Routledge Handbook of Democracy and Security

Leonard Weinberg, Elizabeth Francis, Eliot Assoudeh, Leonard Weinberg, Elizabeth Francis, Eliot Assoudeh

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781317628026
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Politics & International Relations
• Thema: Terrorism

This handbook explores how democracies around the world seek to balance democratic values with the requirement to protect their citizens from the threat of politically motivated violence.

Over the past few decades, the majority of the world's democracies have had to confront serious security threats, and in many instances these challenges have not come from rival states but from violent groups. This volume offers readers an overview of how some democracies have responded to such threats. It examines the extent to which authorities have felt compelled to modify laws to evade what would ordinarily be regarded as protected rights, such as personal privacy, freedom of movement and freedom of speech. Grounded in historical analysis, each of the sections addresses past and emerging security threats; legal and legislative responses to them; successful and unsuccessful efforts to reconcile democracy and security; and a range of theoretical questions. The case studies provided vary in terms of the durability of their democratic systems, level of economic development and the severity of the threats with which they have been confronted.

The volume is divided into three thematic parts:

• Strong democracies: United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand and Israel
• Challenged democracies: India, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and Romania
• Fragile democracies: the Philippines and Nigeria.

This book will be of much interest to students of democracy, security studies, political philosophy, Asian politics, Middle Eastern politics, African politics, West European politics and IR in general.

PART I

Strong democracies: United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia and New Zealand, Israel

1
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY IN THE UNITED STATES

Leonard Weinberg and Elizabeth Francis

This chapter confronts what is usually depicted as a classic dilemma of democratic rule. If democratic rule is threatened, whether by an internal or an external challenge, how best can a democracy defeat the threat without jeopardizing the very core principles on which the democracy is based? If ‘the rules of the game’ are to be suspended, for how long and to what degree of severity must this ‘state of exception’ persist? Who decides? How ‘exceptional’ does a threat have to be?¹

Consider another problem: it is always possible that those holding power in a democracy will manufacture a threat or exaggerate that threat in order to enhance the government’s own power. The events of 9/11 and subsequent terrorist attacks on Americans, both at home and abroad, have excited an intense, sometimes hysterical, debate about how the country should respond to such events. Central to the debate has been the matter of balance. How many rights of individual citizens should be compromised in order to enhance the security of other citizens or the community in general?² Those engaging in the debate often suggest a ‘delicate balance’ is to be struck between security and liberty. In effect, a commitment to heightened security leads inevitably to less liberty (see the congressional debates over the passage of the 2001 Patriot Act). How much liberty must be sacrificed to achieve more security? Should a balance be struck based on ‘bad tendency’ or ‘gravity of the danger’ doctrines, or some other legal formulation? Does it make a difference if the threat to the country is internal, external or a combination of both? Does a long-standing democracy really have to compromise its own principles in order to deal with small bands of terrorists whose chances of gaining terrestrial power are infinitesimal, except in their own minds?

Recently these questions have entangled themselves with vast changes wrought by the computer revolution and the advent of the new social media. The ability of government agencies, the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States especially, to achieve surveillance (at least apparently) over virtually all individuals within the country has drawn widespread attention. So has the capacity of terrorist-minded groups to evade detection through encryption and related means. Often the mouse has been able to evade the cat.

In our view, debates over the ‘delicate balance’ presumption often present us with a false dichotomy. More often than not, recent terrorist events involve efforts by a democratic government to react quickly and publicly to citizen pressure by apprehending or killing members, authentic or aspirational, of al Qaeda (AQ) or the Islamic State (ISIS). Aspirational groups typically consist of no more than a handful of individuals acting on behalf of some wider religious or political cause. In an increasing number of instances ‘lone wolves’, radicalized via social media, commit the terrorist act, lone wolves whose attachment to the larger group is largely imaginary.

Terrorist episodes normally do not pit the government or law enforcement agencies against the People, where significant segments of the population support the killers. Instead the situation usually involves demands on the part of popular majorities for the government to act rapidly and effectively to eliminate a terrorist threat. If the affected government is perceived as not responding rapidly and effectively enough to terrorist attacks, popular opposition mounts and opposition parties are likely gain votes at the next elections. Certainly in the American context no national administration (e.g. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump) wishes to be perceived as weak or insufficiently vigorous in its pursuit of a ‘killer elite’ out to harm the public. This seems to be particularly true when clandestine bands of terrorists or ‘lone wolves’ are viewed as foreign, or inspired by foreign organizations.

The current situation (circa 2020) in the United States is not unprecedented. So far as attempts to counter terrorism are concerned, the ‘modern’ struggle dates to the Nixon administration (1969–1974). Readers may recall the Vietnam War era. During the late 1960s and early 1970s the United States faced a series of terrorist threats. Domestically the Vietnam War caused the formation of a widespread ‘peace movement’. The war, in other words, led to a cycle of mass protests aimed initially at persuading the powers that be to withdraw American forces from Southeast Asia on pain of massive disruptions to public life.

