Despite running on a campaign platform of “no new wars,” the Trump administration has recently begun a war in Iran and requested a Pentagon budget of $1.5 trillion—about a 50% increase over the current Pentagon budget of almost $1 trillion—to support its deeply unpopular war(-crime) efforts. In our attempts to meet the moment, we looked at what the latest research has to say about the sources, dynamics, costs, and repercussions of militarism both within the U.S. and beyond. In our discussion below, we explore the contours of modern-day militarism, revealing the blurred boundaries of the impacts of war across time, space, and different living bodies.
Here’s what we read this past month, including central research questions and key findings:
Why do countries militarize their borders, especially given questions about the efficacy of doing so?
Michael Kenwick and Sarah Maxey explore the symbolic, performative dimensions of border militarization—distinct from its utility—by examining the relationship between perceived international and domestic decline and support for border militarization:
- When individuals—especially members of dominant groups—perceive an impending decline in their status (either as a country at the international level or as a cultural group at the domestic level), they can experience anxiety, due to a perceived threat to their “sense of esteem and security,” giving rise to a desire for order, stability, and protection.
- This perception of decline—and the anxiety that can accompany it—creates potential “political incentives for elites to promote and sustain… more militarized [border] policies,” as border militarization can function to provide a sense of reassurance “that the world is stable, protected, and well-defined” amidst this anxiety and uncertainty.
- The confidence many people have in the military, as well as its symbolic value as a source of order and protection, means that militarization—and especially militarization at the border—can help meet some constituents’ demands for not only order and protection but also stable national identities, by “positioning a reference to state capacity at the line between the in-group and ‘foreign’ threats.”
- The authors tested their hypotheses about the effect of perceived international or domestic decline on support for border militarization through U.S.-based surveys and found the following:
- First, in general, the U.S. public is “not inherently drawn to militarized [border control] policies” but rather cares most about the effectiveness, and to some extent the cost, of border control strategies. That said, Republicans show more baseline support for the most militarized border control strategies than Democrats and Independents do.
- Second, a perception of international decline was correlated with “reduced support for some of the least militarized strategies and increased support for some of the most militarized strategies.”
- Third, a perception of domestic decline (a loss of majority status) among white, non-Hispanic respondents was correlated with greater support for border walls—one of the more militarized border strategies—but, counterintuitively, “reduced support for strategies which target movement outside of legal border crossings.”
- Fourth, non-Republicans (Democrats and Independents) were more responsive to perceived international decline (shifting support to more militarized strategies), while Republicans were more responsive to perceived domestic decline, particularly by increasing their support for the militarized strategies of building and patrolling border walls.
- The findings indicate that it’s plausible that border militarization is driven by political incentives independent of any objective threat at the border (and independent of the efficacy of such militarization), due to the symbolic attraction border militarization has when the public perceives international or domestic decline.
Citation: Kenwick, M.R., & Maxey, S. (2025). Explaining public demands for border militarization. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 69(6), 1005-1032.
How and why is civil society sometimes securitized in armed conflict settings, entailing its promotion and/or repression by state and non-state armed actors?
Niamatullah Ibrahimi, Hadeel Abdelhameed, and Abbas Farasoo examine the contexts of post-invasion Afghanistan and Iraq to consider how civil society becomes a contested site of security politics in armed conflict:
- In Iraq and Afghanistan, civil society was securitized both through international forces instrumentalizing civil society in their “regime change, counterterrorism, and counterinsurgency” efforts and through counter-intervention forces proactively associating civil society with Western intervention “actors and interests” to delegitimize them.
- To analyze the dual securitization process they see at work, the authors develop a distinction between “amity-based securitization” and “enmity-based securitization”:
- Amity-based securitization entails intervention forces’ “incorporat[ion] [of] civil society into security frameworks” through instrumentalizing civil society in the service of the counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and regime stabilization efforts of intervention forces.
- Enmity-based securitization entails counter-intervention forces framing civil society actors as “agents of foreign intervention,” using that association with international actors and interests to delegitimize them and their work—thereby also constituting them as legitimate targets of (often violent) repression.
- In both Afghanistan and Iraq, enmity-based securitization was especially used against women’s rights and/or female activists, with state and non-state actors portraying them as being controlled by foreigners and thereby attempting to delegitimize their claims for women’s rights or their involvement in broader protest movements.
- The analysis suggests that civil society is a “contested referent object,” caught up in state and non-state actors’ competing security narratives and “implicated in security logics not through direct threat behavior, but through their perceived affiliations… with intervening or opposing forces.”
- By embroiling civil society in security politics and repression, “securitization hinders the ability of civil society to effectively contribute to peacebuilding, democracy promotion, and development.” This finding raises the following questions: How do we disentangle civil society from security actors and agendas? How can civil society resist securitization?
Citation: Ibrahimi, N., Abdelhameed, H., & Farasoo, A. (2025). The securitization of civil society in conflict zones: A comparative study of Iraq and Afghanistan. Journal of Global Security Studies, 10(3), 1-18.
