Regions, strategies and empire in the global war on terror

Geopolitics

Volumn 12, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 586-606

  Dalby, Simon ^a  

^a CARLETON UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GEOPOLITICS; GLOBAL ECONOMY; GLOBALIZATION; MILITARY INTERVENTION; NATIONAL SECURITY; NEOLIBERALISM; REGIONAL SECURITY; TERRORISM;

NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 34748907805     PISSN: 14650045     EISSN: 15573028     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14650040701546079     Document Type: Article

References (74)

1. James Sidaway, Imagined Regional Communities: Integration and Sovereignty in the Global South (London: Routledge 2002).
2. Adrian Smith, '"Imagining Geographies of the 'New Europe': Geo-Economic Power and the New European Architecture of Integration'", Political Geography 21/5 (2002) pp. 647-670.
3. Matthew Sparke, In the Space of Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2005).
4. Ibid., p. 111, citing Robert D. Kaplan, An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America's Future (New York: Vintage 1999).
5. Martin W. Lewis and Karen E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley: University of California Press 1997).
6. John Agnew, Geopolitics: Revisioning World Politics, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge 2003).
7. Gear_axoid Ó Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1996).
8. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2000).
9. Robert D. Kaplan, Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground (New York: Random House 2005).
10. Thomas P. M. Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Putnam's 2004);
11. Thomas P. M. Barnett, Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating (New York: Putnam's 2005).
12. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America 2002 (Washington: The White House Feb. 2002).
13. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America 2006 (Washington: The White House Feb. 2006).
14. See W. S. Johnson, '"New Challenges for the Unified Command Plan'", Joint Forces Quarterly (Summer 2002) pp. 62-70. The April 2002 version of "The Commander's Map of the World" is available online at .
15. See Klaus Dodds, Geopolitics in Antarctica: Views from the Southern Oceanic Rim (New York: Wiley 1997).
16. On how the global war on terror links these themes in the Sahel in particular see Jeremy Keenan, '"Waging War on Terror: The Implications of America's 'New Imperialism' for Saharan Peoples'", The Journal of North African Studies 10/3-4 (Sept.-Dec. 2005) pp. 619-647.
17. Sandra T. Barnes, '"Global Flows: Terror, Oil and Strategic Philanthropy'", Review of African Political Economy 104/105 (2005) pp. 235-252.
18. The Defense Strategy of the United States of America (Washington: Department of Defense March 2005).
19. Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington: Department of Defense Feb. 2006).
20. Defense Strategy (note 17) pp. iv, 1.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., p. 2.
23. Ibid., p. 9.
24. Ibid., p. 10.
25. Ibid., p. 17.
26. Ibid., p. 19.
27. Ibid., p. 20.
28. A theme emphasised again in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (note 18).
29. The evolution of American forces is a slow process, and institutional inertia a major obstacle to the transformation of forces advocated by Donald Rumsfeld in particular, as critics of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review quickly pointed out. See Carl Conetta, '"QDR 2006: Do the Forces Match the Missions? DOD Gives Little Reason to Believe', Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo #36 (10 Feb. 2006), available at .
30. Kaplan, Imperial Grunts (note 9) p. 4.
31. Ibid., p. 5.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., p. 6, citing the 1980 reprint version of Bernard de Voto's The Course of Empire (New York: American Heritage 1980).
35. The 'QDR 2006' specifies a US military presence in 2006 in 130 countries.
36. Kaplan, Imperial Grunts (note 9) p. 10. One reviewer's comments printed on the dust jacket of Imperial Grunts suggest that Kaplan is America's Kipling; the imperial intertext is apparently seamless.
37. While Kaplan cites Michael Howard's The Invention of Peace: Reflections on War and International Order (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2000) here, he might also have noted that a leading strategist recently adopted this phrasing as an overarching metaphor for his analysis of the current geopolitical situation;
