There are a number of pressing global problems that we need to address in order to attain sustainable security, such as climate change, increasingly scarce resources, and the surge of violence by globally interconnected non-state actors. If not dealt with, these issues will lead to increased regional instability and perpetual political violence. Although these issues are recognized as pressing concerns, we have not been able to find effective solutions. Underlying this failure is the exclusion of the majority of the global community from policy-making processes. This marginalization can lead to ineffective policies as they fail to consider the interests and values of a large part of the world’s population. Furthermore, given the results of social science research examining the role of values in decision making and in motivated action, policies that are ignorant of core values of the stakeholders will not only fail to garner popular support, they may, in fact, spark resistance and ignite violence.

Background

Most current approaches to negotiation and policy making assume that people make rational decisions – they weigh the benefits and costs of decisions and act in a way that maximizes their payoff. The values people try to maximize can be different for each party but they are assumed to be fungible: people may give up one value for achieving the other. Following these assumptions, policies and interventions often use incentives (e.g., tax breaks) or disincentives (e.g., sanctions) in order to influence the decision making of the stakeholders.

This business-like approach to policy making and interventions has led to the successful resolution of many problems, even very difficult ones. For instance, the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979. In general, as long as the values of the stakeholders can be identified, incentives and disincentives can be designed effectively, leading to successful policies.

However, despite numerous attempts and the best efforts by the parties involved, this approach has been attempted in vain in an increasing number of contexts, and it has failed so frequently that some issues are now assumed to be intractable. A prime example is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the majority of the people involved seem to have lost all hope: according to a 2015 poll by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 51% of Israelis and 38% of Palestinians believe that the conflicting parties will not even return to the negotiation table. In other contexts, like the Northern Ireland or Kosovo conflicts, solutions devised with current approaches may prove to be unsustainable as they have neglected to address underlying concerns.

Sacred Values

The lack of success of current approaches is due to the underlying assumption that all values are in principal fungible: that they are mutually interchangeable. Social science research over the last 20 years suggests that this is not the case. Instead, people consider some values as so important or absolute that they refuse to even measure them on the same metric as material values. Consider, for instance, how parents may react were one to offer them money for selling their child. Most parents will decline the offer no matter how much money in involved. They will regard even considering the value of their child in monetary terms as immoral. Moreover, they will likely feel insulted and disgusted by the offer. One would get thrown out of the house if not directly reported to the authorities. This result is due to the fact that the offer fails to consider the duty most parents feel towards their child; business-like negotiation will not only be futile but will most likely backfire leading to moral anger and a breakdown of relationships. Such core values that seem to be resistant to tradeoffs with material values (e.g., monetary gains or job security), have been termed “sacred values”.

As the name suggests, sacred values can be religious (e.g., holy land or sanctity of life) but they need not to be (e.g., equality or racial purity). However, religious ritual can transform material values into sacred ones. For example, when land is transformed from an agricultural and residential resource into “holy land.” This seems to be particularly the case in existential conflict between groups when people feel that their very existence is threatened, as is the case in the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Studies conducted before the Iran nuclear deal also found that under high pressure from other countries, a politically meaningful minority of Iranians (14%) have come to consider the nuclear program as a sacred right suggesting that material values can become sacralized in a relatively short time. The process of sacralization, however, is not well understood yet.

When it comes to reasoning over sacred values, neuroscience studies show that decisions relating to sacred values are processed differently in the brain from material cost-benefit calculations. When people reason over sacred values as compared to material values, they are more concerned with the rectitude of their actions than with prospects. In other words, they are more concerned with morality and duties than with expected outcomes. If policy proposals that affect sacred values fail to consider this different mode of reasoning, the expected outcome is not only failure to achieve the intended aims but also resistance by the affected people, which can result in violence.

