{"id":14170,"date":"2021-06-04T08:00:59","date_gmt":"2021-06-04T06:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/?p=14170"},"modified":"2021-06-04T16:51:30","modified_gmt":"2021-06-04T14:51:30","slug":"discourses-of-power-and-normativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/discourses-of-power-and-normativity\/","title":{"rendered":"Discourses of Power and Normativity"},"content":{"rendered":"

We would like to thank the contributors as well as the editorial team at V\u00f6lkerrechtsblog, and particularly Su\u00e9 Gonz\u00e1lez Hauck, for putting together this thought-provoking symposium on \u201cThe Justification of War and International Order. From Past to Present\u201d (hereafter: \u201cThe Justification\u201d). As editors of the book, we are grateful for this opportunity to highlight some of the book\u2019s main ideas and to respond to some of the comments and suggestions made by the contributors to this symposium. Your critique and suggestions will feed into our future publications. Given the wide range of perspectives in our book, we do not claim to speak for all of our authors. In what follows, we focus on two core observations: 1. war justifications can be understood as a discourse on ordering the international, 2. this discursive relationship is driven by norms\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0power.<\/p>\n

Neglected\u00a0Discourses: The Justification of War as a Struggle for\u00a0International\u00a0Order<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Wouter Werner pointedly puts it in his stimulating contribution to this symposium, our book basically revolves around two main phenomena: (a) the universally recognized need to justify war or the use of force; (b) the functioning of the justification in specific cases\u00a0as a source for\u00a0ideas about international order more broadly.\u00a0The basic observation that the history of war is also a history of its justification is obvious but neglected. In our view it suggests\u00a0that discourses of justification and international order are co-constitutive: War justifications shape international\u00a0order and are being shaped by it. The\u00a0contributions to the book<\/a>\u00a0specify and partly challenge this dialectic linkage\u00a0which we present as a genealogy in order to identify continuities and changes in the way in which the justification of war and the formation of international order interact.\u00a0This endeavour is not just about history, but about political consequences up to the present day, as Parvathi Menon underlines in her compelling review.<\/p>\n

As Wouter\u00a0Werner\u00a0highlights with reference to Anuschka\u00a0Tischer\u2019s chapter on early modern war justifications in Europe, we would like to contribute to filling the gap between normative theory and political practice: There is a plethora of magnificent works on\u00a0\u2018just-war\u2019 theory<\/a>\u00a0or, speaking more broadly, on\u00a0theories of war and peace<\/a>. Studies dealing explicitly with the political practice of justifying the use of force as it relates to international ordering, however, are rare. The historically constant references to norms in political practices of legitimating violence represent significant sources that deserve more scholarly attention. However, in dealing with this analytical asymmetry we do by no means demote theoretical analyses to second class. Rather, we argue in favour of a more balanced relationship between dealing with conceptual and practical approaches to war and order. This includes taking war justifications seriously as communicative actions ordering the international.<\/p>\n

A False Dichotomy:\u00a0The Normativity of Power and the Power of Normativity\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In doing so, we argue, first of all, against\u00a0Realism<\/em>:\u00a0The assumption that war justifications are mere lies, empty \u2018propaganda\u2019 (Grewe<\/u>\u00a02000<\/u>, at 531) not worth the\u00a0\u2018scrap of paper\u2019<\/u>\u00a0they are written on, is a thesis that is still popular with\u00a0Realists<\/em>\u00a0of all colours from Carl Schmitt to Wilhelm Grewe to\u00a0Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner<\/a>. This thesis may be seductive because it seems to recognise the true motives behind justifications of war, which supposedly are ignored by \u2018reality-blind friends of peace\u2019 (Grewe\u00a01985<\/u>, at 21). In one of his much-cited formulations, Carl Schmitt said:\u00a0\u2018Whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat\u2019 (Schmitt\u00a02008 [1932]<\/a>, at\u00a054).<\/p>\n

As has been sufficiently demonstrated, this view underestimates the complexity of the relationship\u00a0between<\/em>\u00a0normativity and power<\/a>. Communicative practices such as war justifications are not \u2018cheap talk\u2019 just as reference to law on the domestic scene is not simply \u2018cheap talk\u2019 in spite of ubiquitous attempts by political and \u2018private\u2019 actors to manipulate the law to their advantage and the difficulties of courts to sort this out (see among many the respective observations of\u00a0Walter Benjamin<\/a>).\u00a0In all discourses involving law,\u00a0utopia and apology coalesce<\/a>: Indeed, as Wouter De Rycke reminds us in his pointed and well-written critique of our approach, the \u2018words of the powerful need to be taken with a grain of salt.\u2019 As we state\u00a0in our introduction<\/a>, justifications of war are often built on lies and serving as apologies for belligerents\u00a0who are in fact pursuing political interests that may\u00a0contradict\u00a0the norms they refer to. No one would dispute that.<\/p>\n

