“Which is better—to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?”1
— William Golding, Lord of the Flies
The answer lies in lessons learned through tyrants and the oppressed, wars and revolutions, and in the events culminating on September 11, 2001. The 9/11 attacks revisited the lesson that the history of the world continues to teach: We can choose lawlessness and the destruction of life and property it breeds, or we can choose something more civilized.
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”2
—Aldous Huxley, Collected Essays
Civilization harnesses good governance for the well-being of the individual and society. Without strong states to govern it, human behavior can regress to the mean. Historically, one could say the aggregate average of human behavior can be classified as, well, uncivilized.
Civilization can be described as both “a process and a destination” whereby a society progresses from a raw “state of nature,” or “barbarism,” to a state marked by “reasonably complex sociopolitical organization and self-government according to prevailing standards.”3 First, we must begin with the assumption that “civilization is a good thing—or at least better than the alternatives.”4 History speaks loud enough to remind us that in the absence of civil authority “it was the Law of the Sea—beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.”5
As to governance, standards of “civilization” have evolved in international law to determine membership in the international society of states.6 A civilized state has historically required: (1) basic institutions of good governance; (2) the organizational capacity for self-defense; (3) a published legal code and adherence to the rule of law (ROL); (4) the capacity to honor contracts in commerce and capital exchange; and (5) recognition of international law and norms, including the laws of war.7
If a nation could meet these requirements, it was generally deemed to be a legitimate sovereign state, entitled to full recognition as an international entity.8 If not, history is replete with failed states.
During the 1990s, some U.S. strategists began to alert to the risks of “spillover consequences of weak governance in the developing world.”9 Before 9/11, however, U.S. policy makers were focused on the humanitarian aspect to such risks, not the strategic significance.10 This all changed at 8:46 a.m. EST on September 11, 2001, when 19 hijackers acting at the direction of Al Qaeda leadership headquartered in Afghanistan turned commercial airliners into weapons of war, killing more people than the attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II.11 A consensus was quickly reached that “state fragility was both an incubator and vector of multiple transnational threats.”12
Accordingly, President George Bush declared a “Global War on Terror,” initiating “a conflict without temporal and spatial horizons, where non-state, terrorist actors were as much a target of U.S. military action as the states that harbored them.”13 U.S. State Department Director of Policy and Planning Richard Haass noted,
The attacks of September 11, 2001, reminded us that weak states can threaten our security as much as strong ones, by providing breeding grounds for extremism and havens for criminals, drug traffickers, and terrorists. Such lawlessness abroad can bring devastation here at home.14
A new focus emerged on the spillover threats from weak or failed states, and
it rapidly became conventional wisdom, both in the United States and abroad.15 What followed was a (re)focus on building the capacity to be civilized.
“The art of war is of vital importance to the State.”16
—Sun Tzu, Art of War
Strong states are built with security capacity. President Ronald Reagan stated at the Republican National Convention on July 17, 1980, “We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted.”17
The U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) now formally recognizes the “threat posed by fragile states and instability; and emphasizes the need to help create legitimate, well-governed states” by way of nation-building efforts to avoid military intervention.18 Among these are Security Sector Assistance (SSA) operations developed to build the “security capacity” of partner nations—both their armed forces and law enforcement agencies.19 The U.S. Department of State (DOS) was initially tasked with the implementation and overseeing of the SSA programs, in coordination with the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and other interagency partners.20 The DOD has developed its own robust SSA programming in more of a bifurcated process and, along with DOS and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), operates a corollary program that has emerged over the last decade—Security Sector Reform (SSR).21 SSR is also directed at the institutions, processes, and forces that provide security and promote the ROL.22 More than structural capacity, SSR is “the set of policies, plans, programs, and activities that a government undertakes to improve the way it provides safety, security, and justice.”23 The United States is not alone in its pursuit of coordinated and comprehensive approaches to SSA or SSR—the United Nations (UN) has an integrated SSR unit that works in conjunction with the UN Development Program and UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO), pursuant to UN Security Resolution 2151 (2014) to promote ROL and good governance.24
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…”
—U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776)
Security capacity is intertwined with the ROL. It follows that central to SSA/SSR operations and NSS is the rule of law.25 ROL is often cited as being a very important strategic goal in itself and is found numerous times in major official U.S. strategy documents, including the NSS, the National Military Strategy, National Security Presidential Directives, and official programs of the DOD, DOS, and DOJ.26
