Looking Back to See the Future

Over three years ago I suggested Filipinos were the first Iraqis. Trawling the internet on current debates over IR theory, I stumble into the familiar names of Anna Agathangelou and LHM Ling. They write:

Liberalism fails postcolonial states. Its social ontology of fear and property necessarily alienates the Other, whether embodied in an individual person, a society, or an institution of power like the state. Along with class, this alienation carries connotations for race, gender, and culture as well. We find echoes of the current war in Iraq, for example, in the US annexation of the Philippines in 1898 not just in terms of military violence, political manipulation, and economic exploitation but also ideological rationale.

Please find the rest of this working paper here.