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Neoliberalism, the State and War

Aaron Ettinger Millennium - Journal of International Studies 2013 41: 379 DOI: 10.1177/0305829812463475 The online version of this article can be found at: http://mil.sagepub.com/content/41/2/379

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463475
2012

MIL41(2)10.1177/0305829812463475Millennium: Journal of International StudiesEttinger

MILLENNIUM
Review Article
Journal of International Studies

Neoliberalism, the State and War

Aaron Ettinger

Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41(2) 379393 The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0305829812463475 mil.sagepub.com

Queens University, Canada

Gopal Balakrishnan, Antagonistics: Capitalism and Power in an Age of War (London: Verso, 2009, 290 pp., 14.99 pbk) Jamie Peck, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 301 pp., $45.00 hbk) Deane-Peter Baker, Just Warriors, Inc.: The Ethics of Privatized Force (London: Continuum, 2011, 226 pp., $19.95 pbk)

Lamenting the insularity of the social sciences, Michael Mann wrote that it should be obvious that in the real world, structures of ideological, economic, military and geopolitical power are in continuous interaction, and that this interaction is continuously changing the nature of each.1 Failing to recognise these interactions, he said, led social scientists to overlook some of the most fundamental problems of modern society. In the quarter-century since he made this claim, the social sciences, particularly the field of International Relations, has evolved in an effort to achieve the kind of analysis Mann describes. Though a generation has passed and much ink has been spilled, successful internalisation of global dynamism within the field remains elusive. But the observation still resonates in large part because his words are a commentary both on the disciplinary narrowness of the social sciences and on the world itself. As a theoretical statement about the world, Mann identifies it as a complex multidimensional site of interrelationships among transformative and contradictory phenomena and demands that scholars address
1. Michael Mann, States, War and Capitalism: Studies in Political Sociology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), vii.

Corresponding author: Aaron Ettinger, Queens University at Kingston, Department of Political Studies, Queens University, Room C321, Mackintosh-Corry Hall, 99 University Ave, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada. Email: aaron.ettinger@queensu.ca

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it as such. The three texts reviewed here each aspire to an analysis that accounts for this complexity. Antagonistics,2 Constructions of Neoliberal Reason3 and Just Warriors Inc.4 are efforts to make sense of the global dynamics of capitalism, war and power. Reading the three together yields insights into the structures and interactions that set the tenuous parameters of world order. The books are by no means part of the same issue area or research programme. In fact, they are quite different in subject and approach. One is a series of review essays dealing with a range of topics relating to capitalism, power, war, democracy, morality and politics. The second, written from a critical political economy perspective, takes on economic neoliberalism, the political power of ideas and the political construction of a utopian market ideal. The third deals with normative theory and the ethics of commodified force in an era that has seen the emergence of a global trade in military expertise. All three converge around common themes about capitalism and conflict. But more broadly, they speak to the vague outlines of a deeper structural consideration: the evolution, or de-evolution, of the advanced capitalist state. What is interesting is that none of the books engage the issue directly, but it lurks just beyond the scope of each inquiry. The broader issue that these three texts address can be phrased thus: whither the advanced capitalist state in the 21st century? Before going any further, a word of caution is in order: to even speak of the state in such concrete terms is to assume too much. While it is a fundamental component of our understanding about the world and is a ubiquitous reality of political life, the state remains a fluid concept with permeable, shifting and contested frontiers. As a conceptual category in the minds of scholars, the state is ascribed certain foundational properties population, territory, government, legitimate use of force needed to permit any sort of analysis. As a field of practice, out in Manns real world, it is a site of contention that overlays and is overlain by a multitude of complex phenomena. As an agent capable of its own action, the state maintains a certain, peerless status among other actors at multiple scales of analysis. Destabilisation of the fundamental properties of the state, in both theory and practice, has very real effects on the lived experience of social insecurity and on the intellectual foundations of political thinking. The theories and practices engaged in these three texts signal deep shifts in core assumptions about the political world. As political projects directed by individuals occupying the commanding heights of state and non-state institutions, capitalism and war raise fundamental questions about the consequences of their interplay for the state. This is the stuff of profound change and the questions that drive the grandest political and sociological inquiry. What effects do neoliberalism, capitalism and military privatisation have on the state itself as an entity in both theory and practice? Max Webers famous characterisation of the state as the sole bearer of legitimate coercive force faces a challenge in a fascinating twist of history. What happens to the state when the logic of capitalism takes force out of the exclusive realm of state institutions and makes it available

2. Gopal Balakrishnan, Antagonistics: Capitalism and Power in an Age of War (London: Verso, 2009). 3. Jamie Peck, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 4. Deane-Peter Baker, Just Warriors, Inc.: The Ethics of Privatized Force (London: Continuum, 2011).

