The fate of territorial engineering: Mechanisms of territorial power and post-liberal forms of international governance

Does there exist a genuine threat to the continuation of a broadly liberal international (and domestic) order, driven by the re-emergence of religious and secular fundamentalisms? This article assesses this issue in the context of first the rise of territorial power and then its fate in a period of globalization and the revival of religious intolerance. The twin concepts of sovereign-power and bio-power are deployed to investigate the emergence of territorial engineering in the 17th century. A key feature of modern fundamentalisms is that they promote and trade on the deterritorialization of social, political, cultural and economic activity. It is argued that this is a manifestation of a new form of 'spirited martial power'. The risks associated with these developments should not be over-exaggerated but they exist nonetheless. If this is the case, the problem becomes one of how to re-territorialize the activities and disputes engendered by this reappearance and re-emergence of spirited martial power in the international system, with all its attendant links to religious fundamentalisms. Here the argument is that this requires a re-examination of the nature of international borders, and indeed a re-emphasis on their role, not just in respect to containing disorder and restoring the capacity for governance, but also as a way of re-configuring international toleration and of righting a wrong.