Kants Concept of Perpetual Peace In Reality of United Nations - Research Paper Example

INTRODUCTION The contemporary period bears witness to radical changes, which continue to re-shape and influence humankind’s struggle toward the attainment of the good life. After the devastation of World War II, rapid changes have been experienced history. These changes include globalization, establishment of United Nations, advancements in computer and information technology, developments in sciences, advancements in medical technology and an aging population (Soros 2002; Suarez-Orozco & Qin-Hilliard 2003; Calder and Watkins 2008; Purser 2004; Balakrishnan 2003). These developments have created a human condition wherein the world has become smaller, more interconnected and linked, yet ironically, there is a wider gap between the affluent North countries and the poverty-stricken countries of the South (Berdal 10). Proliferation of diseases, AIDS/HIV, genocide, female circumcision and other similar situations continue to threaten the integrity of humanity and questions the validity and legitimacy of the notion human dignity and equality (Berdal 10). In light of this truism, some of the greatest philosophers of all time have proffered explanations and alternative approaches with which humanity may be able to understand and find answer to their current predicament. As such, this paper will be looking into Kant’s concept of perpetual peace and consider how his theoretical elucidations have found reality in United Nations. Moreover, the paper will examine whether United Nations have been successful in setting the path for perpetual peace. Furthermore, to contextualize the issue, an examination of the concept of surveillance in the Post 9/11 world event will be performed. This study is significant as it provides a picture of the contemporary society that is beleaguered by terrorism and how the response undertaken by some of the powerful countries in the period has contributed to the dehumanization of humankind. In this regard, the paper asserts that United Nations failure in eliminating war has opened the contemporary society to a wider scope, meanings and forms of surveillance that denigrate contemporary concepts of liberty, privacy, body and human dignity. Expounding on this claim the paper will be having the following structure. The first part will be dealing with United Nations and on how it becomes an actuality of Kant’s League of Nations. The second part will be a discussion why UN has failed to put an end to war. The third part will focus on how UNs failure has opened new meanings and forms of surveillance in the contemporary society. The fourth part will be a discussion on how this condition degrades human dignity. Finally, the last part will be the conclusion. It is the hope of researcher that this paper may help in elucidating not only some of the basic tenets of some great philosophers but also achieve understanding of the current human predicament. KANT’S LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE UNITED NATIONS United Nations was established on 24 October 1945. Although there was the League of Nations, the forerunner of United Nations, at the beginning of the 20th century, however, it was dissolved when it was not able to prevent Second World War In this regard, the United Nations humanity’s response against the atrocities that had been committed against humankind during World War II. As such, written in its Charter, Article 1, “the purposes of the United Nations are (1) to maintain international peace and security and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace (2) To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace; (3)To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and (4)To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends” Source: www.un.org. In this regard, the United Nations is the actuality of the coming together of countries around the world to enhance peace around the globe and establish a better world for all humanity for all times. In light of this, United Nations can be seen as the fulfillment of Kant’s conception of an international federation of states the rule of law. This supposition is based on the following; (1) Kant’s league of peace seeks to end all wars and not just one particular war, which is the scope of a treaty of peace (Kant n. pag.). In this sense, United Nations can be gleaned as fulfilling this ethos because one of its primary purposes is the establishments and maintenance of international peace and security. (2) According to Kant, the league will not seek to have dominion over the state but will only embark on maintaining peace, security and, freedom within the State and with the other state members of the league (Kant n. pag.). United Nations is not a supranational government with which all the other member states are subjects. Rather, the United Nations is an international public sphere where all states members are deemed equal regardless of their economic stature or developments. It becomes the arena where maintenance of peace, security and, freedom of the individual state as well as enhancing and endeavoring the harmonious relations of all states with one another is realized. Finally, (3) for Kant, the international federation of states is under the rule of law, which in turn, is stipulated by reason the supreme moral legislating authority. Kant maintains that differences between states are settled by war even if they have their internal juridical constitution already (Kant n. pag.). The weakness of this solution is that war is never really ended but hostilities only and that the threat of war may appear anytime in a different guise. As such, the laws of nations necessitates that states in relation with each other is such that it is a condition of lawlessness and that option for each state, just like the savage man, is to “adjust themselves to the constraints of the public law” (Kant n. pag.). In this regard, United Nations with its 192 nation states members is an actuality of the Kantian League of Nations as these