Beyond Climate Security: Reframing the Climate‐War Nexus Through Bataille's General Economy

Abstract The spectre of resource scarcity as a cause of war is dominant in discussions about potential links between climate change and armed conflict. Via engagement with Georges Bataille's theory of a general economy of the biosphere, this article conceptualises the relationship between climate change and war by focusing on resource excess as a threat. Positing resource excess and thereby the burning of fossil fuels, rather than resource scarcity and climate change, as threatening, puts focus on the production and acquisition of fossil fuels as perilous in relation to armed conflict, rather than painting often racialised individuals and countries who are victims of climate change as risks to security. Applying Bataille's thinking to the relationship between climate change and war moves beyond Malthusian crisis narratives and highlights the necessity of abandoning attachments to security as a progressive ideal.