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War, Torture and Terrorism: Rethinking the Rules of International Security.

Article Excerpt
WAR, TORTURE AND TERRORISM." RETHINKING THE RULES OF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY BY ANTHONY F LANG JR AND AMANDA RUSSELL BEATTIE (EDS) (ROUTLEDGE, ABINGDON, 2009) 213 PAGES. PRICE US$42.95 (PAPERBACK) ISBN 9780415465229.

So much of the post-September 11 discussion of terrorism and security begins with bold assertions about the radical novelty of contemporary threats, such as terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and the urgency of doing something drastic about it. Unfortunately, this book is no exception. It is premised on the belief that 'the new international security order has forced changes in the standard rules' (1) on torture, collective security, weapons technologies and war crimes. Consequently, the book insists on a 'rethinking of the rules governing international security'. (2) The introduction by Anthony Lang even suggests that '[i]nstead of a lack of rules, we might say that there is a surfeit of rules, rules appearing at random and without any sense of how they fit into the current order'. (3) It is in this context of supposed 'radical change' (4) that this book asks the central question: 'What role should rules have in the current international security order.?' (5)

These are bold claims indeed. Old-fashioned international lawyers--taking a longer view of history and legal change--and perhaps a little suspicious of the more anxiously reactive strands of international relations, might rightly be sceptical. Challenges to international law, even by an apparently hegemonic superpower like the United States, rarely succeed in unilaterally imposing changes upon the international legal system. International law has often proved itself far more resilient and flexible than some of its realist opponents give it credit for. Within an increasingly thick and complex legal order with a multiplicity of actors, even superpowers can find themselves thwarted at many turns. As a Foucauldian analysis would suggest, power is not distributed in a simple binary relationship of domination and subordination, but is dispersed throughout multiple actors who each exercise varying degrees of influence, resistance and opposition. (6)

As is now evident almost eight years after September 11, the ambitious assertion of US military power under former President George W Bush succeeded only in demonstrating the weakness and fragility of US...

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