What is an International Post-Belligerent Administration?

Abstract

Academic experts use many approximate terms to describe the whole framework of territorial administrations, relying on the resurgence of old concepts such as “international protectorate” or “colonial rule,” associated with the idea of an international trusteeship (international authority).1 To refer to the subsequent practice, the terms of “benevolent autocracy”2 and “humanitarian occupation”3 are used frivolously. For specialists looking for “heritage” of territorial administrations, the neo-colonial context could be explained by the fact that “[c]olonialism lasted long enough to destroy the preexisting social and political institutions, but not long enough to put anything solid and lasting in their place.”4 Some others even justify a form of neo-imperialism to maintain international order: Those who imagine a world beyond empire imagine rightly, but they have not seen how prostrate societies actually are when nation-building fails, when civil war has torn them apart. Then and only then is there a case for temporary imperial rule, to provide the force and will necessary to bring order out of chaos.5