War, Security and the Liberal State

Abstract

Abstract War in late modern politics is a technology of control. While its violent manifestations – for example, the invasion and occupation of Iraq – are directly felt by the population targeted, the practices associated with that war and the wider so-called war against terrorism have a far wider span of operations that encompasses spaces across the globe. This article provides an understanding of global war as a distinctly late modern form of control. It shows that the practices constitutive of global war are best understood in terms of a matrix, incorporating states and their bureaucracies, as well as non-state agents, and targeting at once states, particular communities and individuals. The matrix of war operates in the name of humanity; however, it is ultimately this humanity as a whole that comes to be the subject of its operations of global control. The implications, as the article argues, are monumental for democratic government and the spaces available for scrutiny and dissent.