Friday Review: The Antiwar Position Revisited
The raison d’etre of the war on terror is that it makes us safer. Security, however, is never an end in itself, it is only worthwhile as a means to other ends. We can only measure different security arguments against these ends. For instance, we know that in domestic politics, security is supposed to be a means to liberty, or living a free life. Since demands for security can have authoritarian consequences, we do not accept all of them, and we are, or at least should be, critical of them. We expect there to be some criteria by which we distinguish between real and unreal threats, and between policies that sacrifice too much liberty to security.
The problem with the war on terror, is that it makes security an end in itself. It doesn’t even admit of external principles against which we can distinguish rational and irrational demands. Any act that makes us feel safer is presumed to be justified. Logically speaking, an enemy does not even have to exist. All that has to exist is a perception of threat for a security demand to be seen as valid. This eliminates any rational grounds for criticism because the only standard left is not the materiality of the threat, or the value of security in relation to other principles, but simply our, or really our politicians’, feelings. So in the domestic sphere, we are asked to trade whatever liberty is necessary to make us safe, rather than recognize that some demands for security are unjustified or unnecessary because they have no rational purpose – they do not actually make us safer.
Within our own society, we at least recognize an alternative principle – liberty – against which to measure and criticize different demands for security. But when it comes to international relations it is unclear what the analogous principles are. It is that the antiwar position has failed to come up with an adequately powerful set of arguments. As we have written here before, it is insufficient and potentially problematic to be merely against the war in Iraq, but not against the war on terror. One reason is that the focus on the war on Iraq has lead to an overemphasis on problems that appear specific to that war, and therefore failed to develop properly principled positions. Much of the opposition has focused on the dishonesty, venality, and criminality of the war. Even as criticisms of the Iraq War, these arguments are insufficient:
Lies: It is true that Bush lied, but had he not lied the war still would have been wrong. Even if Saddam had possessed large stocks of biological and chemical weapons, and even if he
had been seeking nuclear weapons, he would not have posed anything like an immediate threat to the United States. This was the leader of an incredibly weak country, ravaged by ten years of sanctions, and unable even to mobilize his soldiers for symbolic military exercises, let alone some kind of attack on the United States.
Corruption: It is also true that there is all kinds of venal, war-profiteering amongst Bush's corporate friends. But this, too, would not be an argument against the war if the war had been necessary.
Illegality: Likewise, it is true that the war was illegal. But calling into question the legality of the war, on its own, does not challenge the important political questions: was Saddam a threat, was this war necessary, and when is it appropriate to violate the sovereignty of another nation?
The fundamental problem with this war was that it was the unjustified violation of Iraqi sovereignty.
Nor is this a matter of Iraq alone. The deeper problem with just critiquing the Iraq War is that the overarching war on terror is left unaddressed. The war on terror is presupposed as a background to the debate, rather than brought to the fore as the central issue for us to discuss. Yet it is relevant even for the Iraq War. Why were people so willing to believe that Saddam was a threat given that he clearly was not? It is not so much that the public was manipulated, but that the Iraq debate was and is deeply interwoven with the war on terror itself. This means that all debate takes place in a climate of fear, in which to challenge any particular claim - like Saddam is a threat - is also to challenge the underlying premise that even the most remote and undefined threats must be assailed 'pre-emptively'.
Here is where a critique of the war on terror is simply unavoidable, and where the need for a set of political principles for assessing global affairs is necessary. Having mainly substituted cynicism for criticism, the antiwar position has left us sorely lacking. When considering just the international dimensions of the war on terror, the alternative principles, against which we can measure security demands, are self-determination and sovereignty. The defense of self-determination abroad derives from the same commitment to freedom and democracy at home. Every nation is capable of becoming a democratic society, but only if it is allowed to determine for itself the shape of its own institutions. Only in this way do their institutions become expressions of their own, collective will. Democratic liberties are only won when they are seized by the people themselves. But for this process of self-determination to take place, then the sovereignty, or territorial integrity and political independence, of these nations must be respected. Sovereignty is instrumental to self-determination. Non-intervention must be the norm. (Of course, the erosion of sovereignty did not begin with Bush).
