Northern PSA Postgraduate Conference
Edinburgh, 6 June 2008
Volha Piotukh
ptvp@leeds.ac.uk
PhD student, School of Politics and International Studies (POLIS)
The University of Leeds
Supervisors: Dr. Deiniol Jones and Prof. Alice Hills
Title: “Humanitarian Action and the War on Terror:
Some Preliminary Thoughts on a New Biopolitical Nexus”
Abstract
As the War on Terror begins to receive the scholarly attention it deserves, its impact on
humanitarian action, with a few notable exceptions, remains largely unexplored. This paper is
attempting to fill in this gap by ‘reading’ this new relationship biopolitically. The paper briefly
addresses the nature of the environment in which humanitarian actors have been finding
themselves since the beginning of the War on Terror and then proceeds by considering the
implications that this environment has for humanitarian action. It argues that not only has the
War on Terror reinforced earlier trends in the evolution of humanitarian action associated with
the so-called ‘new’ humanitarianism, but it has taken them further still by incorporating
humanitarian action into the war effort and blurring the lines between aid and security, the latter
being understood as ‘homeland’ security. Building on Foucault’s theorising on biopower and
biopolitics, and its further interpretation by Agamben, as well as recent work on the War on
Terror as a biopolitical enterprise, the paper suggests that within a new biopolitical nexus of war
and humanitarianism the latter’s role has been transformed further from mitigating violence to
facilitating it. This transformation cannot be easily reversed, and it is probably more damaging to
the humanitarian enterprise than it has been recognised so far.
NB. Draft – not to be cited.
2
The Global War on Terror as the new environment for humanitarian action
Although almost two decades have passed since the end of the Cold War, its impact and
importance are still to be fully understood and appreciated. The much more recent Global War on
Terror (GWOT) is just beginning to get the scholarly attention it deserves. The importance of
considering the GWOT in terms of its implications for humanitarian action is emphasised by
Macrae and Harmer, who point out that it “constitutes not only a series of actual and potential
armed conflicts, but also a framework within which international and national policy, including
humanitarian aid policy, will de defined and implemented” (Macrae and Harmer, 2003 p. 1).
Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the
Pentagon in Washington, the US declared a new war, the war on terrorism, one with no clear
targets and no clear limits. The potentially unending character of the war, as well as the divisions
it created, allowed many to suggest clear parallels with the Cold War (see, for instance, Macrae
and Harmer, 2003 p. 4; Minear, 2002 p. 191). The ‘either with us or against us’ approach proved
detrimental for independent humanitarian space (see, for instance, Donini, 2004 p. 38).
GWOT clearly caused some damage to the UN and to multilateralism in general, which was
reflected not just in the absence of the UN Security Council sanction in Iraq (not unprecedented,
as we know), but also in the way the UN was treated by the Occupying Power (see, for instance,
de Torrente, 2004; Donini, Minear and Walker, 2004). By working through bilateral
relationships, the U.S. Administration managed to overcome existing constraints on international
decision-making, and the coalition it created has been effectively used as a vehicle for promoting
U.S. foreign policy agendas (Macrae and Harmer, 2003 p. 2). Within the framework of GWOT
any alternative, non-military, counter-terrorist approaches are not seriously considered (Jackson,
2005), and even humanitarian action is seen as an essential part of the war effort, its second front
or force-multiplier (for evidence see Minear, 2002; de Torrente, 2004; Vaux, 2006; Hoffman and
Weiss, 2006). Therefore, GWOT not only builds on the ‘coherence’ agenda1 of the previous
years, but also takes it further in a very particular way.
Coherence in this context is understood as “the attempt to bring together, cohere or join up political action in peace
operations with other actions including humanitarian and human rights. As pursued by the UN system and key donor
governments, it is the attempt to bring together all elements of a multi-dimensional peace operation to serve the UN’s
central objective to make, maintain or build peace and security in [a particular] country” (the Henry Dunant Centre
for Humanitarian Dialogue, 2003 p. 24).
1
3
The disrespect for International Law in general (take, for instance, the so-called doctrine of preemptive self-defence), and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in particular (for a useful
account see Beyani, 2003), has increased the overall vulnerability of civilians caught in the
ongoing GWOT campaigns, and has contributed to the worsening of security of humanitarian
workers (see, for instance, Donini, 2004; Donini, Minear and Walker, 2004). Two 2003 attacks
on UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) headquarters in Iraq that took
37 lives, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the then Secretary-General’s Special Representative
in Iraq, are representative of this trend.
