The women’s organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or LDS Church) has a motto: charity never faileth. It comes from the Book of Mormon, the book of scripture that gives members of the Church their nickname: Mormons. The LDS Church as an institution that not only emphasizes the theological importance of charity in the lives of its adherents, but also supports humanitarian aid through institutional mechanisms, particularly its philanthropic arm, LDS Charities.

In the following paper, I will examine the way that this theological teaching of the importance of service is operationalized at an institutional level by LDS Charities. I will first describe the strengths and weaknesses of faith-based organizations in humanitarianism generally, then apply this literature to LDS Charities specifically. In doing so, I will demonstrate that LDS Charities has significant issues with accountability and transparency in funding (as many similar organizations do), but that, unlike similarly-situated organizations, LDS Charities utilizes a fairly professional humanitarian workforce. This makes LDS Charities an important case to examine in determining the role of religion in humanitarian aid.

Religion and Humanitarian Aid

The role of religious organizations in humanitarian aid is significant but debatable, and the role of LDS Charities is no exception. A careful review of the literature on religious organizations and humanitarianism will show the contours of a wider debate, but a careful review of the individual organization is also in order. I will examine each step of the aid distribution process at LDS Charities and compare their practices to the wider literature on faith-based organizations. I will show that LDS Charities’ financial practices are not particularly transparent, as the literature leads me to expect.^[1] Additionally, their use of a transnational network of church members to drive a donor base and volunteer network fits in well with the wider theoretical understanding of faith-based organizations (FBOs). However, the relatively professionalized workforce employed by and volunteering for LDS Charities differs from other FBOs as described in more general academic work.

There are plenty of options for mechanisms and organizations to deliver humanitarian aid. Because the field of NGOs is so wide and so diverse, policymakers, donors, aid workers, and NGOs themselves should and do continually ask themselves what delivery mechanisms are effective. As part of this conversation, there is an increasing desire in both the policy space and academia to examine the role of FBOs as providers of humanitarian aid.^[2] There are several systemic features of faith-based organizations that make them particularly effective in on-the-ground humanitarian aid, though they are not without their drawbacks.

There is a variety of definitions for the term “faith-based organizations” throughout the literature. For the purposes of this paper, I will use this term to refer to networks of people who are motivated by religious or spiritual beliefs and affiliated with a particular organized religious organization and who are working at the international, national, and local levels to provide economic and social humanitarian aid. When necessary, I will specify if I am discussing a formalized international organization or a local congregation, temple, or mosque.

To simplify my discussion of the humanitarian aid process, I use several key phrases. When referring to the final action of humanitarian aid – actual delivering of assistance (money, infrastructure, etc.) to a recipient, I use the term “aid distribution.” I refer to those recipients as both aid recipients and clientele.

The literature on humanitarianism and religion shows several key debates. Faith-based organizations, because they are part of transnational religious networks connected by strong internal solidarity, are in a unique position to provide humanitarian aid on the ground. They serve as a vital connection between resources (such as secular NGOs) and individuals, as they effectively reach remote areas and often enjoy high levels of local legitimacy. However, this is not always the case, and FBOs can suffer from problems with neutrality and accountability. I will investigate studies on each of these claims individually with their associated historical context.

The resulting debate over the role of faith-based organizations in administering humanitarian aid goes back several decades. Much of the question, particularly from the perspective of policymakers in the West, comes back to questions of church and state. This is particularly true of governments when considering which types of groups they will fund, as Western governments take at least the appearance of the separation of church and state very seriously.^[3] However, as the field of humanitarian aid has moved more towards a holistic perspective by including values-based learning (e.g. democracy-building, education), rather than strictly economic forms of aid, the debate over the role of FBOs has become more salient.^[4] Just as separation between church and state is important to liberal governments, fears of appearing too religious impact private donor decisions on which organizations to sponsor. Donors are historically skittish around associating the aid they fund with religion.^[5] Debate among donors is ongoing, both from governmental and non-governmental sources.

Understanding the role of FBOs in humanitarian aid is critical, because the global role of religion continues unabated. Christians, Muslims, and Hindus make up 70% of the world’s population, even as Christianity becomes less salient in Western societies, most likely due to its growth in the global South.^[6] The ongoing salience of religion is not purely due to sheer size of nominal adherence; it is the fact that religions are increasingly international in scope;^[7] congregations are not siloed but exist as part of transnational networks of believers. This places FBOs in a unique social and historical position to administer aid.

Faith-based organizations can engage with individuals in receiving countries in a unique way, particularly if they share a religious background with their clientele. In some Muslim countries, for example, FBOS have “engaged with clerics and ordinary believers in debate and dialogue over social policy.”^[8] This shared language can lead to social change by meeting recipients where they are and speaking in shared scripts (e.g. framing development in terms of shared religious values). The social change that can come from these conversations is far-reaching and lasting. Brazilian Pentecostal and African charismatic churches have been able to change social attitudes in their areas of influence by specifically teaching the importance of financial well-being, leadership, and management (especially for women).^[9] Social change requires changes in thought processes and social attitudes, both of which FBOs can facilitate.

In addition to facilitating social change, one of the most crucial roles that FBOs can play in the humanitarian aid space is that of a connector between economic resources (either from their own organization or other NGOs) and individuals. This is in part because they are able to connect the jargon of national and international aid organizations with the beliefs of the individuals in receiving communities.^[10] These modes of communication are crucial in a field as complex as humanitarian aid.

A potential causal mechanism for this effectiveness in resource distribution is the globally networked nature of faith-based organizations. Many other types of humanitarian actors draw on international networks, but FBOs have the added power of being linked, not only by funding or programmatic goals, but also by powerful and shared spiritual values, which lead to strong in-group solidarity.^[11] This can be particularly valuable when the global networks that support local FBOs are in line with the belief systems of the local clientele.^[12] This international network is in part what leads to effective resource distribution.^[13] The internationally networked nature of FBOs contributes to systemic effectiveness on the ground for solidarity and for resource distribution.

Because religion continues to grow in salience, particularly in the global South,^[14] FBOs often enjoy unparalleled access to the most remote and resource-deprived areas. NGOs often struggle with reaching the poorest communities at a truly grassroots level and exist only in major cities, but FBOs, since they already exist in poor and remote communities, are more readily able to provide resources.^[15] After the disastrous 2005 earthquake, Imams in Pakistan helped by providing food to the most remote regions of the country while other aid workers were restricted by geography.^[16] This is a crucial role, one in which FBOs are in systemically useful positions to fill.

FBOs can be particularly helpful in distributing resources and initiating social change, because they tend to enjoy high levels of local legitimacy. Part of the reason that the Pakistani imams were able to distribute resources is because they lent their “seal of approval” to aid efforts and encouraged congregants to make use of them.^[17] FBOs’ local legitimacy is particularly high among the poorest and most in need of aid.^[18] FBOs can seem more trustworthy than even well-established secular NGOs. Take for example, the Iraqi refugee in Damascus who gave up on the U.N. High Commission on Refugees until a nun convinced her to go back to seek psycho-social aid for her son.^[19] FBOs are also seen as more legitimate than foreign or domestic governments.^[20] Local legitimacy is a valuable currency in aid administration, and one in which FBOs enjoy better standing than governments and secular NGOs, especially in poorer areas.

FBOs can also be useful in administering on-the ground aid because of the length of time they tend to invest in communities. Faith-based organizations are more interested in/more effective at developing staying power than many other NGOs.^[21] The fact that many FBOs arrive before secular NGOs and stay long after others have left gives them a deep knowledge of their clientele communities.^[22] Local knowledge, particularly in the immediate aftermath of disasters, is crucial to effective distribution of economic and social resources, and the power of FBOs in this process should not be underestimated.

These powerful systemic factors do not, however, mean that working with faith-based organizations is without risk. There are particular concerns about neutrality, accountability, and professionalism that should be carefully considered. Additionally, some of the systemic factors that make FBOs particularly effective can also make them damaging.

The humanitarian aid field values neutrality, and many international donors worry that FBOs will not maintain what they feel is a critical feature of the discourse around humanitarian aid.^[23] However, while the discourse around humanitarian aid is important, neutrality on the ground may differ from Western perspective. The fact that a particular organization uses religious terms in and of itself does not mean that they are prioritizing some groups of people over others (although there are valid concerns about this as well).^[24] In terms of neutrality, there are potential problems with proselytizing, with which foreign donors do not want to be associated, although FBOs have moved away from evangelizing as part of humanitarian aid.^[25] Therefore, neutrality is a concern both as an aspect of the language around FBOs and as a means through which they actually distribute services and resources.

Scholars of humanitarianism cite accountability as a major issue for faith-based organizations. Secular NGOs are accountable to donors, boards, and occasionally local governments or clientele. The question of accountability for FBOs is complex. If they receive no government funding, they are not liable to taxpayers or governments. Perhaps they are accountable only to religious institutions with whom they are affiliated.^[26] This lack of transparency can be problematic if FBOs do not specifically publicize accurate information about their finances and the efficiency of their efforts.

Professionalism can also become problematic for FBOs if they do not carefully structure their organizations and make careful hiring decisions. If religious institutions send preachers or theologians to do their humanitarian work, they may quickly find that development and disaster relief requires a completely novel set of tools.^[27] However, as FBOs have moved away from proselytizing in an effort to cease missionary efforts rooted in colonialism, spiritual leaders who come to recipient countries from the global north  are less involved in the distribution of aid.^[28] This issue can be avoided more effectively if international FBOs hire career aid providers who have already developed this skill set.

While their effect on social attitudes, their connection to transnational funding networks, and strong perceived legitimacy in clientele communities are all strengths of many FBOs, they can also become weaknesses. When local congregations receive quick and large inflows of cash (such as after a disaster) from the international arms of FBOs, they are sometimes unable to scale up their activities effectively.^[29] Additionally, the effectiveness of FBOs in shaping social attitudes in clientele communities can also work against resource distribution and aid if the views taught by leaders are not in line with development goals or encourage mistrust in humanitarian aid organizations.^[30]  Local legitimacy, a crucial aspect of FBOs’ systemic effectiveness, is not a guarantee. Particularly when recipient communities’ beliefs differ from incoming international FBOs, being associated with a religious organization can make aid workers less trusted. In Romania, for example, Protestant groups struggled to connect with their Orthodox clientele.^[31] Like all aspects of humanitarian aid, faith-based organizations have a high potential to alleviate suffering as well as serious risks.

Religion plays a crucial global role. As part of their dogma, many religious organizations teach the importance of some form of charity or aid to the poor. This has led many of them to create aid organizations (called faith-based organizations for the purposes of this essay) which are a crucial mechanism for the administration of humanitarian aid. Their special position in local communities as valued faith leaders often – but not always – lends them legitimacy with clientele, and their dense local networks allow them to reach remote, poor areas and to provide needed resources. Simultaneously, their transnational nature provides them with unique funding mechanisms and allows them to be a link between secular NGOs and clientele. Because there is such a great potential for FBOs to provide crucial aid for communities and individuals in need, they should be carefully considered on a case-by-case basis to determine how the systemic benefits of aid from FBOs are being maximized and how the risks are being minimized.

Hypotheses and Methods

Careful case studies of individual FBOs are not particularly common in the literature. There is a particular dearth of case studies on smaller religious organizations and their affiliated humanitarian FBOs. My research will contribute to this small but needed body of case studies by documenting the efforts of LDS charities – the humanitarian FBO affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints  – commonly referred to as the Mormon church. I expect that LDS Charities is, as discussed in the literature, effective at resource distribution via international networks and previous on-the-ground presence but struggling with issues of accountability and transparency. I also expect that, due to the LDS church’s ongoing missionary program, LDS Charities may suffer from issues with professionalism in their aid distribution and low levels of local legitimacy.

Operationalizing these concepts is an important next step in this research. I will use public information from LDS Charities to determine how the organization distributes resources and monetary aid. Where possible, I will attempt to find how often aid reaches its intended recipients. I am particularly interested to see how LDS Charities’ headquarters in Salt Lake City works with local clergy to distribute aid. The use of proselytizing missionaries will be a sign of a lack of a professionalized workforce. To measure accountability and transparency, I will analyze the following: whether or not LDS Charities’ donor list is public, whether or not they take public money, and how they report on the use of this money to the donor government. Local legitimacy is difficult to measure, particularly because I lack the ability to ask recipients of LDS Charities’ aid for their opinions. However, I believe that if local partners do not believe that LDS Charities provides legitimate aid, they will begin to refuse aid from the organization, or at least negotiate its nature. Declining aid, therefore, will be my measure of low local legitimacy.

To find this information, I will use the most recent comprehensive annual report from LDS Charities. This report contains most of the information I need, particularly about distribution methods and networks. The presence or absence of a donor list will also come from public LDS Charities information. I will also use an analysis of auditing practices (or lack thereof) as a measure of transparency and accountability. Where this information is not publicly available (such as how frequently potential recipients decline aid), I will supplement written public information with an interview with an LDS Charities employee in Salt Lake City.

These are, of course, imperfect measures. They are not corroborated by a third party or by aid recipients themselves. They rely entirely on what information LDS Charities chooses to make public and the knowledge of the LDS Charities employee whom I interviewed – who is not an aid distributor. I fully recognize the potential problems with using the decline of aid as an indicator of local legitimacy, as communities in desperate need are unlikely to turn down aid from anyone. However, due to an inability to speak directly to potential aid recipients themselves, I feel that this is the best possible measure I can use. Additionally, LDS Charities partners frequently with other FBOs and secular NGOs, some of whom would presumably refuse a partnership if there were issues with LDS Charities’ on-the-ground presence. This is the greatest potential flaw in my research design but as I wish to attempt to measure local legitimacy, I will cautiously proceed with using it.

Nature of LDS Charities’ Work

LDS Charities divides its work into several key initiatives: emergency response, the Benson Food Initiative, vision care, maternal and newborn care, clean water and sanitation, immunization, wheelchairs, refugee assistance, and community projects. In 2017 – the last year with a publicly released annual report, LDS Charities provided aid in 139 countries/territories on 2,705 projects.^[32] This requires significant infrastructure and partnership.

Each year, LDS Charities releases an annual report detailing progress in each of these areas. The 2017 report included statements from the leadership of LDS Charities on their mission statement and guiding principles, information about the countries where LDS Charities had worked, brief descriptions of each project, a list of partners, and a page on how to donate and contribute to LDS Charities’ efforts.^[33] As a whole, the 2017 report is more of a visual presentation than a statistical one; it focuses on a narrative structure about each project rather than a wider lens using quantitative data. This is a common theme in my analysis of LDS Charities public disclosures in their work. It is useful to an extent, but, as I will demonstrate, LDS Charities uses a wide variety of methods for each individual project they undertake, so their choice to share cases rather than statistics makes generalizing their methods rather difficult.

However, these narratives do provide an interesting look at the individual projects with which LDS Charities has involved itself.

International Networks, On-The-Ground Presence, and Resource Distribution

Since the literature on faith-based organizations emphasizes the role that international networks — including in recipient areas — are a major factor in FBOs’ effectiveness, I am most interested in the areas in which LDS Charities engages the membership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The public annual report for LDS Charities breaks down their distribution process into four key points: receive funds, define needs and develop projects, identify and engage partners, and engage a volunteer network.^[34] The middle two are primarily handled by a limited number of employees at LDS Charities’ headquarters in Salt Lake and about 200 full-time volunteers scattered throughout the world. Local faith leaders can request small amounts of funding for a particular project in their area; however, most projects are coordinated at the regional level by humanitarian staff. It is unclear what percentage of LDS Charities’ budget goes toward projects requested by local faith leaders.

Many of the main initiatives of LDS Charities are directly supervised by partner organizations rather than the organization itself, particularly the immunization, wheelchair, clean water, food, and refugee assistance programs. LDS Charities provides money and/or supplies, and partner organizations work directly with clientele. LDS Charities’ partner organizations include some other faith-based organizations (e.g. Catholic Relief Services and Muslim Aid), some large secular NGOs (e.g. UNICEF, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and the American Red Cross), and some smaller secular NGOs (e.g. Himalayan Cataract Project and Motivation Romania Foundation). In total, LDS Charities works with 43 other FBOs and secular NGOs.^[35] Headquarters says that partner organizations are more effective with these initiatives primarily because they are being carried out in areas where it would be unsafe for LDS Charities affiliated volunteers to travel, in part because LDS Charities does not have a previous presence and local knowledge in these regions that would help ensure the safety of their volunteers.

This is a particularly interesting finding, because the literature suggests that one of the primary benefits of faith-based organizations is the system of local churches that can be utilized in aid distribution. Instead of relying on this network, LDS Charities has instead created an entirely new network of NGOs to distribute and provide aid. This is likely a feature of LDS Charities, because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not particularly widespread. It is much smaller and newer than Catholicism or Islam  — whose corresponding FBOs are often cited in the literature —  and while it is a fairly global proselytizing force, the membership of the LDS Church is concentrated in North America, unlike previously studied faith groups.^[36] Therefore, the local networks that other FBOs might enjoy are simply not available to LDS Charities.

It appears that LDS Charities draws most upon the global network of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the first and fourth steps of their aid distribution process: receiving funds and engaging a volunteer effort. According to the annual report, “most of [their] funds come from small donations made by average, everyday members of the LDS faith.^[37]” Since the more than 16 million Mormons throughout the world are encouraged to tithe  — donate 10% of their income to the Church) — this is a significant and global donor base.^[38]

The transnational network of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also come into play with LDS Charities at the final step of LDS Charities’ self-described process. When a large quantity of manpower is needed for a particular project, congregations engage in so-called Mormon Helping Hands projects, in which a large influx of volunteers from nearby areas provides aid in the immediate aftermath of disasters.^[39] These types of surges in volunteerism have occurred after major hurricanes and other natural disasters in the United States. There are potential problems with such an approach – volunteers coming in to an area can end up using resources that could be used to help victims – but LDS Charities through Church leadership in volunteer-sending areas attempt to mitigate this by coordinating volunteer efforts for specific projects via online signups,rather than going themselves in an unorganized fashion.^[40] 

While the literature on faith-based organizations suggests that they become more effective as they use local clergy to evaluate needs and act as a point of contact and distribution between aid organizations and clientele, LDS Charities takes a different approach. They use a global membership to raise funds and occasionally as a volunteer force for disaster relief-related projects, but do not often use the network of Mormon clergy from across the world to actually distribute aid. For this, they primarily use partner FBOs and secular NGOs.  

Accountability and Transparency

Accountability and transparency are issues throughout the humanitarian field. As non-governmental organizations, FBOs in particular are not accountable to taxpayers. If they take no public money, they are not accountable to governments, either. They can often be held accountable by major donors, although depending on the interests of the donors involved, this may be problematic in and of itself. To measure accountability, I will use public records to determine whether or not LDS Charities is regularly audited (if so, by whom) and whether or not donors exercise decision-making control (and if so, how much).

LDS Charities lacks a specific avenue through which they can be held accountable for the success of their projects and their financial well-being. It appears that LDS Charities does not accept public money, and governments cannot ask for regular updates on their work – updates which would likely be made public as well. The question of whether or not LDS Charities are accountable to donors is more complicated. Since the donor base of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is so wide, extending to 16 million members across the world, no one donor can exercise control over the humanitarian process. Particularly because these donations go to the Church, who then distributes donations according to their (not publicly accessible) budgets to various Church agencies, including LDS Charities, Church members are not aware of how much of their donations actually go to which agencies, and therefore cannot account for LDS Charities’ use of their donations. The majority of donors to LDS Charities likely do not know that they are donors and therefore will not hold the charity accountable for project success and financial responsibility.

Not all of LDS Charities’ budget comes from regular tithes and offerings from members of the Church. According to an LDS Charities employee, the majority of their budget does stem from these offerings, but “some” comes from donations made to LDS Philanthropies, a separate but related organization whose actual purpose and size is unclear. Because it is so unclear, it is possible that donors to LDS Philanthropies can ask for particular accounting of their donations and therefore expect some kind of result from their input, but donor information is not available, nor is any kind of financial report from LDS Philanthropies.

One of the primary concerns with donor-based humanitarian aid is the potential for undue donor influence on project selection and the desire of donors for immediate results. If the entirety of the budget came from tithes sourced from the entirety of the Church, undue donor influence would not be an issue, since no one individual could demand certain projects or results. However, since some funding does come from LDS Philanthropies, it is possible (although impossible to ascertain) if such influence could come from this direction.

Since LDS Charities is not accountable to taxpayers, governments, or the vast majority of its donors, it is not particularly accountable to anyone. There is no public record of any sort of review of results or outcomes from projects, and no one is in a particularly good position to ask for one. This lack of accountability is problematic but could be addressed through transparent financial practices and widespread information about project results, so that members could make informed decisions about whether or not to make their regular tithing offerings; however, this financial information is not available due to a total lack of financial transparency.

Accessing financial information from LDS Charities is not possible. As a religious organization headquartered in the United States, LDS Charities is not required to submit or publish Internal Revenue Service form 990, which would show crucial financial information about total financial holdings, cash on hand, and percentage of budget spent on projects vs. overhead. IRS form 990 is the basis of many charity research and accountability services, including Charity Navigator.^[41] While LDS Charities publicly states that 100% of donations go directly to projects, this information cannot be independently verified.^[42] This lack of public financial information means that potential donors to LDS Charities are unable to see reliable, third-party information about the financial state of LDS Charities.

The only publicly released piece of financial information about LDS Charities is the total number of U.S. dollars spent on aid since its inception in 1985, which they began publicizing in 2016. That year, the cumulative total was $1.89 billion.^[43] In 2017, the cumulative total was $2.07 billion.^[44] Therefore we can infer that in 2017, LDS Charities spent $180 million on humanitarian programs. The fact that they began publishing even this small amount of financial information is a good sign for LDS Charities and financial disclosures. Even such a simple piece of information helps contextualize the scope of LDS Charities’ efforts, so beginning to include it in their annual reports, especially if they continue to do so for a sustained period of time, will at least allow observers and participants to track overall expenditures over time.

While the Church does have an independent auditing department, these audit reports are not made public. Annually, the head of this department makes an announcement to the global Church audience that an audit has taken place and that it has found that all donations have been used appropriately.^[45] No documents involved are publicized.

