a world at war – probably since the 2008 financial crisis, and even more since the global turning point of the 2020s, with its succession of global catastrophes forming an explosive cocktail, and notably: Covid-19 pandemic, invasion of Ukraine, genocidal war in Palestine, opening by the United States of trade war, all accompanied by development of generative artificial intelligences which also constitutes a militarisation factor: “technologies that rely on AI simultaneously transform data into source of profit accumulation, they reinforce states’ security power and they introduce new forms of war thanks to their use by the military”. But then, if war is inevitable, must we resign ourselves?

Certainly not. As ecologists and anticapitalists, we must refuse that the military seize ecology (and I join in this the important critique of “war ecology” by Vincent Rissier [31] in this series of articles on Contretemps). But as anti-imperialists, we cannot wish, nor even less demand, that peoples who suffer aggressions from imperial forces lay down arms. Finally, as ecosocialists, we must ask ourselves, to know in this new context against what and how to fight: what do we hold dear, that is, what do we want to defend? To take up the words of Ukrainian Marxist historian and activist Hanna Perekhoda [32], “we must keep in mind that neither human life, nor workers’ rights, nor the environment can be protected in a state that falls into the ’zone of influence’ of extractivist autocratic imperial powers like Putin’s Russia, Trump’s United States or Xi Jinping’s Party-State China.” This does not mean we must defend the “Europe” bloc – or the structurally neoliberal European Union – against the rest of the world, as suggested for example by Pierre Charbonnier [33]. Catastrophe capitalism, environmental militarism, climate techno-solutionism, genocidal barbarism, are indeed also maintained, developed and supported by European states. But this means we must both oppose the capitalist arms race of the Rearm Europe plan, and militarism which is at the heart of construction of the French state and its imperialism in Africa, in the last overseas colonies and elsewhere, and support another defence and arms production policy, oriented towards popular classes’ interests, ecosocialist and resolutely internationalist. Which implies, I insist again, that we must, for Ukraine as for Palestine, and for the rest of the globe without any exception, support peoples who defend themselves against imperialist wars, or against consequences of their states’ imperialist policies. And this passes – inhabitants and activists of colonised global South countries have always known it, and also previous generations of Marxists from Northern countries who fought against Nazi oppression or against anticommunist repression – through self-defence, and therefore resistance, including by arms. This is why we must make the difference between militarism, to be fought, and defence, to be supported. This is what the slogan “war on war” does not say, and even, if it were badly interpreted, could prevent supporting – and this is notably this debate to which this text would like to contribute –: there is the war of imperialists and the war of those who resist and defend against them; we must prevent the first, and support the second. We cannot campaign for life, freedom, equality and self-determination of peoples, and oppose anti-imperialist self-defence war. Faced with imperialist military violence, international law, diplomacy have always been powerless – it is armed resistance that protects. I will call this position, as opposed to “war ecology” liberal bellicosity as well as abstract pacifism of “war abolitionists”, anti-imperialist anti-militarism (which is therefore also, necessarily, armed anti-imperialism).

2. We must fight against the military-industrial complex and impose democratic control of weapons to put them at the disposal of anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggles – in other words, we must both dismantle, reconvert and socialise arms and military technology production. As long as there continue to be imperialist wars, life and dignity of people in countries attacked by imperialist powers will continue to depend notably on weapons being made available to them – which does not mean, of course, that they will always be used in a morally and politically sustainable manner by resistance. In the current state of things in Palestine, it seems that only military intervention – in the form for example of breaking the blockade of humanitarian aid under military escort, this is the problem currently posed by defence of the Global Sumud Flotilla [34] faced with Israeli threats and aggressions, as well as delivery of weapons to Palestinian resistance forces – could put an end to famine, ethnic cleansing and genocide organised by the Israeli state and its allies in Gaza.