Finally, GWOT has further blurred the lines between aid and security, while shifting the priorities
in favour of homeland security, and contributed to further reinforcement of containment policies2.
As Duffield and Waddell note in this respect, “[r]ather than prioritising the security of people
living within ineffective states (a key manoeuvre in human security) the security of ‘homeland’
populations has moved centre-stage” (Duffield and Waddell, 2006 p. 19).
Further evolution of the ‘new’ humanitarianism
Even before GWOT, important post-Cold War developments in the international environment,
such as unequal ‘erosion’ of state sovereignty, increased disengagement of the North from the
South accompanied by the policies of containment, ‘new’ wars and ‘new interventionism’ all had
an impact on the humanitarian action. The analysis of various accounts on the ways the
humanitarian enterprise responded to these new challenges and opportunities allows one to
identify a number of major developments. These include the proliferation of humanitarian actors,
aid privatisation and an increased competition for funds; further institutionalisation of
I refer to a set of policies which make it increasingly difficult “for people to get out of, or stay out of, their home
countries” (Macrae, 2002 p. 6). The containment measures range from the strengthening of borders through imposing
restrictions on the numbers of asylum seekers and refugees and the increased use of refoulement (involuntary return
to the country where security of refugees would be jeopardised) and even expulsion, to reengagement with the
violent conflict through the ‘new’ interventionism. The ‘new’ interventionism, in its turn, is operationalised through
such measures as the imposition of sanctions, provision of support and protection to conflict-affected populations in
situ (Duffield, 1997; Borton, 1998; Macrae, 2002), and forceful ‘humanitarian’ interventions. Therefore, what may
seem as a genuine paradox, in fact is probably not, as closure of borders and ‘new interventionism’ can be seen as
two sides of the same coin. Thus, according to Bennet, “Intervention is disengagement, for it is associated with
containment which supports populations in war zones, discourages refugee flows and internalises causes and
consequences” (Bennet quoted in Dubernet, 2001 p. 19). For Duffield “[…] humanitarian intervention is part of a
wider trend towards separate development within the global economy and the containment of the associated
instability” (Duffield, 1997 p. 338).
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humanitarian action through the establishment of coordination structures; the demise of
development assistance and subsequent promotion of the relief-development continuum resulting
in the concept of ‘developmental relief’; a shift from traditional humanitarian principles to a
rights-based approach; a shift to consequentialist ethics in response to the mounting critique of
the ‘dark side’ of humanitarian action, accompanied by extensive ‘soul-searching’ within the
humanitarian enterprise; increased ‘bilateralisation’ and securitisation of humanitarian assistance
and its increasingly technological nature; and ‘militarisation’ of humanitarian assistance in
conflict environments.
Although changes in donor policies and the humanitarian enterprise itself should not be seen as
representing a break with previous policies and practices, but rather as a set of shifts, they are
significant and pervasive enough to warrant the label ‘new’, as well as our special attention. I
offer the following definition of the ‘new’ humanitarianism: a set of shifts in humanitarian
policies and practices, which have taken place since the 1990s towards the increased
prominence and intrusiveness of humanitarian action and its use as a foreign policy tool by,
predominantly, Western states, in addressing conflicts and other crises or instability. This
kind of humanitarian action is broadly construed, better resourced and more institutionalised than
before, and it is carried out by a considerable number of different actors. While the use of
humanitarian action as a foreign policy tool of donor states is not, in itself, new, the extent of
such use, some of its objectives, as well as some of the ways in which it is carried out, are novel.
In its turn, GWOT not only reinforced earlier trends in the evolution of humanitarian action
associated with the ‘new’ humanitarianism, but it has taken them further still. It is believed to
“[have] triggered a deleterious quantitative and qualitative shift in the inclusion of humanitarian
action into Northern political agendas” (Donini and Minear et al., 2006 p. 6). As it has already
been stated, both in Afghanistan and Iraq, humanitarians were treated as part of the combat team
responsible for “hearts and minds”. According to Rieff, in the case of Afghanistan, “[a]lmost
from the moment the bombing started, U.S. officials went to considerable lengths to point out
how the military mission and the humanitarian were parts of the same campaign” (Rieff, 2002 p.
