Incandesecent settler colonialism: Maxine Matheson-Lieber, An environmental analysis approach to understanding the effects of the legal use of white phosphorous munitions: slow violence, settler-colonialism, and Western hegemony, Senior dissertation, Claremont, 2024 | settler colonial studies blog

Incandesecent settler colonialism: Maxine Matheson-Lieber, An environmental analysis approach to understanding the effects of the legal use of white phosphorous munitions: slow violence, settler-colonialism, and Western hegemony, Senior dissertation, Claremont, 2024

26May24

Abstract: This paper aims to critically examine the interplay between environmental degradation, settler-colonialism, and the neo-imperialist biases embedded within our international law institutions due to their Eurocentric origins and interest centers. It seeks to demonstrate how these biases contribute to a system that disproportionately empowers certain nations, particularly the United States and other great powers, at the expense of widespread injustices unto humans and their environments globally. This paper will use theory, frameworks, and scholarship rooted in environmental analysis and justice, intersectional analytics, Indigenous, and post-colonial theories. Ultimately, it will argue that we must examine and correct international institutions and rulings that work against the well-being of innocent civilians and close these loopholes left to naturalize and legally enforce Western hegemony. This paper will focus on the loopholes in international law allowing the highly problematic, indiscriminate, and deadly use of WP munitions in conflicts due to its “dual” use. In short, the dual-use clause provides for a hazardous and sometimes fatal weapon to be wielded by the world’s most powerful military forces, no matter the embedded humanitarian and ecological harm involved in dispersing any amount of WP into the environment. This interconnected system around the legal right to wield power and violence is entrenched with other systems of power, including colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy, which will be explored in this paper through the case study of WP use by the Israeli military in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

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