Jura GentiumRivista di filosofia del diritto internazionale e della politica globale
Jura Gentium
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2007 Contemporary Uses of the Notion of 'Empire' (*)Danilo Zolo 1. IntroductionIn this essay my aim is to present a linguistic survey and a critical analysis of those uses of the notion of 'empire' which can be found in the current literature of political science and in Western international studies. The following reflections are intended to provide a contribution to the clarification of the theoretical-political concept of 'empire' and, to a certain extent, to the justification of its contemporary use. The term 'empire', as it is currently used, has semantic features that by and large do not correspond to the understandings of 'empire' and 'imperialism' which were typical of Marxist thought, and which were widespread in the last century (1). It can hardly be denied that recent uses of such notions are far less ambitious, both politically and theoretically, if compared with Marxist theories. It should be noted that according to a number of authors, 'empire' is not, rebus sic stantibus, the most appropriate conceptual tool for dealing with the current state of international relations. Michael Doyle, for instance, emphasizes the need for a sharp distinction between the notions of 'formal empire' and 'informal empire', the latter being appropriate for the contemporary world. In the formal empire, exemplified mainly by the Roman model, power is exerted by means of territorial annexation: the administration of annexed territories is entrusted to colonial governors supported by metropolitan troops and local collaborators. The informal empire, on the other hand, exerts its power along the lines of the 'Athens model', that is to say through the manipulation and corruption of local ruling classes. In this way it extends its control over neighbouring territories and legally independent regimes (2). Other authors, including some neo-realist theorists of international relations such as Robert Gilpin, Kenneth Waltz and Robert Keohane, confronted with the choice between the notion of 'empire' and that of 'hegemony', opt for the latter without hesitation. Keohane, in particular, has successfully elaborated the notion of hegemonic stability, arguing that it is necessary to have one or more great powers if international relations are to be stabilized. His notion of primacy is very different from the idea of permanent expansionist conflicts which are typical of the classic imperial structure (3). Others think that the use of the term 'empire' should be rigorously restricted to refer to those universalist political formations which preceded the appearance, in 17th century Europe, of the Westfalian system of sovereign states. It is held that the prevalence of economic and cultural power over political and military authority in the political systems of the contemporary great powers is enough to dismiss the imperial model or, at least, to reformulate it radically. (4) By contrast, other authors - among them, as we shall see, Alain de Benoist - appeal to Carl Schmitt in order to legitimise the use of the term 'empire' to denote the extension of the Monroe Doctrine, practised by the United States from the days of Wilsonian cosmopolitism onwards, and which continues to influence the strategic expansionism of American power today. (5) With regard to the latter question, I shall anticipate here a general consideration: I believe that the re-emergence of the notion of 'empire' is one of the signs of a profound transformation in the contemporary international order. We are facing an evolving crisis of the nation-state which involves the erosion and modification of some of its traditional functions. At the same time, we see that part of the power of sovereign states is increasingly dislocated and concentrated in the hands of new international subjects, whether military, political, economical or communicative. Among these subjects, there are some 'Great Powers', primarily the United States of America, which take increasing advantage - as Great Powers, not as nation-states - of the systemic mechanisms for allocating power and resources. Such mechanisms are scarcely conditioned by the formal prerogatives of state sovereignty. Such phenomena, which run parallel to that increasing integration of international factors which is known as 'globalisation' (6), have accelerated the decline of the bipolar order following the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the United States' assertion of its role as the only planetary superpower. There has been a further acceleration after 9/11 and the wars that the United States has waged against Afghanistan and Iraq. 2. A Methodological CaveatA methodological caveat is required with regard to the contemporary general meaning of the term 'empire', in particular in the four usages which I will single out within Western political culture. The term 'empire' has a semantic significance and a symbolic importance which tend to crystallize