However, this is not the end of the story \u2013 but rather its beginning:\u00a0In our introduction, we refer to German historian Konrad Repgen. As he was searching the files of the National Library in Munich in winter of 1984 for declarations of war, a US-American colleague told him \u2018with the sympathetic, sad look of a neurologist\u2019 that war manifestos \u2018contain nothing but lies\u2019. Repgen (1985<\/a>, at 19) answered:<\/p>\n

\u2018For exactly that reason I want to study them. (\u2026) These texts amount to pleas which supposedly use a number of recurrent arguments for the justification of the use of force. If this proves to be correct then we should be able to generate a fairly complete compilation of these arguments. (\u2026) We would thus be able to construct a pattern which would enable us to discover and describe the particular as it relates to the general without taking refuge to whatever is fashionable at a certain time.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We agree with Repken. What is striking\u00a0to us is that even one of the best-known\u00a0German personifications of\u00a0Realpolitik<\/em>, Bismarck,\u00a0felt that he should justify the\u00a0use of force with reference to universal norms. Why should he have done that? Because he was shrewd and all others where dim-witted? Certainly not. The question here is not whether a person lies about his\/her true motives but why such a person should make the effort to justify what he\/she is doing in terms of certain norms. The observation of this practice can serve as a source for de-constructing the normative frame of reference around which international politics converge and the changes that occur over time in this respect. Adding more historical context to the analysis corroborates this finding: In his memoirs, Bismarck praised himself for having circumvented the European Concert of Great Powers \u2013 which at the same time\u00a0underlines his awareness of the political and normative authority the Concert had (thus, also strengthening the finding that\u00a0liberum\u00a0ius\u00a0ad bellum<\/em>\u00a0is\u00a0a myth<\/a>\u00a0in the History of International Law and International Relations).<\/p>\n

Of course, states(wo)men are always tempted to instrumentalise norms for their respective political purposes. However, if international norms were regarded as irrelevant for decision-makers, the reference to them would be futile.\u00a0This is precisely why justifications of the use of force are so interesting for empirical analysis. Actions may speak louder than words, but words themselves are powerful\u00a0actions, as\u00a0Martti\u00a0Koskenniemi\u00a0reminds us<\/a>\u00a0and as the mobilization of chauvinistic enthusiasm for fighting it demonstrates. There is no fundamental\u00a0contradiction between action and words. To us, the opposite seems to be right: Words co-constitute actions by making them meet with orders of knowledge and norms.\u00a0In this sense, words\u00a0indeed come to bear as deeds by generating them.<\/p>\n

Continuity, Contingency and Change: A\u00a0Genealogy\u00a0of\u00a0Plural Perspectives<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Claire Vergerio\u00a0rightly observes in her highly interesting and concisely argued review, the theoretical argument that we unfold in our introduction is\u00a0clearly rooted in\u00a0constructivist\u00a0<\/em>arguments (besides critical theory). These arguments have emerged especially, but not only\u00a0in\u00a0(International) Political Theory<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0International-Relations Theory<\/a>\u00a0in the last 30 years. More specifically, as can be seen in the works referred to in our introduction, we as editors move both on critical and discourse-theoretical terrain, which is particularly influenced by our Frankfurt context.\u00a0While we\u00a0are in principle very sympathetic to Vergerio\u2019s\u00a0well founded call for more IR-theory exegesis\u00a0(which we develop in a forthcoming publication within the narrower IR-discourse), we found a more implicit approach more appropriate for the transdisciplinary framework of this book.\u00a0This decision, moreover, may also have been due to the fact that\u00a0a reference to\u00a0Constructivism<\/em>\u00a0to counter\u00a0Realism<\/em>\u00a0might by now perhaps be quite established and unsurprising \u2013 a rather \u2018obvious go-to analytical toolkit for IR scholars working on international law\u2019, as Vergerio\u00a0correctly states.<\/p>\n

But there is another reason: While many of our authors stick to our theoretical approach, others follow different paths \u2013 partly drastically. This is also accompanied by controversies in the volume: While Thilo Marauhn, for example, argues for defending the authority of Art 2 (4) UN Charter from a perspective of international law, Siddharth Mallavarapu recalls the intertwining of law with imperialism and justifications for war, and Chris Brown (at 436), from a perspective of \u201cjust(ified) war\u201d, calls the international legal order regulating the use of force a \u2018dead letter\u2019. While Anuschka Tischler and Isabel V. Hull for good reasons criticize the strong focus in the History of International Law on legal theory, other authors in our book such as Milo\u0161 Vec, Beate Jahn or Anthony Lang, Jr., for their own good reasons, defend this focus or link political practice to legal theory. While Oliver Eberl draws a critically reflective picture of Immanuel Kant in the context of the French Revolution, B.S. Chimni deconstructs\u00a0liberal<\/em>\u00a0thinking on legal progress in the context of the First World War from a TWAIL perspective. Our own approach is criticized in the book: Benno Teschke\u00a0argues in his chapter (at 110) from a materialist perspective that \u2018granting analytical priority to the self-justifications of war (\u2026) externalizes the prior question of the fundamental presence of power politics in early modern Europe.\u2019 We found this juxtaposition of arguments within a common frame of reference particularly fruitful.<\/p>\n

