War and (in)security

War is a major subject of interest for students of international relations, and of politics more generally. The ability to wage war is viewed by some IR theorists as one of the most significant (Carr; Waltz) if not sole (Mearsheimer) sources of power and security for states today, and investigating the moral (cf. Price on weapons taboos; cf. democratic peace theory) or economic (cf. neoliberalism and Marxism) transformations that may limit war constitutes a significant research agenda for many in the field. So I’m going to write a little bit about it here.

Like the previous post, this is a short essay organising my thoughts on the subject in preparation for my comprehensive exam. Unlike the previous post, this is also intended to inform my two colleagues, also taking the exam, on a subject about which they know comparatively little. As such, it may also be of interest to non-IR students, since it will not be as laden with citations – at least at the beginning.

I’m going to answer three intertwined but, at to some extent, analytically separable questions on the subject of war:

1. What is war?
2. Why does war happen?
3. How does war work?

I will begin somewhat more broadly and extemporaneously, but I’ll get into the nitty-gritty of IR literature a bit further in. I may try to turn this into an ‘Impatient Sceptic’s/Humanist’s Guide’ type post if there is interest, too.

1. What is War?

I’m going to proceed from the Clausewitzian dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means. In fact, I’m going to proceed from the view that war is politics, or at least a component of a certain mode of politics: it consists in ‘an act of force designed to compel the enemy to do our will’ (Clausewitz), and thus is a political instrument. Broadening that to permit suitable social-scientific enquiry into the structures, causes, consequences, principles, and meanings that surround and constitute war as a type of social phenomenon, I will define war as follows:

War is an episode of organised, collective violence between political communities designed to resolve a conflict of interests.

This definition essentialises war in a few significant ways. First, it treats war as an attempt by actors to coerce other actors, meaning in rational terms that it seeks to make the consequences of assent less objectionable than the consequences of dissent. Second, it treats war as something that happens between political units, meaning that it must involve different groups with discrete, though not necessarily different, institutional principles or designs. While infighting within a group may involve fissioning mechanisms which eventually produce discrete units, it is not itself war. Third, it comprises acts of organised violence, where ‘violence’ is willful inflictment of physical trauma upon others and where ‘organised’ is the intentional patterning of action around principles or norms. ‘Structural violence’ (Galtung), ‘representational force’ (Mattern), or attempts to discursively undermine identity (Mitzen) are not violence by this definition [1], while campaigns of non-violent resistance (Gene Sharp) are not violent enough, and spontaneous eruptions of inter-communal violence (cf. McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly) may not be well-organised enough, to count as war.

This definition also historicises and contextualises war in a few significant ways. First and foremost, it is agnostic as to what counts as interests. Interests can range from the attainment of prestige or the imposition of religion to the control of territory or the extraction of resources. [2] Second, it is agnostic as to what counts as a political community. Examples include kinship groups, nation-states, revolutionary insurgent groups, single-issue activists (such as environmental groups employing violent means such as terrorism), or reactionary social movements employing strategic violence. Third, it is agnostic as to what suffices as organising principles or norms. Under this definition, campaigns of targeted assaults or beatings designed to suppress or drive away opposing ethnic groups may be as much an act of war as a battle between modern military forces, though we might find many other salient differences between the two that limit our ability to treat them both as similar. Fourth, it does not require that acts of war involve violence between ‘combatants’, rendering attacks upon non-combatants – bearing in mind the socially constructed nature of these categories of persons (cite) – neither ‘merely’ terrorism nor, necessarily, an epiphenomenal or unfortunate side-effect of war.

2. Why Does War Happen?

War happens when, during a conflict of interests between political communities, one or more of those communities decides that it is appropriate to employ organised, collective violence against opposing communities as a means of coercion. Key here is the notion of propriety. One c0mmon definition of instrumental rationality is the calculation of ‘appropriate means to ends’. While this well describes the application of the utility calculus in search of efficiency, it also can describe the attempt to conform action according to norms such as moral obligations or legal procedures. It is impossible to imagine any social act which does not sit within a thick normative structure, and thus it is impossible to imagine war occurring free of moral considerations. Contrary to the maxim inter arma enim silent leges war is only possible due to a constitutive normative structure. Not only does this normative structure produce the ontological, psychological environment of discrete groups with opposing interests, it also produces the possibility of violence serving as a means of coercion. Not all willful inflicting of physical trauma will serve as a political instrument; violence must be seen as undesirable in order for the prospect of its occurrence to be a more objectionable consequence than acquiescence to the demands over which wars are fought. Most people fear death, but there are notable exceptions, under certain circumstances. Many people ‘prefer to die standing than live kneeling’, die for honour in duels [3], or die as hunger-strikers. So the meaning of death or injury, or rather, the social consequences of violence in terms of their effects upon identity, practice, and power, is both variable and profoundly relevant to determining when and why war is an appropriate means to ends.