into a full-blown paradigm. I shall implicitly refer to the content of this paradigm every time I use the word 'empire' with regard to its contemporary uses. Despite differences in the details, this imperial paradigm alludes to a political structure that has the three following morphological and functional features: 1.1. Imperial sovereignty is an extremely strong, centralized and expanding category of political sovereignty. Through this kind of sovereignty, the empire exerts its 'absolute' control over the populations which reside in its territories. In addition to such direct power, there is also an extensive sphere of political, economic and cultural influence exerted on neighbouring political entities which still preserve their formal sovereignty, though in a limited form. From this point of view, the 'Monroe Doctrine', as it has been applied by the United States in the American subcontinent, and in particular in the Caribbean area, is a typical expression of a kind of 'informal' imperial expansionism, along the lines suggested by Doyle. 1.2. The centralism and absolutism of the imperial power's apparatus - the imperial authority is legibus soluta by definition - are accompanied by an extensive pluralism which allows the coexistence of different and distant groups, communities, cultures, idioms and religious beliefs. The central power exerts powerful control over them, but one which does not threaten their identity or relative cultural autonomy. In this sense, the model of the Ottoman Empire has a paradigmatic significance, with its institution of the millet and its widespread practice of confessional tolerance (7). The combination of anti-egalitarian absolutism and ethno-cultural pluralism distinguishes the empire from the representative and national character of the European Rechtstaat. 1.3. Imperial ideology is pacifist and universalist. The Empire is conceived as a perennial entity: a supreme power capable of ensuring peace, safety and stability to all the nations in the world. The pax imperialis, by definition, is a stable and universal peace: the use of military force aims only at spreading it further. The Emperor is the only emperor who, thanks to a divine mandate or providential destiny, has actual or potential power over the entire world: a single basileus, a single logos, and a single nomos. As imperator, the emperor is the commander-in-chief; as pontifex maximus, he is the chief priest; as princeps, he exerts sovereign justice. The imperial regime conceives itself as a monocratic, monotheistic and mono-normative regime. It is clear that the distant but determinant source of this paradigm, however informal, is the Roman Empire, from Augustus to Constantine, with its structures, practices, and ideology. (8) In order to grasp the complexity of the genesis of the Roman archetype, one would obviously have to study the European imperial experiences that followed the fall of the Roman Empire, and which were more or less directly inspired by it. One thinks, for example, of political formations such as the Holy Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Spanish Empire. (9) No influence, by contrast, seems to be exerted by the ancient empires of the Middle East, Mesopotamia or China. The Napoleonic empire also seems to have little influence either, (10) as do colonial empires, from the oldest, like the English Empire, to the most recent ones. (11) There are four uses of the notion of 'empire' in contemporary political science and international studies, corresponding informally to the Roman archetype. 3. The Marxist and Neo-Marxist Accounts of Imperialism and EmpireThe notion of 'empire' implied by Marxist theory, which is a derived from his class-based notion of history and on his 'materialist' critique of the capitalist economy, can be found only in a small part of Western political science literature. (12) 'Empire' in this sense is a largely de-historicized notion, used in the context of a philosophy of history that regards imperialism as the necessary outcome of the capitalist economy. This doctrine of imperialism has far less support nowadays than it did in the recent past. Today, what is questioned above all in this theory of empire is the existence of an economic 'causal factor' which is supposed to determine the transition from capitalism to imperialism as a necessary condition for the market economy to develop (or survive). Accordingly, imperialism is viewed as a process of expansion of the market economy beyond its natural sphere - viz. the area of Western industrialized countries - which is able to co-opt the labour force of industrially undeveloped countries into its mechanisms of exploitation. From this point of view, imperialism and capitalism are strictly connected phenomena. Lenin, as it is well known, thought that the 'causal factor' had to be identified with the tendency of profits to fall, and for competition between capitalists to increase, whereas for Rosa Luxemburg the cause was under-consumption due to the impoverishment of the European proletariat (13). The Neo-Marxist doctrines of capitalist development and its imperialist outcomes, like Paul Baran's and Paul Sweezy's theory of monopolistic capital, or like the 'theory of dependence' advocated, among others, by André Gunder Frank, or Immanuel Wallerstein's theory of 'world system' (14), are much more incisive and widespread in the contemporary political science debate. In comparison with Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, these Neo-Marxist versions of the notion of 'empire' tend to resemble the 'Roman archetype' mentioned above. Baran and Sweezy, for instance, see a connection between the imperialist evolution of 'monopolistic capitalism' - which is concentrated and centralized - and the political (rather than economic) necessity of industrialized countries to assign their 'surplus' to military investments. According to Baran and Sweezy, the hierarchy of nations that constitutes the capitalist system has a pyramidal structure: countries on the top exploit countries which occupy the lower levels, and the last country in the hierarchy is left with no one else to exploit. The 'imperial metropolis' is at the top of the hierarchy, whereas the lower levels constitute the 'colonial periphery'. The militarist vocation of the United States of America - which occupies the entire metropolitan sphere - is derived from that country's need to use the armed forces systemically, in order to maintain and strengthen its leadership in the hierarchy of exploitation (15). Of course, these Neo-Marxist accounts of imperialism have also been questioned. For instance, liberal authors such as Robert Gilpin or Joseph Stiglitz have pointed out that the growing gap between rich and poor countries does not depend on 'imperialistic' oppression, whether formal or informal. The schema of the imperial 'hierarchy' of capitalist exploitation cannot make sense of economic globalisation and the global opening of markets. The increasing polarization in the distribution of global resources depends instead on the different degrees of productivity of national economic systems and, as a consequence, on the levels of culture, technical skills, administrative expertise and initiative spirit which characterize different countries. According to Gilpin and Stiglitz, these are the parameters that should be modified, in addition to the rules of international commerce and capital transfer. In order to do this, a profound revision is needed of the policies that have been adopted by the international economic institutions in the last decades, beginning with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (16). 4. An Imperial EuropeIn the course of the twentieth century, in the context of a crisis of the nation state, authors such as Julius Evola and Arthur Möller van den Bruck have regarded the imperial idea as an alternative to the 'mechanical' and 'rationalistic' power of the European modern state (17). The notion of imperial auctoritas, loaded with ethical values and personal factors, was contrasted with the formal and impersonal notion of potestas. Schmitt's idea of 'empire' (Reich), in its anti-universalistic and nationalistic construal, had an indirect influence on such speculations. The Schmittean notion of 'great space' (Grossraum), namely the complex macro-organization of political space inspired by the 'Monroe Doctrine', suggested the idea of an international order characterised by the balance between the continental or sub-continental areas of influence, rather than by the formalism of states which were juridically equally to one another (18). Nowadays, the imperial idea is advocated by the so-called French 'New Right', whose most known representative is Alain de Benoist. The label 'New Right', as it is well known, is highly controversial both in France and in Italy, to the point that has been completely rejected by Marco Tarchi, the New Right's most respected Italian representative. However, even de Benoist's affiliation to the Nouvelle Droite is not so uncontroversial, as it is difficult to locate him in the context of the European political right. De Benoist and the movement GRECE (Groupement de recherches et d'études pour la civilisation européenne), inspired by de Benoist's views, fully reject nationalism and liberalism in favour of cultural Europeanism and 'localist pluralism'. This is the origin of the idea of an 'imperial Europe' that would allow broad internal political plurality and which would not be nationalistic but rather ethnic and regionalist. De Benoist rejects the Gaullist idea of a 'Europe of nations': liberalism and state nationalism are denounced as ideological and economic devices which produce cultural eradication and uniformity. In opposition to the Americanisation of France and Europe, de Benoist advocates a kind of paganism which he traces back to the Indo-European origins of the European tradition. De Benoist conjugates his plea for an imperial Europe with a harsh attack on American 'imperialism', which he accuses of being a supreme example of dehumanisation, vulgarity and stupidity. Imperial Europe, he argues, will be accomplished only in opposition to the United States; otherwise it is bound to fail. (19) According to de Benoist, there are only two models for constructing Europe: empire or nation. The nation, however, has become too large to solve local problems and too small to deal with global issues, in particular with economic ones. 