Abstract
By the end of 1990s, academic and policy-making circles widely projected the new Western mode of combat for the globalized twenty-first century to be wars principally justified as “humanitarian.” Yet immediately after the 9/11 attacks, for good or ill, this presumed legacy of the so-called human rights decade seemed perilous. Could anyone imagine another Somalia, Bosnia, or Kosovo where the integrity of the Western homeland itself was under threat? “Humanitarian intervention” gave way to “War on Terror” as the rationale for force. But the legacy of the “new military humanism”1 of the 1990s has not dissipated as rapidly as many thought. The United States sought vigorously to defend both the decisions to go to war and the conduct of its armed forces in Afghanistan (2001–2002) and Iraq (2003–2004) in a language profoundly shaped by liberal discourses of “humanitarianism”.2 Several have pointed to the Kosovo operation—an exemplar of “humanitarian war”3—as proof of the United States’ benign post-9/11 intentions and/or to reinforce the global separation between civilized and uncivilized use of force by states.4
On the other hand, humanity, which for the eighteenth century, in Kantian terminology, was no more than a regulative idea, has today become an inescapable fact. This new situation, in which “humanity” has in effect assumed the role formerly ascribed to nature or history, would mean in this context that the right to have rights, or the right of every individual to belong to humanity, should be guaranteed by humanity itself. It is by no means clear that this is possible ... For it is quite conceivable, and even within the realm of practical political possibilities, that one fine day a highly organized and mechanized humanity will conclude quite democratically—namely by majority decision—that for humanity as a whole it would be better to liquidate certain parts thereof.
Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
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Notes
Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism: Lessons From Kosovo (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1999).
Patricia Owens, “Accidents Don’t Just Happen: The Liberal Politics of High-Tech ‘Humanitarian’ War,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 32, no. 4 (2003): 595–616.
Adam Roberts, “NATO’s ‘Humanitarian War’ Over Kosovo,” Survival, 41, no. 3 (1999): 102–123.
Selya Benhabib, “Unholy War,” Constellations, 9, no. 1 (2002): 34–45.
Robert O. Keohane, “The Globalization of Informal Violence, Theories of World Politics, and ‘The Liberalism of Fear,’” in Craig Calhoun, Paul Price, and Ashley Timmer (eds.), Understanding September 11 (New York: The New Press, 2002), 87. Emphasis added.
Jürgen Habermas, “Bestiality and Humanity: A War on the Border between Law and Morality,” in William Joseph Buckley (ed.), Kosovo: Contending Voices on Balkan Interventions (Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing, 2000), 306–316.
On the 1998–1999 Kosovo crises, see Julie A. Mertus, Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999)
and Timothy Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
Michael Doyle, “International Intervention,” Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1997), 389–420.
“If all attempts at reason have failed, and the force is employed by internally democratic states who could justify their actions before a critical international public, then military intervention could potentially become a progressive force.” Mark Lynch, “Critical Theory: Dialogue, Legitimacy, and Normative Justifications for War,” in Jennifer Sterling-Folker (ed.), Making Sense of IR Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005).
Not all international theorists who draw on Habermas support more “humanitarian interventions,” although this may be the outcome. For example, Neta Crawford develops a modified Habermasian discourse ethical model to decide when it may be appropriate to intervene to “promote or protect human rights values.” Neta Crawford, Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 425.
This interpretation is different to one offered earlier where Crawford is depicted as more supportive of humanitarian intervention in principle than may actually be the case. Patricia Owens, “Review Article: Theorising Military Intervention,” International Affairs, 180, no. 2 (2004): 355–365.
The phrase is taken from Arendt’s description of those who called for but failed to establish an effective bill of human rights in the interwar period. She notes, “The groups they formed, the declarations they issued, showed an uncanny similarity in language and composition to that of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals.” See Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian Books [ 1951 ] 1958), 292.
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 54.
See Margaret Canovan, “A Case of Distorted Communication: A Note on Habermas and Arendt,” Political Theory, 11, no. 1 (1983): 105–116.
Selya Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (London: Sage, 1996). Benhabib wants to abandon Arendt’s potentially irresponsible and “masculinist” Greek agonism. At best, she argues, if peers are ever to compete for excellence on the public stage (Benhabib’s not Arendt’s reading of agonism), this would imply a kind of moral and political homogeneity which simply does not exist in late-modern society. Moreover, when the “theatre” of politics is restricted to the public stage, this rigidifies the problematic distinction between public and private that feminists have been at pains to lay to rest for decades. Though Arendt’s neglect of gender issues is more difficult to refute, it is not the case that she wanted to simply reinstitute some Greek-inspired model of the polis.
This reading has been rebutted most effectively by R. Tsao, “Arendt against Athens: Rereading The Human Condition,” Political Theory, 30, no. 1 (2002): 97–123.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 194.
Dana Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror: Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 116.
Bonnie Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 93.
See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press [ 1962 ] 1991)
Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas A. McCarthy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1984).
See Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992).
Mike Hill and Warren Montag, “What Was, What Is, the Public Sphere? Post—Cold War Reflections,” in Mike Hill and Warren Montag (eds.), Masses, Classes, and the Public Sphere (London: Verso, 2000), 3.
