Abstract
Exploring the role of demonization in the context of “waging war” and “waging peace”, Normand asks why the phenomenon continues to appear in modern political discourse. The chapter introduces the notion of a so-called ‘politics of demonization’ and suggests that demonizing one’s enemy many serve four politically expedient functions in that it can (1) promote unity (2) enhance legitimacy (3) reinforce self-righteousness and moral heroism and (4) secure military and political mobilization. In the context of “waging peace”, Normand addresses some of the moral and pragmatic challenges that emerge when framing peace-efforts with the enemy as “shaking hands with the devil’. The chapter concludes by presenting the three dimensions of “demonization deadlock” to help explain how demonization may further complicate negotiation efforts.
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Notes
- 1.
Senior US Marine officer Lt. Colonel Gareth Brandl in a US operation in Fallujah Iraq in November 2004. Quoted in Greg Moodie, “The History of the Devil,” APT Documentary: Siren Visual, 2008.
- 2.
The comment was made in a speech to Italian lawmakers, where the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi urged the world to understand the reasons that motivated terrorists and to engage in dialogues with them. See Sabina Castelfranco, “Libya’s Gadhafi Lashes Out at US,” Voice of America, 11 June 2009. www.51voa.com/VOA_Standard_English/VOA_Standard_English_30256.html. Accessed: 12 June 2009.
- 3.
Theories on the political instrumentality of hostile images are extensive and well developed. For more on the functions of a hostile enemy images, see for example Barker, Making enemies, pp. 6–24; Finlay, Fagen, and Holsti, Enemies in politics; Neil Forsyth, The old enemy: Satan and the combat myth, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987; Arthur Gladstone, “The conception of the enemy,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 3, no. 2, 1959; Vilho Harle, The enemy with a thousand faces: the tradition of the other in Western political thought and history, Westport: Praeger, 2000; Robert Holt and Brett Silverstein, “On the psychology of enemy images”; Keen, Faces of the enemy; Charles Krauthammer, “Do we really need a new enemy?,” Time Magazine, 23 March 1992; and Pagels, The origin of Satan; Rieber, The psychology of war and peace.
- 4.
In biological terms, fear is an emotional reaction generated by a sense of danger. Fear is one of the six basic emotions identified by Charles Darwin, and it is the first sensation experienced by a character in the Bible. See Corey Robin, Fear: the history of a political idea, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 1.
- 5.
Ibid., p. 16.
- 6.
See Henry Tajfel and John C. Turner, “The social identity theory of inter-group behavior,” in Stephen Worchel, ed., Psychology of intergroup relations, Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1986.
- 7.
Fear was a primary driving force in Hobbes’ war-of-all-against-all where men in the state of nature were of existential threat to one another as they competed over limited resources in an anarchical self-help world. Realist scholars in IR base their theories on this very premise. According to their “logic of anarchy” no state in the international system can ever be secure given the potential threat of competing states.
- 8.
Connolly, Identity\Difference, pp. 10–12.
- 9.
Barker, Making enemies, p. 8.
- 10.
See for example Ibid; Adam Curtis, “The power of nightmares: the rise of the politics of fear,” UK: BBC Documentary, 2005; and Tom DeLuca and John Buell, Liars! Cheaters! Evildoers!
- 11.
Krauthammer, “Do we really need a new enemy?”
- 12.
Curtis, “The power of nightmares.”
- 13.
Statement made at a press conference in London, 1969. Cited on Jewish Virtual Library, see http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Quote/MeironPeace.html. Accessed: 25 March 2012.
- 14.
See David Runciman, The politics of good intentions: history, fear and hypocrisy in the new world order, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
- 15.
Ivie and Giner, “Hunting the Devil,” p. 581.
- 16.
James Alfred Aho, This thing of darkness: a sociology of the enemy, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994, p. 33.
- 17.
See Leo Strauss, The city and man, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
- 18.
BBC Frontline, “Oral history: Colin Powell,” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/powell/3.html). Accessed: 29 April 2007.
- 19.
Clausewitz quoted in Rieber, The psychology of war and peace, p. 4.
- 20.
Keen, Faces of the enemy, p. 10.
- 21.
Glenn J. Gray, The warriors: reflections on men in battle, Lincoln Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1998, p. 147.
- 22.
