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INTRODUCTION

The United States-led war in Afghanistan came as an immediate response against terrorism after the September 11 terror attacks in the U.S.  On October 7, 2001, the United States, its ally the United Kingdom and supported by a coalition of other countries, invaded Afghanistan.  The military operation was codenamed Operation Enduring Freedom whose target were the Taliban and Al Qaeda related camps.

After the fall of the Taliban government, a US-sponsored democratic central government was established in Afghanistan.  However, resistance from Islamic militants still persists as evidenced by the frequent infightings and suicide bombings in the past years.

By discussing the conflicting interests, norms, rules, identity and institutions in this paper, the researcher would like to show how unlike other conflicts, the war against terrorism is one that is more difficult to resolve because it lies heavily on socially-constructed ideas.

The researcher used the constructivist approach in this paper with particular focus on norms, rules, identity and institutions as described by scholars namely Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, Miles Kahler, Nicholas Onuf, Hedley Bull, James March and Johan Olsen.  Alexander Wendt’s brand of constructivism, which gives emphasis on the role of interests, was also used in this paper.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

This paper intends to analyze the environment surrounding the United States-led war in Afghanistan, which marked beginning of the US and its allies’ war against terrorism.  The researcher poses the problem of which particular clashing norms, rules, identities and institutions led to the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and how were new norms cascaded.  In addition, the researcher would like to include which opposing interests of the primary actors in the war constitute these norms, rules, identities and institutions.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

After the Cold war, some scholars saw that the realist model, which gives focus on interests behind state action, was inadequate and needed to be modified.  Miles Kahler explained that this “cognitive inadequacy” stems from the realists’ failure to include other matters such as emotion-laden issues of identity that affect state action. (Katzenstein: 1999, p. 281)  One answer to this cognitive inadequacy is the constructivist approach to international relations.

The basic premise of constructivism, according to Nicholas Onuf is that human beings are social beings and that we are ultimately defined by our social relations.

“Constructivism holds that people make society, and society makes people.  This is a two-way process.  Social rules, the third element, link the other two elements.  Social rules make the process by which people and society constitute each other continuous and reciprocal.” (Onuf: 1998, p.59)

Constructivism puts emphasis on norms, rules, identities and institutions.  According to Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, a norm is “a standard of appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity.”(Finnemore and Sikkink: 1999, p. 251) Norms often limit the range of choices and constrain the actions of actors.

Norms may be domestic, regional or international in nature. Domestic norms are usually interconnected with international norms since many international norms started as domestic norms.  International norms are also cascaded through the filter of domestic structures and domestic norms.  Simply put, international and domestic norms influence one another. (Finnemore and Sikkink: 1999, p. 253)

Breaking a norm generates disapproval while conforming to a norm produces praise. However, there are no bad norms from the point of view of those who are promoting them. (Finnemore and Sikkink: 1999, p. 252) Often, a norm is taken for granted because it is already highly internalized.

Changes at each stage of norm cascade are characterized by different actors, motives, and mechanisms of influence.  Norm emergence is characterized by the persuasion of norm entrepreneurs who attempt to convince a critical mass of states to embrace a new norm.   Norms are actively created or built by agents or norm entrepreneurs who have strong notions about appropriate behavior in their community.  New norms emerge in an environment where they must compete with other norms that have previously defined standards of appropriate behavior.

In most cases, for an emergent norm to be cascaded, it must first become institutionalized in specific sets of international rules and organizations, the United Nations for example. However, as Finnemore and Sikkink notes, it is a different thing all together when dealing with powerful states that are rarely coerced in agreeing to a norm. Organizations must be able to persuade these states that the old norm is actually wrong or inappropriate. (Finnemore and Sikkink: 1999, p. 251)

In norm cascade, norm leaders attempt to recruit other states to become followers of their norms.  Finnemore and Sikkink lists several factors that would facilitate norm cascades: “pressure for conformity, desire to enhance international legitimation, and the desire of state leaders to enhance their self-esteem”.  (Finnemore and Sikkink: 1999, p. 255-265)

A norm is said to have reached the stage of norm internalization when it already becomes a habit and is taken for granted.  Not all norms however, can complete the whole process. (Finnemore and Sikkink: 1999, p. 255-265)

Another important constructivist idea is a rule.  According to Nicholas Onuf, a rule is simply a statement that tells people what they should do. If we break a rule, there would be consequences.  The ways, in which we deal with rules, whether we break or follow them, are called practices. (Onuf: 1998, p. 59)

Hedley Bull describes rules as merely intellectual constructs.  They do not come from one central rule-making authority but usually become embedded in customs.  Members of the society make rules effective even in the absence of a supreme government.  In order to be effective, they must be obeyed to some degree.