233). At the start of the Iraq campaign, Natsios, USAID Administrator, told humanitarian NGOs
that by being funded by the U.S. government they were effectively its arm (Natsios quoted in De
Torrente, 2004 pp. 19-20)
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The Iraq experience can also serve as a rather extreme example of a differentiation of response to
crises which is far from being needs-based. Indeed, in 2003 and 2004 Iraq received a larger share
of DAC3 humanitarian assistance then any other single country over the past ten years
(Development Initiatives, 2006 pp. 14-15), in spite of the fact the humanitarian need itself was
not great (Smillie and Minear, 2004 p. 194; Donini, Minear and Walker, 2004 p. 196).
Importantly, the dependence on funds trumped all other operational considerations of
humanitarians, as even those agencies whose services were not essential chose to stay engaged,
even in the face of an increased threat of instrumentalisation.
However, NGOs found themselves competing for funds, and not just with other NGOs and other
humanitarians, like the UN agencies, which had become the norm in the post-Cold War
‘humanitarian marketplace’, but also with military or commercial contractors. According to
Feinstein International Famine Center report (2004 pp. 68-69), “[i]n both Afghanistan and Iraq,
the U.S. government has chosen to channel substantial amounts of funds to private, for-profit
contractors for reconstruction work. (…) The U.S. has also been in the vanguard of suiting up
military personnel for humanitarian tasks”.
Finally, while “[t]he explicit linkage of the security and humanitarian agendas” is not new and
“has been shaping responses to complex political crises for at least a decade” (Macrae and
Harmer, 2003 p. 11), with the GWOT “the balance has tipped [away from an arguably more
universalistic notion of human security of the 1990s] in favour of a ‘harder’ version of security
which prioritizes homeland livelihood systems and infrastructures” (Duffield and Waddell, 2006
p. 3). This shift has important implications, as priorities now seem to lie with “coercive, shortterm strategies aimed at stopping attacks by cutting off financial, political or military support and
apprehending possible perpetrators” and not with those “addressing the underlying causes related
to inequality, exclusion and marginalization, and aggression by states as well as people” (the
Commission for Human Security quoted in Duffield and Waddell, 2006 p. 13) characteristic of
the human security approach, which is arguably more development and human rights-friendly.
Even this brief overview allows one to suggest that overall GWOT has already made a profound
impact on the humanitarian enterprise which cannot and should not be ignored. I would like to
3
DAC stands for the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) and represents the major ‘donor club’.
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suggest that the relationship between GWOT and humanitarianism can be read ‘biopolitically’,
i.e. using Foucault’s theorising on biopower.
Biopolitics as ‘the politics of life itself’
Foucault
As Reid comments “[t]he works of Michel Foucault and other major political and social thinkers
influenced by him are among the most under-utilised and yet over-abused resources of
International Relations theory. Work within International Relations influenced by Foucault has
generally been accused of irrelevance to disciplinary concerns” (Reid, 2006 p. x). He further
suggests that “[t]hrough Foucault it is possible to pose questions and develop modes of analysis
of the relations between war and the development of liberal societies that take us some way
beyond the ordinary limits of studies derived from existing traditions of IR” (Reid, 2006 p. x).
Although it is true that “little is actually done with Foucault’s work on power” (original
emphasis) (Kendall and Wickham, 1999 p. 49), recently there has been a resurgence of interest in
it, especially in Foucault’s theorising on biopower and biopolitics as presented in his The History
of Sexuality, Society Must Be Defended, Security, Territory, Population and The Birth of
Biopolitics. There have been attempts to use his perspective in approaching various IR concerns4.
In The History of Sexuality Foucault argues that, since the classical age, power has undergone a
profound transformation where “the right to take life or let live” was replaced by the right “to
foster life or disallow it to the point of death” (Foucault, 1990 p. 138). In other words, the
sovereign power, capable of inflicting death, was replaced by a new power, taking care over life,
with death turning into its limit. In Society Must Be Defended Foucault make an important
clarification that it is not that “sovereignty’s old right – to take life or let live – was replaced, but
it came to be complemented by a new right which does not erase the old right but which does
penetrate it, permeate it. (…) It is the power to ‘make’ live and ‘let’ die” (Foucault, 2003 p. 241).