This lack of financial transparency is problematic, because it prevents anyone involved in the aid process, from donors to volunteers to clientele, from knowing exactly where LDS Charities stands. Donors cannot make informed decisions, and volunteers cannot be sure that their efforts are part of a wider effort that is effective. Clientele must act on faith that LDS Charities is an effective and responsible partner in their humanitarian efforts. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a general policy of not commenting on any financial matters not required by law to be disclosed, a practice which has only recently come under increased scrutiny (see note on page 1).^[46]

Despite this lack of institutionalized accountability and transparency in finances and auditing practices, LDS Charities does publicize their goals, which may allow partner organizations and some donors to at least ask informed questions about their progress. In their 2016 annual report, LDS Charities listed four goals of the United Nations’ seventeen goals, announced in 2015, for sustainable development and specific plans that LDS Charities had for how to meet those goals (e.g. the United Nations has a goal for zero hunger, and LDS Charities planned to create and expand home food production and storage programs).^[47] Listing programmatic goals is a helpful way of giving at least a bit of accountability to LDS Charities; however, the 2017 annual report provided no follow-up on these goals.

Professionalized Workforce and Local Legitimacy

The proselytizing missionary program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is almost as old as the Church itself. These missionaries are an extremely public face of the Church and are often the first thing associated with Mormonism. If this was not clear before a hit Broadway musical was written about them, I suppose it is now. Because they are an active proselytizing force and missionaries are tied up in the colonial history of many aid-recipient countries, the fact that they are one of the most well-known aspects of the Mormon church may affect perceptions of their legitimacy.

However, proselytizing missionaries are not used in aid distribution from LDS Charities overseas. All aid distribution is done by local partners vetted by LDS Charities employees or by employees themselves. There are “service missionaries” who are specifically assigned to areas in need of training, particularly for LDS Charities’ Maternal and Infant Care Program, which trains doctors and nurses about neonatal resuscitation, and the Vision Care program, which (in addition to donating glasses and frames) provides mentoring to local medical professionals to build local capacity to provide vision care. These service missionaries are specifically non-proselytizing, are older couples (rather than the young people who serve traditional proselytizing missions) and are subject-matter experts who volunteer their time overseas.

Not using proselytizing missionaries as the primary distributors of aid is an important way in which LDS Charities promotes a professionalized workforce. There are, however, important exceptions to this. Occasionally, in the immediate aftermath of natural disasters, proselytizing missionaries participate in wider volunteer efforts with other members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to participate in short-term clean-up efforts (e.g. clearing out destroyed homes to allow new building projects). Proselytizing missionaries are instructed not to evangelize aid recipients during these projects.^[48] I lack data (quantitative or qualitative) of whether or not the participation of proselytizing missionaries in this type of short-term humanitarian effort increases or decreases recipients’ level of comfort with receiving aid; however, it does prove to be an exception to the general rule that LDS Charities follows: not using proselytizing missionaries as aid distributors.

Subject-matter expert volunteers provide much of the on-the-ground for two of LDS Charities’ main initiatives: the Maternal and Newborn Care initiative and the Vision Care initiative. They serve for 18 month periods in a specific country or area, providing a specific service. There are currently 100 such couples volunteering.^[49] Still, these missionaries recognize that they serve less as actual aid distributors and more as project coordinators.^[50] For example, one couple was assigned to infrastructure projects in Cambodia, but since senior service missionaries tend to be retirees, they could not exactly build wells themselves. Instead, they focused on which local businesses to hire using LDS Charities funds to complete aid projects.^[51]

The local longevity for these couples likely makes them more effective at their work. Remaining on the ground in one country or region for a year and a half affords them the opportunity to see projects through to completion and learn the ins and outs of a particular situation. It is also significant that LDS Charities missionaries hire local companies and individuals to work on projects, as this becomes another way of helping local economies and providing both work and capital to local individuals.^[52] Service missionaries are self-funded retired couples, meaning that no donated money is spent on paying them, but they also have the capacity to stay in an area longer than a younger volunteer who would eventually need to make money. These service missionaries are not permitted by LDS Charities or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to proselytize.^[53] LDS Charities believes that their local partners and aid recipients understand this and are not concerned about evangelizing during aid projects, although it is not possible for me to corroborate this with local partners. 

While there are some LDS Charities employees on the ground performing approximately the same work that service missionaries do, LDS Charities materials emphasize the voluntary nature of their work. All interactions I had with employees and all literature I have read, both from the Church’s website and from LDS Charities’ annual report, deemphasized the role of employees and played up the role of volunteers.^[54] The reason for this is unclear, but this approach to explaining their work makes it difficult to ascertain the exact number of LDS Charities employees and their job descriptions. However, it is clear that some exist, particularly at their headquarters in Salt Lake City.

Overall, the humanitarian efforts of LDS Charities are relatively professional and free from proselytizing. While typically proselytizing missionaries are occasionally used to provide short-term aid, longer projects are taken on either by partner organizations, LDS Charities employees, or long-term humanitarian volunteers with subject-matter expertise.

According to my review of the literature, this relatively formalized structure for employees and aid providers should increase the likelihood that partner NGOs, local individual aid recipients, businesses, and governments would want to work with LDS Charities. While it is impossible to find specific data on this, an LDS Charities employee at their Salt Lake City headquarters stated that partners and recipients do not turn down aid. This employee cited the faith-based nature of LDS Charities and their emphasis on volunteerism as reasons for their being a desirable partner. He also cited the financial structure of LDS Charities – that it is entirely donor-based and mostly supported by small donations from individual members.

Conclusion

My initial hypotheses are somewhat supported, but the actual practices of LDS Charities are more complex than the literature suggests. I initially believed that the transnational networks of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would use their transnational networks of believers, and therefore potential volunteers, as an aid distribution force. While this is somewhat true, in that LDS Charities draws on about 200 subject-matter experts to act as service missionaries, the majority of actual aid distribution is not performed by members of these networks, but by partner organizations – an idea not addressed in the reviewed literature. As I expected, LDS Charities lacks mechanisms for accountability and transparency. Annual audits suggest that there is some form of internal accountability, but since those reports are not transparent (that is, publicly available), LDS Charities need not report on the success of its projects to any third-party entity. The LDS Church’s ongoing missionary program was not as much of a factor in local legitimacy as I had expected. Proselytizing missionaries are used on extremely rare occasions as a volunteer force for LDS Charities, and the philanthropic arm seems to enjoy relatively high levels of local legitimacy, both to clientele and to NGOs who are also on the ground.

As LDS Charities combines the Mormon theological importance of charity with best practices in humanitarianism, there are inevitably challenges. But as an institution, they face many of the same issues as other FBOs. Still, many aspects of their faith-based activism make them effective in project selection, local partnership, and the development of local legitimacy. Becoming more transparent and accountable is a logical step forward for LDS Charities to develop best practices in humanitarianism.

Endnotes

^[1] Note: In discussing the financial practices of LDS Charities and the LDS Church in general, I do not make use of the December 17^th, 2019 Washington Post article “Mormon Church Has Misled Members on $100 Billion Tax-Exempt Investment Fund, Whistleblower Alleges.” While some of the suggestions I make address the systemic failures alleged by the Post, the tax-exempt status of the Church is a separate discussion and not one which I address here.

^[2]  Thomas, Scott M. “Building Communities of Character: Foreign Aid Policy and Faith-Based Organizations.” SAIS Review of International Affairs 24, no. 2 (2004): 136.

^[3] Mayotte, Judith A. “Religion and Global Affairs: The Role of Religion in Development.” Johns Hopkins University Press 18, no. 2 (1998): 65-66; Zaman, Tahir. “Jockeying for Position in the Humanitarian Field: Iraqi Refugees and Faith-Based Organisations in Damascus.” Disasters 36 (July 2012): S132.

^[4] Thomas, “Communities of Character,” 136.

^[5] James, Rick. “Handle with Care: Engaging with Faith-Based Organisations in Development.” Development in Practice 21, no. 1 (2011): 111.

^[6] Ferris, Elizabeth. “Faith and Humanitarianism: It’s Complicated.” Journal of Refugee Studies 24, no. 3 (September 11): 609.

^[7] Thomas, “Communities of Character,” 137.

^[8] Ibid 141-142

^[9] Kaplan, Seth. “Faith and Fragile States: Why the Development Community Needs Religion.” Harvard International Review 31, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 23.

^[10] Kraft, Kathryn, and Jonathan D. Smith. “Between International donors and Local Faith Communities: Intermediaries in Humanitarian Assistance to Syrian Refugees in Jordan and Lebanon.” Disasters 43, no. 1 (January 2019): 24-45.

^[11] Ferris, “Faith and Humanitarianism. ”

^[12] Flanigan, Shawn Teresa. ”Paying for God’s Work: A Rights-Based Examination of Faith-Based NGOs in Romania.” Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 18, no. 2 (June 2007): 156-75.

^[13] Clarke, Matthew, and Vicki-Anne Ware. ”Understanding Faith-Based Organizations: How FBOs are Contrasted with NGOs in International Development Literature.” Progress in Development Studies 15, no. 1 (2015): 37-48.

^[14] Thomas, “Communities of Character,” 137.

^[15] Clarke and Ware, ”Understanding FBOs”; James ”Handle with Care,” (111-2); Kaplan, ”Faith and Fragile States,” 23.

^[16] Russell, Simon. ”Reflections from the Field.” Forced Migration Review 1, no. 48 (2014): 26-27

^[17] Ibid.

^[18] James, ”Handle with Care,” 111-12.

^[19] Zaman ”Jockeying for Position,” S137.

^[20] Clarke and Ware ”Understanding FBOs”

^[21] Clarke and Ware, ”Understanding FBOs”; James, ”Handle with Care,” 111-12

^[22] Mayotte, “Religion and Global Affairs,” 66.

^[23] Ferris, “Faith and Humanitarianism”; Kraft and Smith “Between Donors and Communities.”

^[24] Ibid.

^[25] Mayotte, “Religion and Global Affairs,” 68.

^[26] Flanigan ”Paying for God’s Work,” 160.

^[27] Mayotte, ”Religion and Global Affairs,” 68.

^[28] Ibid.

^[29] James, ”Handle with Care,” 115-116.

^[30] Kaplan, ”Faith and Fragile States,” 24.

^[31] Flanigan, ”Paying for God’s Work,” 165.

^[32] “2017 LDS Charities Annual Report.” Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, n.d. 10-12

^[33]  “Annual Report.” 3.

^[34] “Annual Report.” 8

^[35] “Annual Report” 44-45.

^[36] “Worldwide Statistics.” Newsroom. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2018.

^[37] “Annual Report” 8

^[38] “Tithing and Charitable Donations.” Newsroom. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

^[39] “Mormon Helping Hands.” Newsroom. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

^[40] “How the Church has Responded to Hurricane Harvey.” Newsroom. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

^[41] “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Charity Navigator.

^[42] “Annual Report.” 8

^[43] “2016 LDS Charities Annual Report.” Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 9.

^[44] “Annual Report.” 9.

^[45] Jergensen, Kevin R. “Church Auditing Department Report, 2018.” presented at the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah, April 2019.

^[46] “Church Finances and a Growing Global Faith.” Newsroom. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

^[47] “2016 Annual Report,” 14-15.

^[48] I was told about this guideline during my interview with an LDS Charities employee. However, I was unable to find documented proof in the guidelines given to proselytizing missionaries. The only evidence I found of this claim was that in a 2018 update to the training manual for missionaries (entitled Preach my Gospel), a section on service as an opportunity to find potential converts and people to teach was removed. Therefore, while prior to 2018, proselytizing missionaries were explicitly encouraged to find people to teach while serving, they are no longer given explicit encouragement to do so.

^[49] “What do Senior Missionaries Do?” LDS Charities.

^[50] Ibid.

^[51] Ibid. 

^[52] Ibid.

^[53] Ibid

^[54] “Annual Report.” 8

Analyzing the interactions between capitalism, colonialism, and the field of international development in Latin America, this paper explores small-scale, community solar development as a potential solution to the climate crisis as it unfolds in Bolivia. Bolivia has one of the largest indigenous populations in Latin America and is on the frontlines of the climate crisis. The unique geographical landscape of climatic extremes of the Andean nation on the one hand makes its natural environment particularly vulnerable to climate change but on the other hand endows it with tremendous potential for decentralized solar energy. After identifying the inextricable links between capitalism, colonial expansion into Latin America, and extractivist modes of wealth, this paper posits that Bolivia’s modern extractivist development model is a form of neocolonial oppression imposed by Western powers to maintain their dominance in Latin America. Within this analytical framework, the paper goes on to critique systems of international development that perpetuate colonial systems of oppression and provide false solutions to the environmental damage and social inequities created by capitalist expansion. Finally, the paper presents the prospect of using community-based solar systems as alternative forms of development in Bolivia that not only promote climate resilience but also counteract extractive economies and empower marginalized communities. Ultimately, these community solar projects can serve as small-scale models for the remaking of global economic and political systems, which is essential to ensure justice and sustainability for all.

The Climate Crisis and Searching for Alternatives 

The climate crisis of today is a catastrophic convergence of capitalism and colonialism. Capitalism’s propensity to obsess people with the accumulation of capital for profit by any means necessary led to the creation and exploitation of colonial economies in order to feed its insatiable need for more– more capital, more land, and more labor to work the land and produce more capital. This search for increasing capital and profit has altered the climatic systems of the Earth.

Now, we must search for alternatives. We must transform economies around the world from those based upon capitalist structures of extractivism and fossil fuel dependency to those fueled by clean, renewable energy and regenerative livelihoods. Economies must be localized, scaled down, and decoupled from the neoliberal concept of growth; unfettered capitalist-oriented economic growth has severely damaged the planet and its peoples. We must also remedy the legacies of colonialism that continue to oppress historically marginalized communities across the world. Neocolonial systems of oppression often take the form of post-colonial development strategies which, in the name of progress, remake the Global South in the image of the Global North in a process that eerily mirrors an era declared bygone by historians.

Bolivia, an Andean nation with thirty-six recognized indigenous peoples and nearly half of its population identifying as indigenous, acutely experiences the compounding oppressions of global capitalism, neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and extractivism.^[1] Formerly a Spanish colony, Bolivia was run by European-descendant men until 2006, when Aymara coca farmer Evo Morales became the country’s first indigenous president. Vehemently adored by most of Bolivia’s indigenous population, “Evo” became celebrated for his dedication to decolonizing the Bolivian state: in 2009, he oversaw the creation of a new constitution renaming Bolivia the “Plurinational State of Bolivia” to recognize the thirty-six different indigenous nations and codifying indigenous rights and forms of cultural, political, and juridical autonomy.^[2] Morales was also widely praised for his commitment to environmental preservation: in 2010, the Plurinational Assembly of Bolivia passed the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth, which recognized the Andean cosmovision that places the earth deity Pachamama at the center of all life.^[3]

Despite Evo’s momentous efforts towards decolonization, indigenous empowerment, and environment protection, his thirteen-year presidential term continued to promote a neoliberal, extractivist development model that stood in direct opposition to his initial campaign promises and eventually contributed to his forced resignation in November of 2019. While Evo’s legacy is one of anti-capitalist, indigenous resistance, his prolonged tenure also launched the post-colonial state on a path of unprecedented extractivist development.

There must be a path towards development in Bolivia other than Morales’ extractivist model, which enhances climate resilience and encourages self-sufficiency among Bolivia’s indigenous communities while also promoting local wealth. Community-owned solar systems offer a solution to all of the above. Solar-power is the most easily accessible and deployable of renewable energies. Small-scale solar systems, e.g. rooftop photovoltaic panels or small, community-sized solar fields, enable electrification for rural or marginalized communities that have been disconnected from national grids. More importantly, solar power allows communities to remain disconnected, preserving their energy independence from the state and securing their resilience to natural disasters that may wipe out any electric grid constructed.

While community solar development is not inherently decolonial, it can contribute to the process of decolonization. When solar power is introduced to communities on a small-scale, when community members are trained on how to use and fix their solar systems, when they are given ownership over the electricity generated by the panels and are able to decide how to use that energy to benefit their community, solar development works to dismantle colonial power structures and empowers the formerly oppressed while meaningfully boosting local climate resilience. While not the only solution to the climate crisis, community solar systems provide a multifaceted solution that targets the roots of capitalist, extractivist, and colonialist development that led to the climate crisis we face today.

Evo Morales, Empty Promises, and Indigenous Resistance

Though not without occasional bouts of discontent, Morales’ previously widespread indigenous support began to reveal its growing disapproval in 2010 at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. In protest of the lack of centrality of indigenous issues at Morales’ conference, groups of Bolivians convened a parallel event — Mesa 18.^[4] Aguirre and Cooper argue that “it was one of the first and probably one of the most visible public expressions of wariness toward the Morales administration from his social-movement base.”^[5] The main source of contention from the counter-protestors were the contradictions between Morales’ development projects and his commitment to environmental sustainability and indigenous rights. Protestors argued that Bolivia’s development projects, such as the proposed Trans-Oceanic Highway through Cochabamba and the Beni region of the Amazon, and the $2 billion hydroelectric dam Cashuela Esperanza to be constructed on the Beni River, would destroy ecologically sensitive areas and infringe upon indigenous rights.^[6] Participants of Mesa 18 implored that these natural resources belong to communities, not the state, and therefore must be managed through local community structures.^[7] Rafael Quispe, one of the leaders of the National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu, Bolivia’s largest indigenous organization, argued that “the [economics] models that we’ve known until now are socialism and capitalism, but both are Western, both are extractivist, developmentalist, consumerist, and predatory. These models violate the rights of Mother Earth, and if President Evo Morales expresses that we are in a socialist model then he violates the Mother Earth.”^[8]

These grievances expressed by indigenous leaders are a far cry from the waves of indigenous support that elected Evo Morales and his Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) party into office in 2006. Following the explosive 2005 gas wars, in which the radical leftist indigenous bloc rose up in street protests, road blockades and massive marches to the capital in protest of gas privatization, Morales consolidated his support from the Bolivian indigenous majority by presenting himself as one of them, as a warrior of indigenous struggle, and as an alternative to the capitalist, neoliberal, and neocolonial Mesa administration.^[9] To many, Evo represented liberation from white supremacy and from colonial oppression, and that was enough to give him unprecedented power that continued to grow until his recent resignation in response to massive public outcry against his overextended and contested presidential term.

Despite Evo’s campaign promises and intentions to transform Bolivia’s economic development, the country has continued to follow a development model defined by neoliberalism and extractivism. Extractivism can be understood as a regime of capital accumulation derived from the appropriation of nature and oriented towards primary commodity export.^[10] In Bolivia, extractivism exists in its purest form in the mining sector, which expanded drastically under the Morales administration and consolidated the country’s resource governance.^[11] Though promising indigenous autonomy and post-neoliberal reforms, President Morales resulted to the selling of “Third World resources to the most convenient bidder, of degrading their physical and human ecologies, of killing and torturing, of condemning their indigenous populations to near extinction.”^[12]

Perhaps the first major sign of the Morales administration’s condemnation of the very people who elected him and with whom he himself identifies was his TIPNIS highway proposal. In 2011, Bolivia saw an explosion of indigenous-led mobilization in protest of a proposed 190-mile highway that would cut through the Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park, known as TIPNIS.^[13] To the Morales administration, the highway represents a crucial step in alleviating poverty for the many indigenous people who reside within the TIPNIS, affording them better access to infrastructure and services. Proponents also argue that the primary beneficiaries of development within TIPNIS — i.e. hydrocarbon exploration– would be indigenous communities.^[14] However, according to a 2011 study by the Bolivian Institute for Strategic Research, the highway would increase deforestation in the park by 64% within 15 years of the road’s construction by allowing access to illegal loggers and farmers.^[15] In addition, indigenous communities remained skeptical that they would receive benefits from the development projects, when historically they have suffered the brunt of ecological and human health externalities of extractive development. In response, thousands of TIPNIS residents—mostly indigenous—began to march the 360 miles from the Amazon lowlands to the capital, La Paz, in August of 2011.^[16] Police brutality against the marchers ensued, in which 70 were wounded.^[17] In response to international outcry, President Morales agreed to cancel the construction in October of 2011, signing a law that banned the road’s construction and designating the reserve as “untouchable.”^[18] However, just six years later, in August of 2017, Morales reneged on his commitment. He passed a new law that ended TIPNIS’s protected status, thus paving the way for the highway’s construction.^[19] In Bolivia, the TIPNIS struggle laid bare the blatant contradictions between Morales’ political platform and his actual policies.

Morales’ seeming loyalty to natural resource extraction, however, might be less a failure of Morales’ attempts to wrest the economy away from extraction and more of a condition of the global capitalist market that makes it impossible for alternative development models to exist and thrive. Andreucci and Radhuber argue that “the expansion of extractivism has been related to the reproduction of political economic conditions established under neoliberalism.”^[20] These neoliberal conditions prevented Morales’ MAS party from implementing more of the radical demands of his indigenous social movement base, namely indigenous autonomy, plurinationalism, decolonization, and communitarian economies. Instead, the global economic reality in which neoliberalism and extractivism remain dominant and thus profitable forced Morales to rely on short-term rents from extraction to maintain political legitimacy.^[21] The Morales’ government’s inability or reluctance to undertake structural, macroeconomic reform is even reflected in the new constitution rewritten by Morales in 2009, in which mining is still explicitly favored over indigenous and communal forms of economic productivity such as agriculture.^[22] While the 2009 constitution recognizes that “communities have a right to autonomous indigenous territorial administration, to a healthy environment and to practice their traditional political legal and economic forms,” mining activities are given a higher value than agriculture when both are competing for land use rights.^[23] It is clear from the Morales administration’s counter-neoliberal rhetoric on one hand, and extractive, neoliberal policies on the other, that larger political and economic forces favoring neoliberalism and extractivism limited the Bolivian government’s ability to realize its counter-neoliberal reforms while maintaining political viability. In Bolivia, as in other Latin American countries, it seems that the two goals exist in mutual conflict.  

