10 RACE, RACIALISATION AND RIVALRY IN THE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ORDER Robert Knox 1 Introduction As noted by Anievas, Manchanda and Shilliam in the introduction to this collec- tion, debates about imperialism have been – in an oblique manner – one of the main ways in which international relations has grappled with the question of race and racism. The contemporary resurgence in IR scholarship on race is no different, part of a wider scholarly and political revival in the study of empire and imperial- ism. As has often been noted, this wider revival occurred in the wake of a wave of military interventions. Thus the 1999 Kosovo ‘humanitarian intervention’, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the wider “war on terror” and the 2003 invasion of Iraq were all central to the re-emergence of debates about ‘empire’. Analysing these military interventions in terms of empire and imperialism has also brought their racialised nature to the fore. The justifications for all of these military interventions implied and relied upon a stark distinction between different regions of the world, with some states being entitled to intervene, and others existing to be intervened in. This points more generally to the fact that it has often been through issues of military violence that the global colour line has been understood and contested. This is a familiar story to any student of IR. Indeed, as the introduction to this volume notes, the discourse of rogue states and new wars, and the technologies of contemporary military violence all bear the stamp of race. Yet there is something missing from this picture. While military interventions obviously involve questions of force, power and political economy, they also crucially involve questions of law. Military interventions are almost always accompanied by attempts to argue for their legality. Indeed, the discourse of ‘rogue states’ emerged as part of the broader legal architecture of the war on terror, and some of the most heated debates over drones have been conducted in juridical terms. This should draw our attention to Downloaded by [University College London] at 16:22 10 September 2017