Thinking About Alliances

In my dissertation work, I'm attempting to develop ethical guidelines for when non-state groups have the right to go to war (that is, when they have Right Authority). My claim is that non-state groups can often represent their communities as well or better than state governments can, and the current argument that only states are allowed to go to war is absurd.

At the moment, my current obstacle has to do with one of the traditional requirements for Right Authority: the Authority's ability to control and discipline its subordinates. Basically, if fighters on your side are running rampant, attacking civilians, disregarding your orders, and ignoring attempts to broker ceasefires with the other side, then there is a serious problem with your claim of being a Right Authority. That's the way that the issue is presented, anyway. Underlying this treatment is the assumption that armed groups are part of a hierarchical chain of command.

The problem is that when you look at conflicts like the Mindanao struggle in the Philippines, many armed men are part of mostly-autonomous bands that might affiliate with MILF one day, with Abu Sayyaf the next, and pop off for a spot of independent banditry on Sundays. While they are certainly influenced by the demands of the organized group leaders, to call them part of a stable chain of command is ludicrous. Yet, given that, should the existence of such groups harm the standing of the organized units like MILF? That is, should you view such groups as examples of a failure of MILF discipline? Or should they be viewed in another way altogether, one that better fits the facts of the case?

Right now, I'm leaning toward the latter view. I think the best way to look at such groups is as members of an alliance with the major armed organizations. And that brings us to a key point: while political theorists have wrangled back and forth over the ethics of warfare, there has been practically zero discussion that I can find of the ethics of wartime alliances. Can you ally with bad actors? What obligations to control them might you have? If you do ally with bad actors and then fail to control them from committing atrocities or the like, does that ethical breach stand on its own or does it harm your own standing as a Right Authority?

I don't know the answer yet (though I suspect I'll be doing a lot more reading about civil wars, such as this book that comes highly recommended by some big names in the field). But I find it encouraging as a budding young scholar to discover such a rich vein of apparently untapped questions—especially since the topic of ethical alliances could have applications ranging from international relations, to civil wars, to even the institutional workings of democracy itself.

When Hubris and Poverty Mix

I have just read a recent journal article by the brilliant scholar Peter Turchin, in which he elaborates on his theory of the dynamics of social instability over time and tests it on the United States from 1780 to 2010. Put briefly, his theory holds that one can expect a society to suffer greater social violence (such as riots or lynchings, as opposed to routine crime) in a relatively predictable cycle. The larger "secular" cycle occurs every 150 years; a smaller cycle of violence occurs roughly every 50 years, superimposed on the secular cycle. Thus in the United States, we had peaks of societal violence near the years 1870, 1920, and 1970, with the Civil War being the peak of the secular cycle. Turchin forecasts that the next secular peak should hit sometime around the year 2020. Turchin's previous work has detected the same sorts of cycles in societies from ancient China to revolutionary France.

Of course, detecting a pattern does not tell you what has caused it. Turchin's theory for when violence intensifies depends on two major factors. Both of these factors might derive from excessive population growth; in the early version of Turchin's work, he was focusing on agrarian societies in which population growth leads directly to food shortages. But now that he is considering Industrial societies, Turchin is focusing more on the immediate causes laid out below.

First, whether from excessive population growth or technological disruption or whatever, there emerges a labor glut. The average wage drops in response, leading to diminished standards of living. Thus you see larger segments of the populace who are in a precarious situation, with the potential for violent outbreaks such as labor struggles, or ethnic competition with minorities, or political upheaval.

Second, there emerges "an oversupply of elites." This can happen for a few reasons, and Turchin focuses on the economic one. The low cost of labor means that it is easier for those on the top to become far wealthier than they might have done in a more normal setting, leading to the accumulation of vast fortunes and a polarization of society. A consequence of this is that there is much more competition for the leadership positions in society, such as control of government offices. Politics becomes more nasty and partisan, leading in extreme cases to violent rivalries between elite factions struggling to secure their hold on power. Such violence is made easier by the larger number of poor, desperate people in society who can serve as a demagogue's muscle.

In Turchin's research, he finds that oversupply of elites has the strongest association with societal violence. This is easy to understand when one looks at places like the Philippines, in which politicians routinely employ armed militias to attack competitors (a horrifying example was the Maguindanao Massacre of 2009), or the Congo, which has been wracked with coup after coup. But even in the United States, a surplus of would-be leaders will tend to produce extreme ideologies, such as militant unionism in the 1920s, or the present upsurge in eco-terrorism.

Yet a disparity in wealth is not the only way to create an oversupply of elites. Joseph Schumpeter, in his book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, proposed that the growth of an intellectual class was profoundly dangerous to society. Intellectuals, he argued, are alienated from the society around them and believe themselves to be the natural leaders of a new, better, society that they will create. Philosopher Robert Nozick expands on this theme, arguing that intellectuals are those who are most successful in the artificial environment of the classroom; when (after two decades of endless success in school) they are exposed to the unforgiving "real world," many of them cannot handle no longer being the top dog. Seething with resentment and humiliation, they turn to radical ideologies and reject the society around them. After all, they should be the leaders! Aren't they brilliant, aren't they better than those who got C's on their tests?

It seems to me that many more people today aspire to being an "elite" than ever before. And the expansion of university education is to blame. For people in the "softer" side of the academic world, college does a poor job of preparing one for success in the real economy. At the same time, college students are constantly being told that they are America's elite—never mind that nowadays, around 68% of high school students go on to college! Combine that with the prevalence of revolutionary ideologies on campus, and we have a dangerous brew. (No coincidence that the Peruvian Maoist group Shining Path was begun by a university professor, and its initial members were hundreds of his students.)

Not to say that economic factors aren't at work either. American politics is becoming a contest of billionaire against billionaire, quite tedious to watch, quite alarming to live through. It remains to be seen whether the growth of mass connectivity will break this dynamic, or feed into it.

(Have I mentioned lately that my new book is available on Amazon Kindle? It's called The Best Congress Money Can Buy: Stories of Political Possibility. You can read the first story for free here, and then buy it if you like. Enjoy!)