8/10/2019 1ar ev

1/8

RealismOnly if we think it isBurke 7(Anthony, Senior LecturerSchool of Politics and Professor of International RelationsUniversity of New South Wales, Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence, p. 68-69)This chapter is thus an exercise in thinking, which challenges the continuing power of political

ontologies (forms of truth and being) that connect security, sovereignty, belonging, otherness andviolence in ways that for many appear like enduring political facts, inevitable and irrefutable.Conflict, violence and alienation then arise not merely from individual or collective acts whoseconditions might be understood and policed; they condition politics as such, forming a permanentground, a dark substrata underpinning the very possibility of the present. Conflict and alienationseem inevitable because of the way in which the modem political imagination has conceived andthought security, sovereignty and ethics. Israel/ Palestine is chosen here as a particularly urgentand complex example of this problem, but it is a problem with much wider significance. While Ihold out the hope that security can be re-visioned away from a permanent dependence oninsecurity, exclusion and violence, and I believe it retains normative promise, this analysis takes adeliberate step backward to examine the very real barriers faced by such a project. Securitycannot properly be rethought without a deeper understanding of, and challenge to, the politicalforms and structures it claims to enable and protect. If Ken Booth argues that the state should be

a means rather than an end of security, my objective here is to place the continuing power anddepth of its status as an end of security, and a fundamental source for political identity, undercritical interrogation.' If the state is to become a means of security (one among many) it will haveto be fundamentally transformed. The chapter pursues this inquiry in two stages. The first outlinesthe historic strength and effective redundancy of such an exciusivist vision of security in Israel,wherein Israel not only confronts military and political antagonists with an 'iron wall' of armedforce but maps this onto a profound clash of existential narratives, a problem with resonances inthe West's confrontation with radical Islamism in the war on terror. The second, taking up theremainder of the chapter, then explores a series of potential resources in continental philosophyand political theory that might help us to think our way out of a security grounded in violence andalienation. Through a critical engagement with this thought, I aim to construct a political ethicsbased not in relations between insecure and separated identities mapped solely onto nation-states, but in relations of responsibility and interconnection that can negotiate and recognise both

distinct and intertwined histories, identities and needs; an ethics that might underpin a vision ofinterdependent (national and non-national) existence proper to an integrated world traversed byendless flows of people, commerce, ideas, violence and future potential.

Defense

More evidenceinternational complexity proves and other things solvePreble 12(Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the CatoInstitute, PhD in history from Temple University, former professor of history at St Cloud Universityand Temple University, 6-28-12, The Critique of Pure Kagan,http://nationalinterest.org/bookreview/the-critique-pure-kagan-7061) GZ

Kagan returns to both this theme and Adamss quo te in The World America Made. Americasconception of itself as the reluctant sheriff, unwilling to go out in search of trouble but willing to

defend the town only when called upon, bears no relation to reality, he explains. Americanshave used force dozens of times, and rarely because they had no choice. But the world is toocomplex to be policed by a single global sheriff, and it need not be. Instead, the manybeneficiaries of the current order should contribute to the preservation of that order at a level, andin a manner, that is consistent with their interests. By that standard, the United States wouldretain military power that was at least three or four times greater than that of its closest rivals, butit would no longer presume to be responsible for countries that can take care of themselves.Americans must learn to embrace their relative security and face down their lingering fears. Untilthey do so, the fear of the unknown works in Kagans favor. It is difficult to disentangle the many

8/10/2019 1ar ev

2/8

different factors that have contributed to relative peace and security over the past half century,and it is impossible to know what would have happened in a world without America. The future iseven more inscrutable. In this latest book, Kagan surveys all the explanations for what may havecontributed to global peace and prosperityincluding the spread of democracy, liberaleconomics, nuclear weapons, and evolving global norms against violence and warand returnsto his refrain from sixteen years earlier. American hegemony,he and Kristol wrote in 1996, isthe only reliable defense against a breakdown of peace and international order. Fast -forward to2012, and nothing, it seems, has changed: There can be no world order without power topreserve it, to shape its norms, uphold its institutions, defend the sinews of its economic system,and keep the peace. . . . If the United States begins to look like a less reliable defender of thepresent order, that order will begin to unravel. He didnt prove that case before, and he doesntnow.

