Description
In times of fear and unpredictability, we look for solutions. IR as a discipline and as a practice has always turned to international law to offer solutions. Indeed, much of the literature that links IR and international law views international as a source of hope and certainty, and as the moral beacon to save us from the violence and destruction of international politics. This paper argues that this Manichean depiction of the discipline and practice of international politics is not simply overstated, or an insignificant prejudice. It is an essential part of international legal theory’s construction of international law as a superior mode of social organisation to politics. This paper applies securitisation theory to international legal theory to demonstrate how its depiction of global politics is central to its own self-understanding. Securitisation theory argues that the construction of a threat makes social or intellectual commitments, and particular outcomes possible. It will show how international politics is constructed as a threat to, variously, peace, justice, order, fairness and to international law itself. This construction of international politics as a threat justifies the intellectual commitment to the idea that law is unique and distinct from politics, specifically in the belief that legal norms are distinct from social norms. We see this manifested in the Tinkerbell fear: the repeated warning that we should not look too closely at how international law works (i.e. why states comply); we should just be grateful that it does. This forestalling of critique is combined with a powerful assumption that law’s uniqueness makes is a superior mode of social organisation to politics. This is international legal theory’s founding myth: that international law is different from everything non-law and this explains its greater normativity.