'The Empire, in the most traditional sense of the term,' de Benoist argues, 'is the only model that can reconcile the one and the many: it is the politia that accounts for the organic unity of its different parts, leaving their autonomy untouched.' (20) The problem, de Benoist adds, is that from the time of the Maastricht treaty on, no design for an autonomous, politically sovereign, Europe has emerged, as well as no plan to provide Europe with a counterpart to the 'Monroe Doctrine' (Schmitt's influence here is quite clear). We are left with a Europe without any project, legitimacy and political identity. De Benoist's proposal has some interesting features, even though, as should be obvious, the euro-imperial model is unacceptable both to liberal political forces and also to the European liberal-democratic left. The imperial paradigm implies an anti-egalitarian and absolutist conception of power, even if it is compatible with ethno-cultural pluralism. What is more, the idea of a 'pagan' and not just secular Europe seems hardly sustainable. While it is true that European culture is the product of Greek philosophy, Roman law and the Enlightenment, it is also the product of the three monotheisms that flourished in the Mediterranean area: Judaism, Christianity and, last but not least, Islam. It might be noticed that it is not clear whether de Benoist, in referring to the 'Monroe Doctrine' model, is thinking of an 'imperial Europe' under the influence of one or more hegemonic states, such as France and Germany, for instance. Also, it is not clear whether his idea of empire is compatible with an egalitarian arrangement of the relations between the different European nations and, as a result, with a uniform protection of the fundamental rights of European citizens, issues that are both relatively foreign to the speculations of the French 'New Right' (21). 5. Empire, not ImperialismIn their extremely successful book, Empire, Hardt and Negri hold that the new 'world order' imposed by globalisation has led to the disappearance of the 'Westfalian system of sovereign States. (22) There are no nation-states left, apart from the bare formal structure that still survives within the international legal system and institutions. The world is no longer governed by state political systems; rather, it is ruled by a single power structure that bears no resemblance to the modern European state. It is a kind of decentralized and de-territorialized political system that makes no reference to ethnic and national traditions or values, and whose political and normative essence seems to lie in cosmopolitan universalism. For such reasons, reasons, the two authors think that 'Empire' is the more appropriate label for the new kind of global power. The 'imperial constitution of the world', Hardt and Negri claim, is distinct from the state-based constitution of the world because of its functions: the aim of imperial sovereignty is neither the inclusion nor the political-territorial assimilation of subordinate countries and nations, as was typical in state colonialism and imperialism between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Instead, the new imperial power is exerted by means of political institutions and legal apparatuses whose function is basically that of guaranteeing the global order, namely a 'universal and stable peace' that allows the normal functioning of market economy. The Empire carries out tasks of 'international police', even by means of warfare, and it can even play a more or less neutral legal role. Imperial power is invoked by the subject nations for its capacity to solve conflicts from a universal, and virtually impartial, position. Moreover, as Hardt and Negri rightly point out, the fact that, in the last decade and after a long period of absence, a medieval - typically universalistic and imperial - doctrine such as the doctrine of bellum justum has made its reappearance in Anglo-American culture can hardly be underestimated. However, it would be a mistake to identify the Empire - or its fundamental and expansionist core - with the United States of America and its Western allies. Hardt's and Negri's strong contention is that neither the United States nor any national state whatever 'forms the centre of the imperialist project.' (23) The global Empire is radically different from classic imperialism, and the conflation of the two would amount to a serious technical error. This is a delicate and much discussed question in both theoretical and political respects. It has been maintained - and I personally agree with such an idea - that in Hardt's and Negri's work the Empire seems to turn into a sort of 'category of the spirit': it