Sebastian O'Brien

Dissertation Proposal- Critical Security Studies and Terrorism

2008-11-13T07:44:00.000-08:00

Research Question - Introductory Essay

Do 'Critical Security Studies' approaches offer important insights when theorising about the 'War on Terror'?

Introduction

I will argue that 'Critical Security Studies'(CSS) offer many important insights when theorising about the 'War on Terror.'(WoT) In this introduction I will outline what I mean by traditional approaches to Security Studies to help us understand what is different about CSS. Many of the theoretical insights into the WoT offered by CSS come from three sources; the rejection the state as the sole referent object of security; the rejection of a focus on security as simply threat and military response; and the acceptance of the social construction of security. I will work from the understanding that CSS share many philosophical and theoretical orientations but then diverge on many points making it hard to define in any one concrete way. The diverse influences of these approaches and their different orientations suggest to me that for clarity CSS can be loosely grouped into three sub-divisions, the Copenhagen School, the Welsh School and the Post-structuralists. I will outline these sub-groups to illustrate some of the central insights of these approaches for the WoT. First, the concept of 'Securitization' from a group of constructivist theorists known as the Copenhagen School. This will be followed by the insights from the Welsh School such as thinking of the production of knowledge as being a social process, proposing the denaturalisation of the state based in Frankfurt School Critical Theory traditions and a move towards the possibility of security as an emancipatory project. Finally, the Post-Structuralist stress the importance of rejecting positivist grand narratives, further problematising the state and a suggestion derived from French philosophy, particularly the work of Michel Foucault, illustrating the importance of power/knowledge in the creation of discourses. This approach shows the use of a 'discourse of danger' within US Foreign Policy, presenting a dangerous 'other' as helping to construct the identity of the 'self'.(Campbell, 1998)

Traditional Security Studies

Security Studies(SS), formerly Strategic Studies, has traditionally been regarded as the sub-disipline of International Relations(IR) that exclusively focused on military planning, threat assessment and 'national security' issues. This location of SS within a state-centric view of security is still dominant today and I think that the following quote sums up well how traditional SS views the subject.

"Security Studies may be defined as the study of the threat, use, and control of military force. It explores the conditions that make the use of force more likely, the ways that the use of force affects individuals, states, and societies, and the specific policies that states adopt in order to prepare for, prevent, or engage in war."(Walt 1991:212)

With the end of the Cold-War the status-quo of the bi-polar world system had been upset by the collapse of the Soviet Union. This, along with other important world events illustrated other dimensions of security, failed states, genocidal civil-wars, environmental degradation, famine and disease provided an opportunity for more 'critical' IR theories to attempt to illustrate what they saw as the inherent theoretical limitations of the hegemonic state-centric world-view. Since then 'critical' approaches from many different social science disciplines have been applied to almost all sub-disciplines of IR. This work is about the nexus between Security Studies and these 'critical' approaches within the context of theorising the War on Terror. CSS's starting point is asking questions about the foundational assumptions around the ontology and epistemology of dominant security discourses. One of the key ideas of CSS is the 'global/alternative we'. More traditional approaches would use the pronoun 'we' to represent the state as the referent object of security but CSS broadens this out to multiple levels of security right up to global security.

What is CCS?

I am going to be dealing with a label, Critical Security Studies (CSS), but I will not attempt to define it in one exclusive way, I will share in treating it as 'more of an orientation toward the discipline than a precise theoretical label.'(Williams and Krause,1997) Through an exploration of the themes, sub-divisions and alternative orientations of the field's chief theorists I will aim to come to a general understand of this orientation and the diverse academic work it has produced. Central to understanding CSS is their rejection of the dominant positivist approaches to IR and SS within policy making circles. This can be understood through the definitions Robert Cox gave us about the difference between positivist 'Problem Solving Theory' and post-positivist 'Critical Theory.'(Cox, 1981) Within the groups of CSS theorists outlined above I will look at the concept of 'Securitization'(Weaver,1998) in the WoT to place an emphasis on the socially constructed nature of security discourses. This will involve critical analysis of the 'speech acts' of 'securitizing agents' within the WoT. The influence of the Welsh School helps us look at CSS as a project for emancipation aimed at 'developing more promising ideas by which to overcome structural human wrongs.' (Booth, 2005) Finally using Post-Modern, Post-Colonial and Critical Feminist approaches CSS in the WoT highlight the constructed nature of language, the role power plays in knowledge formation, and where these ideas are cross-fertilised between all these grouping, illustrating thematic areas of conflict and cohesion within the field.

Copenhagen School

The 1998 the book 'Security: A New Framework for Analysis' by Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde can be seen as the clearest articulation of the 'Copenhagen School' approach to CSS. It is a combination of an updated version of Buzan's ideas of a sectorial approach to security from his earlier book 'People, States and Fear' and Weaver's work on 'Securitization.' Buzan stressed that whilst security in its military context was still important there were also four other sectors to security; environmental security, economic security, societal security and political security. The concept of 'Securitization' is the most widely known offering from the 'Copenhagen School.' Briefly, this theory suggests that issues can be 'Securitized' by the speech acts of 'securitizing actors' stressing that '"Security" is thus a self referential practice, because it is in this practice that the issue becomes a security issue- not necessarily because a real existential threat exists but that the issue is presented as such a threat.'(Buzan, Weaver, de Wilde 1998:24) I will look at the role of 'Securitization' within the WoT. The Copenhagen School try to refine the broad church of CCS by suggesting that the approach 'want to challenge conventional security studies by applying post-positivist perspectives, such as critical theory and poststructuralism. Much of this work 'deals with the social construction of security, but CSS mostly has the intent(known from poststructuralism as well as from constructivism in international relations) of showing that change is possible because things are socially constituted.'(Buzan Weaver and de Wilde,1998)

Welsh School

The reasons for me leaving the definition of CSS open for interpretation is because many of the 'Schools' within CSS try to define it in a way that often marginalizes the other schools in favour of their own particular approach. This can be seen in the way the 'Welsh School' locates CSS in the specific theoretical tradition of Neo/Post-Marxist Critical Theory. Ken Booth suggests that 'there are times when lines need to be drawn'(Booth 2005: 260) and by this he is articulating a rejection of the broad church for CSS like Krause and Williams presented (1997) in favour of CSS being defined as coming from a similar critical background to himself with influences from the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory and neo-Gramscian approaches. It is the influence of Habermas who came from the Frankfurt tradition that the 'Welsh School' locate CSS in terms of an emancipatory project. They agree with Robert Cox when he says that theory is never neutral, that it is 'always for someone, and for some purpose.'(Cox, 1981)

Post-Structuralists

The final CSS sub-label I am working with here is the 'Post-Structuralists.' They share with 'post-moderists' a rejection of grand positivist meta-narratives and draw their influence from French philosophy. They are influenced by the work of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Within this group the most important text for theorising about the the War on Terror is 'Writing Security: United States foreign policy and the politics of identity' by David Campbell. It is in this work where he illustrates how a 'discourse of danger' about some foreign 'other' has helped to shape the identity of the USA and recreates itself through it own practices. These discourses work to create fear and suppress dissent. (Giroux, 2002) CSS is committed to an ethos of critique and as Campbell said 'decisions must be taken only to be simultaneously criticised and taken again, and to enact the Enlightenment attitude by a persistant and relentless questioning in specific contexts of the identity performances, and their indebtedness to difference, through which politics occurs.' (Campbell, 1998:227) Other important texts in this field look at how a crisis like the events of September 11th 2001 are used to construct new discursive narratives that are then reproduced through cultural absorption like in movies and television (Croft, 2006) and the role of language in constructing what has become known as the 'War on Terror' security discourse (Jackson, 2005).

Conclusion

I have argued that by looking at CSS through three sub-groups of theorists, the Copenhagen School, the Welsh School and the Post-structuralist, it is possible to generalise about the insights offered on the WoT. The label CSS means slightly different things to each of these groups but they also share central core sets of ideas. The first two are rejections of the traditional SS assumptions that first, puts the state as the sole referent object of security and the second related idea is that SS should be conceptualised as thinking about threat assessment and possible military responses. The third is a far more complicated and far reaching idea, that security is a socially constructed concept that we play a role in creating/recreating. The way that dominant security discourses are constructed in the WoT is also a theme that will be looked into in much more detail to try show how a reconceptualisation of 'security' could lead to the possibility of looking at it as an emancipatory project based on the Enlightenment ethos of a constant critique.

Sebatian O'Brien

(The Return of) Carl Schmitt Essay

2008-09-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

Why is an understanding of the political theory of Carl Schmitt still important to International Relations theorists today?

Introduction.

Carl Schmitt may be remembered by most more for his affiliation with Hitler’s Nazi Germany than for any of his academic work, however, his political theory was based on some interesting and unresolved questions within contemporary politics. I will argue that his legacy, good or bad, can not be ignored. It was to the surprise of many, that the last few years have brought intellectuals of many different political persuasions to have a renewed interest in some of the central ideas of his political theory. My suggestion is that this theory has never really gone away and arouses interest in International Relations theorists of many different types because of the quality of the questions he attempted to answer rather than his own conclusions. Due to the limited length of this essay I am going to look at the central themes of Schmitt via two broad but very different (and internally divided) schools of IR theorists to illustrate how his ideas are still important today. The first can be crudely classified as the ‘Neo-Classical Realists/ Neo- Realists/ Neoconservatives’ who share an interest in the primacy of his ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction, allude to similar ideas around ‘Political Theology’, and share some of his criticisms of ‘Liberal’ democratic models and his related solutions around the role of executive ‘state of exception.’ The second broad grouping are IR theorists with more of a ‘Post-Structuralist’ view of IR who are interested in critical sociological theory of many types, like for example, the broad range of ‘Social Constructivists’ and people influenced by Michael Foucault’s ‘Discourse Theory.’ They reject the ‘Positivist’ ideas of the first grouping of IR theorists, are interested in the ‘social construction’ of key IR concepts like identity, the state, and national security, and/or are interested in the formation of ‘dominant discourses’ and the power distribution behind their formation. For this latter grouping the centrality of identity within Schmitt’s political theory and the way that his ideas have been used to help construct dominant discourses is why he is still of interest to them. Finally, I will illustrate how Schmitt’s theory is even having a renaissance in Neo-Marxist Anti-Globalisation theories from the far left whilst many other critics of the current United States government’s actions, their justifications for ‘American Exceptionalism’, and their rejection of international norms, laws and the United Nations draw parallels between their legal justifications and the ‘exceptionalism’ in Schmitt.

The Return of Carl Schmitt

Carl Schmitt was a jurist and political theorist who first came to prominence in the troubled post World War One Weimar Republic government in Germany of the 1930’s. He is remembered by most more for later joining the Nazi Party, being involved in anti-Semitic writings and holding a post as a professor at the University of Berlin right up the end of the Second World War. His authoritarian political views, reputed support for ‘exceptional’ executive actions like the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ and affiliations with Hitler’s Germany and Franco’s Spain doesn’t make him the most likely candidate for renewed interest in the 21st Century. Until recently an interest in Schmitt was mainly reserved for more right wing IR theorists in the US and Europe but with the explosion of interest in the debate around the ‘politics of identity’ he has attracted a renewed interest in his work from a more diverse group of intellectuals. New waves of critical theorists are interested in how the acceptance of Schmittian ideas (like, for example, his ‘friend/enemy’ distinction), amongst other things, underpins the assumptions of dominant IR theorists in the US and helps reproduce, recreate and affirm its central identity creating paradigms. I will look at three central ideas of Schmitt to illustrate why this revival has taken place. The first is the primacy of his ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction within his political theory; the second is his ideas about ‘Political Theology’ and, finally, his criticisms of ‘liberal’ democracy and his solutions around the executive use of a ‘state of exception.’ I will explore these ideas using these two diametrically opposed methodological approaches to the study of contemporary IR theory to illustrate that his ideas are important today even if you do not like his conclusions.

Two Methodological Approaches to IR Theorizing

Carl Schmitt is important to different types of IR theorist for very different reasons. I will briefly explain the different academic approaches of the two general groupings of IR theorists that, for the purposes of exploring Schmitt’s legacy more fully, I have grouped together. Although I have already mentioned how crude these two groupings are I would just like to stress again that I am not suggesting that these groups of theorists are anything like homogenous groups, only that they share certain (but not all) academic approaches and assumptions to the study of the field. The first grouping I called ‘Neo-Classical Realists/ Neo- Realists/Neoconservatives’ and I will argue that they share a ‘Positivist’ approach to IR that claims that by ‘exercising parsimony and rigor, and by employing the “scientific method”, international relations can be studied in a objective manner, and scientific, neutral, and true knowledge can be produced. ’ I will argue that far from being objective, scientific or neutral, the hegemonic position realist thinking of these types has in IR is a political practice that helps to underpin the dominant discourses of U.S. national identity and foreign policy. I will go as far as saying that these ideas do not innocently seek to explain U.S. national security concerns but rather attempt to legitimize their own subjective views about the use of its hegemonic position in the post 9/11 world. For the second grouping of IR scholars, the poststructuralist, or critical theorists do not accept that IR theory can ever escape some sort of political influence because “[t]heory is always for someone and for some purpose ” These theorists are interested in digging deeper into our understanding of key concepts within IR to ‘problematize’ the very foundations of what most realist theory is built on like, for example, the hegemonic status of the ‘state’ or recognizing the implicit/explicit identity creation related to any ‘friend/enemy’ distinctions. I aim to illustrate how Schmitt’s political theory can be seen to be important to both these different approaches for very different reasons.

Schmitt and the ‘Godfather’ of Neo-conservatism

The most direct ideological link between Schmitt and the influential realist ‘Neo-conservative’ IR theorists in the US is through Leo Strauss who ‘is widely regarded today as a founding father, perhaps the Godfather, of neo-conservatism, with direct or indirect ties to the Bush administration in Washington. ’ Strauss, a Jew also born in Germany, was helped by Schmitt, to secure a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in Paris in 1932 before he finally left France during the war. He lived briefly in England but later he moved permanently to American where he taught for many years at the University of Chicago. Strauss like Schmitt saw problems with the ‘Liberal’ democratic model of politics and he ‘regarded modernity as a mixed blessing that required certain premodern classical and biblical teachings to rescue modernity from its own self-destructive tendencies. ’ Strauss had a devoted following at the University of Chicago in the 1960’s where he taught political philosophy with the work of Schmitt being an important part of the Straussian canon. Strauss also taught about a method of identifying double meanings aimed at different audiences in ancient philosopher’s works. He believed that because many philosophers were restrained by what could be seen in their contemporary societies as heresy, they therefore wrote for two audiences, the first an exoteric meaning for the general reader but also there was cryptic esoteric meaning for the ‘gentlemen,’ the truly ‘wise’ who could read it properly. He also taught about Plato’s concept of the ‘Noble Lie’ and admired leaders like Lincoln and Churchill who had acted powerfully when in ‘state of exception’ situations. This has led to the suggestion that Straussian ‘Neo-Conservative’ IR theorists can be secretive about their own views on things like religion because this could fall into the ‘Noble Lie’ category.

Schmitt on Democracy: In the Context of His Contemporary World

Schmitt’s central problems with ‘liberal’ models of the state, ‘liberal individualism’ and cosmopolitan global governance can only be understood fully by exploring the historically specific time the ideas were first formulated by him. His problems with ‘liberal’ models of the state stem from his disappointment of the post World War One situation for Germany in Europe and this led to his assertion that the ‘essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion. ’ The state needs strong ‘exceptional’ powers to maintain its own values but for Schmitt “[liberalism] has produced a doctrine of the separation and balance of powers, i.e. a system of checks and controls of state and government. [But] [t]his cannot be characterized as either a theory of state or a basic political principle. ” He was also strongly against any type of liberal ‘individualism’ because “to compel him [the private individual] to fight against his will…is,…lack of freedom and repression. All liberal pathos turns against repression and lack of freedom.” The result for him is that “we…arrive at an entire system of demilitarized and depoliticalized concepts, thus forming the society of individualist liberalism. ” Finally he is against the idea of any type of global governance, because even if there is an international ‘state of nature’ he chooses not to accept the possibility of any type of cosmopolitan global governance, so to him, there is no power (sovereign) to enforce its dictates. Schmitt was apposed to the League of Nations for the perceived injustices of the post war situation in Germany but his views are analogous to what Richard Pearle has said recently about the UN: "As we sift the debris of the war to liberate Iraq, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions."

