ISLAMIC "STATE"?

EMILY PATTERSON

Islamic State has triggered many waves of controversy in the West over the past few years. Their origins and growth have sparked outrage and concern but few have come to question the very banner that this terrorist group fights under. In fact, it’s taken for granted that Islamic State is not an actual state despite their name. Most media stories categorise the group as a terrorist group in the middle east. But reducing them simply to a terrorist organisation fails to convey what they actually do. They call themselves ‘Islamic State’ because they see themselves as a state.

What makes a state? Despite most people having a clear notion of what a state looks like – a government, a country – pinning down the details of how to define a state is actually quite tricky. Max Weber has one of the most famous and widely used definitions of the state: a body which has a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force in a given territory.

Despite the ongoing debate over how we should define a state, within this definition there are several characteristics that all agree on. These essential components of a state are: that it must be within a clearly defined territory, the government or body in charge must have some legitimacy, and there are certain actions that should be carried out, such as taxation and the provision of some services.

Taking these in order, we can say, first of all, that IS does operate within a given territory. It controls large areas of Iraq and Syria. The borders of this territory may not be clearly defined due to ongoing fighting and areas that keep swinging between IS rule and rebel rule, yet the fact remains that they do have a set geographical area that they operate from. Experts also believe that the main aim of IS currently is to consolidate and protect their borders, rather than to keep expanding or to wage war on other countries. Comparing IS to another terrorist organisation such as the IRA clearly shows these differences: IS have areas that they rule, they are more than simply a rebel organisation operating under another government. Islamic State differs in nature from terrorist groups that the West has traditionally faced as they have territorial control and thus are not forced to use covert methods of force.

The second essential component of a state is legitimacy, and this is where IS seems to fall down. They do not have the legitimacy of a democratically elected government, they take over areas by force, and many people living under their rule speak of oppression and subjugation. Yet legitimacy does not just come from being chosen to be the rulers. By accepting and recognising that IS are the rulers, it could be argued that the people under their rule are tacitly consenting to their leadership, and so they have some level of legitimacy. These populations may be referred to as “quasi hostages” but research suggests that, with unpopular alternatives, there is some support amongst the Sunni majorities of these populations for Islamic State governance. It is definitely unclear whether or not IS meets this criteria of being a state, but it seems to me that arguments could be made in favour of IS having some level of legitimacy.

The final key component of a state is that it provides some level of services to its citizens. IS taxes its citizens, which is a characteristic of most states, and suggests that it has some kind of organised infrastructure which enables it to collect taxes. IS also provides public goods such as power and water services, health care, and employment to its citizens. I would argue that IS does provide some level of protection to its citizens as well, but perhaps the motives of this protection are to consolidate and secure its borders rather than for the benefit of the people. It is clear, then, that IS provides many, if not all, of the required services to the people living under its rule. However, its means of providing these services relies mainly on taxation and the control of valuable natural resources which it can extort for money. Its hold on these resources remains weak, so the provision of services is not as stable and secure as we would expect from a fully functioning state.

It's highly unlikely that maps will ever be redrawn with recognition of IS’s statehood. This article doesn’t try to argue that we should change our approach to Islamic State entirely and grant it this recognition. However, these state-like characteristics that the Islamic State mirrors do have implications for the way we treat this group. Islamic State is much more than simply a terrorist organisation, and we should therefore start to treat it as such. Changing how we classify IS may mean that we would try to combat it in a different way and utilise different methods of fighting. The debate surrounding IS statehood does already exist, and some commentators go so far as to say that treating them as a state and fighting them as we would a state rather than a terrorist group is the only way to defeat them. Governments need to start realising this and adapt their methods of dealing with and fighting against IS if they are to have any chance of winning.

CLIMATE CHANGE: A MILLENNIAL PROBLEM

JAMES PIGGOT

During the past few weeks the debate surrounding climate change and denial of it were once again brought to centre stage, not by politicians or A-list celebrities, but by the climate system itself.  Without respite, hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria have decimated communities along almost identical paths through the Caribbean islands and then on to the south and southeastern United States.  Over the past few years the reaction to devastating events such as these are almost formulaic and effortlessly predicted both in terms of governmental and media response.  Initially, at least, the messages from Presidents and Prime Ministers pledging varying degrees of support and assistance are genuine and beneficial to the causes of those affected.  However, it doesn’t take much more than a single news cycle for the story to be drawn in and absorbed as part of the media hurricane into something reflective of current political discourses. 

