Can We End American Hubris?

Let's End American Dominance

Jun 5, 2010 2:47 PM EDT

Many Americans are anxious about the U.S. losing its supreme-superpower status. But in an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Peter Beinart says we need not dominate the world to enjoy it. 

Barack Obama (Kevin Lamarque / Reuters)

An excerpt from the conclusion of The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, forthcoming by Peter Beinart, about learning from American history that America can live safely and profitably in the world without dominating it.
What America needs today is a jubilant undertaker, someone—like Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan—who can bury the hubris of the past while convincing Americans that we are witnessing a wedding, not a funeral. The hubris of dominance, like the hubris of reason and the hubris of toughness before it, has crashed against reality’s shoals. Woodrow Wilson could not make politics between nations resemble politics between Americans. Lyndon Johnson could not halt every communist advance. And we cannot make ourselves master of every important region on earth. We have learned that there are prices we cannot pay and burdens we cannot bear, and our adversaries have learned it too. We must ruthlessly accommodate ourselves to a world that has shown, once again, that it is not putty in our hands.

Franklin Roosevelt did not wage World War II so America could be the world’s sole superpower, or even Europe’s.

For starters, that means remembering that we did not always believe we needed to dominate the world in order to live safely and profitably in it. In the decade and a half after the Soviet empire fell, dominance came so easily that we began to see it as the normal order of things. We expanded NATO into East Germany, then into Eastern Europe, then onto former Soviet soil, while at the same time encircling Russia with military bases in a host of Central Asian countries that once flew the Hammer and Sickle. We established a virtual Monroe Doctrine in the Middle East, shutting out all outside military powers, and the Bush administration set about enforcing a Roosevelt Corollary too, granting itself the right to take down unfriendly local regimes. In East Asia, we waited expectantly for China to democratize or implode, and thus follow Russia down the path to ideological and strategic submission. And we stopped thinking about Latin America much at all since we took it as a virtual fact of nature that no foreign power would ever again interfere in our backyard.

 

The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris. By Peter Beinart. 496 Pages. Harper. $27.99.

We were like the warrior guarding his village who suddenly finds that the enemy has abandoned the battlefield, leaving vast tracts of territory undefended, and so takes them for his own, since the acquisition apparently involves little risk and cost. And once those lands have been incorporated, he sees that even more is available: The inhabitants offer little resistance, and even appear pleased to join the realm. And as his domain extends further outward, the warrior begins to see its new size less as a choice than a necessity: the bare minimum necessary to keep his family safe. The old borders, which he once deemed sufficient, now strike him as frighteningly exposed. In fact, he comes to suspect that even his current territory is inadequate; he has grown so used to expansion that mere stasis strikes him as a form of retreat. And meanwhile, the lands just beyond his domain are no longer so welcoming or unguarded, and mutinies have broken out in some of his recent acquisitions. Fulfilling his obligations is no longer so effortless and the resources at his disposal are no longer so plentiful. His challenge is to step back from the border skirmishes that now occupy his time and try to remember which lands he considered necessary for his security and prosperity in those more sober days before the recent windfall, because the days of windfall are now clearly gone.

If the men and women who shape American foreign policy conduct this intellectual audit they will discover a sharp discontinuity between some of today’s widely held assumptions and the assumptions of successful American policymakers in eras past. After 9/11, in the name of fighting terror, the Bush administration declared war or cold war on Iraq, Iran, Syria, the Taliban, Hezbollah and Hamas, virtually every significant regime and militia in the greater Middle East that did not kiss our ring. And in its pursuit of regional dominance, it claimed that it was merely doing what past generations had done in Europe and Asia. But that’s not right. Franklin Roosevelt did not wage World War II so America could be the world’s sole superpower, or even Europe’s. He wanted Four Policemen; unipolarity was Hitler’s goal. And FDR did not wage war against all the enemies of freedom: He allied with Stalin to defeat Hitler and Tojo. During the cold war, America did not take on the entire communist world, except for a period of hubristic intoxication that began with McCarthyism and culminated in Vietnam. In the late 1940s we made common cause with the communists in Belgrade, and in the 1970s and 1980s we made common cause with the communists in Beijing, all to contain the communists we feared most, who resided in Moscow. George Kennan saw the purpose of containment as ensuring that no single power controlled the world’s centers of economic and military might, not insuring that that single power was the United States.

How could our forefathers have been so cowardly and immoral? Stalin was a monster; so was Mao, and they both had nuclear weapons aimed at us. Why did we live with that sword of Damocles? Why did we accept their dominion over billions of souls? Once upon a time, the answer was obvious: Because we lacked the power not to. Franklin Roosevelt knew the American people would not sacrifice their sons by the thousands to keep Eastern Europe from Soviet hands. During Korea, Harry Truman blundered into war with Beijing, and realized that in Asia too, the price of denying America’s communist foes a sphere of influence was appallingly high. Even Ronald Reagan proved so reluctant to challenge Soviet control over Poland in the early eighties that conservative commentators accused him of betrayal. In different ways, all these presidents understood that in foreign policy, as in life, there are things you may fervently desire but cannot afford. And in foreign policy, the recognition that resources are limited, and precious, is even more important since you are not merely spending other people’s money; you are spilling other people’s blood.

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Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is associate professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. His new book, The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, is now available from HarperCollins. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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Peter Beinart is editor in chief of Open Zion, a blog about Israel, Palestine, and the Jewish future at The Daily Beast. He is the author of The Crisis of Zionism (Times Books).


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Reagan as Godfather of Liberal Internationalism, Liberal Imperialism, and Liberal Wars

Liberal Internationalism: Peace, War and Democracy

by Michael W. Doyle¹

Peace and democracy are just two sides of the same coin, it has often been said. In a speech before the British parliament in June of 1982, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed that governments founded on a respect for individual liberty exercise "restraint" and "peaceful intentions" in their foreign policy. He then, perhaps unaware of the contrast, announced a "crusade for freedom" and a "campaign for democratic development."²

In making these claims the President joined a long list of liberal theorists (and propagandists) and echoed an old argument: the aggressive instincts of authoritarian leaders and totalitarian ruling parties make for war. Liberal states, founded on such individual rights as equality before the law, free speech and other civil liberties, private property, and elected representation are fundamentally against war, this argument asserts. When citizens who bear the burdens of war elect their governments, wars become impossible. Furthermore, citizens appreciate that the benefits of trade can be enjoyed only under conditions of peace. Thus, the very existence of liberal states, such as the United States, the European Union and others, makes for peace. And so peace and democracy are two sides of the same coin.


Building on a growing literature in international political science, I question the pacific liberal claim by identifying three distinct theoretical traditions of liberalism: liberal pacifism, liberal imperialism, and a liberal internationalism that combines elements of both the previous two.

