• 1 * Luka Nikolić expresses gratitude for the support of Charles University Grant Agency grant number (...)
• 2 ARFI, Badredine, «Khôra as the condition of possibility of the ontological without ontology», in Re (...)

4This is why the present work has no resolutive ambition in regard to friendship and enmity, but is intended to grapple and manage the fundamental insecurity of its own postulates. As it would be more superficial and perhaps even redundant to state as simply the bilateral, trilateral or any other condition of friendship or enmity, both synchronically and diachronically, here, friendship and enmity are no states, but unending and hence parricidal process(es). As such, friendship and enmity intermingle in a constant flux, while being separated only by a undulating pecked line, which is too flimsy to keep the two separate and too rigid to make them coincide. Hence, rather than looking for a condition of friendship or enmity, we look for the condition of im-possibility of neither/nor and both/and, the endless (un)making of frenemyship/frenmity, according to a Derridean ontology without ontology1. In the words of Arfi: «[w]e thus need [...] a sort of ontological without the ‘essence’ of ontology»2. Otherwise, we accept the necessity of an underpinning theoretical ground, but reject its oft-consequential identification with positive assumptions, which part from granted realities. Neither friendship, nor enmity and both friendship and enmity, such is the theoretical and practical purpose of this article, where the neither/nor and both/and stand for precisely the incomplete, hence in-process entities, as well as the irreducible borderlines in between, the accent again being on irreducibility rather than any supposedly fixable entity of borderline.

• 3 NIETZSCHE, Friedrich Wilhelm, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Lincoln (NE), Universi (...)

«“Friends, there are no friends!” the dying wise man shouted. “Enemies, there is no enemy!” shout I, the living fool»3

• 4 HERZ, John H, «Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma», in World Politics, 2, 2/1950, p (...)
• 5 JERVIS, Robert, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, Princeton (NJ), Prineton Un (...)
• 6 GLASER, Charles L, «Security Dilemma Revisited», in World Politics, 50, 1/1997, pp. 171-201.
• 7 DEUTSCH, Karl W, et al, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization (...)
• 8 WENDT, Alexander, «Anarchy is What States Make of It», in International Organization, 46, 2/1992, p (...)
• 9 AXELROD, Robert, HAMILTON, William D, «The Evolution of Cooperation», in Science, 211, 4489, 1981, (...)
• 10 DERRIDA, Jacques, The Politics of Friendship, London - New York (NY), Verso, 2005.

7In the theory of international politics, an analogous condition arguably bears the name of “security dilemma”, hypothesising a self-help situation in which actors, primarily and mainly states, look after their own security in the absence of a world government, yet in so doing unchain vicious circles of doubt and escalation4. Here no less, at issue are both the hybridity of identities (can I consider myself a friend without the other taking advantage or can I rather afford a continuously inimical stance?) and arguably the doom of iterability. Be that as it may, vast is today the literature pointing out the possibility of cooperation under such a condition of primordial uncertainty if only attention were paid to mutual payoffs, the clarity of defensive/offensive postures5, the particularly greedy states6, rather than actors and structures other than states, such as institutions7 or identities8. In game theory as well, preferences and outcomes were found to change depending on the fact whether the situation is singular and experimental rather than regular and repetitive. One-shot setting favours mistrust; in the latter case, the tit-for-tat strategy starts by avoiding unnecessary conflict, responds in kind to any hostile behaviour, is forgiving thereafter and ultimately conveys great overall clarity of conduct.9 In sum, a feedback loop between identities and longer patterns of exposure tend to defuse the incentive to deceive the counterpart and lead to predominantly cooperative relationship. The same goes for the opening quote: from the other to the brother may be a witty way of putting it, capturing as well the “fraternal” and non-sororal cementation of a lasting friendship10.

• 11 DELORI, Mathias, WARE, Vron, «The faces of enmity in international relations. An introduction», in (...)

12- finally, a third group, devoiding the inimical relationship of any affectional charge, whereby mere co-existence is sufficient for violent episodes11.