At present it is inevitable that the debate will refocus and centre on the White House administration and its own climate change denier-in-chief, Donald Trump. As soon as he sets foot in Texas to experience first-hand the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey, dressed in the traditional presidential windbreaker and the slightly less traditional ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball cap, the barrage of questions over climate change and its future impacts begins immediately.  Whilst he and his administration may swat away such questions as opportunistic and insensitive in light of the devastation, the questions will not be going anywhere and neither are the people asking them. 

Of course three, albeit exceptionally powerful, hurricanes in quick succession are not proof of a changed climate. Climate is a 30-year average of daily weather conditions, of which hurricanes and other synoptic scale events are a part.  Some overzealous politicians and media outlets can sometimes overstep the mark on this front, making claims that science cannot simply give a binary answer to.  What can be said is that the strength and frequency of these events is indicative of future change and are almost guaranteed to continue.  But what of the future, in terms of politics, society and the earth system as a whole? Is there hope?

It is these questions which scientists and laymen alike would kill for the answers to. But these questions are impossible to answer.  Whilst every new assessment report produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) strengthens its language and reduces the error bars on many variables within the realm of physical science, there is one area which seems wholly unpredictable and seemingly inexplicable, and that is the human component.  It is easy to outline multiple emissions pathways and run the models into the future, in comparison to redirecting the corporate and political juggernauts towards an acceptable end.  This redirection may have been daunting at best, impossible at worst in the past, entrenched in the ideologies of previous generations, but change is coming.  Change in the form of the often slandered and vilified, iPhone wielding, flat white drinking, Generation Y, better known as… Millennials. 

Originally coined in 1987, by the authors William Strauss and Neil Howe, the phrase “millennials” came into being just as the children born in 1982 were beginning preschool.  The media at the time noted that these children would comprise the high school class graduating in the year 2000, the new millennium.  Whilst there are no strict birth years determining a member of Generation Y it is generally considered to extend between the 1980s and mid-2000s.  A lot of attention has been afforded this generation for many reasons, but two really stand out; they are the first generation to grow up in the age of the internet, and they exist as a dramatic break from the generations preceding them. 

Liberal is a word commonly used to describe millennials, that and lazy if the media are anything to go by.  Their liberalism and tolerance stands counterpoint to the ideas of conservatism and the status quo of the ‘system’ that offers very different prospects for the future than those of their parents.  The unforeseen popularity of the left-wing candidate Bernie Sanders during the American primaries and the election of Justin Trudeau in Canada are testament to the values of millennials and their political ideologies, or perhaps lack of and indicative of the potential influence they possess.  A level of political disenchantment and frustration is understandable considering that those born in the latter half of the millennial age bracket have witnessed a decade of economic upheaval, dramatic increases in inequality and the rise of the populist movements particularly in the ‘West’. 

This is no small group of people we are talking about, in terms of numbers it is now the most numerous generation on the planet.  This is a group of people that are better educated than any before them in history as well as the healthiest (judged by life expectancy).  Yet, there is almost no representation politically for millennials, no one speaking to their issues and values. This is startling considering those issues will shape the future of humanity.  This is a generation that will either be remembered as the greatest in history for saving humankind from itself, or as the generation that couldn’t.  Dramatic as that sounds, the next 50 years are pivotal, decisions made now will have consequences for centuries, if nothing else, because atmospheric inertia has made at least a century of warming a certainty.

Change can already be seen.  Millennials have been branded as narcissistic and entitled by some, but this entitlement may just be the driving force that puts aside short term profits for long term benefits, that seeks value in the work that they do, that will step out from underneath the rampant individualism imposed by a neoliberal order and find benefit from community and togetherness.  In the coming decades, as the younger generations progress upwards through the hierarchy of the world, we are likely to see global leaders, in all areas, that could put aside short term benefits and focus on long term survival.  If we are to succeed in overcoming climate change, Generation Y may be exactly what is needed at exactly the right time. But presentism is a dangerous thing, after all you can only connect the dots looking backwards into the past.