Geographers and urban studies scholars Benjamin Kohl and Linda Farthing similarly argue that there is an inherent conflict between the demands of anti-capitalist, anti-extractivist Bolivian social movements and the realities of economies long dependent on extractivism for their wealth. This conflict inevitably limits the ability of government policy to address these concerns and, thus, fuels social unrest.^[24] Even though the Morales government partially succeeded in using revenue, primarily from gas production, to substantially reduce poverty rates in Bolivia—the percentage of people living in poverty fell from 59.9% in 2006, when Morales first came to power, to 34.6% in 2017, and extreme poverty reduced by more than half (from 38.28% to 15.2%) over the same period^[25]— these improvements in quality of life were the result of extractive processes, and ultimately “have proven insufficient to create sustainable broad-based development.”^[26] Short-term profits from extractive industries reduce the government’s incentive to invest in other sectors, thus funneling national resources into one form of economic development and hindering more multifaceted, sustainable development.^[27]    

Bolivia’s natural resources continue to mostly benefit Bolivia’s wealthy and their foreign partners, while country’s poorest (who are largely indigenous) are condemned to poverty and the effects of environmental contamination, and even death at times. Despite the Morales administration’s new legal frameworks protecting environmental and indigenous rights, environmental regulations have proven effective on paper but not in practice. Thus, the mining sector and other extractive industries have continued benefitting not only from Bolivia’s lax environmental protections, but also through lenient regulations that incentivize extractive operations to the detriment of ecological well-being and indigenous livelihoods.

Revenues from natural resource extraction in Bolivia have increased significantly under the Morales administration, but the majority of the wealth going to private multinational firms and the government.^[28] Needing to maintain its promise to alleviate poverty, especially among indigenous communities, Morales began to approve new exploitative projects at the beginning of his second term that would provide the state with the capital it needed to reinvest in social programs while also covering state expenses.^[29] It was around this moment that the failure of alternative development models to succeed in a capitalist global economy was realized. Subsequently, the Bolivian government approved a series of megaprojects based on the expansion of extractive industries, including lithium exploration, mining operations, road and large hydroelectric dam construction.^[30]

According to Kohl and Farthing, oil and gas profits—which accounts for more than half of Bolivia’s state revenues—increased from $173 million in 2002 to more than $2.2 billion in 2011.^[31] Similarly, Bolivia’s mineral exports—with zinc, tin, and silver as the three most heavily exported—grew from $346 million in 2005 to around $3.5 billion by 2011.^[32] The total value of exports increased from $412 million between 1999-2005 to $2.258 billion between 2006-2012, an astonishing 448% increase.^[33] However, only about $350 million in mining royalties and other taxes were collected by the state, which amount to only around 10% of production value.^[34] This demonstrates while a large percentage of governmental revenue stems from hydrocarbon extraction (around 40% in 2008), foreign companies continue to extort and profit from a disproportionate amount of Bolivia’s natural resource wealth.^[35] With the persistent lack of state-owned capital, Morales turned to the very countries profiting off Bolivia’s resources to ask for more money to finance government operations and services: foreign direct investment (FDI) ballooned from $20 million in 2003 to $651 million in 2011, and FDI stocks represented 37% of Bolivia’s Gross Domestic Product in 2010, which was 10% higher than the South American average.^[36]

Morales’ deference to extractivism persisted and strengthened throughout his presidency. On August 28, 2019, Bolivia exported its first shipment of beef to China.^[37] Forty-eight tons of beef from the Santa Cruz Cattlemen’s Federation were sent on that day, with plans to export 8,000 more tons to China in 2019. Bolivian cattle ranching has the prospect of bringing in $800 million for the country, as the commercial beef market expands from China to other target markets such as Russia.^[38] Around the same time that this shipment occurred, unprecedented forest fires ravaged millions of hectares of forest and pasture land in Bolivia, mainly in the tropical savannah region of Chiquitania and Pantana, home to the world’s largest marshlands. These fires were not naturally-occuring; rather, they were caused by the practice of slash-and-burn agriculture used by Bolivian farmers to prepare their land for commercial cattle ranching, among other environmentally-destructive agricultural industries.^[39]

What’s worse, these devastating practices were permitted by the Morales administration: in July of 2019, Morales passed a decree that allows controlled burns for agricultural purposes.^[40] Not only did Morales deny that the fires were caused by the decree, claiming that the clearing was done illegally by farmers, he also refused to accept international aid to control the fires in a political move mirroring Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro’s claim that accepting international aid to quell fires in Brazil’s Amazon violated the country’s sovereignty.^[41] Both Bolsonaro and Morales’ unquestionably destructive agricultural policies contribute to the deforestation of the Amazon and the violation of indigenous rights: the Bolivian livestock sector alone has caused 60% of the country’s deforestation.^[42] Nonetheless, Morales stated on August 30, 2019 that the fundamental bases for Bolivia’s economic growth are “energy, hydrocarbons, mining, agriculture, and scientific knowledge,” verbally solidifying the dominance of extractive development in Bolivia as forest fires actively violated the environmental and indigenous rights he had promised to uphold.^[43]

In a chaotic tumult of electoral fraud accusations, constitutional violations, road blockades and violent protests, Evo Morales was forced to resign from the Bolivian presidency on November 10, 2019.^[44] Though innumerable factors contributed to his resignation—namely the fact that he was vying for a fourth presidential term that was deemed unconstitutional by the constitution he wrote but changed to accommodate his desire for a longer tenure—his approval had waned among indigenous and non-indigenous populations in Bolivia over the years.^[45] Evo’s laggard and inadequate response to quelling the forest fires in Chiquitania mentioned above—the most recent in a decade-long pattern of prioritizing industrialization over environmental protection—contributed significantly to the demise in his popularity.^[46] Evo’s successor, President Jeanine Añez, while more visibly committed to democratic procedures and establishing new elections, threatens to undo the decades of progress secured by Evo on indigenous rights. Similarly, her religiously and politically conservative cabinet is unlikely to prioritize a decolonial agenda that decouples Bolivia’s economic growth from extractivist, capitalist development projects. Thus, the political, economic, and social future of Bolivia is tragically uncertain, and relying on the post-colonial state for sustainable development is difficult to achieve. Nonetheless, sustainable development at the community level outside of the entrapments of the state is achievable and, more importantly, necessary to provide Bolivia’s most marginalized and indigenous populations with the autonomy, resilience and prosperity they deserve.

Development as a Form of Neocolonialism

Bolivia’s protracted extractivist development is as much about power dynamics as it is about money. The enduring legacy of colonialism in Bolivia undeniably shapes Bolivia’s current economic model, and its dependency on extractivism despite widespread popular protests against this model and in support of more communitarian, locally-controlled, and environmentally just development must be understood in terms of its colonial history.

Argentine sociologist Maristella Svampa elucidates on the paradoxical role that post-colonial South American nations such as Bolivia take on in their efforts to grow economically post-independence, writing,

[e]ven when these nations try to break free from their colonial heritage, that is, their dependence on the export of primary products, through the implementation of development plans directed at diversifying their economies, they generally need foreign currency to achieve this. But they can only access foreign currency by exporting primary products, which again increases their dependence on exports. Paradoxically, by trying to exploit their comparative advantages, these countries that are exporters of natural assets, are frequently reassuming their colonial role as exporters of primary products- a role now redefined in terms of the neoliberal rationality of globalising capitalism. For them, neocolonialism is the next step on from post-colonialism.^[47]

Svampa identifies this post-independence reliance on natural resource exports and foreign currency for development projects as a form of “neocolonialism.” She also notes that Bolivia leads this neocolonial development trend, as 92.9% of Bolivia’s exports are primary products.^[48] This process of neocolonization via extractivist development is far from sustainable: instead, it leads to “the consolidation of export enclaves with little or no connection to local chains of production,” foments social conflict and generates regional fragmentation.^[49]

Colonialism, capitalism, and development are inextricably linked and mutually reinforcing. Colonialism was a necessary byproduct of the expansion of capitalism. European growth during the eighteenth century coincided with its transition to capitalism. It is not a coincidence that as capitalist Europe grew, so did the Atlantic slave trade; the increasing demand for tropical commodities required a substantial and free labor force to meet the European demand while securing as much profit as possible for owners of capital.^[50] As European colonialism seeped into the Americas, so too did the production of commodities for export from extractive industries and tropical agriculture. Development studies scholar Henry Bernstein argues that “the idea of development was established by the late colonial period— and moreover the idea of development as a process in which state funding, agencies, and initiatives had a central role to play.”^[51] “Development” thus became a justification for colonialism as an ideology of progress. Because colonialism exported the social inequities inherent to European capitalist society (i.e. class divisions between laborers and capital-owners) to its overseas colonies, development became the tool by which colonial powers could “contain and manage the potential social disorder of the dynamics of immanent (or unchecked) capitalist development.”^[52] Columbian-American anthropologist Arturo Escobar calls this tool a “politics of poverty,” upon which the new order of capitalism and modernity relied to transform the rest of the world in its mirror image “by turning the poor into objects of knowledge and management.”^[53] This management of social ills was then placed in the hands of those who had created them in the first place: the colonial state.^[54] When the World Bank (an inherently colonial apparatus designed for the specific purpose of keeping post-colonial states indebted to former colonial powers) in 1948 defined those countries with annual income per capita below $100 as “poor,” the problem became one of insufficient income, meaning the solution was clearly economic growth.^[55] Thus, development is no more a tool of “progress” than it is a means of perpetuating colonial rule and the systems of oppression inherent within colonialism. “Development” is a tool of oppression invented by the Western elite to maintain dominance over societies it deems inferior, qua the world outside of Western Europe and North America. As Bernstein states, “it is impossible to divorce the idea of ‘development’ from colonial processes and rationales.”^[56]

This intrinsic relationship between colonialism, capitalism, and development is crucial in understanding the economic trajectory of many post-colonial states, namely Bolivia. The “rational” and “scientific” doctrines of development utilized by colonial authorities in European colonies were never appropriate for the environmental and social conditions of the colonies since these doctrines were developed by Western societies, for Western societies. The pathway of development promulgated by Western countries “conformed to the ideas and expectations of the affluent West, to what the Western countries judged to be a normal course of evolution and progress.”^[57] Economic growth in the hands of Western countries meant “the replication in the poor countries of those conditions characteristics of mature capitalist ones,” including industrialization, urbanization, agricultural modernization, infrastructure, social services like health care, and Western education.^[58] As Escobar writes,

the discourse privileged the promotion of cash crops (to secure foreign exchange, according to capital and technological imperatives) and not food crops; centralized planning (to satisfy economic and knowledge requirements) but not participatory and decentralized approaches; agricultural development based on large mechanized farms and the use of chemical inputs but not alternative agricultural systems, based on smaller farms, ecological considerations, and integrated cropping and pest management; rapid economic growth but not the articulation of internal markets to satisfy the needs of the majority of the people; and capital-intensive but not labor-intensive solutions.^[59]

 Within the practice development exists an inherent power dynamic that values Western technical knowledge and conceptions of progress and devalues local, indigenous knowledge and livelihoods. To those working in the field of development, the villager is someone who can never and will never “understand” what is best for them, because what is best for them is only known by Westerners and defined by the Western ideology of progress.^[60] Because many indigenous livelihoods do not fit within this ideology, they are dismissed and disparaged as backwards, deficient, and ignorant.

 When colonial authorities retreated physically from their colonies post-independence, they left in many instances broken societies: neither the imposed Western institutions nor local livelihoods remained intact. The economic and political struggles of these post-colonial states, in attempting to reclaim their autonomy from European-dominated institutions while maintaining social stability, were then unjustly blamed on the cultures of these post-colonial states, when in fact blame lies exclusively with the colonial powers. This uneven post-colonial development thus “inherited, adapted, reproduced, and in some instances reinforced many of the specific ideas and methods of colonial doctrines of development and their constructions of modernity: what it means to be modern, and how to get there.”^[61]

This imposed modernity on post-colonial states by their metropoles was another form of colonialism, “a strategy to remake the colonial world and restructure the relations between colonies and metropoles” to ensure continued domination by the West.^[62] In a word, neocolonialism. To Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, neocolonialism “represents imperialism in its final and perhaps its most dangerous stage.”^[63] Neocolonialism is a process by which colonial territories are fragmented into smaller “non-viable states which are incapable of independent development,” and therefore must rely on their former colonial powers for economic and political stability.^[64] The idea of foreign aid is inherently neocolonial; Nkrumah writes, “in order to make it attractive to those upon whom it is practiced it must be shown as capable of raising their living standards, but the economic object of neocolonialism is to keep those standards depressed in the interest of the developed countries.”^[65] The field of international development, then, is predicated on maintaining a historical power dynamic between “developed” and “developing” countries, in which “aid” to a post-colonial state becomes nothing more than a predatory investment in the sustained oppression of the former colony from which the metropole extracts ever-increasing profits.^[66] From this definition of neocolonialism provided by Nkrumah, it is clear that development is a perpetuation of colonial oppression within post-colonial states, and only by breaking free of this imported model of progress can these countries engage in a process of true decolonization.

Perhaps the most detrimental aspect of neocolonial development is how it ultimately disempowers post-colonial states into accepting defeat, into enabling oppression. This defeat comes when those in the Third World come to “think of themselves as inferior, underdeveloped, and ignorant and to doubt the value of their own culture, deciding instead to pledge allegiance to the banners of reason and progress.”^[67] The Global South will never be deemed “developed” by the “developed” world (i.e. the Global North) because doing so would invalidate the systems of oppression (white supremacy, global capitalism, colonialism) that ensure that the Global South is perpetually “developing” while the Global North remains powerful. Thus, development must be seen for what it really is: an impossible paradox.  

Community Solar: An Alternative Path of Development

In this sense, community-scale development is not an inherently de-colonial project. In some cases, it can replicate colonial systems of oppression at the community level by delegitimizing local knowledge, disempowering community agency and preventing local self-sufficiency. Done right, however, community solar projects can redress and avoid the neocolonial tendencies of international development efforts by providing local communities with the tools and resources they need to grow sustainably and without outside assistance.

The kind of community development exemplified by community solar projects represents what development studies scholars Sam Hickey and Giles Mohan call a “radical politics of development” that situates development within a “process of social change rather than a discrete technocratic intervention.”^[68] Organizations, often NGOs, that provide community solar projects, must be less like “public service providers” and more like “civic actors” that empower the communities in which they work through advocating for equity and rights-based political agendas, and working alongside local social movements.^[69] Working in opposition to extractive development models, community solar projects have the potential to create an alternative form of politics within the societies they operate, a politics that remedies past harms of colonial oppression and democratizes decision-making. Only this kind of community development will foster climate resilience and community well-being. Similarly, geographers and international development scholars Diana Mitlin, Sam Hickey and Anthony Bebbington argue that NGO-led community development must be understood as a “long-term process of social change” that can either perpetuate harmful hegemonies or forge new counter-hegemonies.^[70] In this sense, community development is much more than an economic mechanism, but rather a process of transforming society into the localized, community-based and climate resilient world that will remedy the climate crisis.

Anthropologist Dana Powell explores this process of transformation in her analysis of renewable energy projects on Native American reservations in the United States. She views this proliferation of these projects “as new modes of economic, ecological, and cultural development” that counter “the history of bio-political regimes of natural resource extraction, which have marked indigenous experience in North America” as well as in South America.^[71] In North and South America alike, indigenous people share a common struggle against state-sanctioned resource extraction that destroys indigenous land, culture, and lives. According to Powell, renewable energy, specifically wind and solar projects, have become “technologies of resistance and existence”^[72] that liberate indigenous populations from the oppression of biopower, which she defines as “the power of the state ‘to make live and let die’” in its ruthless pursuit of unfettered economic growth.^[73] In 2003, the first utility-scale, indigenous-owned and operated wind turbine was installed on the Rosebud Sicangu Lakota reservation in South Dakota.^[74] The project was imagined and executed by local and regional activists and engineers, including the tribal government, the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy, and the indigenous NGO Honor The Earth, but was funded by state agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Departments of Energy, Interior, and Agriculture.^[75] Twenty years earlier, Hopi engineers, activists, and tribal leaders began installing solar panels on rooftops of residences on the reservation.^[76] More recently, national networks and cultural protection organizations have collaborated to install additional solar technologies on New Segobia, or Western Shoshone territory, on the Pine Ridge Lakota reservation, and on the Navajo reservation.^[77]

While these community-based renewable energy projects allow Native Americans to harness the wind and sun for their own power production, they remain imperfect in that they still rely on the post-colonial state apparatus for support, mainly funding. Although the geopolitics of Bolivia’s indigenous population differs vastly from that in the United States, this reliance on state agencies and foreign NGOs for funding is also a reality of many community solar projects in Bolivia. However, once a community solar project is implemented, it allows the community to take ownership of their power—literally and metaphorically—and thus facilitates the transition to self-sufficiency. Even though community solar projects are not completely de-colonial in nature, they nonetheless contribute to the process of decolonization necessary for the liberation of indigenous people in Bolivia and elsewhere.

Ultimately, community solar development is part of a larger societal transformation towards regenerative, autonomous and localized growth that feminist scholar Maria Mies terms the “subsistence perspective.”^[78] The subsistence perspective is one in which the sole purpose is life for life, not for the accumulation of capital that has led to the current climate crisis.^[79] According to Mies, “‘subsistence’ denotes a rejection of every form of colonialism, expansionism, and dependence” and instead calls for a shift towards regionalism, self-sufficiency in place of market dependence, organic agriculture, food sovereignty, and grassroots democracy.^[80] This subsistence lifestyle leads to regional, autonomous economies that are the antithesis of global capitalism and thus the solution to the climate crisis. Community solar contributes to a subsistence lifestyle by promoting energy independence, climate resilience, and local wealth that exists outside of the capitalist market and neocolonial development.

Community Solar Projects in Bolivia

Despite Bolivia’s extremely high solar potential, solar energy provides only two megawatts of Bolivia’s total energy supply.^[81] Bolivia’s weakest solar radiation is equivalent to Europe’s strongest solar radiation, at about four sun hours per square meter per day.^[82] In other words, Bolivia’s proximity to the equator combined with its relatively cloudless weather makes for extremely productive solar production. Nevertheless, Bolivia only has four large-scale solar plants: two in Yunchara and Cobija that produce 5 megawatts each, one in Uyuni that produces 60 megawatts, and its largest in Oruro that produces 100 megawatts.^[83]

Bolivia’s disinclination for large-scale solar is less a representation of a prioritization of an alternative development model but more a result of a lack of foreign investment to finance major solar projects. Nonetheless, in place of large-scale solar have sprung smaller-scale, decentralized solar projects, stemming from both the Bolivian government itself and NGOs. As part of its rural electrification plan, the Bolivian government provides rural houses cut off from the national grid with solar panels and lithium batteries to store solar energy at night.^[84] The renewable rural electrification program, known as Programa Electricidad para Vivir con Dignidad (PEVD), was financed by a combination of public and private funds, including the Nordic Development Fund, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank supplementing funds from the Bolivian government.^[85] The program intended to electrify approximately 180,000 rural households across the country, making it the largest rural electrification program in the region.^[86] The project aimed to make photovoltaic systems affordable to rural populations by financing 60% of the cost of a PV system, while users were expected to pay the remaining 40% over a term of three years.^[87] Nonetheless, despite the program’s moderate success, it remains too dependent on foreign financial aid to be sustainable: trapped in a paradox of eternally “developing,” the post-colonial state is unable to implement renewable energy policies without a financial commitment from instruments of neocolonial finance such as the World Bank. Once foreign funding runs dry, solar electricity provision ceases. Thus, this state-led residential solar development program falls short of the “radical politics of development” promulgated by Hickey and Mohan, as it works within the confines of the post-colonial state and with the support of neocolonial financial institutions, and fails to truly empower the marginalized communities it intends to serve.

 In place of the government, local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play a crucial role in the diffusion of small-scale renewable technologies among the people. Acting as intermediaries between local communities, micro-enterprises, and academics, these organizations disperse solar technologies, build local capacity, and share knowledge to address the dual goal of sustainability and inclusion in the process of community development.

 A Cochabamba-based NGO called Energética tackles rural electrification with a more social-justice-based approach than the Bolivian government. Formed by a group of academics from the Universidad Mayor de San Simón in Cochabamba, the organization focuses not only on the technological components of solar energy distribution, but also on the sociological aspects of sustainable development.^[88] Energética’s mission is to promote energy use “from a perspective of equity, broad solidarity, and proactivity” to achieve sustainable development.^[89] The organization takes a multidisciplinary approach in “understanding that the energy problem influences and depends on the rest of the economic, social, technological, environmental and cultural system” and that individuals must take ownership to ensure the success of the projects in which they participate.^[90] Energética takes a four-pronged approach to rural electrification: (1) developing energy access, (2) sharing knowledge, (3) organizing demands, and (4) strengthening institutions and companies.^[91] Energética works to develop energy access using solar technologies in three realms: energy for the people, which seeks to meet the energy demands of families for lighting, communication and cooking; energy for the community, which develops projects to “strengthen social infrastructure” and services such as rural schools and clinics; and energy for production, which aims to generate additional income for these communities from the production of renewable electricity.^[92]

Energética also has a robust knowledge sharing program, in which it trains locally-based decision-makers, operators, technicians, and users in how to use and fix the solar technologies it deploys throughout rural communities in Bolivia.^[93] This component of Energética’s work is perhaps the most consequential in promoting social change within the communities it services. Rather than simply introducing a foreign technology into a rural community without any knowledge exchange, Energética ensures that its energy project is matched to the needs of the community, and that community members are equipped with the skills they need to take ownership of the technology so that they are not reliant on the organization for continued support and can instead live self-sufficiently. In this way, Energética’s projects mirrors the renewable energy systems built on Native American reservations in the United States: in both cases, indigenous traditions of sharing the fundamental means of subsistence such as land, tools, or public infrastructure are merged with modern technologies that allow indigenous communities to maintain their traditional livelihoods in a landscape defined by neoliberal extractivism. According to anthropologist Ruth Volgger, this interaction between traditional knowledge and academic, entrepreneurial knowledge is called diágolo entre saberes, dialogue between knowledges.^[94] This dialogue “does not reject modern technology, rather it attempts to combine different kinds of knowledge in a non-invasive way to achieve new solutions.^[95]

If a community does need technical assistance, Energética trains a cadre of local technicians that can service the community when necessary. As part of an effort to “guarantee and ensure the technical sustainability of photovoltaic systems in the long term,” Energética collaborated with national solar technician unions and popular education institutes to train “Maintenance Microentrepreneurs” across the country that are equipped to service their communities.^[96] In a publication summarizing this project, Energética interviewed its numerous technicians to understand more clearly the needs of the communities it services. One technician called Pablo reiterated that “it is necessary that the users have access to local maintenance services and suppliers because many of them do not leave their communities.”^[97] By employing these local technicians, Energética preserves community self-sufficiency and their rural livelihoods, rather than making them reliant on federal resources or supplies only available in cities. Another technician named Oscar suggested that “it is necessary to gain the user’s confidence, speak the same language… and enhance the user’s training.”^[98]  Similarly, Energética technician Enrique also recommended to “conduct training workshops for the user” and that “it is more beneficial if they are taught in the same language of the user.”^[99] To share knowledge among indigenous people, Energética provided information and trainings in their native languages, most commonly Quechua or Aymara.

