Ariel Colonomos

La sociologie des relations internationales à la recherche d’une morale

Aujourd’hui, nombre de sociologues se concentrent sur l’espace international. Il est désormais courant qu’un spécialiste d’un domaine—par exemple la sociologie du droit ou de la santé—traite de questions dont la portée est internationale à la fois en raison de la nature et l’évolution de son champ d’études ainsi que du regard qu’il porte sur lui. Simultanément, certains politistes de l’international pratiquent maintenant ce rapprochement avec la sociologie. Les relations internationales se sont ainsi ouvert à des disciplines fondamentales des sciences humaines. Après l’histoire, le droit, la philosophie et la science politique, la sociologie vient en renfort en vue d’établir puis de consolider une théorie de l’international. Ce double mouvement depuis les sciences humaines vers l’international en tant qu’objet et depuis les relations internationales vers des savoirs à vocation généraliste s’est amorcé depuis plusieurs décennies. Au sein des sciences sociales, les premiers débats d’une sociologie des relations internationales prennent forme et s’institutionnalisent progressivement à partir des années soixante. Avec l’internationalisation de la recherche et à la faveur du comparatisme, la mise en réseau des savoirs rend plus aisé le travail sur des objets inter ou transnationaux. En 1966, dans un colloque de sociologie à Evian, ses participants sont d’accord pour accorder une place spécifique aux questions internationales. Depuis, au sein de l’International Studies Association, de nombreux travaux d’inspiration sociologique ont vu le jour et, récemment en 2000, la section «International Political Sociology» a été formée. La sociologie fait désormais partie d’un savoir de l’international. Lorsque l’on songe aux auteurs qui ont le mieux compris les particularités, les changements et les ruptures du système international, la place de la sociologie se révèle incontournable. En effet, qu’il s’agisse d’Aron, d’Allison, de Burton, de Strange ou de Rosenau—pour ne citer que les plus célèbres—chacun d’entre eux a posé les termes d’une réflexion originale en important depuis la sociologie des instruments qui faisaient défaut à une discipline balbutiante. Dès lors, la place, la fonction et le statut de la sociologie posent question, aujourd’hui sans doute plus que par le passé en raison de la professionnalisation de la discipline. Plus particulièrement, nous souhaitons interroger les modalités actuelles de développement de la vision sociologique dans un champ spécifique d’études qui connaît une expansion sans précédent, l’analyse des valeurs, International Review of Sociology—Revue Internationale de Sociologie, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2002

Hostageship: What can we learn from Mauss?:

Hostages have become an important political and security issue in the context of conflicts in the Middle East and in Africa. The work of Marcel Mauss helps us to shed a new light on this phenomenon, which today is portrayed in negative terms as a major violation of fundamental universal rights such as the right to liberty. In The Gift, however, Mauss refers to the granting of hostages as “acts of generosity.” In line with Mauss’ approach, I consider hostageship as a “total social phenomenon,” combining politics, law, and economics, in both domestic and global settings, which reveals structural political and social questions that need to be addressed. The article highlights the role that hostages fulfilled as “gifts” in premodern international relations when hostages were granted and not taken as they are today. I underline the role they notably performed as elements of proto-diplomacy. I show the reasons why the function of hostages has changed over time by underlining the importance of the later Middle Ages as a transitional moment. Finally, I discuss the issue of contemporary hostageship from a normative perspective, arguing along with Mauss, against an interest-based utilitarian vision of hostageship and in favor of a solidarist approach to hostage crises.

The Normative Implications of “Knowing the Future” for Preventive War

ABSTRACT What if claims about the future informed us about the intentions and the capabilities of our opponents to wage war against ourselves? Would and should the existing norms that restrict the preventive use of force change in the wake of such transformation? This article highlights the potential normative consequences of this change and discriminates between several possible normative evolutions. Would and should the “knowability of the future” alter radically the traditional rule of self-defense? This rule could indeed be jeopardized but, as I argue in this paper, it should not (and might not necessarily). However, the distinction between preemption and prevention could become obsolete. Future claims about security will also induce new security doctrines as knowledge about the future would be used to signal one’s intentions and deter one’s opponent. This change would also have a significant impact on accountability, as citizens would have a more active role in discussions over foreign policy. Moreover, new modes of predictions and forecasting will challenge the traditional role of experts whose biases have hampered their analyses and anticipations. Thus, trustworthy future claims could bring significant progress in both ethical and political terms as they would trigger a debate on the role of knowledge in democratic societies.

