Edited by
Mohammadbagher Forough
At War for Peace
Probing the Boundaries
Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher Dr Daniel Riha
Advisory Board Dr Alejandro Cervantes-Carson Professor Margaret Chatterjee Dr Wayne Cristaudo Mira Crouch Dr Phil Fitzsimmons Professor Asa Kasher Owen Kelly
Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E Martin McGoldrick Revd Stephen Morris Professor John Parry Paul Reynolds Professor Peter Twohig Professor S Ram Vemuri
A Probing the Boundaries research and publications project. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/ Hostility and Violence: ‘War and Peace’
At War for Peace
Edited by
Mohammadbagher Forough
Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford, United Kingdom
© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2010 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/
The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multidisciplinary publishing.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-84888-035-1 First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2010. First Edition.
Table of Contents Introduction Mohammadbagher Forough PART I
War and Peace The Changing Character of Military Labour and Its Effects on Public Life Mark Balawender
PART II
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3
Blurring of the Lines? The Merging of CivilMilitary Responses in Conflict Scenarios: Afghanistan and Beyond Corin Chater
11
Holy Peace and Holy War Nevin Climenhaga
21
The Myth of the Hundred Years Peace: War in the Nineteenth Century Eric Royal Lybeck
33
Peacekeeping without Banisters: The Need For New Practices That Go Beyond Just War Theory Anya Topolski
45
War and Terrorism On the Dangers of Innocents – or, Whose Suffering Shall we Value? Emília Brodencová
59
EU Counter-Terrorism Policy: Security vs. Justice? Oldřich Bureš
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Global Society must be Defended: War is On! Teresa Degenhardt
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Blurring the Line Between War and Peace: The United 93 States and Al Qaeda in the Global War on Terrorism Sean N. Kalic
PART III
Income-Based Distribution of Terrorism Piotr Lis
105
Defining Two Categories of Non-State Actors: Do we Need to Gain more Control over Them to Prevent Specific Threats or is it against the Basic Pillars of Democracy? Radana Makariusová
117
War, Media, Communications The Informational War against Terrorism: New Opportunities and New Risks (German Experience) Darya Bazarkina
127
Art as Infiltration: Drawing the Military-Industrial Complex Jill Gibbon
135
Information Warfare as a Part of Communication Management in Contemporary Russia Evgeny N. Pashentsev
145
Peace and War: Communicating Total Spectrum Dominance Vladimir Suchan
155
Communicative Aspect of the Activities of the British Intelligence Service (MI-6) Nowadays Svetlana V. Zudochkina
169
Introduction Mohammadbagher Forough ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning... The smell, you know that gasoline smell... smelled like…victory.’ Apocalypse Now ‘War Is Peace,’ says one of the three slogans on the outside wall of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984. In 2002, eighteen years after the promised dystopia of the book, George W. Bush said: ‘I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.’1 In the February of the same year, he and Tony Blair were jointly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by a conservative Norwegian politician. In 2009, Barack Obama, while running two of the longest and deadliest wars in recent history, was in fact awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark;’ and very probably in the state of our conceptual vocabulary! It is, therefore, high time we paid serious scholarly attention to terms, such as war and peace, that are deliberately misappropriated by politicians and obliviously taken for granted in everyday life and the mass media, redefine them, recast the boundaries that separate them from one another, trace the interconnections, and last but not least, map out as far and clearly as possible the gray areas where two or more of such terms overlap with or cave in on one another. To undertake this task in respect of war and peace and other relevant terms such as terrorism, military, intelligence, justice, etc., a very diverse group of scholars from all over the world got together for three days (April-May 2009) in the city of Prague for the conference War and Peace, and discussed these topics from a very diverse array of perspectives and academic backgrounds. This volume is meant to be a snapshot of what actually went on in the conference. I would like to set out the discussion from my own academic background, political philosophy, with a word or two about war and peace as concepts, by drawing on the geophilosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, especially as far as their understanding of concepts is concerned, as one way to go about analyzing the concepts of war and peace. Geophilosophy aims at breaking free from the subject/object bipolar disorder that has haunted Western thought and philosophy since Descartes down to the linguistic idealism that is rampant in postmodern philosophy: ‘Subject and object give a poor approximation of thought. Thinking is neither a line drawn between subject and object nor a revolving of one around the other; rather, thinking takes place in the relationship of territory and the earth.’2
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______________________________________________________________ In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari define philosophy as the art or the discipline that involves ‘creating concepts,’ and then enumerate some characteristics of the concepts, some of which I will briefly mention and expand upon in relation to war and peace in what follows. ‘There are no simple concepts. Every concept has components and is defined by them. It therefore has a combination (chiffre). It is a multiplicity, although not every multiplicity is conceptual.’3 This is the first characteristic of concepts. Our first task in analyzing war and peace, then, I would argue, is to forgo the simplistic Manichean perception of them and determine what components they are made of. Who are the actors involved? What are the mechanisms that initiate, sustain, and terminate war and peace? What are their conditions of possibility? ‘Every concept’ Deleuze and Guattari further specify, ‘has an irregular contour defined by the sum of its components’4 Only when we specify what these components are, will we be able to mark off the boundaries of the concepts, which must necessarily be irregular; that is to say, no concepts can be defined once and for all as having regular boundaries and being dirempted from other concepts in a clear-cut radical way. Every concept, put otherwise, is in a perpetual flux of change. ‘All concepts are connected to problems without which they would have no meaning, and which can themselves only be isolated or understood as their solution emerges.’5 This is a very interesting development in analyzing concepts. With this principle, Deleuze and Guattari choose to break free from the majority of postmodern philosophers who interpret all phenomena in terms of the linguisticality of human experience. Deleuze and Guattari, intent on bringing philosophy down to the terra firma of reality, see concepts as rooted in real material problems. There could be, therefore, no war or peace (as concepts at least), if they are not analyzed in light of the problems that have given rise to them, the ones they are meant or said to resolve, and the ones they themselves engender. Wars could arise for instance from problems such as clashes of interests, imperialistic ventures, territorial disputes, the need for (more) natural resources, etc.; they are meant, or so we are told, to resolve such problems as disposing of a dictatorship, bringing ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy,’ stopping a regime from committing a grave crime, etc.; they also create problems, such as genocide, devastation, displacement, homelessness, etc. All these problems are totally interconnected and any analyses that do not take into account the problem-based nature of the concept would go astray, according to the two thinkers. The problem therefore always precedes the concept in geophilosophy. The next principle is that ‘concepts are only created as a function of problems which are thought to be badly understood or badly posed.’6 This principle is definitely true about war and peace in that if the problems that bring about wars for instance were posed correctly, and were therefore resolved rationally, they would not lead to wars in the first place. A
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______________________________________________________________ territorial dispute, for instance, must necessarily be posed badly on at least one of the two opposite sides for it to cause some sort of violent clash. ‘A concept requires not only a problem through which it recasts and replaces earlier concepts but a junction of problems where it combines with other coexisting concepts that sometimes belong to other planes of life.’7 This is absolutely true about war and peace as you will see in the contributions to this volume. War and peace are intricately meshed with the concepts of democracy, freedom, security, terrorism, public sphere, to mention only a few. Problems from all these spheres should plug into one another in order for a war to start. These interconnections among different concepts change the nature and redraw the boundaries of our concepts and thereby our moral and conceptual vocabularies. Nowadays, it is somehow impossible to think about war without taking into account other notions such as ‘freedom,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘evil,’ ‘terrorism,’ etc. The very interconnectedness of concepts changes our perception of them and the concepts they are plugged into. The next principle is that a concept ‘renders [its] components inseparable within itself. Components or what defines the consistency of the concept, its endoconsistency, are distinct, heterogeneous, and yet not separable.8 What glues the components of a concept together? A gray in-between area, on which the Deleuzian concept of ‘zone de voisinage’ (‘zone of neighborhood’) can shed some light. All the components within the concept have zones of neighborhood among one another. Components remain distinct, but something cuts through them that is ‘undecidable between them’. These zones are responsible for the internal consistency of the concept; otherwise the concept would break apart or lose its concepthood, if you will, or become a totally different concept. The confusions that plague the discussions of war and peace usually stem from such zones of indiscernibility that exist among the components of a concept and/or among different concepts. In light of this principle, we can shed some light on the quotes from the Orwellian Ministry of Truth and George W. Bush’s quote at the beginning of this introduction. War and peace could and do certainly have zones of neighborhood and indiscernibility between them, but it would be a conceptual confusion or distortion, at least from the Deleuzo-Guattarian point of view, to argue that the two concepts completely overlap with each other, so that you could say war is peace or be talking about war while what you really mean is peace. This volume is divided into three parts, each focusing on one aspect of war and peace. The first part, War and Peace, deals with the topic in more general terms than the other two, and includes five contributions. Mark Balawender considers the widespread use of private military companies in the Post-9/11 world and the lack of legal and political supervision on their activities as a Schmittian ‘state of exception,’ which compromises the ability of the public sphere to have control over the use of military force. Corin
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______________________________________________________________ Chater examines the civil-military interactions amongst and between both international and governmental and non-governmental actors in the context of the war in Afghanistan, and argues that there has been considerable progression in steps to address prospects for such interactions. Discussing religion in the context of war and peace in national and international arenas, Nevin Climenhaga examines the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which religion has played a major role, and critiques the common assumption that religion exacerbates war and justifies violence. Eric Royal Lybeck questions the myth of the hundred years’ peace (1815-1914), as advocated by Polanyi among others, by arguing that it is solely based on the number of battlefield deaths, and calls for a theory that takes into account qualitative geopolitical and social significances. Studying two post-Cold War trends, just war theory and the increase in UN-led peacekeeping operations, Anya Topolski contends that the norms of just war theory do not befit peacekeeping activities, and calls for a new practice of peacekeeping based in relationality and inspired by an Arendtian form of reflection and judgment. The second part, War and Terrorism, that includes six contributions, focuses on terrorism and the ways in which it relates to war, peace, democracy, etc. Emília Brodencová investigates the notions of innocence, suffering, and guilt in the discourse on terrorism in the context of modern warfare, and critiques the discourse surrounding such notions as polarizing and ideologically laden. Oldřich Bureš builds on the analyses of the normative debate concerning the nature of the relationships between freedom, justice and security in the context of European Union’s counterterrorism policy in recent years. Drawing on Foucault and Agamben’s analyses of criminology, Teresa Degenhardt examines the intersections between two security mechanisms, war and punishment, by critiquing representations of wars (e.g., in Afghanistan and Iraq) in terms of crime and punishment, as another form of state apparatus used to depoliticize the conflict and disqualify the enemy. Sean N. Kalic delves into the blurred boundaries between war and peace by evaluating and explaining the history of Al Qaeda (and the U.S. led response to it), as a non-state actor that is involved in the state-based Westphalian political imaginary. Applying time series analysis and expanding upon the work of Enders and Sandler, Piotr Lis addresses the question of whether/how some major historical events (the end of the Cold War, 9/11, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq) induced changes in the distribution of terrorism among countries by income class. Radana Makariusová calls into question a definition of Global civil society that would put all the non-state actors in one homogenous altruistic boat, and offers an alternative hypothesis that would delineate two forms of non-state actors in the global civil society: the altruistic and the unsocial/dark. She then ponders on the question of institutionalized control over non-state actors in the global civil society.
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______________________________________________________________ The third part, War, Media, and Communications, includes five contributions, and is centered on how different media and communications strategies relate to war and peace. Darya Bazarkina addresses the question of informational war against terrorism and the risks and opportunities that such a war creates. She discusses the experience of German special services in the sphere of informational counteraction against terrorism, and the reaction of the German society to such measures. Jill Gibbon discusses how arts, especially the caricature, relate to academic research about war, and uses drawings made in arms fairs to analyze the new marketing strategies implemented by arms companies in the face of pressures on the militaryindustrial complex in 2009-2010. Evgency N. Pashentsev investigates the role and features of information warfare in the contemporary Russian business and politics, in the larger backdrop of world tendencies in the economic, political, and military spheres of life. Drawing on Hobbes’ Leviathan, Vladimir Suchan addresses the twisted question of war and peace (or the Orwellian ‘War Is Peace’) by pitting the common narrative of the U.S. Global War on Terror (GWOT) against the imperialist geopolitical and strategic thinking with respect to Eurasia. Svetlana V. Zudochkina studies the communicative nature of the current activities of the British Intelligence Service (MI-6) as compared with such activities during the Cold War era, especially those activities involving Russia, and argues that intelligence nowadays occupies a position very different from the ‘spy versus spy’ style of the Cold War era.
Notes 1
GW Bush, addressing addressing the Department of Housing and Urban Planning, June 18, 2002. 2 G Deleuze & F Guattari, What is Philosophy? H Tomlinson & G Burchill (trans), Verso, London, 1994, p. 85. 3 Ibid, p. 15. 4 Ibid, p. 16. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid, p. 18. 8 Ibid, p. 19.
PART I War and Peace
The Changing Character of Military Labour and Its Effects on Public Life Mark Balawender Abstract In this paper I discuss how current use of military contractors (private military companies or PMCs) represents a ‘state of exception’ in the Schmittian sense, and try to reach some conclusions about the effect this has on the ability of the public sphere to make political decisions about the use of the military. I argue that military contractors exist in a legal anomic zone and that their increased usage has compromised the ability for public reason to dictate the use of military power. PMCs consist of private employees rather than being a public resource, reducing the ability of the public to dissent against their use. PMC’s also are politically power economic agents whose instrumental interests coincide with strategic state interests in a way that prevent the use of public regulation. Key Words: Military contractors, state of exception, public sphere, public rationality, democracy, instrumental rationality. ***** One of the most distinctive features of the post 9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the heavy use of ‘private military contractors.’ Private contractors have been used in all US wars, however, their use has been on the rise since the end of the Cold War and has exploded in current conflicts. The Iraq war involves the largest number of private military personnel used by the United States to date, and, in Afghanistan close to 70% of the military force is composed of private contractors.1 This rise has been attributed to the reduction of army sizes after the end of the cold war and the availability of surplus military labour. However, it also appears that the US employs contractors because of the lack of legal and political regulation on their activities. I argue that military contractors represent a form of Carl Schmitt's State of Exception in two important ways. First, there are no legal structures which can regulate and provide sanctions for illegal behaviour of PMCs. As a result they may take on tasks or be deployed in circumstances where the instrumental effectiveness of uniformed military is reduced by international law. Second, their use circumvents public sphere democratic as well as congressional controls on the deployment of soldiers. It’s not controversial to say that the US would have needed a draft to fight the current wars had they not been able to hire a huge proportion of private contractors.
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______________________________________________________________ I believe there is a fundamental tension present in this use of PMCs. On the one hand, if PMCs are a part of the state of exception, then in this mode they enhance executive power and fulfil Schmitt’s notion of sovereign power as the ability to suspend the law. The commodification and privatization of military labour is the suspension of both the democratic, domestic and the international legal regulations on the use of military force. On the other hand, as Georgio Agamben notes, the suspension of the law in a state of exception also paradoxically threatens the institution of the sovereign state. While PMCs have allowed the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to proceed without many of the political hindrances they would have faced (more casualties, the necessity for a draft), the lack of regulation that the marketplace brings also empowers PMCs to act autonomously in ways that severely threaten state sovereignty. In addition to possessing more military force than most developing nations, the largest PMCs have also become political lobbyists for their own economic interests. They have lobbied to aid regimes with which the US has a non-interaction policy, and in this way challenge both public democratic power and sovereign executive power. Thus, their effectiveness at supporting a state of exception and sovereign power that results from their private status also, paradoxically, threatens state sovereignty (in addition to democratic power). The turn to the marketplace and the development of Private Military Corporations has made the use of military force more flexible for the US government and at the same time reduced the control and legitimacy of a state that formerly possessed a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. 1.
Schmitt/Agamben and the State of Exception The state of exception is an idea initially presented in Carl Schmitt’s Dictatorship (1921) and further elaborated on in his work, Political Theology (1922). It refers to actions taken by a government in order to preserve itself at a time of emergency, when that institution is threatened. Because a government is threatened with being destroyed, it must sometimes resort to extra legal actions that supersede the legal powers of the government and the restrictions upon it. This is justified through the idea of necessity. A recurrent opinion posits the concept of necessity as the foundation of the state of exception. According to a tenaciously repeated Latin adage, necessitas legem non habet, ‘necessity has no law,’ which is interpreted in two opposing ways: ‘necessity does not recognize any law’ and ‘necessity creates its own law’.2 For Schmitt, this is a theory of sovereign power. Sovereignty does not come from legislating or enforcing laws, but from the ability to act outside of them.
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______________________________________________________________ One is sovereign to the extent that one can create a state of exception and suspend the law. ‘Sovereign is he who decides on the exception. …The sovereign stands outside of the normally valid juridical order, and yet belongs to it, for it is he who is responsible for deciding whether the constitution can be suspended in toto.’ 3 Many of the actions of Bush administration have fit this type of executive action—specifically domestic surveillance, the authorization of the use of torture, and the classification of enemy combatants between criminal and POW. Military contractors fall under the concept of a state of exception in a primary sense because there is no legal structure under which they can be prosecuted. While there are a number of legal structures that contractors could fall under, none of them actually function as law for contractors. For instance, consider the following three legal structures: Official military personnel fall under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) which applies to all uniformed soldiers. In 2005 amendments were made to the UCMJ to make prosecution of contractors possible, but the legal community remains reluctant about trying civilians in military courts. Many express worries that such an extension could put reporters and other civilians in war zones under military control, due to broad language in the extension. Military Contractors, thus, have not fallen under the UCMJ. Contractors are not under a chain of command from the military, as uniformed soldiers are. Their legal relationship to the military is contractual, and punitive measures take the economic form of having contracts revoked. Under the Protocol One Addition to the Geneva Convention, added in 1977 though never ratified by the U.S., military contractors who engage in fighting are considered unlawful combatants and do not have access to prisoner of war status. They would be considered criminals, for instance, if they violated laws in Iraq. However, Iraqis have been unable to prosecute military contractors, for the same reasons they have no legal authority over members of the U.S. military. In 2007, the Coalition Provisional Authority, the transitional government in Iraq, under the administration of Paul Bremmer, enacted Order 17 which stated that ‘Contractors shall not be subject to Iraqi laws or regulations in matters relating to the terms and conditions of their Contracts…’4 The Iraqi government still has no authority over private military companies, although there have been attempts to change Order 17 to give Iraq jurisdiction. Under U.S. federal law it is possible for contractors to be prosecuted under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA). In 2004, the MEJA was revised to include personnel working for the US State Department, and in fact, the five Blackwater shooters involved in killing seventeen Iraqi civilians in 2007 have been charged in the US under the MEJA (and have subsequently been acquitted). Despite this, critics argue that the MEJA does not actually function as law for military contractors because
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______________________________________________________________ they are charged by prosecutors from within the US, which presents significant practical barriers to carrying out the legal procedure. First, the US must send US investigators to the location of incident to conduct their own investigations—necessarily, long after the fact. Second, trials in federal courts have strict evidence requirements. A solid chain of custody over the evidence must be established to determine guilt, along with other requirements (such as bringing witnesses to the US) that are difficult to obtain in such a long distance legal procedure. The result of this legal atmosphere is that, As of 2007 there had yet to be single prosecution of contract workers in Iraq. As Peter Singer has noted: ‘Imagine a town of 100,000 people, and there hasn’t been a prosecution in three years, how do you justify that?’5 2.
The Instrumental Effectiveness Generated by Anomic Status Since private security contractors are able to act in a manner not legally available for uniformed personnel, they have a practical advantage in some circumstances. For instance, contractors guard most diplomats and Americans abroad in Iraqi and Afghani war zones, as well as military locations such as the ‘Green Zone’ in the Baghdad, and reconstruction locations. One of the ostensible reasons for their use in this capacity is that they have less legal injunctions against engaging with potential enemy soldiers. When facing an enemy that blends in with civilian populations, being able to engage in firefights without fear of consequences for violating the laws protecting civilians makes private military soldiers more effective at guarding diplomats, convoys and locations with respect to the issue of restraints on violence. Likewise, contract workers have been involved in many instances of illegal interrogation (they were a significant percentage of the workers at the Abu Ghraib prison6), without any legal consequences. From the military’s perspective this is another way to effectively outsource torture, since those are individuals free from fear of legal consequences.7 The increased use of military contractors for practical reasons is, therefore, connected in many ways to their private status, and the lack of legal restrictions on actors with this status. In effect, the US has adopted a state of exception with regard to private soldiers, making use of their increased effectiveness in an unregulated sphere. 3.
Loss of Public Oversight on the Use of Military Force: The shift to military contractors also functions to promote a state of exception by freeing the government from some of the public-relationship constraints it has historically been held to in using the military. The state of exception functions in this way mainly to mask or launder government use of military force.
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______________________________________________________________ First of all, one of the most serious PR risks during a war is the number of casualties the war generates. This can mobilize political opposition to a war very quickly. The use of contractor in the case of the Iraq war has allowed the government to report official casualties that are much lower than the actual number of US citizens hurt or killed in the conflict. With the number of contractors currently equalling or exceeding the number of uniformed military, it’s clear that on the U.S. side, the number of casualties far exceeds the official reported amount. In a related consequence, the ability of the public to protest the putting of Americans who serve in a public-duty capacity in danger is reduced by the change in status of those who serve. Once in the public military soldiers have no private ability to refuse to serve in particular conflicts—This creates the need and ability for the public to protect them by only exposing them to danger when absolutely necessary. Soldiers who serve in a private capacity, on the other hand, are purely economic actors, who can take or refuse contracts—negating the ability for the public to protest a violent conflict on their behalf. The public cannot complain that we’re ‘sending our sons and daughters to die’ with the same force when the contract is economic rather than public-service based. These factors reduce the PR burden and public accountability the government faces when going to war. Being able to mobilize military force through private channels also allows them to be ‘unofficially’ engaged in military operations without public declaration and approval. For instance, in 1998, in the Balkans, the US was able to promote one of its foreign policy goals without official involvement by encouraging the Croatian government to utilize the company Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) for military training. That company trained the Croatian Military, which was then able to successfully attack the Serbs in Operation Storm. Over 150,000 Serbs were uprooted in act many critics called ethnic cleansing. ‘MPRI involvement in these areas allows the government to achieve foreign-policy goals free from the need to secure Congressional approval and safe in the knowledge that, should a situation deteriorate, official US participation can be denied.’8 In South and Central America, the US remains involved in the drug wars through private companies, since public involvement is illegal. Federal law bans U.S. soldiers from participating in Colombia's war against left-wing rebels and from training army units with ties to right-wing paramilitaries infamous for torture and political killings. There are no such restrictions on for-profit companies, though, and since the late 1990s, the United States has paid private military companies an estimated $1.2 billion, both to eradicate coca crops and to help the Colombian army put down rebels who
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______________________________________________________________ use the drug trade to finance their insurgency.9 Additionally, contracts with private military companies are not publically available through the Freedom of Information Act. Using military force without the approval of congress puts the decision firmly within the executive branch of the government and puts foreign policy control one degree further away from public involvement. There are no official avenues for public opposition to these actions, if and when their existence is made public knowledge. The public cannot hold its congressional members responsible for such decisions, limiting the potential for public political backlash. Hence, the use of private military companies engenders a significant loss of public ability to negate or veto military action through popular dissent. While on the one hand the use of PMCs outside of traditional regulations seems rational for the use and expansion of executive power, their rise as corporations allows them to act in ways that compromise executive as well as democratic. Because of this, I believe there are significant tensions generated by the funding and use of PMCs. There are at least a few significant documented cases of a PMC changing US foreign policy, and collectively seventeen of the largest military contracting companies contributed over $12.4 million to political campaigns between 1999- and 2003.10 In 1998, MPRI wanted to provide contracting services that were requested by Equatorial Guinea, but was not approved to do so by the US State Department in light of significant human rights concerns about that regime. Equatorial Guinea has a history of torture and the murdering of politics dissidents leading to State Department sanctions against relations with them. This did not stop MPRI, however, which mobilized a private political campaign to change this decision MPRI launched a full-scale blitz to overturn the decision, quietly dispatching company officials to work the hallways of the Pentagon, State Department, and Capitol. … ‘This is not something they want a wide discussion on in Congress.’ MPRI's executives argued that the United States should be engaging Equatorial Guinea, both to improve its record on human rights and to ensure access to its oil reserves.11 The end result of this action was that the US state department reversed its decision in 2000, giving MPRI approval to do contract work for Equatorial Guinea. The details of this contract remain private.
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______________________________________________________________ 4.
Conclusion The rise of executive sovereign power has occurred simultaneously through the creation of an anomic zone for military contractors and the move to increasingly commodify that type of labour. These phenomena exist symbiotically, in that both situations are necessary for either to exist. While PMCs lobby to maintain their current legal status and promote their use, they also lobby to open new markets of violent conflict that are not directly within the purview of state interests. Thus while it while they may be deployed for executive sovereign interests, their status in the market place makes them powerful political actors that can influence sovereign power. This tension in their relationship to sovereign power exists in addition to their devastating effects on the ability to democratically control the use of military force.
Notes 1
J Glanz, ‘Contractors Outnumber U.S. Troops in Afghanistan’, New York Times, September 1, 2009. 2 G Agamben, State of Exception, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005, p. 25. 3 C Schmitt, Political Theology : Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1985. 4 ‘Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 17 (Revised),’ ed. CPA. 5 S Horton, specialist in Military Law at Columbia University, as quoted by: A J Rubin & P Von Zielbauer, ‘Blackwater Case Highlights Legal Uncertainties’, New York Times, October 11, 2007. 6 ‘This state of affairs had grave consequences in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse case. A reported 100% of the translators and 50% of the interrogators were private contractors from the Titan and CACI firms respectively. The U.S. Army found that contractors were involved in 36% of the proven abuse incidents and identified 6 PMF employees in particular that were culpable in the abuses. However, not one of these individuals has yet been indicted, prosecuted, or punished. This is despite the fact that the US Army has found the time to do so for the enlisted soldiers involved.’ P Singer, ‘The Private Military Industry and Iraq: What Have We Learned and Where to Next?’, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), Geneva, 2004). 7 ‘Last year, the C.I.A. director, Michael Hayden, told Congress that contractors employed by the C.I.A. had water boarded detainees.’, S Chesterman, ‘Blackwater and the Limits to Outsourcing Security’, New York Times, November 12, 2009.
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______________________________________________________________ 8
D Shearer, Private Armies and Military Intervention, Adelphi Paper Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Oxford, 1998. p. 62. 9 B Yeoman, ‘Soldiers of Good Fortune’, Mother Jones, http://barryyeo man.com/articles/soldiersfortune.html., Viewed 28-7-10. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid.
Bibliography Agamben, G., State of Exception. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005. Chesterman, S., ‘Blackwater and the Limits to Outsourcing Security’. New York Times. November 12, 2009. Glanz, J., ‘Contractors Outnumber U.S. Troops in Afghanistan’. New York Times. September 1, 2009. Rubin, A.J. & von Zielbauer, P., ‘Blackwater Case Highlights Legal Uncertainties’. New York Times. October 11, 2007. Shearer, D., Private Armies and Military Intervention. Adelphi Paper Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Oxford, 1998. Singer, P., ‘The Private Military Industry and Iraq: What have We Learned and Where to Next?’. Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), Geneva, 2004. Yeoman, B., ‘Soldiers of Good Fortune’. Mother Jones. http://barryyeo man.com/articles/soldiersfortune.html., Viewed 28-7-10. Mark Balawander is a PhD student at the Department of Philosophy at Michigan State University.
Blurring of the Lines? The Merging of Civil-Military Responses in Conflict Scenarios: Afghanistan and Beyond Corin Chater Abstract This paper focuses on an evolution in civil-military interfaces and relations in Afghanistan amongst and between both international governmental and nongovernmental actors. In the context of a conflict environment, state and multilateral militaries and associated bodies have, through a variety of mechanisms, had a major role in coordinating and delivering development and humanitarian assistance while simultaneously carrying out offensive tactical operations against an active insurgency. Such an unprecedented function has, with certain justification, been severely criticized by the nongovernmental aid community, who have lamented the ‘Militarisation of Humanitarian Assistance’, and the consequential impact upon their activities in the field. However, over the course of the multilateral deployment in Afghanistan, there has emerged a tacit acceptance that in order to protect the security of civilian individuals, both sides offer considerable expertise that is not worthy of immediate dismissal. Through the lens of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) presently operating in Afghanistan, the paper examines the slowly emerging nexus and evolving interactions between the civilian and military communities in a conflict environment. It will argue that while there remain many challenges in civil-military responses in complex security situations, there has been a marked progression in steps to address prospects for a greater level of cohesion and understanding that take fundamental concerns of both sides into account. The paper will conclude by arguing that collaboration between civilian and military elements will increase in the short-term, with associated alterations at the policy level of both that will include more knowledge about the other, dedicated roles for interface, and the conduct of war and peace-building. Finally, possible scenarios for more effective civil-military interaction in potential future deployments where security and humanitarian circumstances closely mirror the current deployment in Afghanistan will be presented. Key Words: Civil-military relations, conflict, humanitarian assistance, development, NATO, counter-insurgency, peace-building, non-governmental organisations, Afghanistan, ISAF. *****
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______________________________________________________________ 1. Civil-Military Development and Reconstruction Activities in Afghanistan In many ways, international intervention in Afghanistan since the initial deployment of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in early 2002 has proved to be a grand experiment in nation building. Following over two decades of internecine conflict and repressive rule, external actors, be they international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) or country representatives of ISAF are facing formidable challenges in repairing the political, social, and economic fabric of a shattered country. However, while Afghanistan is not unique in terms of implementing development and reconstruction activities following a traumatic event(s), there are distinctive circumstances in evidence that have proved to fundamentally impact upon the strategy employed to carry out this goal. Chief amongst them is the reality that Afghanistan remains, over much of the country, a conflict environment, where the already dismal state of living conditions and services has increasingly been compounded by escalating threats to the human security of the Afghan population from violent non-state groups. For member-states that comprise ISAF, this reality has necessitated a certain duality of strategy in order to achieve the stated goals of security for the population, effective governance and rule of law, and economic and social development.1 On the one hand, the dire state of Afghan poverty and civil society has prompted international actors to undertake small and largescale development, reconstruction, and humanitarian initiatives. On the other, direct offensive operations aimed at defeating, through force of arms, an active and intensifying insurgency are also of critical importance. Consequently, separate battles (against poverty and against a robust physical enemy) are being fought simultaneously, an eventuality which has very little precedence in the annals of armed conflict, especially in a country as diverse as Afghanistan. This paper will focus exclusively on the former tactic, bearing in mind that the two are somewhat interrelated. For the INGO community who are, of course, primarily concerned with development and humanitarian goals, Afghanistan has proved to be a very challenging and frustrating environment, primarily due to the aforementioned lack of security that has impacted upon their programming (and safety of their staff), but also more significantly, the oftentimes antagonistic relationships that have developed with the official development mechanisms of ISAF states: the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), where a large majority of the funds for development assistance are being channelled, coordinated, and delivered. Indeed, the PRT is a curious creation. They are typically comprised of representatives from three separate divisions of government: the military arm, the diplomatic/foreign affairs arm, and the development arm.2 This tripartite approach is meant to facilitate the differing levels of expertise
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______________________________________________________________ required for the coordination and delivery of aid in an operating environment that is acknowledged as being insecure. Variously termed the 3D (Development, Diplomacy, and Defence), whole of government, integrated, or comprehensive approach on behalf of participating ISAF states, the PRT is the physical manifestation of nation building policy on the ground in Afghanistan. Twenty-six PRTs are currently spread over the majority of Afghanistan’s provinces. In theatre, they generally maintain a physical separation from the main ISAF country Task Force, who serve no aid function, per se. What emerges is a new paradigm where two completely separate groups of actors (ISAF state representatives and INGOs) with differing motivations are ultimately seeking similar goals while sharing the same operating environment. Traditionally, there been a deep-seated distrust between the two that is now, by necessity, slowly beginning to be overcome This paper will briefly explore the nature of the debate regarding the military and PRTs being responsible for a large portion of aid delivery. It will then examine the evolution in understanding on behalf of each side to develop a better understanding of the other’s activities. Next, it will argue that these steps are producing a ‘blurring of the lines’ between government and INGO responses to development, humanitarian, and reconstruction goals. Finally, the paper will conclude by outlining some potential policy implications of this convergence for INGOs and state governments should similar conflict environments manifest themselves in the future. 2.
The Debate One of the most intriguing features of the current conflict in Afghanistan has been the emergent fight for ‘humanitarian space’ between the military/PRT and INGO communities. However, the term itself is somewhat inaccurate, for it implies certain homogeneity amongst the INGO community. A more accurate characterization would involve a debate on the delivery of foreign assistance, thereby bringing both humanitarian and development INGOs under the same tent.3 In either case, however, the crux of the argument is clear: Whereas in the past, conflict and post-conflict humanitarian aid and development reconstruction was identified as traditionally being within the purview of international and national aid/development organizations, this paradigm has recently, in the case of Afghanistan, been altered. ISAF country governments through the PRTs are now stepping into insecure areas to provide aid and assistance in lieu of INGOs, justifying this action by the commonly used catchphrase, ‘no development without security and no security without development’. It should be clearly pointed out, however, that the PRTs (and their military components), except in minor cases, do not actually deliver the assistance
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______________________________________________________________ themselves: local Afghan NGOs are typically contracted to do so, under the coordination, guidance, and in some cases security of ISAF forces. Traditionally, there has been much distrust between both camps, for reasons that are not entirely unjustified. The INGO community has forwarded three main arguments against the ISAF governments and their PRT representatives. First, many INGOs are reliant upon funding from government agencies to operate, and are thus, to varying degrees, dependent upon the latter for their very institutional survival. If the government development agency (USAID, CIDA etc.) promotes focusing on, as many are, foreign assistance projects in geographical areas in Afghanistan where their PRT is present, then this puts the INGO in a difficult position. Second, and emanating out of the first point, is the fact that many INGOs are perceived by the Afghan population (and insurgents) as having abandoned their neutrality.4 By definition, ISAF member governments are not neutral players in Afghanistan. They are formally in the country to support and extend the writ of the Karzai government. Thus, where country governments are directly funding INGO programming, this has served to severely undercut the perception of their traditional neutrality in the field, which has also contributed to their insecurity. Finally, there is a very real sense amongst many INGOs that they aside from the aid role they play, they have also indirectly and unwittingly been co-opted by ISAF governments as part of their general military and reconstruction strategy, serving as a ‘force multiplier’ in ‘hearts and minds’ campaigns, especially in circumstances when INGOs arrive directly following ISAF operations.5 For their part, ISAF military representatives have been much less reticent in their relations with INGOs, but have generally regarded them as hindrances to their operations, as their focus on impartiality has at times resulted in INGOs (from the military perspective) providing assistance to individuals or groups that may be considered direct enemies of the state of Afghanistan, and thus, by extension, ISAF forces themselves. 3.
On the Ground Realities While the debate over the role of the PRTs in the delivery and coordination of aid in Afghanistan, and the resultant impact upon INGOs, has been briefly outlined above, it is significant that such disagreements often occur at the policy level (mostly at HQ) rather than in the field itself. This does not necessarily imply in any way that on the ground in Afghanistan the previous concerns on behalf of INGOs towards PRTs are minimized. Simply that the reality of the situation at field level has served to impact upon the relationships between both actors, and not always in a negative sense. As noted above, the contextual environment in Afghanistan is immensely complex. There are a plethora of actors involved in the stabilisation and reconstruction effort (various United Nations Departments,
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______________________________________________________________ country representatives of ISAF, NATO, the Afghan government, INGOs, local Afghan NGOs, private enterprises), which has served to create a lack of policy coherence and operational approaches or guidelines towards aid regimes. For example, fourteen ISAF countries currently operate PRTs in Afghanistan, but the representation of various arms of government within each (military, diplomatic, and development) differs greatly from one country to another. Nor has there been a forum where PRT representatives may share there experiences and discuss best practices or challenges they have faced. To be fair, the former eventuality may in part be attributed to the security situation in a given province, for Afghanistan is by no means monolithic in terms of the threat of insurgent violence throughout the country. However, the lack of discussion amongst them illustrates the fragmented nature and territorialization of the supposedly common reconstruction agenda. Consequently, many PRTs and national-level have instead begun to turn to the INGO community for expertise on such best practices and effective methods of aid coordination and delivery. At the same time, the impact of the lack of security in Afghanistan on INGOs has also been profound. While it is true that their operations and perceptions amongst the civilian population have been undermined by perceived lack of neutrality, the fact remains that given the level of violence on many parts of the country, it is simply impossible for them to operate without threat of violence towards their staff of the Afghan populations who are benefiting from their efforts. In the past three years, attacks and abductions on Aid workers have steadily increased, prompting many to abandon their programming.6 As a result of these factors, relationships between INGOs and the various PRTs at field level have tended to be less antagonistic. In discussions with representatives from both communities, each side has stated that although they do not work together directly, they do provide information on the security situation in a given area where both share an operating environment. Curiously, some INGOs have used their relative greater level of acceptance amongst the civilian population (though as has been noted, this is also increasingly suspect) to promote humanitarian or development initiatives to the PRTs. Thus, there is a level of positive interaction between the PRTs and INGOs at field-level that rises above the often-polarized discourse seen at the policy level. 4.
Blurring of the Lines? While it would be a mistake to characterize the relationships between and amongst the government/PRT and INGO communities to be evolving in a truly positive manner, there have been recent actions aimed at achieving a better understanding of the motivations and principles of the
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______________________________________________________________ other. In conflict environments such as Afghanistan, both groups require each other’s expertise and capabilities perhaps more than they are willing to admit. The INGO community has begun to grudgingly recognize that the involvement of the military in future deployments in conflict environments may be the wave of the future, especially in cases where strategies to address geopolitical and counter-terrorism/insurgency imperatives involve simultaneous relief efforts. As such, many INGOs have begun to take steps to augment their expertise regarding the military and the relationships they may encounter with them in the field, including: the hiring of ex-military staff as program advisors and liaisons, the development of codified guidelines on how to interact with military bodies, and increased participation of INGO representatives at multi-disciplinary conferences involving military strategists. Within the PRT structure itself, there has been an incremental shift away from a military-dominated leadership structure to a more civilian one where the development and diplomatic arms have primacy. When the PRT system was in its infancy, all PRTs were commanded by a military representative. Many now possess a civilian commander. This is again indicative of a move away from a military-led aid structure. Finally, ISAF militaries themselves have taken steps to address their own shortcomings with respect to knowledge about INGOs and international humanitarian norms. Increasingly, pre-deployment training for PRT personnel from many ISAF countries involves learning about the role, mandates, and functions of INGOs in the same operating theatre. Moreover, some ISAF members have developed their own codified manuals and guidelines for working with the non-governmental community, although many militaries have not as yet done so.7 All of these developments on behalf of both militaries and INGOs are indicative of a general effort, admittedly bourn not of interest but instead of necessity and pragmatism, to become more familiar with the complexities of working in a shared operating conflict environment. The fact that each side is taking these steps may certainly be viewed as positive. However, whether the lines between the military and INGO communities are being blurred is doubtful. There remains a clear fundamental separation between that will not likely be altered anytime soon. As was stated by many members of the military interviewed for this research, militaries are not interested in doing development or humanitarian work: that is not their raison d’etre. Circumstances in Afghanistan have dictated that they must undertake such a role, but they fully understand that they lack the expertise to carry it out. In the end, such moves towards mutual understanding may not necessarily result in a more collaborative relationship, but perhaps a more informed one. There appears to be, at present in Afghanistan, a renewed focus on the primacy of human security as a key strategic focus. Under the
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______________________________________________________________ assumption, currently subscribed to by both sides in Afghanistan (either as a fundamental moral principle or incremental tactic), that protection of civilian populations is an imperative, then future deployments in similar circumstances will possibly hold this to be key element of what is essentially a macro counter-insurgency strategy. 5.