Despite the contradictions of liberal pacifism and liberal imperialism, I find with Immanuel Kant and other liberal republicans that liberalism does leave a coherent legacy on foreign affairs. Liberal states are different. They are indeed peaceful. But they are also prone to make war. Liberal states, as Kant argued they would, have created a separate peace. They also, as he feared they might, have discovered liberal reasons for aggression. I conclude by arguing that the differences among liberal pacifism, liberal imperialism, and Kant's liberal internationalism are not arbitrary. They are rooted in differing conceptions of the citizen and of societies and states.

Liberal Pacifism

There is no canonical description of liberalism. What we tend to call liberal resembles a family portrait of principles and institutions, recognizable by certain characteristics – for example, a commitment to individual freedom, government through democratic representation, rights of private property, and equality of opportunity – that most liberal states share, although none has perfected them all. Joseph Schumpeter clearly fits within this family when he considers the international effects of capitalism and democracy.
Schumpeter's "Sociology of Imperialisms," which was published in 1919, made a coherent and sustained argument concerning the pacifying (in the sense of non-aggressive) effects of liberal institutions and principle.³ Unlike some of the earlier liberal theorists, who focused on a single feature, such as trade⁴ or failed to examine critically the arguments they were advancing, Schumpeter saw the interaction of capitalism and democracy as the foundation of liberal pacifism.

Capitalism, he suggests, produces an unwarlike disposition; its populace is "democratized, individualized, rationalized."⁵ The people's daily energies are daily absorbed in production. The disciplines of industry and the market train people in "economic rationalism;" the instability of industrial life necessitates calculation. Capitalism also "individualizes;" "subjective opportunities" replace the "immutable factors" of traditional, hierarchical society. Rational individuals demand democratic governance.

And democratic capitalism leads to peace. As evidence, Schumpeter claims that (1) throughout the capitalist world an opposition has arisen to "war, expansion, cabinet diplomacy;" (2) contemporary capitalism is associated with peace parties; and (3) the industrial worker of capitalism is "vigorously anti-imperialist." In addition, (4) the capitalist world has developed the means of preventing war, such as the Hague Court, and (5) the least feudal, most capitalist society – the United States – has demonstrated the least imperialistic tendencies. (With a curious absence of irony he notes that the United States left over half of Mexico unconquered in the war of 1846-48.)

Schumpeter's explanation for liberal pacifism was simple. Only war profiteers and military aristocrats gain from wars. No democracy would pursue a minority interest and tolerate the high costs of imperialism. When free trade prevails, "no class" gains from forcible expansion: "foreign raw materials and food stuffs are as accessible to each nation as though they were in its own territory. Where the cultural backwardness of a region makes normal economic intercourse dependent on colonization it does not matter, assuming free trade, which of the 'civilized' nations undertakes the task of colonization."⁶

Liberal Imperialism

In contradistinction to the pacific view of popular government, Thucydides and later Niccolò Machiavelli argue that not only are free republics not pacifistic, they are the best form of state for imperial expansion. Establishing a republic fit for imperial expansion is, moreover, the best way to guarantee the survival of a state.

Machiavelli's republic is a classical, mixed republic. It is not a democracy, which he thought would quickly degenerate into a tyranny; nor is it founded on the modern liberal view of fundamental human rights. But it is characterized by popular liberty and political participation.⁷ The consuls serve as "kings;" the senate as an aristocracy managing the state, the people in the assembly as the source of strength.

Liberty results from the "disunion" – the competition and necessity for compromise required by the division of powers among senate, consuls and tribunes (the last representing the common people). Liberty also results from the popular veto. The powerful few, Machiavelli says, threaten tyranny because they seek to dominate; the mass demands not to be dominated. Their veto thus preserves the liberties of the state.⁸ But since the people and the rulers have different social characters, the people need to be "managed" by the few to avoid having their recklessness overturn or their fecklessness undermine the ability of the state to expand.⁹ Thus the senate and the consuls plan expansion, consult oracles, and employ religion to manage the resources that the energy of the people supplies.

Strength, and then imperial expansion, result from the way liberty encourages increased population and property, which grow when the citizens know that their lives and goods are secure from arbitrary seizure. Free citizens equip large armies and provide soldiers who fight for public glory and the common good, because they are in fact their own.¹⁰ Thus, if you seek the honor of having your state expand, Machiavelli advises, you should organize it as a free and popular republic like Rome, rather than as an aristocratic republic like Sparta or Venice. Expansion thus calls for a free republic.

"Necessity" – political survival – calls for expansion. If a stable aristocratic republic is forced by foreign conflict "to extend her territory, in such a case we shall see her foundations give way and herself quickly brought to ruin."¹¹ If domestic security, on the other hand, prevails, "the continued tranquillity would enervate her, or provoke internal dissensions, which together, or either of them separately, will apt to prove her ruin." Machiavelli therefore believes that it is necessary to take the constitution of Rome, rather than that of Sparta or Venice, as our model.

Hence liberal imperialism. We are lovers of glory, Machiavelli announces. We seek to rule, or at least to avoid being oppressed. In either case, we want more for ourselves and our states than just material welfare (materialistic monism). Because other states with similar aims thereby threaten us, we prepare ourselves for expansion. Because our fellow citizens threaten us if we do not allow them either to satisfy their ambition or to release their political energies through imperial expansion, we expand.

There is considerable historical evidence for liberal imperialism. Machiavelli's (Polybius') Rome and Thucydides' Athens both were imperial republics in the Machiavellian sense.¹² The historical record of numerous United States interventions in the postwar period supports Machiavelli's argument.¹³ But the current record of liberal pacifism, weak as it is, calls some of Machiavelli's insights into question. To the extent that the modern populace actually controls (and thus unbalances) the mixed republic, their diffidence may outweigh elite ("senatorial") aggressiveness.

We can conclude either that (1) liberal pacifism has at last taken over with the further development of capitalist democracy, as Schumpeter predicted it would; or (2) the mixed record of liberalism – pacifism and imperialism – indicates that some liberal states are Schumpeterian democracies while others are Machiavellian republics. But before we accept either conclusion, we must consider a third apparent regularity of modern world politics.

Liberal Internationalism

Modern liberalism carries with it two legacies. They affect liberal states, not separately, according to whether they are pacifistic or imperialistic, but simultaneously.

The first of these legacies is the pacification of foreign relations among liberal states.¹⁴ During the nineteenth century, the United States and Great Britain engaged in nearly continual strife. But after the Reform Act of 1832 defined actual representation as the formal source of the sovereignty of the British parliament, Britain and the United States negotiated their disputes despite, for example, British grievances against the Northern blockade of the South, with which Britain had close economic ties. Despite severe Anglo-French colonial rivalry, liberal France and liberal Britain formed an entente against illiberal Germany before World War One. And in 1914-15, Italy, the liberal member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria, chose not to fulfil its treaty obligations under the Triple Alliance to support its allies. Instead, Italy joined in an alliance with Britain and France that had the result of preventing it from having to fight other liberal states and then declared war on Germany and Austria. And despite generations of Anglo-American tension and Britain's wartime restrictions on American trade with Germany, the United States leaned toward Britain and France from 1914 to 1917, before entering World War One on their side.