If sovereignty is the norm, then that means powerful nations, like the United States, cannot invade or otherwise intervene in the affairs of others states whenever it feels worried, or has a hunch about some potential security threat. The threat must be imminent, real and over-powering. Security as a reason for war is only potentially justified when it is in self-defense because survival is a precondition for self-determination: a society cannot determine its fate if it is about to be invaded and destroyed, as the Iraqis and Afghanis now well know. That there is some possibility, some 'unknown unknowns' in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, is not a good reason for war. Iraqi sovereignty should not have been violated. Wars whose justification is simply that some other state *might* someday be threatening, or *might* have some weapons, is simply an invitation for powerful states to act on whatever hunch it might have, with no rational limitations on its actions. It is a prescription for permanent war. If we accept sovereignty as a norm, and self-determination as the principle we are aiming at, then we at least possess a rational standard for assessing, and criticizing, various justifications for war. Having a 'bad feeling about things' is not enough.
Finally, as we have mentioned before, a defense of self-determination and sovereignty is not merely important for what happens internationally and in other countries. By rejecting the idea that the state can go to war to address even the most unfounded and speculative of fears, we also impose restraints on our own government. That is to say, we defend our own process of self-determination, by rejecting our government's attempt to impose a permanent state of war and suspend domestic politics. In this way, by defending sovereignty we allow other nations to retain some of their own political autonomy, and we recover some of our own democratic agency. We must develop the principles that allow us to break free from the politics of fear, suspicion, and irrational conjecture.
The problem with the war on terror, is that it makes security an end in itself. It doesn’t even admit of external principles against which we can distinguish rational and irrational demands. Any act that makes us feel safer is presumed to be justified. Logically speaking, an enemy does not even have to exist. All that has to exist is a perception of threat for a security demand to be seen as valid. This eliminates any rational grounds for criticism because the only standard left is not the materiality of the threat, or the value of security in relation to other principles, but simply our, or really our politicians’, feelings. So in the domestic sphere, we are asked to trade whatever liberty is necessary to make us safe, rather than recognize that some demands for security are unjustified or unnecessary because they have no rational purpose – they do not actually make us safer.
Within our own society, we at least recognize an alternative principle – liberty – against which to measure and criticize different demands for security. But when it comes to international relations it is unclear what the analogous principles are. It is that the antiwar position has failed to come up with an adequately powerful set of arguments. As we have written here before, it is insufficient and potentially problematic to be merely against the war in Iraq, but not against the war on terror. One reason is that the focus on the war on Iraq has lead to an overemphasis on problems that appear specific to that war, and therefore failed to develop properly principled positions. Much of the opposition has focused on the dishonesty, venality, and criminality of the war. Even as criticisms of the Iraq War, these arguments are insufficient:
Lies: It is true that Bush lied, but had he not lied the war still would have been wrong. Even if Saddam had possessed large stocks of biological and chemical weapons, and even if he
had been seeking nuclear weapons, he would not have posed anything like an immediate threat to the United States. This was the leader of an incredibly weak country, ravaged by ten years of sanctions, and unable even to mobilize his soldiers for symbolic military exercises, let alone some kind of attack on the United States.
Corruption: It is also true that there is all kinds of venal, war-profiteering amongst Bush's corporate friends. But this, too, would not be an argument against the war if the war had been necessary.
Illegality: Likewise, it is true that the war was illegal. But calling into question the legality of the war, on its own, does not challenge the important political questions: was Saddam a threat, was this war necessary, and when is it appropriate to violate the sovereignty of another nation?
The fundamental problem with this war was that it was the unjustified violation of Iraqi sovereignty.
Nor is this a matter of Iraq alone. The deeper problem with just critiquing the Iraq War is that the overarching war on terror is left unaddressed. The war on terror is presupposed as a background to the debate, rather than brought to the fore as the central issue for us to discuss. Yet it is relevant even for the Iraq War. Why were people so willing to believe that Saddam was a threat given that he clearly was not? It is not so much that the public was manipulated, but that the Iraq debate was and is deeply interwoven with the war on terror itself. This means that all debate takes place in a climate of fear, in which to challenge any particular claim - like Saddam is a threat - is also to challenge the underlying premise that even the most remote and undefined threats must be assailed 'pre-emptively'.
