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On Security, by Ronnie D. Lipschutz
Pearl-Alice Marsh
One of the goals of this volume is to better understand how particular conceptualizations of national security are formed and subsequently become the basis not only for declaratory policy but also for initiatives with respect to different parts of the world. In Chapter 3, Ole Wæver describes how security as a "speech act" can be used to securitize particular areas of national life. Such securitization projects do not always succeed; if they are to do so they must be plausible and present convincing cause-effect relationships. It is useful, therefore, to consider situations in which a securitization project has failed, and that is my purpose here.
During the Reagan Administration, major episodes of contestation over definitions of security took place when citizens groups, through a process of "grassroots statecraft," challenged national security policy with respect to a number of Third World countries. Operating under the conditions of the Cold War and the compelling ideas of geopolitics, the Reagan Administration was driven by the logic of both to compete with the Soviet Union and to draw strategic boundaries around, and through, an increasing number of states in the "periphery." This logic organized states into two dominant camps, each lined up with one or the other of the two superpowers. Civil conflicts occurring within any particular Third World country were, consequently, seen in "zero-sum" terms and as an opportunity by each superpower to weaken the influence of the other. Often such conflicts were fostered and exacerbated exactly for this purpose. The internal causes of civil conflict often were overlooked because of a desire either to destabilize or maintain the status quo, regardless of the legitimacy or domestic policies of the government in question. What emerged, then, in the context of Third World civil strife, was a contest between two public discourses: The first was an "official" statist one that focused on geopolitics and the securitization of specific countries; the second was one offered by citizens groups that focused on human rights, national self-determination, and desecuritization.
It has been axiomatic in foreign policy that geopolitical factors best account for our security concerns and that realms of concern such as human rights are too murky or contestable for official engagement. 1 The geopolitical framework has focused primarily on "balance" and "stability" and views all conflict through those lenses. Thus, regime stability, the maintenance of friends, and the arming of insurgents against enemies were the mainstays of both the U.S. and Soviet foreign policies.
The framework rooted in human rights challenged this notion that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," and looked more deeply at the internal social dynamics of political conflict within specific countries. This counter-discourse drew different conclusions regarding the implications of Third World conflicts for U.S. security and, indeed, whether such conflicts had anything at all to do with national security. The conclusion derived from the human rights approach was that a geopolitical framework fostered unnecessary interventions into the domestic affairs of countries and had the effect of overmilitarization of civilian conflict. The outcome would be exactly what such intervention was intended to prevent--regime instability and, in the long run, hostility toward the United States--thereby fulfilling the scenario imagined and feared by U.S. policymakers, although for reasons quite the opposite of those they had postulated.
Oddly enough, both frameworks claimed the same ultimate outcome: The strengthening of relations with foreign regimes and, as a consequence, the strengthening of national security (neither considered seriously the likelihood that social chaos might also be a possible outcome, no matter which policy was pursued). Government and citizens groups competed to win the hearts and minds of the public by offering the public what they hoped were plausible cause-effect outcomes that would alter the perception of U.S. national security interests and, ultimately, enable them to prevail when the particular foreign policy initiatives they advocated were implemented.
I focus here on two specific cases. The first involves U.S. policy toward South Africa, a policy that was linked to U.S. national security as long ago as the late 1940s. This became a major concern of the Reagan Administration, in light of its fears of Soviet-launched "resource wars" in southern Africa. The second deals with Central America, where leftist governments and rebellions were pictured as the "thin wedge" of an expanding Communist base in the Western Hemisphere. I begin with a brief discussion of the concept of grassroots statecraft. I then analyze how conventional theories of international relations and foreign policy regard citizens' involvement in the practice of foreign policy as undesirable, if not dangerous. Next, I describe the ways in which grassroots statecraft challenges the discursive national security projects of the state. Finally, I discuss the two cases mentioned above.
Grassroots Statecraft:
Challenging the Discourses of the State
I call the challenges to the state put forth by citizens' groups "grassroots statecraft." I define grassroots statecraft as encompassing the organized actions of citizens who are directly challenging the foreign policy of their government through contending discourses and "speech acts." Grassroots statecraft is rooted in the political processes that pit ideologies, values, strategies, and tactics of organized civil society against the foreign policy establishment of the state. It is the presence of overt public dissent within the political life of a community, in this case over national security policy. It is a process of forging political relations within civil society, and across national borders, sufficient to alter the terms of discourse within the formal political institutions and, in its strongest manifestation, to alter national security policy. It is what James Rosenau calls "stirrings at the micro level which are converted to macro outcomes." 2
Theories of international relations and foreign policy do not have much to say about the role of the citizenry in foreign policy: From realism to interdependence , we find either silence or outright hostility to citizen involvement. 3 To the extent that the high politics of foreign policy are understood to emerge from the state in a "single voice," dissenting voices are minimized or ignored as not possessing the data needed to make an "informed" and "objective" judgment. It is in the interest of the state to create the sense of monopoly over the information that forms the basis for the definition of national interests and the formulation of foreign policy. As Ole Wæver points out in chapter 3: "In naming a certain development a security problem, the `state' can claim a special right, one that will, in the final instance, always be defined by the state and its elites. . . . By uttering `security,' a state-representative moves a particular development into a specific area, and thereby claims a special right to use whatever means are necessary to block it."
Indeed, the state will do all that is in its power to discredit contrary or oppositional security discourses. Samuel Huntington has gone so far as to suggest that citizens' involvement in foreign policy matters represents an " `excess of democracy' and threatens the democratic order." 4 This extreme view illustrates the strong anti-citizen nature of a state-centered approach and implies that an "anti-democracy" stance in foreign policy is necessary in order to preserve democracy!--a stunning suggestion if taken to its logical conclusion.
In any event, the question of the "legitimacy" of citizens' actions, whether or not explicitly expressed, begs empirical observation: Citizens' groups are increasingly involved in the foreign policy process. Concerted citizens' actions range from the anti-apartheid movement in the United States to the environmentalist movements in Europe, each focused on interstate or transnational concerns and sharing common interests that lie beyond national political borders, beyond the range of conventional "domestic politics." 5 These groups seek not only to influence the foreign policy of the state, but also to conduct their own foreign policies, as well.