38. see Colin Gray, The Sheriff: America's Defense of the New World Order (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky 2004).
39. Kaplan, Imperial Grunts (note 9) p. 11.
40. Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (New York: Basic Books 2003).
41. Kaplan, Imperial Grunts (note 9) p. 13.
42. Ibid., p. 37. Kaplan cites Marguerite Youncenar, Memoirs of Hadrian (New York: Noonday 1990 [orig. 1951]).
43. On why this might be the case, see Jason Vest, '"Willful Ignorance: How the Pentagon Sent the Army to Iraq Without a Counterinsurgency Doctrine'", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (July/Aug. 2005) pp. 41-48.
44. Kaplan, Imperial Grunts (note 9) p. 254, citing Winston Churchill's The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (New York: Barnes and Nobel 1993 [orig. '1898]).
45. Barnett's map is available online at .
46. Simon Dalby, '"The Pentagon's New Imperial Cartography: Tabloid Realism and the War on Terror'", in Derek Gregory and Allan Pred (eds.), Violent Geographies: Fear, Terror and Political Violence (New York: Routledge 2007) pp. 295-308.
47. On discussions by practitioners concerning the consequences of American tactical actions in Iraq, see Nigel Aylwin-Foster, '"Changing the Army for Counter Insurgency Operations'", Military Review (Nov./Dec. 2005) pp. 2-15.
48. Barnett, Blueprint (note 10) p. 32.
49. James Kurth, '"George W. Bush and the Protestant Deformation'", The American Interest 1/2 (2005) pp. 4-16.
50. National Security Strategy 2006 (note 12) p. 36.
51. Barnett, Blueprint (note 10) p. 203.
52. Sparke, In the Space of Theory (note 3).
53. Francois Debrix, '"Tabloid Realism and the Revival of American Security Culture'", Geopolitics 8/3 (2003) pp. 151-190.
54. Kaplan, Imperial Grunts (note 9) p. 371.
55. Derek Gregory, The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq (Oxford: Blackwell 2004).
56. See Tony Burke, Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence: War Against the Other (Oxford: Routledge 2007).
57. See my critique of Kaplan's '"Coming Anarchy'" on these grounds in Simon Dalby, Environmental Security (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2002), and in '"Reading Robert Kaplan's Coming Anarchy'", in Gearóid Ó Tuathail, Simon Dalby and Paul Routledge (eds.), The Geopolitics Reader, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Routledge 2006) pp. 197-202.
58. P. Andreas, and T. J. Biersteker (eds.), The Rebordering of America: Integration and Exclusion in a New Security Context (New York: Routledge 2003).
59. On free trade as security policy see Robert Looney, '"U.S. Middle East Economic Policy: The Use of Free Trade Zones in the War on Terrorism', Mediterranean Quarterly 16/3 (2005) pp. 102-117.
60. David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003).
61. Andrew Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (New York: Oxford University Press 2005);
62. Michael Klare, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (New York: Metropolitan 2004).
63. John Agnew, Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 2005).
64. Neil Smith, The Endgame of Globalization (New York: Routledge 2005).
65. Simon Dalby, '"Political Space: Autonomy, Liberalism and Empire', Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 30/4 (2005) pp. 415-441.
66. Sparke, In the Space of Theory (note 3) p. 311.
67. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005).
68. As critics observed early on: Susan Roberts, Anna Secor and Matthew Sparke, '"Neoliberal Geopolitics'", Antipode 35 (2003) pp. 886-897;
69. Naomi Klein, '"Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in Pursuit of a Neocon Utopia', Harpers (Sept. 2004) pp. 43-52
70. and conventional wisdom has more recently reprised: Rajiv Chandrasekaran, '"Who Killed Iraq?', Foreign Policy 156 (Sept.-Oct. 2006) pp. 36-43.
71. Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin 2006).
72. John Agnew, 'Sovereignty Regimes: Territoriality and State Authority in Contemporary World Politics," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95/2 (2005) pp. 437-461.
73. Robert Latham, The Liberal Moment: Modernity, Security, and the Making of the Postwar International Order (New York: Columbia University Press 1997).
74. Hardt and Negri, Empire (note 8).