Annihilation from Within

by Fred Charles Iklé

  These devious procedures for coping with the UN Asylum Convention unmask the present asylum policies as a hypocritical hoax. People who suffer the worst political repression—say, in North Korea, Burma, or the Darfur region of the Sudan—cannot escape from their prison-like existence; while the present asylum system discriminates in favor of migrants who want to leave their homes for economic reasons and can pay generous bribes to people-smugglers. Surely, this hypocrisy could be replaced by a more honest and more realistic human rights policy.

  The origin of today’s asylum practices is the United Nations Asylum Convention of 1951. Voting for this UN Convention in 1951 was a gesture of atonement to acknowledge the inherited guilt of having abandoned refugees from Nazi Germany before and during World War II. And it was a painless gesture. The 1951 Convention applied only to people seeking asylum “as a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951.” But sixteen years later a Protocol was added to this Convention with staggering consequences. This 1967 Protocol created a vast, open-ended obligation to offer asylum to future refugees.13 It was drafted in the bowels of the United Nations by lawyers specializing in refugee matters and was adopted by the U.S. Congress and most European parliaments with minimal or no debate. A small bureaucratic conclave thus succeeded in changing global immigration policies by stealth, with huge and irreversible consequences for all democracies. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held its hearing on the Protocol on September 20, 1968. The State Department witness told the senators that the number of asylum seekers from Eastern Europe could not be predicted, yet he totally ignored the predictability of the immensely larger flow from the rest of the world. Sensing a cover-up, Senator John Sparkman, who chaired the hearing, asked the State Department witness: “I want to make certain of this: Is it absolutely clear that nothing in this protocol … requires the United States to admit new categories or numbers of aliens?” The State Department witness answered: “That is absolutely clear”—an answer that turned out to be absolutely wrong. Such utterly wrong forecasts have been all too common when the U.S. administration urged Congress to adopt a new immigration law.

  More serious is the well-established fact that the current asylum procedures undermine the security of democracies. It has been amply documented in news reports and by government commissions that dozens of terrorists who participated in the attacks in Europe and the United States—before 9/11, during 9/11, and since then—have been able to do so by taking advantage of the flawed asylum system. The fatuity of it all has no limits. Recall that after 9/11, British and Dutch soldiers fought in Afghanistan with their American allies to root out the cruelly oppressive Taliban regime. Yet a couple of years later, a Taliban soldier who had fought against the British liberators fled from the new Afghanistan and was granted asylum in England. He was not the only Taliban whose asylum claim was being processed by the British authorities. Why grant them asylum? Incredibly, the rationale was that they feared persecution by the new, democratic Afghan authorities. In addition, more than two thousand asylum applicants from Afghanistan reached the Netherlands in 2003 and 2004. In accordance with the UN Asylum Convention, they had to be processed, and after years of protracted legal wrangling the chances were good for hundreds of them to remain in the Netherlands. Since NATO forces had liberated Afghanistan by that time and worked to restore democracy, one wonders how many of these applicants were Taliban soldiers or sympathizers, that is to say, not the politically oppressed but the oppressors.14 Would England or the Netherlands in 1947 have granted asylum to members of the Waffen-SS who feared persecution by the new, democratic government in Bonn? As the scolds in ancient Greece and Rome used to say: quod Deus perdere vult, dementat prius (whom God wants to destroy, He first disables with stupidity).

  5. NATIONAL UNITY Of all the ingredients needed to defeat an attempted annihilation from within, perhaps the most important is national unity. This holds true for the United States, England, Japan, Germany, France, indeed for any democracy that might be attacked. A shining example for all was the Churchill-Attlee government created in May 1940. Following the German invasion of Holland and Belgium, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain realized that he ought to step down, and Churchill was called to form a new government—the National Coalition Government. At first, Churchill came under considerable pressure to purge ministers who had been responsible for the Munich agreement with Hitler and for Britain’s inadequate war preparations. But he would not join “the would-be heresy-hunters.” As he explains in his memoirs: “Official responsibility rested upon the Government of the time. But moral responsibilities were more widely spread…. No one had more right than I to pass a sponge across the past.” Throughout the war, Attlee and his Labor Party loyally supported the National Coalition Government. “It was a proud thought,” Churchill recalls, “that the Parliamentary Democracy … can endure, surmount, and survive all trials. Even the threat of annihilation did not daunt our Members, but this fortunately did not pass.”15

  David Reynolds, in his masterful and probing study of Churchill’s memoirs of the Second World War, adds a thought-provoking enrichment to Churchill’s own account of his struggles to maintain national unity and also lead the nation’s fight for survival. “Both struggles absorbed a huge amount of time and emotional energy. Churchill recognized the bleakness of Britain’s predicament—whatever his public bravado, there were moments of private doubt—and he had to adduce plausible reasons for fighting on…. To see the whole picture makes Churchill a more impressive figure than the almost blindly pugnacious bulldog of popular stereotype.”16

  It is an edifying story to this day. National unity was essential for that success. It was also essential for the United States—during the war as well as afterward, when the time came to establish democracy in Japan and Germany. Thanks to Franklin Roosevelt’s and Harry Truman’s ability to maintain bipartisan support on many foreign policy issues, America could play a predominant and constructive role in shaping the new world order. Both presidents enlisted the support of Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg to prepare the Senate’s acceptance of the United Nations, and Truman asked the Republican statesman John Foster Dulles to negotiate the Japanese peace treaty. To end America’s isolationism, Roosevelt and Truman had the political sophistication that Woodrow Wilson lacked. Yet many academics describe that successful American engagement in world affairs as “Wilsonian.” Given the global havoc that Woodrow Wilson caused, one wonders whether academics revere Wilson merely because he was one of them.

