This entry is being written as the results of the U.S. Presidential election are streaming in. It certainly promises to be a roller-coaster ride, just as the entire year leading up to the election has been. In reality, the outcome of the election is not as important as it is made out to be. If Mr. Trump wins, many of his grand plans will be severely stymied by the Congress, even if both the House and the Senate emerge Republican-controlled. If Secretary Clinton prevails, she will encounter similar obstacles.
The election is but an exiguous piece in a much larger puzzle, which concerns the survival of the Western civilization. Europe, Canada, and Australia--and, if Clinton has her way, America, too--are being inundated with millions of migrants. Carefully vetted immigration is to be encouraged and, indeed, it is precisely on the talents, diligence, and sheer numbers of immigrants that the Western civilization emerged to be dominant and prosperous. However, it hardly requires much divination or analysis to understand that permitting the importation, wholesale, of millions of individuals who live and breathe tribalism, misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, nepotism, polygamy, and other habits that the West abjured eons ago will end in conflict. Certainly, some of those migrants will renounce their cultural values and nomos, and they will do so of their own accord and--lamentably--contrary to the exhortations of the assorted bien-pensants in the West. The latter still persist in their preposterous belief that all cultures are equally valid or, worse, that the Western values should defer to minority norms in the name of "diversity." These days, one observes, everything is relativized and open to debate; every absolute of old must be challenged. While it is assuredly laudable to question and to doubt, leering to the extreme of discarding everything once cherished is foolhardy and outright foolish. Rule of law is better that authoritarian caprice. Equality of the sexes is better than institutionalized misogyny. Democracy is better than autocracy. Separation of church and state is better than theocracy. Ultimately, individualism (including individual human rights) is better than collectivism. Therefore, the prevailing precepts upon which the Western civilization rests are better than those practiced in, say, the Near East: be it Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran or Yemen or the supposedly more enlightened Lebanon, Morocco or Malaysia.
While some migrants, accordingly, will embrace the liberal democratic values of their new host states, many will not. Those who do not will do one or both of two things: Withdraw to their self-imposed ghettos and procreate or bomb and shoot up the rest of the population. Even if they do merely the former, they will only do so until their numbers grow sufficiently to engage in the civil unrest that inevitably arises with ghettoization. In either case, civil strife is unavoidable.
Once that societal upheaval materializes, two scenarios can come to pass. A section of the population (commonly derided as "nationalist" by the soi-disant opinion-formers) may decide to proverbially take matters into its own hands. The people being insulted for wearing certain apparel, harassed for drinking alcohol, assaulted, attacked and killed may well reason that they can no longer rely on the authorities to protect them and so resolve to do so themselves. The authorities, such as there are and will be, may accept that, without resolute measures aimed at filtering out the destabilizing elements in the society, said society faces an imminent collapse, and they may or may not assist the popular uprising. Alternatively, the governments may use the societal instability as a pretext for arrogating to themselves enormous powers, such as not seen in decades, even centuries. Such governments--bigger and stronger than for many a generation--would ineluctably engage in blanket repression of the general population, migrant and nonmigrant, under the guise of restoring and maintaining public order and security. Put simply, what today happens at airport "security" would be extended to almost every facet of life. One needs to be only a casual student of history to know that suppression of dissent can successfully last for only a limited time before the population revolts. That would in turn trigger the first course of events detailed earlier.
The upshot of the foregoing is that, unless the migrant invasion of the West is not stanched immediately, the question of war is going to be a matter of when rather than if. Whatever the corollary of that war, it would shake the Western world to its core and undoubtedly abrogate the West's cultural, political, economic, military, and other dominance. While some elements in the West--particularly among the elites--may exult at such a possibility, they would do well to reflect on whether they would rather live in Pakistan, Venezuela, Congo or Laos than in their comfortable ivory towers in the West.
This being an international law platform, it behooves to examine the role legislation and jurisprudence might play in the above context. The answer is: enormous. International law pertaining to refugees and human rights is hopelessly anachronistic. It was designed decades ago and was not envisioned to cater for scenarios such as the one unfolding in the United States and in Europe at this time. The laws on the books were passed in order to protect the most vulnerable, destitute people fleeing for their very lives: women, children, and the elderly escaping by the skin of their teeth an almost certain death and ensconcing themselves, mostly temporarily, in the nearest shelter they could find. Those laws did not foresee millions of healthy young men storming national borders thousands of miles from their domiciles because they heard welfare and other freebies would be doled out there. Nor were those laws meant to provide for the fact that a fair many of the said millions would endeavor to change their new host lands into the image of the decrepit third-world despotisms and theocracies whence they came.
