Military Agricultural Reclamation: Strategic Land-Use Change to Remake Unruly Desert Borders

Abstract

This article outlines the social, political, and environmental conditions under which states engage in strategic agricultural development along desert borders and what these developments achieve for the state. We focus on how national governments employ state-led agricultural reclamation, expansion, or intensification in deserts to produce and territorialize borders and discuss how these projects fall short. We apply theories of state power and legibility to analyze three military agricultural sites on the China–Kazakhstan, Egypt–Sudan, and Israel–Egypt–Gaza borders, each of which exemplifies strategic desert borderland agricultural development. These sites have geopolitical significance due to their history of territorial disputes, potential for ethnic conflict, and access to strategically important natural resources. By drawing on commonalities between these sites, we find that these developments achieve multiple goals for states, including demarcating territorial boundaries, increasing legibility of peripheral borderlands, and demonstrating control over difficult terrains. We also outline how these projects fall short of totally remaking borderlands due to social, political, and environmental limitations.