War in the 21st Century

1
War in the 21st Century
2
Introductions Introduce yourself by telling
about time when were you most personally
threatened or afraid. Please do not sharing
anything that you are not comfortable with.
3

• Did you react in ways that surprised you?
• Do you make any connections between your
  experience and the experience of other people in
  violent conflict elsewhere?
• How do you think the role of personal experience
  should influence the way people study and think
  about peace?

4

• Avishai Margalit Three Enemies
• Iraq/Weapons of Mass Destruction
• World Terrorism
• Militant Fundamentalism
• What would peace look like with each of these
  enemies?

5
First lecture You cant talk about peace by
talking about war in a loud voice. But , what
can you learn about peace from looking at war?
6

• Why do wars break out?
• There are groups that find the current political
  situation intolerable.
• These groups also have contending visions of what
  the political situation should look like in the
  future.

7

• There are increasingly war that are not
  political.
• Lack political objective
• Absence of political ideology
• Lack of a political center or focal point

8

• Important and debatable claims
• Iraq represents a political entity that cannot be
  deterred and constrained and thus fundamentally
  undermines international order.
• World terrorism poses a new and dangerous threat.
• Militant fundamentalism offers a serious
  countervailing challenge to human rights,
  democracy, and free markets.

9

• The Concept of Empire
• Empire is not old style imperialism extension of
  the nation-state into other territories.
• Empire is the new emerging structure of
  international order.

10
Decline of nation-state as the bounded locale of
freedom, prosperity, and stability Rise of human
rights, free markets, democracy Decline of
centered and territorialized authority Rise of
global markets, global finance, global modes of
production Declining legitimacy of national
sovereign, non-intervention, and self-defense
Rise of a new sense of legitimacy Sovereignty
as responsibility to the international
order Intervention as a function of the
exception War as police action
11

• Empire as a concept is an emerging form of
  political international order.
• Empire dissolves boundaries.
• Empire is an order that establishes the world as
  it ought to be.
• Empire operates on all social registers.
• Empire is an expression of perpetual and
  universal peace although it is bathed in blood.

12
World Terrorism

• Terrorism does not make military sense.
• War is not waged by armies but by social
  networks of terrorists, guerrillas, bandits, and
  robbers that are often internal.
• Terrorism seems to be everywhere.
• War is a low-intensity feud because there is
  things are so intermingled that you cant really
  fight the enemy.
• Terrorism is nowhere.
• War is not with a foe, but with terror and
  violence as a form of political struggle.

13
What is the language of peace? Human Rights,
Democracy, Free Markets OR What?
14

• The question of empire is not whose empire, but
  what kind of empire.

15

• Nature of Empire
• Hobbes
• ? State of nature war of all against all
• ? Solution Leviathan
• ? Militarized approach
• Locke
• ? State of nature superabundance, but
  spoilage
• ? Solution money and the need to enter into
  civil society to protect possessions
• ? Global constitutionalism