Seemingly Intractable Issues

A Palestinian boy and Israeli soldier in front of the Israeli West Bank Barrier. Picture taken by Justin McIntosh. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Research shows that the core issues in a number of seemingly intractable conflicts are indeed considered sacred values by sizable parts of the populations involved, who show counterintuitive reactions to proposed solutions leading to a failure to resolve the issue. For instance, one research study on the support of peace deals in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict presented a peace proposal that required giving up core demands (e.g., the right of return for Palestinians). It found that “sweetening” deals with material incentives can actually backfire and exacerbate the situation. When presented with the peace deals, only a minority of Palestinians showed increased support when deals were sweetened with material incentives such as compensation payments in the form of development aid for a Palestinian state resulting from the agreement. However, the vast majority of Palestinians (more than 4 in 5) considered their core demands as sacred values and reacted with moral outrage when the deal included material compensation. They also predicted increased violent resistance if such a deal was to be agreed to by their leaders. This “backfire effect” of material incentives has since been demonstrated by Israeli Settlers when asked about giving up settling in Gaza and the West Bank (land they believe was promised to them by God) and in other seemingly intractable conflicts such as the Iranian nuclear ambitions (right to development of nuclear energy), the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India (Kashmir), and militant Jihad in Indonesia (Sharia law).

In addition, across a number of different contexts, sacred values have been shown to incite strong emotions and spur extreme actions in their defense. People are willing to fight for their sacred values well beyond the prospect of success, seemingly disregarding self-interest. The concern for sacred values seems also to be a driving factor for the droves of young people who have been joining Islamists in Syria and Iraq, exchanging the relative comfort of their home countries for a war zone risking life and limb. For instance, a study among potential Jihadis in Morocco – one of the countries with the highest levels of foreign fighters leaving for Syria and Iraq – showed that people who considered Sharia law as sacred, expressed heightened support for militant Jihad and willingness to fight and die for the implementation of Sharia in Morocco.

Achieving Sustainable Security

The reality that sacred values are not fungible with material values and that otherwise reasonable policies and interventions can badly backfire does not mean we need to completely refrain from dealing with sacred values altogether. Conflicts over sacred values are not unsolvable. In fact, the very study that first demonstrated the backfire effect of business-like approaches in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also found a reason for hope: people who considered the core demands in the conflict as sacred did show willingness to compromise if the other side made some painful concession relating to their deeply held sacred values. In particular, Israelis and Palestinians showed more flexibility regarding their sacred values when the deal included mutual recognition; that is, Palestinians would recognize Israel as a Jewish state and Israelis would recognize the role of Israel in the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe,” a term that relates to the expulsion and flight of Palestinians from what now is Israel). However, identifying these kinds of resolutions requires knowledge of the sacred values of all involved parties and thoughtful consideration of them in devising solutions. Unfortunately, our knowledge of sacred values held by communities worldwide is scarce.

Just like the global clusters of values shown by the recurring World Value Survey, we can expect sacred values to differ considerably across communities and cultures and to change over time. At the minimum, we need to systematically assess sacred values across the world (similar to the World Value Survey), so decision-makers can have access to this knowledge. But for security to be sustainable in the long run, we will also need to bring communities with different sacred values to the table when we seek solutions to the most pressing issues we face today. The world cannot afford a policy-making process with global impact that is dominated by a small exclusive group of countries (e.g., the permanent member states of the UN security council) without regard for the multitude of cultures and values in the world. Because of this ignorance about the core concerns of large parts of the global community, our policies and interventions may not only fail to successfully address the issues at hand, but may actually badly backfire – by accidentally violating sacred values of the people they impact – and lead to more unrest and instability.

Hammad Sheikh is an ARTIS research fellow at the New School for Social Research and a visiting scholar at the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflicts (Harris Manchester College, Oxford University). He received a Psycholgie Diplom from the Free University of Berlin and a PhD in social psychology from the New School for Social Research. Prior to his studies at the New School, he conducted research at the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development in Berlin, the University College Dublin, and the Free University of Berlin. His research focuses on the psychology of intergroup conflict, and uniquely brings together field research (e.g., interviews with combatants in war zones) with traditional psychological methods like questionnaires and cognitive experiments. He is currently examining how commitments to groups and values can lead people to become willing to make extremely costly sacrifices for a cause, including fighting and dying for it.

This interview was conducted by the Remote Control project. 

