The “Bug Pit” of Bukhara and Other Reflections on Torture

A British officer named Charles Stoddart was sent on to Bukhara, in what is now Uzbekistan, to assure the emir he had nothing to fear from Britain, and to try and make an alliance against the Russians. Known for his depravity and cruelty, the emir had Stoddart thrown into a 20-foot pit filled with insects and other vermin.

via Bukhara on the Potomac | GlobalPost.

The man who taught rulers how to rule.

A great essay on the rehabilitating Machiavelli, a foundational thinker in the development of diplomacy and statecraft:

To the culture at large, the danger was real. “The Prince” offered the first major secular shock to the Christianized state in which we still live. Long before Darwin, Machiavelli showed us a credible world without Heaven or Hell, a world of “is” rather than “should be,” in which men were coolly viewed as related to beasts and earthly government was the only hope of bettering our natural plight.

Although his ideas have drawn sporadic support throughout history—among seventeenth-century English anti-monarchists, among nineteenth-century German nationalists—it was not until the present age that scholars began to separate the man from his cursed reputation. Roberto Ridolfi’s landmark biography, of 1954, made a passionate case for its subject’s Italian warmth of spirit. Leo Strauss, a few years later, claimed that Machiavelli intended his most outrageous statements merely to startle and amuse. And, in full redemption, Sebastian de Grazia’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Machiavelli in Hell,” of 1989, argued for the quondam devil’s stature as a profoundly Christian thinker. There is today an entire school of political philosophers who see Machiavelli as an intellectual freedom fighter, a transmitter of models of liberty from the ancient to the modern world. Yet what is most astonishing about our age is not the experts’ desire to correct our view of a maligned historical figure but what we have made of that figure in his most titillatingly debased form. “The Mafia Manager: A Guide to the Corporate Machiavelli”; “The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women”; and the deliciously titled “What Would Machiavelli Do? The Ends Justify the Meanness” represent just a fraction of a contemporary, best-selling literary genre. Machiavelli may not have been, in fact, a Machiavellian. But in American business and social circles he has come to stand for the principle that winning—no matter how—is all. And for this alone, for the first time in history, he is a cultural hero.

UPDATE

More on power and the Prince, from a Yale University open courseware lecture via Academic Earth.

Espionage & diplomacy

The worlds of espionage and diplomacy are sometimes connected, but this new book shows diplomacy by ‘other means’ in an active, and shocking manner–and out of line with the Vienna Conventions which regulate diplomacy. (Research note: Fletcher’s Ginn Library for this and other multilateral treaties/agreements.)

Its not the first time there has been public accusations of spying at the UN.  The more typical discussion, however, is how official UN missions such as UNSCOM were used officially to spy on another country–Iraq and Saddam Hussein.  Arm-twisting, is part of the game.

The scenario:  Request[ing] British help with what amounted to a dirty tricks campaign: a plan for the bugging of offices and homes in New York belonging to UN diplomats from the six “swing states”, countries whose support would be vital if Washington and London were to win a Security Council resolution authorising the invasion of Iraq. (from Guardian UK interview)

Outcome: Within a week, Gun had confessed to her role as the leaker, left GCHQ, been arrested, and spent a night in police custody. Eight months later, she was charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act, facing the threat of a trial and a two-year prison sentence. Yesterday, at the Old Bailey, the case was finally dropped. The prosecution declined to offer any evidence, prompting speculation that the government was desperate to avoid being forced to reveal, in the course of a trial, details of its own legal advice on the war. (Guardian UK)

Listen to the discussion with the authors and the spy on WAMU or check out the book.

Is hypocricy biologically useful? (Never mind the pols we love to criticize)

“The question here…is whether we’re designed at heart to be fair or selfish”

–Dr. David Desteno, quoted in the Times

Uncertainty and time pressure key to Milgram experiments

The famous 50 year old psychological experiments by Stanley Milgram are reviewed and updated, noting that they “may have shown physical, biological differences in moral decision making and obedience, as well as psychological ones.”

Two recent papers bring this classic back for further consideration of decision making, responsibility to authority, and individual accountability.

1. Dominic Packer, Perspectives on Psychological Science (July issue) addresses the key voltage levels the person administering shocks (not real ones, but they didn’t know this fact) refused to continue (obey authority)
2. Jerry M. Burger, American Psychologist, wondered if people today would still obey–and they did, with over half today still willing to zap the others.

In the context of Abu Ghraib and the torture debate (see links below), this adds an important refresh to our developing perspective.

• Beyond the Torture Debate: Charting the Legal Path from 9/11 to Guantanamo, New American Foundation – the legal line drawn out
• David Luban vs. Charles Krauthammer, NPR – sharp elbows
• “On Torture Hypotheticals“, Obsidian Wings  — thoughtful reasoning
• “Is the torture debate robbing us of international credibility?“, Reason Magazine — Putin parallels?
• Seymour Hersh New Yorker classics: “Torture at Abu Gharab,” “Chain of Command,” “The General’s Report” — first draft of history?