Beginning in the eighteenth century and slowly growing since then, a zone of peace, which Kant called the "pacific federation" or "pacific union," began to be established among liberal societies. (More than fifty liberal states currently make up the union. Most are in Europe and North America, but they can be found on every continent.)

Here, the predictions of liberal pacifists are borne out: liberal states do exercise peaceful restraint and a separate peace exists among them. This separate peace provides a political foundation for the United States' crucial alliances with the liberal powers (NATO, the alliances with Japan, Australia and New Zealand). This liberal alliance engendered the unbalanced, preponderance of resources that the "West" enjoyed during the Cold War. This foundation appears to be impervious to economic competition and personal quarrels with liberal allies. It also offers the promise of a continuing peace among liberal states. And, as the number of liberal states increases, it announces the possibility of global peace this side of the grave or world conquest.

Of course, the outbreak of war, in any given year, between any two given states, is a low probability event. But the occurrence of a war between any two adjacent states, considered over a long period of time, would be more probable. The apparent absence of war between liberal states, whether adjacent or not, for almost two hundred years may therefore have significance. Similar claims cannot be made for feudal, "fascist," communist, authoritarian or totalitarian forms of rule;¹⁵ nor for pluralistic, or merely similar societies. More significant perhaps, is that when states are forced to decide on which side of an impending world war they will fight, liberal states wind up all on the same side, despite the complexity of the paths that take them there. These characteristics do not prove that the peace among liberals is statistically significant, nor that liberalism is the peace's sole valid explanation.¹⁶ But they do suggest that we consider the possibility that liberals have indeed established a separate peace – but only among themselves.

Liberalism also carries with it a second legacy – international "imprudence."¹⁷ Peaceful restraint only seems to work in the liberals' relations with other liberals. Liberal states have fought numerous wars with non-liberal states.¹⁸
Many of these wars have been defensive, and thus prudent by necessity. Liberal states have been attacked and threatened by non-liberal states that do not exercise any special restraint in their dealings with liberal states. Authoritarian rulers both stimulate and respond to an international political environment in which conflicts of prestige, of interest, and of pure fear of what other states might do, all lead states toward war. War and conquest have thus characterized the careers of many authoritarian rulers and ruling parties – from Louis XIV and Napoleon Bonaparte to Benito Mussolini's fascists, Adolf Hitler's Nazis, and Joseph Stalin's communists.

But we cannot simply blame warfare on the authoritarians or totalitarians, as many of our more enthusiastic politicians would have us do. Most wars arise out of calculations and miscalculations of interest, misunderstandings, and mutual suspicions, such as those that characterized the origins of World War One. But aggression by the liberal state has also characterized a large number of wars. Both France and Britain fought expansionist colonial wars throughout the nineteenth century. The United States fought a similar war with Mexico in 1846-48, waged a war of annihilation against the American Indians, and intervened militarily against sovereign states many times before and after World War Two. Liberal states invade weak non-liberal states and display striking distrust in dealings with powerful non-liberal states.¹⁹
 
Kant's theory of liberal internationalism helps us understand these two legacies. The importance of Immanuel Kant as a theorist of international ethics has been well appreciated.²⁰ But Kant also has an important analytical theory of international politics. Perpetual Peace, written in 1795, helps us understand the interactive nature of international relations. Methodologically, he tries to teach us that we cannot study either the systemic relations of states or the varieties of state behavior in isolation from each other. Substantively, he anticipates for us the ever-widening pacification of a liberal pacific union, explains that pacification, and at the same time suggests why liberal states are not pacific in their relations with non-liberal states. Kant argues that perpetual peace will be guaranteed by the ever-widening acceptance of three "definitive articles" of peace. When all nations have accepted the definitive articles in a metaphorical "treaty" of perpetual peace he asks them to sign, perpetual peace will have been established.

First, republican governments, he argues, tame the aggressive interests of absolutist monarchies and ingrain the habit of respect for individual rights. Wars then appear as direct charges on the people's welfare that he and the other liberals thought them to be. Yet these domestic republican restraints do not end war. If they did, liberal states would not be warlike, which is far from the case. They do introduce republican caution, Kant's "hesitation," in place of monarchical caprice. Liberal wars are only fought for popular, liberal purposes. The historical liberal legacy is laden with popular wars fought to promote freedom, protect private property or support liberal allies against non-liberal enemies.²¹
 
Second, in order to see how the pacific union removes the occasion of wars among liberal states and not wars between liberal and non-liberal states, we need to shift our attention from constitutional law to international law, Kant's second source. Complementing the constitutional guarantee of caution, international law adds a second source – a guarantee of respect. The separation of nations is reinforced by the development of separate languages and religions. These further guarantee a world of separate states—an essential condition needed to avoid a "global, soul-less despotism." Yet, at the same time, they also morally integrate liberal states "as culture grows and men gradually move towards greater agreement over their principles, they lead to mutual understanding and peace."²² As republics emerge (the first source) and as culture progresses, the established practice of recognized legal rights resting on an understanding of the legitimate rights of all citizens and of all republics comes into play; and this, now that caution characterizes policy, sets up the institutional and moral foundations for the liberal peace. Correspondingly, international law highlights the importance of Kantian publicity.

Domestically, publicity helps ensure that the officials of republics act according to the principles they profess to hold just and according to the interests of the electors they claim to represent. Internationally, free speech and the effective communication of accurate conceptions of the political life of foreign peoples is essential to establish and preserve the understanding on which the guarantee of respect depends. Domestically, just republics, which rest on consent, then presume foreign republics to be also consensual, just, and therefore deserving of accommodation. The recognition of legitimate rights and the experience of cooperation helps engender further cooperative behavior when the consequences of state policy are unclear but (potentially) mutually beneficial. At the same time, liberal states assume that non-liberal states, which do not rest on free consent, are not just. Because non-liberal governments are perceived to be in a state of aggression with their own people, their foreign relations become for liberal governments deeply suspect. In short, fellow liberals benefit from a presumption of amity; non-liberals suffer from a presumption of enmity. Both presumptions may be accurate. Each, however, may also be self-fulfilling.
Democratic liberals do not need to assume either that public opinion rules foreign policy or that the entire governmental elite is liberal. It can assume that the elite typically manages public affairs but that potentially non-liberal members of the elite have reason to doubt that antiliberal policies would be electorally sustained and endorsed by the majority of the democratic public.

Third and lastly, cosmopolitan law adds material incentives to moral commitments. The cosmopolitan right to hospitality permits the "spirit of commerce" sooner or later to take hold of every nation, thus creating incentives for states to promote peace and to try to avert war. Liberal economic theory holds that these cosmopolitan ties derive from a cooperative international division of labor and free trade according to comparative advantage. Each economy is said to be better off than it would have been under autarky; each thus acquires an incentive to avoid policies that would lead the other to break these economic ties. Since keeping open markets rests upon the assumption that the next set of transactions will also be determined by legal rights and agreed upon prices rather than coercion, a sense of mutual security is vital to avoid security-motivated searches for economic autarky. Thus avoiding a challenge to another liberal state's security or even enhancing each other's security by means of alliance naturally follows economic interdependence.