Dr. Jon Moran is Reader in Security and the School of History, Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester. He is interested in the role of the state and military and intelligence agencies both domestically and internationally. He has conducted field research with police and security agencies and civil society activists in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, South Africa and East Asia. For three years he conducted training for the EU for security professionals on the reform of intelligence agencies as part of a programme on Security Sector Reform. He wrote a Briefing Paper on understanding and evaluating Remote Warfare in 2015 for the project. It is available here and organised a conference on remote Warfare in conjunction with the Remote Control project in February 2015.

Dr. Moran’s last book was ‘From Northern Ireland to Iraq: British Military Intelligence Operations, Ethics and Human Rights’ which covers the role of army intelligence and special forces since the 1970s. He is currently working on a book concentrating on the use of intelligence and special forces in the most recent phase of the War on Terror.

In this interview, Dr. Moran discusses the use of remote warfare in Libya, its effectiveness and some of the key problems yielded by the use of this tactic.

Q. In 2011, the UK took part in the NATO military intervention in Libya which led to the overthrow of Gaddafi. Official government statements suggest that the UK’s military operations in Libya both began and ended with this campaign. Since then, however, evidence has gradually surfaced suggesting that the UK has been conducting ‘remote warfare’ in Libya. What is remote warfare and how has this tactic been used in the case of Libya?

Remote warfare is a term used to describe a group of tactics that allow states to prosecute military activities from a distance rather than using conventional warfare. These tactics include:

1. the use of special operations forces (SOF) either directly, or as trainers or mentors to local forces
2. the use of airpower (including drones)
3. the use of intelligence assets to direct forces on the ground and
4. the use of local security forces, either official forces or militias or paramilitaries.

One important thing to note about remote warfare is that it is a set of tactics that can be very effective. Remote warfare was employed in Libya in 2011. United Nations Resolution 1973 called for the protection of civilians against threats by the Gaddafi regime. However, the use of airpower for this purpose was then expanded by Western and other powers into remote warfare in order to overthrow the Gaddafi regime.

In 2011 the civil war between Gaddafi and the rebels was in a stalemate. It was not just airpower that made the difference to the rebels. In addition to airpower, special forces from France, the UK and Qatar were deployed not just for forward air control, but to help the rebels become a more professional force. Special forces and UK intelligence assets were used to support the rebels as they advanced. This involved assistance to them in developing combat plans, gaining tactical skills, identifying Gaddafi forces, and supporting them with air strikes on Gaddafi forces. Foreign intelligence support was particularly important in the final operation to take Tripoli. It is my assessment that without this remote warfare support the rebels would have been unable to defeat Gaddafi.

However, this also highlighted one problem with remote warfare. Although as a set of tactics it can be very effective, it cannot by its nature involve long term planning. Following the overthrow and execution of Gaddafi, Libya descended into chaos. This chaos, involving the development of militias, organised crime, widespread general crime and the collapse of public services led to such instability that Islamic State (IS) identified Libya as a suitable base for its operations outside Iraq and Syria. Such has been the instability in Libya since 2011 that the West is now engaging in a second round of remote warfare to defeat IS forces in Libya and promote one of the competing governments as a stable political actor. This is having success in defeating IS but it still leaves the future of Libya in doubt.

Remote warfare can have strategic effect (in overthrowing Gaddafi and defeating IS) but it is not a strategy in itself. If it is not part of a long term strategy it may end up creating more problems than it solves.

Q. So what are the problems that remote warfare can create?

Remote warfare can have a short term strategic effect (e.g. in stabilising or overthrowing a regime). But by its nature it cannot have a long term strategic effect. Remote warfare involves small numbers of specialist troops (special forces, intelligence, air control) and air power which by their nature cannot be deployed over the long term and can only have a limited effect. Even if remote warfare operatives work with local security forces or militias they cannot control them over the long term since they are small in number and that is not the point of a remote warfare mission. With this is mind remote warfare can create a number of problems:

• Long term instability. The overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya in 2011 was a classic example of a successful remote warfare operation. But the operation had no plans for the aftermath. Libya descended into political and security chaos with rival governments, militias and criminal groupings all contributing to a situation in which citizens became more insecure. By 2016 Western and other states were again engaging in remote warfare in Libya, this time to try and stabilise the area and defeat IS – aiming to solve the problems created by the first phase of remote warfare in 2011.
• Perpetuating conflict. In places such as Yemen remote warfare may assist local forces but not in a game changing (strategic) way. It may end up creating a stalemate where no side is strong enough to prevail and ongoing conflict continues to cost civilian lives and create insecurity.

