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Tarak Barkawi

London School of Economics and Political Science, International Relations, Faculty Member

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My scholarship uses interdisciplinary approaches to imperial and military archives to re-imagine relations between war, armed forces and society in modern times. I have written on the pivotal place of armed force in globalization, imperialism, and modernization, and on the neglected significance of war in social and political theory and in histories of empire. My last book, Soldiers of Empire, examined the multicultural armies of British Asia in the Second World War, re-conceiving Indian and British soldiers in cosmopolitan rather than national terms. Currently, I am working on the Korean War and the American experience of military defeat at the hands of those regarded as racially inferior. This new project explores soldiers’ history writing as a site for war’s constitutive presence in society and politics.
Address: Department of International Relations
London School of Economics
Houghton St.
London WC2A 2AE
UK

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Papers by Tarak Barkawi

Soldiers of Empire Indian and British Armies in World War II--Book Flyer

How are soldiers made? Why do they fight? Reimaging the study of armed forces and society, Tarak ... more How are soldiers made? Why do they fight? Reimaging the study of armed forces and society, Tarak Barkawi examines the imperial and multi-national armies that fought in Asia in the Second World War, especially the British Indian Army in the Burma Campaign. Going beyond conventional narratives, Barkawi studies soldiers in transnational context, from recruitment and training, to combat and memory. Drawing on history, sociology, and anthropology, the book critiques the “Western Way of War” from a postcolonial perspective. Barkawi reconceives soldiers as cosmopolitan, their battles irreducible to the national histories that monopolize them. This book will appeal to those interested in the Second World War, armed forces, and the British Empire, and to students and scholars of military sociology and history, South Asian studies, and international relations.

Powers of War: Fighting, Knowledge and Critique

This paper approaches the ontology of war by asking why, despite its constitutive function for po... more This paper approaches the ontology of war by asking why, despite its constitutive function for politics and society, war has never been made the object of an academic discipline? Through an analysis of the relationship between war and knowledge about war, we argue that the ontology of war is such that it disrupts foundational claims of the kind necessary for conventional forms of academic disciplinarity. At the center of the ontology of war is fighting, an idea we recover from Clausewitz. A moment of radical contingency, fighting both compromises knowledge about war and forces the unmaking and remaking of social and political orders. These generative powers of war operate through the production of systems of knowledge and their institutionalization in the academy, the state and wider society. Although of existential significance for political authority, these knowledges are vulnerable to the very contingency of war that produces them. This complex of relations between war, knowledge and power we term War/Truth. As such, an analytical framework adequate to war requires a reflexive relation to truth claims. We clear the ground for such a ‘critical war studies’.

Decolonizing War

What would it mean to decolonize the concept of war? “Decolonizing” means critiquing the ways in ... more What would it mean to decolonize the concept of war? “Decolonizing” means critiquing the ways in which Eurocentric ideas and historiographies have informed the basic categories of social and political thought. Dominant understandings of the concept of war derive from histories and sociologies of nation-state formation in the West. Accordingly, I critique this Eurocentric concept of war from the perspective of Small War in the colonies, that is, from the perspective of different histories and geographies of war and society than were assumed to exist in the West. I do so in order to outline a postcolonial concept of war and to identify some of the principles of inquiry that would inform a postcolonial war studies. These include conceiving force as an ordinary dimension of politics; situating force and war in transnational context, amid international hierarchies; and attending to the co-constitutive character of war and society relations in world politics.

The Postcolonial Moment In Security Studies

Review of International Studies, Jan 1, 2006

In this article, we critique the Eurocentric character of security studies as it has developed si... more In this article, we critique the Eurocentric character of security studies as it has developed since World War II. The taken-for-granted historical geographies that underpin security studies systematically misrepresent the role of the global South in security relations and lead to a distorted view of Europe and the West in world politics. Understanding security relations, past and present, requires acknowledging the mutual constitution of European and non-European worlds and their joint role in making history. The politics of Eurocentric security studies, those of the powerful, prevent adequate understanding of the nature or legitimacy of the armed resistance of the weak. Through analysis of the explanatory and political problems Eurocentrism generates, this article lays the groundwork for the development of a non-Eurocentric security studies.

