Speaker: Rob Knox
Over the past decade there has been a veritable explosion in literature on the relationship between imperialism and international law. This has been triggered in no small part by the wave of controversial military interventions that began with Kosovo and culminated in the continuing War on Terror. It is thus unsurprising that these interventions have been the target of much of the above scholarship, particular that of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL).Drawing heavily on postcolonial theory, these accounts have foregrounded the issue of race and racial discourse, particularly in relation to humanitarian intervention and the war on terror. Essentially, they have argued that the law and legal rhetoric in these areas reproduces the colonial structures and civilising mission of international laws past. On this reading, what is key to both the war on terror and humanitarian intervention is that they portray peripheral countries as savages (and/or victims) in need of civilising (and/or saving). With this comes an embedded assumption that only civilised states have the capacity to go to war, with uncivilised states being open to almost perpetual intervention. This particular deployment is generally part of a larger argument, whereby international law is seen as driven by the processes of creating racial or cultural others.Whilst there is much to be commended in these positions, I will argue that they miss some key elements in the legal arguments around the use of force. Vitally, the various interventions have to be counterposed to the 1990-91 Gulf War, where intervention in the peripheries was enabled through the fairly uncontroversial (legally) authorisation of the Security Council. The legal argument on humanitarian intervention and the war on terror only emerged as a reaction to the fear that China, Russia and (at various points) Old Europe would block Security Council resolutions authorising the use of force. Consequently, the racial discourse around armed intervention cannot simply be read as othering the peripheries, but was also a key response to a re-emerging inter-imperialist rivalry. I argue that the racialised discourse of humanitarian intervention and the war on terror needs to be seen as an attempt to legally entrench a hegemonic coalition against these emerging imperialist rivalries, whilst also articulating the ability of this coalition to intervene freely across the globe. I argue that this particular understanding has implications for the way in which we understand the role of race and racialised discourse in international law. What the above account suggests is that rather than granting racial otherness a foundational role in our understanding, we have to examine the concrete material circumstances which produce and construct particular racial configurations. Drawing on a range of Marxist and materialist thinkers on race, I will tentatively advance a non-reductionist, materialist account of the place of racial argument in international law, locating it with capitalist social relations and the specific conjunctural moments thrown up by them.
Rob Knox is a PhD candidate in Law at the London School of Economics. His thesis explores the concept(s) of imperialism in Marxist and Third World approaches to international law. He is member of the Editorial Board of the journal Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory.
This series of podcasts is taken from the Historical Materialism and International Relations seminar series convened by Alexander Anievas. The seminars are given at 5 pm on Thursdays in Seminar Room C, Department of Politics and International Relations.
The Historical Materialism and International Relations seminar series seeks to explore and develop the multiple points of contact between Marxist theory and international relations, most broadly defined. It does so with the double aim of investigating the critical and explanatory potentials of Marxism in the domain of international relations, as well as to probe what an engagement with ‘the international’ might contribute to Marxist theory. The seminar series is associated with the journal of Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory and its forthcoming ‘Historical Materialism and International Relations’ book series.
For more information, please see the Centre for International Studies website.