Political Alignment and Identity: Pro-Western Versus Anti-Western Now More Important than Left Versus Right?

[Political Diagram by Marko Attila Hoare. Click for larger, legible, viewing.]

Thanks to Contentious Centrist and Bob for pointing me to this Ignoblus post which is commenting on a post by Marko Attila Hoare. To summarize, Hoare provided a diagram of contemporary political alignments (above). These alignments have less to do with left versus right (a dated but not entirely irrelevant paradigm) then pro-Western versus anti-Western.

Hoare writes:

The triumph of the centrist political model has led to one section of the Left and one section of the Right breaking away from their respective comrades and joining up in opposition to this model: this ultimately takes the form of a Red-Brown coalition. Conversely, a second section of the Left and a second section of the Right have likewise broken away from the first sections and come together in support of extending this model globally. This, then, is the principal ideological division in global politics today: pro-Western vs anti-Western; globalist vs anti-globalist; the democratic centre vs the Red-Brown coalition.

…

The essence of the division is that the pro-Westerners support the extension of the liberal-democratic order across the globe, through the politics of human rights, promotion of democracy, universal values and interventionism (not necessarily always military). The anti-Westerners oppose the liberal-democratic model, at least as a universal model; they admire or support movements or regimes that stand in opposition to the Western alliance or to Western values – all of which uphold religious fundamentalism or nativist nationalism, sometimes combined with a ’socialist’ veneer, as an alternative to liberal democracy.

Ignoblus’ post focuses on cultural codes and anti-Zionism. is on to something in connecting anti-Western sentiment and anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is a huge part of the contemporary radical left’s political identity, But this anti-Zionism should be examined within the context of a broader “anti-imperialism.” Hoare advocated a similar perspective in his review of Buruma and Margalit’s Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies for Democratiya. Here is an excerpt:

In simplest terms, ‘imperialism’ can be defined as a state’s pursuit of empire or the expansion of its power, through acquiring territory from, or power over, other states or peoples. No reasonable person would not oppose this, but ‘anti-imperialism’ today means something other than opposition to imperialism. ‘Imperialism’, in the eyes of the average ‘anti-imperialist’, is coterminous with ‘the West’, i.e. with the US and its West European and Israeli allies. As such, it is used to refer to the bloc of states that dominates the world today, and there is undoubtedly something emotionally appealing to the individual ‘radical’ in apparently fighting that which is all-powerful. As an eighteen-year old Trotskyist and ‘anti-imperialist’ at the time of the 1991 Gulf War, I can testify to the empowering sense of self-righteousness I felt as I demonstrated against the US and its allies, in the course of which my views became increasingly extreme: I fervently believed that the US-led intervention was by far a greater evil than Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait; that it would be a blessing for humanity if the US and its allies were defeated; that such a defeat would trigger revolutionary outbreaks across the Middle East and even in the West.

[read it all here]

I agree that it useful to analyze contemporary conlficts as between the forces supporting economic and political liberalization and those opposed to this opening. However, like Ignoblus, I am rather uncomfortable being lumped in with president George W. Bush. My political opponents on the radical left have often reduced my nuanced centrist position to that of neo-conservatism but there is no need for Hoare to fall into the same trap. After all, part of the appeal of the Euston Manifesto among self-described leftists was it provided an opportunity to be robustly anti-totalitarian (i.e. “decent”) without being right-wing or conservative. Hoare also ignores the existence of ultra-leftists, anarchists, and other self-styled revolutionaries who advocate a third perspective that is classically “anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist” while also critical of Jihadist terrorism. I’m refering here to Three Way Fight, World War 4 Report, etc.

All in all, I find much affinity with what Hoare is writing on these issues and this diagram is a good first attempt at describing political alignments in the post September 11, 2001 era. I’m very interested in seeing Hoare and others develop these ideas further. For example, if muscular liberals are lumped in with neo-conservatives into some sort of political coalition, where does Hoare see the potential for political cleavages developing between these two groups?

Democracy Promotion: Process or Outcome?

Martin in Margins has an excellent post regarding the tension between emphasizing process or, emphasizing outcome, in democracy promotion efforts. Some analysts and academics place an emphasis on process. Essentially, the result of the election is less important than the election itself being fair and transparent. If people are given a political choice and they choose radical religious candidates over moderate secular ones, who are we to determine their political decisions? For others, often policymakers, the emphasis is on outcome. Simply stated, the goal of democracy promotion is fostering states that acknowledge private property rights and the rule of law, majority rule and minority rights, provide the political space for the development of an independent civil society (media, unions, professional organizations, etc.), and so on and so forth.