Towards the Future It is always difficult to foresee the nature of future conflict, but it seems likely, as the experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq have shown, that there will again be instances where intervening international actors are faced with the dual imperatives of combat and aid operations. The ISAF and INGO experiences in Afghanistan have shown that there is much to learn on behalf of both communities in terms of coordination and interaction, but there have been concrete steps taken to address some of the problems in civil-military relations. It is very unlikely that the lines will be completely blurred between civilian and military functions in conflict environments, as principles of neutrality are too fundamental to be abandoned by the INGO community. Still, there are further concrete steps that could be taken in addition to those listed above that would serve to further clarify the roles and responsibilities of militaries and INGOs in conflict environments. First, it is imperative that general guidelines for civil-military interactions and roles in conflict environments be developed and uniformly accepted and applied by all actors, regardless of affiliation. Such guidelines would include a clear delineation of INGO and public sector responsibilities in the field and at HQ level. Indeed, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is developing a codified manual for interaction. Second, a positive step towards mutual trust and understanding would be to initiate military or INGO representation, either as observers or direct participants, at policy and field level meetings of the other. This would ensure that the concerns of both parties are noted and would also serve to mitigate confusion in the field. Third, for the military, hiring of development and humanitarian civilian experts that would operate at field level and act as advisors directly to military bodies on aid norms as well as interaction with INGOs operating in the same environment. Civil-Military relations in Afghanistan are slowly evolving from mistrust to understanding. While there remains much to do, a slow and incremental march towards an effective and integrated civil-military response is nonetheless occurring.
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Notes 1
These were imperatives agreed upon at the main donor London Conference on Afghanistan in 2006, which has hitherto served as the core-guiding document between the international community and the Afghan government. Please see: United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), The Afghanistan Compact, UNAMA, retrieved April 14, 2010, http://unama.unmissions.org/Portals/UNAMA/Documents/AfghanistanComp act-English.pdf . 2 For example, in the Canadian context, the PRT is comprised of representatives from the Department of Defence (Military), the Department of Foreign Affairs (Diplomatic), and the Canadian International Development Agency (ODA). 3 For an excellent overview of this debate, please see A Donini, Afghanistan: Humanitarianism Under Threat, Tufts University, 2009, pp. 2-5. 4 NGO, Consultative Group, Quick Impact, Quick Collapse: The Dangers of Militarized Aid in Afghanistan. Retrieved February 2, 2010, http://www. oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/quick-impact-quick-collapse-jan-2010 .pdf. 5 Ibid. 6 Donini, op. cit., p. 7. 7 For example, the British Ministry of Defence has produced an excellent manual for military personnel outlining the roles of and how to engage with members of the non-governmental community, entitled, Sharing the Space: A Guide to Constructive Engagement with Non-Governmental Organizations and the Aid Community.
Bibliography British Agencies Afghanistan Group, Aid and Civil-Military Relations in Afghanistan (Policy Briefing). BAAG, 2008. CARE, Policy Framework for CARE International’s Relations with Military Forces. Geneva, 2009. Civilian Actors Advisor (CIVAD) Concept. NATO (Unclassified). July 2009. De Boer, M., Development and Diplomacy: Implementing a Cautious and Fully-Balanced Approach Against the Odds in Uruzgan. 2008.
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______________________________________________________________ Department of National Defence (Canada), Evaluation of CF/DND Participation in the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team. Chief Review Services, 2007. Donini, A., Afghanistan: Humanitarianism Under Threat. Tufts University, 2009. Feinstein International Centre, Understanding the Relationship Between Aid and Security. Tufts University, Viewed December 19, 2009, http://wikis. uit.tufts.edu/confluence/display/FIC/Understanding+the+relationship+Betwe en+Aid+and+Security+%28Summary%29. Ferris (ed), ‘Civil-Military Coordination: Challenges and Opportunities in Afghanistan and Beyond’. Calgary Papers in Military and Strategic Studies. Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, vol. 3, 2008. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (UK), Overview of Provincial Reconstruction Team. Viewed December 27, 2009, http://ukinafghanistan. fco.gov.uk/en/working-with-afghanistan/prt-helmand/overview-prt-helmand. Jelinek, E., A Study of NGO Relations with Government and Communities in Afghanistan. ACBAR, 2006. LaRose-Edwards, K., NATO and Militaries as Trusted Partners in CivilMilitary Interaction. The Pearson Papers. Vol. 11, Spring 2008. _______
, NATO Comprehensive Civil-Military Interaction. Discussion Paper, 2007. Permission received by Author. Ministry of Defence (UK), Sharing the Space: A Guide to Constructive Engagement with Non-Governmental Organizations and the Aid Community. Viewed January 2, 2010, http://dcdc.mod.uk. Nixon, H., Aiding the State? International Assistance and the Statebuilding Paradox in Afghanistan. Briefing Paper. Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, 2007. Patrick, S. & Brown, K., Greater than the Sum of Its Parts: Assessing the Whole of Government Approach to Fragile States. International Peace Academy, 2007.
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______________________________________________________________ Rietjens, S., ‘Managing Civil-Military Cooperation: Experiences from the Dutch Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan’. Armed Forces and Society. Vol. 34, 2008, pp. 173-207. Sedra, M., Civil-Military Relations in Afghanistan: The Provincial Reconstruction Team Debate. Foreign Affairs Canada, 2007. Stapleton, B., The Provincial Reconstruction Team Plan in Afghanistan: A New Direction. ACBAR, 2003. Unpublished Paper: permission to cite received by author. Corin Chater is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary. Additionally, he also acts as an Advisor to the Canadian International Development Agency and several NGOs involved in development and humanitarian work globally. His main research interests lie in armed groups and counter-insurgency policy, as well as evaluation of international governance and poverty reduction projects.
Holy Peace and Holy War Nevin Climenhaga Abstract Political actors in the contemporary world are becoming increasingly aware that religion is an important factor in national and international affairs, especially war and peace. However, there is continued confusion over exactly what role it plays. In particular, there is a widespread assumption that religion’s contribution to conflict has to do with religious teachings about ‘holy war’ – that religion causes or exacerbates conflict when religions condone or command violence on the part of their adherents. Through examining a contemporary conflict in which religion has played a particularly salient role – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – I will argue that this assumption is incorrect. In Israel-Palestine, religious teachings about the rightness or wrongness of war and how war should be waged contribute to the conflict only minimally. Religion has contributed to the conflict far more because of teachings about ‘holy peace’ – what true peace is, what it means to pursue it, and what the attitude of the religious believer should be towards human and secular efforts towards peace. I will argue that exclusivist and absolutist theologies of peace, combined with prejudice against religious outgroups, have led, and continue to lead, to support for violence against the other and the rejection of practical peace efforts. As we look for ways to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as other conflicts around the world in which religion plays a part, attention to this dynamic is crucial. Key Words: Religion, peace, violence, conflict, holy war, Israel, Palestine. ***** 1.
Introduction The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not fundamentally a conflict between competing religions, but competing nationalisms. But while Zionism and Palestinian nationalism were predominantly secular at their inception,1 since the 1967 War, religion has become increasingly central to both. An unexpected victory that put holy sites such as the Western Wall, Temple Mount, and much of the ancient Land of Israel into Jewish hands convinced many Jews that God was at last bringing about their redemption.2 Shortly after the war, Jewish messianists began building settlements in the West Bank; they would later form Gush Emunim, an influential religious Zionist political movement.3 For the Palestinians and the Arab states surrounding Israel, the unexpected loss to Israel meant the failure of secular Arab nationalism, the creed of the major Arab players in the conflict. Many Arabs
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______________________________________________________________ responded by turning to political Islam. In Palestine, Hamas eventually arose as a radical religious alternative to the secular PLO. It has grown continually more influential, and in 2006 won the Palestinian parliamentary elections. Not only have radical groups like Gush Emunim and Hamas hindered peace efforts, surveys have found more religious Palestinians and Israelis in general less supportive of political peace agreements, whether actual or hypothetical.4 This is important because the attitudes of constituents constrain politicians. It is difficult for leaders to reach an agreement if it goes against the people’s will – and if they do, it may well be perceived as illegitimate, and destroyed by reactionaries on both sides. 2.
Holy Peace Precisely what about Judaism and Islam as they have been practiced in Israel-Palestine has made so many of their adherents hostile to peace efforts? Many people assume that religion contributes to conflict primarily through teachings about ‘holy war,’ causing or exacerbating conflict by condoning or commanding violence. However, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at least, religious teachings about the rightness or wrongness of war and how war should be waged have not significantly contributed to the conflict. Religion has exacerbated the conflict much more through teachings about holy peace – what true peace is, what it means to pursue it, and what attitude the religious believer should have towards human and secular efforts towards peace. Among all parties in the conflict, exclusivist and absolutist theologies of peace, combined with prejudice against the religious outgroup, have led to support for violence and the rejection of practical peace efforts. Peace is a contested notion. Many peace scholars differentiate negative peace, the absence of direct violence, from positive peace, the absence of indirect/structural violence. Religions, too, tend to have elaborate conceptions of peace as more than mere absence of hostilities. The Hebrew word for peace, shalom, suggests physical, relational, and moral wellbeing. Peace is indivisible from truth, integrity, justice, etc.: ‘Within [shalom]…all other human virtues and values are…subsumed.’5 Shalom is central to Judaism: ‘If one were to describe in one word the essence of Jewish mentality…the word would have to be peace.’6 Peace is similarly central to Islam. The Arabic cognate of shalom, salaam, has the same root as the word ‘Islam,’ and implies virtues like social justice and right relatedness between human beings and with God. But how is peace, understood in these broader senses, to be realized? Many Muslims will say that true peace is found in submission to God – i.e., (the literal meaning of) ‘Islam.’ The Qur’an describes Paradise as dar alSalam (10:25), commonly translated ‘the abode of peace,’ and subsequent Islamic tradition would equate dar al-Salam with dar al-Islam, the abode of Islam, and differentiate it from the rest of the world: dar al-harb, the abode
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______________________________________________________________ of war.7 True (social) peace, medieval Islamic jurists would affirm, was only possible under the ‘banner of Islam’: ‘Because peace was…[in part] a political social order characterized by a justice in which all submit to God, all earthly peace required an Islamic ruler and law.’8 Envisioning peace as only possible under Islam is understandable if one believes Islam God’s full and final revelation to humanity. However, this doctrine has obvious potential for conflict when Muslim political leaders face a non-Muslim world unwilling to live under Muslim rule. It is tempting, if one believes in this vision of peace strongly enough, to conclude that violent struggle to realize it is justified. And when politicians propose peace with a non-Muslim state, clearly this peace must be opposed, because it is only an illusion, a ‘negative peace’ that is only a shadow of the true positive peace that would exist in an Islamic Palestine. It is unsurprising, then, to find the following passage in Hamas’s charter, which earlier describes Hamas as a movement ‘which owes its loyalty to Allah, derives from Islam its way of life and strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine’: Hamas…cares for human rights and is committed to the tolerance inherent in Islam as regards attitudes towards other religions.…Under the shadow of Islam it is possible for the members of the three religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism to coexist in safety and security. Safety and security can only prevail under the shadow of Islam, and recent and ancient history is the best witness to that effect. The members of other religions must desist from struggling against Islam over sovereignty in this region. For if they were to gain the upper hand, fighting, torture and uprooting would follow. Add to this the belief that ‘the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf9 throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection,’ and it is only natural to conclude that ‘[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement.’10 Through the logic of religious triumphalism, extremist groups like Hamas can believe Islam a religion of peace – indeed, the only way to peace – yet support a violent struggle to retake all of historic Palestine from the Jews. Paradoxically, the centrality of peace to Islamic thought leads to its practical rejection by Islamic fundamentalists. In this, however, Islam is not unique. Certainly, Judaism has not historically emphasized the need to bring others under ‘the banner of Judaism’ for their own sakes. But Judaism’s criteria for true peace are as
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______________________________________________________________ rigorous as Islam’s, and Jews have traditionally seen prospects for such peace in the non-Jewish political realm as equally slim. From the prophets onward, Jewish writing has viewed international society as ‘a state of war, where violence is the norm and fighting is continuous, or at least endemic.’11 In Judaism, shalom is explicitly ‘not the normal state of the world in this historical age.’12 World peace is impossible through diplomacy because violence is endemic to the world, and the nations of the world are naturally hostile to Israel; it is impossible through military means because Israel simply does not have such means.13 True peace belongs properly to the next era of history – the messianic era. The prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible contain many well-known images of peace. Isaiah imagines the nations ‘beat[ing] their swords into plowshares/And their spears into pruning hooks…and never again know[ing] war’ (2:4).14 In their original context, however, such images implied ‘Israel’s dominance over all nations who might threaten her and often their coming to accept Israel’s own world-view and her God.’15 The aforementioned verse also speaks of God ‘judg[ing] among the nations/And arbitrat[ing] for the many peoples’ – and of course this God is not the one presently worshipped by the peoples surrounding Israel. This is an eschatological vision, to be fulfilled with the coming of the Messiah. This will be a violent coming, involving God ‘mak[ing] the earth a desolation…[and] wip[ing] out the sinners upon it’ (Isaiah 13:9). In the messianic era that will follow, knowledge of Israel’s God will fill the world (Isaiah 11:9), and people everywhere will come to the Jews for spiritual guidance (Zechariah 8:23). This vision is markedly similar to the Islamic vision of world peace. As mere visions, these are harmless to those who do not share them – but when those longing for them try to realize them, conflict naturally follows. Traditionally, Judaism eschewed attempts to bring about redemption by human efforts. In the early twentieth century, however, Rabbi Avraham Kook argued that while messianic redemption could not be attained solely by human efforts, humans could participate in bringing it about.16 While Kook’s theology was not widely accepted at first, the seemingly miraculous victory of Israel in 1967 vindicated his beliefs for many. Many Jews have come to believe that redemption is at hand, and that the state of Israel is (and should be) helping bring it about. But in order for the Messiah to come, Israel must assert ownership over all the land God has given her, including the Occupied Territories, and especially the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Jewish eschatology sees not only the Jews returning to their ancient homeland but also the Temple being rebuilt. The traditional view is that only the Messiah can rebuild the Temple; however, a minority of Orthodox Jews believe the Jewish people should rebuild the Temple themselves, or at least hasten the Messiah’s coming by making preparations for such rebuilding.17
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______________________________________________________________ This minority is small, but it is also vocal, especially in Jerusalem. Organizations like the Temple Institute and Temple Mount Faithful advocate building the Third Temple now,18 and call for various ways to solve the ‘problem’ of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, Muslim holy sites located on the Temple Mount.19 A few have tried to take matters into their own hands. In 1979, a group of Israeli settlers plotted to blow up the Dome, and secured the necessary explosives – only to call off the plan at the last minute because their leader caught hepatitis.20 Plots to destroy the Dome of the Rock do not exhaust the dangers of Jewish beliefs about holy peace. Many West Bank settlers see themselves as hastening redemption, which will culminate in a peace far greater than any a political settlement could bring. And just as Hamas members say Islamic rule will bring true peace to the Jews, so some radical settlers claim Jewish redemption will bring true peace to the Palestinians.21 If settling the entire Land of Israel, or rebuilding the Temple, will bring a peace so allencompassing that the wolf lies down with the lamb, it makes sense to oppose a political peace agreement, which by its very nature implies compromise. 3.
Peace for Whom? Some Jews and Muslims truly believe that the peace the triumph or dominance of their religion will bring is not only for their coreligionists but also the religious other. However, both theological teachings and the actual attitudes of religionists are ambivalent about this. Biblical scholars note passages in the Hebrew Bible that speak of healing and reconciliation between former enemies and ones that portray peace as ‘a state-of-being experienced only by the winning side’ (the Israelites).22 Among Palestinian Muslim leaders preaching their own versions of eschatology, some say the Jews will ultimately – after conversion to Islam – be saved, whereas others say they will be destroyed or punished. The line between genuinely wanting peace for the other and simply wanting victory and domination for one’s own group is thin. Visions of peace can become visions of the triumph of one’s own religion, and these can twist into simple hatred of the religious other.23 Although prejudice need not accompany absolutist visions of holy peace, the potential for this seems strong. Psychologists have found that religiosity tends to correlate with prejudicial attitudes, especially towards religious outgroups.24 Many believe that such prejudice is caused by a strong association with one’s religious ingroup – what some researchers call ‘religious ethnocentrism.’25 In many cases, religious believers’ conceptions of peace may be difficult to disentangle from an attitude favoring the religious ingroup over the outgroup. When visions of peace combine with prejudice towards those who (through identification with an opposing religion) deny that peace,
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______________________________________________________________ religion becomes truly dangerous – violence against the other can seem permissible, even obligatory. Unfortunately, these often do go together in Israel-Palestine. Despite including statements about commitments to tolerance and peace (understood as coming about through the triumph of Islam), Hamas’s charter is filled with prejudicial rhetoric, comparing Jews to Nazis, calling them ‘the merchants of war,’ and directly referencing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as laying out the Zionist ‘agenda.’26 In the recent conflict in Gaza, military rabbis promoted a vision of religious peace as only possible through the subjugation of an inherently evil and vicious enemy. Pamphlets distributed to soldiers told them both that the Torah forbade their ‘surrendering a single millimetre of [the Land of Israel] to gentiles,’ and that this was ‘a war on murderers,’ one in which they should ‘show no mercy on the cruel.’27 On both sides, exclusivist conceptions of peace have combined with prejudice against the other to contribute to violence and the rejection of practical peace efforts. 4.
Holy War Although I cannot here detail Jewish and Muslim teachings on war, I want to explain why I do not think they have substantially influenced the conflict.28 Firstly, these doctrines were removed from reality even when they were formulated. Jewish scholarship on just war was done at a time when Jews no longer had political power, and the possibility of a Jewish state waging war (the focus of rabbinic writing on war) no longer existed.29 Islamic jurisprudence assumed a unified umma (Islamic political community) confronted by a hostile world, and only allowed for temporary peace with non-Muslim states, when the umma was weak.30 In reality, the umma was often fragmented and warring amongst itself, and alliances and agreements with non-Muslim states were common.31 Secondly, one can find little direct influence of these teachings on the actions of Palestinians and Israelis in the conflict. Secular political considerations have guided Israel’s wartime actions much more than Jewish theories of war.32 And ordinary Jews’ beliefs about the justifiability of violence today are far more influenced by the experience of the Holocaust than medieval rabbinic scholarship.33 Similarly, Palestinian resistance has not been systematically guided by Islamic theories of war – after all, such theories were not written with such a context in mind.34 Moreover, many actions that have been so injurious to the peace process – attacks on civilians, suicide bombing, disproportionate uses of force – would be condemned by classical Jewish or Muslim teachings on the proper conduct of war.35 The main explicitly religious motivators36 for such actions are not beliefs about war, but beliefs about what war and politics should aim at (i.e., beliefs about ‘positive peace’), as well as prejudice towards the religious other being fought.
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Conclusion I have attempted to draw attention to an aspect of religion that has contributed to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s intractability. I have not argued, and do not believe, that religion is a uniformly negative force. The conceptions of peace I have discussed are by no means entirely bad. Social justice, right relatedness between humans and the divine, moral uprightness – these are laudable goals. What is bad is religionists seeing them as exclusively realizable through their own religion, and focusing so much on them that they lose sight of more attainable goals. For there to be peace in the Middle East, religionists there need to come to appreciate the possibility of other religious traditions contributing to at least a limited peace, and see a peace less total than that they believe possible through the triumph of their religion as worth striving for. How peacemakers in Israel-Palestine can bring about this change in attitudes I leave to another time. What is clear, though, is that they cannot afford to ignore religion altogether.
Notes 1
Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, was stridently antireligious, and most religious Jews initially opposed Zionism (WJ Frost, A History of Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim Perspectives on War and Peace, The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, 2004, p. 657). As for Palestinian nationalism, many of its most prominent early proponents were Arab Christians, and they explicitly separated religious and national identity (CM Sennott, The Body and the Blood: The Middle East’s Vanishing Christians and the Possibility for Peace, Public Affairs, New York, 2003, pp. 148-60). 2 G Aran, ‘Redemption as a Catastrophe: The Gospel of Gush Emunim’, Religious Radicalism and Politics in the Middle East, p. 158. 3 Ibid., pp. 157-59. 4 CS Liebman, ‘The Jewish Religion and Contemporary Israeli Nationalism’, Religious Radicalism and Politics in the Middle East, p. 78 (more religious Jews are less likely to support trading land for peace); M Mi’Ari, ‘Attitudes of Palestinians toward Normalization with Israel’, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 36, no. 3, May 1999, p. 346 (religiosity among Palestinians is negatively correlated with support of normalization with Israel); T Hermann & E Yuchtman-Yaar, ‘Divided Yet United: Israeli-Jewish Attitudes toward the Oslo Process’, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 39, no. 5, September 2002, pp. 605-08 (less religious Jews were more supportive of the Oslo process than more religious Jews). 5 SS Schwarzschild, ‘Shalom’, The Challenge of Shalom: The Jewish Tradition of Peace and Justice, M Polner & N Goodman (eds), New Society Publishers, Philadelphia, 1994, pp. 17-18.
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Schwarzschild quoting Hermann Cohen, in ibid., p. 16. B Tibi, ‘War and Peace in Islam’, The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives, T Nardin (ed), Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996, pp. 129-30. 8 Frost, p. 193. This does not mean that, in medieval Islamic thought, peace in the political realm required the conversion of all to Islam; while polytheism and paganism were to be unequivocally opposed, Christianity and Judaism were recognized as religions of ‘the book,’ legitimate though flawed, and peoples of the book living in the dar al-Islam were to be allowed to practice their religion freely, accepting a status as religious minorities (dhimmi) and paying a special poll tax (jizya) (ibid., pp. 199-201; Tibi, p. 130). 9 A waqf is similar to a legal trust – the idea is that God owns Palestine and Muslims manage it for his purposes. 10 ‘The Charter of Allah: The Platform of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)’ (1988), The Jerusalem Fund (website), Accessed 27 April 2010, http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/www.thejerusalemfund.org/carryover/docu ments/charter.html., Articles 6, 31, 11, and 13, emphases mine. 11 M Walzer, ‘War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition’, The Ethics of War and Peace, p. 97. The similarity to the medieval Muslim notion of dar al-harb is striking. 12 Ibid., p. 96. 13 This is not to say that the Hebrew prophets would have promoted expansionist war as a means to peace had Israel the capability. The prophetic critique of war suggests a disdain for not only the ends but also the methods of war. Nevertheless, this aversion to violence apparently only went so far, as suggested by the following discussion of eschatology. 14 Hebrew Bible citations are taken from The Jewish Study Bible, A Berlin & MZ Brettler (eds), Oxford University Press, New York, 2004. 15 S Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence Oxford University Press, New York, 1993, p. 134. 16 A Ravitsky, ‘Religious Radicalism and Political Messianism in Israel’, Religious Radicalism and Politics in the Middle East, E Sivan & M Friedman (eds), State University of New York Press, Albany, 1990, pp. 20-23. 17 G Gorenberg, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, p. 9. 18 Organizations like this get nearly as much financial support from American Christians as they do from Jews (ibid., pp. 171-72, 174). Although I cannot here give this issue the attention it deserves, the influence of evangelical Christian eschatology on the conflict should not be ignored. Like many religious Jews, many evangelical Christians believe that true peace can only come after the Jews settle the entire Land of Israel and rebuild the Temple, 7
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______________________________________________________________ and the Messiah comes – but of course the Messiah they mean is Jesus, and the coming is the second, not the first (ibid., pp. 27-28). Such Christians have been crucial in lobbying the American government to ‘support Israel’ unequivocally (i.e., support right-wing actors in Israel who oppose giving up land for peace) and in financially supporting Jewish messianic organizations. 19 The Temple Mount Faithful suggest that they be moved to Mecca; ‘Objectives of the Temple Mount Faithful,’ The Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement, Accessed 27 April 2010, http://www.temple mountfaithful.org/obj.htm., while some in the Temple Institute imagine that one day the Arabs will realize the truth and ‘come down from the Mount…and say ‘build it [the Temple]’; Gorenberg, op. cit., p. 175. 20 Ibid., pp. 132-37. Years earlier, as Israeli troops captured the Temple Mount in the 1967 War, the chief rabbi of Israel’s army had reportedly urged the general on the site ‘to put one hundred kilos of explosives in [the Dome], and that’s it, once and for all we’ll be done with it.’ The general refused, and after the war management of the site was given by the Israeli government to a Muslim council; ibid., p. 100. 21 Aran, op. cit., p. 172. 22 Niditch, op. cit., p. 135. 23 Gorenberg, a Jewish journalist, recounts attending a (Jewish) Temple restoration organization meeting in Jerusalem. Questioned by a reporter as to why he wanted to rebuild the Temple, when doing so was ‘likely to plunge the Middle East into bloodshed,’ the first speaker replied that ‘Building the Temple will bring peace, will bring security, will cure all the ills of society!’ But when a video promoting the movement showed Muslims praying on the Temple Mount, people in the audience began ‘shouting, booing at the screen, … [expressing] hatred at the others, the unbelievers’. Hope for Messianic redemption was transformed into vilification of the religious other. 24 For a summary of this research, see B Spilka, RW Hood, Jr., B Hunsberger & R Gorsuch, The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach, The Guilford Press, New York, 2003, pp. 457-78. 25 Several studies have lent support to this ‘intergroup’ perspective, finding that religious group identification, especially in situations of perceived conflict, is one of the best predictors of religious outgroup prejudice (ibid., pp. 474-75). Religious ethnocentrism may contribute to prejudice against other outgroups as well, inasmuch as religionists who learn (especially in childhood) to make ‘us versus them’ discriminations in the realm of religion become more likely to make ingroup-outgroup discriminations in all areas of their life (B Altemeyer, ‘Why Do Religious Fundamentalists Tend to be Prejudiced?’ International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, Vol.13, no. 1, 2003, pp. 20-27). Indeed, studies have found correlations, among
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______________________________________________________________ Israelis and Palestinians both, between religiosity and both stronger identification with one’s ethnic/national group (see, for example, L Weissbrod, ‘Religion as National Identity in a Secular Society’, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 24, no. 3, March 1983, pp. 198-202; O Ichilov, ‘Pride in One’s Country and Citizenship Orientations in a Divided Society: The Case of Israeli Palestinian Arab and Orthodox and Non-Orthodox Jewish Israeli Youth’, Comparative Education Review, Vol. 49, no. 1, 2005, p. 58), and more prejudiced attitudes towards the other (religious, ethnic, national) in the conflict (see, for example, Mi’Ari, op. cit., pp. 346-47; B Mollov & C Lavie, ‘Culture, Dialogue and Perception Change in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict’, International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 12, no. 1, 2001, pp. 74-75; Liebman, op. cit., p. 78). 26 ‘The Charter of Allah,’ Articles 20, 31, and 32. 27 A Harel, ‘IDF Rabbinate Publication during Gaza War: We will Show no Mercy on the Cruel’, Haaretz, 26 January 2009, Accessed 27 April 2010, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1058758.html. 28 I do think it is important that both religions have, from their beginnings, regarded violence as sometimes necessary. A prior commitment to pacifism would presumably make religionists more reluctant to use violence to realize their visions of positive peace (although it might not make them more willing to accept a political agreement they see as working against that peace). 29 Walzer, op. cit., pp. 95-96. 30 Frost, op. cit., p. 210; Tibi, op. cit., p. 130. 31 Frost, op. cit., pp. 207, 216-17; Tibi, op. cit., p. 129. The advent of the modern nation-state further disconnected medieval Muslim just war theory from reality. 32 Walzer, op. cit., pp. 107-10. 33 H Fein, ‘Reading the Second Text: Meanings and Misuses of the Holocaust’, Shalom, pp. 71-76. 34 Admittedly, Hamas’s charter draws on medieval ideas of spreading the dar al-Islam through jihad. But Hamas’s actions (for example, targeting Jewish civilians) are not consistent with Islamic teachings on the proper conduct of war. Also, in Islam, warfare is often explicitly justified (both by medieval jurists and contemporary scholars) on the grounds that it will bring about the ‘true peace’ described above (Tibi, op. cit., p. 130). 35 Medieval Islamic jurisprudence prohibited the targeting of non-combatants such as women, children, and the elderly. It also contained other regulations on the waging of war: for example, oaths were to be honoured, and plundering and destruction were forbidden (Frost, op. cit., pp. 211-13; Tibi, op. cit., p. 133). Rabbinic Jewish scholars drew on the Torah to identify
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______________________________________________________________ standards of conduct in war, which similarly aimed to protect non-combatants and limit the destruction caused by warfare (Walzer, op. cit., pp. 106-10). 36 There are, obviously, many non-religious motivators as well.
Bibliography Altemeyer, B., ‘Why Do Religious Fundamentalists Tend to be Prejudiced?’ International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. Vol. 13, no. 1, 2003, pp. 17-28. Aran, G., ‘Redemption as a Catastrophe: The Gospel of Gush Emunim’. Religious Radicalism and Politics in the Middle East. Sivan, E. & Friedman, M. (eds), State University of New York Press, Albany, 1990. ‘The Charter of Allah: The Platform of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)’ (1988). The Jerusalem Fund (website). accessed 27 April 2010, http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/www.thejerusalemfund.org/carryover/docu ments/charter.html. Fein, H., ‘Reading the Second Text: Meanings and Misuses of the Holocaust’. The Challenge of Shalom: The Jewish Tradition of Peace and Justice. Polner, M. & Goodman, N.(eds), New Society Publishers, Philadelphia, 1994. Frost, W.J., A History of Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim Perspectives on War and Peace. The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, NY, 2004. Gorenberg, G., The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount. Oxford University Press, New York, 2002. Hermann, T. & Yuchtman-Yaar, E., ‘Divided Yet United: Israeli-Jewish Attitudes toward the Oslo Process’. Journal of Peace Research. Vol. 39, no. 5, September 2002, pp. 597-613. Ichilov, O., ‘Pride in One’s Country and Citizenship Orientations in a Divided Society: The Case of Israeli Palestinian Arab and Orthodox and Non-Orthodox Jewish Israeli Youth’. Comparative Education Review. Vol. 49, no. 1, 2005.
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______________________________________________________________ The Jewish Study Bible. Berlin, A. & Brettler, M.Z. (eds), Oxford University Press, New York, 2004. Mi’Ari, M., ‘Attitudes of Palestinians toward Normalization with Israel’. Journal of Peace Research. Vol. 36, no. 3, May 1999, pp. 339-348. Mollov, B. & Lavie, C., ‘Culture, Dialogue and Perception Change in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict’. International Journal of Conflict Management. Vol. 12, no. 1, 2001, pp. 69-87. Niditch, S., War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence. Oxford University Press, New York, 1993. ‘Objectives of the Temple Mount Faithful’. The Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement. Accessed 27 April 2010, http://www.temple mountfaithful.org/obj.htm. Sennott, C.M., The Body and the Blood: The Middle East's Vanishing Christians and the Possibility for Peace. Public Affairs, New York, 2003. Spilka, B., Hood, Jr., R.W., Hunsberger, B. & Gorsuch, R., The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach. The Guilford Press, New York, 2003. Tibi, B., ‘War and Peace in Islam’. The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives. Nardin, T. (ed), Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996. Weissbrod, L., ‘Religion as National Identity in a Secular Society’. Review of Religious Research. Vol. 24, no. 3, March 1983, pp. 188-205. Nevin Climenhaga is a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy at Western Michigan University. His primary interests are ethics, epistemology, philosophy of religion, and the intersection of philosophy with other fields.