A further cosmopolitan source of liberal peace is that the international market removes difficult decisions of production and distribution from the direct sphere of state policy. A foreign state thus does not appear directly responsible for these outcomes; states can stand aside from, and to some degree above, these contentious market rivalries and be ready to step in to resolve crises. The interdependence of commerce and the international contacts of state officials help create crosscutting transnational ties that serve as lobbies for mutual accommodation.²³ According to modern liberal scholars, international financiers and transnational and transgovernmental organizations create interests in favor of accommodation. Moreover, their variety has ensured no single conflict sours an entire relationship by setting off a spiral of reciprocated retaliation. Trust, property rights and mutual expectation of the rule of law make economic and other disputes easier to settle. Conversely, a sense of suspicion, such as that characterizing relations between liberal and non-liberal governments, can exacerbate disputes and lead to restrictions on the range of contacts between societies and this can increase the prospect that a single conflict will determine an entire relationship.

No single constitutional, international or cosmopolitan source alone is sufficient. Kantian theory is neither solely institutional nor solely ideological, nor solely economic. But together, and only together do the three specific strands of liberal institutions, liberal ideas, and the transnational ties that follow from them plausibly connect the characteristics of liberal polities and economies with sustained liberal peace. But in their relations with non-liberal states, liberal states have not escaped from the insecurity caused by anarchy in the world political system considered as a whole. Moreover, the very constitutional restraint, international respect for individual rights, and shared commercial interests that establish grounds for peace among liberal states establish grounds for additional conflict in relations between liberal and non-liberal societies.

Comparisons

Much of the debate on the democratic peace or liberal pacifism isolates one feature of democracy or liberalism and then tests it against the historical record. It is thus worth stressing that Kant's theory rejects that approach.²⁴ He presents each of the three "definitive articles" as necessary conditions that and only together establish a sufficient condition of establishing a pacific union.
Representation or democracy (the so-called domestic "structural" causes of the democratic peace) only ensures that foreign policy reflects the preferences of the median voter, whatever they may be. If those preferences are rational egositic, then however rational or powerful the state may be, it will only be pacific to the extent that a particular bilateral peace produces greater material benefits than would aggression (discounting but still counting all systemic and temporal effects). This is a weak reed for a wealthy, resource rich or strategically vital, but very weak democratic state to rely upon in its relations with powerful and also democratic states.²⁵
 
A related objection applies to purely "normative" explanations of the liberal peace. The norms, to the extent they are normative, apply to all statespersons as moral agents, as human beings, anywhere, whatever their state structure. Yet states other than liberal states do not maintain peace (and liberals maintain peace only with each other).²⁶ In short, Kant's argument for the combined effect of structures, norms, and interests warrants our attention.

In order to sort out the varied legacy of liberalism on international relations, we should also recall that Kant's liberal internationalism, Machiavelli's liberal imperialism, and Schumpeter's liberal pacifism rest on fundamentally different views on the nature of man, the state, and international relations.²⁷ Schumpeter's man is rationalized, individualized, and democratized. He is also homogenized, pursuing material interests "monistically." Since his material interests lie in peaceful trade, he and the democratic state that he and his fellow citizens control are pacifistic. Machiavelli's citizens are splendidly diverse in their goals, but they are fundamentally unequal in them as well, seeking to rule or fearing being dominated. Extending the rule of the dominant elite, or avoiding the political collapse of their state, each call for imperial expansion.
Kant's citizens, too, are diverse in their goals, and they are individualized and rationalized. But most importantly, they are capable of appreciating the moral equality of all individuals and of treating other individuals as ends rather than as means. The Kantian state thus is governed publicly according to law, as a republic. Kant's is the state that – formally, legally—solves the problem of governing individualized equals whether they are the "rational devils" he says we often find ourselves to be or the ethical agents we can and should become.

“In order to organize a group of rational beings who together require universal laws for their survival, but of whom each separate individual is secretly inclined to exempt himself from them, the constitution must be so designed so that, although the citizens are opposed to one another in their private attitudes, these opposing views may inhibit one another in such a way that the public conduct of the citizens will be the same as if they did not have such evil attitudes.”²⁸

Unlike Machiavelli's republics, Kant's republics are capable of achieving peace among themselves because they exercise democratic caution and because they are capable of appreciating the international rights of foreign republics. These international rights of republics derive from the representation of foreign individuals, who are our moral equals. Unlike Schumpeter's capitalist democracies, Kant's republics remain in a state of war with non-republics.

Liberal republics see themselves as threatened by aggression from non-republics that are not constrained by representation. And even though wars often cost more than the economic return they generate, liberal republics also are prepared to protect and promote – sometimes forcibly – democracy, private property, and the rights of individuals overseas against non-republics which, because they do not authentically represent the rights of individuals, have no rights to non-interference. These wars may liberate oppressed individuals overseas; they can also generate enormous suffering.

Preserving the legacy of the liberal peace without succumbing to the legacy of liberal imprudence is both a moral and a strategic challenge. The near certainty of mutual devastation resulting from a nuclear war between the superpowers has created a "crystal ball effect" which has helped to constrain the tendency toward miscalculation that was present at the outbreak of so many wars in the past. But this "nuclear peace" appeared to have been limited to the superpowers. It did not curb military interventions in the Third World. Moreover, it is subject to a desperate technological race designed to overcome its constraints and to crises that have pushed even the superpowers to the brink of war. We must still reckon with the war fevers and moods of appeasement that have almost alternately swept liberal democracies.

Burning oil wells and a destroyed Iraqi tank, Al Maqwa, Kuwait, March 1991. Copyright © UN/DPI/J. Isaac

Yet restraining liberal imprudence, whether aggressive or passive, may not be possible without threatening liberal pacification. Improving the strategic acumen of our foreign policy calls for introducing steadier strategic calculations of the long run national interest and more flexible responses to changes in the international political environment. Constraining the indiscriminate meddling of our foreign interventions calls for a deeper appreciation of the "particularism of history, culture, and membership."²⁹ However, both the improvement in strategy and the constraint on intervention, in turn, seem to require an executive freed from the restraints of a representative legislature in the management of foreign policy and a political culture indifferent to the universal rights of individuals. And these, in their turn, could break the chain of constitutional guarantees, the respect for representative government, and the web of transnational contact that have sustained the pacific union of liberal states.

Perpetual peace, Kant says, is the endpoint of the hard journey his republics will take. The promise of perpetual peace, the violent lessons of war, and the experience of a partial peace are proof of the need for and the possibility of world peace. They are also the grounds for moral citizens and statesmen to assume the duty of striving for peace.

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1. This essay draws on parts of Michael W. Doyle's Ways of War and Peace. 1997. New York: W.W. Norton.

