Conflict, Extreme Weather, and Transformation of Sovereignty in the Pacific

Global publics have been noticing the intensity of droughts, wildfires, melting poles, rising sea levels, and typhoons in their daily lives. Policy communities are scrutinizing the nature of the climate change, its human-induced causes and environmental effects. But the effect of climate change does not end with an account of environmental impacts. Climate change has had social and security effects too, as recent arguments on migration pressures (Dalby), resource scarcity (Homer-Dixon), access to rural land (Baechler), and intensification of conflicts (Kelley) emphasize. This paper looks back in time and argues that extreme climate and weather phenomena have influenced conflicts and post-conflict reconstruction of state sovereignties not only in recent decades, but relate to the past occurrences too, including the WWII. As narratives of past events tend towards anthropocentric explanations, the presence of weather and climate are often minimalized or bracketed out in favour of intentionality and human agency. Yet wars are complex phenomena, and no human agency can fully account for them. The argument here is that extreme weather events, such as heavy rains, had contributed significantly to the transformation of the battlefield in the Pacific War, to the atrocities committed on the local noncombatant population, and to the postwar discourses on sovereignty, which radically transformed popular and territorial forms of governance in East Asia. It provides a more climate-prone explanation for the final stages of the Pacific War.