War And Universal Imperial Order: A Diagnosis Of A Global Political Crisis

Abstract

The concept of anti-terrorist war as a war of justice. The global imperial order replacing the sovereign nation-states of the modern period implies the reformatting of the political space, including the renunciation of the former notions and institutions that constitute this order. First of all, it is a question of renouncing sovereignty in the former absolute sense and the related sovereign institutions of the nation-state: political boundaries and ways of legitimizing the power of nation-states. The sovereignty of the empire determines the status of its opponents as terrorist criminals. Police measures with the use of the regular army are rarely inferior in intensity to the military operations of the late modern period, but are legitimized as an "internal" war (anti-terrorist war) against criminals – opponents of the legitimate political order, as terrorists. In theory and political rhetoric, the concept of a 'just war' alien to modernism is revived: a limited, 'legally protected' war of sovereigns as 'legitimate enemies' of each other, which presupposed equality of opponents, recognition of mutual dignity, the possibility and necessity of negotiations and establishment of peace (K. Schmitt) – is replaced by a war of justice, that is, total war, when the enemy is initially criminalized and regarding which any force measures that exclude negotiations and the establishment of peace are lawful. Imperial sovereignty is legitimized postfactum by success in maintaining security and order, that is, according to the authors of the concept of M. Hardt and A. Negri, "automatically" as a result of successfully applied violence.

Keywords: Empiresovereigntywarcivil warterrorismlegitimacy

Introduction

The crisis of the nation-state of modernity and the "implosion of social" ( Baudrillard, 1983) are stated by many researchers belonging to different traditions of social and political philosophy, are a matter of concern for politicians in different countries – an obvious sign of the global crisis of the simultaneously existing world order and social-philosophical and political theories, concerned about the search for a paradigm for the solution of the crisis and a new world order, but do not detect not only the "agreement" between the two countries, but also the "agreement" of the two countries. That is, in other words, there is unity in stating the crisis, but there is no single (and no comprehensive) vision of the prospects of its resolution and further social development, neither in the "whole" of the "scientific community", nor even among "like-minded people". Nevertheless, in the last 30 years there have appeared several concepts worthy of close study, which claim to be able not only to diagnose the situation (the statement of the crisis itself is not yet a "diagnosis"), but also to answer (in general, and sometimes in details) the always urgent question: "What to do"? Such ambitious projects include the concept of the "multitude" of Hardt and Negri ( 2004) proposed by them in "The Empire" and "War and the multitude in the era of empire" ( Hardt & Negri, 2006).

Problem Statement

The new imperial world order is essentially connected with war: as a way of formation, as the main way of being, as the only form of legitimization. Clarification of these connections and correspondences is the main issue of this article.

Research Questions

War as a constitutional element of the imperial order.

Purpose of the Study

Critical study of the imperial global order as a civil/antiterrorist war.

Research Methods

The interpretation of the concept of the imperial order of M. Hardt and A. Negri suggests the use of hermeneutic procedures; comparative historical analysis reveals the universal content of the concept "civil war" / "anti-terrorist war".

Findings

Determining the direction of their research search, M. Hardt and A. Negri consider justified the movement opposite to the one in which Hobbes ( 1991) moved, who formulated the foundations of the political philosophy of the New Age, justifying this fundamental difference between two historical moments. While Hobbes proceeded from the nature of the social organism and the form of citizenship adequate to the state of bourgeoisie's emergence and believed that "the new class could not provide social order by itself", he needed absolute authority, and thus created the theory of sovereignty, the form of which "subsequently developed in Europe in the form of a nation state" ( Hardt & Negri, 2006) – now it is necessary to move in the opposite direction, from the analysis of a new global form of sovereignty, Empire to a new "phenomenon of world character", the multitude by which this sovereignty will be "removed": If Hobbes went from the nascent social class to a new form of sovereignty, then we are moving in the opposite direction – namely, from a new form of sovereignty to a new world class. If sovereign power was required by the nascent bourgeoisie to guarantee its interests, then the multitude emerges within the new imperial sovereignty and points the way to a departure from it ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). World society can give birth to another world society only by "pulling" the multitude through the Empire. In its time, the bourgeoisie relied on sovereignty to establish its order, while the post-modern revolution takes us beyond imperial sovereignty. Many, without being limited to class education, are quite capable of forming a society on their own.

