Ecological Militarization: Engineering Territory in the South China Sea

Abstract

Ecological militarization in the South China Sea is transforming
ecosystems and geopolitics. By ecological militarization, I am referring
to mechanistic transformations of nature in pursuit of military aims.
Mechanistic approaches to nature hold that if appropriate applications
of science and technology are applied, then a desired outcome will result
in a predicable mechanical fashion (Rodenbiker, 2022, 2023). The
transformations underway in the South China Sea are analogous to those
introduced through settler colonial expansion (Braverman, 2023;
Crosby, 2004), efforts to securitize climate change-induced threats
through militarized adaptation (Gilbert, 2012; Marzec, 2015; Merche,
2019), and territorialization of frontiers through militarized conservation
(Woods, 2019). I contend, however, that ecological militarization
can be distinguished by its mechanistic orientation, which in transforming
nature reconfigures ecosystems. Militarization across the South
China Sea’s 3.5 million square kilometer expanse, a region with half a
dozen intersecting territorial claims, is ecologically disruptive not simply
because of fuel- and resource-intensive activities (Belanger &
Arroyo, 2016). Rather, the building of artificial islands has disrupted
reef ecosystems that support one of the largest concentrations of marine
biodiversity on earth (Smith et al., 2019). In creating islands from coral
and sand, the South China Sea has become a frontier of ecological
militarization.