The Imperial Peace:: Democracy, Force and Globalization

European Journal of International Relations, Jan 1, 1999

As a first step towards the development of an alternative account of the ‘democratic peace,’ we r... more As a first step towards the development of an alternative account of the ‘democratic peace,’ we rethink the object of analysis in the democratic peace debates by reworking some of the conceptual parameters through which it is defined. Specifically, we historicize the concepts – ‘democracy’ and ‘war’ – that enable the identification of zones of peace and war, and contextualize those zones in historical processes of globalization. This enables us to rethink both the context of the democratic peace in an alleged division of the international system into a zone of war and a zone of peace, and the central unit of analysis in the democratic peace debates, the sovereign and territorial liberal democratic state. We then outline a new research agenda organized around the ordering of territorially dispersed populations, the constitution and international organization of force, and the role of imperial states in the construction of an international system comprised of zones of peace and war.

Strategy as a Vocation: Weber, Morgenthau and Modern Strategic Studies

This essay introduces Max Weber's sociology of modern culture to International Relations. Previo... more This essay introduces Max Weber's sociology of modern culture to International Relations. Previous treatments of Weber in the discipline focus on Morgenthau’s use of Weberian ideas rather than on the differences in their respective positions. In appropriating Weber’s ‘ethic of responsibility’ for his theory of power politics, Morgenthau neglected his sociology of ‘rationalisation’ and analysis of the displacement of cultural values in modern policymaking. In Morgenthau’s theory foreign policy is judged in terms of consequences for state power while for Weber policy is judged in terms of consequences for cultural values. This crucial difference in their understanding of the political ethics of realism is anatomised. Using Weber’s sociology of modern culture and oft-misunderstood view of the relation between science and values, the essay analyses the repercussions of Morgenthau’s influential understanding of realism in strategic policy science.

Diplomacy, War, and World Politics

Utile Forms: Power and Knowledge in Small Wars

Review of International Studies, May 2013

This article introduces the concept of “utile forms” and analyzes the effects of these forms in i... more This article introduces the concept of “utile forms” and analyzes the effects of these forms in imperial rule and contemporary counterinsurgency. Utile forms are media that enable bureaucracies to disseminate specialized knowledges to officials operating in the field. Examples include smart cards, field manuals and handheld biometric devices. We argue that utile forms have significant social and political effects irrespective of the “truth value” of the knowledge they contain. We analyze these effects in terms of world-ordering and world-making properties: utile forms both embody a particular worldview or ideology (world-ordering) and they facilitate official attempts to remake the world in accordance with this vision (world-making). We draw on examples of utile forms from British India and more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article concludes by reflecting on the relations between truth, knowledge and power in times of war and imperialism.

Brown Britain: Postcolonial Politics and Grand Strategy

From War to Security: Security Studies, the Wider Agenda, and the Fate of the Study of War

This article critiques the wider agenda in security studies from the perspective of the idea of a... more This article critiques the wider agenda in security studies from the perspective of the idea of a war studies. It argues that security studies in any form has not adequately addressed the phenomenon of war and that IR more generally reduces war to an effect of the states system. An analysis of inquiry into the Second World War illuminates these points, while the Vietnam War is mobilised to show how the study of war can refigure our understanding of the international as a distinct social space. The conclusion suggests a new critical research agenda centred on politics, force, and war.

Peoples, Homelands, and Wars? Ethnicity, the Military, and Battle Among British Imperial Forces In the War Against Japan

Comparative Studies in Society and History, Jan 1, 2004

Empire and Order in International Relations and Security Studies

International relations (IR) and security studies lack a coherent and developed body of inquiry o... more International relations (IR) and security studies lack a coherent and developed body of inquiry on the issue of empire. The central focus of IR situates discussion of imperialism and hierarchy outside the core of the discipline, and on its fringes where scholars from other disciplines engage with IR and security studies literature. Similarly, security studies focus on major war between great powers, not “small wars” between the strong and the weak. The general neglect of empire and imperialism in IR and security studies can be attributed to Eurocentrism, of the unreflective assumption of the centrality of Europe and latterly the West in human affairs. In IR this often involves placing the great powers at the center of analysis, as the primary agents in determining the fate of peoples. Too easily occluded here are the myriad international relations of co-constitution, which together shape societies and polities in both the global North and South. In 1986, Michael Doyle published Empires, a thoughtful effort to systematize the historiography of empire and imperialism with social science concepts. It is rarely cited, much less discussed, in disciplinary literature. By contrast, the pair of articles he published in 1983 on Kant and the connection between liberalism and peace revived the democratic peace research program, which became a key pillar of the liberal challenge to realism in the 1990s and is widely debated. The reception of Doyle’s work is indicative of how imperialism can be present but really absent in IR and security studies.