Empire is a new global and universal order; it is a political form of what Foucault ( 2008) called bipower; bipower disposes not only of the power of means of mass destruction of all living things (which is threatened, for example, by nuclear weapons), but also of measures of individualized violence. Being individualized to the extreme, bipower turns into torture ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). Empire is the only form of power that manages to preserve the current global order for a long time; empire becomes, and that is how it is: empire is also a kind of a network (as well as a multitude), the network power of empire is a new form of sovereignty, as its main components, or nodes, are the leading national states, together with supranational institutions, major capitalist corporations and other forces ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). The form of empire formation is war; the empire dominates the global order, which is not only split by internal differences and hierarchies, but also exhausted by endless war. In an empire, the state of conflict is inevitable, and war acts as an instrument of power. Today's imperial world (PaxImperii) is, as in the days of ancient Rome, a pretend world that actually obscures the state of permanent war ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). The global order of the Empire is a permanent war: "Today, a new era is the worldwide transition from modernity to post-modernity. In this sense, the war has become universal: sometimes it can stop somewhere, but armed violence is constantly possible, it is ready to break out at any moment and anywhere. In other words, the essence of war, explained Thomas Hobbes, is not a battle itself, but a certain predisposition to it; the opposite statement has never been confirmed, that is, we are not talking about isolated conflicts, but about a general world state of war, which blurs the distinction between war and non-war to such an extent that we can no longer imagine or even rely on true peace ( as cited in Hardt & Negri, 2006).

Thus, the focus of our attention is on permanent war as a normal state of imperial global and universal order, "new world order" as a way/form of formation and existence of the Empire.

So, for the imperial order, war is not just a "state," it is, in a certain respect, its "regulatory idea," it is its goal and means, that is, war is the essence of the modern imperial order. In general, for the political philosophy of the New Age, the foundations of which were laid by Machiavelli ( 1981) and Hobbes ( 1991), Ankersmit ( 2002) believes that "Machiavelli's tradition" in political philosophy has always been "in the shadow" of another, "Stoicist fundamentalist tradition", of which Hobbes is the most important representative in the New Age; Schmitt ( 1982) argued that Hobbes' teachings can be seen as a kind of "matrix" of political philosophy of the new time, which already contains all its essential content), war is not something exceptional, on the contrary, civil war is a negative experience, on which the idea of modernity about the political order is based. The conflict situation – "the war of all against all" – is in reality only a purified, philosophical concept of civil war, projected either in the past, in prehistoric times, or in the essence of the man himself ( Hardt & Negri, 2006), and the sovereignty established by the social contract (it should be kept in mind at all times that the social contract establishes sovereignty, which is absolute; the subsequent interpretation of the theory of social contract, which is common in our time, and claiming that this contract implies a contract between the superiors. Under the new conditions, sovereignty no longer does so, not only because it is incapable of doing so (and therefore, is actually subject to "re-institution"), but precisely because war is becoming the essence of the modern sovereign imperial order.

Thus, the nature of sovereignty and the nature of war are changing: Modern war that has evolved into a permanent supervisory activity that supports the foundations of administrative power and political control requires, as before, subjects weary of violence and fear of submission. But the fact that the problem resembles the one that existed in the past does not mean that similar solutions will prove to be successful. The strengthened sovereignty of nation States cannot end the global state of war. On the contrary, a different, global form of sovereignty is necessary ( Hardt & Negri, 2006); war was not the last argument of the authorities, a demonstration of force, which is used as a last resort, but a basic element of politics itself. "The war of everyone against all", under imperial sovereignty, does not stop, as Hobbes argued, but is disciplined and politically controlled. Continuous military action becomes its backbone. Thus, the war seems to move simultaneously in two opposite directions: on the one hand, it is reduced to a police action, and on the other hand, it is raised to an absolute, ontological level by the technology of global destruction. However, these two divergent trends do not contradict each other: the reduction of war before the police action does not eliminate, but actually confirms its ontological dimension. The thinning of the military function and strengthening of the police function are ontological signs of absolute annihilation: the military police force supports the threat of genocide and nuclear disaster as the most important resonance for its existence ( Hardt & Negri, 2006).