There are three forms of citizens action movements that seek to alter the behavior of states: (1) those that attempt to influence the affairs of foreign governments by changing the behavior of their own government toward the former (e.g., the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Sanctuary Movement); (2) those that assume responsibility for directly intervening in the affairs of the foreign government (e.g., human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, whose primary aim is to organize citizens around the world to apply pressure directly to individual governments 6 ); and (3) those that go beyond governments and nations to an anti-national form of organization (e.g., some of the activities of organizations such as Greenpeace 7 ). My concern here is primarily with movements and groups of the first type.
While the objectives of groups involved in grassroots statecraft vary as widely as their professed political tendencies, they share some common features: (1) a moral or ideological code which justifies their concerns and actions; (2) an information dissemination and communication structure able to access the general public through traditional organizational channels, mediated through a network of core activists who share a wide range of political and technical skills; (3) an array of tactics and means involving mass action and/or direct public pressure on elected officials; (4) direct relations with foreign movements or governments for whom they claim a cause; and (5) access to resources sufficient to sustain the groups' activities and to help support the movement. The degree to which groups are or are not successful depends on each one's ability to maximize these five features.
The difference between grassroots statecraft and the ordinary lobbying of Congress and the Executive by conventional interest groups is a critical one. Interest groups seek to alter the balance of forces within the federal government with respect to a particular policy issue. The questions they address include: Whom do we support? What should we give them? How much? Interest groups do not, however, question the fundamental premises of national security policy or the content of the security discourse. Threats are a given; responses are a necessity. Practitioners of grassroots statecraft seek to alter the very premises of national security discourse. They do not ask "whom should we should support?" but rather "is there a threat?" They do not accept as given the adversarial and conflictual nature of international politics but rather ask "What is in the best interests of the people involved?"
In the United States, grassroots statecraft movements have emerged primarily on the political left and, indeed, their more recent emergence in the United States can be traced directly to the left's opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Comparable movements on the right have developed subsequently (although similar movements existed in the 1950s) and they have tended to play up the conflictual and threatening nature of international politics (to the United States). While the left could claim credit for the overwhelming support for anti-apartheid legislation that emerged from the U.S. Congress during the 1980s, the right had its victories as well--support for the Contras in Nicaragua, the government of El Salvador, and the FNLA in Angola. In some cases--for example, U.S. policy toward Israel--the left/right dichotomy was ambiguous (an ambiguity that has not been made that much clearer by the 1993 agreement between Israel and the PLO). Supporters of a strong U.S.-Israel alliance in the Middle East, for example, ranged from the left and liberal to the far right. This support was not, however, an instance of grassroots statecraft as defined here; it developed much more along the lines of conventional interest group politics.
In the United States, well-organized, state-oriented protest politics and political movements work primarily within the structures of influence in electoral politics and levels of governance, taking advantage of the separation of jurisdictions between local, state, and national authorities, and the two-party political system. It is within the interstices of the checks and balances of this system that foreign-policy-oriented movements find their space. It is here that conflict is processed and mediated in American politics, and where the effectiveness of the complexity of American politics is most vigorously tested.
Because levers of influence exist at all levels of government in the United States, and can be expressed through public protest, successful movements tend to develop both horizontal and vertical structures. Horizontally, participants attempt to minimize internal ideological differences to create common ground for public demonstrations against foreign policy proposals. Thus, in the United States, at the horizontal level, ideological flexibility is essential so long as there is adherence to a core value, for example, anti-racism in the case of apartheid in South Africa, human rights for Soviet Jewry, or nonintervention in Central America.
Whereas horizontal organization creates political power "from the people," vertical organization constructs political power along hierarchical and technical lines. Horizontal organization exists among mass-based organizations whereas vertical organization exists in several arenas: (1) within the hierarchies of key organizations, including upper echelon staffs and boards of directors, former activists in responsible positions in the public and private sectors, elements among the affluent, religious and labor leaders, and so on; (2) within the hierarchies of the political parties, both in terms of their party organization and local, state, and national levels; and (3) in a technical hierarchy that involves highly trained individuals in fields of various sciences, public policy, and law. 8
American movements have at their disposal a wide range of protest means that fall within the parameters of accepted politics. Since the days of the Civil Rights Movement, civil disobedience has become a mainstay of protest organizations on the left and right. 9 And, successful movements do not employ tactics that alienate a mass following: Coalition-building has become axiomatic to American politics, and to build coalitions requires broad-based appeal on the issue.
So far, I have addressed the domestic organization of these movements; they also develop strong international components. Indeed, one of the key factors in the development of grassroots movements concerned about state policies toward Third World countries is a relationship with a solidarity movement, particularly when the latter has developed strong organizational capacities inside a specific target country. Once this internal organization is established in the democratic state, the ability of the liberation movement in the target state to establish its international legitimacy becomes much easier. It is, in fact, through the establishment of these linkages that threats promulgated by the state are "deconstructed." While those practicing grassroots statecraft in the United States might be accused of consorting with or being "Communists," as they sometimes were, relationships with solidarity and liberation movements provided a communication channel into the United States, directed toward the broader public. It thus becomes possible to understand the goals of these foreign movements in a more benign and nonthreatening light, and to use these "reconstructed" images to influence national security policies. 10
National Security Policy in a World Transformed
Those who pose normative arguments for grassroots statecraft suggest that, while "security" may be defined legitimately as the preservation through military means of the physical safety of the citizenry within political and geographic boundaries, real political contingencies are not subject to such efficient definitions. 11 Even the idea of dependence on the strategic inputs on which military technological preparedness is presumably based is, itself, a function of how political contingencies are understood. What this means is that the concept of "national security," conventionally the anchor for a stable foreign policy, and restricted largely to the purview of military and foreign policy officials, is best understood as an outcome of social processes within a civil society-state complex.