Rules are legitimized if members of the society accept them as valid. States undertake the task of legitimizing the rules by promoting the acceptance of them and by using their powers of persuasion and propaganda to get support from other states.  Rules are said to be formal or legal when they are backed up by other rules.  The more frequent agents follow the rules, the stronger the rule is normatively and the easier it is to make it formal. (Onuf: 1998, p. 69)

An example of a rule is confining the legitimate use of violence or what we call “war” to sovereign states. Other basic rules of co-existence in the international society, which are often kept by states are the mutual respect for sovereignty, the keeping of agreements or treaties and the rules limiting the resort to violence. (Bull: 1982, p. 55)

Rules and related practices form a pattern that suits the agent or the norm entrepreneur’s intentions.  These patterns are what we call institutions or regimes. (Bull: 1982, p. 70)

Finnemore and Sikkink describe an institution as a “collection of practices and rules.” (Finnemore and Sikkink: 1999, p.251) An institution does not necessarily mean an organization or administrative machinery but it is a set of habits and practices shaped towards the realization of common goals.

March and Olsen further describes the institution as a “relatively stable collection of practices and rules defining appropriate behavior for specific groups of actors in specific situations.” (Katzenstein: 1999, p. 308)

When political actors act in accordance to accepted rules and practices, they form an identity.  Identities, like rules are said to be regulative and are molded by social interaction and experience.

Critics of constructivism often poke into the normative vs. rationality debate, saying that the constructivist approach negates rationality and that the role of interests, as realists prioritize, is hugely undermined.  However, scholars like Kahler, Finnemore and Sikkink believe that the normative and the rational can in fact come together and they are intimately connected.

Nicholas Onuf proves this by saying that when human beings act as agents, they have particular goals in mind.  Agents acknowledge these rules because they believe that these will help them reach their goals.  Agents use whatever means available to them to achieve their goals. Acting to achieve these goals or interests is therefore a rational conduct. (Onuf: 1998, p. 60)

Onuf also acknowledges that institutions work to the advantage of some agents at the expense of other agents.  As rational beings, those who benefit from the rules that apply to them are most inclined to follow the rules.  On the other hand, those who benefit less are still inclined to follow the rules because doing so will benefit them more than not doing so.  Those who do not benefit from following a rule may choose whatever resource is available in order to change the rule for their own advantage. (Onuf: 1998, p.60-61)

Alexander Wendt argued against the constructivist belief in “ideas all the way down.”  He says that ideas have material causes but the meaning of power and the content of interests are largely a function of ideas. Wendt says that the material force constituting interests is human nature while the rest is ideational or constituted by shared ideas or culture.  Simply put, we want what we want because of how we think about it. (Wendt: 1999)

Ronald L. Jepperson, Peter J. Katzenstein, and Alexander Wendt also studied how identity and interests come together in national security policy.  They observed that states may develop interests linked to particular identities, or domestic identity politics may be reflected in foreign policy interests.  In both cases, identity is prior to interests and may define those interests. (Katzenstein: 1999, p. 296)

March and Olsen, on the other hand, see political actors as “constituted both by their interests, by which they evaluate their expected consequences, and by the rules embedded in their identities and political institutions.  They calculate consequences and follow rules, and the relationship between the two is often subtle.” (Katzenstein: 1999, p.312) Miles Kahler similarly argues that emotion-laden issues of identity affect state action. (Kahler, p. 281)

Meanwhile Bill McSweeney studied the relations between identity and interests by looking into the dynamics of the Northern Ireland peace process.  Identity and interests, he says, are interrelated in all the stages of security policy formation. (McSweeney: 1999, p. 197) For him, the identity theory alone exaggerates the causal role of identity and fails to account the role of interests in the change of identity.  He says it is too idealistic to think that individuals will choose to change without the incentive or self-interest.  It is therefore important to note that all rules are imbued with the special interests and values of those who made them. (Katzenstein: 1999, p. 210)  However, Bull points out that these rules will serve the interests of the ruling elements of society than the interests of others.  The objective of those elements in any society, which seek to change the existing order, is to change the terms of these rules in such a way that they cease to serve the special interest of the presently dominant elements.

Next we shall see how norms, rules, institutions, identities as well as interests played their role in war of the U.S. and its allies against the Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

ANALYSIS

A battle between norms

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said “you cannot defeat a fanatical ideology just by imprisoning or killing its leaders; you have to defeat its ideas.”  The Afghanistan war is indeed a conflict of ideas.  It is a war between norms and rules that make up the institutions of Islamic fundamentalism and totalitarianism in Afghanistan and Western institutions of liberty, democracy and human rights.