With that in mind, it is high time for alterations of the relevant laws to be effected without delay. The most salient and pressing of these are:
- The refugee law has to be clear that an asylum application lodged anywhere other than the nearest safe state to the asylee's will be automatically denied and followed with an immediate deportation. That means that e.g. an Afghan can only hope to receive asylum in Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan, but not Sweden, Germany or even Turkey. An Eritrean--insofar as Eritrea can be deemed unsafe at all--can get asylum only in Djibouti, Ethiopia or Sudan, not in Italy, Greece or England. In practice, since the European Union does not border any state that can be considered unsafe, all asylum applications made in an E.U. member should be ipso facto rejected, with extreme prejudice. The same applies to the U.S.
- Dovetailing off the previous point, deportations of failed asylum seekers have to be rendered at the time the refusal is issued. There should certainly be an appeals process--except when the rejection is based on the grounds from the first point--but it cannot be dragged out for months and years, all the while allowing the asylee to roam around at will.
- Human rights cannot be invoked by a failed asylee as a means of circumventing the refugee law and stay in the host country. It very frequently happens that someone whose asylum claim has been rejected then launches a suit preventing his or her deportation on the basis that, say, they already formed a family in the host state or that, though their life might not be in danger in their home state, they might nonetheless get arrested there and wind up in a prison without a T.V. and Xbox in the cell.
- Technicalities must likewise not preclude the operation of the law, the foremost of which is an asylee lacking identity documents or a failed asylee's home state refusing to accept them. Those two arguments thwart both processing of asylum applications as well as deportations in alarming numbers of cases. States that refuse to admit failed asylees have to be subjected to extreme pressure, including economic and other sanctions, with a view to making them amend their ways.
- Similarly to the preceding point, political correctness must not be permitted to impede investigations into the validity of asylum claims. An asylee professing to be underage (which attracts more lenient treatment as well as conferral of more generous entitlements) has to undergo whatever tests are necessary to ascertain the veracity of his or her claim regarding age. It is unforgivable that, as recently reported, 29-year-olds are admitted into a country as "child refugees" because conducting examinations into their age would be "intrusive" and breach their "right" to "privacy." Similarly, those not in possession of identity documents must be interviewed and interrogated, with skepticism and at length, to determine where it is they come from. Making false claims about one's background has to be disincentivized.
- While their claims are being processed, asylees must be housed in secure accommodations. They cannot be allowed to wander around the country (or, indeed, the whole Schengen area) together with their flashy sneakers and latest smartphones, all the while being in receipt of hundreds of dollars of monthly maintenance. Further, those accommodations have to conform to the domestic legal standards, meaning that incidents such as that reported recently in Denmark, where an asylee was allowed to live as a married couple with his underage "wife," must not occur.
- Asylees who are successful and thus legally become refugees do so on the understanding that (1) their stay in the host country is temporary, and (2) their status applies exclusively to them. That means that there is no pathway to citizenship, but only to permanent residence, and even that only after the best part of a decade has elapsed. Moreover, a successful asylee cannot be permitted to "bring in" (i.e. sponsor) any current or new family members to the host country. It is egregious that a single asylee--even before having his/her asylum claim approved--is allowed to bring in a half a dozen family members, too, on the grounds of family unification.
- Refugees, although their sojourn in the host state is temporary, are to be expected to fully integrate with and practice the host state's cultural, social, and legal values. That, in the West and many other places, includes, but is not limited to, speaking the language, abandoning the burka, abjuring the sharia, earnestly looking for work, participating in the civic life, respecting and promoting individual liberties (including in and for own family's), etc.
- Migrants rescued from dingy, sinking ships on the high seas, most often in international waters, should be given basic immediate assistance, such as some food provisions, blankets, and clothing. They should then be sailed back to the shores they had set off from and left there. There is no justification for transporting migrants who shipwrecked a few dozen miles off the coast of Libya 500 miles to Italy.
- Probably the most commonsense point of all: An asylee who commits any legal infraction--even jaywalking, let alone rioting or rape--is, if need be, incarcerated, and deported with a lifetime immigration ban. The sight of hordes of asylees who (1) illegally snuck into a country thousands of miles away from their home, (2) are lavished with munificent benefits paid for by the host country's taxpayers, (3) show overt disdain for the host state's citizenry and culture, and then (4) engage in rioting, sexual abuse or terrorist activities is enough to make anybody's blood boil.