The debate over the importance of South Africa to U.S. national security can be interpreted in this light. Following a geopolitical argument that can be traced back to the late 1940s, the Reagan Administration argued that the Soviet Union, through its regional proxies, was seeking to gain control of critical strategic resources in southern Africa as a means of coercing, or "Finlandizing," the West. This objective was adduced from Soviet assistance to proto-marxist groups and governments in the Horn of Africa, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, and elsewhere. Hence, U.S. support for the white government of South Africa was essential to ensure that the "resource war" was not won by the Soviets. 12
But the same evidence could be used to deduce a different meaning for events in Africa and to argue that U.S. support for the South African regime could have the very consequences so feared by the ore warriors of the Reagan Administration. That argument was as follows: First, the South African government could not assure long-term domestic political stability so long as a minority tried to dominate a majority, so by allying ourselves with the apartheid state, we were increasing our vulnerability in the long run. Second, our stockpiles of strategic minerals were, in any case, sufficient to outlast short-term cutoffs imposed by the apartheid regime, and thus our interests lay with the emergence of a more stable post-apartheid government. Finally, the United States possessed the technological capacity to produce reliable substitutes for these strategic materials, which meant that dependence was not the threatening strategic issue it was so often made out to be. 13
But this debate was not merely an intellectual one among competing epistemologies, as we shall see below; it also came to depend on the leverage that citizens' groups were able to bring to bear domestically, as well as transnationally, on the "subjects" of the debate: American and South African societies. The possibility of validating interpretations through "real-time" displays of information proved crucial not only to altering opinion within the United States but also to convincing the South African government that it must change to survive.
The work of James Rosenau and others indicates just how important these transnational, real-time capabilities may be in transforming social realities and epistemologies, even where national security is concerned. 14 Rosenau's central thesis focuses on global change and the breaking down of old boundaries and barriers. He begins with the assumption that "profound transformations are occurring in global life" (p. 92) and moves on to develop new conceptual approaches to these profound changes by treating "anomaly as pattern" (p. 96). Rosenau posits four patterns sufficient to warrant a break with Cold War structures. The first three involve the coexistence of multicentric, "sovereignty-free" and state-centric "sovereignty-bound" worlds, within which multinational and national actors function and often compete. In Rosenau's framework, phenomena exist in the international environment which, simultaneously, underpin the international states system, where national sovereignty and security are preeminent, and the interdependent state system, where autonomy becomes a dominant concern under constraining conditions. There is, moreover, yet another "realm" in which "sovereignty-free" actors can pursue ends without regard for the desires of states or the constraints of the state system. The fourth pattern is particularly descriptive of the conditions at the micro level that foster an environment for the practice of grassroots statecraft at the macrolevel. As Rosenau puts it:
Changes at the level of macro structures and processes have served as both sources and products of corresponding micro-level shifts wherein individuals are becoming more analytically skillful and cathectically competent, thus fostering the replacement of traditional criteria of legitimacy and authority with performance criteria that, in turn, serve to intensify both centralizing and the decentralizing tendencies at work within and among macro collectivities. (p. 98)
How does Rosenau's framework apply to the arguments about national security policy that I discuss here? Grassroots statecraft--at least in its most recent form--originated in direct response to the politics of the Cold War. First, Cold War politics defined the world in bipolar terms. Domestic conflicts in Angola, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, and so on were viewed in the context of superpower contention. No episode attests to this more vividly than the Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia, during which the United States and the Soviet Union exchanged client states, thereby demonstrating a complete lack of any convictions except the importance of the zero-sum "game."
Second, the overwhelming capacity of the superpowers to destroy the planet through nuclear war made the significance of conventional regional and national conflicts less plausible. In the face of mass nuclear annihilation, ragtag Third World soldiers in various jungles and deserts around the world hardly seemed threatening to near-hegemonic states. Both of these contradictions undermined explanations regarding national security policies.
Grassroots statecraft was also assisted by advances in communications and transportation, which transformed not only relationships among political and economic leaders but also moved citizens' communication into the new world of information. As Rosenau puts it:
New electronic technologies have so greatly collapsed the time in which organizations and movements can be mobilized that the competence of citizens feeds on itself, in the sense that they can virtually "see" their skills and orientations being cumulated into larger aggregates that have consequences for the course of events. Unlike any prior time in history, therefore, citizens are now able to intrude themselves readily into a situation anywhere in the world, because information about its latest twists and turns is immediately at hand. (p. 15)
Television and satellite transmissions operate outside the reality of physical boundaries, and have democratized access to other nations. Cable Network News (CNN)--"news without borders"--broadcasts "local news" to more than 135 countries around the world and through CNN it is estimated that more than 100 million people have access to images of other citizens all over the world. In one hour, an individual sitting in her home in Omaha can see the politics and societies of countries on every continent. On CNN, mothers in America can see desperate mothers in Mozambique holding their starving children to their milk-dry breasts; American viewers can see militant Muslims in Iran writing protest signs in English (rather than Arabic) and displaying them for television transmission to the United States; white supremacists in Idaho can see and identify with neo-fascist activists in Germany, and so on.
In the past, cultures and politics were contained within national borders. Leaders and elites were, for the most part, the only ones who knew the world first hand, and they were relied upon to interpret the motives, behaviors, and actions of other leaders and elites and to formulate responses. Today, that reliance has all but vanished. Since the average American spends between five and eight hours per day watching television, her opportunity to know and interpret the world for herself sharply decreases the historical control by political leaders over national world views.
Passive television communications from civil society to civil society have been augmented by active communications technologies--fax machines, electronic mail, computer networks, the convenience of air travel, and so on. All of these have allowed grassroots foreign policy activists to bring a powerful critical view of governments' foreign policy directly to voters. An example of this "real-time" transmission can be seen in the formal channels of communication established between ten U.S. cities and black communities under the threat of relocation in South Africa. 15 Within hours of the South African government's announcement that the community of Oukasie was to be bulldozed under the relocation policy, 16 for example, leaders of that community contacted the mayor of Berkeley, California, their sister community, asking for intervention. Telephone calls went directly from the Berkeley City Hall to the South African Embassy in Washington. A political advertisement, with a coupon, was inserted in the local co-op newspaper, and the co-op's fifteen thousand members were urged to clip and send it to the South African Ambassador as a form of protest. This heightened awareness and immediate international response helped stave off the removal threat (in this instance, the U.S. government would not have pressured the South African government for fear of alienating it). Through such communication channels, it first became possible and then easier to offer alternative scenarios in which officially promulgated threats were critiqued or undermined.