There is a tension between these two competing perspectives than many refuse exists. Martin notes:

I’ve written before about the difficulties that arise when a newly-democratic country makes a democratic choice, the consequence of which is to exclude or oppress significant sections of the population. The example I discussed in these earlier posts is southern Iraq, where the democratic election of conservative religious parties threatens the rights and freedoms of religious and political minorities, women and homosexuals. Some blame may be attached to the Coalition Provisional Authority, for the way it encouraged a communalist politics in the south and lent credibility to sectarian forces such as the Sadrists. However, the popular vote for the religious parties in the 2005 election appears to have been overwhelming.

So is this democracy? And where does it leave the strategy of encouraging the development of democratic reform in the Middle East, if the result is to install Islamist regimes which then proceed to limit democratic freedoms? I remember seeing a quote from a liberal Saudi woman who was emphatically against democratic change in her country, since she feared it would mean the election of an even more oppressively Islamist government. But does this mean that the west should revert to its discredited strategy of shoring up corrupt Middle Eastern dictators, for fear that their removal would lead to something much worse?

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Military Contractors, State Power and the Monopoly of the Use of Force

In the controversially titled “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” Charles Tilly made a rather uncontroversial observation, the consolidation of state power in Europe was accompanied by the monopolization of the use of force. In Tilly’s words, “A tendency to monopolize the means of violence makes a government’s claim to provide protection, in either the comforting or ominous sense of the word, more credible and more difficult to resist.” (see Bringing the State Back In). Yet recent trends in the United States and elsewhere suggest this cornerstone of state power may be eroding and with it, the ability of the U.S. to achieve success in the Long War.

“Businesses Worldwide. United for Peace”–International Peace Operations Association

The most recent, costly and controversial example of this shift are the private military contractors (PMCs) operating in Iraq. The Iraqi government recently restricted the movement of military contractor Blackwater to the U.S. Green Zone in response to allegations of indiscriminate violence and the targeting of Iraqi civilians. For critics, Blackwater and other PMCs are essentially mercenaries, hired soldiers with little sense of morality or loyalty.

The security contracting industry has been working hard to counter that image through their trade group, the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA). The IPOA considers itself “the most ethical, transparent, and effective voice of the Peace and Stability Industry in the world” and paints a different picture of military contractors than we see in the mainstream media. Contractors are removing land mines in Africa, assisting with reconciliation in the Balkans and performing other necessary functions in post-conflict zones throughout the world.

I asked a friend who served as a solider in the first Gulf War what he thought about the role of contractors, was it good or bad for the military, are they of use in specific roles, and so forth. He thought in specific instances, food preparation and service, transportation of basic supplies, etc. using contractors was better than having soldiers perform these tasks. However, when it came to the use of force he was much more critical. Soldiers are held to much stricter rules of engagement and to much harsher consequences and penalties for getting out of line. The contractors are outside of the chain of command and do not share these restrictions.

For the soldier, the behavior exhibited by many contractors is dangerous to our counterinsurgency effort. Unprovoked firefights are a major concern. On a more strategic level, the actions of contractors undermine U.S. attempts to win “hearts and minds” in Iraq and damages American credibility in the ideological struggle throughout the region.

Peter Singer’s recent study for the Brookling’s Institution, “Can’t Win With ‘Em, Can’t Go To War Without ‘Em: Private Military Contractors and Counterinsurgency,” examines these concerns.

The point here is not that all contractors are “cowboys,” “unprofessional,” or “killers,” as Blackwater and other contractors are often described. Rather, most are highly talented, ex-soldiers. However, their private mission is different from the overall public operation. Those, for example, doing escort duty are going to be judged by their bosses solely on whether they get their client from point A to B, not whether they win Iraqi hearts and minds along the way.

Then there are the financial costs. Privatization works great for catering, but it has proved far less efficient for combat operations. Questionable contracts have resulted in the loss of billions of dollars.

Singer’s study explores how the use of contractors:

Inflames popular opinion against, rather than for, the American mission through operational practices that ignore the fundamental lessons of counterinsurgency.

As one set of contractors described. “Our mission is to protect the principal at all costs. If that means pissing off the Iraqis, too bad.”

Participated in a series of abuses that have undermined efforts at winning “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people.

The pattern of contractor misconduct extends back to 2003 and has involved everything from prisoner abuse and “joyride” shootings of civilians to a reported incident in which a drunken Blackwater contractor shot dead the security guard of the Iraqi Vice President after the two got into an argument on Christmas Eve, 2006.

Weakened American efforts in the “war of ideas” both inside Iraq and beyond. As one Iraqi government official explained even before the recent shootings.

“They are part of the reason for all the hatred that is directed at Americans, because people don’t know them as Blackwater, they know them only as Americans. They are planting hatred, because of these irresponsible acts.”

