By anonymous anti-facist
Repressive States have been an International Security Concern since the end of the cold war because they challenge the ability of the United States to impose what Max Webber calls ‘the monopoly of legitimate use of physical force’ or what I will call the monopoly of violence in underdeveloped states.
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The Interventionist post cold war theme in US Foreign Policy has been criticised by Gventer in which she sees ‘a larger trend to make humanitarian intervention a national security priority’ which is negative both for the United States and for the rest of the world. Repressive States are not only an International Security because of the potential for them to become failed economic states and have violence spill over in neighbouring countries but also because they challenge the concept of American Exceptionalism and the Leninist hegemonic ideals of the Neoconservative based U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post Cold War Period.
Christian Davenport in his article ‘State Repression and Political Order’ has provided a definition of state repression. Davenport stated that the following types of actions breach what he calls ‘First amendment type rights’ ,
the actual or threatened use of physical sanctions against an individual or organisation, within the territorial jurisdiction of the state, for the purpose of imposing the cost on the target as well as deterring specific activities and\or beliefs perceived to be challenging to government personnel, practices or institutions.
Davenport by his own admission fails to take into consideration ‘the influence of dissident/insurgent activity’, ‘the role of diverse economic characteristics’ and most importantly the ‘international influences’ that affect state repression.
To add to Davenport’s definition Robert I. Rotberg in his book Worst of the Worst: Dealing With Repressive Nations outlines some of the basic features of U.S. Foreign Policy towards Repressive States. These being;
• The holding of political prisoners
• The assassination of opponents
• The denial of freedoms
• The absence of the rule of law
• State command of the economy
• Food scarcity
• Degrees of corruption.
Rotberg however, despite his development of a set of measures to analyse State Repression admits that the gathering of data on state repression is almost impossible and must rely on the statements of opposition groups which may be skewed.
Both Davenport’s and Rotberg’s analyses are example of the American Exceptionalist approach favoured by U.S. regimes both Democratic and republican which attempts to provide legitimacy for US Foreign Policy initiatives. These academics promote the idea of an unquestionable moral authority of the United States which sits above international norms, institutions and laws. The adoptions of these policies have effectively undermined International Law and State Sovereignty by justifying the United States to apply a monopoly of violence globally with facing the checks and balances of a normal state government. The most serious failing of Davenport’s and Rotberg’s analysis to which he even admits is his failure to include international factors in state oppression or even include the existence of civil turmoil and armed insurgency as well as excluding economic factors like the state being a failed state.
States that have been labelled as Repressive and analysed through such measures can be more readily defined as states that have attempted to deny the United States a monopoly of violence in there state jurisdiction. As Greenwald in his article published in The Guardian stated,
this belief in the unfettered legal and moral right of the US to use force anywhere in the world for any reason it wants is sustained only by this belief in objective US superiority, this myth of American Exceptionalism. And the results are exactly what one would expect from an approach grounded in a belief system so patently irrational
The American Exceptionalist policy is an approach that has not led to the development of greater accountability for Repressive States under International Law. However, it has led to the creation of International Security Concerns as the conceptualisation of global norms, institutions and laws has been seriously undermined by the world’s last hegemonic power in its decline from power.
Stanford academic Francis Fukuyama has exposed the inner working of US Foreign Policy and has criticised its approach to Repressive States. Fukuyama in a blasting critique of US interventionalism in Iraq claimed that the failings in US Foreign Policy were due to the political orientation of Neoconservatism which dominates its Foreign Policy approach. Fukuyama stated that,
Four common principles or threads run through much of this thought up through the end of the cold war: a concern with democracy, human rights and, more generally, the internal politics of states; a belief that American power can be used for moral purpose; a scepticism about the ability to solve serious security problems; and finally a view that ambitious social engineering often leads to unexpected consequences and thereby undermines its own ends.
Fukuyama warned against the hegemonic and Leninist democracy building programs such as those promoted by Freedom House. One of the starkest examples of what Fukuyama warned as ‘unexpected consequences’ can be seen in the 9-11 attacks on New York and Washington carried out by former U.S. associates of the US Government who received support under the patronage of former Neoconservative President Ronald Regan.
It was the aim of the United States aid program in 1980s to building up an opposition to the Soviet backed communist regime of Dr Najibullah in Afghanistan. After the withdrawal of support by the Soviet Union and the takeover by the Taliban of Afghanistan it became a failed state engulfed in Civil War with many varying fighting parties. It also and became home to the world’s worst Repressive Regime and the world’s worst violators of human rights. Afghanistan under the Taliban also provided the base training area’s for Al-Qaeda to launch a global insurgency against the United States which results in the deaths over 3000 people at the World Trade Centre in New York in 2001.