The antecedent constitute the bare minimum necessary to save the Western civilization from not only civil war with the battalions of migrants and their descendants but also from the populism, jingoism, virulent nationalism, xenophobia, and bigotry that will inevitably arise betimes if such measures are not taken. The measures above, and the sentiments behind them, may sound callous. I personally do not blame the asylees for trying all kinds of tactics to make it to the West. I know that if I had been born--through no fault of my own--in a part of the world where I knew I would never have any prospects for a better life regardless of whatever I did, I might well essay to go elsewhere by any means necessary. I also do not blame the terrorists and other enemies of the civilized world for exploiting the refugee and other laws to form a fifth column in our midst and attack us. As they say: All is fair in love and war.
I do, however, blame the Western governments for not patching up those laws and commissioning other methods of combating illegal immigration.
Just as it is not the fault of a Honduran, Pakistani, Sudanese, Syrian or Senegalese that they were born where they were, neither is it ours. Nor is it our fault that we happen to live in much nicer and all-around better places. Life is unfair and just because not everyone can partake in the quality of life and other privileges we in the West have does not mean we, too, should be stripped of them by allowing ourselves to be swamped by millions of people who share neither our demographics nor--far more importantly--psychographics.
©2017 Michael L.S.
In the course of reading Carsten Stahn's (pretty lumbering) book The Law and Practice of International Territorial Administration, the following excerpt is encountered:
What is needed, in the immediate post-conflict period is not quick elections, democratic ferment, or economic "shock therapy" but a more controlled and gradual approach to liberalization, combined with the immediate building of government institutions that can manage these political and economic reforms. (Roland Paris, At War's End)
...or, phrased more succinctly, "institutionalization before liberalization."
That, one is tempted to adjudge, sounds very reasonable in the first instance. It is at once logical and legally sound. It is consonant with the idea that democracy cannot be imposed but must perforce evolve: It has to be organic and autochthonous, and it can only develop as its foundations are gradually internalized among the dramatis personae (or, in modern parlance, the stakeholders). Stahn not only criticizes some territorial administration projects for having failed to secure the locals' backing (which is "old news") but shrewdly distinguishes between domestic consent and domestic support. He adroitly accentuates the importance of the latter as a conditio sine qua non for an international governance mission to stand any chance of success.
Yet, on closer inspection the above postulates can be descried as suffering from a number of deficiencies and assumptions.
For one thing, the reasoning is a standard Catch-22. The naissance of democracy is contingent on strong domestic "ownership" and local "capacity-building" (the buzzwords of "good governance" de nos jours); but how are these possible without the existence of a environment of liberalism, pluralism, and--yes--democracy? In other words, how can people freely decide what type of a government they wish to have (viz, internal self-determination) if there is no opportunity for them to express their views by way of a one-person-one-vote mechanism operating among a politically-educated electorate?
Attempts to reform or rebuild the economy in the administrated areas along the lines of the free-market laissez-faire model are also lambasted, on the grounds that doing so is contrary both to human rights standards (self-determination, again) and the laws of occupation. That may well be correct. However, territorial administrations are necessarily long-term endeavors (v. infra). As such, they are also expensive endeavors. Both the administration and the reconstruction (one will recall that such projects are most frequently undertaken in the aftermath of a devastating and destructive conflict) require a continuous inflow of exorbitant quantities of money. Donor conferences and charity pledges only go so far, and mostly last until something more current (and bloody) grabs people's attention (another conflict elsewhere, perhaps). Whence, then, are the funds to be procured? The answer is: private investors, especially via F.D.I. However, foreign investors demand stability, transparency, certainty. They need some manner of guaranty. An environment in which neither the political nor socioeconomic order is anywhere close to solidification does not lend itself well at all to inspiring investors. Without such investments though, it is dubitable whether the administrators or the domestic decision-makers--such as there be--can foster a domain conducive to the emergence of a free, liberal, democratic society. The whole exercise becomes a matter of petitio principii.
Next comes the no small matter concerning the timeframes involved. Democracy does not evolve in a matter of years (q.v. the amount of time the South needed to accept desegregation); sometimes it does not evolve at all (pick many former U.S.S.R. states or any post-Arab Spring country, with the cautious exception of Tunisia). Stahn and many others advocate a policy of "persuasion": convincing the local stakeholder to gradually internalize the ideals of democracy, etc. They suggest the first step be the establishment of an independent and impartial judiciary. Such a vision though is woefully divorced from the realities on the ground. Brutal wars do not happen due to "misunderstandings" and "misapprehensions," but due to incompatible and frequently diametrically-opposing goals and objectives of the belligerents. The ensuing war occasions thousands of fatalities, tens of thousands of wounded, hundreds of thousands of refugees, and millions of seething, livid people. The proposition that such people will, within a few years, be able to identify and focus on commonalities, and give each other a group hug is ludicrous... - and that encompasses members of the judiciary who, ultimately, are members of the warring communities. Moreover, the administrators do not have years on end to wait for a groundswell toward amity and reconciliation: Territorial administrations are necessarily transitional and temporary.