The causes of war may be more or less located at three levels, or ‘images’ of society (Waltz MSW). The first is ‘human nature’: war happens because people have a ‘will to power’ that leads them to seek dominance over others (cf. Morgenthau) or are inclined towards in-group chauvinism (cf. Mercer on war and social identity theory). The corollary to this view is that people might learn a cosmopolitan morality (cf. the Enlightenment) whereby all are seen to be part of the same overarching political community, and therefore war might become obsolete. The second is that of political order: war happens because the ordering of society produces conflict. Class conflict and oligarchy (cf. Marx), ideologies of national or religious chauvinism, and pacts between warlords and merchants (cf. Tilly) leads to wars of colonial expansion, or territorial conquest. The corollary to this view is that a re-organisation of society according to, for example, communism (Marx) or liberal democracy (Kant) will produce a peaceable political community opposed to or uninterested in bellicose confrontation. The third is that of the international system itself, and it is here that the field of international relation’s most well-known thinkers have laid most of the ‘blame’ for war: from Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian Wars to Waltz’s ‘Theory of International Politics’ – and the slightly less influential but no less brilliant contemporaneous theory of ‘War and Change in International Politics’ (Gilpin) -  war is seen to be caused by tragic circumstances of insecurity due not to inherent malevolence or ideological chauvinism but rationally justified fear and uncertainty.

Rational analyses of war tend to ‘black-box’ the social factors that make war possible and focus on the relationship between information and security. Here enters the classic ‘security dilemma’: since we cannot know whether others would be willing to coerce us, and since their doing so is a reasonable possibility (ie there are many situations wherein it could be to their benefit), it is rational to take steps to defend ourselves, but those very defensive steps also make us more of a potential danger to those others, as they are equally unsure of our willingness to coerce and because our defensive steps boost our own coercive power. Thus, even in a situation where every political community has no desire to wage war in any other situation than pure defence, it may be rational for all to prepare for war and to feel insecure. This dynamic is often modeled in game theory using the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Of course, we know that many political communities are entirely willing to initiate war, or at least to threaten to do so. Nevertheless, this still leaves the question of why wars happen. As rational choice theorists have observed, war is always costly (CITE). If parties know one-another’s capabilities, then the weaker side[s] should know that they’re going to lose the war, and thus capitulate ex ante to save themselves the costs of fighting. Ignoring for a moment the non-rational or normative factors that might nevertheless make fighting desirable even under futile circumstances, a number of important analyses offer an explanation. First, war may become less costly compared to other alternatives due to the processes of negotiation, whereby leaders who threaten war may face domestic ‘audience costs’ by reneging on that threat (Fearon 1994) or due to ‘locked’ in bargaining manoeuvres [4]. Second, war may occur because parties have an incentive to misrepresent their capabilities, and therefore they may have private information which leads them all to conclude that they stand a good chance of winning (Fearon 1995). As a result, many rational choice theorists have searched for structures of interaction between political communities such that the security dilemma can be overcome through creating disincentives to ‘defect’ (cf. Keohane 1983) or though arms monitoring (cite?). Some variants of ‘liberal peace’ theories hold that long-term economic interaction between communities under free market conditions are enough to make harmony always preferable (Spruyt; Bueno de Mesquita), while hegemonic stability theorists (Krasner), ‘English school’ theorists of international society (Bull) and some political economists (Rodrik) see the solution to the ‘security dilemma’ as lying only in the unification of political communities under a single authority able to credibly enforce and underwrite order.

3. How Does War Work?

Usually people form up and kill one-another until all sides but one give up or everyone gets tired and they all go home. [5]

Conclusion

Hopefully this has helped to inform you, my dear colleagues and the handful of others who have bothered to read this. It has been helpful to write, at least.

[1] Though they may be just as coercive, just as morally objectionable, and, in another definition for another analysis, productively defined as indeed violence.

