The War Law Institute is a small but sincere step towards a lofty goal; that of reimagining the world order from the perspective of the Global South. In this inaugural essay, I’d like to present what I hope the Institute will be as well as what I hope it won’t be. It won’t be a place where we ventriloquise the views of the Global North, it won’t be a place where we regurgitate the tired ahistoric accounts of events taught to us by the West, it won’t be a place where we dare not speak ideas which will cost us cushy positions in the Atlantic.
So what will it be? At its core, WLI aims to promote sovereign thinking. In this, we acknowledge that the Global South has long been in a period of intellectual stagnation, in which we merely bat ideas around which have flowed to us from the West, in which our finest scholars have left for the greener pastures in the North, in which we lack the self-esteem to generate our own theory of history. This is not to say that we do not have quality scholarship already, but it is to say that what is there is not enough. A cultural and intellectual revival is needed of a kind that would require many initiatives such as this to bring us closer to the goal of sovereign thinking.
So why start with war? We start with war because all history is the history of war and all civilisations owe their origins to the warrior. We start with war because notions of a ‘just war’ paved the way for colonial conquest, and in turn, armed resistance ousted these invaders from our territories. In starting with war, we acknowledge the bravery of freedom fighters who made the world a better place with weapons in their hands, we acknowledge how dubious the West’s claim to moral authority is after dragging us into two world wars, and we acknowledge all the steps on the way to war; the sanctions, the aid and the debt. In taking war as the centre of our circumference, we give no quarter to all the assumptions we hold about the world we live in and how we got here. We must wage war on the old for new ideas to spread.
So who are we and what do we want? There are many ways to describe us, the Rest (versus the West), the Global South (versus the Global North), bombable geographies (versus unbombable ones) or the darker nations (versus the lighter ones). It would be a mistake though to think that all states who fit this description think the same. We don’t. We are all nation-states pursuing our own interests. But we do share a history of colonisation, we share a history of not being white, and we share a history of resisting the hierarchy which was used to justify our subjugation.
What we want is simple; to create a lively commons in which we can generate and refine new ideas which reflect our own histories, cultures, and knowledge. In this, the WLI offers a platform where thinkers, lawyers and academics can share their expertise, articulate ideas and knowledge, and engage with each other. There is a need to reclaim our agency. Law, politics and economics are currently created in London, Washington and Brussels, it is our aim that in the future they will be made in Jakarta, Sao Paolo and Baghdad. In getting to this point, we must ask many wrong questions to get to the right answers, we must not shy away from debates which are uncomfortable and we must engage in meaningful conversation in a way which reflects our curiosity, wonder and anger.
WLI aims to be a modest contribution to the chorus of voices needed to rebuild an intellectual culture. There is much work to be done. We hope you will support us.