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loses force privatized violence comes in. It then spreads to the West,
where the profits are to be made. The third lesson is that chaos as such
will spread, so that it cannot go unwatched in critical parts of the
world. An aspect of this crisis is that the state structures themselves,
which are the basis of the UN language of law, are a last imperial
imposition of the process of decolonization.
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134 Philosophy of International Law
So Cooper formulates a general principle for dealings with non-
Western states which is incompatible with the international law of the
Charter. It is based upon an openly imperialist anthropology that, not
surprisingly, he sees to be as much a part of European as of American
elite mentalities. In Blair s case, Kampfner supports this point. He
insists that Blair regards as a major foreign policy priority Our
history is our strength, that we have to draw on Britain s influence as
a former colonial power. Our empire left much affection as well as
deep problems to be overcome (236). The danger of the so-called pre-
modern is that, while We (postmodern Europeans) may not be inter-
ested in chaos, chaos is interested in us. The rhetoric is blistering,
reminiscent of the yellow peril or the dark heart of Africa :
In fact chaos, or the crime that lives within it, needs the civilised world and
preys upon it. Open societies make this easy. At its worst, in the form of
terrorism, chaos can become a serious threat to the whole international
order. Terrorism represents the privatisation of war, the pre-modern with
teeth; if terrorists use biological or nuclear weapons the effects could be
devastating. This is the non-state attacking the state. A lesser danger is the
risk of being sucked into the pre-modern for reasons of conscience and then
being unwilling either to take over or to get out. . . (77)
While European international lawyers inhabit a postmodern world
(of which more later) Europe itself is a zone of security beyond which
there are zones of chaos which it cannot ignore. While the imperial
urge may be dead, some form of defensive imperialism is inevitable.
All that the UN is made to do is to throw its overwhelming power on
the side of a state that is the victim of aggression (58). So, as presently
constituted, it cannot provide a guide for action. Nonetheless, Cooper
generally counsels against foreign forays. For Europeans to practice
humanitarian intervention abroad is to intervene in another continent
with another history and to invite a greater risk of humanitarian cat-
astrophe (61). However, the three lessons of recent state collapse in
Sierra Leone, etc., cannot be ignored. Empire does not work in
the post-imperial age (i.e. acquisition of territory and population).
Voluntary imperialism, a UN trusteeship, may give the people of a
failed state a breathing space and it is the only legitimate form pos-
sible, but the coherence and persistence of purpose to achieve this will
usually be absent. There is also no clear way of resolving the human-
itarian aim of intervening to save lives and the imperial aim of estab-
lishing the control necessary to do this (65 75). While Cooper
concludes by saying that goals should be expressed in relatives rather
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The Use of Force 135
than absolutes, his argument has really been that the pre-modern, the
modern, and the postmodern give us incommensurate orders of inter-
national society. This is the context of our dilemmas concerning inter-
ventions in the chaotic pre-modernity of non-Western parts of
international society. Cooper s incommensurability is infused with
the anthropological heritage of colonialism.
The UN is an expression of the modern, while failed states come
largely within the ambit of the pre-modern. Cooper means, practic-
ally, that the language of the modern UN does not apply to pre-
modern states. This is not to say the Charter is violated in that
context. It is simply conceptually inapplicable (16 37). The moder-
nity of the UN is that it rests upon state sovereignty and that in turn
rests upon the separation of domestic and foreign affairs (22 6).
Cooper s words are that this is still a world in which the ultimate
guarantor of security is force. This is as true for realist conceptions of
international society, as governed by clashes of interest, as it is of ide-
alist theories that the anarchy of states can be replaced by the hege-
mony of a world government or a collective security system. I quote:
The UN Charter emphasizes state sovereignty on the one hand and
aims to maintain order by force (23).
Even in the world of the modern the typical threats to security
render the Charter rules on the use of force redundant. The modern
also presents nightmares for which classical international law is not
prepared. The sovereign equality of states means that, where all could
possess nuclear and other WMD, one faces nuclear anarchy, with all
states capable of destroying one another (Cooper, 63). Preventing this
nightmare of the modern should be a priority for all who wish to live
in a reasonably orderly world (64). And so international law is obso-
lete. Following well-established legal norms and relying on self-
defence will not solve the problem. Not only is self-defence too late
after a nuclear attack, but it misses a wider point . . . (64). Weapons
affect those not directly involved. The more countries which have them
the more likely it is they will be used. The more they are used the more
they will be used. And so on! This means: It would be irresponsible to
do nothing when even one further country acquires nuclear capabil-
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