Transforming World Politics

From Empire to Multiple Worlds

Anna M. Agathangelou, L.H.M. Ling

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135979942
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides a critical understanding of contemporary world politics by arguing that the neoliberal approach to international relations seduces many of us into investing our lives in projects of power and alienation. These projects offer few options for emancipation; consequently, many feel they have little choice but to retaliate against violence with more violence.

The authors of this pioneering work articulate worldism as an alternative approach to world politics. It intertwines non-Western and Western traditions by drawing on Marxist, postcolonial, feminist and critical security approaches with Greek and Chinese theories of politics, broadly defined. The authors contend that contemporary world politics cannot be understood outside the legacies of these multiple worlds, including axes of power configured by gender, race, class, and nationality, which are themselves linked to earlier histories of colonizations and their contemporary formations. With fiction and poetry as exploratory methods, the authors build on their 'multiple worlds' approach to consider different sites of world politics, arguing that a truly emancipatory understanding of world politics requires more than just a shift in ways of thinking; above all, it requires a shift in ways of being.

Transforming World Politics will be of vital interest to students and scholars of International Relations, Political Science, Postcolonial Studies, Social Theory, Women's Studies, Asian Studies, European Union and Mediterranean Studies, and Security Studies.

Part I
The neoliberal imperium

1 Politics of erasure

there have been no words.
i have not written one word.
. . . .
not one word.

Suheir Hammad, “first writing since” (2001)¹

World politics reel with hegemony. Mainstream analysts typically cite Thucydides’ line as warrant: “The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.” Relations in world politics thus fall into two distinct categories: the (strong) Self sets “the rules of the game” for the (weak) Other to play. Should compliance fail to ensue, or worse, should outright violation occur, the Self must discipline the Other. “The Athenians killed all the men and enslaved all the women and children” – so ends the chapter on Melos in the History. Realists and liberals use these few lines to justify our contemporary world politics under the neoliberal imperium. Some push “soft power” (Nye 2004) to sweeten the promises of prosperity and equality in a “capitalist peace” (Gartzke 2007). Still, the fundamental stricture of Self vs Other remains.

International institutions like the UN cannot help. Supposedly an arbiter of fair representation, free speech, due process, and democratic voting for the world community, the UN since proxies for the neoliberal imperium by centering liberal internationalism as the institution’s only, legitimate discourse for debate.² Other norms, practices, and traditions cannot participate as equal sources of consideration or impact. This flush of imperialist victory, however, fades even as it begins. The exiled now vows to redeem glory and dignity with more violence. These jousts of vanity and power invariably take on the form and structure of hypermasculine competition, exploiting the same pool of subjugated and marginalized populations: e.g., women, children, workers, peasants, and other “minorities.”

This chapter discusses three recent instances of the politics of erasure: (a) Bush and bin Ladin in the aftermath of 9/11, (b) the US/Iraq “debate” at the UN, one month before the US invaded Iraq, and (c) the 9/11 Commission Report (2004). Each exemplifies the violent consequences of the Self’s attempts to erase the Other.

We begin with 9/11.

NINE ELEVEN

… Today is a week, and seven is of heavens, gods, science.
evident out my kitchen window is an abstract reality.
sky where once was steel.
smoke where once was flesh …

On 11 September 2001, terrorists struck at the heart of the capitalist world order. The attack and its targets demonstrated with horrendous efficiency that neither global wealth (World Trade Center) nor military might (the Pentagon) defends against low-tech, human sacrifices when the latter are mobilized. For this reason, some US leaders have used 9/11 to generalize a sense of insecurity across the globe. Three conventions established after the end of the Cold War now seem suspect: viz., “US power reigns supreme,” “borders dissolve in a globalized world,” and “liberal capitalism secures prosperity, democracy, and stability for all.” The rest of the world has always asked, “Whom can we trust?” Now, those at the center of the capitalist world order wonder: “How can we feel secure again?”

We must rethink “international relations.” The charred remains of the World Trade Center (WTC) and Pentagon compel us to review power as more than just economic or military superiority. Had the terrorists restricted themselves to this traditional, realist notion, they would have needed the backing of a state³ or access to huge arsenals of military hardware to execute their plan. They relied, instead, on box-cutters and a suicidal guerrilla tactic. Their comrades in the caves of Afghanistan brandished little more than outdated American and Soviet firepower.

Many also declared borders are obsolete under the state-straddling, market-binding strategies of neoliberal globalization. Yet 9/11 dramatized the sovereignty of borders in our minds. The terrorists attacked US hegemony to “protect” but really to isolate Islamic culture and religion; likewise, the tragedies in New York and Washington, DC, have reinscribed borders in the popular American imaginary, now translated into a “global war on terror.” Assumptions about national security and national wealth also crumbled in light of 9/11. How could the world’s richest, most heavily-armed state – the only global superpower – be so vulnerable?