Full text

Political Geography 106 (2023) 102932
Available online 10 July 2023
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Guest editorial
Ecological militarization: Engineering territory in the South China Sea
Ecological militarization in the South China Sea is transforming
ecosystems and geopolitics. By ecological militarization, I am referring
to mechanistic transformations of nature in pursuit of military aims.
Mechanistic approaches to nature hold that if appropriate applications
of science and technology are applied, then a desired outcome will result
in a predicable mechanical fashion (Rodenbiker, 2022, 2023). The
transformations underway in the South China Sea are analogous to those
introduced through settler colonial expansion (Braverman, 2023;
Crosby, 2004), efforts to securitize climate change-induced threats
through militarized adaptation (Gilbert, 2012; Marzec, 2015; Merch´
e,
2019), and territorialization of frontiers through militarized conserva-
tion (Woods, 2019). I contend, however, that ecological militarization
can be distinguished by its mechanistic orientation, which in trans-
forming nature recongures ecosystems. Militarization across the South
China Sea’s 3.5 million square kilometer expanse, a region with half a
dozen intersecting territorial claims, is ecologically disruptive not sim-
ply because of fuel- and resource-intensive activities (B´
elanger &
Arroyo, 2016). Rather, the building of articial islands has disrupted
reef ecosystems that support one of the largest concentrations of marine
biodiversity on earth (Smith et al., 2019). In creating islands from coral
and sand, the South China Sea has become a frontier of ecological
militarization.
In 2014, Chinese vessels began dredging coral reefs with cutter
suction and trailer hopper techniques. These techniques entail ocean
vessels with suction pumps equipped with either a cutter or drag head
moving slowly through the water to dislodge coral and sand from the
seabed. The dislodged material is suctioned into the hopper of the
dredging vessel or directly discharged via pipelines to the desired
location. Two years after dredging began, the techniques transformed
richly biodiverse reefs into barren islands. The process produces sedi-
ment plumes exceeding 1200 km, which inhibit sunlight, substantively
impacting coral, marine ora, and fauna in the region (Smith et al.,
2019). Today, Chinese state-owned enterprises lead the world in dredger
capacity effectively cornering the global market in port and articial
island construction with projects in Abu Dhabi, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka
and elsewhere (Benecki, 2017). But China is not alone in transforming
ocean ecologies in pursuit of territory. Over the last decade Malaysia,
Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines have all produced new islands or
expanded on existing islands through coral and sand dredging. These
forms of ecological mechanization heighten military competition and
geopolitical tension in the region.
Environmentally engineering ocean ecologies, therefore, has come to
gure centrally in state efforts to expand territory and enhance military
presence in the South China Sea. Thus far, China alone has produced
over 3200 acres of land. Engineering articial islands transforms
underwater ecologies into land upon which military infrastructure can
be built, such as runways, radar domes, and anti-ship missiles. Examples
of articial islands created by China include Subi Reef, Fiery Cross, and
Mischief Reef in the Spratly archipelago. The Chinese state has laid
territorial claims to these newly made and enlarged islands, the air
above them, and oceans surrounding them.
China’s party-state and national media refer to these islands and that
which surrounds them as part of a wider “blue territory” (蓝色国土),
which encompasses portions of the sea. Ofcial gures for blue territory
weigh in just shy of three million square kilometers — roughly one-third
of China’s entire mainland territory (Central Government of the People’s
Republic of China, 2016). Since the islands’ creation, China has built up
its military presence and increased military maneuvers. Chinese military
boats patrol the ocean’s surface. Routine surveillance yovers by U.S.
aircraft in international airspace near these islands have been met with
radio warnings not to violate China’s air sovereignty (Beech, 2018).
State competition to consolidate sovereignty at sea has been aptly
described as “voluminous” (Bill´
e, 2020), as maritime spaces intersect
with aerial heights above islands and exclusive economic zones, various
layers of ocean depth, and below-ocean-oor resources (Childs, 2022;
Ranganathan, 2019). More recently, Chinese ghter jets entered into
top-gun-like aerial peacocking with U.S. aircraft (Mandhana, 2023),
indexing the transition from engineering ocean ecologies and enhancing
military presence to competing for regional dominance. These ecolog-
ical expressions and constitutions of state power mark a reconguration
of maritime territoriality. While in the past, China relied on routine
patrols in the name of sheries administration and international diplo-
macy aimed at delaying territorial dispute resolutions (Fravel, 2011),
the last decade has seen the creation of articial islands, the construc-
tion of military infrastructure, and a heightened frequency of territorial
confrontations. Yet, in order to naturalize novel territorial claims pro-
duced through ecological mechanization, social practices that reinforce
regional imaginaries are crucial.
Recent work sheds light on practices and processes relevant to
naturalizing the South China Sea region as part of the Chinese nation-
state. What constitutes a “region” within South China imaginaries has
transformed signicantly over the last 200 years, as Ping Su and Adam
Grydehøj (2022) explore. Ideas of the region surrounding South China
shifted from colonial imaginaries of islands as interstitial nodes con-
necting local trade with global markets, to the Pearl River Delta as a
coherent area based on geographical denability through river-induced
erosion patterns, and eventually to the PRC-named “Greater Bay Area”
consisting of economically integrated urban centers linked through the
work of government planners from not only mainland China, but Hong
Kong, too (Bennett, 2021; Su & Grydehøj, 2022). As these transitions in
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Political Geography
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.102932
Received 16 June 2023; Accepted 20 June 2023

