This week we focused on analyzing Machiavelli and some of his political writings. I found Machiavelli very entertaining but, as I stated in my blog post, I did not find him too compelling from a modern perspective. But, as I dedicated a blog post to that, I will not dwell on it here. What I did find interesting was the Spy Museum.
Now, the Spy Museum itself was good, but not up to the standards of the Newseum which was fantastic. But it did raise some interesting questions about the role of espionage and clandestine activities in modern world politics. Countries, like the United States, are quick to laud the international system and international law but are equally quick to subvert and ignore it when it serves their interests. The US has no qualms about assassinating suspected terrorists in the mountains of Pakistan and Yemen and the coast of Somalia which is possibly in violation of the international law we claim to hold so highly. But it's not just the US, French Intelligence kidnapped Carlos the Jackal from a hospital in Sudan in 1994, an early example of the current controversy of rendition in the United States today.
Nearly every country makes at least a rhetorical effort to support the international system but nearly every country subverts it without fear of reprisal -- the worst that can happen is a strongly worded nonbinding condemnation that gets held up in the Security Council by Russia. While the spy museum didn't actually cover this in great depth, it did provoke this line of thinking on my part. It's, of course, necessary to occasionally operate outside the system -- the system is simply so dysfunctional and unrealistic that one would be irresponsible not to occasionally operate outside the international system. But where's that line?
"It's, of course, necessary to occasionally operate outside the system -- the system is simply so dysfunctional and unrealistic that one would be irresponsible not to occasionally operate outside the international system. But where's that line?" In other words, when is it acceptable or necessary to transgress the borders of international sovereignty? We could perhaps of included "espionage" on our list of things realism is at a bit of a loss to study or explain. Since realism takes as given a system of sovereign territorial states and regards power as principally military (and sometimes economic) in scope -- and espionage deals in the shadowy "unofficial" realm of violations of sovereignty and measures power in terms of information -- realism in some ways seems ill-suited to explain this aspect of international relations. Yet at the same time, states maintain official governmental agencies devoted to espionage and intelligence gathering in this context is in the service of a sovereign authority. in this sense, espionage seems to be a quasi-legitimate norm of world politics designed (one assumes) to enhance states' power. How do you think espionage fits into a realist framework? Does it cross a line or is it within the outline of international politics realism presents us with?
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