[2] I do not find it productive to differentiate between ‘ideational’ and ‘material’ interests, as this dichotomy collapses under any real scrutiny (cf. the philosophy of science; science)

[3] And as Clausewitz has observed, battles are duels writ large.

[4] As Schelling has observed, it can be rational to give up control under certain circumstances in order to signal resolve.

[5] Though as Clausewitz has observed, ‘the result in war is never final’.

You get to help me study: economic globalisation

I’m preparing answers to practice questions for my upcoming comprehensive exam in international relations. Since many of the themes they address may interest some of the people who read this blog, and since having an audience may keep me sharper than just writing for my own benefit, I will include a few of these practice answers here. I did so whilst studying for exams for my MA, and that produced a few interesting posts, I like to think. I will probably not bother to expand upon the citations, so just pretend they don’t exist.

Discuss and assess the debate about economic globalisation and its effects upon political stability and economic development, with some reference to empirical research.

Generally speaking, economic globalisation is a process of deepening and broadening economic interconnectedness of a global scope, such that economic activity in any one locality is incresingly influenced by that of geographically distant others, which in its modern, accelerated form constitutes a profound transformation in economic organisation across space and between nations (cf. Rosenau, Held, Giddens). The main points of debate over economic globalisation revolve around whether it benefits all states and communities caught up in its processes or only a powerful (and Western) few, whether it will lead to the decreased salience of states and borders to the global – and local – economy, and whether it will continue in the face of the tensions, reactions, and fracturations it generates in opposition to it.

The view that globalisation consists of imperial exploitation of the globally un(der)industrialised by a few, highly industrialised, capitalist states in N. America and Europe is generally traceable to Lenin, and in its more sophisticated ‘systems-theoretical’ form, to Wallerstein’s ‘World Systems’ theory. According to it, the world may be divided into the core, the periphery, and (in WST) the semi-periphery. The core exploits the periphery and countries in the periphery, deluded by the belief that it has the potential to itself reach the position of the core, occasionally to semi-periphery status, which is a sort of mid-point of partial industrialisation/development. The core essentially plays the role of the bourgeoisie and the periphery that of the proletariat, writ global, and the former is devoted to the labour exploitation, resource extraction, and political marginalisation of the latter. Modern economic globalisation may not involve the same formal institutions of domination and control as were seen in the heyday of European imperialism and colonialism, but it is functionally analogous, serving the same interests and generating the same relations of power and subordination.

In opposition to this view is the generally (neo)liberal view that economic globalisation permits if not even than still universal and absolute growth in quality of life and economic development. Based on economic theories rooted in Smith and Ricardo, it holds that the expansion of markets, the free flow of capital, and the development of transport and communications technology permits countries to trade to their comparative advantage, buy goods as cheaply as possible while satisfying global demands, and access the credit and investment needed for capital growth and industrial development. Liberals in the Kantian tradition predict that this will also lead to the spread of democratic norms as an ascendent middle-class will demand political enfranchisement, while neofunctionalists go even further by predicting that economic globalisation will eventually lead to political unions or federations, on the grounds that national borders and currencies will be consolidated to facilitate more efficient trade (cf. Mitrany, Rodrik). While the rise of the ‘BRICS’ is often held to be an example of how ‘developing’ countries can follow trajectories beyond the limits of ‘semi-periphery’ quasi-industrialisation, and the EU is often held to be an example of a move towards political union in the service of economic integration, both these examples encounter problems. Of the BRICS, only Russia and China appear to possess the power to attain considerably global economic might, while South Africa, Brazil, and India are so riven with domestic developmental asymmetries and constraints that it is questionable whether they will continue to exhibit a high rate of economic growth. Meanwhile a resurgence in nationalism in Europe, most starkly illustrated by the rise of the fascistic Golden Dawn movement in Greece but certainly not limited to that country or to that level of radicalism, driven by debt crises and a reaction against austerity, suggests that while Rodrik may have been right to see a tension in simultaneously attempting economic intergration, democratic politics, and state sovereignty, the resolution to this tension will not lie in a democratically sensitive transnational federalism but rather in a return to protectionism.

This third view, that while globalisation may not be reducible to the logic of capitalist exploitation write large but that it also shall not produce the liberal harmony envisioned by its most enthusiastic proponents, tends to see globalisation as an irregular, fractured, and variable process. Reactionary political movements such as those associated with the rise of conservative Islamism, the competition of economic powerhouses such as Russia and China to establish exclusive zones of economic hegemony – Russia in Central Asia and China in Africa – and a growing awareness of consumers in wealthy countries of the ways in which their consumption can fund political and labour practices they find anathema all indicate push-backs against a universalist economic globalisation that may transform global economic integration into multiple regional integrations.