9/11 legitimates what has always swarmed world politics: hypermasculine competition. It comes through reactive discourses as well as tit-for-tat displays of power, as demonstrated by Bush and bin Ladin, respectively, representing the US and al Qaeda. Each camp draws on a common pool of hyperfeminized resources to produce more fodder for their competition, whether it is through breeding more babies for war or, paraphrasing Gayatri Spivak, having white women “liberate” brown women from brown men for white people. Meanwhile, dissent is censored as “unpatriotic” or “unfaithful,” depending on the patriarchal community in question. A Self-involved, Self-delusional consumerist politics follows, turning on its head what constitutes “legitimate” violence. Bombings of whole nations, for example, do not qualify as using weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Similarly, goading young people to undertake suicide bombings for particular political causes turn into acts of faith and fidelity.

A caveat: we recognize that Bush and bin Ladin, along with their respective allies, do not occupy parallel levels of or access to violence in world politics. Al Qaeda cannot match the economic, political, and military resources possessed by the US state. What binds Bush and bin Ladin, instead, are their mutually-embedded, retaliatory strategies of hypermasculine competition in world politics.

Hypermasculine competition for violence

Bush and bin Ladin

Nine days after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress to outline America’s “global war on terror” and to finger Osama bin Ladin as its chief suspect. bin Ladin responded with a videotape broadcast on 7 October 2001 by Al-Jazeera television based in Qatar.

The two speeches share remarkable similarities. Each leader targets the Other as the cause of violence and destruction in the world, generally, and against his own country or people, specifically. They declare that the Other must be defeated or killed. Each leader presents the collective Self as innocent, victimized, virtuous, moral, and rational; the enemy Other, as demonic, murderous, and barbaric. Both leaders conclude that militarization must be transnationalized. A moral imperative to national or communal security, each proclaims, is to take care of one’s own.

Note these six common themes:

1. Virtue, Truth, and Centrality vs Murderous Envy. For each camp, the Self’s virtue, truth, and centrality incite a murderous envy in the Other. The terrorists hate America, Bush explained, because of their sense of lack:

They hate what we see right here in this chamber, a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms – our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

(Bush 2001a)

For bin Ladin, “infidels” seek to destroy what they cannot possess: that is, an unwavering, Islamic Self who is endowed with Truth. America is “morally depraved” because it “champion[s] falsehood, support[s] the butcher against the victim, the oppressor against the innocent child” (bin Ladin 2001b). bin Ladin further suggest that the US consolidates its hegemony by clubbing all Others, including non-Arabs, non-Muslims. Referring to the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bin Ladin charged that “[h]undreds of thousands of people, young and old, were killed in the farthest point on earth in Japan. [For the Americans] this is not a crime, but rather a debatable issue” (bin Ladin 2001b). But the faithful will prevail despite the infidels’ evil tricks. “He whom God guides is rightly guided but he whom God leaves to stray, for him wilt thou find no protector to lead him to the right way” (bin Ladin 2001b);

2. Innocent Victim vs Irrational Barbarity. Victimization by this envious, irrational Other demands retributive justice. Bush referred, of course, to the official tally of 2,801 dead or missing on 9/11.⁴ The US is an innocent bystander to world affairs he told the nation but time has come for military action: “Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom” (Bush 2001a). Once roused, the American giant will spare no means to punish its offenders.

bin Ladin portrayed all Muslims as innocent victims of US aggression. Conveniently discarded from the world’s public memory, America’s acts of aggression are for no apparent reason other than to exert raw power, thoughtlessly applied. For example:

[Islam’s] sons are being killed, its blood is being shed, its holy places are being attacked, and it is not being ruled according to what God has decreed. Despite this, nobody cares.

One million Iraqi children have thus far died in Iraq although they did not do anything wrong.

[I]sraeli tanks and tracked vehicles also enter to wreak havoc in Palestine, in Jenin, Ramallah, Rafah, Beit Jala, and other Islamic areas and we hear no voices raised or moves made.

[The Americans] bombed Iraq and considered that a debatable issue.

(bin Ladin 2001b)

3. Rationality vs Radicalism. For Bush, the terrorists personify Evil. They seek to shatter the secure, prosperous world-order that America upholds. If the terrorists have a goal, then it is for the abominable purpose of remaking the world in their radical self-image:

These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life … Al Qaeda is to terror what the mafia is to crime. But its goal is not making money; its goal is remaking the world, and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere.

(Bush 2001a)

Bush carefully distinguished Good Arabs/Muslims from Bad Arabs/ Muslims. The former are America’s “many Arab friends;” the latter, “a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them” (Bush 2001a). He recuperated “good Arabs” as those who comply with his version of the law; “bad Arabs” are those who violate it. Furthermore, according to Bush, al Qaeda’s terrorists “blaspheme the name of Allah” (Bush 2001a) by perverting their own people and society in the name of religion:

Afghanistan’s people have been brutalized; many are starving and many have fled. Women are not allowed to attend school. You can be jailed for owning a television. Religion can be practiced only as their leaders dictate. A man can be jailed in Afghanistan if his beard is not long enough.

(Bush 2001a)

bin Ladin denounced the American Demon categorically. There are only bad Americans and they pollute the world with an arrogance and hypocrisy that know no bounds:

They came out in arrogance with their men and horses and instigated even those countries that belong to Islam against us.

They came out to fight this group of people who declared their faith in God and refused to abandon their religion.

