American Foreign Policy

Threats and pre-emption

Fukuyama addresses two themes in the chapter read for today, and so we’ll discuss them.  Again, I wanted a very limited lecture, and more time in discussion.

Threats:  After 9-11 a new threat emerged: Islamic extremism.  How big is this threat?  Some at first seemed to indicate that Islam itself was a threat, that the religion is at base expansionist and intolerant.  They pointed to Islamic history, along with beheadings and desires of people like Bin Laden to create a new Caliphate.  In a country like the US, where people are generally ignorant of Islam or other religions, this painted a scary picture, and all Muslims became distrusted.

Fukuyama notes that this is simply not the case.

First, Islam as a religion emerged as a kind of social reform movement, as Muhammad focused especially on improving the rights of the poor and of women.  Moreover, Jihad as a concept has two facets.  Higher jihad is the fight of faith to remain moral in a world filled with temptations.  Lower jihad is a just war to defend Islam.  Yet it has rules: you protect innocents, you don’t fight if the other side does not want to fight, you don’t force religion on people, and in general the rules are very similar to the rules of Just War theory in the Christian tradition.  Also, the Koran was written as the Qu’arysh tried to eliminate Muhammad and his new movement; many statements from it, such as ‘kill the polytheists’ are directed at the Qu’arysh, though some now (both critics of Islam and extremists) try to say that applies in general.  But since Muhammad demanded respect for other ‘people of the book’ and had friends that were Jewish and Christian, that is wholly implausible.

But Islam did expand through military conquest.  Still, compared to western/Christian expansion, including the crusades, wars in Europe, colonialism, and even the holocaust, it’s clear that in the Christian as well as the Muslim world politicians focus on power rather than the dictates of their faith.  They’ll often use their faith to rationalize actions that contradict it.

Must Muslims follow the Sunni tradition which is very conservative.  They follow the dictates of the Ulama, or learned clergy, who draw on not just the Koran, but also the Hadiths, written after Muhammad’s death, and often contradicting the Koran to try to undo some of Muhammad’s teachings.  Reformist Muslims try to discredit or limit the scope of rule based on the Hadiths.  The Ulama rejected earlier efforts to create a rationalist Islam (Avicenna, Averroes), which ironically had inspired Aquinas and led the Catholic Church to embrace rationalism and Aristotle.  The crusades and attacks from the East gave the emerging Ottoman Empire a desire to use conservative traditional religion to rationalize power, and thus the Ulama embraced a view that the perfect community was that of Muhammad back in Medina in 630.

Due to a split on who should succeed Muhammad, a fight between the party of Ali, Muhammad’s son in law, and the supporters of Abu Bakr, the successor to Muhammad emerged.  Ali’s group wanted to keep the Caliphate in the hands of Muhammad’s family or clan; Abu Bakr and his successors did not.  To make a long story short, the third Caliph, Uthmann, was corrupt and greedy.   When he died, he was replaced by Ali at last.  But Ali had to deal with Uthmann’s son Mu’awyiwah.  Ali managed to defeat him, but after he was assassinated Mu’awiyah took power.  He built an empire centered in Damascus, and focused on power, not religion.  Ali’s son Husayn tried to defeat Mu’aawiyah’s son Yazid, but Yazid had Husayn (Hussein) butchered with his followers at the battle of Karbala.  The party of Ali started to mourn the death by meeting yearly in Karbala and drawing blood by whipping their backs, to show solidarity with Hussein.  This “party of Ali” became the Shi’ites, who developed a different theology based on the belief of Imams, descended from Ali, who were the religious leaders, infallible – sort of like a Pope.  That line died out, so there is a myth of a “hidden Imam” kept in occultation until the end of days, when the prophet Isu (Jesus) returns to convert the world to Islam.  (Jesus returns and shocks the Christian faithful by proclaiming himself Muslim!)

The other group are the Sufis, Though one is hard pressed to find a clear theology, the Tawhid, accepted by all Muslims, is the essential core of Islamic monotheism: God is unified and cannot be divided.  Sufis take that to the point where all reality is unified, and dualities should be rejected, even the self is rejected.  The emphasis is on mystical experience and the oneness of reality and love.  In a sense, this is similar to a variety of mystical beliefs, and many core concepts pre-date Islam. 