Overall, remote warfare is no substitute for a long term commitment, either politically (though aid and diplomacy) or militarily (large scale deployment in conjunction with local forces – itself a serious decision).

Q. Given the problems that remote warfare can create, why is the use of remote warfare by states on the rise?

For a number of reasons. One is the lack of success of long term deployments of regular troops by Western countries in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq approximately 4500 US military troops were killed and over 30,000 wounded. In Afghanistan the casualties were fewer but the conflict dragged on for a long time. Both conflicts have to be judged as a failure. Iraqi security was only evident for a period after the surge in 2007 and then the rise of Islamic State showed how weak public security was, and is, in Iraq. In Afghanistan the Taliban remain undefeated and indeed the period after 2010 saw the UK and US negotiating with the Taliban and redefining them as insurgents rather than terrorists in the global jihad against the US. Remote warfare is a way for the US to maintain its pressure on jihadist groups without necessitating massive troop deployments and long term counter insurgency operations. It saves money also – both wars cost the US perhaps $3 trillion dollars.

For the UK, remote warfare is way of keeping up its security profile and assisting the US as its conventional power has declined. The UK military was, in a sense, exhausted after Iraq and Afghanistan and then military cuts imposed by the Coalition government further reduced its capacity for large scale deployments. Further, the UK public would not support any large scale ground force deployment for the next few years or in the absence of direct major terrorists attacks on the UK. They are more inclined to support remote warfare.

The French have used remote warfare in Mali and Libya because again it is way to maintain a security presence without the large deployment of troops that the French public might not support even after the IS attacks in France. The French already had a crucial experience with large scale troop deployments and drawn out conflict in Indochina and Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s, and since then have often relied on airpower and paratroopers to support friendly local regimes in Africa.

It should also be pointed out that although remote warfare by Western states has been patchy in its success, elsewhere countries are using remote warfare very effectively. The Russians have used remote warfare very effectively in Ukraine. They have used special operations forces, military advisers and local militias supported where necessary to take the Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine under effective Russian control.  Remote warfare seems to have been a success in Syria. The Iranians developed remote warfare against the Coalition forces in Iraq after 2003 and have been involved in remote warfare in the Lebanon supporting Hezbollah for a long period.  Recently, they have joined with Russia in using local or other forces (such as Lebanese Hezbollah) and their own operatives to stabilise the Assad regime, while Russia has employed surveillance, reconnaissance and airpower to batter the rebels. These are successful operations because they have been used by Russia and Iran not as an antidote to the failure of large scale operations – they have seen what disasters this can bring and they also want to avoid direct conflict with the USA. Rather, for them, remote warfare allows them to achieve their objectives – it’s a useful way of achieving foreign policy objectives. For the West, remote warfare is often a reaction to previous failures at invasion, occupation and nation building.

Q. So is remote warfare better at achieving political stabilisation or destabilisation?

I think overall remote warfare is better at destabilisation. This is not to say that remote warfare cannot stabilise countries. There are examples including the US in Afghanistan (2001-02), the UK in Sierra Leone (2001), and the French in Mali (2011) where remote warfare successfully defeated local militias or terrorist groupings and prevented the further development of conflict. In Afghanistan the Taliban, never viewed as legitimate and not in full control of the country, was deposed and a fragile democracy imposed; in Sierra Leone remote warfare helped to defeat the militias who were opposed to the UN brokered peace agreement; and in Mali remote warfare prevented the overthrow of the government by a combination of insurgent and terrorist groups.

However, remote warfare only started these processes. In all three cases extra support in the areas of security, aid, civilian assistance etc. was provided to make sure the stabilisation was secured in the longer term. In areas where remote warfare has been the start and the finish of the operation it has created far more instability. Libya is the prime example, where intervention successfully overthrew Gaddafi but left the country in anarchy. In Yemen it is also the case as is the remote warfare conducted on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Remote warfare operations in these two areas have ‘managed’ conflict and have not reduced it.

