Retrieving+the+Imperial+Empire+and+International+Relations


 * =Retrieving the Imperial: Empire and International Relations= ||  ||
 * =Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey= ||  ||
 * =2002= ||  ||
 * =By Eddy= ||  ||
 * =Summary=

Barkawi and Laffey's article is a critique of Hardt and Negri's seminal book //Empire// (2000), which gives a neo-marxist account of the new world order.

First a few notes about //Empire//. Hardt and Negri claim that the world order should be understood as “empire.” Empire rests upon four claims; first, that sovereignty has moved away from bordered nation-states, to borderless and limitless empire. Second, that empire is not only limitless spatially, but temporally as well – it is either outside, or at the end of history. Third, it is not just the territorial make-up of the international that empire controls, but the bodies too - it is biopolitical power. Finally, while empire is itself always bathed in blood, it acts for perpetual, timeless peace.

Barkawi and Laffey view //Empire// as an important, but flawed, account of international relations. They begin by challenging the notion of the Westphalian model of sovereignty. While Hardt and Negi view Westphalian sovereignty as having been eroded in the contemporary era, Barkawi and Laffey see sovereignty (as part of larger international relations) as remaining mutually constituted. For example, during the Iran-Contra affair, while the US, Iran and Nicaragua are all sovereign states, the internal activities of each were both influenced by, and had influence on the others. The realm of international relations have always been interconnected. This is not something new that came about only in the post-modern era.

Barkawi and Laffey also critique Hardt and Negri for viewing sovereignty during the colonial era as having been a global phenomenon. For Barkawi and Laffey, sovereignty was never the same in the metropole as in the colony. Many “colonized” regions were never fully brought under the control of the colonizing power. For example the North-West Frontier area between present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan was never fully “pacified” by British forces.

Finally, Barkawi and Laffey critique Hardt and Negri's notion that the US hegemony constitutes a new post-imperial system. For Hardt and Negri, the US was founded as a post-imperial state and thus have (for the most part) not participated in imperialist actions. For Barkawi and Laffey this ignores both historical and contemporary US foreign policy. Written in 2002, Barkawi and Laffey's article came at a time when the US was expanding politico-military power around the world. ||  ||
 * =Discussion points=

Going back to Toulmin, how much do the ideas of both Hardt and Negri and Barkawi and Laffey owe to the historical period in which they were writing? Although only separated by a couple of years, this time period includes 9/11 and the fundamental shift in US foreign policy that followed. Does Barkawi and Laffey's thesis of “an international state dominated by the US” still apply (if it did in 2002)? ||  || = = = = = = = = = = = =

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