Human rights, state wrongs, and social change: the theory and practice of emancipation

This article demonstrates the significance of human rights for challenging state violence and terrorism. It is intended to enhance understanding of the concept of emancipation. Critical Security Studies has tended to focus on the individual as the agent of her/his own liberation. Yet many victims of oppression are not able to free themselves. Drawing on historical materialism, it is argued that collective agency on behalf of the oppressed has a necessary role to play in emancipatory politics. Emancipation is contingent on the capacity of specific agents, located socially and historically, to identify practices that might bring about change, structures that might be transformed, and appropriate agents that are in the best position to facilitate such change. This article shows how such collective social action has forced a reversal of some of the Bush administration’s repressive policies, and has partially succeeded in curtailing the arbitrary use of US state power. This has been achieved through the national and international human rights architecture. Therefore, Marxian claims that human rights should be eschewed are mistaken, since they fail to acknowledge the emancipatory potential of human rights, the opportunities they provide for collective social action, and the role they can play in transformative social change

Preventing Rendition and Torture by Mapping the Global System of Rendition and Proxy Detention

This paper seeks to explain the development and operation of a now global system of rendition and secret detention. Rendition involves the kidnap of suspects and their illicit transfer to another state and frequently involves torture. It is generally assumed that rendition was very much a phenomenon of the Bush administration. In fact, it has continued since Obama took office, despite his early executive orders which ruled out some of the other nefarious practices of the Bush administration, such as torture. Situating rendition within the wider framework of US neo-imperial practices, particularly the quest for US hegemony within the global military-industrial complex, the paper provides a detailed account of the development and evolution of the global system of rendition. It analyses the ways in which key moments in US and international politics have impacted on rendition practices, and also shows how rendition constitutes the latest iteration of international state terrorism

Perpetual Impunity: Lessons learned from the global system of rendition and secret detention

It is now well documented that the Blair government was colluding at the highest levels in the global system for the rendition, detention and interrogation of terror suspects, at the same time as repeatedly denying any involvement. This paper seeks to explain why the UK so confidently maintained its position of denial. The main argument is that involvement in the global rendition system was facilitated and protected by an architecture of impunity. That is to say that the global rendition system deliberately consisted of a set of practices that were designed to ensure impunity for those agents involved at various levels, particularly Western governments and their intelligence agencies. Furthermore, if aspects of a state’s involvement were exposed, the architecture of impunity was sufficiently robust that the state could control the level of exposure. For example, the state could allow the light to be shone on certain aspects but could keep others very much in the dark. The state could also take specific actions to mitigate the effects, for example by withholding key information, destroying evidence, or by deflecting attention. Finally, where state involvement was exposed, again because the architecture of impunity was so robust, the authorities were in a strong position to seriously hamstring or avert investigations into wrongdoing. We conclude by offering some reflections on what this tells us about the challenges of holding governments to account for human rights violations of this nature, especially where they arise through a transnational network of state violence/crime

Insulating Universal Human Rights from the ‘Ethical Foreign Policy’ Threat

At the heart of the notion of an ethical foreign policy is the assumption that foreign policy can help deliver liberty and security around the globe. Yet, as Conor Gearty has argued, in our contemporary ‘neo-democratic’ world, liberty and security are not the universal goods they are often considered to be. Rather they are selectively granted, and curtailed for those considered a threat to the status quo. Where liberty and security are curtailed, this is often in the name of the universal freedoms that neo-democracies claim to uphold. When the Blair government was elected in 1997, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook announced that British foreign policy must have an ethical dimension. There has been much debate on whether UK foreign policy under the Blair government can be argued to have been ‘ethical’. The focus of debate has tended to be the UK’s military interventions. Far less attention has been paid to the direct role played by UK authorities, through its intelligence services, in human rights violations under the New Labour and subsequent Coalition governments. This paper seeks to further the debate on the ethics of UK foreign policy since 1997. It does so by offering a detailed account of the UK’s involvement in the CIA’s rendition programme, and shows that the UK was far more involved in rendition and secret detention between 2001 and 2010 than was previously assumed. Threaded through the analysis is an account of the various measures taken by the New Labour subsequent Coalition governments to suppress the evidence of UK involvement. We conclude by offering some reflections on the role human rights organisations, litigators, and investigative journalists are increasingly playing in defending the universalism of rights, for publics that rarely appreciate what is really at stake

Western State Terrorism

States use terror to achieve political ends, by employing violence to ensure compliance and to coerce populations away from dissent. Moreover, despite popular understandings of terrorism as a ‘strategy of the weak’ used against liberal democracies, an examination of the history of Western foreign policy shows that democracies have often returned to the use of state terror in order to cement their regional or global dominance. This chapter explores the use of state terror by the West, and seeks to provide an understanding of its underlying purposes. We argue that Western state terror is one of a number of coercive tools used to secure and maintain access to resources and markets, whether in colonial times, during periods of imperial decline, or as an adjunct to the more recent roll-out of neoliberal forms of globalisation

