The A Spot

If it’s Teresa’s tendency to geek out over cool new tools, it’s probably mine to get lost down the rabbit hole of overthinking theories and abstract ideas. Today’s post is a prime example, but a blog is a blog, and since this is what I’ve been thinking about with respect to advocacy this past week, I’m putting those thoughts down as best I can.

Karl Maria von Clausewitz famously opined that war is “merely the continuation of politics by other means.” Put a different way, we might say that war — or violence — is advocacy taken to its illogical extreme. Our definition of advocacy up in the sidebar over there is “developing a passion for something and doing everything you can to make it happen.” It’s that “everything” that I’m picking at today. The Hutus of Rwanda were passionate that Tutsis should no longer exist, and they were truly willing to do everything to see that happen. Osama bin Laden and the followers of al Qaeda were passionate about striking a blow against the liberal, secular democracy that the United States represents; they were willing to everything, or anything, to do that. President Bush was passionate about removing Saddam Hussein from power for his (purported) role in supporting al Qaeda, and perhaps also passionate about bringing stable democracy to the Middle East. Whatever your opinion of the war in Iraq, few would question the President’s willingness to use any means available to accomplish his goals.

We struggle with this in our own advocacy work as well — that is to say, if we are working to build the capacity of citizens to advocate effectively, how do we know that they won’t use those skills to be more effective in pursuing objectives or ideals we would find abhorrent? This needn’t always be violent. It can take the form, for example, of designing and conducting successful misinformation or propaganda campaigns. But it can just as easily be violent. As we noted in a previous post, cell phone text messaging was used during the recent election crisis in Kenya to coordinate violence against particular political and ethnic groups.

The problem is that methods and tools that can be used to persuade, can often be used with equal facility to coerce. Persuasion, we would argue, involves dialogue. Our concept of advocacy necessarily includes or derives from an inviolable respect, or tolerance, for the right of others to listen, be heard, and make their own decisions. We may disagree with them, even loathe their positions, but except in the most extreme circumstances, we are unwilling to force them to change. We will only keep trying to persuade them. Coercion, by contrast, does not respect or tolerate the right of others to listen, be heard, and make their own decisions. Coercion is the imposition of obedience or acquiescence without regard to the rights of others.

Because coercion — violence, war, intimidation — removes the possibility of free will on the part of the target audience (sometimes removing much more than that), it is a singularly poor foundation for increasing civic freedoms. War by its very nature abrogates and erodes civic freedoms. As advocacy, war is more likely to result in the death of further advocacy than the birth of it. As long as it persists unchecked, war destroys absolutely the conditions necessary for open civic dialogue, for advocacy as a mainstream part of everyday life. This would seem to belie the current U.S. administration’s avowed strategy of bringing freedom to Iraq by conquering it through military force. Others would argue that there are occasions when war is, although a last resort, the only resort. I agree with that, actually, even though I don’t agree that Iraq represents such a case. Such disagreement just further illustrates my point, however — in America we are free to debate this issue, to try to persuade each other. The Iraqi people don’t have that luxury. War was imposed on them.

I’m writing about this because the U.S. government is currently engaged in a rather substantial effort to foster the development of stronger civic participation and civic dialogue in Iraq, as part of its strategy for helping democracy take root there. I’m not talking about military force now, but rather about foreign assistance. U.S. government funding, in significant amounts, to support the kind of work that Teresa and I and our colleagues are engaged in doing in other countries. It’s a constant question for us — should we be open to accepting this money? Regardless of how we might feel about what has happened in Iraq to date, can the Iraqi people benefit from the kinds of skills and tools we have to offer? Or is it impossible on its face to attempt to cultivate openness, dialogue, and civic advocacy under the cover of military force?

I lean toward the latter position – that taking U.S. government money to foster freedom under cover of a military action I don’t agree with is morally problematic at best. But at the same time, am I willing to leave military force as the only thing we have to offer the Iraqi people? Don’t they need more than that from us? Don’t they deserve more? I have no idea how to answer these questions.

And Iraq is hardly the only example. There are many situations in which our diplomacy, development and defense priorities can work at cross purposes. Serbia. The Palestinian Territories. China. Cuba. So this is my call for others smarter than I am to help — any guidelines or advice out there for the conflicted?

Tags: advocacy, foreign assistance, Iraq, war

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Matthew DeGroot. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.