Decline is smoothPreble 12(Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the CatoInstitute, PhD in history from Temple University, former professor of history at St Cloud Universityand Temple University, 6-28-12, The Critique of Pure Kagan,http://nationalinterest.org/bookreview/the-critique-pure-kagan-7061) GZ

The world is both more complicated and more durable than Kagan imagines. The United Statesdoes not need to police the globe in order to maintain a level of security that prior generationswould envy. Neither does the survival of liberal democracy, market capitalism and basic humanrights hinge on U.S. power, contrary to Kagans assertions.Americans need not shelter wealthy, stableallies against threats they are capable of handling on their own. Americans should not fear powerin the hands of others, particularly those countries and peoples that share common interests andvalues. Finally, precisely because the United States is so secure, it is difficult to sustain publicsupport for global engagement without resorting to fearmongering and threat inflation. Indeed, whenAmericans are presented with an accurate assessment of the nations power relative to others and shown how U.S. foreign policy hascontributed to a vast and growing disparity between what we spend and what others spend on national securitythe very state of affairsthat Kagan celebratesthey grow even less supportive.

No impact to hegMaher 11---adjunct prof of pol sci, Brown. PhD expected in 2011 in pol sci, Brown (Richard,

The Paradox of American Unipolarity: Why the United States May Be Better Off in a Post-Unipolar World, Orbis 55;1)

At the same time, preeminence creates burdens and facilitates imprudent behavior. Indeed,because of Americas unique political ideology, which sees its own domestic values and idealsas universal, and the relative openness of the foreign policymaking process, the United Statesis particularly susceptible to both the temptations and burdens of preponderance. Fordecades, perhaps since its very founding, the United States has viewed what is good for itselfas good for the world. During its period of preeminence, the United States has both tried tomaintain its position at the top and to transform world politics in fundamental ways, combiningelements of realpolitik and liberal universalism (democratic government, free trade, basichuman rights). At times, these desires have conflicted with each other but they also capturethe enduring tensions of Americas role in the world. The absence of constraints andAmericas overestimation of its own ability to shape outcomes has served to weaken its overall

position. And because foreign policy is not the reserved and exclusive domain of thepresident---who presumably calculates strategy according to the pursuit of the states enduringnational interests---the policymaking process is open to special interests and outsideinfluences and, thus, susceptible to the cultivation of misperceptions, miscalculations, andmisunderstandings. Five features in particular, each a consequence of how America has usedits power in the unipolar era, have worked to diminish Americas long-term material andstrategic position. Overextension. During its period of preeminence, the United States hasfound it difficult to stand aloof from threats (real or imagined) to its security, interests, andvalues. Most states are concerned with what happens in their immediate neighborhoods. The

8/10/2019 1ar ev

3/8

United States has interests that span virtually the entire globe, from its own WesternHemisphere, to Europe, the Middle East, Persian Gulf, South Asia, and East Asia. As itspreeminence enters its third decade, the United States continues to define its interests inincreasingly expansive terms. This has been facilitated by the massive forward presence ofthe American military, even when excluding the tens of thousands of troops stationed in Iraqand Afghanistan. The U.S. military has permanent bases in over 30 countries and maintains atroop presence in dozens more.13 There are two logics that lead a preeminent state tooverextend, and these logics of overextension lead to goals and policies that exceed even theconsiderable capabilities of a superpower. First, by definition, preeminent states face fewexternal constraints. Unlike in bipolar or multipolar systems, there are no other states that canserve to reliably check or counterbalance the power and influence of a single hegemon. Thisgives preeminent states a staggering freedom of action and provides a tempting opportunity toshape world politics in fundamental ways. Rather than pursuing its own narrow interests,preeminence provides an opportunity to mix ideology, values, and normative beliefs withforeign policy. The United States has been susceptible to this temptation, going to greatlengths to slay dragons abroad, and even to remake whole societies in its own (liberaldemocratic) image.14 The costs and risks of taking such bold action or pursuingtransformative foreign policies often seem manageable or even remote. We know from boththeory and history that external powers can impose important checks on calculated risk-takingand serve as a moderating influence. The bipolar system of the Cold War forced policymakers