nation states have consciously formed the UN to avoid repeating the atrocities and human degradation experience during WWII. Its inception is rooted on the recognition of the intrinsic importance of human dignity and of the respect allotted to human rights. In this sense, the events of WWII have propelled humanity to accept the negative duty of embracing peace in the international and global level. UNITED NATIONS FAILURE However, as the world and United Nations have consciously working to create a better human condition for humanity, one glaring reality that cannot be denied is the continued experience of war. In fact, it is not only nation - state wars that concerns this period, but it is also plagued by genocide, ethnic cleansing, war on terrorism and intra-state conflicts. As such, it can be claimed that United Nations have failed to put an end to war. The reasons for these are First, the contemporary human condition is such that globalization has permeated all sectors of the society. Globalization, generally understood, is the removal of economic barriers existing among nations. As such, it is the opening of national markets, which pave the way for freer movements of goods, services and capital. In this sense, governments have become less involve in the market and have adopted liberal national policies that will ensure less governmental intervention in the market economy. This condition has created not only lesser governmental role in the economy but it has opened the influence of transnational corporations and multinational corporations in the political, cultural, social and other segments of the society. This truism creates a condition wherein issues are more often resolved in lieu of economics and downplaying the political and the social. However, in the face of this myriad, “UN’s link to world financial or economic institutions looks vague in the eyes of world public opinion.” (Durand 63) Second, there is an imbalance of power in UN itself. The Security Council who refuses to take drastic political actions to nation states, which have committed abuses and atrocities against their own people, manifests this. Indeed UN is not the panacea for all the ills of the world. However, UN is the last bastion of hope of people who have been denigrated by the very government that is supposed to be creating and establishing the conditions that will allow them to have a better life. This reality is very pronounced in the Security Council. The P-5 (U.S., China, Russia, France and U.K), these are the permanent members in the Security Council protect their own interests (Weiss 148). Third, UN has failed to end war because UN itself is made of nation states that are oppressive and tramples on human rights (Habermas 2007). Moreover, the inherent pluralism in UN with nations having “historical experiences, economic realities, cultural influences, forms of government and perceptions of interests” (Berdal 2) have created an international community wherein there is a “genuine conflict of interests and values among member States (Berdal 9) Fourth, UN has failed because the contemporary condition is such that war is no longer just limited to military warfare but that poverty, North-South divide, AIDS/HIV, female circumcision and other similar forms of human degradation are experienced by majority of the human population are bound in the contemporary human condition (Berdal 10). In this regard, UN has failed because the intricate reality of the milieu goes beyond human rights and advocacy. The holistic appreciation and approach in addressing the current human predicament is one of the authentic measures with which the contemporary situation and context of the majority of people may be addressed. THE CASE: SURVEILLANCE IN THE POST 9/11 EVENT Despite the failure of the United Nations to put an end to war, it has, in a way established the perception that in war nobody stands alone because contemporary threats to international order are seen as borderless (Berdal 18). As such, ‘self-protection’ is not a viable option (Berdal 18). However, the United States with its pre-emptive attack against Iraq have shown that United States as “the sole super power administration (Bush administration) is not in the least interested in rules, old or new, …it has no interests of subordinating its sole responsibility for protecting what it perceives to be its national security to the judgement of others” (Franck 616). Thereby, undermining the very spirit with which the United Nations is established. However, it is not only that. Aside from side stepping the international community in pursuit of its “self-protection”, United States has implemented laws and regulations that has expanded the coverage and meaning of surveillance in the contemporary U.S. society. The Post 9/11 U.S. society is gripped with terror because the battlefield is in the home front. In response to the terrorist attacks, the U.S., government has implemented laws that opened a wider coverage for surveillance. In this regard, surveillance entails both the gathering of information through watching the physical movements and activities of persons (Bloss 209). At the same time, it is also the gathering of personal data using “the collection of biographical, biometric, or transactional data on individuals harvested from personal communications, electronic transactions, identifiers, records, or other documents” (Bloss 209). In this sense, surveillance is no longer just limited to actual observation of physical activities, but it now also involves the collection of personal data using modern technology. This wider approach in the performance and understanding of surveillance in the contemporary period manifest the effects of two of the most important changes that have happened in the period – globalization and technology (Bloss 211). Globalization has opened not economic and political alliances and borders but it has also set off transnational crimes like terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking, organized crimes and other transnational illegal