Can We Really “Forget” Militarization? A Conversation on Alison Howell’s Martial Politics

by Maya Eichler, Nisha Shah, and Tarak Barkawi

International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2019

On the Pedagogy of'Small Wars'

International Affairs, Jan 1, 2004

This article argues that flawed Western strategies for ‘small wars’, those fought in the non-Euro... more This article argues that flawed Western strategies for ‘small wars’, those fought in the non-European world, have been informed by illusions concerning the cultural, military and political superiority of the West. With 9/11, such wars ceased to be small. The main threat to the Western powers no longer emanates from other states organized along lines similar to their own, but from a transnational network enterprise that has its origins in the Global South and the Islamic world. Nonetheless, old imperial and orientalist constructions continue to inform Western and particularly US perceptions of the war on terror. ‘Knowing thy enemy’ and ‘knowing thyself’, Sun Tzu’s formula for victory, requires abandoning flattering accounts of Western identity and learning to empathise with those we call terrorists.

Political Military Legacies of Empire in World Politics

Subaltern Soldiers: Eurocentrism and the Nation-State in the Combat Motivation Debates

Retrieving the Imperial: Empire and International Relations

Millenium: Journal of International Studies, Jan 1, 2002

This essay uses Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire, one of the most widely read accounts of... more This essay uses Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire, one of the most widely read accounts of international politics in recent years, as a vehicle to rethink International Relations’ engagement with the notion of empire. We begin with the observation that Westphalian models of the international obscure the role of imperial relations in world politics. We go on to develop a conception of the international as a ‘thick’ set of social relations, consisting of social and cultural flows as well as political-military and economic interactions, which often take place in a context of imperial hierarchy. Retrieving the imperial thus offers a way out of the ‘territorial trap’ set by Westphalia and alerts us to a range of phenomena occluded by IR’s central categories. From this perspective, we analyse Empire as an innovative but flawed effort to take the imperial character of international relations seriously. In particular, we focus on the role of the multitude in world politics, Hardt and Negri's genealogy of sovereignty, and their claim that imperialism in the old fashioned sense is over.

The International Origins of Social and Political Theory

by George Lawson and Tarak Barkawi

Journal of Genocide Research

Scientific Decay

Poznansky (2015) attempts to reconcile democratic-peace theory with US covert operations against ... more Poznansky (2015) attempts to reconcile democratic-peace theory with US covert operations against elected regimes during the Cold War. In the course of doing so, he exposes both the degenerating character of the democratic-peace research program and its ideological underpinnings in American exceptionalism.

Soldiers of Empire Indian and British Armies in World War II--Book Flyer

How are soldiers made? Why do they fight? Reimaging the study of armed forces and society, Tarak ... more How are soldiers made? Why do they fight? Reimaging the study of armed forces and society, Tarak Barkawi examines the imperial and multi-national armies that fought in Asia in the Second World War, especially the British Indian Army in the Burma Campaign. Going beyond conventional narratives, Barkawi studies soldiers in transnational context, from recruitment and training, to combat and memory. Drawing on history, sociology, and anthropology, the book critiques the “Western Way of War” from a postcolonial perspective. Barkawi reconceives soldiers as cosmopolitan, their battles irreducible to the national histories that monopolize them. This book will appeal to those interested in the Second World War, armed forces, and the British Empire, and to students and scholars of military sociology and history, South Asian studies, and international relations.