Democratic systems are based on the assumption that the will of the citizens--expressed through direct and indirect processes--is reflected in the policies of government. National security policy has always been seen as an exception. But, with the emergence of these new technologies, the assembly and interpretation of information has been democratized, with a growing concomitant impact on national security and foreign policies. Through the revolution in communications technology, civil societies around the world are becoming linked in a variety of ways, making available lateral inputs into grassroots discourses that can then compete with those of the makers of foreign policy. Given that the free flow of information is a cardinal principle in democracy, citizens and the media seek regularly to confirm or disaffirm government "facts" and to interpret the world for themselves. The government becomes only one source of public information, and disingenuous constructions or falsification of information are readily apparent.
Thus, while there is clearly still a "foreign policy establishment" composed of individuals who, in and out of government, strongly influence and make foreign policy, in the larger political gestalt involving partisans, constituents, opposition parties, the electorate, foreign lobbyists, and so on, national security and foreign policy have become ambiguous domains. By this I mean there are few foreign policy decisions today that enjoy absolute public consensus because, as a result of increased public access to information, the conflicting ideologies and perspectives of the public are themselves being strengthened and carried into the policymaking system. Consequently, we observe a perceptible decline in the commonality of public and official thought. Although there is not yet a majority consensus and common voice in contradiction to the government's definition of security threats, there are growing concerns over new issues that might be come to be seen as "threats" to national security. In a 1989 U.S. News and World Report poll, for example, 47 percent of Americans ranked global environmental problems as the top priority threat. Only 5 percent considered Soviet aggression in Europe a concern, while the Persian Gulf garnered a 15 percent rating. 17 Where the Third World was concerned, 32 percent considered poverty a threat, while only 15 percent were still concerned about the spread of communism. 18
I cannot do complete justice to the importance or role of the revolution in communications technology in this chapter. I do, however, argue that the emergence of these new communication technologies has been absolutely instrumental to the emergence and development of grassroots statecraft. From passive to active use technologies, citizens have at their disposal alternate channels of information and interpretation that are both accessible and cheap. 19 A few thousand dollars or less can purchase the computer equipment, whose basics can be mastered within hours, that allows access to bulletin boards and other communications channels all around the world. 20 A reasonably reliable fax machine can supply an insurgent group or a government in crisis access to a myriad of foreign citizens and organizations. 21 I will return to the role of the "communications revolution" in the context of grassroots statecraft, below.
Citizens do not break easily with their leaders. The rate of reelection of political incumbents in the U.S. (at least until the 1994 mid-term elections), and the long tolerance of a large and inefficient bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, attest to that. Rosenau is correct when he argues that postinternational politics are marked by an "authority crisis" because of the transformational changes at the global level (p. 89). Old icons of authority--politicians, national leaders, heads of religious organizations--are not capable of influencing the everyday lives of individuals in a meaningful way. New national and transnational icons, often charismatic individuals, are being sought out. Transnational social networks are emerging based on gender, ethnic identity, neo-fascism, human rights, religion, wealth, and labor. While there are few shared consensuses among these groups, they are, nonetheless, forming new national and international networks.
Grassroots statecraft is not only a symptom of the declining role of governmental authority, resulting primarily from the uncontrollable complexity of international affairs, but also a reflection of the overwhelming technological and informational revolutions that have taken place and have the capacity to inform citizens almost as quickly as political leaders. 22 Activists on the left and right are crafting means to challenge political authorities, and the claims they make, in ways that reflect and tap into this mass uneasiness. The process is illustrated in the two case studies that follow.
Central America and Southern Africa:
The Right and the Left
The basic proposition I present here is that, through grassroots statecraft, it is possible to contest state policymaking when several conditions obtain: (1) the structure of the grassroots or social movement itself can minimize internal ideological differences and create common ground for public opposition to a foreign policy; (2) the organizational structure encompasses practical methods of building a mass base at home and reaching out to liberation groups abroad; (3) group goals link foreign and domestic concerns; and (4) tactics are pursued that successfully alter the balance of power between decisionmakers and organized public opposition and undermine the believability of the arguments of the former.
A central feature of grassroots statecraft movements is the shift from the "self-interest" politics that dominate the domestic agenda to a "moral" and "ideological" politics. New Right anti-communist support for the governments in El Salvador and Guatemala and the Nicaraguan Contras was characterized as "humanitarian assistance." New Left "self-determination" and "anti-racist" support for the (South) African National Congress, the Palestinians, and Nicaragua's Sandanista government was also characterized as "humanitarian." The battle for the middle class was and is about securing the moral and ideological "high ground." The appeal to values is fundamental in reorienting civil society for mobilization against a policy, and it is an appeal with great societal legitimacy by comparison with realpolitik security concerns. Human rights are among the most universal values professed and, as such, they were and continue to be the basis for the organizing efforts of both secular and religious organizations. In each of these cases, movements tried to recharacterize events away from the realm of "national security," to contest and delegitimize official explanations, and if possible to provide alternative accounts of "threats" (turning them into non-threats, where feasible).
Organizationally, the lifeblood of these social movement networks is human agency--individuals and collectives committed to change. At the center of grassroots politics are pragmatic radicals, key individual members of organizations who possess a range of competencies, including organizational and technical skills (such as research and writing), and the personal ability to foster communication among organizations as well as to mediate between core organizations and the general public. Critical to such cooperation within a loose local and national network are the abilities to: (1) diminish the importance of narrow and contradictory ideological convictions; (2) work with groups whose purposes fall outside the normal range of activities, beliefs, and interests of the core organization; and (3) work in a task-oriented organizing mode. Even though the individuals in these activities may interact collectively at the national level, their networks are highly decentralized, since their work is primarily and fundamentally local.
