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MILITANT LIBERALISM and ITS DISCONTENTS: on the DECOLONIAL ORIGINS of ENDLESS WAR a Dissertation Presented to the Faculty Of

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MILITANT LIBERALISM and ITS DISCONTENTS: on the DECOLONIAL ORIGINS of ENDLESS WAR a Dissertation Presented to the Faculty Of MILITANT LIBERALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS: ON THE DECOLONIAL ORIGINS OF ENDLESS WAR A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Aaron B Gavin December 2017 © 2017 Aaron B Gavin MILITANT LIBERALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS: ON THE DECOLONIAL ORIGINS OF ENDLESS WAR Aaron B Gavin, Ph. D. Cornell University 2017 MILITANT LIBERALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS tells a story about the reinvention of liberalism during the era of decolonization. The dissertation shows how a persistent pattern of militant liberalism came to structure the postwar international order—one where the United States engages in militant action to protect the liberal international order from irredeemable illiberal threats, precisely when its hegemonic influence reaches its limit. While anti-totalitarianism and the war on terror are defining episodes in the development of this pattern, the dissertation argues that it was only liberalism’s encounter with decolonization that made the practice of militant liberalism ideologically coherent and enduring. After shattering the civilizational justifications of nineteenth century liberalism, decolonization provided militant liberals with a unique enemy, the Third World, upon which to distinguish and legitimate their own logic of violence, all while destroying alternative political possibilities arising out of the decolonial process. The dissertation explores these themes through four political thinkers—Isaiah Berlin, Louis Henkin, Frantz Fanon, and Carl Schmitt—and narrates a story about the legitimation of militant liberalism and the eventual rise of its discontents. On the one hand, Berlin and Henkin spoke of Thirdworldism as uniquely threatening: the former arguing that Thirdworldist nationalism often morphed into romantic self-assertion, and the latter claiming that Thirdworldists exploited state sovereignty allowing international terrorism to proliferate unbound. In response to these images, Berlin cast liberal violence as universal, ethically responsible, and hence morally superior to nationalist-inspired violence, while Henkin sympathized with US attempts to interpretively modify international law and drape itself under its authority as it hunted terrorists behind sovereign lines. On the other hand, Fanon and Schmitt, as critics of liberalism, challenged these pictures. The actors arising out of decolonization, they claimed, were neither driven by romantic self-assertion, nor were they meaningfully sovereign. Instead the authoritarian disasters and aggressive reactions of decolonization often stemmed from the interventions of militant liberalism and the aggravations of the liberal order itself. The prior accounts of decolonization disavowed liberalism’s complicity in fomenting the conditions that allowed it discontents to proliferate: global terrorism as the diametric force perpetuating endless warfare. Biographical Sketch Aaron Gavin studies political theory, with a focus on the histories of liberalism, decolonization, and international law. While writing his dissertation, Aaron also completed a Juris Doctorate degree at NYU School of Law. Before Cornell, Aaron completed an undergraduate bachelor’s degree at CUNY Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, NY. He was born and raised in Houston, TX. Acknowledgments I discovered political theory during a transformative moment of my life, when solace was best found among a cannon of great thinkers who struggled with crises of faith and tradition much before me. I am grateful to all my undergraduate professors who kept my mind sharp and my arguments compelling during this period: Corey Robin, for advising my undergraduate thesis; Janet Johnson, for patiently reading and commenting on my work; Hisseine Faradj, for our lengthy conversations and debates; Paisley Currah, for always casting my arguments in their best light; and Rosalind Petchesky, for not only teaching me how to read but for also showing me how to be a mensch. While writing the dissertation, I always found myself surrounded by vibrant intellectual communities, both at Cornell and NYU School of Law. Thanks to Jason Frank and Aziz Rana, for co-chairing my dissertation and continuously challenging my arguments; Camille Robcis, for pushing me to refine my framing and contribution; Matthew Evangelista, for not only challenging my big ideas but also the smallest of nuances; and Richard Bensel, for exceeding my expectations as external reader. I would like to thank various law school professors who read my work and contributed to my intellectual development: Robert Howse, Adam Samaha, Jeremy