The general point of this Friday Review is that the antiwar movement has failed to develop a truly critical position on the international dimensions of the war on terror. There are three places in which this failure is visible, and where we would like to propose what a truly critical, oppositional stance looks like. This Friday Review is written as something of a position paper because it doubles as one set of arguments that we will make about the international dimensions of the war on terror at our teach-in.
The first problem with the antiwar position is the almost exclusive focus on Iraq. This near total obsession with Iraq is a political mistake. It reflects an inability to relate the invasion of Iraq to the broader context of the war on terror. The problem is that the various arguments against the Iraq War – dishonest, illegal, war for oil, unilateral, risky – give the appearance that a critical position can be developed on the basis of the peculiarities of that war. While one can strike opportunistic blows in this way, it leaves the most problematic political trends unchallenged. The occupation of Iraq should be put in the broader context of post-Cold War interventionism, and the degradation of sovereignty and self-determination. This process of degradation began with humanitarian interventions in places like Somalia, Haiti and Kosovo, whereby the sovereign equality of states, and the principle of self-determination, were cast as impediments to moral progress, rather than carrying democratic justification. These interventions have inevitably bled into state-building operations, becoming in some situations far more invasive than during the Cold War, when at least formal respect for sovereign equality existed.
The second problem relates to the first. While the antiwar position is marked by a tremendous diversity of arguments, perhaps the most pervasive is that it was based on ‘lies’. This is not a principled criticism of the administration so much as an expression of political cynicism. In fact, politics often involves lies and deception. There is nothing new, but also nothing specially important, about the fact that Bush lied to go to war. To elevate ‘dishonesty’ to the level of criticism is to adopt the same moralistic tone as the administration, and also fail to find the political point of entry. Honesty is a matter of personal integrity, but not political ethics. Liberty is a political principle. The problem with the invasion of Iraq is the problem with the administration’s diplomacy generally: the degradation of sovereignty and self-determination is not the way to foster collective liberty. Sovereignty is not a timeless principle, nor is it a guarantee that, should the autonomy of states be respected, they will immediately become democratic. In these times, however, it is the most principled way of emphasizing that truly democratic institutions only arise through the collective efforts of those governed by them, not by imposition.
Moreover, interventionism not only undermines the development of democratic processes abroad that suffer, but also at home. In pursuing his ethical and security aims abroad, Bush has loosened himself from domestic, democratic controls on foreign policy, and sought to escape the fact that he is incapable of addressing any domestic issues. In doing so, Bush follows a script written by his predecessor. Clinton used humanitarianism to transcend domestic politics, and focus attention on the suffering of others, rather than political paralysis at home. The best argument against the new interventionism is not that it is based on lies – as Kosovo and Iraq, especially, were – but on the fact that they undermine democratic liberties at home and abroad.
The final problem with the antiwar position is that the failure to develop a truly critical political principle goes hand in hand with the failure to identify the real agents of change. The antiwar movement has generally looked outside itself for effective political resistance, be it to international law, Europe, or Third World insurgents. This signals a real abdication of domestic responsibility. ‘Not in Our Name’ is not the slogan of an effective opposition so much as the manifesto of a group that has abandoned the hope of making an impact, and simply wishes go about its daily activity with a clear conscience. By trying to extricate ‘our name’ from the war, ‘we’ seem to be more concerned to keep ‘our’ hands clean than to develop a truly oppositional political agency. In this sense, the antiwar opposition seems to start from the position that it is unable to be the source of change. That is why it looks to the divine intervention of external agents to slow down the Bush administration. In doing so, the antiwar position reinforces perhaps the most conservative feature of contemporary politics: a degraded sense of political agency. Just as the best hope for democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan is self-determination, so too the only really effective opposition in the US will come from those who seriously believe they can be political agents. This means climbing down off the defeatist moral pedestal of ‘Not in Our Name’, and worrying more about how we can change society than the state of our conscience.
A real alternative will only emerge on the back of careful, self-conscious thinking about arguments, principles and aims. Many of the criticisms floating around right now are opportunistic, and lack a truly critical edge. Here, we are offering a starting point for developing a serious alternative. Defending the sovereignty and independence of other states goes hand in hand with taking seriously the idea of our own political agency.
10 Comments:
I confess to finding your pro-sovereignty manifesto rather puzzling. In your blog's statement of principles you say, "We at Against the War on Terror aim to challenge the idea that security, rather than liberty, should guide our political life." But now it emerges that the liberty you propose to defend is that of states, not of individual citizens. Your argument rests on two premises: 1) that the grounds invoked for intervention in the affairs of sovereign states are often pretexts for unavowed purposes of domination both at home and abroad, and 2) that intervention abroad distracts from the failures of domestic policy and is used to justify the denial of liberty (in this case individual liberty) at home.
One can grant these two premises and still find them insufficient to justify your endorsement of sovereignty as a principle: "Defending the sovereignty and independence of other states goes hand in hand with taking seriously the idea of our own political agency." To be sure, you qualify this earlier, when you say that "sovereignty is not a timeless principle, nor is it a guarantee that, should the autonomy of states be respected, they will immediately become democratic." Yet the logic here is peculiar. In pursuit of the primary goal of restoring political agency, you propose to pursue a secondary goal, the defense of foreign sovereignty, as if the latter were the only or best means to achieve the former. Perhaps you can convince me that this is the case, but I see no argument for it in your manifesto.
Consider a "gedanken" experiment. Imagine a self-styled defender of liberty living in the northern portion of the ante-bellum United States who subscribes to your view of sovereignty. He detests slavery but also fears the tyranny of the majority and is keenly aware of the cynical ways in which anti-slavery feeling is manipulated by certain economic interests and political factions. Does he embrace the doctrine of state rights--surely a version of your pro-sovereign view--as a check on the power of the majority? Does he deride the sometimes cloying moralism of the abolitionist element as nothing more than a pretext for cynical interventionism? Does he hold that the best way to refocus debate on the issues that seem most germane to him is to bracket the iniquity of the "peculiar institution" that southern sovereignty sustains?
