Today, Mahmoud Jibril, the prime minister of the National Transitional Council (NTC), the interim government in Libya, met with President Obama at the White House to seek recognition of the NTC as the ruling body of Libya (See video here). Yesterday, the British government was the first to invite the NTC to open a foreign office on its soil.
As someone who spends much of her time considering what makes a political community a community, and thus, what constitutes true regime change, I am intrigued by this appeal of Minister Jibril. Of course, to call him Minister Jabril is to already grant what he requests, that the body he represents be recognized as the true representatives of the people of Libya and thus the rightful government of Libya. Nonetheless, the question remains open. When Aristotle sets himself to the task of defining political life he acknowledges that the question is a pressing one precisely in the context of regime change. It isn't clear whether the community should be held to its promises and debts incurred in a regime once it is overthrown. So people want to know what makes the community what it is: the shared territory or the rulers? If it is the rulers, it seems that the community becomes a wholly other community when the ruling regime changes. Aristotle will go on to argue that it is the rulers, but that the rulers must be understood to be the citizens, citizens are those who engage in rule. Changing the regime is changing who is a citizen. Or, when you change who the rulers are you are changing who the citizens are.
By speaking of the ruler in this way, Aristotle is able to speak about political rule without conflating it to master rule, or tyranny. This configuration is helpful for understanding the Qaddafi regime, which appears to rule under the clear definition of the tyrant: like the master of a slave, the tyrant rules for his own needs and ends and puts the people to work to achieve them for him. They are not for themselves, one could say, not setting their own ends collectively, but his. But while Aristotle's analysis seems like an internal one -- how are the community understood by those within it when there is a change in rulership, today's meeting pointed to the importance within nation-state relations of the external recognition of the government.
There are a number of pragmatic reasons that Jibril seeks recognition from the United States of the rebel governing body at this time. One reason is that Jibril and the NTC want access to the Libyan governments' frozen assets amounting to $180 million in U.S. banks. (There was a remarkable story on NPR this morning about the NTC finance minister, Ali Tarhouni, robbing a Libyan bank by tunneling into it.) But the obvious reason is that recognition of a government as the rightful government of a people by other governments, as we learn from Aristotle, is recognition of a new community.
In her book, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, Wendy Brown explains sovereignty in a way that sheds some light on what is happening here. She argues that sovereignty has a split personality: it functions one way when it is focused inward and another way when it is focused outward. Focused inward, sovereignty is the unifying force that joins disparate groups and citizens to form a whole. Focused inward, sovereignty is not democratic but the power that stands above the will of the people (if that is what popular sovereignty seeks) because it is what judges, determines and executes that will. Thus, it is situated above the people. Yet focused outward, in relation to other states, sovereignty is what enables a state to have a democratic relation to other states. It shows the autonomy of the state and the equality of the state in relation to other states. Thus it is only between sovereign states that there is true democracy. Well, of course, even in the international setting, money and military might allow some sovereign states to move more freely across the globe and to pursue their ends with impunity more than others. But sovereignty as autonomy in relation to others is the states relation to other states, it is not the relation of the people within the state to one another or to the state.
Yet in light of all of this, what is so striking about this appeal by Prime Minister Jibril is the continued importance of recognition from others in order for one's sovereignty to be acknowledged. In contrast to a universal democracy, one that is found in various theories of collective action where to be here is to belong, the autonomous sovereignty of states must be won from others. Moreover, that some states' recognition is more influential than others suggests that some states are more sovereign than others. An apparent regress ensues wherein the autonomous sovereignty that faces outward still requires the same kind of sovereignty that is at work when the sovereign is faced inward -- there must be some position that is superior that recognizes who is autonomous sufficiently to be included. So Jibril seeks recognition from the more sovereign state of the United States, just as on the other end of this regress, some bodies are recognized as contributing to popular sovereignty because they are autonomous and others are not. Brown's inward / outward perspectives collapse into one another on this analysis.
I'm working on a project now (they're piling up) that aims to show the opposition between sovereignty and democracy based on different conceptions of border life. Putting the border life element aside for now, this appeal by the NTC illustrates the case that wherever there is sovereignty, there cannot be true democracy, even in international politics. There is more to be theorized in this appeal for recognition: for example, the revolutionary possibilities in seeking recognition from other states when there has not yet been official abdication of the previous ruler and the implications of the paradoxical situation wherein one must appeal to the undemocractic logic of sovereignty to establish a more democratic community. I'd like to see others thinking this through.
Bullshit and Journalism
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