Covert Wars and the 'standards of totalitarians'

A short addendum to a RUSI piece

Today, Dr Robert Schuett and I have published a commentary piece for Royal United Service Institute. The piece makes the argument that the English School of International Relations (also known as the International Society approach) has much to contribute to current debates regarding “new” state threats and a “new” threat environment. We refer, in particular, to states’ use of criminal gangs, illicit finance, and other criminal ventures in the pursuit of covert operations, including sabotage and assassinations.

We argue that the response to these threats should go beyond a more Realist approach of increased defence spending. It should also go beyond simple problem-solving solutions such as calls to increase collaboration between intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

An “English School-inspired” response should take into consideration the challenges that these “new” threats pose to states and - more broadly - to international society. They should be understood as Matthew Redhead put it in an excellent report as challenges to the rules and norms of the game. The game, here, understood as both the game of statecraft and the game of espionage.

Of course, one could argue that - in looking at the activities of states like Russia and Iran as breaches to the rules of the game - we are turning a blind eye to how those rules and norms have been undermined, circumvented, and altogether abandoned by states we associate with “the West.” This is very true. I have long ben critical of the conduct of the United States, especially in the context of normalising assassination. The fact that the US and others have undermined these rules, though, does not entail that current episodes do not represent violations.

We conclude the RUSI piece with a suggestion:

In other words, an approach that recognised the diversity of international society and the evolution of states’ approaches helps policymakers, diplomats, and intelligence professionals fine-tune their norm-setting responses – neither panicked nor complacent. Democracies must defend themselves, without becoming what they oppose.

The last sentence is particularly dear to my work. Too often, democratic governments have fallen into the trap of fighting fire with fire or, as we put in the piece, of suggesting that the fight against particularly brutal enemies had necessarily to occur on the dark side. This is very much a fallacy. One that was exposed - but perhaps never expanded upon - during a moment of soul searching in US history.

As Congressional investigators unravelled the misdeeds of the CIA in the 1970s, they identified certain practices (assassination, for example) as “un-American.” Compiling recommendations for the US government, Senators wrote:

We reject absolutely any notion that the United States should justify its actions by the standards of totalitarians. Our standards must be higher, and this difference is what the struggle is all about. Of course, we must defend our democracy. But in defending it, we must resist undermining the very virtues we are defending.

Yes, there is more than a whiff of American exceptionalism here. And, of course, as those investigations and many since have uncovered, the United States has often used the methods (and the justifications) of totalitarians, but the recommendation remains. The conduct and justifications of democratic states should be different from those of authoritarian and/or totalitarian ones; as that is ‘what the struggle is all about.’