is everywhere only because it is nothing over and above the new dimension of globality. However, it has been also objected that if everything is imperial then nothing is really so. How can we identify the supranational subjects that have imperial interests and aspirations? Who has to be the target of our criticism and anti-imperialistic resistance? Who has such an imperial role, if we exclude the political and military apparatuses of the great western powers, in primis those of the United States of America (24)? Moreover, there is a second aspect in Hardt's and Negri's theory of Empire that has been questioned. Such an aspect seems to depend on the implicit 'ontology' that seems to underlie Hardt's and Negri's account, i.e. the dialectics of history, in a Hegelian, Marxist and Leninist sense. According to Hardt and Negri, the global Empire amounts to the positive overcoming of the Westfalian system of sovereign states. Having brought states and their nationalism to an end, the Empire has also put an end to the classic forms of imperialism and colonialism, thus allowing for a cosmopolitan perspective that should be welcomed with enthusiasm. Hardt and Negri claim that any attempt to resurrect the nation-state in opposition to the present imperial constitution of the world would be only the expression of a 'false and pernicious' ideology. The philosophy expressed by the anti-globalisation movement, and by other forms of naturalistic environmentalism and localism, must be rejected as primitive and anti-dialectical, i.e. 'reactionary' positions. Communists, as Hardt and Negri define themselves, are intrinsically universalist, cosmopolitan and 'catholic': their horizon is that of the whole of humanity, i.e. that of 'generic human nature', in Marx's terminology. In the past century, the working masses have counted on the internationalisation of political and social relations. Nowadays, the 'global' powers of the Empire must be governed and not demolished: the imperial constitution must be preserved and directed towards non-capitalist purposes. According to Hardt and Negri, even if it is true that law enforcement technologies represent the 'hard core' of the imperial order, still such an order has nothing to do with the dictatorships and totalitarianisms of the past century. From the point of view of the transition to a Communist society, the construction of the Empire represents 'a step forward': the Empire 'is better than what came before' because 'it does away with the cruel regimes of modern power' and 'also increases the potential for liberation' (25). There is here a sort of imperial optimism, which in my opinion is deeply rooted in Hegelian-Marxist dialectical metaphysics. 6. The United States of America as 'Global Empire'Michael Ignatieff, the distinguished Anglo-North American liberal author, has recently claimed that the United States is an empire. He argues that it is a new kind of empire, inspired by the principles of the free market, human rights and democracy: a real 'discovery in the annals of political science.' But however significant the novelties and specificities of their global hegemony might be, the United States, like the empires of the past, still has to shoulder a heavy burden of obligations and responsibilities. These include the task of securing 'peace, stability, democratisation and oil supplies' in the Middle East and in Central Asia, from Egypt to Afghanistan (26). The United States now plays the role that the Ottoman Empire and the French and British colonial empires played in the past. This is the reason why, after having defeated the Taliban and after having occupied Afghanistan, the United States had to intervene in Iraq in order to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, preclude the actions of terrorist networks, and bring to an end a tyrannical and bloodthirsty regime. 9/11 has shown that, unless the United States adopts an imperial foreign policy, it will not be able to guarantee social peace and democratic values at home. Italian authors such as Massimo Cacciari and Giulietto Chiesa (27) have made claims similar to those of Ignatieff. However, they have arrived at the very opposite assessment of the situation, being sharply critical of the imperial hegemony of the United States. Personally, I have often used the expression 'empire' (and 'global empire') to describe the American super-power, albeit with caution. In using the term 'empire', sometimes in explicit disagreement with Antonio Negri's account, I was largely inspired by Carl Schmitt 'spatial' realism' and the anti-normativism of his philosophy of international law, as he formulated it in Der Nomos der Erde. (28) Schmitt's criticism of the United States' universalistic projection of the 'Monroe Doctrine' is particularly arresting. From the initial idea of a particularist and defensive Pan-American Grossraum, the United States' strategy has transformed itself into an increasingly expansionist interventionism which has gone far beyond the Caribbean and South American area. This strategy