Adapt or die: what the EU can learn from 19th century Ottomans

KATHERINE PYE

On a crisp November day in 1839, in the Gülhane rose gardens of Istanbul, the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire, Grand Vizier Mustafa Resid Pasha recited a proclamation direct from the Sultan in the fresh morning air. It was to change the course of the region’s history for the next 70 years. Before numerous distinguished European guests and dignitaries, including the third son of King Louis Philippe, the decree from recently crowned Abdülmecid I espoused religious equality, modernisation and secularised Ottoman citizenship. It called for the abolition of corrupt tax farming, reform of conscription, and proclaimed the rights of all children to free secular education. 

The proclamation triggered the Tanzimat movement from 1839-1870s, the most extensive programme of modernising reforms the vast empire ever saw. It’s aim: to wrestle back power from local hands and win over the support of entrenched interest groups, including powerful religious minorities. It launched the Ottoman empire into industrial modernity. Tanzimat would enable the Ottoman Empire to compete with the European great powers in its own right, and most importantly, to unify and strengthen itself from within to face its threats without. Its method: using a strong, integrated bureaucratic class to create a new, inclusive secular identity, attempting to rob internal dissenters of their arguments that they faced discrimination at the hands of the Sublime Porte.

As the Pasha spoke, the empire was in turmoil. The millets, religious minorities, had gained extensive new powers, setting their own laws and collecting their own taxes. The once Ottoman governor of Egypt, Mehmet Ali Pasha had declared Egypt an autonomous khedivate no longer part of the Empire, invading Ottoman Syria in 1831 with a modernised, formidable Egyptian army. Meanwhile, in the background Western Europe was flexing its muscles in the Near East; Algeria was conquered by the French in 1830, the Persian Gulf had emerged as an East India Company sphere of influence despite Ottoman claims to suzerainty and West Europeans and Russians readily intervened in the internal affairs of Muslim states over the treatment of the Christian populations. The Ottomans had to act, and Tanzimat became their new hope. 

Fast forward to 2017. The same European countries which feasted their eyes on the Ottoman prize with colonial covetousness have formed a union of their own, which now faces a hostile and uncertain new world. They face a Russia flexing its muscles in Eastern Europe, emerging powers ready to challenge the privileged economic and diplomatic role of the EU, and an American White House reluctant to commit to defending them. Just as the Europeans had vested interests in a weak Ottoman empire so do Russia and emerging superpowers today. As European states argue amongst themselves, competitors like Turkey, China, Russia, quietly ascend.

To counter this, the EU must learn to structure its support from within its borders in order to be taken as a strong, credible and unified force. As with the Ottomans, the task that lies ahead is to steal from its populist enemies their most powerful political tools; passionate appeals to democracy. No longer can the EU afford to ignore concerns, particularly from the fringe parties eroding their authority, about democratic deficit, isolated, unaccountable elites underestimating of the power of identity and a cumbersome, inaccessible EU legal framework. It cannot rest on technocratic laurels to achieve its vision but learn to bridge the gap between authority and the people. It must seek to find its advocates right down to the local grassroots in each of its member states and work hard to simplify and justify itself to the people it claims to serve. 

The EU must learn, as the Ottomans did, to rob its adversaries of their arguments; a directly elected president of the European Commission, for instance, would go some way to silencing the battle cries of European populists. The Union must take seriously concerns about democratic deficit. The EU is not on the brink of collapse, as the Eurosceptics claim, but it could face real danger should it not continue its current course. 

Tanzimat, ultimately, was a failure. In the face of European colonial greed, social inequality and bitter sectarian division Tanzimat never fully achieved its aims before the final death of the Ottoman empire in 1918. However, Europe can succeed where the Ottomans have failed. It has a strong, centralised institutional framework and, more importantly, counts among its members some of the most prosperous economies in the world. It has resources capable of uniting people as vast as the internet by which it can connect with citizens, resources the imperial class in Istanbul 200 years ago would have envied. Like the 19th century Ottomans, the EU’s time is running out. To combat its threats it must unify itself from within.

