`There are No Rules' (George W. Bush): International Order After September 11

Abstract

This article examines the role of rules and other kinds of norms in the struggle against terrorism. The first section looks at legal and moral rules: at what the seven months since September 11 tells us about the multiple and complex roles that norms play in world politics; at the processes of institutional and solidarist enmeshment which, on some accounts, have pressed the US to engage with international law and institutions; at the limits to such processes; and at the way in which the nature of the struggle against terrorism and the idea of civilizational conflict have influenced understandings of the roles of legal and moral rules. The second part examines the role of political norms: in terms of the rationality of terrorist violence, the links between terrorism and the conditions from which it arises, and the impact of these events on US power and hegemony and on the idea of a hegemonic political order.