Equally critical to these networks are core groups, committed to the overall goals of the movement, while at the same time having particular interests--ideological, political, or functional--that make an issue germane to them. Such groups are often local "chapters," or "subsidiaries," of larger organizations that have either chosen or been delegated a particular issue as a focus--for example, the justice committees of religious organizations. They may also be narrow, sectarian groups with no particular ties to larger organizations, such as student, religious, human rights, political/civic, and trade unions. These groups may also be further classified according to function: direct action, economic action, resource and information, cultural, media, lobbying/legislative, coalition or coordinating councils.
Core groups are often linked to mainstream organizations that serve as "anchor" institutions in the community, such as churches, trade unions, fraternal associations, and universities. As such, they have the institutional stability to serve as an ongoing base for the movement, whether or not the participants in the core group shift over a period of time. Thus, while spontaneous, ad hoc groups in the core may form and disappear over time, creating some general fragmentation at the grassroots operational level, in the overall movement these anchor institutions provide a stable base through which the coherence of the movement is sustained.
The tactics of grassroots movements are designed for one specific purpose: To alter the "balance of power" between decisionmakers and the general public, thereby discrediting the claims of the former. Democracy creates power elites who, though democratically elected, once in office often isolate themselves from the electorate. 23 The division between the expert foreign policymaker and the public is ordinarily legitimated on a number of grounds: National security matters require secrecy and cannot be a part of the public debate; democracies prefer "easy" policies in which the rewards are immediate and tangible; peril exists for a foreign policy that changes in response to domestic pressures that have little to do with a state's position in the world; and the public mandate gives authority to the elected elite. 24 A challenge to official policy must, therefore, confront each of these.
The tactics used by grassroots organizations in this process include, therefore: (1) organizing and disseminating "counter-intelligence"; (2) psychological mobilization; and (3) direct action. Communications are built on reliable data and analysis provided by an active grassroots intelligentsia. The role of the grassroots intelligentsia is not simply to collate existing data but to establish criteria for selecting and evaluating these data. Their success is based on what Rosenau calls "the persistence of competing criteria of evidence." He suggests that "the processes of assessing proof are embedded deep in the underpinnings of the culture." 25
The debate that took place in the United States over whether or not to impose sanctions on South Africa illustrates this point. The U.S. government argued that sanctions would hurt a strong anti-communist ally (the South African government), our strategic interests in the southern region (security risk) and black South Africans, the very people the sanctions were intended to help (humanitarian). The anti-apartheid movement countered that apartheid's racism was so reprehensible as to cancel out any gains we might realize from an anti-communist position, that our long term security interests were not secure with white minority governments (witness the collapse of white rule in Rhodesia, Mozambique, and Angola), and that apartheid did much more harm to blacks in the long run than sanctions could do in the short run.
The acquisition of "intelligence" useful to the anti-apartheid movement that emerged during this process, and the ability to challenge the government in knowledge terms, were profound. The two divergent accounts proceeded from identical data--unemployment rates among black South Africans, collapse of white regimes in the region--but the final interpretations were quite different. High unemployment rates were a direct result of apartheid's industrial policies, not sanctions. Race-based anti-communism in the region fuelled, rather than staved off, revolutionary and communist sympathies among blacks, who argued that, if whites were against communism, they were for it. Not only did the movement's knowledge and data base approach parity with the U.S. government's, the extent to which their interpretations were believable and believed also exceeded that of the Reagan Administration.
One of the fundamental tasks of mobilization in such instances is the creation new psychological and political images that counter those posed by policymakers--for example, transforming "terrorists" into "freedom fighters," "communists" into "national liberators," and so on. 26 Moreover, certain images or slogans the government uses in defining its interests can be "captured" and redefined. For example, during the Persian Gulf War, leftist antiwar movements used the American flag and the slogan "support our troops" as part of their oppositional campaign. This psychological mobilization was thus intended to persuade the public that true patriotism was on the side of the opposition and to encourage it to identify personally with the movement's cause.
Mass mobilization involves demonstrations, public hearings, mass meetings, letter-writing campaigns, boycotts and so on. Direct action campaigns are a substantial component of grassroots movements. To aid direct activism, many guides and booklets have appeared, telling groups and individuals how to organize local campaigns and generate direct action. 27 The success of these efforts was evident in, for example, the "Pledge of Resistance Campaign" to oppose intervention in Central America, which was organized nationally through the American Friends Service Committee. Individuals were asked to commit to different levels of activism, ranging from serving on a telephone alert tree to pledging civil disobedience. In October 1987, the Committee in Support of the People of El Salvador (CISPES) organized a 22-city national walk-a-thon to raise $300,000 for medical supplies, reconstruction projects, and agricultural development in El Salvador.
Another important element in grassroots statecraft is the creation of a structure parallel to the foreign-policy decisionmaking process of the government. Thus, grassroots movements set foreign policy goals, organize diplomatic strategies, and pursue policies with measurable outcomes. Grassroots movements act "as if" they were in the business of conducting foreign policy in order to influence the general public as well as policymakers. As with the foreign policy establishment, the goals of grassroots movements are based primarily on a set of ideological principles. Prior to the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern and Central Europe, for example, anti-communist conservatives saw the containment of Soviet influence in the Third World as a primary foreign policy goal. Leftist religious and human rights ideologies drove much of the Central America movement in the U.S. These ideologies facilitated the organizing capacity of the movement, and dictated the kind of organizations to which the movement could appeal and the individuals it could recruit.
Grassroots diplomatic strategies also help to legitimize both the domestic movement itself and the insurgent group or country with which the movement is identified. Movements host delegations and send their members on fact-finding missions to the target countries. Movement leaders are invited on national lecture tours. Members of the Catholic Church routinely organized missions to El Salvador. In other instances, skilled volunteer workers were sent on "work brigades" to support the grassroots economic and social service work of insurgent groups inside their home countries. 28
Finally, movements establish policies that produce measurable outcomes. The Anti-Apartheid Movement pushed for economic sanctions legislation; the Neighbor-to-Neighbor movement worked against military intervention in Central America; the Sanctuary Movement attempted to establish political refugee status for citizens fleeing conflict in Central America; conservatives demanded complete economic and diplomatic isolation of Angola during the civil war there. The relative degrees of success of these movements demonstrate the possibility of grassroots statecraft playing a critical role in the policymaking of the government.
