{"id":1674,"date":"2005-07-01T08:58:24","date_gmt":"2005-07-01T12:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/site\/?p=1674"},"modified":"2011-03-20T12:16:17","modified_gmt":"2011-03-20T16:16:17","slug":"issue_46-2_engle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/2005\/07\/issue_46-2_engle\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal Internationalism, Feminism, and the Suppression of Critique"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Article:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>I  have been asked to reflect on the significance of the range of new  visions of global public order now circulating in the United States, and  to consider, in particular, what has happened to the liberal consensus  of twenty years ago. There are, of course, many directions that a  response might take. One could question whether there really was a  liberal consensus twenty years ago and, if there was a seeming  consensus, what underlying concerns and tensions it attempted to  mediate. One could focus on political science, economics, history,  critical theory, postcolonial theory, or feminist theory and discuss how  one or all of those has played a role in various challenges to liberal  legal internationalism inside the United States. One could attempt to  understand liberal legal internationalism in relationship to U.S.  foreign relations and question the extent to which it emerged and  coalesced around a particular view of the United States\u2019 role in the  global order. One might consider what, if any, causal relationship  exists between the dissolution of the apparent consensus and the rise of  what many consider to be a new American exceptionalism. And one might  even consider whether liberal legal internationalism has unwittingly  participated in constructing a new American exceptionalism.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I  will not explore all of these questions here. Yet I will attempt to  touch upon many of them through the consideration of a couple of recent  examples of the Bush administration\u2019s deployment of international legal  rhetoric and process to protect women\u2019s rights, and by examining the  various critiques they have and have not engendered. In particular, I  will look at the Bush administration\u2019s intervention in Afghanistan and  its support of international efforts to end sex trafficking.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I  have chosen these case studies to understand contemporary views of  international law within the United Sates for a variety of reasons.  Since September 11, it seems that almost every international legal  scholar in the United States has felt the need to write something about  the war on terrorism, often specifically challenging or defending U.S.  responses to September 11. As a result, it is more difficult today than  it has been for some time to separate visions of public order  circulating within the United States from visions of public order about  the United States. Moreover, with the rise of a real right within the  discipline of international law in the United States over the past  decade and its manifestation in at least some of the Bush  administration\u2019s interpretations of international law, proponents and  even designers of parts of the war against Iraq and the war on terrorism  have effectively participated in and even altered the terms of much of  the debate within the international legal academy. While liberal  internationalists often contend that the Bush administration opposes  international law, I would suggest instead that the administration is in  many instances pursuing a vision of international law that does not  accord with the liberal internationalist version that has dominated the  past few decades. That is, the administration is often promoting a  classical view of international law that is based on sovereign consent,  at least on the sovereign consent of the United States.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The case  studies suggest, however, that the Bush administration policies also  contain a liberal internationalist streak. With regard to Afghanistan,  the administration has appealed to liberal internationalist and feminist  rhetoric about respecting human rights. In the context of trafficking,  it has appealed to a liberal internationalist process that favors  international cooperation. Thus, by offering examples where the United  States claims to be protecting international human rights and even does  so through a rhetorical, and in one instance procedural, commitment to  international cooperation, these case studies question the  characterization of U.S. foreign policy as an example of American  exceptionalism. In addition, they show how the assertion of acting in  the name of international human rights, particularly women\u2019s rights,  serves to silence much of the opposition that the substantive positions  themselves might otherwise invoke.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have been asked to reflect on the significance of the range of new visions of global public order now circulating in the United States, and to consider, in particular, what has happened to the liberal consensus of twenty years ago. There are, of course, many directions that a response might take. In particular, I will look at the Bush administration\u2019s intervention in Afghanistan and its support of international efforts to end sex trafficking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[37,64],"class_list":["post-1674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-print-archives","tag-americas","tag-trade"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZu3S-r0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}