Columbia International Affairs Online

CIAO DATE: 10/07

Theoria

Vol. 53, No. 2, Issue 110 (August 2006)

Articles

• Privatized Wars and World Order Conflicts
  Andreas Herberg-Rothe

  In an attempt to capture the unexpected forms taken by excessive violence since the epochal years of 1989-91, Robert Kaplan has argued that these developments indicate a coming anarchy, which has to be prevented (Kaplan 1994). This statement is based on the assumption that the level at which wars are being fought has shifted from the level of the state to a ‘lower’ level. It is argued that in most of these conflicts, non-state actors are involved on at least one side. The motivation and goals of these non-state actors seem not to follow political or ideological imperatives but have other sources, which may be ethnic, economic, or the fact that violence has become an autonomous force. Things would look different, however, if this diffusion were no more than a transitional phase after the breakdown of the polar order of the Cold War. The paradigm of the wars to come would then be determined not by the order/anarchy antithesis, but by the conflict between different conceptions of order. Finally, I argue that there will be a re-politicization of war and violence in the long run.

• War, Politics and Race: Reflections on Violence in the ‘War on Terror’
  Saul Newman and Michael P. Levine

  The authors argue that the ‘war on terror’ marks the ultimate convergence of war with politics, and the virtual collapse of any meaningful distinction between them. Not only does it signify the breakdown of international relations norms but also the militarization of internal life and political discourse. They explore the ‘genealogy’ of this situation firstly through the notion of the ‘state of exception’—in which sovereign violence becomes indistinct from the law that is supposed to curtail it—and secondly through Foucault’s idea that politics is essentially a form of warfare. They suggest that these two ways of approaching the question of violence can only be understood through a racist dimension, which forms the hidden underside of the ‘war on terrorism’. In other words, our contemporary situation is characterized by the mobilization not only of fundamentalist and conservative ideologies, but, increasingly, racial antagonisms and prejudices directed towards the Muslim other.

• Democratic and Perpetual Peace: Kant and Contemporary Peace Politics
  Karel Mom

  This paper criticizes an empirical reading of On Perpetual Peace. It is also equally critical of the approach taken by philosophically minded scholars to give preference to Kant’s philosophical outlook. Instead, it focuses on the peculiar oscillation between the philosophical and political aspects of the essay. Contrary to current concerns to update the conceptual framework of On Perpetual Peace—to rescue it from becoming obsolete—its salient irony, which mediates between both aspects, is singled out as a clue to an interpretation which seeks to account for both of them. Thus, the essay can still be a source of inspiration for peace research.

• On War, Politics and Capitalism After 9/11
  Tom Rockmore

  9/11 represents less a tear in the fabric of history, or a break with the past, than an inflection in ongoing historical processes, such as the continued expansion of capitalism that at some recent time has supposedly attained a level of globalization. This paper considers the relation of war and politics with respect to three instances arising in the wake of 9/11, including the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and finally the global war on terror (GWT). I argue that these wars are superficially dissimilar, but that on a deeper level they all relate to a single ideological position that is an important motivation in current US foreign policy, and that this position is further related to capitalism.

• ‘Delinquents, Troublemakers, Pirates and Gangsters’: New Wars in the Postpolitical Borderland
  Mikkel Thorup

  This article tries to actualize Carl Schmitt’s critique of liberal internationalism in what the author calls the ‘liberal globalist paradigm’, which substitutes a post-sovereign humanitarian-moralist discourse for political arguments. This discourse helps shape a new inequality in the interstate system based on the ability to invoke humanist language; an ability that is systematically skewed in favour of Western states. The post-sovereign discourse hides an aggressive liberal antipluralism which only acknowledges liberal-capitalist societies as legitimate and reserving the right to intervene and criticize globally. The new re-configuration of power manifests itself in the war on terror and in humanitarian interventions.

• America’s Quest for Global Hegemony: Offensive Realism, the Bush Doctrine, and the 2003 Iraq War
  Carlos L. Yordán

  Research in the discipline of international relations finds that the great democratic powers are less likely to pursue revisionist policies. This investigation challenges this argument by showing that the United States’ decision to oust Saddam Hussein’s regime in March 2003 was consistent with a modified version of John Mearsheimer’s theory of offensive realism, which finds that great powers’ motivation is global hegemony. This article is divided into three sections. The first section considers the value of Mearsheimer’s theory and reworks it by adding domestic variables to explain why states abandon defensive strategies for offensive ones. The second section shows how pre-9/11 American foreign policy strategy was, for the most part, status quo oriented, and section three explains why and how the Bush administration introduced a revisionist foreign policy strategy after the 9/11 attacks. This investigation concludes by showing how the 2003 Iraq War is the first step in the United States’ quest for global hegemony.