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Ellen Meiksins Wood

In� nite War

When the US (and Britain) failed to launch a massive
attack on Afghanistan within days of the September

11 atrocities, there was almost universal surprise,
whether tinged with disappointment or relief. People

had come to expect, as a matter of course, an imme-
diate and massive high-tech assault, which would

spare the lives and limbs of US forces while in�ict-
ing much ‘collateral damage’. But this time, we were

told, the White House ‘moderates’ had won, at least
for a time, if only because the exigencies of preserving

the coalition against terrorism counselled caution, or
because winter was too near, or because the Taliban

might simply implode without a �ght. Any attack –
and there might be none at all – would be ‘measured’

and ‘proportionate’. Optimists hoped that Bush had
learned the virtues of multilateralism. Pessimists

feared the worst was still to come. But critics and
supporters were united in their wonder at the tem-

perance displayed by the world’s only superpower.
Then the bombing started. The massive high-tech

assault, with all the collateral damage, proceeded as
before. Still, hopes were voiced that the strikes would

be carefully targeted and ‘proportionate’ and that
the campaign would be short. In the meantime, the

Historical Materialism, volume 10:1 (7–27)
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2002

US told the UN that it reserves the right to keep its options open for possi-

ble strikes on targets other than Afghanistan. Since the Taliban régime in
Afghanistan has collapsed, we can assume that, at some not too distant point,

the US will declare its mission there accomplished (irrespective of what hap-
pens on the ground). But we seem even further away from the end of the

‘war against terrorism’ than we were at the start.
Yet it is not to soon to say that the standards by which we have been judg-

ing this new war, for or against, are now outdated. In recent years, the US
and its allies, notably Britain, have been rede�ning war and the criteria by

which we judge it. The new doctrine of war that seems to be emerging is a
necessary corollary to a new form of empire.

War without end

Immediately after the September 11 atrocities, President Bush announced that
his purpose was to rid the world of evil. At that moment, the ‘war against

terrorism’ was being called ‘Operation In�nite Justice’. Some time later, Prime
Minister Blair told the Labour Party Conference that the present campaign

should be part of a larger project of ‘reordering our world’. Nothing that was
said before or after did much to clarify or narrow these grandiose ambitions.

Sympathetic observers were no less at a loss than critics to explain precisely
what the objective of the �rst military round would be: to capture Osama bin

Laden, to destroy al-Qaida’s training camps (by then, surely, empty), or to
overthrow the Taliban, with or without installing a new government, to say

nothing of further objectives, such as attacks on Iraq to complete the job left
un�nished by George Bush Senior.

In the face of these uncertainties, the tendency was to assume either that
the White House is simply divided between hawks and doves, or that the

administration is simply confused, with no real idea what to do; and there
is a strong temptation to think that Blair is suffering from almost pathologi-

cal delusions of grandeur, which have the advantage of de�ecting scrutiny
from his failures at home. No doubt, there is something to be said for all

these interpretations. But we need to take more seriously the signi�cance of
Bush and Blair’s grand design.

If we discount the overblown self-righteous rhetoric, there remains a new
military doctrine, which, while making the most extravagant moral claims,

8 � Ellen Meiksins Wood

nonetheless departs from centuries of discourse on ‘just war’. The just war

tradition has always been notoriously elastic and in�nitely capable of adjust-
ment to the varying interests of dominant classes, encompassing everything

up to and including the most aggressive and predatory imperial adventures.
So, throughout the changing character of war and imperialism, ideologies of

justi�cation have been able to remain within certain conceptual limits and to
operate with certain basic principles. The new doctrine, while invoking the

traditions of just war rather than amoral Realpolitik, has, for the �rst time in
centuries, found those principles insuf�ciently �exible and has effectively dis-

carded them. Just as earlier adjustments were made to �t changing contexts
and requirements, the current rupture also has its speci�c historical context

and bespeaks particular class needs.
The doctrine of ‘just war ’, throughout its permutations, enunciates a few

basic requirements for going to war: there must be a just cause; war must be
declared by a proper authority and with the right intention, and after other

means have been exhausted; there must be a reasonable chance of achieving
the desired end, and the means must be proportionate to that end. In a

moment, we shall look at some of the ingenious ways in which those appar-
ently stringent requirements have been made compatible with the most

aggressive wars of commercial rivalry and imperial expansion. But let us �rst
note how the current doctrine operates within those constraints and how it

departs from them.
Every US war claims a just cause, a proper authority, and right inten-

tions, while insisting that there is no other way. Those claims are, of course,
more than a little debatable. But the point here is simply that justi�cations

of US military campaigns, however contestable they may be, up to this point
remain within the limits of just-war argumentation. The rupture occurs most

clearly in the other two conditions: that there must be a reasonable chance
of achieving the goals of any military action, and that the means must be

proportionate.
There are two senses in which the new doctrine of war, most recently enun-

ciated by Bush and Blair, violates the �rst of these two principles. It is,
needless to say, clear that no military action could possibly rid the world of