The conclusion is hence insuperable: The precepts of democracy, liberalization and liberalism, tolerance, pluralism, rule of law, etc. must be foisted, with some measure of compulsion, on postconflict societies. The approach does not have to be exclusive of continual efforts to coopt local stakeholders--indeed, doing so is indispensable to eventual success--but even medium-term results are impossible without a degree of coercion.
One argument frequently advanced against coercion is that local actors are better equipped to handle local problems. They carry more gravitas with the local populace and are more cognizant of the local challenges, history, culture, values, etc. That is very myopic and blinkered reasoning: It presupposes that the external administrators are complete neophytes. The situation is rather the reverse, however. The administrators have their own experience, whether they are Westerners who come from the history of centuries of conflict and bloodshed or whether they come from areas that experienced centuries of colonial turbulence and postcolonial strife. In any case, the administrators are informed by first- and second-hand knowledge of events whose corollary has been the realization that representative democracy is the best form of government, that the rule of law, separation of church and state, separation of powers, etc. are the best form of governance, that freedom of conscience and speech and assembly are essential for a thriving society, that the free-market economy is the optimal catalyst for sustained prosperity, and so forth. Such knowledge, experience, and expertise cannot be dismissed as inferior to the locals'; quite the contrary.
Furthermore, it is questionable to what extent local leaders possess genuine sway and respect. After all, they are the very same ones who initiated, inflamed, and facilitated the destructive conflict in the first place. Rather than defer to them and strive to mollify them through compromise, it might be more advantageous to circumvent them and appeal directly to the population. That was the tactic utilized in e.g. Cambodia, Bosnia, and Afghanistan, and though it was (boringly predictably) criticized, it is difficult to envision an alternative course of action the respective administrators could have taken.
All this is a gamble. Anything externally imposed runs the risk of encountering implacable opposition solely by virtue of being foreign. Internal malcontents might possess the pull to constantly and effectively undermine even the most forcefully imposed initiatives. Ultimately, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the population (or a belligerent community) might not, even latently, be favorably disposed toward prosperity and stability, but be interested in brute dominance.
An international territorial administrator does not have the luxury of investing decades into endeavoring to change the hearts and minds of the administrated population. Moreover, such an approach elicits the difficult question of why several generations (at least two or three, possibly many more) of people should be subjected to continued repression, oppression, penury, and an overall lesser standard of life when it is possible to fast-forward the process of democratization and liberalization. Tens of millions more Afghan women do not have to be subjected to a life of ultra-patriarchal tyranny and all manner of physical and psychological abuse merely because academics believe that equal rights should not be imposed and international politicians do not have the resolve needed to ensure that is accomplished as soon as possible. The bulk of international polity is today more sensitized both to the value and transience of human life than ever before. It is increasingly not anymore the question of the "less fortunate" (read: by sheer accident of birth) becoming empowered politically and economically, but their becoming empowered politically and economically right now (or, at least, as absolutely soon as possible).
"Institutionalization before liberalization" not only entails no guarantees that the "liberalization" part will ever be attained; it also requires considerable time for an outcome (either way) to emerge. Reversing the principle necessitates determination, resources, and, frankly, "thick skin" (for one, there will be inevitable, though mendacious and selfserving, charges of neocolonialism leveled), but the millions of longsuffering and brutalized people to whose aid international administrators purportedly come deserve nothing less.
Thus, "liberalization before institutionalization," with the utmost resolve and uncompromising, long-term commitment should be the imperative in scenarios of comprehensive international territorial governance missions.
©2015 Michael L.S.
Reading through Anghie's (rather brief) exposition on some of the writings of Francisco de Vitoria--widely considered the pioneer of international law--one cannot but be struck by the parallels that can be drawn between his thinking more than five centuries ago and the doctrines informing some of the most recent of global developments.
When the Spanish encountered the "Indians" (Native Americans), they were unsure how to relate to them. A common error is made in this regard by believing that the former viewed the latter ex ante as less than human. That was not the case: De Vitoria and his contemporaries considered the natives fully human. They also acknowledged that they were "civilized," in that they had discernible values, systems of governance and societal order, capacity to interact with others, etc. The natives were, accordingly, fully human, equal in their humanity to the Spanish. However, the Spanish recognized that the natives' values system was at prodigious variance with their own, and the question ineluctably arose of how to reconcile them (if possible) or whose system would take precedence (if not).