Also see Martin Köhler, “From the National to the Cosmopolitan Public Sphere,” in Daniele Archibugi, David Held, and Martin Köhler (eds.), Re-imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 58–71
Craig Calhoun, “Imagining Solidarity: Cosmopolitanism, Constitutional Patriotism, and the Public Sphere,” Public Culture, 14, no. 1 (2002): 147–171
H. Brunkhorst, “Globalising Democracy Without a State: Weak Public, Strong Public, Global Constitutionalism,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 31, no. 3 (2002): 675–690
N. H. Samhat and R. Payne, “Regimes, Public Spheres and Global Democracy,” Global Society, 17, no. 3 (2003): 273–295.
Jürgen Habermas, The Post-National Constellation: Political Essays (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001).
For one of the earliest and most influential critiques of Habermas, see Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Bruce Robbins (ed.), The Phantom Public Sphere (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 1–32.
See Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the Post-Westphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998)
and Selya Benhabib, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).
See e.g., Mary Kaldor, “A Decade of Humanitarian Intervention: The Role of Global Civil Society,” in Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, and Mary Kaldor (eds.), Global Civil Society 2001 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 109–143
U. Beck, “The Cosmopolitan Perspective: Sociology in the Second Age of Modernity,” in Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen (eds.), Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 61–85.
John A. Guidry, Michel D. Kennedy, and Mayar N. Zald, “Globalization and Social Movements,” in Guidry, Kennedy, and Zald (eds.), Globalizations and Social Movements: Culture, Power, and the Transnational Public Sphere (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 7.
James Bohman and Mathias Lutz-Bachmann, “Introduction,” in Bohman and Lutz-Bachmann (eds.), Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 18.
Martii Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law, 1870–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
For a good critique, see Molly Cochran, “A Democratic Critique of Cosmopolitan Democracy: Pragmatism from the Bottom-Up,” European Journal of International Relations, 18, no. 4 (2002): 517–548.
John Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 129.
Mark Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres: The International Politics ofJordan’s Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 3. This distinction is made by Habermas in numerous places, but for an early statement see Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science and Politics (London: Heinemann [ 1969 ] 1971).
Nicholas Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). The work of English School theorist Hedley Bull has been used to suggest the overlap between international public spheres and the notion of a “society of states.” “Bull’s emphasis on shared norms, expectations, and institutions,” according to Lynch, “involves communicative action and the public sphere dimension of structure.” Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres, 34.
Hannah Arendt, “On Violence,” in Hannah Arendt (ed.), Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), 143–144.
See Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003).
Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 206.
Christopher Coker, Humane Warfare (London: Routledge, 2001), 22–23.
Also see Michael Ignatieff, Virtual Wars: Kosovo and Beyond (London: Chatto and Windus, 2000)
Colin McInnes, Spectator Sport Warfare: The West and Contemporary Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 2002).
On Lockean international order, see Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
For a similar argument about the democratic peace literature, see Tarek Barkawi and Mark Laffey, “The International Relations of Democracy, Liberalism, and War,” in Barkawi and Laffey (eds.), Democracy, Liberalism, and War: Rethinking the Democratic Peace Debate (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 1–23.
Anne Orford, Reading Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), 47–81.
John McGowan, “Must Politics Be Violent? Arendt’s Utopian Vision,” in Craig Calhoun and John McGowan (eds.), Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 270.
Arendt’s reflections on violence have not received a great deal of attention relative to other dimensions of her thought. One other more detailed treatment can be found in Iris M. Young, “Power, Violence, and Legitimacy: A Reading of Hannah Arendt in an Age of Police Brutality and Humanitarian Intervention,” in Martha Minnow (ed.), Breaking the Cycle of Hatred: Memory, Law, and Repair (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 260–287. While broadly critical of NATO’s actions over Kosovo, Young accepts that the organization was principally motivated by humanitarianism during the campaign.
Arendt, “What is Authority,” in Hannah Arendt (ed.), Between Past and Future (New York: Viking Press, 1968 [1954]), 91–142. See also Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror, 114, 116.
Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. edited, and intro. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946), 115.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (London: Penguin, 1978), 93.
Hannah Arendt, “Hermann Broch, 1886–1951,” Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), 148.
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 2nd edn (New York: Basic Books, 1992), xxx–xxxi.
Molly Cochran, Normative Theory in International Relations: A Pragmatic Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 252.
H. Arendt, “Mankind and Terror,” in Jerome Kohn (ed.), Essays in Understanding, 1930–1954 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1994), 302.
M. Canovan, Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 174.
For the beginnings of such an account, see Tarek Barkawi and Mark Laffey, “Retrieving the Imperial: Empire and International Relations,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 131, no. 1 (2002): 109–127.
For a highly problematic effort to marshal Arendt’s ideas to defend NATO’s Kosovo intervention, see Jeffrey C. Isaac, “Hannah Arendt on Human Rights and the Limits of Exposure, or Why Noam Chomsky is Wrong about the Meaning of Kosovo,” Social Research, 69, no. 2 (2002): 263–295.
Isaac misses much of the force of Chomsky’s critique of NATO’s invocation of human rights discourses, ignoring the centrality of human rights issues to Chomsky’s other scholarship, as well as almost entirely neglecting to address the structure of global power in which human rights claims are made. For a more persuasive discussion of Arendt and the theme of human rights, see Jeffrey C. Isaac, “A New Guarantee on Earth: Hannah Arendt on Human Dignity and the Politics of Human Rights,” American Political Science Review, 90, no. 1 (1996): 61–73.
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© 2005 Anthony F. Lang, Jr. and John Williams
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Owens, P. (2005). Hannah Arendt, Violence, and the Inescapable Fact of Humanity. In: Lang, A.F., Williams, J. (eds) Hannah Arendt and International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981509_3
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