Read Empire for Free Online

significant symptom ofthis transformation
    is the development ofthe so-called right of intervention. 28 This is commonly conceived as the right or duty ofthe dominant subjects
    ofthe world order to intervene in the territories ofother subjects
    in the interest ofpreventing or resolving humanitarian problems,
    guaranteeing accords, and imposing peace. The right ofintervention
    figured prominently among the panoply ofinstruments accorded
    the United Nations by its Charter for maintaining international
    order, but the contemporary reconfiguration ofthis right represents
    a qualitative leap. No longer, as under the old international ordering,
    do individual sovereign states or the supranational (U.N.) power
    intervene only to ensure or impose the application ofvoluntarily
    engaged international accords. Now supranational subjects that are
    legitimated not by right but by consensus intervene in the name
    ofany type ofemergency and superior ethical principles. What
    stands behind this intervention is not just a permanent state of
    emergency and exception, but a permanent state ofemergency and
    exception justified by the appeal to essential values of justice. In other words, the right ofthe police is legitimated by universal values.29
    Should we assume that since this new right ofintervention
    functions primarily toward the goal of resolving urgent human
    problems, its legitimacy is therefore founded on universal values?
    Should we read this movement as a process that, on the basis of
    the fluctuating elements ofthe historical framework, sets in motion
    a constitutive machine driven by universal forces of justice and
    peace? Are we thus in a situation very close to the traditional
    definition ofEmpire, the one promulgated in the ancient Roman-
    Christian imaginary?
    It would be going too far to respond affirmatively to these
    questions at this early stage in our investigation. The definition of
    the developing imperial power as a science ofthe police that is
    founded on a practice of just war to address continually arising
    emergencies is probably correct but still completely insufficient. As
    we have seen, the phenomenological determinations ofthe new
    global order exist in a profoundly fluctuating situation that could
    W O R L D O R D E R
    19
    also be characterized correctly in terms ofcrisis and war. How can
    we reconcile the legitimation ofthis order through prevention and
    policing with the fact that crisis and war themselves demonstrate
    the very questionable genesis and legitimacy ofthis concept of
    justice? As we have already noted, these techniques and others like
    them indicate that what we are witnessing is a process ofthe material
    constitution ofthe new planetary order, the consolidation ofits
    administrative machine, and the production ofnew hierarchies of
    command over global space. Who will decide on the definitions
    ofjustice and order across the expanse ofthis totality in the course
    ofits process ofconstitution? Who will be able to define the concept
    ofpeace? Who will be able to unify the process ofsuspending
    history and call this suspension just? Around these questions the
    problematic ofEmpire is completely open, not closed.
    At this point, the problem ofthe new juridical apparatus is
    presented to us in its most immediate figure: a global order, a justice,
    and a right that are still virtual but nonetheless apply actually to us.
    We are forced increasingly to feel that we are participants in this
    development, and we are called upon to be responsible for what
    it becomes in this framework. Our citizenship, just like our ethical
    responsibility, is situated within these new dimensions—our power
    and our impotence are measured here. We could say, in Kantian
    fashion, that our internal moral disposition, when it is confronted
    with and tested in the social order, tends to be determined by the
    ethical, political, and juridical categories ofEmpire. Or we could
    say that the external morality ofevery human being