De Vitoria astutely sidestepped the prevalent dogma at the time that all authority was ultimately traceable to a "god," or, more plausibly, the "god's" earthly representative (the pope). The reasoning was that the natives had never heard of Christianity and could hence not be held liable under its injunctions. He thus fell back on the (Aquinian) notion of natural law, i.e. an objective, ubiquitous set of rules and values immanent in all human beings. De Vitoria termed its contemporary incarnation as ius gentium. Here was the rub: He posited that, whereas ius gentium was universal, the Spanish had, in a manner of speaking, "perfected" it. By implication, the natives required assistance to self-realize the truism, benefits, and execution of ius gentium, and it was the Spaniards' duty to proffer that guidance and help. Crucially, any opposition was deemed unreasonable: If the norms of ius gentium were the perfection of thought and practice for all humankind, then any opposition to it was a fortiori retrograde, reactionary, and progress-retarding, and, accordingly, had to be staunched... - by any means necessary. On that view, by extirpating dissent to the process of inculcation of ius gentium among the natives, the Spanish were doing them a major favor (even if that "favor" ended up manifesting itself in the form of blatant theft and ruthless genocide).
The analogy with modern times is glaring. What was ius gentium in the days of de Vitoria is the conceptualization of putatively "universal" human rights (liberal democratic governance, rule of law, separation of powers, equality of the sexes, various freedoms (thought speech, etc.), protection of minorities, and so forth) today. These values--just as ius gentium of old--are a product of evolution of the Western thought, and have been institutionalized by means of international organizations (e.g. the U.N.), which, themselves, are a product of Western politics.
The U.N. has promulgated such values through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants, and other instruments. The Europeans states have embraced even higher normative standards in the form of the E.U.'s Charter of Fundamental Rights and the E.C.H.R. The O.A.S. has its own charter as does the A.U. A.S.E.A.N. and the Arab League also compiled declarations, though these have been rebuked for falling short of the "universal" values.
The question is what happens when a subject deviates from these "universal" norms. That can be due to e.g. its cultural specificities or economic particularities. The Arab Charter on Human Rights, for instance, fails to guarantee equal treatment of women and discriminates against non-citizens' basic rights. A.S.E.A.N.'s attempt has met with even more strident criticism for omitting some of the most longstanding, fundamental protections or providing conspicuous and numerous loopholes to evade them. These, however, are difficult to challenge directly, being that they are endorsed by a multiplicity of quite powerful states. There is an entire official (government) and semi-official (N.G.O.s) "industry" centered around producing reports and conducting campaigns concerning individual states' adherence to the human right principles. Which principles? The "universal" ones, but of course. And where the presumptive "international society" (read: the Western-led international organizations) can, it does its utmost to introduce as many of these norms as possible to the areas under its control (e.g. Timor-Leste, Kosovo, Iraq, etc.). Harking back to de Vitoria, opposition to such endeavors is excoriated as backward, unhelpful, and, yes, hostile. Though such hostility is no longer countered with genocide, its protagonists are excluded from all nation-building processes and, depending on the extent and quality of their opposition, may be subjected to anything from imprisonment to "daisy-cutters."
The issue at the heart of this discourse is what the A.S.E.A.N. Declaration unabashedly makes reference to: the notion of "cultural relativism." It is an idea with which even a cursory observer of current affairs is familiar, to wit, that every society has a right (indeed, a human right!) to practice and safeguard the values prevailing in that society, even if these diverge considerably from the alleged "universal" values. That idea is espoused by such diverse actors as autocratic regimes, leftist academics, Western leaders (still reeling under the burden of colonial baggage), and, indeed, a great many people in the type of societies in the docket, including those (e.g. women) who would benefit from a conferral of the "universal" rights on them. Who, the trope goes, made those rights "universal" and with what justification? What should give the (Western or West-tainted) powers the right to, yet again, impose their views on the sovereign peoples of the world? Did we learn nothing from the brutalities of centuries of colonialist practice?
The opposing view is that of the "soft bigotry" of lowered expectations. The contention here is that the "universal" values are indeed superior to--termed, for simplicity's sake--regional values, and that attempting to equalize the worthiness and merit of the two bespeaks racism, for it implies that the "regionals" are not deserving of enjoying the same liberties and rights as those fortunate enough to be living in, basically, the Western(-modeled) countries. Far from striving to eschew the aggregate of the colonialist enterprise, "cultural relativism" does the opposite: It perpetuates the "natives'" inferiority.