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on the market? How does the state change when the legitimate use of force becomes a commodity? What are the implications for political morality when the state is no longer the sole repository of legitimate coercive force? These questions only become possible when holistic inquiry supplants explanations of discrete variables as part of a broader world view. As Mann suggested, an overall theory of state, militarism and war, and the economy must involve considerations of them all.5 While no theory as such emerges in the texts, each of the three books ventures into this challenging theoretical territory. The results are rich theoretical understandings of their respective subjects within the broader cross-currents of war, political economy and morality. The first offering is from Gopal Balakrishnan, professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His book, Antagonistics: Capitalism and Power in an Age of War, is a collection of critical reviews published in New Left Review between 1995 and 2007. These 12 essays develop an intellectual portrait of the post-Cold War era through examinations of key works of political and philosophical scholarship. As he remarks in the preface, Antagonistics periodisation is meant to chronicle (mostly) the second decade of the post-Cold War status quo and bring the eras historical determinants into sharper relief. The status quo he speaks of is characterised, of course, by the hegemony of American capitalism, which remained largely undiluted during this period. The historical determinants, however, are more complex and require elucidation, which is Balakrishnans animating purpose. This purpose is most urgently needed and served in the selections published after 11 September, which raised new and difficult questions about war, wealth and power in a changing world order. Balakrishnans essays are divided into two thematic sections. The first contains extensive reviews of works in historical sociology on the co-evolution of capitalism and the state system. In these essays, the themes of capitalism, war and power are woven into criticisms of sovereignty, empire, American foreign policy and, more abstractly, the state itself. The atmosphere of the pieces is one of foreboding. They evoke a sense of uncertainty about the liminal moments that mark great transformations in political economy and violence. This is particularly salient in the post-11 September period where myriad non-state actors clash with prosperity at the peripheries of the Westphalian order. The uncertainty of the present moment is written into the various macro-histories that seek to explain the current distribution of forces in the long arc of Western civilisation. Familiar themes reoccur: the history-moving force of capitalism, the structural persistence of the state system and spatial reorganisations after the Cold War. Part Two takes aim at politics in the sense of the genesis, internal identity and motives of state.6 Balakrishnan covers themes of nationalism, democracy, European multiculturalism and the political commitments of the intellectual. Major figures are treated here: Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson, Alexis de Tocqueville, Carl Schmitt, Jrgen Habermas, Bhikhu Parekh, Herbert Marcuse and, finally, Machiavelli. However, it is the latter figure who looms largest over Balakrishnans criticisms. The final entry is an original essay on the Florentines indispensable relevance to a contemporary understanding of historical change. Machiavellis aversion to change was premised upon the
2) (, 2)

5. Mann, States, War and Capitalism, xi. 6. Balakrishnan, Antagonistics, xiii.

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reformation of existing structures and contains valuable lessons for contemporary attempts to displace capitalism. Though socialist and communist projects failed spectacularly in the 20th century, Balakrishnan argues that alternatives for the 21st can be more than amendments to liberal capitalism itself and need not reconcile themselves to the strictures of the dominant paradigm. No doubt, this claim would resonate among the occupiers of city parks and squares during the last months of 2011. Balakrishnans orientation towards his subject matter is deliberately contextualised. His approach is a form of criticism that tangles with logical and factual failures but also his opponents unacknowledged ideological commitments. The stated purpose of his criticism, he says, is intellectually consequential opposition grounded in historically comparative reflection on the prospects for a rational human transformation of the human order of things.7 It is a bold claim and, for the most part, Balakrishnans surveys convincingly situate contemporary concerns in history and ideological subtext. In his criticisms, Balakrishnan paints a complex image of world politics characterised by overlapping spheres of power and cross-cutting forces without deference to levels of analysis or discrete variables common to conventional International Relations research. In this sense, he sees the world as Mann does; Balakrishnan locates each piece within the broader dynamics of continuous interaction and evolution. Balakrishnans critical style is unambiguous, insightful and illuminating. As a social critic he is preoccupied by the noble questions of identity, intersectionality and emancipation. Generally, he serves his emancipatory agenda well. There is, however, a striking exclusion. Women are almost entirely absent from his work, either as the writers of history or as agents of it. In fact, women make no significant appearances in any of the narratives. Though hardly a new criticism, having to ask the perennial question Where are the women? continues to exasperate feminist International Relations scholars. A scan of the index shows only three references to women: Rosa Luxemburg, Margaret Thatcher and Barbara Tuchman, and all three are mentioned only in passing. Luxemburg is cited as an influence on another author; Thatcher appears in her usual totemic role alongside Reagan as a prelude to the BushBlair paradigm of market-state leaders; Tuchman is represented as a popular writer in contraposition to the more serious historians such as Otto Hintze or Ernst Bloch. As Cynthia Enloe suggested, if we employ only the conventional, ungendered compass to chart international politics, we are likely to end up mapping a landscape peopled only by men, mostly elite men.8 This is what Balakrishnan ends up producing. For a collection that emphasises historical and moral reflexivity, the exclusion of gender from the currents of world politics, except as part of a grab bag of identity categories, is an unattractive omission. Nevertheless, Balakrishnans erudition in Antagonistics is impressive and the selections speak to pressing themes in sociology, International Relations and political philosophy. The interplay of capitalism and conflict are the threads that bind the selections into a coherent critical inquiry into the post-Cold War era and it is here that he is most

7. 8.

