Anticipating a Cosmopolitan Future: The Case of Humanitarian Military Intervention
- PDF / 140,162 Bytes
- 18 Pages / 442 x 663 pts Page_size
- 30 Downloads / 219 Views
Anticipating a Cosmopolitan Future: The Case of Humanitarian Military Intervention1 William Smith Department of Politics, University of Dundee, Scotland, DDI 4HN, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
The past decade has witnessed the emergence of numerous ‘cosmopolitan’ theories of humanitarian military intervention. These theories anticipate a more cosmopolitan future, where interventions will be authorized by new cosmopolitan institutions and carried out by reformed cosmopolitan militaries. The contention of my article is that despite the merits of these approaches, it is often difficult to discern whether and how cosmopolitan theories can inform assessments of interventions that take place in our non-cosmopolitan present. Through taking Ju¨rgen Habermas’s judgements of two recent interventions as a ‘case study’, I reflect on the considerations that might come into play when cosmopolitans attempt to translate their future-orientated theories into practical engagements with the world as it is. International Politics (2007) 44, 72–89. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800159 Keywords: cosmopolitanism; humanitarian military intervention; judgement; Ju¨rgen Habermas; Kosovo; Iraq
Introduction The past decade has witnessed the intersection of two intellectual currents: the development of cosmopolitanism in the social sciences and the search for new ways of understanding humanitarian military intervention. While both cosmopolitanism and intervention are established subjects of research and analysis, it is only recently that explicit links have been drawn between the two. This is reflected in the elaboration of accounts of intervention that describe themselves as ‘cosmopolitan’ (Archibugi, 2004; Held, 2004; Caney, 2005). It is also reflected in the proliferation of terms like ‘cosmopolitan militaries’ (Elliott and Cheeseman, 2002), ‘cosmopolitan law enforcement’ (Kaldor, 2001, 124– 126) and ‘cosmopolitan regimes’ capable of carrying out militarized ‘police actions’ (Habermas, 2003a, 39). The contention of this article is that despite the sophistication and originality of cosmopolitan theories of humanitarian military intervention, it is often unclear whether and how these theories can inform judgements about military
William Smith Anticipating a Cosmopolitan Future
73
interventions that take place in our world. This uncertainty stems from the forward-looking character of these theories; they tend to focus more on the ways in which interventions would take place in a more cosmopolitan future than on the difficult normative questions posed by controversies over interventions in our non-cosmopolitan present. In this article, I aim to cast light on how cosmopolitans can combine their anticipation of a more cosmopolitan future with a practical engagement with the world as it is. To this end I foreground the idea of ‘cosmopolitan judgement’, understood as the formulation and communication of political judgements that are informed and orientated by cosmopolitan commitments. In order to substantiate the idea of cosmopolitan judgemen
Data Loading...