Numerous empirical research projects feed into this debate. Scholarship on civil wars and authoritarianism has payed close attention to the role of globally desirable resources and commodities, such as oil and diamonds, in funding human rights abuses (cf. Bates, Laitin, Cederman, Weinstein, Wood). Scholarship on agricultural development has examined the  dependencies, environmental degradation, and market sensitivity produced by the spread of patented crop varieties or the shift towards cash-crop cultivation. Scholarship on the economics of environmentalist measures such as carbon emissions controls finds both persistent unwillingness on the part of states to honour their economically restrictive commitments and a curious readiness on the part of firms and non-state professional bodies to self-regulate (Hoffman). Notably, none of these projects are so clear in their findings, so far, as to support one view over its competitors in the debate as to the effects of economic globalisation.

Perhaps the next few years will provide some clarity, as we will see whether the EU can weather its most acute crises to date, whether the BRICS will continue to rise, and if regional hegemony bids such as China’s ‘ring of pearls’ strategy will produce spheres of influence rather than open markets.

Derping a bit on Iran and Nukes

My father forwarded me an op-ed by an IR prof claiming that Iran has been skilled in parrying diplomatic attacks against its nuclear weapons programme, and that Iran is determined to get the Bomb because it wants to ‘counter’ Israel, gain an advantage over its regional rivals, build prestige, and engineer the coming of the apocalypse. The op-ed finishes by recommending further sanctions, secret bilateral US-Iran talks, and a US declaration of ‘we can’t stop Israel from bombing Tehran!’ I’m not a big-picture geopolitics student and it’s been a while since I’ve studied Iran in particular, but most of these claims do not sit well with me. Since I haven’t blogged in ages I will just repost my reply to my father. I recognise the high chance that I am talking bollocks in some respect, so please accept my derp disclaimer – and do tell me if I’m off-base.

First, I don’t think that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons in the sense that he seems to. Rather, I think Iran is trying to reach a technological point, with their enrichment and their missile programme, where they could build a nuclear weapon quickly if they felt the need to do so. This ‘breakaway capacity’ is something that quite a few countries have – Japan could have nukes in months if they wanted to make them, I suspect – and helps secure the country against future unknowns. This makes a lot more sense than stockpiling actual weapons, and is still less threatening, regionally.

Second, I don’t think that Israel will launch a conventional attack against Iran. Israel does not have the military power to make such a strike effective in significantly damaging the Iranian nuclear programme. The US does, but they will not use it.

Third, I don’t think that all of this talk of prestige, of apocalyptic views as to the return of the Mahdi, or even of ‘countering’ (balancing against?) the Israeli nuclear capacity is what motivates Iran. I’ve only really read Mehdi Khalaji on the theology of the regime, but the strong sense I get, and which many experts seem to have, is that nobody in power there is actually forming security policies with the intention of prompting the return of the messiah. Here’s what I think motivates Iran: the desire to feel secure against significant conventional attack while it mucks about in the affairs of its neighbours. Groups like Hizbullah in Lebanon or a number of Shiite militias in Iraq (not to mention the Iraqi government) are essentially foreign arms of the Iranian regime. They also have their own autonomy and political agenda, but they take orders and, when the time comes, they go to war for Iran. Iran has tried to build similar organisations in Saudi Arabia and some of the other Gulf states (eg Bahrain) but have had less success. By having this nascent nuclear capability, Iran can quite actively use these proxy forces without as much worry of a major reprisal. At the same time, in an unstable region (see Syria) and even in an unstable world (see the decline of US hegemony), the Iranian regime knows that having the capability to develop nuclear weapons on short notice is an important safeguard.

My article on Israeli assassinations during the Second Intifada

It may be found here [1] for anyone who is interested. The abstract is as follows:

This article examines the evolving logic to the systematic assassinations of Palestinian activists carried out by Israel during the Aqsa Intifada (September 2000–2005). It argues that the logic of Israel’s “assassination policy” developed in three stages. During each successive stage, the security executive expanded the scope of who could be legitimately targeted and what goals could be served in doing so. This article further argues that normative and legal considerations played a key role in determining target selection and tactical means. It finds that during the Aqsa Intifada, the Israeli government used assassination not according to any unified purpose but rather as an evolving and often ad hoc combination of political communication, tactical action and, more rarely, strategic manipulation. In short: there was not one single rationale driving the assassinations but several.

