The insurgency of global Empire and the counterinsurgency of local resistance: new world order in an era of civilian provisional authority

Abstract

This article examines the conflicts with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Kuwait since 1978 in order to clarify how the modern state-form in the region is being undermined through aggressive efforts by US-led multinational coalitions to organise containment structures around Islamic, anti-Western powers, as well as around modernising petro-capitalist regimes, for the benefit of ‘stability’ in the larger world system. It asks if today's real insurgency is that of fluid Western multinational coalitions, while the true counterinsurgencies are the more fixed fundamentalist, localist and nationalist resistances in the region. It also asks whether weak civilian provisional authorities are displacing during the 21st century those older 19th century models of the strong state mapped out by Max Weber—both in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Notes

1 This argument draws upon as well as deepens analyses that I have made elsewhere. See TW Luke, ‘9.11.01 and its global aftermath: Empire strikes back?’, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 24, 2006, pp 229 – 257; Luke, ‘Material concerns about immaterial labor in multitude’, Political Theory, June 2006, pp 365 – 371; and Luke, ‘Developing a new speech for global security: exploring the rhetorics of evil in the Bush administration response to 9.11.01’, in Mark J Lacey & Peter Wilkin (eds), Global Politics in the Information Age, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp 21 – 38.

2 J Agnew, Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2005.

3 For more detail, see C Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project), New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004; and Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, New York: Henry Holt, 2000.

4 Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

5 U Beck, What is Globalization?, Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.

6 Hardt & Negri, Empire, p xi.

7 K Waltz, Man, the State and War, New York: Columbia University Press, 1962; RBJ Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; and TW Luke, ‘Discourses of disintegration/texts or transformation: re-reading realism in the New World Order’, Alternatives, XVIII (2), 1993, pp 229 – 258.

8 Hardt & Negri, Empire, p xi.

9 For more discussion, see Max Weber, ‘Politics as a vocation’, in Hans Gerth & C Wright Mills (eds), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York: Oxford University Press, 1958, pp 77 – 128.

10 Whether in Columbia, Nepal, Iraq or Nigeria, the provisionality of civilian authority is obvious. As Anyakwee Nsirimovu, a human rights lawyer in the oil-rich southern Niger Delta region of Nigeria's Rivers State says about counterinsurgencies there against transnational oil interests, ‘There is no rule of law here. The AK-47 rules.’ Katherine Houreld, ‘Violence, abductions surge in Nigeria's oil-rich area’, Roanoke Times, 8 October 2006, A12.

11 Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in Age of Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

12 Hardt & Negri, Empire, p xv.

13 Ibid, p xiv.

14 Ibid, p xvi.

15 N Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America's Empire, New York: Penguin Press, 2004.

16 F Ajami, ‘The new boys of terror’, US News & World Report, 9 October 2006, p 33.

17 H French, Vanishing Borders: Protecting the Planet in the Age of Globalization, New York: Norton, 2000.

18 Hardt & Negri, Multitude; and R Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, New York: Knopf, 2006.

19 Hardt & Negri, Empire, p xii (emphasis in original).

20 Ajami, ‘The new boys of terror’, p 33.

21 Anon, Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, Dulles, VA: Brassey's, 2004.

22 See L Diamond, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2004.

23 See Col T Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century, St Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2004; and R Kaplan, Imperial Grunts, New York: Knopf, 2005.

24 This scenario also captures realities on the ground in Afghanistan five years after its invasion and occupation. There are 40 000 nato troops remaining in the country, the official gnp has more than doubled, Kabul is booming economically, but large sections near Kandahar are essentially Taliban dominated. Afghanistan grew enough opium poppies in 2005 – 06 to produce more heroin than the world market requires, and nato coalition battle losses to Taliban fighters, opium warlords and ordinary criminals are nearing 2001 – 01 levels. Most villages still have no paved roads, no running water, no electricity, sporadic health care, little legitimate work, few schools, and many frustrated citizens. As one villager, recently arrested on suspicion of aiding the Taliban resistance, and frustrated with the nato occupation, told reporters, ‘I swear to you, I have not seen a single dollar bill. I do know its size and color. We are dying from a lack of food and water—and they call us Al-Qaeda or Taliban.’ See Fisnisk Abrashi & Jason Straziuso, ‘5 years into war, Afghanistan still far from stable’, Roanoke Times, 8 October 2006, A1, 10.

25 D Harvey, The New Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

26 T Dodge, Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation-Building and a History Denied, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.

27 P Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market, New York: New Press, 1998.

28 D Gregory, The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.

29 See TW Luke, ‘Governmentality and contra-governmentality: rethinking sovereignty and territoriality after the Cold War’, Political Geography, 15 (6 – 7), pp 491 – 507; Luke, ‘Placing powers, siting spaces: the politics of global and local in the New World Order’, Environment and Planning A: Society and Space, 12, 1994, pp 613 – 628; and S Krasner, Problematic Sovereignty: Contested Rules and Political Possibilities, New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.