Yet what applies to Palestine also applies to Ukraine – as Gilbert Achcar [35] clearly formulated in December 2022: “Everything else flows from there: those who are for just peace, who oppose conquest wars whilst supporting liberation wars as legitimate defence wars, cannot oppose delivery of defensive weapons to victims of aggression and invasion.” Of course, this position of principle does not settle all problems, but on the contrary raises difficult and concrete questions, and notably: how to distinguish between defensive and offensive weapons, and more generally between weapons that will need to be dismantled and those that will need to be socialised? How to avoid counter-productive uses of these weapons, military escalations and extension and globalisation of conflicts? How to simultaneously protect civilian populations living in states waging imperialist war? And if we focus on national liberation struggles, or project ourselves into the perspective of ecosocialist revolution: what does a people’s army or one under democratic control mean, and how to avoid that the military seize decisions and end up playing, as has so often been the case in the 20^th century, a counter-revolutionary role? But these thorny questions, and about which we can only note a lack of collective formation in our camp, must not discourage strategic reflection on this subject. On the contrary they signal that it is necessary not to leave knowledge of military questions to imperialist, neoliberal and neofascist enemies, and that there is need to propose a popular and ecosocialist appropriation of it.

In this regard, I will follow here the general model of revolution of the productive apparatus within the framework of ecosocialist degrowth, proposed notably by Michael Löwy [36] and Daniel Tanuro [37], which can be summarised thus: we must dismantle certain productions (for example nuclear) or drastically reduce certain sectors (for example meat production), reconvert and reorient others (for example agro-industry towards agro-ecology) and socialise another part (for example medicine production). This “dismantling/redirection/socialisation” strategy must also apply to arms production. Certain weapons and parts of military industry must, this is the first dimension of this strategy, be dismantled and their production and delivery interrupted: this is what corresponds, for example, to syndicalist and militant actions, entirely necessary and urgent, of blocking sales and sending of weapons towards Israel, as well as the always crucial objective of nuclear disarmament and abolition of nuclear weapons. But these initiatives, fundamental, cannot constitute the whole of an anti-militarist and anti-imperialist policy, notably because questions arise of redirection of weapons towards anti-imperialist struggles, on one hand, and reconversion of employment and know-how in this sector to respond to popular needs, on the other hand.

The second dimension of an ecosocialist strategy concerning arms production, that of redirection, means both reorientation of certain weapons towards self-defence needs and reconversion of certain sectors of military industry. On one side, internationalist solidarity requires that we actively support resistances, armed and non-armed, of anti-imperialist and national liberation struggles, like those waged today by the Ukrainian people against the Russian state that invades them and the Palestinian people against the Israeli state that colonises, invades and destroys them. In this perspective, part of weapons – for example produced in France – should be sent towards Palestine, or used by a military coalition aiming to put an end to genocidal war against the Palestinian people, as is the case with part of arms production delivered to Ukrainian resistance. On the other side, no form of dismantling or redirection can be done without workers in the sector, which underlines the urgency of anti-militarist and anti-imperialist engagement of trade unions, but also requires that we support reflections and syndicalist initiatives and of employees in favour of reconversion of part of employment and technologies of the sector towards other needs. We will mention in this regard the position of CGT Thalès [38] on “Reorientation of Thalès activity towards a greater share of civil activities compared to military activities”, also linked to the alternative project of safeguarding and development of medical imaging activity, notably on the Moirans site in Isère [39].

This question of participation of workers in ecological redirection of their activities – which is, in all sectors and at all scales, central, in my view, in the perspective of necessary ecological and social revolution – underlines the necessity of a third dimension of ecosocialist strategy, that of socialisation of arms production. First, because it is factually necessary to the first two: it is only a process of democratic reappropriation of control over weapons, and therefore their economic socialisation (decommodification) and political (decision on means and ends of their production), that could effectively permit dismantling the part of military industry to be abolished and redirecting them towards anti-imperialist struggles. Then, because this socialisation is necessary so that popular enquiry, deliberation and decision can determine what part of military industry must be suppressed, transformed or made available to social needs of populations of producer countries as well as countries that must defend themselves from imperialist wars. Finally, since part of arms production is necessary, it must be, like all production responding to social needs, under democratic control. Such socialisation must not be considered as a distant perspective, postponed until after a victorious revolution: it involves a process that can be anchored in immediate demands (for example use of defensive weapons to escort anti-blockade flotillas, or their delivery to support resistance armies and anti-imperialist guerrillas, or syndicalist battles so that only weapons intended for defence are produced), which must be understood in a transition programme and in a long-term anti-militarist strategy. This is also what the wars in Ukraine and Palestine remind us – and we would of course need also to analyse concretely the stakes of ongoing wars in Yemen and Sudan, notably – with all their differences and political problems raised by armies and organisations that defend peoples against imperialism and neofascism there: on the long path of ecosocialist self-defence and revolution, there will unfortunately, whether we want it or not, be numerous drones and tanks to bring down, and for that weapons will be needed.

