Bureaucracy, The Individual and Rational Decision Making?

This was originally a response to a question my lecturer posed my class, "Individual cognition and bureaucratic interests undermine rational decisions in the “War on Terror". I didn't really like the question, so i went my own way in answering it...

The post 9/11 years have been marked with a distinct loss of civil liberties and “The ‘War on Terror’ serves as the latest guise for the aggressive reassertion of the principle state sovereignty, beyond the traditional limits imposed on it by legal institutions or democratic polities” (Newman, 2008). The ‘War on Terror’ can be seen as the forefront of, as Newman put it, this “creeping conservatism’s” initiative to reaffirm its hold on power by using the 9/11 event to do so. I cannot in good conscience argue for or against the fact that individual cognition and bureaucratic interests are undermining rational decisions for this 'war', for in doing so leads me to experience a peculiar form of cognitive dissonance as it is in my opinion, that this 'war' is in essence irrational. However I can agree with the fact that rationality in decision making can be undermined by falsely perceived notions of truths, individual cognition and bureaucratic interests which actually does, in my opinion, exemplifies the 'war' in all entirety. Namely it is an irrational 'war' that was created based on falsehoods to serve bureaucratic (and private) interests using an abhorrent act of terrorism as its vehicle to push through policies that would never have taken shape otherwise.

That aside, rationality can sometimes be impaired by individual cognition (or in the case of the neocons, group cognition). Individual experiences, bias, self-interest, personality or even delusions are want to persuade decisions one way or another, an example of which could be seen in Thatcher's poll-tax in 1989. Against all advice she persisted to push through this highly unpopular system for, as some analyst put it, her "Iron Lady" persona made it impossible for her to "U-Turn" on any decision she made. This trait was an asset for her in the past, unfortunately for her it eventually led to her being toppled from government in 1990. A more curious example irrational decision making due to individual cognition would be the late Saparmurat Niyazov, or Turkmenbashi, the 1st President of Turkmenistan who amongst other things renamed the month January after himself and shut all hospitals outside his capital, Asgabat.

Oscar Wilde once quipped, "Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.", and no doubt he said it with the intention satirising the insanity of this monolithic organ of government. In essence, the bureaucracy of a nation officially exists to execute, maintain and perpetuate the policies of the nations political core. However, more often than not, a bureaucracy exists with the sole intention of perpetuating itself whilst expanding its budget, and it is this instinct of self-interest and self-preservation that sometimes undermines rationality. In 2008, Tom Sauer, of the International Politics University of Antwerp, presented a paper at the SOAS Conference ‘Globalisation and Disarmament’, entitled "US nuclear weapons policy under the Clinton administration: a missed opportunity due to bureaucratic inertia and a lack of political leadership" in which he outlined how the US military-industrial complex managed to prevent Clinton from revising the US' nuclear weapons policies as any change to the status quo could threaten its relevancy. This is a clear example of how bureaucratic interests can subvert both policy and clear, rational decision making. It is in the US' best interest to reduce its nuclear armaments as this would not only help reduce an already bloated defence budget but would also provide it with the moral high ground to insist other nations to follow suite and help it prevent newer upstart nations from insisting on joining the nuclear club. However, bureaucratic self-interest won over rationality.

In his paper, Sauer concluded that arms control was limited by "the power of the bureaucracy and a lack of political leadership. " and one could say the same concerning the rationality of our leaders decisions. The power of the bureaucracy can and does subvert rationality, and so does the personal limitations, in other words individual cognition, of the decision makers. An apt analogy would be when a car hits a tree. If you consider the tree as a constant, then there are only two variables left to consider in such an accident to determine why it happened, one being the inertia and mass of the car along with any mechanical problems it may have could make it impossible for the driver to correct any mistakes or miscalculations he made to cause the crash, and the other would of course be the state of mind the driver was in during the accident. If the drivers drunk and the breaks don't work, then you could say that the accident was inevitable.

Do new threats to national security justify the use of torture?

Regardless of how it's proponents may posit the necessity of using torture as a means of extracting information, there is no way to justify the practice. Not only does it disgrace the country that countenances it, it inevitably undermines the country's ability to protect itself. History has thought us that the costs of utilising torture have been astronomical, for the French in Algeria, for the Americans in Vietnam, and now for the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The French army may have won the Battle of Algiers but they soon lost the war for Algeria, in part because their systematic torture delegitimated the larger war effort in the eyes of most Algerians and many French. “You might say that the Battle of Algiers was won through the use of torture,” observed British journalist Sir Alistair Horne, “but that the war, the Algerian war, was lost.”