Michael W. Doyle is the Harold Brown Professor at Columbia University in the School of International and Public Affairs and Columbia Law School.

Professor Doyle previously has taught at the University of Warwick (United Kingdom), Johns Hopkins University and Princeton University. His publications include Ways of War and Peace (W.W. Norton); Empires (Cornell University Press); UN Peacekeeping in Cambodia: UNTAC's Civil Mandate (Lynne Rienner Publishers); Keeping the Peace (Cambridge University Press) which he edited with Ian Johnstone and Robert Orr; Peacemaking and Peacekeeping for the New Century (Rowman and Littlefield) edited with Olara Otunnu; New Thinking in International Relations Theory (Westview) edited with John Ikenberry; Escalation and Intervention: Multilateral Security and Its Alternatives (Westview Press/United Nations Association) edited with Arthur Day; and Alternatives to Monetary Disorder (Council on Foreign Relations/McGraw Hill) which he wrote with Fred Hirsch and Edward Morse.

He recently served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. His responsibilities in the Secretary-General's Executive Office included strategic planning, outreach to the international corporate sector (the "Global Compact") and relations with Washington. He is currently chairman of the Academic Council of the United Nations Community. He was the Director of the Center of International Studies of Princeton University and chairman of the Editorial Board and the Committee of Editors of World Politics. He was the vice-president and senior fellow of the International Peace Academy and is now a member of its board of directors. He has also served as a member of the External Research Advisory Committee of the UNHCR, the Advisory Committee of the Lessons-Learned Unit of the Department of Peace-Keeping Operations (UN), and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, New York. In 2001, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Michael Doyle is married, has a daughter and lives in Philadelphia and New York.

2. Reagan, Ronald. 1983/1984. "Peace and National Security," televised address to the nation, Washington D.C., March 23, 1983, p. 40 in the U.S. State Department, Realism, Strength, Negotiation, May 1984.

3. Schumpeter, Joseph. 1950. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Doyle, Michael W. 1986. "Liberalism and World Politics," American Political Science Review, vol. 80, no. 4 (December), pp. 1151-1169.

4. Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron of. 1748/1966. Spirit of the Laws. New York: Hafner, bk. 20, ch. 1.

5. Schumpeter, Joseph. 1955. "The Sociology of Imperialism." Imperialism and Social Classes. Cleveland: World Publishing, p. 68.

6. Ibid. pp. 75-76. A study by R.J. Rummel of "libertarianism" and international violence is the closest test that Schumpeterian pacifism has received (1983). "Free" states (those enjoying political and economic freedom) have considerably less conflict at the level of economic sanctions or above (more violent) than "non-free" states. The free, the partly free (including the democratic socialist countries such as Sweden), and the non-free accounted for .24, .26 and .61 of the violence, respectively. These correlations are impressive, but not conclusive for the Schumpeterian thesis. The data set is limited, in this test, to 1976-1980. It includes, for example, the Russian-Afghan War, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, China's invasion of Vietnam and Tanzania's invasion of Uganda, but just misses the U.S. quasi-covert intervention in Angola (1975) and the not so covert war against Nicaragua (1981). More importantly, it excludes the cold war period with its numerous interventions and the long history of colonial wars (the Boer War, the Spanish American War, the Mexican Intervention, etc.) that marked the history of liberal, including democratic capitalist states. See Rummel, Rudolph J. 1983. "Libertarianism and International Violence." Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 27, pp. 27-71.

7. Machiavelli, Niccolò. 1950. The Prince and the Discourses, trans. Luigi Ricci and Christian Detmold, ed. Max Lerner. New York: Modern Library, bk. I, ch. 2, p. 112; Mansfield, Harvey C. 1970. "Machiavelli's New Regime." Italian Quarterly, vol. 13, pp. 63-95; Skinner, Quentin. 1981. Machiavelli. New York: Hill and Wang, ch. 3; Huliung, Mark, 1983. Citizen Michavelli. Princeton: Princeton University Press, ch. 2.

8. Ibid, bk. I, ch. 5, p. 122.

9. Ibid, bk. I, ch. 53, pp. 249-250.

10. Ibid, bk. II, ch. 2, pp. 287-290.

11. Ibid, bk. I, ch. 6, p. 129.

12. Thucydides, 1954/1972. The Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner, intro. M.I. Finley. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, bk. 6.

13. Aron, Raymond. 1973. The Imperial Republic, trans. Frank Jellinek. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, chs. 3-4; Barnet, Richard. 1968. Intervention and Revolution: The United States in the Third World. New York: Meridian, ch. 11.

14. Clarence Streit (1938. Union Now: A Proposal for a Federal Union of the Leading Democracies. New York: Harper, pp. 88, 90-92) seems to have been the first to point out (in contemporary foreign relations) the empirical tendency of democracies to maintain peace among themselves, and he made this the foundation of his proposal for a (non-Kantian) federal union of the leading democracies of the 1930s. In a very interesting book, Ferdinand Hermens (1944) explored some of the policy implications of Streit's analysis. D.V. Babst (1972. "A Force of Peace." Industrial Research, vol. 14 (April), pp. 55-58) performed a quantitative study of this phenomenon of "democratic peace." And R.J. Rummel did a similar study of "libertarianism" (in the sense of laissez faire) focusing on the post-war period (1983), which drew on an unpublished study (Project No. 48) noted in Appendix I:7.5 (1979, p. 386). I use "liberal" in a wider (Kantian) sense in my discussion of this issue in (1983). In that essay, I survey the period from 1790 to the present, and find no war among liberal states.

15. Doyle, Michael W. 1983. "Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs," Part 1 and 2, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 12, nos. 3-4 (Summer and Fall), p. 222.

16. Babst (ibid, "A Force for Peace," 1972) did make a preliminary test of the significance of the distribution of alliance partners in World War One. He found that the possibility that the actual distribution of alliance partners could have occured by chance was less than 1% (p. 56). But this assumes that there was an equal possibility that any two nations could have gone to war with each other; and this is a strong assumption. The most thorough statistical demonstration of the significance of the liberal peace, controlling for alliance patterns, proximity, economic interdependence, etc. can be found in Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett, "Alliance, Contiguity, Wealth, Political Stability: Is the Lack of Conflict Among Democracies a Statistical Artifact," International Interactions, vol. 17, no. 3 (1992), pp. 245-267.

17. Hume, David. 1752/1963. "Of the Balance of Power," Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 346-347.

18. Small, Melvin and Singer, J. David. 1976. "The War-proneness of Democratic Regimes." Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, vol. 50, no. 4 (Summer), pp. 50-69.