A Climate of Peace? The role of Climate Change in International Diplomacy

SASHA SKOVRON

The Paris climate agreement represents so much more than a commitment to limit rising global temperatures; climate change poses an equal threat to all nations, and efforts to tackle it signify a worldwide community united in its shared goal to ‘protect all of creation’, in the words of Chancellor Merkel. In a world so fragmented by currents of racism, xenophobia, nationalism and the likes, the role of climate change in ascribing a dynamic of commonality to international diplomacy and foreign policy is often overlooked. The 2015 Paris agreement commits the United States and 194 other countries to ‘holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change’.

In signalling America’s exit from the accord on June 1st, Trump not only crystallises his blatant disregard for the sustainability of our planet, but he consciously withdraws America from a worldwide endeavour which surpasses borders and dissonances so that we may communicate with one another and work together towards finding solutions to an environmental crisis that impacts us all. Michael Brune, from US environmentalists, the Sierra Club, said the expected withdrawal was a "historic mistake which our grandchildren will look back on with stunned dismay at how a world leader could be so divorced from reality and morality”. The only other countries in the global community which have not signed up to the Paris climate accord are Syria and Nicaragua.

The powerful link between climate change and international diplomacy is brought to the fore when we examine the origins of the agreement itself and the reactions of the international community in the wake of Trump’s recent decision. The key relationship that brokered the Paris accord was that of the United States and China, as President Obama and President Xi Jinping collaborated to build a so-called “coalition of high ambition”. On June 2nd, an EU-China Summit took place in Brussels, whereby leaders from both parties reaffirmed their commitment to implementing the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change and, as major energy consumers and importers, highlighted the importance of fostering cooperation in their energy policies. EU and Chinese leaders also look forward to co-hosting, along with Canada, a major ministerial gathering in September to advance the implementation of the Paris agreement and accelerate the clean energy transition. At the joint press conference following the Summit, President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said: "As far as the European side is concerned, we were happy to see that China is agreeing to our unhappiness about the American climate decision. This is helpful, this is responsible, and this is about inviting both, China and the European Union, to proceed with the implementation of the Paris agreement.” The news that a US pullout is on the cards represents so much more than Trump’s obvious ignorance; it signals a move towards American isolationism, as the president seeks to raise yet more barriers between the United States and the rest of the world, following from his decision earlier this year to implement a Muslim travel ban.

External to the Paris climate accord are other international schemes and programmes designed to protect the environment. The Copenhagen Agreement was drafted by the United States and the BASIC countries (a bloc of four newly industrialised countries - Brazil, South Africa, India and China) who committed to act jointly at the Copenhagen climate summit of 2009, whereby a fund was created dictating that high income countries would give 100 billion USD each year to developing countries by 2020 to ensure they could invest in renewable energy without sacrificing economic growth. “Climate finance” is thus indicative of the way in which climate change has driven foreign policy and international cooperation, uniting HICs, MICs and LICs, whilst also partially responding to the claim that developed countries should make a more concerted effort to tackle environmental issues given that they have up until recently been responsible for the lion’s share of emissions. A similar multilateral scheme is the Kyoto protocol which went into force in 2005. Ratified by nearly all nations, this agreement was the first of its kind to mandate country-by-country reductions in yearly emissions of carbon.

The Clean Development Mechanism was introduced to help achieve these targets, and allows emission-reduction projects in developing countries to earn certified emission reduction (CER) credits, each equivalent to one tonne of CO2. These may be traded in emissions trading schemes, with developed countries having the ability to purchase CERs from developing countries, thus investing in emission reductions and green technologies where it is cheapest globally. This work, driven primarily by the demand for low-cost emissions reduction credits from the EU Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS), has resulted in the creation of a burgeoning global market for greenhouse gas emission offsets. Similar to a domestic cap-and-trade programme between companies, international emissions trading enables the transfer of emissions allowances, each worth one ton of greenhouse gases, from one country to another while keeping the total amount of allowable emissions constant.

These strategies are not without their flaws, but it is what they represent - the coming together of nations to protect our shared future through economic and environmental ventures - that is so critical to the shaping of a more sustainable and harmonious international global community. The CDM has made a considerable contribution to the development and transfer of knowledge and technology in developing countries, and has positively impacted on local communities through the creation of jobs and infrastructure. This process of cross-cultural dialogue and interaction, combined with the transfer of knowledge, international trading schemes and foreign investment represents the opening up of our borders and the shared values of humanity that Trump’s decision last week so strongly undermines.