In the mid-1970s social psychologist Albert Bandura et al. conducted experiments to investigate the relationship between “dehumanization” and aggression. Their experiments built on Milgram’s famous studies, which tested the likelihood of subjects to administer electric shocks to other subjects. In these studies, subjects were under the fake impression that they were being tested on “the effects of punishment on social learning patterns” when in reality they were being tested for the degree to which they were willing to administer electric shocks to subjects, ranging from intensity level of 1 (weak) to 10 (painful). Bandura’s study revealed two very telling findings on the relationship between dehumanization and aggression.The first was that subjects were more likely to administer high intensity shocks to “dehumanized” groups—they were treated twice as punitively as “humanized” or “neutral” groups. The second was that postevaluation forms revealed that the subjects were less likely to feel remorse about having administered the electric shocks against dehumanized groups while they strongly condemned punitive techniques, and rarely administered shocks to humanized groups. Subjects seemed to have morally disengaged from the victims. A. Bandura, B. Underwood, and M.E. Fromson, “Disinhibition of aggression through diffusion of responsibility and dehumanization of victims,” Journal of Research in Personality, vol. 9, no. 4, 1975.
- 23.
For a good overview on “dehumanization” in the field of social psychology see Nick Haslam, “Dehumanization: an integrative review,” Personality and Social Psychology Review, vol. 10, no. 3, 2006.
- 24.
See Marshall B. Rosenberg, Speak peace in a world of conflict: what you say next will change your world, Encinitas: Puddle Dancer, 2005.
- 25.
See Herbert C. Kelman, “Violence without moral restraint—reflections on dehumanization of victims and victimizers,” Journal of Social Issues, vol. 29, no. 4, 1973, pp. 25–61.
- 26.
Uri Avnery, “The Boycott Revisited,” Ma’an News Agency, 7 September 2009. See http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=224008. Accessed: 2 June 2010.
- 27.
The book uses “bargaining” and “negotiating” interchangeably, with the common denominator being the attempt to resolve differences and to reach an agreement through dialogue. Mnookin also combines bargaining and negotiation, explaining: “By bargain I mean attempt to make a deal—try to resolve the conflict through negotiation—rather than fight it out.” Robert H. Mnookin, Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010, p. 1.
- 28.
For more on literature on diplomatic deadlock, see for example Guy Olivier Faure, “Deadlocks in negotiation dynamics,” in William Zartman and Guy Faure, eds., Escalation and negotiation in international conflicts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 28–32; Robert H. Mnookin, “Why Negotiations Fail: An Exploration of Barriers to the Resolution of Conflict,” Ohio State Journal of Dispute Resolution, vol. 8, 1993; Stefan Persson, “Deadlocks in International Negotiations,” Cooperation and Conflict, vol. 29, 1994; Paul R. Pillar, Negotiating Peace: War Termination as a Bargaining Process, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993; Dean G. Pruitt, Sung Hee Kim, and Jeffrey Rubin, Social Conflict-Escalation, Stalemate and Settlement, New York: McGraw- Hill, 2004; and Arend Underdal, “Causes of Negotiation ‘Failure’,” European Journal of Political Research, vol. 11, 1983.
- 29.
Lloyd Jensen, “Negotiations and power asymmetries: the case of Bosnia, Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka,” International Negotiation, vol. 2, no. 1, 1997, p. 23.
- 30.
David A. Lax and James K. Sebenius, 3D Negotiation: Powerful Tools to Change the Game in Your Most Important Deals, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006.
- 31.
For more on identity-based conflicts, see for example Jay Rothman and Marie L. Olson, “From Interests to Identities: Towards a New Emphasis in Interactive Conflict Resolution,” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 38, May 2001.
- 32.
Guy Olivier Faure, “Demonization and Negotiation,” PIN—points: The Processes of International Negotiation Program, vol. 28, 2007, p. 9.
- 33.
Faure, “Deadlocks in negotiation dynamics,” p. 32.
- 34.
Robert H. Mnookin, “Bargaining with the devil,” Foreign Policy, 17 February 2010. See http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/17/bargaining_with_the_devil. Accessed: 10 September 2010.
- 35.
Mnookin, Bargaining with the Devil, p. 3.
- 36.
Romeo Dallaire and Brent Beardsley, Shake hands with the Devil: the failure of humanity in Rwanda, London: Arrow, 2004, p. 7.
- 37.
Putnam distinguishes between “across the table” (i.e. face-to-face interactions between the international parties) and “behind the table” (i.e. the interaction between the party and its own domestic constituency). See Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization, vol. 42, Summer 1988.
- 38.
Johan Galtung, “What if the Devil were interested in peace research?,” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 25, no. 1, 1988, p. 1.
- 39.
Ibid, p. 1.
- 40.
Interview with Morton Deutsch on “negotiating with the devil” http://www.thegovernancecommons.org/audiodisplay/deutsch-m-13-devil1. Accessed: 23 September 2010.
- 41.
Point made in Mnookin, Bargaining with the Devil, p. 3.
- 42.
Raemakers’ cartoon is available in Guity Novin, “Chapter 40: A history of caricatures, and political cartoons,” A history of graphic design (Online blog). See http://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2011/06/chapter-40-history-of-caricatures.html.