in both the United States and the Soviet Union to exercise extreme caution and prudence.One wrong move could have led to a crisis that quickly spiraled out of policymakers control.Second, preeminent states have a strong incentive to seek to maintain their preeminence inthe international system. Being number one has clear strategic, political, and psychologicalbenefits. Preeminent states may, therefore, overestimate the intensity and immediacy ofthreats, or to fundamentally redefine what constitutes an acceptable level of threat to live with.To protect itself from emerging or even future threats, preeminent states may be more likely totake unilateral action, particularly compared to when power is distributed more evenly in theinternational system. Preeminence has not only made it possible for the United States tooverestimate its power, but also to overestimate the degree to which other states andsocieties see American power as legitimate and even as worthy of emulation. There is almosta belief in historical determinism, or the feeling that one was destined to stand atop worldpolitics as a colossus, and this preeminence gives one a specia l prerogative for ones role and

purpose in world politics. The security doctrine that the George W. Bush administrationadopted took an aggressive approach to maintaining American preeminence and eliminatingthreats to American security, including waging preventive war. The invasion of Iraq, based onclaims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and had ties toal Qaeda, both of which turned out to be false, produced huge costs for the United States---inpolitical, material, and human terms. After seven years of war, tens of thousands of Americanmilitary personnel remain in Iraq. Estimates of its long-term cost are in the trillions of dollars.15At the same time, the United States has fought a parallel conflict in Afghanistan. While theObama administration looks to dramatically reduce the American military presence in Iraq,President Obama has committed tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan.Distraction. Preeminent states have a tendency to seek to shape world politics in fundamentalways, which can lead to conflicting priorities and unnecessary diversions. As resources,attention, and prestige are devoted to one issue or set of issues, others are necessarily

disregarded or given reduced importance. There are always trade-offs and opportunity costsin international politics, even for a state as powerful as the United States. Most states arerequired to define their priorities in highly specific terms. Because the preeminent state hassuch a large stake in world politics, it feels the need to be vigilant against any changes thatcould impact its short-, medium-, or longterm interests. The result is taking on commitmentson an expansive number of issues all over the globe. The United States has been very activein its ambition to shape the postCold War world. It has expanded NATO to Russias doorstep;waged war in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan; sought to export its own democraticprinciples and institutions around the world; assembled an international coalition againsttransnational terrorism; imposed sanctions on North Korea and Iran for their nuclear

8/10/2019 1ar ev

4/8

programs; undertaken nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan; announced plans for a missiledefense system to be stationed in Poland and the Czech Republic; and, with the UnitedKingdom, led the response to the recent global financial and economic crisis. By being soinvolved in so many parts of the world, there often emerges ambiguity over priorities. TheUnited States defines its interests and obligations in global terms, and defending all of themsimultaneously is beyond the pale even for a superpower like the United States. Issues thatmay have received benign neglect during the Cold War, for example, when U.S. attention andresources were almost exclusively devoted to its strategic competition with the Soviet Union,are now viewed as central to U.S. interests. Bearing Disproportionate Costs of Maintaining theStatus Quo. As the preeminent power, the United States has the largest stake in maintainingthe status quo. The world the United States took the lead in creating---one based on openmarkets and free trade, democratic norms and institutions, private property rights and the ruleof law---has created enormous benefits for the United States. This is true both in terms ofreaching unprecedented levels of domestic prosperity and in institutionalizing U.S.preferences, norms, and values globally. But at the same time, this system has proven costlyto maintain. Smaller, less powerful states have a strong incentive to free ride, meaning thatpreeminent states bear a disproportionate share of the costs of maintaining the basic rulesand institutions that give world politics order, stability, and predictability. While this might befrustrating to U.S. policymakers, it is perfectly understandable. Other countries know that theUnited States will continue to provide these goods out of its own self-interest, so there is little

