State centric focus invariably produce hierarchies in which historical oppression and erases domination within states.

In reimagining the West and articulating the problem of difference or heterology in international relations, scholars contend that ‘difference is marked and contained as international difference’ with the emergence of territorially bounded modern sovereign states that ‘defines the problem of difference principally as between and among states’ (Naeem & David, 2004). It is claimed that the insistence on the maintenance of order in the international system generates a ‘pervasive suspicion of difference’ as a source of disorder, degeneration and armed conflict. The ‘problem of difference emerges and intensifies under modern conditions of relative equality, often leading to the reassertion of (illicit or informal) forms of social hierarchy’ and the marking of others as inferior, dependent and threatening (Naeem & David, 2004, p. 23). The doubt and anxiety generated with the discovery of difference is to be contained by locating it ‘at some distance from the self’ and insisting on structural uniformity. These managerial exercises compound the problem of difference by their failure to account for the injuries suffered as a result of a violent and exploitative colonial practices of imperialism. Barkawi and Stanski (2012) further suggest that war among states is ‘a difference of opinion pursued through violent means’ (Barkawi & Stanski, 2012, pp. 2–3) It is the act of splitting of inside/outside that ‘deflect (s) our responses to difference in the direction of ‘putrefying hatred’ and constitutes the ‘political and ethical limits and possibilities of modern life’ (Naeem & David, 2004, pp. 44–45). These conditions of sovereign political community foster ‘ethically limited and tragic interactions of these separate states’ (Naeem & David, 2004, pp. 44–45). The tragic interactions during war entail ‘recognition as well as Othering’ through war propaganda (Porter, 2013). But such propaganda exercises are often undertaken as preliminary measures prior to the catalytic event that leads to the outbreak of actual war. This othering takes place through deployment of techno-racial stereotyping. It is differences in technology and race that are emphasized to produce stereotypes. John W. Dower (1986) argues that ‘portraits of the enemy’ are sketched through ‘gross simplification and reductionism’ generating two forms of stereotyping (Dower, 1986, p. 30). The ‘first kind of stereotyping could be summed up in the statement: You are the opposite of what you say you are and the opposite of us, not peaceful but warlike, not good but bad…In the second form of stereotyping, the formula ran like this: you are what you say you are, but that itself is reprehensible’ (Dower, 1986, p. 30).