30 B Agger, Fast Capitalism, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989; and TW Luke, Screens of Power: Ideology, Domination, and Resistance in Informational Society, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

31 T Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005; J Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, St Louis: Telos Press, 1981; and P Crang & N Thrift, Thinking Space, London: Routledge, 1999.

32 Hardt & Negri, Empire, p xiii.

33 T Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, New York: Knopf, 1999.

34 National Security Council, National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, November 2005, at http://whitehouse.ogv/nsc/nsct/2005.

35 Coalition Provisional Authority, ‘Regulation 1’, 16 May 2003, at http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/index#regulations.

36 TW Luke, ‘Real interdependence: discursivity and concursivity in global politics’, in Francois Debrix (ed), Language, Agency and Politics in a Constructed World, Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 2004.

37 Hardt & Negri, Multitude, p 94.

38 Ibid.

39 W Greider, One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism, New York: Penguin Press, 1996.

40 M Mazzetti, ‘Spy agencies say Iraq war worsens terror threat’, New York Times, 24 September 2006, A1, 8.

41 P Shenon & M Mazzetti, ‘Study of Iraq war and terror stirs strong political response’, New York Times, 25 September 2006, A1.

42 M Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol I, An Introduction, New York: Vintage, 1980.

43 M Foucault, The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon & Peter Miller, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

44 RD Kaplan, The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the 21st Century, New York: Random House, 1996.

45 Ajami, ‘The new boys of terror’, p 33.

46 Hardt & Negri, Empire, p xv.

47 Hardt & Negri, Multitude, p 101.

48 Hardt & Negri, Empire, p xiv.

49 Ajami, ‘The new boys of terror’, p 33.

50 A Rathmell, ‘Planning post-conflict reconstruction in Iraq: what can we learn?’, International Affairs, 81 (5), 2005, pp 1013 – 1038.

51 T Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map: Blueprint for Action for a Future Worth Creating, New York: GP Putnam's Sons, 2005.

52 N Kamp, M O'Hanlon & A Unikewicz, ‘The state of Iraq: an update’, New York Times, 14 December 2005, A14.

53 See Bob Woodward, State of Denial, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006, for an account of how the White House worked its way into this strategic morass.

54 J Fallows, ‘Why Iraq has no army’, Atlantic Monthly, December 2005, pp 60 – 77.

55 ‘Stating the obvious: new report makes a plain case that invading Iraq has been counterproductive’, The Economist, 30 September, p 35.

56 M Ignatieff, Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, London: Penguin, 2004.

57 K Ohmae, The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy, New York: Harper and Row, 1990; and JH Mittelmann, The Globalization Syndrome: Transformation and Resistance, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

58 See Rathmell, ‘Planning post-conflict reconstruction in Iraq’, pp 1013 – 1038.

59 TW Luke, ‘Identity, meaning and globalization: space – time compression and the political economy of everyday life’, in Scott Lash, Paul Heelas & Paul Morris, Detraditionalization: Critical Reflections on Authority and Identity, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, pp 109 – 133.

60 J Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

61 R Reich, The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism, New York: Knopf, 1991.

62 C Barnett, ‘The consolations of “neoliberalism”’, Geoforum, 36, 2004, pp 7 – 12.

63 P Chatterjee, Iraq Inc: A Profitable Occupation, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004.

64 Kamp et al, ‘The state of Iraq’.

65 M Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict, New York: Henry Holt, 2002.

66 M Kaldor, New & Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.

67 N Smith, The Endgame of Globalization, New York: Routledge, 2004. The George W Bush administration under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would also add dominating ‘strategic communications’ in the global 24-hour news cycle across Empire. Bob Woodward cites a 1 May 2006 Pentagon memo by Donald Rumsfeld entitled ‘Illustrative new 21st century institutions and approaches’, which he obtained in researching State of Denial. Rumsfeld implicitly traces out the info war challenge to Empire as he notes: ‘Today the centers of gravity of the conflict in Iraq and the global war on terror are not on battlefields overseas. Rather, the centers of gravity of this war are on the centers of public opinion in the US and in the capitals of free nations. The gateways to those centers are the international media hubs and the capitals of the world. [Ayman Al-] Zawahiri has said that 50 percent of the current struggle is taking place in the arena of public information. That may be an understatement.’ See Woodward, ‘The world according to Rummy’, Washington Post, 8 October 2006, B5.

68 J Judis, The Folly of Empire: What George W Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, New York: Lisa Drew/Scribner, 2004.

69 Ibid; and Mazzetti, ‘Spy agencies say Iraq war worsens terror threat’, J Judis; and ‘Stating the obvious’.

70 ‘Iraq army still needs US troops’, Roanoke Times, 17 September 2006, A10.

71 Woodward, ‘The world according to Rummy’, Washington Post, 8 October 2006, B5.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid. For a long-term assessment of how Empire operates on the ground, see Robert Fisk, ‘The Age of Terror: a landmark report’, Independent, 2006, at http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk.

75 S Tavernise & D McNeil, Jr, ‘Iraqi dead may total 600 000, study says’, New York Times, 11 October 2006, A1, 6.