Failure of radical analysis of root causes

Coming Out as a Radical -- or Coming In? (Part #7)

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Case of climate change: Despite its quest for the "deepest causes", the Encyclical Letter of Pope Francis (Laudato Si' on Care of Our Common Home, 18 June 2015) explicitly sets aside as irrelevant and misguided any concern with reduction of the birth rate:

50. Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate. At times, developing countries face forms of international pressure which make economic assistance contingent on certain policies of "reproductive health". Yet "while it is true that an unequal distribution of the population and of available resources creates obstacles to development and a sustainable use of the environment, it must nonetheless be recognized that demographic growth is fully compatible with an integral and shared development".... To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues. It is an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption.

As discussed separately, there is no recognition that global and national governance is extremely problematic, notably with respect to inequalities, imbalances and distribution of resources to the most needy (Papal Concern for Climate Change and Refugee Care: a means of concealing criminal systemic negligence? 2015). Under such circumstances it might be assumed, as in the case of any family, that it would be prudent to avoid encouraging any increase in the number of mouths to be fed when the future source of that food is far from evident. Failure to do so is to increase the probability of suffering, starvation and premature mortality.

However, in failing to address the ever increasing pressures on global governance -- exacerbated in every sector by unrestrained population growth -- the following concluding article is correct in ways which are not the intention of the Encyclical:

109. ...We fail to see the deepest roots of our present failures, which have to do with the direction, goals, meaning and social implications of technological and economic growth.

There is every reason to suspect that support for the UN Climate Change agreement, through the Encyclical, was "negotiated" prior to the Paris summit in 2015 -- with the proviso that no mention whatsoever of "population" should be made in that agreement.

Case of terrorism: For Wolfgang Ischinger (The Globalization of Justice, The Washington Post, 24 September 2001):

Beyond the short-term measures now required, we need a comprehensive, long-term strategy if we want to get to the root of terrorism. Globalization is not, as some would have it, the cause of this new kind of terrorism. But this new kind of international terrorism demands a global response. In fact, the formation of a global coalition against terrorism means that we are now moving beyond the globalization of the economy to the globalization of politics.

For Paul Rogers (Peace in our time? BBC, Spring 2005):

There is clearly a threat of terrorism but the way in which the war on terrorism is being fought is, I think, very counterproductive in that it relies very heavily on military measures in which tens of thousands of people have already been killed, mostly civilians, and, if anything, there's still very little attempt to get to the root of the terrorist organisations, particularly where they are getting their support from and why; if anything, their support is growing.

In a commentary on The Fallacy of "Root Causes, the very quest for root causes through empathy is mocked by David Martin Jones and M. L. R. Smith: Carry On Empathizing: the ISIS crisis and Western political thought, War on the Rocks, 11 September 2014):

For our critics the solution lay not in ascertaining the appeal of a doctrine of radicalized Islamism, but in the identification of "root causes". Predictably, they claimed the possession of a higher knowledge that enabled them to divine what these "root causes" comprised. This capacity for Olympian insight was, of course, denied to other mortals. The key to obtain this higher knowledge was a position of fully-fledged empathy. According to one of our protagonists, Tarak Barkawi, writing in 2004 [as noted above]: Should it not just be accepted that suicide bombers are fighters in a cause, which can be recognized, with just a small dose of empathy, as a response to historic injustice? He went on: Only by granting one's enemies a full and unqualified humanity can one ever hope to understand them.

Through the policy of empathy, its adherents were granted the unique capacity to uncover the "root causes" of Islamist violence, which did not reside, they discerned, in the growth of an insidious death-worshipping fascist cult. Instead, they believed the problem could be found in the long-term grievances arising out of the suffering at the hands of decades of Western imperialism and prejudice. Unbearable Islamophobia endured by Muslim communities within the domestic realm created injustices that demanded redress. Armed with this special insight, Barkawi asserted that through empathy it was possible to learn to live in peace with people different from ourselves, people who may not choose to live as we do or to organize their societies along western lines.

A new level of bombing of Syria and Iraq has been instigated by a US-led coalition of NATO-associated forces, following the attack in Paris in November 2015. Those supporting this strategy justify it in terms of the need to act now -- a time for action, not a time for thinking. Curiously there is no question whatsoever of eliciting new thinking in parallel with the assumed need to focus on military action now. Seemingly multitasking is not esteemed or cultivated as a strategic requirement of governance -- despite the failure to elicit such arguments.

The articulation of the necessity to do so has been variously criticized. Those opposing it note the total absence of a well-articulated strategy, especially subsequent to the expected success of military action -- and despite the problematic assumption that military action enables the emergence of a political solution meaningful to those on the ground (Rafael Behr, Cameron's cluelessness on Syria hands no one the moral high ground, The Guardian, 3 November 2015). Critics note the challenge of "winning the peace", as highlighted by military action in other arenas. The argument for action now is consistent with the traditional slogan: Shoot first and ask questions after. In the German parliament, the emphasis was placed on the absence of any strong argument not to bomb now.

