War on terrorism and the crises of the political

Abstract

The paper deals with the form the war against terror calls into question: not only the ethical norms for the treatment of prisoners of war, the limits of just wars, but also our understanding of the justifiability of politics. Once “under attack”, the western world responded with a wide-spread, multifaceted, multi-front war, transgressing a set of international norms and laws with reference to a “state of emergency” and “self-defense”. I will argue that in the wake of 9/11 the application of “self-defense” and “state of emergency”-logics has triggered legitimacy crises of the political: a) In the national context, the political was reduced to Carl Schmitt's understanding of politics in state of emergency that allows to trump ethical or moral concerns limitlessly. b) In the international context a historic abandonment of the classical “no-firststrike- doctrin” is about to be established. “Self-defense” is used as a justification for military action. The legitimation-discourse on all sides in the middle east can serve as an example for the dangerous use of the topos of “self-defense” for actions that range from self-defense to preventive attack, to aggressive attack, to terrorist action. The American nuclear plans can serve as another. The paper reflects on the crises of the political in times of “self-defense” and will try to offer a normative criterion to judge and criticize political or military action.