Climate change and the imposition of strategic ontologies: Tracing International Relations and Media Studies between militarization, invincibility and vulnerability

This article examines how strategic ontologies shape the material and social conditions that enable conflict and war in world politics. Specifically, it interrogates how climate change is framed through an imposed militarized strategic ontology of war, producing narratives of invincibility, inversion and a lack of accountability. Rather than addressing climate security concerns, this ontology obscures responsibility for harm and reinforces conflictual structures in world politics. Drawing on Griffiths and Redwood’s (2024) article ‘Late modern war and the geos’, the article contends that the militarized ontology of war, when applied to climate change, reconfigures political organization in ways that silence existing harm and naturalize future conflict. It contributes to debates on strategic ontologies by demonstrating how imposed ontologies reinforce hegemonic power and drive insecurity, highlighting the normative responsibility of scholars in exposing, critiquing and countering these ontologies.