The Myth of the Hundred Years Peace: War in the Nineteenth Century Eric Royal Lybeck Abstract In The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi described the period between 1815 and 1914 as the ‘Hundred Years’ Peace.’ Indeed, relative to previous and subsequent centuries, battlefield deaths were considerably lower between the Napoleonic and Great Wars. The European Great Powers’ reluctance to go to war, Polanyi suggested, was due to the growing interdependence generated by the new capitalist system – what he termed ‘market society’. However, applying a different sociological theory of war - one that does not reduce the significance of war to battle death tolls, but rather considers wars’ qualitative geopolitical and social significances - establishes a new framework through which we can better understand this ‘peaceful’ 19th century. Furthermore, we should expand the frame of reference beyond the European stage as the globalising trajectory of capital in this period brought non-European regions into a unifying economic world system. Wars in the periphery of the system at this time would therefore have greater significance and would further qualify Polanyi’s thesis. The assumption that the 19th century was a uniquely pacified society undermines our ability to understand the crucial links between war, society, and economics in the present era, and needs to be reassessed using new theoretical tools and insights. Key Words: War, nineteenth century, geopolitics, world systems, transnational capitalism, imperialism, Karl Polanyi, military. ***** Since 1953, the end of the Korean War, the ‘Global North’ has been at peace with itself. The Cold War never led to World War III. Europe let its economic interdependence trump its historic political and ethnic differences toward the creation of the E.E.C. and the E.U. International Relations theorists, raised in the era of nuclear deterrence and superpower, have debated whether this peace was caused by market integration, democraticpeace, balance-of-power, or American hegemony. Interest in the causes of war and peace clearly has instrumental purposes: what are we doing right? Can we keep doing it, do it in more places, or realize when we have stopped doing it? Though this effort is not in vain if it can help prevent inter-state war between the ‘Great Powers’ - many of which have nuclear weapons capability – a picture of the post-war period as an era of world peace is clearly off the mark. The division between East and West Europe and North
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______________________________________________________________ and South Korea ended the era of ‘hot’ world wars, but was followed, not by a ‘Cold War,’ but by what Niall Ferguson terms, ‘The Third World’s War.’1 The United States, the Soviet Union, China, and other ‘advanced’ nations never ceased fighting each other via proxy wars, which were safe in so far as they did not disrupt the global balance-of-power. The Third World’s War was fought by the likes of Fidel Castro in Cuba, the Derg in Ethiopia, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. To the millions in these ‘developing’ nations who fell victim to these wars, the notion of a post-war peace might sound ludicrous and grotesque. Yet this is precisely the way we tend to perceive the 19th century in history. Between the Napoleonic Wars (which belong to the 18th century) and World War I (which belongs to the 20th) there lies ‘a phenomenon unheard of in the annals of Western civilization, namely a hundred years’ peace – 18151914.’2 So stated Karl Polanyi in 1944 amidst the ruins of that very civilization. An economic historian concerned with the social ramifications of what he called ‘market-society,’ Polanyi began his magnum opus, The Great Transformation, with the puzzle of this unusual peace. 19th century civilization, he said, rested on four institutional pillars – the balance-of-power system, the international gold standard, the self-regulating market, and the liberal state. Two of these institutions were political; two were economic. In another configuration, two were domestic and the other two were international. The hundred years’ peace was maintained by the international balance-of-power political system and the international economy maintained through the gold standard. Though the breakdown of these systems were the proximate causes of World Wars I and II, Polanyi considered the domestic political-economic configuration of the self-regulating market, artificially maintained by the liberal state, to be the underlying root cause of the seemingly stable, but ultimately superficial 19th century civilization.3 Polanyi has not been alone in suggesting the concept of a 19th century peace.4 Indeed, in terms of average battle durations, battle deaths per year, and a host of other statistical criteria, 19th century Europe does not rate with either the 18th or the 20th century versions of itself.5 As Polanyi figures it – ‘apart from the Crimean War – a more or less colonial event - England, France, Prussia, Austria, Italy, and Russia were engaged in war among each other for altogether only eighteen months,’ compared to an average of sixty to seventy years of major wars in the 17th and 18th centuries.6 Though Polanyi does not provide his data sources, the proportions of his facts seem to bear out according to his criteria. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Great Powers were involved in war 94% and 78% of the time, respectively, compared to 40% of the time in the 19th century (including the Napoleonic Wars of 1800-1815).7 If we focus on wars between Polanyi’s ‘Great Powers’ - the Austro-Sardinian War (1848-49), the Roman Republic War (1849), The
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______________________________________________________________ War of Italian Unification (1859), The Seven Weeks War (1866), and the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) amounted to a total of 17.7 months.8 However, before accepting Polanyi’s claim outright, his calculation needs to be examined further. For one, there is no reason why the Crimean War should be left out – it was not ‘a colonial event,’ as Polanyi suggested, but was rather one of the century’s most significant wars, involving Britain, France, and Turkey against Russia. The war dramatically shifted the balanceof-power as Austria-Hungary became isolated from the Holy Alliance;9 Russia stalled its persistent incursion through the Caucasus and Black Sea in the hopes of seizing Constantinople;10 while Britain preserved the Ottoman Empire and its communications network to India. As Winfried Baumgart suggests, ‘if the fighting had carried on during 1856, the First World War would then have taken place 60 years earlier.’11 Adding this conflict’s 28.3 months back into the calculation brings the ‘Great Power’ total to 46.0 months – nearly 4 years. This is still a long shot from previous centuries’ 60 to 70 years of major wars. But, Polanyi’s six powers, while the greatest, were not the only European, or ‘Western’ powers during this period as states declined out of, or entered into the core inter-state system. One could add the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), Holland, Spain, the United States, Japan, and China by the end of the period. Wars between these twelve powers would yield an additional 95 months of war between ‘Western’ powers.12 Finally, if one adds all of the wars that were not between these powers, but involved one or more of the powers against weaker states, like the newly independent Latin Americanor Balkan states an additional 125.5 ‘nation-months’ of war can be accounted for.13 Adding colonial wars by these powers against non-state actors yields an astonishing additional 790.8 months. All of these figures combined amounts to approximately 88.11 years of war in which major powers were involved. There is no way to characterize states as peaceful during this period of time. They were involved in nearly constant preparation for, and execution of, war at home or abroad. Using a slightly different data set from 1648-1989, Kalevi Holsti determined that the ninety-nine years after the Congress of Vienna had only a 13% lower occurrence rate of war than the previous period - one war every 3.3 years compared to one every 2.8 years.14 Yet, Holsti notes: Except for the three brief wars of German nation-building and Russia’s armed interventions into Hungary and Poland at mid-century, the centre of Europe running from London, through Paris, Berlin, and Vienna constituted a significant zone of peace.15
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______________________________________________________________ Indeed, this was part of Polanyi’s point. Rather than peace between powers, one can think of ‘pacified regions’ upon which a transnational economy could take place. Several sociologists have noted the way the war-making nation-state in this period ‘caged’ citizens within boundaries.16 Anthony Giddens, employing some of Foucault’s categories, suggested that this was due, in part, to a routinised system of surveillance, which allowed for an externalisation of military functions.17 ‘It involves…not the decline of war but a concentration of military power ‘pointing outwards’ towards other states in the nation-state system.’18 Yet, during the 19th century, the military was still called up during labour and bread riots, fought irregular revolutionaries, and was only gradually supplemented by (not replaced by) police and paramilitary forces.19 Polanyi described the first third of the hundred years’ peace, as being under the firm grip of the Holy Alliance (Prussia, Austria, and Russia): ‘Its armies were roaming up and down Europe putting down minorities and repressing majorities.’20 This was partially true within the territories they were responsible for, which included the minimally militarised remnants of the Holy Roman Empire. The army did not exist solely for repressive purposes, however, nor could a military achieve such ends without political and legislative mechanisms in the form of local concessions and alliances between middle classes (Bürgerlich) and old regime nobles and patricians. Still, Giovanni Arrighi, following Polanyi, described the Holy Alliance and the Concert of Europe, the two primary diplomatic mechanisms to emerge from the Treaty of Vienna in 1815, as ‘an instrument of British governance of the continental balance of power.’21 While the novelty of the postNapoleonic international system, arranged primarily through Prince Metternich of Austria, was a commitment toward domestic order,22 Britain was actually notably absent from Continental diplomatic issues and spent most of the period consolidating its overseas empire. Jeremy Black outlined the three main functions of the military in the 19th century: international, domestic and colonial.23 The weaponry, organizational systems, logistics and communications employed were similar, but in the case of domestic conflict, for example, the fighting took place in urban environments, quite different from the traditional open field battles of previous eras. Colonial action consumed much of the military’s attention, particularly in Britain and France – the two dominant colonial powers throughout the period. Michael Mann suggested that many colonial conflicts, such as those against the Zulu, the Mahdi, and the Sheriffians were often considered ‘war games’ by military staffs in which new technologies could be experimented with and opportunities for promotion could be determined.24 The British empire grew at an average annual pace of about 100,000 square miles between 1815 and 1865,25 and by the 20th century held
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______________________________________________________________ a quarter of the world’s land surface and nearly the same proportion of the world’s population.26 Though Lenin, adapting J.A. Hobson’s ‘surplus capital’ theory,27 considered imperialism to be driven by the economic necessity of incorporating ‘outside’ markets into the capitalist ‘inside,’28 materialist considerations were not always dominant for the imperial players. As the Golden Age of capitalist growth (1848-1873)29 settled into its deflationary and big industrial phase,30 imperialism had become a cultural necessity. Though British military support was never removed from material considerations, the Empire was not always cost-effective. Some happy accidents like the discovery of gold and diamonds in South Africa (which led to the Boer War of 1899-1902)31 had demonstrated to Cecil Rhodes and others - no territory, however barren, should be left unclaimed. As other powers, notably Germany and Russia, began encroaching on key regions, especially those along communications routes, ‘geopolitical imperialism,’32 that is, imperialism for its own sake became the order of the day. For the era of two Industrial Revolutions, the impact of war-making and the military-as-customer is rarely given due credit. For example, in Britain, new coke-fired blast furnaces were installed in Wales and Scotland during the Napoleonic Wars despite substantial investment risk and expense. Both the absolute volume and the mix of products that came from British factories and forges between 1793-1815 were profoundly affected by government expenditures for war purposes.33 These ironworks, in conjunction with the substantial organizational apparatus at dry-docks for naval construction, were the prime industrial advantages in British hands as they entered the 19th century. Similarly, across the Atlantic, mass-production of arms by New England factories for the Civil War and overseas export were a part of that region’s industrial dominance and were among the early sites to popularise F.W. Taylor’s scientific management techniques.34 Much of the entrepreneurial innovation in the period was directed towards weapons of mass destruction, by men like Hiram Maxim and Alfred Krupp, and lesser known crackpot engineers enticed by stricter patent rights.35 Furthermore, it must be remembered that this was primarily a naval century and the evolution from wooden galleons to ironclads to torpedo boats to Dreadnaught battleships was one of the notable achievements in an era excited by engineering. By the 1880s this development in ships, artillery, rifles, and shells was being accomplished by what William McNeill termed, a ‘command technology’ system,36 which was essentially a military-industrialcomplex eighty years before Dwight Eisenhower coined the term. Certainly, rationalized organization was the major development within militaries during the long peace. As medieval colleges in Göttingen, Berlin, and elsewhere codified their curricula to become modern research universities, military colleges, originating first in France at the École Spéciale
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______________________________________________________________ Militaire de Saint-Cyr in 1802, were established to expand the technical capabilities of soldiers. Initially education was only required of artillerymen, who needed special engineering skills, but the mathematically-minded Napoleon encouraged further knowledge within the ranks. As military theorists like Antoine-Henri Jomini codified the principles of Napoleonic warfare, which emphasized flexible corps and sharp, direct attack, the armies of Europe became academically imitated and uniform. The application of scientific principles to military affairs led to the creation of General Staffs and the autonomous power of militaries.37 This would have devastating consequences during World War I when military strategies like the rapid mobilization schedule in Russia and the German Schlieffen Plan were executed by default without leaving time for diplomats to negotiate.38 In the latter case, geopolitics by map had the Germans automatically invade Belgium to eliminate France, ensuring Britain’s entry into the war, without the foreknowledge of either the chancellor or the kaiser! Though the need for technical skills allowed a certain amount of meritocracy to enter the nepotistic military hierarchy, war was still left, by and large, to the old regime. The vast majority of officers were drawn from landed nobility and gentry, especially in the General Staffs, which represented a sharp contrast to the democratising societies at large. The same holds true of diplomats, as Michael Mann pointed out: ‘Foreign policy remained the private domain of a small group of notables, plus special interest groups advising the few politicians who aspired to be ‘statesman’.’39 Routine foreign policy was handled by a small ruling elite, even in parliamentary countries like Britain, France, and the United States, as, indeed, it still is today. Only in crises and wars were outside parties consulted. Yet, it was precisely at this stage that the transnational economic class Polanyi identified as haute finance became involved.40 After all it was the members of this elite class of bondholders, embodied in the Rothschilds and J.P. Morgan, who would have to float the loans required to pay for wars. The international financial class, which owed allegiance to no single government, was, in Polanyi’s view, primarily responsible for the hundred years’ peace. Though he noted: They were anything but pacifists; they had made their fortune in the financing of wars; they were impervious to moral consideration; they had no objection to any number of minor, short, or localized wars.41 Ultimately, the transnational capitalist class was interested in the preservation of the core international markets. Significant disruptions of economic activity within Western countries would jeopardize long-term
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______________________________________________________________ investments, like railroads, while a decline of commerce between warring nations could amount to substantial economic losses. Even the threat of war could impact bond markets reflecting the credit-worthiness of European governments.42 Though Polanyi overestimated the ‘intimate contact between finance and diplomacy,’43 for, as we have seen, the old regime still ruled the day in inter-state politics, the effect of financial variables was a real and novel factor in 19th century considerations of war and peace. Polanyi, however, was wrong to suggest that economics was the sole and primary cause of peace during this period. Cultural, political, racial, and pure military considerations were just as important at various times in deflecting Great Power statesmen away from war with each other. And, in any case, the option to go to war with weaker peoples overseas was the road most frequently travelled. The pacification of the core of the emerging world economic system was an important step in the spread of the Western financial system, but more importantly, the spread of Western civilization. As we consider the instability and fragility of this financial system today, we must recall that one hundred years ago a world war was considered both impossible and probable, as Henri Bergson pointed out.44 We must not take our Fifty-Seven Years’ Peace (and counting) for granted, and neither should we ignore the violence within and without our ‘advanced’ societies.
Notes 1
N Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, Penguin Press, New York, 2006, pp. l. 2 K Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Beacon Press, Boston, MA, 2001, p. 5. 3 The notion of the Hundred Years’ Peace is not the core of Polanyi’s argument in The Great Transformation. Rather, the process by which the market economy became ‘disembedded’ from society during the English Industrial Revolution consumes the bulk of the book. The following critique of Polanyi’s notion of 19th century geopolitics should not invalidate his seminal contribution to the field of economic sociology and economic history. 4 H Kissinger, Diplomacy, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1994; K Holsti, Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648-1989, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ; New York, 1991.; M Mann, The Sources of Social Power V ol. II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1993. 5 C Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990, Blackwell, Cambridge, Mass., 1990, pp. 72-74. 6 Polanyi, op. cit., p. 5.
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Ibid., p. 72; Tilly’s of definition of Great Powers is slightly more inclusive than Polanyi’s, see Tilly, Ibid., p. 170 8 Calculation based on JD Singer & M Small, The Wages of War, 1816-1965: A Statistical Handbook, Wiley, New York,, 1972. 9 Kissinger, op. cit., p. 93-94. 10 A Avtorkhanov & M Broxup. The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance Towards the Muslim World, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1992. 11 W Baumgart, The Crimean War: 1853-1856, Oxford University Press, London & New York, 1999. 12 Calculation based on Singer and Small, as is the calculation below. 13 M Centeno, Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pa., 2002; J Black, War in the Nineteenth Century: 1800-1914, Polity, Cambridge, 2009. 14 Holsti, op. cit., p. 142. Holsti excludes some conflicts, like the MexicanAmerican War, which did not ‘impact’ the system of mutual relations. 15 Ibid., p. 142. 16 A Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence: A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1985; Mann, loc. cit.; Tilly, loc. cit.; 17 See M Foucault, Power, Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, New Press, New York, 2000. Foucault’s inversion of Clausewitz’ dictum was: ‘politics is the continuation of war by other means’ M Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1977-1978, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007, p. 123.; see C Clausewitz, On War, Penguin, London, 1968. 18 Giddens, op. cit. p. 192; Mann, op. cit. pp. 405-406. 19 Mann, loc. cit.. 20 Polanyi, op. cit. p. 7. 21 Arrighi, op. cit. p. 54. 22 Kissinger, loc. cit.; P Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994. 23 Black, War in the Nineteenth Century: 1800-1914, p. 204. 24 Mann, op. cit., p. 436. 25 P Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, Vintage Books, New York, 1989. 26 N Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, Basic Books, New York, 2003. 27 This is still the dominant Marxist analysis of imperialism, in which capital cannot find enough domestic outlets for its surplus and must export it imperially. For the modern version of this theory, which corresponds with the idea of ‘Military Keynesianism,’ see P Baran & P Sweezy, Monopoly
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______________________________________________________________ Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1966.; M Hardt & A Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2000.; For an effective critique of this perspective, see R Aron, The Century of Total War, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1954, pp. 56-73. 28 VI Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline, Foreign Languages Pub. House, Moscow, 1917; see also the Second International Socialist Congress, ‘Resolution Adopted at the Second International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart’, http://www.marxists.org/ history/international/social-democracy/1907/militarism.htm. Accessed 11-2909 2009. 29 E Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875, Vintage Books, New York, 1996. 30 A Chandler, Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism, Belknap Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1990.; J Schumpeter, Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process, McGraw-Hill, New York, London,, 1939; E Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 1875-1914, Pantheon Books, New York, 1987. 31 T Pakenham, The Boer War, Random House, New York, 1979.; B Nasson, The South African War 1899-1902, Oxford University Press, New York, 1999.; H Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, A Harvest Book, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York,1973, pp. 198-200.; Ferguson, Empire, loc. cit. 32 Mann, op. cit., p. 34. Mann identified 6 ideal strategies of capitalist imperialism: 1. Laissez-faire; 2. National protectionism; 3. Mercantilist domination; 4 Economic imperialism; 5. Social imperialism; 6. Geopolitical imperialism 33 McNeill, op. cit., p. 211. 34 MR Smith, Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Perspectives on the American Experience, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1985. 35 McNeill, loc. cit. 36 Ibid., 278-85. 37 Mann, loc. cit. 38 Kissinger, op. cit.; Mann, op. cit. 39 Mann, op. cit., p. 416. 40 Polanyi, op. cit., p. 7. 41 Ibid., p. 11. 42 N Ferguson The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000, Basic Books, New York, 2001, p. 277. 43 Polanyi, op. cit., p. 10. 44 H Herwig, The Outbreak of World War I: Causes and Responsibilities 5th edn., D.C. Heath and Co., Lexington, Mass., 1991, p. 10.
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Bibliography Arendt, H., The Origins of Totalitarianism. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1973. Arrighi, G., The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times. Verso, London & New York, 2010. Baumgart, W., The Crimean War: 1853-1856. Oxford University Press, London & New York, 1999. Black, J., War in the Nineteenth Century: 1800-1914. Polity, Cambridge, 2009. Ferguson, N., The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West. Penguin Press, New York, 2006. Gay, P., The Cultivation of Hatred: The Bourgeois Experience - Victoria to Freud. Oxford University Press, New York, 1984. Giddens, A., The Nation-State and Violence: A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1985. Herwig, H., The Outbreak of World War I: Causes and Responsibilities, 5th edn. D.C. Heath and Co., Lexington, Mass., 1991. Hobsbawm, E.J., The Age of Empire, 1875-1914. Pantheon Books, New York, 1987. _______
, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875. Vintage Books, New York, 1996.
Holsti, K., Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order, 16481989. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; New York, 1991. Kiernan, V.G., The Lords of Human Kind: European Attitudes to Other Cultures in the Imperial Age. Serif, London, 1995. Lenin, V.I., Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline. Foreign Languages Pub. House, Moscow, 1917.
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______________________________________________________________ Levy, J. & Thompson, W., Causes of War. John Wiley & Sons, Malden, Mass, 2010. Mann, M., The Sources of Social Power, Vol. I. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge & New York, 1986. _______
, States, War, and Capitalism: Studies in Political Sociology. Blackwell, Oxford & New York, 1988. _______
, The Sources of Social Power Vol. II: The Rise of Classes and NationStates, 1760-1914. Cambridge University Press, New York, 1993. McNeill, W.H., The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1982. Mumford, L., Technics and Civilization. Harcourt, New York, 1963. Polanyi, K., The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Beacon Press, Boston, MA, 2001. Singer, J.D. & Small, M., The Wages of War, 1816-1965: A Statistical Handbook. Wiley, New York, 1972. Tilly, C., Coercion, Capital, and European States, Ad 990-1990. B. Blackwell, Cambridge, Mass., USA, 1990. Weber, M., Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Vol. 2, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1978. Eric Royal Lybeck is currently pursuing his PhD in Sociology at the University of Tennessee – Knoxville.
Peacekeeping without Banisters: The Need for New Practices that go Beyond Just War Theory1 Anya Topolski Abstract While there may be nothing new under the sun in terms of warfare, there are two new trends in the post-Cold war era that are strikingly at odds with each other: the resurgence of just war theory and the increase in UN led peacekeeping operations. On the one hand, there has been an explosion of just war theory since 9/11 because of the crisis of the nation state seeking to find new rhetoric to legitimate violence, while on the other hand, peacekeeping, in its UN Blue beret guise, has had over fifty new UN peacekeeping missions since the 1990s. These two trends seem to work against each other not only in theory but also in practice. Because of the relatively new appearance of peacekeeping missions, there has been a lacuna in the need to develop a distinct theoretical ground – one which both challenges the theoretical foundations of just war theory but also one which rehumanises the military’s mission. It is my contention that the norms of just war theory are unsuitable for peacekeeping activities and that there is an urgent need to seek new practices for the latter. According to Julian LindleyFrench of NATO, ‘The distinctions between peacekeeping, peacemaking and warfighting are becoming rapidly meaningless in the context of a ‘threeblock’ war, that is war involving humanitarian activities, stabilisation and high-intensity war fighting’. If...and I mean to stress if, there can be a difference between war and peacekeeping, this difference is lost in the fog of peacekeeping and its paradoxically normative basis in just war theory.2 Key Words: Arendt, 9/11, UN peacekeeping mission, war theory, NATO, military mission. ***** It is incongruous to assume that peacekeeping can differ significantly from war if it relies upon the same personnel, the same technology and most importantly the same norms – that of the just war tradition. If we consider only a few of the radical transformations that have occurred within the world and specifically within a military context such as the new technologies, the return of the tactics of guerrilla warfare taken up by terrorists, and the rejection of warfare by nations whose soldiers now serve in peace-keeping/enforcing missions, it is essential that peacekeeping seek its own roots in a humanising logic based in relationality and an Arendtian form of reflection and judgement. To prove my point, I provide two examples of
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______________________________________________________________ the misapplication of the norms of just war theory to peacekeeping. First, given that the just war tradition assumes a simplistic duality between invader and invaded, it does not address the reality of most international military missions - which are of an OOTW nature and involve a variety of third parties. Secondly, with the introduction of an immense variety of technology, transforming the battlefield into a computer laboratory, Network Enabled Operations (NEO) have completely altered the space and contents of such missions. By developing these examples, I will demonstrate the continuous misapplication of the just war approach to the realities of conflict-resolution in the 21st century.34 In response, I provide an early sketch of model for logic of peacekeeping. I put forward a notion of relationality, which undercuts the us/them frame. Secondly, I argue that the NEO allows for shared knowledge, which leads to a shared responsibility, and thirdly I develop a pedagogical model, which challenges the current product of the post WWII process of dehumanising soldiers in order to increase their ability to kill without remorse. 1.
A Just War is not the same as a Just Peace While Clausewitz spoke of the fog of war, he could never have imagined the fog of peacekeeping – soldiers who have for centuries clung to their norms and orders are sent across the world without either. It is this ambiguity, this uncertainty that makes ‘operations other than war’ (OOTW), such as peacekeeping, peacemaking and humanitarian interventions, such difficult notions to delineate. While such interventions were born in the coldwar period, they have only recently come into their, this however does not mean that their growing pains are at an end. In fact, as the recent surge in requests for UN peacekeepers demonstrates, this potential alternative to warfare is just beginning to mature. If peacekeeping is to become an autonomous adult and free itself from the violent chains of its roots, those of warfare legitimised by just war theorists, it is imperative that the adjective other find both meaning and depth. ‘In international law the motive for embarking on a war (jus ad bellum) is crucial to its legality: initiating hostilities in self defence is authorized by international law’. I argue that the ontological basis of just war theory makes peacekeeping impossible because it relies on a ‘logic of war’, that is an us vs. them frame that dehumanises the other. This frame is the product of any argument rooted in self-defence (jus ad bellum) which cannot escape the simplistic vision of a self attacked by an other, enemy or stranger. It is but a small theoretical step, and immense indoctrination, that leads from this us/them frame to a dehumanising logic that results all too often in genocide. Kaldor makes a similar claim in her account of ‘new wars’ in which civilian causalities approach 80%. This simplistic ‘logic of war’, a logic that is rooted in a frame of us vs. them,
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______________________________________________________________ which must slowly be dismantled in order for peacekeepers to have a chance of succeeding. Without going into the history of the just war tradition, it is important to recall that both its roots within antiquity and its early praxis within the medieval period were times when the notion of war was not as morally contested as it is today, times when the equation of stranger with uncivilized or inhumane barbarians was both widespread and politically correct. While contemporary post-war theorists have sought to keep this tradition up-to-date thereby reducing these immoral and antiquated aspects, I would argue that traces and gaps remain.5 It is impossible to completely eliminate the roots of a doctrine that has played such a pivotal role in ‘Western’, and specifically Christian, imperialism. This type of discourse, does nothing to further peace – rather it thwarts its stated end. This logic is rooted in a division, identity politics like frame of us/them that denies our relationality and common humanity. This kind of logic can never lead to perpetual peace. On the contrary, the result of the current approach has produced problematic consequences for those involved. The list of UN peacekeeping missions that have gone terrible awry in the recent past is quite possibly the result of an inadequate reflection on the distinct nature of peacekeeping and the importance of seeking a ground other than that of just war theory. 2.
Peacekeeping within a Networked Enabled Operation ‘In this hyper-electronic age, security and defence are merging to create global interdependence and mutual vulnerability’. While one may wish to reflect upon operations other than war in abstract, the reality of all armed forces – which rarely work in isolation – is that most missions are enabled by means of a vast complex and dynamic network. One would be hard pressed to find a mission that is not at least a combination of military operations (joint); the reality being that the vast majority are either coalition/combined operations or multi-agency (comprehensive/whole of government). In addition to supporting my claim that the essence of conflict, and conflict resolution, is radically different today, a network enabled operation (NEO) whether peacekeeping or warfare presents new ethical dilemmas to all armed forces.6,7,8 NEO is largely based on the technological capability of connecting information systems (sensors, databases) for fast distribution and accessibility of information. The assumption is that with the capability of information sharing the parties will involve in active linking with each other and develop a higher form of collaboration, which is however not a natural development in an arena with very diverse parties. Part of the logic of peacekeeping I aim to put forward as an alternative to the default logic of war justified by means of JWT is that this increased knowledge and communication should be
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______________________________________________________________ understood as a moral imperative for greater shared responsibility within networked enabled operations. Today’s ‘weapons’ range from the traditional arms of the past, to laptops, gsms, robots etc (amidst a diversity of yet classified technological innovations). The introduction of technology does more to military ethics than is often recognised. It allows for the introduction of new relational notions of shared responsibility. This is precisely the argument made in ‘Moral Fitness for Peace Operations’ that ‘the scale, complexity, and scope of operations of operating systems and technology in the military operationsother-than-war are leveraging moral dilemmas in new ways’.9 One of the most underemphasized changes concerns the means by which decisions are made from communications to judgments and responsibility. While the military has always been seen as the trope of the hierarchical relation with very little space for feedback loops and challenges to authority, the introduction of a networked approach has forced the military to come into the 21st century defined by intersubjective and interactional dynamic communications. Rather than the traditional pyramid structure, NEO has given room to develop a dynamic tension between horizontal and vertical forms of relationality each of which is marked by different values, norms of judgment and standards of responsibility. It is this somewhat ‘post-modern’ reality that the military today must strive to understand and to train its peacekeepers to think from within a NEO rather than view themselves as somehow separate from the network.10 3.
Peacekeeping without Banisters By ways of a conclusion, I would like to briefly sketch an alternative logic of peacekeeping greatly inspired by Arendt and consequently labelled ‘peacekeeping without banisters’. In agreement with Kaldor, ‘in the globalised new wars, thinking based on inside and outside has less meaning ... borders are blurred’, it is therefore imperative that peacekeeping without banisters aims to think, judge and act beyond an us/them frame. To do so at minimum three steps are required: 1) 2) 3)
A re-humanising logic of relationality that denies the legitimacy of us/them thinking.11 A moral imperative associated to the usage of NEO, such that knowledge implies responsibility. A pedagogical model of 2-in-1 thinking and judging to help prepare soldiers for the above.
The first step towards peacekeeping without banisters is to seek a means to justify peacekeeping without recourse to JWT. While Arendt does not provide a ready-made alternative, she does advice against theoretical
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______________________________________________________________ models that are often to rigidly tied to rules. In addition, she provides a model of the world that is not rooted in the autonomous liberal self or the absolute sovereignty of nation-states. This alternative phenomenological model of the world is one rooted in relationality of persons that does not end with artificially created borders. It is this web of relations that implies shared responsibility for the world recognising the networked or interconnected reality of our times. Such a worldly approach offers a great many avenues of justification for peacekeeping that are not fundamentally rooted in disguised self-defence or personal gain. Furthermore, the dynamic and non-hierarchical communication of networked operations makes it such that communication is either one-dimensional or uni-directional. The traditional picture of the military as hierarchical vertical and absolutely autonomous is being replaced by a dynamic and horizontal network of interdependence.12 The type of situational, relational, and responsible thinking that is necessary cannot be located in an ethical approach that provides clear rules or easy answers. There are no easy answers or clear rules for taking responsibility for the relationality of the world. This is precisely the reality of peacekeeping that cannot be underestimated. It is the reality that one chooses to help another, putting oneself at risk by so doing, without knowing precisely how to do so and without the certainty of success. The above is markedly different from war, which is rooted in selfinterest, such as self-defence, which provides a different justification for such risks and has very concrete goals and aims that can be defined by those engaging in war.13 Peacekeeping without banisters is rooted in relationality, a perspective from which to judge and justify that challenges the us/them frame and thinks in an interdependent and inter-responsible dynamic networked frame. Peacekeepers must accept the risk, asymmetry and uncertainty of their commitment. Conflicts, like those that contribute to them (human beings) are not predictable, they are irrational, chaotic and all too often (from an outsiders perspective) inconsequential. A theory is sought specifically to avoid the realities of conflict – chaos, risk, asymmetry and uncertainty. If peacekeepers really wish to serve others, they must embrace these realities rather than seek to conceal them by means of theories. Rather than turn to the fixed and non-particular standards of traditional ethical theories, Arendt proposes that we seek the standards for our judgments in the between, that is in the relations between people, in our fundamental relationality. Arendt describes a type of thinking process, the 2-in-1, which demands that one consider the perspective of others; thereby integrating different understandings, in one’s own reflective process. This relational thinking allows the person required to make decisions to consider the needs, goals and dignity of the other and to go beyond her own limited and often dogmatic perspective.14 This allows for one’s conclusions and actions to be rooted in relationality, in a perspective that understands the world to be shared by all
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______________________________________________________________ human beings. By means of communication, by exchanging stories rich with examples from which we can all learn, by listening, we create a web of relations that provides a post-foundational ground for judgment.15 Such a web is not externally imposed by military educators, it arises from the interactions and experiences of the peacekeeper. While the military approach remains the dominant influence in this web, there is space for other perspectives, which can serve both to support or challenge, when necessary. As such a web is part of the peacekeeper, it helps them to make difficult choices in difficult situations with or without the presence of others.16 By making relationality central to reflection and judgment, a peacekeeper has the ability to make better judgments, to always turn ‘in’ to find their own voice and reason for engaging in peacekeeping, to make choices without clear rules of engagement and to be able to justify to themselves, to other members of the network, to the media and latter to society. It is precisely such a skill of thinking, judging and acting without banisters that is fundamentally necessary for peacekeepers in networked environment. It is a way of thinking and acting that transcends the selfperpetuating and destructive logic of war that cannot be avoided by theories such as that of just war that are rooted in frames of us vs. them. It is these latter frames that fail to appreciate the basic relationality that prioritizes responsibility rather than blame. An ethics of relationality requires that peacekeepers ask themselves how am I responsible, what can I do rather than simply assuming there is a ‘them’ that is somehow distinct from the self, or the ‘us’. While there are no guarantees attached to such an approach, we must also remember that the guarantees provided by just war theory are similarly illusive. The reality of human interaction and certainly of conflict is such that guarantees are impossible. Peacekeepers must therefore learn to think without banisters. Rather we must strive to embrace the unicity of peacekeeping in a networked environment and with it the importance of thinking, judging and acting relationally. This is the basis of our responsibility to the other and for the world we all inhabit.
Notes 1
This research is part of the research program ‘Moral fitness of military personnel in a networked operation environment’, which is supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) under grant number 313-99-110. 2 Again, if there can be a difference, this difference, I want to argue is rooted in the intentions for intervention. War cannot escape egoistic intentions often disguised as self defence, while peacekeeping might arise out of a sense of guilt or responsibility – past or present (usually both) – connected to such
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______________________________________________________________ desires to engage in warfare for selfish reasons. While this is also a form of repressed egoism, it is an egoism that is humanising and not dehumanising. 3 While many just war theorists claim that the dilemma for the military is due to the rise of the Enlightenment ideas of humanism, and as such call for its end, they have failed to appreciate that the alternative means the end of the universalists roots of just war theory itself. 4 ‘It wasn’t only that they wanted to avoid anything like the My Lai massacre in future wars; they wanted, like professional soldiers everywhere, to distinguish their profession from mere butchery. And because of their Vietnam experience, they believed that this had to be done systematically; it required not only a code but also a theory.’. 5 Without intending to deny the noteworthy attempt to introduce the category of jus post bellum, its principles and interpretation remain highly disputed. To learn more about the disputed status of jus post bellum see: D McCready, ‘Ending the War Right: Jus Post Bellum and the Just War Tradition; and A Bellamy, ‘The Responsibility of Victory: Jus Post Bellum and the Just War’, Refining Jus Post Bellum. Bosanquet seeks to sort through these disagreements and comes to the conclusion that ‘the jus post bellum bandwagon, if you will, has filled up with musicians who have yet to get on the same sheet of music’. This musical cacophony cannot be ignored, it is a warning sign of the limitations of just war theory with regard to operations OTHER than war. While just war theory and its rapidly growing list of adaptations (jus post bellum, jus ante bellum and jus in disciplina bellica) may speak to the moral needs of warfare, the same cannot be said when applied to peacekeeping missions. While certain needs are similar, the differences cannot be denied. The current approach could be likened to trying to put a right-handed glove on one’s left hand. It might be possible in the short term, but in the long term it is clear that it simply does not fit. 6 The notion itself of ‘armed’ forces – that is weaponised soldiers and drones – comes into question in an NEO. 7 This has clearly been recognised by advocates of the terms Network Enabled Capabilities (NEC) and Network Enabled Operations (NEO), both of which aim to eliminate traces of warfare that were transparent in the term Network Centric Warfare (NCW). 8 NCW as concept arose from the evolution of information technology and competitive business concepts that transformed operational capabilities perspectives from a location or platform level orientation to a network level orientation. It enables a much faster and more effective warfighting style, characterized by the new concepts of speed of command and selfsynchronization. The follow-up NEC and NEO concepts focus on the ability to couple various capabilities – resources, expertise, knowledge – of the
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______________________________________________________________ mission partners through an information and communication infrastructure. Whereas the sound is humanistic, the concepts cover a strong technological orientation with unwarranted psychological and almost mechanistic assumptions that give an infrastructure participants in the network who may have large differences in goals and intentions will naturally shared information and collaborate. 9 See also F Iersel, T van Baarda and D Verweij. ‘Preparing Soldiers for Responsibility. 10 Those who have gone beyond just war theory, have in fact begun to ask these questions. Appreciating the novelty of networks in the military, Essens, Punte and Cornelissen describe how the military notion of temporality and the spatial means of dynamic discourse are altered by means of communication networks, a change that needs to be further studied 11 The temptation is of course to argue that such a logic is natural and has simply be trained/indoctrinated ‘out’ of soldiers in order to make them more efficient in a post WWII climate. While there is certainly evidence and research that point in this direction, I will not address the question of what is natural/human nature with regard to killing in this paper. 12 In addition, as a result of the increasing numbers of missions in poor conflict ridden corners of the globe, soldiers need to be trained to be culturally sensitive. Cultures transcend such norms which themselves are culturally bound. One only has to consider how tensions connected to gender and heternormativity were played out both in Iraq and Afghanistan to realise the importance of such training. 13 With regard to the second blind spot of just war theory, given the reality of conflicts, such as that of terrorism, and the fog of peacekeeping, what is needed in terms of training is precisely contrary to what was valued in traditional warfare. Rather than simply following orders, like Eichmann did, soldiers need to be able to think, to make decisions and to justify their choices. While traditionally this was the task of officers, it is slowly being recognised that such skills are needed at all levels. While the Canadian military is the only one to have chosen to train all its soldiers in this manner, many other armed forces are considering similar steps. 14 Ideally this process happens in dialogue with others but if this is not possible, which is certainly the case in interlinguistic and intercultural environments such as that of peacekeeping, it is important to learn how to think beyond one’s own norms. 15 While this web may not be as tangible as the norms of just war theory, it brings several practical advantages for peacekeeping. In his retelling of the events that lead to the Rwandan genocide, Lt. General Roméo Dallaire often engages in such an exercise before making a decision. While this activity
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______________________________________________________________ alone was not able to stop the genocide, it certainly helped Dallaire and the soldiers under his command to justify their choices to themselves and others and to continue to serve the people of Rwanda in a situation where so many others quit. 16 This is what Arendt refers to as the Socratic 2-in-1. Through one’s interactions with others, which of course includes one’s military training, two voices develop within one’s mind, that of the plurality of perspectives discovered by means of dialogue and one’s own voice (which is by no means fixed). Judgments, in this picture, are best made by means of a 2-in-1, whether real such as within a public space, or virtually, as in within one’s mind. However, in both cases, a plurality of other perspectives is available. While traditional military approaches may desire to silence this latter plurality, it is precisely the reality of having to consider other options that forces one to think through one’s choice helping one to understand ones choice, helping one to justify this choice and making it very difficult to deny one responsibility for this choice. What more, such a plurality helps one never to forget the nature of relationality and the importance of considering the needs and perspectives of all those involved in the situation.
Bibliography Arendt, H., Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin Books, New York, 1992. _______
, Essays in Understanding: 1930-1954. Harcourt Press, Houghton Mifflin, 1994. _______
, Responsibility and Judgment. Ed. Jerome Kohn, Schocken Books, New York, 2005. Asad, T., ‘Thinking about Terrorism and Just War’. Cambridge Review of International Affairs. Vol. 23:1, 2009, pp. 3-24. Bellamy, A., ‘The Responsibility of Victory: Jus Post Bellum and the Just War’. Review of International Studies. Vol. 34 (4), 2008, pp. 601-25. Blocq, D., ‘The Fog of UN Peacekeeping’. Journal of Military Ethics. Vol. 5(3), 2006, pp. 201-213.
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______________________________________________________________ Bosanquet, Lt. C., ‘Refining Jus Post Bellum’. Religion and the Military and The Military and Codes of Ethics. Springfield, Virginia, 2007. http://www. usafa.edu/isme/ISME07/Bosanquet07.html. Brown, W., ‘Porous Sovereignty, Walled Democracy’. Seattle Distinguished Katz Lecture. Thursday April 10th 2010. (Book Forthcoming). Butler, J., Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? Verso, London, 2009. Cebrowski, A. & Garstka, J., ‘Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future’. U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. Vol. 124, no. 1, January 1998, pp. 28–35. Cloud D., ‘Pentagon Review Calls For No Big Changes’. New York Times. Feb 2, 2006. Croser, C., ‘Commanding the Future: Command and Control in a Networked Environment’. Defense & Security Analysis. Vol. 22(2), 2006, pp. 197-202. Dallaire, R., Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Da Capo Press, 2004. Essens, P., Punte, P. & Cornelissen, M., Human Systems Integration for Network Centric Warfare. RTO-TR-HFM-155, 2009. Essens, P., Spiegeleire, S. , Treurniet, W. & Spaans, M. ‘C2 That! Command and Control in the Post-Industrial Age’. TNO Report. Soesterberg The Netherlands, 2010. Evans, M., ‘Moral Responsibilities and the Conflicting Demands of Jus Post Bellum’. Ethics and International Affairs. Vol.l. June 22, 2009, pp. 147-164. Garstka, Alberts & Stein, Network Centric Warfare: Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority. CCRP, 2000. Iersel F., van Baarda, T. & Verweij, D., ‘Preparing Soldiers for Responsibility, Integrity and Transparency in the Dutch Armed Forces: Exploring the Realm of Dilemma Training’. Journal of Power and Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Review. Vol. 2(1), 2006, pp. 42-67.
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______________________________________________________________ Lindley-French, J., ‘News Big World, Big Future, Big NATO’. NATO Newsletter. Jan 18th 2006. Kaldor, M. & Basker, V., New Wars. Pinter, London, 1997. Kaldor M., New & Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2002. Marchart, O., Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2007. McCready, D., ‘Ending the War Right: Just Post Bellum and the Just War Tradition’. Journal of Military Ethics. Vol. 8 (1), 2009, pp. 66-78. Mitcham, C., ‘The Spectrum of Ethical Issues Associated with the Military Support of Science and Technology’. Annals New York Academy of Sciences. Vol. 577, 1989, pp. 1-9. O’Driscoll, C., ‘Introduction to James Turner Johnson and the Recovery of the Just War Tradition’. Journal of Military Ethics. Vol. 8, e 3., 2009, pp. 163-164. Orend, B., The Morality of War. Broadview Press, 2006. Richardson, Verweij and Winslow, ‘Moral Fitness for Peace Operations’. Journal of Political and Military Sociology. Vol. 24(1), 2004, pp. 99-113. Robinson, P., De Lee, N. & Carrick, D., Ethics Education in the Military. Surrey, Ashgate, 2008. Schott, R., ‘Just War and the Problem of Evil’. Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Theory. Vol. 23 (2) April-June, 2008, pp. 122-140. Smith, R., ‘The Utility of Force’. The Art of War in the Modern World. Allen Lane, 2005. Pfaff, T., Peacekeeping and the Just War Tradition. Strategic Studies Institute, United States Military Academy, 2000.
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______________________________________________________________ Verweij, D., ‘The Dark Side of Obedience: The Consequences of Hannah Arendt’s Analysis of the Eichmann Case’. Professional Ethics. Vol. 10(2-4), 2002, pp. 143 – 158. Walzer, M., Just and Unjust Wars A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations. Basic Books, 2000. Walzer, M., ‘The Triumph of Just War Theory (and the Dangers of Success)’. Empowering Our Military Conscience: Transforming Just War Theory and Military Moral Education. Ashgate, Farnham, 2010. Wertheimer, R., ‘The Moral Singularity of Military Professionalism’. Empowering Our Military Conscience: Transforming Just War Theory and Military Moral Education. Ashgate, Farnham, 2010. Anya Topolski holds two bachelor’s degrees from McGill University in Montreal, Canada: A BSc in Biochemistry (1999) and an BA Honours in Philosophy (2000). She recently obtained her PhD in Philosophy (Magna Cum Laude) at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Her dissertation was awarded the Auschwitz Foundation Stichting Prize and is currently under review for publication. In 2008 she completed a postdoctorate at the KULeuven on the relation between ethics and politics. She is currently engaged at the TUE and the Netherlands Defence Academy as an NWO research fellow in the field of military ethics, post-Srebrenica research, responsibility and judgment.