Friends and Enemies

To understand the political theory of Carl Schmitt it is important to recognize the primacy of his claim that ‘the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. " Although this is the starting point of his theory he warns against thinking that this is some abstract conceptualization by saying that "the friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. " This clear cut friend and enemy distinction although it may sound simplistic is still used in modern international politics like, when, for example, George Bush Jr. the President of the United States of America claimed in 2001: "You are either with us [friend] or against us [enemy] in the fight against terror." When defining the concept of enemy Schmitt wrote that ‘the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. ” These distinctions play another important role helping create and recreate identity as Samuel Huntington suggests in his (in)famous book the ‘Clash of Civilizations’: “People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against. ” Schmitt was influenced by the English political theorist Thomas Hobbes, it is analogous to Schmitt because it has been said that ‘the central textual strategy of Hobbes’s political theory: a strategy of otherness designed to discipline the self. ’ This friend and enemy distinction in Schmitt is attractive to contemporary politicians for just these reasons; it helps to clarify binary opposites; illustrate who ‘They’ are; and reinforce ideas of homogeneity for ‘Us’ through articulating who are our friends and who are our enemies.

The ‘Politics of Identity’ Debate

The debate around the ‘politics of identity’ has reinvigorated the interest and exploration in the Schmittian concept of ‘Friend/Enemy’ for many poststructuralists. The problamatizing of identity and the role of the ‘state’ is of interest to critical IR theorists because the ‘identity of a “people” is the basis for the legitimacy of the state and its subsequent practices. [ …] Nationalism is a construct of the state in pursuit of its legitimacy. Benedict Anderson, for example, has argued in compelling fashion that “the nation” should be understood as an “imagined political community” that exists only insofar as it is a cultural artifact that is represented textually. ’ This rejection of the assumption of the centrality and legitimacy of the ‘state’ makes any analysis much more demanding but as Michel Foucault said: ‘Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult.’ These types of theorist accept the importance of Schmitt’s ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction because for them ‘identity is constituted in relation to difference… [This] is achieved through the inscription of boundaries that serve to demarcate an “inside” from an “outside,” a “self” from an “other,” a “domestic” from a “foreign.” ’ They progress this logic onto the ‘national security culture’ of the United States to problematize the concept of an objective ‘security concern’ because ‘danger is not an objective condition. It [sic] is not a thing that exists independently of those to whom it may be a threat. ’ Thus, certain crises are used, to reinforce dominant discourses but at the same time these ‘‘discourses create and reflect identities, and thus they construct those who are our allies and those who are our enemies. When not in flux, they settle who ‘we’ are, and who ‘they’ are; what ‘we’ stand for, and what ‘they’ mean to ‘us.’ ’’ To suggest that Schmitt didn’t know about the ideational creation of enemy is to underestimate him because as he himself said “what constitutes an existential danger to one’s own form of life can be judged only by the participants in a potential conflict, because it is they who have experienced the challenge of the enemy. The specifically political perspective which informs this judgment emerges out of a first-hand encounter with the enemy. ”

Politics and God: or ‘Political Theology’

The Schmittian concept of ‘Political Theology’ has a strong resonance with ‘Post-structualist’ critical theorists who are interested in his central claims relating to the incorporation of theological concepts within politics but think that it is only part of the ideational formation and construction of state identity. This idea is also of interest to theorist with a more positivist approach because of what Strauss has called the relationship between ‘revelation’ and ‘reason’, or as he put it ‘Jerusalem’ versus ‘Athens.’ In relation to this Schmitt put forward the idea that:
“All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development—in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver—but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology. ” So for Schmitt the state has taken on many theological concepts as their own but the role of exceptions is a clear example of ‘Jerusalem’ taking precedence over ‘Athens.’ David Campbell in his poststructuralist work ‘Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity’ touched on these themes by saying: ‘The Enlightenment had been an attack on ecclesiastical authority through the instruments of reason and scientific rationality. […] the popular characterization of this period as the victory of reason over faith, experience over intuition, science over religion, and modernity over tradition, the outcome was not so clear-cut. […..] The problem was that once the “death of God” had been proclaimed, the link between the world, “man,” and certitude had been broken.[..] The state requires discourses of “danger” to provide a new theology of truth about who and what “we” are by highlighting who or what “we” are not, and what “we” have to fear. ’ He elaborates further by saying “In this way, the state project of security replicates the church project of salvation. The state grounds its legitimacy by offering the promise of security to its citizens who, it says, would otherwise face manifold dangers. ….. Both the state and the church require considerable effort to maintain order within and around themselves, and thereby engage in a evangelism of fear to ward off internal and external threats, succumbing in the process to the temptation to treat difference as otherness…. We can consider foreign policy as an intergral part of the discourse of danger that serve to discipline the state. ’

‘Ausnahmezustand’ Today

When I have previously talked about ‘exceptionalism’ within Schmitt I am talking about something derived from the concept within the German legal tradition called ‘Ausnahmezustand’ which in English political tradition is called ‘emergency powers’ but I will use the more popular translation the ‘state of exception.’ Schmitt is clear about who decides when this suspension of the normal constitution and laws when he says definitively that the ‘sovereign is he who decides on the exception. ’ This goes back to the problems Schmitt has with the traditional separation of power within liberalism because he doesn’t believe in Locke’s ideas about ‘checks and balances’ between the different parts of government or the primacy of law. This is clearly illustrated when he says ‘all law is "situational law." The sovereign produces and guarantees the situation in its totality. He has the monopoly over this last decision. ” He believes that "only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence. ” Critics of the current U.S. administration of G. W. Bush illustrate in their critique of his ‘exceptionalism’ echoes of Scmitt when they say ‘the White House has been eager to assert what is claimed to be the power of the "unitary executive," that is, the asserted power of the executive branch to override those provisions of laws with which it does not agree. ’ In both Schmitt’s political theory, Nazi Germany and the current U.S. administration the ultimate power of government lies not in legal legislation, but in the executive that has the right to ignore the ‘rule’ in favour of the ‘exception.’ Although I have used the examples of Nazi Germany and the United States of America because of the heavy use of these powers, this concept of ‘exceptionalism’ is present in most ‘liberal democratic’ models and leads to the necessity of re-examining the validity of such claims due to the likelihood of abuse. The necessity of this type of ‘exceptionalism’ for me cuts right to heart of issues around the current legitimacy of democracy and the need to examine what our political systems are actually saying about the ‘rule of the people.’

Schmitt, ‘Multitude’ and Perpetual War

Another different example of the recent renaissance of Scmitt’s political theory is illustrated by the fact that an exploration of his political theory is even present in ‘Neo-Marxist’ anti-globalization IR theorists Hardt/Negri in their 2003 book ‘Multitude.’ They suggest that the current global situation is one of perpetual war and that ‘the state of exception has become permanent and general. ’ This has ramifications for understanding contemporary international politics because ‘‘when the state of exception becomes the rule and when wartime becomes an interminable condition, then the traditional distinction between war and politics becomes increasingly blurred. ’ Schmitt uses the friend/enemy distinction as the cornerstone of his political theory but it ignores any problematization of the state as the primary actor in international relations and only has mild warnings about using difference as ‘otheness’ to help create your own identity. Schmitt never resolves the same problem that was an issue for me in Hobbes: if the reason an individual enters into a political entity only to protect their own life, how does that political entity ever demand that they risk serious injury or death for the state? As in Hobbes there is no attempt to universalize his theory to stop the international system being in a ‘State of Nature.’

Schmitt, the Geneva Conventions and Guantanamo

Although Carl Schmitt was both a political theorist and important scholar of international law his political theory places adhering to international law as secondary to the ‘exceptionalism’ of the executive. This position has resulted in the suggestion that the legal policy of the current American administration, with its rejection of the Geneava Conventions, many international laws on human rights and legislation on what constitutes torture, is similar to or influenced by, Carl Schmitt. An example of this type of legal ‘exceptionalism’ is Guantanamo Detention Centre where the US administration have said that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the detainees at Guant́anamo, as it was, “written for a different kind of war.” In a recent article about Schmitt it was said that because of his views about the primacy of the political this ‘led him to ridicule international humanitarian law in a tone and with words almost identical to those recently employed by Yoo [US administration senior legal advisor] and several of his colleagues. ’ The striking similarities between the Nazi era rejections of the 1929 Geneva Conventions and those of the current American administration are interesting to those interested in the theoretical underpinning of ‘American Exceptionalism.’ When talking about Bush’s new powers the spectre of the founding fathers is more often conjured up but this link through Carl Schmitt is more reminiscent of Adolf Hitler.

Why We Can’t Ignore Schmitt

Although the political theory of Carl Schmitt may not be to the liking of many in the 21st century it is wrong to think that he lacks relevance. His ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction is just as central to the thinking of many important IR theorists in the US and elsewhere, from Neoconervatives to poststructualists. The debate around ‘identity’ within ‘security studies’ and poststructuralist ideas around ‘political theology’ revive interest is some of the questions posed by Carl Schmitt. His criticisms of ‘liberal democracy’ and the need for ‘executive autonomy’ are shared by many influential IR theorists and policy makers in the United States of America. My suggestion here is that the conclusions of Carl Schmitt are still being used today in many ‘liberal democracies’ and the renewed interest in Schmitt’s ideas could highlight that these questions remain unsatisfactorily answered. The ideas of Hardt/Negri also suggest that the current ‘state of global war’ have ramifications for the adherence to Scmittian ‘state of emergency’ executive power because this is no longer the ‘exception’ but rather a constant situation. When war is fought against abstract concepts like ‘drugs’ and ‘terror’ it has the affect of being almost without end. I would be unfair of me not to mention that Carl Scmitt himself had a more nuanced understanding of the danger implicit in his theories, and that both the Nazi use and that of the current US administration ignored his warnings.

Conclusion

There are many different reasons why the political theory of Carl Schmitt is still important. I have attempted to illustrate that his theory, far from being forgotten, is still important today for many different types of IR theorists, policy makers and legal advisors. I particularly concentrated on two very different types of IR theorists to illustrate how some of the central themes of Schmitt’s political theory are still feeding debate, from the ‘positivist’ position of the influential Neoconservative IR theorists close the Pentagon to ‘Poststructuralists’ on the outer fringes. I also touched on how Schmittian political theory is experiencing a renaissance with the example of the attention shown to his theory in Hardt and Negri’s leftist anti-globalization manifesto ‘Multitude.’ I explored the ideological links between Leo Strauss, Neoconservative theorist close to George W. Bush and Carl Schmitt with a particular focus on his ‘Friend and Enemy’ distinction and ‘State of Exception’ to highlight its relationship with ‘American Exceptionalism.’ I wanted to show that the ideas of Carl Schmitt from in between the two world wars are still relevant today and the acceptance of his ideas of ‘exceptionalism’ are still important today for ‘liberal democratic’ states. This, for me, raises questions about the very foundations of our ‘democratic’ systems of liberal democracy that was described by Francis Fukuyama, another influential IR theorist in the US as ‘The End of History.’ The ‘Friend and Enemy’ distinction and his concept of ‘Political Theology’ are important to ‘Poststucturalist’ IR theorists who are interested looking deeper into the genealogy and formation of ‘Dominant Discourses’ and problamatizing many assumptions in the ‘Politics of Identity’ debate. Finally I look at the implication of his ‘state of exception’ when we are in a state of perpetual war. This has lead people to compare the way that way that the current US administration has reneged on many human rights treaties, rejected the Geneva Conventions on torture and rejected International law to the political to legal and political theory of Carl Schmitt. Although I previously thought that a political theorist who is associated with the Fascist governments of Hitler and Franco would be of no interest today it is the quality of the unresolved questions within Schmitt and the tacit acceptance of some of his central ideas that are still iimportant. This appraisal of his work has led me to question the theoretical underpinning of the ‘liberal democratic’ model and made me think that some of the current US administration’s policies are closer than most may think to a Fascist ideology.

Sebastian O’Brien May 2008 .

Bibliography

Books

Campbell, David, ‘Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity’ Revised Edition, 1998, Manchester University Press, Manchester.

Schmitt,Carl, ‘The Concept of the Political’ Wikibooks.com

Schmitt,Carl, ‘Political Theology’ Wikibooks.com

Blumenburg, Hans, ‘The Legitimacy of the Modern Age’ Cambridge, Massaxhusetts,1983

Huntington, Samuel P: ‘Who Are We? America’s Great Debate’, 2004, Simon & Schuster, London.

Huntington, Samuel P: ‘The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of World Order’, 1997, Simon & Schuster, London.

Gopal Balakrishnan, ‘The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt’ (New York: Verso, 2000),

Croft, Stuart, ‘Culture, Crisis and America’s War on Terror’ Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Hardt, Michael & Negri, Antonio, ‘Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire’ London UK, Penguin, 2005

Cox, Robert: ‘Social Forces, States and World Order: Beyond International Relations Theory’ in ‘Approaches to World Order’ Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press 1996.

Hobbes, Thomas, ‘Leviathan’ London UK, Penguin, 1968

Said, Edward, ‘Orientalism’ London UK, Penguin, 2003.

Articles and others

Grondin, David. ‘(Re)Writing the ‘National Security State’: How and Why Realists (Re)Built the(ir) Cold War’ Paper presented at the annual International Studies Association Convention March 17-20 2004.

Smith, Steven B.: ‘Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism’ Excerpt from pages 1-15 of Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism by Steven B. Smith, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©2006 by the University of Chicago.

Versluis, Arthur: ‘How Carl Schmitt Spawned Fascist America’ http://www.counterpunch.org/versluis08102006.html

Horton, Scott: ‘The Return of Carl Schmitt.’ Monday, November 07, 2005 www.balkin.com

Sociology of Crime: ‘La delincuencia y su circunstancia: Sociología del crimen y la desviación’ by Fernando Gil Villa

2008-09-25T10:36:00.001-07:00

On Part One of ‘La delincuencia y su circunstancia: Sociología del crimen y la desviación’ by Fernando Gil Villa

Introduction

I will explore the most salient concepts within the first part of Fernando Gil Villa’s book ‘La delincuencia y su circunstancia: Sociología del crimen y la desviación’ whilst offering an overview of my understanding of the key concepts of the sociology of crime, an appraisal of the contribution of particular theorists and groups of theorists whilst offering a commentary on my own positions on the key debates. I start with a look at the history of analyzing crime and its importance for political and academic theorizing whilst exploring the important role a more sociological approach has played and will continue to play in this field. I aim to explore the different explanations of crime whilst comparing the terms of their theoretical and political contexts, their central concerns, their substantive themes and their policy prescriptions. The first specific group of theorists I investigate is ‘The Chicago School’ with a particular focus on the concept of ‘Differential Association’ brought to us by Edwin Sutherland. After that I look at the concept of ‘Anomie’ that was introduced by Emile Durkheim but then developed and refined by Robert Merton, this then leads naturally to an investigation of ‘Delinquent Subculture Theories.’ I then look at three important concepts together, the first, ‘Labeling Theory,’ the second, ‘Deviance Amplification’ and, the third, ‘Stigmatization.’ The final paragraphs are each devoted to a different approach to analyzing crime, from a Marxist view, to both Left and Right Realist views, then the Feminist views and finally I look at the ‘Post-modern’ views with particular emphasis on the relationship between criminology and sociology.

Crime and Sociology

Crime has been for a long time and remains today a very important issue, not just because the media serve us up a constant stream of crime related stories but because, possibly for the same reason, it is an important issue for the public and is therefore at the centre of political debate. Crime is clearly a major realm of societal concern and at the same time an important issue for the government agencies that have to come up with policy recommendations to try to monitor and positively affect the amounts and types of offences committed. In the last three decades of the twentieth century many countries recorded a massive increase in the numbers of recorded crimes. In recent years there have also been many ‘self-report’ studies done that point to the fact that there are many more crimes committed than those recorded with some suggesting that for every crime the police record, there were around three to four times as many unrecorded offences, but these figures varied according to the type of offence . As mentioned above, trying to understand crime is not just a recent thing, stretching right back to the nineteenth century people have been preoccupied with crime and its causes. It was only in the 1950’s that a more sociological approach to understanding crime took over from more individualistic explanations suggesting it was related to inherent biological or psychological predispositions.

Sociological Methodologies and Context

Even though the non-sociological and sociological approaches to the understanding of crime have very different methodologies they are both committed to the modernist project. That is for me that they believe that it is possible to establish and verify knowledge about crime, criminals and criminality and that with the use of a rational approach can come up with strategies and methods of deterrence and punishment that can improve the situation. As Heiderson said: “It is, after all, inherent in the nature of the sociological approach, deriving as the discipline does from intellectual reactions to and theories of social change, that its practitioners believe that states can be altered, institutions restructured and communities redeveloped. ” This is not to say that all sociological approaches are the same, I will explore the theoretical and political contexts that these different theories were developed, their central concerns and the policy solutions recommended. I will also argue that some of the best ‘Postmodern’ theories on crime do not reject the project for modernity or enlightenment ideals in the way some people suggest.

