Searching For The Rules Of Engagement On The Global Battlefield. What Are the Critical Theorists Saying?
Searching For The Rules Of Engagement On The Global Battlefield. What Are the Critical Theorists Saying?

Summary/Abstract: Beginning with the second half of the XXth century and entrenching themselves with the Third Debate in the mid-eighties, poststructuralist studies have challenged discourses of power and deconstructed monolithical state narratives of security. In this paper we look at how the rhetorical orthodoxies rooted in the discoursive arena of international relations under the guise of concepts such as “just war”, “humanitarian interventions”, “human rights”, “nation building” – have led to an overall qualitative devaluation of foreign policies strategies. By highlighting the key positions of poststructuralism and critical geopolitcs, we explore how they further apply to the contemporaneous security crises. The ongoing developments in the Middle East region, for example, exceed the lowest common denominated “tribalist binary”, and can be analysed using varied layers of interpretation in order to showcase how the just war discourse has in this case at least, failed its theoretical tenets by a considerable margin. Thirteen years into the “war on terror”, we are presently witnessing the start of a new phase – which can genealogically be traced back, all the way to its “architectonic” logic as well as to the sovereignty-democracy paradoxal divide.

• Details
• Contents