5 - From Iraq to Syria

Summary

This chapter documents the relevance of the ‘standard of civilisation’ for contemporary international law, despite the marked decline of explicit invocations of the concept. It does so by documenting the continuing existence and purchase of arguments that oscillate between the ‘logic of improvement’ and the ‘logic of biology’. By focusing on two distinct legal fields that have been highly relevant to the war on terror, the laws of occupation and jus ad bellum, this chapter documents the importance of conforming with the imperatives of the neoliberal state in order to be recognised as a subject of international law. In the first part, the chapter offers a detailed examination of the neoliberal reforms imposed in occupied Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority. It details both the promises anchored to the adoption of neoliberal capitalism and the constant negation of such promises based on Orientalist stereotypes based on Iraqis’ purported incapacity to government themselves. In the second part, this chapter focuses on the controversial ‘unwilling or unable’ doctrine situating it within the political economy of the ‘war on terror’ and the demand that post-colonial states subscribe to its imperatives.