Online research in philosophy

Doctrines of the just war predate formulations of the law of war by many centuries. Yet classical accounts of the just war are presented as matters of law – not positive law or law devised by human beings, but natural law, or law that is inherent in the nature of things. War, like other human activities that raise moral issues, was held by the classical just war theorists to be governed by immutable moral laws that were part of the natural order, no less real or objective than the laws of nature. This early presentation of morality as a matter of law prefigured, or perhaps inaugurated, the recurring tendency to blur the distinction between the morality of war and the law of war, a tendency that persists to this day.

"Everything is very simple in war," said Carl von Clausewitz, "but the simplest thing is difficult." This essay will suggest that the resort to the language of war, as "natural" and "starkly simple" as it is, nevertheless has a profound impact on how the law's intervention is shaped, or how the laws governing the transnational use of force are interpreted to accommodate a "war" on terrorism. I argue that although "war" is absent from the principal international legal instruments by which states are guided (and obligated) in their relations with other states, the concepts suppressed by this elision have an evocative power that, when revealed or excavated by the promulgation of a war against terror, shapes both the legal justifications for action as between states and, as such, the legal norms and standards themselves. Thus, war and its rhetoric may indeed create norms, but politics is as much within the service of language as language is of politics. The meaning of law is always located at this intersection. It is in order to see this relation, and to clarify the motives and consequences that entail in the alternative legal and discursive responses to terror following September 11, that this essay begins with a rhetorical analysis of the word and its relationship to law.

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.

The notion of biopolitical sovereignty and the theory of the state of exception are perspectives derived from Carl Schmitt’s thought and Michel Foucault’s writings that have been popularized by critical political theorists like Giorgio Agamben and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri of late. This article argues that these perspectives are not sufficient analytical points of departure for a critique of the contemporary politics of terror, violence and war marked by a growing global exploitation of bodies, tightened management of life, and endless and unpredictable abusive force. To better capture the singularity of our present condition of violence, war and terror, a supplementation of Schmitt’s and Foucault’s approaches by way of Hannah Arendt’s language of political action and agonistic engagement is useful. By bringing Arendt’s language of political agony to bear on contemporary biopolitical debates and discourses, we wish to revisit common practices of war and terror as matters of ‘agonal sovereignty’. ‘Agonal sovereignty’ allows us to peer into the ‘abyss of total violence’ that manifests itself after sovereign decisionism and biopolitical modalities of power have taken over the everyday conduct of political affairs.

The September 11 attacks on the U.S. dramatized the relationship between media spectacles of terror and the strategy of Islamic Jihadism that employs spectacular media events to promote its agenda. But U.S. administrations have also used spectacles of terror to promote U.S. military power and geopolitical ends, as is evident in the Gulf war of 1990-1991, the Afghanistan war of fall 2001, and the Iraq war of 2003. In this paper I argue that both Islamic Jihadists and two Bush administrations have deployed spectacles of terror to promote their political agendas; that both deploy Manichean discourses of good and evil which themselves fit into dominant media codes of popular culture; and that both deploy fundamentalist and absolutist discourses. Criticizing the role of the U.S. broadcasting media in presenting the September 11 terror spectacle and subsequent Bush Terror War, I argue against both Islamic terrorism and U.S. militarism, and call for multilateral and global responses to terrorism and rogue regimes. I also argue that the Internet is the best source of information concerning complex events like Terror War, while mainstream U.S. corporate media, especially broadcasting, have become instruments of propaganda for the Bush administration and Pentagon during spectacles of terrorism and war. Finally, I suggest limitations of the politics of the spectacle and argue that the record of the spectacles of Terror War in recent years disclose highly ambiguous, unpredictable, and negative political effects.

Introduction -- The meaning of war -- The historical context -- How do we know that we are at war? -- How do we know when a war is over? -- National security strategy and tactical art -- Who participates in war? -- What rules govern war? -- Why does it matter? -- The way ahead.

Foucault on Politics, Society and War interrogates Foucault's controversial genealogy of modern biopolitics. By insisting on 'life' as the key referent of power in the modern age, Foucault argues that politics grounds society in war, specifically race war, in ways that come to threaten the very human existence it is pledged to promote. These essays situate Foucault's arguments, clarify the correlation of sovereign- and bio-power and examine the relation of bios, nomos and race in relation to modern war.

In this essay, Denike assesses the appropriation of international human rights by humanitarian law and policy of "security states." She maps representations of the perpetrators and victims of "tyranny" and "terror, " and their role in providing a "just cause" for the U.S.–led "war on terror. " By examining narratives of progress and human rights heroism Denike shows how human rights discourses, when used together with the pretense of self-defense and preemptive war, do the opposite of what they claim—entrenching the sovereignty of Western imperialist states while eroding the conditions necessary for the recognition of the human rights of others.