Here is where a critique of the war on terror is simply unavoidable, and where the need for a set of political principles for assessing global affairs is necessary. Having mainly substituted cynicism for criticism, the antiwar position has left us sorely lacking. When considering just the international dimensions of the war on terror, the alternative principles, against which we can measure security demands, are self-determination and sovereignty. The defense of self-determination abroad derives from the same commitment to freedom and democracy at home. Every nation is capable of becoming a democratic society, but only if it is allowed to determine for itself the shape of its own institutions. Only in this way do their institutions become expressions of their own, collective will. Democratic liberties are only won when they are seized by the people themselves. But for this process of self-determination to take place, then the sovereignty, or territorial integrity and political independence, of these nations must be respected. Sovereignty is instrumental to self-determination. Non-intervention must be the norm. (Of course, the erosion of sovereignty did not begin with Bush).
If sovereignty is the norm, then that means powerful nations, like the United States, cannot invade or otherwise intervene in the affairs of others states whenever it feels worried, or has a hunch about some potential security threat. The threat must be imminent, real and over-powering. Security as a reason for war is only potentially justified when it is in self-defense because survival is a precondition for self-determination: a society cannot determine its fate if it is about to be invaded and destroyed, as the Iraqis and Afghanis now well know. That there is some possibility, some 'unknown unknowns' in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, is not a good reason for war. Iraqi sovereignty should not have been violated. Wars whose justification is simply that some other state *might* someday be threatening, or *might* have some weapons, is simply an invitation for powerful states to act on whatever hunch it might have, with no rational limitations on its actions. It is a prescription for permanent war. If we accept sovereignty as a norm, and self-determination as the principle we are aiming at, then we at least possess a rational standard for assessing, and criticizing, various justifications for war. Having a 'bad feeling about things' is not enough.
Finally, as we have mentioned before, a defense of self-determination and sovereignty is not merely important for what happens internationally and in other countries. By rejecting the idea that the state can go to war to address even the most unfounded and speculative of fears, we also impose restraints on our own government. That is to say, we defend our own process of self-determination, by rejecting our government's attempt to impose a permanent state of war and suspend domestic politics. In this way, by defending sovereignty we allow other nations to retain some of their own political autonomy, and we recover some of our own democratic agency. We must develop the principles that allow us to break free from the politics of fear, suspicion, and irrational conjecture.
4 Comments:
I agree with most of what is presented here in terms of the "war on terror" and that the foundations of this premise must be aggressively attacked. I don't agree however that the illegality of the war is not a solid foundation for the anti-war position. In terms of countries with different laws interacting with each other, international law becomes the common base language to define what actions are possible, and multi-nation governing bodies such as the UN and the international court provide the mechanisms for determining (and, at least in principle, enforcing) those laws. Pre-emptive attacks are illegal by many treaties, particularly the Geneva Conventions, making our presence in Iraq a war crime. In contrast I would argue that there are situations where intervention is morally correct even though it does not respect the sovereignty or self-determination that you propose as a guiding principle. Germany declared war on the US in WWII, but intervention would have been morally correct even if they hadn’t. Any situation where genocide could be prevented by intervention arguably justifies the intervention. Of course these situations are usually complex thus reiterating the need for an international body with internationally applicable (and enforceable) laws.
So again, I agree with your denial of the validity of the war on terror, but because it provides the mechanism to undermine our own democracy, not because of its applicability to international relations. I believe that assessing the necessity and validity of war needs to be handled through international governance that can democratically weigh the pros and cons of each situation, thus the emphasis on the Iraq war being a violation of international law is important. The problem with this is that for decades our government (both Democrats and Republicans) has aggressively fought the idea that the US should be subject to international law even though, when polled, the majority of Americans believe there should be an international court of law and the US should be subject to it. Acceptance of international law would not allow the US to constantly wage war to protect its geopolitical interests, thus the active propaganda campaign against it.