The crux of the matter, therefore, is the status of the "universal" set of human rights norms in comparison to the others. Is it--its misnomer notwithstanding--just one of many acceptable (which itself is a normative term) standards or is it the ideal toward whose truly universal implementation to aim?
Descrying a definitive answer to this is impossible. The Western body politic is petrified of doing or saying anything remotely reminiscent of colonial practices (further affected by the anomie plaguing its society, in which any kind of judgment is unwelcome). The assorted Third World tyrants are keen to maintain the status quo, which is greatly strengthened by illiberal practices passed off as "local culture." Many ordinary people in those societies, too, vehemently oppose change. (That is by no means unprecedented: Some of the most ornery opponents of the Suffragette movement in the West were precisely women. For instance, tales abound of female prison wardens being far more brutal toward incarcerated women's rights activists than their male counterparts. Scores of women, too, made public speeches and engaged in other types of campaign denouncing the Suffragettes.) Who is entitled to deem one system of values better or worse than others, on what basis, and pursuant to what criteria?
Meanwhile, child marriages are rampant. So is marital rape. Cheap child labor supports entire economies. Homosexuals are hanged, "apostates" beheaded, "adulterers" stoned, juveniles imprisoned with adults, "blasphemers" lynched, girls denied access to basic education. The Gulf Cooperation Council states openly practice what can only be described as modern-day slavery. Tens of thousands of people are locked up without any due process, including for political slights and "thoughtcrime." Tens of millions have no recourse to justice against gross excesses by state power. Hundreds of millions are unable to have any input on who determines the course of their lives. Do those individuals not deserve the quality of life that those born in other places in the world are fortunate enough to be able to take for granted? Should those so blessed not assay to help the them?
If the latter narrative is embraced, there will inevitably arise resistance, including from among the "natives." How should it be addressed: the way of the Spanish or differently? Is a universalization of human rights necessarily a zero-sum endeavor, viz, either the current state of affairs is accepted or the errant societies are brought into line, even manu militari if need be?
Might the answer lie in gradual, nuanced--yet insistently, doggedly, confidently, continually driven--change employing methods such as Joseph Nye's "soft power"? That could take generations, meanwhile condemning billions to continued suffering and inferior life quality. Conversely, rapid, revolutionary tactics could backfire (q.v. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and other, less pronounced, cases in Africa), occasioning conflict whose immediate ramifications would be far more detrimental than the invidious conditions at present.
One conclusion does seem inevitable: The "universal" norms of human rights are superior and should be adopted and practiced globally. How that is actualized is a different matter, but de Vitoria's strategy is not an option.
© 2014 Michael L.S.
The University of Manchester annually organizes a postgraduate conference in law. (This year's was held at the end of October at the Old Trafford.) It is an enjoyable all-day event, where selected doctoral students present their ongoing research in a supportive, semi-formal environment, devoid of the pressures of more rigid "peer-reviewed" conferences. The "rules" are more relaxed, in that e.g. a presenter speaks for a full half hour whereupon there follows a fairy generous Q&A part. As there were quite a few presenters, the session is divided into parallel panels, and the attendees chose to patronize the one in the morning and the one in the afternoon they envision to be of the most interest or otherwise stimulating.
Most of the ones I saw were highly thought-provoking and certainly worthy foci for academic inquiry. There was one exploring "domestic violence" experienced by underage women in abusive relationships. Another discussed the relevance of the current narcotics legislation--particularly the classification of substances--vis-a-vis the so-called "legal highs." Yet another explored the utility of the concept of "money-laundering," both legally and societally. (The latter evinced an interesting, if somewhat unconvincing, point that small-time money-launderers (e.g. street-level drug-pushers) sometimes proceed to invest their laundered funds into legitimate businesses. Entrepreneurs'R'Us!) One presentation though caught my undivided attention, and for all the wrong reasons.
A young man assayed to "reframe" the wanton, gluttonous riots that beset parts of Great Britain back in 2011. In his view, apart from practically a given that the initial riots were justified due to the police killing an unarmed man, both those and the subsequent mushrooming riots were pretty much legitimate manifestations of indignation by--you can easily guess the part that follows--"victims" of "marginalization" and "disenfranchisement" of the, naturally, lower (lowest?) communal strata.
