'Humanity, sovereignty and the camps'

This article responds to the commentary on my book, Between War and Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt, by Helen M. Kinsella, Richard Beardsworth and Anthony Burke. Burke's claim that Arendt betrays a 'normative defeatism' based solely on his reading of Origins of Totalitarianism is misguided. It is a narrow reading to suggest that Arendt was uninterested in institutions and laws more cosmopolitan in intent than traditional inter-state law. In response to Beardsworth, I argue that Arendt's criticism of the reduction of all politics to violence is not normative in the way he suggests. Nor is it 'merely' to repeat the 'Schmittian/realist argument that conflict is irreducible'. Arendt's agenda is different. Finally, I respond to Kinsella's provocative defence of some concordance (as distinct from equivalence) between the Nazi concentration camps of World War II and US-run camps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.