Peace in an era of global war(ming)

We have long imagined peace as a shield cast over serene landscapes, protecting us from war’s responsibility and its wounds. Yet this illusion crumbles under recent findings in environmental science, which reveal that the militaries of nations heralded as symbols of peace, such as the United States and NATO are the largest contributors to climate change today, devastating health, ecosystems, and communities across both conflict-affected and seemingly peaceful regions. This cross-border environmental destruction is so profound that, from an ecological perspective, the distinction between peace and war landscapes has effectively dissolved. Yet our collective imagination remains anchored in an outdated dichotomy, confining war victims to visibly scarred regions while perceiving those outside these areas as secure, thriving, and detached from accountability. Consequently, it prevents individuals from recognizing their exposure to war’s harm and hinders the emergence of activist positions rooted in an understanding of our shared and precarious contemporary trajectory. This paper addresses this gap by examining three analytical lenses applied to the same contemporary landscapes: political philosophy, which traditionally conceptualizes landscapes in territorial terms divided between zones of peace and war; environmental science, which exposes the ecological consequences of militarization that transcend territorial and temporal boundaries; and contemporary autobiographical literature, which, through the personal gaze on one’s home landscape, reconciles these perspectives, shaping a new way of inhabiting the ecopolitical realities of the 21st century. Through this interdisciplinary approach, this article introduces a new category of victims: “The Unknowing Fallen”, individuals living beneath seemingly “peaceful” landscapes yet suffering from the ecological destruction caused by historical, distant, and future conflicts. Building on this concept, it proposes a framework that recognizes our shared vulnerability and complicity, calling for a paradigm shift that unites ecological justice and peacemaking as an urgent and unified global imperative.