How did he figure that out? Well, he interviewed those who had gotten arrested in the aftermath of the riots, and discovered that the preponderance of them had long had alcohol, drugs, domestic, etc. problems. In a most unusual turn of events, they also happened to be "poor" and jobless. Not only were they "victims" who were understandably (if not legitimately, at least not wholly legitimately) expressing their frustrations with the inequity and iniquity that is modern Great Britain, but the riots were not "mindless," as routinely portrayed in the media, nor were the rioters merely brutal thugs. Indeed, an anecdote was proffered about how one scumbag--sorry, "victim" of "oppression" by the "system"--was about to throw a brick through the window front of a charity shop, when another "victim" thwarted him in that mission on the basis that their beef was with such faceless corporate pigs as the banks and big businesses. Because, you see, vandalizing a Barclays or a Tesco is fine; a mom-and-pop store is apparently not. (No explication as to the grounds for an objective evaluation of such conscience-based, hence totally normative, judgments was adduced.)
Rather prosaically and anticlimactically by this stage, quite a few choice words were reserved for the police and the government. The latter (ab)used the ensuing prosecutions as a show of force, whereas the former engaged in unpalatable breaches of privacy and the hallowed "human rights" of the participants. How exactly did the police do that? Firstly, it plastered the faces of the suspects all over posters and billboards, including on vans driving around the city. That, ladies and gentlemen, the presenter in short shrift repudiated as a revolting invasion of the suspects' privacy. He then explained how the police was able to identify those it went on to apprehend by reason of their having had previous dealings with the police (read: they were "known" to the police). Thus, the narrative goes, the police perpetuated the vicious cycle of "victimhood" of those who were (and are) already among the most "vulnerable." Besides, does it not stand to reason that those who had already been chewed up and spat out by The System(TM) would be only too alacritous to rage against it, given an opportunity!?! All that was rounded off with some statistics about the conviction, incarceration, and remission (reoffending) rates, the corollary of which was the "prison does not work."
That, folks, is an example of doctoral-level thinking. One is tempted to weep uncontrollably in sheer despair.
If you could detect a soupcon of sarcasm and an overall casual tone in the foregoing, I congratulate you on your perspicacity. True: I am finding it difficult to write about this with the detached severity reserved for academic discourse. The reason is simple: With due respect to the gentleman in question, the above is dilettante hokum, in content and reasoning, more apposite to be found in a two-bit samizdat flier by a college Marxist appreciation club than the dissertation by a law doctoral candidate at a global-top-50 university.
The entire presentation was an orgy of the most extreme left-wing dogma, lacking even cursory mention of counterpoints and nuance, let alone a thorough treatment and critical analysis of the same. The "novelty" of the whole schtick was supposed to be embodied in the fact that it sought to depart from the established tableau of the rioters as criminals and of the riots as brainless, meaningless violence. It seems that--just as is the case in journalism--aspiring (and not just those!) academics make their names either by producing high-quality work or by being outrageous.
A county court judge who was in the audience ably rebuked the presenter for his assertion that "prison does not work." She enjoined him about the use of prison not merely as a locus of rehabilitation (by extension, wherein appropriate treatment is rendered to ensure there is no remission to a life of crime) but also as one of punishment. In that regard, prison indeed does work: The miscreants are removed from the society, protecting the latter from the former's continued pernicious malfeasance.
Then there is the matter of the candidate's very sketchy methodology. Why did he not assay to interview those who rioted but were not arrested? Could their motivation have been not pushback against putative "victimization" but something more trivial, yea, possibly wanton violence? Come to think of it, what is the ratio of arrested vs. not-arrested rioters: How representative is the presenter's study group of Manchester's rioters as a whole?
But the presentation evidenced a much more insidious problem, one increasingly visible in academia. It used to be the problem that students grew out of in the early stages of their undergraduate studies. Now, apparently it is observable among graduate students and even among seasoned academics, and it is this: prejudice... - or, if more detailed an explanation be necessary: espousing and exhibiting propaganda and rhetoric in lieu of objective, impassive, neutral research and analysis.
It was readily apparent that the presenter had formulated his conclusions before he had even conceived of his research, let alone embarked on it. Indeed, his dissertation is predicated on his personal dogma, not on the findings pursuant to extensive, comprehensive, analytical study. Epistemological arguments about the plausibility or otherwise of truly objective research aside, striving to illuminate a research question by prejudging it and then weaving the argument retrospectively to fit the predetermined denouement is surely the very antithesis of academic inquiry.
Back when I was a lecturer in rhetoric and research, I always endeavored to impress upon my (mostly freshmen and sophomore) students the indispensability of approaching a research area and the subsequent processes with an open mind. Sometimes a researcher knows a lot about the researched field, sometimes less, sometimes nothing. Sometimes they think they know a lot. Whatever the case, the scientific method is clear: One approaches the research as if one truly knows nothing, at least in terms of the possible outcomes. The mindset ought to be: I do not know anything about how this will turn out, I do not know what I will find; I will therefore search wide and deep for the answers, wherever the search may lead me.