Political Geography 106 (2023) 102932
2
South China imaginaries suggest, regions are socially produced. Regions
are malleable. They expand and contract. Regions uctuate and are
recongured according to social imaginaries of geographical intercon-
nection and belonging. Therefore, it is crucial to examine how ocean
spaces and terraformed islands of the South China Sea are narrativized
as part of national territory.
Banal practices, such as tourism, effectively narrativize the South
China Sea as part of China’s national territory. Yan Huang (2022) ex-
amines how South China Sea tourism conditions individuals toward
national-territorial thinking, arguing that regional tourism socializes
Chinese citizens to recognize the South China Sea as part of China’s
territory. Indeed, work has shown that tourism is not only among the
rst industries developed in frontier regions, but also integral to
frontier-making practices in the South China Sea (Mostafanezhad, 2020;
Wang & Bennett, 2020). Everyday practices of tourism, in other words,
are playing an important role in producing territorializing effects. As
Huang (2022, p. 11) demonstrates, such effects are uneven as “the
state’s territorial ideology throughout the [South China Sea] tour is
variously interpreted, accepted, and negotiated by tourists.” Yet, for
many, the social effects of intergenerational communication and
story-telling during these tours amplify identication of the sea with
national territory — a process that Huang calls “territorial socialization”
(ibid, 2–3, 7).
Such banal practices are integral to producing and reinforcing
imaginaries of territorial integrity across contested maritime frontiers.
And herein lies a key correlate with ecological militarization. While
ecological militarization transforms nature into territory, other social
practices are required to naturalize newly made territory within the
hearts and minds of the national population. In other words, ecological
militarization in the South China Sea is but an initial step in the pro-
duction of territory. The social production and naturalization of terri-
torial imaginaries is an integral corollary. Social practices that reinforce
imaginaries of a unitary sovereign counter competing and contradictory
claims to maritime sovereignty. On a meta-geographical level, govern-
ments draw on discourses of “threat” and “security” to legitimize na-
tional boundary making at sea and to discipline the thinking of national
populations. In this sense, as Christian Wirth (2016) argues, discourses
of securing so-called “wild” eastern seas and bringing order to chaotic
regions reinforce regional territorial imaginaries. Securing the volume
(Elden, 2013) of the South China Sea, therefore, entails not only
mechanizing ocean ecologies, but also narrativizing maritime spaces
and far-sea island chains (Li, 2009) as part of national territory.
The violent alchemy of ecological mechanization and militarization
in the South China Sea echoes historical relationships between military
pursuits and the scientic eld of ecology. As Laura Martin (2018, 2022)
details, during the 1950s and 1960s, research on ecology in the U.S. was
funded predominantly by the United States National Atomic Energy
Commission. The U.S. government wanted to establish a baseline
regarding the effects of atomic radiation on aquatic animal populations.
Over one hundred nuclear detonations in the island Pacic Proving
Grounds were instrumental to developing ecological concepts, such as
steady-state equilibrium theory (ibid.). Moreover, the process of
nuclear-ecological experimentation advanced American military pres-
ence in the Pacic Ocean, far beyond U.S. mainland borders. The nexus
of regional militarism and ecology reverberates across space and time,
from the pursuit of 20th century nuclear hegemony to 21st century
South China Sea territoriality.
As demonstrated above, engineering territory in the South China Sea
is predicated on mechanizing ocean ecologies and narrativizing terra-
formed islands as national territory amidst competing sovereign claims.
Accordingly, I contend that ecological militarization can be distin-
guished from cases wherein scientic endeavors align with military
pursuits (Martin, 2018, 2022), militaries engage in climate adaptation
(Marzec, 2015; Merch´
e, 2019), and militarized conservation practices
extend territorial control over resources and human populations
(Braverman, 2023; Woods, 2019). Rather, an example that parallels
what I have dened as “ecological militarization” in the South China Sea
is the mechanization of the honeybee. Jake Kosek (2010) analyzes how
the U.S. military has bioengineered the honeybee to identify chemical
traces in explosives, land mines, and tritium — a substance used in
developing nuclear weapons. Bees’ swarming patterns, moreover, have
been used to engineer drone strikes during the U.S. war on terror. In
these ways and more, the honeybee has been remade into a military
technology, while military technologies have been refashioned through
bees. The militarization of bees, like the engineering of articial islands
in the South China Sea, emerged through the mechanization of nature.
Further, each instance of ecological militarization is narrated as crucial
to securing national territory. In intervening, therefore, political geog-
raphers need to attend to the fraught relationships between militariza-
tion and the mechanization of nature across ecological, national,
geophysical, scientic, territorial, and more-than-human domains.
Declarations of interest
None.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Clifford Kraft and Paul Nadasdy for engaging
with my earlier writing on this topic and Mia Bennett for incisive
comments.
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Jesse Rodenbiker
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Department of Geography, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
E-mail address: jr2609@princeton.edu.
Guest editorial