The Chicago School and Differential Association
Starting in the 1920’s there was a group of sociologists later know as ‘The Chicago School’ that pioneered an approach to urban sociology research that re-wrote the rule book of the study of crime by studying the urban environment and combining sociological theory and ethnographic fieldwork in their city. It was in part due to this new empirical approach that the sociological methodology was accepted into the main stream but there was at the same time a reworking of older sociological concepts that also attracted a renewed interest in the Chicago School. One of the most important offerings was from Edwin Sutherland who used a version of ‘symbolic interactionism’ to come up with his concept of ‘Differential Association’ which put very crudely suggest that criminal behavior is learned from small scale interactions with other criminal people in everyday life. His theory focuses on the how but not the why people learn to become criminals, the theory goes that exposure to other criminals teaches people about the attitudes, motivations and rationalizations of their behavior that can then lead to its replication. Sutherland developed the idea of the ‘self’ as a social construction through interactions with other people but it is interesting now in the twenty-first century to think of his ideas in a wider way to think how the representations of criminals on television, music and in the movies could also do the same thing. Due to his focus on human interactions as the key to learning behaviors he does not explain how people who have not been exposed to this type of behavior could commit crime but by broadening the influences out to encompass the media, music, television and the movies as well as human interactions his theory leaves us with much to think about.

‘Anomie’ in Durkheim and Merton
The concept of ‘Anomie’ borrowed from the work of the founding father of sociology Emile Durkheim has been interestingly reworked by Robert Merton to offer us some insights into the sociology of crime. For Durkheim ‘Anomie’ is where normal cultural norms break down because of the rate of change in modern society, his studies used this concept to explain increased rates of suicide when, for example, an economic downturn leads people to not be able to achieve the goals they learned to pursue. Merton alters this concept slightly, to refer to a situation in which there is an apparent lack of fit between the culture's norms about what constitutes success in life (or goals) and the culture's norms about the appropriate ways to achieve those goals (or means). Merton's formulation offers an explanation for the distribution of deviant behavior across groups defined by class, race, ethnicity, and for high rates of deviant behavior in the U.S. compared with other societies. Merton sees the U.S. as an example of a society where there are polar opposites between the goals (the accumulation of vast sums of money) that are emphasized for everyone in the culture, but the culture is at best ambivalent in its means of achieving this success. One version of ‘The American Dream’ is working hard and working your way up to a position of great wealth, but there is also an admiration for anyone who has ‘made it’ regardless of how exploitative (at best) or outright criminal (at worst) their behavior was to achieve this. This is the disparity between goals and means that he suggests is a reason for the high levels of crime in the United States.
Delinquent Subculture Theories

Building on some of Merton’s ideas there later came what became known as ‘Delinquent Subculture Theories’ that attributed crime in a similar way to the lack of opportunities available to young working-class males. In the late 1950’s and 1960’s ‘Delinquent Subculture Theories’ were developed in the United States of America most notably by Albert Cohen, Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin. These theories rejected non-sociological explanations of crime but were still rooted in the positivist tradition that sees the social world as an objective entity that are subject to the same cause and effect relationships as the physical world so, for them, the question was to look at the social causes that caused this behavior. This further advance on Merton’s ideas established the idea more firmly that criminality was actually a product of society not just something inherent in people, which could lead to the problems of alienation for some social groups (working class males) and lead them to commit more crime. This dissatisfaction led to the situation where, as Cloward and Ohlin said: “Delinquents have withdrawn their support from established norms and have invested in officially forbidden norms of conduct with a claim to legitimacy in the light of their special situations. ” This perception that they can not succeed in the normal ways approved by society leads them to embrace delinquent subcultures to allow them to an ‘explicit and wholesale repudiation of middle-class standards and the adoption of their very antithesis. ’ It is interesting to consider that in keeping with liberal positivism the policy solutions were to try create more opportunities for these groups not something more radical like the Marxist criminologists I will come to later.

Labeling Theory, Deviance Amplification and Stigmatization
The late 1960’s brought ‘Labeling Theory’ that was another innovation in sociological theory about crime that was again influenced by the work on ‘symbolic interactionism’ by George Herbert Mead and Charles Cooley. It was a rejection of positivist sociology that treated social reality as something unproblamatically ‘out there’ and observable and instead treated it in an anti-positivist way accepting that this ‘social reality’ was not something straightforward or absolute but was instead ‘socially constructed’, open to interpretation and problematic. This development needs to be seen within the political context of the late 1960’s which was a time where normal social norms in the US were being challenged by, for example, the civil rights movement, the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground and a more general anti-Vietnam War movement. This moved the question from what causes criminal behavior to which behavior is classified and defined as criminal and why? The answers these Labeling Theorists came up with were that it was a relationship between those who have committed offences and a range of other people, from the victims to witnesses and then the police and finally the criminal justice system. These theories stress the importance of power in these relationships and as Becker said: “Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders. From this point if view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender.’ The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is behaviors that people so label. ” From this type of ‘Labeling Theory’ other interesting concepts within the field such as (the closely related) ‘Deviance Amplification’ and ‘Stigmatization’ were derived. Both these ideas are related to what happens to an individual who has been ‘labeled’ a criminal by the system. The first, ‘Deviance Amplification’ suggests that once someone has been labeled a criminal it damages their social identity and social status in normal society so can then lead to the amplification of more criminal behavior in the future because they feel that they don’t fit in anymore. The second, ‘Stigamatization’ is very similar, but this has led to the suggestion that in some cases it could be better to eliminate or reduce some of the ‘Stigmatization’ of the label of ‘criminal’ for lesser offences because this label once applied can then become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Marxist Criminology

The next group of theorists I will look at are Marxist criminologists who had concerns with the way labeling theory (amongst others) neglected, in their view, more structural causes of crime. This was developed from the 1970’s by theorists like Frank Pearce, William Chambliss and Richard Quinney who, as with all Marxist theory, place a heavy emphasis on the structural-conflict caused by the capitalist system itself. Again this has to be placed in its historical-political context where there was a renewed interest in Marxism that reflected the social, economic and political tensions of the time. They stressed the importance of political economy and class division when it came to explaining the causes of crime in the western capitalist world. For them it was an obvious by-product of a system that is built on fiscal inequality and an ideology that promotes self-interest over social harmony. As Quinney said: “Some of the behaviors that follow from alienated work are an attempt at setting things right again. Some behavior is a conscious rebellion against exploitation and inhumane conditions. And there is the responsive activity which, in a responsive activity which, in a reproduction of capitalism, is pursued for economic survival or gain. Activity of a criminal nature becomes a rational and likely possibility under the conditions of capitalism. All this is to say that crime – including both crime control and criminality – is a by-product of the political economy of capitalism. ” Whether these claims are true or not the only solution they offer is the total reorganization of society within their Marxist paradigm and with anything short of that they don’t really have a very much to offer us.

Left Realist Criminology

One reaction to the Marxist views above and also Right Realism (which will be looked at in more detail below) was what has become know as the Left Realists. They shared with the Marxists the view that structural inequality was an important factor in the causation of crime but they avoid their simple structural explanation and instead consider this as only part of their explanation of the causes of crime. They recognized that crime is more of a problem in working class areas and inner-cities but that intra-class crime is most prevalent and this is not just caused by structural inequality or official bias. The Left Realists factor in some of the delinquent subculture theories, stress the role of relative depravation and marginalization to these more structural factors and consider their approach to be a rejection of 'the moral panics of the mass media or the blatant denial of left idealism. ’ For the Left Realists a multi-level approach is necessary to tackle the problem, the macro solution is based around the quest for social justice, improved opportunities, housing and education in the poorer areas whilst developing better relations through more locally sensitive policing, a penal system that can be more flexible and other local measures to help the most problematic areas.

Right Realist Criminology

The Right Realist views of crime reject the utility of sociological theorizing about crime and stressed the need for policies based on an understanding of human nature to deter people from committing crimes. As with many of the other different approaches I have looked at these Right Realist views were a product of their times, namely, the 1980’s that were dominated in the US and UK by New Right/Neo-Liberal politics of Reaganism and Thatherism. This rejection of a more sociological approach is illustrated by Thatcher’s (in)famous quote “There is no such thing as society.” The Right Realists rejected the ideas that came before them that relative depravation or marginaization were the causes of crime and even if they were they felt that it was not their role as governments to get involved. They consider people to have a natural human nature that is strongly motivated by self interest and high crime rates were a product of weak policing and ineffective deterrence from the penal system. Their solutions were to create a situation where the risk involved in committing crime was greater, this meant longer terms in jail and more police convictions. This led to policies such as ‘Zero Tolerance’ where the police confronted all anti-social behavior with heavy law enforcement measures. If this led to the occasional mistake it was a necessary evil for the greater good of the community. They also promoted greater involvement in the community to create ‘active citizens’ and to work together as a community to protect your own property with neighborhood watch schemes and more domestic security measures.

Feminist Criminology

The penultimate group of theorists I will look at is ‘Feminist Criminologists’ who fit their theorizing on this subject into their greater theoretical-political stance against the marginalization of women in society as a whole. Although they recognize that female offending is less prevalent than that of men, they highlight that the mainstream of criminological theory has a male orientated bias and that much theorizing on the subject has almost ignored women. They also stress that women need to be considered from the prospective of them as victims of crime and sexist stereotyping whenever they are brought into the criminal justice system. For them any general theory of criminology needs to take into account the criminal behavior of both men and women and reject ‘an exclusive interest in male criminality in a comfortable world of academic machismo. ’ Much of this theorizing rejected the crude biologism that suggests women are by ‘nature’ passive and virtuous and that any exception should be considered biologically or psychologically abnormal. This gender expectation was highlighted by the suggestion that in a court situation being considered a ‘good mother’ could have considerable bearing on the outcome of the case and criminal women tend to be medicalised as abnormal. Again the work of Heidenson showed that women were very often the victims of domestic and sexual violence and that this problem had been heavily under-reported in official reports and national crime figures.

‘Postmodern’ Criminology

The final group of theorists I will look at are generally called ‘Postmodern’ but this name is controversial to many theorists who receive this label. These theorists challenge the general meta-narratives of most general sociological theorizing around crime and aim to challenge assumptions that many other theorists take for granted. They challenge the idea that as Garland called ‘the Lombrosian project …that tradition of enquiry, begun by Lombroso, which aims to differentiate the criminal individual from the non-criminal. ’ The criticism of this group of theorists suggests that questioning theory that is ‘wedded to the positivist paradigm of modernism ’ leads to a nihilistic rejection of the enlightenment project in its entirety. For me questioning assumptions is exactly what this project was meant to be about, as David Campbell, a critical international relations theorist inspired by Foucault’s work says: ‘decisions must be taken only to be simultaneously criticized… to enact the Enlightenment attitude by a persistent and relentless questioning. ’ The ‘Post-Modern’ critique of criminology is therefore recognizing that it is too diverse to be dealt with one great totalizing theory and that it needs to be broken down and deconstructed into more manageable areas of sociological interest. I will end with another quote from Smart: “The whole raison d’etre of criminology is that it addresses crime. It categorizes a vast range of activities and treats them as if they were all subject to the same laws… The thing that criminology cannot do is deconstruct crime. It cannot locate rape or child abuse in the domain of sexuality or theft in the domain of economic activity or drug use in the domain of health. To do so would be to abandon criminology to sociology: but more importantly it would involve abandoning the idea of a unified problem which requires a unified response- at least at a theoretical level…. The core enterprise of criminology is profoundly problematic. ”

Conclusion

I have attempted to illustrate an understanding of the key concepts within the first section of Fernando Gil Villa’s book ‘La delincuencia y su circunstancia: Sociología del crimen y la desviación’ whilst offering a commentary with some of my own opinions on the contemporary debates. I commence with an exploration of the history of crime analysis and its importance for political and academic theorizing whilst explaining the way a more sociological approach has become more important. I explored the different explanations of crime whilst trying to compare their theoretical and political contexts, some of their central concerns, their substantive themes and their specific policy recommendations. I started with ‘The Chicago School’ particularly focusing on Sutherland’s concept of ‘Differential Association.’ I progressed by looking at the concept of ‘Anomie’ that was taken from Durkheim’s work but developed and refined by Merton, this led me to an explanation of ‘Delinquent Subculture Theories.’ The final three concepts I looked into were Labeling Theory, Deviance Amplification and, Stigmatization. The final paragraphs are each devoted to a different approach to analyzing crime. Although it does offer some interesting insights I was critical of the one-dimensional Marxist view because of its lack of anything but structural analysis and recommendations that could be called idealistic. I was more appreciative of the multilayered approach Left Realist views, whilst disagreeing with the rejection of the sociological approach in Right Realism. The Feminist views offered some interesting insights and has a relationship with the final group the ‘Post-modernists’ because both approaches suggest ways that the more established theories unwittingly base their theories on assumptions that are problematic.

Sebastian O’Brien May 2008

Freedom-Fighter Vs Terrorist Debate Essay

2008-09-25T10:34:00.000-07:00

Account for the persistence of the ‘terrorist versus freedom fighter’ debate as we approach the 40th anniversary of international terrorism.

I will argue that to account for the persistence of the ‘terrorist versus freedom fighter’ debate more fully as we approach the fortieth anniversary of international terrorism we need to look at the central issues through different conceptual lenses. I will incorporate in this account the ‘Social Constructionist’ views championed by the ‘Copenhagen School’, along with more traditional analysis. I will show that the ‘Securitization’ of concepts, like ‘Terrorism’, is important when accounting for the persistence of this debate.

I will initially explain ‘Social Constructivist’ approaches to international relations theory and then, more specifically to this debate, the ‘Copenhagen School’ and their ‘Securitization Model.’ I will explore the different levels of importance attributed to having a definitive definition of what constitutes an act of terrorism. Following this I will look at the linguistic resonance of the names of previous ‘terrorist’ groups and how the understanding of the concept of ‘terrorism’ has changed throughout time. I look at how the confusion within this debate is caused by the blurring of means and ends. The right of self-determination is accepted but it is interesting to look at the political and media usage of the two terms when describing different organisations to see that they can have political consequences. Another factor for the persistence of this debate is the direct relationship ‘terrorists’ have with the media. I will look at some of the perceived successes of ‘terrorism’ in this area that could also account for the persistence of this debate. Finally, I will look at the role of civilian deaths and the strongly contested concept of State Terrorism as another important factor in the persistence of this debate.

‘Social Constructivism’ is a relatively new approach to international relations theory that stresses ‘how ideas define, and can transform the organisation of world politics, shape the identity and interests of states, and define what counts as legitimate action. ’ Constructivism is not a substantive theory of international relations but instead a social theory that is ‘broadly concerned with how to conceptualise the relationship between agents and structures, ’ with its central observation being ‘the social construction of reality. ’ Constructivism as an approach to international relations ‘concerns itself with the centrality of ideas and human consciousness [and] how the structure constructs the actors’ identities and interests, how their interaction are organised and constrained by that structure, and how their very interaction serves to either reproduce or transform that structure. ’

The concept of ‘Securitization’ is also new, brought to the field of international relations by a group of Constructivist thinkers known as the ‘Copenhagen School.’ They regard ‘security as a socially constructed concept ’ and this sociological approach considers ‘how the world is made and re-made through human action and intervention. ’ For them ‘what constitutes an existential threat is regarded as a subjective matter. It very much depends on a shared understanding of what constitutes a danger to security. ’ ‘Securitization’ is where ‘Securitizing Actors’ (government, political elites, military, even members of civil society) use ‘Speech Acts’ to attempt to ‘Securitizes issues by declaring something, a ‘referent object,’ existentially threatened, ’ the referent object being ‘things that are seen to be existentially threatened and that have a legitimate claim to survival. ’ This may not work but it is done because a ‘successful act of securitization provides the securitizing actors with the special right to use exceptional means. ’

Traditional International Relations theory might suggest that definitions of the two terms used in this debate are important but the Copenhagen School would focus on how these concepts are ‘socially constructed’ within each society. Western leaders are today in a ‘War on Terrorism’ but do not work from a definitive definition of what constitutes a terrorist act, rather, ‘academics, politicians, security experts and journalists, all use a variety of definitions of terrorism. ’ The conceptualisation of the two terms is the cornerstone of the ‘Terrorist Versus Freedom Fighter’ debate and from here we must progress with caution because ‘the matter of definition and conceptualization is usually a purely theoretical issue’ and ‘defining our terms tend to transcend the boundaries of theoretical discussion.’ Constructivists agree about the importance of the understanding of the words ‘Terrorist’ or ‘Freedom Fighter’, but, unlike a more traditional approaches it would not be concerned with dictionary definitions but more to do with the way influential actors like, for example, the President of the United States, use ‘speech acts’ to influence the way that the concept of ‘Terrorism’ is created in our minds.

Although the term ‘terrorism’ may not have been used, acts very similar to our current conceptions have been committed almost since we have any historical record and it is interesting to that some of the names of these groups are still used today. Most of these early proponents of ‘terrorist’ acts were millenarian but not from any one particular faith. There was a Jewish group called the ‘Zealots’ in the first century A.D. that would murder Romans (or fellow Jews that they judged to have colluded with the Romans) in public places by slashing their victim’s throat with a knife called a ‘Sica’. Starting in the seventh century A.D. there was a group of Indian religious fanatics called the ‘Thugs’ that murdered passing travellers as a sacrifice to the Hindu goddess of terror and destruction, Kali. The ‘Thugs’ operated for just over one thousand years and the term is still used today as an adjective to mean someone excessively violent or threatening. The way the names of these groups end up in popular usage is interesting and this is again true for a group of radical Muslim Shi’as called the ‘Assassins’ who after the turn of the first century A.D. murdered their Christian enemies in acts that they believed were sanctioned by a higher power. The thing that this highlights for a ‘Constructivist’ is the resonance linguistically of proper nouns that become adjectives could be to do with the power of pre-modern Securitization.

The terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘terror’ have changed meaning regularly and dramatically throughout the past two hundred years and this illustrates that there is a certain amount of fluidity to our understanding of a concept, and this is constructed by factors that can be located in a particular time. The term ‘Terror’ was first popularised after the French Revolution of 1789 in what was known as a ‘reign of terror’, and did not have the pejorative connotations that it has now; it was in fact, ‘an instrument of governance wielded by the recently established revolutionary state. ’ By the middle of the twentieth century the meaning had changed again to represent the oppression of totalitarian states against its own people like in Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Fascist Italy or Stalin’s Communist Russia. After the Second World War ‘terrorism’ was once again associated with revolutionary movements, but, this time as only a likely stage in a greater campaign. During the 1960’s and 70’s the meaning changed yet again when ‘terrorist’ tactics were used not just by nationalist and ethno-separatist and iridescent groups within a guerrilla war but by ideologically driven or disenfranchised nationalist groups to publicise their cause. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation is said to have introduced the era of ‘International Terrorism’ hijacking planes using the ‘theatre ’ of terrorism to highlight their cause. Since then many diverse groups and organisations have used ‘terrorism’ for a wide variety of reasons but the terrorist attacks on the United States of America on September 11th 2001 illustrated the massive destruction that could be caused by ‘suicide’ terrorism and led people to examine this phenomena and conceptualisation of the words like ‘terrorism.’

As is highlighted by the problems around definition, ‘terrorism’, like most concepts in the social sciences, is contentious and never really escapes ‘relativist’ and ‘viewpoint’ considerations. Terrorism is a ‘complex phenomena open to subjective interpretation ’ so it is understandable that a person’s ‘viewpoint’ needs to be understood at the same time as their definition and conceptualisation of ‘Terrorism.’ It is also important to consider that ‘using relativist arguments, critical theorists suggest that Western states cannot claim moral superiority, and its associated legitimacy, on the basis of their willingness to contravene international norms as it suits them. If anything, the historical track record of Western states as colonial and/or imperial powers only legitimizes the acts of the disenfranchised who have no other option to combat their continued oppression and poverty. ’ It is no surprise then that ‘the concept of terrorism is deeply controversial. It has generally been used as a term of abuse against groups who engage in violent behaviour, by people who oppose the goals of the group’ In the ‘securitization’ model of the Copenhagen School it is the lack of objectivity of things like the ‘security threat’ of terrorism that is used to explain the use of extraordinary powers when a concept is successfully ‘securitized.’

Problems have been caused within this debate by people placing an emphasis on the ends or goals of a group rather than looking at both the ends and the means applied in achieving these. This is where the term ‘Freedom Fighter’ becomes very vague; the end that someone is ‘Fighting’ for is ascribed to be ‘Freedom’ but no further information is discernable about the methods applied in attempting to achieve this. It is also quite likely that both sides in a conflict are going to claim to be fighting for the positive notion of ‘Freedom’ but can this can not be objectively judged. Within this debate it is also important to accept that ‘much confusion occurs in the debate about the morality of terrorism because of a failure to distinguish ends and means. Terrorism is a method that can be used for an infinite variety of goals. ’ Constructivists would argue that the distinction between means and ends is not of central importance and that the more important thing is the way that issues like terrorism are ‘Securitized’ to add to the breadth of the range of possible responses.

Once the ‘aims’ or objectives of a group have been accepted the next step is to look at the ethical acceptability of methods or ‘means’ they use to achieve these goals. This is important to the persistence of this debate because ‘reaching consensus on what constitutes terrorism is difficult and one of the foremost reasons for disagreement relates to different interpretations of the legitimacy of terrorist means and methods. ’ In Palestine ‘terrorism’ can be seen as the only option, and they have a ‘martyr concept’ where they believe that due to the uneven distribution of armed force it is acceptable to use any means necessary, even suicide bombing by women and children. This again feeds into the fact that ‘using relativist arguments, critical theorists suggest that Western states cannot claim moral superiority, and its associated legitimacy, on the basis of their willingness to contravene international norms as it suits them. If anything, the historical track record of Western states as colonial and/or imperial powers only legitimizes the acts of the disenfranchised who have no other option to combat their continued oppression and poverty. ’ It could be said in this debate that both sides attempt to ‘Securitized’ their respective struggles to justify the use of extraordinary ‘means’ because they consider themselves to be existentially threatened.

After the Second World War and with the creation of the United Nations Charter the “principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples ” was codified in international treaties and this gave extra credibility to anti-colonial struggles and peoples battling against oppressive dictators. This then led to the thorny issue around labelling independence movements that is central to this debate. After the official destruction of the ideological dominance of Imperial nations this left ‘competing political and religious value-systems [that] are not subordinate to overarching authority. ’ Within the ‘Cold War’ there was ‘stability through nuclear fear ’ but with that came any distinctions between independence movements being dictated more by ‘Cold War’ politics than objective analysis. In the post Cold War era it is more obvious than ever that the ‘dream’ of an ‘international consensus order, based on agreed values and laws ’ has not been established and international relations theories based more on power like ‘realism’ or ‘neo- realism’ are as dominant as ever.

It is interesting to look back at the last forty years to assess the way that the two terms have been used politically by Presidents of the United States of America to help us understand what has been driving the distinction for the current world hegemonic power. When Ronald Reagan took control of the White House in 1980 the Iranian Hostage Crisis was quickly resolved but he was under no illusions about the new revolutionary Islamic Republic’s threat to the interests of the United States of America. This revolution in Iran roughly coincided with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Reagan’s plans for a more aggressive foreign policy aimed at taking the fight back to the soviets, overcoming ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ and recreating the important role on the international scene the Americans had enjoyed since the second world war. He overtly supported the ‘Afghan Freedom Fighters ’ that would later evolve into the Taliban and in some cases Al Qaeda. He also supported the ‘Contras’ in Nicaragua in response to “an unusual and extra ordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. ” It is accepted that powerful politicians have an advantage as a securitizing actor but ‘moves of securitization can fail. This results from the audience rejecting the speech act articulated by the securitizing actor. ’

Terrorism and the media have a direct relationship because ‘terrorism by its very nature is a psychological weapon that depends upon communicating a threat to the wider society. ’ That is not to say that terrorism was not possible before the advent of mass media as the earlier exponents of such tactics murdered their victims in crowded places like markets and relied on simple word of mouth to ‘communicate a threat to the wider society.’ That being said the necessity of communicating the message via news agencies is not lost on the actors wanting the media attention or in fact on news stations that compete for market share and use ‘terrorist’ activity to bolster their advertising revenues. This strange relationship has led people to suggest that ‘terrorism and the media enjoy a symbiotic relationship. ’ British PM Margaret Thatcher thought that some sort of censorship should be employed to stop [the ‘terrorists’] getting ‘the oxygen of publicity.’ The problems of implementation made this policy unravel without considering the central issue of this debate, who is a ‘Terrorist’ and who is a ‘Freedom Fighter?’

The lack of definition and obvious implications of the usage of the term ‘terrorist’ became something of a discussion forum for different media outlets before 9/11. It was recognised that ‘the term ‘terrorist’ has a pejorative value ascribed to it that further complicates understanding of the subject. ’ How could respectable News outlets use a term that ‘is highly pejorative, [and] tends to be used selectively and subjectively? ’ This led to different policies being implemented by different media out lets from never using the terms except in direct quotes etc and then this also ignited a debate again after 9/11. This debate still persists because of exactly these types of intellectual enquiry. Without definitive definition these terms can only be used selectively and subjectively and for any self respecting news agency this raises serious issues. In using these terms media organisations could be said to be helping the Securitization of the concepts.

It is hard to argue that terrorism has not had a certain amount of success in the area of publicising their causes but at the same time it is dramatically less successful on its own at recruiting support from the wider audiences they target. It has been said that ‘for terrorists, media coverage of their activities is, as we have seen, something of a double-edged sword, providing them with the attention and publicity that they invariably seek, but not always in a particularly useful or even helpful manner. ’ I would also agree that ‘the relationship between publicity and terror is indeed paradoxical and complicated. Publicity focuses attention on a group, strengthening its morale and helping to attract recruits and sympathizers. But publicity is pernicious to the terrorist groups too. It helps an outraged public to mobilize its vast resources and produces information that the public needs to pierce the veil of secrecy all terrorist groups require’ David Rapoport

Although terrorist may not have direct success in recruitment after a ‘terrorist’ attack, the situation for them can change dramatically when the same ‘target’ audience feels that the response in counter-terrorism terms is disproportionate and as indiscriminate as the original attack. In fact ‘many terrorist leaders hope that their actions will lead to disproportionate reactions by a state that in turn disaffects public or international opinion and increases support for their cause. ’ Looking at this issue we could come to the conclusion that the broad scope and hard to understand links between the western ‘War on Terror’ and the threat from Al Qaeda could be the greatest single factor in the apparent success of terrorism in the modern age. A national/ international police response to ‘terrorist’ attacks no matter how dramatic would not revitalise the ‘terrorist versus freedom fighter debate’ like the US Securitization of Terrorism after 9/11 has.

One of the most contentious issues is whether ‘states alone have a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. ’ The successful securitization of terrorism by governments is important because within this paradigm, the use of violence by non-state actors is illegitimate so excluding the possibility of acts of ‘State Terrorism’. Many people associate civilian deaths with ‘terrorism’ and this leads to another related issue confusing this debate and keeping it alive. Can states can commit ‘acts of terrorism?’ I mentioned earlier the previous conception as ‘terror’ being exclusively the reserve of the state in Fascist states but this was in relation to its actions towards its own people. The exemption of states from being able to commit terrorist acts is one near constant when looking at the way in which states have attempted to define terrorism. Official definitions often state that the perpetrators have to be non-state, sub-state or extra-legal entities but without this distinction it is hard to argue against the possibility of state terrorism. Within the Second World War British politicians argued against the bombing of whole urban populations in Germany due to it being ‘terrorism.’ British World War Two leader Winston Churchill admitted when stopping the policy that it had been aimed at ‘terrorising the German people into submission.’ Along similar lines the dropping of atomic bombs on cities in Japan should also be seen as ‘terrorism’ as it could be argued that this was done not simply to win the war but also to communicate a political message to the Soviets about the post war ‘balance of power’. In the 2003 invasion of Iraq some claim that the necessary UN resolutions were not obtained in advance and therefore ‘actions by the coalition should be considered as an act of terrorism’ conducted by states ’. All these considerations are illuminated by social constructivist approaches; it is more to do with the competing forces constructing our understanding of the terms than any objective reality.

Conclusion

To account for the persistence of the ‘terrorist versus freedom fighter’ debate more fully as we approach the fortieth anniversary of international terrorism it is important to consider Social Constructionist views of international relations alongside more traditional approaches. The Copenhagen School help us to understand the importance of Speech Acts in creating Securitized concepts, and when this is successfully done it allows the use of methods that are normally considered outside the range of acceptable responses to a threat. It is for these reasons that this alternative conceptual lens helps us account for the persistence of the terrorist versus freedom fighter debate. Traditional analysis would suggest that having a definitive definition of what constitutes an act of terrorism is important but Constructivist would be more concerned with the way this is constructed or conceptualised in people’s minds after competing Speech Acts have been articulated. It is interesting to look at the linguistic resonance of the names of previous ‘terrorist’ groups and how the understanding of the concept of ‘terrorism’ has changed throughout time thus illustrating the social construction of these concepts. The confusion within this debate caused by the blurring of means and ends is based in more traditional analysis as Constructivist do not place much importance in this issue. The right of self-determination is accepted but it is interesting to look at the political and media usage of the two terms, when describing different organisations, to illustrate that there is awareness that the mental construction of these terms is important. Another factor for the persistence of this debate is the direct relationship ‘terrorists’ have with the media, they need to communicate their message and this battle ground is important in the construction of these concepts. The perceived successes of ‘terrorism’ are around the amount of publicity that they can generate but this can be used by securitizing actors to help convince their audience of a threat and allow extra ordinary methods to be used in response. The final issue I looked at was the role of civilian deaths and the strongly contested concept of State Terrorism and this is important to the persistence of this debate because, as Social Constructivists would say, it is a barometer of the success or otherwise of the securitization of terrorism.

Sebastian O’Brien

November 2007 .

Bibliography

Books

John Bayliss and Steve Smith. ‘The Globalisation of World Politics; An introduction to International Relations.’

Paul Wilkinson ‘Terrorism Versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response’

Hoffman, Bruce. ‘Inside Terrorism: Revised and Expanded Edition’

‘Introductory Sociology’ 4th Edition, Palgrave Macmillan,

Andrew Haywood ‘Politics’ Palgrave Macmillan

Edited by Alan Collins. ‘Contemporary Security Studies.’

Noam Chomsky. ‘Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance’ Penguin

Journal Articles

Boaz Ganor, Definining Terrorism: ‘Is One Man’s terrorist Another Man’s Freedom Fighter?’ Journal. Page 1

Frameworks for Conceptualising Terrorism

Philosophy- Is nature designed?

2007-05-15T08:22:00.000-07:00

Are there any reasons for supposing that nature is designed?

I will argue that although it may sometimes appear to us that there are good reasons for supposing that nature is designed, that they are not as strong as some ‘intelligent design’ theologians suggest. There has been a long line of ancient thought that supposed this due the complexity of humans ourselves but once Darwin had popularized the ideas of evolution we had to look further for this supposition. The strongest of these is called the ‘Anthropic Principle’ that points to the delicate balance of natural laws and suggests that this points towards design. I personally think that there are good common-sense arguments to refute this, one of which I call the certain coincidence argument. There are also a great many ‘Multiverse’ or ‘Parallel Universe’ theories that it has been suggested are nothing more that scientific speculation but for me speculation that is grounded in science is better that that which is grounded in mysticism. I will also look at ideas around how our current biological form is resultant of evolutionary fluke and that if this world was designed, the designer created something rather nonsensical and inhumane. I finally look at the idea that if we suppose some sort of design that still leaves us with the question of who designed the designer?

One of the earlier arguments for supposing that nature is designed was the pre-Darwinian idea that man is such a complex being with such amazing capabilities that we must have some purpose and direction so therefore be designed by some greater being, in almost all cases, a God. We now know that, evolutionary forces have slowly created complex entities like ourselves over many, many millennia in a series of mutations but before the recognition of the theory of evolution this could be seen as a suggestion of design. One of St Thomas Aquinas ‘Five ways’ of proving the existence of God was a form of Teleological argument that suggests that we must have some purpose. He says: “Some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God. ”

The ‘Anthropic Principle’ is a name given for a more recent argument for the supposition that nature is designed and is related the scientific observation that the ‘fundamental constants’ of nature appear to be ‘fine-tuned’ in such a way as to suggest design. Some Cosmologists have pointed to things like the mass-to-charge ratio, the strength of the force which binds nuclear particles together, or even the laws of gravity to argue that these are so finely balanced that it could not be by chance. This has been warmly greeted by what I will call the ‘Intelligent Design’ wing of modern Christianity. I will admit that the odds of such a universe coming together in one attempt are extraordinary but if we look into this a little further there are a few possible explanations.

The first explanation I will classify as the certain chance/coincidence argument. This goes that it might be only possible for the universe to support life with a particular set of ‘finely-tuned’ fundamental constants but we would not be here to report them otherwise. This argument is articulated very well by Roger Penrose in the ‘Emporor’s New Mind’: “The argument can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the earth at the present time. For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time. This principle was used very effectively by Brandon Carter and Robert Dicke to resolve an issue that had puzzled physicists for a good many years. The issue concerned various striking numerical relations that are observed to hold between the physical constants (the gravitational constant, the mass of the proton, the age of the universe, etc.). A puzzling aspect of this was that some of the relations hold only at the present epoch in the earth's history, so we appear, coincidentally, to be living at a very special time (give or take a few million years!). This was later explained, by Carter and Dicke, by the fact that this epoch coincided with the lifetime of what are called main-sequence stars, such as the sun. At any other epoch, so the argument ran, there would be no intelligent life around in order to measure the physical constants in question-so the coincidence had to hold, simply because there would be intelligent life around only at the particular time that the coincidence did hold!” Chapter 10

Then I personally feel slightly drawn (somewhat irrationally I must admit) to what has become known as ‘Multiverse’ theories. This explains the ‘Anthropic Principle’ by speculating that our Universe is only one of many, greatly reducing the necessity for any apparent ‘design.’ With the myriad of different ideas there is a constant that our Universe is only one of a great number of parallel Universes, but the relationships between the constituent Universes depends on which theory you subscribe to. There are a great many to consider such as; the Bubble theory, open Multiverses, Big Bounce, M-theory but I will not go into each one. It has been said that these theories themselves are not science because they are impossible to test empirically or to scientifically disprove. Some of these theories are though based on complex quantum physics like Hugh Everetts ‘Many Worlds Interpretation’ but not being particularly knowledgeable in quantum mechanics I cannot say anything about it strengths or weaknesses.

