Law, Bombs, and Capital

International Law and the Empire, from the Colonial to the Neoliberal

Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use

first to shrink-wrap people’s minds
and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.
- Arundhati Roy*

The world is shaped by power struggle, and its terrains are paved by the dichotomy of power and
powerlessness, of dominations and subjugations, of wars and resistance.

And so is international law.

The essay of Antony Anghie on the colonial and postcolonial underpinnings of international law
reveals a vivid and insightful take on the role of power and powerlessness in the (un)making of
international order. It is a dent on the conventional view on international law as pristine –
devoid of the maladies of peoples of the Third World who historically bore the brunt of imperial
powers’ megalomaniac quest for imperialist expansion.

Anghie began from the vestiges of colonialism, and rightly so,

An understanding of the colonial vestiges of international law is fundamental in placing it in the

heart of the struggle for global justice. Whether it will forever be a means for imperialist
expansion or a conduit for the Third World peoples for Counter-Empire largely depends on us.
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*Lifted from Arudhati Roy’s critically acclaimed speech, Come September, delivered in 2002 for the Lannan Foundation. Roy is the author of the
Booker Prize winning novel The God of Small Things. Roy devoted her more than 20 years thereafter to activism against corporate globalization
and for global justice. The speech poetically dealt with power, globalization, nationalism and the US’ War on Terror. The lecture can be
accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHz8cpULupo