Are right-wing populist leaders more likely to start wars?
Minnie M. Joo, Brandon Bolte, Nguyen Huynh, Vineeta Yadav, and Bumba Mukherjee analyzed data on populist leaders worldwide from 1886 to 2014 and conducted survey experiments in India and Japan, finding that right-wing populist leaders are significantly more likely to initiate militarized disputes, but only when they govern in participatory democracies, where civil society is robust and citizens have real access to political processes.
- The central argument is that right-wing populist rhetoric works by constructing a story of national victimhood, blaming elites for the country’s decline, and promising revenge against outside threats. This rhetoric shifts public opinion toward supporting military force. In countries with an active civil society, shifts in public opinion are fed back to the leader through organized pressure. The leader, now trapped by their own narrative and accountable to a mobilized base, is more likely to follow through with actual military action.
- Analyzing data on leaders across 190 countries from 1886 to 2014, the study found that right-wing populist leaders in highly participatory democracies raise the probability of initiating a militarized dispute by roughly 12 percentage points.
- Survey experiments in India and Japan showed that right-wing populist messaging around victimhood, blame, and revenge shifted general public opinion in favor of military force by 20 to 29 percentage points, an effect that held across the full population, not just right-wing partisans.
- What separates right-wing populists from traditional hawkish leaders is that they get trapped by their own narrative. Tough-talking leaders can strategically back down. Right-wing populists face a mobilized base that expects follow-through.
- The elevated conflict risk does not apply to left-wing populists, generic right-wing leaders, or autocracies of any kind. It is specific to the combination of right-wing populist ideology and robust civic participation.
Citation: Joo, M. M., Bolte, B., Huynh, N., Yadav, V., & Mukherjee, B. (2025). Right-wing populist leaders, nationalist rhetoric, and dispute initiation in international politics. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 69(2-3), 321-351.
How do the critical minerals that go into making precision weapons relate to environmental and bodily harm not only during war but also before deployment?
Mark Griffiths and Kali Rubaii suggest that we expand our understanding of the harms of war to include the “beforemaths” by examining the environmental and human health effects of mining critical minerals along with the “aftermaths” of precision bombing campaigns.
- Late modern war, meaning the dominance of “precision” weaponry and surveillance technology, is mythologized as a more humane and less environmentally destructive type of warfare that minimizes collateral damage.
- “Seen from the perspective of those who live in targeted territories, military violence is anything but contained[.]” There are massive environmental and human health harms from the toxic chemicals released by “precision” bombing campaigns, with generational effects.
- In addition to the “aftermaths” of bombing campaigns, there are also the less-recognized “beforemaths”—or the environmental and human health effects from the mining of critical minerals used in weaponry. War’s effect on the “geos” (meaning, the earth and the life it sustains) is “doubly destructive.”
- The authors document similar, long-term environmental and bodily harms, including congenital and reproductive disorders, across the different contexts they examine: the U.S. War in Iraq in 2003, Israel’s “Operational Cast Lead” bombing of Gaza (2008-2009), and the mining of cobalt, copper, tantalum, and uranium in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
- Harm done at these mining sites represents “the origins of military violence”: as “the health of populations in Fallujah, Mosul, and Gaza City is threatened by the war-damaged geos, so too is that of those [in the DRC] that constitute war’s origins.”
- The authors offer a framework to analyze the “geos-war relationship” that is inclusive of war’s “beforemaths” and “aftermaths” by expanding the spatiality (from the earth where critical minerals are mined to the earth that is contaminated by toxic remnants of bombing), temporality (“where war’s violence begins, war begins”), and the range of bodies affected by warfare.
Citation: Griffiths, M., & Rubaii, K. (2025). Late modern war and the geos: The ecological ‘beforemaths’ of advanced military technologies. Security Dialogue, 56(1),38-57.
Informing Practice
To American audiences, there is a sense that what we are witnessing in the realm of militarism and imperialism right now is unprecedented—but this “new”-ness is limited. To the people of the global majority, being on the receiving end of violence—through projects such as colonialism and extractive capitalism—is nothing new. As it always has, militarism operates through interconnected systems, sustaining and justifying violence as the underlying status quo. Recent research surveyed here helps us make sense of this self-reinforcing web, particularly as it takes shape in this moment.
One characteristic of today’s militarism is the prominence of right-wing populism. Right-wing, populist administrations tend to galvanize support for war (Joo et al) and accelerate the expansion of state security forces, which outlast their political terms. These administrations routinely leverage (or even intensify) the public’s concerns about domestic and international decline regarding the nation, as these can make the public more supportive of border militarization (Kenwick et al), not to mention the militarized “management” of migrant populations within the country. At the same time, civil society groups who dissent may be labeled as threats to delegitimize them and make them into active targets for state violence and repression (Ibrahimi et al).