Between 1996-2008, Energética installed 13,983 photovoltaic systems, of which 83.4% were for domestic use, 16.3% were for social use (clinics, schools, churches, adult centers, unions) and 0.3% were for productive use, such as spinning centers, artisanal centers and pumping systems.^[100] Most of these installations were in Cochabamba, Potosí and Oruro, but Energética’s work spans all nine departments across Bolivia.^[101] Until 2012, Energética led a project providing electricity supply to 18,494 people living in rural areas of Potosí and Oruro via photovoltaic systems.^[102] Between 2014-2016, Energética installed communal solar water pumping systems in Oruro, Cochabamba and Potosí to provide potable water for indigenous populations without electricity access.^[103] The project is intended to “improve the quality of life and the health situation” of 16,000 people, “guaranteeing a sustainable and ecological water supply and thus reducing the migration of the countryside” to cities.^[104] It is a perfect example of a community solar project that contributes to the process of decolonization. Energética combats the degradation of traditional livelihoods forced by state-led capitalist development and urbanization by sharing knowledge, encouraging indigenous users to take ownership of their power supply, enhancing local health and preserving indigenous livelihoods.

Energética continues to empower indigenous communities with rural electrification, its most recent project bringing PV and lithium battery solar systems that use LED bulbs to light rural houses. Compared to the government-led rural electrification project, Energética’s projects engage in a process of social change aimed at decolonization via renewable energy technologies. These development projects are truly technologies “of resistance and existence” as stated by Powell that enact “alternative ways for tribes to self-sustain and grow healthy economies, ecologies, cultures, and bodies,” as stated by Powell.^[105] By reclaiming the power-generating processes of nature, indigenous communities in Bolivia and elsewhere can reclaim their social, cultural, economic, and political power.

The Center for Development with Solar Energy (CEDESOL) takes community-based solar development one step closer to a “radical politics of development” than Energética. The Cochabamba-based non-profit’s mission is “to empower the disempowered, guided by the concepts of alternative education, renewable energy, and social justice.”^[106] CEDESOL centers social justice and community empowerment in its work bringing solar cooking systems to rural communities in and around Cochabamba. CEDESOL understands that “real technology transfer is as much about social issues as it is about technology”; it strives to make its technologies sustainable by requiring “community support, an informed understanding of its workings” and technology that “serves a practical purpose.”^[107] When CEDESOL introduces its solar cookers to a community, it is “often met with cultural resistance.” To overcome this reluctant unfamiliarity, CEDESOL couples technology introduction with “intensive, ongoing training and support programs” to ensure that “individuals, families and communities own the technology and have the confidence to modify it to fit local and individual needs.”^[108] Only through community ownership can community and individual empowerment be achieved.

 CEDESOL has distributed 10,000 rocket stoves and solar cookers to rural communities, thus reducing biomass dependency, offsetting more than half a million tons of carbon emissions, and empowering communities as they gain energy independence, financial liberty, and greater freedom (especially among women and children) from duties such as cooking and collecting firewood.^[109] In the long-term, CEDESOL’s solar cookers improve the health of participants, especially women and children, and contribute to both local and global environmental health. CEDESOL’s latest project is provision of solar cookers to eleven schools in Toro Toro, a rural municipality in Potosí founded in the late colonial period by mestizo migrants from Cochabamba. The project has three distinct phases. The first is environmental education–the process of sharing knowledge with participants on environmentally-friendly practices to understand the benefits of solar cookers. This education is crucial to maintaining CEDESOL’s 92% adoption rate by participants.^[110] The second phase is distribution, which not only provides individuals cook-stoves, but also trains users to prevent reversion to familiar, unsustainable cooking methods. The third phase is evaluation, in which CEDESOL encourages participants give feedback on their educational training and on the performance of their cook stoves. This last step allows CEDESOL to “continue to work closely with communities…to fight for carbon reduction, social justice, and access to education in impoverished communities throughout Bolivia.”^[111]

CEDESOL’s community development efforts go one step further than Energética’s, valuing community empowerment and social justice over technological innovation in their projects. Nonetheless, both organizations provide prime examples of how community solar development in Bolivia can be an alternative form of sustainable development that empowers, rather than marginalizes, its rural and indigenous population, amid working to mitigate climate change’s impacts on the global vulnerable communities.

Cracks in the System

The failure of many development projects to foster community autonomy along with climate resiliency is a product of our current society. How can a country that exists within the modern capitalist system resist neoliberal and neocolonial development when those very nations in the Global North, which have defined themselves as “developed,” regard it is as an “underdeveloped” nation? Colonial systems of oppression are deeply rooted in our society, and it is unfair to place the burden of decolonization entirely on previously colonized countries when they already suffer economically, politically, and socioculturally from those very same systems.

However, the small-scale solar development presented in this paper offers a promising solution to this incredibly convoluted conundrum. Community solar development is but one of many clear cracks in the capitalist system, a metaphor employed by John Holloway in his book Crack Capitalism. The more small-scale solar projects that are deployed across the world, simultaneously empowering communities, relocalizing economies, and fostering climate resilience, the more the oppressive capitalist-colonialist economy disintegrates into more sustainable and just alternatives. As Holloway says himself, “the opening of cracks is the opening of a world that presents itself as closed.”^[112] Only by taking a chance on these creative solutions can we prevent our descent into destruction.

About the Author

Celia is a senior at Tufts University from Redding, Connecticut. She is double majoring in International Relations and Environmental Studies with a focus in Sustainability, Policy and Equity. Though her academic interests range from environmental policy and science to history and global affairs, she is primarily interested in how climate change interacts with historical systems of oppression to produce new injustices and is dedicated to fighting these injustices through her activism and work. She spent last spring traveling throughout Vietnam, Morocco and Bolivia to understand the complexities of climate change in some of the world’s most vulnerable landscapes, and hopes to continue this international study of community sustainability post-graduation. 

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Endnotes

^[1] “Indigenous People in Bolivia.” IWGIA, https://www.iwgia.org/en/bolivia

^[2] Robert Albro, “Evo Morales’s Chaotic Departure Won’t Define His Legacy.” Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/22/evo-morales-departure-bolivia-indigenous-legacy/ (November 22, 2019).

^[3] John Vidal, “Bolivia enshrines natural world’s rights with equal status for Mother Earth.” The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/10/bolivia-enshrines-natural-worlds-rights (April 10, 2011).

^[4] Jessica Camille Aguirre and Elizabeth Sonia Cooper, “Evo Morales, Climate Change, and the Paradoxes of a Social-Movement Presidency,” Latin American Perspectives 37, no.4 (July 2010): 240

^[5] Aguirre and Cooper, “Evo Morales, Climate Change, and the Paradoxes of a Social-Movement Presidency,”  240-1

^[6] Ibid, 240

^[7] Ibid, 241

^[8] Ibid 241

^[9] Jeffery R. Webber, “Carlos Mesa, Evo Morales, and a Divided Bolivia (2003-2005),” Latin American Perspectives, 37, no.3 (July 2010): 67

^[10] Diego Andreucci and Isabella M. Radhuber, “Limits to ‘counter-neoliberal’ reform: Mining expansion and the marginalization of post-extractivist forces in Evo Morales’s Bolivia,” Geoforum 84 (2017): 280

^[11] Andreucci and Radhuber, “Limits to ‘counter-neoliberal’ reform: Mining expansion and the marginalization of post-extractivist forces in Evo Morales’s Bolivia,” 282

^[12] Arturo Escobar, “The Problematization of Poverty: The Tale of Three Worlds and Development” in Encountering Development: The Making and the Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 52

^[13] Dan Collyns, “Bolivia approves highway through Amazon biodiversity hotspot,” The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/15/bolivia-approves-highway-in-amazon-biodiversity-hotspot-as-big-as-jamaica (August 15, 2017)

^[14] Emily Achtenberg, “Why is Evo Morales Reviving Bolivia’s Controversial TIPNIS Road?” NACLA, https://nacla.org/blog/2017/08/22/why-evo-morales-reviving-bolivia%E2%80%99s-controversial-tipnis-road (August 21, 2015)

^[15] Collyns, “Bolivia approves highway through Amazon biodiversity hotspot.”

^[16] Achtenberg, “Why is Evo Morales Reviving Bolivia’s Controversial TIPNIS Road?”

^[17] Ibid

^[18] Ibid

^[19] Ibid

^[20] Andreucci and Radhuber, 281

^[21] Ibid, 282

^[22] Ibid, 284

^[23] Ibid, 284

^[24] Benjamin Kohl and Linda Farthing, “Material constraints to popular imaginaries: The extractive economy and resource nationalism in Bolivia” Political Geography 31 (2012): 225

^[25] Oliver Balch, “How a populist president helped Bolivia’s poor— but built himself a palace,” The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/07/how-a-populist-president-helped-bolivias-poor-but-built-himself-a-palace (March 7, 2019)

^[26] Benjamin Kohl and Linda Farthing, “Material constraints to popular imaginaries: The extractive economy and resource nationalism in Bolivia,” 226

^[27] Ibid

^[28] Kohl and Farthing, 230

^[29] Maristella Svampa, “Resource Extractivism and Alternatives: Latin American Perspectives on Development,” Journal of Development Studies, 28 (January 2012): 126

^[30] Svampa, “Resource Extractivism and Alternatives: Latin American Perspectives on Development,” 126

^[31] Kohl and Farthing, 230

^[32] Ibid, 231

^[33] Andreucci and Radhuber, 285

^[34] Kohl and Farthing, 231

^[35] Ibid

^[36] Ibid

^[37] Miriam Telma Jemio, “Bolivia’s forest fires and the rise of beef exports,” Diálogo Chino, https://dialogochino.net/29896-bolivias-forest-fires-and-the-rise-of-beef-exports/ (September 4, 2019)

^[38] Jemio, “Bolivia’s forest fires and the rise of beef exports”

^[39] Ibid

^[40] Paola Flores, “Evo Morales not trending among Bolivia’s youth ahead of vote,” The Associated Press, https://apnews.com/3a675c8af8584c2dba29c7e3f4f3a79b (October 7, 2019)

^[41] Jane Dalton, “Amazon fires: Bolsonaro rages at ‘colonial’ G7 leaders over $16m aid deal to fight Brazil blazes,” The Independent, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amazon-fires-bolsonaro-brazil-g7-summit-aid-deal-a9079586.html (August 26, 2019)

^[42] Jemio, “Bolivia’s forest fires and the rise of beef exports”

^[43] Ibid

^[44] Anatoly Kurmanaev, “Evo Morales and Bolivia: What We Know About the President’s Resignation,” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/world/americas/evo-morales-resignation-bolivia-facts.html (November 12, 2019)

^[45] Yascha Mounk, “Evo Morales Finally Went Too Far for Bolivia,” The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/evo-morales-finally-went-too-far-bolivia/601741/ (November 11, 2019)

^[46] Simon Romero, “Where is the Amazon Rainforest Vanishing? Not Just in Brazil,” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/world/americas/amazon-rainforest.html (August 30, 2019)

^[47] Svampa, 117

^[48] Ibid, 118

^[49] Ibid, 119

^[50] Henry Bernstein, “Colonialism, Capitalism, Development,” in Poverty and Development into the 21st Century, eds. Tim Allen and Alan Thomas (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000): 247

^[51] Bernstein, “Colonialism, Capitalism, Development,” 265

^[52] Ibid, 266

^[53] Escobar, “The Problematization of Poverty: The Tale of Three Worlds and Development,” 23

^[54] Bernstein, 266

^[55] Escobar, 23-4

^[56] Bernstein, 267

^[57] Escobar, 26

^[58] Ibid, 38

^[59] Ibid, 43

^[60] Ibid, 49

^[61] Bernstein, 269

^[62] Escobar, 26

^[63] Kwame Nkrumah, Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (London, UK: Panaf Books, 1970), ix

^[64] Nkrumah, Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, xiii

^[65] Ibid, xv

^[66] Ibid

^[67] Escobar, 53

^[68] Sam Hickey and Giles Mohan, Relocating participation within a radical politics of development: citizenship and critical modernism (Manchester, UK: University of Manchester, 2003), 1

^[69] Sam Hickey and Giles Mohan, Relocating participation within a radical politics of development: citizenship and critical modernism, 20

^[70] Diana Mitlin, Sam Hickey, and Anthony Bebbington, “Reclaiming Development? NGOs and the Challenge of Alternatives” World Development 35 no.10 (2007): 1705

^[71] Dana E. Powell, “Technologies of Existence: The indigenous environmental justice movement” Society for International Development, 49, no.3 (2006): 125

^[72] Dana E. Powell, “Technologies of Existence: The indigenous environmental justice movement,” 130

^[73] Powell, 128

^[74] Ibid, 129

^[75] Ibid

^[76] Ibid, 130

^[77] Ibid

^[78] Maria Mies, “Housewifisation—Globalisation—Subsistence Perspective,” in Beyond Marx, eds. M. Van der Linden and K. H. Roth (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishers, 2014): 231

^[79] Maria Mies, “Housewifisation—Globalisation—Subsistence Perspective,” 236

^[80] Ibid, 232

^[81] Renan Orellana de la Fuente, “Energy in Bolivia,” Lecture, Centro de Estudios Superiores Universitarios,  Cochabamba, Bolivia  (April 26, 2019)

^[82] Miguel Fernandez, “Renewable Energy in Bolivia,” Cochabamba, Lecture, Centro de Estudios Superiores Universitarios, Cochabamba, Bolivia (April 26, 2019)

^[83] “Bolivia opens its largest solar farm,” Power-Technology,https://www.power-technology.com/news/bolivia-opens-largest-solar-farm/, (September 10, 2018)

^[84] Renan Orellana de la Fuente, “Energy in Bolivia,”

^[85] “Rural electrification with renewable energy in Bolivia,” Nordic Development Fund, https://www.ndf.fi/news/rural-electrification-renewable-energy-bolivia, (September 7, 2012)

^[86] Mario Pansera, “Renewable energy for rural areas in Bolivia.” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 16, no.9 (2012): 669

^[87] Pansera, “Renewable energy for rural areas in Bolivia,” 6699

^[88] Ibid, 6700-1

^[89] “Energy for Development” Energética, http://www.energetica.org.bo/energetica/quienessomos.asp

^[90] “Methodology and Work Areas,” Energética, http://www.energetica.org.bo/energetica/areastrabajo.asp

^[91] Ibid

^[92] Ibid

^[93] Ibid

^[94] Pansera, 6702

^[95] Ibid

^[96] Energética, “Micro Empresas Solares: Número 2,” (March 2010): 3

^[97] “Micro Empresas Solares: Número 2,” 3

^[98] Ibid, 8

^[99] Ibid, 11

^[100] Energética, “Micro Empresas Solares: Número 1,” (March 2009): 1

^[101] “Micro Empresas Solares: Número 1,” 1

^[102] “Decentralized Infrastructure for Rural Transformation,” Energética, http://www.energetica.org.bo/energetica/proyectosd.asp?tp=17

^[103] “Potable Water Photovoltaic Pumping in Oruro,” Energética, http://www.energetica.org.bo/energetica/proyectosd.asp?tp=48

^[104] Ibid

^[105] Powel, 130

^[106] “Our Mission,” CEDESOL, http://cedesol.org/ourmission/

^[107] “Our Mission,” CEDESOL

^[108]  Ibid

^[109] “Current Project,” CEDESOL, http://cedesol.org/overview/

^[110] “Current Project,” CEDESOL

^[111] Ibid

^[112] John Holloway, Crack Capitalism. (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2010): 5

When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land…

Desmond Tutu

On December 10^th, 1993, a strange drama was unfolding in Oslo. Before a star-studded audience at the famed Oslo City Hall, Francis Sejersted, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, commended together Frederik Willem de Klerk and Nelson Mandela on winning the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. All evening, a curiously religious mood hung in the air. F.W. de Klerk, quoting Afrikaans poets, highlighted in his Nobel lecture the Apartheid regime’s ‘soul-searching’ to “work for peace in our land,^[1] while Mandela drew on the work of the preacher Albert Lutuli, the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to frame his lecture. Sejersted praised both de Klerk and Mandela for recognizing “the God-factor in [all men]…[who] strive to serve [their] creator to the best of [their] ability…”^[2] “Reconciliation,” declared the Committee, “…the recognition that one must give in order to be able to take… provides hope not only for South Africa; it is also a shining example for the world that there are ways out of the vicious circle of…bitterness.”^[3] Committee members, prize winners, and observers held up the prize as a model for stitching together a world left in tatters by religious and ethnic divides. Four months later, Nelson Mandela won the South African presidency. “At the southern tip of the continent of Africa, a rich reward [had been] in the making,” and in 1994, they won a victory long-delayed.^[4] The spectacle of the 1993 Nobel cycle seemed to be the final nail in Apartheid’s coffin and great hope of reconciliation. But, how would the new regime in Pretoria choose “not to dwell on the deep wounds of the past?”^[5] And would it succeed?

Black churches functioned as key organizational networks and prophets of liberation and reconciliation in the South African movement for independence and its aftermath. Today, however, post-conflict transformation in South Africa stands largely stalled. The disenfranchisement and violence of the ancien régime lives on, even among the ‘born free’ generation. Nowhere is this reality more apparent than in the land itself. The Afrikaner colonial enterprise was fundamentally motivated by land, and to this day, white South Africans own over 70% of the country’s arable territory.^[6] The contemporary land reform debate brings to the surface difficult questions about what the Nobel Committee entrusted Mandela and de Klerk to achieve and typifies the unfinished business of reconciliation. As the South African democratic experiment grapples with the urgent and divisive question of land justice, Black churches have not been able to play a fruitful role in the debate since a short burst of activity in the early 2000s. This paper contends that the justitial-prophetic capacity of black churches and FBOs, which once pioneered ‘restorative justice’-based reconciliation, has declined. I offer three key reasons for this absence of dynamic prophetic voice on the land question. First, the South African Council of Churches (SACC), once the chief prophet of liberation and reconciliation, lost its momentum on the land debate after the early 2000s and has, since then, lost much of its social and political power. Second, the face of South African (and African) Christianity itself is evolving, with Pentecostal-type African-Initiated Churches (AICs) assuming greater influence among ordinary South Africans. I analyze, to this end, the emergence and growth of the largest church in South Africa, the Zion Christian Church (ZCC). Finally, taking the ZCC as an example, I argue that most AICs in South Africa are politically disengaged, which holds critical implications for theological contributions to the land justice debate and the future of public Christianity in the country.

Perspectives and Terms

Before beginning, it is important to address some of the key terminological debates and controversies relevant to discussing the church-state relationship in South Africa. First, this paper uses extensively the terminology of ‘prophet,’ ‘prophecy,’ and ‘prophetic voice’ to analyze the public and political roles black churches have played. The concept’s origin lies in the idea of ‘prophetic witness,’ through which Christian prophets offered contextual critiques and programmes to society on behalf of God.^[7] For scholars like Walshe and Nell,^[8] the “prophetic Christian voice”^[9] in South Africa brings biblical values to bear on social analysis and advocacy for justice. However, such a justice-focused understanding also brings a host of value judgements about the appropriate place and role of the church. South African ‘prophets,’ such as the Afrikaner churches, have as much been agents of injustice as they have been, in the grand tradition of the SACC, advocates for justice. Therefore, in this paper, I use a thinner understanding of ‘prophetic voice’ simply to characterize how churches relate to and work within particular socio-political contexts.^[10]

Second, this work rests on a comparative analysis of ‘mainline’ and ‘African-Initiated’ churches. I will use interchangeably the terminology of ‘mainline’ and ‘mission’ church to characterize the established mainline churches of South Africa, which trace their roots back to missionary work in the 19^th and 20^th centuries and generally maintain strong theological and organizational links to mother churches. On the other hand, African-Initiated Churches (AICs) are becoming the next frontier of Christian expression on the continent. Although, strictly speaking, AICs refer simply to churches initiated and controlled by Africans, for my purposes, a narrower understanding includes the recognition that most AICs in Southern Africa are related to Pentecostalism.^[11] These AICs do have early links to Evangelical missionaries of the early 20^th century, but they will not be characterized as ‘mission churches’ here because they are organizationally, theologically, and liturgically distinct from their Western Evangelical origins. With this conceptualization of the “African manifestation[s] of Christian pneumatology,”^[12] I borrow from Anderson and use the terminology of AICs in South Africa interchangeably with ‘African Pentecostals’ and ‘Pentecostal-type’ churches.^[13]

Public Christianity and religious activism in South Africa have operated at multiple registers, including the individual, local, communal, regional, national, and transnational. This, however, is a middle-range analysis focused neither on the “million acts of everyday struggle”^[14] in local Christian communities nor on networks mobilized in Lusaka, Dodoma, London, Geneva, and Washington. Instead, I will examine thinkers and activists at the national level who have contributed to the development, or lack thereof, of prophetic voice among South African churches. The land debate is currently dominating and transforming South African politics. Much of the literature on land reform falls into three broad categories: those that trace the genesis of current land policy and its political and ideological antecedents,^[15] those concerned with the implementation of land policy, its successes, and failures,^[16] and those analyzing recent developments in the land debate.^[17] None, however, have connected public theologies and Christianities to the questions of land justice and its recent upheavals. By bridging research in religious studies on the continent with the unfolding debate on land reform in political science, I will attempt to highlight the ambiguity of church roles in South Africa and some of the complex social, political, and economic relationships that are making and un-making productive public Christianities on the continent.