Ibid., xi. Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Relations (Pandora: London, 1989), 1.

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successful. The first series of essays are macro-histories of the co-evolution of capitalism and the state system, which compellingly unravel the assumptions of the grand paradigms of International Relations scholarship. His inquiries tell a story of complexity and reconstitution that narrates the reader into a present where previous assumptions cannot be sustained. There are moments when he succinctly encapsulates the uncertain dynamics of the times, and in these moments Balakrishnan is at his most insightful and profound. Much of what propels this insight is the timeliness of his selections. Part One of Antagonistics engages the global politics of the post-11 September world, giving him an exceptional context in which to draw out the themes of capitalism, power and war. However, for a book intended to capture a Zeitgeist, he strays from the primary themes. In the second section, Balakrishnan sets aside capitalism, power and war to the detriment of the overall effect of the collection. Instead, he elects to focus on ad hoc topics in politics and sociology, such as nationalism, identity and intellectual integrity. While they are undoubtedly important matters, they do not sustain the core themes that were established so well in Part One. This is not necessarily a problem since the individual essays are quite interesting in their own right. But it is not clear what purposes these particular selections serve or how they help frame the post-Cold War era. In some instances, the selected essays work against Balakrishnans desire to illuminate the present in the light of history. For example, the argument he makes in a 1995 review of Benedict Andersons Imagined Communities that understanding national identities challenges conceptions of the nation-state is underwhelming and falls flat in the collections larger context. Elsewhere, a 2001 review of Bhikhu Parekhs Rethinking Multiculturalism has a distinctly pre-war on terrorism tone. His characterisation of the civilised discourse of ethnic difference in Americas Clintonian Gilded Age is a naive claim from a bygone era that was not true to begin with. The reflections on the moral responsibilities of the intellectual in two pieces about Carl Schmitt and Ernst Junger (2000) and Jrgen Habermas (2003) are engaging but unmoored from the collections general themes. Even if Part Two was a platform for fragments of a broader picture of politics, it would have been a perfect place for a feminist inquiry, but the opportunity is missed. The essays in Antagonistics give an account of the post-Cold War era bookended by the themes of the re-emergence of nationalism and the brooding economic horizon of 2007. Since the book was published in 2009, the economic upheavals of the global recession make no appearance, though what was not yet a reality was anticipated by Balakrishnan in the introduction. Written in the opening moments of the crash and carrying a hint of validation, the text says: the post-Cold War reflation of American power was ultimately based on unsustainable world economic imbalances and speculative bubbles. These would eventually unravel, precipitating a global downturn of intractable, if not inter-war proportions, and the onset of a new season of political surprises. The first part of this prediction seems to have been lately confirmed.9 Though he cannot account for the economic upheavals, his historical approach leaves little doubt that it is best addressed in light of the long ascendancy of capitalism.

9. Balakrishnan, Antagonistics, xiii.

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Antagonistics ends with the world on the cusp of the Great Recession, political retrenchment and resistance to the neoliberal capitalism which Balakrishnan locates within the long arc of Western history. Overall, it is a fascinating collection of commentaries with a subtext of intellectual combat. Part of Balakrishnans agenda is to undermine the standing of intellectual paradigms (realism, historical sociology and Marxist theories of empire) that fail to account for the complexities of continuous interaction at the ontological core of his thinking. Of these interactions, the most pronounced occur between the imperial American state and the neoliberal economic paradigm it promoted. The result is the evolution of both, and the analytical subtext of Balakrishnans reviews provides a model for the analytical evaluation of these phenomena and the normative indictment of their consequences. If capitalism is a principal theme of Antagonistics, a particular variety of capitalism is the central concern of Constructions of Neoliberal Reason.10 Neoliberalism has been in the lexicon of social scientists for decades; though it is ubiquitous, its meaning remains unsettled. It seems like no-more-than approximate proxy for a specific analysis of mechanisms or relations of social power, domination, exploitation or alienation.11 More pointedly, it is a conceptual trash heap capable of accommodating multiple distasteful phenomena without much argument as to whether one or the other component really belongs.12 Either way, neoliberalism is a term in need of considerable clarification. Enter Jamie Peck, professor of geography at the University of British Columbia. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason fits neatly with Pecks previous work on neoliberalism that aims to give the concept greater analytical depth.13 Moreover, it is situated within broader debates about the analytical and historical dimensions of the neoliberal paradigm.14 Its major contribution is a conceptual framework that treats neoliberalism as a dynamic historical process and permits new avenues of research into the pathways of neoliberalisation over a long time-scale. Here, he engages with the fundamental character of that nebulous phenomenon by tracing its intellectual lineage from Ordoliberalism to Obamanomics. Neoliberalism, he argues, is not a coherent ideology, but rather a constructed project that has been made and remade by generations of scholars, economists and politicians. To develop this point, Peck takes on the ambitious task of historicising the ideational and institutional practices that shaped neoliberalism over the past nine decades.