incentive for these other states to contribute significant resources to help maintain these publicgoods.16 The U.S. Navy patrols the oceans keeping vital sea lanes open. During financialcrises around the globe---such as in Asia in 1997-1998, Mexico in 1994, or the global financialand economic crisis that began in October 2008--- the U.S. Treasury rather than the IMF takesthe lead in setting out and implementing a plan to stabilize global financial markets. TheUnited States has spent massive amounts on defense in part to prevent great power war. TheUnited States, therefore, provides an indisputable collective good---a world, particularlycompared to past eras, that is marked by order, stability, and predictability. A number ofcountries---in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia---continue to rely on the Americansecurity guarantee for their own security. Rather than devoting more resources to defense,they are able to finance generous social welfare programs. To maintain these commitments,the United States has accumulated staggering budget deficits and national debt. As the solesuperpower, the United States bears an additional though different kind of weight. From the

Israeli-Palestinian dispute to the India Pakistan rivalry over Kashmir, the United States isexpected to assert leadership to bring these disagreements to a peaceful resolution. TheUnited States puts its reputation on the line, and as years and decades pass without lastingsettlements, U.S. prestige and influence is further eroded. The only way to get other states tocontribute more to the provision of public goods is if the United States dramatically decreasesits share. At the same time, the United States would have to give other states an expandedrole and greater responsibility given the proportionate increase in paying for public goods. Thisis a political decision for the United States---maintain predominant control over the provision ofcollective goods or reduce its burden but lose influence in how these public goods are used.Creation of Feelings of Enmity and Anti-Americanism. It is not necessary that everyone admirethe United States or accept its ideals, values, and goals. Indeed, such dramatic imbalances ofpower that characterize world politics today almost always produce in others feelings ofmistrust, resentment, and outright hostility. At the same time, it is easier for the United States

to realize its own goals and values when these are shared by others, and are viewed aslegitimate and in the common interest. As a result of both its vast power but also some of thedecisions it has made, particularly over the past eight years, feelings of resentment andhostility toward the United States have grown, and perceptions of the legitimacy of its role andplace in the world have correspondingly declined. Multiple factors give rise toanti-Americansentiment, and anti-Americanism takes different shapes and forms.17 It emerges partly as aresponse to the vast disparity in power the United States enjoys over other states. Takingsatisfaction in themissteps and indiscretions of the imposing Gulliver is a natural reaction. Insocieties that globalization (which in many parts of the world is interpreted as equivalent toAmericanization) has largely passed over, resentment and alienation are felt when comparing

8/10/2019 1ar ev

5/8

ones own impoverished, ill-governed, unstable society with the wealth, stability, and influenceenjoyed by the United States.18 Anti-Americanism also emerges as a consequence of specificAmerican actions and certain values and principles to which the United States ascribes.Opinion polls showed that a dramatic rise in anti-American sentiment followed the perceivedunilateral decision to invade Iraq (under pretences that failed to convince much of the rest ofthe world) and to depose Saddam Hussein and his government and replace itwith agovernmentmuchmore friendly to the United States. To many, this appeared as an arrogantand completely unilateral decision by a single state to decide for itselfwhen---and under whatconditions---military force could be used. A number of other policy decisions by not just theGeorge W. Bush but also the Clinton and Obama administrations have provoked feelings ofanti-American sentiment. However, it seemed that a large portion of theworld had a particularanimus for GeorgeW. Bush and a number of policy decisions of his administration, fromvoiding the U.S. signature on the International Criminal Court (ICC), resisting a global climatechange treaty, detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, andwhat many viewed as a simplistic worldview that declared a war on terrorism and thedivision of theworld between goodand evil.Withpopulations around theworld mobilized andpoliticized to a degree never before seen---let alone barely contemplated---such feelings ofanti-American sentiment makes it more difficult for the United States to convince othergovernments that the U.S.own preferences and priorities are legitimate and worthy ofemulation. Decreased Allied Dependence. It is counterintuitive to think that Americas

unprecedented power decreases its allies dependence on it. During the Cold War, forexample, Americas allies were highly dependent on the United States for their own security.The security relationship that the United States had with Western Europe and Japan allowedthese societies to rebuild and reach a stunning level of economic prosperity in the decadesfollowing World War II. Now that the United States is the sole superpower and the threatposed by the Soviet Union no longer exists, these countries have charted more autonomouscourses in foreign and security policy.A reversion to a bipolar or multipolar system couldchange that, making these allies more dependent on the United States for their security.Russias reemergence could unnerve Americas European allies, just as Chinas continuedascent could provoke unease in Japan. Either possibility would disrupt the equilibrium inEurope and East Asia that the United States has cultivated over the past several decades.New geopolitical rivalries could serve to create incentives forAmericas allies to reduce thedisagreements they have with Washington and to reinforce their security relationships with the

United States.