On one side you have the Taliban and the Al Qaeda as the dominant agents and norm entrepreneurs in Afghanistan who have established their own government. Some of the strict puritanical Sunni Muslim norms include studying the Qur’an, requiring women to wear burqas in public, not allowing women to work and flogging offenders in public.  On the other hand you have the United States and its allies as another norm entrepreneur, establishing liberal democratic institutions after the war by introducing norms such as freedom of religion, freedom to wear anything you want, equal opportunities for men and women when it comes to work and due process in courts.  Democracy is viewed as an antidote to repressive norms and institutions such as Islamic fundamentalism and notions of terrorism.

However, terrorism, which the United States is invoking when it is justifying its invasion of Afghanistan, is also an institution that has different meanings to different parties.  For the U.S. and its allies, the Al Qaeda’s attacks on their civilians are considered as acts of terrorism.  Allowing a known Islamic militant leader like Osama Bin Laden to stay in Afghanistan is therefore a terrorist act tagged by the U.S. as ’state sponsored terrorism.’

But for the Islamic militants, these ‘terrorist acts’ are justified by their belief in jihad or holy war.  They believe that Muslims could kill civilians and military personnel from the U.S. and its allies until they withdraw support for the state of Israel and withdraw their military forces in other Islamic countries.  This is a classic case of one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

Knowing these conflicts between norms, which norms then, are likely to spread throughout the system? Ann Florini argues that prominent norms or those held by states as successful and desirable models are most likely to diffuse.      Institutionalists in sociology have also argued that norms making universalistic claims about what is good for all people in all places such as liberal democratic institutions have more expansive potential than localized and particularistic normative frameworks.

Following Finnemore and Sikkink’s norm cycle—norm emergence, norm cascade and norm internalization, we shall examine how and why new norms were adopted in the Afghanistan experience.

The emergence of new norms in Afghanistan started when the U.S. government persuaded the Taliban government to turn over Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda, whose norms were viewed as terrorist acts.  When the Taliban refused to conform to this, the United States turned to international legitimation to pursue their invasion of Afghanistan.

The international community was quick to adopt the call for a war on terrorism and its first act was to get rid of the Al Qaeda forces operating in Afghanistan.  Just less than 24 hours after the 9/11 attacks, the NATO invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and declared that the attacks were made against all the NATO member countries.  U.S. President George W. Bush then launched the war on terrorism with the support of NATO and other allies.  The U.S. and the U.K. were able to show initial success in the Afghanistan war so they were able to gain more support afterwards.

According to Finnemore and Sikkink, it matters which states adopt the norm.  Some states are critical to a norm’s adoption because they have a certain “moral stature.”  The United States and other NATO member nations are seen as leaders in security issues, therefore they are critical to the adoption of norms and rules related to security.

States are not the only agents of socialization.  Networks of norm entrepreneurs and international organizations also act as agents by pressuring targeted actors like Afghanistan, to adopt new policies and laws and to ratify treaties and by monitoring compliance with international standards like the war against terrorism. Norm studies show that at this point, often an international or regional lobbying occurs and is much more influential than domestic politics. (Finnemore and Sikkink: 1999, p. 255-265)

Self-esteem is another motivation for states to accept new norms. Esteem suggests that a state sometimes follow norms because they want others to think well of them, and they want to think well of themselves.  This is what Kenneth Waltz meant when he suggested some of the ways in which socialization occurs: “emulation (of heroes), praise (for behavior that conforms to group norms), and ridicule (for deviation).”  States join the war because they want other states to think well of them, that they have the political will to fight terrorism and to protect their citizens. In the war against terrorism, non-compliance put states in a position where they are viewed as sponsoring terrorism.

During the process of norm cascade, more states supported the war and the establishment of a democratic government in Afghanistan because of socialization.  Socialization is an important mechanism through which norm leaders persuade others to adhere.  In the case of Afghanistan, people saw the severity of the 9/11 attacks and the plight of the Taliban women as portrayed in the media so it became easier for them to accept the war in Afghanistan as legitimate.

When a norm reaches the tipping point, wherein enough states and critical states adopt it, the new norm redefines the appropriate behavior for the community.  Thus, the U.S. and its allies are expected to support each other in the fight against terrorism.  Afghans are also expected to renounce the Taliban government and to adhere to liberal democratic norms.  However, as evidenced by the ensuing resistance of several forces in Afghanistan, we can conclude that the new norms have not yet been fully internalized.