10. Peck, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason. 11. Ibid., 14. 12. Ibid., 15. 13. Neil Brenner, Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore, Variegated Neoliberalization: Geographies, Modalities, Pathways, Global Networks 10, no. 2 (2010): 182222; Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell, Neoliberalizing Space, Antipode 34, no. 3 (2002): 380404; Adam Tickell and Jamie Peck, Making Global Rules: Globalization or Neoliberalism?, in Remaking the Global Economy: Economic-Geographical Perspectives, eds Jamie Peck and Henry Wai-chung Yeung (London: Sage, 2003). 14. Philip G. Cerny, Embedding Neoliberalism: The Evolution of a Hegemonic Paradigm, Journal of International Trade and Diplomacy 2, no. 1 (2008): 146; Rachel S. Turner, Neo-liberal Ideology: History, Concepts and Policies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008); Bob Jessop, The Future of the Capitalist State (London: Polity Press, 2002).

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Peck follows two lines of inquiry to ascertain how neoliberalism has been constructed. The first is an intellectual history of the ideas formation as a theoretical project; the second is a set of contemporary case studies of neoliberalism as a political project. This interrelated approach arises from his crucial observation that the neoliberal project is built on an irreconcilable, and well-documented, paradox when put into motion: the utopian ideal of frictionless market rule and state minimalism requires a significant state presence to provide market-enabling governance mechanisms and safety nets in the event of market failure. The contradictory outcome of neoliberal practice is a purgatory in which neoliberals must dwell. Thus, the ideal neoliberal end goal is fundamentally unattainable yet it endures. Pecks animating questions, then, are quite fundamental: what is neoliberalism and how has it been (re)articulated over the past 90 years? What he offers is a compelling intellectual and political biography of neoliberalism as a constructed and polymorphous idea. That being said, it should come as no surprise that Peck devotes considerable space to matters of definition. On one point he is unambiguous: neoliberalism is by no means a static ideational framework, handed down from some Pelerinian mountain top, or a parsimonious formula sketched out on a University of Chicago blackboard. Rather, it is defined by the oscillations and vacillations around frustrated attempts to reach its end goal that shape the revealed form of neoliberalism as a contradictory mode of market governance. Pristine definitions of neoliberalisation are therefore simply unavailable; instead, concretely grounded accounts of the process must be chiselled out of the interstices of state/market configurations.15 The elusive meaning of neoliberalism speaks volumes about its contested history and the properties it is intended to denote. If neoliberalism varies from place to place, and is constantly refashioned in word and deed, what exactly is it? Peck develops a conceptualisation of neoliberalism as an evolving phenomenon with a shifting profile that cannot be reduced to a core set of principles or characteristics. Reliance on singular conceptions would be little more than ahistorical abstraction. Instead, he insists on a conceptualisation that can situate and make sense of its mutations. Abjuring static definitions, Peck presents his conceptualisation of rollback and roll-out phases of neoliberalism, a pair of dynamic concepts that denote characteristics of neoliberalism as they have been practised at different points in its history. It is both a non-reductionist way of defining neoliberalism and a way to operationalise the term for the purposes of empirical research. Roll-back neoliberalism is associated with the destructive and deregulatory moment, attacks on Keynesian-welfarist structures and the extension of neoliberal strategies to the international domain. Roll-out neoliberalism is the creative and proactive moment characterised by pro-market institution-building and the social normalisation of its logic.16 These two concepts provide a flexible framework for analysing neoliberalism as a dynamic phenomenon in its actually existing forms. With his conceptual framework set, Peck proceeds to explore how the neoliberal idea has been constructed in history. The ensuing chapters can be divided into two themes.

