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‘Welcome to Our Age of Impunity’

By Siomn Tisdall – a liberal who believes in 'international law'

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“I argue that contrary to the traditional understanding, the epoch of ‘formal imperialism’ was not the highpoint of imperialism’s embedding into international law, but that imperialism predated the epoch of formal colonies, and has survived it. There has long been a tendency towards the universalisation of the sovereign state, the fundamental juridical unit of international law, and in a modern ‘anticolonial’ system of international law, imperialism is hidden within law, but I argue that without it, international law could not exist… I argue that coercive political violence – imperialism – is the very means by which international law is made actual in the modern international system.


“The international rule of law is not counterposed to force and imperialism: it is an expression of it… In fact… though it is quite true that ‘force decides’, the ‘equal rights’ it mediates are really, and remain, truly equal. This is precisely the paradox of international law: force is determining, but determining between relations which cannot be understood except as equal in fundamentally constitutive and constituting ways. The equality and the force determine each other: the equality gives determining force its shape; the force – violence – is equality’s shadow.” (China Miéville, Between Equal Rights, 2005, pp. 1-8)



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