The most striking innovation in terms of grassroots organizing in the world of foreign policy has been in the ability of activists and insurgents to form international solidarity structures. Groups organized within civil society, such as trade unions, human rights organizations, religious movements, and women's groups, are able to establish formal ties with activist groups in foreign countries and even with foreign governments. In fact, groups may even assert that government policies are so wrong-headed that they have the right and even the duty, as American citizens living within a democratic framework, to act as if their alternative foreign policy initiatives were wholly legitimate. This can be understood as a foreign policy "civil disobedience" or foreign policy "self help" movement.
A key purpose of solidarity links is to establish the domestic and international bona fides of a liberation movement. A government, even if it is challenged domestically, already has international legitimacy by virtue of its sovereignty and control of the political and military machinery of its state. In order to challenge the foreign policy of a government, and the domestic policies of a target state, a grassroots movement and insurgent groups must develop a parallel citizens' political machinery. This requires the insurgent group to establish "government-like" structures, with foreign supporters, and to help create opportunities through which the latter can call attention to the reasons they are challenging the legitimacy and authority of their government's policies, as well as that of the target government. In citations of its human rights violations, reprehensible laws and the illegitimate political practices, a target government can find itself subjected to public criticism, diplomatic censure, economic sanctions, humanitarian opposition, and even military intervention. It is, of course, the task of a target government to take countermeasures against these pressures and to keep domestic political conflicts out of international fora. The primary means of countering these pressures include discrediting the opposition, branding their leaders "terrorists," "outside agitators," "criminals," and asserting that their claims either are false or exaggerated. 29
Liberation movements have to engage in diplomacy and court foreign supporters, and they often employ symbolic activities to enhance their legitimacy in international affairs. When U.S. President George Bush agreed to meet with Albertina Sisulu of the South African United Democratic Front (UDF), it was a great political coup for the African National Congress and a serious blow to the legitimacy of the South African government. Likewise, the U.S. government's refusal to let Yassir Arafat visit the United States was, until 1993, considered a demonstration of legitimacy for the Israeli government (showing, more recently, that legitimacy can be a tricky and ephemeral condition).
Another function of a solidarity movement is the development of solidarity through cultural affinities. One of the key devices a target government or insurgent group can use to discredit its opposition is to make itself more culturally acceptable to politically important groups. In other words, the more one can create a sense that group members look and act in ways similar to those whose support is being sought, the easier it is to build political support. As an example, in 1984, Ted Koppel broadcast the popular television news show Nightline from South Africa during the height of the first state of emergency in that country. 30 The South African government agreed to the broadcast of a debate between government representatives and African leaders, counting on the opportunity to exhibit the former's "westernness"--coded language for white, civilized, and so on--in order to establish an affinity with Americans. But the images of black South Africans portrayed by these officials--unpredictable, non-western, simple, traditional, terrorist, and incapable of handling the complexities of modern political life--were completely at odds with the actual images of Bishop Desmond Tutu, ANC leader Oliver Tambo, Reverend Alan Bosaek, UDF's Albertina Sisulu, and others that American viewers saw in the satellite transmission. They looked very familiar, even conservative: The women in designer-style African dresses, the men in conservative dark suits, clerical collars, and horn-rimmed glasses.
The South African government's strategy backfired, much to its dismay. An international news blackout was imposed after that broadcast, but the damage had been done. The image of black South Africans as educated, articulate, westernized people had been established in American minds. Inasmuch as the Civil Rights Movement, with its goals of desegregation, enfranchisement, and equal rights, was embedded deep in the collective American consciousness, there was no way to convince the American public that these individuals were not worthy of the same political rights.
Another important feature in the growth of grassroots movements is the development of resources to sustain the movement and to provide material assistance to the liberation movement. Governments have institutions, formal international alliances, tax bases, budgets, and military and intelligence agencies. Grassroots and liberation movements depend almost exclusively upon external resources, funds, supplies, and refuge that are purely voluntary in nature. 31 The supporters of liberation movements depend on their numbers, personal organizing skills, and abilities to raise funds through their organizations via direct donations, passing the hat, fundraising events, and so on. Films, lectures, cultural events, "celebrations" and grants are typical means for organizations to maintain their financial obligations and their material commitments to the liberation movements.
The somewhat haphazard nature of the fundraising strategies masks the core funds that sustain movements over time. Anchor institutions provide direct funds and in-kind support directly to political core groups organizations. For example, it has been estimated that, over the past twenty years, a total of $500,000 was contributed directly to "liberation work" in northern California by such anchor institutions. 32 The "$top Banking on Apartheid" campaign was, for several years, funded and supported by the American Friends Service Committee. It was responsible, along with the Africa Fund and several other major national organizations, for the growth of the sanctions movement in this country. The National Conservative Foundation spent $1.3 million on television spots and a 30-minute documentary in support of the Nicaraguan Contras. 33 In summary, the resources available to grassroots movements, while not absolutely quantifiable, can be estimated, and they are substantial and reliable over sustained periods of time.
After organizing large constituent groups against a particular foreign policy, the effort then turns to Congress and more traditional lobbying strategies. Here, the battle is over the vote for or against a particular policy. In the cases of Southern Africa and Central America, did both the popular and congressional strategies of grassroots statecraft work? Were the organizing efforts effective? The major political victory for the anti-apartheid movement was the imposition of national sanctions against South Africa over the opposition of President Reagan, who twice vetoed legislation. In spite of presidential opposition, the pressures put on Congress in 1984 were sufficient for passage of the first sanctions legislation. Reagan invoked the presidential veto and responded with a promise to impose weak economic pressure through executive order, and to provide opportunities to black South Africans through scholarships, grants to community organizations, and other inducements.