There is also an argument that only refutes the Theological argument that nature and the natural world was designed for the development of us homo-sapien-sapiens. This is that our development into our current form is based on many many evolutionary flukes? This does not discount the creation of ‘intelligent’ life forms of some sort, but only that, as most theologians suggest, that it was ‘created/designed’ to facilitate life in our present form.

Another argument (that possibly has no place in Philosophy) is that if nature was designed by some super-natural entity then why is life so random and so horrible for some? Disease, Depravation, Acts of Nature, and many other things cause immeasurable discomfort and distress to us so why not design some type of Utopia? Or at least ‘create’ some sort of correlation between what I’ll loosely call ‘good behaviour’ and a ‘good life.’ Although we are encouraged by people of a theological disposition, to act in this way or that, there does not appear to be any tangible results in this life.

We can finally consider, when that when looking at the ideas of any supposed design to nature, who designed the designer? This is a question that I believe that science, theology, and philosophy will never be able to answer. Trying to speculate about ‘Multiverses’ or ideas of that ilk can at least be inferred from scientific enquiry, and people may believe that we are just waiting some great ‘theory of everything’ but to go back any further leads to a insolvable circular argument.

To conclude, I concede that before we became aware of the ‘Theory of Evolution’ it could be easy to think that complex beings like ourselves could not have fallen from the sky in our present form so accepting the idea of a designer was not totally irrational. I have never accepted the ‘Anthropic Principle’ but can see that the argument about the ‘fine-tuning’ of the laws of physics needs an answer. I personally accept the idea that the ‘chance’ came first and then we followed giving the world this appearance of design. There are many different ways that this could be possible but I would point towards ‘Multiverse’ or ‘Parallel Universe’ theory as the most likely explanation. I think it is quite easy to refute the suggestion that the world was particularly designed to result in humans in their present form and easy to ask why the world is so cruel and inhumane if it was designed. I must admit that I have nothing of note to say about the question of “Who designed the designer?” but instead leave it as a question that I believe can never be answered.

Sebastian O’Brien April 2007

Revision Essay On 'Per Capita' Income (Development)

2007-04-20T04:27:00.000-07:00

Why is per capita income considered an inadequate measure of a country’s development? Answer with reference to the various dimensions of poverty AND alternative ways of measuring human development.

Plan
1. Reason1- It tells us nothing about internal income distribution
2. Reason 2- Income measure only one part of broad view of poverty.
3. Reason 3- Currency measure not usually local currency PPP
4. Reason 4- Other ‘Dimension of Poverty’ debate issues not mentioned eg subjectivity ‘absolute’ ‘relative’ ‘snapshots
5. Alternative ways of measuring human development HDI. And why it is better
6. Measuring Poverty not simple. Even HDI not perfect but still working on innovations.

Intro

Per Capita income is considered an inadequate measure of a country’s development for a wide variety of reasons. It is based on the median GDP income and tells us nothing about the internal distribution of wealth within the country so it could be argued that the figure can sometimes relate to only a very small section of the population in the middle. It is also a money-metric measure that overlooks other important considerations when trying to understand a country’s development. There are other major issues around converting the local currency into an internationally recognized bench mark currency like the United States Dollar because local food prices, for example, can be relatively low in the local currency. There are also a whole raft of other considerations that fall into the ‘Dimensions of Poverty’ debate like, measuring ‘Absolute’ poverty or ‘Relative’ poverty, ‘Snapshot’ or ‘Time-line’ issues and the ‘subjective’ nature of Poverty. To try overcome some of these concerns and to get a broader picture of development the United Nations Development Programme has come up with the Human Development Index to try get a more balanced picture. Although HDIs are a massive improvement on measuring development on Per Capita income it is by no means perfect, measuring poverty and development is not easy but innovations are constantly helping us to refine our methods to look with more detail at specific internal groups.

1.
The first reason I would give for why per capita income is considered to an inadequate measure of a country’s development is because it tells us nothing about the internal income distribution of that country. The country’s GDP is crudely divided by the population to give this per capita income regardless of whether there is a massive disparity between the ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ within that country. With this type of disparity, per capita income is the median of these two groups so could be equally unrepresentative of both groups. Even where income distribution figures exist they are often measured with the ‘household’ being the unit so therefore ignoring any internal disparity within the family. This intrahousehold distribution of resources could take the form of the men of the house getting more nutrition or education.

2.
This income-centric measure also overlooks other important indicators of poverty like for example, average life expectancy or access to education or healthcare. Any number of factors could be taken into account to try gauge poverty but looking simply at per capita income is showing a lack of understanding for the complexity of poverty. Some people can live from the produce they can grow in their locality but something like this is not involved in a measurable financial transaction and without speculating about its market value would go uncounted. Also access to education and healthcare may appear to be less tangible indicators of poverty but they would be considered by any serious study or measure.

3.
Another reason that measuring per capita income based on GDP can be misleading is that this measure of production and its value is made in a currency that can be freely converted internationally like the US Dollar. This is misleading because the local currency may have a different purchasing power for commodities at local prices, and example of this is that in certain countries living off two US Dollars per day could buy enough food to have a reasonably high calorific intake whereas in the US it most certainly would not. The reality of this situation is taken into consideration with some measurements, when this is done is the result is given in ‘purchasing power parity dollars’ or ‘PPP Dollars.’

4.
The ‘Dimension of Poverty’ debate looks at the above issues but also has many other considerations, like ‘Snapshot or Timeline’ issues, the difference between ‘Absolute’ or ‘Relative’ poverty and ‘subjective perceptions of poverty’. What I mean by ‘Snapshot or Timeline’ issues is that poverty or relative prosperity can be something that is seasonal, or negatively affected by war or drought, we would need to look over a long period of life-cycle to try understand these. ‘Absolute’ or ‘Relative’ poverty are two different ways of measuring poverty, the former is people under a given benchmark(E.g. 1PPP Dollar per day) and the latter is half the mean income or in some cases considers exclusion from participation in society. Finally, when I talk about ‘subjective perceptions of poverty’ I am suggesting that there is no definitive ‘objective’ measure of poverty so there may be some disparity between local and development agency understandings of what ‘really’ constitutes poverty.

5.
There are many other ways to measure poverty but the Human Development Index goes a lot further than Per Capita income to try get a multi-dimentional picture of poverty. The HDI considers life expectancy, educational exposure/literacy and real per capita income with the ‘Purchasing Power Parity’ considerations mentioned above. It has been said that the HDI is ‘a more comprehensive measure than per capita income as it has the advantage of directing attention from material possessions toward human needs’. The United Nations Development Programme, who introduced these measures, uses the HDI to rank countries into three groups, low, medium or high human development. An example of HDI giving us different results to simple Per Capita income is that of Bolivia in 2004 with a much lower GDP scored a higher HDI than Guatamala illustrating that they were translating that lower income into better human development.

6.
Measuring poverty is not an easy business with so many different factors to try understand and take into consideration. HDI is not at all perfect, even the UNDP said that ‘‘the HDI is a useful starting point, it is important to remember that the concept of human development is much broader and more complex than any summary measure can capture…the HDI is not a comprehensive measure. It does not include important aspects of human development, notably the ability to participate in the decisions that affect ones’ life and to enjoy the respect of others in the community’’. These shortcomings have been recognised and some effort has been put into address some of the issues with recent HDI innovations being able to look at separate components like, gender, class, ethnicity and regional variation to get a better picture of the skewed incomes of these groups.

Conc

The reasons for Per Capita income being considered an inadequate measure of a country’s development are many and varied. Ignoring the internal distribution of wealth within the country can result it the Per Capita income measure being representative of only a small percentage of the population. Looking at development in an income-centric way misses other important considerations. There are also issues relating to usefulness of converting the local currency into an internationally recognized bench mark currency because local food prices can, in some cases, be relatively cheap in the local currency. The ‘Dimensions of Poverty’ debate also highlights other anomalies like, whether to measure ‘Absolute’ poverty or ‘Relative’ poverty, the inaccuracies of ‘Snapshot’ measurements and the lack of a universal ‘objective’ standard of poverty. The UNDP measure of HDI is a massive improvement to measuring a country’s development on Per Capita income but even with some of its latest innovations there can never really be a ‘perfect’ way to measure a countries development as particular idiosyncrasies based on a more sociological understanding are always present.

Sebastian O’Brien April 2007

Revsion Essay On Political Obligation (Political Theory)

2007-04-17T13:59:00.000-07:00

Examine the reasons given for arguing we have a political obligation to obey the government. Are there ever good reasons for disobeying the law?

Plan

1. Pol Oblig Reason 1- Ensuring our own security. Hobbes.
2. PO Reason 2- Social Contract Theory. Hobbes, Locke, and most important development with Rousseuau
3. Within Social Contract Theory Disobey The Law Reason 1- ‘Right to Rebellion’ SCT Locke, US Constitution, French ‘Rights of Man’
4. DTL Reason 2- Non-Violent protest. Gandhi, US Civil Rights and success of some Violent action.
5. DTL Reason 3- Civil Disobedience. John Rawls on CD in good democracy.

Intro.
The main reason given for arguing we have a political obligation to obey the government is that it is the only way of ensuring our own personal security. This led to ‘Social Contract’ theory which I believe is still important in relation to our political obligation to obey the law. There are also good reasons for disobeying the law. I believe that ‘Social Contract’ theory establishes a ‘right to rebellion/revolution’ in response to despotic leadership and an example of this is clearly stated in the US Constitution. Forms of non-violent protest have been very successful in the past, violent revolution can be sanctioned in extreme cases and ‘civil disobedience’ can be used, with conditions, to demonstrate a political point.

1.
The primary reason for having a political obligation to obey the government comes from the understanding that it should result in more personal security for its own people. Thomas Hobbes, an important English political theorist, argued that a ‘state of nature’ (meaning how life would be like without government) would be ‘nasty, brutish and short’ in his famous work ‘Leviathan’ This is where Hobbes argued when he said that without a government in his ‘state of nature’ it would be a ‘war of all against all.’ When he is quoted saying life would be ‘nasty, brutal and short’ in this state he argues that we should give our power away to an absolute monarch who would protect us from ourselves and each other. Regardless of his solution Hobbes’ words have been used to remind people of what life could be, and was in earlier times, like without a government thus enforcing the idea of what could be at stake if we don’t obey our government.

2.
A ‘Social Contract’ is now abstract concept but their development gave us a tangible reason to obey the government. When the Frenchman Jean-Jaques Rousseuau took up these themes in his treatise ‘The Social Contract’ he articulated this as an agreement between all people about how their will be demonstrated to the government. It was not as in Hobbes, where the population pool their individual power and give it over to the ruler/s:with Rousseuau who believed in some sort of direct democracy, and certain not any kind of representative democracy, it was all about finding the ‘general will’ of the people.

3.
Within this development of ‘Social Contract’ theory there was established a ‘right to rebellion/revolution’ if the government was not representing the ‘will of the people’. It was most clearly specified in John Locke’s 1689 work ‘Two Treatises of Government’ where he established this ‘right to rebellion’ where the government was tyrannical. Rousseuau’s idea was that the ‘contract’ would be refreshed and renewed with each demonstration of the ‘general will’ but without direct democracy this had to be achieved in some other way. To this end, Locke introduced the idea of ‘checks and balances’ being put in place to ensure that the executive and legislature have a separation of powers. This ‘right to rebellion/revolution’ was considered so important that it is mentioned in the US Constitution, the French Revolutionary ‘Rights of Man’ proclamation and is still considered by most to be fundamental to the conception of a modern ‘Social Contract.’

4.
In circumstances where the government is seen to be ‘unjust’ (a term that blatantly suffers from relativism) or repressive it could be argued that non-violent protest or in even more dramatic cases revolution, or to some others even terrorism, could be sanctioned. Non-violent protest or ‘Satyagraha’ was famously used by Gandhi to express his dissatisfaction with British rule in India and other non-violent protests like that of Rosa Parks in the black civil-rights movement in the United States of America. The argument for violent revolution or even terrorism is weaker but if the oppression of the people is extreme enough (again relativism is an issue) then I believe more dramatic methods could be employed. In most famous revolutions it is an oppressive dictator or regime that is seen by the people to not represent them that are targeted, but to what lengths people can go in this situation is definitely a matter of opinion. Both Nelson Mandela and the current Sinn Fein leadership had been involved with terrorist activity of some sort and have subsequently enjoyed political power.
5.
‘Civil Disobedience’ as a concept was popularised by an essay by Henry David Thoreau in 1849 and, as mentioned above, this type of non-violent resistance has been widely used to make a political point. Thoreau was objecting to paying taxes to a government that allowed slavery and was credited by Gandhi as being “the chief cause of the abolition of slavery in America”. It was argued by John Rawls in his 1971 work ‘A Theory of Justice’ that ‘Civil Disobedience’ could, and should, be part of a fair democracy. He says that as long as it is done right(i.e. within the general conception of law), it shows a certain respect for the established political authority and is a way of people expressing their moral objection to something that they feel is ‘unjust’ without causing direct violence. What happens when you have something that is clearly ‘unjust’ to you but it attracts no popular support even after the issue has been raised by civil disobedience? Maybe Roussaueu’s argument for disassociating yourself with your political peer group would be applicable but it is in practice not easily achieved.

Conc.
The most important reason given for arguing that we have a political obligation to obey the government is that without a functioning government we would be in a, so called, ‘state of nature’ where, with no laws, it would be a war ‘of all against all.’ In this state, it has also been famously said that life would be, ‘nasty, brutish and short’, so the implication is that we need to submit to a greater ‘social order’ of some sort, for our own security. These ideas we first articulated by what political theorist call ‘social contract theory’. This is the now implicit understanding that there is an abstract ‘social contract’ between the people to ensure that the government respects the ‘general will’ of the electorate. Put very crudely, these ‘contracts’ are meant to ensure that the people’s interests will be served by the government in return for people obeying the law. The ‘right to rebellion’ was an essential part of John Locke’s social contract theory, explicitly mentioned in the US constitution and the ‘Rights of Man’ from the French Revolution and I will argue is still important to any healthy democracy. Non-violent resistance has been famously used by people like Gandhi, South African Anti-Apartheid protesters and the US Civil-Rights movement. Even violent revolution or terrorist actions could be seen by some to be legitimate in certain circumstances. ‘Civil Disobedience’ was first encouraged by Thoreau in the late nineteenth century to show solidarity with the movement to abolish slavery in America by non payment of taxes and more recently the political theorist/philosopher John Rawls argued that ‘Civil Disobedience’ could and in fact should be part of a functioning democracy.

Sebastian O’Brien April 2007

Philosophy 'Mind-Body Dualism' Essay

2007-01-21T14:14:00.001-08:00

Assess the plausibility of ‘mind-body dualism.’

I will argue that considerations of the ‘mind-body relationship’ have been around for a very long time and even today parts of ‘mind-body dualism’ as presented by Descartes play an important role on thinking on the subject. There is a long line of ancient thinkers who grappled with this ‘mind-body relationship,’ starting in the West with Plato and Aristotle, then as with much of the Western history of ideas, these notions were developed through the First and into the middle of the Second millennia by theologians until they were taken up again a few hundred years ago. A mind-body distinction of some sort forms an integral part of almost all major religions, so it could be said to be still very plausible to many. It was really Descartes method that led to his presentation of the material and mental worlds as distinctly different substances that resulted in his ‘mind-body dualism’ having so much longevity. This then led to people consider the interactional causation between the physical and mental and the uniquely subjective nature of mental events as apposed to physical events. I will then look at some of the strengths and weakness of ‘mind-body dualism’ arguments and finally explain my thoughts on the subject.

Ever since the appearances of whatever we consider to be the first ‘conscious’ beings there has been an unresolved relationship between mental and physical worlds we all experience. We have a body, and a ‘conscious’ mind. Through our bodily senses we can all touch, hear, see, smell and taste physical events and objects. We can all also locate where these occurrences take place physically but ‘If you hear a bell ringing, where does your auditory experience occur?’[1] Is it somewhere in the brain? When someone else is in pain, for whatever reason, you may feel you are able to empathise with the pain that the other person is experiencing but it is exclusively their experience. In fact although logically your reaction should be broadly similar the experience may be different in some way but as we have no way of comparing unique personal experience we do not know for sure.

