Neo-Gramsci and the War in Afghanistan

İZMİR UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS
Theories of International Relations
INSTRUCTER: Yrd. Doc. Dr. Balkan Devlen
SUBJECT: Neo-Gramsci and the War in Afghanistan

Sıla BOZ
Tolga YELMEN
Kamer AYDIN
Aydın Ersin YILMAZ

Introduction The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan has been seen as a ‘just war’ by the world opinion across the globe which represented a war targeting the terrorism and responsible terrorist organizations which are Taliban and Al-Qaida. In order to eliminate the ‘Islamic Terrorism’ by a Western-style democracy, international organizations which are under the dominancy of US have mobilized in order to justify the ‘war on terrorism’ with the help of the media campaigns. In this paper, it is going to be analyzed the US Afghanistan invasion according to the perspectives of neo-gramscianism. Neo-gramscianism finds both ‘neo-realism’ and ‘liberalism’ not sufficient to analyze the international politics since as R. W. Cox states that the every theory serves to somewhere and to an ideology as well as to a purpose and differs problem-solving theories which assume that states are not subject to fundamental changes but limited or incremental changes and all actions take place in a limited framework and critical theories that go beyond them to identify the origins and its developmental potential and historical phenomena. Thus, in this paper, the concept of hegemony, historic bloc and war and terror in the world order will be examined according to the Afghanistan occupation. Neo-Realist concept of hegemony includes one powerful state that dominates other with its military and economic capabilities. However, neo-gramscian approach is much wider than this definition which includes it is more than a state dominance, based on a consensual order that has dominance but dominance by a powerful state may be a necessary but not sufficient condition. In the historic bloc part, the historic bloc concept of Gramsci including international organizations will be examined at

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