While these dynamics are not unique to the United States, the Trump administration offers a clear example of right-wing populism driving increased militarization. The construction of a political narrative around “victimhood and humiliation” (Joo et al) mobilized his voting base. This narrative centered white victimization, directing blame at “the other” rather than at the overarching system that produces inequality. Immigrants, who are essential to U.S. social and economic life as community members and as workers and business owners, are scapegoated for governmental failures. Borders then become a stage where public anxieties about national and international decline can find expression—and, more importantly, where proposed (militarized) responses to perceived decline can be performed for dramatic effect (Kenwick et al). Greater militarization at the border becomes a way for the state to offer a sense of order, protection, and stability in response to these anxieties.
This logic extends beyond borders and circulates back inside of them. The case of Venezuela shows how state narratives about the necessity of targeting drug cartels to keep U.S. borders safe build public consent for military operations abroad. Militarism is normalized at and beyond the border, while also boomeranging inward. ICE deployments in everyday public spaces disrupt daily life for some and end it for others. The erosion of civil liberties begins with the most vulnerable. The same systems of violence and repression used in war settings abroad are now being used domestically, collapsing the boundaries between domestic and foreign policy. When governments use the language of security threats to restrict or repress civil society, it undermines peacebuilding, democratic participation, and development (Ibrahimi et al). In highly militarized countries, such as the U.S., fear of state targeting limits free expression. For instance, policies such as the “nonprofit killer bill” label pro-Palestinian advocates as terrorists or supporters of terrorist activity, creating a chilling effect designed to silence dissent about the United States’ active role in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians and mass violence and displacement in Lebanon.
Just as militarism blurs the geographic boundary between domestic and foreign policy, so too does it blur the temporal boundaries of war. To confront militarism, we must expand our understanding to include the “beforemaths” of conflict (Griffiths & Rubaii). This framing exposes capitalism’s extractive and oppressive logic as a root cause of militarism. Griffiths and Rubaii describe the “geos-war relationship” as the deep connection between geography, land, and warfare. They call on us to contend with the “beforemaths” of war: how conflict is shaped by extraction and exploitation long before battles begin, and how its harms spread across time, place, and people’s bodies. Griffiths and Rubaii also challenge the idea that advanced military technology is “humane, precise, or ecologically friendly.” The full supply chain, from mineral extraction to ammunition production to deployment, is marked by continuous violence. Including the “beforemaths” in any analysis of war gives a fuller picture of its harms.
Practical takeaways for peace and security funders are to prioritize funding historically marginalized groups most impacted by violence and the systems producing it. For peace practitioners, including the “beforemaths” of war within analyses and policy recommendations will be helpful to provide a more accurate picture of the harms of war. Additionally, mindful of the key role played by victimization and threat narratives to justify militarism and repression, peace practitioners must proactively counter those narratives with ones that emphasize joint struggle, solidarity, inclusion, and humanity in the face of injustice. All of this requires attending to the safety and needs of those most vulnerable to harm, whether from systemic violence or from the direct violence of those who benefit from the dominant system.
Organizations:
The Horizons Project: https://horizonsproject.us/
Extractive Industries Initiative: https://eiti.org/
The Red Nation: https://www.therednation.org/
We Are Dissenters: https://wearedissenters.org/
Recommended reading:
War Prevention Initiative. (2025, November 13). Race and racism within the peace and security sector. Peace Science Digest. Retrieved April 20, 2026, from https://warpreventioninitiative.org/peace-science-digest/race-and-racism-within-the-peace-and-security-sector/
Fathallah, S. (2026). Algorithmic death-world: Artificial intelligence and the case of Palestine. Public Humanities, 2, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.124784
El-Kurd, M. (2025). Perfect victims: And the politics of appeal. Haymarket Books.
Protect Democracy. (2022). The authoritarian playbook. Retrieved April 16, 2026, from https://protectdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/The-Authoritarian-Playbook-Updated.pdf
Goitein, E., & Nunn, J. (2025, April 28). How turning the border into a military zone evades Congress and threatens rights. Retrieved April 16, 2026, from https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-turning-border-military-zone-evades-congress-and-threatens-rights
Southern Border Communities Coalition. (2026, February 2). Border militarization. Retrieved April 16, 2026, from https://www.southernborder.org/border_lens_border_militarization
Maurer, D. (2025, April 30). Border militarization blurs the distinction between ‘policing’ immigration and ‘combating’ immigrants. Retrieved April 16, 2026, from https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/border-militarization-blurs-the-distinction-between–policing–immigration-and–combating–immigrants
Shamsi, H. (2025, October 15). How NSPM-7 seeks to use “domestic terrorism” to target nonprofits and activists. ACLU. Retrieved April 16, 2026, from https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/how-nspm-7-seeks-to-use-domestic-terrorism-to-target-nonprofits-and-activists
Kamara, J., & Bumba, S. (2025, February 10). Protecting miners’ health in Democratic Republic of Congo. Think Global Health. Retrieved April 16, 2026, from https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/protecting-miners-health-democratic-republic-congo
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