• 12 KUPCHAN, Charles A, How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace, Princeton (NJ), Prince (...)
• 13 JACKSON, Patrick Thaddeus, Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the Wes (...)
• 14 WHEELER, Nicholas J, Trusting Enemies: Interpersonal Relations in International Conflict, Oxford, O (...)
• 15 See for instance the “in/direct international relations” (i. e. the friend of my enemy, the enemy o (...)
• 16 See for instance: HERRMANN, Richard K., FISCHERKELLER, Michael P., «Beyond the enemy image and spir (...)

13Taken collectively, all these contributions share a categorical ontology taking enmity (and friendship) as either given or socially constructed, as is the case with a lot of other scholarly literature which could easily be attributed to one of the classes. For instance, Kupchan sees enmity as a misplaced focus on the regime type rather than the quality of statecraft. The so-called democracies and non-democracies are no enemies by means of mere regime difference since mutual accommodation is possible if statecraft is solid12. Further, Jackson’s study of post-WWII metamorphosis of Germany from a foe into a friend of the Western bloc is at least two steps into the same logic: there are friends and enemies and where there are enemies, their civilisation is possible, their affective status vis-à-vis the beholder being ultimately socially constructed13. On the same note, Wheeler takes inspiration from speech act theory, whereby speaking becomes doing, and proceeds to describe enmity as a function of the interpersonal relationship between the heads of state or government14. Finally, other contributions still part from the purity of ontological categorisation and only divide between those taking enmity as given15 and those believing it to be socially constructed16.

• 17 IGNATIEFF, Michael, op. cit.

15Otherwise said, the problem of frenemyship/frenmity boils down to the problem of declaration since the latter always-already presupposes the affirmation of the other. An other whom I address is an other affirmed and recognised by the very gesture of address, however friendly or inimical the nature and tone of the address itself. It is this declaration without (formal) declaration, a tacit declaration, which underwrites the institution of declaration itself. For, «we are friends/enemies» works in any context whatsoever only through the underlying and undermining work of involuntary recognition, as though replicating the form of the opening quote, whereby friends or enemies are invoked in the same gesture which negates their existence. This is why friendship qua the relation of absolute acceptance is not possible without the work of difference testifying by the same token to the inimitable singularity of each and every engaging part. The same goes for enmity, unlike what is found in the hereby supplemented literature: when Ignatieff argues that between enemies, unlike adversaries, trust is impossible, he downplays the trust in the symbolic meaning of enmity, necessary to each and every articulation of however radical enmity itself17. For, even without flirting again with the paradoxical setting of the opening quote, communicating that «we are enemies» requires that the idiom of enmity is somehow shared in what easily becomes the first step towards equally futile mutual destruction, but perhaps also reconciliation. It is hence this idiom which speaks from us even before we may boast about mastering it, if ever.

• 18 ANDREATTA, Filippo, CLEMENTI, Marco, COLOMBO, Alessandro, KOENIG-ARCHIBUGI, Mathias, PARSI, Vittori (...)

16Notwithstanding, enmity has still been historically predilect in the study of international politics, as in an overturn of the famous Clausewitzian idea of war into something as «politics as the continuation of war by other means». The relatively modern story for the purpose of this article goes that even before the formal birth of the discipline of international relations (IR), in Aberystwyth, Wales in 1919, ever since centrally concerned with bellicose conduct in international politics for obvious reasons18, international law alone creaked in the attempt to limit the impact of hostilities for the parties concerned. For instance, Article 1 of the Hague Convention relative to the Opening of Hostilities (1907) reads:

• 19 Körösényi even argues that friendship is no political category at all. KÖRÖSÉNYI, András, «Politics (...)

17With the end of WWII, enmity was far from leaving the floor to friendship, which is perhaps by itself instructive of the unuttered seriousness of its issue over that of friendship19. As a matter of fact, even when the brand-new United Nations (UN) Charter banned the use of force by states through Article 2(4), enmity was simply displaced in an ever more radical negative ontological attempt at curbing its impact. For, even at this point, friendship was at the margins, except for its technical translation into alliances, yet again with external balancing functions and hence as guarantees of a status quo situation. One occasion it did penetrate somewhat serious fora of discussion culminated with the UN General Assembly Resolution 2625 (1970), also known as «The Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States» and perhaps even more for its discussion of self-determination as an intra- and sub-national issue of popular deliberation, fearing the potential for crumbling of the hitherto subject and object of friendship and enmity itself: the national state.