The situation is aggravated by the fact that at the disposal of the authorities (and in part of their adversaries, who, as we shall see further, are now called terrorists) there are means of mass destruction, which include not only nuclear weapons, but also technical capabilities to implement genocide: Weapons of global defeat interrupt the dialectic of war inherent in modern times. War has always entailed murder, but in the 20th century the scale of destruction acquired the character of the production of death itself, the symbols of which became Auschwitz and Hiroshima. The ability to carry out genocide and nuclear destruction directly affects the very structure of life, decomposing and twisting it ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). Sovereign power now holds not only the life of an individual or group in its hands, but virtually commands the existence of everything alive. This is a situation of "existential choice", a decision that was once pointed out by Dostoevsky ( 1876) (man begins to exist when the threat of total non-existence becomes real), and, thus, the political project of the multitude receives a kind of existential ontological substantiation: We must begin to realize the current global state of war and its change by studying the origins of social and political resistance movements. Ultimately, this will lead us to a new vision of the world, as well as to the identification of subjects capable of building a new world ( Hardt & Negri, 2006).

Civil war, from the point of view of the imperial order, is nowadays presented as an anti-terrorist war, the main task of which is not to destroy the enemy (it is impossible due to its network nature, and it is not necessary to: war is the way of being an empire), but "ensuring security." Police operations (with the use of armed forces) outside the outdated borders of sovereign (no longer) nation-states; imperial legislation, global in its essence; ideology; rhetoric of politicians and media – all means of imperial power are mobilized to "fight terrorism". From the legal point of view, we are in an "extraordinary situation"; The constitutional concept of an "extraordinary situation" contains an obvious contradiction: in order to save the constitution, it is necessary to suspend its validity. However, this contradiction is solved or at least mitigated by the awareness of the short period of crisis and extraordinary situation ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). However, the globalizing crisis and the permanent state of war make an extraordinary situation constantly lasting and not limited in time. This contradiction manifests itself completely and the whole meaning of the concept completely changes. At the same time, Hardt and Negri are clearly aware that this legal concept alone does not give us sufficient grounds for understanding the new global state of war in which we find ourselves. We need to link the current "extraordinary situation" with another exception, namely, the uniqueness of the United States as the only remaining superpower. The key to understanding the meaning of global war lies at the intersection of these two exceptions ( Hardt & Negri, 2006).

Large-scale and spectacular terrorist attacks, the need for which was specified for the authorities by Baudrillard ( 1983), became not only a reality, but almost the main instrument of legitimization and actualization of the new imperial order. The first thing to point out was that such attacks contributed to the formation of the necessary mood and behavior of people for the authorities: After September 11, 2001 and with the beginning of the subsequent war against terrorism, all protests against the global system were temporarily suppressed by the global state of war. First of all, in many countries it became almost impossible to protest, as in the name of anti-terror the police presence at demonstrations became much more numerous and more rigid. Secondly, against the backdrop of military adversity, various complaints seem to have faded away and become obsolete ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). The second is the change in "military doctrine" in the part that concerns the definition of the enemy: An unpleasant lesson that the leaders of the U.S. and its allied nation states had to learn after 9/11 is that the enemy with whom they deal is not some sovereign country, but rather a network. In other words, the enemy has taken on a new form. In fact, nowadays asymmetric conflicts have become a general condition that enemies and threats to the imperial order usually arise in the form of distributed networks rather than centralized and independent entities ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). A new form of letigation becomes common ( 1972): At present, coercion is particularly effectively legitimized not within a given scheme, whether moral or legal, but only post facto, based on its results. One might think that violence from the strong is automatically legitimized and violence from the weak is immediately stigmatized by terrorism, but the logic of legitimization is more closely linked to the impact that the violence produces. Strengthening or restoring the existing global order is what retroactively legitimizes recourse to force ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). Number four. An important consequence should be considered that, formalized as a response, the reaction of imperial power to terrorist attacks and their threat, thus makes it possible to structure the imperial order, that the sovereignty of nation-states can be if not completely ignored (this is a question of fact and force: those who can thus resist have a recognized right of resistance, not legally recognized, here the liberal ideology is consistently uncompromising, but again in fact), but successfully redistribute the powers of the state of imperial resistance. The codes of relevant laws are strictly functional and serve the purpose of constant redrawing of imperial territories ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). Finally, the fifth. The most important achievement of the period of modernity, the limited war that was conducted between legitimate enemies, implied the conclusion of peace, regulated relations in the occupied territories ( 2002) described the concept of "limited war" in the works "The concept of political" and "Nomos land" ( Schmitt, 1997), i.e. imposed restrictions on war through the "law of war" and the "military law ", now "no longer exists": it was replaced by a medieval concept of "just war", the most important feature of which for us is the non-recognition of the "legitimate enemy", criminalization of the enemy, declaring him a criminal, and, therefore, including the impossibility of a peace agreement. The theory of "just war" is now called so by M. Hardt and A. Negri (we partly agree with this, but generally prefer the theory of K. Schmitt) "mystification": The most sophisticated and elegant version of the mystification is the theory of 'just war', which has been revived in recent years by scientists, journalists, and politicians. It should be clear to us that the concept of "just war" has nothing to do with defensive action. Protecting Jews from Pharaoh's troops during the exodus does not need such justifications. On the contrary, the concept of "just war" is required for moral justification of aggression. If such a war is presented as a method of defence, it is a matter of preserving the values at stake. This is where the current theory of "just war" in practice is closely linked to the old concept, which had been in use until the modern era and was so effective during the long European wars, which were conducted on religious grounds ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). The concept of "just war" is a military aggression justified on moral grounds. It is fundamentally different from the protective nature of democratic violence. A just war has not only an "external" aspect (conditionally, there is nothing external for the imperial order; the longstanding discussions of the U.S. political theorists on whether the U.S. has a foreign policy demonstrate, among other things, a certain prevalence and popularity of the "imperial consciousness"), but also a conditionally "internal" aspect: The internal political facade of the doctrines of just war and war on terror is a regime that aims at social control, close to total ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). Social transformations, defined as biopolitics, "biopolitical social production", if it is assimilated to the "imperial code", act in increasing contradiction with the changed social composition of the population and only block new ways of production and manifestations of social activity. In any case, there is an extremely controversial situation when the actions of the ruling forces to maintain control lead to the undermining of their own interests and powers, i.e. not only block the political project of the multitude (more or less effectively), but also are a factor of "self-destruction" of the imperial power.