has gone so far that the Americans now reject the pluralism of the international community, seeking instead to impose a global monopoly of their military force, their economy, their vision of the world and even their conceptual vocabulary: I have also drawn from Schmitt the idea that it is very difficult to achieve a reduction in international conflicts and in the destructiveness of modern war (waged with weapons of mass destruction) by means of universalist, 'de-spatialized' institutions such as the League of Nations and the United Nations. Rather, any project of pacification of the world seems to require a neo-regionalist implementation of the idea of Grossraum, and a reintroduction of multilateral negotiation between the states as the normative source of democratic legitimacy of the regional processes of integration. Despite the rhetoric which heralds the imminent extinction of state sovereignties, the principal function of nation states seem to have no choices other than the conflict between the global hegemony of the United States and the terrorist response, or between the nihilism of imperial wars and the anarchic nihilism of a terrorism which is spreading to all continents (29). Within the framework of this philosophy of law and international relations, Schmitt's anti-normativism and anti-universalism converge with the anti-normativism and anti-universalism advocated by authors such as Martin Wight and Hedley Bull (30). Bull, in particular, has insisted on the need to rehabilitate normative categories that are less inspired by Enlightenment and Jacobin conceptions of the international system. Against the normativism and cosmopolitanism of Hans Kelsen applied to the international sphere, Bull has argued strongly in favour of ideas like the balance of power between the Great Powers, preventive diplomacy, multilateral negotiation between states, and jus gentium construed as that complex of international customs which has slowly established itself as a means of making war less destructive if not completely eliminating it (31). On the basis of these theoretical assumptions, I have argued that the power of the United States can be described as 'imperial', in a sense of the term which is complex and partly different from the Roman archetype. This meaning of 'imperial' takes into account the innovations which globalisation and the consequent global transformations of war are today introducing into international political relations, as well as in the economic, communication and normative spheres. As a hypothesis I have suggested the following four conceptual meanings of the notion of 'global empire' which in my view can be usefully used to describe the American political system (32). 6.1. The power of the United States can today be described as 'imperial' and 'global' in a geopolitical sense, since we are dealing with a power which, thanks to its absolute military hegemony, tends to operate economically and militarily in a de-spatialised dimension. In the past, state power has always been anchored in a specific territorial space, and the same can be said of wars between states. By contrast, the 'global war' model practised by the United States is not based on the model of a war between sovereign states. War is instead waged in the name of a strategy which its principal protagonist directs against universal objectives like global security and world order. The conquest of territorial space for stabilisation and annexation is foreign to the 'informal' strategies of the American empire. Imperial war is increasingly becoming 'air war', and, in the near future probably war in outer space. 6.2. Secondly, the power of the United States can be called 'imperial' and 'global' in a systemic sense, i.e. in the sense of General System Theory. The United States' foreign policy is engaged in a permanent struggle to decide who should enjoy leadership within the global system of international relations, who can impose the systemic rules, who will have the power to influence the processes of allocation of the resources in terms of power and wealth, and who can impose their own conception of the world as well as their own idea of order. In official statements by the most senior members of the US administration, (33) the United States declare themselves to be, in their capacity as a global power, the only country which is able to 'project power' on a world scale. The USA claims to have global interests, responsibilities and competences, and that therefore they must extend their influence to strengthen America's global leadership role. This is to be done both to increase the USA's internal security as well as to promote its own 'vital interests' at the international level, by means of strengthening its planetary network of military bases, the network of satellite espionage, and - last but not least - both its tactic and strategic nuclear arsenal. 