War plans, written histories, and mediated representations make war appear as if it is conducted in a vacuum. Yet war is seldom neat and tidy, especially not those that have been conducted by the world's most powerful military. From its origins in colonial militias to its recent incursions in Venezuela, the United States military has always been shaped by the environment. Yet, U.S. military history has not traditionally been cognizant of ecology or space. This panel shows how environmental analysis can reveal what is typically hidden in the military history of the United States.

Though different environmental histories, the panelists explore how the environment has factored into the motivations for, course of, and implications (intended and unintended) of warfare in North America and abroad. Sylvia Faichney analyzes the ecological destruction that results from military infrastructure by examining patterns of construction from the advent of permanent Army posts on the island of Oah'u during the late nineteenth century. Her paper traces these patterns right up to the recent Red Hill fuel tank fiasco which continues to impact military personnel and the local population, including Kanaka Maoli. Patrick Jaojoco investigates CIA-backed counterinsurgency efforts in the Philippines during the decades following independence. He argues that American military involvement in the former colony has revolved around the creation of productive agricultural landscapes that benefit the U.S. Sanjay K. Paul explores how the U.S. Army's two-year occupation of Middle Tennessee during the Civil War was shaped by soldiers' and animals' metabolic requirements. His paper explores the attendant risks of this landscape of regular warfare for enslaved people seeking self-emancipation. Adam Longenbach concludes the panel with a history of how the Marine Corps designed the built and natural environments of training camps to inculcate soldiers with prejudices against Japanese and German people during the Second World War. He explores how staged lynchings and racist depictions blurred soldiers' sense of who was and was not a combatant, leading to war crimes committed by U.S. troops.

Collectively, this panel suggests the many lessons that might be learned through an environmental history of U.S. warfare. It seeks to bring ongoing scholarly conversations in environmental history and architectural history to military historiography. By focusing on examples from across the nineteenth and twentieth century, it raises questions about how similar analysis might reinterpret other important moments in the consequential military history of the United States of America.