Bush’s ‘evil-doers’. For that matter, the ‘war against terrorism’ can hardly be
said to have a reasonable chance of ending terrorism. If anything, it stands

a better chance of aggravating terrorist violence. Nor can military action, with

In�nite War � 9

or without humanitarian admixtures, reorder the world in the way outlined

by Blair.
But it is just as clear that the new doctrine departs from the principle

of achievable goals in ways inconceivable to any earlier proponents of the
just-war doctrine. This particular principle was directed against futile and

self-destructive adventures by forces lacking the means to achieve their ends
and more likely to make their own conditions worse. The present case has

to do with the world’s most powerful military force, the most powerful the
world has ever known, which could con�dently expect to achieve any rea-

sonable military goal. So, a new principle is being established here: it could
simply mean that military action can, after all, be justi�ed without any hope

of achieving its aim, but it would probably be more accurate to say that mil-
itary action now requires no speci�c aim at all.

Such a principle naturally affects the means-ends calculus too. We are accus-
tomed to criticising the US and its allies for undertaking actions which, in

their massively destructive means, are unsuited to their professed ends. But
we may now be compelled to discard the principle of proportionality alto-

gether – not simply because we are being asked to accept ‘disproportionate’
means but because, in the absence of speci�c ends, no such calculus is rele-

vant at all. There is a new principle of war without end, either in purpose or
in time.

The ‘war against terrorism’ is not the �rst instance of the new doctrine. It
certainly has roots in the Cold War. Even the ‘war on drugs’, insofar as it

undoubtedly has a military component (whether directly conducted by the
US or, with its assistance, by, say, Colombian forces), has had something of

this �avour. The campaign against Iraq, too, has been going on without appar-
ent end. But the most important step in establishing the new doctrine has

been the notion of ‘humanitarian war ’. And it is certainly in this connection
that the constraints of old just-war principles were �rst most explicitly

discarded.
It is by now a well-known story that, in their con�ict over war in the

Balkans, the former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, then Ambassador
to the UN, challenged the current Secretary of State, Colin Powell, then head

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, over his objection to military intervention in Bosnia.
Underlying his objection was the so-called ‘Powell Doctrine’, a military doc-

trine in the old just-war tradition, requiring that military action have clear

10 � Ellen Meiksins Wood

and �nite ends, adequate means, and exit strategies. ‘What’s the point of hav-

ing this superb military that you’ve always been talking about,’ Albright
angrily protested, ‘if we can’t use it?’ What Albright was challenging was

certainly not a doctrine opposed to any military action ever. Powell, as a mil-
itary man, was hardly advocating paci�sm. Where they parted company was

precisely at the point that traditional doctrines of just war require speci�c
and �nite achievable ends and commensurate means.

But, if Madeleine Albright represents a milestone in the development of
this new doctrine, it has long been a pattern in the US for political �gures to

depart from the old one. When Henry Kissinger advocated the unpredictable
use of military force, he, like Albright, had in mind the use of force for polit-

ical purposes far more diffuse and inchoate than the achievement of some
speci�c military goal, as did others throughout the Cold War. To be sure, he

was not particularly given to just war arguments and was generally quite
open about his adherence to the opposing principles of amoral raison d’état.

But other political leaders, in support of the same policies, have had no
dif�culty invoking the justice of war. Today, when Colin Powell himself is

Secretary of State, he is being challenged by non-military politicians such as
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and probably Cheney, together with Bush advisers such

as Richard Perle, whose views are even more clearly antithetical to the old
just-war principles of ends and means. They have, according to reports,

devised a plan called ‘Operation In�nite War ’, which calls for an open-ended
war with no limits of time or geography.1

In�nite War � 11

1 On 30 September, The Observer in London carried a special report by Ed Vulliamy,
‘Inside the Pentagon’. Here are the highlights of the piece:

As war begins in Afghanistan, so does the assault on the White House – to win the ear
and signed orders of the military’s Commander in Chief, President George W. Bush,
for what Pentagon hawks call ‘Operation In�nite War’ . . .

The Observer has learnt that two detailed proposals for warfare without limit were
presented to the President this week by his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, both
of which were temporarily put aside but remain on hold.
They were drawn up by his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz . . . the plans argue for open-ended
war without constraint either of time or geography . . .

[T]he Pentagon militants prefer to speak of ‘revolving alliances’, which look like a
Venn diagram, with an overlapping centre and only certain countries coming within
the US orbit for different sectors and periods of an unending war. The only countries
in the middle of the diagrammatic rose, where all the circles overlap, are the US, Britain
and Turkey.

Of�cials say that in a war without precedent, the rules have to be made up as it
develops, and that the so-called ‘Powell Doctrine’ arguing that there should be no mil-
itary intervention without ‘clear and achievable’ political goals is ‘irrelevant’ . . .

And there we have it: in�nite war – not necessarily continuous war, but

war inde�nite in its duration, objectives, means and spatial reach.

Just war and empire

To situate this new doctrine in its speci�c historical context requires some

consideration of what went before. In particular, we are interested in how
theorists have negotiated the constraints of just-war theory to make it

compatible with aggressive and expansionist wars, especially in the early
years of European colonialism, when the foundations for future imperialist

ideologies were laid down. Considering the current innovations in military
doctrine against that background will help to illuminate the ways in which

they correspond to the latest phase of Western imperialism, just as earlier
phases called forth their own speci�c ideological adjustments.

