Of wolves and wars: infrastructural violence in a multispecies world

Abstract This article intervenes in International Relations (IR) debates on infrastructural politics by centering the role infrastructures play in sustaining species domination, as a key foundation of international political relations. It argues that infrastructures materialize a distribution of killability, where some lives, particularly those of certain humans, are deemed non-killable, while others, like wolves, are subjected to exclusion, marginalization, and even death. By focusing on the Netherlands and Belgium, the article examines the rise of wolf-exclusionary infrastructures that create artificial boundaries, sustaining promises of human security shielded from the dangers posed by other species. These infrastructures obscure the violent histories of successive human wars against wolves and embed ongoing violence within technical vocabularies and international standards that make it seem neutral and inevitable. The article challenges IR to recognize infrastructure as a key tool of violence and urges a rethinking of how risks and vulnerabilities are materially distributed within multispecies relations. In so doing, it reveals the politics of infrastructure as central to the ongoing struggle of living with other species in a world shaped by entrenched human interests. Finally, the article calls for a reconsideration of security and explores a redistribution of the risks of earthly living across species lines.