The Bio-Zoopolitics of U.S. Military Working Dog Policy in the U.S. “War on Terror”

Abstract

This paper analyzes the differential positioning of military working dogs in U.S. military
policy with particular attention to the period from 2000-2023, during which, among other shifts, these
dogs were reclassified within U.S. law and military code from “expendable equipment” to “military
animals.” This time also aligns with the time of the U.S. “war on terror.”1 The paper draws on feminist
and postcolonial animal studies to consider the larger cultural contexts under which these shifts
emerged, particularly within the biopolitical and racialized contexts of this war. Considering the cultural
contexts of these legislative shifts helps illuminate the biopolitical and zoopolitical entanglements of
animality, nationalism, and war in determining how military working dogs gain a certain limited “right
to life” through U.S. military policy within the racialized sacrificial economies of this war.