PART II War and Terrorism
On the Dangers of Innocents – or, Whose Suffering Shall we Value? Emília Brodencová Abstract Terrorism has been increasingly recognised by many as a new, or as another, type of modern warfare. Yet unlike in the case of warfare analysis, in most discussions on terrorism and modern or postmodern terror the focus is laid not on the objectives or causes, on the definition of which no consensus exists, but on the practice – namely, the practice of indiscriminate and random targeting of the innocent. What is often forgotten is that it was precisely state dominated modern warfare that introduced the strategy of targeting the innocent. Furthermore, one should be prudent with the use of the term ‘innocent’ which rather than advancing humanness and serving humanity can cause deep polarisation and fragmentation in both, implying that there is a substantial difference between the victimisation and suffering of the innocent and the ‘guilty’. The aim of my paper is to reflect on and question this categorisation and the political, moral, symbolic or rational terms in which it is expressed in the discourse on terrorism, mainly in light of certain pragmatically-ideological extension of the understanding of the innocent as someone whose suffering has bigger moral weight and value than the suffering of the non-innocent/guilty and whose suffering is considered to be unjustifiable. Key Words: Terrorism, definitions of terrorism, morality, suffering, guilt/innocence. ***** Terrorism has been increasingly recognised by many as a new, or as another, type of modern warfare. Yet unlike in the case of warfare analysis, in most discussions on terrorism and modern or postmodern terror the focus is laid not on the objectives or causes, on the definition of which no consensus exists, but on the practice – namely, the practice of indiscriminate and random targeting of the innocent. In fact, the majority of definitions agree on this element as being characteristic of and even key to the phenomenon of terrorism (understood mostly as the modus operandi of nonstate insurgent actors) and its moral reprehensibility. What is often forgotten in this rather selective identification of terrorism with modern warfare is that it was precisely state dominated modern warfare that introduced the strategy of targeting the innocent. It is thus somewhat hypocritical to consider this
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______________________________________________________________ strategy as illegitimate and morally reprehensible in one instance and as justifiable and legitimate in another instance, and this even more so in the age of hyper-technologisation of warfare in which the difference between the intended killing and foreseen but unintended killing can hardly be maintained. Furthermore, one should be prudent with the use of the term ‘innocent’ which rather than advancing humanness and serving humanity can cause deep polarisation and fragmentation in both, implying that there is a substantial difference between the victimisation and suffering of the innocent and the ‘guilty’. For example, by their strategy of reducing own casualties the states waging modern wars give clear indication whose suffering should be avoided and whose suffering is marginalised as ‘collateral damage’. The aim of my paper is to reflect on and question this categorisation and the political, moral, symbolic or rational terms in which it is expressed in the discourse on terrorism, mainly in light of certain pragmatically-ideological extension of the understanding of the innocent as someone whose suffering has bigger moral weight and value than the suffering of the non-innocent/guilty and whose suffering is considered to be unjustifiable. Let’s, first of all, have a brief look at the notion of ‘new terrorism’ as a new type of warfare. The proponents of this notion claim the novelty on the level of objectives, scope and mode. As Igor Primoratz, a professor of philosophy who has extensively written on terrorism, sums up these three elements, ‘(…) while old- style terrorism focused on specific, intelligible, and achievable political objectives, the ‘new terrorism’ has large and nebulous aims that can never be achieved.’1 ‘New terrorism’ is further operating in an almost exclusively international scope and environment and finally it is perceived as ‘distinctively Islamic and inherently given to suicide attacks’. 2 Primoratz rightly rejects these claims as they are all rather problematic and they can be all refuted. What Primoratz proposes is that ‘the true watershed in the history of terrorism was in the early twentieth century, when ‘direct’ or ‘individual’ terrorism was replaced by its ‘indirect’ or ‘mass’ variety.’3 With regard to ‘direct’ or ‘individual’ terrorism he refers to the Russian revolutionaries of the 1880s, whose movement would become known as the ‘Anarchist wave’4 and as the first wave of modern terror, who would not target the whole population by their attacks but would only resort to targeted political assassinations since they perceived violence as intrinsically and morally wrong and thus only applicable as the last measure. This line of action and thinking was not followed by the following generations of the Russian revolutionaries of the Red Terror and the Great Terror who did not discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate targets. Ever since the Russian Revolution terrorism has come to mean ‘indiscriminate killing, maiming and destruction’.5 While Primoratz’s distinction is certainly quite original in many aspects, it is also problematic. The definition of terrorism that Primoratz
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______________________________________________________________ offers is the definition that centres on ‘the deliberate use of violence, or threat of its use, against innocent people’.6 His definition, as many definitions of terrorism that try to capture the most common public complaint about terrorism, namely that terrorism attacks ‘the innocent’, in Primoratz’s own words, ‘highlights violence against non-combatants, civilians, the innocent, as the central defining trait of terrorism.’7 In view of this definition, targeting the government officials or the military personnel, which is precisely what the Russian Anarchists did, cannot be considered as terrorism. If we thus follow the reasoning of Primoratz with regard to the definition of terrorism, ‘direct’ or ‘individual’ terrorism as he describes it would seem as the contradiction in terms. The question remains whether there is indeed such a substantial difference between political assassination and terrorism understood from the point of the view of the target; that is whether political violence against morally legitimate targets, broadly understood as ‘guilty’, ‘deserving’ or ‘responsible’, can be justified while political violence against morally illegitimate targets, ‘the innocent’ is unjustifiable. Or in other words, how innocent can the innocent be if their status implies the category of assassinability? Since we are addressing the issue of suffering mainly in terms of the phenomenon of terrorism, let’s try to look for the questions I mentioned in the definition(s) of terrorism. As it is well known, there is no definition of terrorism that would be generally accepted. As Michael Kronenwetter remarks, ‘terrorism, then, is often in the eye of the beholder. When our people are killed, that is terrorism. When we kill other people, that is not.’8 It, of course, does not help the matter that terrorism has become such a loaded term. If the Russian Anarchists in the 1880s were proud to be called ‘terrorists’ and the terrorists in the 1920s were termed, with much sympathy, as ‘freedom fighters’, the twentieth century made terrorists equivalent of, or even worse, than killers and murders, with not much sympathy left for them. We might not know what terrorism exactly is but as Kronenwetter puts it, ‘[one]ne thing we know for sure: terrorism is wrong.’9 What of the definition of terrorism then in view of this ‘moralistic blanket condemnation of terrorism’?10 Alex P. Schmid reported in 1985 that there existed at least 100 definitions of terrorism in theoretical literature.11 More than 20 years later, and after 9/11, I would venture to say that this number has certainly doubled, if not tripled. While these definitions may differ with regard to the element(s) they regard as key to the concept of terrorism, they would generally refer to one of the following aspects: the effect of fear; the attack on the state; the strategic purposes; the supposedly random nature; the targets; secrecy.12 However, most definitions used are either too broad or then too narrow, depending on the purpose they serve and on the audience they are designed for. The former describe terrorism in general terms as a use of force or threats with the aim of demoralizing,
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______________________________________________________________ intimidating and subjugating; the latter usually focus only on one aspect of terrorism – its targets. For example, Caleb Carr defines terrorism as ‘the deliberate military targeting of civilians as a method of affecting the political behaviour of nations and leaders’ In Coady’s definition, terrorism is ‘the organised use of violence to attack non-combatants (‘innocents’ in a special sense) or their property for political purposes.’13 For Primoratz terrorism is ‘the deliberate use of violence, or threat of its use, against innocent people, with the aim of intimidating some other people into a course of action they otherwise would not take.’14 Where Carr’s definition radically differs is by naming the target ‘civilians’ rather than ‘non-combatants’ or ‘innocent people’. While the latter two are also rather problematic, Carr’s terms is quite untenable in any form of guerrilla or insurrection warfare in which civilians can be combatants and a pregnant woman or a small girl or a boy, all in civilian clothes, can turn out to be a suicide bomber. Since the U.S. State Department considers its military personnel, which is off-duty as ‘noncombatants’, this term is only slightly more tenable than the term ‘civilians’. The category of ‘innocent people’ is even more complex category since it is directly related to the conception of moral justifiability of terror(ism) as opposed to justifiability of other forms of political violence such as political assassination. Terrorism is claimed not to discriminate between the innocent and the guilty and hence it is morally reprehensible since as Primoratz claims, in most cases the terrorist is aware of innocence of his/her victims. Primoratz talks here of ‘the distinctive obscenity of much terrorism’15, further claiming that innocence should not be understood in absolute terms but rather that the innocent are not responsible ‘on any credible understanding of responsibility’ for the ‘real or alleged injustice or suffering’ of the terrorist and therefore they do not deserve suffering that is inflicted on them and this also from the point of view of the terrorist.16 Innocence and immunity to harm is something we all start with, as also Michael Waltzer points out, and we can then lose it by our actions. It is worth pointing out that the categories of innocence and immunity are suspended and become irrelevant in the case of collateral damage understood as civilian casualties which are perceived as foreseen but not intended side-effects of legitimate attacks. While this doctrine may have been applicable within the framework of just war theory at the time of Waltzer’s famous book (1977), some may claim that it is hardly justifiable in the era of super-modern and hyper-technological warfare. In fact, in this era it may be rather perceived as a convenient excuse for negligence or carelessness on the part of superior forces. It is often forgotten that just war theory also stipulates proportionality of the harm – not bombing the whole village in order to kill one rebel – and that it is a duty of soldiers to save civilian lives – ‘and if saving civilian lives means risking soldiers’ lives, the risk must be accepted.’17 Looking at the
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______________________________________________________________ recent and current wars (conflicts) in Iraq and Afghanistan none of these rules have been much observed, on the contrary. Another issue which needs to be addressed with regard to the perception of suffering in terms of the guilty/innocent and this link may appear as rather surprising is whether state can be also recognised as a terrorist actor. The importance of this question is reflected in a certain pragmatically ideological assumption that acts of state as a legitimate political entity are by definition legitimate while acts of entities or groups, which are not recognised as legitimate political structures are by definition not legitimate. Even if nation-states may seem to be disappearing in our postmodern inter-permeable world of fluid borders, it is still rather helpful to have own flag, territory and borders if one wants to claim the legitimacy of its actions. If we then have a brief look on the state-terror discussion, Carr seems to imply in his definition that the term ‘terrorist’ should be used solely for non-state, insurgent actors and this seems to be implied also by many public discussions of terrorism and it is explicitly stated in most considerations of terrorism from the point of view of social sciences. Ariel Merari, professor of psychology who studied political terrorism for 30 years, claims that: [t]he purposes, circumstances, and methods involved in a state’s violence against its own citizens are entirely different from those that characterize violence by states against other states or by insurgent groups against governments. The application of the term ‘terrorism’ to all three situations is obfuscating (…).18 Similarly, Walter Laqueur, another authority on terrorism, writes that state and non-state terrorism ‘fulfil different functions and manifest themselves in different ways’.19 While these arguments carry some truth it is also true that ‘historically, the state has been the biggest terrorist’, as Primoratz from his philosophical perspective poignantly puts it.20 Rather than denying that state can be in any way or form associated with the terrorist terror, it is worthwhile to nuance between terror as it is used by state against its own citizens in mostly totalitarian regimes and some military dictatorships, what Primoratz calls ‘incessant terrorism’21; terror as a strategic and military instrument used for specific purposes, mainly in war situations, even by democratic and liberal states; and terror employed by non-state actors to achieve their particular objectives. While both Laqueur and Merari are right to point out that these three may differ with regard to their purposes, circumstances, methods and functions, although they do not have to and often they do not differ, their raison d’être is intimidation and coercion for political
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______________________________________________________________ purposes by creating the atmosphere of terror and they thus substantially remain the forms of the terrorist terror. In conclusion, Brian Keenan who was kidnapped in Beirut in 1985 and who was held captive for the next four and a half years writes in his Evil Cradling, a diary of his captivity, and let me quite him here in length, that: there is a capacity in each of us and sometimes I think even a need to reach out to others in pain. (…) The more we discover the different degrees and different aspects of our own unhappiness the greater our capacity to sympathize instinctively or to reach out to someone in distress. Maybe it’s a hangover from those days when we practiced a sympathetic magic: by reaching out and touching someone else’s distress or suffering, we took a little of it on ourselves as a kind of protection against the fullness of such suffering taking hold of us.22 Maybe it is thus inevitable precisely because of our own suffering that we chose and prioritise suffering that should touch us and that we exclude some suffering from our human register on the basis of its moral standing and its deserve. I do not think that many of us stand still when reading a yet another report on victims of an attack or even a natural catastrophe which specifies that so and so many were killed under which so many children and women, or as the case may be, so many terrorists or insurgents, or so many western soldiers – implying that suffering of all these human beings can and even should be somehow ranked and valued against each other. It is as if we needed the guidance to which and whose suffering we should value (more). In the common world of humanity the feeling of belonging, the sense of the community is crucial yet it is hardly ever the feeling of belonging to this common world of humanity that matters. It is rather belonging to the certain given group or community within this common world – identity has always had precedence over humanity. The whole, if we can talk of the whole of humanity, is thus subdued by its own parts and the feeling of belonging is inevitable accompanied by fragmentation and polarisation. If there is ‘us’, there is always ‘them’ and ‘us versus them’ is never far away. Yet no matter how shattered, and no matter what form or mode humanity in any particular case may have adopted, the common world of humanity will never let go. The worst criminals and murderers may not be particularly human but they will always be humans. Maybe this is one of the curses of humanity – that it can never really purify itself of its own humanity; and maybe it is one of the blessings of humanity – that it may never really purify itself of its own humanity.
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Notes 1
I Primoratz, ‘A Philosopher Looks at Contemporary Terrorism’, Cardozo Law Review, Vol. 29-1, October 2007, p.34. 2 Ibid., p.34. 3 Ibid., p.51. 4 DC Rapoport, ‘The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism’, Attacking Terrorism. Elements of a Grand Strategy, Georgetown University Press, Washington, 2004, p. 47. 5 Primoratz, ‘A Philosopher Looks at Contemporary Terrorism’, p. 36. 6 Ibid., p.40. 7 I Primoratz, ‘Introduction’, Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues, I. Primoratz (ed), Palgrave Macmillian, Basingstoke, 2004, p.xii. 8 M Kronenwetter, Terrorism: A Guide to Events and Documents, Greenwood, Westport, 2004, p. 8. 9 Ibid, p.4. 10 SK Anderson & S Sloan, Historical Dictionary of Terrorism, Scarecrow, London, 2002, p.1. 11 AP Schmid, Political Terrorism: A Research Guide to Concepts, Theories, Data Bases and Literature, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1985. 12 CAJ Coady, ‘Defining Terrorism’, Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues, Palgrave Macmillian, Basingstoke, 2004, p. 4. 13 Coady, op. cit., p. 5. 14 I Primoratz, ‘What is Terrorism?’, Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues, Palgrave Macmillian, Basingstoke, 2004, p. 24. 15 Ibid., pp. 18-19. 16 Primoratz, ‘A Philosopher Looks at Contemporary Terrorism’, pp. 41-42. 17 M Waltzer, Just and Unjust Wars, Basic Books, New York, 2006, p. 155. 18 A Merari, ‘Terrorism as a Strategy of Insurgency’, The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to Al Qaeda, G Chaliand & A Blin, (eds), University of California Press, Berkeley, 2007, p. 13. 19 W Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism, Little, Brown & Co, Boston, 1987, p. 146. 20 I Primoratz, ‘Introduction’, Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues, Palgrave Macmillian, Basingstoke, 2004, p. xx. 21 I Primoratz, ‘State Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism’, Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues, Palgrave Macmillian, Basingstoke, 2004, p. 115. 22 B Keenan, Evil Cradling, Vintage, London, 1992, p. 46.
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Bibliography Anderson, S.K. & Sloan, S., Historical Dictionary of Terrorism. Scarecrow, London, 2002. Carr, C., The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians: Why It Has Always Failed and Why It Will Always Fail. Random House, New York, 2002. Coady, C.A.J., ‘Defining Terrorism’. Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues. Primoratz, I. (ed), Palgrave Macmillian, Basingstoke, 2004. Keenan B., Evil Cradling. Vintage, London, 1992. Kronenwetter, M., Terrorism: A Documents. Greenwood, Westport, 2004.
Guide
to
Events
and
Laqueur, W., The Age of Terrorism. Little, Brown & Co, Boston, 1987. Merari, A., ‘Terrorism as a Strategy of Insurgency’. The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to Al Qaeda. Chaliand G. & Blin, A. (eds), University of California Press, Berkeley, 2007. Primoratz, I., ‘A Philosopher Looks at Contemporary Terrorism’. Cardozo Law Review. Vol. 29-1, October 2007, pp. 33-51. _______
, ‘Introduction’. Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues. Primoratz, I. (ed), Palgrave Macmillian, Basingstoke, 2004. _______
, ‘What is Terrorism?’. Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues. I. Primoratz (ed), Palgrave Macmillian, Basingstoke, 2004. _______
, ‘State Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism’. Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues. Primoratz, I. (ed), Palgrave Macmillian, Basingstoke, 2004. Rapoport, D.C., ‘The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism’. Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy. Cronin, A.K. & Ludes, J.M. (eds), Georgetown University Press, Washington, 2004.
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______________________________________________________________ Schmid, A.P., Political Terrorism: A Research Guide to Concepts, Theories, Data Bases and Literature. North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1985. Waltzer, M., Just and Unjust Wars. Basic Books, New York, 2006. Emília Brodencová is a PhD Candidate and an Assistant at the Institute of Philosophy of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
EU Counter-Terrorism Policy: Security vs. Justice? Oldřich Bureš Abstract This paper offers an analysis of the European Union’s (EU) counter-terrorism policy with a special focus on the wider ‘security versus justice’ debate. Based on official EU documents, internal reports, and secondary sources, it surveys the human rights, transparency, (lack of) oversight, and legitimacy critiques of the key EU counter-terrorism measures. A brief overview of the larger normative debate concerning the trade-offs between justice and security in the context of the EU’s Third Pillar is also provided. Key Words: European Union, terrorism, counter-terrorism, oversight, human rights, liberty, justice, freedom, security. ***** 1.
Introduction When it comes to counter-terrorism, debates about trade-offs between liberty, transparency, accountability, justice and greater security are neither new, nor specific to the EU. The post-9/11 EU counter-terrorism policy, however, has been criticized for failing on both fronts – e.g. ‘for being ineffective, slow and incoherent as well as for taking disproportionate, self-serving and partly illegal measures that undermine democratic and judicial oversight as well as civil liberties.’1 This paper does not and cannot provide a comprehensive account of all issues and questions involved.2 Instead, building on an analysis of the larger normative debate concerning the nature of relationships between freedom, justice and security in the context of EU’s counter-terrorism policy, it offers brief accounts of the specific human rights, transparency, accountability, and legitimacy critiques of both the key EU counter-terrorism measures. The hope is that these reviews will provide the reader with sufficient amount of information to make his/her own opinion on this complex, yet fundamental, topic. 2.
The Larger Normative Debate According to Edwards and Meyer, the larger freedom and/or/versus security, or in their terms the ‘erosion of norms debate,’ can be subdivided into three sub-strands, depending on the underlying relationship between the goal of policy-effectiveness and legitimacy:
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______________________________________________________________ 1.
2.
3.
Those who take the effectiveness in fighting terrorism as the sole and only benchmark for measuring the EU’s performance regardless of legal and normative questions; Those who feel that there is some sort of trade-off between achieving security and the protection of citizens vis-à-vis the instruments and agencies of the state; Those who assert that democracies would be undermining their own foundations if they allowed any infringement of civil rights and liberties for the sake of security-enhancing measures, placing civil rights and democratic process effectively outside the realm of political discretion and trade-offs.3
An alternative conceptualization of the relations between freedom and security was offered by Didier Bigo, who argued that there are at least six cursors that should be distinguished in order to acknowledge that freedom and security are often in a hierarchical, rather than equal or balanced, relation (e.g. one is seen as a principle while the other as an exception): 1. 2.
3.
4.
5.
Freedom is the only principle with no limits (the anarchist view); Freedom may be considered as the principle, and security as the exception. Security is the way to regulate interactions between freedom and the risk of anarchy (the libertarian view); Security could be analyzed as the freedom of the individual under the name of safety. Freedom encompasses security (the constitutionalist view); Security may be considered as the first freedom of the individual under the name of safety. No freedom is possible if you are dead or at risk of being killed. It may be the survival of the collectivity or survival of the individual. The former may imply the lack of the latter. Freedom exists only after security is ensured so security encompasses freedom at the beginning, but not after (the ‘exceptionalist view’); Security is considered as a collective common good and as the first freedom because life exists only if survival exists. Security is a right and a freedom because it is the way to prevent danger and violence. Freedoms as practices are the exception, even if freedom as discourse is emphasized. Security is ‘our’ security and could imply the suspension of
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6.
rights of others, but always in the name of more freedom (the permanent emergency view), Security is the only principle with no limits. Democracy is weakness. Order and obedience are better values than freedom (the fascist view).4
In addition, Bigo argued that the relationship between freedom and security is further complicated by the fact that they are both related to two additional concepts – danger and justice. Regarding the latter, he contrasted dispassionate ‘serene justice’ with securitized ‘accusers’ justice’ (e.g. justice seen through the eyes of the prosecutors, police, intelligence officers etc.), whose primary purpose is ‘to help security by providing a quick punishment.’5 Regarding the former, Bigo notes that ‘a society without danger (insecurity) does not exist and some dangers are part of life.’ Consequentially, security may have a negative connotation to both freedom and danger and therefore it is not always a ‘good thing’ that ought to be ‘maximized’: Does the acknowledgement of some element of danger in life render security the contrary to insecurity? We cannot be certain. Security is more like an expanding envelope and insecurity is the environment in contact with this sphere, so the two phenomena expand at the same moment. More security may create more insecurity.6 To students of Security studies, this will sound familiar – security, as well as perceptions of specific security risks, are inherently subjective so there is always plenty of room for a security dilemma, where even the best intentioned efforts to increase one’s own security may lead to the decrease of (or perception of) security of the others. Balancing all four elements in Bigo’s matrix (security, freedom, justice and danger) appears to be a daunting, if not impossible, challenge. Even among the more specialized academic disciplines (Philosophy, Law, Security studies), there is much discussion about the ontology and epistemology of these complex concepts, as well as their practical, policymaking implications. In the Security studies field, for example, there is a plethora of often-contradictory answers to such basic questions such as what is to be secured, by whom, by what means and at what cost.7 Similar questions can certainly be raised when it comes to liberty and justice. It is beyond the scope of this paper to provide and exhaustive treatment of even one of these important questions. The discussion will therefore be limited to the application of the aforementioned conceptualizations of the relationship between freedom and security to the EU’s counter-terrorism policy after
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______________________________________________________________ 9/11. Specifically, if we take out the extreme anarchist and fascist positions from Bigo’s conceptualization and apply his principle versus exception logic to Edwards and Meyer’s categories, we can arrive at the following categorization: 1.
2.
3.
The ‘security first’ approach, where security is the first freedom and/or a common good (category one by Edwards and Meyer and categories four and five by Bigo); The ‘balancing freedom and security’ approach, where somehow both security and freedom should be the principle values that ought to be in balance (category two by Edwards and Meyer, no category by Bigo); The ‘freedom first’ approach, where freedom of the individual is the first principle (category three by Edwards and Meyer and categories two and three by Bigo).
The following section of this paper offers a succinct review of the available human rights, transparency and legitimacy critiques of the key EU counterterrorism measures. Due to size restrictions, they build on my previous research of the EU counter-terrorism policy not presented in this brief text.8 They should nonetheless indicate which of the aforementioned approaches to the freedom-security relationship have prevailed in the EU in aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 3.
Current State of Affairs and Future Prospects Concerning the ‘security first’ strand, the aforementioned analyses of key EU legal and institutional mechanisms in the fight against terrorism suggests that the impact of the Madrid and London terrorist attacks has indeed been occasionally used as a justification for security taking priority over freedom. Some experts have even pointed out that underlying expectation of the Council has been that an effective EU counter-terrorism policy ‘will, as a consequence, lead to greater freedom, not the reverse.’9 According to Amnesty International, this may eventually lead to the portrayal of human rights ‘as a potential barrier to effective protection from ‘terrorist’ acts,’ which in turn has allowed some to argue that ‘the threat of ‘terrorism’ can justify limiting or suspending human rights.’10 It should be also noted that further explicit calls for more securitization and less concern for human rights when it comes to counter-terrorism have been made at the national level in several EU MSs, especially those most affected by terrorism. After the London terrorist attacks in July 2005, for example, the Former UK’s Home Secretary Charles Clarke addressed the European Parliament with the following words: ‘European Union States may have to accept an erosion of some civil liberties if their citizens are to be protected from organized crime
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______________________________________________________________ and terrorism … [T]he human right to travel on the underground on a Thursday morning without being blown up is also an important right.’11 These words were accompanied by a vigorous diplomatic action aimed at upgrading the EU counter-terrorism policy along the lines of the then newly introduced British Terrorism Bill, which stirred acute controversy during the summer of 2005, at both the national and European levels.12 The second ‘balancing’ strand has been presented by many analysts as a possible middle ground that would somehow satisfy those opinions which acknowledge the need to adopt new, and possibly harsher, counterterrorism measures, but which also recognize the existing concerns regarding the lack of democratic input and control, along with the importance of the rule of law and protection of human rights. In the context of the EU counterterrorism policy, these concerns have become especially paramount to many legal commentators due to the exceptional swiftness with which the EU Council adopted its own counter-terrorism measures, as well as due to the often uncritical adoption of external standards and measures with minimal transparency, scrutiny and accountability at the EU level. While on the one hand speedy adoption of new law can be seen as an exercise in exceptionally efficient decision making, on the other hand it can be argued that the swifter the EU law making, the bigger the tension between democratic accountability and efficiency within the EU.13 Alternatively, as a report by Amnesty International put it: Unfortunately, amid the flurry of recent counter-terrorism initiatives both in the EU and beyond, the concept of human rights and the rule of law as the basis for genuine security has been lost all but in the rhetoric. In its policies and legislation on counter-terrorism, the EU has failed so far to properly address the serious issue of the protection of Fundamentals rights. While one element of the creation of the EU’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice is the promotion and protection of fundamental rights, this aspect has not been manifest in concrete proposals on counterterrorism.14 The wisdom of the hitherto of a swift and often uncritical adoption of new counter-terrorism standards by the EU has also been questioned on justice grounds and a growing number of legal challenges are pending in the EU courts.15 The third ‘freedom first’ strand of opinions considers the very idea of a balance between freedom and security as misguided. This view has been particularly advanced by several scholars participating in the CHALLENGE Project, whose aim was to respond to ‘widespread concerns about the resort
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______________________________________________________________ to specific illiberal practices by contemporary liberal regimes.’ In their final project report, Bigo, Carrera and Guild argued that the balance metaphor erroneously considers liberty and security as analogous ‘values’ which can be compared (and evaluated) with and weighed against each other: Our research has shown that such a ‘balancing picture’ has actually favoured the development of a conception of security equal to coercion, surveillance, control and a whole series of practices of violence and exclusion. A concept of security has also favoured claims about collective security, ‘global threats’ and ‘worst case scenario’ situations, which have too often led to measures and practices outside of democratic accountability and judicial oversight (rule of law) and constituting a challenge to fundamental human rights.16 Instead, the CHALLENGE project report suggested that security actually ‘only comes from the respect and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms through the rule of law’ and liberty should therefore be placed ‘as the starting principle on which the EU’s AFSJ should be rooted and developed.’17 This is because even the Treaty on European Union states ‘the EU is rooted in the principle of freedom’18 and security should therefore represent ‘only a tool in support of freedom.’19 In practice, however, the reverse has often been the case: ‘The Hague Programme appears to marginalise the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms (liberty), the principle of equality and of democratic accountability and judicial control. The overall priority, which guides the programme, remains clear: strengthening security understood as coercion.’20 Another CHALLENGE project report has argued that already the 1999 Tampere Programme had in fact rejected the balancing metaphor in the relationship between freedom and security by advocating a ‘shared commitment to freedom based on human rights, democratic institutions and the rule of law’ as the starting paradigm.21 Similar concerns about the dominance of security in EU counterterrorism policy have been also expressed by several Members of the European Parliament. For example, Johanna Boogerd-Quaak, a Dutch Member of the European Parliament stated that ‘if we [Europeans] give away our freedoms in the fight against terrorism, the terrorists will have won.’22 In this context, it should be also noted that some experts have even suggested that ‘unbalanced powers being given to law enforcement bodies and security services can of itself lead to a breeding ground for terrorism.’23 Alternatively, David Spence stated in the conclusions of his edited volume on EU counterterrorism policy that after years of debate about Guantanamo bay, it is now clear that constitutional judicial processes might be boon to counter-terrorism
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______________________________________________________________ efforts, rather than a hindrance: ‘If it is possible to prosecute terrorists under existing criminal justice systems, the argument for more robust and specific counter-terrorism action may lose sway. Indeed, treating terrorist humanely, in contrast to the brutality of their actions, might well significantly undermine support for their cause.’24 This, in turn, highlights the need of human rights, data protection provisions, and due process of law to effectively operate in the counter-terrorism framework. It should be, however, also noted that according to some experts, the metaphorical liberty-security pendulum has already begun shifting back toward liberty due to lack of new terrorist attacks since the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London. As the memories of the last major attacks fade, ‘the security-liberty pendulum has clearly swung back, as the questions of civil liberties and data protection have become increasingly central in Brussels, particularly at the European Parliament, as shown in the passionate debates on the Commission’s proposal to criminalize incitement.’25 Similarly, a number of experts participating at a recent conference titled Internal Security Policies in the European Union - After the Stockholm Programme: An Area of Freedom, Security and Justice in the European Union? argued the Stockholm program priorities try to strike a more nuanced relationship between security due to the realization that effectiveness of AFSJ policies cannot be assessed outside of a larger normative framework. As one speaker noted, ‘the justice argument is making a comeback. After 9/11 the prevalent thinking was that the primary right is security but this is no longer the case.’26 It also appears that European courts have, albeit perhaps belatedly, become an increasingly used avenue for both individuals and entities unduly affected by some of the EU’s legal counter-terrorism measures. The Lisbon Treaty should be also helpful in this regard, although it is yet too early to assess its real impact on the complex relations between liberty, justice and security at both the national and EU levels.
Notes 1
G Edwards & CO Meyer, ‘Introduction: Charting a Contested Transformation’, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 46, January 2008, p. 15. 2 Many have also been covered elsewhere. See for example T Balzacq & S Carrera (eds), Security Versus Freedom? A Challenge for Europe’s Future, Ashgate Publishing Company, Aldershot, 2006; E Guild & F Geyer (eds), Security Versus Justice: Police and Judicial Cooperation in the European Union, Ashgate Publishing Company, Aldershot, 2008. 3 Edwards & Meyer, op. cit., p. 16.
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D Bigo, ‘Liberty, Whose Liberty? The Hague Programme and the Conception of Freedom’ Security Versus Freedom? A Challenge for Europe’s Future, T Balzacq & S Carrera (eds), Ashgate Publishing Company, Aldershot, 2006, pp. 38-39. 5 Ibid., p. 41. 6 Ibid., pp. 38-39. 7 For a basic overview, see A Collins, Contemporary Security Studies, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007. 8 O Bures, EU Counter-Terrorism Policy: A Paper Tiger? Ashgate, 2011 (forthcoming). 9 Balzacq and Carrera, op. cit., p. 18. 10 Amnesty International, Human Rights Dissolving at the Borders? Counterterrorism and EU Criminal Law, IOR 61/013/2005, 31 May 2005, viewed on 5 June 2009, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/IOR61/013/2005/en/ b280c0de-d4e3-11dd-8a23-d58a49c0d652/ior610132005en.pdf. 11 C Clarke, Liberty and Security: Striking the Right Balance, European Parliament, October 2005, Viewed on 14 January 2006, http://press. homeoffice.gov.uk/Speeches/speeches-archive/sp-euro-parliament-1005. 12 United Kingdom Presidency of the European Union, Liberty and Security. Striking the Right Balance, 12 October 2005, Viewed on 15 April 2008 http://www.edri.org/docs/UKpresidencypaper.pdf. 13 S Douglas-Scott, ‘The Rule of Law in the European Union - Putting the Security in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’, European Law Review, Vol. 29, 2004, p. 220. 14 Amnesty International, op. cit., p. 2. 15 For the most recent updates on new cases, see Statewatch, Latest News and Documentation - Statewatch Terrorist Lists Site, March 2010, Viewed March 2010 http://www.statewatch.org/terrorlists/terrorlists.html. 16 D Bigo, S Carrera & E Guild, The CHALLENGE Project: Final Policy Recommendations on the Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security, Center for European Policy Studies, September 2009, Viewed on 17 March 2010 http://www.ceps.be/book/challenge-project-final-policy-recom mendations-changing-landscape-european-liberty-and-security. 17 Ibid., pp. 3-4. 18 ‘The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights…[Its] aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples…In its relations with the wider world, the Union shall uphold and promote its values and interests and contribute to the protection of its citizens.’ Treaty on the European Union, Articles 2, 3(1) and 3(5) respectively.
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D Bigo et al., The Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security: Mid-Term Report on the Results of the CHALLENGE Project, Center for European Policy Studies, February 2007, Viewed on 20.03.2007, http://www.libertysecurity.org/IMG/pdf_ChallengeMidReport.pdf. 20 Ibid., p. 14. 21 Ibid. 22 Cited in A Tsoukala, ‘Democracy Against Security: The Debates About Counter-terrorism in the European Parliament September 2001-June 2003’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 29, August-October 2004: pp. 417-40. 23 M O'Neill, ‘A Critical Analysis of the EU Legal Provisions on Terrorism’, Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 20, January-March 2008, p. 26. 24 D Spence, ‘Conclusion: The Continuing Quest for Coherence: Sovereignty, Human Rights and EU Coordination’, The European Union and Terrorism, D Spence (ed.), John Harper Publishing, London, 2007, p. 171. 25 J Argomaniz, Counter-Terrorism Policy-Making in the EU, PhD dissertation, School of Politics & International Relations: University of Nottingham, 2008, p. 116. 26 University of Salford, Centre for European Security, January 28-29, 2010. Chatham House Rule applies.
Bibliography Amnesty International, Human Rights Dissolving at the Borders? CounterTerrorism and EU Criminal Law. IOR 61/013/2005, 31 May 2005, Viewed on 5 June 2009, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/IOR61/013/2005/ en/b280c0de-d4e3-11dd-8a23-d58a49c0d652/ior610132005en.pdf. Argomaniz, J., Counter-Terrorism Policy-Making in the EU. PhD Dissertation. School of Politics & International Relations: University of Nottingham, 2008. Balzacq, T. & Carrera, S. (eds), Security Versus Freedom? A Challenge for Europe’s Future. Ashgate Publishing Company, Aldershot, 2006. Bigo, D., Carrera, S. & Guild, E., The CHALLENGE Project: Final Policy Recommendations on the Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security. Center for European Policy Studies. September 2009, Viewed on 17 March 2010 http://www.ceps.be/book/challenge-project-final-policy-recom mendations-changing-landscape-european-liberty-and-security.
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______________________________________________________________ Bigo, D., ‘Liberty, Whose Liberty? The Hague Programme and the Conception of Freedom’. Security Versus Freedom? A Challenge for Europe’s Future. Balzacq, T. & Carrera, S. (eds), Ashgate Publishing Company, Aldershot, 2006, pp. 35-44. Bigo D. et Al., The Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security: Mid-Term Report on the Results of the CHALLENGE Project. Center for European Policy Studies, February 2007, Viewed on 20.03.2007, http://www.libertysecurity.org/IMG/pdf_ChallengeMidReport.pdf. Bures, O., EU Counter-Terrorism Policy: A Paper Tiger? Ashgate, Aldershot, Forthcoming in 2011. Clarke, C., Liberty and Security: Striking the Right Balance. European Parliament. October 2005, Viewed on 14 January 2006, http://press.homeoffice.gov.uk/Speeches/speeches-archive/sp-euro-parliame nt-1005. Collins, A., Contemporary Security Studies. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007. Douglas-Scott, S., ‘The Rule of Law in the European Union - Putting the Security in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’. European Law Review. Vol 29, 2004, pp. 219-242. Edwards, G. & Meyer, C.O., ‘Introduction: Charting a Contested Transformation’. Journal of Common Market Studies. Vol. 46, January 2008, pp. 1-25. Geyer, F., ‘Court of Justice of the European Communities Judgment of 3 May 2007. Case C-303/05. Advocaten Voor de Wereld VZW v. Leden Van de Ministerraad’. European Constitutional Law Review. Vol. 41, 2008, pp. 149-161. Guild, E. & Geyer, F. (eds), Security Versus Justice: Police and Judicial Cooperation in the European Union. Ashgate Publishing Company, Aldershot, 2008. Megie, A., ‘Mapping the Actors of European Judicial Cooperation’. The Field of the EU Internal Security Agencies. Bigo, D. (ed), L'Harmattan, Paris, 2007, pp. 67-96.
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______________________________________________________________ O'Neill, M., ‘A Critical Analysis of the EU Legal Provisions on Terrorism’. Terrorism and Political Violence. Vol. 20, January-March 2008, pp. 26-48. Spence, D. ‘Conclusion: The Continuing Quest for Coherence: Sovereignty, Human Rights and EU Coordination’. The European Union and Terrorism. Spence, D. (ed.), John Harper Publishing, London, 2007, pp. 168-176. Statewatch, Latest News and Documentation - Statewatch Terrorist Lists Site. March 2010, Viewed March 2010, http://www.statewatch.org/terrorlists/ terrorlists.html. Tsoukala, A., ‘Democracy Against Security: The Debates About Counterterrorism in the European Parliament September 2001-June 2003’. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political. Vol. 29, August-October 2004: pp. 417-40. United Kingdom Presidency of the European Union, Liberty and Security. Striking the Right Balance. 12 October 2005, Viewed on 15 April 2008 http://www.edri.org/docs/UKpresidencypaper.pdf. Oldřich Bureš is the Head of the Department of International Relations and European Studies, Metropolitan University Prague. His research is focused on United Nations peacekeeping operations, private military companies, and the EU counter-terrorism policy.
Global Society must be Defended: War is On! Teresa Degenhardt Abstract The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been portrayed as mechanisms to punish criminals in the international sphere by both former US President George W Bush and ex-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. The notion of crime and punishment to represent war speaks to a blurring of the disciplines of international relation and criminology. Drawing on Foucault and Agamben’s analytics and previous literature in criminology, this work examines points of contact between two hitherto distinct security mechanisms - war and punishment - and suggests possible effects of this discursive blurring. Key Words: War, punishment, war on terror, global sphere, sovereignty. ***** 1.
Introduction Since 9/11, much study has focused on understanding how discourses, rationalisations, and justifications of war have intertwined and merged with those of crime in such a way that the borders between the two notions are no longer clear1. In line with these studies, this piece suggests a connection between how we conceptualise military intervention and punitive actions. To this end, it shows how former US President George W. Bush and ex-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair legitimated the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as punitive reactions to the crime of 9/11 or as the enforcement of international law. Where once ‘wars on crime’ were waged within criminal justice discourse, we are now reversing this trend, with the language of criminal justice increasingly applied to the context of war. Drawing on Foucault and Agamben’s analytics of power and on previous literature in criminology, I argue that while modernity has taught us to view punishment and war as two distinct security systems, one directed to the inside and the other to the outside, current rhetorical practices highlight a much more complex relationship. War and punishment are mechanisms to establish not only sovereignty, as has frequently been claimed, but political community in their identification of a suitable enemy/criminal/danger. It is not my intention to suggest that the ways in which wars are justified have dramatically changed since 9/11. Indeed, wars that follow a more traditional inter-state trajectory still exist - for instance, the recent war between Russia and Georgia - and the legitimation of war as punishment was recognised by just war theory in the ancient past. The present intention is to foreground the punitive intent of the two current military campaigns, in the
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______________________________________________________________ hope that this reading will contribute to our understanding of current military campaigns and the overlapping of discourses of war and crime. 2.
