Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper, I make an initial attempt to study hegemony and institutions under conditions where both are present and uniquely so. In response to 9/11, the United States adopted the rhetoric of a “global war on terror.” In doing so, the US undertook to suppress terrorism through military and non-military means and indicated a willingness to act against those states providing support for terrorism. Simultaneously, an Office of Homeland Security was commissioned, to consolidate and extend federal bureaucracies in an effort to “take defensive measures to protect Americans against terrorism.”10 Aspromised, the “global war on terror” has utilized all of the tools of statecraft at the disposal of the US government. Most prominently, this has involved the use of military force by the United States and it allies in Afghanistan and, controversially, in Iraq. The latter, involving as it did the application of a recently articulated doctrine of
preemption,11 drew critical responses from scholars and policy analysts that the Bush administration was behaving “unilaterally.”