Remote warfare is only the start of any process of intervention. It might be seen as useful tactic but it cannot operate in a vacuum. Russian remote warfare has been effective because the Russians have been working with strong local forces to effectively wrest parts of the Ukraine away; these territories will now need continuing Russian support (like other breakaway areas such as Transdnistria). In Syria the Russians (and Iranians) have been able to bolster Assad’s exhausted but still coherent national army. But a long term peace process will determine the future of Syria and Russia and Iran realise this – they have just used remote warfare to ensure Assad will be a big player in this and that rebel forces will not be negotiating from a position of strength. In Iraq, the rise of IS exposed the weakness of the Iraqi security forces. The US could only work with the Kurdistan Peshmerga and the reliable US-trained Iraq Special Operations Forces, assisted by Shia militias. The disparate group of local forces has been able to stop Islamic State’s advance but with far more difficulty than should have been the case. US and UK remote warfare support has allowed this but this is not any long term solution to the weakness of the Iraqi state.

Q. Taking into consideration the mixed results of remote warfare, how do you see its use evolving in the future?

Remote warfare will not replace conventional warfare but it is likely to be the dominant form of warfare for the next decade at least. There are differing reasons for this depending on the country involved. In the USA, the UK and France there is little public support for any large scale conventional intervention in other countries. So remote warfare remains the main way that countries such as these can maintain some sense of control. Taking into consideration the limits of remote warfare, this will probably remain reactive and have limited success. (It will remain a response to the long term problems of the West ‘Losing Control’ of international security as Paul Rogers pointed out in his book of the same name some years ago). For other countries such as Russia and Iran remote warfare has been effective and is a sign of their gaining more control as the West loses it. Russia used remote warfare effectively in Ukraine and now controls a substantial part of the east of the country and will likely use remote warfare to intervene where it feels necessary to protect its security interests. Iran effectively used remote warfare to destabilise the US intervention in Iraq after 2003 and to support the Assad regime in Syria. Other countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar have employed remote warfare techniques in Yemen and Libya. It is possible that countries like China in its territorial disputes in Southeast Asia may use remote warfare to gain control of the islands involved.

Donald Trump has recently been critising his democratic allies, but he has been eager to revive the special relationship with the UK. Likewise, Theresa May has pledged to “renew the special relationship for this new age”. What are the drivers behind this development?

Donald Trump has a thing for rebuking America’s democratic allies and their leaders—his latest target being Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull. The UK appears to be an exception to this trend. In his first interview with the British press as president-elect, Trump explained that the UK has a “special place” in his half-Scottish heart and pledged to support a post-Brexit UK-US trade deal. Reportedly a big fan of Winston Churchill—and of Boris Johnson’s Churchill Factor—he also asked the UK government to loan him a Churchill bust that his Republican predecessor George W. Bush kept in the Oval Office.

This got some people in the UK excited—and not just Trump’s old friends like Nigel Farage. Indeed, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Downing Street announced that Prime Minister Theresa May would be the first world leader to visit America’s new president. On January 23, four days ahead of May’s visit, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, confirmed that two leaders would talk trade (of course he called May “the British head of state”) and that the US has “always had that special relationship with Britain.” He then added, with a peculiar giggle: “We can always be closer.”

Looking at the visual images the media coverage left behind in isolation, you might think that May’s visit was a roaring success—the beginning of a beautiful Conservative-Republican friendship à la Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Image one depicts the two leaders shaking hands against the background of Trump’s main Oval Office redecorations—the Churchill bust and the portrait of Andrew Jackson. Image two shows Trump and May holding hands while walking from the Oval Office to the press conference. Image three: a well-attended, convivial press conference.

These images now depict a day that will live in infamy in the history of British foreign policy. A day after May left Washington—that is, on the Holocaust Remembrance Day—Trump’s “Muslim ban” came into force, causing worldwide shock and pain. Now even her supporters had to wonder: How did we ever think we could we do business with this misogynistic, racist man? And why was the prime minister prevaricating instead out outright condemning Trump’s policy?