15. Peck, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason, 16. 16. Ibid., 226.

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Firstly, Peck explores the key interlocutors in the transatlantic dialogue begun in 1947 between the Mont Pelerin Society and the University of Chicago economics department. These chapters provide historical accounts of neoliberalisms intellectual lineage within geographically separate communities of like-minded economists and political theorists, with specific emphasis on the mercurial Friedrich Hayek of the Austrian School and affable Milton Friedman of the Chicago School. But, neoliberalism did not develop in a straight line from idea to policy. Rather, in both communities, it was formed in the crucible of an embattled intellectual collective, unified by a doctrinal belief in state minimalism and shared rejection of the worlds post-war embrace of Keynesianism. The two chapters on the Mont Pelerin and Chicago paradigms effectively reconstruct the intellectual cross-currents that yielded the neoliberal ideal. These chapters ably demonstrate Pecks first premise, that neoliberalism is not an internally cohesive theory of political economy. However, a biography of an idea that revisits familiar characters like Mises, Hayek, Friedman et al. would be insufficient. Thus, Peck turns his attention to how figures beyond the academy contribute to neoliberalisms morphology. He looks to more contemporary actors and events that have made a contribution to 21st-century neoliberalism. Here, the focus is primarily on urban governance in both tragic and creative times. The tragic scenes are laid in two settings: New York in its late 1970s decay and after September 11 crises, and post-Katrina New Orleans. In both cases, Peck highlights the way right-wing think tanks mobilised during periods of upheaval to present neoliberal solutions to urban crises. In New York, Peck describes how the conservative Manhattan Institute made concerted efforts in the 1980s and 1990s to promote market solutions to the citys crippling debt and social problems. Though the term is not used, these solutions resemble roll-back neoliberalism (more on this ambiguity later). Among its most notable adherents was Rudy Giuliani, whose policy programmes in his first term as mayor were heavily influenced by the in-house publication of the Manhattan Institute. After 11 September, the Institute mobilised a similar, cynical effort to dissuade in the strongest terms a return to deficit spending as part of the reconstruction of lower Manhattan. In post-diluvian New Orleans, mostly out-of-state neoliberal think tanks redoubled their efforts to promote new programmes of economic and moral reform for the city. In their view, the pre-Katrina pathologies were the product of failed welfare-state dependency imposed by paternalistic governments. After the flood, New Orleans represented a tabula rasa of sorts, an opportunity for urban rebirth along proto-neoliberal lines. If the crises experienced in New York and New Orleans reveal the attraction neoliberals have for catastrophes, gentrification trends in established cities demonstrate neoliberalisms redeployment as a mode of urban economic development policy repackaged in the rhetoric of creativity. Here, Peck engages the creative city/class discourse and its chief proponent Richard Florida. Peck argues that the discourse of commodified innovation, creative class accommodation, fast economy and flexible urban governance sits squarely within the ambit of neoliberalism. It prioritises economic growth by way of flexible forms of production, market-enabling policy written by municipal governments and the empowerment of a precarious network of privileged creative actors over service workers and other invisible urban residents. Peck concludes with a sharp assessment of urban neoliberalism in hipster garb: creativity strategies canalize and constrain

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urban-political agency, even as their material payoffs remain extraordinarily elusive. The cult of urban creativity is therefore revealed in its true colours, as a form of soft law/lore for a hyper competitive age.17 Constructions of Neoliberal Reason closes with an almost real-time interpretation of Barack Obamas economic policy. Much like the rest of his electoral persona, the finer points of the future presidents policy could only be pieced together from public statements. The final chapter narrates the ascendance of Obama through an interpretation of the attitudes Obama took towards the economic crisis of 20079. Peck asserts that Obamanomics was not the creeping socialist hobgoblin of right-wing nightmares, or the hopeful neo-Keynesianism of the progressive left. Rather, it was, and remains, an updated version of Third Way technocratic pragmatism informed by highly skilled advisors another amalgam of activist government and market rationality.18 While Obamas campaign rhetoric of hope and change implied bottom-up social democratic reform, his management of crises as president was decidedly cautious, conventional and neoliberal. Obamas nudgeocracy is characterised by roll-out neoliberalism, but, again, Peck is not explicit on this point. Like the chapters on urban governance, here is another instance where the theoretical framework is not integrated into the chapter. This oversight is unfortunate because it is not easy to discern any common conceptual thread that unites the case study chapters. Overall, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason makes an important contribution to the literature on neoliberalism in the 21st century. Its chief strength is the elaboration of the roll-back and roll-out neoliberal frameworks that conceptualise the different spatial and temporal permutations of neoliberalism. However, as hinted earlier, there is a significant shortcoming in the way Peck integrates his theoretical framework and case studies. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason is animated by two interrelated questions, but at times they diverge and the book appears to pursue two separate projects at once. The point Peck makes about the polymorphous character of neoliberalism is vital and his rollback/roll-out conceptualisation is propitious. But it is puzzling that the conceptual framework carefully set out in Chapter 1 has little bearing on the rest of the book to the extent that it is not clear if Peck realises his own theoretical objective. Peck sets out a programme to approach neoliberalisation as a process realised through political action and institutional reinvention, engaging with programs and programmers in word and deed.19 Certainly, this is an ambitious project and he succeeds on the point about programmers and words, but less so when it comes to programmes and deeds. The majority of Constructions of Neoliberal Reason is about the evolution of neoliberalism as an idea in the minds and publications of its proponents. Without a doubt, ideational construction is an indispensable part of 90 years of neoliberalisation but it is only half of the story. After presenting a highly credible theory of roll-back and roll-out neoliberalisation, Pecks analysis leaves the conceptualisation of evolving institutional deeds to focus primarily on the discursive formation of the word. Certainly, neoliberalism is constructed over time, but Peck does not provide a theoretical basis for explaining how it is constructed.
17. Ibid., 224. 18. Ibid., 258. 19. Ibid., 33.