They came out to fight Islam in the name of terrorism.

(bin Ladin 2001b)

4. The World Must Choose. Each camp demanded an unequivocal decision from the world: the righteous “Self” vs the murderous “Other,” “civilization” vs “barbarity,” “the faithful” vs “the infidels.”

Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.

(Bush 2001a)

[There is] one [world] of faith where there is no hypocrisy and another of infidelity, from which we hope God will protect us.

(bin Ladin 2001b)

5. Globalized Militarization is a Moral Imperative. Both camps justified globalizing militarization as a moral/cultural imperative for attaining their respective desires (“national security” for Bush; “Islamic honor and integrity” for bin Ladin). For Bush, Al Qaeda’s attack on America recalls one Sunday in 1941” (Bush 2001a).

For bin Ladin, the US deserves 9/11. He praised the attackers as a “successful … convoy of Muslims, the vanguards of Islam [whom God] allowed … to destroy the United States” (bin Ladin 2001b). For this reason, justice in any form is acceptable: “May God mete them the punishment they deserve” (bin Ladin 2001b). Let the American Demon now suffer what the Islamic Self has had to endure since colonial times:

What the United States tastes today is a very small thing compared to what we have tasted for tens of years. Our nation has been tasting this humiliation and contempt for more than 80 years.

(bin Ladin 2001b)

bin Ladin issued a promise and a threat:

As for the United States, I tell it and its people these few words: I swear by Almighty God who raised the heavens without pillars that neither the United States nor he who lives in the United States will enjoy security before we can see it as a reality in Palestine and before all the infidel armies leave the land of Mohammed, may God’s peace and blessing be upon him.

(bin Ladin 2001b)

6. We Take Care of Our Own. Bush established a new cabinet-level office, Department of Homeland Security, to protect America and Americans from future terrorist attacks. Evoking a sense of national unity reminiscent of World War II and the Great Depression, the President appealed to the American people to normalize their lives with the following guidelines:

• Take care of your family. “I ask you to live your lives and hug your children.”
• Stay loyal. “I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here.”
• Be tolerant of Others. “We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith.”
• Donate time and money. “I ask you to continue to support the victims of this tragedy with your contributions.”
• Cooperate with law and order. “The thousands of FBI agents who are now at work in this investigation may need your cooperation, and I ask you to give it.”
• Comply with those who seek to protect you. “I ask for your patience, with the delays and inconveniences that may accompany tighter security – and for your patience in what will be a long struggle.”
• Help the economy by spending money. “I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy. Terrorists attacked a symbol of American prosperity. They did not touch its source.”
• Pray for victims, the military, and the country. “Finally, please continue praying for the victims of terror and their families, for those in uniform, and for our great country.”

(Bush 2001a)

bin Ladin urged “… every Muslim [to] rush to defend his religion.” He commended the terrorists for sacrificing themselves for their “oppressed sons, brothers, and sisters in Palestine and in many Islamic countries.” He concluded: “I ask God Almighty to elevate their [the terrorists’] status and grant them Paradise. He is the one who is capable to do so” (bin Ladin 2001b).

In sum, Bush and bin Ladin affirmed that the Self is irreconcilably opposed to the Other. This allowed for a massive deployment on moral grounds for militarization on a transnational scale since, as with all dichotomies, the superiority of the first term (Self) justifies dominance over the second (Other). Logic required, then, for Bush to call for a “war on terror;” and for bin Ladin, a “global jihad.” Each sought to increase national/communal security but, as the next chapters will show, just the opposite resulted given the binary of Self vs Other.

The UN could not adjudicate between these reactive camps of hypermasculine competition. The organization itself was confined to one discursive tradition and its practices: i.e., liberal internationalism.

DEBATE AT THE UN

today it is ten days. last night bush waged war on a man once
openly funded by the
cia. i do not know who is responsible. read too many books, know
too many people to believe what i am told.

Hammad urges us to have a more nuanced understanding of different peoples. But the UN can hear only one voice and that is the Anglo-American, liberal one. Founded on classical liberal principles and staffed with those vested in the neoliberal imperium, the UN inherently favors this tradition over others. Those from different juridico-political and ethical traditions such as Islamic law, for example, may speak but they cannot be heard on their own terms. The “debate” between former US Secretary of State Colin Powell and then Iraqi Ambassador to the UN, Mohamed Aldouri, on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, serves as a case in point.

“A web of lies”

“It is all a web of lies.”⁵ On 5 February 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell accused Iraq of guilt and duplicity: that is, Iraq possessed WMDs in direct violation of UN agreements and sought to hide this fact. Lasting about an hour and a half, Powell drew on “solid sources” that disclosed “disturbing patterns of behavior.” He began with taped phone recordings of Iraqi military personnel, supposedly plotting to hide WMDs, then moved to US satellite pictures of so-called mobile WMD factories on the ground, eyewitness accounts from detainees and informants of Iraqi manipulations and maneuverings to cover up their WMDs, and UN inspectors’ reports.

...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Introduction
• PART I The neoliberal imperium
• PART II In and of multiple worlds
• Othello’s Journeys
• Notes
• References