Civilizing interventions? Race, war and international law

Abstract

Over the past decade there has been an explosion in literature on imperialism and international law. This scholarship has focused on the use of force, especially humanitarian intervention and the war on terror. These accounts foreground the issue of race, arguing that these legal arguments reproduce the dynamic of the civilising mission. This article argues that such analyses miss some key elements. Contemporary interventions must be counterposed to the First Iraq War, which was enabled through the uncontroversial authorization of the Security Council. Humanitarian intervention and the war on terror emerged in reaction to the fear that other states would veto Security Council resolutions. Consequently, the ‘racial’ discourse around intervention cannot simply be read as ‘othering’ the peripheries, but was also a response to inter-imperialist rivalry. The article then advances a conception of the arguments as an attempt to articulate hegemonic coalitions against emerging rivalries, and reads racialization in this light.

Notes

The foundations of this paper were laid at several of the ‘Glasgow Conversations in International Law’, so my thanks to Akbar Rasulov for organizing them and for his scathing but pertinent criticisms. My thanks also go to Alex Anievas for inviting me to present a version of this paper as part of the ‘Historical Materialism and International Relations’ seminar series at Oxford, as well as to the audience. I have presented versions of this paper at the ‘Third World Approaches to International Law’ conference at the University of Oregon and the Eighth Historical Materialism conference: my thanks go to the co-panellists, organizers and audiences of these events. Finally, I owe a great deal of thanks to Owen Taylor and the three anonymous reviewers of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs for their useful and astute comments on this article. As ever, all errors and omissions of style and substance remain mine alone.

¹ For two examples specifically focused on Empire see Balakrishnan (2003) and Passavant and Dean (2003).

² See Callinicos (2009); Harvey (2003); Kiely (2010); Wood (2003); Milios and Sotiropolous (2009).

³ There are occasions when states will frame their actions as being consciously against the prevailing international legal regime—see Berman (2005).

⁴ The literature here is voluminous, but for a few examples see: Alvarez (2009); Bartholomew (2006); Bowden (2005); Bowring (2008); Byers and Nolte (2003); Krisch (2005); Marks (2003); Miéville (2005); Rasulov (2010); Simpson (2004); Zolo (2009).

⁵ There is a great deal of TWAIL literature, but for a representative sample see: Anghie (2005a); Chimni (2006); Gathii (2007); Mutua (2001); Okafor (2008); Rajagopal (2003).

⁶ National Security Strategy (2002).

⁷ Much of the relevant law was dealt with by the UN's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change in its report ‘A more secure world’ A/59/565 of 2 December 2004.

⁸ This is reflective of the fact that Anghie—like other TWAIL scholars—draws upon postcolonial theory, particularly Said and Bhabha (Anghie 2005, 9). Obviously, one of the key theoretical moves of postcolonial scholarship has been to argue that there is an endless push towards consolidating the European ‘self’ through the creation of a non-European ‘other’. See Said (2003) and Bhabha (2004).

⁹ See Nesiah (2004) for an account of the relationship between the logics of militarism and humanitarianism.

¹⁰ Richard Seymour (2011, 2–3) explicitly invokes the notion of ‘binary stratification’, the war on terror being seen as rationalizing imperialist violence. A number of other scholars rely on the binary account; for example: Amin (2006); Bartholomew (2006); Bowring (2008); Chimni (2004, 16–17); Vitalis (2000).

¹¹ With varying degrees of ambivalence see Henkin (1999), Wedgwood (1999) and Reisman (1999).

¹² Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v US), 1984 ICJ 392 (26 November).

¹³ This was directly reflected in the 2002 National Security Strategy, which stated that the US would ‘make no distinction between terrorists and those who knowingly harbor or provide aid to them’ (National Security Strategy 2002).

¹⁴ Hardt and Negri (2000; 2004) to some degree set the scene for arguing against geopolitical rivalry. Similarly, see Robinson (2004). For accounts stressing US hegemony more strongly, see Panitch and Gindin (2003) and Wood (2003). Against this are accounts that have stressed the continued importance of rivalries, such as Callinicos (2009).

¹⁵ This debate has long roots and resurfaces periodically. For some more recent examples see Cox (2007) and Reus-Smith (2004).

¹⁶ There is a period lasting for approximately 7 years when a number of interventions were authorized by the Security Council in inter alia Somalia, Yugoslavia, Haiti, Rwanda, Albania, the Central African Republic and Sierra Leone. However, throughout this period there were tensions, particularly over the no-fly zones in Iraq (Operation Provide Comfort) and Operation Desert Fox, an operation against Iraq for ‘failing to comply’ with UN weapons inspectors. In these latter instances, a combination of implied Security Council authorization, self-defence and humanitarian intervention claims was employed. See Gray (2002).

¹⁷ Italics omitted.

¹⁸ Carty (2004) articulates a similar vision, drawing heavily on Marxist literature. However, he unfortunately frames the issue in terms of structural pressures that cause the US to break international law. This misses the ways in which the US is specifically attempting to articulate particular legal doctrines in serious legal terms, as opposed to simply ‘violating’ the law, and precludes an understanding of the forms these doctrines take. Wood (2003, 143–165) makes some reference to the idea of the war on terror as being driven by potential rivalry. However, she argues that there are no competitors, and sees the war on terror as an indirect display of force so as to cow potential competitors (Wood 2003, 157). This account entirely fails to take account of the way in which the US has been forced to act outside the Security Council by the legal power of other states.

¹⁹ National Security Strategy (2002).

²⁰ National Security Strategy (2010, 44).

²¹ National Security Strategy (2010, 43).

²² S/RES/1973 of 17 March 2011.

²³ In Bartholomew (2006) a great deal of the analysis essentially centres on the defence of the UN as against US imperialism; Bowring (2008) puts forward a more radical critique that reaches the same position.

²⁴ Rasulov has argued that those scholars who argue that US imperialism has created an imperial law that runs against the UN are analogous to the ‘feudal socialists’ criticized by Marx, since much of their argument concerns the superiority of European domination to ‘upstart’ US imperialism (Rasulov 2010, 466).

²⁵ China Miéville has argued persuasively that unilateralism is simply one strategy adopted by imperialist powers in given situations, and that multilateralism can be just as brutal and imperialist (Miéville 2008).

²⁶ For a broader account of the pitfalls of ‘legalist’ oppositions to imperialism, see Miéville (2005, 295–318), and for a broader Marxist critique of legalism see Baars (2011). For an attempt to articulate a legal strategy capable of moving within international law, see Knox (2010).