A NEW AMERICAN EMPIRE?
To its critics the US looks like a new Empire bent on world domination. But reactions to the difficulties in Iraq are beginning to look like the latest evidence of waning American power. Criticisms of President George W Bush's Iraq policy are mounting on left and right. In September's Foreign Affairs, Clinton apparatchiks Madeleine Albright and James P Rubin stick the knife into Washington's 'failed diplomacy'. Meanwhile the 'neo-con' champions of the belligerent Iraq policy are beginning to complain about backsliding - William Kristol and Robert Kagan write of 'an unwillingness by America's leaders to shoulder the necessary military burden' (Sunday Times 21 September 2003).
The belief that US power is overwhelming is itself a sign of the opposite. Whereas criticism of the 1991 Gulf War was restricted to the political margins, this year's war was widely contested - particularly in Europe, in the developing world and throughout the intelligentsia. As Rubin and Albright argue, Washington's failure to get diplomatic support was a sign of weakness, not strength. But the neo-cons are right too, when they point out America's unwillingness to see through its military ambitions. Public disquiet over the (relatively light) American casualties, and criticisms of military spending are hardly indications of a new Rome - more like Rome in 410, sacked by the Goths.
DIVORCING RESPONSIBLY
New Labour has always presented itself as pro-family, but the government has never been able to impose its authority on the issue. One of Tony Blair's first acts as an MP was to derail the patient work of the select committee trying to establish 'no-fault' divorce law, with the dogmatic intervention that family break-up mustn't be made easier. Despite Blair's tough communitarian talk about the value of marriage, the divorce rate remains at a historically high level and marriage rates are declining. Helen Reece's Divorcing Responsibly explains why the present regime is so impotent by means of a detailed discussion of the philosophical background to the divorce law reforms under the previous government.
Through a comprehensive review of the literature, Reece demonstrates that the Family Law Act 1996 was based on what she calls a 'post-liberal' understanding of the key legal concepts of individual autonomy and responsibility. The post-liberal view is shared by several theories that are influential in New Labour, including communitarianism, feminism and the sociology of reflexive modernity. She argues that the authorities' efforts to bolster marriage through coercive laws are undermined by the relativist assumptions of the post-liberal outlook itself. This tension prevented implementation of key parts of the Family Law Act 1996. The loudly proclaimed 'values' of the government turn out to be empty.
Divorcing Responsibly is not an easy read, but that is because Reece is trying to establish a new standpoint in the theoretical struggles between liberalism and its critics which have dominated Anglo-American legal theory for the past 20 years. Reece's argument that to understand the problems of the recent law reform it is necessary to grasp the contradictions of post-liberalism turns the critical spotlight back on to those who have long styled themselves as the critics of legal orthodoxy. Given the huge influence of post-liberal thinking on legal regulation in every area of social life, her book makes a valuable contribution to developing a critique of the new authoritarianism.
Divorcing Responsibly by Helen Reece is published by Hart Publishing, £32.50 hbk. -- James Heartfield