Sufism’s “golden age” was from about 1250 to 1500, when Sufis communicated, traveled and developed a strong spiritual community.  They developed poetry, and had a strong influence on early Islam.  They accept the five pillars, as well as the Sunnah of the prophet.  But their emphasis shifts to the mystical rather than the orthopaxic. 

The five pillars, the Shariah, the rituals are simply aides to get one started on an inner search for god and truth.  This is not done through the head, but through the heart, and Sufis emphasize the heart at various levels.  The heart is not just emotion, however, the heart contains the deeper essence of human existence.  The heart is spirit, not emotion.

Life is this spiritual journey.  The first step – and religion allows one to take this step – has to be to recognize that this life is not the true life.  This world is not the real world.  This world is a place where our egos create a false separation between the true self and our perceived self, between our soul and God.  God is more than just an entity (remember, God is incomprehensible and does not have human attributes) but is the state of union and oneness that comes when we overcome our focus on the material and the ego. The focus remains on LOVE, love is the primary value for the Sufis.  Love is a spiritual sense of not just devotion and fondness, but the spiritual experience of oneness.   Sufism is still around, but a minor sect.

Radical Islam is a political movement that emerged in both Shi’ite and Sunni sects as a response to the challenge of modernism and globalization.   They are a minority, as Fukuyama notes, and have trouble recruiting.  Yet over half the Muslim world is under 16 years old, and of course do not necessarily understand their religion well – and thus are susceptible to the kind of subversion of Islam the extremists undertake.  Fukuyama says that nonetheless, this appeal is minimal, and can be made worse if the West is seen as an enemy or killing Muslims.   Their threat is connected to:

WMD:  Nuclear technology is over 60 years old, chemical and biological weapons are cheap to produce.  With globalization the idea that the proliferation of WMD could be harder than ever to stop creates a real threat.  As long as nuclear weapons were in the hands of powerful states deterrence was rational.  But if it expands?  India and Pakistan haven’t fought a war since they’ve gone nuclear.   Still…

Terrorism:  Terrorists could use WMD.  The fear was put forth that al qaeda could get WMD from Iraq, and that meant we needed to strike.  This is probably a very unlikely prospect, but in the post 9-11 mood, it seemed rational.

Thus the idea of pre-emptive war, as described by Fukuyama.  Yet pre-emptive war is usually only if there is an obvious and direct threat.  Iraq didn’t fit that bill, and to move to a preventative war requires, as Fukuyama notes, real knowledge about the threat – something we don’t seem to have. 

So we have Neo-conservatism: the US should be a force for good in the world, acting on the world stage, seeing all citizens as humans of equal rights, with our political action globally being informed by the same morals we have nationally or even locally.   Thus we work to promote democracy, equal rights, and other western values unapologetically, rejecting the relativism of realists.

Yet the means to do isn’t necessarily war, especially pre-emptive war.  One can imagine trying to use aid, persuasion and our example.  Yet the existence of dictators and massive atrocities creates an argument or military action.  Add to that the threats of anti-modern, anti-western movements to potentially get WMD leads to a double whammy for neo-conservatives: we can do good by ridding a country of a dictator to allow democracy to have a chance, and we can protect ourselves from the potential that this dictator will develop nuclear weapons, or give WMD to terrorists.   Add to that concerns about oil from the region, and the case for pre-emptive war seems strong.

But war is a blunt and brutish instrument of policy.  It kills people.  People in places like Iraq have had their lives ruined by the violence it unleashes.  Is there a disconnect between the neo-conservative concern of individual rights and the impact of this kind of policy on individuals? 

Discussion issue:

1.  Threat of Islamic extremism: how real?

2.  Threat of terrorism – how do we assess?

3.  Efficacy of military power to achieve these goals, how do we assess that?

4.  Both Johnson and Fukuyama paint persuasive, yet very different pictures.  Why?  What’s similar or different about them?  Can we start comparing and developing ideas about the future of American foreign policy?

5.  Again to the relativism of realism: are there advantages to realist relativism?  Note that realists don’t say we can’t reflect our own values, they tend to emphasize not expecting others to share them.

6.  What does globalization mean for all these approaches to foreign policy?