Early Signs of Blurring: War on Crime and the New Penology In the US, the rhetoric of ‘war on crime’ and ‘war on drugs’ was established in discourses about the criminal justice system long before the current war against international terrorism made the conflation of the discourses of war and crime evident. Scholars have underlined how the use of the language of war, and the consequent perception of the criminal as the enemy, have had profound implications on institutional structures and the practice of penalty.2 The discourse of the war on crime has legitimised the militarisation of the police inside the state and the sending of military forces abroad for policing operations,3 facilitated the rejection of due process, and increased the power of the executive over the legislative.4 It is considered responsible for the dramatic changes in how we punish, identified by the term ‘new penology.’ The new penology is recognised as allowing the use of intransigent and violent practices against whole categories of people; further, it has focused our attention on groups rather than individuals, ranked by their likelihood of being dangerous. Being dangerous is assessed in relation to a set of characteristics extrapolated by profiling techniques: penalty is thus based on the principle of prevention and the notion of risk. An emblematic consequence of this shift is the huge increase in incarceration rates in most countries. Some criminologists have suggested that these practices reestablish sovereignty at a time of crisis; more specifically, they utilise some sections of the population as ‘suitable enemies,’ thus ensuring political legitimacy.5 In short, the language of war within the criminal justice discourse is correlated to changes in techniques of governance and a move towards utilising crime as a way to govern. Despite these existing analyses of the blurring of discourses within a national dimension, there has been little consideration of the effects of such blurring outside national borders. By using Foucault’s and Agamben’s insights on war and the power to punish, I will make a good start at this type of analysis. 3.
Foucault on War and Agamben on the Power to Punish Foucault’s contribution to the analyses of penalty as a mechanism of governance is generally acknowledged. Less well known are his insights on war; some of these have recently been published as a series of lectures in which he touches on changes in our understanding of war. He notes, for example, that in the Middle Ages, war was conceived of as an act of justice; with the Peace of Westphalia, however, it became an instrument to maintain security and guarantee the strength of the state.6 He suggests this shift was
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______________________________________________________________ related to a fundamental change in the structure of society, namely the constitution of states. He claims that the discourse of war, formerly a way to interpret political relations and challenge power inside the social body, was appropriated by the state and exported outside for use against an inferior group. In this way, a sovereign state could govern its own population by law, discipline, and surveillance, while manifesting its power to kill outside the state. Foucault believes there is a connection between the establishment of law, the denial of conflict inside, and the exporting of war outside. In elaborating on Foucault’s analysis, Giorgio Agamben suggests that the constitution of sovereignty and political communities are interrelated and are based on the exclusion of the outlaw, the ‘homo sacer’ who can be killed with impunity but cannot be sacrificed. In positing this connection, he argues that the power to punish is ‘the original political element’ 7 by which the sovereign state excludes the outlaw - the bandit - and this exclusion gives shape to the political community by signalling its borders. Such analyses argue for a strict connection between the power to launch wars and the ability of the established sovereignty and political community to punish a defined enemy/criminal group. The exclusion of this group from the social body allows the sovereign state to establish its legitimacy and permits the political community to take shape by disciplining their various subjectivities against their definitions of outlaws. In the next section, I show a similar overlapping in the rhetorical representations of the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq by the US and British administrations of the time. 4. Overlapping War and Punishment in the Context of the War on Terror The war in Afghanistan was described as a response to Ground Zero and a way to achieve justice by both former US President George W. Bush and exUK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Bush said, ‘Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.’8 He added, ‘Our military action is designed to drive terrorists out and bring them to justice,’9 referring to the retributive function of penal policies. In short, the delivery of pain will restore justice. Similarly, former UK Prime Minister announced, ‘We must bring bin Laden and Al Qaeda leaders to justice and eliminate the terrorist threat that they pose,’10 making evident the connection between the power to punish and war. After the war began, Blair called Osama bin Laden ‘wicked’ and of ‘murderous intent,’11 constructing him as a criminal and de-politicising the conflict. Similarly, the Taliban were criminals in their harbouring of terrorists. Blair said, ‘They are guilty and they will face justice.’12 Here, reference is made to the notion of responsibility – essential for the adjudication of punishment and equally apparent in Bush’s claims:
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______________________________________________________________ The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as Al Qaeda. They are the same murderers indicted for bombing American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and responsible for bombing the USS Cole. 13 And again, ‘The men on the wall here have put themselves on the list because of great acts of evil. They plan, promote and commit murder. … They must be found, they will be stopped; and they will be punished.’14 Clearly, those launching the campaign (and acting as judges) are contributing to the blurring of the boundaries between war and punishment in their construction of Osama and Al Qaeda as global criminals who can attack anywhere (in the US, Tanzania, or Kenya) and in their adjudication of responsibility and guilt. The global dimension of crime in these representations is pronounced. In the following speech, Blair refers to criminal procedures: We must bring to justice those responsible. Rightly, President Bush and the US Government have proceeded with care. They did not lash out. They did not strike first and think afterwards. Their very deliberation is a measure of the seriousness of their intent. They, together with allies, will want to identify, with care, those responsible. That is a judgment that must be based on hard evidence. Once that judgment is made, the appropriate action can be taken. It will be determined, it will take time, it will continue over time until this menace is properly dealt with and its machinery of terror destroyed.15 He evokes notions of evidence, responsibility, and guilt, thereby framing the military response as the adjudication of a specific act and making this statement appear part of a proper proceeding. As the objective of the war is to capture and punish the individuals responsible, we see the overlapping of war and punishment. The blurring is also based on the definition of those groups and states who allow criminal actions to be planned in their territory as ‘dangerous’ to the whole community. Just as terrorists are defined as criminals, so too states are labelled as ‘rogue’ in the US National Security Strategy, issued in September 2002. This Strategy transposes the label of
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______________________________________________________________ criminality onto entire nation states, thus enabling the criminalization of whole populations and demanding a punitive response.16 Terrorists and rogue states are linked as a threat which calls for reaction and exclusion. The notion of imminent threat is used as a reminder of danger, producing fear and authorising violent practices by those who proclaim themselves sovereign. The concept of deterrence traditionally used within the international sphere is abandoned in favour of preventive self-defence, much like the new penology where ‘We know from experience that some enemies cannot be deterred.’17 Similarly, the war in Iraq was initially framed as a reaction to 9/11 and the threat of terrorism. Bush defined Iraq as a ‘threat,’ obviously referring to the UN Charter and the notion of ‘threat of the peace’ as an element that could justify military action, but also signalling the risk of further harmful events when he said: ‘We have no ambition in Iraq except to remove a threat and restore control.’18 Saddam Hussein was a ‘murderous tyrant’ and a ‘homicidal dictator;’ he was compared to Hitler, a ‘monster’ who had ‘killed his own people.’19 Bush reiterated that Hussein was in violation of international law, specifically citing UN Resolution 1441. The former President argued: ‘Saddam Hussein has a long history of reckless aggression and terrible crimes’ 20and ‘should be held accountable,’21 adding, ‘[The] Iraq regime has violated all … obligations.’22 Echoing his American colleague, Blair pointed out the need to ‘act within the terms set out in Resolution 1441’ and to enforce international norms: ‘To pass Resolution 1441 and then refuse to enforce it would do the most deadly damage to the UN’s future strength, confirming it as an instrument of diplomacy and not of action.’23 Blair asks rhetorically: ‘Who will believe us [next]? What price our credibility with the next tyrant?’24 In such statements, war is a mechanism of law enforcement reacting against Saddam’s defiance of UN Resolutions, even though the military operation was clearly against international legal standards.25 In both campaigns – Afghanistan and Iraq – as part of the ongoing war on terror, criminal justice discourse was used to legitimise illicit military violence and to disqualify Al Qaeda violence. A superior set of norms was evoked – albeit fictitious and used to cover up a crime. The enemy was constructed as a criminal who posited a danger to the globe, and specific states were criminalised as ‘rogue.’ It is especially interesting to note the identification of specific threats/dangers against which to authorise violence and to unite the community. Echoing back to Foucault and Agamben, these speeches show the overlap between our understanding of war and our understanding of punishment on the basis of their common function of setting sovereignty and the political community against an enemy/criminal/danger. In what follows, I summarise the overlap and suggest possible effects of the discursive blurring.
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______________________________________________________________ 5.
War and the Construction of the Global Sphere It is crucial to note the definition of some groups and states as criminal in these discourses. When set against this danger and potential violence, the coalition of the willing is legitimised. Reference to a superior (albeit specious) set of norms is used to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate violence. The notion of crime is used to depoliticise the conflict and disqualify the enemy. When a group is established as criminal/enemy who should be fought against, we see again certain mechanisms underlined by Foucault and Agamben: namely, sovereignty and political community are established on the definition of the outlaw and the construction of an inferior group. This, in turn, reveals how the current overlapping of the notions of war and punishment is based on their common function: both are mechanisms to establish governance. Further, these wars constitute an attempt at establishing sovereignty and the political community in the global sphere in their exclusion of inferior/dangerous/criminal groups. The blurring of borders between war and law enforcement, and enemy and criminality can be related to the establishment of similar mechanisms of exclusion– defining a specific section of the population as inferior and excluding it through violence thinly disguised as law.
Notes 1
N Feldman ‘Choices of Law, Choices of War’, The New Era of Terrorism: Selected Readings, G Martin (ed), Sage, London, 2004, p. 72; D Bigo ‘Globalised (In)Security: The Field and the Ban-Opticon’, Illiberal Practices of Liberal Regimes: The (In)Security Games, L’Harmattan/ Culture and Conflicts, Paris, 2005, p. 25; R Sparks ‘Ordinary Anxieties and States of Emergency: Statecraft and Spectatorship in the New Politics of Insecurity’, Perspectives on Punishment, The Contours of Control, Oxford University Press. Oxford, 2006, p. 31. 2 PB Kraska (ed), Altered States of Mind: Critical Observations of the Drug War. Garland Publishing, New York, 1993. See Also PB Kraska (ed), Militarising the American Criminal Justice System: The Changing Roles of the Armed Forces and the Police, Northeastern University Press, 2001; PB Kraska ‘Militarization and Policing-Its Relevance to 21st Century Police’, Policing,Vol 1, Number 4, 2007, p 501. K Beckett, Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics, Oxford University Press, 1997. C Parenti, Lockdown America: Police and Prison in the Age of Crisis, Verso, London, 1999; D Garland, ‘The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary Society’, The British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 36, Number 4, 1996, p 445; D Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, University of
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______________________________________________________________ Chicago Press, 2001; J Simon, Governing Through Crime, Oxford University Press, 2007. 3 P Andreas & E Nadelmann, Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations, Oxford University Press, 2006. 4 M Delmas-Marty, ‘The Paradigm of the War on Crime’, Journal of International Criminal Justice, Vol. 5, 2007, pp 584; A Huq & C Muller, ‘The War on Crime as Precursor to the War on Terror’, International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, Vol. 36, 2008, pp 215; Simon, op cit. 2007. 5 Garland, op cit, 2001; Simon, op. Cit. 2007. 6 M Foucault Society Must Be Defended. Picador, New York, 2003. 7 G Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Standford University Press, California,1998, p. 101. 8 GW Bush, ‘Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People’, 20 September 2001, Viewed on February 2007, http://whitehouse. gov/news/releases/2001/09/print/20010920-8.html . 9 GW Bush Address to the Nation, 7 October 2001, Viewed on February 2007, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011007-8.html. 10 T Blair, ‘Prime Minister Statement to Parliament’, October 4 2001. Viewed on April 2007, http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1606.asp. 11 T Blair, ‘Prime Minister Statement to House of Commons’, October 8 2001, Viewed April 2007, http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page1621. 12 T Blair, ‘Prime Minister Statement to Parliament on the War on Terror’, 14 November 2001, Viewed April 2007. http://www.number10.gov.uk/ Page1668. 13 GW Bush, ‘Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People’, 20 September 2001, Viewed February 2007, http://whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/print/20010920-8.html. 14 GW Bush, ‘Attorney General announcement with President Bush, Secretary of State Powell and FBI Director Mueller, FBI Headquarter, 10 October 2001, Viewed February 2009.http://old.911digitalarchive.org/crr/ documents/ 2801.pdf. 15 T Blair, ‘Prime Minister Statement to Parliament’, 14 September 2001, Viewed February 2009, http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page1598. 16 J Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2005. 17 National Security Strategy of the United States of America Washington, White House, September 2002, Viewed on December 2006, Available online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf., p. 30. 18 GW Bush, ‘President Bush Address to the Nation’, 19 March 2003. Viewed April 2007, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/ 20030319-17.html.
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GW Bush, ‘President Bush outlines Iraqi Threat’, 7 October 2003, Viewed April 2007, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/200210078.html. 20 GW Bush, ‘President’s Radio Address on the War on Terror’, 8 March 2003, Viewed in 2007, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/ 03/20030308-1.html. 21 Bush, 2002, loc. cit. 22 Bush, 2002, loc. cit. 23 T Blair, ‘Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Statement Opening the Iraq Debate, 18 March 2003, Viewed February 2007, http://www.number-10.gov.uk/ output/Page3294.asp. 24 Blair, 2003, loc. cit. 25 P Sands, Lawless World: America and the Maxing and Breaking of Global Rules, Allen Lane, London, 2005.
Bibliography Agamben, G., Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Standford University Press, California, 1998. Andreas, P. & Nadelmann, E., Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations. Oxford University Press, 2006. Beckett, K., Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics. Oxford University Press, 1997. Bigo, D. (ed), Illiberal Practices of Liberal Regimes: The (In)Security Games. L’Harmattan/ Culture and Conflicts, Paris, 2005. Blair, T., ‘Prime Minister Statement to Parliament’. October 4 2001. Viewed in April 2007. http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1606.asp. _______
, ‘Prime Minister Statement to House of Commons’. October 8 2001. Viewed in April 2007.http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page1621. _______
, ‘Prime Minister Statement to Parliament on the War on Terror’. 14 November 2001. Viewed in April 2007. http://www.number10.gov.uk/ Page1668. _______
, ‘Prime Minister Statement to Parliament’. 14 September 2001. Viewed in February 2009. http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page1598.
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, ‘Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Statement Opening the Iraq Debate. 18 March 2003. Viewed in February 2007. http://www.number-10.gov.uk/ output/Page3294.asp. Bush, G.W., ‘Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People’. 20 September 2001. Viewed in February 2007. http://whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/print/20010920-8.html. _______
, ‘Address to the Nation’. 7 October 2001. Viewed in February 2007. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011007-8.html. _______
, ‘Attorney General Announcement with President Bush, Secretary of State Powell and FBI Director Mueller’. FBI Headquarter. 10 October 2001. Viewed in February 2009. http://old.911digitalarchive.org/crr/documents/ 2801.pdf. _______
, ‘President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat’. 7 October 2002. Viewed in April 2007. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/200210078.html. _______
, ‘Presidential Letter to the Congress’. 19 March 2003. Viewed in April 2007. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030319-1.html . _______
, ‘US President George W Bush Discusses the Future of Iraq’. 26 February 2003. Viewed in February 2007. http://www.whitehouse.gov/ news/releases/2003/02/20030226-11.html. _______
, ‘President Bush Address to the Nation’. 19 March 2003. Viewed in April 2007. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/2003031917.html. _______
, ‘President’s Radio Address on the War on Terror’. 8 March 2003. Viewed in April 2007. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/ 20030308-1.html. Delmas-Marty, M., ‘The Paradigm of the War on Crime’. Journal of International Criminal Justice, Vol 5, 2007, pp 584-598. Derrida, J., Rogues: Two Essays on Reason. Stanford University Press, California, 2005.
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______________________________________________________________ Feldman, N., ‘Choices of Law, Choices of War’. The New Era of Terrorism: Selected Readings, Sage, London, 2004. Foucault, M., Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College the France. Picador, New York, 2003. Garland, D., ‘The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary Society’. The British Journal of Criminology. Vol. 36, Number 4, 1996, pp 445-471. _______
, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2001. Huq, A.Z. & Muller, C., ‘The War on Crime as Precursor to the War on Terror’. International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice. Vol. 36, 2008, pp 215-229. Kraska, P.B., ‘Militarising the Drug War: A Sign of the Times’. Altered States of Mind: Critical Observations of the Drug War. Garland Publishing, New York, 1993. _______
, ‘Crime Control as Warfare: Language Matters’. Militarising the American Criminal Justice System: The Changing Roles of the Armed Forces and the Police. Northeastern University Press, Boston, 2001. _______
, ‘Militarization and Policing: Its Relevance to 21st Century Police’. Policing. Vol. 1, Number 4, 2007, pp. 501-513. National Security Strategy of the United States of America Washington, White House. September 2002. Viewed in December 2006. http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf . Parenti, C., Lockdown America: Police and Prison in the Age of Crisis. Verso, London, 1999. Sands, P., Lawless World: America and the Maxing and Breaking of Global Rules. Allen Lane, London, 2005. Simon, J., Governing Through Crime. Oxford University Press, 2007.
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______________________________________________________________ Sparks, R., ‘Ordinary Anxieties and States of Emergency: Statecraft and Spectatorship in the New Politics of Insecurity’. Perspectives on Punishment: The Contours of Control. Oxford University Press, 2006. Teresa Degenhardt is Lecturer in Criminology at the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast. Her research area is mostly in theoretical criminology.
Blurring the Line between War and Peace: The United States and Al Qaeda in the Global War on Terrorism Sean N. Kalic Abstract Since September 2001, the United States has struggled with non-state actors and a new era of warfare characterized by a blurred line between war and peace. The Westphalian system established in 1648 codified the basic structure of the international community, which has spawned the modern nation-state and established the basic parameters through which states, and later nations, interacted with one another. The development of international laws, treaties, diplomatic missions, and international organizations have evolved from the tenets of the traditional international system. However, on September 11, 2001 a non-state actor (Al Qaeda) suddenly burst onto the international scene and challenged the tenets of the system. The major question became how does a coalition of nations conduct war on a non-state actor within the context of a system designed for nation-states? At the heart of this study is an evaluation and explanation of the history of Al Qaeda and the U.S. led response to combat this new trans-national security threat. This paper highlights critical insights in the major issues that face the international community in the twenty-first century as the distinction between war and peace becomes increasingly unclear. Key Words: United States, al Qaeda, global war on terrorism. ***** 1.
Introduction Since September 11, 2001 the United States and its allies have struggled with transnational terrorism as a new era of warfare has emerged. In the aftermath of the Thirty-Years War the Westphalian system emerged as an international system for states to form an official forum to negotiate and establishment the ‘fundamental rights and duties of states.’1 The Westphalian system codified the structure of the international community and spawned the interaction among modern nation-states. The development of international laws, treaties, diplomatic missions, and international organizations has evolved from the tenets of the traditional international system.2 However, on September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda, burst into the international spotlight and fundamentally challenged the tenets of the Westphalian system. Arguably, a new era of warfare emerged. On September 30, 2001 U.S. President George W. Bush announced before a joint session of
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______________________________________________________________ Congress that the United States had initiated a ‘war on terrorism that focused on Al Qaeda,’ as well as the ‘ defeat of every other terrorist group of global reach.’3 This new era focused not on a traditional nation, but rather a transnational terrorist structure, e.g. a non-state actor. Lacking a national context, Al Qaeda operates outside the traditional elements of the international community. Because of this transnational orientation, the United States and the international community have used a variety of actions to contain, isolate, and eradicate the threat posed by Al Qaeda. In its quest to secure its objective however the United States and its allies have had to blur the lines between war and peace. 2.
Rise of al Qaeda Prior to its attacks on the United States, Al Qaeda and its leader Osama Bin Laden were relatively unknown.4 Using his experience as a mujahidin in Afghanistan in the 1980s, bin Laden developed a transnational organization of Islamic extremists to rollback the expanding influence of the ‘ideas and influence of the unbelievers.’5 Using his vast material resources, as well as operational experience gained in Afghanistan, bin Laden established a trans-national terrorist organization focused on ‘re-establishing the caliphate’ by reaching out to all Muslims.6 Al Qaeda emerged in the early 1990s as the primary transnational terrorist organization. Bin Laden urged Muslims to fight the forces of Western globalization in Bosnia, Kashmir, the Philippines, and the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union.7 Through the 1990s, as Al Qaeda grew, it moved from Sudan to Pakistan, before settling in Afghanistan, which the Taliban controlled.8 Bin Laden used his business education to build an impressive organizational, as well as an international financial support network. Al Qaeda has a core of several subordinate committees and cells. At the top is bin Laden who serves as the leader of the organization. To assist in managing and operating the transnational terrorist organization, Shura majilis serve ‘consultative council.’9 The Shura majilis receive information from committees, that provided details on ongoing military operations, financial matters, religious/legal, and media issues.10 A loose confederation of cells provides information to the committees on ongoing regional and country specific operations.11 The way to get approval and funding from Al Qaeda is that a cell, either affiliated or unaffiliated, presents an operations plan, justified within the context of Jihad. The committees and Shura majilis receive briefings and approve, or veto, the cell’s proposed operations. If recommended for approval, the finance committee aligns funding and the military committee assists in training the terrorists. There are two important elements to this process. The first is funding. Al Qaeda generates money, legally, through construction companies, furniture making, fishing boats, and agriculture products to
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______________________________________________________________ generate capital for their operations.12 These businesses operate throughout the world and donate revenue to Al Qaeda. The second funding stream uses philanthropic Islamic organizations.13 This loose international network of banks and non-governmental organizations present a rich and diverse coffer. Moreover, this stream presents an issue as the West’s attempts to freeze accounts. Any action taken against these structures can result in a media backlash against the West, as Al Qaeda portrays as an attempt to stifle assistance to Muslims in need. The second important element in Al Qaeda’s operational planning is the justification of action. The Religious/Legal Committee as well as the Shura Majilis provides a ‘religious’ justification for every operation. In this context, Al Qaeda maintains strict control over its support of operations designed to advance the objective of re-establishing the caliphate. With a robust structure and international network, Al Qaeda became a dynamic and impressively flexible non-state actor by 2001. From 2001, the United States has led a robust effort to eradicate and capture Al Qaeda’s leadership. While achieving success in killing or detaining approximately seventy-five percent of Al Qaeda’s key leadership by 2007, the organization continues to operate as a modern hydra.14 One reason for this limited success is that fact that Al Qaeda operates well outside the parameters of the traditional Westphalian system. While at times behaving like a traditional state, Al Qaeda also possesses elements of transnational criminal organizations, international philanthropies, and hardcore terrorist groups. The problem therefore is a complex process calling for a variety of response that blurs the line between war and peace. 3.
Blurring the Line Although the international community had been dealing with ‘new terrorism’ since 1968, Al Qaeda represents a different paradigm. As the United States and its ‘Coalition of the Willing’ charged headlong into a ‘global war on terrorism,’ they were unsure about how to combat the elements of a transnational terrorist organization. To prosecute this endeavour the United States uses a variety ‘peaceful’ and ‘warlike’ measures. First, the United States applies international criminal and financial laws to stop Al Qaeda. This method proved promising because it allowed the West to use law enforcement functions that had proven successful in the international community’s fight against transnational organized crime and terrorism.15 Specifically, by classifying Al Qaeda as a criminal enterprise, the United States leveraged well-known international networks such as the INTERPOL to combat the terrorist group. Furthermore, since 1972 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defined and detailed its abilities to track and arrest members of terrorist organizations and transnational criminal syndicates.16 By applying traditional criminal legislation, the United States
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______________________________________________________________ weakened the leadership and degraded Al Qaeda’s operational ability. The pattern for this success stemmed from the international community’s fight against transnational organized crime.17 These law enforcement functions are not war like, but rather standard elements used by law enforcement organizations throughout the globe. The second non-military method to attrite Al Qaeda was the use of the Banking Secrecy Act and the Money Laundering Control Act to freeze and limit the capital generated by Al Qaeda.18 Using this proven method the United States and the international community froze vast assets of Al Qaeda. Furthermore, the United States used legislation such as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to further erode the organization’s operational capabilities.19 The use of criminal and financial legislation by the United States works in conjunction with one another and constitutes a ‘peaceful’ method for the United States and its allies to attack Al Qaeda. In addition to using criminal and financial legislation, the United States specifically also made use of Executive Orders, which provides the U.S. president with extraordinary powers. President William J. Clinton used this power in January 1995 with Executive Order (E.O.) 12947 in an attempt to dissuade terrorist organizations from disrupting the Middle-East peace process. The order read: ‘grave acts of violence committed by foreign terrorists that disrupt the Middle-East peace process constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.’20 Furthermore, E.O. 12947 outlined that individuals or groups that provided ‘financial, material, or technological support’ to terrorist groups bent on disrupting the peace process would be held criminally accountable. Beyond using criminal legislation, financial legislation, and executive orders to fight terrorism, military force emerged in the twenty-first century as the preferred tool to curb transnational terrorism.21 Prior to President George W. Bush’s open declaration of a ‘Global War on Terrorism,’ the military option remained the most reserved and guarded response used by U.S. presidents. In the aftermath of the Al Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001, the United Nations and the Security Council fundamentally embraced the position of President Bush in his efforts to eradicate the threat posed by terrorism by initiating a ‘global war on terrorism.’ Although efforts to combat terrorism before September 11, 2001 had been well established, the severity and high casualties in the Al Qaeda attacks reinforced the sentiments within the United States that terrorism need to become a higher security priority. The United States and its allies opted for a strong military posture, but still embraced the usefulness of the ‘peaceful’ measures of prosecution.
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______________________________________________________________ Beyond stating that the United States would use all means necessary to combat the forces of terrorism, U.S. President George W. Bush further warned that nations assisting, supporting, or conducting terrorist operations would be held accountable for their actions.22 Bush’s declaration was a direct re-statement of the language used by Clinton in Executive Order 12947, with the expressed recognition that the international security threat posed by Al Qaeda demanded military power, as they were ‘acts of war.’ 23 Henceforth, the Bush administration, having identified bin Laden and Al Qaeda as responsible for the attacks, initiated a military campaign.24 Stopping short of an official declaration of war, the U.S. Congress ‘approved a joint resolution authorizing the use of armed force against those responsible for the attacks.’25 On October 7, 2001 Operation ENDURING FREEDOM began. The phased attack consisted of an initial strike using ‘aircraft and cruise missile attacks on Taliban forces, Al Qaeda fighters, training sites, command and control systems, and radar installations’ in Afghanistan, while the second phase consisted of operations conducted by U.S. Special Forces and US Army Rangers units.26 Next, United States Marine Corps Expeditionary Units entered the country of Afghanistan to establish a base in Kandahar from which U.S. and Allied forces could fight to eradicate the Taliban.27 Although led by the United States, the operations in Afghanistan were an international effort supported the British, Russian, and Pakistani governments as well as other nations who contributed to the combat effort.28 The sustained combat operations in Afghanistan by the United States and its allies against the Taliban and Al Qaeda represent a fundamental break with how nations attempted to combat terrorism prior to September 2001. The overwhelming use of military force in conjunction with criminal and financial legislation simply blurred the line between war and peace. In effect, the United States and its allies continue to fight, a transnational terrorist group, as if it was a traditional nation. While there are merits to this method, the international community has also used traditional criminal and financial methods to carry out a second front in the ‘war on terrorism.’ Embracing a wide variety of approaches to combat terrorism after 2001, the non-military precedents established prior to 2001 became fundamentally significant because as they provided a foundation upon which the United States and the international community began to build and expand common links found throughout the international system. ‘The link of transnational organized crime, arms traffickers, and narcotics traffickers to terrorist organizations proved to be one such connection made and pursued in the international community’s fight to eradicate transnational terrorist groups.’29 Likewise, the international community’s use of criminal, financial, and immigration legislation, backed by strong law enforcement
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______________________________________________________________ commitments, converged to offer the allied nations a wide variety of options that obscured the traditional line between war and peace.30 4.
Conclusion Detailing the development of Al Qaeda and the response by the United States brings us back to the Peace of Westphalia and the subsequent congresses and international agreements that have defined the lexicon of international relations since 1648. At their core, these agreements have detailed and maintained that nations are the primary agent in the course of international relations. Periods of peace and war have come to be representative of strong nations or unified blocs of state power. Seldom has there been a threat that operated well outside the parameters of the system. Combating Al Qaeda is a fundamental break with the past. Although currently the United States and its allies are involved in a global war against terrorism that maintains two active military fronts and a constant state of awareness, there has not been an official declaration of war by the United States Congress. The lines of war and peace blur as the military services of the U.S. and its allies continue conduct combat operations, while the vast majority of the citizens remain far removed from the conflict. U.S. President George W. Bush even tried to convince the public of the wartime stance by consistently referring to the global war on terrorism as the ‘first ideological fight of the 21 century.’ However, the American public remains largely unconvinced. In many ways the juxtaposed perceptions between the military’s consistent and steady involvement in combat operations and the public’s perception of ‘life as normal,’ mimics the nation’s treatment of its primary threat--Al Qaeda. While lacking a traditional national structure, as enemies of the past have tended to have, the United States used criminal, financial, immigrations and military processes in an attempt to dissuade the enemy. This blend of military, criminal, and legislative approaches further obscures the distortion between war and peace.31 The fundamental difference in this new era of warfare is that the nations of the global community are allying against a transnational non-state actor. In trying to eradicate the threat, they have been forced to use all means necessary to combat a foe that is flexible, adaptive, and relatively resilience. As a historian, I am weary of making a grandiose declarations about the dénouement of the Westphalian system, as the primary actors, nations have not withered. However, I am willing to concede that the present era does indicate a need to alter the system to meet the demands posed by non-state actors, which seem to have become a permanent part of the system. For the time being, we need to become comfortable with the blurred line between war and peace.
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Notes 1
AS Hersey, ‘History of International Law Since the Peace of Westphalia’, The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 6 No 1, January 1912, p. 33. 2 L Gross, ‘The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948’, The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 42, No1 (January 1948), p. 20. 3 Patterns of Global Terrorism, 2001, U.S. Department of State, Washington D.C., May 2002, p. i. 4 R Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror, Berkely Books, New York, 2002, p. xlii; Patterns of Global Terrorism, 1997, U.S. State Department, Washington D.C., 1997, p. 30. 5 O Bin Laden, ‘World Islamic Front Statement Urging Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders’, Al Qaeda in its Own Words, G Kepel & J-P Milelli, (eds), Belknap press, Cambridge, 2008, p.52-56; Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda, p. 74. 6 O Bin Laden, Ibid., p. 60-65; Gunaratna, op. cit., p. 74. 7 BM Jenkins, Countering Al Qaeda: An Appreciation of the Situation and Suggestions for Strategy, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, 2003, p. 3. 8 Gunaratna, op. cit., p. 56. 9 R Gunaratna, ‘Blowback’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, August 2001, p.43. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 M Basile, ‘Going to the Source: Why Al Qaeda’s Financial Network is Likely to Withstand the Current War on Terrorist Financing’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, May-June 2004, p. 169-170. 13 Gunaratna, op. cit., pp. 90-91. 14 Although the United States and its allies have been able to attrite the core leadership of Al Qaeda, the organization has proven to be resilient. 15 A Baveja, ‘America’s ‘War’ on Terrorism: Can the U.S. Learn from Its War on Drugs?’, Journal of Counterterrorism and Security International, January 2001, p. 16. 16 RM Nixon, ‘Memorandum Establishing a Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism’, September 25, 1972, Evolution of U.S. Counterterrorism Policy, Vol. I, Y Alexander & MB Kraft (eds), Praeger Security International, Westport, 2008, p. 47-48. 17 Baveja, op. cit., p. 16. 18 PJ Smith, ‘USA Adopts Financial Legislation for Counterterrorism’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, August, 2004, p.35.; See also 12 United Stated Code, 1829, b and 13 United States Code, 1956-57. 19 See, 18 United States Code, 1961-68.
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WJ Clinton, ‘Executive Order 12947: Prohibiting Transactions with Terrorism Who Threaten to Disrupt the Middle East Peace Process’, The Federal Register, January 25, 1995, p. 5079. 21 President Reagan’s authorization of operation EL DORADO CANYON in 1983 and President Clinton’s use of cruise missiles against targets in Sudan and Afghanistan in the wake of Al Qaeda bombing on US embassies remain the two primary examples of the use of military force against terrorists in the years prior to the Al Qaeda attacks on the Unites States on September 11, 2001. 22 GW Bush, ‘Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People’, US Capital, Washington D.C., September 21, 2001, transcript posted on http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/release/2001/09/print/20010920-8.html., Viewed on June 11, 2008. 23 CH Briscoe, RL Kiper, JA Schroder & KI Sepp, Weapon of Choice: US Army Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan, Combat Studies Institute Press, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 2003, p. 33. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. The approval by Congress was not a declaration of war, but rather the authorization and support of the president’s decision to use military force against Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Under the War Powers Act, the president must inform Congress of his decision to use military force, upon which those forces can only be deployed for 60 days. If the presidents needs an extension, he may appeal to Congress for an additional 30 days before the troops then either need to be removed or approved by Congress. 26 SM Duncan, A War of a Different Kind: Military Force and America’s Search for Homeland Security, Naval Institution Press, Annapolis 2004, p. 53. 27 Ibid., 34. 28 Approximately 12 nations supported and assisted the United States in its operations in Afghanistan. The activity of support ranged from the commitment of combat forces by nations such as Britain, to fly-over rights granted by several republics of the former Soviet Union. 29 SN Kalic, Combating a Modern Hydra: Al Qaeda and the Global War on Terrorism, Combat Studies Institute Press, Fort Leavenworth, 2006, p. 31. 30 Ibid. 31 S Wilson & A Kamen, ‘Global War on Terror is Given a New Name,’ Washington Post, online edition, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/03/24/AR2009032402818.html.Viewed on March 17, 2010.
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Bibliography Alexander, Y. & Kraft, M.B. (eds), Evolution of U.S. Counterterrorism Policy. Vol. 1. Praeger Security International, Westport, 2008. ________
, Evolution of U.S. Counterterrorism Policy. Vol. 2. Praeger Security International, Westport, 2008. ________
, Evolution of U.S. Counterterrorism Policy. Vol. 3. Praeger Security International, Westport, 2008. Basile, M., ‘Going to the Source: Why Al Qaeda’s Financial Network is Likely to Withstand the Current War on Terrorist Financing’. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. No 27 (May-June 2004), 169-185. Baveja, A., ‘America’s ‘War’ on Terrorism: Can the U.S. Learn from its War on Drugs?’. Journal of Counterterrorism and Security International. Vol. 8 no. 1, January 2001, pp. 16-20. Boulden, J. & Thomas G.W. (eds), Terrorism and the U.N.: Before and After September 11. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2004. Daphne, J. & Framework, W. (eds), Non-State Actors in World Politics. Palgrave Press, New York, 2001. Duncan, S.M., A War of a Different Kind: Military force and America’s Search for Homeland Security. Naval Institution Press, Annapolis, 2004. Enders, W. & Sandler, T., ‘Transnational Terrorism in the Post-Cold War Era’. International Studies Quarterly. Vol. 43, No. 1, (March 1999). pp. 145167. Gross, L., ‘The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948’. The American Journal of International Law. Vol. 42, No. 1, (January 1948), pp 20-41. Gunaratna, R., Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror. Berkeley Books, New York, 2002. ________
, ‘Blowback’. Jane’s Intelligence Review. Vol. 13, No. 3, (August 2001), p. 45.
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______________________________________________________________ Hersey, A.S., ‘History of International Law Since the Peace of Westphalia’. The American Journal of International Law. Vol. 6, No. 1, (January 1912), pp. 30-69. Jenkins, B., Countering Al Qaeda: An Appreciation of the Situation and Suggestions for Strategy. RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, 2003. Kalic, S.N., Combating a Modern Hydra: Al Qaeda and the Global War on Terrorism. Combat Studies Institute Press, Fort Leavenworth, 2006. Kepel, G. & Milelli, J-P. (eds), Al Qaeda in its Own Words. Belknap Press, Cambridge, 2008. Laqueur, W., The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction. Oxford University Press, New York, 2000. Leblanc, B., ‘Sources of Terrorist: Funding the Drug Trade’. Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International. Vol. 10, No. 2, (Summer 2004), pp. 26-34. Murphy, J.F., Sword of Islam: Muslim Extremism from the Arab Conquest to the Attack on America. Prometheus Books, New York, 2002. Patterns of Global Terrorism: 1990-2003, U.S. State Department, Washington D.C., 1991. Risen, J., ‘Evolving Nature of Al Qaeda is Misunderstood, Critics Says’. New York Times. http://ebird.afis.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20041108335596.html., Viewed on November 8, 2004. Simon, B. & Simon, S., The Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam’s War Against America. Random House, New York, 2003. Smith, P.J., ‘USA Adopts Financial Legislation for Counterterrorism’. Jane’s Intelligence Review. No. 16, August 2004, 34-36. Wilson, S. & Kamen, A., ‘Global War on Terror is Given New Name’. The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2009/03/24/AR2009032402818.html. Viewed on March 17, 2010.
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______________________________________________________________ Sean N. Kalic is an Associate Professor in the Department of Military History at the United States Army’s Command and General Staff College. He has published on topics dealing with the Cold War, which is one of his areas of expertise, as well as on Al Qaeda and transnational terrorism.
Income-Based Distribution of Terrorism Piotr Lis Abstract The study applies time series analysis to establish whether income-based transference of international terrorism took place in reaction to the rise of the fundamentalist-based terrorism, the end of the Cold War, 9/11, and the 2003 Iraq invasion. It introduces several extensions to an article by Enders and Sandler (2006), for instance it uses two independent datasets and presents an alternative approach to the events in Iraq. The differences in results between this paper and Enders and Sandler (2006) are caused by the lack of consistency in employing the World Bank’s income classification by the two authors. This study finds that the rise of fundamentalist terrorism brought increases across all countries, while the post-Cold War era resulted in a reduction in attacks only in high and medium income countries. 9/11 appeared to have had no long lasting impact on distribution of terrorism, while the Iraq invasion seemed to have reduced international terrorism in rich states. Key Words: Terrorism, distribution, Iraq war, time series. ***** 1.
