This paper examines the US military's impact on climate by analysing the geopolitical ecology of its global logistical supply chains. Our geopolitical ecology framework interrogates the material‐ecological metabolic flows (hydrocarbon‐based fuels, water, sand, concrete) that shape geopolitical and geoeconomic power relations. We argue that to account for the US military as a major climate actor, one must understand the logistical supply chain that makes its acquisition and consumption of hydrocarbon‐based fuels possible. Our paper focuses on the US Defense Logistics Agency – Energy (DLA‐E), a large yet virtually unresearched sub‐agency within the US Department of Defense. The DLA‐E is the primary purchase‐point for hydrocarbon‐based fuels for the US military, as well as a powerful actor in the global oil market. After outlining our geopolitical ecology approach, we detail the scope of the DLA‐E's operations, its supply chain, bureaucratic practices, and the physical infrastructure that facilitates the US military's consumption of hydro‐based carbons on a global scale. We show several “path dependencies” – warfighting paradigms, weapons systems, bureaucratic requirements, and waste – that are put in place by military supply chains and undergird a heavy reliance on carbon‐based fuels by the US military for years to come. The paper, based on comprehensive records of bulk fuel purchases we have gathered from DLA‐E through Freedom of Information Act requests, represents a partial yet robust picture of the geopolitical ecology of American imperialism.

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In this article, we discuss our experience conducting ethnographic and archival research on illiberal processes within nominally liberal states -in this case, the USA. We focus on two different institutional practices based on our respective fieldwork: (1) counterinsurgency training of civilian and military personnel in Indiana for deployment in southern Afghanistan and (2) immigration enforcement, particularly immigrant family detention. Building on Koch's (2013, this issue) argument for conceptualising closed contexts over il/liberal dichotomies, we analyse how liberal norms of open information, documentation and archiving function as governmental technologies. We argue that immigration and military agencies are not best understood as intentional, conspiratorial agencies bent on obscurity; rather, we show how a range of state and non-state actors produce particular kinds of knowledge about US federal agency practices. By working through examples from our respective research projects, we show how seeking access to state agencies requires researchers' participation in the bounding of state and civil society. Rather than accept those boundaries, we argue that researchers in nominally liberal and illiberal states alike should pay close attention to how governmental technologies of openness and closure are woven together.

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Hamkari translates as "Cooperation" in Pashto and Dari. 2 The number of villages completely or partially destroyed in the Hamkari operations is contested. U.S. officials claim three villages, while the Arghandab District Governor, Shah Muhammad Ahmadi, named seven villages in an interview with the New York Times (Shah and Nordland 2010). Ahmadi estimated 120 to 130 homes demolished in his district alone. The four villages discussed in this article are confirmed by interviews and cross-referenced with multiple sources, but it is important to keep in mind that there could be more. 3 The build-up of U.S. troops (Obama's "surge") occurred in summer 2010. On March 11, 2012, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales went on a shooting rampage in three villages in Panjwai district, killing sixteen civilians, including nine children. The fallout from Bales' actions effectively ended formal counterinsurgency operations in Kandahar. 4 This is not to say that McChrystal's approach was less violent. On the refined violence of "non-kinetic and non-lethal targeting" in counterinsurgency doctrine, see Gregory (2008: 9). 5 On Razzik's record of corruption and human rights abuses, see Aikens (2011). 6 See Memos 4-13 on the "Application of Treaties and laws to al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees" in Greenberg and Dratel 2005. 7 The criticisms of the U.S. military's approach to "cultural awareness" and "human terrain" are well known (Belcher 2014; Gregory 2008; Price 2011; Wainwright 2016). 8 On the notion of "IED factories": "They [U.S. military] would patrol that area, and there was a Taliban presence that was using some of those villages for firing positions and for IED factories as they were termed. I mean, I don't know if you can call a guy making some HMEs [homemade explosives] a factory, but I guess that is what they were called, factories." (Department of State official, interview) 9 The Battle for Bomb Alley, BBC Films, 2010 10 The 3 rd Squadron, 2 nd Stryker Calvary Regiment that built the wall is known as the "Wolfpack." 11 It must be noted that the U.S. military has a poor track record of discerning civilians, especially military-aged males, from combatants (Gregory 2006). 12 As Flynn told Paula Broadwell: "I literally cringed when we dropped the bombs on these places-not because I cared about the enemy we were killing or the HME destroyed, but I knew that the reconstruction would consume the remainder of my deployed life" (Broadwell 2011). 13 When I read Hameed's account to the USAID/OTI official, he replied: "Yeah, it sounds very familiar. I mean, look. The number of folks that we saw, and I'm not saying this is him. I'm saying that the number of people who came out of the woodwork to try to make money out of things like this was sickening, quite frankly."