States of Contingency: Geopolitical Dynamics of Sovereignty and Intervention in American Studies and International Relations

In his address to the nation in the fall of 2014, Barack Obama outlined the strategy of the United States for a military intervention aimed at the destruction of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. In a telling rhetoric move, Obama put particular emphasis on the terrorist organization’s name, claiming that “ISIL is not ‘Islamic’ [...]. And ISIL is certainly not a state.” Especially the latter part of this statement reveals a number of issues in which present-day geopolitics and International Relations scholarship are deeply entrenched: the legal framework, academic interpretation and practical application concerning the nexus between territorial sovereignty, self-determination, and external interventions into these maxims. In fact, the current crisis in Iraq and Syria renders visible a number of peculiar and long-standing challenges of nation states like the United States and supranational organizations like the United Nations and NATO, most notably to maintain a coherent logic between the mantra-like postulation of the spatial integrity of territory on the one hand and simultaneous violation of this principle legitimized through, for instance, the “war on drugs” or the “war on terror” on the other hand.