Introduction This study seeks to answer whether major historical events induced changes in the distribution of international terrorism among countries by income class. It also explores the effects of discrepancies between two terrorism datasets – MIPT and ITERATE – on the obtained results. I start by attempting to replicate the work of Enders and Sandler (2006), henceforth E&S, and find that although some of their results hold up, their unclear income classification prevents me from reproducing many of the estimates. Similarly to the two authors, I follow the World Bank’s (1978-2008) income classification, which distinguishes high-, medium- and low-income countries (HICs, MICs and LICs, respectively). Then I apply time series analysis to evaluate whether terrorists have altered their target locations categorized by countries’ income in response to the rise of religious fundamentalism, the end of the Cold War, the September 11 attacks, henceforth 9/11, and the Iraq war, which is not accounted for in E&S. Subsequently, I introduce several extensions. First, I analyze the MIPT (2008) database in addition to the ITERATE dataset used by E&S. Second, I follow the World Bank’s income classification more closely1. Third, I suggest an expanded analysis of the
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______________________________________________________________ Iraqi conflict by incorporating domestic events under the presumption that they affect foreign audience. I base my considerations on the rational actor model (Anderton, Carter 2005), which implies that terrorists choose venues that promise a higher ratio of expected benefits to expected costs. This framework allows for a substitution between targets. For instance, wealthy nations can afford more effective measures than their poorer counterparts. Thus, in periods of increased threat, when countries boost their security, we may observe transference of terrorism to less developed states that are unable to afford widespread counterterrorism measures. 2.
Terrorism Data The data on international terrorist attacks is drawn from two sources: the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, which was managed by the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, and the International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events (ITERATE), which has been developed by Mickolus et al. (2008). MIPT records 10,237 international incidents between 1 January 1968 and 31 December 2007, while ITERATE reports 12,975 events over the same period. Notably, MIPT dismisses any hoaxes, foiled or failed plots, while ITERATE is more inclusive and incorporates a wider range of events including hoaxes, and those aborted by terrorists or authorities at any stage of planning or execution. Using the described datasets, I aggregate the observations over three-month periods, which minimizes the risk of having intervals with zero or near-zero observations. Subsequently, I generate two time series. First, ‘all incidents’ includes quarterly totals for all types of international attacks. Second, the ‘casualty’ time series lists only attacks with either a death and / or injury. Figure 1 (See Appendix) depicts numbers of terrorist events per quarter and by income class between 1968 and 2007. Plots in the bottom of each panel present differences between the two datasets computed by deducting the MIPT counts from the ITERATE totals. All panels of Figure 1 (See Appendix) give the impression of an increase in terrorist activity with the advent of the fundamentalist violence. The end of the Cold War seems to be associated with a noticeable decline in the number of incidents in all series but LICs, which suffer from a further escalation of terrorism. The post-9/11 period seems to bring immediate increases across all four panels, while the Iraq invasion is likely to benefit HICs. At the same time, Panel 3 suggests a drastic expansion of terrorism in the MIC group that includes Iraq. Discrepancies between the datasets in recent years, when MIPT totals exceed those of ITERATE, can be largely contributed to the way the databases handle attacks in Israel, Iraq and
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______________________________________________________________ Afghanistan. Table 1 shows that MIPT’s record of 351 attacks in Israel, which constitutes 62 per cent of all HIC incidents, is ten times higher than ITERATE’s count of 33 attacks. MIPT also appears to be doing a better job when reporting incidents in Iraq. It lists nearly three times more international attacks than the rival dataset. When I match the ITERATE’s records of all attacks that took place in Iraq in 2005 with the MIPT content, I find that ITERATE omits tens of incidents which are undoubtedly international and shown in MIPT. 3.
Estimation Method and Results I employ an autoregressive process of order p, AR(p), augmented by adding five intervention variables2: p
y t a0 ai y t i α 1 FUND α 2 POST α 3 SEPT α 4 IRAQ α 5 D P εt , i 1
where yt is the number of attacks in period t, a0 is a constant and εt is an error term. The intervention variables take the following values: fundamentalist terrorism:
FUND = 1 for t ≥1979:4 and 0 otherwise,
the end of the Cold War:
POST = 1 for t ≥ 1992:1 and 0 otherwise,
9/11 (permanent effect):
SEPT = 1 for t ≥ 2001:3 and 0 otherwise,
9/11 (pulse dummy):
DP =1 if t = 2001:3 and 0 otherwise,
the Iraq war:
IRAQ = for t ≥ 2003:3 and 0 otherwise.
Regression results are presented in Figure 2 (See Appendix). Each bar represents a confidence interval (CI) for an estimate, which is marked with a horizontal line. Table 2 (See Appendix) facilitates further discussion by summarizing the effects found by E&S and stating whether my results confirm (‘yes’) or contradict (‘no’) their findings. Cases where E&S report significant effects, but my estimates are not statistically different from zero are coded as ‘maybe’. The advent of the religious fundamentalism (FUND), increased terrorism by around 20 attacks per quarter, but it did not seem to affect casualty incidents. I show that the effect of fundamentalist terrorism spreads across all income groups. The estimates of the effect of the end of the Cold War (POST) confirm E&S’s finding of the decline in incidents of all types and no impact on casualty incidents. On the income group level my results back the drops across the MIC and HIC samples. Nonetheless, I find evidence of transference of terrorism to LICs. This effect can perhaps be attributed to the fact that both sides of the Iron Curtain lost their interest in
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______________________________________________________________ destabilizing each other, and therefore support for terrorists was reduced. This was accompanied by emergence of new LICs and diminished efforts to maintain the Soviet or Western influence in peripheral countries, which deprived of assistance, became unable to control internal ethnic hatreds. Also, the atmosphere of global changes might have been exploited by insurgents in underdeveloped states who wanted reforms. My estimates do not show permanent changes in the distribution of terrorism following 9/11 (SEPT). The rise of terrorism in HICs shown by MIPT is attributed to the dataset’s much higher number of incidents in Israel. It should not be generalized for the entire HIC sample as the regression does not return any change when attacks in Israel are excluded. The picture is more complicated when it comes to the immediate effect of 9/11 (Dp). I confirm E&S’s result of transference of casualty incidents to HICs. The rise in terrorism in rich countries could be attributed to the increase of perceived marginal benefits, as well as an ease of causing anxiety immediately after 9/11, which in turn decreased the marginal cost of terrorism. In the long run, however, security upgrades in rich countries seem to have raised the marginal cost enough to deter terrorists. The Iraq war did not seem to have a noticeable impact on the global, LIC and MIC series (see Figure 2 in the Appendix). The MIPT estimates reveal a considerable drop in the number of all incidents and casualty incidents in HICs. This may imply that the increased presence of the Western forces in terrorists’ homelands have engaged them enough to keep them away from launching attacks in rich countries, or that further advances in security in HICs have paid off3. MIPT and ITERATE give similar results, with the largest discrepancies in the instant effect of 9/11. The reason for that is the databases’ different handling of events in recent years. The comparison of the ITERATE coefficients with those of E&S shows differences in estimates for MICs and LICs, which are a result of discrepancies in the used income classifications. 4.
Iraq – An Alternative Approach This section looks closer at terrorism in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. I argue that attacks in which only Iraqi nationals are involved are ‘weakly’ international as they are likely to affect audiences beyond the host country. Since those incidents occupy news nearly every day, the Western public opinion must be somewhat influenced by them. Terrorists try to convince the coalition countries’ citizenry that the war in unwinnable. This message may reduce public support for the war, which is crucial for democratic governments to carry out their operations, particularly foreign military missions, which may be perceived as unnecessary loss of resources and lives. In addition, prolonged instability is associated with larger costs being paid
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______________________________________________________________ from the coalition states’ budgets, as well as prevents their businesses from obtaining expected benefits. Moreover, unpopularity of operations in Iraq may reduce general support for governments and hinder internal reforms. Based on the above arguments, I extend the terrorism series by taking the MIPT dataset with only international events and adding 9,063 attacks that took place in Iraq after 1 May 2003 and did not involve foreign targets. The time series obtained through this exercise are plotted in Figure 3 (See Appendix). Since the violence generating process in Iraq is unique and different from other countries, I separate Iraq from MICs. The analysis relies on testing for structural breaks in the time series at unknown date τm. As before, I use an AR(p) process, and estimate the following model: p p y t a10 a1i yt i I (t m) a 20 a2i y t i I (t m) t , i 1 i 1 where yt is the number of incidents in period t, a10 and a20 are constants and εt is an error term. The indicator function, I(.), takes the value of zero before the tested break date, and I(.) = 1 otherwise. I follow the procedure described by Bai (1997) to find the break points. I consider break dates in the central 85 per cent of the sample. Table 3 (See Appendix) reports estimated break dates and coefficients. I do not show results for the ‘MIC without Iraq’ sample as it does not experience any significant changes related to the Iraq war. All displayed series show breaks in the second quarter of 2004. The long-run mean of all incidents worldwide rises from 65.9 before to 184.5 after the break. This is largely influenced by the events in Iraq, where the corresponding measure soars to 149 attacks per quarter. A similar development is present in the casualty series, where long-run mean rises to 96.7 incidents per quarter in Iraq and nearly four-fold in all countries. The escalation of violence in Iraq combined with the decline of attacks in HICs, which is shown in the previous section, implies transference of terrorism from the latter to rich countries. The analysis shows changes in the terrorism series a year after the invasion. There may be several explanations for this delay. First, terrorists needed time to organize resources. Second, scandals such as the abuse at Abu Ghraib could have further aroused insurgents’ determination. The outrage among Iraqi public could have raised the support for the insurgency. Third, terrorists started to target the newly forming Iraqi police and military, as well as people who wanted to join them4. By making the Iraqi security forces appear unable to defend themselves, terrorists were sending a message that the coalition’s efforts were failing.
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______________________________________________________________ These results should be read with caution as the above analysis may overestimate the number of international terrorist attacks. But taking into account only those incidents in Iraq that are classified as international ignores the fact that attacks, which directly involve only Iraqi nationals, may also affect international audience. The real impact of the Iraq war on international terrorism is likely to lie somewhere between these two extremes. 5.
Concluding Remarks This study shows that 9/11 did not have as large impact on international terrorism as religious fundamentalism or the end of the Cold War. It also shows that such controversial steps as the Iraq war may enhance security at home and keep terrorists away from their prime targets. However, providing security to citizens is increasingly difficult as terrorists can easily communicate, travel across countries, and react strategically to security upgrades by identifying and exploiting soft targets. States should exert efforts to protect the weakest links, but doing so they ought to be aware that counterterrorism policies are likely to create externalities. This study also exposes sensitivity of E&S’s findings. Since the discrepancies are largely attributable to the fact that I follow the World Bank’s income classification in a more consistent way, it provides a caveat against the dangers of using cross-national income data in time series analysis. The differences between estimates obtained with MIPT and ITERATE are caused mainly by different approaches to coding incidents, particularly in Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel.
Appendix
Year 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Total
Table 1. Incidents in Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan Incidents in Incidents in Incidents in All incidents Iraq Afghanistan Israel MIPT IT. MIPT IT. MIPT IT. MIPT IT. 205 52 0 0 2 1 79 4 298 130 0 0 13 5 106 13 276 164 46 25 33 12 52 7 395 234 246 133 24 12 6 4 311 109 177 45 30 13 4 0 241 83 75 12 30 8 55 3 149 91 48 6 11 15 49 2 1875 863 592 221 143 66 351 33
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______________________________________________________________ Table 2. Comparison of findings in E&S with my results Incident type and Confirmed E&S Confirmed E&S IT. MIPT IT. MIPT country class Fundamentalist terrorism The end of the Cold War World rise yes* yes decline yes yes All LIC rise yes* yes decline no no incidents MIC decline yes yes decline no no HIC no effect yes no decline yes yes World no effect yes yes no effect yes yes Casualty LIC no effect yes no no effect no yes incidents MIC no yes decline maybe maybe no effect HIC no effect yes no no effect yes no Temporary effect of 9/11 Permanent effect of 9/11 World no effect yes yes decline yes maybe All LIC no effect yes yes decline yes maybe incidents MIC no effect no yes decline yes maybe HIC no effect yes no no effect yes yes World no effect yes yes no effect yes no Casualty LIC no effect yes yes decline yes maybe incidents MIC no effect yes yes no effect no yes HIC no effect yes yes rise yes yes * significant at 10% confidence lev Table 3. Estimated break dates and coefficients Time series
p
Break date
SupWald
5% crit. value
R2
a10
a11
a12
a20
a21
a22
a23
Long-run mean before break
after break
65.9
184.5
All countries (extended series) All 4 incidents
2004:2 17.69
0.28 180.76 0.40 -0.01 -0.37 17.27 0.93 21.74 0.39 (4.39) (3.76) (3.98) (2.60) (1.68) (-0.06) (-2.62)
Casualty 4 incidents
2004:2 18.33
17.27 0.94
2.83 0.64 0.27 130.76 0.30 -0.44 (1.81) (4.92) (2.52) (2.67) (1.20) (-1.93) Iraq (extended series)
29.3
114.8
All 5 incidents
2004:2 54.83
19.27 0.96
0.24 1.85 -0.89 183.04 -1.02 0.80 (1.08) (11.67) (-3.61) (2.54) (-3.75) (2.52)
5.6
149.3
Casualty 4 incidents
2004:2 19.15
17.27 0.95
0.13 1.95 -0.86 127.31 -0.98 0.67 (0.88) (7.36) (-1.89) (2.57) (-2.84) (1.33)
-1.54*
96.7
* Value not significantly different from zero. p - number of coefficients allowed to change when testing for breaks; regressions are run on the 1968:1-2007:4 sample; t-statistics in parentheses; a1i denotes pre-change coefficients; a2i relates to post-change coefficients.
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Figure 1. Incidents by Income Class (quarterly totals)
______________________________________________________________
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Figure 2. OLS estimates and 95% confidence intervals
______________________________________________________________
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Income-Based Distribution of Terrorism
______________________________________________________________ Figure 3. Extended terrorism series and estimated break periods
Notes 1
The World Bank distinguishes two subgroups of MICs – Lower Middle and Upper Middle Income Countries. From the example given by E&S one concludes that they treat the two sub-groups as one class. But they also say that Mexico moved from LICs to MICs, while Poland shifted in the opposite direction. In fact none of these countries was ever classified as LIC and the only moves they made were within the middle income category. 2 Compare with E&S. I also obtain maximum likelihood estimates based on the negative binomial distribution, which enables me to overcome limitations associated with OLS estimation for ‘thin’ series. However, here I present only OLS estimates as they can be interpreted intuitively and are consistent with results obtained using negative binomial. 3 Results for the incidents against U.S. targets (not shown) suggest that the war did not increase the vulnerability of the U.S. interests. 4 Attacks against the Iraqi police and military, which are not a part of the occupying forces, constitute terrorism. However, only 0.6% of all terrorist attacks in Iraq after the invasion were against military targets. Analogously,
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______________________________________________________________ attacks on civilians waiting to volunteer for these services constitute terrorism.
Bibliography Anderton, C.H. & Carter, J.R., ‘On Rational Choice Theory and the Study of Terrorism’. Defence and Peace Economics. Vol. 16(4), 2005, pp. 275-282. Andrews, D.W.K., ‘Tests for Parameter Instability and Structural Change With Unknown Change Point’. Econometrica. Vol. 61(4), 1993, pp. 821-856. Atkinson, S.E., Sandler, T. & Tschirhart, J., ‘Terrorism in a Bargaining Framework’. Journal of Law and Economics. Vol. 30(1), 1987, pp. 1-21. Bai, J., ‘Estimation of a Change Point in Multiple Regression Models’. Review of Economics and Statistics. Vol. 79(4), 1997, pp. 551-563. Cameron, A.C. & Trivedi, P.K., Regression Analysis of Count Data. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998. Enders, W. & Sandler, T., ‘Distribution of Transnational Terrorism among Countries by Income Class and Geography After 9/11’. International Studies Quarterly. Vol. 50(2), 2006, pp. 367-393. _______
, ‘Patterns of Transnational Terrorism, 1970-1999: Alternative TimeSeries Estimates’. International Studies Quarterly, vol. 46(2), 2002, pp. 145165. _______
, ‘Transnational Terrorism in the Post–Cold War Era’. International Studies Quarterly. Vol. 43(1), 1999, pp. 145-167. Hamilton, L.C. & Hamilton, J.D., ‘Dynamics of Terrorism’. International Studies Quarterly. Vol. 27(1), 1983, pp. 39-54. Hoffman, B., ‘Terrorism Trends and Prospects’. Countering the New Terrorism. Lesser, I. (ed), Document MR-989-AF Edn., RAND, Santa Monica, 1999, pp. 7-38. Long, J.S., Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables. Sage Publications, Inc, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1997.
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______________________________________________________________ Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), Terrorism Knowledge Base. Accessed on 13 Mar 2008 from http://www.tkb.org/, no longer available online. _______
, The MIPT Terrorism Annual. National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, Oklahoma City, 2002. Mickolus, E.F., Sandler, T., Murdock, J.M. & Flemming, P., International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events, 1968 - 2007. Vinyard Software, Dunn Loring, VA, 2008. Sandler, T. & Enders, W., ‘Economic Consequences of Terrorism in Developed and Developing Countries’. Terrorism, Economic Development, and Political Openness. Keefer, P. & Loayza, N. (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008, pp. 17-46. World Bank, World Development Report. Oxford University Press, New York, 1978 – 2008. Piotr Lis is a PhD student at Royal Holloway University of London. His research interest is in economics of armed conflict, particularly terrorism and changes in public opinion in response to war.
Defining Two Categories of Non-State Actors: Do we need to Gain more Control over Them to Prevent Specific Threats or is it Against the Basic Pillars of Democracy? Radana Makariusová Abstract Non-state actors are entities which have an irreplaceable position in the current global system. In the last decades they have become so influential that the analysis of the current global system is impossible without their characterisation. Individuals and non-state actors are the pillars of global civil society and the appropriateness of the terms ‘global’ and ‘civil society’ is subject to many discussions. Global civil society is an arena in which non-governmental actors are active and influence the lives of people all over the world. As Mary Kaldor says: ‘global civil society (societas civilis) is a peaceful political community based on an implicit or explicit consensus of all its members’. But is it true in reality? Or do we specify, on the contrary, a specific ‘dark zone’ which requires a more detailed observation? The proposed paper advances an alternative hypothesis that the existence of global civil society and the structure of global governance inadvertently support the participation of ‘unsocial’ non-state actors. My hypothesis leads to a discussion whether non-state actors may be defined with two contradictory aspects – the positive altruistic approach and the negative aspect supporting the emergence of war, terrorism, radicalism etc. Non-state actors are very heterogeneous and the lack of their control might lead to negative tendencies in the current global system. The core of my paper lies in the endeavour to find an answer to the following question: Shall we create specific institutions which would be responsible for gaining control over non-state actors? Is this procedure the right approach in eliminating the potential of specific global threats? The current global system - the system of global governance is based on a unique interconnection of intergovernmental relations and non-state actors therefore we shall concentrate on solutions of specific threats resulting from the lack of control of non-state actors. Key Words: Non-state actors, global civil society, global governance, weak states, UN Global Compact. *****
Defining Two Categories of Non-State Actors 118 ______________________________________________________________ 1.
Introduction Non-state actors are entities, which have an irreplaceable position in the current global system. In the last decades they have become so influential that the analysis of the current global system is impossible without their characterisation. Individuals and non-state actors are the pillars of global civil society and of the institutional structure of global governance. The appropriateness of the terms ‘global’ and ‘civil society’ is subject to many discussions. Global civil society is an arena or space in which non-governmental actors are active and influence the lives of people all over the world. As Mary Kaldor says: ‘global civil society (societas civilis) is a peaceful political community based on an implicit or explicit consensus of all its members’. But is it true in reality? Or do we specify, on the contrary, a specific ‘dark zone’ which requires a more detailed observation? I advance an alternative hypothesis that the existence of global civil society and the structure of global governance inadvertently support the participation of ‘unsocial’ non-state actors which might have global impact. My hypothesis leads to a discussion whether non-state actors may be defined with two contradictory aspects – the positive altruistic approach and the negative aspect supporting the emergence of war, terrorism, radicalism etc. Non-state actors are very heterogeneous and the lack of their control might lead to negative tendencies in the current global system. The core of my paper lies in the endeavour to find an answer to the following question: Shall we create specific institutions which would be responsible for gaining control over non-state actors? Is this procedure the right approach in eliminating the potential of specific global threats? I divide non-state actors into two categories: non-profit (NGOs, charities, etc.), profitable (multinational corporations), and come to a solution that each non-state actor on all levels of analysis occupies a very specific and sometimes very powerful potential to influence others in a positive or a negative way. The current global system - the system of global governance is based on a unique interconnection of intergovernmental relations and non-state actors which stresses the deepening of mutual cooperation and political coordination. Therefore, we shall concentrate on solutions of specific threats resulting from the lack of control of non-state actors. These problems are linked and examining the better-developed space of non-state actors and it throws light on how to develop the world of non-state actors in other words the space of global civil society. We can define meaning ‘civil’ by a dual inherent meaning. Which raises two questions:
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______________________________________________________________ 1.) how to handle the dark side of the non-state world represented by various kinds of organised terrorists and criminals? 2.) how to handle the global economy and its non-state actors. We need the concept that captures the non-state political universe, whether is nice or nasty.1 2.
Democratic Principles of Globality With globalization, many social relations substantially transcend territorial geography, territorialist governance has become impracticable. National and local governments are quite unable by themselves to effectively regulate phenomena like global terrorism; global arms trade or global ecological problems. Transborder flows cannot be tied to a strictly delimited territorial space over which a state might endeavour to exercise unilateral full control. Moreover globalisation has also loosened some important cultural and psychological underpinnings of sovereign statehood.2 Governance of global spaces is not only different, but also lacks democratic legitimacy. On the whole, current arrangements to regulate global communications, global conflict, global terrorism, global ecology, global finance and global production rest on very limited explicit consent from the affected populations. In each area of global policy, public participation and public accountability are generally weak. So it is no exaggeration to say that contemporary globalization has provoked a crisis of democracy. This crisis derives from major structural problem, which in turn reflected in a host of institutional deficiencies. The structural problem relates to the changing contours of the disjunction between supraterritorial spaces and territorial self-determination. While many social relations have gained a substantial global dimension, practices of democracy have largely failed to keep pace. Yet even if territorial democratic mechanisms are not adequate to bring transborder actors and flows under collective control of the people they affect. Democratic global governance cannot be derived from democratic government alone.3 Current global system is a space within which participate thousands of non-state actors, but without any inner systematic control. There is no superordinate body, which would be responsible for monitoring and supervision over non-state entities. Our current global system is a new phenomenon and we have not yet devised a tool that would help us adapt to the current new conditions that the system offers. States are the most powerful entities, but in some cases only formally, because there are states, which not even remotely attain the power position of some non-state actors (for instance the turnover of some multinational corporations exceeds manifold the GDP of the poorest countries of the world).
Defining Two Categories of Non-State Actors 120 ______________________________________________________________ On the one hand we can argue that non-state actors are under control, because they have to adapt to the conditions and legal forms of the state on whose territory they are active, but what is the situation in cases where we speak of failing states or the least developed countries which do not have sufficient opportunities for forming good governance? These are the cases we should try to solve. It is the interior non-functional political system of these countries that is a threat to the whole global community. We should learn to solve such threats and to create functional democratic criteria with which to fill the so-far ineffectively governed trans-national space. We can ask ourselves – Is the formation of a supranational body supervising non-state actors in conflict with the principle of state sovereignty as the basic and unrivalled criterion of the existence of state units? It is not, because some non-state actors can be a real and significant threat to the whole international/global community. 3.
Weak States Weak states have become current issues on the agendas of politicians, military personnel and academia in the West, due to crystallization of the understanding that these states and regions have turned into a significant threat to the security and interests of the West. Weak states stem from the collapse of the governmental and political structure in the country and the loss of the state´s ability to enforce law and order. The process is initiated and accompanied by manifestations of anarchy and form of violence. A weak state is one in which the government does not have effective control of its territory, is not perceived as legitimate by a significant services to its citizens, and lacks a monopoly on the use of force. A weak state may experience active violence or simply be vulnerable to violence.4 The state not only lacks an effective government, but also the situation includes the collapse of the system that composes the state entity. Therefore the term ‘failing states’ actually refers to countries that have disintegrated.5 From the sociological aspect, the weak state is characterized by what the sociologist Max Weber calls ‘loss of monopoly over power’.6 In this type of reality, the legal system, the police, and other entities that serve the role of maintaining law and order stop functioning or cease to exist. These entities may join various armed groups or criminal elements that take over the state infrastructures and resources for their own needs and establish a ‘government’ of their own within various regions and population of the state, or in certain cases – criminalization. In this type of situation the ceases to exist and society reverts to a status of pre-state chaos.7 From a legal point of view, it is possible to claim that a failing state is an entity defined as a ‘state’ but in practical term lacks the ability to function as a state entity.
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______________________________________________________________ We should take the responsibility and give order to the ‘interconnectedness’ and ‘globality’ of our current global system and to form an international body, which will be responsible for the control of nonstate entities within failing states or within the least developed countries. In my opinion this is the only means of protection and the only way to prevent the spread of potential security threats. Let´s form specific parameters and criteria on the basis of which we identify countries which need to be monitored and let us intermediate through an independent body a sufficient control over local activities of non-state actors. It is a question of interest for us all and for our children. This is the only way in which we can effectively eliminate a possible potential global security threat. On the level of profit-making non-state actors – multinational corporations we can already notice a certain development in the monitoring of the activities of multinational corporations, even though it is voluntary, within Kofi Annan’s original initiative – the UN Global Compact.8 4.
Conclusion The Global Compact can establish a new practical model for the theory of international relations, because it is an excellent example of forming structures, norms and identities between international institutions. It helps understand the formation of a legitimate and more democratic multilateral cooperation. Currently thousands of firms from all world regions and thousands of non-governmental organisations participate on the fulfilment of this international initiative and their basic objective is the fulfilment of the ten basic principles. That is why the future development of the UN Global Compact and the intensification of the cooperation between non-profit making and profit-making international actors can have a significant impact on the formation and future development of the global corporate governance. Let’s form a similar body for all non-governmental actors both on the regional levels as well as on the global level within the UN, let’s eliminate terrorism and the potential terrorist threat. The example of the functioning of the UN Global Compact can be a unique model for the formation of such an initiative for the control and cooperation of nongovernmental and charity organisations working and originating in failing states or in the least developed countries. The disadvantage of the UN Global Compact lies in the fact that it is a voluntary initiative based on voluntary participation, but my proposal goes towards another level of cooperation – the ‘obligatory monitoring’ on non-governmental actors in the countries that meet specific criteria. At the start of my paper I claimed that the current global relations lack democratic legitimacy and thus it is necessary to form it. It is an issue very similar to the one being solved in the case of humanitarian intervention – when does the international community
Defining Two Categories of Non-State Actors 122 ______________________________________________________________ have a right to intervene and violate the sovereignty of a state to protect a certain group of inhabitants? It is an important question, which has been an issue for many decades. In the case of the formation and functioning of terrorist groups we do not speak of just a ‘certain group of inhabitants’ – we speak of the whole global community. That is why I think that the time has come for us to realise that state sovereignty is not absolutely sacrosanct, because during the last 20 years there have been significant changes in international relations and the activity of non-state actors is not limited by state borders. To protect the future of the humanity it is necessary to create new tools which would differ from the original intention of the UN Charter from 1945. We cannot stop progress and we are on the threshold of a period when it is necessary to decide and make a change and an improvement. When the UN Charter was formulated from the point of view of the then existing international relations it was necessary to establish mutual relations on the immunity of state sovereignty, but nowadays the situation is different and it is necessary to adapt to the new conditions. That is why we should realise that there are exceptional serious cases when the international community should take over the responsibility. Such exceptional cases are states whose inability to enforce the law and order on their territory has a potential to threaten the whole community and in such cases it is necessary to start to act and formulate rules which will help solve this issue institutionally; rules on the basis of which an international organisation will be established, an organisation which will have the right to monitor the activities of non-governmental actors; rules which have the potential to change the existing understanding of the principle of the immunity of states and start a new era of acceptance of the significant potential of non-state actors. It would thus open a new chapter in the history of mankind, in international relations and in institutionalisation of global relations in general.
Notes 1
B Buzan, From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 77. 2 JA Scholte, ‘Civil Society and Democracy’, The Global Governance Reader, Routledge, 2005, p. 327. 3 Ibid, p. 329. 4 S Shay, Somalia between Jihad and Restoration, Transaction Publishers, 2008, p. 142. 5 Ibid, p. 144. 6 M Weber, Staatssoziologie, Berlin, 1997, p. 27. 7 Ibid, p. 144.
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______________________________________________________________ 8
The formation of the UN Global Compact as an international initiative of the United Nations was proclaimed at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 31st January 1999 in the speech of the former UN General Secretary Kofi Annan. He called upon prominent businessmen and representatives of firms to cooperate with UN agencies and civil society organisations
Bibliography Alice, B.D. & Hoffmann, M.J., Contending Perspectives on Global Governance: Coherence, Contestation and World Order. Routledge, 2005. Barnett, M. & Duvall, R., Power in Global Governance. Cambridge University Press, 2005. Baudot, J., Building a World Community, Globalisation and the Common Good. University of Washington Press, 2001. Buzan, B., From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Strucutre of Globalisation. Cambridge University Press, 2004 Clarke, J.N., Global Governance in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Cooper, A.F., Enhancing Global Governance, Towards a New Diplomacy. United Nations University Press, 2002. Groom, A.J.R., Frameworks for International Cooperation. Pinter, 1990. Held, D., Governing Globalisation: Power, Authority and Global Governance. Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Hewson, M. & Sinclair, T., Approaches to Global Governance Theory. State University of N.Y. Press, 1999. Keohane, R.O., Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World. Routledge, 2002. Rosenau, J.N., ‘Governance in Twenty-First Century’. Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organisations. 1995.
Defining Two Categories of Non-State Actors 124 ______________________________________________________________ Shay, S., Somalia between Jihad and Restoration. Transaction Publishers, 2008. Scholte, J.A., ‘Civil Society and Democracy’. The Global Governance Reader. Routledge, 2005. Whitman, J., The Limits of Global Governance. Routledge, 2005. Wilkinson R., The Global Governance Reader. Routledge, 2000. Radana Makariusová is senior lecturer at the Department for International Relations and European Studies, Metropolitan University Prague and visiting senior lecturer at Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of International Relations. Research Interests: Global governance, Global Terrorism, Non-state actors. Email Address:
[email protected].
PART III War, Media, Communications
The Informational War against Terrorism: New Opportunities and New Risks (German Experience) Darya Bazarkina Abstract There is a new meaning of the problem of terrorism in contemporary world in cause of global economic crisis. The governments and special services tell about the danger of the mass protests, which are able\allowed to provoke the acts of terrorism.1 At the same time, there is an activation of the counterterroristic policy, which is often followed by negative reactions to state’s activity. We shall try in our paper to analyze the experience of German special services in the sphere of informational counteraction to the terroristic treatments and to research the effect made by the proclamations, PR- and CM-actions and the propagandistic campaigns of the special services in the sphere of public opinion in FRG. We shall also examine the reaction of German society upon the counter-terroristic measures and upon their communication maintenance. The object of our research is the public opinion’s transformation in FRG under the counter-terroristic policy’s influence and the reputation risks of the state in this area. We consider it’s necessary to demarcate the meanings ‘social protest’ and ‘terrorism’ and to research, how the statements about the potential danger of the acts of terrorism in the protest movement influent on the protest groups. Key Words: Social communication.
protest,
terrorism,
global
economic
crisis,
***** One of the positive features of the modern counter-terrorist strategy in EU and in Germany in particular is the consecutive institutionalization of the authorities’ special measures. One of the leading counter-terrorist structures in FRG today is the Joint Counter-Terrorism Centre which took up activities in Berlin on 14 December 2004. The Joint Counter-Terrorism Centre brings together analysts from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). It provides excellent conditions to share information in real time, to produce fast and targeted analyses of potential threats, and to coordinate operational measures to combat terrorism. A joint centre ensures a smooth flow of information in all directions and is an intelligent way of sharing knowledge. Significant advantages are:
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Accelerated information-sharing, and Strengthened and focused analytical expertise. The Centre regularly and intensively performs the following tasks:
1.
2. 3.
4.
5. 6.
7.
8.
Daily briefings: At these daily meetings participants exchange up-to-date police and intelligence information, draw up preliminary assessments and plan relevant measures. Threat assessments: Daily reports, warnings and new information are immediately analyzed and assessed. Operational information-sharing: The aim is to establish a direct link between information-sharing and the coordination of operational measures. Case assessment: Individual aspects of terrorism, such as the procurement of falsified identity documents or weapons and explosives, are jointly assessed to find effective prevention strategies. Structural analyses: This essential task entails analyzing long-term effects of international terrorism. Gathering intelligence on terrorists: Information on potential terrorists and relevant persons is verified and improved to effectively combat terrorist organizations and their supporters and to prevent terrorist recruitment. Sharing resources: Using available synergies, for example regarding Internet research or when consulting Islam experts and translators. Additional measures concerning legal status: The aim is to determine at an early stage whether it is necessary to take measures under foreigners or asylum law.
The information aspect of counter-terrorist counteraction is rather important also in the activity of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz/BfV). Of course, it is necessary to protect the society from the terror danger, and there are a lot of really useful materials on BfV website, like the instructions for the citizens explaining, how to prevent the terrorist act.. But in time of economic crisis the burden of responsibility for any word and deed is much harder than usual. Attempts to use spontaneous mass actions in interests of the influence groups are not a new phenomenon. Performances of participants of «students’ revolution» 1968 and mass protests of the next years became an occasion for some provocations from police. Today, during an epoch of a
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______________________________________________________________ postindustrial society, mass communications get a special urgency. The public effect of a mass action is amplified by its illumination in mass-media. The reactionary and repressive structures could take advantage in it. Before the crisis arrived the communication activities of lawenforcement services in Germany were rather sufficient. Thus traditionally the protest movement here was identified with extremist activities, and the theoretical foundation of the left movement was presented as the basic source of extremist tendencies in public opinion. This phenomenon is reflected, for example, as in section «Left extremism» of Department on Protection of the Constitution of FRG and in numerous publications of its regional departments: ‘Left-wing extremists are avowed opponents of the state and social order of the Federal Republic of Germany, which they defame as an order of capitalism marked by racism and fascism. Depending on their ideologicalpolitical orientation – revolutionary-Marxist or anarchist – they are aiming at establishing a socialist/Communist system or a ‘society free from rulers’ (anarchy). The left-wing extremists´ forms of action are manifold: They comprise public manifestations, overt agitation with flyers, calls for action via posters, periodic publications, electronic communications media and running in elections and attempts to covertly influencing social groups. Violations of the law including overt or covert offences like causing damage to property, mass militancy and also inflicting bodily harm are partly regarded as a means to pursue their political objectives’.2 Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution distinguishes in German left-wing extremism the following ideolgical trends:
a revolutionary-marxist wing, comprising i.a. the ‘Deutsche Kommunistische Partei’ (DKP / German Communist Party), the ‘Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands’ (MLPD / Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany) and individual overtly extremist structures within the ‘Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus’ (PDS / Party of Democratic Socialism) and the ‘Left-wing Party PDS’ like the ‘Kommunistische Plattform’ (KPF / Communist Platform). among the Trotzkyist groups which have been particularly active in the past years are ‘Linksruck’ (Swing to the Left) and ‘Sozialistische Alternative’ (SAV / Socialist Alternative). the major part of the violence-prone left-wing extremists is made up of anarchist groups, among them those calling themselves ‘Autonomists’.3
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______________________________________________________________ There are a number of publications in which the legal left parties and movements such as German Communist Party, were identified as dangerous extremist organizations. These publications have often the bright headers like ‘The Enemies of Democracy’. We suppose that the economic crisis led to the suspension of such publications. At the same time mass protests in Germany, headlined by media, are often accompanied by comments capable only to flare up social tensions. Sometimes the official statements on terrorism do the same negative job. There are articles in newspaper of German Communist Party ‘Unsere Zeit’ (‘Our Time’) which include the answer on antirecessionary measures with the photos of DKP demonstrations.4 One of the reasons of these demonstrations is a communication barrier between authority and opposition, which exists today in many European countries and Russia and which, we consider, became the reason of the long-termed political crisis in Greece. The world economic crisis became the reason of that thousands of people across all Europe have taken part in pickets and demonstrations asking for radical democratic reforms. The mass protests caused by crisis, are often accompanied by violent actions of ultra leftists or ultra rightists that are capable to provoke demonstrators on the violent actions. So, the police of Athens has shot fifteen years old young man who with thirteen comrades (in press they are named by representatives of independent groups) showered with stones the police car in the center of the Greek capital in December, 2008. This incident has provoked a new wave of protest actions in Greece during which demonstrators overturned cars, beat windowpanes, burned shops. Such events not only displease citizens, but also entail armed conflicts of demonstrators with police that is extremely negatively influence on opportunity to adjust dialogue between the state and citizens. It is possible at the analysis of mass protests to allocate two groups which go through the reputation risks. It’s the demonstrators who can undergo to provocations and discredit the upheld idea by rash actions, and authorities, which can admit a number of communication mistakes at interaction with protesting. It is reflected in publications of press in which, depending on position in each separate country, is possible to make a game with ultra leftist and ultra rightist organizations. Mass protests in the East Europe, in comparison with Western, are less influenced by counterculture, therefore in the East Europe the external attributes of the protest are much poorer, and actions are much more desperately. Therefore it is much easier during communication counteraction to mass actions in the West to give to an event more character of theatrical action, rather than the public or political action. As an example it is possible to cite the description of mass protests in London in Russian RBC Daily on the materials of British The Economist:
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______________________________________________________________ A huge brown pig Winnie did not manage to reach Downing Street. She was stopped on the way to Whitehall together with several hundreds of pig breeders who strode singing a hymn «Support your own meat». They have arrived to London on March, 4th to complain to the government of a disastrous condition of the branch... Week earlier... the opponents of construction of the third runway at Heathrow have lowered the slogans from a roof of the Westminster palace and have thrown paper planes all area below... . Similar character of public performances though does not lead, as a rule, to collisions of demonstrators with police; in some cases the performance form discredits the claims of democratic transformations. On the other hand, frankly scornful tone of conservative press is capable to harden protesting and to push them to the ‘ultra leftist’ actions. For the prevention of political risks we represent a constant dialogue of authorities with employees of every branch in crisis, and with representatives of protest movement as the most comprehensible decision. The common tendency for Western and the East Europe on a background of a world economic crisis is strengthening of ultra right tendencies. The example of Germany where crisis tendencies were showed in attacks of neo-Nazi youth on representatives of police is most indicative in the Western Europe. Both representatives of the land governments, and the federal government, notice the new quality of neo-Nazi attacks, such, as improbable frankness of murder attempts. Also the actions of German neoNazis more often began to pass in the central cities of FRG whereas before they have been concentrated in boundary areas. The rejuvenation of neo-Nazi contingent is marked alongside with exasperation of actions. If till now the ideological leaders in it were old right (for example, former member ultra leftist Horst Mahler) today the circle of neo-Nazis has narrowed by young functionaries with essentially increased readiness for violent measures. The informational society gives the new opportunities to use the information technologies in counter-terrorism policymaking. The experts on risk management pay an attention on communication defense too: ‘External risk communications are not aimed merely at informing and instructing the media and those affected; rather, they seek a dialogue tailored to a specific audience. Here one must always remember to communicate risk related topics in such a way that no misunderstandings can arise between sender and receiver. For example, empirical research has demonstrated differences in the way experts and ordinary persons perceive risk. In order to avoid unacceptable results, risk communications should always be timely,
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______________________________________________________________ unambiguous, audience-appropriate, consistent and reliable. For risk communications to be effective, the audience must trust the source and find it credible.5 Surveillance of Islamists on the Internet has become vital in the battle against terrorism, Germany’s top anti-subversion official, Federal Prosecutor General Monika Harms, said Dec. 14, 2010. ‘The Internet has developed into the decisive means of communication within international Islamist terrorism,’ she said during a press conference in Karlsruhe to review the year. Harms said a Berlin-based team, the Joint Internet Center (GIZ), consisting of about 30 German police and intelligence officers, had been working full time since January, monitoring Islamist activity on the Internet and analyzing Islamist Web sites.6 These opportunities are very useful for the communicational counteraction to terrorist groups, but the activity of the security agencies could impair the state reputation too. There are many risks related to the information policy of German authorities. According to a law passed by the German parties CDU, CSU and SPD, from 2008 on is possible to trace who has contacted whom via telephone, mobile phone or e-mail for a period of six months. In the case of mobile calls or text messages via mobile phone, the user's location is also logged. Anonymising services will be prohibited as of 2009. ‘The data that is collected about the entire population allows our movements to be traced, any calls or communications with personal and business contacts to be monitored and removes privacy in our personal relationships. Information regarding the content of communications can be deduced relating to personal interests and the individual life circumstances of the persons communicating. Access to the data is granted to the police, public prosecutors, secret services and foreign states which hope for better prosecution of crimes.’7 These measures begun the action ‘You are the terrorist’, when the German Working Group on Data Retention (GWGDR) uploaded on YouTube the video with the following subtitles: ‘Just recently we found out that there are more than 82 Million terrorists hiding in Germany. You are one of them. So from now on we will record all of you activities for 6 months... And because you are a Terrorist, the BKA is allowed to investigate your Computer (trojan-horse)...’8 There is an explanation on GWGDR website: ‘You are a terrorist’ is a persiflage of two official German social-marketing-campaigns... ‘You are a terrorist’ is the answer to today’s politics in Germany. All Citizens are under general suspicion. Germany becomes a preventive surveillance society. By visualizing the already passed and future laws, it shows what the Germany of the present and the very near future does look like.9 These examples of informational attacks and the measures of authorities’ control make us to reflect on the aftereffects of communication measures in counter-terrorist struggle. It is possible to conclude, that
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______________________________________________________________ reputation and the political risks caused by a world economic crisis, are coincide in many respects and equally capable to damage the common European house’s architectonics. The means of PR and communication management can render serious influence on process of situation’s settlement. Among possible communication methods of the decision it is possible to name adjustment of dialogue between the governments and the nongovernmental organizations, mainly, trade unions. The propagation of struggle against poverty, which experts both in the West and Russia recommend to spend, can be entered within the limits of communication policy of the large companies. The creation of the regional organizations, similarly to Transparency International, investigating a level of a transparency of actions of authorities and business-elite, can become an essential help in struggle against corruption. The minimization of political risks in the Europe is possible only at the similar balanced actions of authority, large business and the nongovernmental organizations and at appropriate information and communication maintenance of anti-recessionary policy.