Arguments about the legitimacy of war no doubt have a much longer his-
tory than the just-war tradition. The Romans, for instance, raised questions

about the legitimacy of war, and some, such as Cicero, appeared to demand
fairly strict conditions – for instance, that only a war in self-defence can be

legitimate. Yet, at the same time, these apparently stringent limitations were
from the start made compatible with war in pursuit of imperial power and

glory – no less by a republican like Cicero than by later defenders of the
Empire. And, from the start, the Romans were inclined to invoke a kind of

global, human society on whose behalf they were engaging in their wars of
expansion, to civilise the world by imposing the Pax Romana. That notion

of a global society required little modi�cation to serve the purposes of later
Christians bent on their own brand of civilising mission, as the Roman Empire

gave way to the Universal Church.
It is certainly true that Christian theology also produced trenchant critiques

of imperial expansion and raised far-reaching questions about the legitimacy
of war. But it is testimony to the remarkable �exibility of this moral discourse

that, for instance, in the most expansionist early European imperial power,
Spain, a theology critical of the Spanish empire in the Americas could be

mobilised no less in its defence.2

12 � Ellen Meiksins Wood

2 For an illuminating discussion of Spanish imperialist ideology, in contrast to that
of Britain and France, see Pagden 1995.

Early justi�cations of the empire, especially at a time when the Spanish

sovereign was also Holy Roman Emperor, presented it as something like a
mission on behalf of the Christian world order, based on donation from the

pope in the form of papal Bulls. But the dif�cult relationship between the
Spanish monarchy and the papacy made this an awkward defence. To make

matters worse, the available theological arguments against the claims of the
papacy, which worked in favour of the monarchy, tended also to argue against

the Spanish conquest. Theologians of the Salamanca School argued that the
pope, though he was the spiritual leader of Christendom, had no temporal

authority over the world, nor did the pope have authority, temporal or spir-
itual, over non-Christians. This meant not only that there was no such thing

as a universal temporal empire but also that Spain could not rely on a papal
donation and claim legitimacy for its conquest on the grounds that it was

bringing Christianity to in�dels, or even that it was punishing the savages
for violations of natural law.

These arguments, whether they were motivated by humanitarian revulsion
at imperial atrocities or simply defending the monarchy against the papacy,

challenged the right to impose Spanish domination on the Americas. Yet a
justi�cation of empire emerged from the very same theological tradition.

Having accepted that the old arguments based on the universal temporal
authority of the church and the papacy would not serve, the new justi�cation

relied instead on the ‘just war ’. Colonialism might not be justi�ed on the
grounds of papal authority, but there were various legitimate reasons for

waging war – to defend the ‘innocent’ or, much more broadly, to promote
the values of ‘civilised’ (i.e. European) life. Just as a republic could go to war

in self-defence, war could be waged on behalf of a universal ‘human repub-
lic’ threatened by behaviour that violated its particular standards of peace

and good order. Any conquest resulting from a just war could establish legit-
imate domination. The principle of war in self-defence could thus embrace

anything, including universal conquest, not to mention slavery.
The Spanish, unlike other European empires, were unambiguously explicit

that what they were justifying was indeed conquest. They were obliged to
do so, given the nature and object of their empire. By far their main interest

was the extraction of silver and gold from South American mines. Their con-
quest was certainly genocidal; but, faced with a dense, well organised, and

technologically fairly advanced indigenous population, they seem to have

In�nite War � 13

had more to gain from conquering and ruling than completely exterminat-

ing that population, requiring a labour force more than they needed empty
territory. Even their agricultural plantations, in the encomienda system, made

use of servile indigenous labour.
Other European empires, without access to massive wealth from mines,

had different ambitions and hence different ideological needs. The French
and the English made much of the differences between their empires and the

Spanish, denying (with scant respect for historical truth) their role as con-
querors and emphasising (with somewhat greater veracity) the agricultural

and commercial nature of their colonies. We shall return to the English case
in a moment, to explore some signi�cant ideological innovations associated

with it. But the most striking example of theoretical opportunism in response
to speci�c imperial needs is provided by the Dutch, in the person of Hugo

Grotius.
The Dutch, more than any other Europeans, constructed a commercial

empire, in which colonial conquest and settlement were a secondary, or aux-
iliary, concern. Yet, in the pursuit of commercial supremacy, the Dutch were

no less given to aggressive military violence than their rivals. In the early
years of the Dutch Republic, as it was coming into its golden age, military

expenditures accounted for a greater proportion of the Republic’s excep-
tionally high tax revenues than did any other activity, and the Dutch engaged

in some notorious acts of aggression.3 Nor did they abandon military means
of gaining commercial advantage as the economy continued to rise and then

fall – up to and including the Dutch role in England’s Glorious Revolution.
Whatever the English may have thought about their ‘bloodless’ revolution,

the Dutch conceived it as an invasion, carried out with support not only by
the state but by the Amsterdam stock exchange, for purely commercial rea-

sons in an effort to counter the commercial rivalry of France.
The Dutch produced an ideology to match their ‘extra-economic’ means

of establishing commercial supremacy. The case of Grotius is particularly
important and revealing because he is commonly credited with founding

international law, and his work is generally presented as a theory of limita-
tions on war, a modern milestone in the just-war tradition. Yet, that work is