Prophecies of Subjugation, Prophecies of Liberation: Constructing White Afrikanerdom, Black Churches, and the SACC

The land question as it stands now has been defined by several critical junctures from the colonial era and independence struggle. Dutch and British colonialism,^[18] which eventually matured into rasse-Apartheid (race separation),^[19] constructed a distinctivelyAfrikaner role civilisatrice (underpinned by Afrikaner churches^[20]) linked to a particular understanding of the relationship between land and race. As settlers from marginalized European communities, colonists understood keenly the profound power of land. The Afrikaner weltanschauung thus embedded narratives of racial deservingness and identity within the traditional Anglo-Saxon understanding of property. Whiteness became the fundamental property^[21] upon which the colonial regime built Apartheid. Thus D. F. Malan, one of the principal architects of Apartheid and a Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk, NGK) minister, argues:

Our history is the greatest masterpiece of the centuries. We hold this nationhood as our due for it was given us by the Architect of the universe. [His] aim was the formation of a new nation among the nations of the world…the history of the Afrikaner reveals a will and a determination which makes one feel that Afrikanerdom is not the work of men but the creation of God…^[22]

At the same time, black churches used their own theological resources and approaches to push back against the ideologies upon which their marginalization had been premised and to claim South African land as a site of meaning-making and material empowerment. In 1962, Dr. Beyers Naudé, an NGK minister, founded the journal Pro Veritate and the Christian Institute (CI, since 1968 the SACC).^[23] Under the visionary leadership of, among others, General-Secretaries Desmond Tutu (1978-1984), Beyers Naudé (1984-1998), Frank Chikane (1987-1994), Sam Buti (1979-?), and Peter Storey (1981-1983), the SACC became a famed foe of Apartheid.^[24] “There are alarming signs,” the SACC declared, “that this doctrine of [racial] separation has become, for many, a false faith, a novel gospel…such a claim inevitably conflicts with the Christian Gospel, which offers salvation, both social and individual…we believe that his kingdom and its righteousness have power to cast out all that opposes his purposes and keeps men in darkness.”^[25] In 1984, Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role within the SACC because “few other organisations can make the same claim to speak for the black population.”^[26] Slow and highly-confidential negotiations between the Apartheid regime and the then-imprisoned Deputy President of the ANC, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, and with ANC President Oliver Tambo, exiled in Lusaka,^[27] coalesced around the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) in 1991, the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum in 1993, a government of national unity, an interim constitution, and a transitional executive committee.^[28] In December of that year, Mandela and de Klerk were awarded the joint Nobel Peace Prize, and, just four months later, Madiba was sworn in as the first democratically-elected, black President of South Africa.

Prophets of Transitional Justice: The SACC, Reconciliation, and Restorative Justice

The spectacle of the 1993 Nobel cycle captured both the great hope of reconciliation and what would become its significant limitations in post-Apartheid South Africa. The 1993 interim constitution laid out CODESA’s vision for South Africa’s democratic transition: a transitional justice agenda focused on ‘national unity and reconciliation’ would become “a historic bridge between the past of a deeply divided society…and a future founded on…peaceful co-existence and development opportunities…”^[29] In exchange for the full and honest truth and acknowledgement about what had been done in the name of the ancien régime, the new state would grant its perpetrators amnesty through a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) chaired by the Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu.^[30] Although a pragmatic political initiative in many regards,^[31] there is no doubt that the reconciliation agenda also represented a deeply-felt and deeply-embedded grappling with the profoundly philosophical and ethical dimensions^[32] of democratic transition. Religion, Christianity in particular, became a, if not the, crucial idiom of reconciliation: the TRC’s “notion of reconciliation…associated with contrition, confession, forgiveness and restitution”^[33] had emerged first in South African liberationist-Christian circles and filtered out to the broader anti-Apartheid coalition which ultimately formed CODESA.^[34] As part of its transformation from primarily an ecumenical organization to a storied collective preaching revolution, the SACC and its allies transitioned from prophets of liberation to prophets of reconciliation and a ‘restorative justice’ that would acknowledge harms, seek to repair them holistically, and improve social relationships.^[35] The key role of mainline churches in this project is captured, for instance, by these words from a SACC brochure: “the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation is not another Nuremberg. It turns its back on any desire for revenge…the space is thereby created where the deeper processes of forgiveness, confession, repentance, reparation, and reconciliation can take place.”^[36] Reconciliation thus became the “civic sacrament,”^[37] as Asmal, Asmal, and Roberts call it, through which South Africa was meant to recover. 

Truth commissions had been pioneered in Latin America, beginning with Argentina’s National Commission on the Disappeared (CONADEP).^[38] What was distinctive about South Africa’s TRC process, which worked with over 21,290 people,^[39] was its explicit effort to foreground reconciliationand its religious character.^[40] Reconciliation was performed and lived every day in the TRC.^[41] On the very second day of public hearings, for example, Tutu, clad in his purple vestments, broke down in tears and held his head in his hands listening to the harrowing story of ANC veteran Singqokwana Ernest Malgas.^[42] Often, commissioners, and Tutu and Alex Boraine in particular, would end testimonies with homilies^[43] and traditional songs like the Xhosa Senzeni Na.^[44] Many who told their stories, like Paul Williams, Frank Retief (two St. James Massacre’93 victims), and Ramorakane Mohajane (a Sharpeville’60 survivor) drew on Christian ideas to frame their testimonies and how they came to terms with their suffering.^[45] “The spotlight gyrates…,” as Cole writes, “exposing old lies and illuminating new truths.”^[46]

The South African model of transition, with truth and reconciliation at its center, has been heralded as a success and a model of reconciliation for a world torn apart by socio-political divides in popular^[47] and academic^[48] memory. Cynthia Ngeweu, whose son Christopher Piet was murdered as part of the Gugulethu Seven, summarized it as “this thing called reconciliation…if I am understanding it correctly…if it means the perpetrator, the man who has killed Christopher Piet, if it means he becomes human again…so that I, so that all of us, get our humanity back…then I support it all.”^[49]

Unfinished Business: ‘Diminished Truth,’ Structural Legacies of Apartheid, and the Land Question

The TRC, or at least its Human Rights Committee where perpetrators, victims, and bystanders told their stories and the nation publicly grappled with its past, seemed to be a cathartic “miracle”^[50] for South Africa. The story of the Reparations and Rehabilitation Committee (RRC), however, was different. “So many in the white community,” Desmond Tutu writes, “were able to live normal lives, enjoying the freedoms of citizenship, with huge privileges and benefits.”^[51] It was, indeed, a privileged citizenship. Very little economic-racial data exists from the Apartheid period both because the government made very scant information available and because of the spatial isolation of black populations in ‘homeland’ territories.^[52] However, the 1994 Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development (PSLSD) does allow us to put numbers to some of this privilege on the eve of transition – on average, white, colored, and Indian people were wealthier, healthier, and happier than black people. 45% of surveyed Africans had completed at least grade six compared to 92% of whites,^[53] 44% of Africans lived in a house/part of a house compared to 82% of whites,^[54] 34% had access to sanitation and electricity infrastructures compared to close to 100% of whites,^[55] the average monthly household expenditure in white households was close to five times larger at R4742 than that of black households R1111,^[56] and African households had an average monthly income of R1005, compared to R6394 among white people.^[57] 39% of surveyed Africans were ‘dissatisfied’ with their quality of life, compared to 53% of whites who were satisfied.^[58] For black people, the most desperate needs included ‘jobs’ and ‘housing,’ while white people noted a need for ‘political settlement’ and ‘end of violence.’^[59] A majority of black people did not feel safe within or outside their homes.^[60] According to the 1996 census, 40% of the economically active (15-65) was unemployed (hitting near 50% in the poorest provinces).^[61]

Land was, and continues to be, a critical dimension of this structural struggle. As the TRC wrapped up in 1998, the RRC – the least well-known TRC committee – became particularly controversial. It could only make recommendations for reparation, and Shore argues rightly that the amnesty and reparations process “revictimized” survivors who “witnessed their violators go free without having received any compensation.”^[62] The government authorized R50 million^[63] as urgent interim reparations,^[64] alongside 20,000 victims, who received (after many delays) R660 million^[65] of individual reparation grants^[66] (roughly R30,000 to each). This hardly begins to tackle the structural problems facing black South Africa, briefly touched upon above. Thus, for Mamdani, the TRC, by not engaging more deeply with the thorny questions of structural transformation and social justice, produced a “diminished truth.”^[67] The ‘individualization’ of harm – a social and political necessity at the time – remains indefensible for some observers.^[68] As I briefly traced earlier, the colonial project concerned itself fundamentally with land, land dispossession,and exploitation of black labor to work the land – on farms, in mines, in factories around the country – which influenced deeply the formation of white Afrikanerdom and black opposition to it.^[69] Moreover, land and access to land is not simply an economic matter. As Shipton argues, “landholding is at the center of the confluence…[of] religion, ritual…cognition…adaptation, sustenance, and production…”^[70] Land, in short, is inextricably bound up with the metaphysical and material dimensions of enfranchisement, liberation, and reclamation in newly-democratic South Africa. Apartheid had limited Africans to only 13% of the reserved territories (‘Bantustans’/‘native homelands’).^[71] In 1994, the average black person held 1.3 hectares of land compared to 1,570 hectares owned by the average white person^[72] – a staggering 199% difference. About 82% of South African land is available for agricultural use,^[73] and 86% of this arable land was in white hands in 1994.^[74] 60,000 commercial landowners,^[75] representing the white minority (in 1996, 10.6% of the population^[76]), not only kept the majority of South African land out of black hands but exploited black labor through tenure systems. The political economy of white domination, and in particular the need for land reform, restitution, and redistribution were thus recognized as urgent by the new government.

The 1996 constitution acknowledged both the right to property and “the nation’s commitment to land reform,” for which property could be expropriated.^[77] While revolutionary in sentiment (at least by Western standards of property rights), its application was anything but. The ANC regime was called upon to reconcile multiple dimensions of deprivation and various political sensitivities wrapped up in the land question: white landowners controlled most of the arable land to produce export-oriented high-value products like meat and fruit.^[78] Lahiff argues that after 1994, black South Africans needed not access to commercial-scale production, but simply a return to the “thriving African peasant sector [of] the early 20th century,” which the Apartheid regime had destroyed.^[79] The new South African government needed to maintain a delicate balance, addressing not just land dispossession as systematic injustice (for example, as Zimbabwe did through Fast-Track Land Reform, FTLR in 2000), but also addressing rural poverty and urban exploitation^[80] while “contribut[ing] to economic development, without destroying the advanced agricultural sector or alienating politically conservative white landowners.”^[81] “Restitution,” argued the Land Affairs Department in 1998, “has turned out to be much more complex than was originally realised.”^[82] It was in this atmosphere – in a country with dispossession “greater than any other…in Africa”^[83] – which the neoliberals were about to step up to the plate.

The government, in its 1997 White Paper on Land Policy, set three policy priorities: restitution, redistribution, and tenure reform.^[84] The new state’s policy approach was strongly shaped by the World Bank and affiliated Bretton Woods technocrats,^[85] with whose advice the new government set out to redistribute 30% of all agricultural land in the first five years using a market-based approach.^[86] Throughout the independence movement period, neo-Marxist ideas about redistribution and expropriation – drawn from the rich tradition of post-colonial socialist thinking on the continent – had been a cornerstone of the policy vision espoused by key players like the COSATU, ANC, and the SACC.^[87] But, the policies of land justice in South Africa after 1994 do not reflect these radical visions. Trevor Manual, former South African Finance Minister (1996-2009), explains this ideological shift as such: “the collapse of the Soviet Union, the destruction of the Berlin Wall broke the…revolutionary romantic illusions of many…”^[88] The ‘willing buyer-willing seller’ system that emerged instead connects voluntary sellers and buyers (while the state provides grants and services to needy buyers)^[89] for redistribution. Meanwhile, the restitution program would hear claims from those who said they were dispossessed to restore land or provide capital or financial alternatives,^[90] and tenure reform would rest on a non-racial rights-based system that protected de facto landholders (vested workers).^[91] This policy ecosystem sidesteps many of the thorny questions about public interest expropriation enshrined in the constitution.

Despite these diverse policy pathways, the way property ownership and land justice has been enacted in post-1994 South Africa has remained a domain of controversy and failure. By 1999, 1% of land had been transferred, and in 2006, this number stood at 4.1%.^[92] The strategy of reform by “buy[ing] out white privilege”^[93] has been a slow, even stagnant process: in 2005, 3.5 million hectares of land had been transferred.^[94] In 2018, of the over 80 million arable hectares, the government had delivered 8.4 million.^[95] Compared to the government’s target of 30% redistribution by 1999 (a date later extended to 2015), by 2018, the government had only managed to transfer about 10% of all viable farmland.^[96] Approximately 60% of South Africans continue to hold no property or property rights (with only a small minority having secure tenure).^[97] A 2017 Land Audit revealed the true extent of these failures: Africans still owned only 4% of the land. 72% remained with white landowners.^[98] The “mediocre hucksters of neoliberalism” had managed to push for a form of individualized and atomized land reconciliation that ultimately failed to deliver the fruits of land justice to black South Africa.^[99]

But the land question in African politics rarely rests easy. Already with FTLR in Zimbabwe in the early 2000s, the landscape of policy possibilities in Southern Africa was shifting: “the winds of change that were started by Mugabe [we]re indeed blowing across South Africa and Namibia and fueling the voices that call for a radical, non-market driven land reform process.”^[100] The 2014 election brought the land question to the forefront of South African politics with renewed urgency. In July 2013, Julius Malema – a former ANC Youth League renegade – began transforming the South African political landscape narratively and visually through the new Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party. The EFF’s ubiquitous red beret, “a must-have fashion accessory,” stood as a “symbol of commitment to the struggle for economic freedom.”^[101] The party – ideologically polysemic but with socialist influences and representing a “radical blackness”^[102] – advocates for expropriating white-owned land without compensation, nationalizing the ‘strategic sectors’ of the economy, and for “a move from reconciliation to justice”^[103] (emphasis added). The EFF and its firebrand politicians – Malema, Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, Floyd Shivambu – began putting forward an explicit and piercing critique of the reconciliation paradigm, labelling the post-1994 Rainbow Nation as an extension of the “white supremacist state” in the absence of the “economic emancipation of the Black majority.”^[104] That the EFF was tabling a publicly and politically-resonant agenda became clear when the new party became the third-largest in the 2014 parliament, overtaking older and more established opposition blocs like the United Democratic Movement (UDM) and Congress of the People (COPE). In raw numbers, the EFF only picked up 25 seats and the ANC certainly towered over it with 249 seats,^[105] but it was a clear signal to the old guard about shifting tides in South African politics. As the 2019 election season began heating up, the land reform debate was back in the public consciousness. At its 54^th National Conference in December 2017, the ANC acknowledged that “expropriation of land without compensation should be among the key mechanisms available to government to give effect to land reform…”^[106] In 2018, the EFF tabled a motion calling for a review of Section 25 of the Constitution,^[107] which set up the principle of public interest expropriation with compensation.^[108] The Constitutional Review Committee’s public hearings confirmed the “overwhelming support for constitutional amendment and expropriation of land without compensation.”^[109] In August 2018, Akkerland Boerdery became the first white-owned property to be sent a controversial, non-negotiated expropriation notice after initial sale negotiations with the government stalled.^[110] In this political context, the 2019 election saw the EFF nearly double its seat count,^[111] keeping land reform high on the national agenda. The Constitutional Review Committee’s findings were reaffirmed by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s 2019 Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture, which recommended a significant rethinking of the Western notions of property and property compensation on which the 1996 property clause was originally based.^[112] As of November 2019, Ad Hoc Committee to Initiate and Introduce Legislation Amending Section 25 of the Constitution continues to work on what form this new land reform regime might take, and expects to wrap up by 31^st March, 2020.^[113]

For the foreseeable future, land justice and land reconciliation will remain salient in the public and political consciousness. The neoliberal moment in South African politics is at a point of crisis, and political challenges fielded by parties like the EFF demand a concerted reconfiguration of the land question, and broadly, a radical rethinking of the reconciliation framework within which land justice has thus far been embedded. Indeed, it is difficult to disagree with McCusker, Moseley, and Ramutsindela’s observation that even as the TRC pioneered the restorative justice paradigm, its legacy on and the ANC’s approach to land reform displays a “sheer lack of imagination…[in] reconfiguring either the [colonial-era] patterns or processes of the production of space.”^[114] New voices like the EFF are pushing the public and political elites in new directions. The South African religious establishment, whose prophetic imaginaries had sustained the liberation movement for decades and propelled forward the reconciliation paradigm near the end of Apartheid, however, is adding little to the current land debate. Why? This paper offers three key reasons for the absence of a dynamic prophetic voice on the land question. First, the South African Council of Churches (SACC), once the chief prophet of liberation and reconciliation, lost its momentum on the land debate after the early 2000s and has, since then, diminished significantly in its social and political power. Second, the face of South African (and African) Christianity itself is evolving, with Pentecostal-type African-Initiated Churches (AICs) assuming greater influence among ordinary South Africans. I analyze, to this end, the emergence and growth of the largest church in South Africa (and the second-largest in Africa) – the Zion Christian Church (ZCC). Finally, taking the ZCC as an example, I argue that most AICs in South Africa focus on the experiential and charismatic dimensions of Christianity and remain political disengaged, which holds critical implications for theological contributions to the land justice debate and the future of public Christianity in the country.

“Going Back to the Church:” The SACC’s Missing Prophets and Political Marginalization

In 1994, Desmond Tutu introduced Nelson Mandela as the first democratically-elected President of South Africa on the steps of the Union Building in Pretoria. “Now,” he said, “I am going back to the church to do the real business of the church and leave politics to those well qualified to do it.”^[115] Yet, as South Africa began transitioning to a democracy, organizations like the SACC were called upon not simply to ‘go back to the church,’ but also to move from a liberatory theology to a “theology of nation-building.”^[116] Kumalo and Dziva describe this approach as a ‘critical solidarity,’ through which churches support “those government initiatives that promote justice, peace, and democracy, whilst continuing [their] protest against unjust policies and its protection of the interests of the poor and minority groups.”^[117] At a 1994 conference at Vereeniging, the SACC described its role in a democratic South Africa in this way.^[118] However, this is not precisely where the SACC’s prophetic potential lies. After all, ‘critical solidarity’ is “redolent with ambiguity.” In fact, when articulated, it often implies (if not outrights constructs) a ‘subsidiarity’ between state and church. For some, like Vellem, “it is a misnomer for the [prophetic] church to be in solidarity with the state, i.e. with power.”^[119] Villa-Vicencio offers a more nuanced and powerful take on churches’ ideal roles after 1994. South African churches have a moral imperative to continue to lead with contextual voices in the arena of human rights and law-making. Otherwise, institutions like the SACC would merely become “an escape from the challenge of discerning the liberating presence of God in the midst of the struggle for a better world.”^[120] In other words, it is not for churches to show solidarity with the democratic state or simply to speak about unjust practices. Churches must continue to lead publicly and politically with novel and evolving prophetic voices.

However, though accepted in principle, the ecclesiological practice of dynamic prophetic witness on the land question has generally eluded the SACC since 1994 for two key reasons. First, the council has reproduced, in important ways, the ANC’s traditional line on land reform and land reconciliation. As we have seen above, the ANC adopted, under pressure from the Washington neoliberals, a market-oriented, gradualist vision of land reform and land justice. In the early 2000s, there was some pushback from the SACC on willing buyer-willing seller. In an October 2004 submission to the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture and Affairs, the council prioritized the long-term vision of land reform over its pace: “the success of land reform should not be measured in terms of how quickly the ‘task’ is completed or even how much land is transferred, but rather how extensively…it advances…the restoration of human dignity.”^[121] At this time, the SACC advanced the idea that “ownership of land was never absolute…the Jubilee tradition affirmed the redistributive nature of God’s commitment to the poor, seeking to ensure just and equitable access to land and resources…”^[122] This redistributive and pro-poor activism for ‘humans as stewards of the land,’^[123] however, has diminished.

In the years since, just as land reform itself has lost its momentum (at least until recently), so has the SACC’s advocacy for it. To be fair, the council has pushed back in other ways against the neoliberal logic of the contemporary South African state. Most prominent among these is its support for the People’s Budget Campaign, which seeks to transform the understanding of ‘fiscal responsibility’ from an austerity-oriented one to a person- and society-oriented one.^[124] It has criticized the “mortgaged state” of South Africa and particularly Jacob Zuma, the face of corruption and neopatrimonialism within the ANC.^[125] It has condemned South African militarization as detracting from the urgent needs of development.^[126] Kuperus argues that these developments reflect clearly “the survival of the SACC’s critical and prophetic voice.”^[127] On the land question, however, after the short burst of activity in the early 2000s, the council has been fairly silent. Its voice is missing from the unfolding national dialectic between the ANC and EFF’s approaches to reform as well as on recent developments on expropriation without compensation. In a 2017 statement, the SACC laid out its sparse strategic vision of land reform as follows: the land question should be dealt with through “a comprehensive spatial utility approach that involves all areas, rural and urban, communal and freehold; with appropriate trade-offs to the satisfaction of all.”^[128] Thus, even as the land justice debate occupies the current political consciousness, the SACC has not offered a concrete program nor a vision that goes beyond the reconciliatory “trade-offs” of 1994. During a period of renewed focus on land reform, its justitial-prophetic voice on land justice has been absent from ecumenical statements, in parliament, in reports, and steering committees.

Second, theSACC’s influence within the ruling ANC, and therefore the South African state, has diminished significantly, which limits its prophetic capacity on the receiving end. Democratization in the 1990s blurred the line between the SACC and the new South African state. The “remarkably humanizing policies” of the Mandela government and the euphoria of democratization led organizations like the council to exchange their ‘prophetic distance’ from the pre-1994 state for ‘critical solidarity’ with the post-1994 state.^[129] Already, through appointments to the TRC, this process had begun. Other key religious leaders like Brigalia Bam, Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, Makhenkesi Stofile, Mvume Dandala, Peter Marais, Frank Chikane, Motsoko Pheko, Sipho Mzimela, and Stanley Mogoba joined the government or the civil services.^[130] Some like Allan Boesak found themselves embroiled in corruption scandals.^[131] The SACC, because of its close association with the state, has been criticized on a variety of fronts, including its hesitation in criticizing the government’s record on poverty reduction, Zimbabwe’s human rights violations, response to HIV/AIDS, and the corruption of the Zuma regime (which only recently did the SACC become very vocal in criticizing) as well as the rape charges against him.^[132] As Storey writes, institutions whose “theological clarity had been forged in the heat and burden of the struggle” began losing their way by “signing onto Caesar’s payroll.”^[133] The SACC did begin voicing more insistent criticisms of the ANC, particularly on the Zimbabwe issue and on the marginalization of the poor, in the late 2000s,^[134] which then led the Zuma regime to make a concerted effort to marginalize the council’s political role and restrict the reach of its voice.^[135] In July 2009, the Zuma government brought various religious groups together to form the National Interfaith Leaders Council (NILC) – a partnership with the government on public service provision. In a “remarkable development,”^[136] the SACC – once the foremost religio-political authority in the country – was not invited onto the NILC.^[137] Mogomotsi Diutwileng, a former SACC staffer, describes the council’s decline: “The SACC is not influential. If we had influence and power, the government would consult with us before it takes certain decisions…even when the church stands on a public platform to issue a statement, if we are lucky, a spokesperson of the ANC replies to the statement—that is, if we are really lucky…”^[138] Without financial support from the government or international organizations, the SACC was forced to shut down its Parliamentary Liaison Office in 2016 – a disturbing indicator of its waning political voice. Its national staff, which numbered at over six hundred at the council’s height of influence, now has dropped to one, along with twelve to twenty regional staff. ^[139] “Inspirational and charismatic” leaders like Bayers Naudé, Peter Storey, and Frank Chikane neglected to pass on the prophetic reins to a younger generation of activists.^[140] The contemporary SACC, shows Kuperus, has become only one of the many organizations that are able to capture the national imagination.^[141] Espousing a politics of conciliation and reconciliation, the council has not successfully developed a substantive theology of reconstruction and nation-building.