acts (Bloss 211). In this condition, to protect the citizen a more advance means of surveillance is necessary to counter any illegal activities. Crimes endanger public safety and to prevent events such as the 9/11 from happening again, essential information gather through surveillance are necessary. Furthermore, this situation is further complicated by the fact that the ease of perpetuating transnational crimes is made via the utilization of advancements in technology as well. In the face of this reality, police surveillance has to use also the developments in technology to “watch” people who are involved in these nefarious crimes. It is the means with which they can effectively counter transnational criminal activities. As such, the use modern technology such as biometric, tapping of personal communications, CCTVs, UAVs and other devices are now being use in the collection of personal information and law sanctions it. Surveillance is an issue in the U.S. (Bloss 210). However, the expanded surveillance is justified as it is intended primarily to counter terrorism. Various laws such as U.S. Patriot Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and Digital Telephony Act support this move by the U.S. government. In this regard, what can be impugned is the idea that the expansion of surveillance has an effect in the laws, political, social and civil life of the citizens (Bloss 221). CONTEMPORARY U.S. SOCIETY AND SURVEILLANCE According to Foucault (1982), “to live in a society is to live in such way that action upon other actions is possible – and in fact ongoing” (208). It is in this relation of actions that power relations are defined (Foucault 208). Thus, presenting the truism that power does not come from above but that it is the actuality of actions taking place in the sphere of the social. The tension between the relationship of power and strategy of struggle enables one to understand and apprehend the phenomenon of domination in the society, although what it presents are two differing interpretation of the same event (Foucault 208). Surveillance is an effective tool that has been used to keep the subjects within the case or cell that the State wants the subject to be. Surveillance is maintaining discipline within the view of the supervisor. This whole idea sets the parameter with which the individual is allowed to undertake action. The subtleties of the concept of surveillance are that the bodies are observed and gazed at, while the observer remains invisible (Foucault n pag). Moreover, in surveillance, the bodies become occupants of spatial relations that are observed and kept under the gaze for discipline. In this regard, the value of the entire ‘mechanism’ is anchored on functionality and on how it contributes to the productivity and value of the society as a whole (Foucault n pag). Moreover, the mechanisms set by the government allows for understanding and knowledge of the behavior of the person; “knowledge follows the advances of power, discovering new objects of knowledge over all the surfaces on which power is exercised” (Foucault n. pag.). In the context of surveillance of Post 9/11 event, people are now conscious that they are being observed by the mechanisms of the State. The invisible gaze has become obvious to the point that people are already aware of the surveillance and that it has created a polarization in the society between those who affirm it as necessity in the face of terrorism and other transnational crimes and those who opposed it in the name of privacy. What is surprising is that nobody is questioning the very notion of surveillance itself. The debate has zeroed on the question of national security versus individual privacy. This debate in itself is veering away from the real of issue of the current nature of surveillance. This is raised because of the fact that the State mechanism is very efficient in such a way that it possesses information, however minimal, of almost all its citizens. In fact, surveillance is misnomer for what is being done by the government. It is not just surveillance; it is gathering information in all possible and available means, which is an open attack to individual freedom, right to privacy and autonomy. Agamben (2004) talks about the dehumanization experience by the biopolitics implemented by the U.S. government to foreigners entering their country. The new technologies that the U.S. is using in gathering the necessary information from foreigners are again meant to separate the criminals and terrorists from those who are legitimately entering the United States. Likewise, this is done in the name of national security. Two aspects are seen in the State mechanism that is currently carried out. First is the segregation that this mechanism explicitly manifests. There are the Americans and the others who are entering the U.S. indeed; the whole notion is protection of the U.S. citizenry from possible public dangers. However, in the process of implementing it they have created a visible divide that separates and demarcates foreigners from Americans. This process in itself is frightening because “the Other, the different, [is possibly] the enemy within” (Eriksen139). As such, they have to be subjected to some degrading mechanisms because they are under suspicion (Agamben n pag). The logic of suspicion is bordering in paranoia that “...What we are witnessing is no longer the free and active participation on the political level, but the appropriation and registration of the most private and unsheltered element, that is the biological life of bodies”. (Agamben n pag) The second implication of this the notion of the human body being use as a tool for identification, which is a denigration of the person. This is maintained on the supposition that the body is not a tool (Merleau-Ponty 1962). Rather, the human body is humanity’s conduit to the physical realm. The body provides us the actual presence, the reality and the way to learn and experience that which, the world offers. As such, the body is an integral part of our humanity. It possesses an