Powers of War: Fighting, Knowledge and Critique

This paper approaches the ontology of war by asking why, despite its constitutive function for po... more This paper approaches the ontology of war by asking why, despite its constitutive function for politics and society, war has never been made the object of an academic discipline? Through an analysis of the relationship between war and knowledge about war, we argue that the ontology of war is such that it disrupts foundational claims of the kind necessary for conventional forms of academic disciplinarity. At the center of the ontology of war is fighting, an idea we recover from Clausewitz. A moment of radical contingency, fighting both compromises knowledge about war and forces the unmaking and remaking of social and political orders. These generative powers of war operate through the production of systems of knowledge and their institutionalization in the academy, the state and wider society. Although of existential significance for political authority, these knowledges are vulnerable to the very contingency of war that produces them. This complex of relations between war, knowledge and power we term War/Truth. As such, an analytical framework adequate to war requires a reflexive relation to truth claims. We clear the ground for such a ‘critical war studies’.

Decolonizing War

What would it mean to decolonize the concept of war? “Decolonizing” means critiquing the ways in ... more What would it mean to decolonize the concept of war? “Decolonizing” means critiquing the ways in which Eurocentric ideas and historiographies have informed the basic categories of social and political thought. Dominant understandings of the concept of war derive from histories and sociologies of nation-state formation in the West. Accordingly, I critique this Eurocentric concept of war from the perspective of Small War in the colonies, that is, from the perspective of different histories and geographies of war and society than were assumed to exist in the West. I do so in order to outline a postcolonial concept of war and to identify some of the principles of inquiry that would inform a postcolonial war studies. These include conceiving force as an ordinary dimension of politics; situating force and war in transnational context, amid international hierarchies; and attending to the co-constitutive character of war and society relations in world politics.

The Postcolonial Moment In Security Studies

Review of International Studies, Jan 1, 2006

In this article, we critique the Eurocentric character of security studies as it has developed si... more In this article, we critique the Eurocentric character of security studies as it has developed since World War II. The taken-for-granted historical geographies that underpin security studies systematically misrepresent the role of the global South in security relations and lead to a distorted view of Europe and the West in world politics. Understanding security relations, past and present, requires acknowledging the mutual constitution of European and non-European worlds and their joint role in making history. The politics of Eurocentric security studies, those of the powerful, prevent adequate understanding of the nature or legitimacy of the armed resistance of the weak. Through analysis of the explanatory and political problems Eurocentrism generates, this article lays the groundwork for the development of a non-Eurocentric security studies.

The Imperial Peace:: Democracy, Force and Globalization

European Journal of International Relations, Jan 1, 1999

As a first step towards the development of an alternative account of the ‘democratic peace,’ we r... more As a first step towards the development of an alternative account of the ‘democratic peace,’ we rethink the object of analysis in the democratic peace debates by reworking some of the conceptual parameters through which it is defined. Specifically, we historicize the concepts – ‘democracy’ and ‘war’ – that enable the identification of zones of peace and war, and contextualize those zones in historical processes of globalization. This enables us to rethink both the context of the democratic peace in an alleged division of the international system into a zone of war and a zone of peace, and the central unit of analysis in the democratic peace debates, the sovereign and territorial liberal democratic state. We then outline a new research agenda organized around the ordering of territorially dispersed populations, the constitution and international organization of force, and the role of imperial states in the construction of an international system comprised of zones of peace and war.

Strategy as a Vocation: Weber, Morgenthau and Modern Strategic Studies

This essay introduces Max Weber's sociology of modern culture to International Relations. Previo... more This essay introduces Max Weber's sociology of modern culture to International Relations. Previous treatments of Weber in the discipline focus on Morgenthau’s use of Weberian ideas rather than on the differences in their respective positions. In appropriating Weber’s ‘ethic of responsibility’ for his theory of power politics, Morgenthau neglected his sociology of ‘rationalisation’ and analysis of the displacement of cultural values in modern policymaking. In Morgenthau’s theory foreign policy is judged in terms of consequences for state power while for Weber policy is judged in terms of consequences for cultural values. This crucial difference in their understanding of the political ethics of realism is anatomised. Using Weber’s sociology of modern culture and oft-misunderstood view of the relation between science and values, the essay analyses the repercussions of Morgenthau’s influential understanding of realism in strategic policy science.