4
For instance, security (Campbell, 2007); security, liberal and network wars (Dillon, 2002; Dillon and Reid, 2001);
war on terror (Reid, 2005 and 2006; Dauphinee and Masters, 2007); security and development (Duffield, 2005
onwards); postcolonial transitions (Sylvester, 2006); the AIDS pandemic (Elbe, 2005); human rights (Orford, 2007);
genocide (Savage, 2007); refugees, asylum seekers, visa regimes and borders management (Muller, 2004; Ajana,
2005; Salter, 2006; Isin and Rygiel, 2007).
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In The History of Sexuality Foucault suggests that from the 17th century onwards, this new power
evolved in two basic forms: discipline centred on the individual body as a machine, associated
with the emergence of such institutions as medicine, education, and punishment; and control,
focused on the population (birth and mortality, level of health, life expectancy and longevity,
etc.). In Society Must Be Defended he clarifies that the second of these forms emerged in the
second half of the 18th century, and, “unlike discipline, which is addressed to bodies, the new
nondisciplinary power is applied (…) to man-as-living-being; [and] ultimately, (…) to man-asspecies” (Foucault, 2003 p. 242). Unlike discipline, which is individualising, this power is
massifying, it is concerned with human-as-species, so, following the establishment of an
anatomo-politics of the human body, a ‘biopolitics’ of the human race was established (Foucault,
2003 p. 243). Thus, the politics of the state, exercising power over living being as living beings,
becomes biopolitics. The concept of the population is key to understanding this new technology
of power, as “[b]iopolitics deals with the population, with the population as a political problem,
as a problem that is at once scientific and political, as a biological problem and as power’s
problem” (Foucault, 2003 p. 245).
Biopolitics as a technology of power introduces and relies on mechanism different from
disciplinary ones; its mechanisms include forecasts, statistical estimates and alike. They are not
aimed at modifying events or individuals, but rather at establishing equilibrium, maintaining an
average and compensating for variations at the level of population. Crucially, then, “security
mechanisms have to be installed around the random element inherent in a population of living
beings so as to optimize a state of life” (Foucault, 2003 p. 246). Importantly, unlike discipline,
security is “centrifugal, it widens and continuously integrates new elements” (Lazzarato, 2006),
and while “discipline wants to produce order, (…) security wants to guide disorder” (Foucault
quoted in Agamben, 2002). It is thanks to this legacy that the modern state has security as “its
only task and source of legitimacy”, and it does not take much effort to realise that such a state is
“a fragile organism” as “it can always be provoked by terrorism to turn itself terroristic”
(Agamben, 2002).
Foucault then poses a question: given that the basic function of the new power “to improve life,
to prolong its duration, to improve its chances, to avoid accidents, and to compensate for
failings”, how can a power like that kill? (Foucault, 2003 p. 254). This question exposes a
paradox of biopolitics, which has to do with the fact that the care of life can become the
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administration of death (Enoch, 2004 p. 54), or that “the reverse side of biopolitics is
thanatopolitics” (Foucault, 2000 p. 416).
Foucault addresses this question by turning to the concept of racism. For him, it is the emergence
of biopower that inscribes racism in the mechanisms of state. Racism in this context is
understood as “a way of introducing a break into the domain of life that is under power’s control:
the break between what must live and what must die” (Foucault, 2003 p. 254). It is, in essence, a
way of “separating out the groups that exist within a population” (Foucault, 2003 p. 255).
Another important function of racism is the establishment of a positive relation of the type: “The
very fact that you let more die will allow you to live more”. While it is a familiar relationship of
war: “In order to live, you must destroy your enemies”, Foucault argues that it functions in a new
way. He explains: “The fact that the other dies does not mean simply that I live in the sense that
his death guarantees my safety; the death of the other, the death of the bad race, of the inferior
race (…) is something that will make life in general healthier (…) and purer” (Foucault, 2003 p.
255). Therefore, it is not a military, but a biological relationship. In this kind of relationship the
enemies who need to be eliminated are threats, either external or internal, to the population; and
racism is the precondition for exercising the right to kill (Foucault, 2003 p. 256). ‘Killing’ in this
context does not have to be limited to murder as such, it can be anything from exposing someone
to death to political death, expulsion and so on. Finally, as “[r]acism is bound up with the
workings of a State that is obliged to use race, the elimination of races and the purification of the
race, to exercise its sovereign power”, “the most murderous States are also, of necessity, the most
racist” (Foucault, 2003 p. 258).