14 � Ellen Meiksins Wood

3 On Dutch military expenditures during this period, see De Vries and Van der
Woude 1997, pp. 100–2.

striking for its ideological opportunism, transparently constructed to defend

the very particular practices of the Dutch in their quest for commercial
domination in the early seventeenth century. To build his case, he not only

produced a theory of war and peace but laid a foundation for transforming
theories of politics and property in general.4 If Grotius is indeed the founder

of international law, we may have to admit that international law in its incep-
tion had as much to do with advocating as limiting war, and as much to do

with pro�t as with justice.
Without formally violating the limits of the just-war tradition, Grotius

was able, as Richard Tuck has persuasively shown, to justify not only wars
of self-defence, however broadly conceived, but even the most aggressive

wars pursued for no other reason than commercial pro�t. In answer to the
requirement that a war can be just only if conducted by a proper authority,

he was also able to defend aggressive action not just by sovereign states but
by private trading companies.

In fact, the very principles commonly cited as central to his restrictions on
war can have, and were intended to have, the opposite effect. Grotius, like

other theorists of the seventeenth century, is credited with something like a
conception of the state of nature, according to which individuals possess nat-

ural rights prior to, and independent of, civil society. At the same time, states,
which can have no powers that individuals do not already have in nature,

must, he argued, like individuals be governed by the same moral principles.
Although this is generally taken to place strict conditions on the rightful

pursuit of war, this conception, with all its wide-ranging implications for
political theory in general, was �rst elaborated by Grotius, at a time when

the Dutch were embarking on commercial expansion in the Indies, in order
to defend aggressive military action, not just by states but by private traders

– action such as the seizure of Portuguese ships – on the grounds that indi-
viduals, like and even before states, have the right to punish those who wrong

them. Grotius, as Tuck puts it, ‘made this remarkable claim, that there is no
signi�cant moral difference between individuals and states, and that both

may use violence in the same way and for the same ends.’5

But violence in pursuit of commercial advantage, whether by states or pri-

vate traders, does not, on the face of it, look like self-defence. So Grotius went

In�nite War � 15

4 For a provocative, and persuasive, interpretation of Grotius, see Tuck 1999.
5 Tuck 1999, p. 85.

further, effectively constructing a whole political theory on the principle that

self-preservation is the �rst and most fundamental law of nature, and then
de�ning self-preservation in the most capacious way. First, it means that

individuals and states are permitted, perhaps even obliged, to acquire for
themselves ‘those things which are useful for life’. Although they may not,

in the process, injure others who have not injured them, their own self-
preservation comes �rst.

Grotius’s notion of injury turns out to be very broadly permissive, while
the moral principles to which individuals and states are both subject are

minimal. The notion of some kind of international society bound together
by certain common rules is regarded as one of Grotius’s major contribu-

tions to international law and a peaceful world order. But his argument had
far less to do with what individuals or states owe one another than the

right they have to punish each other in pursuit of self-interest, not only in
defending themselves against attack but ‘proactively’, as it were, in purely

commercial rivalries. ‘Grotius,’ concludes Tuck, ‘endorsed for a state the
most far-reaching set of rights to make war which were available in the

contemporary repertoire.’6

This included not only a very wide-ranging international right of punish-

ment but also, as Grotius adjusted his theories to the changing needs of the
Dutch commercial empire, a right to appropriate territory. To buttress that

right, Grotius was obliged to develop a theory of property – and, here, his
ideological opportunism is particularly striking.

In the �rst instance, his main concern in constructing his theory of prop-
erty was to argue for the freedom of the seas, to challenge the right of

commercial rivals like the Portuguese to claim ownership of the seas and
monopolise trade routes. We can only have a proprietary right, he main-

tained, to things we can individually consume or transform. The sea cannot
be property, because, like air, it cannot be occupied or used in this way

and is, therefore, a common possession. Furthermore, what cannot become
private property, he argued (contrary to traditional conceptions of political

jurisdiction), cannot, by the same token, be the public property of the state
either, since both private and public ownership come about in the same way.

16 � Ellen Meiksins Wood

6 Tuck 1999, p. 108.

No state jurisdiction is possible where the kind of control implied by prop-

erty is even in principle impossible.
It is not dif�cult to see how military intervention might be justi�ed on these

grounds against those whose only wrong had been to assert a hitherto accepted
right of state jurisdiction over neighbouring waters or the right to regulate

certain �shing grounds and trade routes. Nor, of course, did this principle
preclude the de facto monopolisation of trade that the Dutch were aiming

for in certain places, where they simply coerced local populations into trade,
while aggressively repelling their European rivals.