The debate in the UK Parliament confirming UK participation in the coalition is illustrative of the failure:

• In the debate in the UK Parliament, the leader of the opposition said of the Prime Minister:

  He knows that opposition to his ill-thought-out rush to war is growing. On planning, strategy, ground troops, diplomacy, the terrorist threat, refugees and civilian casualties, it's become increasingly clear the prime minister's proposal simply doesn't stack up. (Jeremy Corbyn: David Cameron has failed to show that bombing Syria would work, The Guardian, 2 December 2015)

• Controversially, the Prime Minister then accused the leader of the opposition of being a terrorist sympathiser (David Cameron accuses Jeremy Corbyn of being 'terrorist sympathiser', The Guardian, 1 December 2015)

For Rafael Behr (Syria airstrikes: Commons emerges with credit from day of bitter division The Guardian, 2 December 2015):

David Cameron came under sustained pressure to apologise for comments the previous evening that a vote against the government would be complicity with "terrorist sympathisers". The prime minister refused, conceding only that principled positions were found on all sides. But the recurrent fury of reasonable dissenters knocked him off his rhetorical stride. He repeated arguments made earlier in the week, but with decayed authority....

Whether the right choice was made or not, history will have to judge. But when that verdict is given, it should be recalled that, after a shaky start, parliament gave the matter due and dutiful consideration; that it fulfilled its constitutional function properly and, for the most part, with civil propriety. The outcome may be bitterly regretted by some, but the institution deserves more credit than contempt for the way the choice was made.

The strategic mindset had previously been framed in the following terms by David Cameron (Speech at Munich Security Conference, Munich 2011, BritishPoliticalSpeech):

We have got to get to the root of the problem, and we need to be absolutely clear on where the origins of where these terrorist attacks lie. That is the existence of an ideology, Islamist extremism. We should be equally clear what we mean by this term, and we must distinguish it from Islam. Islam is a religion observed peacefully and devoutly by over a billion people. Islamist extremism is a political ideology supported by a minority. At the furthest end are those who back terrorism to promote their ultimate goal: an entire Islamist realm, governed by an interpretation of Sharia. Move along the spectrum, and you find people who may reject violence, but who accept various parts of the extremist worldview, including real hostility towards Western democracy and liberal values. It is vital that we make this distinction between religion on the one hand, and political ideology on the other. Time and again, people equate the two. They think whether someone is an extremist is dependent on how much they observe their religion. So, they talk about moderate Muslims as if all devout Muslims must be extremist. This is profoundly wrong. Someone can be a devout Muslim and not be an extremist. We need to be clear: Islamist extremism and Islam are not the same thing.

This highlights, I think, a significant problem when discussing the terrorist threat that we face. There is so much muddled thinking about this whole issue. On the one hand, those on the hard right ignore this distinction between Islam and Islamist extremism, and just say that Islam and the West are irreconcilable - that there is a clash of civilizations. So, it follows: we should cut ourselves off from this religion, whether that is through forced repatriation, favoured by some fascists, or the banning of new mosques, as is suggested in some parts of Europe . These people fuel Islamophobia, and I completely reject their argument. If they want an example of how Western values and Islam can be entirely compatible, they should look at what's happened in the past few weeks on the streets of Tunis and Cairo : hundreds of thousands of people demanding the universal right to free elections and democracy. [also as Speech on radicalisation and Islamic extremism, New Statesman, 5 February 2011]

Unrecognized complexity: The European inability to consider the complexities of the strategic situation more adequately was a feature of commentary by Agnès Levallois and Michael Lüders (Entretien, Arte Thema, 1 December 2015), notably with respect to what was on offer to the younger generation of unemployed Europeans, so readily attracted to the arguments of ISIS (see also Agnès Levallois, L'évolution de la situation géopolitique post-attentat au Moyen-Orient, The Huffington Post, 30 November 2015)

With respect to the arguments of David Cameron, George Monbiot asks:

On what grounds does he believe that a military campaign in one part of the world will discourage terrorism in others? One of the astonishing features of counter-terrorism is the dearth of empirical assessment. Apaper in the journalPsicothemafound an almost complete absence of evaluation research on counter-terrorism strategies ...[we] conclude that counter-terrorism policy is not evidence-based. Of the 11 military adventures the researchers analysed, they found that five had no discernible impacts on subsequent terrorism. Six were followed by more terrorism than there had been before (On climate change this government is indifferent to life, in love with death, The Guardian, 2 December 2015).