• 20 HUGHES, Geraint, My Enemy’s Enemy: Proxy Warfare in International Politics, Eastbourne, Sussex Acad (...)

19Contemporary reflections signal that this is no longer possible, if ever it has been. Hughes, for instance, dismantles the idea that sole enemies in the international realm are states, opening a Pandora’s box of frenemyship and frenmity20. Although his contribution focuses only on proxy wars, also known as «internationalised non-international armed conflicts» in the field of adapting international humanitarian law (IHL), whereby a state meddles with the internal affairs of another state with the aim of supporting a state opponent in its political aims, contributions of the sort do justice in at least two important ways. First, by showing precisely that there is no friendship and/or enmity, but rather a scalar disposition of incessant difference permeating the subnational, national and international realms. Second, by translating the idea of frenemyship/frenmity as a fundamental undecidability between the «who» and «what» of a relation to otherness: for a relationship between A and B as normally conceived, there need to be A and B in the first place, which are here such only as homeostatic rather than static. Ergo, the question directly taunts states and any such structure (institutions, identities) envisaged as the privileged subject and object of friendship and enmity. In the words of Ashley, who baptises the security dilemma «the anarchy problematique»:

• 22 VAUGHAN-WILLIAMS, Nick, PEOPLES, Columba, Critical Security Studies: An Introduction, Abingdon, Rou (...)
• 23 DOMBROWSKI, Peter, GHOLZ, Eugene, Buying Military Transformation: Technological Innovation and the (...)

21The end of the Cold war without a doubt marked the disappearance of bipolar security architecture in which the two well-defined blocs stood opposed to each other with third parties bandwagoning to avoid geopolitical annihilation. The relative defeat of the Eastern bloc opened a way for new kind of structures, threats and strategies. Soviets were substituted with rogue countries, state actors with violent non-state actors, nuclear weapons with horizontal proliferation, conventional arms and war on drugs, imminent and concrete physical threat left open space for somewhat abstract and ubiquitous terrorist attacks22. In other words, states had apparently lost their primacy and the new era could start, that of technological advancements and liberal internationalism embodied in the notion of human security23.

• 24 BUZAN, Barry, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Col (...)

22For this paper, particularly significant transformation is that of enemy which is present as a trace, in a spectral form, not anymore as an internationally legitimate state actor with even the minimum level of responsibility. However, the point is precisely that the change has not been as radical as one may claim. The majority of literature in security studies epitomised that source of the threat, strategic outlook, the polarity of the system or nature of power irreversibly changed with the disappearance of Soviet threat and the consequential unipolar moment24. Contrary to that, we claim that the underlying logic of security through actor-based security model and threat-based strategy remained intact while manifest forms evolved. Put plainly, the mainstream literature owes a convincing explanation as to why and how the positivist framework of friends vs. enemies crumbled with the Berlin Wall, simply calling for alternative explanations. Our hitherto take, hereafter tested upon post-Cold war, is that non-identity contaminates and has always been intrinsic to interstate relations. Therefore, post-Cold war security architecture served as a sui generis justification for actions that would come afterwards owing to the blurred borders between allies and adversaries. Hence, while in itself it would be an understandable course within narrow confines of a self-help international system, contemporary history witnesses the transcendence of the very ethical and cosmopolitan paradigms.

• 25 AGAMBEN, Giorgio, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Pres (...)
• 26 DAMAI, Puspa, «The Killing Machine of Exception: Sovereignty, Law, and Play in Agamben’s State of E (...)

24Giorgio Agamben has become famous for his attempts to modernise the sovereignty theory of Carl Schmitt through the employment of state of exception as a legal form of something that cannot be legal25. Namely, in a paradoxical manner, a norm fringe to the law keeps the juridical system alive. In the post-Cold war environment, the state of exception gets some additional connotations because by continuous applications it stops being so exceptional. Anticipating the essence of these paragraphs, Damai claims: «Agamben’s prophetic portrayal of contemporary politics in which the state of exception—normally a provisional attempt to deal with political exigencies— has become a permanent practice or paradigm of government»26. When an exception becomes the new normalcy, nothing less than creation of a series of dubious governance techniques can be expected.

