I watched most of the sessions of the recent Consultative Forum on International Security Policy. It was better than I anticipated but ultimately, it disappointed. We hear so much about how the world is changing and bringing new threats: why, then, do we burrow down deeper in the ‘box’ to find a response. Anyway find here my submission to the Forum.

Submission to the Consultative Forum on International Security Policy from Frank Litton

Introduction

I ‘attended’ most of the Forum’s sessions online. I am sure I am not alone in finding value in its deliberations on foreign and defence policy. It opened horizons and informed. I look forward to the report that will solidify its contribution. That contribution would be enhanced if the report went beyond summarising what was discussed to note what was not discussed. An important dimension was missing. As a consequence, the value of the Forum as guide to the way forward is diminished.

The wit, poet, surgeon, Oliver St John Gogarty was walking down Holles street, then a narrow thoroughfare flanked by tenements. Two women were  engaged in furious argument shouting across the street from their respective windows. Gogarty turned to his companion: ‘those women will never agree’; ‘how do you know?’ They are arguing from different premises.’ My argument is concerned with  premises, or the suppositions that remain unsaid as arguments proceed. These provide the ‘horizon’ in which facts are gathered and judgements made. So disagreement can occur at two levels. We can disagree about what we see and its implications. We can also disagree on the horizon. The German philosopher, Gadamer, famously wrote of conversations as the ‘merging of horizons’ . One horizon was not brought into the Forum’s conversations, a fundamental flaw. 

The Chair in her opening remarks reminded us of Darwin’s lesson: adaptability in a changing environment is key to a species’ survival. I was reminded of distinctions made by the United State’s philosopher John Dewey, famous for his pragmatism, in his examination of how we interact with our environment. He wrote of ‘accommodation’, ‘adaptation’ and ‘adjustment’.

Accommodation

We can think of the environment as both the source of problems and solutions. We encounter the problems as we go about our daily business; we look for solutions in the more or less tacit understandings that underpin the roles and routines through which that business is conducted, as we draw on the common stock of knowledge. 

For example, a tricky problem surfaces in the United Nations. Conflicting loyalties must be reconciled, compromises made as allies are recruited. A diplomat advises the Minister on a speech she is to deliver to the Assembly. Diplomatic nous is required respecting the boundary that separates the civil servants role from that of the Minister and in finding the form of words best matched to the situation. Considerable skill may be deployed, nonetheless, it is a matter of routine. The respective roles are well established, the memoranda and reports in the file provide the background. The purposes pursued are well served by accommodation. [ The Diplomat’s task will become easier as AI develops its capacity to mine and represent data analysed in tune with the tacit understandings that generated it.]

Adaptation

What do we do when we encounter problems that cannot be solved by accommodation however skilfully deployed? Dewey tells us that our stance changes. Where we allowed the environment to shape us, now we must adapt it to better suit our purposes. Purposes, of course, are part of the environment, elements of its tacit understandings. They occasionally surface when values are proclaimed. Adaptation requires that they be made explicit, rendered in a form that allows them be interrogated in ways that the assertion of values cannot.

The Forum: accommodation and not adaptation 

The publicity surrounding the Forum suggested that its business was adaptation. In the event, evidence of adaptation was scant. What we heard most of the time in most of the discussions was accommodation thinking, often of a high quality.

Lurking in the background was the question of whether changed circumstances meant that we change the character of our alliances or enter into new ones: join NATO or deepen or involvement in EU defence initiatives. If this question was answered in adaptation mode, the problems that demanded the change would have been discussed in extensive detail and, importantly, the following questions would have been addressed.

The overriding purpose of our foreign policy is that it should be moral and that it should seek to make the world a better place. We hold, I suppose, that there are no circumstances in which the taking of innocent life can be justified. Is joining an alliance armed with nuclear weapons whose raison d’être is the slaughter  of the innocent compatible with this? What military alliances are allowable given that the killing of civilians appears to be an inevitable part of modern warfare? 