You do not include your opinions, you do not choose which evidence you like, you do not discard facts you dislike. You are not down in the thick of it, participating in it or influencing it. You are high above the fray, espying the goings-on you witness, describing them, and attempting to find as many possible explanations for what you see (i.e. you hypothesize). You can use primary sources and your own experiments and/or secondary sources; but you keep digging in all directions, you keep asking questions, you keep wondering. You then set about trying rigorously to at once prove and disprove your hypotheses, until one remains standing: That becomes a theory (in the academic, scientific sense), i.e. your conclusion. Sometimes the conclusion conforms to your own intuitions and views; at other times it might not. But the conclusions must at all costs be arrived at independently from your intuitions, opinions, prejudices, experiences, and other views, conscious or unconscious.
Basing academic work on opinion is an insult to generations of academics. One does not require advanced education to put opinion on paper; rudimentary literacy skills are sufficient for such an exercise. The whole point of graduate studies is to detach every facet of oneself from one's work. Failing that, one does not end up with a thesis or dissertation worth its name, but with something not unlike an op-ed in Cosmo.
© 2014 Michael L.S.
Last month I attended a Ph.D. "master class" in which eight or so doctoral candidates presented their work-in-progress, preliminary findings, context of their research, etc. One presentation in particular caught my attention.
A young lady is examining compliance with international humanitarian law (the Geneva Conventions et alia). Her hypothesis is that the laws in question are often(?) not followed on the battlefield because military personnel receive inadequate training in this regard; in particular, the imperative of adherence to these provisions is not impressed upon them with sufficient urgency and sobriety. If only--she contends--soldiers were instructed more formidably in how critical it is to comply with the norms of international humanitarian law, the likelihood of instances of abuse such as the Abu 3'rayb prisoner mistreatment scandal or the more recent contretemps involving Sgt. Alexander Blackman would have been minimized if not altogether averted.
As I was absorbing her polemic, it struck me again how alarmingly insular and detached from the real world academia is becoming. College students and academics have been castigated for being "out of touch" on many issues. An apposite example is the now decades-in-the-making promotion of a happy-go-lucky mode of education for children that accentuates their right to personhood, individuality, having fun, and so forth, which critics claim (now supported by hard research) deprives them of the structure, discipline, knowledge, and skills that they require to grow into both competent workers and functional adults. Prison reform, human rights, civil liberties, sexual equality, and immigration are some other matters that lend themselves to such criticism, too.
The biggest difficulty with the issue in the docket is that it is being theorized on by someone who has no first- or even second-hand experience of the battlefield. It is not only unrealistic, but also egregious and insulting, for an adolescent ensconced in an armchair in Manchester to be prescribing to grown men and women situated in the midst of war how they ought to behave.
Imagine, if you will, the reality of the theater of war: Mines and R.P.G.s are exploding left and right, dozens of bullets are making the cracking sound inches away from your ears, you have witnessed people who an hour ago were laughing and planning Christmas with their families blown to smithereens a few feet in front of you, your friends' guts are spilling out of their bodies or their limbs are gone...
There is no Undo button to press anywhere.
There is no Pause button.
There is no Quit button.
Somehow you make it out alive and later on you come across a wounded enemy combatant who mere minutes previously had been launching grenades at you and spraying you with bullets. Can anyone seriously argue that in such a situation you can be reasonably expected to engage in an objective, dispassionate, detached introspection of the Geneva Conventions!?! "Ludicrous" does not begin to describe it!
I am not even remotely impugning the importance of both the existence and enforcement of robust international rules governing engagement in armed conflicts. Wanton destruction, revenge, brutalization of civilians or even coldblooded abuse of enemy combatants are to be unreservedly condemned, outlawed, and censured. However, there has to be a dose of hard realism present when presuming to prescribe the behavior of individuals placed under unimaginable levels of personal, existential stress. P.T.S.D. is a recognized condition, which affects the sufferers profoundly; this has to be accounted for in any discourse seeking to regulate the conduct of those likely to be severely afflicted by it.
After all, many of those insisting that soldiers should abide by the international humanitarian law even in the most stressful circumstances are among the first to characterize many types of criminals and societal transgressors as "victims" who should first and foremost be helped address their multifarious problems, and be punished only as an afterthought and certainly with leniency. Can they not extend the same kind of consideration to those who underwent experiences the "disenfranchised" and "marginalized" rioters of 2011 or violent robbers afflicted by assorted "substance addictions" cannot even fathom?
© 2014 Michael L.S.