[1] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09546553.2012.657280

Zero Dark Thirty and the Torture Debate

I think the main cause for concern in ZD30′s portrayal of torture is that it is seen to elicit reliable information, whether ‘in the moment’ or as resulting from its lingering threat in future interrogations. Even if in this particular story that information didn’t lead to the Big Bad, the simple fact that the information was successfully educed in this way in the story is bad.

Most people, except those on the real fringe, don’t believe that anyone deserves to be tortured, nor that torturing is anything less than a severe violation of human rights. However, I’ve also found that many people – myself included – are swayed by the hypothetical ‘ticking time-bomb’ scenario. Hypothetically, we would see the harm of torture, though great, as justifiable if it prevented the otherwise imminent deaths of some sufficiently large group of people. And some of the ‘ticking time bomb’ parameters do show up from time to time in reality.

So the fact that the scenario, as a whole, is a red herring – the fact that torture is basically never more reliable than alternative methods in the best of cases and probably not reliable in general – is one of the most morally salient pieces of information in this debate. The fact that there is no utilitarian negotiation, that we are never actually balancing harms but simply choosing to amplify them, is the knockdown argument that makes torture illegitimate to people like me who believe that security issues demand a prudential logic.

ZD30, by clouding the relatively solid – to my knowledge – expert consensus that torture doesn’t work, probably should be criticised as naive and irresponsible given its possible influence upon the larger public discussion of torture. Target of hate and source of outrage? Maybe not. But I think it’s a bit less ambiguous than you seem to think

Ideas, Causes, and IR Theory debates

I recently read a post on an excellent IR blog which looked at the validity of drawing an ontological distinction between the material and the ideational. I think it is a very interesting discussion, with broader implications for social scientists – it’s entirely unrelated to the particular scope of international politics – and so I am going to weigh in here.

Specifically, this post centred on the statement by one of IR’s most famous ‘scientific realists’ that

in the end there can only be two possibilities [for types of explanation], materialist and idealist, because there are only two kinds of stuff in the world, material and ideational

- Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics 1999, p. 136

, and the criticism directed against it by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson (PTJ), another theorist on philosophy of science in IR. PTJ’s criticisms, which aim to attack Wendt’s particular school of thinking on its own physicalist grounds,  are divisible into two claims:

1. Ideas are material, because reducible  to particular configurations of a cognitive system realised in a physical substrate (ie ideas are brain-states);
2. Because ideas are either caused by neurophysiological states or are actually non-existent, they cannot feature in explanations of cause and effect;

The post’s author rejects both these claims, tentatively, on the grounds that

many physicalists in philosophy of mind argue that mind is not reducible to material objects, but rather shares an identity with certain material processes. Furthermore, even if ideas and beliefs really are just pre-scientific labels we use to refer to particular classes of physical processes, these processes remain as plausible candidates as any others to provide explanations for social phenomena. Commitment to physicalism in the philosophy of mind doesn’t necessarily tell us much anything about what sort of processes are causally efficacious in the social world.

This response is not grounds for rejecting the first of PTJ’s claims , but it is indeed grounds for rejecting the second. PTJ’s first claim is most charitably understood as an argument for token physicalism; basically, according to it, any explanation referring to a particular idea held by a particular person at a particular time is reducible to an explanation involving a brain-state. However, this is not the same as type physicalism, which holds that ideas of a certain type categorically reduce to a certain brain-state. Many token physicalists are not type physicalists, because they believe that multiple brain-states could lead to functionally identical mental-states. To quote wikipedia:

Token identity physicalism argues that mental events are unlikely to have “steady” or categorical biological correlates. These positions make use of the philosophical Type–token distinction (e.g. having the same type of car need not mean that you and your friend share a token, a single vehicle). Type physicalism can now be understood to argue that there is identicalness between types, whereas token identity physicalism says we are only describing a particular, unique, brain event.

Token identity phsyicalism would, as the post’s author claims, mean that we still can use explanations involving ideas or mental states because while we know that our terms are identical to physical processes, we can’t know which processes beyond a set with possibly infinite members. Token physicalism does allow us to view ideas as material, because their physical realisation is in the configuration or sequence of configurations of a material substrate – ie any token idea is causally or ontologically reducible to activity in the brain. However, as token physicalism, unlike type physicalism, does not entail categorical reduction (in the opinion of most philosophers of mind, to my knowledge) we can continue to explain things using ideas, beliefs, mental kinds, etc because we can often go no further than to identify the type of mental state which is causally salient – eg if we’re speaking in categorical terms or if we have insufficient data.