Because of these developments, the SACC has been unable to bring a productive prophetic voice to the land reform debate or address the higher-order challenges inherent to the restorative justice paradigm, which tends to dissociate social justice from social reconciliation. Vena Mqondisi, Director of the Western Cape Province of Churches, says that

We seem to have lost the prophetic voice…I think to a certain extent…we have been very complacent…we should do away with critical solidarity with the government. I think our solidarity should be with the poor and marginalized.^[142]

 In sum, the SACC today is unable to provide prophetic guidance on the land question because it lost its momentum on the debate after the early 2000s and because of its complex relationship with the ANC regime. But it is not simply the chief prophet of South African Christianity that has changed since 1994. In fact, the face of South African (and African) Christianity itself is evolving, with critical implications for theological contributions to the land justice debate and the future of public Christianity in the country.

“The People Will Look for the Church:” Africa’s Evangelical Turn, the Changing Christianity of South Africa, and the Zion Christian Church

African-Initiated Churches (AICs) – including Ethiopian-type churches, Zionists, and Apostolics – emphasize “the working of the Holy Spirit.”^[143] Many Southern African AICs trace their roots to the American healing and Pentecostal movements which spread on the continent through missionary work in the 20^th century. However, AICs imbue their focus on the Holy Spirit with distinctively African characteristics, embedding their experience of Christianity into a relational and contextual framework.^[144] West suggests that unlike the traditional mission-sponsored churches, which center mainline churches’ characteristic ‘other-worldliness,’ AICs introduced to Evangelical mission Christianity a focus on the “explanation, prediction, and control of space-time events” common to “traditional African religious systems.”^[145] Because mission Christianity was pushed onto a population cognitively oriented to ‘this-worldly’ spirituality, “Christianity would be judged in these terms.”^[146] But, as Ranger argues, AICs did not just ‘Africanize’ mission-Evangelical teaching, they also intensified it and propelled its transformation into an “oral prophetic” tradition.^[147] AICs, writes Mashabela, allow black people to “live out the Gospel as Africans.”^[148] The AIC’s ‘prophet’ (particularly in Zionist churches), through whom God speaks to congregants and addresses their concerns, usually diverges from the mission churches by forging their credentials in actively addressing this-worldly concerns like sickness and misfortune.^[149] 

Opportunities for advancement, a resonant mix of Western and African thinking, and spaces for healing and releasing tensions and frustrations communally have all been cited as reasons for the emergence of AICs in Africa.^[150] Scholars like Thompson also situate the proliferation of AICs within the larger growth of an “Evangelical-Pentecostal-charismatic spirituality” around the world in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.^[151] According to a 2011 survey, Sub-Saharan Africa is home to the greatest share of the world’s evangelicals at nearly 39% of the total Sub-Saharan population.^[152] In South Africa, AICs have seen startling growth. In 1996, 26.8% of South Africans belonged to AICs. The 2001 census identified a third of the population (nearly 32%) as AIC members.^[153] Unlike the general trend to secularism in Western countries,^[154] in South Africa, Christianity continues to experience steady growth into the 21^st century. In 2001, about 79% of South Africans were Christian.^[155] In 2010, a Pew survey estimated this number to stand at 87%.^[156] In the official 2013 General Household Survey, nearly 86% of South Africans were identified as Christians.^[157] Moreover, 74% of surveyed South Africans in 2010 found religion to be very important in their lives (and 66% of them went so far as to say the Bible should be the basis of law). South Africans consistently report community organizations like churches as key frontline resources.^[158] In 1991, there were at least six thousand AICs in South Africa, to which 46% of the black population belonged.^[159] By far, the biggest Christian sector in South Africa is the Evangelicals, with over 22 million members in 2016.^[160] This brief quantitative sketch highlights two important trends: one, the continued salience of a growing Christian sector in South Africa, which gives churches significant social capital and power, and two, the importance of Evangelicals, and particularly the AICs. Gifford argues that the shift away from mainline/mission churches in Africa to Pentecostal and Pentecostal-type AICs is not just a “significant realignment within African Christianity,” but also represents a powerful filtering down of elite mission Christianity to the masses.^[161]

This gives AICs, which constitute the largest and a swiftly-growing Christian sector in South Africa, significant potential. In particular, I focus on the Zion Christian Church – the largest AIC in South Africa (and in Southern Africa) and the second-largest in Africa.^[162] The ZCC was founded by Engenas Lekganyane, an evangelist from Mamabolo, who had his education in the Word of Christ with the Free Church of Scotland and then with Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM), established in South Africa by North American missionaries in 1908. ZCC lore holds that Lekganyane received a vision in 1910 and in 1925, he founded the ZCC.^[163] Lekganyane commanded “supreme charismatic authority”^[164] in the church and left its control to the ‘bishops’ (leaders), who come from the Lekganyane family. Edward Lekganyane (1926-1967) and Barnabas Lekganyane (1954-) have led the church as ‘prophet-type leaders with administrative talents,’^[165] focused on faith healing, dancing, drums, speaking in tongues, spirit possession, nightly communion, sing-song testimonies, pilgrimages to the Lekganyane home and ZCC headquarters in Moria, symbolic dress codes,^[166] alongside various theological and liturgical continuities with mission Pentecostalism.^[167] Exact numbers are not available, but the ZCC has at least 10 million members in South Africa, with hundreds of other congregations around the world. Indeed, even with Engenas Lekganyane’s guiding proclamation that “a true Church will not look for the people, but the people will look for the Church,”^[168] the ZCC has had a phenomenal record of growth: in 1990 it had about 1 million members. By the 2001 census, this number had grown to 4.9 million.^[169] This is the latest government data available, making it safe to assume that the number is much higher today – at least 10 million, by ZCC’s most recently stated estimates.^[170] ZCC members comprise at least half of all AIC members in South Africa, and some estimates put the number up to 11-12 million, which would make ZCC members half of all evangelicals in the country. Despite the dearth of reliable data, ZCC members, in their silver-star badges, headscarves, caps, and uniforms, are a highly visible constituency in South Africa, particularly in the North. Müller argues that the ZCC exists as a ‘cultural enclave’ – a “world within worlds,” a “borderland world” – which makes it especially popular among poorer South Africans in both urban and rural areas.^[171] The ‘enthusiastic Christianity’ of the ZCC provides meaningful and “concrete answers to African problems”^[172] within the cultural, social, and economic worlds of its congregations. At the same time, the ZCC’s top leadership commands a powerful financial network supported by social security programs, insurance, transportation, and agribusinesses.^[173] Engenas Lekganyane, for example, is said to have made recruiting trips in a Rolls Royce.^[174] The creation of these cultural enclaves by the ZCC also influences its politics, or lack thereof. While AICs, and particularly the ZCC, are leading a socio-religious zeitgeist in South Africa, they are oddly absent from the country’s political scene— a strange state of affairs considering the long entwinement between church and state in South Africa. Yet, as the next section demonstrates, the ZCC’s lack of political participation is not novel or surprising. For all the decades the SACC and its political allies were preaching liberation, there was a “surprising silent majority”^[175] that still remains. The apolitical tradition of this ‘silent majority,’ combined with the ascendance of the ZCC in South Africa, I will argue, accounts for the declining prophetic potential of black churches when it comes to the question of land justice.

“All Things End and Prayer Alone Shall Remain”: The Politics of African Pentecostals and the ZCC

Evangelicals approached the radical-liberationist period of anti-Apartheid politics in diverse ways. The “cultural adaptability of the discourse of the Spirit,” says Thompson, enables multivocal, even inconsistent, responses to the socio-political context.^[176] Some, like Ranger and Balcomb, show how evangelicals in pre-1994 South Africa existed within the ambiguous “interstices between activism and acquiescence.”^[177] While institutions like the SACC were advocating for an explicitly political mission of active resistance through the Christian medium, others, like Pentecostal-type churches, provided their congregants, often the most powerless in society, an “ideological and symbolic”^[178] mode of implicit resistance through their religious practices. Comaroff argues that through its rituals and imaginaries, the ZCC — “the Zionist church par excellence”— articulated a situated form of internal protest against colonial and neocolonial “cultural forms.”^[179] Some scholars consider these forms of protest as symbolic and culture, and therefore inherently political.^[180] As Schoffeleers writes, “what looks like acquiescence to one party may be described by another as a subtle form of resistance.”^[181] Ranger advances one of the most optimistic readings of Evangelicals in Africa, arguing that AICs can make significant contributions to the democratic consolidation process because of their potential to “moralize” neopatrimonial African regimes and address the needs of their communities on the ground.^[182] Because the ZCC offers its congregations significant autonomy, they gain the capacity to address essentially local problems.^[183] Yet, as Gifford shows, the ‘faith gospel’ of African Pentecostals often clashes with the structural experiences of most Africans.^[184] For my purposes, I will borrow from Schoffeleers’ understanding of ‘political acquiescence,’ which he defines as a church’s avoidance of “political activism of a critical nature” (emphasis added).^[185] Taking that perspective, despite the AICs’ “cultural dynamism”^[186] and their potential contributions as civil society actors,^[187] it is difficult to contest the fact that Pentecostal-type churches in South Africa rarely venture into the explicitly political arena. On an issue like land reform, which churches cannot address without wading into the nitty-gritty politics of it, the AICs leave a significant portion of the justitial-prophetic role they could play on the table. Indeed, Gifford quotes one Liberian bishop who, frustrated by the “insignificant role” AICs had been playing in the democratization of Africa, exclaimed: “we don’t know why they won’t join us.”^[188]

Like many AICs, the ZCC espouses no “systematic theology.”^[189] However, two key themes emerge clearly in analyses of its theology and praxis. One, the ZCC both draws on and diverges from the practices of mission Pentecostals. The Holy Spirit is the guiding framework within which the church’s practices are embedded. This “spirit-oriented Christianity” foregrounds the experience of the Holy Spirit through experiences like healing, prophecy, and speaking in tongues.^[190] Müller shows that while the traditional Pentecostal language of being ‘born again’ is absent from the ZCC, ZCC members are baptized into the church^[191] and abide by strict moral codes, including restrictions on alcohol, tobacco, and pork.^[192] This emphasis on a “personal encounter with God through the power of the spirit” and “signs and wonders” represents key continuity with the early years of mission Pentecostals.^[193] Yet, the ZCC, like most AICs in Southern Africa, also diverges from classical Pentecostalism through rituals and forms that many label “unscriptural and ‘heathen.’”^[194] Their clothing, dancing and drums, and prophetic and healing practices can all be considered ‘Pentecostal-type with African characteristics.’ The prophets of the ZCC, most prominent among whom are Engenas Lekganyane and the subsequent Lekganyane family bishops, are very important and typify the experiential and charismatic Christianity of the church. Prophets “hear from God and proclaim his will to people.”^[195] They bring distinctive embodied practices to church services, including jerking, snorting, and so on, and play multiple social roles, including as conduits between congregants and the Spirit,  advisors, and maintainers of social equilibrium.^[196] Linked to this first pattern is the second: ZCC preachers offer strong critiques of ‘traditional’ African rituals in favor of their own healing practices that draw both from their Pentecostal antecedents and its Africanization. The critical importance of healing practices with the ZCC has led some, like Schoffeleers, to label it a “healing church.”^[197] 82% of ZCC members surveyed by Anderson in the early 1990s rejected consulting traditional diviners.^[198] Müller shows how ZCC preachers criticize traditional practices, especially the role of the ngaka (traditional diviner) and muti (traditional medicine). “Who in their right mind,” he quotes from the preacher at a sermon he attended, “would be so gullible as to think that the blood of a slaughtered chicken would be of any beneficial use?”^[199] Instead, prophets espouse the ZCC’s own holistic “material theology” ^[200] that focuses on individual and social healing, health, and well-being.^[201] In this role, “the offices of prophet and diviner coalesce.”^[202] According to Anderson, “many ZCC members saw [healing] as the primary function of a prophet.”^[203] Indeed, the emphasis on healing as a manifestation of the African-Christian experience has been a part of the ZCC canon since the earliest years of Engenas Lekganyane, who forged his religious credentials through his renown as a healer.^[204] ZCC congregations expect these healing practices and ‘prophetic therapy’ to diagnose, to effectively heal, and to help them through troubles of misfortune, witchcraft, family conflicts, and secret sins.^[205] Through the ZCC’s healing role, its members find Christian solutions to pain and suffering.^[206] Occupied with “the micro-world of the suffering individual,”^[207] however, the ZCC and its members remain fairly disengaged from policy activity and activism.

In the South African case, Balcomb distinguishes between five archetypical Evangelical responses to the independence struggle: the conservatives, particularly the Church of England in South Africa, became “havens” for conservative white Evangelicals fleeing the ‘radical liberalism’ of the SACC; the pragmatists, including the Rhema Bible Church, were first apolitical and slowly politicized as the movement gained momentum in the 1980s; proponents of the ‘third way,’ like African Enterprise, attempted to opposed Apartheid but espoused a gradualist, nonviolent form of opposition; the ‘liberationists,’ encapsulated most famously the Apostolic Faith Mission’s Frank Chikane, participated openly in anti-Apartheid politics and tried to ally themselves with the SACC through organizations like the African Independent Church Association (AICA), and finally, some, such as Nicholas Bhengu’s Back to God Movement, “transcended political categories and asserted the alternative values of the kingdom of God” through their belief in “the right to reach our hand to God in the unseen World.”^[208] This last category is the one into which the ZCC roughly fits, though not quite.

During the Apartheid period, the ZCC’s ‘apolitical’ positioning often invited accusations of being a collaborationist institution by anti-Apartheid activists. Schoffeleers, for instance, describes the strange experience of journalist Allister Sparks, who visited the ZCC’s Moria headquarters in 1982. In an all-black church, Sparks saw portraits of Afrikaner heroes and white leaders and a replica of the Voortrekker Monument. In 1960, Minister of Bantu Administration and Development, Daan de wet Nel, visited the ZCC’s Easter celebrations.^[209] According to Sparks, when another ‘minister of Bantu government’ visited the church in 1965, Edward Lekganyane thanked him for bringing “orderly freedom” to black South Africans.^[210] At the 1980 Easter gathering, Bishop Lekganyane called on ZCC members to abide by the government’s homeland policy and other Apartheid laws as domestic and international opposition to the regime was heating up.^[211] The political ambiguity of the ZCC is epitomized most infamously by the church’s 75^th-anniversary celebration on Easter Sunday in 1985. To the great consternation of the ANC and SACC, the ZCC invited President P.W. Botha to address a crowd of over two million black ZCC members in Moria. Bishop Barnabas Lekganyane felicitated Botha for “his efforts to spread peace and love.”^[212] Botha’s speech, punctuated by applause, criticized the “messengers of evil” ^[213] (assumed to be the ANC and its allies) because “we read in Romans 13 that every person is subject to the governing authorities. Rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad conduct.”^[214] Among major SACC leaders like Beyers Naudé and Desmond Tutu, the spectacle of the anniversary celebration elicited shock and disbelief.^[215] The same year, Bishop Lekganyane said sanctions were hurting black South Africans and eroding the “goodwill between blacks and whites.”^[216]

After 1994, the ZCC emphasized its “spiritual war against hatred amongst fellow South Africans.”^[217] In describing their contributions to the struggle against Apartheid, ZCC’s leadership highlighted their work toward moral reconstruction by advocating against addictive substances and violence, their schools, clinics, and contributions to local economies. The work of active resistance, argued the ZCC, could be undertaken by its members outside the church’s purview.^[218] In his testimony before the TRC in November 1999, Emmanuel Motolla from the ZCC Bishop’s Council, summed up the church’s position on political activism as follows: “the church never had any problem with any political organisation…[but] in most cases, this church simply keeps quiet.” When questioned by Commissioner Rev. Dr. K. Mgojo about the ZCC’s political disengagement during Apartheid, Motolla stated: “the Zion Christian Church did not lead people into a mode of resistance against apartheid…but we taught our people, all these people who are members of this church, listen to his Grace’s sermons regularly and they are taught nothing less than rejecting that which is evil and unjust.”^[219] This leads scholars like Thompson to argue that the idea that “once spiritual problems were taken care of, the social problems would take care of themselves” guided AICs.^[220] Since then, things have not changed much.

Once a powerful counter-culture haven “in the heartless world of white political power,”^[221] the spaces for prophetic political engagement have opened up and the needs of ZCC congregants have shifted. Still, Engenas Lekganyane’s injunction that “all things end and prayer alone shall remain”^[222] — that ‘all may change but Jesus never’^[223] — continues to guide the church’s approach to politics even in a transformed external landscape. On the land question, socially powerful churches have the power to both legitimate and delegitimate the market-led system the ANC regime adopted after 1994.^[224] In the ZCC’s case, its majority-poor membership would ideally lay the groundwork for a church highly-engaged with land reform and the questions of socio-economic justice latent within it. After 1994, far from needing counter-cultural enclaves, the new South Africa and its disenfranchised — many concentrated in AIC congregations— need directed and resolute justitial-prophetic guidance in politics. Yet, the material prosperity of the Lekganyane family, preachers’ and prophets’ roles as agents of individual and communal healing, and the church’s history of political disengagement all contribute to the ZCC’s political detachment. Moreover, as a civil society actor, the ZCC’s capacity for transformation at the grassroots is limited and ambiguous.^[225] In fact, the “redistributive ethic…of the Christian articulation”^[226] is largely missing from most of South Africa’s Pentecostal-type churches. The ZCC, in short, carries significant but unfulfilled potential as a liberatory network in the absence of any systemic and critical engagement with the black working-class struggle.^[227] 

Conclusion

In 1994, South Africa embarked on one of the most ambitious political and ethical projects of the era of decolonization. Black churches were key players in the South African movement for independence, assuming prophetic-liberatory roles to push back against the Afrikaans ideology (embodied by, among others, Afrikaner churches) that helped underpin and justify Apartheid. After the 1994 election brought the ANC to power, South Africa adopted a mission of post-conflict transformation, epitomized by the spectacle of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which broadcast the lived experiences of Apartheid into South Africans’ homes (and across the world) into the late 1990s. Today, this reconciliation project stands stalled, and nowhere is this reality more apparent than in the land itself. White South Africans continue to own a majority of the country’s arable territory. The issue of land reconciliation, and the economic grievances it symbolizes, has been the TRC’s major failure and continues to be one of the most salient and divisive issues in the country (and region). South African churches have not been able to play a fruitful role in the land reform debate ever since a short burst of activity in the early 2000s, even though the issue has only become more politically and socially relevant. Why? This paper advances three interrelated explanations. First, the justitial-prophetic capacity of the SACC, once the chief prophet of liberation and reconciliation, has declined. Second, the nature of South African Christianity is undergoing a significant transformation, with Pentecostal-type African-Initiated Churches (AICs) becoming increasingly influential. And third, analyzing the biggest AIC in South Africa —- the Zion Christian Church — I argue that most AICs in South Africa are politically unengaged, which holds critical implications for theological contributions to the land justice debate. Altogether, this paper highlights both the ambiguity of church roles in South Africa and on the continent as well as some of the complex social, political, and economic relationships transforming South Africa’s public Christianities.

About the Author

Ankushi A. Mitra is a senior at Georgetown University’s International Politics-Security Studies Program, where she holds the Junior Centennial Fellowship. She is interested in displacement, subaltern citizen-making, and development in the Middle East and Africa, which she will be pursuing further through an M.Sc. in International Development in 2020-2021. This project was made possible with generous assistance from Georgetown’s John & Pat Figge Fellowship, with constant advice and support from Dr. Lahra Smith at the African Studies Program, Dr. Drew Christiansen, S.J. at the Catholic Studies Program, and the wonderful 2019-2020 Figge fellowship cohort.

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Endnotes

^[1] “F. W. de Klerk – Acceptance and Nobel Lecture,” The Nobel Prize, December 10^th, 1993. Accessed at: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1993/klerk/26129-f-w-de-klerk-nobel-lecture-1993/.

^[2] “Presentation Speech by Francis Sejersted, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,” The Nobel Prize, December 10^th, 1993. Accessed at: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1993/ceremony-speech/.

^[3] “Presentation Speech by Francis Sejersted, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,” The Nobel Prize, December 10^th, 1993. Accessed at: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1993/ceremony-speech/.

^[4] “Nelson Mandela – Acceptance and Nobel Lecture,” The Nobel Prize, December 10^th, 1993. Accessed at: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1993/mandela/26130-nelson-mandela-nobel-lecture-1993/.

^[5] “Presentation Speech by Francis Sejersted, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,” The Nobel Prize, December 10^th, 1993. Accessed at: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1993/ceremony-speech/.

^[6] “Land Audit Report,” Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, Republic of South Africa, November 2017, pp. 7-9.

^[7] Wessel Bentley, “Redefining Christianity’s ‘Prophetic Witness’ in the Post-Apartheid South African Democracy,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 39(1) (2013), pp. 261-262.

^[8] Ian Nell, “In Search of Meaning: Moving from the Prophet’s Voice to Prophecy in Community: A South African Perspective,” Scriptura 102 (2009), pp. 562-578.

^[9] Peter Walshe, “South Africa: Prophetic Christianity and the Liberation Movement,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 29(1) (March 1991), pp. 27-60.

^[10] The last two sections of the paper, which focus on AICs and the Zion Christian Church, also use the terminology of ‘prophets.’ In that context, I am referring not to ‘prophetic voice’ but rather the technical position of ‘prophet,’ prophetic healing, and prophetic preaching within the ZCC (Mashabela, 2017).

