After the November 13^th Paris attacks, can the international war on terror be thought of as a ‘global civil war’? Giorgio Agamben’s Stasis, based upon “two seminars on civil war given at Princeton University in October 2001,” poses this disturbing question. “It is up to readers to determine,” Agamben writes, “to what extent the theses addressed here—which identify the fundamental threshold of politicization in the West in civil war and the constitutive element of the modern State in ademia (that is, the absence of a people)—still apply, or whether … the passage into … global civil war has altered their meaning in an essential manner” (ix).

But Agamben’s question actually presupposes these controversial theses, and sidesteps the more difficult questions: can the international ‘war on terror’ really be thought as a ‘global civil war’?—and not as what Samuel Huntington calls a ‘clash of civilizations’ between ‘the West’ and the Muslim world? or as what Donald M. Snow describes as an “uncivil war,” which “appear[s] to be directed, not toward the control and transformation of the political system, but toward the maximization of disorder”? (2) And is the Western State really devolving into a constant ‘state of exception,’ which threatens to destroy the rule of law upon which it is founded?

In “Stasis,” the first of the two seminars, Agamben’s thesis derives from Nicole Loraux’s “La guerre dans la famille,” which argues that Greek politics emerge from an internecine civil war, originating within the family or household, which is then politicized by the city or polis, finally resulting in an uneasy truce that establishes the democratic rule of law (6-11). Contra Loraux, Agamben argues that the conflict between family and city, oikos and polis, is never resolved, but persists as a constant civil war which describes the threshold of politicization in the polis (11-22). And in “Leviathan and Behemoth,” Agamben argues, based upon Hobbes’ Leviathan, that Hobbes’ ‘war of all against all’ (bellum omnia contra omnes), described as a ‘state of nature,’ is really a projection of this civil war, which is only resolved by an absolute sovereign who imposes the rule of law by violence upon his subjects (52-53). This rule of law does not derive from a social contract, but is simply imposed by the sovereign, in the absence of the political body of ‘the People‘ upon which Western democracy is founded (42-52).

Thus far, Agamben’s reading of Leviathan doesn’t deviate from conventional studies of Hobbes as an apologist for 17^th Century absolutism, and of the Hobbesian ‘Leviathan’ as precursor of the 20^th Century totalitarian states, with Franz von Neumann’s ‘Behemoth’ (the Nazi State) standing as its monstrous double. Agamben’s reading of Hobbes’ political theology is more provocative. According to Agamben (25-37), the frontispiece of Leviathan, which portrays the Hobbesian sovereign as the incarnation of the body politik, really exposes the sovereign’s political body as an optical illusion (38-44), scarcely disguising his role in imposing sovereignty violently upon “the dissolute multitude” (44-48). The Hobbesian State is dubbed ‘Leviathan’ because it is actually ‘The Kingdom of Anti-Christ’ (53-58), a satanic double of the ‘Christian Commonwealth’ which will only be established after ‘The Second Coming,’ when Paul’s prophecies of the Church as ‘the Body of Christ’ will be fulfilled, and God Himself become the sovereign head of ‘The Kingdom of God’ (58-64).

Agamben then conflates Hobbesian political theology with Walter Benjamin’s Theological-Political Fragment (64-68) to suggest that the Hobbesian State is really a diabolic mechanism bringing about its own downfall through the civil war it wages against its subjects. Whether Agamben believes that this catastrophic downfall will inaugurate a ‘Kingdom of God,’ a Marxist/Leninist State, or something else altogether, cannot be discerned. Instead, Agamben concludes, “it is [only?] certain that the political philosophy of modernity will not be able to emerge from its contradictions except by becoming aware of its theological roots” (69), as is evident from Hobbes’ Leviathan.

Agamben’s description of the Western State as existing in a permanent state of exception is an accurate description of the 20^th Century totalitarian regimes; and Agamben’s depiction of this constant civil war corresponds to the clash between ‘communism’ and ‘fascism’ in the 1930s and 1940s. This state of exception then continued through the 1950s and 1960s Cold War conflicts between the USSR and the USA, and into the ‘un-civil wars’ in the former Yugoslavia of the 1990s. By Agamben’s argument, this permanent state of exception also extends into current events, with the declaration by French President, Françoise Hollande, of a state of emergency, following the Paris attacks.

Agamben makes this argument in a recent interview with France Culture (reprinted in La Repubblica, November 24, 2015). Here he argues that a state of emergency is an ineffective response to terrorist attacks, insofar as it merely expedites the refashioning of the Western State as a “security state,” in which “the participation of the citizens in politics is drastically reduced, and the citizens … are treated … like potential terrorists.” The war on terror cannot be theorized as an international war, because “if there is a war, it is necessary to have a clearly defined enemy”; and in counter-terrorist warfare, “the enemy is indeterminate,” only serving to justify state-sponsored violence. “It is not with a state of exception … that terrorism can be combated,” Agamben concludes, “but only with a radical change in the political system, for example, by ceasing to sell arms to … those states which … provide support to terrorism,” thereby stopping the state-sponsored violence which perpetuates both counter-terrorism and terrorism.

After the Paris attacks, Agamben’s description of this (permanent?) state of exception might appear to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. But whether his thesis is applicable to current events in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq can only be decided by those events, which defy even the direst prophecies of Western political theology.