The US invasion of Afghanistan is also perceived to be clashing against the rule that each state should respect the sovereignty of every other state over its own citizens and domain, in return for the right to expect similar respect for its own sovereignty from other states.  The outcome of this central rule is the rule that states will not intervene forcibly or dictatorially in one another’s internal affairs.  However, these rules on the sovereignty of states have been challenged by the U.S. led war on terrorism.

The search for an identity

Experience with shared rules facilitates the development of rule-based international institutions and collective identity. (Katzenstein: 1999, p. 322) The U.S. led war against terrorism puts forward the democratic identity as a component in combating terrorism.  It follows the assumption that if democratic institutions replace authoritarian regimes, then terrorism will be defeated.

The problem with this argument, however, is that it clashes with the interests and the existing norms and institutions of individual states.  Even in the development of a European identity, for example, the European Union authorities have had difficulties in constructing collective identities because it confronts already existing identities.  In most areas where the war on terrorism is centered, religion and state are tightly fused together, making it all the more difficult to establish a collective identity.

The resurgence of sub state and supranational identities focus on culture and identity in understanding international relations.  In Afghanistan, ethnic, religious, linguistic, regional, functional, and class identities have already internalized. Afghans are known for their high regard for personal honor, clan loyalty and for their readiness to carry and use arms to settle disputes. Their individualistic trait was a result of years of clan warfare, making it more difficult to shift to nation-state loyalty, patterned after Western ideas of democracy.

The role of interests

As stated by some constructivists, interests and institutions can come together to analyze state behavior.   Wendt, in particular, emphasized how interest constitute ideas and vice versa.  For these scholars, norms and rules guide the behavior of states and their interests.

As McSweeney puts it, “We are collectively who we want to be, but the process of change has been conditioned in large part by the stick and carrot, the pressure and blandishment of material interests.”(McSweeney: 1999, p. 182-183)

Sometimes, as Grotius notes, states claim a just cause for going to war while hiding their real motives.  March and Olsen further discussed that although individual states act rationally to achieve coherent goals such as peace, such attainment is limited primarily not by explicit rules regulating international encounters but by simultaneous competitive efforts of other states to maximize their own interests.

The U.S.’ interests in Afghanistan is partly due to its post-Cold War foreign policy stipulated in Pentagon’s ‘Defense Planning Guidance’ “to continue to dominate the international system” and to “discourage the advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or…even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” This is also related to the fact that Afghanistan has an important geostrategical location, connecting South Asia, Central Asia and Southwest Asia.

On the other hand, we also have the interests of the Taliban to stay in power and to continue with its fundamentalist Islamic regime thus the fierce resistance to any foreign intervention and pressure on their state policies.

CONCLUSION

After the fall of the Taliban administration in 2001, adherents of the fundamentalist Islamic movement have already re-grouped and are now a resurgent force, particularly in the southern and eastern regions of Afghanistan. Although democratic institutions have emerged, they have yet to go beyond the capital and to forge national unity.

March and Olsen notes that institutions are most likely to change if they are seen as failure. They say that people are less likely to follow institutional rules if they believe that the rules produce poor results.  If institutions miss their targets, the failure creates a loss of confidence in existing rules and a search for new alternatives. (Katzenstein: 1999, p. 326)

This may well describe the Afghanistan experience.  Only if democratic institutions prove to benefit the lives of its people can the new norms be fully accepted and internalized in the country.

As discussed in this paper, the US-led war in Afghanistan is a war against existing norms, rules and institutions.  Critics even strongly suggest that this war against “terrorism” will produce a state of “perpetual war” since it is based on relative ideas of good and evil.   But in order to fully analyze the structure of the system, it is also significant to look at the interests that constitute the normative aspects of behavior.

As McSweeney puts it, “We choose who we are and who we want to be. We are no more determined by universal laws of anarchic social structure to act out the roles assigned to states in conflictual association by orthodox political science, than we are to act out the cooperative roles structured for us by a comprehensive security policy or peace process.” (McSweeney: 1999, p. 196)

The US-led war in Afghanistan proved to be a classic case of how norms and interests come in conflict with other existing norms and interests.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bull, Hedley. 1982. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. London: MacMillan Press, Ltd.

March, James G. and Olsen, Johan P. 1999. “The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders,” in Peter J. Katzenstein, Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics. Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press.

Finnemore, Martha and Sikkink, Kathryn. 1999. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” in Peter J. Katzenstein, Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics. Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press.

Kahler, Miles. 1999. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” in Peter J. Katzenstein, Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics. Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press.

McSweeney, Bill. 1999. Security, Identity and Interests: A Sociology of International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Onuf, Nicholas. 1998. “Constructivism: A User’s Manual” in Vendulka Kubalkova, International Relations in a Constructed World. Armonk. New York and London: M.E. Sharpe.

Wendt, Alexander. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.