^[11] Allan Anderson, Zion and Pentecost: The Spirituality and Experience of Pentecostal and Zionist/Apostolic Churches in South Africa (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 2000), p. 8.

^[12] Allan Anderson, Moya: The Holy Spirit in an African Context  (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 1991), p. 3.

^[13] Allan Anderson, Zion and Pentecost: The Spirituality and Experience of Pentecostal and Zionist/Apostolic Churches in South Africa (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 2000), p. 9.

^[14] John W. de Gruchy and Steve de Gruchy, The Church Struggle in South Africa (Minneapolis, MN.: Fortress Press, 2005), p. 40.

^[15] Patrick Bond, Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa (Pluto Press, 2000);

Deborah James, Gaining Ground? Rights and Property in South African Land Reform (London: Routledge-Cavendish, 2007);

Richard Peet, “Ideology, Discourse, and the Geography of Hegemony: From Socialist to Neoliberal Development in Postapartheid South Africa,” Antipode 34(1) (2002).

^[16] Lionel Cliffe, “Land Reform in South Africa,” Review of African Political Economy 27(84) (2000);

Brent McCusker, William G. Moseley, and Maano Ramutsindela, Land Reform in South Africa: An Uneven Transformation (Lanham, MD.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016);

S. Turner and H. Ibsen, “Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa: A Status Report,” Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies Report (2000);

^[17] Ruth Hall, “A Political Economy of Land Reform in South Africa,” Review of African Political Economy 31(100) (2004);

Edward Lahiff and Ben Cousins, “Smallholder Agriculture and Land Reform in South Africa,” IDS Bulletin 36(2) (2005);

Thembela Kepe and Ruth Hall, “Land Redistribution in South Africa: Towards Decolonisation or Recolonisation?” Politikon 45(1) (2018);

Busani Mpofu, “The Urban Land Question, Land Reform and the Spectre of Extrajudicial Land Occupations in South Africa,” Africa Insight 46(4) (2017);

Noor Nieftagodien, “The Economic Freedom Fighters and the Politics of Memory and Forgetting,” South Atlantic Quarterly 114(2) (2015).

^[18] Gerrit Schutte, “Company and Colonists at the Cape, 1652-1795,” in The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840, edited by Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (Middletown, CT.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), pp. 283-323;

Leonard Guelke, “Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780,” in The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840, edited by Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (Middletown, CT.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), pp. 66-108.

^[19] The Apartheid (separateness) agenda developed through, among others, the 1911 Mines and Works Act, which limited black employment, the 1913 Land Act, which restricted black South Africans to particular enclaves (the ‘native homelands’ or ‘Bantustans’), the 1923 Native Urban Areas Act, which controlled black access to urban land, the 1936 Representation of Natives Act, which created a separate African electorate to be represented by white politicians, the 1949 Mixed Marriages Act and 1950 Immorality Act, which circumscribed African and non-African unions, the 1950 Group Acts, which classified residential areas along Colored, African, and White lines, the 1952 Documents Act, which strengthened the Apartheid surveillance state, the 1953 Separate Amenities Act, and the 1953 Bantu Education Act, which mediated black access to education (Chiwengo, pp. 50-53; Hope and Young, pp. 32-33).

^[20] John W. de Gruchy and Steve de Gruchy, The Church Struggle in South Africa (Minneapolis, MN.: Fortress Press, 2005), p. 1-15;

Marjorie Hope and James Young, The South African Churches in a Revolutionary Situation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981), p. 25-30;

Tamara Rice Lave, “A Nation at Prayer, a Nation in Hate: Apartheid in South Africa,” Stanford Journal of International Law 30(483) (1994), pp. 483-524;

Susan Rennie Ritner, “The Dutch Reformed Church and Apartheid,” Journal of Contemporary History 2(4) (October 1967), p. 17-37.

It is crucial to acknowledge that while the system of racial domination espoused by the Dutch Afrikaner population is wrapped up in very specific political-theological developments and the British tended to be different in their approach to missionary work, the treatment of black South Africans, and notions of sacred destiny, there was no shortage of similar ideas among the British either. Cecil Rhodes, for instance, felt that “only one race approached God’s ideal type, his own Anglo-Saxon race; God’s purpose then was to make the Anglo-Saxon race predominant.” (de Gruchy and de Gruchy, p. 33).

^[21] Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106(8) (June 1993), pp. 1707-1791.

^[22] Tamara Rice Lave, “A Nation at Prayer, a Nation in Hate: Apartheid in South Africa,” Stanford Journal of International Law 30(483) (1994), pp. 483-484.

^[23] John W. de Gruchy and Steve de Gruchy, The Church Struggle in South Africa (Minneapolis, MN.: Fortress Press, 2005), p. 102.

^[24] See, among others, the Rosettenville Conference (1949), ANC Freedom Charter (1955), Cottesloe Declaration (1960), A Message to the People of South Africa (1968), The Apartheid and the Church Report (1972), Programme to Combat Racism (1969), the Hammanskraal Conscientious Objection Resolution (1974), the 1980 WCC Consultation, Testimonies to the Eloff Commission (1982), and the Kairos Document (1985);

Marjorie Hope and James Young, The South African Churches in a Revolutionary Situation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981), pp. 15-45;

Anthony Balcomb, “From Apartheid to the New Dispensation: Evangelicals and the Democratization of South Africa,” in Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa, edited by Terence Ranger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 191-224;

Peter Walshe, “Church versus State in South Africa: The Christian Institute and the Resurgence of African Nationalism,” Journal of Church and State 19(3) (Autumn 1977), pp. 457-479;

Peter Walshe, “The Evolution of Liberation Theology in South Africa,” Journal of Law and Religion 5(2) (1987), pp. 299-311. 

^[25] “A Message to the People of South Africa,” Theological Commission of the South African Council of Churches, 1968.

^[26] “Presentation Speech by Egil Aarvik, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,” The Nobel Prize, 1984. Accessed at: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1984/ceremony-speech/.

^[27] Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (Little Brown, 2008), pp. 87-97. 

^[28] William Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 263-300.

^[29] “Constitution of the Republic of South Africa,” Act 200 of 1993, Republic of South Africa.

^[30] “Constitution of the Republic of South Africa,” Act 200 of 1993, Republic of South Africa.

^[31] Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).

^[32] Justice Richard Goldstone, quoted in “Volume I: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report,” Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, October 29^th, 1998, p. 104.

^[33] “Volume I: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report,” Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, October 29^th, 1998, p. 108.

^[34] Desmond Tutu, “God-Given Dignity and the Quest for Liberation,” Address to the National Conference of the South African Council of Churches, July 1973.

^[35] Agata Fijalkowski, “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions,” in An Introduction to Transitional Justice, edited by Olivera Simić (New York: Routledge, 2017), p. 101;

Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999).

^[36] John W. de Gruchy and Steve de Gruchy, The Church Struggle in South Africa (Minneapolis, MN.: Fortress Press, 2005), p. 224. 

^[37] Kader Asmal, Louise Asmal, and Ronald Suresh Roberts, Reconciliation Through Truth: A Reckoning of Apartheid’s Criminal Governance (South Africa: David Philip Publishers, 1997), p. 49. 

^[38] Agata Fijalkowski, “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions,” in An Introduction to Transitional Justice, edited by Olivera Simić (New York: Routledge, 2017), p. 102.

^[39] “Volume VII: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report,” Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, October 29^th, 1998, p. 1.

^[40] Megan Shore, Religion and Conflict Resolution: Christianity and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Ashgate, 2009).

^[41] Richard Wilson, “Reconciliation and Revenge in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Current Anthropology 41(1) (2000), p. 82; “Facing the Second Day of the TRC Hearings,” Sunday Times Heritage Project. Accessed at: http://sthp.saha.org.za/memorial/articles/facing_the_second_day_of_the_trc_hearings.htm;“Washing Past Victims’ Feet Won’t Redeem this Former Apartheid Leader,” Quartz Africa, October 7^th, 2015. Accessed at: https://qz.com/africa/517401/washing-past-victims-feet-wont-redeem-this-former-apartheid-leader/; Catherine M. Cole, Performing South Africa’s Truth Commission: Stages of Transition (Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press, 2010).

^[42] “Ernest Malgas Tombstone Unveiled in Port Elizabeth,” SABC News. Accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey7XWetG0f0.

^[43] Catherine M. Cole, Performing South Africa’s Truth Commission: Stages of Transition (Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press, 2010), pp. 128-129.

^[44] “Facing the Second Day of the TRC Hearings,” Sunday Times Heritage Project. Accessed at: http://sthp.saha.org.za/memorial/articles/facing_the_second_day_of_the_trc_hearings.htm. 

^[45] Megan Shore, Religion and Conflict Resolution: Christianity and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 88-89.

^[46] Catherine M. Cole, Performing South Africa’s Truth Commission: Stages of Transition (Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press, 2010), p. 129. 

^[47] “What South Africa can Teach the U.S. about Reparations,” Washington Post, June 25^th, 2019; “Special Report: Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation,” The Guardian, June 24^th, 2014.

^[48] Agata Fijalkowski, “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions,” in An Introduction to Transitional Justice, edited by Olivera Simić (New York: Routledge, 2017); Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence (Boston, MA.: Beacon Press, 1998), p. xii.

^[49] Cynthia Ngeweu, quoted in Lyn Graybill, Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Miracle or Model? (Boulder, CO.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), p. 34.

^[50] Piet Meiring, “Truth and Reconciliation: The South African Experience,” The Expository Times, 2002, p. 79. 

^[51] Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999), p. 251.

^[52] Martine Mariotti and Johan Fourie, “The Economics of Apartheid: An Introduction,” Economic History of Developing Regions 29(2) (2014), pp. 113-125.

^[53] “South Africans Rich and Poor: Baseline Household Statistics,” Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town, 1993, p. 47. 

^[54] “South Africans Rich and Poor: Baseline Household Statistics,” Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town, 1993, p. 65.

^[55] “South Africans Rich and Poor: Baseline Household Statistics,” Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town, 1993, p. 81, p. 86.

^[56]“South Africans Rich and Poor: Baseline Household Statistics,” Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town, 1993, p. 220.

^[57] “South Africans Rich and Poor: Baseline Household Statistics,” Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town, 1993, p. 314.

^[58] “South Africans Rich and Poor: Baseline Household Statistics,” Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town, 1993, p. 290.

^[59] “South Africans Rich and Poor: Baseline Household Statistics,” Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town, 1993, p. 293.

^[60] “South Africans Rich and Poor: Baseline Household Statistics,” Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town, 1993, p. 296.

^[61] William Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 313. 

^[62] Megan Shore, Religion and Conflict Resolution: Christianity and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Ashgate, 2009), p. 103.

^[63] Megan Shore, Religion and Conflict Resolution: Christianity and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Ashgate, 2009), p. 103.

^[64] “Volume VI: Report of the Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee,” Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, October 29^th, 1998, p. 94. 

^[65] Megan Shore, Religion and Conflict Resolution: Christianity and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Ashgate, 2009), p. 103.

^[66] “Volume VI: Report of the Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee,” Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, October 29^th, 1998, p. 94. 

^[67] Mahmood Mamdani, “Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC),” Diacritics 32(3/4) (Autumn-Winter 2002), p. 57.

^[68] Mahmood Mamdani, “Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC),” Diacritics 32(3/4) (Autumn-Winter 2002), p. 57.

^[69] “Volume VII: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report,” Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, October 29^th, 1998.

^[70] Parker Shipton, “Land and Culture in Tropical Africa: Soils, Symbols, and the Metaphysics of the Mundane,” Annual Review of Anthropology 23 (1994), p. 347.

^[71] Edward Lahiff, “ ‘Willing Buyer, Willing Seller’: South Africa’s Failed Experiment in Market-Led Agrarian Reform,” Third World Quarterly 28(8) (2007), p. 1578.

^[72] Klaus Deininger and Julian May, “Can There be Growth with Equity? An Initial Assessment of Land Reform in South Africa,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, 2000, p. 5.

^[73] Edward Lahiff, “ ‘Willing Buyer, Willing Seller’: South Africa’s Failed Experiment in Market-Led Agrarian Reform,” Third World Quarterly 28(8) (2007), p. 1578.

^[74] Klaus Deininger and Julian May, “Can There be Growth with Equity? An Initial Assessment of Land Reform in South Africa,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, 2000, p. 5.

^[75] Edward Lahiff, “ ‘Willing Buyer, Willing Seller’: South Africa’s Failed Experiment in Market-Led Agrarian Reform,” Third World Quarterly 28(8) (2007), p. 1578.

^[76] “Population Census 1996 – 10% Sample,” Statistics South Africa, 1996.

^[77] “South Africa’s Constitution of 1996 with Amendments through 2012,” The Constitute Project, pp. 18-20.

^[78] Edward Lahiff, “‘Willing Buyer, Willing Seller’: South Africa’s Failed Experiment in Market-Led Agrarian Reform,” Third World Quarterly 28(8) (2007), p. 1579; Their contribution to the economy, however, was small – in 1994, it was a mere 4% of the GDP and now averages about 2% (“Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing, Value Added (% of GDP Added) – South Africa,” World Bank Data Bank). Land dispossession in the Apartheid era, then, was a form of domination in the explicit service of white strength, rather than any national development per se.

^[79] Edward Lahiff, “ ‘Willing Buyer, Willing Seller’: South Africa’s Failed Experiment in Market-Led Agrarian Reform,” Third World Quarterly 28(8) (2007), p. 1579.

^[80] “White Paper on South African Land Policy,” Department of Land Affairs, Republic of South Africa, April 1997, pp. 102-103.

^[81] Edward Lahiff, “ ‘Willing Buyer, Willing Seller’: South Africa’s Failed Experiment in Market-Led Agrarian Reform,” Third World Quarterly 28(8) (2007), p. 1579.

^[82] Hein Marais, South Africa: Limits to Change: The Political Economy of Transition (Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2001), p. 191.

^[83] Edward Lahiff, “ ‘Willing Buyer, Willing Seller’: South Africa’s Failed Experiment in Market-Led Agrarian Reform,” Third World Quarterly 28(8) (2007), p. 1578.

^[84] “White Paper on South African Land Policy,” Department of Land Affairs, Republic of South Africa, April 1997.

^[85] Klaus Deininger and Julian May, “Can There be Growth with Equity? An Initial Assessment of Land Reform in South Africa,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, 2000.

^[86] Hein Marais, South Africa: Limits to Change: The Political Economy of Transition (Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2001), p. 191.

^[87] “Freedom Charter, Adopted at the Congress of the People at Kliptown, Johannesburg, on June 25 and 26, 1955,” Historical Papers Research Archive, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

^[88] Trevor Manual, quoted in Brent McCusker, William G. Moseley, and Maano Ramutsindela, Land Reform in South Africa: An Uneven Transformation (Lanham, MD.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), p. 90.

^[89] Ruth Hall, “Transforming Rural South Africa? Taking Stock of Land Reform,” in The Land Question in South Africa: The Challenge of Transformation and Redistribution, edited by Lungisile Ntsebeza and Ruth Hall(Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2000), pp. 88-89.

^[90] “White Paper on South African Land Policy,” Department of Land Affairs, Republic of South Africa, April 1997.

^[91] “White Paper on South African Land Policy,” Department of Land Affairs, Republic of South Africa, April 1997, p. 16. 

^[92] Ruth Hall, “Transforming Rural South Africa? Taking Stock of Land Reform,” in The Land Question in South Africa: The Challenge of Transformation and Redistribution, edited by Lungisile Ntsebeza and Ruth Hall(Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2000), p. 88. 

^[93] Ruth Hall, “Transforming Rural South Africa? Taking Stock of Land Reform,” in The Land Question in South Africa: The Challenge of Transformation and Redistribution, edited by Lungisile Ntsebeza and Ruth Hall(Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2000), p. 88. 

^[94] Ruth Hall, “Transforming Rural South Africa? Taking Stock of Land Reform,” in The Land Question in South Africa: The Challenge of Transformation and Redistribution, edited by Lungisile Ntsebeza and Ruth Hall(Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2000), p. 89. 

^[95] “Final Report of the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture for his Excellency the President of South Africa,” Expert Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture, May 4^th, 2019, p. 12.

^[96] “Final Report of the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture for his Excellency the President of South Africa,” Expert Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture, May 4^th, 2019, p. 12.

^[97] “Final Report of the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture for his Excellency the President of South Africa,” Expert Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture, May 4^th, 2019, p. 12.

^[98] “Land Audit Report,” Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, Republic of South Africa, November 2017, pp. 7-9.

^[99] Patrick Bond, Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa (Pluto Press, 2000), p. 55.

^[100] De Villiers, quoted in Jaco S. Dreyer, “Land Reform: A Key Human Rights Issue and a Challenge for Religion in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” in Dreaming the Land: Theologies of Resistance and Hope, edited by Hans-Georg Ziebertz and Friedrich Schweitzer (Brisbane: International Academy of Practical Theology, 2005), p. 40.

^[101] “Battle of the Berets,” The Economist, January 10^th, 2014. Accessed at: https://www.economist.com/baobab/2014/01/10/battle-of-the-berets.

^[102] Ebrahim Fakir, “Fragmentation and Fracture – The Loss of Trust and Confidence in Political Parties,” in SA Elections 2014: Political Opposition – Cohesion, Fracture or Fragmentation? Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa, 2014, p. 5. Accessed at: https://www.eisa.org.za/eu/pdf/electionupdate4.pdf.

^[103] “Economic Freedom Fighters Founding Manifesto: Radical Movement Towards Economic Freedom in Our Lifetime,” EFF Online, July 27^th, 2013. Accessed at: https://effonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Founding-Manifesto.pdf.

^[104] “Economic Freedom Fighters Founding Manifesto: Radical Movement Towards Economic Freedom in Our Lifetime,” EFF Online, July 27^th, 2013. Accessed at: https://effonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Founding-Manifesto.pdf.

^[105] “2014 National and Provincial Elections: National Results,” Electoral Commission of South Africa, 2014. Accessed at: https://www.elections.org.za/content/Elections/Results/2014-National-and-Provincial-Elections–National-results/.

^[106] “What Then About Land Expropriation Without Compensation?” Thabo Mbeki Foundation, 2018, p. 8. Accessed at: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/wp-content/uploads/TMF-NDR.pdf.

^[107] “Section 25 Review Process,” Parliamentary Monitoring Group. Accessed at: https://pmg.org.za/page/Section25reviewprocess?via=homepage-feature-card.

^[108] “South Africa’s Constitution of 1996 with Amendments through 2012,” The Constitute Project, p. 19.

^[109] “ Report of the Joint Constitutional Review Committee on the Possible Review of Section 25 of the Constitution,” Parliamentary Monitoring Group, 15^th November 2018.

^[110] “Dispute after State Authorised Expropriation of Farm,” News24, 19th August, 2018. Accessed at: https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/state-takes-first-farm-20180818.

^[111] “National Assembly – 2019,” Electoral Commission of South Africa, 2019. Accessed at: https://www.elections.org.za/NPEDashboard/app/dashboard.html.

^[112] “Final Report of the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture for his Excellency the President of South Africa,” Expert Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture, May 4^th, 2019, p. vi.

^[113] Mathole Motshekga, “Section 25 Ad Hoc Committee Will Meet Deadlines – Parliament,” Parliamentary Communication Services, October 11^th, 2019. Accessed at: https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/section-25-ad-hoc-committee-will-meet-deadlines–p.

^[114] Brent McCusker, William G. Moseley, and Maano Ramutsindela, Land Reform in South Africa: An Uneven Transformation (Lanham, MD.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), p. 121.

^[115] Desmond Tutu, quoted in Simanga R. Kumalo and Daglous Dziva, “Paying the Price for Democracy: The Contribution of the Church in the Development of Good Governance in South Africa,” in From Our Side: Emerging Perspectives on Development and Ethics, edited by Steve de Gruchy, Nico Koopman, and Sytse Strijbos (Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers, 2008), p. 175.

^[116] Charles Villa-Vicencio, A Theology of Reconstruction: Nation-Building and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 21.

^[117] Simanga R. Kumalo and Daglous Dziva, “Paying the Price for Democracy: The Contribution of the Church in the Development of Good Governance in South Africa,” in From Our Side: Emerging Perspectives on Development and Ethics, edited by Steve de Gruchy, Nico Koopman, and Sytse Strijbos (Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers, 2008), p. 172.

^[118] Simanga R. Kumalo and Daglous Dziva, “Paying the Price for Democracy: The Contribution of the Church in the Development of Good Governance in South Africa,” in From Our Side: Emerging Perspectives on Development and Ethics, edited by Steve de Gruchy, Nico Koopman, and Sytse Strijbos (Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers, 2008), p. 172.

^[119] Vuyani Vellem, “The Symbol of Liberation in South African Public Life: A Black Theological Perspective,” Ph.D. Thesis, 2007, University of Pretoria, p. 366-267.

^[120] Charles Villa-Vicencio, A Theology of Reconstruction: Nation-Building and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 39-41.

^[121] Jaco S. Dreyer, “Land Reform: A Key Human Rights Issue and a Challenge for Religion in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” in Dreaming the Land: Theologies of Resistance and Hope, edited by Hans-Georg Ziebertz and Friedrich Schweitzer (Brisbane: International Academy of Practical Theology, 2005), p. 39. 

^[122] “Report of the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture and Land Affairs on Pace of Land Reform in South Africa Hearings,” Committee on Agriculture and Land Affairs, 2004. Accessed at: http://pmg-assets.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/docs/2004/appendices/041117landreform.htm.

^[123] “Report of the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture and Land Affairs on Pace of Land Reform in South Africa Hearings,” Committee on Agriculture and Land Affairs, 2004. Accessed at: http://pmg-assets.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/docs/2004/appendices/041117landreform.htm.

^[124] Carolyn Bassett, “The South African People’s Budget Campaign as a Challenge to Neoliberal Policy Framework and Methodology,” in Neoliberalism and Globalization of Africa: Contestations on the Embattled Continent (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 221-239.

^[125] “A Mortgaged State: Trends and Patterns, Let Daylight Prevail,” South African Council of Churches, March 17^th, 2016. Accessed at: http://sacc.org.za/news/mortgaged-state-trends-patterns-let-daylight-prevail/.

^[126] Tracy Kuperus, “The Political Role and Democratic Contribution of Churches in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Journal of Church and State 53(2) (Spring 2011), p. 290.

^[127] Tracy Kuperus, “The Political Role and Democratic Contribution of Churches in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Journal of Church and State 53(2) (Spring 2011), p. 290.

