Concepts of international order: the antidote to enmity

Abstract

How should the ‘problem of order’ associated with weapons of mass destruction be understood and addressed today? Have the problem and its solution been misconceived and misrepresented, as manifested by the problematic aftermath of Iraq War? Has 9/11 rendered redundant past international ordering strategies, or are these still discarded at our own peril? These are the questions explored in this Adelphi Paper.

It opens by focusing attention on the linked problems of enmity, power and legitimacy, which lie at the root of the contemporary problem of order. The Paper shows how the ‘WMD order’ that was constructed during and after the Cold War was challenged from various directions in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It shows how the growing disorder was a cause and effect of a potent ‘double enmity’ that arose in the US against both ‘rogue states’ and the international constitutionalism that had been espoused by previous US governments and bound states to a common purpose.

An ordering strategy that is imperious and places its main emphasis on counter-proliferation and the threat of preventive war cannot be successful. The recovery of order must entail the pursuit of international legitimacy as well as efficacy. It will require all states to accept restraint and to honour their mutual obligations.

Notes

1. The arguments in this chapter are necessarily compressed and lack qualifications that could be provided in a lengthier discussion. They will be elaborated upon in a subsequent monograph.

2. Notable discussions of international order can be found in Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1977); Henry Kissinger, AWorld Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–1822 (London: Phoenix Press, 2000); N.J. Rengger, International Relations, Political Theory and the Problem of Order (London: Routledge, 2000); John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Ian Clark, The Post-Cold War Order: The Spoils of Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Muthiah Alagappa, ‘The Study of International Order’ in M. Alagappa (ed.), Asian Security Order: Instrumental and Normative Features (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).

3. See Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 260–263.

4. ibid., p.261

5. ibid.

6. The word forbearance has been chosen in preference to tolerance, as it carries a greater sense of long suffering and endurance.

7. John Herz, ‘Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma’, World Politics, vol. 2, no. 2, 1950, pp. 157–180.

8. Ikenberry, After Victory, pp. 22–37

9. Note that the NPT's preamble refers to the ‘devastation that would be visited upon all mankind by a nuclear war’ (my italics). The NPT's text can be found on www.fas.org/nuke/control/npt/text/npt2.htm.

10. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

11. Carl Schmitt, Theorie des Partisanen, Duncker & Humbolt, Berlin, 1975 (lectures given in Pamplona and Saragossa in March 1962). Available at http://petradoom.stormpages.com/sch_tp.html. ‘Conventional’, ‘true’ and ‘absolute enmity’ are translations of konventionelle, wirkliche and absolute Feindschaft respectively. Wirkliche Feindschaft is sometimes translated as ‘real enmity’. I marginally prefer ‘true enmity’.

12. This form of political violence has acquired many labels in recent times, including ‘new terrorism’ and ‘revolutionary millenarianism’, or ‘strategic terrorism’ as distinct from ‘tactical terrorism’. I prefer Schmitt's terminology, which is richer in embrace.

13. Gabriella Slomp, ‘Carl Schmitt and Thomas Hobbes on Violence and Identity’, paper presented to the 53rd annual conference of the Political Studies Association, University of Leicester, 15–17 April 2003.

14. ibid.

15. ibid., p. 3