The "internal aspects" of the situation of total civil war (a just war, from the point of view of the authorities) include the "transition in politics from "defense" to "protection" ( Hardt & Negri, 2006); The active, proactive nature of the security policy is in fact already laid down in other transformations of the war we have analyzed above. If from now on the war is considered not an extraordinary situation, but a normal state of affairs, that is, if we have entered a permanent state of war, it becomes necessary that it is not a threat to the existing power structure, not a destabilizing force, but, on the contrary, an active mechanism that constantly reproduces and strengthens the current global order ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). This erases the distinction between the external and internal spheres, between the army and the police. Unlike "defence", which creates a protective barrier against threats from outside, "security" justifies constant military activity both inside and outside its territory. U.S. law, especially since the patriotic act, has "markedly expanded the government's competence to oversee its own and foreign nationals. The same has happened in Europe. In addition, new surveillance capabilities have emerged with the advent of advanced technological systems such as the Echelon, a secret plan by U.S. intelligence agencies and other governments to monitor worldwide electronic communications, including telephone, electronic and satellite channels ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). Privacy boundaries have been eroded. And the logic of the development of security doctrine, which is growing every year, leads to the fact that the sphere of personal life is not assumed in it. The authors believe that security is a perversion that turns everything into an object of control. A security strategy involving preventive wars and pre-emptive strikes also undermines the sovereignty of nation-states and renders the existence of external borders meaningless: That is, both inside and outside the country, security champions demand more than just the preservation of the established order – they say that if we wait for attacks to respond to them, it will be too late. Security requires the active and continuous development of the external environment through military and/or police action. Only a world formed by ourselves will be safe. This understanding of security is, therefore, a form of bipower in the sense that it is entrusted with the task of producing and transforming public life at the most general, global level ( Hardt & Negri, 2006).

The legitimization of imperial violence requires a constant image of the enemy and the danger of rioting. And when war becomes the basis of politics, the enemy becomes the main sign of legitimacy. That is, it loses its specificity and turns into a "snake in imperial paradise". The enemy becomes an atmosphere, an invisible feeling of hostility. The pressure of such an atmosphere makes it possible to "boost" legitimization in places where it has weakened. Such an enemy cannot be caught, for he is a pure abstraction: Abstract objects of war – drugs, terrorism, etc. – are not really enemies either. It is best to treat them as symptoms of the disorganization of reality, which is a threat to security and to discipline and control ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). The abstraction of the enemy indicates, in the authors' opinion, that imperial legitimacy cannot solve the problem of asymmetry and imbalance of forces in the world.