6.3. Thirdly, the power of the United States can be described as 'imperial' and 'global' in a proper normative sense, because it has a tendency to disregard the rules of international law. The United States disregards both the prohibition concerning the 'private' use of the force (ius ad bellum) established by the Charter of the United Nations, and also the laws of war (ius in bello)elaborated by the modern international legal system. The theoretical distinction between combatants and non-combatants in fact leaves room for use of weapons of mass destruction which mainly hit civilians, and prisoners of war are treated in plain violation of the Geneva Conventions. The United States' wars are wars that are decided by an authority that not only conceives itself as legibus soluta but acts, to use Schmitt's terminology, as a supreme source of a new 'Nomos of the world' in a situation - the threat represented by global terrorism - of enduring 'global exception'. (Schmitt famously wrote that the sovereign was the one who decreed the 'state of exception' or 'state of emergency'.) The notion and practice of 'pre-emptive war' is the most revealing indication of such a will to undermine the current international order, which is still founded on the sovereignty of states. 6.4. Finally, the United States can be considered a 'global empire' in an ideological sense. This is because of its constant appeal to universal values in order to justify the use of force. War is justified not in the name of sectoral interests or particular objectives, but from a superior and impartial point of view which is said to apply to the whole of humanity. The United States puts forward its monotheistic view - in particular the Biblical and fervently Christian view advocated by the current American ruling class - in opposition to the pluralism of values and with the complexity of the world. In fighting the inhuman and cruel ideology of global terrorism, the United States is said to be conducting a 'humanitarian war' - and thus a 'just war' in the classical, theological and imperial sense - against the enemies of humanity who deny the universality of values such as freedom, democracy, human rights and market economy. It is therefore a 'discriminatory' war in Schmitt's sense: a war that criminalizes the opponents in order to make their image inhuman and thus to justify hostile, if not brutal, behaviour against them as enemies of mankind. Guantánamo Bay, and the Special Court that has been set up for a highly probable death sentence for the former Iraqi dictator, are examples of this. Essential bibliography
Notes*. In The Monist, 90 (2007), 1, pp. 48-64. 1. See R. Owen and B. Sutcliffe (eds.) Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, Longman, 1977. 2. See A.W. Doyle, Empires, Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY), 1986. 3. See R.O. Keohane, After Hegemony. Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984, pp. 31 ff., 49-64, 83-4; R.O. Keohane, Neorealism and Its Critics, New York, Columbia University Press, 1986; K.N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, New York, Newbery Award Records, 1979; R. Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981. On the alternative between the notions of 'hegemony' and 'empire' see V.E. Parsi, L'impero come fato? Gli Stati Uniti e l'ordine globale, 'Filosofia politica', 16 (2002), 1, pp. 87, 92-3. 4. Cfr. D. Lieven, Empire. The Russian Empire and Its Rivals, London, John Murray, 2000, p. 9. 5. See: C. Schmitt, Völkerrechtliche Formen des modernen Imperialismus, 'Auslandsstudien', 8 (1933), now in C. Schmitt, Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit Weimer, Genf, Versailles 1923-1939, Hamburg, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1940; C. Schmitt, Völkerrechtliche Grossraumformen mit Interventionsverbot für raumfremden Mächte. Ein Beitrag zum Reichsbegriff im Völkerrecht, 'Schriften des Instituts für Politik und Internationales Recht an der Universität Kiel', n. 7, 1939, now in C. Schmitt, Staat, Grossraum, Nomos, G. Maschke (ed.), Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1995; C. Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum, Berlin, Duncker und Humblot, 1974. On Schmitt's theory of imperialism and the related notion Grossraumordnung, see P.P. Portinaro, La crisi dello Jus Publicum Europaeum, Milano, Edizioni di Comunità, 1982, pp. 188-202. 6. On these issues, see my Globalizzazione. Una mappa dei problemi, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2004. 7. The term millet denotes a religious community that had a decentralized administrative role within the Empire; see G. Prévélakis, Les Balkans. Cultures et géopolitique, Paris, Nathan, 1994. On this see the first chapter (Imperial mapping and Balkan nationalism) of my Invoking Humanity. War, Law and Global Order, London-New York, Continuum International, 2002, pp. 7-36. 8. See: G. Poma, L'impero romano: ideologia e prassi, 'Filosofia politica', 16 (2002), 1, pp. 5-35; C.M. Wells, The Roman Empire, London, Fontana Press, 1992; P. Veyne, The Roman Empire, Cambridge (Mass.), 1997. 