As argued by Doug Bandow (Terrorism in Paris: Why Do Western Governments Believe They Can Wage War Without Cost? The Huffington Post, 2 December 2015):

By now every government should recognize what America learned on September 11, 2001. Wandering the globe bombing, invading, and occupying other states, intervening in other nations' political struggles, supporting repressive governments, and killing residents for good or ill inevitably create enemies and blowback. Explanation is not justification. But any government that attacks the Islamic State should realize retaliation is likely, probably against people innocently going about their lives, as in Paris -- and against Hezbollah in Beirut the day before and Russia in Sharm el Sheikh a bit earlier still.

This kind of terrorism simply is another weapon of war. Imagine if the Islamic State was a normal nation. No one would have been surprised had ISIL fighter planes shot down French aircraft engaged in France's nearly 300 bombing runs over the "caliphate." There might have been shocked disbelief at such a defeat of French arms, but no moral outrage. The same would be the case if ISIL planes had retaliated by striking Paris. Again, that would have been a routine act of war. After all, France had attacked Raqqa, the Islamic State's de facto capital, in October. The U.S. has bombed the capital of every major adversary since World War II: Rome, Berlin, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Hanoi, Belgrade, Baghdad, and Tripoli....

Western governments which loose the dogs of war should stop assuming that their own people will not be bitten. Being a liberal democracy does not turn bombing and killing into an act of immaculate conception. Instead of pretending that their nations enjoy immunity from the inevitable horrors of war, Western officials should make the case to their people that the likely costs are worth the benefits. In this case that includes the possibility, perhaps likelihood, of terrorist attacks at home. There are no certainties even for America, which has done surprisingly well since 9/11.

For Tony Cartalucci (Solving Syria (and more): the root of the problem. Syria 360: Reporting on events in Syria and the Middle East, 11 July 2012), solving problems means first understanding them:

As difficult as it might be for some to believe, Syria's problem is not violence, armed insurrection, or political upheaval. Neither is it economic or social. These are but symptoms, many purposefully induced from abroad, of Syria's real problem, and therefore any solution aimed at treating only these symptoms will provide only but the most superficial and temporary relief. Many geopolitical analysts know this, and yet champion for the immediate treatment of these symptoms, particularly the end of violence, which makes perfect sense in a sense of "triage," but will ultimately fail if the root of the problem is not also exposed and a solution for "digging it out" not formulated and appropriately promoted.

Derivative thinking: The failure of radical analysis can be explored in terms of "derivative thinking" (Vigorous Application of Derivative Thinking to Derivative Problems, 2013). The argument is usefully illustrated by the preference given to "mainstream thinking" as indicative of the desirable normality of average discourse. However this metaphor is called into question by increasing recognition that the focus of attention on downstream river management increases immensely the probability and cost of flooding.

As noted by George Monbiot:

Yet almost all the money devoted to freshwater flood relief is being spent at the bottom of river catchments. This means waiting until the wall of water arrives before seeking to contain it; a perfect formula for disappointment. A rational policy would aim to prevent the flood from gathering in the first place. It would address the problem, literally and metaphorically, upstream. (Do little, hide the evidence: the official neglect that caused these deadly floods, The Guardian, 7 December 2015)

As Monbiot remarks elsewhere (Dredging rivers won't stop floods; it will make them worse, The Guardian, 30 January 2014):

Flooding is exacerbated by canalising rivers and dredging in order to increase the rate of flow. However the river channel is not large enough to contain extreme floods, even after dredging. Dredging of river channels does not prevent flooding during extreme river flows... The concept of dredging to prevent extreme flooding is equivalent to trying to squeeze the volume of water held by a floodplain within the volume of water held in the river channel.... Removing river bank vegetation such as trees and shrubs decreases bank stability and increases erosion and siltation.... That means, broadly speaking, the following:

-- More trees and bogs in the uplands - reconnecting rivers with their floodplains in places where it is safe to flood (and paying farmers to store water on their fields while the danger passes);

-- Making those floodplains rougher by planting trees and other deep vegetation to help hold back the water - lowering the banks and de-canalising the upper reaches, allowing rivers once more to create meanders and braids and oxbow lakes. These trap the load they carry and sap much of their destructive energy

Monbiot makes similar points with respect to subsequent severe flooding in the UK (This flood was not only foretold - it was publicly subsidised, The Guardian, 30 December 2015).

The systemic equivalence to recognition of "upstream" knowledge processes -- "radical" root-cause thinking -- is then evident in contrast to focus on "mainstream" processes that derive from them. The arguments here regarding the failure of concern for diligent trace-back, and the characteristics of "downstream thinking" on derivative issues, could be understood as following from the modalities only too evident in the relationships between disciplines and between sciences.

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