Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness by Joshua O. Reno (review)

Military Waste by Joshua O. Reno is a book that will appeal to anyone interested in the material traces of militarization and militarism in the United States, as well as the political, economic, environmental, and social legacies of the Cold War. Reno is an anthropologist by trade, so the book is based on a diverse range of theoretical and ethnographic approaches to the topic. Each of the book's six chapters focuses on a type of military waste or a theoretical framework for understanding military waste as a byproduct of permanent war readiness.

The first three chapters are the book's strongest elements because each is grounded firmly in the materiality of waste. Chapter 1 explores the waste generated in the military-industrial complex. Through interviews with current and former employees at defense contractors in Binghamton, New York, Reno shows the centrality of waste within the defense economy and how the scientists engaging in research and development interpret the waste they create. Reno concludes that waste is understood as an engineering problem and byproduct of technological progress and high procurement costs. That is, it is an inevitable consequence of new technologies replacing inferior weaponry or mechanical decline as military assets reach the end of their lifecycles.

Chapters 2 and 3 (both coauthored with Priscilla Bennett) explore the afterlives of specific weapons systems and the multilayered meanings and legacies embedded in their reuse and re-appropriation. In chapter 2, the authors discuss the fate of surplus aircraft stored at the "Boneyard" (Davis-Monthan Air Force Base) near Tucson, Arizona. Aircraft boneyards serve important roles in supply chain logistics, which is why the base was established after World War II to stockpile old planes and parts. Over time, the base spawned a cluster of museums that specialize in displaying the technological sublime through the medium of obsolete technologies. The "Boneyard" attracts tourists, veterans, and aircraft enthusiasts seeking authentic restorations and reproductions of aeronautical history, but, as the authors astutely point out, not everyone values the aircraft as aircraft. Instead, some junked planes gain new meanings when artists reuse them as canvases for art displays.

The tensions between authenticity and reuse are further explored in chapter 3, which focuses on the scuttling of the USNS Vandenberg transport ship and the creation of a new tourist attraction for scuba divers in Key West, Florida. Reno and Bennett interviewed those responsible for creating the artificial reef, detailing the obstacles they overcame and the ways they recast the derelict ship's history as a sunken treasure. Rather than scrapping the vessel, the hulk was cleaned and deployed to expand the local economy. Taken together, the two chapters elucidate some pervasive legacies of the Cold War. By reimagining and reusing the remnants of America's Cold War military, the vestiges of militarism and militarization are converted to decidedly unmilitary purposes. The so-called peace dividend, therefore, becomes the tourist economy surrounding the Boneyard and Vandenberg, as people are drawn to both the glorification of military pasts and the peaceful reinvention of military wastes.

In the final three chapters, Reno shifts from the materiality of waste to theoretical constructions about military waste. In doing so, the book loses sight of waste as a collection of things and commodities governed by value regimes and instead conceives of military waste as a byproduct of militarism with many social, environmental, and colonial implications. This shift is not without merit, but the decoupling of waste from its materiality detracts from the argument's persuasiveness. For example, in Chapter 4 Reno explores space junk and the militarization of science. This is a novel approach. Few people realize how connected the U.S. military is to orbital debris, but Reno fails to narrow his inquiry to a specific object, such as the development of a Cold War–era satellite. Without this Vandenberg-like anchor, the narrative does not follow a coherent story about the military-industrial-academic complex or demonstrate how advanced...