Reveals a double standard towards Iraqi civilian institutions that undermines efforts to build up these very same institutions, another key lesson of counterinsurgency.

As one Iraqi soldier said of Blackwater. “They are more powerful than the government. No one can try them. Where is the government in this?”

Forced policymakers to jettison strategies designed to win the counterinsurgency on multiple occasions, before they even had a chance to succeed.

The U.S. Marine plan for counterinsurgency in the Sunni Triangle was never implemented, because of uncoordinated contractor decisions in 2004 that helped turn Fallujah into a rallying point of the insurgency. More recently, while U.S. government leaders had planned to press the Iraqi government on needed action on post-“surge” political benchmarks, instead they are now having to request Iraqi help in cleaning up the aftermath of the Blackwater incident.

 

I’ll be writing more on this topic in the near future.

Ben Gidley: Social theory, the left, and terror

[Hat tip to Bob from Brockley]

The new issue of Street Signs [pdf], the magazine of the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths College, is out. Have a look at Ben Gidley’s “Chicken’s coming home to roost: Social theory, the left, and terror,” on page 27.

Here is the first paragraph:

When the September 11 attacks on New York happened, I was in my office in the Laurie Grove Baths at CUCR, trying to finish a report that was overdue. A colleague, Garry Robson, came into my office to tell me what was happening. It seemed unreal and my first thought, of which I am now ashamed, was that this was a distraction I didn’t need. I went downstairs to the communal office where people were standing around the radio listening to events unfold, then after a while returned to my office to try to finish off the report. It was only when I arrived home and started to watch the images on television that it began to feel more real. And then it began to feel painfully real when I spoke on the telephone to my mother – a New Yorker transplanted to Yorkshire.

Bounds: A Bloody Misalliance

[Hat tip once again to Norman Geras. This pamphlet is now available online.]

P. Philip Bounds holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Wales. He is the author of British Communism and Literary Theory (2007), Cultural Studies (1999) and Orwell and Culture: The Dialogue with British Marxism (forthcoming). His essays, articles and reviews have appeared in a wide range of journals and newspapers. This essay was first published in hardcopy in the July 2007 issue of The Individual, the journal of the Society for Individual Freedom.

The Grotesque Alliance

Metaphorical references to “borders” and “frontiers” have been a staple part of Western culture since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. If the dreadful events in New York and Washington achieved nothing else, they made it uncomfortably clear that the border between Islam and the West was far more porous than we previously supposed. It is no longer possible for even the most purblind Westerner to believe that Islam is something which happens “over there” in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Nearly everyone recognises that it has now established a significant and perhaps immoveable presence in the heartlands of the West, bringing much that is beneficial and much that is ugly in its wake. There are now at least two million Muslims in the USA and a staggering 53 million in Europe. The issue of how the “host communities” should relate to them is one of the most important in international politics. Should the border between Muslims and non-Muslims be pushed back, heavily guarded or even dismantled altogether? The coming decades will tell.

One of the most disheartening aspects of the interchange between Islam and the West is also one of the least noticed. Over the course of the last five years, largely as a consequence of the Western intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have seen the emergence of a grotesque alliance between militant Islamists and certain sections of the Marxist left.¹ Devout followers of Muhammad and excitable disciples of Leon Trotsky have joined together to oppose the wars and even to found new political parties and movements.

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A Question of Agency: Individuals vs. Collectivities

Interesting discussion of the agency of individuals and collectivities at Normblog and Stumbling and Mumbling.

[Hat tip to Norman Geras]

Social Facts and Individual Acts

Chris and I continue to agree with one another on just about everything at issue, while still managing to disagree about something (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). It’s now down to a single word, and that word is ‘basic’. Chris says (in 5): ‘the individual is the basic unit of analysis’. But I say (in 4): ‘it’s a two-way street’. As between individual motivation and action, on the one hand, and social structure and constraint, on the other, there is no ‘basic’. Explanation in the human sciences can’t do without either; they are always co-present.

When Chris warns, at the end of his latest post (5), against seeing collectivities as agents, he’s right. Only individuals do things. But that’s because doing, in that meaning, i.e. acting, is what (only) individuals do. Only social structures and institutions, however, can constrain in the way that (only) they do – limiting a person’s choices, for example, between certain roles accommodated within the society or the economy in question. Only cultures, speaking loosely, put certain languages and certain ideas beyond the reach of the individual even before s/he can start to think or choose, narrowing the linguistic and intellectual space via what they (the cultures) contain and what they don’t.

There is no more and less basic with regard to social facts and individual acts, or in explanation of the human world. There is just conjoint, reciprocal, influence.