Agamben
Agamben has further developed Foucault’s theorising on biopower. However, unlike Foucault,
who apparently treated sovereign power and biopower as more or less separate, Agamben
considers them to be parts of the same power. His analysis, he argues, is focused on the point of
intersection between the two (Agamben, 1998 p. 6). He also uses Schmitt’s account of
sovereignty (i.e. as capable of deciding on the exception), and Benjamin’s concept of ‘mere life’
(i.e. as life that is a product of violence exerted by the law), to come up with his concept of Homo
Sacer, someone who cannot be sacrificed, but can be killed, while his killing will not constitute a
homicide. The status of Homo Sacer is defined by being excluded from both the divine and from
the human, thus being included into the sovereign sphere of indistinction between sacrifice and
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homicide: “The sovereign sphere is the sphere in which it is permitted to kill without committing
homicide and without celebrating a sacrifice, and sacred life – that is, life that may be killed but
not sacrificed – is the life that has been captured in this sphere” (Agamben, 1998 p. 83).
For Agamben, Homo Sacer is a biopolitical body that serves both as a result of, and a source of,
sovereign power. In other words, Homo Sacer represents life in between natural life and political
life. It exists in the sovereign sphere, a sphere of indistinction between outside and inside, a
sphere of exception created by the sovereign rule that applies to it only by no longer applying,
abandoning it. What is therefore crucial for Homo Sacer is that “regardless of whether it lives a
life of happiness or misery, [it] is defined by its dependence upon sovereign power for its status”,
which itself “emerges by capturing life in the exception” (Caldwell, 2004).
Agamben also proclaimed that it is ‘the camp’ that represents “the fundamental biopolitical
paradigm of the West” (Agamben, 1998 p. 181). The camp is created in a state of exception.
Since the distinction between the rule and the exception is blurred, “[t]he camp is the space that is
opened when the state of exception begins to become a rule” (Agamben, 1998 p. 169). The camp
as a space of indistinction serves as an embodiment of the sovereign sphere where the biopolitical
body, Homo Sacer, is trapped. In this space, set outside the law, a new law is adopted which
legitimises extreme forms of violence. It is in the camp that life can be kept at the threshold of
death.
GWOT as a biopolitical enterprise
As we have seen, for Foucault it is the race war discourse that brings together sovereign and
biopower, as it allows the state, whose primary concern is to make live, to retain its right to kill.
As Mutimer explains,
The population must be made to live, and, precisely because of that, it must be
defended against the biological enemies that threaten it. It is because of the
importance of this defense to the very possibility of biopolitics that the sovereign can
still order people to their death to provide for that defense (Mutimer, 2007 pp. 168169).
10
Mutimer also suggests that GWOT, just as the Cold War before it, represents an expression of the
race war discourse. What makes him come to this conclusion? First of all, he points out to the
fact that as the race war discourse reconciles the central contradiction of the biopolitical state, it
also depends on the unending nature of the war, because the war cannot be won for the
contradiction to remain unexposed. We know that an important feature of the way GWOT is
envisaged is its potentially permanent nature, as the danger is both out there and in here, and only
the state can defend the society against it. At the same time, I would suggest, for GWOT it is also
true that “Wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are
waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilised for the purpose of
wholesale slaughter in the name of necessity”(Foucault, 1990 p. 137). The following quote could
be used to illustrate the point.
“[O]ur security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be
ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our
lives” (Bush, 2002 quoted in Weber, 2007 p. 116).
GWOT is also cast in oppositional, binary “either with us or against us” terms, which allows no
middle ground and no solution other then the eradication of those “against us”. As we have seen,
Foucault does consider this opposition. Secondly, Mutimer argues that the terrorist enemy is the
one who will not give up or cannot be beaten, and therefore represents a permanent threat. This
nature of the threat allows for the constant expansion of the more-intrusive security measures in
the name of defending society.
Finally, within GWOT the enemy is extensively racialised, of course, not explicitly in the Nazi
sense, but rather in a sense of appearance. In other words, anyone who looks like the race enemy
represents a potential threat. Consequently, many members of the society that the state is
supposed to defend are rendered less and less secure by its very practices of security. Mutimer
quotes Beck who argues that,
[Under these conditions] the citizen must prove that he or she is not dangerous, for
under these conditions each individual finally comes under the suspicion of being a
potential terrorist. Each person must thereby put up with submitting to random
‘security’ controls (Beck quoted in Mutimer, 2006 p. 173; original emphasis).