There is a long established development of mind-body considerations within Western Philosophy. Plato (b. 427 BC) was one of the earliest to touch on this subject with his ‘doctrine of ideas or forms’[2] where ’whenever a number of individuals have a common name, they also have a common idea or form. For instance, though there are many beds there is only one ‘idea’ or ‘form.’[3] These he says are universal concepts, independent non-physical ideas that are only conceivable to those who can understand the bigger picture of their role in the universe. Of this Bertrand Russell said that it ‘contains a number of obvious errors. But in spite of these it marks a very important advance in philosophy, since it is the first theory to emphasise the problems of universals, which in varying forms, persisted to the present day.’

Aristotle (384 BC- 322) revised this theory when he developed the ‘Third Man Argument’ but also developed his ideas of a non-material world. This argument that that was proposed initially by Plato highlighted that if there is an earthly form and a virtual form then there must be a third similar form to make the likeness. From this he developed his ‘essence’ argument but still not believing that intellect can be conceived as material because “if the intellect were material then it could not receive all of the forms. If the intellect were a specific material organ (or part of one) then it would be restricted to receiving only certain kinds of information, as the eye is restricted to receiving visual data and the ear is restricted to receiving auditory data. Since the intellect is capable of receiving and reflecting on all forms of data, then it must not be a physical organ and, hence, it must be immaterial.”[4]

The next Western incarnations of the mind-body relationship were developed by the only intellectual class of the times, the theologians, so naturally had a heavy spiritual element attached. Saint Augustine (354-430) ‘believed that I am a soul that is “chained” to a body.’[5] Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) came to develop Aristotle’s theory of forms into a trinitarian notion of forms that mirrored the trintarian doctrine of Father, Son and Holy Spirit: forms, intellect and soul were three parts of the same singular phenomenon. For him, the soul was the substance of a human but you need a body for the soul to manifest itself within, the soul can exist without the body but it could not be said to be a person. Upon death the soul was all that remained of the person, everything bodily inculding your memories would be wiped out.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is considered one of the most influential philosophers due to the paradigm shift that occurred after his recognition of the importance of mind-body dualism. He developed an approach to philosophy that has become known as ‘Cartesian Doubt’ where he doubted everything he could possibly doubt to see what (if anything) he was left with. After dismissing the senses because it could all be a dream or an evil demon misleading him for some unknown reason he was left with his single most famous line: “I think, therefore I am.” This became the first principle of his philosophy and is important in the history of ideas because it ‘makes mind more certain than matter, and my mind (for me) more certain than the minds of others. There is thus, in all philosophy derived from Decartes, a tendency to subjectivism, and regarding matter as something only knowable, if at all, by inference from what is known of the mind.’[6] He also claimed that this showed that the mind, a thinking thing, can exist apart from its extended body. And therefore, the mind is a substance distinct from the body, a substance whose essence is thought. This is became known as Substance Dualism or Cartesian Dualism.

This led straight to the what has become known as the ‘Problem of Interactionism’ where somehow these two distinct substances have to find a way of bridging this gap between mind substances and body substances. Descartes himself later came up with an explanation along the lines of men ‘have a soul, which resides in the pineal gland. There the soul comes into contact with the ‘vital spirits’, and through this contact there is interaction between soul and body.’[7] Even his protoges where not happy with this and this quickly led to alternative explanations like, Geulincx his Dutch disciple to come up with his ‘two clocks’ theory. This theory suggests that with two running clocks at identical times, it could seem like, if you could only see one and hear the chime of the other, that one, caused the other. This is not the case, they are just runnining parallel to each other, and it is not our will that moves our body at the same time as our mind requests, but as Leibniz further developed this theory of a ‘pre-established harmony’ set in place by God creating the appearance of interaction.

This interaction causation is important to me, not least because it is also an intuative commom-sense notion that physical and mental events interact but also because of the implications of this interaction on any real dualism. This can be called ‘Interactionism’ and in this view, mental states such as desires and beliefs, causally interact with physical states. We have all seen something like this. A child falls over and cuts its knee(physical) so he feels pain(mental) shouts out(physical) in agony and this alerts and causes brief panic(mental) for its parent. So any mind-body dualism for me would need to deal with this interaction keeping them distinctly separate entities.
Within this argument it is important for me to acknowledge that mental and physical experiences have very different, and prehaps irreconcilable, properties. There is a certain subjective quality to mental events but this is not the case for physical events. For example, what does the pain from a burn feel like? What does a particular colour look like? What does pleasant music sound like? These subjective aspects of mental events has been called by philosophers ‘Qualia.’ This is the particular ‘what it is like’ to feel pain, sorrow, etc. It is extremely difficult to try reduce these Qualia into anything remotely physical.
I find parts of both Property Dualism and Predicate Dualism appealing. The former suggesting that when matter is organised in an appropreiate way as in the human body, mental properties emerge. With Predicate Dualism people maintain that while there is only one ontological category of substances and properties of substances (physical), the predicates that we use to describe mental events cannot be redescribed in terms of physical predicates of natural languages.
Apart from the intuative objection I raised earlier about the causal interactions of these two different types of substance there is a more scientific approach to the argument. Even with mystical explanations that violate normal conceptions of Newtonian mechanics, these causal interactions must violate the laws of physics. Similarly, it could be said that dualistic interactionism violates a general heuristic principle of science: the causal closure of the physical world. Critics of this suggest that mental events could be causal overdetermined and that some features of an effect may not be fully explained by its sufficient cause.
There is an argument formulated around the effects of brain damage on mental performance that questions the clarity of any distinction between body and brain/mind. It is simply that when the brain suffers some sort of damage, either by an accident, drug abuse or pathological diseases, it is always the case that the mental properties of that person are significantly compromised. If the mind were a completely separate substance from the brain, how could it be possible that every single time the brain is injured, the mind is also injured? Experts can even predict and explain the kind of mental or psychological deterioration or change that will take place when specific parts of their brains are damaged. So the question for the dualist to try to confront is how can all of this be explained if the mind is a separate and immaterial substance from, or if its properties are ontologically independent of the brain.
The final argument against dualism I will present is that of ‘Occam’s Razor.’ It is another example of dualism going against the heuristic principles in science and philosophy. Why would we assume the existence of more entities that is necessary for a clear explanation and prediction? Why believe in two, onotologically distinct entities, mind and body, when you could try explain it in one?
I think that our ‘conciousness’ is just a quirk of nature, an emergent property of the neureological evolution of living organisms and, it is this, that has caused for us the mind-body ‘problem.’ The only things that exist are physical things. All mental things appear to exist to us in our heads as thoughts and memories but these are just functions of our brain. When your heart pumps it is doing the major part of its job within the body, when your brain thinks it is doing the major part of its job within the body. Physical occurrences run in parallel with mental occurrences, the physical leading the mental. It may appear to us that what is going on within our heads is somehow just as real as the physical world (if not more) but it is in part due to the subjective nature of our mental world.

In conclusion mind-body dualism is still not resolved for most people so it must be plausible. Mind-body considerations have been with us since our evolution gave us ‘consciousness’. It could be said be intuitive to believe in some sort of dualism and it is certainly very important for people of a religious persuasion. Descartes rejection of anything he could doubt led to an introversion that has been very rewarding in the history of ideas. He was first to establish the subjective nature of thought and how hard it is to reconcile with the physical world. This led to investigation into the causation interaction of these two separate worlds that has not yet been resolved. There are strong arguments against mind-body dualism but it is subtly a well established concept for many people for many different reasons but I believe the authority of subjective thought established by Descates is the principle. I feel we have progressed as far as we can with this line of enquiry into a relationship we can fundamentally never totally understand. Others are still looking to the future:

”What is needed is something we do not have: a theory of conscious organisms as physical systems composed of chemical elements and occupying space, which also have an individual perspective on the world, and in some cases a capacity for self-awareness as well. In some way that we do not now understand, our minds as well as our bodies come into being when these materials are suitably combined and organised. The strange truth seems to be that certain complex, biologically generated physical systems, of which each of us is an example, have rich non-physical properties. An integrated theory of reality must account for this, and I believe that if and when it arrives, probably not for centuries, it will alter our conception of the universe as radically as anything has to date.”
Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere

Sebastian O’Brien Jan 2007

[1] 173 hospers Introduction to Philosophical analysis
[2] Bertrand Russell- History of Western Philosophy 123
[3] ibid
[4] Aristotle
[5] hospers 171
[6] 516 hist western
[7] 514 western

Role of Propaganda in 'War on Terror' Essay

2007-01-02T11:05:00.000-08:00

Examine the role of propaganda in the ‘War on Terror’ after the attacks of 9/11.

I will argue that propaganda has played an extremely important role in justifying the actions for the chief Western participants of the ‘War on Terror’ after the attacks of 9/11. It started with the choice to declare a ‘War on Terror’ and after that propaganda has been used to create the impression that ‘Al Qaeda/Islamo-fascism’ is a global threat on the level of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. We have seen propaganda being used to overstate the threat posed to Western interests before in certain stages of the Cold War. The similarities continue with the aims of this propaganda being broadly the same and the focus of the threat being massively inflated by similar propagandistic methods. To achieve this there needs to be systematic propaganda mechanisms and I will try to outline one model that fits these ends. I suggest that public opinion has been recognised as a ‘second superpower’ and that this is why propaganda is so important. I finally outline Britain’s role in the propaganda around the ‘War on Terror’ and show example of ‘pseudo-information’ being used to mislead for political purposes in both the US and UK.

Soon after the multiple terrorist attacks on key targets within the United States of America on September 11th 2001, the president, George W Bush chose to re-declare a ‘War on Terrorism.’ This was a choice. Other less dramatic courses of action could have been taken. Consider this alongside the House of Commons Defence Committee suggestion that ‘the sources of instability that affect our fundamental interests…are often driven more by how we, our allies and partners choose to react to particular crises, rather than the crises themselves.[1]’ This decision soon led to a total rejection of ex-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s old approach of not giving ‘Terrorists’ the ‘oxygen of publicity’ with Al Qaeda quickly becoming a familiar organisation to anyone with access to a television.

Not long after the initial declaration of war American Vice-President Dick Cheney asserted that this ‘‘War on Terrorism’ could last fifty years or more[2]’ with critics suggesting that we now have to ‘live with the threat and illusion of endless war.[3]’ The role of propaganda was therefore to create a real-life evil Goldstein, as in George Orwell’s prophetic novel 1984, in Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. It is not unusual for politicians to try consolidate power by inspiring fear within a population. There is a historical precedent for this practice, it was said that that these tactics were used ‘throughout the Reagan-Bush years, as the leadership conjured up one devil after another to frighten the populace into obedience.[4]’ But could this ‘rag-tag’ group of Islamic extremists really be considered to be a global threat to American hegemony?

For many people the propagandist demonisation of ‘Al Qaeda’ was a throw back to the middle to late stages of the Cold War. As with the Soviet Union it could not be said that they were not a threat but are similar propaganda methods being used to inflate the threat level? It is interesting listening to ex-Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld talk about the threat of both Terrorism and Communism, there is a striking similarity. It would be possible to exchange the words Communism and Terrorism in some of his defence speeches without knowing which was current and which was over 15 years old. Going back even further ‘the Truman-McCarthy Red scare helped inaugurate the Cold War and the permanent war economy.[5]’

After the end of the Cold War it was still necessary to have some kind of threat to ensure it could be ‘business as usual’ for Western geopolitical strategists. The propaganda inflating ‘terrorism’ was a parody of ‘the ‘Soviet threat’[that]served four main purposes: it provided a pretext for Western military intervention abroad as ‘defence’ against Soviet expansion; it allowed repressive governments to be supported on the excuse that they were bulwarks against communism; it allowed clampdowns on domestic dissent to take place by referring to infiltration by the enemy; and it allowed huge profits to be made by military industry, which produced the weapons demanded by a permanent arms race.[6]’ This may not be a bi-polar world anymore and Western objectives have not changed noticeably since the end of Cold War but it is the threat of ‘terrorism’ that helps ‘oil the cogs’ of the Industrial Military Complex now.

To achieve these aims a ‘Propaganda Model’ has to be implemented resulting in ‘the modes of handling favoured and inconvenient materials (placement, tone, context, fullness of treatment) differ in ways that serve political ends.[7]’ This model is articulated as having five features within Herman and Chomsky’s book ‘Manufacturing Consent- The Political Economy of the Mass Media.’ It states that ’In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires systematic propaganda.[8]’ I would simplify the features of this model as: concentrated ownership of media outlets; advertising revenue being their primary income source; reliance on government/business as primary source of material; ‘Flak’ that is created when expected reporting norms are breached and Anti-Communism that has now been replaced by ‘Anti-Islamo fascism.’

Chomsky has described a ‘second superpower, world public opinion[9]’ and suggested that ‘problems of domestic control become particularly severe when the governing authorities carry out policies that are apposed by the general population.[10]’ It is a threat to powerful elites when ‘popular perceptions, rather than governments [are] setting the pace for international diplomacy.[11]’ This in turn leads to ‘the enemy at home often has to be controlled by intensive propaganda.[12]’

Propaganda has played a major role in the ‘War on Terror’ with respects of re-enforcing and exaggerating the threat from Islamic extremists. To look the output in this area from a single primary government source, ex-US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is revealing. He has said that ‘today, the world does face a new threat to peace and freedom. It’s not Adolf Hitler, fascism. It’s not communism. But it’s one that can be as destructive as any-or all, for that matter- and one that has implications for the future that are every bit as monumentous as those we have faced in the past.[13]’ So we are to understand that this ‘War on Terror’ could be as important to the peoples of the world as the Cold War or Second World War. He also warns that ‘we now know thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us’ and that ‘the gathering storm of terrorism will unleash its fury on us all.[14]’

The Iraq Invasion 2003 illustrates that ‘the most important weapon in this ‘war’ is pseudo-information.[15]’ This was used by the American administration to link Saddam Hussein with the attacks of 9/11 to help justify the immanent invasion of Iraq. This ‘government media propaganda assault[16]’ created the illusion that he was “an immediate threat to the US[17]” and was said to have ‘succeeded brilliantly in linking the war in Iraq with the trauma of September 11[18]’ This propaganda campaign resulted in one poll showing that nearly ninety percent of Americans believed that Saddam was ‘aiding and abetting terrorist who are planning future strikes against the US.[19]’

Britain’s chief role in this ‘War on Terror is to act as ‘the leading apologist for US policy[20]’ and as ’international coalition builders in support of US strategy.[21]’ This involves Britain offering ‘token military commitment’ whilst ‘its more useful function being to uphold the pretence of an ‘international coalition.[22]’ This has led to the suggestion that ’Britain under Blair has overtly become chief public propagandist for ‘Western’ strategy.[23]’

Tony Blair had his own propaganda concerns with Iraq ‘he knew he would have to assure Bush that, whatever his domestic problems, he would back military action.[24]’ This then led to political gymnastics because ‘at the same time he had to convince parliament that no decision had been made[25]’ he also had to try convince the British public and ultimately win a commons vote to back a military invasion. This led to the infamous ‘Dodgy Dossier’, the ’45 Minute’ claim and the misrepresentation of the Attorney Generals legal advise but despite all this he got the vote through the Houses of Commons even if the war has ultimately left his reputation in tatters.

With the decision to declare a ‘War on Terrorism’ the US administration had started its propaganda campaign. This then led to unprecedented use of propaganda throughout this ‘War.’ Using all the tricks that had been learned from the Cold War the ‘Al Qaeda’ organisation and Osama bin Laden has been established as the greatest threat to peace and security in the modern world. This is done to ensure the political objectives of Western elites, whilst using long established, highly organised and sophisticated propaganda apparatus. This ‘second superpower’ of public opinion was tamed once again with mis-information but only at the expense of the integrity of our political leaders and system.

Sebastian O’Brien Dec 2006

[1] Web of Deceit, page 75
[2] New Rulers, page 1
[3] Ibid
[4] Hegemony, page 115
[5] Manufacturing, page 32
[6] Web page 76
[7] Manufacturing page 35
[8] Manufacturing page 1
[9] Hegemony page 10
[10] Hegemony page 8
[11] Web page 22
[12] Hegemony page 8
[13] Web page 75
[14] Web page 77
[15] New Rulers page1
[16] Heg page 18
[17] Ibid
[18] Ibid
[19] Ibid
[20] Web 22
[21] Web 113
[22] Ibid
[23] Ibid
[24] Blairs 259
[25] Ibid

Bibliography

Web Of Deceipt- Mark Curtis
The New Rulers of the World- John Pilger
Blair’s Wars- John Kampfner
Manufacturing Consent- The Political Economy of The Mas Media- Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky
Hegemony or Survival- Noam Chomsky

Globalisation Essay

2007-01-02T11:04:00.000-08:00

Do processes of ‘globalisation’ undermine the capacity of states/governments to act independently?