Developed countries are subsequently recognising and accepting responsibility for their contribution to global warming, and are making concerted efforts to devise innovative means by which less developed countries can undergo the same process of economic growth whilst using renewable technologies, rendering them less dependent on fossil fuels such as coal. The UN World Meteorological Organisation said that in the worst scenario, the US pullout could add 0.3°C to global temperatures by the end of the century. I view Trump’s decision as not only entirely selfish (he argued that the agreement “punished” the US and would cost millions of American jobs), but as a provocation of joint diplomatic efforts to overcome one of our generation’s greatest challenges.

Reactions both within and outside the United States testify to the moral obligation we all share topreserve this planet for future generations. Democratic former US Secretary of State John Kerry branded this an ‘extraordinary moment of self-destruction’ which ‘isolates the United States after we had united the world.’ Mayors across the country have stood firm against Trump’s explosive revelation that he would withdraw America from the 2015 Paris climate accord, with the Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, asserting: "This decision is an immoral assault on the public health, safety and security of everyone on this planet. On behalf of the people of New York City, and alongside mayors across the country, I am committing to honour the goals of the Paris agreement with an executive order in the coming days, so our city can remain a home for generations to come."

One link that has yet to be researched further but which bears great relevance to the role of climate change in foreign affairs is that between climate-fragility risks and non-state armed groups (NSAGs). A Climate Diplomacy report entitled ‘Insurgency, Terrorism and Organised Crime in a Warming Climate: Analysing the Links Between Climate Change and Non-State Armed Groups’ published in 2016 highlights how the complex risks presented by conflicts, climate change and increasingly fragile geophysical and socio-political conditions can contribute to the emergence and growth of NSAGs. Climate change is thus inextricably linked with matters of security, since the former acts as a risks multiplier in regards to NSAGs. Large-scale environmental and climatic change contributes to creating an environment in which NSAGs can thrive and opens spaces that facilitate the pursuit of their strategies. Climate change increasingly contributes to fragility, namely by initiating conflicts surrounding natural resources and livelihood insecurity. NSAGs proliferate and can operate more easily in these environments where the state has little to no authority (‘ungoverned space’) and lacks legitimacy.

Sometimes, NSAGs also try to fill the vacuum left by the state by providing basic services in order to gain legitimacy and secure trust and support among the local population. Food insecurity and water/land scarcities render the affected population groups more vulnerable to recruitment by NSAGs, since these groups can offer alternative livelihoods and economic incentives, responding to political and socio-economic grievances. The report comprises four case studies to highlight this point: Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region, ISIS in Syria, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and urban violence and organised crime in Guatemala. 

 Environmental history emerged in the United States out of the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Having only recently assumed prominence as a methodology and discipline of historiographical literature, it emphasises the active role nature plays in influencing human affairs. A study of environmental history documents the transition over time from an ancient and medieval worldview which interpreted environmental catastrophes as orchestrated by God, to a modern-day global acceptance of the impact of human beings on their environment. A unified effort on behalf of the global community to tackle climate change offers opportunity for integration, the transfer of knowledge, cross-cultural exchange, international trade and foreign investment, which bring with them open dialogue and communication, as well as a diplomatic attitude which prizes community and the vision of a shared future over division and barriers. Trump’s signal to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate accord resembles so much more than an abandonment of America’s commitment to reduce its carbon emissions; it represents an undermining of the values we should be pressing so hard to maintain and reinforce in light of the contemporary tensions and challenges we face.

Tracing Treason: Between Civil Liberties and Collective Security

SORCHA THOMSON

It was the golden age of Athenian civilisation when Socrates was called to trial by a polis facing political reformulation following defeat in the Peloponnesian War. Under charges of moral corruption and impiety, the great philosopher faced his jury.  For crimes against the city-state of Athens he was found guilty, and sentenced to death. Faithful to his teachings of respect for the rule of law, he drank the contents of his ascribed poison as if a draught of sweet wine.  

For some, the trial represented the disparity between democratic ideals and popular rule in practice. For others, his sentence was a reasonable defence of a democracy at peril and its steadfast principles. For Plato, the execution - of whom he called the wisest and most just of all men - inspired a body of work that marked the culmination of ancient Greek philosophical thought and laid the foundations for the Occidental philosophical tradition.