For the Americans, they're track record with their use of torture has shown its ineffectiveness. Official sources are nearly unanimous that the yield of the massive Phoenix program, with over forty prisons across South Vietnam who systematically tortured thousands of suspected communists, was surprisingly low. One Pentagon contract study found that, in 1970-71, only 3 percent of the Viet Cong “killed, captured, or rallied were full or probationary Party members above the district level.” Not surprisingly, such a brutal pacification effort failed either to crush the Viet Cong or win the support of Vietnamese villagers, contributing to the ultimate U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War. Even the comparatively limited torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay has done incalculable damage to America’s international prestige whereas the information. In short, the intelligence gains are soon overwhelmed by political costs as friends and enemies recoil in revulsion at such calculated savagery.

As we slide down the slippery slope to torture in general, we should also realize that there is a chasm at the bottom called extrajudicial execution. With the agency's multinational gulag full of dozens, even hundreds, of detainees of dwindling utility, CIA agents, active and retired, have been vocal in their complaints about the costs and inconvenience of limitless, even lifetime, incarceration for these tortured terrorists. The ideal solution to this conundrum from an agency perspective is pump and dump, as in Vietnam, pump the terrorists for information, and then dump the bodies. After all, the systematic French torture of thousands from the Casbah of Algiers in 1957 also entailed more than 3,000 “summary executions” as “an inseparable part” of this campaign, largely, as one French general put it, to ensure that “the machine of justice” not be “clogged with cases.” For similar reasons, the CIA’s Phoenix program produced, by the agency’s own count, over 20,000 extrajudicial killings.

To reassert my answer, no, there is no way to justify the use of torture regardless of any arguments given on the security of the state. Basically torture is are always wrong, regardless of what the suspect is thought to know or to have done. It's banned absolutely under international law. Further more, the information gained is more often than not are unreliable. The practice of torture corrodes the rule of law and undermines the criminal justice system and in no way does it do not make us any safer. The use of torture to stop ticking bombs leads ultimately to a cruel choice?either legalize this brutality, à la Dershowitz and Bush, or accept that the logical corollary to state-sanctioned torture is state-sponsored murder, à la Vietnam.

A, B & C vs Ireland: Should Ireland Be Excluded From The EU?

The question of whether or not Ireland should be kicked out of the EU because of the entitled case cannot be answered by a simple yes or no as it brings up two questions with seemingly conflicting answers, namely; what exactly are the reproductive rights of the mothers and what rights to life does an unborn foetus have.

Reproductive Rights

In the case of A, B & C v Ireland, the mothers claim was that the laws of Oreland contravened their reproductive rights as expressed by the WHO as:

“Reproductive rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. They also include the right of all to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence.”

As which, A,B & C argue that in enforcing anti-abortion laws, Ireland has negated their right “to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children."(Proclamation of Teheran 1968). However, reproductive rights as stated by the WHO and the Teheran proclamation are non-binding agreements which and many of the articles are yet to be recognized in hard-law hard. To complicate matters more, the European Convention on Human Rights is silent on the question of reproductive rights

Right to Life

All member states of the EU have to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights to in order to maintain their membership with the EU, and this is where Reproductive Rights clash with the Article 2 in that document, The Right to Life. Many Pro-lifers argue that the act of aborting a pregnancy constitutes a negation of the foetuses right to life. However, most pro-lifers rest their argument on a religious or philosophical definition of when a human is defined as a being a human; they consider as soon as a woman’s pregnant, the collection of fertilised cells that make up the embryo is already human thus Article 2 applies at the moment of conception. The pro-abortion lobby on the other hand argue that a human can only be considered a human upon delivery.

When is a Human, Human?

So when does Article 2 apply to an individual? When is a foetus recognised as being human? As I mentioned earlier, most pro-lifers take the religious high ground and base their arguments on 2,000-year-old religious dogma, but it seems unwise to base such an important definition on something that essentially has no factual backing. At the same time studies have shown that foetuses in towards the end of their third trimester actually experience REM sleep (Schwab & Schiller 2009), meaning they dream and is not dreaming indicative of consciousness? Descartes posited, “I think therefore I am” in his “Discourse on Method” (1637) when he was discussing the proof of self-existence so perhaps in can further be expanded to define when a human can be considered human. Meaning, that if thinking about your existence acknowledges that you do in fact exist, your existence is based on the fact that you thought about it thus thought or the act of thinking defines your humanity. So perhaps, in order for us to adequately determine when Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights applies, you would have to determine when brain activity, or thought, occurs in the foetus.