Or, as the post’s author later claims (in a comment):

This means that knowledge regarding mental states provides us with reliable knowledge about the physical states and processes at work within a set of physical systems. Those physical systems (which correspond to the epiphenomena we know as ‘beliefs’, ‘desires’, intentions’) may well be causally efficacious.

Hence while we should not strictly separate between the ideational and the material, we still have good reason to continue to explain things in terms of ideas. Furthermore, while it is possible that eventually social science will be reducible to neuroscience -ie if we believe in type reduction – it is also possible that mental kinds are not simply placeholders for token neurological states but for entire sets of neurological states whose membership can never be fully defined.

A bit on rational choice theory

Recently I’ve been reading up on the use of rational choice models for analysing political behaviour in international politics. Rational choice theory appears enticingly powerful for its representing and explaining the array of possible decisions and strategies available to actors. Despite the sorts of cognitive biases and errors which we now know lead decision-making often quite far from the assumptions of rational choice theory, we might nevertheless see it as capable of solving some of the most intractable problems and of rendering social wholes into analysable component parts. The ability to determine what a utility-maximising actor should do in a given situation or interaction permits us not only to make predictions about actor behaviour in situations where we might expect actors to conform adequately to rationality assumptions, it also tells us what we should do if we would like to conform to those assumptions – for example, in making economic or diplomatic choices. Not only that, but it offers the power to explain both through nomothetic generalisations deduced as hypotheses from the model and also through teleological statements about the intentions of actors, viz., that some action was the most efficient means of realising some intended outcome. As the rational choice theorist knows, the answer to one ancient question can be easily found so long as we assume that the other side of the road is the best place to be, and that the best transport option available to the chicken is to cross.

However, rational choice theory has also proved quite unpopular amongst sceptics who assert that rationality assumptions fail to accurately and adequately describe any real human being in any real human situation, and who question the value of many rational choice analyses on the grounds that they substitute obscure sophistry for truly rigorous and empirically grounded scholarship. Others may be less sceptical but still find that, pace Milton Friedman, while models may offer sound predictions despite being constructed out of many unrealistic assumptions, they prefer to develop scientific theories which do more than predict but also, ideally, describe how things really are – that carve reality at its joints. To these sceptics I offer two additional, if less common, uses for rational choice theory that often get missed in the debate.

1: ‘Weber, Wittgenstein, Winch’

While it is nothing new, for economists, to recognise that they must take into account a full and rich range of values and tastes as guiding decisions beyond the narrow goal of financial gain, we can not only infer decisions based upon preferences but preferences, qua norms, based upon decisions. Obviously this method must be conducted with considerable humility, given the infinite possible belief-value schemes [1] which could render some decision best, but informal or even formal methods of comparison, such as Bayesian networks, could allow a scientist to find the most probable background for understanding – for this is a hermeneutic method – why some actor behaved as they did. This method of studying social action owes much to Weber, though it bears notable similarities to Geertz’s influential interpretive methodology, and has received a more structural formulation in the Wittgenstein-inspired thesis argued by Peter Winch in his book ‘The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy’, in which he holds that social scientists are to explicate the rules, norms, or conventions according to which some action is appropriate or warranted. While this kind of methodology still suffers from many of the limitations of the rationality assumptions – limitations which might be transcended by a ‘logic of habit’ or what Weber called ‘traditional rationality’, for example – it nevertheless offers an appealing instrument to quivering math-phobes, godless quallies, or anyone else for whom the formality and predictive bent of game-theoretic modelling renders it less appealing of a method than one aimed at cultural exploration.

2: ‘All the fun is in the error’

Another use for ideal-typical models based upon rational choice assumptions is as a way of exploring the limitations of our prior theories while locating new areas for research. Here ideal-types, to spare you the Weber quotation, are designed as simulations of a simplified reality operating according to assumptions which we believe are adequately true. If we find that these models predict outcomes that diverge strongly from reality, we would not say that the model is falsified – how can you falsify a simulation? – but rather that it is incomplete as a representation of what is really happening, in significant ways. There is something in the error that we are failing to account for. Rather than abandon our prior theories, then, we instead look for the additional factors that produce the error.