In attempting to answer the question about the nature of the processes of globalisation on states/governments capacity to act independently I will initially outline my definition of ‘globalisation’ and explain briefly why it is such a contentious concept. I will then explain the normative understanding of national sovereignty within the traditional ‘Westphalian’ system and its inherent contradictions within our modern ‘globalised’ world. Whilst concentrating particularly on economic and political globalisation I will argue that these do put pressure on states capacity to act independently and change the nature of national sovereignty. This leads to the conclusion that we have moved into a post-Westphalian system that changes, but not eliminates, state sovereignty and in turn the capacity for states/governments to act independently. This new system also creates problems with a ‘double democratic deficit’ and the impact of globalisation on states capacity to act being asymmetric along traditional ‘distorted’ global political lines.

Globalisation itself ‘has become a deeply controversial issue.[1]’ Even in modern Politics literature it has been described as ‘slippery and elusive[2]’ concept because ‘it is not a single process but a complex of processes, sometimes overlapping and interlocking processes but also, at times, contradictory and oppositional ones.[3]’ A more simplistic explanation of Globalisation is that it is ‘the process of increasing interconnectedness between societies such that events in one part of the world more and more have effects on peoples and societies far away.[4]’ That definition suggests that Globalisation must have been in development for some time already but I would suggest that it is the rate of the acceleration, deepening, stretching and thickening of this process that exemplifies this phenomenon.

The state has had a privileged position ever since the ‘Peace Treaties of Westphalia (1648) established the legal basis of modern statehood and by implication the constitution of modern world politics.[5]’ The aim was to ensure ‘agreement amongst Europe’s rulers to recognise each other’s right to rule their own territories free from outside interference.[6]’ It was only in more recent time that ‘sovereign statehood and with it national self-determination finally acquired the status of universal organising principals of world politics.[7]’ This evolution ‘welded together the idea of territoriality with the notion of legitimate sovereign rule’ and this sovereignty involved ‘the rightful entitlement to exclusive, unqualified and supreme rule within a delimited territory.[8]’

It is these established ideals of sovereign power as exclusive, unqualified and supreme control of everything within the state that are the antithesis of globalisation. As ex-US President Clinton noted the “line between domestic and foreign policy is blurring.[9]” This blurring is linked to globalisation because of the ‘growth of ‘superterritorial’ relations between people, a reconfiguration of social space in which territory matters less because an increasing range of connections have a ‘trans-world’ or ‘trans-border’ character.[10]’
Globalisation comes in many forms but I believe that two key areas highlight the effects these processes are having on state independence are predominantly economic globalisation and political globalisation.

Economic Globalisation can be summed up as ‘a shift from a world of distinct national economies to a global economy in which production is internationalised and financial capital flows freely and instantly between countries.[11]’ With this comes ’the reduced capacity of national governments to manage their economies and, in particular, to resist their restructuring along free-market lines.[12]’ Multinational corporations can exercise power over national governments by ‘relocating capital and production elsewhere’ if they do not like a particular policy ensuring developing-world states provide ‘cheap labour and low production costs without being able to oblige them to make a long-term investment.[13]’ The rate in which this economic globalisation is developing ‘far outstrips that of political globalisation[14]’ so the current global governance systems are unable to control this economic globalisation to retain Westphalian state sovereign power.

Political Globalisation is illustrated by ‘the growing importance of international organisations[15]’ that are trans-national, so operate, ‘not within a single state, but within an international area comprising several states.[16]’ From the European Union to the World Bank, the United Nations or Amnesty international they all try to compete and develop their functions within the global community. With international organisations that recognise the principles of inter-governmentalism a state can ‘take concerted action without sacrificing national sovereignty’ but with some supra-national organisations like, for example, the European Union have ‘an authority that is ‘higher’ than that of the nation–state and [is] capable of imposing its will on it.[17]’ With political globalisation we have the inherent problem that our recognition of, and emphasis on, autonomous nation states is at odds with the expansion of contemporary economic and cultural globalisation. When a modern state becomes ‘embedded in frameworks of global and regional governance [they] confront a real dilemma… state autonomy is compromised.[18]’

The Westphalian concept of ‘exclusive, unqualified and supreme rule within a delimited territory’ mentioned earlier has been left behind. A new post-Westphalian order has developed where states ‘engage in extensive multilateral collaboration and cooperation[19]’ and ’sovereignty is understood as the shared exercise of public power and authority.[20]’ Borders are still important but territoriality is being subordinated by ‘a new geography of organization and political power is emerging which transcends territories and borders.[21]’ Sovereign power in this new order has been ‘transformed but not necessarily eroded[22]’ it is now uses it ‘as a bargaining tool, in the context of transnational systems of rule making, with other agencies and social forces.[23]’

These changes in the global order have an effect on the independence and accountability of national governments and increased the importance of international organisations thus creating a ‘double democratic deficit.’ Modern Post-Westphalian states have a ‘reduced capacity…to manage their economies’ so therefore reduced capacity to express the will of their electorate. Furthermore we have seen that ‘economic activity increasingly pays little attention to national borders’ but that ‘politics continues to operate largely within in them’ this happens with ‘the international organisations that do exist being too weak to call global capitalism to account.[24]’ There is also a democratic deficit within global organisations, there are over 200 members of the United Nations but ‘issues of international peace and security are determined by only 15 members.., of whom only five can exercise a power of veto.[25]’

Modern global politics should more accurately be called ’distorted global politics’ and this has implications on the relative effects on sovereignty between stronger and weaker nation states. Stronger nations are able to ‘shape the rules and institutions[26]’ of global politics due to ‘enormous inequalities of power between states.[27]’ Weak states alternatively ‘have little or no influence in the creation and enforcement of rules in the system and they have exercised little control over their own integration into the world economy.[28]’ The effect globalisation has on weaker states is therefore greater because they cannot, like stronger states, ‘guard with equal ferocity their independence in economic, foreign policy, human rights and security issues.[29]’

My conclusions are that ‘state sovereignty has been a defining characteristic of international politics for three hundred and fifty years[30]’ but the processes of globalisation mean ‘events in one part of the world more and more have effects on peoples and societies far away’ and thus reduce the capacity for independent action. It is clear that processes of globalisation have changed the nature of state sovereignty and reduce the capacity of nation states to act truly independently. In keeping with ‘distorted’ global politics the processes of globalisation undermine the independence of more powerful nations less because they get to retain more autonomy and have more influence to shape the global governance organisations Globalisation has created a post-Westphalian global order where it is harder for states/governments to exercise tradition independence and instead live in a world of increased interconnectedness and interdependence that favours more powerful states and leads people to ask serious questions about the implications of the inequalities between nations and the democratic credentials of this current world order.

Sebastian O’Brien December 2006

[1] Andrew Heywood, Politics, Second Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, page 140
[2] Andrew Heywood, Politics, Second Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, page 137
[3] Ibid
[4] John Bayliss and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World Politics, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, page 8
[5] John Bayliss and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World Politics, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, page 29
[6] ibid
[7] ibid
[8] John Bayliss and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World Politics, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, page 30
[9] ibid
[10] Andrew Heywood, Politics, Second Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, page 137
[11] Andrew Heywood, Politics, Second Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, page 139
[12] Ibid
[13] Andrew Heywood, Politics, Second Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, page 43
[14] ibid
[15] Andrew Heywood, Politics, Second Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, page 139
[16] ibid
[17] Andrew Heywood, Politics, Second Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, page 148
[18] John Bayliss and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World Politics, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, page 33
[19] ibid
[20] ibid
[21] John Bayliss and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World Politics, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, page 35
[22] ibid
[23] John Bayliss and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World Politics, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, page 33
[24] Andrew Heywood, Politics, Second Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, page 143
[25] John Bayliss and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World Politics, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, page 198
[26] John Bayliss and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World Politics, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, page 340
[27] John Bayliss and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World Politics, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, page 35
[28] John Bayliss and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World Politics, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, page 341
[29] ibid
[30] John Bayliss and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World Politics, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, page 60

Cuban Missile Crisis Essay

2007-01-02T11:02:00.000-08:00

Examine the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ with particular reference to its origins and conclusions.

In my examination of the origins of the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ I will primarily explain some history predating the 1959 Cuban Revolution but then investigate the rapid deterioration of the relations between the Cuban leader Fidel Castro and the United States of America before this 1962 confrontation. It was the ‘Cold War’ that acted as a catalyst within the origins of this crisis and introduced Soviet influence on the United States of American’s doorstep. The infamous failed ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion of Cuba by a force of mainly exiled Cubans funded and encouraged covertly by the US that developed the already established, ideological and military links between Cuba and the Soviet Union. I will examine both the origins and conclusions of the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ within its ideological context and attempt to look at these events from the perspective of each ‘National Actor’ whilst trying to highlight some of their considerations, motivations, objectives and how different conclusions affected each country. I will also try to illustrate some limitations of the ‘Rational Actor Model[1]’ of analysis. The conclusions are many and varied but the most important for me is that even without nuclear parity the shared view was that ‘no other objective can be of greater importance than avoiding nuclear war[2]’ and that this, led finally, to a diplomatic solution. Khrushchev’s brinksmanship ultimately led to Cuba being safe from US invasion but, with no real strategic advantage for the Soviets, it was a factor in him loosing his job in 1965. Kennedy’s role in the crisis improved his own and America’s reputation on the world stage after the ‘Bay of Pigs’ fiasco but it left Castro in charge in Cuba without diminishing his export of revolutionary zeal, equipment and personnel. The Cuban Missile Crisis has also proved to be a long running ‘test case’ for historians and the study of Crisis Management and Crisis Prevention. These events also improved direct communications between the two ‘Cold War’ superpowers which made possible international agreements on test bans, arms control, and nuclear non-proliferation and could be seen as a factor the later period of détente in the ‘Cold War’.

Some of the earliest origins of Cuba’s ‘October Crisis’ are rooted in their perception of the United States of America’s ‘imperial’ influence over them. Cuba was a Spanish colony until the end of the Spanish-American War in 1902 but this was no more that ’a change of masters’[3]for them and Castro ‘studied and admired the heroes of Cuba’s independence movement[4]’ like Jose Marti and hoped to have influence across South America like another of his heroes Simon Bolivar. In January 1959 Cuba’s Revolutionary movement led by Fidel Castro, finally toppled the US backed military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista after over two years of guerrilla warfare. Upon taking power Castro initially tried to appease his US neighbours by issuing ‘a number of statements of moderate character’[5] whilst consolidating his position within Cuba. This posturing troubled close confidantes to the Cuban leader like Raul Castro and legendary Argentine Marxist ‘Che’ Guevara but they were later relieved when it became clear that he would ‘attack without delay the special link with the United States’ as to them it represented ‘a form of economic servitude.’[6]

The belief within successive American administrations in the ‘Monroe Doctrine’ that confirmed the role of the US in South America as defending it against imperial exploitation to ensure access to its resources and that if violated the US should ’go in and take over.[7]’ New American President John Fitzgerald Kennedy made the Cuban situation, part of his 1959 presidential campaign when he described Cuba as ‘the most glaring failure of American foreign policy.[8]’ Covert CIA plans to invade Cuba with a force of Cuban exiles was already planned before Kennedy took over and he immediately realised that it could cause problems with the USSR. Days after Kennedy accepted an invitation to meet again with Khrushchev the operation that became known as the ‘Bay Of Pigs’ had started in Cuba. Kennedy had not overcome his initial doubts about visible support from the US; he fatally altered the level of air support from the original plan which led to it being a total failure.

The Soviet Union had agreed in 1959 to send Cuba arms from Warsaw Pact countries but by November 1960 direct arms shipments were coming from the USSR. The fact that the Cuban Revolutionary Movement had keen Marxists at its centre and links with the Cuban Communist (PSP) was hidden at first but the Soviets knew this even if they had lingering doubts about Fidel Castro. When relations between the US and Cuba were deteriorating through the end of the Eisenhower administration the Soviets were quick to help out by taking the majority of the sugar exports that were cut by the US. Khrushchev was insecure about US military domination and was keen to develop Soviet influence in the world and would prove to be prepared to take risks to threaten US hegemony.

The key decision in the origins of this crisis was the clandestine deployment of nuclear warheads to Cuba whilst publicly stating that no ‘offensive’ weapons would be placed there. Castro’s initial doubts about links with the Socialist Bloc had evaporated and he was quoting saying ’Moscow is our brain and our great leader.’[9] Khrushchev had also received a disturbing KGB report from the US outlining that they knew the ‘Missile Gap’ was a fallacy and that it could be in the Americans interest to strike soon before any ‘real’ gap appears. This insecurity and a genuine wish to protect Castro’s revolution led to Khrushchev publicly supporting the Cubans and expressly promising to protect it from outside intervention. The ‘Bay Of Pigs’ invasion had worried Castro, hardened Cuban public against the United States of America, allowed Castro to publicly side with the Soviets and ultimately led to Khrushchev agreeing to supply nuclear material to the now overtly Socialist island of Cuba as a ‘deterrent’ against any future US aggression. This move by Khrushchev was risky and opportunistic as he said himself “this may end in a big war.[10]”

The world became aware of the Cuban Missile Crisis on October 22nd 1962 when American president John F Kennedy announced knowledge of a ‘soviet military build up’ including ‘offensive missile sites’ to provide a ‘nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.[11]’ Days earlier an America U2 surveillance plane pictured these missile sites being built and after a period of consultation the Americans wanted to show they were determined to get them removed and the ‘initial steps[12]’ would be a naval ‘quarantine[13]’ to ensure that no more ‘offensive’ military equipment could arrive on the island. This course of action was finally preferred to an air strike or full-scale invasion by Kennedy because of the threat of a nuclear exchange would be “one hell of a gamble.[14]” This option applied pressure but notably gave the Soviets a diplomatic route out of the conflict that after a number of extremely nervous days Khrushchev took. On October 28th the Soviets notified Washington without consulting Havana that in exchange for the removal of the missiles he would expect America to publicly commit to not invading Cuba. He had decided that ’a communist Cuba without missiles was better for Soviet interests than a U.S.-occupied Cuba.[15]’

One of the most important conclusions of this crisis is that both nuclear superpowers involved needed to protect their interests but ultimately tried to pursue a diplomatic solution to avoid the first nuclear exchange of the ‘Cold War.’ On the day of Kennedy’s October 22nd speech Khrushchev privately admitted “we were not going to unleash war, we just wanted to intimidate them and deter the Anti-Cuban forces[16]”. Even with Khrushchev’s brinksmanship Kennedy had the upper hand strategically. His fear was an air strike of all known missile sites may ‘risk that some remain undetected[17]’ that could then be fired in retaliation against America.

Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba in exchange for a commitment by the Americans not to invade, to remove the blockade and the removal of US missiles in Turkey within six moths of the crisis. This was not known in the US until six years later and Khrushchev took sharp criticism from within the Presidium about this agreement not being made public. He was ousted a few years after the resolution of this crisis. Deeper analysis reflects that simply looking at the original decision from the ‘Rational Actor Model’ is to ignore the possibility that ’a number of different individuals’ quite distinct perceptions of separable problems snow balling into a single solution[18]’.

Fidel Castro was said to be initially livid about not being consulted about the decision to remove the missiles. Relations did improve later between Castro and Moscow, although, more radical elements within the Cuban government like ‘Che’ Guevara felt betrayed. In concluding the ‘deal’ the superpowers did not get an explicit agreement from Cuba to restrict their support of anti-imperialist movements around the world. In the next few years Cuba were involved in supporting revolutionaries in Andean Peru, Venezuela, Congo and numerous other places like Bolivia, where the incurable revolutionary ‘Che’ Guevara met his death in 1967.

Numerous later revelations about this crisis have illustrated that Kennedy’s caution with the air strike and invasion policy was prudent. Had the Americans have invaded Cuba Khrushchev had authorised the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Kennedy’s profile abroad and that of America in the ‘Cold War’ was greatly improved by this crisis but many within the US thought he was too weak. The Soviets had been discovered clandestinely transporting nuclear material to a hostile neighbour and yet this young American president was prepared to think before acting and tactically leave the door open for his adversary to back down.

The crisis led to a new understanding between the nuclear powers and was a factor bringing about specific nuclear test bans, nuclear non-proliferation agreements and, even less in directly, a period of détente in the ‘Cold War’. In the years after the crisis a ’new and more extensive test ban agreement as well as the installation of a direct and permanently open, or ‘hot’, line of communications’ between the superpowers was achieved.[19]’ It was events in Cuba and Berlin that developed this ‘fearful intimacy[20]’ between the two nations as well as an understanding of ‘the permitted limits of nuclear politics.[21]’ Arms control was not new but with ‘the need to avoid mutual annihilation’ and ‘interest in their own superiority[22]’ were factors in developing the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty and in following decades the SALT agreements and a thawing of the ‘Cold War.’