• 27 LUNSTRUM, Elizabeth, «Terror, Territory, and Deterritorialization: Landscapes of Terror and the Unm (...)
• 28 AGAMBEN, Giorgio, op. cit., pp. 48-60.

25Among them, spaces of exception where human life is scaled down to its bare physiological nature are the cruelest if not globally dangerous. Those spaces such as black sites, prisons, secret interrogation centers, even the whole micro-regions are «legally ambiguous spaces or territories where the law is suspended and where state-orchestrated violence, including torture, plays out with impunity»27. Agamben described it as a camp, permanent spatial arrangement that remains continually outside the normal state of law28.

• 29 DERRIDA, Jacques, «The World of the Enlightenment to Come (Exception, Calculation, Sovereignty)», i (...)

26Finally, nowadays we can talk about globalised substance of the exception which is not only a merit of citizen-state, but also citizen-world and state-world relations. The vertigo of sovereignty is adjacent both to the structures and systems. And they are always immersed in violence preceding its fundaments. When Derrida wrote that there is something rogue in every state, he added: «[T]he recourse to terror and fear, which has always been […] the ultimate recourse for the sovereign power of the state, in an implicit or explicit, blatant or subtle, form, and even when it is contractual and protective»29. Accordingly, sovereignty and citizenship start and end at the very same point. It is the one where the friend and the enemy meet.

• 30 O TUATHAIL, Gearoid, LUKE, Timothy W., «Present at the (Dis)Integration: Deterritorialization and R (...)

27As was already said, post-Cold war period was marked by the forces of deterritorialisation that counter-intuitively go hand in hand with territorialisation, just with the prefix re- to signal repetitive and cyclical nature of the process30. The most important deterritorialised threat has certainly been the terrorist one. Therefore, on its example we will investigate the mechanisms of how, so to speak, an unknown enemy is actually substituted with a known friend. Three are the phases that will be part of the analysis, deliberately put in the form of imperative: deterritorialise; reterritorialise; technologise.

• 31 BUSH, George W, Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation, 2001, URL:
• 32 FELDMAN, Allen, «Books Deterritorialized Wars of Public Safety», in Social Analysis: The Internatio (...)
• 33 BONDITTI, Philippe, «From Territorial Space to Networks: A Foucaldian Approach to the Implementatio (...)
• 34 WHINE, Matthew, The New Terrorism, Tel Aviv, Stephen Roth Institute, 2005, p. 8.
• 35 O’MALLEY, Pat, Risk, Uncertainty and Government, London, The Glasshouse Press, 2004, p. 23.
• 36 FELDMAN, Allen, op. cit.

28After the first terrorist attacks on the US soil in 2001, the question was against whom to retaliate. Was it a particular state, cluster or even the whole continent? President Bush made the choice easier by claiming that they will treat as terrorists even those who are harbouring them31. Declaration of War on terror and coalition of the willing ostracised everyone who did not want to join. Contrary to the expected, deterritorialised threat could not be neutralised in such a way because terrorism was simultaneously sub- and supra-state threat. Some theorists even described it as a dream threat32. Inability of a state to confront the terrorist threat caused appearance of new discourses about networks of terror, axis of state sponsors of terrorism…33. At the same time it was the public demonstration of a novel security challenge, but also a subtle justification for the inefficiency of countermeasures. Famous is the statement of a US general questioning the mere possibility of destroying the enemy hidden in the caves of Kabul, while Whine warns that «Al Qaeda consists of nomadic and amorphous networks characterized by the diffusion of its groups, it challenges the abilities of governments to infiltrate the networks and to track these terrorists»34. On the other side, deterritorialisation of the terrorism was used as an opportunity to partially dislocate the credible struggle. O’ Malley was writing about the emulation of precautionary principle in the light of existential uncertainty35, while Feldman put deterritorialised wars of public safety as a corollary of the transfer of counter-terrorist focus36.

• 37 BONDITTI, Phillipe, op. cit., p. 472.
• 38 MOODLIAR, Suren, «Militarism, Mass Surveillance and Mass Incarceration», in Socialism and Democracy(...)
• 39 BONDITTI, Phillipe, op. cit., p.473.