The U.S. government interagency definition of ROL, adopted from the UN definition and used in SSA/SSR operations, is “a principle under which all persons, institutions, and entities, public and private, including the state itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced, and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights law.”27 To advance NSS objectives and counter failed state threats, the U.S. military has been heavily involved in ROL operations in the context of counterinsurgency campaigns, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in overarching SSA/SSR operations.28 ROL measures to improve the justice sector affects all aspects of SSA/SSR. Courts provide oversight over the security sector mechanisms, management, and oversight institutions by adjudicating disputes and by applying sanctions to those that fail to comply with the governing laws.29
How important is the ROL to security capacity, good governance, and a civilized society? UN High Representative Lord Paddy Ashdown recounted the UN’s experience in war-torn Bosnia:
We thought that democracy was the highest priority, and we measured it by the number of elections we could organize. In hindsight, we should have put the establishment of ROL first, for everything else depends on it: a functioning economy, a free and fair political system, the development of civil society, and public confidence in police and courts.30
To maintain this focus today, the UN SSR unit is within an enhanced UN Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions, established within the UNDPKO, which deploys peacekeepers who “assist conflict-affected countries in re-establishing the ROL and security institutions necessary to build and sustain peace.”31
“Eternal vigilance is the price we pay for liberty.”32
—attributed to Thomas Jefferson
Civilization stands in defiance of human history and must be guarded closely. This is the heart of the identified weaknesses leading to 9/11. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, “Across the government, there were failures of imagination, policy, capabilities, and management.”33 It is interesting to note, that the 9/11 Commission found that “the most important failure was one of imagination [emphasis added]… Al Qaeda’s new brand of terrorism presented challenges to U.S. governmental institutions that they were not well-designed to meet.”34 Even the policy failures were linked to this failure of imagination.35 The management failures were due to a broader inability to adapt to the new challenges of the 21st century.36 Perhaps, the United States could have used a “Tenth Man,” an institutionalized “devil’s advocate,” as Israel did to guard against blindsiding in the new world of “asymmetrical operating and oversight environments.”37
Underpinning the limited imaginative capacity were structural failures. “Before 9/11, the U.S. tried to solve the al Qaeda problem with the capabilities it had used in the last stages of the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. These capabilities were insufficient. Little was done to expand or reform them.”38 This failure in capacity stemmed from a “combination of an overwhelming number of priorities, flat budgets, an outmoded structure, and bureaucratic rivalries [that] resulted in an insufficient response to this new challenge.”39
Security capacity is the foundation upon which all other civil capacities rest. The “First Duty of Government” is to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens.40 The governed convey this power to the sovereign where it is held in the public trust to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”41 According to a recent study, post-9/11 military and nation-building operations as part of the Global War on Terror cost the United States alone over $6.4 trillion and 7,014 U.S. military lives (and counting).42 U.S. founding father Benjamin Franklin famously stated in a letter about the “Protection of Towns,” that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”43
We either resource our military and justice institutions to guard the walls of the “shining cities upon a hill,” that we work so hard to build, or we pay the price to retake them.44 Let’s never forget the lessons of history. Let’s never stop building our capacity to be secure and be civilized.
“Let’s roll…”45
—Todd Beamerd
Notes:
1William Golding and Edmund L. Epstein, Lord of the Flies: A Novel (Perigee, 1954).
2Aldous Huxley, Collected Essays (New York, NY: Harper, 1958).
3Brett Bowden, Civilization and Its Consequences (Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016).
4Bowden, Civilization and Its Consequences.
5Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ‘80s (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1988).
6Bowden, Civilization and Its Consequences.
7Bowden, Civilization and Its Consequences, citing Gerrit W. Gong, Standard of “Civilization” in International Society (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1984); Brett Bowden, “In the Name of Progress and Peace: The ‘Standard of Civilization’ and the Universalizing Project,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 29, no. 1 (2004.): 43–68; Brett Bowden, The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
8Bowden, Civilization and Its Consequences; Bowden, “In the Name of Progress and Peace”; Bowden, The Empire of Civilization.
9Stewart M. Patrick, Weak Links: Fragile States, Global Threats, and International Security (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011), 1-4.
10Patrick, Weak Links.
11National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, Executive Summary (2004).
12Patrick, Weak Links.
13Conor Keane, US Nation-Building in Afghanistan (London, UK: Routledge, 2016).
14Patrick, Weak Links, citing Richard Haass (State Department Director of Policy Planning, remarks to the School of Foreign Service and the Mortara Center for International Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, January 14, 2003).
15Patrick, Weak Links.
16Sun Tzu, Art of War, trans. Thomas Cleary (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 2005).
17Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum, “Peace Through Strength.
18U.S. Army Center for Law and Military Operations, preface to Rule of Law Handbook: A Practitioner’s Guide for Judge Advocates, citing the White House National Security Strategy (Charlottesville, VA: Judge Advocate General Legal Center and School, 2015), v.