Though we avoided theoretical streamlining, the book entails several core themes and coherent narratives\u00a0which are told over interrelated chapters, as the reviewers highlight. One of our most important narratives is the deconstruction of Schmitt\u2019s thesis of a turn towards the \u2018non-discriminatory concept of war\u2019\u00a0(nicht-diskriminierender\u00a0Kriegsbegriff)<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0for which especially the chapters by Anuschka\u00a0Tischer, Hendrik Simon, and Isabel V. Hull are important. Another central concern of the book is the longevity of imperialism and colonialism in the discourses of war justifications. Parvathi Menon in her review brings this argument succinctly to the point: \u2018History reminds us that war justifications have long facilitated imperial domination, the legacies of which continue to this day.\u2019 Since we as editors have a Western (and especially German) perspective on the history of violence and normativity, it was important to us to include postcolonial perspectives in every single part of our book. One exception is Part V, in which the narrative of the rise and fall of \u2018liberal peace\u2019 is confronted in a critical manner with more recent Western discourses of war justifications. Part VI therefore is a direct response to Part V.<\/p>\n

Finally, a word on historical narratives such as continuity, \u2018structures of repetition\u2019 (Wiederholungsstrukturen<\/u><\/em>, Reinhart Koselleck), and progress, which are examined (critically) in our book: Our approach is not only directed against\u00a0realist <\/em>shortcuts to explaining justifications of war. It is also directed against overly optimistic, teleological narratives of progress in the genealogy of the international \u2018order\u00a0of justification\u2019 regulation the use of force. \u2018Progress\u2019 has not only itself always been a narrative which served the discrimination of the \u2018barbaric\u2019 other.\u00a0The history of force and international order is also marked by a continuous\u00a0dialectic of domination and emancipation. It is this nexus in which our book\u2019s analyses operate. The analyses in our book support the observation that throughout history norms have been invoked\u00a0in\u00a0the decision to go to war. From this we draw hope that the struggle over norms entails not only a struggle for power but also a struggle for emancipation. This hope may be frail but it is not necessarily foolish.<\/p>\n

Outlook: Further \u2018Rethinking the Justification of War\u2019\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Wouter Werner argues in his review, an endeavour such as \u201cThe Justification\u201d is always \u2018incomplete, as to leave room for the reader to add and fill in\u2019. And as Claire Vergerio recalls, \u2018there simply remains much more to be explored.\u2019 We could not agree more. As the reviews in this symposium have forcefully argued, there are blind points that would be interesting for further discussion: For instance, Parvathi Menon uses the example of the Palestine-Israel Conflict(s)\u00a0to show how much past and present are interrelated in these complex debates. We agree with Wouter Werner that actors\u00a0such as international courts and tribunals as well as internationally constituted groups of legal experts would make a great addition to our approach (and also the role of legal advisors on the conformity of military action to the\u00a0ius\u00a0in bello<\/em>). Claire Vergerio makes an important point when she writes that non-state actors need more attention in this context, too. Our approach \u2013 apart, perhaps, from the contributions by Arnulf Becker Lorca, Lauren Benton, and Axel Heck\/Gabi Schlag \u2013 is indeed largely\u00a0state-centric.\u00a0We are also sympathetic to De Rycke\u2019s call for more historical contextualization\u00a0of war discourses (which especially Hendrik is eager to live up to in his forthcoming publication). As we state in our preface to the book, it was not our intention to make a \u2018claim to present the final or second to final word in this matter.\u2019 However, the contributors to this symposium have reaffirmed our hope that our book will contribute to further \u2018rethinking the justification of war\u2019 (Werner). For this we thank them again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We would like to thank the contributors as well as the editorial team at V\u00f6lkerrechtsblog, and particularly Su\u00e9 Gonz\u00e1lez Hauck, for putting together this thought-provoking symposium on \u201cThe Justification of War and International Order. From Past to Present\u201d (hereafter: \u201cThe Justification\u201d). As editors of the book, we are grateful for this opportunity to highlight some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6639],"tags":[],"authors":[5741,6807],"article-categories":[5080,3572],"doi":[],"class_list":["post-14170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","authors-hendrik-simon","authors-lothar-brock","article-categories-book-review","article-categories-symposium"],"acf":{"subline":"Ordering the International via War Justifications"},"meta_box":{"doi":"10.17176\/20210604-123630-0"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14170"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14197,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14170\/revisions\/14197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14170"},{"taxonomy":"authors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/authors?post=14170"},{"taxonomy":"article-categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-categories?post=14170"},{"taxonomy":"doi","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doi?post=14170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}