19. Op. cit. 1983. "Kant, Liberal Legacies."

20. Armstrong, A.C. 1931. "Kant's Philosophy of Peace and War." Journal of Philosophy, vol. 28, pp. 197-204; Friedrich, Karl. 1948. Inevitable Peace. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; Waltz, Kenneth. 1962. "Kant, Liberalism, and War." American Political Science Review, vol. 56, pp. 331-340; Hoffmann, Stanley. 1965. The State of War. New York: Praeger; Hinsley, F.H. 1967. Power and the Pursuit of Peace. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, ch. 4; Hassner, Pierre. 1972. "Immanuel Kant," in Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., History of Political Pihlosophy. Chicago: Rand McNally; Galston, William. 1975. Kant and the Problem of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Gallie, W. 1978. Philosophers of Peace and War. New York: Cambridge University Press, ch. 1; Williams, Howard. 1983. Kant's Political Philosophy. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

21. Kant regards these wars as unjust and warns liberals of their susceptibility to them (Perpetual Peace, in 1970, p. 106). At the same time, he argues that each nation "can and ought to" demand that its neighboring nations enter into the pacific union of liberal states (p. 102).

22. Op. cit., Kant. 1970, p. 114.

23. See for example, Russett, Bruce and O'Neal, John, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations, New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.

24. A useful survey of that literature can be found in Harvey Starr, "Why Don't Democracies Fight One Another? Evaluating the Theory-Findings Feedback Loop," Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, vol. 14, no. 4 (1992), pp. 41-57.

25. Lake, David. 1992. "Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War," American Political Science Review, vol. 86, no. 1 (March 1992), pp. 24-37.

26. Maoz, Zeev and Russett, Bruce. "Alliance, Contiguity, Wealth and Political Stability: Is the Lack of Conflict among Democracies a Statistical Artifact?" International Interactions, vol. 17, no. 3. pp. 245-268.

27. For a comparative discussion of the political foundations of Kant's ideas see Shklar, Judith. 1984. Ordinary Vices. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp. 232-238.

28. Kant, Immanuel. 1970. Kant's Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss and trans. H.B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, England, p. 113.

29. Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic Books, p. 5.

First published 22 June 2004

TO CITE THIS PAGE:
MLA style: "Liberal Internatinalism: Peace, War and Democracy". Nobelprize.org. 23 May 2012 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/articles/doyle/

THINKPROGRESS

Private Empire: ExxonMobil And American Power

By Climate Guest Blogger on May 3, 2012 at 11:32 am

by Jason Tanz, via OnEarth Magazine

 

Perhaps you recall Milo Minderbinder, the ambitious World War II mess hall officer from Catch-22. An avatar of capitalist ambition, Minderbinder expands his modest operation into a full-fledged multinational corporation.

It starts innocently enough — Minderbinder starts buying eggs from Sicily, then arranges a series of increasingly ludicrous deals to turn a profit. The absurd logic of untrammeled capitalism soon drives him to outrageous action, including accepting money from the Germans to bomb his own platoon. He justifies his behavior by pointing out that, as everyone in the troop is an investor — “everybody has a share,” as his catchphrase has it — they are in fact profiting from their own demise.

In Steve Coll’s new book Private Empire, a history of ExxonMobil in the years since the March 24, 1989, Valdez spill in Alaska, CEO Lee Raymond doesn’t quite reach Minderbinderian levels of amorality, but he gets mighty close. His company pays the torture-happy Singaporean military to protect its oil fields from rebel forces. He hires a team of scientists to browbeat researchers attempting to assess the damage from Valdez. He publicly dismisses the very notion of climate change, even as his company explores how global warming might offer new opportunities for oil exploration and profit. “Don’t believe for a minute that ExxonMobil doesn’t think climate change is real,” Coll quotes a manager as saying.

Coll conducted hundreds of interviews to compile this exhaustive — sometimes exhausting — history of one of the world’s most secretive companies. In piercing Exxon’s crude-black veil, Coll is doing more than describing the inner operations of a successful multinational. He is investigating an organization that, in size and influence, may as well be its own nation with its own sovereign interests — a “corporate state within the American state,” as Coll puts it. In capturing the mind-boggling scope of Exxon’s activity, Coll also offers crash courses in the finer points of oil exploration, the bizarre and brutal history of Equatorial Guinea, the rise of piracy in Nigeria, the eco-guerilla movement, resource management in post-Soviet Russia, the finer points of campaign-finance law, the apportionment of oil field contracts in post-war Iraq, and the battle for Acehnese independence. (NB: This is a much-abridged list.)


It is to Coll’s credit that Raymond never comes across as a moustache-twirling supervillain. He is merely the master of a proudly cloistered society, one that values loyalty and rule-following over free thinking and flexibility. That kind of rigorous mindset is probably necessary to oversee a business as complicated and sprawling as Exxon. Routinely one of the most profitable companies in the U.S. — its quarterly earnings topped $10 billion last year — Exxon’s tradition of consistent financial performance belies the chaos inherent in practically every level of its operations. Like all oil concerns, Exxon is on a constant hunt for “reserve replacement” — finding enough new oil to make up for the huge amount that the company extracts every year — a requirement that has led Exxon into ever more far-flung (and unstable) parts of the world.

At the same time, the size of its balance sheet means that even modest legislative adjustments — a small tax increase, for instance — could result in billions in losses. Factor in the occasional class-action suit, oil leak, or executive kidnapping, and even the least sympathetic reader can have some appreciation for Raymond’s rigid, top-down culture. “[U]nless Raymond used his bully pulpit … to pound hard and even intimidate his employees,” Coll writes, “the natural drift and compromising tendencies of such a large workforce would produce mediocre results.”

Raymond takes a similarly uncompromising attitude toward his many critics. Alternative-energy proponents are dismissed as soft-headed idealists. SEC regulations that conflict with Exxon’s own accounting practices are glibly disregarded in its public statements. Human-rights compacts are refused, not because Exxon doesn’t agree with the ideals behind them but because, in the words of one executive, “We don’t sign on to other people’s principles.” Raymond, in other words, was well suited for the early 21st century Age of American Imperiousness, an attitude best personified by his close friend, Dick Cheney.

And woe to scientists who reach conclusions that Exxon finds distasteful. Government researchers studying how much oil still lurked beneath the beaches of Prince William Sound 12 years after the Valdez spill dug 7,000 holes on 91 beach segments — all while being trailed by Exxon-funded scientists on cruise ships and helicopters, who mapped their movements and double-checked their work. When the government’s team leader, Jeffrey Short, published his findings, Exxon rushed out a response, all but accusing the researchers of fraud. “We saw no evidence that Short dug 7,000 pits,” the paper stated. “Had thousands been dug, we would have located many more.” Exxon filed dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests, burying the scientists in paperwork, and representatives showed up at every public presentation to attack their work. Eventually, Short retired from his government post, in part because he was fed up with the harassment.

About halfway through Coll’s treatise, he loses his main character. In 2006, Raymond steps down. His replacement, Rex Tillerson, is chosen in part as a softer corrective to Raymond’s alienating ways. Coll unearths some great details from Tillerson’s reign, none more heartbreaking than the story of Tillerson’s ill-fated flirtation with support for a carbon tax. Tillerson ordered a review of the company’s climate strategy when he took the helm, which concluded that some form of carbon price hike was likely inevitable, and that a predictable tax was preferable to the gyrations and bureaucracy of a cap-and-trade system. Despite Exxon’s aggressive lobbying campaign, politicians pursued a cap-and-trade policy, which died in the Senate.

