Post‐Humanitarian Militarism and the End of Development: Global Inequality, Security, and the Ethics of Post‐Imperial Solidarity

ABSTRACT This article traces the transformation of global development from a discourse of aspirational equality to a regime of posthumanitarian militarism. It shows how aid, once framed as solidarity and progress, increasingly operates as an instrument of coercion, surveillance, and containment. Drawing on historical sociology and decolonial critique, the article argues that postwar development legitimated global stratification by promising political recognition while deferring redistribution. As this legitimating order unravels, illustrated by U.S. foreign aid retrenchment and the European Union's migration‐security nexus, a new mode of governance has emerged: one that manages inequality through exclusion rather than inclusion. The analysis contributes to sociology by reframing development as a mechanism of stratification, by showing how racialized hierarchies structure global governance, and by advancing postimperial solidarity as a normative alternative grounded in redistribution, epistemic plurality, and collective responsibility.