This article seeks to explain the limits of critical discourses of `global war' and biopolitical framings of `global conflict' that have arisen in response to the globalization of security discourses in the post-Cold War era. The central theoretical insight offered is that `global war' should not be understood in the framework of contested struggles to reproduce and extend the power of regulatory control. `Global war' appears `unlimited' and unconstrained precisely because it lacks the instrumental, strategic framework of `war' understood as a political-military technique. For this reason, critical analytical framings of global conflict, which tend to rely on the `scaling up' of Michel Foucault's critique of biopolitics and upon Carl Schmitt's critique of universal claims to protect the `human', elide the specificity of the international today. Today's `wars of choice', fought under the banner of the `values' of humanitarian intervention or the `global war on terror', are distinguished precisely by the fact that they cannot be grasped as strategically framed political conflicts.
Agamben, Giorgio, 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
2.
Agamben, Giorgio, 2005. State of Exception. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
3.
Bishai, Linda S. & Andreas Behnke , 2007. `War, Violence and the Displacement of the Political', in Odysseos & Petito ( 2007b: 107-123).
4.
Chandler, David, 2007. `Hollow Hegemony: Theorising the Shift from Interest-Based to Value-Based International Policy-Making', Millennium: Journal of International Studies35(3): 703-723.
5.
Chandler, David, 2008a. `The Revival of Carl Schmitt in International Relations: The Last Refuge of Critical Theorists?', Millennium: Journal of International Studies37(1): 27-48.
6.
Chandler, David, 2008b. `Textual and Critical Approaches to Reading Schmitt: Rejoinder to Odysseos and Petito', Millennium: Journal of International Studies37(2): 477-481.
7.
Chandler, David, 2009a. Hollow Hegemony: Rethinking Global Politics, Power and Resistance. London: Pluto.
8.
Chandler, David, 2009b. `Critiquing Liberal Cosmopolitanism? The Limits of the Biopolitical Approach', International Political Sociology3(1).
9.
Colombo, Alessandro, 2007. `The "Realist Institutionalism" of Carl Schmitt', in Odysseos & Petito (2007b: 21-35).
10.
de Benoist, Alain, 2007. `Global Terrorism and the State of Permanent Exception: The Significance of Carl Schmitt's Thought Today', in Odysseos & Petito (2007b: 73-96).
11.
Deng, Francis M.; Sadikiel Kimaro, Terrence Lyons, David Rothchild & I. William Zartman , 1996. Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
12.
Devetak, Richard, 2007. `Between Kant and Pufendorf: Humanitarian Intervention, Statist Anti-Cosmopolitanism and Critical International Theory', Review of International Studies33: 151-174.
13.
Devji, Faisal, 2005. Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity . London: Hurst.
14.
Douzinas, Costas, 2007. Human Rights and Empire: The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism . London: Routledge Cavendish.
15.
Duffield, Mark, 2007. Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples. London: Polity .
16.
Foucault, Michel, 2003. `Society Must Be Defended': Lectures at the Collège de France 1975- 1976. London: Allen Lane/Penguin.
17.
Foucault, Michel, 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977- 1978. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
18.
Foucault, Michel, 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-1979. Basingstoke: Palgrave .
19.
Hardt, Michael & Antonio Negri , 2001. Empire. New York: Harvard University Press.
20.
Hardt, Michael & Antonio Negri , 2006. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. London: Penguin .
21.
Jabri, Vivienne, 2007. War and the Transformation of Global Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
22.
Jahn, Beate, 2007a. `The Tragedy of Liberal Diplomacy: Democratization, Intervention and Statebuilding (Part I)', Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding1(1): 87-106.
23.
Jahn, Beate, 2007b. `The Tragedy of Liberal Diplomacy: Democratization, Intervention and Statebuilding (Part II)', Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding1(2): 211-230.
24.
Koskenniemi, Marti, 2004. `International Law as Political Theology: How To Read Nomos der Erde?', Constellations11(4): 492-511.
25.
Laïdi, Zaki, 1998. A World Without Meaning: The Crisis of Meaning in International Politics. London: Routledge.
26.
Mouffe, Chantal, 2007. `Carl Schmitt's Warning on the Dangers of a Unipolar World' , in Odysseos & Petito (2007b: 147-153).
27.
Odysseos, Louiza & Fabio Petito, 2007a. `Introduction: The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt', in Odysseos & Petito (2007 b: 1-17).
28.
Odysseos, Louiza & Fabio Petito, eds, 2007b. The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order . London: Routledge.
29.
Ojakangas, Mika, 2007. `A Terrifying World Without an Exterior: Carl Schmitt and the Metaphysics of International (Dis)order', in Odysseos & Petito (2007b: 205-221).
30.
Paris, Roland & Timothy D. Sisk , 2009. The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations. London: Routledge.
31.
Petito, Fabio, 2007. `Against World Unity: Carl Schmitt and the Western-Centric and Liberal Global Order', in Odysseos & Petito (2007b: 166-184).
32.
Prozorov, Sergei, 2007. `The Ethos of Insecure Life: Reading Carl Schmitt's Existential Decisionism as a Foucauldian Ethics', in Odysseos & Petito (2007b: 222-241).
33.
Reid, Julian, 2006. The Biopolitics of the War on Terror: Life Struggles, Liberal Modernity, and the Defence of Logistical Societies. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
34.
Roy, Olivier, 2004. Globalised Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. London: Hurst.
35.
Schmitt, Carl, 1988. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
36.
Schmitt, Carl, 2003. The Nomos of the Earth: In the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum. New York: Telos.
37.
Schmitt, Carl, 2004. The Theory of the Partisan: A Commentary/Remark on the Concept of the Political. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
38.
Selby, Jan, 2007. `Engaging Foucault: Discourse, Liberal Governance and the Limits of Foucauldian IR', International Relations21(3): 324-345.
39.
Ulmen, Gary L., 2007. `Partisan Warfare, Terrorism and the Problem of a New Nomos of the Earth', in Odysseos & Petito ( 2007b: 97-106).