Still, without Raymond’s single-minded drive as an anchor for the story, Coll’s narrative falls prey to some of the same aimlessness and drift that Raymond feared would befall Exxon without his authoritarian touch. Regardless, the book concludes with a satisfying — if depressing — geometry. Coll begins his tale with an account of the Valdez spill, an event that the author credits for inspiring Exxon’s fierce discipline, giving the company “a sense that Exxon’s leaders might need to find new ways to exert greater control over the world in which they operated.” In the intervening years, Exxon succeeds remarkably at this goal, influencing US foreign policy, environmental regulations, and tax policy, all while negotiating successfully with an assortment of tin-pot dictators and executing the multibillion dollar purchases of Mobil and XTO.

And yet, at the book’s final chapter — an account of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, for which Exxon shared cleanup responsibilities — the company is no better prepared than it was for the Valdez spill. “When these things happen,” Tillerson admits before a congressional committee, “we are not well equipped to deal with them.” It’s hard to imagine the ever-arrogant Exxon making a similar confession about any other aspect of its business. Then again, it doesn’t seem to have mattered much. In the two years since Tillerson made that statement, Exxon’s stock has jumped 39 percent. And one way or another, everybody has a share.

Jason Tanz is the New York editor at Wired, where he heads up the magazine’s business coverage. This piece was originally published at OnEarth and was re-printed with permission.
Related Post:

• ExxonMobil gave $1.5M to climate disinformation groups last year, breaking its pledge to stop funding denial machine

Five Reasons Drone Assassinations Are Illegal

by Bill Quigley / May 15th, 2012

US civilian and military employees regularly target and fire lethal unmanned drone guided missiles at people across the world.  Thousands of people have been assassinated.   Hundreds of those killed were civilians. Some of those killed were rescuers and mourners.

These killings would be criminal acts if they occurred inside the US.  Does it make legal sense that these killings would be legal outside the US?

Some Facts about Drone Assassinations

The US has used drones to kill thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.   But the government routinely refuses to provide any official information on local reports of civilian deaths or the identities of most of those killed.

In Pakistan alone, the New America Foundation reports US forces have launched 297 drone strikes killing at least 1800 people, three to four hundred of whom were not even combatants.   Other investigative journalists report four to eight hundred civilians killed by US drone strikes in Pakistan.

Very few of these drone strikes kill high level leaders of terror groups.  A recent article in FOREIGN AFFAIRS estimated “only one out of every seven drone attacks in Pakistan kills a militant leader.  The majority of those killed in such strikes are not important insurgent commanders but rather low level fighters, together with a small number of civilians.”

An investigation by the Wall Street Journal in November 2011 revealed that most of the time the US did not even know the identities of the people being killed by drones in Pakistan.  The WSJ reported there are two types of drone strikes.  Personality strikes target known terrorist leaders.  Signature strikes target groups of men believed to be militants but are people whose identities are not known.  Most of the drone strikes are signature strikes.

In Yemen, there have been at least 34 drone assassination attacks so far in 2012 alone, according to the London based Bureau of Investigative Journalism.  Using drones against people in Yemen, who are thought to be militants but whose names are not even known, was authorized by the Obama administration in April 2012, according to the Washington Post.   Somalia has been the site of ten drone attacks with a growing number in recent months.

Civilian deaths in drone strikes are regularly reported but more chilling is the practice of firing a second set of drone strikes at the scene once people have come to find out what happened or to give aid.  Glen Greenwald of Salon, a leading critic of the increasing use of drones, recently pointed out that drones routinely kill civilians who are in the vicinity of people thought to be “militants” and are thus “incidental” killings.  But the US also frequently fires drones again at people who show up at the scene of an attack, thus deliberately targeting rescuers and mourners.

Here are five reasons why these drone assassinations are illegal.
One.  Assassination by the US government has been illegal since 1976
Drone killings are acts of premeditated murder.  Premeditated murder is a crime in all fifty states and under federal criminal law.  These murders are also the textbook definition of assassination, which is murder by sudden or secret attack for political reasons.

In 1976 U.S. President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order 11905, Section 5(g), which states: “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.” President Reagan followed up to make the ban clearer in Executive Order 12333. Section 2.11 of that Order states: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” Section 2.12 further says: “Indirect participation.  No agency of the Intelligence Community shall participate in or request any person to undertake activities forbidden by this Order.”  This ban on assassination still stands.

The reason for the ban on assassinations was that the CIA was involved in attempts to assassinate national leaders opposed by the US. Among others, US forces sought to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, and Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam.

Two.  United Nations report directly questions the legality of US drone killings
The UN directly questioned the legality of US drone killings in a May 2010 report by NYU law professor Philip Alston.  Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, said drone killings may be lawful in the context of authorized armed conflict (eg Afghanistan where the US sought and received international approval to invade and wage war on another country).  However, the use of drones “far from the battle zone” is highly questionable legally.  “Outside the context of armed conflict, the use of drones for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal.” Can drone killings be justified as anticipatory self-defense?  “Applying such a scenario to targeted killings threatens to eviscerate the human rights law prohibition against arbitrary deprivation of life.” Likewise, countries which engage in such killings must provide transparency and accountability, which no country has done.  “The refusal by States who conduct targeted killings to provide transparency about their policies violates the international law framework that limits the unlawful use of lethal force against individuals.”

Three.  International law experts condemn US drone killings
Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international affairs and politics at Princeton University, thinks the widespread killing of civilians in drone strikes may well constitute war crimes.  “There are two fundamental concerns. One is embarking on this sort of automated warfare in ways that further dehumanize the process of armed conflict in ways that I think have disturbing implications for the future,” Falk said. “Related to that are the concerns I’ve had recently with my preoccupation with the occupation of Gaza of a one-sided warfare where the high-tech side decides how to inflict pain and suffering on the other side that is, essentially, helpless.”

Human rights groups in Pakistan challenge the legality of US drone strikes there and assert that Pakistan can prosecute military and civilians involved for murder.

While stopping short of direct condemnation, international law expert Notre Dame Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell seriously questions the legality of drone attacks in Pakistan.  In powerful testimony before Congress and in an article in America magazine she points out that under the charter of the United Nations, international law authorizes nations to kill people in other countries only in self-defense to an armed attack, if authorized by the UN, or is assisting another country in their lawful use of force.  Outside of war, she writes, the full body of human rights applies, including the prohibition on killing without warning.  Because the US is not at war with Pakistan, using the justification of war to authorize the killings is “to violate fundamental human rights principles.”
Four.  Military law of war does not authorize widespread drone killing of civilians

According to the current US Military Law of War Deskbook, the law of war allows killing only when consistent with four key principles: military necessity, distinction, proportionality, and humanity.   These principles preclude both direct targeting of civilians and medical personnel but also set out how much “incidental” loss of civilian life is allowed.  Some argue precision-guided weapons like drones can be used only when there is no probable cause of civilian deaths.  But the US military disputes that burden and instead directs “all practicable precautions” be taken to weigh the anticipated loss of civilian life against the advantages expected to be gained by the strike.