- 43.
For more on the Mandela’s negotiations, see Chapter 6 in Mnookin, Bargaining with the Devil.
- 44.
Brookes’ cartoon appeared in The Times on 14 October 1997. The image is available on http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/browse/cartoon_item/anytext=Peter%20Brookes%201997?page=176
- 45.
Cited in Deepak Malhotra, “Without conditions: the case for negotiating with the enemy,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 88, no. 5, September/October 2009, p. 88
- 46.
e.g. Al-Qaeda, Hamas, PKK, and ETA.
- 47.
Condoleezza Rice cited in Jordan Timm, “Book review: Negotiating with the Devil,” Canadian Business Magazine, 15 March 2010.
- 48.
Point also made in Bertram I. Spector, “Deciding to negotiate with villains,” Negotiation Journal, vol. 14, no. 1, 2007.
- 49.
MJ Rosenberg, “Negotiating with the devil,” Israel Policy Forum, no. 166, 30 December 2004. See http://www.israelpolicyforum.org/commentary/negotiating-devil. Accessed: 15 September 2010.
- 50.
Some scholars argue that a “no-negotiation” policy is suboptimal unless terrorist groups are risk-seeking (e.g. Todd Sandler, John Tschirhart, and Jon Cauley, “A theoretical analysis of transnational terrorism,” American Political Science Review, vol. 77, March 1983). Others recommend that governments should “never say never” because certain scenarios necessitate concessions and it is therefore better for the government to be open to negotiations (e.g. Richard L. Clutterbuck, Terrorism in an unstable world, London: Routledge, 1994). Sederberg, for instance, argues that a regime’s decision to negotiate with a terrorist group (or not) should depend upon certain structural factors, such as the size of the terrorists’ base of support and the nature of the terrorists’ goals. Peter C. Sederberg, “Conciliation as Counter-Terrorist Strategy,” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 32, no. 3, 1995. For a more contemporary debate on the question of whether to bargain with terrorists, see Guy Olivier Faure and I. William Zartman, eds., Negotiating with terrorists: strategy, tactics, and politics, New York: Routledge, 2010. See also Deepak Malhotra, “Without conditions: the case for negotiating with the enemy,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 88, no. 5, September/October 2009.
- 51.
Muammar Gaddafi cited in Sabina Castelfranco, “Libya’s Gadhafi Lashes Out at US,” Voice of America, 11 June 2009. www.51voa.com/VOA_Standard_English/VOA_Standard_English_30256.html. Accessed: 12 June 2009.
- 52.
Spector, “Deciding to negotiate with villains,” p. 47.
- 53.
Daniel Heradstveit and Matthew Bonham, “What the ‘axis of evil’ metaphor did to Iran,” Middle East Journal, vol. 61, no. 3, 2007, p. 91.
- 54.
In his research on the causes for intractable conflicts, Daniel Bar-Tal argues that “delegitimization of the adversary…is one of the major detrimental forces of peaceful resolution of any conflict.” See Daniel Bar-Tal and Neta Oren, “The detrimental dynamics of delegitimization in intractable conflicts: the Israeli-Palestinian case,” International Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 31, no. 1, 2007, pp. 111–12.
- 55.
For more on the role of mistrust in bargaining dynamic, see Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The security dilemma: fear, cooperation, and trust in world politics, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
- 56.
Bill Clinton, “Millennium Summit Speech,” 6 September 2001. See http://www.un.org/millennium/webcast/statements/usa.htm. Accessed: 27 September 2010.
- 57.
According to Donald Rothschild, third-party mediation was “the missing variable” in traditional literature on ethnic bargaining. Donald Rothchild, “Ethnic Bargaining and the Management of Intense Conflict,” International Negotiation Journal, vol. 2, no. 1, 1997.
- 58.
For more on mediation, see for example Lon Fuller, “Mediation: Its Forms and Functions,” Southern California Law Review, vol. 44, 1971; Janet Rifkin, Jonathan Millen, and Sara Cobb, “Towards a New Discourse for Mediation: A Critique of Neutrality,” Mediation Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 2, Winter 1991; Larry Susskind, “Mediating Public Disputes: A Response to the Skeptics,” Negotiation Journal, vol. 1, no. 2 April 1985.
- 59.
For example Kelman attributed part of the “Oslo Breakthrough” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the Norwegian facilitators/mediators (i.e. not setting the agenda, not pushing for any particular solution or forcing their opinions, but rather providing a venue, the resources, and advice when asked). See Herbert C Kelman, “some determinants of the Oslo breakthrough,” International Negotiation, vol. 2, no. 2, 1997.
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Normand, L. (2016). Demonization in War and Peace. In: Demonization in International Politics. Middle East Today. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54581-7_3
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