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Recent and ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Africa and the Middle East highlight a key trend in contemporary warfare: belligerents are deliberately manipulating access to energy and sustenance sources, targeting critical infrastructure as well as food and water supplies to weaken adversaries and achieve operational objectives. Although increasingly prominent in both state and non-state military strategies, these dynamics have received relatively limited attention in international relations and security studies scholarship. Natural resources have been approached primarily as an external dimension of conflict – either as drivers of hostilities (with greed or resource scarcity causing the rise of violence) or victims of war (with conflict deteriorating environmental conditions) – rather than as instruments of coercion.
This panel aims to address this gap, exploring how the weaponisation of such resources, either considered as tools or targets, affects contemporary forms of conflict and reshapes both international competition and rebel governance patterns, contributing to broader transformations in global and regional security dynamics as well as in international governance. Such weaponisation is understood in a broad sense, encompassing practices that destabilise energy and sustenance systems, including the seizure of energy and natural resources, the obstruction of supply routes, the destruction of key assets, and the intentional denial of essential services, along with their humanitarian and ecological repercussions. Understanding these practices is increasingly important not only because they contribute to the pluralisation of global security, blurring the boundaries between conventional warfare, economic coercion, and hybrid conflict, but also because they may gain further salience with the intensification of climate stress and resource scarcity in vulnerable regions.
The panel welcomes both theoretical and empirical contributions employing qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods. Prospective papers may address, but need not be limited to, the strategic exploitation of economic and ecological assets; the changing nature of coercion and power projection in contemporary conflict; the extension of warfare into critical systems and civilian domains; and the political, legal, and ethical implications of emerging conflict practices. Contributions examining the role of natural resources’ weaponisation in regional security dynamics and geopolitical competition, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, are especially encouraged.