  6

  RESTORATION

  THE HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE is a saga with many sad endings. Down through the centuries, a new beginning has followed each demise and new civilizations have been built on the ruins of the old. Whenever a nation or an empire had lost its power, pride, and glory, the waning societies have been replenished by a new influx of people—or alas, have been superseded by multitudes of barbarians. In any event, the decline and fall of great cultures rarely erased the memories of their splendorous past. We still treasure the literature and philosophy of the Roman Empire, long after the sack of Rome in the fifth century and the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

  But new Great Destroyers are now arriving on stage—the spread of mass destruction weapons beyond national control, and technologies that can invade the sanctuary of the human mind. These trends will make possible a nuclear power-grab by aspiring tyrants, and in the more distant future might set off an international competition among nations to build a system with superhuman intelligence.

  The morning after a nuclear power-grab, fear of follow-on attacks will grip the populace and preoccupy government leaders in many countries. Responding to these deep-felt anxieties, many prominent politicians and academics will clamor for utopian solutions. If biological weapons had been used in the attack, benevolent activists would advocate an international agency to assume worldwide control of all biotechnology laboratories and offer “absolute” assurance that such activities stay within the bounds of peaceful
use. If a nuclear bomb had been used for the attack, they would cry out for universal nuclear disarmament. This would be a flashback to the beginning of the nuclear age, when quite a few Americans favored some form of world government to avert nuclear war. The United World Federalists, an organization that attracted politically active and influential Americans in the late 1940s, called for a global federation of nation-states to control nuclear technology, essentially a greatly strengthened United Nations.1 Even today, proposals for abolishing all nuclear weapons easily gain support. In the fall of 2005, 74 percent of the American public (according to a Pew Research Center poll) favored the United States’ signing a treaty to reduce and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons. The governments struggling to put an end to nuclear or biological stealth attacks must not be distracted by such delusory solutions. Undoubtedly, the advocates of these global agreements will mean well and will bristle with their sense of rectitude.

  How on earth could an international treaty prevent another sneak attack with mass destruction weapons—and especially one launched from within a nation? After the first nation was attacked from within, surely every other national government would do its utmost to avert the same fate. How could the United Nations enforce arms control measures that these very same nations could not enforce within their own territory? Would the UN suddenly become a world government with superior enforcement power in every country? And if this magically happened, would we not end up with a world tyranny? As the renowned political theorist Hedley Bull wrote several years ago: “The advocate of world government makes the tacit assumption that it is his own moral and political preferences that will be embodied in it; he conceives the world authority as a projection of his own ideas…. One of the difficulties in all prescriptions about future world order is to determine to whom they are addressed…. Mankind as such is not a political agent or actor.”2

  Since these proposals for a benignant world authority would woefully fail—save for garnering a couple of Nobel Peace Prizes—we need an alternative. After a clandestine mass destruction attack, the leading nations must first restore their own security before they can commit themselves to join international efforts for controlling destructive technologies. Until the calamity’s initial aftermath can be assessed, the multiple pathways for long-term restoration will remain obscured by vast uncertainties. At most, four broad priorities might be anticipated:

  ■ First, for the survival of democracies, their legal and constitutional foundation must be reinstated (or if left undestroyed, must be revitalized). Only if the vast majority of the people regards the government as legitimate can the restoration proceed. The chronic violence and lawlessness in Iraq after 2004 illustrate how a society can become entrapped in a vortex of anarchy.

  ■ Second, the initial period of restoration must somehow find a way back to nuclear nonuse as a lasting dispensation in which national leaders and the public can have some confidence. Obviously, after a nuclear power-grab, there will be lingering uncertainty about nuclear weapons being used again. It will be absolutely essential to prevent this uncertainty from stoking a multipolar nuclear arms race that might end in a nuclear 1914.

  ■ Third, the restoration must focus hard on the global economy. A clandestine use of mass destruction weapons by unknown evildoers will make governments suspect that a foreign terrorist organization might be responsible. The stronger the belief that the deadly weapons were smuggled across the border—even if in fact they originated within the attacked country—the greater will be the pressure to close all borders. If several large trading nations felt obliged to do this, the global economy would collapse, and there would be severe food shortages in several countries.