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Instead, he relies on idiographic cases where elite actors in academia, think tanks and high office improvise ideas in real time to deal with fast-moving policy problems. Neoliberalism, conceptualised from the start as a process of constant institutional reorganisation, largely disappears from the analysis. Sure enough, instances of roll-back and roll-out neoliberalism can be gleaned from Pecks case studies but they are never expressed as such. This makes for a disjointed narrative that severs the case analysis from an otherwise compelling theoretical framework. A less charitable reading would suggest that Peck chose the wrong theory to pursue an analysis of the construction of neoliberalism. It makes sense instead, to frame the case material differently. A more appropriate approach towards the discursive construction of neoliberalism in intellectual and policy circles would be a theory of epistemic power that can locate the capacity to shape decision-making processes at the level of the agents that appear in his cases.20 This would certainly account for the ideational origins of neoliberal programmes and provide context for the influence of ideas on policy. But it would not account for the execution and evolution of neoliberal policy once it was set in motion. This is precisely where the roll-out/roll-back theoretical framework should be integrated into the case analysis to explain the dynamics of actually existing neoliberalism. But this does not occur and a complete articulation of the ideational and institutional construction of neoliberalism is not fully realised. Pecks inquiry into the construction of capitalisms neoliberal variant and Balakrishnans considerations of power and capitalism in a time of war converge neatly around themes about free-market primacy and the so-called new wars of the 21st century. They speak to Manns observation about the continuous interaction and reconstitution of real-world phenomena, the subtext of which is the (de)evolution of the state in a complex world. This is not to take the state out of the equation or relegate it to a supporting role. That mistake was made in the mid-1990s. Rather, it is to acknowledge reconfigurations in the nature of states themselves, as non-state actors and other forces encroach upon its hitherto exclusive domain. It is no longer possible, if it ever was, to give the state ontological centrality by default in political or philosophical reasoning. As Mann insisted, an overall theory of states, militarism or the economy must involve a consideration of them all. What this entails is a world of seemingly intractable complexity and frightful volatility. The global dynamics of the past decade fit this description well. The decade since 11 September has demonstrated the destabilising power of non-state forces which states themselves have limited means to address. The catalysing force of global terrorism and the subsequent wars have brought the limits of conventional military power to the fore. These cross-currents have also yielded a scenario whereby the states power projection capabilities have become inextricably linked with non-state market actors. Since the end of the Cold War, private soldiering has become a global industry aided in part by the end of the superpower rivalry, military downsizing, the ascendancy of neoliberalism and globalisation.21
20. For example, see Anna Leander, The Power to Construct International Security: On the Significance of Private Military Companies, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 33, no. 3 (2005): 80326. 21. P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Private Military Industry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003) provides an excellent account of private military firms and remains the touchstone work in the burgeoning literature on military privatisation.

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Over the past decade, military contractors have been indispensable to US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Scholars working in this field do not hesitate to state that contractors in war zones are not new. Debates about the for-profit warrior are part of a long discourse on mercenarism that dates from ancient Greece, to Renaissance Italy and post-colonial Africa. But the spectre of lynched contractors in Fallujah, civilian massacres in Baghdad and charges of fraud, profiteering and abuse raise unsettling questions about the private-sector participation in war, and its repercussions on the way we think about states and the ethics of violence. Just Warriors, Inc.: The Ethics of Privatized Force22 addresses a phenomenon that sees the entanglement of states, militarism and economics, and adds a normative dimension. Deane-Peter Baker discusses a phenomenon that arises from a complex interaction of neoliberal capitalism and war, and has serious implications for the future of both. In Just Warriors, Inc. Baker, professor of philosophy at the United States Naval Academy, makes a timely philosophical inquiry into the normative repercussions of commodifying the legitimate use of force. Just Warriors, Inc. is located at the intersection of literature in political philosophy and International Relations scholarship. It integrates a 21st-century incarnation of the decades-old debates about the militaryindustrial complex and the centuries-old tradition of Just War theory. Here, Baker considers some of the pressing moral questions attendant on the widespread use of private military contractors in the post-11 September wars, where they have been deployed to undertake tasks, including the use of lethal force, associated historically with the sovereign state. He joins a debate that has gained renewed salience in an era where the United States has attempted to balance the imperatives of national security, humanitarian intervention and justifiable expense.23 The results of these inquiries have been rather counter-intuitive and run against long-standing normative assumptions about the repugnancy of killing for profit. In most cases, political philosophers find it difficult to sustain an intrinsic case against the practice and find room for the conditional use of for-profit combatants in times of war. Beginning from this premise, Baker fundamentally rejects the resistance to private military contractors in academic and popular discourse as unduly hostile. He contends that censorious claims about contracted combatants are uncritically focused on the inherent character flaws of so-called mercenaries. The real moral questions, he says, have less to do with the freelance soldier and are much more philosophically challenging. There is, he claims, no intrinsic reason that we should reject contracted combatants as means to just ends in a world plagued by violence and victimisation. In this sense, the philosophical point of Just Warriors, Inc. is to articulate the instrumentality of contracted combatants in relation to more intrinsic concerns. The higher-order question is about the

