Recovering Territory: The Thick Geopolitics of Demining in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina and Wartime Ukraine

Abstract

Demining is not only a technical matter, but also a geopolitical one. Landmines pose a violent threat to human and non-human life alike, and have enduring material effects on territories and ecologies. They defy the spatio-temporal limits of battlespaces, and entrench the territorial logic of wars by inscribing it on land. They render space dangerous, disrupt land-tenure patterns, and degrade the biosphere. Put differently ⎯ landmines kill, disable and territorialize, and remake ecologies. The removal of this violent threat to human and non-human life and livelihood is an act of governance. What lives and livelihoods get protected and restored through demining is a geopolitical question, determined by the international, national and local correlation of forces shaping the context in which it takes place. Demining is thus ultimately an act of governance ⎯ and it is imbued with spatial logic and territorial imperatives. This dissertation advances an understanding of demining as a territorial practice. In doing so, it develops a concept of "territorial recovery"⎯ a process by which a particular socio-spatial order is restored and safeguarded to ensure the viability of future life. By presenting a contrasting study between Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) and Ukraine, this dissertation shows that demining, which has historically emerged in post-conflict settings as part of the efforts to "reverse the effects of war", can also evolve in substantially different contexts in ways that further war. Demining in BiH emerged in the aftermath of conflict, and in an uncontested U.S.-led "international liberal order". In Ukraine, this process is unfolding amid active conflict, in a context marked by multipolar rivalries and contestation of "liberal world order". Through examination of the demining process in these contrasting circumstances, this dissertation argues that the geopolitical context ⎯ or multiscalar correlation of international, national and local forces ⎯ transforms the nature, meaning, and impact of the demining process as a territorial practice. A geopolitical context anchored around a peace settlement, and shaped by liberal humanitarian norms and practices, facilitates demining as a territorial recovery process tied to ecological restoration and economic growth. A geopolitical context anchored around war-fighting, and shaped by liberal war coalition and support practices, constructs demining as a territorial practice tied to terrain securitization and war-fighting imperatives.