Interdependence does bring obligations. We benefit from our membership of the EU. We should be prepared to pay our dues which include contributions to the defence of the Union. We have to take the character of the Union into account when assessing these obligations. To simplify, consider a continuum: at one pole we have an imperial order dominated by one or two great powers. They find it expedient to incorporate smaller, weaker powers on their periphery who find sufficient economic and security benefits in the shelter the order provides to acquiesce to its hegemony. The calculus is the balance of powers, the matching of needs with alternatives. At the other pole, we have an association of nations who find in a shared tradition the resources to act in solidarity. The calculus is the common good. Where does the EU lie on this continuum? What are the implications of its position for our obligations? 

These questions were not addressed. Should they have been? Much was made of the changing world order and the problems this brought. If this talk had been taken seriously, the answer is, obviously, yes.

 Adjustment

Adapting brings our purposes into focus as we modify our environment the better to pursue them. Adjusting takes this a stage further as we transform our understanding of our purposes and how they relate to the world in which we find ourselves. At the level of the individual this entails something like a religious conversion. At the social level, it entails the transformation of what the Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor calls the social imaginary: ‘the ways in which [people] imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations which are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images which underlie these expectations.’ Though imaginaries endure for long periods of time, they develop, change, mutate and eventually slowly collapse to be replaced. The origins of the western, democratic imaginary can be traced to the 17^th century when the wars of religion showed the prevailing imaginary incapable of delivering peace and security and providing the framework to sustain a nascent capitalism. Is our imaginary facing threats akin to the wars of religion? Are we in need of adjustment?  Some of the threats adverted to in the forum could be understood as suggesting ‘yes’.

Take two issues: populism and misinformation. The consensus is that while they are troubling, bring uncertainty into calculations, solutions can be found in existing frameworks. The classic distinction between left and right applies. The problem is extremists on both wings , especially those on the right. Disinformation  is a problem that comes with technological advances equipping the political rogues that are always to be found, with new powers to do their mischief. New forms of censorship can, if not remove, the threat, mitigate it. 

Another reading is possible. What we are facing is the collapse of the mediators that linked the citizens into the wider picture of national politics. Peter Mair, the Irish political scientist, noted the transformation of the role of political parties more than a decade ago. Up to the 1970s and beyond, political parties in European democracies could rely on the support of solid blocs of supporters. Their support ran from membership, financial contributions, to consistent voting in their favour.  Rather than voting for a party because they judged its program matched their interests, they trusted the party to instruct them in their interests. This trust had to be sustained, hence the importance of local organisation and a partisan press which communicated the party’s position. This world is disappearing fast; membership of political parties declines, voter turnout declines. We are witnessing what the French political scientist Bernard Manin calls the move from ‘Party Democracy’ to ‘ Audience Democracy’. With it, the role of party leader changes. A Trump, a Johnson, a Macron can win the votes of the audience without progress ing up the party hierarchy where their abilities would be tested and skills honed. While political parties were the major mediators, they were not alone. Trade unions, business, social, charitable, religious, associations, all brought local interests and perspectives into the ‘big picture’ while communicating it down the line.  These follow the path of political parties. Misinformation is as much a cultural as a technological problem. It reflects the collapse of authority that follows from the disappearance of mediating hierarchies. 

Any reformulation of the social imaginary must include a global, international dimension.  We can find the kind of thinking that feeds into the recasting of the social imaginary without difficulty. I mention just two names among many.  Bruno Latour’s wide-ranging reflections, on technology, the environment, politics attract increasing attention. Pope Francis’s encyclicals Laudato Si and Fratelli Tutti provide a deeper, richer account of how we are in the world than the thin gruel served up by neo-liberalism with its exclusive concern with economics. Neither they nor anybody else addressing these issues were mentioned.

Conclusion

Research reports invariably conclude with ‘more research is needed’ . The report on the Forum cannot avoid the conclusion ‘more deliberation is needed’.