3. The last proposition is the most important: ecological and anti-fascist militants and organisations should consider as priorities support for anti-imperialist struggles, which are de facto on the front line of combat against catastrophe capitalism, which has already begun its work of hyper-acceleration of nature’s destruction, exploitation of workers (of production and reproduction) and development of neofascism at the global level. It is indeed on the terrain of these imperialist wars that are constructed, tactically, the means of environmental militarism and militarised techno-solutionism, and strategically the expansionist, supremacist projects and of “selective adaptation” – that is, Wim Carton [40] and Andreas Malm [41] are right to use this term, because it is indeed literally about abandonment and sacrifice of popular classes, of “paupericide [42]” – that characterise the alliance between neoliberals and neofascists around pursuit of catastrophe capitalism. It is therefore also through support for anti-imperialist resistances, aiming at their medium-term victories and to begin with their resistance over time and capacities to make imperialist powers retreat, that an ecological and anti-fascist strategy at the global level must pass today.

From this point of view, since “genocide of advanced late capitalism gives ammunition to paupericide”, that is, the war of Israel and the United States against Palestine is a turning point towards adaptation of the richest and sacrifice of the poor and racialised faced with climate catastrophes, then supporting the Palestinian people is also a means to save the Earth, as Andreas Malm rightly maintains. Or again, as Adam Hanieh [43], author of an important book on the history of fossil capitalism, expresses in an article translated in 2024 by Contretemps: “We must also better understand how the Middle East fits into the history of fossil capitalism, and in contemporary struggles for climate justice. The Palestine question is inseparable from these realities. In this sense, the extraordinary combat for survival that the Palestinian population in Gaza Strip wages today represents the avant-garde of struggle for the planet’s future.” I completely subscribe to this important conclusion, to which I think we must add: this is also the case of the Ukrainian people’s anti-imperialist struggle, which also opposes Putin’s fossil fascism (and his principal ally on the new scene of catastrophe capitalism: Trump), and of all struggles against imperialist powers (whether historical imperialist states: notably the United States, Russia, Israel, France, or those becoming so at the global level, like China, or at the regional level, like Saudi Arabia or Turkey) – including of course against French imperialism in Sahel countries and in the last French colonies and notably in Kanaky [44].

The alternative “socialism or barbarism” – or rather “ecosocialism or barbarism” –, and therefore also “revolution or cataclysm” is more valid than ever. But there can be no question in this process of abandoning either oppressed peoples of global South countries, nor popular classes of Northern countries, whose sacrifice faced with ecological and social catastrophes is the very heart of catastrophe capitalism’s politics. From this point of view, alliances between ecological, anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, antiracist, feminist movements, such as the War on War coalition, represent the future of the real movement that must abolish capitalism and imperialism, and for that defeat their strategy of selective adaptation to catastrophes. On condition of being concretely anti-imperialist, which supposes – this is an ongoing debate in this coalition, as elsewhere, to which this text would like to contribute – not abandoning the military terrain to enemies, not abandoning those who are forced to make war to survive and resist capital and empires’ violence, and understanding the community of their situation and that of social movements, notably ecological and antiracist ones, henceforth confronted including in Northern countries with militarised repression. This refers, in a general way, to one of Marx’s principal lessons, and of Marxist movements for emancipation for 150 years: materialism, which recalls that “the weapon of criticism cannot replace the criticism of weapons, that material power can only be overthrown by material power [45]”. That is, for the question that concerns us, that we must not pay ourselves with words (“let us abolish war!”, “let us finish with weapons!”), but work concretely so that those whom imperialist wars want to submit can survive, resist and defeat the enemy. Only then can we defeat militarism and its deadly and ecocidal effects. There will be no end to war against human beings and against nature, if we do not defeat all imperialisms.

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Alexis Cukier is a philosopher and member of the editorial board of Contretemps, a journal of communist critique. The intervention was originally given at the Historical Materialism Paris conference panel “War, Imperialism and Ecology” on 28 June 2025.