At this point, Grotius was, in a sense, more concerned with what is not
property than what is. For the purposes of defending Dutch commercial prac-

tices, and, in particular, the actions of the East India Company, it was enough
to insist on the freedom of the seas and the right to pursue commercial

interests aggressively. But, as Tuck points out, a shift in Dutch commercial
policy, especially in the face of competition from the English and the French,

meant that Dutch trading companies became more interested in colonial set-
tlement than they had been before, if only to facilitate trade. Grotius duly

mobilised his earlier theory of property to encompass this requirement too.
Having argued that something could become property only if it could be

individually consumed or transformed, which might be true of land but not
the sea, he now elaborated the other side of that argument: if usable things

were left unused, there was no property in them, and hence people could
appropriate land left unused by others. Land left waste or barren – i.e. uncul-

tivated – was not property and could be claimed by those able and willing
to cultivate it. Grotius’s argument had clear af�nities with the Roman law

principle of res nullius, which decreed that any ‘empty thing’ such as un-
occupied land was common property until it was put to use – in the case of

land, especially agricultural use. This would become a common justi�cation
for European colonisation.7

In�nite War � 17

7 Pagden has a useful discussion of this principle and its use particularly by the
English and, to a lesser degree, the French, and the reasons for its absence in Span-
ish imperial ideology. See Pagden 1995, p. 77. The principle was obviously more
useful in cases where imperialism took the form of settler colonies which displaced
local populations and was of little use to the Spanish, with their empire of explicit
conquest.

Grotius argued that no local authority could legitimately prevent free

passage or the occupation of unused land, and any attempt to do so could
legitimately be challenged by military means. Nevertheless, since land, unlike

the sea, was in principle capable of transformation into property, it was also
susceptible to political jurisdiction. Grotius never denied that indigenous

authorities retained their general jurisdiction over the land – something that
Dutch trading companies effectively accepted by seeking the approval of

these local authorities and even paying them for taking land out of their
jurisdiction.

Toward an ideology of capitalist imperialism

Although such principles of colonial appropriation suf�ced for the Dutch,
whose main interest was in commercial supremacy, it would not suf�ce for

other imperial powers, or one in particular. A much less equivocal right of
appropriation by colonial settlers would be required by the English as they

developed their own very speci�c pattern of colonisation. The English, late
starters in the competition for overseas hegemony, began to rely more on

white settler colonies than its rivals ever did. This pattern began in Ireland,
and the Irish model was soon adapted to new colonies elsewhere.

What is signi�cant about this model, from our point of view, is that it was
accompanied by a very distinctive ideological strategy, which, while it shared

certain assumptions with England’s European rivals, introduced innovations
that re�ected a very speci�cally English experience. It is signi�cant that this

ideological strategy did not take the form of a theory of international rela-
tions or a doctrine of war and peace. The �rst major theoretical contribution

of the English to the justi�cation of modern imperialism was a theory of pri-
vate property.

In the late sixteenth century, the English adopted a policy of colonisation
in Ireland more aggressive than ever before. The object was not simply to

impose the state’s hegemony but also, and more particularly, to resettle Irish
lands with English and Scottish colonists. This meant not only a coercive

process of expropriation but also an attempt to transform Irish property rela-
tions, on the model of English commercial agriculture.

This was, in a sense, an instant transition from feudal to capitalist modes
of imperialism. Old strategies for dominating the Irish – by means, for instance,

18 � Ellen Meiksins Wood

of English lordship – were being replaced by attempts (successful or not) to

absorb Ireland into the English economy, even when, or because, direct polit-
ical domination had failed. Not only would English and Scots settlers import

the principles of English commercial agriculture but even Irish chieftains
would – and did – emulate them, often taking English and Scots tenants.

What direct coercion had failed to do, economic imperatives might accom-
plish – even if this strategy revealed a contradiction which would always

plague capitalist imperialism: having sought to impose these new imperatives
on Ireland, the imperial power was then obliged to thwart the development

of Ireland when it threatened to become a commercial rival, as it did in the
seventeenth century.

But this new imperial strategy required its own ideological defences. Since
Irish land could hardly be said to be unoccupied, or even uncultivated, this

project clearly required something more than the ideological supports pro-
vided by the doctrine of res nullius, even in the aggressively colonialist form

advocated by Grotius.
We can see the beginnings of a new argument for colonisation in the words

of Sir John Davies, one of the architects of English imperialism in Ireland. In
a letter to the Earl of Salisbury in 1610 about the Ulster plantation, he explains

the legal arguments in favour of expropriating the Irish and transferring their
property to English and Scots settlers. The argument that stands out for our

purposes here is that ‘half their land doth now lie waste, by reason whereof
that which is habited is not improved to half the value; but when the under-

takers [the settlers] are planted among them . . ., and that land shall be fully
stocked and manured, 500 acres will be of better value than 5000 are now.’