[1] The belief that some combination of beliefs and desires explains why some rational actor did something is typically expressed (by philosophers, anyway) in what is often called the axiom of folk psychology: ‘if an actor desires X and believes that Y is the best way to achieve X, then, all things being equal, that actor will Y’.

Why we shouldn’t psychologise extremism (as often as we do, anyway)

Too frequently we refer to members of extremist, terrorist, radical, violent (etc) groups or movements in the language of psychopathology; we call them ‘sociopathic’ or ‘psychopathic’, we label their conspiracy theories ‘paranoid’, and we describe their outlook as ‘deranged’. Or at least, many commentators use this language, as I noticed while reading a prominent and well-regarded magazine on global affairs, this morning.

This is usually not very rigorous or wise.

There are certainly members of these extremist outfits that are genuinely psychopathic. Abu Mus’ab az-Zarqawi certainly seems to qualify, hesitant as I am to offer psychiatric diagnoses without medical credentials. And a fear and mistrust so acute and pressing that it might reasonably be called ‘paranoid’ is common amongst members of terrorist or insurgent groups which are organised into clandestine cells and which owe their survival to great secrecy and caution. If we restricted our use of psychopatholigcal or psychoanalytic language to these empirically supported and carefully delimited areas, we’d be entirely reasonable.

The problem is in referring to people as psychopathic simply because they’re willing to use extreme violence against people who seem to us to be totally innocent – against children, for example – or in referring to people as paranoid simply because they believe in conspiracies which to us seem completely implausible – such as believing that the Mossad is behind everything from shark attacks to 9/11. There is a great deal of excellent literature in social psychology which explains why individuals, without needing to have any particular disorders, psychiatric illnesses, or instabilities, can reach the belief that indiscriminately  killing cafe patrons or schoolchildren is justified, and will sleep just fine after doing so. I’ve discussed some of this literature elsewhere (in papers, blog posts, and talks), so I won’t do so at any length here except to quote one finding upon which almost all psychologists studying terrorism and extremism have converged:

Terrorists are psychologically normal.

Consider the belief, apparently held by the vast majority of the Pakistani population (according to one source who is eminently credible, but whom I cannot name under Chatham house rules) and many others besides, that 9/11 was a CIA-Mossad plot. On the surface of it, this belief seems absolutely barmy. It seems a real stretch to say that anyone who holds it isn’t paranoid, in that they have demonstrated a failure of reasonable evidence assessment and see unlikely conspiracies behind major world events. But place yourself in the mindset of many of the people who do believe this. Everyone around you believes it too, and the people who tell you that you’re out of your tree are part of ‘the enemy’. You already believe the enemy to be deceitful and devious. You may even believe that the alleged culprits – jihadis – follow codes of conduct that make their involvement hard to imagine. Given all these things, what seems more plausible: that everyone around you is totally mistaken and the foreign powers who assault your community actually have just cause, or a conspiracy of powerful enemies?

I’m not saying that these aren’t examples of poor critical thinking skills, but if we’re going to call anyone who falls victim to cognitive biases or the forces of ‘groupthink’ psychologically abnormal, we’re going to deprive the very notion of normalcy of much of its usefulness.

So I think we should avoid diagnosing our crazy enemies. We can make do with calling them radicals, with describing their morality as simplistic, cruel, and horrible, and with labeling their beliefs as unjustified or unwarranted. These are powerful words and they do not rely upon problematic assumptions about psychiatric conditions or personality disorders. Frankly, it’s sort of a shame that we can’t dismiss savagery as simply the result of deficient minds, and instead must look to social forces and conditions that even us enlightened folk could be swayed by in other circumstances. But I’m of the opinion that accepting depressing truths is still better and wiser than holding to comforting falsehoods.

Recording of my presentation on the Israel-Palestine conflict

Yes, I speak too quickly. No, I shouldn’t have spend so much time on older history. Yes, I do think it went well overall.

Weighing in on the conflict in Gaza

Very concisely, I’m going to express some thoughts on the ongoing conflict.

First, I want to state that I believe Israel’s occupation and settlement of the West Bank is bad and should stop. I believe that Israeli diplomatic intransigence and, in particular, the expansion of Israeli settlements have powerfully negative effects upon the possibility of peace in the near future, and I believe that they cause unjustified suffering to both Palestinians and Israelis.