The Cuban Missile Crisis has become an important ‘test case’ for historians or international relations analysis not least because of the magnitude of the possible outcomes but also that ‘many events were interpreted by the other side as planned and controlled actions when in fact they were neither[23]’ To look at any National Government’s decision output as one man making a ‘rational’ choice is usually a simplification that both ‘obscures as well as reveals’ as more often it is ‘not one calculating decision maker but is rather a conglomerate of large organisations and political actors.[24]’

The simplest explanation of the origins and conclusions of this conflict are that after the Cuban Revolution Castro was on course for a confrontation with the United States and that without the help of USSR they would have lost. Khrushchev’s last major international ‘throw of the dice’ was a risky one that led to his political demise but the Cuban revolution’s survival. Rationality led to the diplomatic solution but these were not simple choices made by one person and could have had many different outcomes. The fear generated by the crisis did have positive effects in developing an understanding between the two countries and arms controls of different types. A less encouraging inference from this conclusion is that even without nuclear parity the real threat of a nuclear exchange upsets normal power politics so that these weapons may be seen as a good addition to ensuring any ‘rogue’ state’s international ambition.

Sebastian O’Brien. November 2006

[1] Graham T. Allison, ‘Essence Of Decision’ Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Pg4
[2] Raymond L. Garthoff, ‘Reflections On The Cuban Missile Crisis’ The Brooking Institute, Washington D.C. Pg160
[3] Peter Calvocoressi, ‘World Politics Since 1945’
[4] Leycester Coltman, ‘The Real Fidel Castro’ Yale University Press, New Haven and London, Pg14
[5] Peter Calvocoressi, ‘World Politics Since 1945’ p692
[6] Ibid
[7] Aleksandr Fursenko/ Timothy Naftali, ‘One Hell Of A Gamble’ Pimlico, London Pg52
[8] Ibid
[9] Ibid
[10] Aleksandr Fursenko/ Timothy Naftali, ‘One Hell Of A Gamble’ Pimlico, London Ch 13
[11] Aleksandr Fursenko/ Timothy Naftali, ‘One Hell Of A Gamble’ Pimlico, LondonPg 246
[12] Raymond L. Garthoff, ‘Reflections On The Cuban Missile Crisis’ The Brooking Institute, Washington D.C. Pg58
[13] Aleksandr Fursenko/ Timothy Naftali, ‘One Hell Of A Gamble’ Pimlico, London Pg 245
[14] Ibid
[15] Raymond L. Garthoff, ‘Reflections On The Cuban Missile Crisis’ The Brooking Institute, Washington D.C. Pg93
[16] Aleksandr Fursenko/ Timothy Naftali, ‘One Hell Of A Gamble’ Pimlico, London Pg 241
[17]
[18] Graham T. Allison, ‘Essence Of Decision’ Little, Brown and Company, Boston Pg 237
[19] Peter Calvocoressi, ‘World Politics Since 1945’Pg 38
[20] Peter Calvocoressi, ‘World Politics Since 1945’Pg 41
[21] Peter Calvocoressi, ‘World Politics Since 1945’Pg41
[22] Peter Calvocoressi, ‘World Politics Since 1945’Pg42
[23] Raymond L. Garthoff, ‘Reflections On The Cuban Missile Crisis’ The Brooking Institute, Washington D.C.Pg155
[24] Graham T. Allison, ‘Essence Of Decision’ Little, Brown and Company, Boston Pg3

Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre Essay

2007-01-02T10:57:00.000-08:00

Discuss the impact of the Guant́anamo Bay Detention Centre on the ‘War on Terror.’

The Guant́́anamo Bay Detention Centre in Cuba has had symbolic power in the ‘War on Terror’, both for the American administration, and more recently, for people who are opposed to its methods. For the US Government, it illustrated that the “War on Terror is a new kind of war."[1] This ‘new war’ needed a new set of rules to help “obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens”[2] from detainees initially labelled as “among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.”[3] With this description there was an implied message to the American people, that, they had apprehended key figures from ‘Al Qaeda’ in Afghanistan, and that they were making progress in the ‘War on Terror.’ The power of Guant́anamo as a symbol for the humanitarian organisations and outspoken individuals opposed to the camps has been growing gradually year by year as more information has become available. For them it symbolises the apparent contradiction of the US policy, that is, simultaneously trying to spread ‘Freedom and Democracy’ around the world, whilst not adhering to normal rules of engagement and international human rights laws. These detentions in a “legal black hole”[4] has achieved its aim of “keeping them off the streets”[5] but, after falling under the spotlight of the world’s media, the impact of these blatant human rights violations and their unilateral approach to foreign policy has eroded much of the world’s post ‘9/11’ sympathy for America and will continue to alter people’s perceptions of the ‘War on Terror.’

In October, 2001, three days after ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ had officially started in Afghanistan, US President George W. Bush outlined in a prime-time news conference the nature of the enemy they needed to fight in this ‘War on Terror.’ "The attack took place on American soil, but it was an attack on the heart and soul of the civilized world. And the world has come together to fight a new and different war, the first, and we hope the only one, of the 21st century. A war against all those who seek to export terror, and a war against those governments that support or shelter them." This coming together of the world after ‘9/11’ did not last long. It wasn’t the prospect of a “long war”[6] against such a fundamentally subjective ememy but the advent of places like Guant́anamo that led people to think that the U.S. had “dissipated the goodwill out of its arrogance and incompetence. A lot of people who would never ever have considered themselves anti-American are now very distressed with the United States.”[7]

By January, 2002, the American Government was already exporting suspected ‘Al Qaeda and Taliban’ prisoners they had detained there, Pakistan and elsewhere to the newly expanded Guant́anamo Bay Detention Centre in Cuba. In the words of Donald Rumsfeld the US Secretary for Defence on 21st January 2002; “These people are committed terrorists, we are keeping them off the streets and out of the airlines and out of the nuclear power plants and out of the ports across this country and across other countries.” Apart from protecting the American people from the detainees held in Cuba, they were also said to be “developing information of enormous value to the nation, enormously valuble intelligence” and that they “think of Guant́anamo as the interrogation battle lab of the war against terror.”[8]

Two months earlier, on November 13, 2001, the US president, George Bush, had issued a Presidential Military Order, as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Services, outlining that suspected ‘Al Qaeda’ terrorists could be tried by special military commissions, and that they would not be classed as Prisoners of War, but as ‘Enemy Combatants.’ Some were surprised when told that this term also was applicaple to all the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. Not long after they arrived it was said that due to this ‘Enemy combatant’ classification “they do not have any rights under the Geneva Conventions.”[9] The detainees were also deprived of access to US federal law and this left them, as the English Court of Appeal said in 2004, in a ‘legal black hole.’ This ‘new’ approach was later outlined in some detail in a leaked memo; “As Commander-in-Chief, the president has the constitutional authority to odrer interrogations of enemy combatants to gain intelligence information about the plans of the enemy.”[10] This new approach of classing anyone, by decree of the president, as ‘Enemy combatants,’ gives the administration their new set of rules, for this ‘new kind of war.’

The western media response to the first pictures of the detainees arriving at Guant́anamo was unambiguously negative. The broadcast of images of the detainees arriving at Camp X-Ray shackled together, kneeling in the dirt, wearing blacked out goggles, orange jump suits and taped-on gloves was met with a combination of shock and revulsion around the world. It illustrates how much the mood of the world media had changed in the few months after 9/11. Seeing the civilian population in America attacked allegedly by Islamic terrorists temporarily softened, even the most critical opponents of American foreign policy. However these pictures were met with instant indignation from elements of the media and human rights groups. The contradiction of publicly parading pictures of detainees (which could be seen as a direct violation of the Geneva Convention on Human Rights) whilst trying to win the battle for ‘Hearts and Minds’ in the ‘War on Terror’ was lost on the American administration. The negative publicity the pictures created worldwide did lead to the admission by Donald Rumsfeld that allowing the release of the pictures was “probably unfortunate.”

The response from the developing world, and in particular the Arab world, was even less diverse and even more negative. The image of scores of Muslim men being incarcerated in what could be seen as, a ‘concentration camp,’ with no legal representation or access to the Red Cross caused a new wave of anti-American sentiment in the region. These images and subsequent photos from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq provided ample ammunition for pamphleteers, cartoonists and the broadcast media in the Arab world to highlight what they see as contradictions in the ‘moral’ position of US Policy. There have also been oblique references to Guantanamo in the worrying and more recent speit of decapitations, with the video footage showing pictures of western hostages in Iraq being dressed in orange ‘Guant́anamo style’ jump suits before being beheaded.

The negative impact of these images and the immoral practices that came out of Abu Ghraib has undoubtedly worked as a recruitment tool for ‘Al Qaeda’ and any organisation opposed the US administration. Islamic fundamentalist websites are saturated with images and news of the human rights abuses, excessive use of military power and use of certain banned weapons by the American administration and its allies. The ‘Al Jazeera’ news station based in Doha in Qatar has become a target for the administration as it broadcasts in Arabic, exercises its own editorial control and doesn’t conform to the usual usage of erroneous and misleading language like most western media outlets. It also has correspondents on the ground in dangerous places like Afghanistan and Iraq sending out real-time news of developments on the ground that the administration would like to control. In both Afghanistan and Iraq mistakes were made by the Americans military by ‘accidentally’ bombing the ‘Al Jazeera’ news desks even though they had the GPS co-ordinates. These may have indeed have been accidents, but it has undoubtedly been seen in the Arab world as an attempt to silence uncomplimentary news. This also is seen as a contradiction in American policy, the media in the West is meant to be ‘free’ to tell the truth, but a news station not conforming to ‘the official line’ of the US government could be accidentally targeted by US bombs.

The new approach to the classification of Enemy Combatants outlined above and the National Security Strategy of September 2002[11] and its implementation in the ‘War on Terror’ have been regarded as important developments in international relations. The contradiction again is implicit in the acceptance of the usefulness of these doctrines whilst accepting that it cannot be “a universal principle available to every nation.”[12] This is in stark contrast to what Noam Chomsky describes as “the most elementary moral truism, the principle of universality.”[13] What would be the American administration’s response be to US citizens or spies been arrested, transported to, and imprisoned indefinitely without charge in a foreign prison? This concept of ‘universality’ is also explicitly mentioned in the preamble of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights when talking about the responsibilities of member states to “secure their universal and effective recognition and observance.”

Of the 650+ detainees that have been held at the Guant́anamo Bay Detention Centre to date, less than ten prisoners were ever charged with any offence. This extremely low conviction rate appears at odds with the administration’s claims that these people were ’among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.’ The disparity between the claims of the administration and the conviction rate has been explained by some as a result of intelligence screening processes in Afghanistan and elsewhere being “flawed and inadequate, made still worse by the use of woefully poor and virtually untrained translators.”[14] This contradiction between the description of the detainees being the “worst of the worst”[15] and the low conviction rate and the poor intelligence techniques used to determine their involvement in terrorism reflect badly on the administration’s use of its power and judgement in this ‘War on Terror.’

The American administration claimed that although the Geneva Convention did not apply to the detainees at Guant́anamo, as it was, “written for a different kind of war”[16]; their treatment was “in the spirit of Geneva.”[17] This came around at the same time that the administration was moving away from the leaked memo (mentioned above) from 1st August 2002, which was legal advice from the Department of Justice on the legality of certain interrogation techniques in relation to international law. This document redefined torture as having to cause “death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function.”[18] It also proposed that any American charged with torturing a ‘terrorist’ suspect can use, ‘self-defence,’ as a legal position due to the ‘9/11’ atrocities. The credible depiction of life in the camp from some of the released detainees suggest that practices such as sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, exposure to heat/cold, shackling in ‘stress’ positions were all used in combination. These methods we described by the International Committee of the Red Cross as ‘tantamount to torture.’

The previous US administration had been said to have taken “the lead in eliminating human rights protections”[19] so it should be no shock to hear this administration describing the Geneva Conventions as being “quaint.”[20] Article 5 of the UD states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The myths created around these detainees fuelled the incorrect assumption that the people they picked up in Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere else in the region were predominantly ‘Al Qaeda’ operatives. When they got no tangible results from the first wave of interrogations they used the ‘new’ definitions of interrogation technique thinking that would get a better return. However, if you want to charge and convict the detainees of any crime, you need evidence, but all respectable courts will not permit confessions under duress. This realisation was articulated by Lieutenant-Commander Swift; “Even if we did get some intelligence of value it wasn’t worth it. Let’s suppose that among those 600 detainees, there are some bad guys. The likelihood now is that, eventually, they’ll go free. If we’d handled this differently, this wouldn’t have been the case.”[21]

The campaign to get Guant́anamo closed has been gaining momentum over the past few years. On June 28 2004 the US Supreme Court decided that the detainees could have access to federal law to challenge their detention. There has also being a build-up of influential people speaking out even more unequivocally against the camp. Most detainees have now been freed but, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that the United States must shut down the Guant́anamo Bay prison camp "as soon as is possible."[22] And the British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has called it a “symbol of injustice”[23] and that it would be ‘right’ for it to close down. Even George Bush has now said that he would like to see “all the detainees charged and the camp closed”[24] – but what damage has already been done to the perception of America’s role in the War on Terror?

The Guant́anamo detention centre has had mixed success in achieving its own stated aims. It has kept the detainees ‘off the streets’, but it is intrinsically less clear if it helped in ’obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens.’ If, like administration officials have said, a “key element of our offensive strategy against terrorism, is to wage a battle of ideas to impede recruitment and support,”[25] then with this they have had even less success. It is in this ‘battle of ideas’ that Guant́anamo impacts most in the ‘War on Terror.’ It highlights the hypocrisy of the US policies. An official who worked at the camp said the problem was that “we were supposed to be the good guys, but at Gitmo, we aren’t.”[26] The men detained were often not affiliated in any way with either ‘Al Qaeda’ or the Taliban and have been treated in ways that leads to Guant́anamo being seen as an “icon of oppression”[27] throughout the world. There is evidence that at Guant́anamo, the US have broken the Geneva Conventions and reneged on its ratification of the UN 1985 Torture treaty. Its foreign policy has highlighted their unilaterally approach and its all justified with the single explanation that they are ‘protecting the American people.’ Winston Churchill the British World War Two Prime Minister who ‘protected’ the British people against the rise of Hitler’s Nazi Germany said; “The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and to particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian governments whether Nazi or Communist.”[28]

The Guant́anamo Bay Detention Centre now symbolises; contradictions in U.S. policy, suggestions of torture, human rights abuses, a lack of ‘universality’ in policy, a misuse of power and ill thought-out and inadequate vetting procedures for suspected terrorists. This has all worked to show that mottos like that of Guant́anamo, “Honour Bound to Defend Freedom,”[29] have now lost their validity. If the camp doesn’t hold the most senior members of ‘Al Qaeda’ that they have detained, then, where are they? If places like the Guant́anamo Bay Detention Centre attract so much media attention, what will be the effect of further revelations of ‘extraordinary renditions’ and U.S. ran secret prisons in other countries? The impact of Guant́anamo as a symbol is important because it is a microcosm of the ‘War on Terror’ and if lessons were learned from losing that ‘battle of ideas’ then ultimate success may not be so allusive.

Sebastian O’Brien

May 2006.
[1] Alberto Gonzales- Memo to Bush 25/01/02
[2] William J Haynes- Memo to Donald Rumsfeld ‘Wall Street Journal’ 06/03/03
[3] Donald Rumsfeld- Speaking from Camp X-Ray in Cuba 27/01/02
[4] English Court of Appeal Ruling 06/11/02
[5] Donald Rumsfeld- Speech 21/01/02
[6] Washington Post- ‘Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key To Pentagon Plan’ Ann Scott Tyson 04/02/06
[7] Meghnad Desai- Director of the Institute for Global Governance at the London School of Economics
[8] Major-General Geoffrey D. Miller- Pg 81 ‘Guantanamo’ by David Rose 2004
[9] Donald Rumsfeld- Guantanamo’ David Rose
[10] Leaked US Department of Justice Memo or ‘Bybee’ Memo 22/01/02
[11] National Security Strategy 17/11/2002
[12] Henry Kissinger- Chicago Tribune 11/08/02
[13] ‘Hegemony or Survival’ Noam Chomsky Pg 239
[14] ‘Guantanamo’ David Rose
[15] Donald Rumsfeld
[16] Alberto Gonzales- Memo to Bush 25/01/02
[17] Major McCann ‘US Afgan Prisoner Treatment Decried’ Asim Khan ‘Al Jazeera’ Online 07/02/05
[18] Leaked ‘Bybee’ Memo
[19] Human Rights Watch World Report 1997
[20] Alberto Gonzales- Memo to Bush 25/01/02
[21] ‘Guantamo’- David Rose
[22] Washington Post ‘Military Prison’s Closure Is Urged’ Colum Lynch 20/05/06
[23] AP 10/05/06
[24] Guardian Unlimited ‘Close the detention facility’ David Fickling 19/05/06 quote date 08/05/06
[25] Douglas J Feith ‘Strategy in the War on Terror’ 07/02/03
[26] Lieutenant-Commander Swift- ‘Guantanamo’- David Rose
[27] ‘Guantanamo’- David Rose
[28] Winston Churchill- ‘Hegemony or Survival’ Noam Chomsky
[29] ‘Guantanamo’- David Rose