Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence

Book excerpt: In a world plagued by war and terror, Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence sounds a warning: not only are global patterns of insecurity, violence and conflict getting ever more destructive and out of hand, but the ways we understand and respond to them will only prolong the crisis. When security is grounded in exclusion and alienation, ethics licenses killing and war, and freedom is a mask for imperial violence, how should we act? Anthony Burke offers a groundbreaking analysis of the historical roots of sovereignty and security, his critique of just war theory, and important new essays on strategy, the concept of freedom and US exceptionalism. He pursues critical engagements with thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Hardt and Negri, Emmanuel Levinas, Carl Von Clausewitz, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Michael Walzer, Michel Foucault and William Connolly. Combining a diversity of critical thought with analyses of the War on Terror, Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Vietnam War, the Indonesian crisis, globalization and the new drive for empire, Burke refuses easy answers, or to abandon hope. This innovative study will be of interest to students and researchers of politics and international relations, security studies, social and cultural theory and philosophy.