The standard answer is cold realpolitik. Scheduled to formally take the country outside the EU’s single market in 2019, the UK government is desperately searching for new trade deals. The U.S. market is the primary target—this was implicit in May’s Lancaster House speech (“We will continue to be reliable partners, willing allies and close friends”) and explicit in her speech at the Republican Party conference in Philadelphia (“I am delighted that the new Administration has made a trade agreement between our countries one of its earliest priorities”). Viewed from this perspective, hugging Trump close, while doing so in an extremely unedifying manner, is in Britain’s best interest—it is certainly in the best of interest of some Britons, as George Monbiot pointed out in his latest weekend column for The Guardian.

Most Conservatives and probably at least a third of the British voters are in quiet support of staying the course. On the same day Trump’s press secretary giggled about the need for an ever closer special relationship. William Hague, former British foreign secretary and no supporter of Brexit, penned in The Daily Telegraph that the special relationship was Britain’s only “indispensable alliance.” Subsequent events did little to make him change his mind. To Hague, rather than retaliating against Trump’s policies—which is a minority demand anyway—the UK government should host the American president this summer as planned. As for the image of the queen being “within grabbing distance of America’s helmsman,” Britons would do well to recall that she has dealt with thugs before, wrote Hague on January 31.

Image (modified) by UK Home Office and Gage Skidmore.

Bannon’s rules

The special relationship has always been asymmetric, with the Americans acting as rule-makers and the British as rule-takers. That said, the rules have never before been made by Stephen Bannon, the American president’s “chief strategist.” Having likened himself to revolutionaries such as Lenin and Thomas Cromwell (and also figures like Darth Vader and Satan)  Bannon appears to be bent on remaking international order by moving the US away from “multilateralism”, “liberalism” and “democracy” and towards America First-styled “sovereignty” and “traditional values.” In practice, this means that the US is now openly hostile to the UN, WTO, NATO, the Five Eyes, to say nothing of the fragile global governance regimes on climate, human rights and arms control—while simultaneously being “open-minded” about Putin’s Russia and Europe’s far right.

Related, Bannon, former executive chairman of Breitbart News, an information hub for conspiracy theorists, ultra-conservatives, authoritarians, fascists, white supremacist and other “alt-right” aficionados, seems to think of international relations are fundamentally inter-racial relations. American politics and American foreign policy textbooks cannot shed light on this particular America. A combination of Samuel Huntington, Carl Schmidt and Jared Taylor’s White Identity might.

In every generation for the past seventy years there were those who saw the special relationship as a Faustian bargain for Britain. Their arguments usually never made it into the mainstream, however. As of last week, this has changed—compare the aforementioned Monbiot or Paul Mason in The Guardian to Gideon Rachman in The Financial Times, for example.

As thousands of Londoners surrounded the US embassy this past Saturday under the banner “Make America Think Again,” it is worth asking where May’s Trump policy might take Britain. Among several memorable statements the prime minister made in her Philadelphia speech, one that received no media scrutiny was the claim that the UK and the US together “defined the modern world.” Not a diplomatic thing to say, but not necessarily wrong either. The British Empire, in its many forms and iterations, transformed the globe by making Britain and “Neo-Britains” rich, and those on the outside poor. Britain also never challenged the rise of the U.S. the way it challenged other imperial rivals—before the democratic peace came the Anglo-Saxon peace. And once the US moved to establish the so-called liberal international order after World War II, a special role was reserved for Britain. “Whenever we want to subvert any place, we find the British own an island within an easy reach,” said one American spook in 1952. The statement has aged well—it helps explain British foreign policy after Suez, after East-of-Suez, after the end of the Cold War and after 9/11. It may well be valid in the Trump era as well, albeit this time the island in question is likely to be Britain itself—Oceania’s “Airstrip One,” as depicted by Orwell in 1984.

Srdjan Vucetic is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. His research interests involve American and Canadian foreign and defence policy and international security. Prior to joining the GSPIA, Srdjan was the Randall Dillard Research Fellow in International Studies at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.