Rendition in the "War on Terror"

The CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) programme was a central component of the first phase of the ‘war on terror’, from 2001-2008. Through constructing a global network of secret prisons, wherein hundreds of terror suspects were tortured, the US and its allies embarked upon a concerted campaign of state terrorism in pursuit of their wider political goals. This chapter provides an account of the employment of state terror through the CIA’s RDI programme. We outline the main features of the programme, and the involvement of a range of other states, many of which were Western democracies. We also show that the attempt to secure valuable intelligence through coercion, torture and terror proved to be a clear failure, resulting in the detention and torture of dozens of individuals who posed no threat and the use of barbaric methods which did nothing but produce poor intelligence and dehumanise all those involved

Inter-state terrorism in the 21st Century: Mapping the Evolution of the Global Rendition System

This paper seeks to explain the development and operation of a now global system of rendition and secret detention in the ‘War on Terror’. The paper offers two corrections to current understandings of rendition. Firstly, while existing scholarship has emphasised the use of rendition as a counter-terrorism tool during the Reagan and Clinton administrations, there has been no analysis of the role played by rendition in the much longer history of the efforts at the heart of US foreign policy to insulate US hegemony. The paper will show that rendition is the most recent in a long line of tools that have been developed by US intelligence and defence officials to carve out extra-legal spaces to deal with perceived threats. Secondly, the paper seeks to show that the global rendition system is a system in flux. Various pressures beyond the US government’s control have forced the US Executive and intelligence and defence services to make major changes to the global rendition system in desperate attempts to maintain that extra-legal space that it believes it needs to thwart threats to its interests

Dirty Little Secrets: State and Corporate Complicity in Rendition, Secret Detention and Torture

Based on a comprehensive investigation into the nature and evolution of the global rendition system, this paper seeks to provide an account of the extent of British involvement in and knowledge of that system. It shows that UK authorities have been complicit in a wide range of human rights violations associated with rendition, secret detention and torture. Using Stanley Cohen’s framework for explaining how states deny involvement in and knowledge of atrocities we demonstrate the various ways that the UK government sought to cover up both its knowledge of the system, and its role within it. The paper is also aimed at offering some insights into how we have undertaken the research into these highly secretive practices. The paper begins by setting out the key elements of the global rendition system. It then explains how each of those elements violates various human rights conventions before going on to examine the extent of British involvement, and the lengths the British government went to in denying both knowledge of the system and complicity in it

Repression, human rights, and US training of military forces from the South

In order to understand whether US training of military forces from the South has resulted in the use of repression or improvements in human rights, we need to situate the training within the broader context of US foreign policy objectives and strategies. The main aims of US foreign policy are to maintain its dominant global position and to ensure control of resources and markets in the South. These objectives are being pursued through an emerging, US-led transnational state, using the instruments of legitimation at least as much as repression. This contrasts with the Cold War, during which US foreign policy strategy towards the South emphasised repression. US training of military forces from the South during the Cold War played a key role in a US-led network, through which many states in the South were connected to the US and each other by cooperation between their militaries, police and intelligence services. The training was dominated by a particular form of counterinsurgency instruction which advocated repression of groups that might potentially threaten US control of Southern economies and assets. This contributed to widespread human rights violations, particularly in Latin America. Following the end of the Cold War, reliance on coercion diminished, and it was subsumed within the emergent transnational state. In line with this shift in US foreign policy strategy in the South, some aspects of the training began to be characterised by the promotion of legitimation. In the wake of 9/11, the US has intensified both its legitimation efforts and its use of repression, and the training continues to play a significant role in the service of US foreign policy objectives.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Drones, State Terrorism and International Law

The conventional wisdom among US foreign policymakers is that drones enable precise strikes, and therefore limit collateral damage. In contrast, critics point out that many civilian casualties have ensued, and they variously cite poor intelligence and imprecision of the strikes as reasons for this. Critics have also raised concerns that the US and its allies are engaging in “lawfare” to legitimise violations of human rights law. As such, some have questioned whether academic engagement with the legal questions surrounding targeted killings amount to collusion with state attempts to legitimise human rights violations. This article will argue that by conceptualising the targeted killings programme as a form of state terrorism, we are better equipped to provide a critical analysis of the drones programme within the context of a long history of violence and terrorism which has underpinned the imperial and neo-imperial projects of the UK and US. The article will then argue that there are important similarities between the targeted killings programme, and previous UK and US counterinsurgency operations, including prior uses of air power, and operations involving the internment of terror suspects, and the targeting of specific individuals for interrogation and torture or disappearance. Common to these programmes is that they are forms of policing aimed at crushing rebellions, stifling disorder and constructing or maintaining particular political economies, through terror. Also common to these programmes are the attempts made either to conceal illicit actions, or in the event they are exposed, to shroud them in a veil of legitimacy. The article concludes by offering some brief reflections on why we should not abandon the quest to resolve the thorny legal questions around the targeted killings programme