Sovereignty – The Ultimate States’ Rights Argument

Sovereignty – The Ultimate States’ Rights Argument

by Anna Simons

FPRI

July 2011

Much as it would be comforting to think that jihadism will wither with Osama bin Laden’s demise, the opposite could well occur. Or, what about NATO’s discombobulated effort to topple Moammar Gadhafi? This, too, could augur plenty more anti-American terrorism. If Gadhafi survives, watch out. If he doesn’t, but his family members do, watch out. All of which should lead Americans to wonder: do we have any more coherent a policy today for dealing with anti-American violence than we did ten years ago?

The answer, sadly, is “no.”

For ten years and counting, U.S. policy has rested on the misguided notion that it is somehow possible to separate “moderates” from “radicals,’’ or reconcilables from irreconcilables. Washington’s policy has been that if those espousing and participating in unjustifiable violence can be isolated, moderates should be wooable, and once they’ve been won over the irreconcilables can be eliminated. To accomplish this, we just need to persuade moderates to stop lending extremists support.

One problem with such a presumption, however, is it treats radicals and moderates as if they represent two neatly distinguishable groups of people. But, they clearly don’t, not when parents and siblings can express genuine surprise when they learn it was their son, daughter, brother, sister, or husband who just martyred him or herself in a suicide attack. If family members in close quarters and tightly knit households can’t tell or don’t know exactly where each other is on the scale of radicalization, how can we make such a determination? More to the point, why would we ever want to base our security on the presumption that we can?

Sometimes individuals make it obvious that they hold extremist views; some wear their politics on their sleeves. Others do not. Most famously, the 9/11 hijackers didn’t. But also, just because someone is a moderate today does not mean that he or she can’t be radicalized tomorrow. It is impossible to predict which sorts of events will trigger what types of reactions or in whom. It could be the 16th rather than the 15th time that a young man is made to stand for hours at a checkpoint that flips the switch. This is why even the best intentioned de-radicalization efforts through education are likely to prove insufficient.

Inadvertence compounds the radicalization problem. For instance, consider the release of the prisoner abuse photos from Abu Ghraib. They depict abuses that should not have occurred. But the fact that incidents that shouldn’t have occurred were recorded—which also shouldn’t have occurred—means those images will be available to incite people for years to come.

Once incidents are logged into social memory, that’s where they stay. But also, as the Abu Ghraib debacle illustrates, there is no foolproof way to ensure abuses won’t occur. Worse, if unforeseen events can push buttons in people who themselves aren’t aware they have them till after they are pushed, keeping “moderates” separate from potential “radicals” becomes either an impossible or a never-ending task.

Logic suggests two ways to deal with radical adversaries who are uninterested in a secular peace: inflict so much loss and pain that none dares cross you again. Or, force those with the ambition to rule to have to rule. Let al Qaeda, for instance, wrest Saudi Arabia from the Saud royal family if it can.

Several summers ago a group of military officers and I put together an argument that is not quite as untempered as the two approaches just described might suggest, but it does borrow from both. [1] In the Sovereignty Rules world we envision, the United States would not engage in the same sorts of behavior that radicalize so many people today. We Americans would not imprison people in other countries. Nor would we imprison them in their own countries. We wouldn’t occupy. We wouldn’t invade to nation-build. Instead, the United States would do everything in its power to reinvigorate sovereignty. We would make countries self-police.

Think about it. There is no more effective mechanism for eliminating “bad guys” than to impel countries to self-police. This is true even given the caveat that not every country in existence should be a country. Some should be two or three. Others should not exist at all. But until humans stumble or agree upon a new way to arrange political space around the globe, states are the socio-geographic containers we’ve got. Nothing else at the moment has states’ potential to box in terrorists and other non-state anti-state actors. Nothing else grants diverse peoples a freer rein to govern themselves as they see fit.

The Telegram is a publication of the Hertog Program in Grand Strategy, jointly sponsored by Temple University’s Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy and the Foreign Policy Research Institute and made possible by a grant from the Hertog Foundation.

Anna Simons is a Professor of Defense Analysis at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), joining the faculty in 1998. Prior to teaching at NPS, she was an assistant and then associate professor of anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles. At NPS, she teaches courses in the anthropology of conflict, military advising, low intensity conflict in Africa, and political anthropology. This essay draws from a talk presented to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in August 2010, which in turn draws from The Sovereignty Solution: A Common Sense Approach to Global Security (forthcoming from the Naval Institute Press), co-written with U.S. Army Special Forces Lieutenants Colonel Joe McGraw and Duane Lauchengco. The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, or any office of the U.S. government.