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have
    reappeared in our postmodern world: on the one hand, war is
    reduced to the status ofpolice action, and on the other, the new
    power that can legitimately exercise ethical functions through war
    is sacralized.
    Far from merely repeating ancient or medieval notions, how-
    ever, today’s concept presents some truly fundamental innovations.
    W O R L D O R D E R
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    Just war is no longer in any sense an activity ofdefense or resistance,
    as it was, for example, in the Christian tradition from Saint Augustine
    to the scholastics ofthe Counter-Reformation, as a necessity ofthe
    ‘‘worldly city’’ to guarantee its own survival. It has become rather
    an activity that is justified in itself. Two distinct elements are com-
    bined in this concept ofjust war: first, the legitimacy ofthe military
    apparatus insofar as it is ethically grounded, and second, the effec-
    tiveness ofmilitary action to achieve the desired order and peace.
    The synthesis ofthese two elements may indeed be a key factor
    determining the foundation and the new tradition of Empire. Today
    the enemy, just like the war itself, comes to be at once banalized
    (reduced to an object ofroutine police repression) and absolutized
    (as the Enemy, an absolute threat to the ethical order). The Gulf
    War gave us perhaps the first fully articulated example of this new
    epistemology ofthe concept.19 The resurrection ofthe concept of
    just war may be only a symptom ofthe emergence ofEmpire, but
    what a suggestive and powerful one!
    The Model of Imperial Authority
    We must avoid defining the passage to Empire in purely negative
    terms, in terms ofwhat it is not, as for example is done when one
    says: the new paradigm is defined by the definitive decline ofthe
    sovereign nation-states, by the deregulation ofinternational markets,
    by the end ofantagonistic conflict among state subjects, and so
    forth. If the new paradigm were to consist simply in this, then
    its consequences would be truly anarchic. Power, however—and
    Michel Foucault was not the only one to teach us this—fears
    and despises a vacuum. The new paradigm functions already in
    completely positive terms—and it could not be otherwise.
    The new paradigm is both system and hierarchy, centralized
    construction ofnorms and far-reaching production oflegitimacy,
    spread out over world space. It is configured ab initio as a dynamic and flexible systemic structure that is articulated horizontally. We
    conceive the structure in a kind ofintellectual shorthand as a hybrid
    ofNiklas Luhmann’s systems theory and John Rawls’s theory of
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    T H E P O L I T I C A L C O N S T I T U T I O N O F T H E P R E S E N T
    justice.20 Some call this situation ‘‘governance without government’’
    to indicate the structural logic, at times imperceptible but always
    and increasingly effective, that sweeps all actors within the order
    ofthe whole.21 The systemic totality has a dominant position in
    the global order, breaking resolutely with every previous dialectic
    and developing an integration ofactors that seems linear and sponta-
    neous. At the same time, however, the effectiveness of the consensus
    under a supreme authority ofthe ordering appears ever more clearly.
    All conflicts, all crises, and all dissensions effectively push forward
    the process ofintegration and by the same measure call for more
    central authority. Peace, equilibrium, and the cessation ofconflict
    are the values toward which everything is directed. The develop-
    ment ofthe global system (and ofimperial right in the first place)
    seems to be the development ofa machine that imposes procedures
    ofcontinual contractualization that lead to systemic equilibria—a
    machine that creates a continuous call for authority. The machine
    seems to predetermine the exercise ofauthority and action across
    the entire social space. Every movement is fixed and can seek its
    own designated place only within the system itself, in the hierarchical
    relationship