Historically, the links between global environmentalist movements and campaigns for disarmament have been strong. In the UK at least, from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) to The Green Party’s sporadic support for the prohibition of nuclear weapons, there exists clear precedent for a compatible coalition between environmental and anti-militarist agendas. In particular, the burgeoning “degrowth” movement, which includes in their proposals a more explicit call for disarmament and the downscaling of the military-industrial complex, shows potential as a leading partner in the drive for near-term disarmament.

Degrowth and its Relevance to Disarmament

In the 2022 IPCC report (cited as the starkest scientifically-grounded warning of climate change-related risks) degrowth was mentioned as part of several pathways for limiting global heating to 1.5°C. Degrowth as a concept argues that exponential economic growth is no longer a useful policy tool for states to pursue. It argues that unabated economic growth is ecologically untenable, given GDP is tied to the quantity of materials that flow through economies. From this, degrowth makes the simple claim that on a finite planet, one cannot have infinite economic growth. Degrowth also claims that GDP is a poor metric of progress. Similarly, degrowth advocates, taking from ecological economics, argue that wealthy states in the Global North use far more than their fair share of resources, many of these resources being extracted from the Global South. Instead of pursuing economic growth, degrowth advocates suggest that high-consumption areas of the world must downscale socially useless and environmentally destructive spheres of production and reorient societal objectives around improving human wellbeing and meeting human needs.

Degrowth’s unique relevance in the disarmament debate concerns its explicit call for demilitarisation. The military is earmarked as a sphere of production that needs to be “degrown” given its social uselessness and ecological impact. Degrowth looks to the simple, clear fact that the military is one of the world’s largest emitters, making up between 1-6% of global emissions. The social uselessness of militaries lies in the observation that despite militarism regularly rendering benefits to certain actors in the short-term, over the long durée of history, it is both a race-to-the-bottom and a recourse to cyclical violence.

Degrowth’s growing popularity amongst climate, decolonial, and global justice advocates is becoming bulwarked by figures such as the President of Ireland, Colombia, and various European ministers calling for its introduction, alongside a high-profile conference at the EU commission in June 2023 which saw EU Commission President Ursula Von der Layen in attendance. Given the potential weight of degrowth in ideological and policy debates in the coming years, both the degrowth movement and the disarmament movement must be able to align their messages, but also work through several extant issues.

The Barriers to Peace and Degrowth

The primary issue concerns how security is to be maintained without the military. Detractors tend to argue that a conflictual human nature, accompanied by a distrust of our supposed foes make demilitarisation unfeasible. The dominant narratives in international relations scholarship either agree with this point of view, accepting the realist take that building power is necessary to protect one’s own interests, or they believe that cooperation is possible through interwoven, successful, growing global economies that make going to war undesirable and unprofitable.

For disarmament advocates, the onus is on them to offer counters to the realist logic. Yet, for degrowth advocates there exists a dual onus. One facet of the downscaling and reorientation of production contained within the degrowth agenda is a localisation of production, particularly for basic needs such as food, energy, and building materials. The deglobalisation implicit within the degrowth agenda has the potential to dismantle many of the economic interdependencies supposedly keeping the opportunity cost of war high.

Opportunities for Mutual Learning

Fortunately, degrowth scholarship and insights from what is known as ‘positive peace theory’ offer opportunities for squaring these circles. An abridged version of positive peace, which Galtung describes as “freedom from structural violence” is the idea that a sustainable peace can only be built from the ground-up. Peaceful relations between peoples can only be sustainable when the needs of each society are met without being done so at the expense of others. It is evident that many conflicts stem from an attempt to satisfy unsatiated desires, be it the free flow of hydrocarbons in the case of Iraq in 2001, to Israel’s desire for territorial acquisition in occupied Palestine.

Degrowth’s prescriptions for localised economies, based on principles of sufficiency and autonomy, entail the rupturing of the exploitative supply chains that maintain patterns of consumption in the Global North. The dual objective is to both end the exploitation of labour and extraction of resources from the Global South, and to foster a sustainable society domestically in the Global North. Embedded within this agenda is the maxim that “I am not truly free until everyone is free”, a message that typifies the dynamic necessary for cooperation and peace in a demilitarised world.

Stronger messaging is required from both the environmentalist and disarmament communities to convince the public that the paradigms they put forward will necessarily be peaceful ones. Both movements have much to learn from each other. The often radical, young, degrowth advocates stand to gain perspective on what may or not be feasible in the short-term. Similarly, disarmament advocates can certainly point to degrowth as an example of a politics that seeks to build peace in a more holistic and enduring fashion.