9. See: E. Bussi, Il diritto pubblico del Sacro romano impero alla fine dell'VIII secolo, vol. 2, Milano, Giuffrè, 1957-59; G. Ostrogorski, Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates, München, Beck, 1940; D. Kitsikis, L'Empire ottoman, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1985; A. Musi, L'impero spagnolo, 'Filosofia politica', 16 (2002), 1, pp. 37-61: F. Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'lépoque de Philippe II, Paris, Colin, 1982. 10. See E. Di Rienzo, L'impero-nazione di Napoleone Bonaparte, 'Filosofia politica', 16 (2002), 1, pp. 63-82. 11. See W.J. Mommsen, Das Zeitalter des Imperialismus, Frankfurt a.M., Fisher Bücherei; R.F. Betts, The False Dawn: European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1975. 12. See, among others: P. Bourdieu, Contre-feux 2, Paris, Liber, 2001; L. Boltanski, E. Chiapello, Le nouvel esprit du capitalism, Paris, Gallimard, 1999; A. Callinicos, et al., Marxism and the New Imperialism, London, Bookmark, 1994; U. Allegretti, M. Dinucci, D. Gallo, La strategia dell'Impero, S. Domenico di Fiesole, Edizioni Cultura della Pace, 1992. 13. See N. Lenin, L'imperialismo fase suprema del capitalismo (1917), Roma, Editori Riuniti, 1964; R. Luxemburg,L'accumulazione del capitale, Torino, Einaudi, 1968. 14. See P.A. Baran, P.M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1966, Italian translation: Torino, Einaudi, 1969; A.G. Frank, Capitalism and Under-development in Latin America, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1969; I. Wallerstein, The Modern World System, New York, Academic Press, 1974; I. Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979. 15. See P.A. Baran, P.M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, pp. 150-5s. 16. See R. Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1987; J.E. Stiglitz, Globalisation and Its Discontents, New York, W.W. Norton & Company. 17. See J. Evola, Imperialismo pagano: il fascismo dinanzi al pericolo euro-cristiano, Padova, Edizioni di Ar, 1978; A. Möller van Den Bruck, Das dritte Reich, Bamberg, C.C. Buchners Verlag, 1935. 18. On the informal aspect, founded primarily on economic relations, of the imperial power exerted by the United States over the Latin-American subcontinent see C. Schmitt, Völkerrechtliche Formen des modernen Imperialismus, pp. 161-73; on 'Monroe Doctrine' and the notion of Grossraum, see C. Schmitt, Völkerrechtliche Grossraumformen mit Interventionsverbot für raumfremden Mächte, pp. 277-85; and see A. Campi, Grande spazio contro universalismo, in A. Campi, Schmitt, Freund, Miglio, Firenze, Akropolis, 1996. 19. See A. De Benoist, L'Impero interiore. Mito, autorità, potere nell'Europa moderna e contemporanea, Firenze, Ponte alle Grazie, 1996; and P.-A. Taguieff, Sur la Nouvelle droit. Jalons d'une analyse critique, Paris, Descartes & Cie, 1994. 20. See P.-A. Taguieff, Sur la Nouvelle droit. 21. On this, see my preface to the Italian edition of P.-A. Taguieff, Sur la Nouvelle droite. 22. See M. Hardt, A. Negri, Empire, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard College, 2000. 23. M. Hardt, A. Negri, Empire, p. 15. 24. On this debate, see A. Negri, D. Zolo, L'Impero e la moltitudine. Un dialogo sul nuovo ordine della globalizzazione, 'Reset', 73 (2002), pp. 8-19, now also in A. Negri, Guide. Cinque lezioni su Impero e dintorni, Milano, Raffaello Cortina, 2003, pp. 11-33. An extended English version has been edited by A. Bove and M. Mandarini, in 'Radical Philosophy', 120 (2003), pp. 23-37. 25. M. Hardt, A. Negri, Empire, pp. 56, 208. 26. See M. Ignatieff, The Burden, 'New York Times Magazine', January 5, 2003. 27. See M. Cacciari, Digressioni su Impero e tre Rome, 'Micromega', (2001), 5; G. Chiesa, La guerra infinita, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2002. 28. C. Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum, pp. 231-3, 311-12. 29. Carl Schmitt showed foresight when he wrote in the mid-1900s: 'if compared with the nihilism of a centralized order that rules by exploiting the modern means of mass destruction, anarchy may turn out for the desperate humanity not only as the least evil, but even as the only working remedy' (Donoso Cortés in gesamteuropäischer Interpretation, Köln, Greven Verlag, 1950). On these issues see A. Mingardi, A Vitale, Difendere il mondo dalla democrazia? Un dialogo sulle prospettive dell'ordine mondiale dopo l'11 settembre. Intervista a Danilo Zolo, 'élites', 7 (2003), 4, pp. 18-29; and A. Vitale, Nuove guerre, mutamento internazionale, trasformazioni del diritto, pp. 4-17. 30. See: M. Wigth, Why is there no International Theory?, in H. Butterfield, M. Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations, London, George Allen and Unwin Lmt, 1969; H. Bull, The Anarchical Society, London, Macmillan, 1977. 31. See H. Bull, The Anarchical Society; on this issue, see A. Colombo, La società anarchica fra continuità e crisi, 'Rassegna italiana di sociologia', 2 (2003). 32. See my Una guerra globale 'monoteistica', 'Iride', 16 (2003), 30, pp. 223-40. 33. They can be consulted in the section War, Law, and Global Order. |
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