A military force, in this case called a policeman, will receive legitimacy to the extent and only to the extent that it is effective in correcting global violations – not necessarily in establishing peace, but in maintaining order. According to this logic, a force such as the American Army may resort to violence that is not necessarily legal or moral, but will be considered justified because it results in the reproduction of imperial order ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). M. Hardt and A. Negri believe that such legitimacy is unsustainable: the inability to provide security deprives the force of legitimization (just as Hobbes believed: sovereignty is absolute, in theory, rightly, there is no possibility for resistance to the established sovereignty; but, in fact, if the sovereign providing security in exchange for freedom is unable to ensure it, order is deprived of its "foundation" and subjects can effectively return to civil war). However, the decision about the ability/inability is the solution: if the sovereign is able to keep his subjects in obedience by any means, his decision is both true and lawful. As long as there is imperial power, therefore, it is in its right to interpret the success/failure of its security actions (the USA officially considers its actions in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia successful; some doubts are only concerning Syria and Venezuela, but not at the level of official political position).

A just war is a war against terrorism, and the modern concept of terrorism was invented quite recently to provide theoretical and political support for the global state of war, which, according to the authors of "Many", it does not cope with. Originally, the term meant the bombers of the first leftist organizations, which at the end of the XIX-early XX centuries, committed acts of intimidation in Russia, France and Spain, promoting through the action of their political programs. The modern concept of terrorism is a political concept of war, more specifically, civil war, which is denoted by three different phenomena, "sometimes considered separately and in other cases mixed together: (1) insurrection or rebellion against a legitimate government; (2) the use of political violence by a government in violation of human rights (including, as some believe, property rights); and (3) the practice of warfare in violation of relevant rules, including attacks on civilians" ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). Accordingly, the enemy in such a war is officially denounced as a terrorist (in the modernist era, it was a partisan: "Partisan Theory" and "Nomos Land" by K. Schmitt): Perhaps the decline in the ability of states to legitimize the violence they commit can explain, at least in part, why the accusations of terrorism have become increasingly loud and confusing in recent decades. In a world where no violence is legitimate, it is acceptable in principle to call all violence terrorism ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). Depending on how or by whom the main components – government legitimacy, human rights and rules of war – are defined, so is the definition of terrorism. The definition of terrorism depends on understanding the legitimacy of violence. The war on terror aims at legitimizing and giving organized form to imperial violence (and world violence in the sense that it is again a point of view and solution: imperial power and liberal ideology); the so-called 'coalition of the determined' and 'axis of evil' denote strategies for grouping nation states, i.e., giving meaning to their violence by creating blocks. However, the definitions of terrorism to which they refer vary greatly depending on the point of view of the person making the relevant accusations ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). The logic of imperial domination determines such measures, the effectiveness of which can be doubted if one thinks that the purpose of these measures is "the victory over terrorism", among other measures aimed at solving this task (for example, economic measures, such as "fighting poverty"; or the establishment of an "axis of evil" in the countries, exemplified by the countries of the "coalition of determined", almost all of which are members of NATO, except perhaps the rich, by no means liberal and not democratic, monarchies of the Persian Gulf; but they are too valuable to question the order within them, especially as it organically fits in as an area of imperial order; we have not heard officials and prominent public figures concerned with human rights around the world protest the death penalty for homosexuals in Saudi Arabia, but we regularly see strong protests against the same in Iran, for example). The purpose of these measures is quite different: They address the problem that arises for imperial power because of the world civil war, namely, from this perspective, the end of civil war does not put an end to violence and fear. It is simply a matter of giving them order and concentration in the hands of the sovereign ( Hardt & Negri, 2006).

Conclusion

So, the analysis of internal contradictions of the 'war machine' caused by the extraordinary nature of the situation and the global civil war, revealing the peculiarities of the new model of warfare, defining the essence of this war as a civil and anti-terrorist one (the main thing is that 'it must also meet the traditional demands of the sovereign power, namely to suppress the resistance movements and to subordinate the multitude to a certain order ( Hardt & Negri, 2006). In this sense, the next step in the research should be to study the ways of resistance, bearing in mind the decision that "resistance is a response or a reaction" (violence of exploiters is primary, revolutionary violence is only an inevitable response of those who want to end such violence in this historical context); This principle provides us with a different vision of the development of modern conflicts and manifestations of the current permanent global warfare. Recognition of the primacy of resistance allows us to see the whole process from below. It also makes visible to us the alternatives that are possible today ( Hardt & Negri, 2006).

The alternative to the global imperial order, the "elimination" of war as a constitutional principle of the political order (and in this sense – the only way to really transition from war (just, civil, anti-terrorist) to peace) is considered to be an opportunity funded by the ontological nature of the "multitude" as a "freedom order"; the political project of the multitude is built as a program of transition from imperial to free political order.

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