Narrating, Explaining, Defining Preventive War

What is a preventive war? We have to overcome an initial paradox here. It would seem to be dual in nature, both offensive and defensive. Preventive war—the most striking example being the war launched by the United States against Iraq in 2003—is a conflict waged in a resolutely offensive mode. However, the watchword etched on the US standard was the security of the United States and the world. This chimes with a more or less well-founded belief that preventive war is necessary when a strictly defensive action would have failed and would have unjustly endangered the state that feels compelled to give battle.

Good or Bad Fortune

Very often, the judgment of wars conforms to the most traditional ethics, in which the judgment of an action depends on the intention guiding it. Self-defense, the just cause, and right intention—these are the elements most at issue. The second aspect of thinking on just wars reflects another concern: the priority to be accorded to an assessment of the consequences of individual acts or collective decisions. It is outcomes that count and the decision that produces them is subjected to scrutiny, while individuals’ capacities for action and foresight are assessed, together with the performance of the institutions in which they play a part. Transgressing the rules of distinction and proportionality is what characterizes a bad decision, and political and military errors are seen as moral failings. The individual is judged responsible for his acts and thus perceived, a priori, as master of his existence, of the meaning he accords to it and of the fate of those he includes in his world—that universe whose borders he is rearranging.

A Just War

The use of force develops in tandem with the ideas that announce it, legitimate it, accompany it, or sustain it. In this regard, the just war tradition is both a mirror to, and a compass for, “how Westerners wage war” or how—some of them—think it should or should not be waged. It is also the gauge of deep contradictions when soldiers and politicians attempt to justify it—precisely as preventive action. It is not at all my intention here to go back over a history of ideas with the aim of tracing the encyclopedic evolution of the notion of prevention. On the contrary, the aim is to identify certain questions deliberately chosen from the reading of the principal texts, thereby revealing some of the contemporary orientations and their contradictions and affording greater insight into the application of the ideas governing them.

Precision as Justification

The idea of “clean war”5 first entered the public arena during the 1990s and quickly fuelled an intense debate. Western armies proclaimed it and reduced their losses (the “no casualty” doctrine), while at the same time claiming to inflict less suffering on civilians at the sites where they fought (there were fewer civilians killed than before, and fewer than there might have been). These two measures are often related, particularly in aerial warfare: the higher the bombers fly, the greater the risk to which civilian lives are exposed because of the difficulty of precise targeting from such altitudes.

Targeted Killings: Manhunts

Precision is a doubly demanding concept. It is used in two related senses: in the calculation of an action aimed at the target to be hit and only that target, and also with regard to the distinction between civilians and combatants. This is one of the reasons why the policy of targeted killings is, no doubt, the most emblematic example of all forms of preventive action. Widely vaunted for their precision, “targeted killings” (the criterion and the term are both worthy of discussion) are one of the marks of Israel’s battle against those it refers to as enemies who kill its citizens. The United States uses similar methods.

The Fear of Accountability and Calculating the Incalculable

“Why didn’t you bomb Auschwitz!?” It was in such abrupt terms that an action was brought against the United States in a court of the District of Columbia in January 2001 by relatives of prisoners who had died in that concentration camp. They were demanding forty million dollars in reparations. Though this lawsuit had little prospect of success, it was nonetheless a stark expression of a deep-seated criticism of state decision-making. The state, the greatest liberator in what was without doubt a just war, was wrong.

Is There any Shame in Being Cynically Realist

These choice remarks are attributed to the American president, speaking of the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza . Roosevelt’s caustic maxim has passed into the history of international anti-morality: it announces and reflects quite accurately a certain “spirit” of the Cold War.