I agree with fish on several of his points. The illegality element is not something to leave off lightly - in fact the international law of war tries to frame some of the questions you are interested in - "is the war a [legally valid] threat, was this war [legally] necessary, and when is it [legally] appopriate to violate the sovereignty of another nation?" The vast majority of the world, including AWOT, seems to agree that war will sometimes be politically necessary, and the major problem then is how to agree on a set of shared standards for when this threshold has been met. This is not to say that shared standards are an end in and of themselves, but rather that they help to limit the fear-induced solipsism of purely unilateral decisions. This is not to say that I disagree with the point that 'the war was illegal' is a weak critique on its own. But I think the legal layer adds some flesh and precedent (and hopefully a bit of multilateral perspective) to what is, it is true, ultimately a political question.
I also am not sure if I agree fully with the strongest possible version of an insistence on respect for self-determination and sovereignty. I do think that respect for sovereignty should be a cardinal principle of US foreign policy, and that it should have weighed more heavily in the Iraq decision (less so Afghanistan, in my view), but I think that the degree to which a 'sovereign' state is also 'self-determining' may be a relevant factor in US foreign policy. Generally this should be a background factor - both in the interests of the US and of other states, as you point out - but I don't think it should disappear as a factor altogether. I also would like to see the principle of 'respect for sovereignty' extend beyond pure politics and respect for boundaries and into the economic arena, which generates much of the anger over 'loss of sovereignty' outside the US.
I agree that sovereignty is the core issue of principle at stake. In light of this, though, I don't see why you wouldn't say that the pernicious force of the war on terror derives from questions of soveriegnty. at least as much as it has its origins in the elevation of "security" to a guiding policy principle.
it seems to me that the hysteria that 9/11 caused among elites was due to its fairly clear attack on the sovereignty of states as such. individuals were now committing violence on a nation-state scale. the state monopoly on violence was thrown radically into question.
at the end of the long line of attacks on sovereignty that you noted in your January 13 post, 9/11 comes and appears to be another nail in the Westphalian coffin.
unless it can be turned into an opportunity to reinscribe state sovereignty by declaring a War on Terror. which is just what they did.
this is also why the putative "opposition" is also completely in thrall to the rhetoric of the war on terror. since they aim to one day control the state themselves, they are a priori committed to its sovereignty. in as much as the war on terror supports state sovereignty, which it absolutely does since that's what it wss made to do, they must support the war on terror.
on another note, it would be interesting to hear your opinions about the relation between sovereignty and self-determination and to what extent and in what sense one relies upon the other.
ol raises a good question, can we consider states sovereign if it is not self-determined? even if there is no "foreign" intrusion, can a government that doesn't derive its powers from the consent of the governed be considered just/legitimate. can it be considered sovereign?
This is a well-reasoned and theoretically persuasive critique of the war on terror. Unfortunately, I don't think it is ever one a major American political party, and therefore the American government, could ever fully accept for one simple reason: It is not does not put American interests first. If the American government is convinced that American interests are served by violating the principles of sovereingty and self-determination, it will do so.
The last paragraph appears to be an attempt to address this issue. It argues that "[b]y rejecting the idea that the state can go to war to address even the most unfounded and speculative of fears, we also impose restraints on our own government." I find this very unconvincing. It seems perfectly coherent for a people to place one set of constraints on what government can do domestically and another on what it can do abroad. In fact, that is precisely what the American public has done for at least a generation. That is why support for the Iraq war is waning: the cost/benefit ratio, viewed purely through a domestic lens, is looking pretty bad. The relative lack of outrage over the NSA program is not a counterexample. While its legal rationale is scary, the program does not represent a significant practical erosion of American liberties. If the government were spying on domestic opposition, you can be sure that the outcry would be greater than it would be for 10,000 Iraqis dead, as it was in a similar situation in the Vietnam era.
Of course, perhaps you are not trying to develop arguments that the American government could ever accept. If you are, however, I think you need to elaborate quite a bit on why the war on terror is not in America's interest.
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