Seriously there is no possible scenario where heg could solve warFriedman 10Ben, research fellow in defense and homeland security, Cato. PhD candidate inpol sci, MIT, Military Restraint and Defense Savings, 20 July, http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-bf-07202010.html

Another argumentfor high military spendingis thatU.S. military hegemony underlies global stability. Ourforcesand alliance commitments dampen conflict betweenpotential rivalslike China and Japan, we are told, preventing them fromfighting wars that would disrupt trade and cost us more than the military spending that would have prevented war. The theoretical and empiricalfoundation for this claim is weak . It overestimatesboth theAmerican military's contributionto international stabilityand the danger that instability abroad poses to Americans. In Western Europe, U.S. forcesnow contribute little to peace, at best making the tiny o dds of war among states there slightly more so.7 Even in Asia, where

there is moretension, the history of international relations suggests that without U.S. militarydeployments potential rivals, especially those separated by sea like Japan and China, will generallyachieve a stablebalance of power rather than fight. In other cases, as with our bases in Saudi Arabia between the Iraq wars, U.S. forces probably create moreunrestthan they prevent. Our force deployments can also generate instability by prompting states to develop nuclear weapons. Even when wars occur, their economic impact is likely to belimited here.8 By linking markets, globalization provides supply alternatives for the goods we consume, including oil. If political upheaval disrupts supply in one location, supplierselsewhere will take our orders. Prices may increase, but markets adjust. That makes American consumers less dependent on any particular supply source, undermining the claim that weneed to use force to prevent unrest in supplier nations or secure trade routes.9 Part of the confusion about the value of hegemony comes from misunderstanding the Cold War. People tend toassume, falsely, that our activist foreign policy, with troops forward supporting allies, not only caused the Soviet Union's collapse but is obviously a good t hing even without such a rival.

Forgotten is the sensible notion that alliances are a necessary evil occasionally tolerated to balance a particularly threatening enemy.The main justification forcreating our Cold War alliances was the fear that Communist nations could conqueror capture byinsurrection the industrial centersin Western Europe and Japan and then harness enough of that wealth to threaten us either directly or by forcing us to become a

8/10/2019 1ar ev

6/8

garrison state at ruinous cost. We kept troops in South Korea after 1953 for fear that the North would otherwise overrun it. But these alliances outlastedthe conditions that caused them. During the Cold War, Japan, Western Europe andSouth Korea grew wealthy enough to defend themselves. We should let them. These alliancesheighten our force requirements and threaten to drag us into wars, while providing no obvious benefit.

K Cards

prefer our uniqueness evidence because it deals with the overarchingtheory of sustainability rather than simple snapshots in timeGulli 13. Bruno Gulli, professor of history, philosophy, and political science at KingsboroughCollege in New York, For the critique of sovereignty and violence,http://academia.edu/2527260/For_the_Critique_of_Sovereignty_and_Violence, pg. 14

Although the United States remains by far the worlds most powerful state, its relationship to the

rest of the world is now best described as one of dominationwithout hegemony (1994/2010:

384). What can the US do next? Not much, short of brutal dominance . In the last few years,

we have seen president Obama praising himself for the killing of Osama bin Laden. While thataction was most likely unlawful, too (Noam Chomsky has often noted that bin Laden was a

suspect, not someone charged with or found guilty of a crime), it is certain that you can kill all thebin Ladens of the world without gaining back a bit of hegemony . In fact, this killing, just like