Reformed Neoconservative Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University is one of many academics who have criticised the US Governments Repressive States Policy to as espoused by US Governed funded think thanks such as those of Freedom House. According to Fukuyama seem,
to think that democracy was a kind of default condition to which societies reverted once the heavy lifting of coercive regimes change had occurred, rather than a long-term process of institution - building and reform.
Fukuyama argued that US Repressive State Policy and institutions like Freedom House are set up to present a Leninist argument in which social evolution of humanity ends at US Liberal-Democracy Utopia instead of a Communist one. This Leninist benevolent hegemonic approach according to Fukuyama ‘was a failure in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as a farce when practiced by the United States.’
‘Much of the heritage of the Unites States is embodied in Massachusetts’
ENSE PETIT PLACIDAM SUB LIBERTATE QUIETEM
By the Sword We Seek Peace, But Peace Only Under Liberty
The analyses of Davenport and Rotberg deliberately exclude such important variables such as the domestic political environment, the existence of social disturbances and more importantly the exclusion of any reference to the existence of outside support for an internal insurgency. In the case of Syria the existence of insurgent bases in Turkey and Jordan supported by The United States European Nations and Gulf Oil States, some of which are considered amongst the worst Repressive States in the world, from where insurgent surges and attacks are launched. The reactions to this orchestrated violence are considered in there according to their analyses makes the measurements by Davenport and Rotberg irrelevant to states undergoing conflict.
This has led to loss of many more lives than would have been lost otherwise and has pushed Syria closer to Russia, China and Iran as the Syria state government has attempted to secure it grip on power through its acceptance of conditional aid. Through the usurping of international legal norms, process and institutions by sponsoring a military uprising in Syria the United States has not only undermine global norms, institutions and laws but has also created the most potent of international security concerns.
The United States through its actions has created a military conflict that has the potential to threaten Syria’s neighbouring states including close regional allies of The United States in Turkey and Israel through its sponsorship of the conflicts. If the Syrian opposition was to successful in their goal of turning Syria into an Islamic Emirate there would be a even greater chance of prolonged conflict in the Middle East as well as a potential to create another terrorist state similar to Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
So therefore in conclusion the United States with it Repressive States Policy and its belief in American Exceptionalism has undermined global norms, institutions and law which are currently the greatest threat to International Security. The problem with analyses of both Davenport & Rotberg is that they fail to analyse the international component especially in countries under internal conflict and as such the theories have limited application in today’s world.
Other academics such as Fukuyama and Gventer have sided with John Quincy Adams in rejecting the concepts of US Exceptionalism and US interventionalist hegemonic activity in Repressive States as being dangerous and detrimental to both US Foreign and Domestic Policies. According to former U.S. Assistant Secretary for Defence,
It appears to be part of a larger trend to make humanitarian intervention a national security policy. Such a move at this moment in history, while perhaps morally commendable, seems strangely quixotic.
These failures permeate academic thought on Repressive States and U.S. Foreign Policy development and as such if Davenport’s and Rotberg’s analysis were used to examine the Foreign Policy of the United States it would be labelled as a global repressive state. As the reformed Neocon. Fukuyama stated,
Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony. What is needed now are new ideas… ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficiency of American Power and hegemony to bring these ends about.
Through its responses to Repressive States the United States has set a bad precedent for emerging BRICS powers though it over militaristic and aggressive approach to promoting global Regime Change. According to Gventer,
At best, the likely result of this activity is the appearance that the administration is ‘doing something’ about mass atrocities. At worst, it could be become a justification for perpetual American activism, all at the expense of the public, the tiny minority of military service members and their families, and the country’s strategic welfare.
Therefore the implicit danger emanating from Repressive States to International Security comes not from the Repressive States themselves but from, the Leninist inspired Neoconservatism Foreign Policy approach of the United States. These polices are based upon the failed political conceptualisations of American Exceptionalism which underpins a U.S. hegemonic agenda to impose a monopoly of violence upon the whole world with international norms, institutions and laws suffering as a result.
It's certainly true that Americans are justifiably proud of certain nationalistic attributes: class mobility, ethnic diversity, religious freedom, large immigrant populations, life-improving technological discoveries, a commitment to some basic liberties such as free speech and press, historical progress in correcting some of its worst crimes. But all of those virtues are found in equal if not, at this point, greater quantity in numerous other countries. Add to that mix America's shameful attributes - its historic crimes of land theft, genocide, slavery and racism, its sprawling penal state, the company it keeps on certain human rights abuses, the aggressive attack on Iraq, the creation of a worldwide torture regime, its pervasive support for the world's worst tyrannies - and it becomes not just untenable, but laughable, to lavish it with that title.
And they made him sign his name as Daniel Washington