Notes 1
The paper was prepared within the bounds of Federal Target Programme ‘Scientific & Pedagogic Personnel of Innovative Russia in 2009 – 2013’. 2 Left-wing extremism, in Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz/BfV), viewed on 14 March 2010, http://www.verfassungsschutz.de/en/en_fields_of_work/leftwing_ ext remism/. 3 Ibid. 4 Unsere Zeit. 12.03.2010. 5 Protecting Critical Infrastructures – Risk and Crisis Management: A Guide for Companies and Government Authorities. Federal Ministry of the Interior, Berlin, 2007, p. 16. 6 Top German Prosecutor Backs Online Terror Surveillance, in Deutsche Welle, Viewed on 14 March 2010, http://www.dw-world.de/article/ 0300472000.html. 7 The Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung (German Working Group on Data Retention), Viewed on 14 March 2010, http://www. vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/index.php?lang=en. 8 You are a Terrorist! A Campaign against Terrorists, Viewed on 14 March 2010, http://www.dubistterrorist.de/en/. 9 Ibid.
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Bibliography Author Unknown, ‘Left-Wing Extremism’. Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz/BfV). Viewed on 14 March 2010, www.verfassungsschutz.de/en/en_fields_of_work/leftwing_ extremism/. Protecting Critical Infrastructure, Risk and Crisis Management: A Guide for Companies and Government Authorities. Federal Ministry of the Interior, Berlin, 2007, p. 16. The Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung. (German Working Group on Data Retention). Viewed on 14 March 2010, http://www.vorratsdaten speicherung.de/ index.php?lang=en. ‘Top German Prosecutor Backs Online Terror Surveillance’. Deutsche Welle. Viewed on 14 March 2010, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article /0300472000.html. You are a Terrorist! A Campaign against Terrorists. Viewed on 14 March 2010, http://www.dubistterrorist.de/en/. Darya Bazarkina – PhD, programme coordinator of public relations and communication management studies at the International Centre for SocioPolitical Studies and Consulting (ICSPSC), associated researcher at the Communication Management Centre at the Russian-German Graduate School of Management (the Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation). Lecturer of the Communication Management specialism at the PR Department of the Faculty of Philosophy, Lomonosov Moscow State University. Author of a monograph ‘Ultra-leftist terrorism in the FRG: major trends in the activity of the Red Army Fraction (RAF) and its communication support (1971-1992)’, as well as articles on the communication aspect of the terrorist activity in Russia, Germany and Sweden. E-mail:
[email protected].
Art as Infiltration: Drawing the Military-Industrial Complex Jill Gibbon Abstract This paper uses drawings made in arms fairs and an arms company AGM to discuss pressures on the military-industrial complex in 2009-10, and the ways arms companies are responding with new marketing strategies. In particular, the paper identifies a new emphasis on ‘civil security and borders’ as technologies developed for war zones are promoted for state and corporate use. Potentially more ominous than the technology, is the use of fears of immigration to justify the extension of military surveillance to domestic settings. The paper also discusses the kind of knowledge produced by caricature and other practice-based methods, and their relevance to academic research about war. Key Words: Drawing, dada, caricature, arms trade, military-industrial complex, surveillance. ***** Last year at War, Virtual War and Human Security I introduced a project I am currently working on, drawing the arms trade. I explained that I am attempting to reverse the usual focus of war reportage from the war zone to the military-industrial complex. The reason is that, although the militaryindustrial complex is frequently cited as a factor in war, it is largely invisible. An informal network of alliances between arms companies, politicians and armed forces, it is difficult to pin down. It is perhaps most visible at arms fairs - but even here, the transnational arms dealing is veiled behind a decorous facade. Last year I explained that I have managed to get inside these events as a war artist, under the pretext of sketching tanks. But once inside, I have attempted to caricature the marketing strategies of the arms trade, to strip away its polite façade. Today, I will give an update on the project. In particular, I want to discuss the emergence of new sales slogans in arms fairs this year, perhaps as post-cold war marketing strategies have become politically embarrassing. Solomon Hughes suggests that the reduction of military budgets at the end of the cold war posed a real threat to arms companies. Supported by the UK and US governments, they responded by merging, expanding into new markets and diversifying. BAE Systems, for instance, used aggressive sales tactics to secure contracts with developing countries such as South Africa in 1999 and Tanzania in 2001. Meanwhile the privatisation of parts of
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______________________________________________________________ the prison service and the military opened up new domestic markets in defence and security. Then, came the ‘war on terror’. Solomon Hughes suggests that the ‘war on terror’ was opportunistic, coined by the militaryindustrial-complex to justify a return to high military spending, and allowing private defence and security firms to capitalise on the September 11th attacks.1 However, in the past year, many of these post-cold war marketing strategies have begun to unravel. BAE Systems is currently facing bribery allegations in relation to its arms deals in the late 1990s, and the invasions initiated as part the war on terror have proved costly, ineffective, and politically unpopular. Using drawings made in the BAE Systems AGM, I will suggest that these political difficulties are causing unease in the arms trade. Then I will discuss the ways arms companies are perhaps responding with new sales strategies. But first, I want to say something about presenting the drawings here, as caricature might seem out of place in an academic context. Indeed caricature is at the opposite extreme of the dominant expectations of academic research. Whereas caricature is subjective and deliberately exaggerated, academic research usually aspires to objectivity, accuracy, and is based on reason. Now, I do not want to underestimate the value of such methods; I will give an example of this later. But, partisan, practice-based approaches perhaps offer a different kind of knowledge. To explain this, it is necessary to trace the historical separation of art from academic enquiry. Terry Eagleton dates this to the C17th and the rise of rationalism.2 As reason became the dominant route to knowledge, the word ‘aesthetic’ came to refer to subjective, sensuous ways of understanding the world. And art became the main preserve of aesthetic approaches. From the C20th, in examples such as Dada, these alternative approaches also included performance and reversal parodying and inverting dominant forms to reveal their political affiliations. So, art has come to stand for a set of subjective, sensuous and occasionally subversive approaches to knowledge. This makes it particularly useful – it can perhaps offer insights not available to other methods. But, because art tends to be separated from analytical approaches, these insights can be easily lost, misconstrued or incorporated into dominant ideologies. So, I would suggest that there is potential in combining aesthetic and analytical approaches. One reason is that some subjects defy rational explanation. Arms fairs are an example. The marketing of weapons with wine, pretzels and fashion is difficult to convey with reasoned analysis. Having said this, I struggle to describe it with drawing. But I will give a brief description of how I attempt to do so.
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I always draw on location. This is not to valorise direct observation as a source of truth. Rather, in the antiwar tradition of Dada, there is an element of performance in the project. I suggested at the beginning that the project reverses the focus of war reportage. I am also attempting to reverse the surveillance that has come with the war on terror by getting around its security systems. I will return to this aspect of the project at the end of the presentation. When I draw, I combine observational and expressive techniques. To indicate that the drawings are produced in an actual place, I start with observational methods - perspective and contour line. However observational techniques are unable to show things that cannot be seen – political issues, emotional reactions. To convey these aspects, I use exaggeration and satire. And, whenever I notice a slip in the polite façade, an expression of greed or unease, I attempt to emphasize it.
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______________________________________________________________ This brings us to the BAE Systems AGM last year, where such slips where particularly evident. BAE Systems is the world’s largest arms manufacturer. Formed in 1999 from the merger of two UK arms companies British Aerospace and Marconi, and since acquiring Vickers tank manufacturers and warship division of the VT Group, it is a cornerstone of the military-industrial complex. An AGM is mainly a PR exercise where accounts from the previous year are presented to shareholders in as favourable a light as possible. In 2009 this was a fairly easy task for BAE. Although stock markets crashed around the world in 2008, at BAE profits were up. After nearly a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the arms business is booming. In 2008 BAE sales exceeded £18.5 billion.3 But, in spite of this, there was a sense of problems on horizon. Every year the chair, Dick Olver, opens the AGM with a speech about the company’s performance. The rest of the meeting is taken up with questions from the audience - a mixture of protestors, who have got in with a token share, and conventional shareholders. Olver is impeccably polite, and fields each question with careful rhetoric. He does not flinch when a protestor accuses him of murder. And, when asked if he has qualms about the use of BAE products on civilians, he says he is proud to serve the men and women at the front line. But this year, as he turned to take a question, an uncharacteristic ripple of fear passed over his face.
The questioner was Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC M.P. Feinstein opposed the arms deal between BAE systems and South Africa when he was an MP arguing that it diverted money from health care when the country faced an AIDs epidemic but no military threats. And, when the deal went ahead, he resigned. Since 2004, the serious fraud office in Britain has investigated allegations of bribery in relation to the South African contract
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______________________________________________________________ and BAE deals with a list of other countries. The investigations are potentially devastating for BAE. If they are proved, anticorruption legislation would prohibit it bidding for defence contracts in Europe.4 Perhaps for this reason, the inquiries are repeatedly stalled. In 2006 the British government stopped an investigation of a BAE deal with Saudi Arabia. And in February this year, it seemed that the South African investigation would meet a similar fate when BAE was allowed to plead guilty to ‘accounting irregularities’, neatly side-stepping the bribery issue. Feinstein condemned the agreement, and a coalition of campaign groups secured an injunction against it. Never doubt the power of methodical research. It now seems that the injunction will fall through. Even so, Olver was clearly aware of the threat posed by Feinstein and colleagues. He attempted to regain authority by arguing that dubious business practices were in the past. In 2007 BAE employed the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf to chair an ethical review of the business. Woolf’s report was highly critical of the company. BAE responded by writing a global code of conduct, ‘Being a Responsible Company’5, and Olver referred to this as evidence of a new era of ethical practice. However, he was clearly unnerved. And, soon after, he made a second slip in response to a question from a conventional share holder who was concerned about the impact on profits of the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. BAE Systems is careful to avoid any suggestion that the company has a vested interest in war. At previous AGMs Olver has avoided even using the word arms, insisting that BAE is a defence company.6 But, caught off guard, he presented the continuing war in Afghanistan as a reason for optimism. Even here, problems are looming for the company. A series of polls in the US and UK over the past year suggest that public opinion has turned against the war.7 There is more specific criticism from within the military. Douglas Borer and David Clukey, a US major, argue that the US is losing war in Afghanistan because of a ‘culture of attrition’ in the US military, held in place by its dependency on technology. As an example, they suggest that unmanned aerial vehicles of the kind supplied BAE Systems, lead to a gulf of communication between those operating the technology and those on the ground.8
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With the ‘war on terror’, the main focus for arms sales since 2001 losing credibility, and previous sales strategies under investigation for corruption, the military-industrial complex seems more vulnerable now than at any time since the end of the Cold War. It seems likely that it will respond as it did in the last crisis with new marketing strategies. If so, they are likely to be on show at arms fairs. In September last year I drew at DSEi, the Defence Systems Exhibition international, one of the world’s largest arms fairs. The immediate impression is business as usual. Arms fairs are exercises in decorum. There are all of the usual rituals of business. A sign at the entrance insists on polite dress. And, as in previous years there are show catalogues, wine and cakes, alongside tanks, spy planes and warheads.
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However, there was also a change. The BAE stand was targeting ‘civil security and borders’. I mentioned at the beginning that arms companies diversified into security in 1990s. So, what is new about civil security? Defined in opposition to military contexts, civil implies a different emphasis from the war on terror. The reference to borders suggests what this might be. Borders usually refer to immigration. This is confirmed by a document obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act9 a record of meetings of the South Coast Partnership, an alliance between BAE Systems, the UK Border Agency, the Serious Organised Crime Agency and a range of police forces. According to the Guardian the group has identified a number of domestic uses for drones – the unmanned spy planes developed for use in Iraq and Afghanistan, including policing urban spaces, political protests and immigration. The document recognises that this will be difficult to sell the plan to the public, and suggests promoting it primarily as immigration control. In the words of the South Coast Partnership, this will allow it to be presented as ‘a good news story’.10 Selling military equipment has always required an enemy, and in times of recession, asylum seekers are an easy target. This use of one of the most vulnerable social group as an ‘other’, to justify an expansion of spy technology, seems more ominous than the equipment itself. As Clukey and Borer suggest, too much technology creates inefficiency.11 I will finish with an example of this from the part of the project I mentioned earlier –being present at arms fairs. As I explained, I got a pass to DSEi in 2007 by describing myself as a war artist. I have circulated the drawings since then and, perhaps for this reason, my application to DSEi
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______________________________________________________________ 2009 was refused. I got in this time, past the wall of police, security guards and surveillance technologies, simply by joining the end of a queue.
Notes 1
S Hughes, War on Terror, Inc: Corporate Profiteering From the Politics of Fear, Verso, London, 2007. 2 T Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Blackwell, Oxford, 1990. 3 CAAT, BAE Systems, http://www.caat.org.uk/issues/bae/, 2010, Accessed 11 March, 2010. 4 S Hope, ‘BAE Systems Problem: How to Resolve SFO Probe and not Lose Billions in EU Contracts,’ Daily Telegraph, 2009, http://blogs.telegraph.co. uk/news/christopherhope/100017648/bae-systems-problem-how-to-plead-gui lty-and-not-lose-billions-in-defence-contracts/. Accessed 6 April, 2010. 5 BAE, Being a Responsible Company: What it Means to Us, BAE Systems, London, 2009. 6 D Olver, Opening Address BAE Annual General Meeting, London, 9 May 2007. 7 J Agiesta & J Cohen, ‘Public Opinion in US Turns Against Afghan War’ Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2009/08/19/AR2009081903066.html, 2009, accessed March 31, 2010; G Langer, ‘Poll: Afghan War Support Slips’ ABC News, 2009. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/19/AR200 9081903066.html, Accessed March 31, 2010. M Morris & K Sengupta, ‘Voters Turn Against Afghanistan’ in The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/voters-turn-against-war-inafghanistan-1763227.html, 2009, accessed March 31, 2010; BBC, ‘Newsnight Poll: Most Think the Afghanistan War Unwinnable’, Newsnight,
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______________________________________________________________ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8530761.stm, Accessed 3. 31. 2010. 8 D Borer & D Clukey, Strategic Theory and Operational Practice: How to Win in Afghanistan, The International Studies Association Annual Convention, New Orleans, 18th February 2010. 9 P Lewis, ‘CCTV in the Sky: police plan to use military-style spy drones’, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/23/cctv-sky-policeplan-drones, 2010, accessed April 5th, 2010. 10 Ibid. 11 op. cit.
Bibliography Agiesta, J. and Cohen, J.,‘Public Opinion in US Turns Against Afghan War’. Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2009/08/19/AR2009081903066.html, 2009, Accessed March 31, 2010. BAE Systems, Being a Responsible Company: What it Means to Us. BAE Systems, London, 2009. BAE Systems, Our Brand. http://www.baesystems.com/AboutUs/Corporate IdentityGuidelines/index.htm., 2010, Accessed 7th April 2010. BBC, ‘Newsnight Poll: Most Think the Afghanistan War Unwinnable’. Newsnight. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8530761.stm, 2010, Accessed March 31, 2010. Borer, D.A & Clukey, D., Strategic Theory and Operational Practice: How to Win in Afghanistan. The International Studies Association Annual Convention, New Orleans, 18th February 2010. CAAT, BAE Systems. http://www.caat.org.uk/issues/bae/, 2010, Accessed 11 March, 2010. Eagleton, T., The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Blackwell, Oxford, 1990. Feinstein, A., After the Party. Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg and Cape Town, 2007.
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______________________________________________________________ Feinstein, A. & Hawley, S., ‘An Affront to Justice’. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/07/bae-systems-casecorruption-settlement, 2010, Accessed 1 April 2010. Hope, S., ‘BAE Systems Problem: How to Resolve SFO Probe and not Lose Billions in EU Contracts’. Daily Telegraph. 2009, http://blogs.telegraph. co.uk/news/christopherhope/100017648/bae-systems-problem-how-to-pleadguilty-and-not-lose-billions-in-defence-contracts/, Accessed 6 April, 2010. Hughes, S., War on Terror, In: Corporate Profiteering From the Politics of Fear. Verso, London, 2007. Langer, G., ‘Poll: Afghan War Support Slips’. ABC News. 2009. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/19/AR2009 081903066.html, Accessed March 31, 2010. Lewis, P., ‘CCTV in the Sky: Police Plan to use Military-Style Spy Drones’. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/23/cctv-sky-policeplan-drones, 2010, Accessed April 5th, 2010. Moore, J., ‘Woolf’s BAE Ethics Review Calls for Tougher Anti-Bribery Controls’. The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/ news/woolfs-bae-ethics-review-calls-for-tougher-antibribery-controls-822230 .html, 2008, Accessed March 31, 2010. Morris, N. & Sengupta, K., ‘Voters Turn Against Afghanistan’. The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/voters-turn-agai nst-war-in-afghanistan-1763227.html, 2009, Accessed March 31, 2010. Olver, D., Opening Address. BAE Annual General Meeting. London, 9 May 2007. Plaw, A., Sudden Justice? Evaluating the US Predator Drone Campaign in Pakistan. The International Studies Association Annual Convention, New Orleans, 18th February 2010. Jill Gibbon is an associate lecturer at the Open University. Her research interests include reportage, war art, and interdisciplinary uses of drawing.
Information Warfare as a Part of Communication Management in Contemporary Russia Evgeny N. Pashentsev Abstract The contributor of the present paper assumes that communication management (CM) is above all the professional target groups and capital management by means of communications. Information warfare (IW) consists of overt and secret purposeful informational influences of systems (states, parties, profit and nonprofit organizations) on each other with the aim of liquidating (or appropriation) the intangible assets of the other part. To influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decisions-making while protecting your own with the aim of getting some material dividends is the very nature of the IW. Evidently IW very often being a part of CM programmes, sometimes in the atmosphere of intense internal and external conflicts dominates CM. The paper gives an analysis of the role and features of information warfare in the contemporary Russian business and politics. The contributor of the present research will try to do it in the context of world tendencies in the economic, political and military spheres of life. The main elements of the communication security system in Russia are also examined in the paper. Key Words: Information warfare, PSYOP, communication management, Russia, media war, perception manipulation, psychological warfare, Russian banks. ***** 1. How the World and National Experience Forced Russia to go Forward in IW The technologies of IW as a whole and PSYOPS particularly were one of the key factors of the collapse of the Soviet Union, later numerous defeats of Russia in the sphere of international relations though they had primarily internal roots (the rising backwardness, corruption, social inequality etc.) finally increased the interest of the ruling elite to the possibilities of CM and IW. In the 1990s, the Russian state had no clear position concerning this problem. It was not until September 2000 that the President of Russia signed the ‘Doctrine of information security of Russia’. In contrast to the US approach, in the Russian doctrine it is the issue of individual, group and mass consciousness security that is of primary importance. The goals of the anticipatory management of information flows by Russia, of using the latest developments in this field, as well as the problem
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_____________________________________________________________ of the rational use of information resources, make it necessary for Russia to master and to use new instruments in the state policy. We may say that Russia needs to build as fast as possible a system of communication management and information attack resistance. The technologies of the communication management used by some private corporations recklessly at best and by way of gaining profit by any means at worst turned into serious damage for millions of people, impaired national security not only in the USA, the countries of the Western Europe and Russia but in the whole world at the present economic crisis. An artificially high share of intangible assets in the cost of enterprises provokes various information attacks of the competitors against them, suggesting the self-organization of such attacks in order to underbid the stock value due to their massive sell-out and then buy-in through shoeing-horns reinforcing their positions in the enterprise. It’s evident that the higher the share of the intangible assets of the enterprise the easier and more effective it is to conduct such a transaction. The bankruptcy of a variety of investment vehicles in the USA was accompanied with obviously instigated rumours, mass media reports which helped someone to get out of the crisis. Such a scenario of social and economic development became possible in a much more educated society than back in 1929 not least of all due to effective use of communication management technologies at the global level with a mercenary motive which led to a decrease in social and political activity of the population and as a consequence to the weakening of control of authorities and corporations actions. The field of information warfare has deeply shifted into economy. The main reason for it is the growth of the intangible constituent in the companies’ cost. It is a well-known fact that in the last 25 years the cost of tangible assets of western companies has fallen from 80 to 20-30% of the total cost. The remaining part is made up by the reputation, well-promoted brands, etc. The example of Western and Russian Internet companies shows the high potential of information wars’ efficiency in virtual economy. Having minimal tangible assets these companies demonstrated an impressive growth of revenues. The dramatic fall of this market in the late 1990ies was caused by the information about these companies being not cost-effective. Consequently, the profitability of these companies was based on reputation. Putting it differently, tangible assets and basic intangible assets or intangible assets of the first level (such as, intellectual property, the level of the personnel’s professional skills, etc.) characteristic for any more or less successful organization and defining its stage of development and actual value have become the object of ‘hype’ by means of intangible assets of the second level (advertising, propaganda, PR, etc.). The latter have practical social value only when serving the interests of individuals or organizations
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______________________________________________________________ and performing various useful functions related to informing and management and not interfering with the interests of the society but answering to its objective needs, contributing to its civic self-organization and guaranteeing communication support to the progressive models of development. In Russia, the amount of intangible assets in the total cost of a business is in general not very large. That is why wars aimed at ruining a reputation are not so efficient. In Russia, information warfare is mainly connected with the redistribution of property. The most sensational scandals refer not to the competition for the customer but to conflicts between proprietors and directors or between shareholders. Among the most wellknown conflicts are those at NTV, KGOK ‘Vanadium’, Himmash, Energomash, SEMZ, PSM Hydraulics and many other companies. The efficiency of information warfare in Russian business has a dubious character. Judging by the experience, because of the absence of expensive reputations these wars not necessarily have impact on the economical state of the business but almost always affect the reputation of the company’s top manager. Thus, what seems to be inefficient today can result in a significant damage to the business in the long-term outlook. In internal politics the information warfare is less intense now to be compared with 1990s, because of more stable political situation and domination of one party in the political landscape. Traditional propaganda became for the last years more important instrument of CM then IW but the situation could changed as a result of any prolonged all national crisis if happens so. In the majority of Western countries and in Russia the quantity of trade unions dropped drastically, the role of political parties in decision making became less prominent and the parties themselves were more and more personified represented by their leaders widely promoted with the help of modern mass media. If before communications used to be a means of connecting a party and electorate to mobilize its support, now the parties to a certain extent represented by their leaders make themselves over to the system of indirect management of population by shady oligarchic clans which prevents them from making decisions suitable for the public interest. Acts of terrorism, local conflicts are also intricately interlaced in the fabric of communication management. Moreover on account of ‘spin’ (spin – whirl, swirl, that is necessary turn of coverage in mass media) and other communication technologies a way can be carved from the event to radical political and military decisions, which would be impossible without communication technologies. For example after the terrorist attack on World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon the Bush administration managed to twist public opinion in the USA and to a large extent outside the country in such a manner that it made possible to invade oil-producing Iraq
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_____________________________________________________________ without any convincing excuses for its actions. In the book published several years ago under the editorship of K. Borisson, the most distinguished American journalists told about advanced manipulative technologies in mass media.1 Recently the Russian-Georgian conflict has been represented by the world’s leading news channels in such an overweighed form that only the obvious inadequacy of the Georgian president in solving his problems characterised by chewing on his tie and an active communication policy by Russia partially helped to overcome the fear of ‘resurgent Evil Empire’ emerging in the West. It does not mean that the present day Russia has no very serious problems with human rights or corruption, mass poverty and criminality etc. But the evident partiality of the leading media world media channels to Russia hardly help to save the country from its evils but only increase the position of those ones who want to draw the attention of public from the internal reasons of these problems and to impose all responsibility for the difficulties on foreign forces. Finally it helps to continue the bureaucratic and oligarchic domination in Russia and weaken it even more than now. Thus the interests of internal and external egoistic elite groups with all their very often outward conflict work in one direction: less progressive and weaker Russia and that is not in the interests of democracy and peace in our country, in Europe and in all the world. The armament race has been unwrapping since the end of the XXth century with incomparable speed unseen from the times of the Cold War, but nevertheless partly due to the corresponding informational policy this fact does not noticeably affect the public conscience in different countries. Meanwhile even without the war armaments race, which obviously aggravates multiple problems of the ‘ailing’ world economy and does not encourage growth in prosperity and security of all countries of the world. The same we can find in Russia, more accent in media on tests of new weapons in our country and abroad, successes and defeats of Russia in selling arms all over the world than on a rising danger of the arms racing for global peace and security. Information wars became a regular practice of international life long ago and there is a valid layer of fundamental scientific research on this matter,2 but in the period of further perfection of information technologies against a progression of the crisis in the world economy and serious tension in foreign affairs we should probably be prepared for new battles for the control of people’s minds and behaviour. All civil and military structures are preparing for this. And Russia is not an exception from this general tendency. 2.
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______________________________________________________________ It’s evident that the issues of information and communication security are gaining more and more significance in the activity of the Russian state and leading companies. But the main content of the documents mentioned above is aimed on the problems of information security. The communication security aspects seem to be ‘diluted’ in the issues of information management and information security. In the author’s view-point, these terms have much in common but are not equal. Information security is providing the security of both the information which is considered to be a trade secret and the information vital for the continuous functioning of the enterprise. Information security usually suggests security measures for using confidential information of all kinds, private technical intelligence services counteraction, and all kind of actions aimed at protection of the local computers as well as internal networks etc. In a democracy, communication security at the state level is a system of measures for the usage of public communications with the purpose of protecting the population from the negative influence of selfinterested manipulators. To our opinion it implies the usage of a high position of a state authority as well as the financial resources. These measures include:
the research of communicational risks and problems of the state; system control over the management of state and private information holdings (with the forms of control corresponding to the forms of ownership); neutralizing antisocial target manipulations in the mass media; to develop the international Russia TV broadcasting. The creation in 2006 of a satellite TV-channel ‘Russia Today’ was an important step in the development of the information attack resistance system. It is noteworthy that CNN, the leading western news-channel, was founded in 1980. The USSR spent great sums of money on the creation and development of nuclear-missile forces but had no money for a satellite TV-channel. control over rumours and other kinds of informal communications (not with the purpose of persecuting dissidents but with the purpose of creating the background necessary for the neutralizing of target campaigns of secret influence inspired, organized and financed from abroad or by the oligarchical criminal groups inside the country);
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the system of NGOs is a system Russian nongovernmental organizations functioning on the territory of CIS, EU and USA (by comparison, in Russia there function numerous American NGOs financed by the USA government, the bright analysis of their communication activities was done by Sergei Mozgovoy in his research3). organizing communication protection of the population as well as the specific target publics. The foundation of the Information crisis centre as suggests Igor Panarin4. Russian authorities should be able to manage the information flow by cooperating with the media, both Russian and foreign. The situation of August 8-11, 2008 when Saakashvily took up more time in the news than the Russian leaders must not repeat itself. At that time the information sphere was invaded for a certain period by the enemy’s comments with the help of information and propaganda actions prepared beforehand. the usage of CM technologies to neutralize faults in the operation of governmental bodies (not with the purpose of keeping secret the mistakes of the authorities but with the purpose of establishing constructive cooperation with the publics in order to minimize the damage from these mistakes as well as to overcome their consequences); cooperation in the field of communication security between authorities and specialists of state and private structures of different countries which suggests the network character of communication security; arranging of training in the field of communication security. It is necessary to select the main institutes of higher education where specialists able to take part in information warfare should be trained. For example, top managers can be trained at the Russian Academy of State Service under the President of the Russian Federation, the Academy of National Economy at the Government of Russian Federation, Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia. As for middle management, it can be trained at Moscow State University, Higher School of Economics, Moscow State University of International Relations. The course on communication security (32 academic hours) as well as the course on IW(32 academic hours) with 50% of time devoted to training of practical skills have been already introduced in
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______________________________________________________________ the framework of the specialization ‘communication management’ at Lomonosov MSU and in the corresponding modules at ANE under the academic guidance of the contributor of the present paper. It is clear that the issues of communication security are part of the agenda of authorities and the leading corporations. However, the solution of such problems is rather a job for state and corporate security specialists. In this case the major problem is the problem of coordinating the communicational policy (from the point of view of its managerial rather than informational function) at the national and international levels, in the field of international relations as well as the activities of transnational corporations. It is obviously a functional task of the government and the top management of leading corporations. But to what extent are they ready for the solution of such a problem taking into account the present level of the development of information technologies and the establishing of the whole system of communication management disciplines as well as the globalization process? And to what extent are we ready to control the technologies that are being actively used while remaining imperceptible for the society and will be used in future against it? The future academic researches in this sphere will inevitably develop in civil and military sectors and influence more and more the national and global politics.
Notes 1
K Borisson (ed), Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press, Prometheus Books, 2004. 2 ГГ Почепцов, Информационные войны. Рефл-бук, Ваклер, 2000 (Pocheptsov G. G. Informatsionnyje voiny); Манойло, А. В., Петренко, А. И., Фролов, Д. Б. Государственная информационная политика в условиях информационно-психологической войны. Горячая линия – Телеком, 2009. Gosudarstvennaja informatsionnaya politika v uslovijakh informatsionno-psikhologicheskoj voiny); Панарин, И. Н. Информационная война и дипломатия. Городец, 2004. (Informatsionnaya voina I diplomatija); Цыганов, В., Бухарин, С. Информационные войны в бизнесе и политике. Издательство «Академический проект», 2007. (Informatsionnyje voiny v Biznese I politike); MC Libicki, What is Information Warfare? National Defense University Press, Washington, D.C., 1995; N Snow, Information War: American Propaganda, Free Speech, and Opinion Control Since 9/11, New York Publishers, 2007.
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3
See: CA Mозговой, Религиозный фактор в коммуникационном менеджменте внешней политики США: новые явления и тенденции (Religiozny factor v kommunikatsionnom menedjmente vnechney politiki SSHA: noviye yavlenia I tendentsii) in Пашенцев, ЕН (Ред.) Коммуникационный менеджмент в мировой политике и бизнесе. Т. 1. Международный центр социально-политических исследований и консалтинга, Центр коммуникационного менеджмента РНВШУ АНХ при Правительстве РФ и др., 2007 (EN Pashetsev (ed), Kommunikatsionny menedzhment v mirovoj politike I biznese), c. 154 – 188. 4 Prof. Igor Panarin an information war expert conceived a number of ideas, among them the foundation of the Informational-psychological subunits in government and military directorates (proposed in 1997); would develop strategic and operational measures to prevent or neutralise attempts to control the psyche of Russian society (i.e. a strategy of psychological defence). A Chief Directorate in Support of Psychological Security would ensure the psychological component of Russian national security. He proposed also the Information Service for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with headquarters in Moscow: proposed in his book Information warfare and the world (2003) for more effective information-analytical support of SCO activities and more reliable presentation of analytical information to the leadership of SCO countries etc.
Bibliography Borisson, K. (ed), Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press. Prometheus Books, 2004. Information Operations Roadmap. Department of Defence, United States of America, 2003, October 30. Libicki, M.C., What is Information Warfare? National Defense University Press, Washington, D.C., 1995. Коммуникационный менеджмент в мировой политике и бизнесе. T. 1 – 2. Международный центр социально-политических исследований и консалтинга, Центр коммуникационного менеджмента РНВШУ АНХ при Правительстве РФ и др., 2007.
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Манойло, А. В., Петренко, А. И., Фролов, Д. Б., Государственная информационная политика в условиях информационно-психологической войны. Горячая линия – Телеком, 2009. Mозговой, С. А., Религиозный фактор в коммуникационном менеджменте внешней политики США: новые явления и тенденции Пашенцев, (Ред.) Коммуникационный менеджмент в мировой политике и бизнесе. Международный центр социально-политических исследований и консалтинга, Центр коммуникационного менеджмента РНВШУ АНХ при Правительстве РФ и др., 2007. Орлова, Т. М., Коммуникационный менеджмент экономическими системами. Изд-во РАГС, 2002.
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управлении
Панарин, И. Н., Информационная война и дипломатия. Городец, 2004. Пашенцев, Е. Н. (ed), Паблик рилейшнз и коммуникационный менеджмент: Зарубежный опыт. Международный центр социальнополитических исследований и консалтинга, Центр коммуникационного менеджмента РНВШУ АНХ при Правительстве РФ и др., 2002. Почепцов, Г. Г., Информационные войны. Рефл-бук, Ваклер, 2000. Цыганов, В., Бухарин, С., Информационные войны в бизнесе и политике. Издательство «Академический проект», 2007. Evgeny N. Pashentsev is a research supervisor of the specialization communication management at Lomonosov Moscow State University, the Faculty of Philosophy. Head of the Communication Management Centre at the Russian-German Graduate School of Management – the Faculty of the Academy of National Economy under the Government of RF. Director of the International Centre for Social and Political Studies and Consulting. Email:
[email protected] [email protected].
Peace and War: Communicating Total Spectrum Dominance Vladimir Suchan Abstract The question of peace and war is the most important question of our time, which is the time of the Global War on Terror. The GWOT is also already becoming one of the longest U.S. wars. Two countries were invaded and occupied—with a combined population of 60 million people. The U.S. has already spent on the Global War on Terror more than on any other war except for World War II. U.S. military spending already significantly exceeds its Cold War levels. All these vast military efforts are meant to eliminate the threat of terrorism represented by al-Qaeda. Yet no al-Qaeda were present in Iraq before the invasion of that country in 2003. Globally, al-Qaeda membership is officially estimated to run between five hundred and one thousand persons. U.S. intelligence officials report only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the whole of Afghanistan. To contain the al-Qaeda threat, the U.S. has already spent about one billion dollars per one al-Qaeda militant. Politically, economically, and strategically, the offered explanations seem odd, irrational, and incongruous. In the name of the war against al-Qaeda, the U.S. military is, nevertheless, engaged in its possibly largest strategic and logistical manoeuvre and redeployment since the World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. Already back in 1997, Brzezinski called for a conquest of the heart of Eurasia, which he saw as the key to global hegemony. On the occasion NATO’s 60th anniversary, Brzezinski identified an unprecedented political, anti-colonial mass awakening in this broader region as the greatest security threat. Such geopolitics and strategic thinking fundamentally alter and amend the common narrative and rationale of the Global War on Terror, that is to say, its inherent Hobbesian rhetoric that recasts the permanent nature of the imperial Leviathan’s war as an article of its virtual peace. Key Words: War, peace, full spectrum dominance, Global War on Terror, Brzezinski, Hobbes, military spending, Iraq, Afghanistan, information superiority. *****
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______________________________________________________________ ‘Roman imperialism was the result of continuous war, and continuous war was the result of the Roman system.’1 The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization ‘Winston could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war …’ George Orwell, 19842 1.