G. W. Bushs war against Iraq, makes one think of a Mafia-style regolamento di conti more than

any other thing. Barack Obama is less forthcoming about the killing of 16-year-old Abdulrahman

al-Awlaki, whose fate many have correctly compared to that of17-year-old Trayvon Martin

(killed in Florida by a self-appointed security watchman), but it is precisely in cases like this one

that the weakness at the heart of empire , the ill-concealed and uncontrolled fury for the loss

of hegemony , becomes visible. The frenzy denies the possibility of power as care , which is

what should replace hegemony , let alone domination. Nor am I sure I share Arrighis optimistic

view about the possible rise of a new hegemonic center of power in East Asia and China:probably that would only be a shift in the axis of uncaring power, unable to affect, let alone exit,

the paradigm of sovereignty and violence. What is needed is rather a radical alternative in

which power as domination, with or without hegemony, is replaced by power as carein otherwords, a poetic rather than military and financial shift.

Hegemony doesnt exist and the attempt to ensure it causes blowback andfailureDoran 9

(Charles F., Prof @ Johns Hopkins U, Fooling Oneself: The Mythology of Hegemony,

International Studies Review 11.1, p. 177-181)//LA ***We dont endorse ableist language. More than a catalogue of techniques other governments use to resist U.S. titular hegemony, this book informs an important question, long-debated, about the

concept of hegemony. If the United States is a hegemon, why does a balance of power, composed ofrivals that severely disagree with hegemonic domination, not form against the dominant UnitedStates? Building onthe guidelinespro- posed by Wohlstetter (1964, 1968) and Elmore (1985) for the making of soundpolicy, namely, to see the world through the lens of the other so as to anticipate what others might conclude and do, the book critiques thevery notion of hege- mony. In this review, I argue from the perspective thatthe current conception of hegemony has

neither historical nor theoretical justification(Doran 1991, pp. 117-121), and that many of the categories and examples assessed herebear wit- ness to this reality. Joseph Nye (1990) distinguished between hegemony based on domination and control and a state carrying out a leadership role.Historically, as Doran (1971) argued, all military attempts at hegemonic domination in the central sys- tem failed;other members of the system rolled back these bids for hegemony forcefully, and the subsequentpeace was neither designed nor governed (Iken- berry 1989; Ikenberry and Kupchan 1990; Gaddis 2002) by any singlestate. Hegemony therefore involved attempts at centralized control, but never realized control. Instead, equilibrium among highly unequal states(Kissinger 2005) pre- served the de-centralized nature ofthe international system(Vasquez 1993). Mearsheimer (2001) concurred that, as opposed to regions (Hurrell 2004) such as Eastern Europe underthe Soviet Union or as opposed to the relationship between colonies and mother country (Mckeown 1983), hegemony in the central systemnever existed. The central international system is pluralistic, de-centralized, and subject to the

http://academia.edu/2527260/For_the_Critique_of_Sovereignty_and_Violencehttp://academia.edu/2527260/For_the_Critique_of_Sovereignty_and_Violence

8/10/2019 1ar ev

7/8

rules of balance. Across long periods of history, the structure of the system changes as states follow their respective trajectories of relat ive power,reflecting their ability to carry out a variety of foreign policy roles. And at any point in time, states are located at highly unequalpositionson these evolving power cycles. But a hegemon, a single all-powerful state, has never dominatedand con- trolled; nor does it today; nor will it in the future. The United States is an ordinarypower(Rosecrance 1976) like others, just more powerful, and, accordingly, more capable of providing certain leadership functions in thesys- tem. The choice of global leadership is far different from that of global dom- ination (Brzezinski 2004). Failure to understand this reality has gotten theUnited States into the situation that is described in this book. The articles in Hegemony Constrained provide strong evidence in support of the claim that the reason