  ■ Fourth, the spiritual dimension of the restoration will be of great importance. The calamity and suddenness of the annihilating attack will induce people to seek refuge and comfort in transcendental spheres of thought. For many people, the motivating emotions and intellectual imagery will now be about life after death, rewards in paradise, a coming judgment day. One might reasonably regard this change in thinking as beneficial and appropriate for such dreadful times, except that it would make the worldwide clash of religions more violent. Jihadist suicide bombers who are about to kill themselves—the better to kill children or elderly shoppers—are fixated on their promised reward in paradise.

  Note also that technology’s threat to nation-states derives not just from weapons of mass destruction. The ongoing progress in computer science and brain science will lead to proposals for building a system with superhuman intelligence. Any nation that can command science to work on such a project is likely to pursue it—up to the point where moral scruples call for a halt. But as soon as a major power appears to make significant advances in this area, other nations will wake up to the immense national security implications of superhuman intelligence. As day follows night, they will enter the race with competing projects. Thus, the ultimate threat to nations approaches from two sides. First, if the quest for superhuman intelligence succeeds with a dramatic breakthrough, the identity of the human race will be challenged, as adumbrated in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Second, as weapons of mass destruction truly move beyond the control of nation-states, we, or our descendants, may have to cope with the most violent global anarchy.

  A frightful question would then grip our mind: have we reached the twilight of the glorious era when technology kept making us ever more prosperous and more comfortable? This era was ushered in by mankind’s cultural split more than two centuries ago, and led to a widening divergence between the scientific mode of human activity and the societal-political mode. Must this divergence end in the destruction of the world’s entire political and social matrix? How can nation-states—indeed, how can the human race—survive scientific-technological advances that keep accelerating, untamed by religion and time-tested traditions and moving way beyond the control of governments? This question will have no easy answer. Nations now depend on perpetual economic growth, which thrives best if nourished with untrammeled technological progress. Perpetual growth of the national economy has many influential advocates, such as the business community, investors, and agencies that seek to reduce poverty. The options of elected officials to tame the dark side of technology are therefore severely limited, since almost any restriction imposed on technological “progress” will be attacked as being antigrowth.

  Today’s apotheosis of economic growth is a relatively recent phenomenon.3 It began when Franklin D. Roosevelt energized U.S. and British officials to prepare postwar policies for promoting economic growth at home and abroad, a new philosophy heralded by FDR’s famous call for “freedom from want—everywhere in the world.” Prior to the 1930s’ Great Depression, many industrializing nations had enjoyed fairly steady growth for a long time without any specific pro-growth policies and without pro-growth lobbies. Yet today, being considered “progrowth” is essential for politicians seeking reelection and for economists seeking an academic career. Few scholars are willing to explore the merits and problems of what John Stuart Mill called the “stationary state”—an economic-demographic order in which human lives could continue being enriched and people would make cultural advances, although the world’s population and “physical capital” would have stabilized. Someone who has written creatively on the larger picture of growth and stability is Herman E. Daly; but economists who see merit in some such stability are not welcome in the economics departments of most universities.4 That leaves us intellectually ill-prepared to throttle the dark side of technology without stumbling into a prolonged economic depression.

  To find our way through these times of trouble we will have to reject the siren songs of new ideologies that promise security for everyone, but at the price of accepting a totalitarian dictatorship. How can democratic nations rein in science and technology to work again as their servants, not as their destroyers? How can a people find the strength and conviction to turn around the flow of history?

  In meeting this
formidable challenge, an important source of strength can be the people’s common emotional bond with the past. In the United States, this bond is the extraordinary continuity of the American Constitution. No other global power has been built on such an enduring foundation, providing both a long-lasting political philosophy and extraordinarily stable legal basis for the nation. Certainly the Roman Empire changed its legal structure and political philosophy several times, as did the British Empire, and China had its dynastic changes as well as the more recent revolutionary transformations of its ideology. But the American Constitution is truly exceptional. While it has been amended many times and disputes about its interpretation enliven America’s political scene endlessly, let us note that no American party, no organization with any influence, none of America’s ethnic and racial groups oppose the Constitution. To preserve this most precious patrimony of our country, each generation must be reminded of the gift from the Founding Fathers. We all must maintain the emotional link to the time of the country’s creation, even as we also must look to the future—both its promising prospects and ominous threats.

  Fortunately, the human mind can rise above the inexorable flow of time. As if lifted up by celestial wings, our emotions enable our thoughts to overcome the transitory nature of the current moment. We can revisit moods of erstwhile happiness or sorrow, and leap ahead in joyous expectation or with grim foreboding. These winged emotions revive the vanished past to provide an anchor for our present sentiments, and illuminate a future that is still out of reach. What binds people together in times of trouble are emotional links to stories of their past endeavors, their sacrifices and victories, their wellsprings of ethics and faith. What inspires people to accept sacrifice today to build a better tomorrow are the colors of hope and fear that illuminate the road ahead. Without these emotive anticipations and memories, societies would live compressed in the here and now. Perched on such a narrow foothold in the time dimension, people would lack the inspiration—indeed, would lack the will—to exert themselves in behalf of the future.