29What followed was the second phase of reterritorialisation or logical step to give physical boundaries to an allegedly invisible threat. However, instead of placing terrorists outside, majority of countries decided to take their own territory as an ultimate terrorist frontier. To put it simpler, containing the threat within the reach of a sovereign was meant to delegitimise it. Bonditti claims that the aim of every government suddenly became to conduct «multileveled dispositive of control over people in a given territorial space»37. As can be inferred, this meant spillover of oppressive state measures from terrorists to the immigrants, workers, foreign students, the Other in general. Moodliar even writes that states employ indiscriminatory measures oriented at anyone and everyone38. In that precise moment the world turned into a panopticon and similarly to the so-called erosion of sovereignty, control and discipline became the contemporary globalised substance. In that conjuncture, the vital interest of every state is to precisely know who is entering the state and who is already there39. That could be done solely through the absolute control of personhood without respect for anything except for the grand strategy and goal of national survival.

• 40 COHEN, Elliot D., Mass Surveillance and State Control, London, Palgrave McMillan, 2010, p. 17.
• 41 Ibidem, p. 8.
• 42 FELDMAN, Allen, op. cit., p. 77.
• 43 Ibidem.

31Skillfully evading constitutional provisions, Bush administration introduced a project called TIA intended to put an end to the terrorist threat. It involved the «construction of a vast database of personal information (from movie rentals and credit card purchases to phone and e-mail conversations) and a network of integrated technologies for trolling through it»40. The government did not need a warrant by a judge to conduct the oversight and keep records of the acquired data through the large databases. The only formal requirement for the government was to provide a so called National Security Letter which actually was nothing more than a provisional confirmation that someone can potentially be a security threat41. Feldman rightfully noted that TIA represents an attempt to create «a new form of citizenship and concomitant personhood»42. Under the guise of the fight against terrorism, a huge space for power abuse was opened and prospects for absolute control of the population enhanced. TIA used «sociality patterns along with racial and ethnic affiliation [which] are meant to dissect the social persona»43. All of the aforementioned created an overarching paranoia that state is present everywhere and that everyone is a potential victim. In other words, citizens became terrorists, while governments inverted the paradigm to demonstrate that they oppress citizens for their own good. Accordingly, state-sponsored terrorism and state-sponsored fight against terrorism retain striking similarities.

• 44 MARAS, Marie-Helen, «How to Catch a Terrorist: Is Mass Surveillance the Answer?», in Journal of App (...)
• 45 LYON, David, The Electronic Eye The Rise of Surveillance Society, Minneapolis (MN), Minnesota Unive (...)
• 46 MARAS, Marie-Helen, The Social Consequences, cit., p. 71.
• 47 Ibidem, p. 70.
• 48 WILLIAMS, Robin, JOHNSON, Paul, «Circuits of surveillance», in Surveillance and Society, 2, 1/2004, (...)

32A passage from Maras reads: «In response to these [terrorist] attacks, an intense system of mass registration and surveillance of movement was set in place to combat the terrorist threat»44. Surveillance as a method has been employed since the dawn of humanity, but if its aim is to increase the capacity for doubt, then it becomes a tool at the disposal of a state to even turn daily routines of people into a public event45. Moreover, attempts to stop terrorist plots can easily slide into a tendency to preserve status quo46. All of this suggests that eventual non-compliance of citizens with state policies as a permanent possibility for limitations of governance is much more dangerous than the mere terrorist threat which almost regularly boosts confidence in the state itself. However, surveillance of phones, mail, homes, routines threatens to fulfill the plea of Tony Blair that bases with private data should include anyone who steps in in the country47. Through surveillance, the state becomes big (br)other, an agent of absolute control and discipline, while citizens become the «permanent shadow of an ever present witness»48.

• 49 FELDMAN, Allen, op. cit., p. 70.

33To conclude, this is an illustration of a manifest blurring between friends and enemies. Terrorist threat is countered through the oppression of non-terrorists, while freedoms are sacrificed for the sake of achieving freedom. Feldman writes: «The current warfare ideologies of public safety share with their “terrorist adversary” an epistemological and visual investment in actuarial retribution and the dramaturgy of sacrificial repetition»49. Nevertheless, if we employ Hobbesian pessimism, maybe that is just the normal order of things. Order in which disorder is a structural necessity.