Second, I want to state that regardless of the bigger picture, regardless of the conclusions we come to about the justifications or lack-thereof for the use of force, an image of dead children is one that should all give us a great feeling of sorrow and horror (note: link is not to the image, though it’s not hard to find). We should lament every loss of life, but when children die, we can’t escape the simple aesthetic experience of helplessness, despair, and generalised anger. Let none of us gloss over this.

But the conflict in Gaza is complicated.

Hamas’s position in the territory is very government-like in certain key ways. Hamas commands a large military wing, comprising10,000 active fighters and up to 20,000 reservists that are reasonably well trained and equipped (by regional standards), a police force to keep public order, and a bureaucratic infrastructure that collects taxes and administers services ranging from health-care to sanitation. The Gaza Strip may be a territory under siege, with Israeli control over its airspace, waters, and border crossings, but it is not occupied in the way that the West Bank is occupied.

And the rockets and mortars that Hamas and its Palestinian Islamic Jihad allies have been launching are a real threat. In the recent flare-up, three Israelis have been killed and about a dozen more have been moderately to seriously injured, which basically means some long-term and possibly permanent health problems. Israelis within rocket range do feel legitimate fear, and they are lucky to be able to take cover in the vast number of bomb shelters that Israel makes sure are available to its citizens. These not only include the regulation bombshelters that every residence in Israel must possess but also portable concrete shelters that have been erected in communities bordering the Gaza Strip.

Now obviously the people in Gaza have it a lot worse. Israeli bombs and missiles are far more deadly than the rockets that Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups have been firing.

But what does this all mean for the legitimacy or justification for Israel’s on-going military campaign against Hamas, in which well over a hundred people have died so far?

I think we should affirm Israel’s right, and obligation, to defend its citizens from military attack by a foreign government. And I think that Hamas’ rockets do constitute such an attack. This brings us into the territory of ‘just war theory‘, and to the question of what kind of violence is permissible in war and what kind isn’t. Conventional just war theory actually permits quite a lot of force. For example, the simple fact that Hamas’ rocket launchers are often fired from densely populated areas would, under conventional understandings. probably permit fairly massive Israeli retaliation, with the Doctrine of Double Effect permitting extensive casualties amongst those unlucky enough to be in the vicinity. But this seems perverse and I don’t want to endorse it. Neither does Israel, it seems, as the Israeli military warns locals by text message and by leaflet before it begins bombing. Nevertheless, many people are dying.

It is not at all trivial to note that if Israel were to engage in any military actions in Gaza at all, those actions would likely cause non-combatants to die. The assassination of Hamas’s military commander, which took place at the beginning of the recent flare-up, is actually an anomaly in that it was highly discriminate and resulted only in the deaths of its target, a combatant, and the car’s other occupant, also a combatant. As I’ve said in the past, just because someone is a combatant does not mean that their death isn’t a bad thing. We should value all life, and see all loss of life as a tragedy. We can also say that many of Israel’s bombs are falling on empty buildings – or at least on buildings where the combatants have left – and thus aren’t actually achieving a particularly useful military objective. So we can condemn those.

Nevertheless, it seems to me, so far, that we shouldn’t be condemning the larger military operation.

But I am with Jeff McMahan – one of my favourite philosophers on the morality of war – in holding that no act of violence in war can be just if it is in the service of an unjust war. And while we might see this particular flare-up as a just war if we narrowly conceive of it as a response to rocket fire, we must not ignore the overall context of the conflict: a century-long struggle between Zionist Jews and Arabs both in Palestine and in the surrounding region, which in its current state certainly does not lend much legitimacy to the Israeli position. How can we endorse a war against Hamas when Israel could almost certainly stop the rocket attacks, at least for the time being, by doing what it already should be doing, which is evacuating its settlements and ending its occupation?

To this I can only say that things are not so simple. And I’m sorry for the weakness of this answer. We know that the Israeli government is a terrible mess of extremist parties and coalition governments, within which the settler movement is very powerful. We know that even if a substantial majority of the Israeli population wanted to see the occupation end – and it did at one point, though it seems as though that progressive bloc is shrinking in the face of a fearful resurgent nationalism – no rapid or unilateral action is likely to take place. And so we’re stuck with a tragic situation. We need to ‘bracket’ shorter-term situations like this recent conflict between Hamas and Israel and, to a far greater degree than we probably would like, come to conclusions that run contrary to our overall sympathies.

In this case, to my discomfort, I conclude that Israel’s military action is just, despite my deeper and broader objections to Israeli policies towards the Palestinians.