inherent dignity, a bodily integrity (Merleau-Ponty 1962). It is not just reason or passion that demarcates our humanity. Although it cannot be denied that, the uniqueness of the body can serve as identification of the uniqueness of the person especially with the current developments in biosciences. However, the manner with which it is being used to identify an alien entering the United States is a somewhat similar to the utilization of the body being marked as “practice of tattooing the inmates in Auschwitz was possibly regarded as a "normal" and economical form of regulating the incorporation of the deported ones into the camp” (Agamben n pag). The third implication of surveillance in the Post 9/11 world is what Foucault has been saying “as the progressive animalization of man through extremely refined techniques” (Agamben n pag). Through the current surveillance implemented by U.S. in her country and outside U.S., the U.S. government has created a mechanism wherein it can interfere in the private sphere of the individual while maintaining the U.S. government has whole gamut of data, a powerful source of knowledge concerning her citizens and the citizens of the world. It is important to understand that data are not simply collected without any purposes. Data can only be important if it is process as information. As such, the accumulation of data by U.S. is in itself a power that can be used anytime, anywhere. In this regard, Foucault is correct, the society is a society of surveillance where “behind the great abstraction of exchange, there continues the meticulous, concrete training of useful forces; the circuits of communication are the supports of an accumulation and a centralization of knowledge; the play of signs defines the anchorages of power; it is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies”(Foucault n.pag). THE CONNECTION Kant in Perpetual Peace proposed the establishment of a league of nations that will put an end to wars. This vision, in a way, is actualized by the presence of the United Nations. It has become the bastion of hope for peoples of the world who are suffering from oppression and other forms of conditions that threatens the integrity of their being and diminishes their human dignity. However, as the international community strives in establishing a better human condition for the world, truth is UN has failed in ending wars. Several reasons have been forwarded for this reality and it all boils down to the question to the authenticity of the intensions of some the affluent member States. In lieu with this, the Post 9/11 world has vividly shown the failure of UN, but more so it presents the transformation of the notion of surveillance in the contemporary period. U.S. has made surveillance an open secret. Open secret because people know they are being observed, people are aware that the government is involved. They also know the institutions that are into it. What they do not know are the actual people who are doing the surveillance. Is this still surveillance? However, what is clear is that it is an implemented mechanism that seeks to segregate, to dehumanize, to devalue the intrinsic worth of body and to accumulate more power. The way to peace is difficult, but to continuously hope for it is a beacon that keeps faith in humanity alive. CONCLUSION United Nations’ failure in eliminating war has opened the contemporary society to a wider scope, meanings and forms of surveillance that denigrate contemporary concepts of liberty, privacy, bodily integrity and human dignity. However, humanity cannot just give up no matter how bleak the notion and reality of peace may be. As globalization and advancements in technology, continue to permeate every segment of contemporary society, the quest for peace and authentic respect for human dignity and bodily integrity will continue with our ceasing for it is only through this that the path for the good life may be laid for all and not just for a select few. REFERENCES: Agamben, Giorgio. “Bodies without words: Against the biopolitical tattoo.” German Law Journal Special Issue (2004): no page. Balakrishnan,P. “Globalisation, power and justice.” Economic and Political Weekly (2003): 3166 – 3170. Berdal, Mats. “The UN’s Unnecessary Crisis.” Survival (Autumn 2005): 47. 3: 7 – 32. Bloss, William. “Escalating U.S. Police Surveillance after 9/11: an Examination of Causes and Effects.” Surveillance & Society Special Issue on ‘Surveillance and Criminal Justice’ Part 1, 4.3 (2007): 208-228 Calder, A. and Watkins, S. IT Governance: A manager’s guide to data security and ISO27001/ISO27002 4th Ed. London: Kogan Page, 2008. Durand, Daniel. “The United Nations at the Heart of ‘Another World.” Development,), 48.1(2005):61-64. Eriksen, Thomas. “Ethnicity and Nationalism” in Ethnicity and Nationalism 2nd Ed. Foucault, Michel. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structure and Hermeneutics. Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1982. ---.. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison. NY: Vintage Books, 1995. Franck, Thomas M. “What Happens Now? The United Nations after Iraq.” The American Journal of International Law, 97. 3 (Jul 2005): 607 – 620. Habermas, Jürgen. “A Political Constitution for a Pluralist World Society?” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34.3 (2007): 331 – 343. DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6253.2007.00421.x Kant, Immanuel. Perpetual Peace Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Phenomenology of Perception. Trans by, Colin Smith, New Jersey: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962. Purser, S. A practical guide in managing information security. Boston: Artech House, 2004. Soros, G. George Soros on Globalization. New York: Open Society Institute,2002. Suarez-Orozco, M.M., & Qin – Hilliard, D.B. Globalization: Culture and Education in the new Millennium. Berkeley: THE ROSS INSTITUTE, 2004. Weiss, Thomas G. “The Illusion of UN Security Council Reform”, The Washington Quarterly, 26. 4 (Autumn 2003): 147 – 16. Read More