But the South African crisis did not go away. The images of townships in rebellion, and the South African government's violent response, brought back memories of the Civil Rights era in the United States. After the second state of emergency was declared by the South Africa government, the Reagan policy of "constructive engagement" was subject to increasing condemnation. Ultimately, it collapsed. A number of Republicans, including 31 neo-conservatives such as Vin Weber (R-Minnesota), John McCain (R-Arizona) and Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia), joined Democrats in overriding a second Presidential veto. As Representative Jim Leach (R-Iowa) put it, "The administration must not be allowed to walk blindly to the grave with the black glove of white supremacy." 34 Sanctions became law.
In the case of Central America, the Neighbor-to-Neighbor Organization and Nicaragua Information Center provided grassroots organizing in opposition to aid to the Contras, while the Sanctuary Movement and CISPES were the primary organizations concerned with El Salvador. In 1986, Neighbor-to-Neighbor successfully targeted key Congressional districts, where anti-intervention candidates were on the ballot in New York, Colorado, and Pennsylvania, and won. Neighbor-to-Neighbor virtually saved Alan Cranston's (D-California) seat in the Senate in a campaign in which he won with a margin of 116,662 votes, as a three-week campaign by 3,000 volunteers brought out an estimated 160,000 voters. 35 In the Senate, where aid to the Contras had previously been approved by slim margins (53-47 and 52-48), Neighbor-to-Neighbor targeted William Cohen (R-Maine), who had voted for and against Contra aid, and Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kansas), who was considered vulnerable to constituent pressure. 36 The centerpiece of the campaign was a television advertisement and a graphic thirty-minute documentary, "Faces of War," on U.S. policy in El Salvador and Nicaragua. By 1987, Neighbor-to-Neighbor had identified fourteen representatives and four senators from nine states who were wavering on the Contra aid vote. The slogan used by Neighbor-to-Neighbor in the Congressional offensive was: "Now is the time to prevent another Vietnam War in Central America." Neighbor-to-Neighbor won four of five targeted elections.
The Sanctuary Movement focused primarily on El Salvador and the refugee problem. Intensive lobbying campaigns were directed at the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee and these led to a reduction in allotted funds from the $514 million requested by the Reagan administration to $300 million. Legislation was sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) in 1982 and by 88 members of Congress in 1983 to have "extended voluntary departure" status granted to El Salvadoran and Guatemalans. 37 The movement engaged in a pitched battle with the State Department over charges of human rights violations in El Salvador. While challenging the government on its refugee return policy, the Church was directly engaged in a major civil disobedience campaign in which sanctuary was granted to refugees at churches throughout the country. In addition, a number of cities declared themselves sanctuaries. In 1986, the City of Oakland, California: (1) declared that it would not participate in prosecuting anyone giving sanctuary to refugees; (2) directed the Police Department to allow support services access to refugees being detained in jail; (3) requested that the state of California become a "State of Refuge"; and (4) encouraged residents of the city to support sanctuary activities. 38
Although these movements did not, ultimately, manage to engineer a reversal of Central America policy during the Reagan Administration, they did create sufficient popular and Congressional opposition to that policy so that the government was driven to extra-legislative and illegal means to achieve its goals via the Iran-Contra affair. Moreover, they helped to establish public support for the eventual peace initiatives in Central America, in which regimes supported by the United States engaged in official negotiations with the very insurgents that had, so recently, been described as the "entering wedge" of global Communism.
More to the point, it was largely through the efforts of grassroots "diplomats" that issues initially defined as "threats" to the national security of the United States were transformed into problems to be addressed through nonmilitary means. All this suggests that what governments deem a security "problem" is, more often than not, defined intersubjectively, and not by any objectively defined indicators. We must ask not only "who threatens?" but also "who is threatened?" The widely held image within security studies, and by security analysts, of the state as a singular object simply disregards such nuances. By shifting the terms of domestic discourse, grassroots diplomacy is able to alter such intersubjective definitions, in the process not only changing security policy but also highlighting a much more sophisticated understanding of international politics.
I have offered here an analytical basis for studying the involvement of citizens in challenges to official foreign policies as well as national security doctrines and practices. 39 This, I argue, is a phenomenon that has emerged on a relatively large scale only since the Vietnam War. Citizens' involvement in foreign policy matters is not anathema to democracy but is more accurately a result of changes in global politics, in communications technology, and in the ideas and values held by a significant fraction of the U.S. population toward "other people" in the world. These changes have helped to undermine the plausibility of supposed "threats" to national security, as formulated by realpolitik strategists of the Cold War period. The U.S. government's freedom to craft national security policies is, increasingly, problematic and being questioned, and there is no reason to think that other governments are not feeling similar challenges from their own grassroots.
Note 1: See, e.g., George F. Kennan, "Morality and Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs 64, no. 2 (Winter 1985/86): 205-18. Back.
Note 2: James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics--A Theory of Continuity and Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 317. Back.
Note 3: Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), pp. 12-13, 269. Back.
Note 4: Samuel P. Huntington, The Dilemma of American Ideals and Institutions in Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1981). Back.
Note 5: Paul Wapner, "Ecological Activism and World Civic Politics," paper prepared for a panel on the Role of NGOs in International Environmental Cooperation and Security, International Studies Association annual meeting, Atlanta, March 31-April 4, 1992; Ronnie D. Lipschutz, "Reconstructing World Politics: The Emergence of Global Civil Society," Millennium 21, no. 3 (Winter 1992): 389-420; Kathryn Sikkink, "Human Rights, Principled Issue-Networks, and Sovereignty in Latin America," International Organization 47, no. 4 (Summer 1993): 411-42; David Skidmore and Valerie M. Hudson, eds., The Limits of State Autonomy--Societal Groups and Foreign Policy Formulation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993); and Peter B. Evans, Harold K. Jacobson, and Robert D. Putnam, Double-Edged Diplomacy--International Bargaining and Domestic Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Back.
Note 6: In its Handbook , Amnesty International goes so far as to state that " . . . human rights are too important--and too vulnerable--to be left to governments." Maurice Staunton, Sally Fenn, and Amnesty International U.S.A., eds., The Amnesty International Handbook (Claremont, Calif.: Hunter House, 1991). Back.
Note 7: Paul Wapner, Making States Biodegradable (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995). Back.
Note 8: Peter M. Haas, "Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination," International Organization 46, no. 1 (Winter 1992): 20-26. Back.
