Mershon Center for International Security Studies: Raymond "Bud" Duvall

Raymond "Bud" Duvall is Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science and former interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts at University of Minnesota.  Among his publications are Power in Global Governance (Cambridge University Press 2005, co-edited with Michael Barnett) and Cultures of Insecurity:  States, Communities, and the Production of Danger (University of Minnesota Press 1999, co-edited with Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey and Hugh Gusterson).

 

His articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, International Theory, Political Theory, Review of International Studies, Millenium, and other scholarly journals and edited books. Duvall's research focuses on international relations theory, global governance, and critical political economy. His current research addresses the implications of a developing imaginary war without humans, especially for territorial state sovereignty as the foundational principle of world order.

 

He is the recipient most recently (2015) of the Distinguished Scholar Award from the International Theory Section of the International Studies Association.  Previously (2010), he received the Grain of Sand Award from the Interpretive Methodologies and Methods Conference Group of the American Political Science Association, which award honors a political scientist whose contributions to interpretive studies have been longstanding and merit special recognition.

 

During his tenure at the University of Minnesota, Duvall has also served as chair of the Department of Political Science, affiliated professor in the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Department, and acting director of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change.

 

Abstract

 

Military security policy is in flux, and the changes exhibit a seeming paradox.  On the one hand, component of the nuclear weapons arsenal of the United States -- the bedrock of deterrent stability for decades -- are falling into disrepair, as if international war were becoming obsolete. On the other hand, and at precisely the same time, we learn almost weekly of U.S. drone-borne missile attacks, expressive of what President Obama characterizes as a war that will be prosecuted for the long term and what some analysts describe as the new normal of perpetual war. It is apparent that how foreign policy makers and military strategists think about, imagine and prepare for war is changing notably.

 

Duvall will address the newly emerging conceptualization of war.  He asks how this emerging image -- which he calls war without humans, in which humans are largely removed from direct participation on the battlefield through the use of drones, battlefield robotics, cyber warfare, and the weaponization of orbital space -- affects the constitutive foundation of the nation-state system, the principle of territorial state sovereignty. The book he is writing shows that war without humans becomes a dominant conception -- and practice--of war, it erodes the fundamental principle of territorally sovereign state and the nation-state system that that principle sustains.

 

In place of territorial state sovereignty, this conception bolsters the development of a distinct structure of global authority -- a globally centralized, but de-territoralized, imperial form that I call empire of the future. The ultimate paradox then is that far from replacing sovereign power, war without humans gives risk to a potentially more sinister form of sovereign power.