19U.S. Army Center for Law and Military Operations, preface to Rule of Law Handbook: A Practitioner’s Guide for Judge Advocates; Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, Office of Congressional and Public Affairs, U.S State Department, “The Role of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in U.S. Security Sector Assistance,” January 20, 2021.
20Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, Office of Congressional and Public Affairs, U.S State Department, “The Role of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in U.S. Security Sector Assistance.”
21Max Bergmann and Alexandra Schmitt, “A Plan to Reform U.S. Security Sector Assistance,” Foreign Policy and Security, March 9, 2021; U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), and U.S. Department of State (DOS), Security Sector Reform (2009).
22U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), and U.S. Department of State (DOS), Security Sector Reform (2009).
23United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM), Handbook for Military Support to Rule of Law and Security Sector Reform, book 4, chap. 1, section 9(b), Unified Action Handbook series (2016
24UN Peacekeeping, “Security Sector Reform.”
25U.S. Army Center for Law and Military Operations, preface to Rule of Law Handbook: A Practitioner’s Guide for Judge Advocates, v.
26United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM), Handbook for Military Support to Rule of Law and Security Sector Reform, book 4, chap. 1, section 9(b), Unified Action Handbook series (2016).
27UN Peacekeeping, “Security Sector Reform.”
25U.S. Army Center for Law and Military Operations, preface to Rule of Law Handbook: A Practitioner’s Guide for Judge Advocates, v.
26USJFCOM, Handbook for Military Support to Rule of Law and Security Sector Reform, chap. 1, section 4.
27U.S. Army Center for Law and Military Operations, Rule of Law Handbook, citing USAID, DOD, and DOS Security Sector Reform.
28U.S. Army Center for Law and Military Operations, preface to Rule of Law Handbook: A Practitioner’s Guide for Judge Advocates, chap. 1, 3.
29USJFCOM, preface to Handbook for Military Support to Rule of Law and Security Sector Reform.
30USJFCOM, preface to Handbook for Military Support to Rule of Law and Security Sector Reform.
31UN Peacekeeping, “Building Rule of Law & Security Institutions.”
32This motto is attributed to Thomas Jefferson but officially undetermined.
33Natl. Comm. on Terrorist Attacks Upon the U.S., The 9/11 Commission Report.
34Natl. Comm. on Terrorist Attacks Upon the U.S., The 9/11 Commission Report.
35Natl. Comm. on Terrorist Attacks Upon the U.S., The 9/11 Commission Report.
36Natl. Comm. on Terrorist Attacks Upon the U.S., The 9/11 Commission Report.
37Joseph Polzak, “Ipcha Mistabra Maybe the Opposite Is True,” Chief’s Counsel, Police Chief 87, no.3 (March 2020): 18–20.
38Natl. Comm. on Terrorist Attacks Upon the U.S., The 9/11 Commission Report.
39Natl. Comm. on Terrorist Attacks Upon the U.S., The 9/11 Commission Report.
40Steven J. Heyman, “The First Duty of Government: Protection, Liberty and the Fourteenth Amendment,” Duke Law Journal 41, no. 507, citing remarks of Rep. Farnsworth 39th Cong., 2d Sess. (1867) (debating Reconstruction Act of 1867) and Jennifer Nedelsky, Private Property and the Limits of American Constitutionalism: The Madisonian Framework and Its Legacy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
41U.S. Const., Preamble.
42Brown University, “The Cost of the Global War on Terror: $6.4 Trillion and 801,000 Lives,” press release, November 13, 2019.
43Benjamin Franklin, “On Protection of Towns from Fire,” February 4, 1735. Benjamin Franklin was a printer, political thinker, politician, scientist, inventor and diplomat, and one of the “Founding Fathers” of the United States of America.
44Ronald Reagan, “Farewell Address to the Nation,” January 11, 1989, “[I]n my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”
45”Defending America’s Airspace,” Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial. “The nation owes a debt to the passengers of United 93—including Todd Beamer, who stated ‘let’s roll’ as the passengers mounted an assault on the hijackers to re-take the aircraft.”
 Joe Polzak currently serves as police legal advisor for the Sarasota, Florida, Police Department, and as legal counsel for several other law enforcement agencies. He formerly served as a felony prosecutor for the State of Florida as an assistant state attorney. He has presented law enforcement best practices to government agencies and industry organizations. |
Please cite as
Joseph J. Polzak, “Lessons Learned? A Civilized Society,” Chief’s Counsel, Police Chief 88, no. 9 (September 2021): 20–21.