Waldron, and Ryan Goodman. I also want to express gratitude to numerous colleagues who lent their thoughts and comments throughout my graduate school years, the most important of which include my immediate cohort: Vijay Phulwani, Kevin Duong, Nolan Bennett, Michael Gorup, and Greg Thaler. Finally, I want to thank my parents for always supporting me. Without their guidance and encouragement, I would not have successfully traveled down the long and arduous path of completing the dissertation. iv Table of Contents Biographical Sketch iii Acknowledgments iv Introduction Towards a Political Theory of Endless War 1 Chapter I Two Concepts of Dignity: Isaiah Berlin and the Legitimation of Militant Liberalism 28 Chapter II From Ending War to Endless War: Louis Henkin and the Interpretive Modification of the Jus Ad Bellum 90 Chapter III The Negative Dialectic of Decolonial History: Frantz Fanon and the Tragic Destruction of Universal Self-Determination 136 Chapter IV The Partisan of Reaction: Carl Schmitt and the Global Search for Sovereign Freedom 198 Conclusion Disavowals, Discontents, and the Future of Forever War 239 Bibliography 247 v INTRODUCTION TOWARDS A POLITICAL THEORY OF ENDLESS WAR [W]e are neither "warmongers" nor "appeasers," neither "hard" nor "soft." We are Americans, determined to defend the frontiers of freedom, by an honorable peace if peace is possible, but by arms if arms are used against us… — President John F. Kennedy We seek peace. We strive for peace. And sometimes peace must be defended…. If a war is forced upon us, we will fight in a just cause and by just means... — President George W. Bush The Unexceptional ‘War on Terror’ On June 4, 2009, President Obama declared that the United States would seek “a new beginning” with “Muslims around the world.” This declaration pointed to a wide-range of concerns: how to encourage economic development and defend religious freedom; how to support women’s rights and resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But sticking out among this assortment of issues was one moral stain that President Obama sought to uniquely move beyond: the Bush Administration and its war on terror. Although not quite coining a name for his own post-Bush international vision, President Obama asserted that the United States would return to its previous role of defending the liberal international order with its inherent emphasis on multilateralism and legal restraint. The United States, Obama claimed, would remain “respectful of the sovereignty of nations and the rule of law.” It would learn from Bush’s mistakes in conducting the war on terror, acknowledging that “military power alone [was] not going to solve the problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan” and how the failures of the Iraqi invasion emphasized “the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve [America’s] problems.” Of course, Obama maintained that there were still “violent extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans [as] possibl[e],” and hence the United States could not simply disengage from its military projects tout court. But if force was still required, Obama asserted that “America is not 1 the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire.” “Make no mistake,” Obama proclaimed, “we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan,” just as we “have made it clear to the Iraqi people that we pursue no bases, and make no claim on their territory or resources.” Like all nations of the postwar order, “Iraq’s sovereignty is its own.”1 By the end of the Obama presidency, the aspirational promises of this new beginning had clearly fallen short. While reducing troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Administration kept thousands of troops in the former war zone, while sending back a similar number of troops to the latter area to face the new threat of ISIL. In addition, informal wars began to pop up across the globe expanding the war on terror in scope: targeted killings and drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and US-backed proxy battles in Somalia and Syria. Surely, Obama was correct in asserting that the point of maintaining troops in the Middle East or initiating these new offensives was not, like the empires of the past or even like some states in the present, to formally annex territory. In addition, the Obama Administration even made faithful attempts to bring the United States within the reasonable bounds of liberal legality when conducting its wars, especially when it came to torture, extraordinary rendition, and the use of military tribunals.2 But it was not clear whether the latter attempt to humanize war was moving the country forward or whether it simply “sanitize[d] war,” as one commentator put it, and in doing so, made it “more enduring.”3 It was not clear whether the former intention to support sovereign autonomy reflected the facts on the ground or whether it served as a moralizing
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