This chapter documents the relevance of the ‘standard of civilisation’ for contemporary international law, despite the marked decline of explicit invocations of the concept. It does so by documenting the continuing existence and purchase of arguments that oscillate between the ‘logic of improvement’ and the ‘logic of biology’. By focusing on two distinct legal fields that have been highly relevant to the war on terror, the laws of occupation and jus ad bellum, this chapter documents the importance of conforming with the imperatives of the neoliberal state in order to be recognised as a subject of international law. In the first part, the chapter offers a detailed examination of the neoliberal reforms imposed in occupied Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority. It details both the promises anchored to the adoption of neoliberal capitalism and the constant negation of such promises based on Orientalist stereotypes based on Iraqis’ purported incapacity to government themselves. In the second part, this chapter focuses on the controversial ‘unwilling or unable’ doctrine situating it within the political economy of the ‘war on terror’ and the demand that post-colonial states subscribe to its imperatives.

This chapter explores the organizational culture of Iraq’s army between its founding in 1921 and its collapse by the time of the American invasion in 2003. During this eighty-two-year history, the organizational culture of the Iraqi Army moved from the face of a foreign occupation in the 1920s, to a political tool of internal social and political coercion, to “probably the most potent military ever wielded by an Arab government.” However, by the time American troops pulled down the statue of Saddam in Baghdad’s Firdos Square, the army’s organizational culture was but a faint echo of not only its Iran-Iraq War pinnacle but also its historic norm. Saddam’s role was the critical factor in this change. Saddam needed professional military officers competent in developing and employing a large modern armed force, but he preferred the counsel of “violent and ignorant personalities.” Saddam could never reconcile the fundamental difference between what he called tribal and civilized (or state) warfare and the professional elements of the Iraqi armed forces could not survive in his shadow.

The American Civil War presented an exceptional state of affairs in modern warfare, because strong personalities could embed their own command philosophies into field armies, due to the miniscule size of the prior US military establishment. The effectiveness of the Union Army of the Tennessee stemmed in large part from the strong influence of Ulysses S. Grant, who as early as the fall of 1861 imbued in the organization an aggressive mind-set. However, Grant’s command culture went beyond simple aggressiveness – it included an emphasis on suppressing internal rivalries among sometimes prideful officers for the sake of winning victories. In the winter of 1861 and the spring of 1862, the Army of the Tennessee was organized and consolidated into a single force, and, despite deficits in trained personnel as compared to other Union field armies, Grant established important precedents for both his soldiers and officers that would resonate even after his departure to the east. The capture of Vicksburg the following summer represented the culminating triumph of that army, cementing the self-confident force that would later capture Atlanta and win the war in the western theater.