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I would suggest that theorising on biopower and biopolitics can provide useful insights not only
at the macro, but also at the micro level, as particular practices can also be ‘read’ biopolitically,
including what euphemistically was termed ‘detention and interrogation techniques’ in
Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. I believe that what matters most for such a reading is not the
torture as such, or the persistent denial of such facts by the U.S. Administration, or the hypocrisy
of its rhetoric stressing the full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, or even the
double-standards inherent in accusing other countries of resorting to torture and similar practices,
but the fact that torture has become legitimised and even subject to regulation.
Referring to Foucault’s concept of biopower as a power that fosters life or disallows it to the
point of death, Wadiwel suggests that it “can (…) capture and subject life, for an indefinite
duration, to a measured violence (…) In this violence – a frictional violence – the sovereign
reveals a commitment to life, a life whose time is measured by pain” (Wadiwel, 2003 p. 124).
Torture, therefore, can be considered as an ugly form of life preservation. A torturer has to
maintain life, to not let death prevent the continued infliction of pain, which can become life long
(Wadiwel, 2003 p. 117). Thus, the Nazi ‘Protective Custody’ directive of October 26, 1939
contained the following condition: (..) the duration of detention in a concentration camp must
always be indicated as ‘indefinite’” (Wadiwel, 2003 p. 124). The detainees of detention camps
scattered all over the world, share the same fate, as they have been promised release only upon
cessation of GWOT, which, as we know, is a war with imprecise objectives, and no definite end.
This indefinite detention itself becomes a form of torture.
Agamben’s theorising can also provide useful insights. For example, the tortured were those
categorised as ‘unlawful’ or ‘enemy’ combatants – terms unknown in international law. These
definitions allowed the U.S. Administration to deprive these people of the protection provided by
either IHL or human rights law. Moreover, they could not appeal to the U.S. national courts as,
given the location of the camps, the courts would not have jurisdiction to consider appeals of
foreigners captured and held abroad. Thus, these people were turned into Homo Sacer, stripped of
anything that could stand between them and the torturer as a personification of bio-power, caught
in the state of exception where law does not apply in any other way than by no longer applying.
Anything becomes possible, including the decisions that practices that ‘only’ amount to cruel,
inhuman or degrading can be tolerated, anything up to the point when “tortured are finally left
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with nothing but their own living being, felt only through an endless suffering” (Wadiwel, 2003
p. 120).
Conclusion: Humanitarian action and GWOT: a new biopolitical nexus
Humanitarian action, both normative and material, has its roots in several traditions, one of the
most important of which is assistance to and protection of war victims. Since the 19th century
when the first Geneva conventions were negotiated and the Red Cross established, till the present
day humanitarianism has had a very special relationship with war and violence. As Hoffman and
Weiss put it,
War and humanitarianism may have distinct logics and values, but historically they are
intimately linked. Swords trigger humanitarian crises and responses; violent conflicts
cause casualties and displace people, which require salves. [In its turn,] [h]umanitarian
action (…) alters how wars are fought and affects their outcomes. It is impossible to
draw exact, let alone, causal relations between war and humanitarianism, but each has
clear consequences for the other (Hoffman and Weiss, 2006 p. 10).
According to Slim, from its inception the humanitarian project has been one that “legitimates
violence by mitigating it”, but only with respect to the way the wars are fought (jus in bello)
(Slim, 2001 p. 327). However, with the new interventionism of the 1990s humanitarianism has
been also used as a justification for wars (jus ad bellum). It is worth pointing out in this respect
that even though neither the intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, nor in Iraq in 2003 were
presented as humanitarian per se, humanitarian considerations featured prominently during both
campaigns (for instance, Macrae and Harmer, 2003 p. 7; Rieff, 2002 with respect to the
intervention in Afghanistan; for a more detailed account see Breau, 2005 pp. 149-177).
What I would argue is that with GWOT a new biopolitical nexus of war and humanitarianism has
been established. Within this nexus the latter’s role has been transformed further from mitigating
violence to facilitating and justifying it. After all, within a series of military and other campaigns
waged in the name of defending some societies against others, which is what GWOT is all about,
humanitarian rhetoric features prominently and humanitarians themselves are treated as a forcemultiplier, a part of the combat team. This transformation, although not all-encompassing and
clearly incomplete, cannot be easily reversed, if ever, and it is probably more damaging to the
humanitarian enterprise than it has been recognised so far.
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It should be noted that the above deliberations represent only preliminary thoughts, and are
designed to encourage discussion with a view to their further development.
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