Beyond the polis of Athens, the court room has acted as a theatre for reflection on the relationship between the citizen subject and the society to which they belong. Within the binary constraints of the law, judgements are passed. The drama of the court room provides for negotiations on the relationship between individual identity and the authority of the state, as collective identities are forged through the narrative of public trial. With a protagonist accused and a captive audience, a stage for moral lesson is built.

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Moving forward to the foremost horror of the twentieth century, it was not until the 1960s - when the trial of Adolf Eichmann demonstrated the banality of an evil wholly obedient to authority - that the Holocaust gained its metaphysical and cultural symbolism. 

But in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the Holocaust was not recognised by the international community as the systematic extermination of 6 million Jews. Rather, it was seen as one aspect of the atrocities committed by the Nazi fascists in their war of aggression. It was as an active participant in this violent nationalism that William Joyce would be tried by the British government for the crime of treason. 

Joyce, whose fascist career had begun under the guidance of Sir Oswald Mosley, was drawn towards the world of Adolf Hitler. Shortly before war was declared, he fled the British authorities to a place where his views did not elicit the prospect of arrest. In Germany, he was quickly employed to issue broadcasts and write scripts on an English language radio station. At the peak of his popularity, the rhetoric he had perfected as a young fascist activist was used to deliver German propagandist messages to 18 million British listeners – inciting subversion against the Allied war effort.

His career lasted the war, but in 1945 Joyce was brought to the Old Bailey under charges of high treason. Pleading not guilty, he offered himself as a case for a prominent public trial by a nation reeling from the material and emotional toil of war. For his prosecutors, this was a chance to affirm the collective identity of a British front that had won military success. 

It was the particularity of his association with the Nazi regime whilst in possession of a British passport that served as the key indicator of Joyce’s guilt. For his jury, the failure to uphold allegiance to the Crown in favour of the fervent nationalism of the German fascists was an offence that demanded his life. William Joyce went defiant to his noose, the last person to be executed for treason in Britain.

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But with that special capacity of time to alter any idea, the nature of treason is shifting. Just as it was the multipolar order of the Second World War system that generated that particular brand of fascist treachery, it was the bipolar order of a new world system that shaped the path of those called to conspire in the Cold War.  

In the climate of Cold War intrigue, treachery could be achieved through the weakening of the ties that formed an ideological front. The Soviet Union willed the identification of its agents amongst the internal workings of Western ally states as a way to sow distrust and generate imbalance between the various atoms of its enemies. As the tactics of conceit changed, so too did the means by which its actors faced judgement.

The trial of Klaus Emil Fuchs on 1 March 1950, for his role in sharing atomic secrets with the Soviet enemy, judged his espionage as an act of treason. His defence held that he was acting in principled protest against government demands for secrecy that violated his commitment to truth as a member of the global scientific community. The conduct of his trial highlighted the changed nature of the world order. Unlike that of Joyce and his fellow fascists, whose trials were intended as a moral lesson for a nation, Fuchs was tried quickly, quietly, and without spectacle. He was handed the maximum sentence available under the Official Secrets Act. 

Such patterns of communist conspiracy were repeated, replicated in action and then in art, forming a body of work that gave immortality to the workings of this secret global society. Then, with the peculiar dramatism that remains the preserve of history, this world too crumbled. Its people rose, its walls fell, and a seemingly deep rooted ideological grip sank into the earth from which it aspired to build. 

The collapse of the bipolar world order was taken by some to represent the triumph of liberal democracy and capitalism over alternative world visions - the end of history in a post-ideological age. Globalisation - taken to mean the state of complete transnational integration, encompassing all the people of the world within a single network of economic and cultural connections informed by a common consciousness - became the byword of the millennia, believed by both optimists and pessimists to represent the potential of a new age.

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Since then, this imagined condition has become the latest utopia to collapse before our eyes. The implications of the contemporary ‘globalised’ world - neoliberal market hegemony, the homogenisation of mass consumerism against the sharpened heterogeneity of cultural relativism, mass migration in a world of hyper information, and the ubiquitous spectre of environmental destruction - have raised a host of new and challenging questions to contend with.

In this transnational age, the nature of nationalism, and its counterpart treason, takes on new meaning. The social contract that dictates a state provides protection in return for citizen obedience has broken its national boundaries, subject to treachery on a universal scale. 