a balance of power of disaffected states has not formed against the US is that, in other than defensive terms (Keohane 1984), hegemony does notexist except in the minds of a few theorists of international relations and influential advocates inpolicy circles. Not unexpectedly, other governments have discovered tactics to elude and to minimize theeffect of such applications within US foreign policy. The excesses of application in theGeorge W.Bush administration are the out- come of a mythology long in the making, extending from E.H. Carrsextrapola- tion from British colonialism, and nurtured through American theorizing about the existence ofa hegemon that dominates the system until a new rising state defeats and replaces the priorhegemon in a systems transforming war(Organski and Kugler 1980; Gilpin 1981; Modelski and Thompson 1989; Kugler and Lemke1996; Tammen, Kugler, Lemke, Stam, Abdol-Lahian, Alsharabati, Efird, and Organski 2000). In the aftermath of the collapse of bipolarity, the belief thatuni- polarity meantsuch hegemony began affecting foreign policy decision-making and rhetoricduring the Clinton administration(when America was proclaimed the biggest bulldog on the block). Quite in contrast is the argumentation ofall prior administrations, going back to the Eisenhower administration, a time when America enjoyed greater relati ve power differentials (Pollins 1996) than those

existing today. Yet, led by a groundswell of neo-conservative foreign policy thought(Kraut- hamer 1991; Mastanduno1997; Wohlforth 1999; Kagan 2002; Barnett 2004), intellectual elites have so committed themselves to the hegemonic

thesis that they have blinded themselves to the consequences of their own speculation. Shouldthey be surprised when the hierarchy of international relations turns out to be non-existent, or thecapacity to control even very weak and divided pol- ities is met with frustration?Americans have invented a mythology ofhegemonic domination that corresponds so poorly to the position they actually find them- selvesin that they cannot comprehend the responses of other governments to their actions.Bobrow and hisfellow writers show the dozens of ways that other governmentsfind to evade, andto subvert, the proscriptions andfulminations emanating from Washington. By creating a mythology of hegemony rather thanlearning to work with the (properly conceived) balance of power, the United States hascomplicated its foreign policy and vastly raised the costs of its operation (Brown et al. 2000; Brzezinski 2004). Bydestroying a secular, albeit brutal, Sunni Arab center of power in Iraq, the United States must now contend with a far greater problem (Fearon 2006) of itself havingto hold the country together and to balance a resurgent Iran. Bogged down in Iraq, it is unable to deter aggression against allies elsewhere such as Georgia and

the Ukraine, or to stop the growing Russian penetration of Latin America. By waving the flag of hegemony, the United Statesfinds that very few other governments see the need to assist it, because hegemony is supposedto be self-financing, self-enforcing, and self-sufficient.

Even if they win hegemony is real, the universalization of hegemonicontology makes violence through backlash the only possible response theyre in a double bindMouffe 7Chantal Mouffe, Professor of Political Theory at the Centre for the Study ofDemocracy, University of Westminster, 2007, Carl Schmitts warning on the dangers of aunipolar world, in The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt, Edited by: Odysseos andPetito, p. 152

I submit that it is high time to acknowledge the pluralist character of the world and to relinquishthe Eurocentric tenet that modernization can only take place through Westernization. We shouldrelinquish the illusion that antagonisms could be eliminated through unification of the world,achieved by transcending the political, conflict and negativity. It is also necessary to abandon theidea that the aim of politics is to establish consensus on one single model. The central problemthat our current unipolar world is facing is that it is impossible for antagonisms to find legitimateforms of expression. It is no wonder, then, that those antagonisms, when they emerge, takeextreme forms, putting into question the very structure of the existing international order. It is, inmy view, the lack of political channels for challenging the hegemony of the neo-liberal model ofglobalization which is at the origin of the proliferation of discourses and practices of radicalnegation of the established order. In order to create channels for the legitimate expression ofdissent we need to envisage a pluralistic world order constructed around a certain number ofgreat spaces and genuine cultural poles. The new forms of terrorism reveal the dangers implicitin the delusions of the universalist globalist discourse which postulates that human progress

8/10/2019 1ar ev

8/8

requires the establishment of world unity based on the adoption of the Western model. This iswhy, against the illusions of the universalist-humanitarians, it is urgent to listen to Schmitt whenhe reminds us that [t]he political world is a pluriverse, not a universe (Schmitt 1976: 53). This is, Ibelieve, the only way to avoid the clash of civilizations announced by Huntington (1996) and towhich, despite its intentions, the universalist discourse is, in fact, contributing.