Diplomacy, War, and World Politics

Utile Forms: Power and Knowledge in Small Wars

Review of International Studies, May 2013

This article introduces the concept of “utile forms” and analyzes the effects of these forms in i... more This article introduces the concept of “utile forms” and analyzes the effects of these forms in imperial rule and contemporary counterinsurgency. Utile forms are media that enable bureaucracies to disseminate specialized knowledges to officials operating in the field. Examples include smart cards, field manuals and handheld biometric devices. We argue that utile forms have significant social and political effects irrespective of the “truth value” of the knowledge they contain. We analyze these effects in terms of world-ordering and world-making properties: utile forms both embody a particular worldview or ideology (world-ordering) and they facilitate official attempts to remake the world in accordance with this vision (world-making). We draw on examples of utile forms from British India and more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article concludes by reflecting on the relations between truth, knowledge and power in times of war and imperialism.

Brown Britain: Postcolonial Politics and Grand Strategy

From War to Security: Security Studies, the Wider Agenda, and the Fate of the Study of War

This article critiques the wider agenda in security studies from the perspective of the idea of a... more This article critiques the wider agenda in security studies from the perspective of the idea of a war studies. It argues that security studies in any form has not adequately addressed the phenomenon of war and that IR more generally reduces war to an effect of the states system. An analysis of inquiry into the Second World War illuminates these points, while the Vietnam War is mobilised to show how the study of war can refigure our understanding of the international as a distinct social space. The conclusion suggests a new critical research agenda centred on politics, force, and war.

Peoples, Homelands, and Wars? Ethnicity, the Military, and Battle Among British Imperial Forces In the War Against Japan

Comparative Studies in Society and History, Jan 1, 2004

Empire and Order in International Relations and Security Studies

International relations (IR) and security studies lack a coherent and developed body of inquiry o... more International relations (IR) and security studies lack a coherent and developed body of inquiry on the issue of empire. The central focus of IR situates discussion of imperialism and hierarchy outside the core of the discipline, and on its fringes where scholars from other disciplines engage with IR and security studies literature. Similarly, security studies focus on major war between great powers, not “small wars” between the strong and the weak. The general neglect of empire and imperialism in IR and security studies can be attributed to Eurocentrism, of the unreflective assumption of the centrality of Europe and latterly the West in human affairs. In IR this often involves placing the great powers at the center of analysis, as the primary agents in determining the fate of peoples. Too easily occluded here are the myriad international relations of co-constitution, which together shape societies and polities in both the global North and South. In 1986, Michael Doyle published Empires, a thoughtful effort to systematize the historiography of empire and imperialism with social science concepts. It is rarely cited, much less discussed, in disciplinary literature. By contrast, the pair of articles he published in 1983 on Kant and the connection between liberalism and peace revived the democratic peace research program, which became a key pillar of the liberal challenge to realism in the 1990s and is widely debated. The reception of Doyle’s work is indicative of how imperialism can be present but really absent in IR and security studies.

Can We Really “Forget” Militarization? A Conversation on Alison Howell’s Martial Politics

by Maya Eichler, Nisha Shah, and Tarak Barkawi

International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2019

On the Pedagogy of'Small Wars'

International Affairs, Jan 1, 2004

This article argues that flawed Western strategies for ‘small wars’, those fought in the non-Euro... more This article argues that flawed Western strategies for ‘small wars’, those fought in the non-European world, have been informed by illusions concerning the cultural, military and political superiority of the West. With 9/11, such wars ceased to be small. The main threat to the Western powers no longer emanates from other states organized along lines similar to their own, but from a transnational network enterprise that has its origins in the Global South and the Islamic world. Nonetheless, old imperial and orientalist constructions continue to inform Western and particularly US perceptions of the war on terror. ‘Knowing thy enemy’ and ‘knowing thyself’, Sun Tzu’s formula for victory, requires abandoning flattering accounts of Western identity and learning to empathise with those we call terrorists.