22. Baker, Just Warriors, Inc. 23. James Pattison, Outsourcing the Responsibility to Protect: Humanitarian Intervention and Private Military and Security Companies, International Theory 2, no. 1 (2010): 131; Cecile Fabre, In Defence of Mercenarism, British Journal of Political Science 41, no. 3 (2010): 53959; C.A.J. Coady, Morality and Political Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Tony Lynch and A.J. Walsh, The Good Mercenary?, Journal of Political Philosophy 8, no. 2 (2000): 13353.

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protection of people, human rights and the political communities that sustain them. Bakers criticism is that dwelling on the inherent character flaws of contractors distracts from the more important question: can they be legitimately deployed in the service of just causes? To pursue this line of thinking, Baker engages in a series of conceptual expositions and philosophical debates that have been reignited during the post-11 September wars. The first three chapters develop a framework in which to analyse a just warrior. After tracing moral objections to mercenarism from Machiavelli to the present, Baker concludes that they are inadequate. He reframes the debate on the essential features of a just warrior, irrespective of any publicprivate distinction: courage, comradeship, sense of honour, sacrifice and professionalism. He makes a plausible claim that the determinants of a morally legitimate combatant are rooted in a set of virtues, rather than any affiliation with a state. It follows that a privately sourced combatant can embody these virtues just as much as a state soldier. (The corollary is that state soldiers are equally susceptible to the vices of murderous ineptitude and craven thuggery seen on the ground. But these matters are bracketed and set aside.) If the premise is accepted that contracted combatants can embody the warriors virtue, then the question about inherent character flaws of privately sourced soldiers is irrelevant. How, then, does expanding the range of legitimate combatants to the private sector affect broader issues within the Just War tradition? Here, Baker extends his scope of analysis to issues such as the right of states to engage in combat, state control over the use of force and the responsibility to protect. Just Warriors, Inc. is not pitched directly at a scholarly audience so Baker can only sketch the contours of its many implications. Nevertheless, his inquiries are provocative and reveal uncomfortable assumptions about the ethics of war in the 21st century. Perhaps as a result of the targeted audience, Baker must leave many crucial assumptions unsupported in his exposition. Though there are numerous objections to be made, one pervasive assumption is worth reflecting upon here. Baker rests practically all his moral reasoning on the foundations of an abstract state and assumes that the state has some morally privileged standing, or that the special relationship between the state and violence is somehow axiomatic. Though this strategy is not without precedent in political philosophy, it goes without justification in Just Warriors, Inc. In essence, Baker fetishises the state by deferring to its central ontological place in moral reasoning about violence and the use of force. Ascribing a central place to the state is a pragmatic move that anchors Just War theory in something with long historical precedent. The instrumentality of the state as a perspicuous iteration of the common life is attractive, but fraught, and needs to be interrogated. This does not happen and the move to defer to the ontological centrality of the state is a short cut around a broader debate that seeks to justify the state itself in normative terms. This is evident in the ways he anchors the virtues of the just warrior to state service (Chapters 1 and 3), his use of Agent Theory to establish the possibility of healthy civilprivate military relations (Chapters 5 and 6), the moral importance of having democratically elected leaders contract and monitor commercial combatants (Chapter 7), and, ultimately, the equitable implementation of the responsibility to protect doctrine (Chapter 8). In each case, the supposedly paradigmatic relationships between state and soldiers, norms and violence are taken for granted.