It is already clear in this passage that occupancy is no longer the relevant
issue. Nor, for that matter, is waste alone. Occupied land, even cultivated

land, can be appropriated if the occupants are failing to use it productively
enough. The criterion is no longer waste or usage in the traditional sense but

relative value.
The argument outlined by Sir John Davies in rudimentary form was clearly

rooted in the domestic experience of English agriculture, in which consid-
erations of ‘improvement’ and relative value belonged to the everyday

consciousness of commercial landlords, as did arguments in favour of enclo-
sure at home strikingly similar to the case for colonial expropriation. Similarly,

when William Petty, often called the father of classical political economy, later

In�nite War � 19

elaborated a labour theory of value for the very practical imperialist purpose

of surveying the value of land in Ireland for redistribution to Cromwell’s
army, in his capacity as Cromwell’s Surveyor General, he brought to bear the

experience of English agrarian capitalism.
But the argument already hinted at by John Davies in Ireland found its

most systematic development later in the century, in the work of John Locke –
though there is no need to assume any direct in�uence, since such arguments

were in the air of England’s developing agrarian capitalism. Locke’s theory
of property justi�es at one and the same time the practices of colonialists in

the Americas and capitalist landlords at home, interests combined perfectly
in the person of Locke’s mentor, the �rst Earl of Shaftesbury.

Commentators have pointed out that Locke introduced an important inno-
vation into the res nullius principle by justifying colonial appropriation of

unused land without the consent of any local sovereign, and that he pro-
vided settlers with an argument that justi�ed their actions on the basis of

natural law, without any reference to civil authority.8 In that respect, he went
even further than Grotius, with his equivocal recognition of local authority.

Locke did have a precursor in Thomas More (a critic of enclosure who was
himself an encloser), who in his Utopia suggested a similar principle about

the colonial occupation of unused land without the permission of local inhab-
itants. But there is something even more distinctive in Locke’s argument,

which owes less to pan-European legal and philosophical traditions than to
the speci�c experience of England, and to its domestic property relations even

before its colonial ventures.
Like Grotius, Locke associates property with use and transformation. But

his argument is not simply that things can become property when, and only
when, they are used and transformed. The point is rather that the right of

property derives from the creation of value. His famous labour theory of
property in Chapter Five of his Second Treatise of Government, according to

20 � Ellen Meiksins Wood

8 It is striking that histories of early modern European political thought, such as
those by Pagden and Tuck, as well as James Tully, whose work has revealed much
about the imperial implications of Locke’s theory of property, seem to have a blind
spot when it comes to theoretical innovations related to the speci�c experience of
English capitalism. It will be argued in what follows that Locke differentiates himself
from his European predecessors and Continental contemporaries more than any of
these histories allow, in ways that are directly related to the distinctive historical expe-
rience of England and English imperialism. See Tully 1993, and, for a critique, Wood
1994.

which we acquire property in something when we ‘mix’ our labour with it,

is full of complexities (including the question of whose labour, since the mas-
ter is entitled to property derived from his servant’s labour), which there is

no space to explore here. But one thing that is emphatically clear is that the
creation of value is the basis of property. Labour establishes a right of prop-

erty because it is labour that ‘puts the difference of value on every thing.’9

And the value in question is not ‘intrinsic’ but exchange value.

This implies not only that mere occupancy is not enough to establish prop-
erty rights, or even that hunting-gathering cannot establish the right of

property while agriculture can, but also that insuf�ciently productive and
pro�table agriculture, by the standards of English agrarian capitalism, effec-

tively constitutes waste. Land in America is open to colonisation because
an acre of land in ‘unimproved’ America, Locke argues (in a manner remini-

scent of Davies in Ireland) which may be as naturally fertile as an acre in
England, and have the same ‘intrinsick’ (sic) value, is not worth 1/1000 of

the English acre, if we calculate ‘all the Pro�t an Indian received from it were
it valued and sold here.’10

Locke thus goes beyond even Grotius in asserting the primacy of private
property over political jurisdiction in the colonies. In fact, political jurisdic-

tion at either end of the colonial relationship is conspicuously absent. For
Grotius, writing on behalf of the Dutch commercial empire, in which the prin-

cipal issue was commercial rivalry among trading nations vying for supremacy
in international commerce, it really was a question of ‘international relations’,

including the issue of war and peace among states. Although the Dutch cer-
tainly introduced innovations in their own domestic production, the kind

of commercial supremacy they enjoyed depended in large part on ‘extra-
economic’ advantages, superior shipping and sophisticated commercial

practices, the command of sea routes, de facto if not always de jure trading
monopolies, and far-�ung trading posts.11 All of these advantages were, in

one way or another, bound up with questions of war, peace, military might
and diplomacy. Even when, as the Dutch supplemented their earlier poli-

cies of imposing trade on local powers, in the Indies and elsewhere, with

In�nite War � 21

9 Locke 1988, Paragraph 40.
10 Locke 1988, Paragraph 43.
11 This argument about the Dutch Republic’s reliance on ‘extra-economic’ advan-

tages is elaborated in Wood 2002.

outright colonial settlement, so that Grotius was obliged to extend his argu-

ment to encompass colonial appropriation, he never gave up his original
conceptual framework, just as the Dutch never gave up their primary con-

cern with trade and commercial supremacy.
Early modern England, no less than other commercial powers, engaged in

the same international rivalries. English theorists could also draw on older
theories of just war, for example, to justify slavery – as Locke did himself –

by arguing that captives taken in a just war could legitimately be enslaved.
But there was already something new going on, and we �nd its best early

expression in Locke. Here, we �nd the beginnings of a conception of empire
rooted in capitalist principles, in pursuit of pro�t derived not simply from

exchange but from the creation of value in competitive production. This is a
conception of empire that is not simply about establishing imperial rule or

even commercial supremacy but about extending the logic and the impera-
tives of the domestic economy and drawing others into its orbit. Although

capitalist imperialism would never dispense with more traditional means of
justifying imperial expansion, it had now added wholly new weapons to the

ideological arsenal.