Even using the more lenient standard, there is little legal justification of deliberately allowing the killing of civilians who are “incidental” to the killings of people whose identities are unknown.

Five.  Retired high-ranking military and CIA veterans challenge the legality and efficacy of drone killings

Retired US Army Colonel Ann Wright squarely denies the legality of drone warfare, telling Democracy Now:  “These drones, you might as well just call them assassination machines.  That is what these drones are used for: targeted assassination, extrajudicial ultimate death for people who have not been convicted of anything.”

Drone strikes are also counterproductive.  Robert Grenier, recently retired Director of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center, wrote, “One wonders how many Yemenis may be moved in the future to violent extremism in reaction to carelessly targeted missile strikes, and how many Yemeni militants with strictly local agendas will become dedicated enemies of the West in response to US military actions against them.”

Recent polls of the Pakistan people show high levels of anger in Pakistan at US military attacks there.  This anger in turn leads to high support for suicide attacks against US military targets.

US Defense of Drone Assassinations

US officials claim these drone killings are not assassinations because the US has the legal right to kill anyone considered a terrorist, anywhere, if they can argue it is in self-defense.  Attorney General Holder and White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan recently defended the legality of drone strikes and argued they are not assassinations because the killings are in response to the 9/11 attacks and are carried out in self-defense even when not in Afghanistan or Iraq.  This argument is based on the highly criticized claim of anticipatory self-defense which justifies killings in a global war on terror when traditional self-defense would clearly not.  The government refuses to provide copies of the legal opinions relied upon by the government.

Growing Resistance to Drone Assassinations

In signs of hope, people in the US are resisting the increasing use of drones.
CODEPINK, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the London-based human rights group Reprieve co-sponsored an International Drone Summit in Washington DC to challenge drone assassinations. Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill noted that Congress only managed to scrape up six votes to oppose the assassination of US citizens abroad.  “What is happening to this country? We have become a nation of assassins.   We have become a nation that is somehow silent in the face of the idea that assassination should be one of the centerpieces of US policy.”

The American Society of International Law issued a report “Targeting Operations with Drone Technology: Humanitarian Law Implications” in March 2011.   Concerned that drones may be the future of warfare, scholars examined three questions in the US use of drone technology: the scope of armed conflict (what is the battlefield upon which deadly force of drone killing is authorized); who may be targeted; and the legal implications of who conducts the targeting (since it is often not military but clandestine CIA agents who decide who dies).   Concluding that the US may soon find itself “on the other end of the drone” as this technology expands, they criticize official US silence on these key legal questions.

Others are taking direct action.  Select examples include: fourteen people arrested in April 2009 outside Creech Air Force base in Nevada in connection with a protest against drones by the Nevada Desert Experience; in January 2010 people protested drones outside the CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia; in April 2011, thirty-seven were arrested at Hancock Air Force base in upstate New York as part of a four hundred person protest against the use of drones;  in October 2011, as part of the International Week of Protest to Stop the Militarization of Space, there were protests outside of Raytheon Missile Systems plant in Tucson;  in April 2012, twenty-eight people were pre-emptively arrested on their way to protest drones at Hancock Air Force Base.

There is a brilliant new book, DRONE WARFARE authored by global activist Medea Benjamin which documents the nuts and bolts of the drone industry and the money involved in their production and operation.  She collects many global media reports of innocent civilian deaths, investigations into these deaths, and gives voice to international opposition groups like her own CODEPINK, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Fellowship of Reconciliation, War Resisters International, Human Rights Watch, the Catholic Worker movement, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and others working against the drones.

As National Public Radio and The New Republic jointly editorialized, there is good reason to doubt the veracity of US claims that drone killings are even effective.  Drone use has escalated and expanded the US global war on terror and thus should be subject to higher levels of scrutiny than it is now.  As the use of drones escalates so too does the risk of killing innocents which produces “legitimate anti-American anger that terrorist recruiters can exploit….Such a steady escalation of the drone war, and the inevitable increase in civilian casualties that will accompany it, could easily tip the delicate balance that assures we kill more terrorists than we produce.”

There is incredible danger in allowing US military and civilians to murder people anywhere in the world with no public or Congressional or judicial oversight.  This authorizes the President and the executive branch, according to the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights, to be prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner.

The use of drones to assassinate people violates US and international law in multiple ways.  US military and civilian employees, who plan, target and execute people in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia are violating the law and, ultimately, risk prosecution.  As the technology for drone attacks spreads, protests by the US that drone attacks by others are illegal will sound quite hollow.  Continuation of flagrantly illegal drone attacks by the US also risks justifying the exact same actions, taken by others, against us.

Bill Quigley is a professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans and Associate Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. He can be reached at: quigley77@gmail.com. Read other articles by Bill.

This article was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 at 7:59am and is filed under Afghanistan, Assassinations, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen.

We Are Not Exiting Afghanistan -- We Are Staying

 

Rep. Dennis Kucinich

U.S. Representative from Ohio's 10th District

We Are Not Exiting Afghanistan -- We Are Staying

Yesterday, the president announced that the U.S. signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Afghanistan, committing the United States to the country for a long time to come. The agreement addressed the transition to Afghan-led security forces by 2014. Human and monetary costs to the U.S. will continue to skyrocket.

According to a recent article in The Atlantic, the U.S. spends an estimated $14,000 per Afghan troop per year. The long-term costs to the U.S. to train the 352,000 Afghan security troops we are counting on to allow the withdrawal of U.S. troops will be over $4 billion per year; or more than $40 billion over the next 10 years. The Associated Press recently highlighted a report that raises significant questions regarding International Security Assistance Force claims that there have been Afghan-led military operations, an indicator of progress toward Afghan military self-sufficiency, a cornerstone of our strategy.

It is widely recognized that much of al Qaeda's leadership and presence in Afghanistan has been decimated. Since the death of Osama bin Laden exactly one year ago, we have lost 381 U.S. troops. The president stated that 'we must give Afghanistan the opportunity to stabilize.' The assertion that maintaining a long-term presence in the country is the best way to prevent future attacks on the U.S. belies the reality on the ground: that our mere presence is destabilizing. The events of the past few months alone -- the Koran burnings, coordinated attacks by the Taliban in Kabul, and the killing of Afghan civilians by a U.S. solider -- should be enough of an indication that more time in Afghanistan is not the answer.

America has been lulled to sleep by the mind-boggling elongation of a war seven thousand miles away. The plain fact is we are not exiting Afghanistan, despite the appearances that the White House is trying to create. We are staying. Have we learned nothing from 10 years of quagmire? It is time to bring our troops home safely and responsibly.

Follow Rep. Dennis Kucinich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RepKucinich