US citizen Edward Snowden took the decision in 2013 to blow the whistle on human rights abuses by the United States National Security Agency. His revelation outed the extent of global mass surveillance, showing how governments without consent are scooping up the private communications of individuals. He chose to share this information because he believed that the citizens of his country and the world needed to confront the truth of this mass violation of civil liberties. His betrayal of state information in favour of public interest means he now faces decades in prison under charges of espionage outdated and ill-suited to deal with the nature of his crime. His treason was not in support of a contained enemy ideology, but as a transcendent universal aim for the protection of individual freedoms to which all nations must be accountable.

But the apparent goodwill that inspired Snowden’s revelations is not a consistent thread in contemporary acts of treason. Terrorism committed by citizens of a state willing to murder their compatriots in the name of ideology is a gross breakdown of a social contract that demands some collective duty of society. 

In Britain, the 2015 murder of left-wing politician Jo Cox by a far right extremist and the 2017 fatal attack on the Houses of Parliament in Westminster are tragic examples of how perceptions of difference in a globalised world breed a fatal brand of treason at home.

Jo Cox’s murderer was locked away swiftly; Thomas Mair chose to enter no plea and gave no defence at his trial. But his murderous cries of “Britain First!” rang out through the courtroom as evidence of the extreme nationalism that inspired his act. Khalid Masood, the Westminster attacker, was shot in his tracks as he tried to inflict more death on an innocent public. Despite the speed with which the radical terrorist organisation Islamic State claimed him as one of their own, the exact motivations that took Masood over that bridge remain subject to speculation. 

Beyond the media headlines and the commemorative processions, true justice for the victims of such criminal acts will come from achieving solutions that ensure innocent civilians are not killed in the street by those who feel that is a legitimate way to express dissatisfaction with their society. 

But, so often, in the climate of fear that follows an attack on the values of a state, citizens are willing to grant their government extraordinary powers in the name of protection. After 11 September 2001, the community of nations took the opportunity to combat terrorist activities by cracking down on domestic political opponents. In democracies and authoritarianisms alike, the war on terror has been extended to restrict civil liberties in the name of national security.

France, following the 2015 Islamic State terror attack that killed 130 people in Paris, has recently entered its longest uninterrupted state of emergency since the Algerian War in the 1960s, accompanied by the restriction of civil liberties that this entails. In the vying for political power, the provision of security is central to the promises of leaders in a nation whose children have died by the guns of an enemy ideology. But with the insistent recurrence of such violence, the impossibility of absolute security becomes painfully clear, begging the question how much freedom is one willing to give up for the sake of collective safety, and at what cost.

In contemporary Turkey there is evidence of the dangers of this security narrative to the values of democracy. The presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has seen the harassment, arrest and imprisonment of intellectuals, teachers and artists whose commitment to rights of expression puts them in opposition to his entrenching regime. Dissenters condemned as traitors, the act of treason is used as a reason for the extension of power, in violation of civil liberties that should transcend the nation. 

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Socrates, when drinking his sweet poisoned wine, believed that reason could dictate a conscientious disobedience to the state, while agreeing that he had to accept the legal sanctions of his polis. But with no natural correlation between law and justice, an individual must walk this line between respecting the democratic rule of law, and fighting for those values whose intangible nature pulls more at the human heart than those of decrees or documents. 

As it was seen in Eichmann, it is with absolute obedience to the orders of authority that the banal nature of human evil is given space to prosper. The memory of such obedience practiced en masse should provide the guidance to our contemporary treasons. 

The accompanying balance between civil liberties and collective security is for the social contract as the Odysseyan passage between Scylla and Charybdis, respectively.

Odysseus and his ship faced an ocean passage between the Charybdis whirlpool and the cave dwelling, man-eating monster Scylla. One route, Charybdis, presents the possibility that the entire ship will be swallowed by the sea, taking with it all men on board to certain death. The other, Scylla, guarantees the loss of some men to the hungry monster, but ensures that the ship will pass intact. A terrible choice, but pragmatism and idealism alike demand that the mouth of the monster is chanced. The potential to lose all men aboard to the depths of the ocean, the ship and all its previous achievement sinking into oblivion, is too high a risk to take when the journey ahead will promises so much for the vessel and its crew.