Political Military Legacies of Empire in World Politics

Subaltern Soldiers: Eurocentrism and the Nation-State in the Combat Motivation Debates

Retrieving the Imperial: Empire and International Relations

Millenium: Journal of International Studies, Jan 1, 2002

This essay uses Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire, one of the most widely read accounts of... more This essay uses Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire, one of the most widely read accounts of international politics in recent years, as a vehicle to rethink International Relations’ engagement with the notion of empire. We begin with the observation that Westphalian models of the international obscure the role of imperial relations in world politics. We go on to develop a conception of the international as a ‘thick’ set of social relations, consisting of social and cultural flows as well as political-military and economic interactions, which often take place in a context of imperial hierarchy. Retrieving the imperial thus offers a way out of the ‘territorial trap’ set by Westphalia and alerts us to a range of phenomena occluded by IR’s central categories. From this perspective, we analyse Empire as an innovative but flawed effort to take the imperial character of international relations seriously. In particular, we focus on the role of the multitude in world politics, Hardt and Negri's genealogy of sovereignty, and their claim that imperialism in the old fashioned sense is over.

The International Origins of Social and Political Theory

by George Lawson and Tarak Barkawi

Journal of Genocide Research

Scientific Decay

Poznansky (2015) attempts to reconcile democratic-peace theory with US covert operations against ... more Poznansky (2015) attempts to reconcile democratic-peace theory with US covert operations against elected regimes during the Cold War. In the course of doing so, he exposes both the degenerating character of the democratic-peace research program and its ideological underpinnings in American exceptionalism.

IR319 MT 2016 Empire and Conflict in World Politics

This is the Syllabus for IR 319 in MT 2016. Ignore class times and room numbers but readings and ... more This is the Syllabus for IR 319 in MT 2016. Ignore class times and room numbers but readings and lectures are correct. If you are registered for this course, note the Assigned Readings. You are strongly encouraged to purchase copies of The Conquest of America, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia, The Impossible Indian, The Wretched of the Earth, and The Colonial Signs of International Relations. We will be reading these books in their entirety and you will need to bring copies to class. If this looks like too much reading to you, DROP THE COURSE.

Empire and Conflict in World Politics LSE MSc Course IR452 2016-17

This is the syllabus for my MSc course in 2016-17. Note that places on this course are limited. T... more This is the syllabus for my MSc course in 2016-17. Note that places on this course are limited. To determine if you want to take the course, look at the seminar books on pp. 10-11 and ask yourself if you really want to read them. If you are absolutely sure you want to take the course, buy the seminar books before you come to London and email me. I will guarantee the first 15 who do this a place; after that you will be on a waiting list. Note that this course is more difficult and involves more reading and writing than other courses; it is taught at the level of US PhD coursework. Be warned.

Empire and Conflict in World Politics

LSE MSc Syllabus for 2014/15

Postcolonial Perspectives on International Relations

Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Decolonization (GPOL 6459)

Wednesdays, 1800-1950, Room 465, 65 W. 11 th St.

War and Society in World Politics

Violent conflict is a generative force in world politics. Warfare shapes, and is shaped by, the s... more Violent conflict is a generative force in world politics. Warfare shapes, and is shaped by, the societies, cultures and polities that populate world politics. Accordingly, this course considers the co-constitutive relations between war and politics; war and society; and war and culture. It conceives the µinternational ¶ as a µthick ¶ space of social interaction and transnational relations, and locates violent conflict and its generative powers amid these flows. The course will consist primarily of seminar discussions of a set of book length texts to include theoretic, historical and sociological approaches to war and society, as well as contributions from practitioner-theorists. It will range from the early modern world to the contemporary moment, with special attention to warfare between the µstrong ¶ and the µweak ¶, or µsmall war ¶.

War and Society in World Politics 2011-2012

Interview of Stuart Schrader by Tarak Barkawi in International Politics Reviews

by Stuart Schrader and Tarak Barkawi

International Politics Reviews, 2020

International Politics Reviews published a review forum for Badges Without Borders: How Global Co... more International Politics Reviews published a review forum for Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing in 2019. The reviewers were Paul Edgar, Jeffrey H. Michaels, Jeanne Morefield, and Guillermina Seri. Tarak Barkawi wrote a brief introduction (included here) and interviewed me about the book and the reviews in the forum.

Abstract: In this wide ranging interview, Stuart Schrader discusses the research and writing of Badges without Borders and responds to his criticisms and questions raised in the review essays. He discusses counterinsurgency and policing; history and theory; racialization in the post-1945 US world order; the interplay between domestic and foreign in both scholarship and US policy; and the place of policing in US grand strategy.