*Originally published in 2023 and preserved as part of our archive project.Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

The Israel/Hamas war poses some issues for International Relations scholars which we perhaps tend to downplay. For example, the desire to act or demonstrate solidarity, to fulfil the imperative to ‘decolonise’ or ‘to call out the oppressors’, can often clash with the desire to deconstruct or oppose claims to political or moral authority. Today many people are becoming increasingly aware of our shared imbrications and entanglements, where all ‘our livelihoods are underwritten by colonial violence and  unsustainability’. If coloniality is not something that can just be wished away but is at the heart of the international system, the best of intentions can often result in reducing decolonising to a metaphor or taking shortcuts - ‘decolonial washing’ via publishing appeals, petitions and statements – rather than initiating transformative change.

For example, one minute we’re reading or writing critical studies of the ways that international institutions gain moral authority through international humanitarianism, but the next minute, when something dreadful happens in the world, it seems that there is no alternative but to demand that our governments act ‘progressively’ in the world. This problem perhaps is most acute when it comes to the demand that ‘something must be done’ about international outrages, such as war crimes........

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