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One particular usage of the abstract state provides a helpful ingress into a broader criticism of Bakers state fetishisation: the grounding of the right to fight in a conception of the common life. Baker takes a position that every state must be considered to have the prima facie right to national defense, but under certain conditions it may be justifiably concluded that a particular state does not, in fact, have this right.24 This right to fight hinges upon the notion that states, or comparable institutions, function as protectors of the common life, a concept borrowed from Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. In turn, this common life provides the context that defines specific forms of human flourishing which rights are intended to protect. Individuals need a societal backdrop that acts as the context of choice in which individuals pursue and achieve their full humanness. For Baker, the intrinsic significance of the context of choice is what permits the establishment of institutional forms like the state in order to ensure its longevity. He continues: humans will often be dependent on institutions like states for both attaining and maintaining their fundamental humanness the right to defend the attributes of full humanness extends to the right to defend the necessary conditions for human flourishing. Thus, because the existence of a state (or equivalent institution) is a necessary condition for the achievement and maintenance of the attributes of full humanness, persons have the right to defend their state (or equivalent institution) with lethal force.25 If states have a right to fight, then soldiers have a right to fight on behalf of their states. Now, if we accept that there are sets of obligations that go along with our rights as citizens, including the responsibility to fight in defence of the state which secures the common life, does this exclude the use of contracted combatants? Baker does not think so. There is little justification, he says, for the view that the deployment of contracted combatants is inimical to, or contravenes, the states right to fight, or the citizens duty to contribute to the states efforts to preserve the common life. Indeed, the common life is an interesting way to frame the discussion about political communities without appearing state-centric. But while the common life is intended to denote different kinds of political communities, including the state, Baker effectively conflates the common life with the state. Political communities that give meaning to choices exist in multiple forms, and though states may be the most efficacious institutions for attaining and maintaining the common life, they are neither necessary nor sufficient. Here, states are classed alongside unspecified equivalent institutions without any justification or exploration of communities that may be able to foster a common life, which has rather serious implications for his theory. It is unclear what such an institution would look like. One can imagine a community that provides an institutional and societal context for a common life. Does this kind of community retain the right to defend itself with hired combatants? The question is particularly salient in cases of territorially concentrated but stateless communities, such as the Palestinians, who endure repression at the hands of Israels ostensibly liberal democracy. How would Bakers common life work if the state was replaced with some other form of political community, or if another actor supplanted the state in the principalagent relationship? It is not clear, but there are serious implications for Bakers ethics of privatised force. The
24. Baker, Just Warriors, Inc., 77. 25. Ibid., 76.

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superficial treatment of alternative political communities brings his state-centricity into sharp relief and significantly delimits the number and nature of choice contexts in the world. In effect, it limits the kinds of actors that may legitimately deploy private force to one, the state. While the ontological centrality of the state is only implicit throughout the text, its fetishised treatment comes out completely in one of the books closing thoughts. Baker writes: [If] there is one aspect in which the current debate has tended to miss the point about contracted combatants, it is in the focus on the contractors themselves rather than on the states that employ them. [T]he really important ethical issues come down to the responsibility of the state for its decisions about the exercise of armed force and the agents that exercise force on its behalf.26 Here, we see how the presumption of state primacy informs Bakers reasoning. The state is assumed to be the principal in all cases for the purpose of his philosophical analysis. The possibility of non-state principals contracting privatised force is ignored until a passing, concluding remark. In the final pages, Baker turns to the question about non-state principals but elects to sidestep it, leaving it for future consideration. Though he does not posit an answer to the question of non-state principals, one is implicit in an earlier passage about private security guards such as campus police or those that patrol shopping malls. These private actors enforce order where public enforcement is lacking. If we extrapolate to the question about war-fighting, we would expect Baker to see rent-a-soldiers as supplements to international law enforcement or as enforcers of global justice principles, provided that the principal is just. If the non-state principal fulfils the moderate instrumentalist criterion laid out in Chapter 8, then, conceivably, anyone could hire a private army. Would Baker find this morally acceptable? It is hard to say because, by his standard, the virtues of these contracted combatants, particularly sacrifice and professionalism, can only be fully tested in their relation to the state. The fetishisation of the state becomes increasingly problematic in an empirical world where armed non-state actors proliferate and market conditions determine outcomes. As he readily admits, an account of cosmopolitan Just War theory would need much deeper engagement than he can allow, but it is his crucial sidestep around non-state actors that cannot be relegated to secondary status in the analysis of world politics. Despite these criticisms, Bakers philosophical inquiry raises inescapable questions about conflict, justice and humanitarianism. Integrating them into a more holistic understanding of the world is a challenge that will perplex scholars and practitioners alike. The commentaries in Antagonistics, the critical political economy in Constructions of Neoliberal Reason and the normative theory of Just Warriors, Inc. are by no means part of a single scholarly dialogue. On the contrary, they diverge considerably in subject matter, method and style. They do, however, coalesce around a shared concern about the nature of capitalism and conflict, and together they yield valuable insights into contemporary world politics. Foremost among these insights is the (de)evolution of the state, as both an agent and structure of world politics, as a site of ideological contention, and as a concept at the centre of analytical and moral reasoning. In public policy, the implications explored in these books have profound implications, whether it is the reconstruction of

26. Ibid., 183, emphasis added.

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New Orleans and lower Manhattan, or the realities of military privatisation. No doubt, the conceptual and ethical implications are even more far-reaching. For scholars, the success of political and sociological inquiry, one may anticipate, depends greatly on the kind of perspective articulated by Michael Mann and many others since. His call for a broader and more integrated approach to the social sciences is, in a small but important way, met in each of these three books. Societal and state actors, ideas and ideologies, military power and political ethics are woven together and account, with varying degrees of success, for the kinds of structures and interactions that Mann had in mind. Reading the three together, each yields insights into the cross-currents of war and capitalism and, as discussed earlier, the advanced capitalist state in the modern world. Though not without their respective shortcomings, they shine an important light on the structural, ideational and institutional parameters of world order in the 21st century. Author Biography Aaron Ettinger is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Studies at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.