Conclusion

To conclude, since reproductive rights aren’t enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, technically, Ireland is not at fault for denying its citizen’s the right to abort unwanted pregnancies. However, it is disconcerting that reproductive rights aren’t discussed in the document, since this means that European states technically could be as draconian as China in regards to reproduction.

My opinion is that it is uncertain on whether or not A, B and C’s rights were abused as not enough information as given on each of their cases, e.g. How long were they into their pregnancies? How did they become pregnant to begin with? What were their reasons for wanting an abortion? These questions matter when discussing abortion rights for though I’m not a pro-lifer since I do believe women have the right to decide what happens in their bodies, I also believe that the right of the foetus to live also has to be taken into consideration. A common consensus has to be reached on when humanity occurs in a foetus. This consensus however must be based on provable facts and not ideological nor religious suppositions or philosophical debate.

My Thoughts on Foreign Policy, Diplomacy & The Identity of the State

Conventionally, foreign policy is a set of goals that provides the general rule of conduct determining how a state interacts with its neighbours economically, politically, socially and militarily, and to a lesser extent, how the state will interact with non-state actors. The objectives of these policies are to protect the states interests, namely its security, ideological goals, and economic prosperity. This can occur as a result of peaceful cooperation with other states, or through exploitation. Diplomacy on the other hand, is how the state communicates these policies to its neighbours. Together, they represent an instrument of statecraft necessary to identify the state in relation to its neighbours.

A state’s foreign policy represents a linkage between the state’s domestic interior and the international exterior and can be seen as a portrayal of the state’s character or ‘personality’. This ‘personality’ is determined principally by the culture practiced by either the state’s citizen’s en mass or simply by its elites and how this culture views itself to be in relation to the international. The culture of the state constructs its identity by contrasting itself against its neighbours, acknowledging primarily the differences, real, perceived or synthetic, in order to define itself a unique singularity from which it can determine its current standing and where it wishes to be.

It is through this self-examination of what it perceives its identity to be and its place in the international that defines its interactions with its neighbours. This ‘self-made identity’, or interior, exerts itself onto the exterior by determining the form of conversation between itself and its neighbours. This colours the state’s ‘personality’ by making it inherently bellicose or passive in its attempts to achieve its goals. In recent years however, with the growth of stronger inter-state and non-state players and the diffusion of cultures via mass diaspora the concept of an inherent ‘stable-state-identity’ is increasingly becoming fictitious.

In Conclusion, it is from this Manichean construct of “us against the other” that the state perceives what its interests to be. Furthermore, it also determines the methodology it will use, namely the disposition of the diplomacy it practices, in order to attain these interests. It is in the author’s opinion that this represents a form of self-inflicted division, however it is an inherent facet of the current international system and it is increasingly becoming redundant in this current era globalisation but that is the topic of another paper.

A Brief Essay on Human Rights

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

—Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

On December 10^th, 1948 The United Nations General Assembly adopted Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. The UDHR consists of 30 Articles covering the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled. Examples of rights and freedoms which have come to be commonly thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law; and economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to participate in culture, the right to be treated with respect and dignity, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to education.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has acted as the leading modern codification of commonly accepted rights. However, this Bill of Rights does not represent international law and all signee countries adhere to it only on a voluntary basis. Indeed internationally, there has been many debates and disagreements over which rights are human rights, and about the precise nature, content, justification and appropriate legal status of those rights. One of the biggest questions has been over at what point is a human deemed to even be human for these rights to apply? Some countries have even criticized the Universal Declaration for its perceived failure to take into the account the cultural and religious context of different countries.

That aside, what is the necessity of having an internationally accepted doctrine of human rights? The necessity is that without doing so, all humanity would be condemned to a future of persistent barbarity where insecurity would be the norm. History has shown that societies in which the rights of the individual have been ignored have all been doomed to eventual entropy. The definition of what these rights are have of course changed over time from the Cyrus Cylinder of the ancient Persians, the Natural Laws of the Romans, the Magna Carta, the Natural Rights of the French and finally the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What this shows is that people have long understood that there is value in being human and it is this value that needs to be protected.

In conclusion there is a distinct need to identify an internationally accepted covenant that would legally bind states to protect the dignity and sanctity of the life of the common man. We need to identify the prerequisites for a "universal" minimal standard of justice and tolerance that would maintain this dignity and would be considered the internationally accepted moral norms owed by and to the individual by the mere virtue of their humanity and of course at what point does it apply. These prerequisites can exist as the shared norms of actual human moralities, as justified moral norms or moral rights supported by strong reasons, as legal rights at a national level, or as a legal right within international law.

“I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!”

Peter Finch as Howard Beale in Network (1976)