Globalisation and war

The ‘second’, and more properly ‘British’, Empire, whose crown jewel was

India, produced its own ideological requirements. To justify imperial dom-
ination of a strong commercial power like India with complex political

institutions, where the land was very much and insurmountably occupied,
and where the issue was neither simply trade nor colonial settlement but

domination of one major power by another, demanded arguments other than
those deployed in colonising the New World. Much of the old ideological

repertoire could be adapted to suit this new conquest, but some adjustments
had to be made. In particular, a modernisation, so to speak, of the old uni-

versal society argument was called upon to bear the ideological weight of
the new empire. Where the old version invoked certain universal principles

of civilised order to justify imperial wars, that theme was now modi�ed
by more recent conceptions of progress. India could then be depicted as

enjoying benign British tutelage, at least until its political and economic devel-
opment had caught up with the imperial guardian.

22 � Ellen Meiksins Wood

But if the new empire had different ideological requirements than the old,

the theoretical innovations that had buttressed the �rst British empire, in
Ireland and America, remained in some respects more prescient about the

future shape of capitalist imperialism. This is true not, of course, in the sense
that colonial settlement was to be the dominant form of capitalist imperial-

ism. But, in other ways, the ideological weapons forged to defend the Irish
and American models were more speci�cally capitalist than other available

theories. It is here that we begin to �nd a conception of empire not as con-
quest or even military domination and political jurisdiction, but as purely

economic hegemony.
John Locke, again, best re�ects this new conception of empire, in the sense

that his theory of colonial appropriation by-passes altogether the question of
political jurisdiction or the right of one political power to dominate another.

In his theory of property, we can observe imperialism becoming a directly
economic relationship, even if that relationship required brutal force to implant

it. That kind of relationship could be justi�ed not by the right to rule but by
the right, indeed the obligation, to produce exchange value.

Capitalist imperialism eventually became almost entirely a matter of
economic domination, in which market imperatives, manipulated by the

dominant capitalist powers, were made to do the work no longer done by
imperial states or colonial settlers. It is a distinctive and essential character-

istic of capitalist imperialism that its economic reach far exceeds its direct
political and military grasp. It can rely on the economic imperatives of

‘the market’ to do much of its imperial work. This sharply differentiates it
from earlier forms of imperialism, which depended directly on such extra-

economic powers, whether territorial empires which could reach only as far
as the capacity of their direct coercive powers to impose their rule, or com-

mercial empires whose advantages depended, for example, on domination
of the seas.

Once subordinate powers are made vulnerable to economic imperatives
and the ‘laws’ of the market, direct rule by imperial states is no longer required

to impose the will of capital. But here we encounter a paradox, or, better still,
a fundamental contradiction of capitalism. Market imperatives may reach

far beyond the power of any single state, but these imperatives themselves
must be enforced by coercive extra-economic power. Neither the imposi-

tion of economic imperatives, nor the everyday social order demanded by

In�nite War � 23

capital accumulation and the operations of the market, can be achieved with-

out the help of coercive powers much more local and territorially limited
than the economic reach of capital.

That is why, paradoxically, the more purely economic empire has become,
the more the nation-state has proliferated. Not only imperial powers but

subordinate states have proved necessary to the rule of global capital. It has,
in fact, been a major strategy of capitalist imperialism even to create local

states to act as conduits for capitalist imperatives.
Globalisation has not transcended this need. The ‘globalised’ world is

more than ever a world of nation-states. In fact, the new imperialism we
call globalisation, precisely because it depends on a wide-ranging economic

hegemony that reaches far beyond any state’s territorial boundaries or polit-
ical dominion, is a form of imperialism more dependent than any other on

a system of multiple states.
Subordinate states that act at the behest of global capital may be more effec-

tive than the old colonial settlers who once carried capitalist imperatives
throughout the world, but they also pose great risks. In particular, they are

subject to their own internal pressures and oppositional forces, and their own
coercive powers can fall into the wrong hands, which may oppose the will

of imperial capital. In this globalised world, where the nation-state is sup-
posed to be dying, the irony is that, because the new imperialism depends

more than ever on a system of multiple states, it matters to capital more than
ever who commands those local states and how. For instance, popular strug-

gles for truly democratic states, for a transformation in the balance of class
forces in the state, with international solidarity among such democratic national

struggles, might present a greater challenge to imperial power than ever
before.

