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The Biopolitics of the War on Terror: a critique of the ‘return of imperialism’ thesis in international relations

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 26; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0143659042000339100

1360-2241

Julian Reid,

Nuclear Issues and Defense

Abstract The 'war on terror' is widely regarded as instigating a major regression within the development of the international system. Processes of globalisation are being challenged, it is argued, by a reassertion of the sovereign power of nation-states, most especially the USA. In more overt terms this regression is represented as a 'return' of a traditional form of imperialism. This 'return of imperialism' thesis challenges the claims of theories developed during the 1990s which concentrate on the roles of deterritorialisation and the development of biopolitics in accounting for the constitution of the contemporary international order. In contrast this paper seeks to detail the important respects in which biopolitical forces of deterritorialisation continue to play an integral role within the strategies of power that make the war on terror possible. Rather than understanding the war on terror as a form of 'regression' it is necessary to pay heed to the complex intertwinings that continue to bind sovereign and biopolitical forms of power in the 21st century. Such an understanding is urgent in that it provides for different grounds from which to reflect on the processes by which international order is currently being reconstituted and to help think about how to engage in reshaping them. Notes Earlier versions of this article were presented at the International Politics research workshop at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, December 2003, the Centre for the Study of Democracy Research Seminar Series at the University of Westminster in October 2004, the Rethinking Security and Violence in Contemporary World Politics Workshop at Birkbeck College London, November 2004, the British International Studies Association conference at Warwick University, December 2004, and the Rights, Justice, Violence and War Research Seminar Series at the Centre for Rights, Justice, Violence and War, University of Sussex, February 2005. I thank the participants at those events for their comments on this work. I wish to thank Stefan Elbe, Yoshi Nakano, and Louiza Odysseos in particular for their productive criticisms of the work. Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000, p i. Ibid, p xii. Ibid, p xiv. Ibid, p i. For a more expansive account of the violence of these processes, see Julian Reid, 'War, liberalism and modernity: the biopolitical provocations of Empire', Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 17 (1), 2004, pp 63 – 79. Hardt & Negri, Empire, pp 83 – 87. For an elaboration of the concept of disutopia see their earlier work Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State-Form, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1994, pp 310 – 313. The concept of immanent or 'constituent' power is developed in Labor of Dionysus and is close to Marx's concept of 'living labour'. The Foucauldian concept of biopower is only developed in the later part of Hardt and Negri's Empire. The distinction between immanence and biopower remains heavily under-theorised in their work, leading to several lines of critique of their theoretical case. This article is an attempt, in part, to address that lacuna by developing a more authentically Deleuzean account of relations between immanence, biopolitics and political sovereignty. Ivan Eland, 'The empire strikes out: the 'new imperialism' and its fatal flaws', Policy Analysis, 459, 2002, pp 1 – 27. Michael Cox, 'The empire's back in town or America's imperial temptation—again', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 32 (1), 2003, pp 1 – 27. Tariq Ali, 'Re-colonizing Iraq', New Left Review, 21, 2003, pp 1 – 19. For a further elaboration of the ways in which Deleuze's concept of deterritorialisation informs Negri's theory of immanent power, see Julian Reid, 'Deleuze's war machine: nomadism against the state', Millennium, 32 (1), 2003, pp 57 – 85. For example, see Robert Kagan, 'Power and weakness', Policy Review, 113, 2002, available at http://www.policyreview.org/JUN02/kagan.html. Cox, 'The empire's back in town', pp 13 – 14. David Hastings Dunn, 'Myths, motivations and "misunderestimations": the Bush administration and Iraq', International Affairs, 79 (2), 2003, pp 279 – 297. www.newamericancentury.org. Audrey Kurth Cronin, 'Rethinking sovereignty: American strategy in the age of terrorism', Survival, 44 (2), 2002, pp 119 – 139. The denouncement of the imperialism of US foreign policy can be traced back at least as far as the formation of the American Anti-Imperialist League in 1899. See, for example, Ronald Bleier, 'Invading Iraq: the road to perpetual war', Middle East Policy, IX (4), 2002, pp 35 – 42; Cox, 'The empire's back in town', pp 13 – 14; Eland, 'The empire strikes out', p 5; and Ali, 'Re-colonizing Iraq'. See 'The imperial backlash on empire: Antonio Negri interviewed by Ida Dominijanni', at http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/000487.php. Hardt & Negri, Empire, pp 51 – 52. For two excellent and nuanced accounts of Deleuze's theorisation of the relation of state sovereignty to processes of deterritorialisation, see Ronald Bogue, 'Apology for nomadology', Interventions, 6 (2), 2004, pp 169 – 179; and Ulrike Kistner, 'Raison d'état: philosophy of and against the state', Interventions, 6(2), 2004, pp 242 – 251. Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: Athlone Press, 2000, p 260. As discussed in Dirk Messner & Franz Nuscheler, 'World politics—structures and trends', in Paul Kennedy, Dirk Messner & Franz Nuscheler (eds), Global Trends & Global Governance, London: Pluto Press, 2002, pp 125 – 155. See Hardt & Negri, Empire, pp 4 – 6 on this point. Abbas Alnasrawi, 'Iraq: economic sanctions and consequences, 1990 – 2000', Third World Quarterly, 22 (2), 2001, pp 205 – 218. As laid out in Resolution 688 (5/4/91). Discussed in Peter Malanczuk, 'The Kurdish crisis and allied intervention in the aftermath of the second Gulf war', European Journal of International Law, 2, 1991, pp 114 – 132. http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/background/fact-sheet.html. Judith S Yaphe, 'America's war on Iraq: myths and opportunities', Adelphi Papers, 354 (1), 2003, pp 23 – 44. G John Ikenberry, 'America's imperial ambition', Foreign Affairs, September – October 2002, p 81. Roger MacGinty, 'The pre-war reconstruction of Iraq', Third World Quarterly, 24 (4), 2003, p 606. http://ods-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N03/368/53/PDF/N0336853.pdf?OpenElement. MacGinty, 'The pre-war reconstruction of Iraq', p 606. Ibid, p 607. Ikenberry, 'America's imperial ambition'. Ibid. Mary Kaldor, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War, Cambridge: Polity, 2003, pp 133 – 134. Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War; Kosovo and Beyond, London: Vintage, 2001, p 201. Adam Roberts, 'Law and the use of force after Iraq', Survival, 45 (2), 2003, pp 31 – 56. Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, London: Athlone Press, 1999, p 509. Ibid, pp 351 – 423. Paul Patton, 'Future politics', in Paul Patton & John Protevi (eds), Between Deleuze & Derrida, London: Continuum, 2003, p 21. Here I am paraphrasing Kistner's formulation whereby 'nomadism is haunted by the state that it attempts to ward off'. Kistner, 'Raison d'état', p 250. Hardt & Negri, Empire, pp 35 – 37. A demand more substantially made by Paul Gilroy in his recent After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture, London: Routledge, 2004, pp 13 – 21. Ibid, pp 91 – 92. Kaldor, Global Civil Society, p 156. Ibid, 159. Douglas Kellner, 'September 11, social theory and democratic politics', Theory, Culture & Society, 19 (4), 2002, p 158. Benjamin Barber, 'The war of all against all: terror and the politics of fear', in Verna V Gehring (ed), War After September 11, New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003, p 88. Ibid, p 76. Kellner, 'September 11, social theory and democratic politics', p 158.