At bottom, I am with you in your rejection of Hobbes: security is not the primary good that states are instituted to guarantee. But I am against you in your rejection of Locke, who envisioned moral grounds on which sovereignty could and should be challenged.
A very refreshing and innovative take on the War on Terror. I shall definitely be keeping an eye on AWOT ... keep up the good work!
Agreed with anonymous above. This site is like a breath of fresh air to what's been passing for 'opposition' from the left and the anti-war movement these days. I look forward to the teach in.
The crisis of sovereignty is that other nations are more sovereign than others, and usually those nations that are sovereign have the tendency of imposing economic reform blueprints and “democracy” on the not so sovereign. Here we are faced with something that is very odd, because we all clearly acknowledge that upholding the “timeless” notion of sovereignty will provide impediments to the pursuit of human rights, as was the case in Rwanda, and Cambodia’s killing fields. I think as members of the international community, it is our duty, regardless of issues of sovereignty, to make sure that the “sovereignty” of an individual is upheld, rather than something that is only and idea such as a state. However, the debate arises when you have other countries ostentatiously showing that their sovereignty means more than other countries’ sovereignty. If the United States doesn’t want to relinquish its sovereignty, then it should also not infringe on other countries’ sovereignty. The UN charter states that all nations are sovereignty, and not that others are more sovereign than others.
I agree with Goldie, the emphasis on state sovereignty is rather pecular. I'm not sure state sovereignty in itself is something that would encourage political agency.
I think it is also think that emphasis on state sovereignty has a tendency to contribute to xenophobic attitudes. If the we divide the world according to strictly enforced political boundaries, it is very easy to point to the social and cultural differences between two countries as evidence that "they" are not the same as "us" and don't share "our" values or concerns.
I agree with your point that the exclusive emphasis on the war in Iraq is a mistake and the anti-war movement should broaden its focus.
However, I disagree with your point that sovereignty was respected during the Cold War and only began to be degraded with the humanitarian interventions of the 1990s. I hope you will recall the US invasion of Panama and Grenada, the US invasion of Vietnam, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as well as the Contra war and the various other proxy wars in which the United States and Soviet Union were involved.
I also think the question of state sovereignty and indeed of the Westphalian system in general is a tricky one. The first territories to become nation-states did so on the basis of cultural and linguistic similarlity. I believe this model still underlies the concept of a state (although the principal does not seem to work very well in many formerly colonized states). If this is the case it would seem that the development of individual and distinct states is based on identity-based differences, which would seem to give rise to xenophobia and give it a nationalist character as well.
Anyway, I think the broader focus on the war on terrorism is good, but I hope you will consider how the war on terrorism has a bit of a racist and xenophobic character and the ways in which this may be fueled by the Westphalian system.
I found this blog via Reason's Hit & Run blog. Despite the ATWOT name which implies an anti-American theme, I was pleased to find this blog to be much more than what I had expected (i.e. an interesting and maybe amusing one-time diversion into the mindset of International ANSWER and their ilk). Somehow I get the feeling that ATWOT is going to become one of my favorite blogs.
Anyhow, I don't believe that terrorism per se is the root problem in itself, but merely the most obvious symptom of a much larger long-term problem, which other commentators have touched upon in bringing up the failings of the Westphalian system of nation-states. The larger problem -which the "war on terror" as it is defined and waged by the Bush administration does not, and indeed cannot, begin to address - is that the entire Westphalian model itself is on thin ice.
This is for a number of reasons, but two in particular stand out in my mind. First, dramatic and ongoing shifts in worldwide demographics (recently discussed at length by Mark Steyn) have undermined the monocultural, geography-based premise of the Westphalian system. In the West, the idea of the common culture has been further eroded by the vast array of available news and entertainment choices (and yes, by the multicultural ethos promoted by cultural elites). Without a common culture, the idea of a geographically defined nation can't help but lose some of its luster.
Second, instant global communication (of news, ideas, images, propaganda, data, plans and schemes of all sorts), and the ever-advancing technology that makes it possible, have long since outstripped national governments' ability to keep up with it, much less effectively police it (the legal authority and political will to do so notwithstanding). When you don't give any more thought to interacting with someone on the other side of the globe as you would your next-door neighbor, you can't help but lose respect, at some level, for the idea of national sovereignty.
Add to this mix the Islamist ideology, with its attempt to appeal to all Muslims everywhere, its virtually limitless funding, its proponents' demonstrated talents for intimidating other Muslims and for advancing its cause piecemeal by perfectly legal means even in the West, and its stated ultimate goal of a one-world caliphate to replace the Westphalian system, and the true scope of the problem becomes clear. The current world order is in for a rough ride in the next few decades, and the U.S. will not be immune - with or without terrorism. In this context, the "war on terror" is like treating an AIDS patient only for the pneumonia he has contracted due to his depressed immune system.
One could also make the same argument about the US and seeking to create a global environment that is economically and politically homogenious through the invasion of Iraq and some of the other humanitarian interventions listed above.
I think that is the point of entry for the argument in favor of national sovereignty, as it would seem that political hegemony/homogenizaton could discourage political agency.
I do agree that the idea of national soveriegnty is in need of some serious rexamination (particularly before it is taken up as the battle cry of the anti-war movement).
This idea of national sovereignty is not new, but the question what to do about it in our times is. What set of priciples do we endorse now that we seem so close to our neighbor from around the globe?
Very cool design! Useful information. Go on!
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