Note 9: The anti-abortion movement, Operation Rescue, has successfully adopted this protest strategy with the result that the state has responded with laws limiting particular forms of civil disobedience. Back.
Note 10: As I point out below, the appearance of ANC representatives on the ABC program Nightline did more to defuse the specter of a Communist "threat" in South Africa than any amount of information or propaganda provided by governments. Back.
Note 11: The debate over the percentage of the federal budget that should be allocated to military vs. entitlement and other domestic programs is an example. Another is the debate over the strategic value of the Panama Canal and our contingent relationship with Panama's former military dictators. Back.
Note 12: For a discussion of the "resource wars" thesis, see David Rees, "Soviet Strategic Penetration in Africa," Conflict Studies no. 77 (Nov. 1977). A general discussion of the role of strategic resources in U.S. foreign policy can be found in Ronnie D. Lipschutz, When Nations Clash: Raw Materials, Ideology, and Foreign Policy (New York: Ballinger/Harper and Row, 1989), ch. 5. Back.
Note 13: A fairly measured and sober discussion of the strategic minerals issue is Hanns W. Maull, Energy, Minerals, and Western Security (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984). Back.
Note 14: Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics . Back.
Note 15: Among the American cities that have established "Sister-community" organizations are Berkeley, Seattle, St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta, and St. Paul. Back.
Note 16: The policy was to remove blacks from areas that were either designated "white areas" or were too close to white residences--a policy of "racial cleansing" akin to the Serbian "ethnic cleansing" policy in Bosnia. Back.
Note 17: The care with which the Bush Administration orchestrated the Gulf War of 1991 illustrates this point. Because there could not be a reliable consensus during the early days of the confrontation (critics ranged from Pat Buchanan on the right to Ron Dellums on the left), the Bush administration had to bring the country to the brink (the war was a fait accompli by late December) in order to manufacture consensus. Then, given the weak stomach Americans have for "killing fields," the military information services made sure visual images of the war were highly technological, sanitized, and devoid of human catastrophe. Back.
Note 18: "The U.S. Under Siege?,"U.S. News and World Report , June 12, 1989. Back.
Note 19: Within days of the launching of hostilities during the Gulf War, for example, student groups from Yale, Berkeley, Brown, and other universities had set up a daily bulletin on the Internet to allow national exchange of information regarding daily events on their respective campuses. There is some small irony here, in that the Internet was established as a defense communications network. Back.
Note 20: A paper on the Gulf War, written by Prof. George Lakoff, Linguistics Department at the University of California at Berkeley, was disseminated through the Internet, garnering responses from individuals "on the net" in North America, Western Europe, and Scandinavia. Back.
Note 21: The fax machine has fast become the cheapest propaganda machine in use. The Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. routinely faxes Israel Line to interested individuals. This even includes those institutional fax lines where there is limited interest in Israeli government news. Back.
Note 22: If they are to be believed, a number of elected officials publicly asserted during the Gulf Crisis that they had no more information in hand than that available to news reporters and citizens from satellite-based news reporting. Back.
Note 23: A useful body of knowledge to help understand this tendency among elected officials is to be found in organization theory, which describes the behavior of self-protection. Back.
Note 24: Kenneth N. Waltz, Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics: The American and British Experience (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), pp. 12-14, 269. Back.
Note 25: Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics , p. 203. Back.
Note 26: For example, see Julie Frederikse's None But Ourselves: Masses vs. Media in the Making of Zimbabwe (New York: Penguin, 1984), which addressed the struggle for the hearts and minds of Zimbabweans, and her South Africa: A Different Kind of War--From Soweto to Pretoria (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), about security-related activities in the South African townships. Back.
Note 27: These "how to" books include Martin Oppenheimer and George Lakey, A Manual for Direct Action (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1965), and Theodore W. Olsen and Lynne Shivers, eds., Training for Nonviolent Action (London: Friends Peace and International Relations Committee, 1970). Such guides and manuals offer comprehensive, understandable instruction in the politics and tactics of people-based organizing. They include a profusion of illustrations and examples of successful grassroots tactics. Back.
Note 28: The 1960s Venceramos Brigades to Cuba "grandfathered" solidarity work brigades to Nicaragua--construction, coffee bean harvesters, medical suppliers, and others. Back.
Note 29: During the Nigerian Civil War, the Nigerian government and Biafran insurrectionists hired American public relations firms to counter each other's propaganda. Nowadays, many foreign governments have public relations firms representing their interests in Washington. Back.
Note 30: The South Africa government declared the first state of emergency in 1984 following an attempt to hold limited "non-racial" elections which included "Indians" and "coloureds" but excluded the African majority. Back.
Note 31: Although liberation movements may be able to collect taxes in "liberated territories," these rarely compare to the resources as the disposal of governments in power. Back.
Note 32: Estimate provided to the author by members of the African Resource Center, Oakland, California. Back.
Note 33: Action Fund letter, Neighbor to Neighbor, 1987. Back.
Note 34: The entire debate can be found in The Congressional Record 132, #132 (Sept. 30, 1986):H8648-8672. The Leach quote is on page H664. Back.
Note 35: "Grassroots Politics Pays Off: Use of El Salvador Video Helped Anti-Interventionists Win," San Francisco Examiner , November 10, 1986. Back.
Note 36: Action Fund letter, Neighbor to Neighbor, 1987. Back.
Note 37: "Sanctuary: Part of a Bigger Picture--What People are Fleeing, and why, must be Considered," Michael J. Farrell, National Catholic Reporter , September 14, 1984. Back.
Note 38: "Oakland Declared a City of Refuge," CISPES Action Bulletin , August 1986. Back.
Note 39: More detailed accounts of such citizens' diplomacy can be found in: Janice Love, The U.S. Anti-Apartheid Movement--Local Activism in Global Politics (New York: Praeger, 1985); and Elizabeth S. Rogers, "The Conflicting Roles of American Ethnic and Business Interests in the U.S. Economic Sanctions Policy: The Case of South Africa," in: Skidmore and Hudson, eds., The Limits of State Autonomy , pp. 185-204. Back.
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