Encountering the Global War on Terror with a Simple Counter Our time is an age of the Global War on Terror. This war has also been dubbed the ‘perpetual war’ or more modestly ‘the long war’. In terms of its duration, the GWOT is also already becoming one of the longest U.S. wars. In its process, two countries were invaded and occupied—with a combined population of 60 million people. One of these wars—the war in Iraq—has gained notoriety as an exemplary war launched under false pretences, while leading to the death of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of millions more. The whole story of the so-called weapons of mass destruction is already sufficiently well known and established. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, one of the principal official cheerleaders of the war, explained the rationale for the war in terms strangely evocative of the images later leaked from Abu Ghraib prison: What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, ‘Which part of this sentence don't you understand?’ You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This...We could have hit Saudi Arabia. It was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could. That’s the real truth...3 Later, Friedman offered a more polished argument stretched between ‘none’ and ‘whatever’: ‘[W]hatever the cost, [the war] has given freedom and decent government to people who had none.’4 In his 2009 Cairo speech, President Obama declared the Iraq war to be ‘unnecessary.’5 This does not, however, mean that the war would stop. It continues now into its eighth year. The U.S. has already spent on the Global War on Terror more than on any other war except for World War II: ‘The Korean and Vietnam Wars were fought on 2/3 the current defense budget, … US defense spending during the Cold War (1946-1991) averaged $400 billion per year in 2008 dollars, including both the Korean and Vietnam wars.’6 The Department of
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______________________________________________________________ Defence’s budget for 2010 has already passed the $700 billion mark. The costs of the Global War on Terror already reached more than $1.15 trillion, as reported by the Congressional Research Service reported in July 2010.7 Two other facts are also striking: 1) with 5% of the world population, the U.S. spends 50% of the world’s combined military budget, and 2) with 13% of the world population, the whole of NATO (including the US) controls over 70% of the world’s war budget. U.S. military spending thus not only matches but actually significantly exceeds its Cold War levels, and is ‘still geared toward Cold War-type scenarios.’8 2. The Virtual and the Real: The Spectre and the Full Spectrum Dominance These vast military efforts under the banner of the Global War on Terror are meant to eliminate the threat of terrorism represented by al-Qaeda. Yet no al-Qaeda were present in Iraq before the invasion of that country in 2003. Even today, the presence of al-Qaeda in Iraq is minimal. Official U.S. estimates of the number of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan place the number at around a hundred persons.9 Yet President Barack Obama continues to declare that al-Qaeda remains the ‘greatest threat to the United States’ security.’10 According to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the war in Afghanistan must, nevertheless, continue because al-Qaeda is still ‘the biggest source of threat to our national security.’11 Globally, al-Qaeda membership was officially estimated to run between five hundred and one thousand persons. Surely this is one of the greatest oddities of the Global War on Terror, yet it is also one of the least reported. As Ken Silverstein of the respectable Harper’s Magazine said: Al Qaeda isn't the all-powerful group that it is often portrayed to be; its strength and reach have been exaggerated, partly because of the extraordinary impact of the 9/11 attacks, and partly because the Bush Administration has found it politically useful to hype the group's capabilities. Two years ago, I interviewed Jack Cloonan, a 25-year veteran of the FBI who, between 1996 and 2002, served on a joint CIA–FBI task force that tracked bin Laden. ‘How many members of Al Qaeda do you think there are?’ he asked me. Cloonan laughed when I pegged its membership at several thousand. The real numbers, he said, ‘are miniscule.’ Documents discovered by the joint task force, Cloonan said, showed that Al Qaeda had 72
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______________________________________________________________ members when it was founded in 1989. Twelve years later, the task force got its hands on an updated membership list … It showed that bin Laden had a grand total of precisely 198 sworn loyalists. … ‘Al Qaeda’ is less of an organization than it is an impulse. And while bin Laden isn’t the all-powerful terrorist mastermind he’s often portrayed to be, the war in Iraq, Guantánamo, extraordinary renditions, and other Bush Administration brainstorms have ensured that his message is broadcast loud and clear throughout the world.12 In an interview with CNN in October 2009, Obama’s National Security Adviser, Gen. James Jones, put the number of al-Qaeda at ‘fewer than a hundred.’ The same number was also affirmed in a session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in October 2009.13 When President Obama announced the Afghan ‘surge’ in his West Point speech of December 1, 2009, he made only vague reference to the size of the al-Qaeda: ‘[A]l Qaeda has not re-emerged in Afghanistan in the same number as before 9/11, but they retain their safe havens along the border.’14 When asked about alQaeda’s size, a spokesperson at the White House's National Security Council, Chris Hensman, said he ‘could not comment on intelligence matters.’15 In June of 2010, CIA Director Leon Panetta confirmed the miniscule size of the Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan. In an interview for the ABC ‘Week,’ he said: ‘I think the estimate on the number of Al Qaeda is actually relatively small. Almost, we’re looking at 50 to 100, maybe less.’16 In this light, the economics of the Global War on Terror and its strategic rationale can only be seen as highly irrational, even absurd. If we take the upper estimate of al-Qaeda membership at 100 and compare that with the running price tag of the Global War on Terror at some $1 trillion, we are compelled to infer that, in order to contain the al-Qaeda threat, the U.S. has already spent about ten billion dollars per one al-Qaeda militant. Yet the taxi meter simply keeps on running, and the cost per minute shows no sign of decreasing. The Economist mercifully dubbed this glaring oddity ‘the impossible question’ when it referred to the leaked, teasingly Machiavellian 2003 memo from Donald Rumsfeld, then the U.S. Secretary of Defence: ‘Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?’17 Politically, economically, and strategically, the offered explanations make no sense. Not only are the ‘metrics’ lacking, but apparently also common sense itself.
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______________________________________________________________ The closer one looks, however, the more one is struck by the massive and persistent incongruity. Thus, as Jason Ditz put it, ‘claims of dubious veracity [are being issued] aimed at convincing the public of the necessity of continuing the war, already in its ninth year.’18 Even though al-Qaeda has no significant presence either in Iraq or in Afghanistan, according to U.S. State Secretary Hilary Clinton the war and hence heavy U.S. military presence must continue ‘to get al-Qaeda.’ At the same time, Secretary Clinton also stated that ‘the US has no illusions that Afghanistan will ever become a modern democracy.’19 As President Obama also reminded us, NATO itself has been mobilized to fight the al-Qaeda menace. ‘For the first time in its history,’ President Obama said in his West Point speech, ‘the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invoked Article 5 – the commitment that says an attack on one member nation is an attack on all. … America, our allies and the world were acting as one to destroy Al Qaeda’s terrorist network, and to protect our common security.’20 It is worth noting that the Alliance’s total population numbers some 840 million, and NATO’s active armed forces include 4 million troops.21 Currently, NATO fields some 150,000 troops in Afghanistan with the help of at least the same number of ‘civilian contractors.’ Some seventy years ago, on August 20, 1940 in the midst of the air Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill famously declared: ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ Today, with respect to the Global War on Terror constructed as a global mobilization for war against al-Qaeda, one might add that never in history has so much been spent in the pursuit of so few. And so, in the guise of the war against al-Qaeda, the U.S. military is now engaged in its possibly largest strategic and logistical manoeuvre and redeployment since the World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. 3. The Spectrum of Global Political Awakening as Dominance’s Imminent Threat On the occasion last year of NATO’s 60th anniversary, the foremost U.S. strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski made it clear that, for the US and NATO, the key perceived threat is the unprecedented political, anti-colonial, global awakening of mankind: The basic challenge that NATO now confronts is that there are historically unprecedented risks to global security. … The paradox of our time is that the world … is experiencing intensifying popular unrest … Yet there is no effective global security mechanism for coping with the growing threat of violent political chaos stemming from
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______________________________________________________________ humanity’s recent political awakening. The three great political contests of the twentieth century (the two world wars and the Cold War) accelerated the political awakening of mankind, which was initially unleashed in Europe by the French Revolution. Within a century of that revolution, spontaneous populist political activism had spread from Europe to East Asia. On their return home after World Wars I and II, the South Asians and the North Africans who had been conscripted by the British and French imperial armies propagated a new awareness of anticolonial nationalist and religious political identity among hitherto passive and pliant populations. The spread of literacy during the twentieth century and the wide-ranging impact of radio, television, and the Internet accelerated and intensified this mass global political awakening. … The dispersal of global power and the expanding mass political unrest make for a combustible mixture. … There is no other way to shape effective security arrangements for a world in which politically awakened peoples - whose prevailing historical narratives associate the West less with their recent emancipation and more with their past subordination - can no longer be dominated by a single region.22 Already in 1997 in his de facto blueprint of the current war, The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski had identified the current central battlefield of the Global War on Terror not only as ‘likely [to be] a major battlefield’ of the new U.S. geopolitical game, but also as the centre of gravity in securing for U.S. lasting ‘global supremacy’ or ‘hegemony of a new type,’ i.e., ‘seemingly consensual American hegemony.’23 According to Brzezinski, the zone stretching from Iraq to Central Asia is ‘geopolitically axial,’ and thus ‘a power that dominates [it] would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions … and control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination …’24 For the U.S, then, ‘the chief geopolitical prize is [thus to be] Eurasia,’ which dictates controlling the area that coincides with what is now held to be the central battlefield of the Global War on Terror. Control of this would-be global heartland in Eurasia will, as Brezinski believes, provide access to ‘its potential wealth,’ ‘motivate corporate interests,’ and ‘revive imperial aspirations.’25 What is also notable is that nowhere in the strategy-setting Grand Chessboard does Brzezinski deem al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden worth mentioning even once.
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Figuring out Wise Men’s Counters, Fools’ Money: Peace and
Brzezinski’s strategic thinking is embedded in the Pentagon’s global strategy of ‘full spectrum dominance,’ which denotes ‘control over all elements and assets.’ This objective was introduced in Joint Vision 2020 released by the U.S. Defense Department of Defense on May 30, 2000. The key in full spectrum dominance is ‘information superiority,’ a factor that is ‘the core of every activity,’ and which should provide for ‘enhanced awareness.’ Another key concept in full spectrum dominance is ‘dominant maneuver,’ which goes ‘beyond the actual physical presence of the force,’ for it ‘creates an impact in the minds of opponents and others.’ Information, i.e., deception, is ‘a force multiplier.’ As Joint Vision 2020 put it, ‘we must have information superiority,’ and that requires ‘both offensive and defensive information warfare (IW).’ No information warfare, no information superiority, and no information superiority, no full spectrum global dominance. To achieve conversely means ‘denying [others the ability] to do the same’—to have superior information.26 This also means to ‘confuse or deceive.’ The emphasis on superior information and, respectively, superior deception, raises a question as to what such superior information or disinformation might be and to what it might pertain. I think that we can now answer this quintessential question. Above all, superior information, first and foremost superior deception and disinformation, pertains to war and peace, the most important question of our time, but also the question that formed the cornerstone of Hobbes’ Leviathan—the modern empire.27 The new imperial Leviathan is presented as Peace, and all else as the state of war in which ‘the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’28 For Hobbes, international relations typically define wartime, as in fact does the duration of anyone’s independence (‘the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather’). The presence of Hobbesian ‘peace’ as a state of mind then depends on whether the permanence of war is ‘sufficiently known’ or not, or whether one receives from someone else an ‘assurance to the contrary.’ According to Hobbes, the greatest and most decisive form of inequality among men concerns their comprehension and interpretative skills—in their power ‘grounded upon words.’29 And, for Hobbes, words are ‘wise men’s counters’ and ‘the money of fools.’ The peace of Hobbes’s Leviathan, being then grounded upon (Hobbes’) words (read: Hobbesian rhetoric of peace), then becomes a fool’s peace—a continuous war for those who can correctly ‘reckon’ (figure out) how to read the Empire’s dictionary of war and peace.
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______________________________________________________________ What does this mean for us in relation to the Empire’s Global War on Terror? It means that before we can put an end to such madness and find real peace, we must first determine who is playing the Hobbesian fool. If peace and war are what matter most, imperial policies will twist their meanings from beginning to end. On that deception you may depend, for the empire’s fate too depends on that one thing above all.
Notes 1
Slightly modified from S Hornblower & A Spawforth, The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998, p. 610. 2 G Orwell, 1984, Penguin Books, New York, 1990, p. 35. 3 ‘Thomas Friedman Sums Up the Iraq War: Suck. On This’, Charlie Rose Show, PBS, 2010, Viewed on 4 April 2010, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HOF6ZeUvgXs. 4 T Friedman, ‘It’s Up to Iraqis Now: Good Luck’, The New York Times, 9 March 2009, Viewed on 4 April 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/ 03/10/opinion/10friedman.html. 5 B Obama, ‘Remarks by the President on a New Beginning’, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt, 4 June 2009, Viewed on 4 April 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-atCairo-University-6-04-09/. 6 ‘U.S. Defense Spending is Out of Control’, True Cost – Analyzing our Economy, Government Policy, and Society through the Lens of Cost-Benefit, 2 March 2009, Viewed on 22 August 2009, http://truecostblog.com/ 2009/03/02/us-defense-spending-is-out-of-control/. 7 ‘Report: Tab for ‘War on Terrorism’ Tops $1 Trillion,’ CNN, Viewed 28 July, 2010, http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/20/war.costs/index. html. 8 A Shah, ‘World Military Spending’, GlobalIssues.org, 1 March 2009, Viewed on 22 August 2009, http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world military-spending. 9 ‘US Commander: No Sign of al-Qaeda Presence in Afghanistan’, Antiwar.com, 11 September 2009, Viewed on April 4, 2010, http://news.antiwar.com/2009/09/11/us-commander-no-sign-of-al-qaedapresence-in-afghanistan/. 10 B Obama, ‘Remarks by President Barack Obama at Town Hall Meeting with Future Chinese Leaders’, Museum of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China, 16 November 2009, Viewed on 4 April 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-barack-oba ma-town-hall-meeting-with-future-chinese-leaders.
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______________________________________________________________ 11
P Webster, ‘Al-Qaeda still biggest threat to British security, says Gordon Brown’, Times, 16 November 2009, Viewed on 4 April 2010, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6918483.ece. 12 K Silverstein, ‘The Al Qaeda Clubhouse: Members Lacking’, Harper’s Magazine, 5 July 2006, Viewed on 5 April 2010, http://www.harpers. org/archive/2006/07/sb-al-qaeda-new-members-badly-needed-1151963690. 13 R Esposito, M Cole & B Ross, ‘President Obama’s Secret: Only 100 al Qaeda Now in Afghanistan’, ABC News, 2 December 2009, Viewed on 5 April 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/president-obamas-secret-100-alqaeda-now-afghanistan/story?id=9227861&page=2. 14 ‘Full Transcript: President Obama's Speech on Afghanistan’, op. cit. 15 Esposito, op. cit. 16 ‘CIA: At most, 50-100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan’, ABC, 27 June 2010, viewed on 10 July 2010, http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/06/ cia-at-most-50100-al-qaeda-in-afghanistan.html. 17 ‘Winning or Losing?’ The Economist, 19 July 2008, Vol. 388, special section, p. 5. 18 J Ditz, ‘Officials Defend Afghan Escalation, Citing Dubious al-Qaeda Ties With Taliban’, Antiwar.com, 2 December 2009, Viewed on 5 April 2010, http://news.antiwar.com/2009/12/02/officials-defend-afghan-escalation-citi ng-dubious-al-qaeda-ties-with-taliban/. 19 J Ditz, ‘U.S Doesn’t Have Long-Term Designs on Afghanistan’, Antiwar.com, 15 November 2009, Viewed on 5 April 2010, http://news.antiwar.com/2009/11/15/clinton-insists-us-doesnt-have-long-ter m-designs-on-afghanistan/. 20 ‘Full Transcript: President Obama's Speech on Afghanistan’, op. cit. 21 NATO Review: Military Matters Beyond Prague, Autumn 2002, NATO, Viewed on 5 April 2010, http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2002/issue3/ english/military.html. 22 Z Brzezinski, ‘An Agenda for NATO - Toward a Global Security’, speech delivered at the NATO Defence Ministers Meeting, Bratislava, Slovakia, October 17, 2009, also published in Foreign Affairs, September / October 2009. Volume 88 No. 5, Viewed on 5 April 2010, http://www.atasac.org/ncbc/highlights-news/an-agenda-for-nato---toward-a-global-securityweb/ New Challenges Better Capabilities. Emphasis Added. 23 Z Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, Basic Books, New York, 1997, chapter 1 and p. 52. 24 Ibid.,p. 31. 25 Ibid., p. 125. 26 Joint Vision 2020, U.S. Defense Department, 2000, Viewed on 5 April 2010, http://www.iwar.org.uk/military/resources/aspc/pubs/jv2020.pdf.
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______________________________________________________________ 27
T Hobbes, The Leviathan, Hackett, Indianapolis/Cambridge, 1994, xiii, 8, 9, 12, pp. 76, 78. Original Emphasis. 28 Ibid., xiii, 9, 14, pp. 76, 78. 29 Ibid., xiii, 2, p. 74.
Bibliography Author Unknown, ‘Defense Budget/QDR Announcement as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates’. Arlington, VA, Monday, February 01, 2010, U.S. Department of Defence. Viewed on 4 April 2010, http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1416. –––, ‘Full Transcript: President Obama’s Speech on Afghanistan’. West Point, December 1, 2009, ABC News. Viewed on 5 April 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=9220661. –––, ‘List of Countries by GDP’. Wikipedia.com. Viewed on 4 April 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29. –––, ‘Obama to Help Troops, Rethink Defense Spend’. AFP. 25 February 2009, Viewed on 22 August 2009, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ article/ALeqM5jQmlNuequei36TCBuV0mAgUP7dAw. –––, ‘Seven Ways NATO Broke International Law’. U.S. Foreign Policy Index Page. Viewed on 4 April 2010, http://www.justiceyugoslavia. org/intnalaw.html. –––, ‘Thomas Friedman Sums Up the Iraq War: Suck. On This’. Charlie Rose Show. PBS, 2010, Viewed on 4 April 2010, http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=HOF6ZeUvgXs. –––, ‘U.S. Defense Spending is Out of Control’. True Cost – Analyzing our Economy, Government Policy, and Society through the Lens of Cost-Benefit. 2 March 2009, Viewed on 22 August 2009, http://truecostblog.com/2009/ 03/02/us-defense-spending-is-out-of-control/. –––, ‘US Commander: No Sign of al-Qaeda Presence in Afghanistan’. Antiwar.com. 11 September 2009, Viewed on April 4, 2010, http://news. antiwar.com/2009/09/11/us-commander-no-sign-of-al-qaeda-presence-inafghanistan/.
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______________________________________________________________ –––, ‘Winning or Losing?’ The Economist. 19 July 2008, Vol. 388, Special Section, p. 5. –––, Joint Vision 2020. U.S. Defense Department, 2000. Viewed on 5 April 2010, http://www.iwar.org.uk/military/resources/aspc/pubs/jv2020.pdf. –––, NATO Review: Military Matters Beyond Prague, Autumn 2002, NATO, viewed on 5 April 2010, http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2002/ issue3/english/military.html. Beslie, L., ‘What Obama's Afghan War Plan will Cost You’. Christian Science Monitor. 3 December, 2009, Viewed on 4 April 2010, http://www.csmonitor.com/Money/new-economy/2009/1203/what-obamasafghan-war-plan-will-cost-you. Bettts, R.K., ‘A Disciplined Defense’. Foreign Affairs. November/December 2007. Brzezinski, Z., ‘An Agenda for NATO - Toward a Global Security’. Speech delivered at the NATO Defence Ministers Meeting, Bratislava, Slovakia, October 17, 2009. _______
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, ‘U.S Doesn’t Have Long-Term Designs on Afghanistan’. Antiwar.com. 15 November 2009, Viewed on 5 April 2010, http://news.antiwar.com/2009/11/15/clinton-insists-us-doesnt-have-long-ter m-designs-on-afghanistan/. Drew, C., ‘High Costs Weigh on Troop Debate for Afghan War’. The New York Times. 15 November 2009, Viewed on April 5, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/us/politics/15cost.html?_r=1&scp=1&s q=afghanistan%20costs&st=cse.
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______________________________________________________________ Esposito, R., Cole, M. & Ross, B., ‘President Obama’s Secret: Only 100 al Qaeda Now in Afghanistan’. ABC News. 2 December 2009, Viewed on 5 April 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/president-obamas-secret-100-alqaeda-now-afghanistan/story?id=9227861&page=2. Farrell S. & Bumiller, E., ‘No Shortcuts When Military Moves a War’. The New York Times. 31 March 2010, Viewed on 5 April 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/world/01logistics.html?sq=U.S.%20mil itary%20move&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print. Friedman, T., ‘It’s Up to Iraqis Now: Good Luck’. The New York Times. 9 March 2009, Viewed on 4 April 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/ 03/10/opinion/10friedman.html. Hobbes, T., The Leviathan. Hackett, Indianapolis/Cambridge, 1994. Hornblower, S. & Spawforth, A., The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998. Kwiatkowski, K., ‘American Military Policy and the War on Terrorism’. Viewed 4 April 2010, http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/ kwiatkowski244.html. Obama, B., ‘Remarks by President Barack Obama at Town Hall Meeting with Future Chinese Leaders’. Museum of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China, 16 November 2009, Viewed on 4 April 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-barack-oba ma-town-hall-meeting-with-future-chinese-leaders. Obama, B., ‘Remarks by the President on a New Beginning’. Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt. 4 June 2009, Viewed on 4 April 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-atCairo-University-6-04-09/. Orwell G, 1984. Penguin Books, New York, 1990. Seely, H., Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld. Free Press, New York, 2003.
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______________________________________________________________ Shah, A., ‘World Military Spending’. GlobalIssues.org, 1 March 2009, Viewed on 22 August 2009, http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world military-spending. Silverstein, K., ‘The Al Qaeda Clubhouse: Members Lacking’. Harper’s Magazine. 5 July 2006, Viewed on 5 April 2010, http://www.harpers. org/archive/2006/07/sb-al-qaeda-new-members-badly-needed-1151963690. Thompson, L., ‘America’s Economic Decline’. Armed Forces Journal. Viewed on 22 August 2009, http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2009/03/ . Webster, P., ‘Al-Qaeda Still Biggest Threat to British Security, Says Gordon Brown’. Times. 16 November 2009, Viewed on 4 April 2010, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6918483.ece. Vladimir Suchan is an Associate Professor of Foundations and Social Studies at the University of Maine at Fort Kent and an Associate Research Fellow with the Communication Management Centre at the Russian German Graduate School of Management at the Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation. He is a Platonist with a keen interest in international relations and communication management. Email Address:
[email protected]
Communicative Aspect of the Activities of the British Intelligence Service (MI-6) Nowadays Svetlana V. Zudochkina Abstract MI-6 provides the British Government with a global covert capability to promote and defend the national security and economic well- being of the United Kingdom. MI-6 operates word-wide to collect secret foreign intelligence in support of the British Government‘s policies and objectives. Regional instability, terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and illegal drugs are among the major challenges of the 21st century. MI-6 assists the government to meet these challenges. MI-6 uses mass media, the Internet in their activity to call into operation: disinformation, manipulation, shredding of the myths and rumors. MI-6 collects secret intelligence and mounts covert operations overseas enquiries from the media are conducted through a subordinate FCO Press Office. Mi-6 is the participant of modern information operations, military conflicts in Yugoslavia, Iraq. Communication management in British foreign policy towards Russia mainly touches upon the problems of Russia in the image making of the country, difficulties in seeking new investments, incorrect activities of the Russian commercial and governmental organizations in different parts or the world, problem of safety of citizens etc. Communication management in British foreign policy towards Russia forms public opinion that justifies actions of the country and promotes preservation of her stability in the world. Intelligence service activity being a part of the communication activity plays a key role in the relations between the UK and the RF. It communicates with people, creates its own and country‘s image. Its decision influences the forming strategies and tactics of the state. The British intelligence service uses information from the Internet. British intelligence services cooperate with Russian intelligence in order to fight international terrorists. Key Words: Secret intelligence service, special operations, communicative source, communication management, RF, UK. ***** Communication management is a professional management of people and capitals with the help of communications.1 Secret intelligence services use communication management for effective activity. Information of secret service forms public opinion, influences the government, individuals, and at times can cause crisis situations.2
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______________________________________________________________ The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. It is more often referred to in the mass media and popular parlance by its former name MI6.3 Around 1920, it began increasingly to be referred to as the SIS, a title that it has continued to use to the present day and which was enshrined in statute in the Intelligence Services Act 1994. Its headquarters, since 1995, is at Vauxhall Cross on the South Bank of the Thames. In 1994 new headquarters at Vauxhall Bridge was officially opened by the Queen. For Guardian columnist Hugo Young, the new headquarters was a sign that MI6 still had clout in Whitehall. These agencies' emergence means that they are not afraid to announce their central role in government. MI6 is still viewed as a major national asset by Whitehall mandarins. MI-6 is under the control included in the state of MFA of Great Britain. Played a leading role in activity of MI-6 is by a prime minister. MI-6 collects secret intelligence and mounts covert operations overseas enquiries from the media are conducted through a dedicated FCO Press Office. Because of the secret nature of MI-6 work it has been the policy of MI-6 and successive Governments not comment on operations, staff, agents, or relations with foreign intelligence services.4 In Brunel Centre there are important sources about activity of MI-6. For Intelligence and Security Studies is an academic research unit based at Brunel University. Department specializes in teaching and research relating to the evaluation of intelligence service activities. Main focus of research is the UK however, there is also some comparison with services in the European Union and USA. Web site offers details on the aims of the centre, its courses, staff and research projects. It also includes information about recent publications. intelligence, weapons of mass destruction and the 2003 Gulf War against Iraq and Saddam Hussein (commentary on the Hutton report and the Butler report), national security and intelligence, covert operations and espionage. There is in Internet the UK Intelligence Community Online. This is a UK government website whose aim is to explain the United Kingdom national intelligence machinery. It provides an overview of intelligence provision in support of Government and law enforcement and provides details of the threat levels system which outlines the national security threat from international terrorism. It also provides access to full text publications information on how to access intelligence records. These pages reflect the UK Government's desire to be as open as possible about intelligence matters, while recognizing the constraints imposed by national security. The intelligence agencies themselves share in the blame though for the current problems.5 The most successful operations — actions in Ireland, Holland, Germany. Participated in thousand operations from Sahara to Malaysia. The
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______________________________________________________________ most known operation — clearing of hostages in the Iranian embassy in London in 1980. Summary group of employees of regiment Increment operates in interests of external investigation MI6. Mi-6 is the participant of modern information operations, military conflicts in Yugoslavia, Iraq. MI-6 uses mass media, the Internet in their activity to call into operation: disinformation, manipulation, shredding of the myths and rumors. MI 6 and SIA supervised Serbia and prepared plot on overthrow of president Milosevic and carried it to the international tribunal in the Hague. The Serbian sources inform, that scouts MI-6 has stolen Milosevic from the Belgrad prison, have thrown to the Hague where he has been killed.6 It was an important example of where the service was more then a simple collector of intelligence. Here it performed a major analytical role. A new era of international co-operation appeared. Western intelligence specialists argued that the Iranians had taken the place of the Soviets. Newspaper reports smacked more of disinformation than any recourse to reliable information. Iran does attack its opponents and the campaign, using hit squads, has been bloody, leading to the murder of a number of dissidents exiled in the West. MI-6 funds to have been allocated to ‘fighting drug trafficking in the eastern Mediterranean and a new policy of direct action, including the use of special forces to intercept shipments, has been agreed.’ In 1995 the police National Criminal Intelligence Service produced a report on the Russian mafia in Britain, ‘Ivan 1’, ‘Ivan 2’. Having spent billions of dollars on attempting to control the supply of drugs, the State Department has admitted that the number of addicts is increasing. The drugs war has already been lost and the emphasis has to be on prevention and treatment programmes. Britain did not have the funding to compete at the level at which the Americans operated, with much of GCHQ's budget needed to update its expensive computers. Outdated ideas of national security prevented cooperation and participation by Britain in European Union.’ It is a maxim of intelligence that there are no friendly intelligence services, and MI6 has been known to target its European partners. Ten officers in the UKB Unit at MI6 headquarters had been running Operation JET-STREAM which directs economic espionage against France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Switzerland. In 1996, MI6 cooperated with the CIA's station chief in London, Thomas Twetten, in a botched operation in northern Iraq. The CIA and MI6 invested millions of dollars in the London-based Iraqi National Accord whose leader once a member of the ruling Baath Party. Unfortunately for MI6, the INA was riddled with informers and double agents. In November 1998 CIA and MI6 to construct an Iraqi opposition out of a number of disparate and bitterly divided exile groups.
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______________________________________________________________ In September 2002 government produces dossier about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, including claim they could be deployed within 45 minutes. In Britain a campaign to protect the independence and funding of the BBC started. Hundreds joined a demonstration outside Television Centre in west London and further rallies were held at offices including Glasgow, Cardiff and Bristol.7 Tony Blair has dismissed fears about the intelligence gathered about Iraq and again defended his decision to go to war. Conservatives press Blair to sack MI6 chief Dossier was the reaction of quarrel between The American and British Intelligence Service. London got the information about Saddam who wanted to buy African uranium in Italy and France. The citizens of Britain and USA are pressurized by the idea of terrorism. The rumors which are spread among the people are considered to be the manipulation of citizens' mind in order to justify The British and American government.8 Nowadays British mass-media told that the United States made key decisions about the future of Iraq without consulting Britain, the chief of MI6 has said. Sir John Sawers, a former foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair who is now the head of Secret Intelligence Service, was drafted in as Britain‘s Special Representative to Iraq with less than a week to prepare. He said when he was Tony Blair's private secretary for foreign affairs, discussions took place on political actions which could help undermine Saddam Hussein‘s regime short of military action. When the information was acquired by MI6, a footnote was written on the page of an intelligence report sent to No 10 stating that the claim was verifiably inaccurate. But the footnote was ignored by Downing Street, Mr Holloway claimed. He said that a security official in the United States knowing about the pre-war MI6 reports confirmed to him that the footnote was ignored. The allegations are due to be published in a report on the Iraq war by Mr Holloway on a website called www.firstdefence.org. Sir John Scarlett, the former MI6 chief was responsible for drawing up the dossier, is expected to be questioned about it when he gives evidence to the inquiry head by Sir John Chilcot today. But he is unlikely to be publicly quizzed about MI6 sources. Mr Holloway says that pressure was put on MI6 to come up with intelligence after Mr Blair met President George W Bush in Texas in April 2002. The Chilcot inquiry has heard that this was the meeting at which a plan for Iraq was first discussed. In his report The Failure of British Political and Military Leadership in Iraq, Mr Holloway writes: Under pressure from Downing Street to find anything to back up the WMD case, SIS were squeezing their agents in Iraq for anything at all... Today the sphere of application of management has changed. It is connected with development of information technologies. In 2004, the MI6
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______________________________________________________________ station was still using floppy disks to transfer files but staff decided it would be quicker to use the memory capacity of a digital camera to transfer large files. This was a breach of procedure. The memory stick was not labeled or held securely in the MI6 station nor was it destroyed. The managerial influence of the information operations of MI-6 on the society is analyzed. The Sunday Times said that Egypt has been training British MI6 agents in how to combat Islamic terrorists, underlining Cairo's growing importance in the war against terror and the Middle East peace process. A senior Middle Eastern military intelligence official revealed last week that British officers had undergone the training as part of a cooperation programme with Egypt that began after the September 11 attacks on America in 2001 and continued until last year. Details have not been revealed, but it is believed to have included instruction in specialized interrogation techniques and in the terminology used by terrorists which will enable agents to understand monitored telephone conversations.9 Agents from MI6 are engaged in secret talks with Taliban leaders despite the British government‘s claims that there are no negotiations with terrorists. Intelligence service activity being a part of communication activity plays the main role in relations between UK and RF play. It communicates with people, creates its own and country's image. Its decision influences the forming strategies and tactics of the state. 10 Nikolai Patrushev, who heads the Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency, in the interview to the Russian newspaper Argumenty I Fackty, said that foreign spies were focusing their efforts on gathering information related to Russia's elections. ‘They are trying to influence protest feelings and demonstrations in Russia.’ He singled out Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, or MI 6, saying its agents ‘aren't only gathering intelligence in all areas, but they are also trying to influence the development of the domestic political situation in our country. Agents have been guided by the principle the aim is justifying the means. Money, bribery, blackmail, exemption from punishment for crimes committed are their main recruitment methods. British intelligence has relied on people who fled abroad to avoid criminal charges in Russia - an apparent hint at Kremlin critics living in Britain, such as tycoon Boris Berezovsky and Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakaev. Russia has vainly sought their extradition. Litvinenko was a critic of Putin administration claiming that Putin is turning Russia into a police state. From British point of view, this whole matter was very suspicious and may be Russian authority is directly & indirectly responsible for these multiple murders & attempts by poisoning.
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______________________________________________________________ From Russian point of view, especially considering statements & demonstrations of Nashi, British authority has engineered the murders of several Russian citizens to malign the reputation of Putin administration. But later, two journalists of British Daily Mail Stephen Wright and David Williams, Alexander Litvinenko was an MI6 agent under direct supervision of MI6/SIS Chief Sir John Scarlett. According to .unnamed intelligence & political sources., they claimed Litvinenko received .2000 per month & was directly recruited by Director Scarlett. In the late nineties English investigation has suffered a large failure in Russia when its agent, the employee the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Platon Obuhov has been detained. It has been revealed, in spite of the fact that Englishmen have supplied with its up-to-date equipment for communication, allowing to transfer the espionage data without direct contact to scouts. N. Patrushev also alleged that foreign spies were using nongovernmental organizations ‘both for gathering intelligence information and as an instrument for having a hidden influence over political processes.’ He pointed at the revolutions that ousted unpopular governments in the former Yugoslavia, Ukraine and Georgia as a product of such activities. ‘There is a danger of foreign NGOs being used to finance activities to undermine Russia’. He claimed that some NGOs were also being used by international terror groups to support militants in Russia's volatile North Caucasus. The CIA and MI6 were actively relying on the special services of Poland, Georgia and the Baltics to spy on Russia.11 BBC said that the main aim of British intelligence service was the safety of the country and rebirth of global opposition.12 The British intelligence service use information from the Internet. In Russia there are such websites as vkontakte.ru, odnaklasniki.ru, which give the information about people in Russia. But at the same time British intelligence services cooperate with Russian intelligence in order to fight international terrorists.13 What and how they do (even partly mythologizing public opinion) to create their own country‘s image. Although 'MI6' fell into official disuse years ago, many writers and journalists continue to use it to describe SIS. A number of intelligence operatives have left SIS. Usually they have found new employment in the civilian world. In late 1990s, an SIS officer Richard Tomlinson was dismissed and later wrote a story of his experiences entitled ‘The Big Breach’. The British intelligence service housed threats of legal action to force publishers in several European countries to abandon plans to publish this book.14 In August 2004, both the MI6 and CIA bureau in Кiev had bееn strengthened. Western-sponsored NGOs, such as Freedom House Inc from
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______________________________________________________________ America, helped to fund аn international оbserver mission to ensure the elections would bе free and fair. Freedom House volunteers went to cafes and рор-соncerts encouraging young people to vote. Western intelligence officers were available for advice and occasional aid. А direct link between reformists within the Ukrainian secret police and MI6 was established via the Yushchenko campaign office. А senior Yushchenko official told that earlier in the campaign, а friendly SBU general had bееn assigned to the campaign оffice. Тhe information included а warming about а possible threat to Yushchenko‘s life.15 SIS assists the government to meet these challenges. To do this effectively SIS must protect the secrets of its sources and methods Nowadays Secret Intelligence Service try to destroy the myths of their activities. Their website appeared in 2005. The motivation comes from two related areas. Firstly, there is a desire to clarify what the organization actually does. The second motivation is a desire to use the website to make it easier for people to apply to join the service. Many of the pages on the site are dedicated to outlining the different types of jobs performed at SIS and providing 'profiles' of people's work. The website is a recognition that intelligence now sits in a very different position from that of the days of the Cold War and 'spy versus spy'. The arrival of the SIS website is to some extent an acknowledgement of this rising tide of public interest.
Notes 1
EN Pashetsev, Kommunikatsionny menedzhment: strategija uspekha v so vremennom biznese, IM, Slovo, 2007. 2 A Hough, UK Terror Threat Raised to ‘Severe’, Home Secretary Announces. Published: 8:37PM GMT 22 Jan 2010, http://www. telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/7056220/UK-terror-threatraised-to-severe-Home-Secretary-announces.html. 3 S Sayenko, British Intelligence Service Marks 100th Anniversary Aug 6, 2009, 12:52 Moscow Time, http:// english.ruvr.ru/2009/08/06/273651.html. 4 SIS Or MI6: What's In A Name? SIS Website., http://www.sis.gov.uk/ output/sis-or-mi6-what-s-in-a-name.html.Retrieved 2008-07-11. 5 Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, http://www.bciss.org/. 6 Angelu Democratii//Sovetskaya Rossia, N32 (12949), 10 March 2007, http://www.sovross.ru/old/2007/32/32_3_4.htm. 7 S Dorril, (2001) MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations London: Fourth Estate, ISBN 1-85702-701-9. 8 Iraq Inquiry: Blair Claim ‘Separate from Dossier’ Former M16 Boss Sir John Scarlett has distanced himself from Tony Blair's claim over Saddam
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______________________________________________________________ Hussein and Weapons of Mass Destruction. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/6767091/Iraq-Inquiry-Blair-clai m -separate-from-dossie.html, Published: 8:03AM GMT 09 Dec 2009. 9 Machine Translation, The Sunday Times, http://revolution.allbest.ru/ programming/00001289_0.html. 10 Official Urges Better State PR Campaign, Moscow Times, 10/29/2007. 11 Spy Chief: West Wants to Split Russia, http//www.iraq-war.ru/article/ 143914, 10/10/2007 12 BI Lyubimov, Obshestvennoje veshanie Britanskaya Model, 2006. 13 Internet Protiv Shpionov, http://www.rbcdaily/2007/focus/300091. 14 The Big Breach: From Top Secret t o Maximum Security, Richard Tomlinson, http://books.imhonet.ru/element/44213/. 15 Kak zapad pomogal mugestvennum ludyam Ukrainu, http://censor.net.ua/ go/viewTopic--id--132518.
Bibliography British Intelligence Service Marks 100th Anniversary Aug 6, 2009. 12:52 Moscow Time. http://english.ruvr.ru/2009/08/06/273651.html. Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies. http://www.bciss.org. Dorril, S., MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations. Fourth Estate, London, 2001. Gossiping Taxi driver Source of Iraq 45-Minute WMD Claim. The Times. December 8, 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6948 283.ece. Internet Protiv Shpionov. http://www.rbcdaily/2007/focus/300091. Iraq Inquiry: Blair Claim ‘Separate from Dossier’. http://www. telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/6767091/Iraq-Inquiry-Blair-claim-separatefrom-dossie.html Published: 8:03AM GMT 09 Dec 2009. Machine Translation in The Sunday Times. http://www.revolution. allbest.ru/programming/00001289_0.html. Pashetsev, E.N., Kommunikatsionny Menedzhment: Strategija Uspekha v Sovremennom Biznese. Slovo, Moscow, 2007.
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______________________________________________________________ SIS or MI 6: What's In A Name? SIS Website. http://www.sis. gov.uk/output/sis-or-mi6-what-s-in-a-name.html. Retrieved 2008-07-11. Spy Chief: West wants rticle/14391410/10/2007.
to
Split
Russia,
http://www.iraq-war.ru/a
Tomlinson, R., The Big Breach. From Top Secret To Maximum Security. http://www.books.imhonet.ru/element/44213/. UK Terror Threat Raised to ‘Severe’, Home Secretary Announces. Published: 8:37PM GMT 22 Jan 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/7056220/UK-terror-threat-raised-to-severeHome-Secretary-announces.html. Svetlana V. Zudochkina – associated researcher at the Communication Management Centre at the Russian-German Graduate School of Management (the Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation). Lecturer of the Communication Management specialism at the PR Department of the Faculty of Philosophy, Lomonosov Moscow State University. E-mail:
[email protected]
