The Military-Fossil Fuel Complex

A world system based on permanent war, and permament ecological crisis.

The idea of the ‘military-industrial complex’, coined by Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address, was meant as a warning about the unchecked power of arms manufacturers and their influence over foreign policy. Today, that complex has metastasized. It no longer describes just the cosy relationship between arms manufacturers and politicians. It now includes another powerful, planet-destroying industry: fossil fuels.

The military-fossil fuel complex is the unholy alliance between some of the world’s most carbon-intensive organisations – its armed forces – and the corporations most responsible for heating the planet. These two sectors are not just loosely aligned; they are mutually reinforcing. If we want to understand why the world is trapped in a cycle of endless war and accelerating climate collapse, we need to understand how war and oil have become so closely intertwined.

War is a Carbon-Intensive Business

Let’s start with the obvious: war is bad for the planet. The US military is by far the largest military force in the world. It is also the single largest institutional consumer of oil in the world, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University. If the US military were a country, it would be the 46^th largest greenhouse gas emitter on Earth. The tanks, jets, aircraft carriers and logistical operations required to sustain a global network of over 800 military bases are all powered by fossil fuels.

Military emissions are deliberately excluded from many national and international climate agreements. The Kyoto Protocol, for example, exempted military emissions from its targets, thanks in part to lobbying from the United States. This loophole remains largely in place today. It allows the war machine to churn out carbon unchecked, while politicians wring their hands about household recycling habits.

But the military doesn’t just consume fossil fuels; it secures them.

A US marine near an oil refinery in Basra, Iraq. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/18/geysers-of-burning-oil-looting-and-mayhem-reporting-on-the-opening-days-of-the-iraq-war

Despite endless platitudes about a transition to green energy, oil remains one of the most strategically important resources on the planet. And where there is oil, there is conflict. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a masterclass in how military power is deployed to secure energy resources under the guise of democracy and counterterrorism. The occupation left a shattered state, a quarter of a million dead, and a privatised, deregulated oil industry that allowed Western energy giants to swoop in and make massive profits.

Petrodollars and the Merchants of Death

There’s another link between fossil fuels and violence: the revenues generated by fossil fuels insulate governments from their own populations, empowering some of the most violent and repressive regimes in the world. Autocrats from Saudi Arabia, to Russia, to the UAE depend on oil and gas exports to maintain their grip on power. These revenues reduce the need for taxation, weakening the social contract and eliminating any incentive to democratize. In place of consent, these regimes govern through repression, surveillance, and, when necessary, brute force.

In many cases, the West is more than happy to turn a blind eye. Governments like Saudi Arabia may be authoritarian, but they’re our authoritarians: strategic partners who keep the oil flowing and the enemy in check. Their security is guaranteed by Western arms deals and military alliances. Their repression is legitimised by talk of ‘stability’. Their wealth is recycled into the financial centres of London and New York.

Oil revenues don’t just fund repression at home; they bankroll a global arms trade dominated by US and European firms. In 2023, Saudi Arabia was the world’s fifth-largest purchaser of weapons, most of them manufactured by American companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing. These purchases are financed by the billions the Kingdom earns selling oil.

In fact, a big part of the reason that oil sales are denominated in dollars – so-called ‘petrodollars’ – is so that these funds can be recycled into weapons purchases. This arrangement benefits the US and Saudi Arabia - not to mention secondary players like the UK, home to massive arms manufacturer BAE Systems. These relationships are often mired in corruption. Back in the 1990s, BAE was caught red handed giving bribes to the Saudi royal family as part of the infamous Al-Yamamah arms deal.

This cycle – oil for dollars, dollars for weapons, weapons for control – binds the fossil fuel industry and the arms industry in a grim mutual dependency. The same companies heating the planet are also profiting from its instability. The same governments calling for peace and decarbonisation are arming despots and drilling for more oil.

A System of Permanent War and Permanent Extraction

The military-fossil fuel complex is not a bug, but a feature of global capitalism. This nexus produces war to secure fossil fuels. It burns fossil fuels to fight wars. It props up authoritarian regimes to maintain access to oil. And it arms those regimes with weapons bought using the profits from oil sales.

The result is a global order built on permanent war and permanent extraction: a system in which the destruction of lives and the destruction of the planet are not collateral damage, but part of the business model.

Until we break this alliance between military power and fossil capital, there will be no peace, and there will be no climate justice. The struggle for climate justice is also a struggle against empire, against militarism, and against the global oligarchy of oil and arms. It is, at its core, a fight for democracy.