As American involvement in the war wound down in the early 1970s, so did the mass anti-war protests, particularly following the killings of students at Kent State University by Ohio National Guardsmen (1970). In place of mass protests, new ‘revolutionary’ groups appeared, the most conspicuous of which were the Weathermen, the Black Liberation Army and the Symbionese Liberation Army. Rather than pursue peace, these groups sought to ignite a violent revolution, no matter how far-fetched their aim. Small bands carried out a series of terrorist attacks on various publicity-winning targets – including newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, who was kidnapped, and Marcus Foster, the first African-American superintendent of the Oakland CA school system, who was murdered. The randomized murder of police officers also caught the public’s attention.

During this period terrorism was hardly confined to the home front. Following the June 1967 Arab–Israeli war, Palestinian groups (especially the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, PFLP), acting under the umbrella of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), launched a terrorist campaign against Israeli targets in Europe. Most spectacular among them was the 1972 Black September attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. The PLO’s operations quickly spread to the Jewish State’s perceived friends and allies. Consequently, PLO groups began to target Americans and their diplomatic installations and commercial aircraft in Europe and elsewhere.

The Nixon administration reacted to such threats (including the murder of a US diplomat during a 1973 reception at the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum by a PLO group) by issuing executive orders, encouraging Congress to pass legislation and encouraging international cooperation (e.g. the International Conventions on Airline Skyjacking), initiatives all designed to stop terrorist attacks foreign and domestic.³

After this initial outburst of terrorist activity in the early 1970s, American security services, armed forces and law enforcement agencies have sought to eliminate a succession of terrorist threats. Terrorist groups have come and gone (especially at the end of the Cold War), but threats have persisted. If anything, the level of threat to America and American interests by the Islamic State and its jihadist cohorts during the second decade of the 21st century has been as substantial as it was during the earlier revival of terrorism in the 1970s.

Earlier 20th-century security threats

Over the course of the 20th century the United States faced a number of threats to its security by enemies foreign and domestic, real and imaginary. That history is worth examining in detail. To undertake the analysis we should begin by defining the nature of the specific security threat with which the United States was confronted and ask ourselves whether the response was proportionate to the threat.

First, we should consider whether the threat posed to the US was primarily foreign, domestic or a combination of both. It appears that reaching a plausible conclusion about this distinction is much more difficult than it might seem initially. Take the case of the Korean War (1950–1954). In June 1950 the Truman administration deployed American forces to South Korea in order to prevent the communist North from overrunning the government in Seoul and seizing control of the whole peninsula. The deployment was sanctioned by the UN Security Council. At first glance the Korean ‘police action’ appears to have been a case where the threat to American security was exclusively foreign. Kim Il Sung, the North Korean ruler, had few admirers or followers in the United States ready to sabotage or undermine the war effort. Nor did the North Korean dictator possess the military means to strike at the United States. Nevertheless, the Korean fighting did have serious domestic ramifications involving mass fear of communism as manifested by the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China and agents or alleged agents of those countries operating in the United States. Such fears led to various anti-communist investigations conducted by members of congressional and state legislative committees committed to eliminating ‘subversive activities’. During the Korean War era even private organizations and popular journalists (e.g. Red Channels, the New York Journal American and the American Legion) committed themselves to rooting out the Red threat to American society.

Neither the Korean War nor more generally the conflict between the US and the USSR and its allies involved terrorist operations of the sort with which we are familiar today. Of course the threat to American national security posed by the Soviet bloc countries was far more serious than that offered by ISIS and al Qaeda in recent years. The latter’s terrorist acts have been and are profoundly disturbing to American and other Western publics; but they are hardly existential challenges, and do not involve the potential destruction of the countries involved.

Second, as suggested above, beyond the distinction between foreign and domestic events we need to evaluate the severity and extent to which terrorism was involved. For example, World War II drew millions of Americans into the fighting in both the European and Asian theatres of operations but involved virtually no terrorism on the North American mainland, even though the fighting appeared at one point to represent a serious threat to the country.

The consequences of World War I were not the same. World War I ended with an Armistice agreement in November 1918. The United States emerged relatively unscathed by the fighting. In Europe, on the other hand, WWI left millions dead, destroying a whole generation of young men. The German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian Empires came to an end as a result of the fighting. Perhaps of greatest consequence was the 1917 Russian Revolution, which resulted in the victory of the Bolsheviks under V.I. Lenin.

The Red Revolution led to the formation of revolutionary communist parties throughout the industrialized world, including the United States, and the Third Communist International. Communists, revolutionary socialists and revolutionary anarchists launched violent uprisings in Hungary, It...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Democracy, security and the rule of law: An introduction
• PART I Strong democracies: United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia and New Zealand, Israel
• PART II Challenged democracies: India, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Romania
• PART III Fragile democracies: the Philippines and Nigeria
• Index