At any rate, the imperial power has acted to ensure against any risk of los-
ing its hold on the global state system. However unlikely or distant that

prospect may seem, the US has been ready to anticipate it by using its one
most unambiguous advantage, its overwhelming military power – if only

because it can do so more or less with impunity.
But if military force remains an indispensable tool of the new imperial-

ism, its nature and objectives must be different from its application in old
colonial empires. The old forms of colonial imperialism required outright

conquest, together with theories of war and peace to justify it. Early capital-

24 � Ellen Meiksins Wood

ist imperialism, while no less dependent on coercive force to take control of

colonial territory, seemed able to dispense with a political defence of coloni-
sation and to incorporate the justi�cation of colonial settlement into a theory

of property. Globalisation, the economic imperialism of capital taken to its
logical conclusion, has, paradoxically, required a new doctrine of extra-

economic, and especially military, coercion.
The practical and doctrinal dif�culties posed by this new situation are obvi-

ous. If local states will guard the economy, who will guard the guardians? It
is impossible for any single state power, even the massive military force of

the US, to impose itself every day, everywhere, throughout the global system.
Nor can any conceivable collective force impose the will of global capital all

the time on a multitude of subordinate states, or maintain the predictable
order required by capital’s daily transactions. It is not easy to identify the

role of military force in defending a borderless empire and establishing impe-
rial control over a global economy, instead of sovereignty over a clearly

bounded territory.
Since even US military power cannot be everywhere at once (it has never

even aspired to more than two local wars at a time), the only option is to
demonstrate, by frequent displays of military force, that it can go anywhere

at any time, and do great damage. This is not to say that war will be con-
stant. ‘Operation In�nite War’ is apparently intended to produce something

more like Hobbes’s ‘state of war’: ‘the nature of war,’ he writes in the Leviathan,
‘consisteth not in actual �ghting, but in the known disposition thereto

during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary’. It is this endless
possibility of war that imperial capital needs in order to sustain its hegemony

over the global system of multiple states.
Hobbes understood what the new imperialists know: that power rests to

a great extent on psychology and especially fear. As the right-wing com-
mentator, Charles Krauthammer has recently said in the Washington Post, ‘The

elementary truth that seems to elude the experts again and again – Gulf war,
Afghan war, next war – is that power is its own reward. Victory changes

everything, psychology above all. The psychology in the region is now one
of fear and deep respect for American power. Now is the time to use it to

deter, defeat or destroy the other régimes . . .’, above all, Iraq. So, while power
produces fear, fear produces more power; and the purpose of a war like the

one in Afghanistan is to create a psychological climate, as much as anything

In�nite War � 25

else, a purpose more easily served by attacking adversaries who can be

defeated with relative ease (and where, perhaps, the outcome matters rela-
tively little to the imperial power), and then moving on to bigger game,

forti�ed by universal fear.
This does not necessarily mean that the US, as global capital’s ultimate

coercive power, will wage war for no reason at all, just for the purpose of
display. There are likely to be more �nite goals, as in Afghanistan, though

even here, the objectives probably have more to do with trying out new modes
of war and, above all, creating a political climate for the open-ended ‘war

against terrorism’ – even more than, say, ensuring access to the huge oil and
gas reserves of Central Asia, which many commentators have suggested is

the purpose of the war.
But, whatever speci�c objectives such wars may have, there is always some-

thing more. The larger purpose is to shape the political environment in a
complex system of multiple states. In some cases, particularly in subordinate

states, the object is exemplary terror, pour encourager les autres. In advanced
capitalist states, the political environment is shaped in other ways, by their

implication in imperial alliances.12 But in all cases, the overriding objective
is to demonstrate US hegemony.

Such purposes help to explain why there has developed a pattern of resort
to military action by the US in situations ill-suited to military solutions, why

massive military action is anything but a last resort, and why the connection
between means and ends in these military ventures is typically so tenuous.

An endless empire which has no boundaries, even no territory, requires war
without end. An invisible empire requires in�nite war, and a new doctrine

of war to justify it.

References

Gowan, Peter forthcoming, ‘American Global Government: Will It Work?’, Deutscher

Memorial Prize Lecture, to appear in Socialist Register 2003.

Locke, John 1988, Second Treatise of Government, edited by Peter Laslett, Cambridge:

Cambridge University

Press.

26 � Ellen Meiksins Wood

12 See Gowan forthcoming on US efforts to shape the political environment in allied
capitalist powers.

Pagden, Anthony 1995, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and

France c. 1500–1800, New Haven: Yale University Press.

Tuck, Richard 1999, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International

Order from Grotius to Kant, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tully, James 1993, An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

de Vries, Jan and Ad van der Woude 1997, The First Modern Economic: Success, Failure,

and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815, Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Wood, Ellen Meiksins 1994, ‘Radicalism, Capitalism and Historical Contexts: Not Only

Reply to Richard Ashcraft on John Locke’, History of Political Thought, 15, 3: 323–72.

Wood, Ellen Meiksins 2002, ‘The Question of Market Dependence’ , Journal of Agrarian

Change, 2, 1: 50–87.

In�nite War � 27

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