^[128] “The Urgent Need to Reclaim Our Country and Hammer Out a Vision Together,” South African Council of Churches, October 20^th, 2017. Accessed at: http://sacc.org.za/news/op-ed-urgent-need-reclaim-country-hammer-vision-together/.

^[129] Peter Storey, “Banning the Flag from our Churches: Learning from the Church-State Struggle in South Africa,” in Between Capital and Cathedral: Essays on Church-State Relationships, edited by Wessel Bentley and Dion A. Forster(Unisa: University of South Africa, 2012), p. 13.

^[130] Kelebogile T. Resane, “‘Ichabod’ – The Glory has Departed: The Metaphor Showing the Church’s Prophetic Failure in South Africa,” Pharos Journal of Theology 97 (2016), p. 3.

^[131] “Anti-Apartheid Fighter Charged with Defrauding Relief Funds,” The New York Times, December 14^th, 1996.

^[132] Simanga R. Kumalo and Daglous Dziva, “Paying the Price for Democracy: The Contribution of the Church in the Development of Good Governance in South Africa,” in From Our Side: Emerging Perspectives on Development and Ethics, edited by Steve de Gruchy, Nico Koopman, and Sytse Strijbos (Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers, 2008), p. 176.

^[133] Peter Storey, “Banning the Flag from our Churches: Learning from the Church-State Struggle in South Africa,” in Between Capital and Cathedral: Essays on Church-State Relationships, edited by Wessel Bentley and Dion A. Forster(Unisa: University of South Africa, 2012), p. 15.

^[134] Tracy Kuperus, “The Political Role and Democratic Contribution of Churches in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Journal of Church and State 53(2) (Spring 2011), p. 291.

^[135] Peter Storey, “Banning the Flag from our Churches: Learning from the Church-State Struggle in South Africa,” in Between Capital and Cathedral: Essays on Church-State Relationships, edited by Wessel Bentley and Dion A. Forster(Unisa: University of South Africa, 2012), p. 15.

^[136] Tracy Kuperus, “Democratization, Religious Actors, and Political Influence: A Comparison of Christian Councils in Ghana and South Africa,” Africa Today 64(3) (Spring 2018), p. 39.

^[137] “SACC Excluded from Interfaith Council,” IOL News, 19^th August, 2009. Accessed at: https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/sacc-excluded-from-interfaith-council-455696.

^[138] Tracy Kuperus, “Democratization, Religious Actors, and Political Influence: A Comparison of Christian Councils in Ghana and South Africa,” Africa Today 64(3) (Spring 2018), p. 39.

^[139] Tracy Kuperus, “Democratization, Religious Actors, and Political Influence: A Comparison of Christian Councils in Ghana and South Africa,” Africa Today 64(3) (Spring 2018), p. 40.

^[140] Mookgo S. Kgatle, “The Prophetic Voice of the South African Council of Churches: A Weak Voice in Post-1994 South Africa,” HTS: Theological Studies 74(1) (2018), pp. 2-3.

^[141] Tracy Kuperus, “Democratization, Religious Actors, and Political Influence: A Comparison of Christian Councils in Ghana and South Africa,” Africa Today 64(3) (Spring 2018), p. 40.

^[142] Tracy Kuperus, “Democratization, Religious Actors, and Political Influence: A Comparison of Christian Councils in Ghana and South Africa,” Africa Today 64(3) (Spring 2018), p. 43.

^[143] Allan Anderson, Zion and Pentecost: The Spirituality and Experience of Pentecostal and Zionist/Apostolic Churches in South Africa (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 2000), p. 8.

^[144] Allan Anderson, Moya: The Holy Spirit in an African Context  (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 1991), pp. 2-5.

^[145] Martin West, Bishops and Prophets in a Black City: African Independent Churches in Soweto, Johannesburg (Cape Town: David Philip, 1975), pp. 190-191. 

^[146] Martin West, Bishops and Prophets in a Black City: African Independent Churches in Soweto, Johannesburg (Cape Town: David Philip, 1975), p. 192.

^[147] Terence Ranger, “Introduction: Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa,” in Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa, edited by Terence Ranger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 6.

^[148] James Mashabela, “Healing in a Cultural Context: The Role of Healing as a Defining Character in the Growth and Popular Faith of the Zion Christian Church,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 43(2) (2017), p. 12.

^[149] Martin West, Bishops and Prophets in a Black City: African Independent Churches in Soweto, Johannesburg (Cape Town: David Philip, 1975), p. 192-194.

^[150] Martin West, Bishops and Prophets in a Black City: African Independent Churches in Soweto, Johannesburg (Cape Town: David Philip, 1975), pp. 87-88.

^[151] Glen Thompson, “‘Transported Away’: The Spirituality and Piety of Charismatic Christianity in South Africa (1976-1994),” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 118 (March 2004), p. 128.

^[152] “Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population,” Pew Research Center, December 19^th, 2011. 

^[153] “Primary Tables South Africa: Census ’96 and 2001 Compared,” Statistics South Africa, 2004, p. 24. Accessed at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/census/census_2001/primary_tables/RSAPrimary.pdf. 

^[154] “The Age Gap in Religion Around the World,” Pew Research Center, June 13^th, 2018.

^[155] “Primary Tables South Africa: Census ’96 and 2001 Compared,” Statistics South Africa, 2004, p. 24. Accessed at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/census/census_2001/primary_tables/RSAPrimary.pdf. 

^[156] “Tolerance and Tension: Islam and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Pew Research Center, April 15^th, 2010, p. 20.

^[157] “General Household Survey,” Statistics South Africa, 2013, p. 12. Accessed at: https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0318/P03182013.pdf. 

^[158] “South African Social Attitudes Survey 2014 (SASAS) Microdata,” Human Sciences Research Council, 2014.

^[159] Allan Anderson, “The Lekganyanes and Prophecy in the Zion Christian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29(3) (August 1999), p. 286.

^[160] “Community Survey in Brief,” Statistics South Africa, 2016, pp. 40-41. Accessed at: https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/03-01-06/03-01-062016.pdf. 

^[161] Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press, 1998), p. 329.

^[162] Allan Anderson, “The Lekganyanes and Prophecy in the Zion Christian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29(3) (August 1999), p. 285.

^[163] Allan Anderson, “The Lekganyanes and Prophecy in the Zion Christian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29(3) (August 1999), pp. 287-289.

^[164] Allan Anderson, “The Lekganyanes and Prophecy in the Zion Christian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29(3) (August 1999), p. 290.

^[165] Martin West, Bishops and Prophets in a Black City: African Independent Churches in Soweto, Johannesburg (Cape Town: David Philip, 1975), p. 50.

^[166] Marjorie Hope and James Young, The South African Churches in a Revolutionary Situation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981), pp. 192 -193. 

^[167] Allan Anderson, Zion and Pentecost: The Spirituality and Experience of Pentecostal and Zionist/Apostolic Churches in South Africa (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 2000), p. 8.

^[168] Barry Morton, “Engenas Lekganyane and the Early ZCC: Oral Texts and Documents,” unpublished. 

^[169] Retief Müller, African Pilgrimage: Ritual Travel in South Africa’s Christianity of Zion (Ashgate, 2011), p. 7.

^[170] “Nothing Unholy about ZCC’s Financial Affairs,” ENCA, February 17^th, 2016. Accessed at: https://www.enca.com/south-africa/zccs-financial-affairs-order-church-council;

Joanne O’Brien and Martin Palmer, The Atlas of Religion (Oakland: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 48-49. 

^[171] Retief Müller, “The Zion Christian Church and Global Christianity: Negotiating a Tightrope between Localisation and Globalisation,” Religion 45(2) (2015), pp. 180-182.

^[172] Allan Anderson, “The Lekganyanes and Prophecy in the Zion Christian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29(3) (August 1999), p. 285.

^[173] “Zion Church’s Finances to Remain Private,” IOL News, 16^th February, 2016. Accessed at: https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/limpopo/zion-churchs-finances-to-remain-private-1985397.

^[174] Matthew Schoffeleers, “The Zion Christian Church and the Apartheid Regime’, Leidschrift (Leiden) 4(3) (1988), p. 49.

^[175] “A Surprising Silent Majority in South Africa,” The New York Times, April 17^th, 1994.

^[176] Glen Thompson, “‘Transported Away’: The Spirituality and Piety of Charismatic Christianity in South Africa (1976-1994),” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 118 (March 2004), p. 129.

^[177] Anthony Balcomb, “From Apartheid to the New Dispensation: Evangelicals and the Democratization of South Africa,” Journal of Religion in Africa 34(1/2) (Feb.-May 2004), p. 7; Terence Ranger, “Introduction: Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa,” in Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa, edited by Terence Ranger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 3-35.

^[178] Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 31-32.  

^[179] Jean Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 238. 

^[180] Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press, 1998), p. 32.

^[181] Matthew Schoffeleers, “Ritual Healing and Political Acquiescence: The Case of the Zionist Churches in Southern Africa,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 61(1) (1991), p. 2.

^[182] Terence Ranger, “Introduction: Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa,” in Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa, edited by Terence Ranger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 3-35.

^[183] Matthew Schoffeleers, “The Zion Christian Church and the Apartheid Regime’, Leidschrift (Leiden) 4(3) (1988), p. 51.

^[184] Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 338-342.

^[185] Matthew Schoffeleers, “Ritual Healing and Political Acquiescence: The Case of the Zionist Churches in Southern Africa,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 61(1) (1991), p. 3.

^[186] Tracy Kuperus, “The Political Role and Democratic Contribution of Churches in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Journal of Church and State 53(2) (Spring 2011), p. 282.

^[187] Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 340-342.

^[188] Terence Ranger, “Conference Summary and Conclusion,” in The Christian Churches and the Democratisation of Africa, edited by Paul Gifford(Brill, 1995), p. 25. 

^[189] Retief Müller, African Pilgrimage: Ritual Travel in South Africa’s Christianity of Zion (Ashgate, 2011), p. 49.

^[190] Allan Anderson, “New African Initiated Pentecostalism and Charismatics in South Africa,” Journal of Religion in Africa 35(1) (2005), p. 68.

^[191] Retief Müller, “The Zion Christian Church and Global Christianity: Negotiating a Tightrope between Localisation and Globalisation,” Religion 45(2) (2015), p. 182.

^[192] Allan Anderson, “The Lekganyanes and Prophecy in the Zion Christian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29(3) (August 1999), p. 308.

^[193] Allan Anderson, “New African Initiated Pentecostalism and Charismatics in South Africa,” Journal of Religion in Africa 35(1) (2005), pp. 69-74.

^[194] Allan Anderson, “New African Initiated Pentecostalism and Charismatics in South Africa,” Journal of Religion in Africa 35(1) (2005), p. 69.

^[195] Allan Anderson, “The Lekganyanes and Prophecy in the Zion Christian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29(3) (August 1999), p. 298.

^[196] Allan Anderson, “The Lekganyanes and Prophecy in the Zion Christian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29(3) (August 1999), pp. 297-301. 

^[197] Matthew Schoffeleers, “Ritual Healing and Political Acquiescence: The Case of the Zionist Churches in Southern Africa,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 61(1) (1991), p. 1.

^[198] Allan Anderson, Bazalwane: African Pentecostals in South Africa (University of South Africa, 1992), p. 77.

^[199] Retief Müller, African Pilgrimage: Ritual Travel in South Africa’s Christianity of Zion (Ashgate, 2011), p. 51. 

^[200] Retief Müller, “The Zion Christian Church and Global Christianity: Negotiating a Tightrope between Localisation and Globalisation,” Religion 45(2) (2015), p. 182.

^[201] Allan Anderson, “The Lekganyanes and Prophecy in the Zion Christian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29(3) (August 1999), p. 298.

^[202] Allan Anderson, “The Lekganyanes and Prophecy in the Zion Christian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29(3) (August 1999), p. 302.

^[203] Allan Anderson, “The Lekganyanes and Prophecy in the Zion Christian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29(3) (August 1999), p. 298.

^[204] Barry Morton, “Engenas Lekganyane and the Early ZCC: Oral Texts and Documents,” unpublished.

^[205] Allan Anderson, “The Lekganyanes and Prophecy in the Zion Christian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29(3) (August 1999), pp. 298-300.

^[206] Allan Anderson, “The Lekganyanes and Prophecy in the Zion Christian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29(3) (August 1999), p. 304.

^[207] Matthew Schoffeleers, “The Zion Christian Church and the Apartheid Regime’, Leidschrift (Leiden) 4(3) (1988), p. 47. 

^[208] Anthony Balcomb, “From Apartheid to the New Dispensation: Evangelicals and the Democratization of South Africa,” Journal of Religion in Africa 34(1/2) (Feb.-May 2004), pp. 9-24.

^[209] Matthew Schoffeleers, “The Zion Christian Church and the Apartheid Regime’, Leidschrift (Leiden) 4(3) (1988), p. 44.

^[210] Matthew Schoffeleers, “The Zion Christian Church and the Apartheid Regime’, Leidschrift (Leiden) 4(3) (1988), p. 53.

^[211] Matthew Schoffeleers, “The Zion Christian Church and the Apartheid Regime’, Leidschrift (Leiden) 4(3) (1988), p. 44.

^[212] Matthew Schoffeleers, “The Zion Christian Church and the Apartheid Regime’, Leidschrift (Leiden) 4(3) (1988), p. 42.

^[213] Matthew Schoffeleers, “The Zion Christian Church and the Apartheid Regime’, Leidschrift (Leiden) 4(3) (1988), pp. 42-43. 

^[214] “Botha in Address to a Black Sect, Warns Against Evil From Abroad,” The New York Times, April 8^th, 1985.

^[215] Matthew Schoffeleers, “The Zion Christian Church and the Apartheid Regime’, Leidschrift (Leiden) 4(3) (1988), pp. 44-45. 

^[216] Matthew Schoffeleers, “The Zion Christian Church and the Apartheid Regime’, Leidschrift (Leiden) 4(3) (1988), p. 54.

^[217] “Zion Christian Church His Grade Bishop B.E. Lekganyane,” Statement to the TRC, TRC Faith Community Hearings, 18^th November, 1997.

^[218] “Zion Christian Church His Grade Bishop B.E. Lekganyane,” Statement to the TRC, TRC Faith Community Hearings, 18^th November, 1997.

^[219] “Zion Christian Church Testimony Before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” TRC Faith Community Hearings, 19^th November, 1997.

^[220] Glen Thompson, “‘Transported Away’: The Spirituality and Piety of Charismatic Christianity in South Africa (1976-1994),” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 118 (March 2004), p. 135.

^[221] Peter Walshe, Prophetic Christianity and the Liberation Movement in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: Cluster Publications, 1995) p. 110. 

^[222] Barry Morton, “Engenas Lekganyane and the Early ZCC: Oral Texts and Documents,” unpublished.  

^[223] Glen Thompson, “‘Transported Away’: The Spirituality and Piety of Charismatic Christianity in South Africa (1976-1994),” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 118 (March 2004), p. 129. 

^[224] Robert Garner, “African Independent Churches and Economic Development in Edendale,” in Engaging Modernity: Methods and Cases for Studying African Independent Churches in South Africa, edited by Dawid Venter (Westport, CT.: Praeger, 2004), pp. 78-82. 

^[225] Robert Garner, “Religion as a Source of Social Change in the New South Africa,” Journal of Religion in Africa 30(3) (2000).

^[226] Robert Garner, “African Independent Churches and Economic Development in Edendale,” in Engaging Modernity: Methods and Cases for Studying African Independent Churches in South Africa, edited by Dawid Venter (Westport, CT.: Praeger, 2004), p. 82.

^[227] Itumeleng J. Mosala, “Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa,” Ph.D. Thesis, February 1987, University of Cape Town, pp. 222-223.

Introduction

In 2003, a terrorist detonated a suicide bomb while on board a bus in Haifa. This event was part of a larger series of attacks against Israelis — attacks that many Israelis believe were financed partially by the Arab Bank. Fifteen years after the bus explosion, the fathers of three boys who were killed on board wrote an opinion piece in The Jerusalem Post urging the Supreme Court of the United States to hold the Arab Bank accountable for its role in the attacks.^[1] Why did these fathers turn to the Supreme Court to prosecute actions that did not occur on American soil? And what gave the Supreme Court the right to consider such a case?

Petitioners filed the case against Arab Bank (Jesner v. Arab Bank) in the United States under a once obscure law called the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). The United States Congress created the ATS in 1789 for aliens to sue for wrongful acts, or torts, in federal courts.^[2] Scholars believe that the Framers wrote the ATS to ensure that the national government dealt with foreign affairs.^[3] For almost two hundred years after its enactment, the ATS lay dormant. In 1980 human rights activists rediscovered the ATS as a way to prosecute actors abroad for human rights abuses. For the last 40 years or so, human rights activists have used the ATS to hold powerful actors accountable. However, the era of using the ATS to prosecute abusers for actions committed abroad may be ending: within the last decade, the Supreme Court has gradually narrowed the scope of the ATS.

The narrowing of the ATS has arrived at a puzzling moment in history. Globally, a norm of accountability is emerging in international law. According to the Spiral Model of Human Rights Change, a decentralized system of accountability is materializing, and states are  expected to hold foreign human rights abusers responsible for their actions. If the world is accepting an accountability norm, why is the United States narrowing a law that creates accountability?

This paper will attempt to explain the major factors that influenced the narrowing of the ATS. The first section will consider the literature on the topic, most of which focuses on the widening of the ATS. In order to fill in the gaps in the research, this paper will focus on the decisions in the two most recent cases that narrowed the ATS: Kiobel and Jesner. By examining newspaper articles and recent scholarship, this paper will consider the actors, arguments, and themes that influenced these cases. I will argue that the decision to narrow the ATS in both Kiobel and Jesner was based on three issues: the rise of a pro-business court, a recent rejection of universality, and increased fears about foreign entanglements. This exploration will provide some insight into how and why the Supreme Court may be pushing back against the international rise of accountability by narrowing the ATS.

Literature Review

Scholars have suggested that the re-awakening and widening of the ATS has its roots in the 1970s human rights movement and the negative reactions to globalization in the 1990s. Not long after its revival, the ATS faced a slew of attacks that led to its eventual narrowing. There is much less research on what caused the narrowing of the ATS, considering that the two cases that limited the ATS (Kiobel and Jesner) occurred in 2013 and 2018. Most of the recent literature on the ATS discusses the scope of the ATS, and the implications these two most recent ATS cases might have on prosecuting human rights violations in the future. Scholars who have studied the ATS claim that it was limited because of conservative economic, legal, and political arguments that were popularized in the late 1990s.

The Rise of the ATS

In 1980, the Second Circuit Court in Filartiga v. Pena-Irala held that the ATS can be used to prosecute violations of customary international law on foreign soil.^[4] This decision effectively revived the ATS as a means to prosecute human rights abuses abroad. Many scholars — such as Stephens, Drimmer, Deitelhoff, and Wolf, — have argued that the late 20^th century human rights movement sparked the rise of the ATS in the 1980s and 1990s. Stephens claimed that the 1970s human rights movement pushed federal courts to recognize the ATS as a way to enforce human rights norms. Enraged by the foreign policies of Kissinger and Nixon, and inspired by the civil rights movement and the end of the Vietnam war, activists in the 1970s began looking for ways to encourage federal courts to enforce the international agreements and emerging international norms regarding human rights that arose after World War II.^[5] These activists  discovered the utility of the ATS.

According to Lee, shifting attitudes about human rights within the executive and legislative branches in the late 1970s and early 1980s helped solidify the Filartiga interpretation of the ATS. In the late 1970s the executive and legislative branches endorsed the application of international law by federal courts, and therefore endorsed Filartiga. International human rights were central to the Carter administration’s foreign policy agenda, and the Carter administration used the judicial branch to reproach allies of the United States for their atrocities.^[6] The political branches of government support of the human rights movement legitimized the modern reading of the ATS.

According to Drimmer, Deitelhoff, and Wolf, activists in the 1970s and 1980s also pushed to reign in the actions of corporations. Activists at that time tried to legally bind companies into following human rights norms while international organizations created “soft-law” regulations through voluntary codes of conduct. Unfortunately, most of these attempts failed. In the 1990s, the rise of globalization caused corporations to gain even more power.^[7] According to Drimmer, this period of globalization sparked the modern ATS movement and in the early 1990s, lawyers began using the ATS to prosecute corporations for their actions abroad.^[8] As more corporations moved to developing nations during the 1990s, more scandals about the human rights abuses of corporations emerged leading to the multiplication of corporate ATS cases.

The Fall of the ATS

According to Stephens, when lawyers began filing ATS cases against powerful defendants, objections against the ATS gained popularity among scholars, corporations, and political actors.^[9] The economic argument was most popular among corporations.^[10] Hufbauer and Mitrokostas were two scholars who held that the ATS would have devastating effects on the United States economy and the economies of developing nations. Hufbauer and Mitrokostas claimed that the threat of an ATS suit might discourage corporations from doing business in developing countries.^[11] They worried that if corporations stopped investing in developing nations then “millions of impoverished people may be denied an opportunity to participate in the global market.”^[12] When countries are denied opportunities to trade, the prospects for that country are diminished.^[13] Not only would developing nations suffer, but the United States would also lose significant investments if ATS suits created obstacles to trading with developing nations. Hufbauer and Mitrokostas estimated that a wave of ATS litigation would depress overall trade between the United States and “target countries” by ten percent.^[14]– an almost $42 billion loss in imports to the United States.

The economic argument has been highly influential in narrowing the ATS. Justice Kennedy, who presented the majority opinion in Jesner, claimed that the ATS could harm the global economy by discouraging American corporations from investing abroad.^[15]

Stephens also cited the legal anti-ATS argument based on Bradley and Goldsmith’s work that gained popularity in the late 1990s.  In 1997, Bradley and Goldsmith argued that the legal modern interpretation of the ATS is incompatible with “American Political Traditions.”^[16] When federal courts use customary international law to decide an ATS case, federal political branches become bound to customary international laws that may not be part of American law. Bradley and Goldsmith claim that the current application of the ATS overlooks that federal political branches, not the judiciary, have the “constitutional authority and the institutional competency” to make foreign policy decisions.^[17] According to Bradley and Goldsmith, the United States needs to reject the modern interpretation that customary international law is part of federal common law, and firmly place the enforcement of international norms in the hands of political branches.^[18] A similar argument appeared in a Washington Post articlein 2003, maintaining that the ATS was creating a democratic accountability problem. The article claimed that the ATS involves courts in foreign policy judgements — an area that courts do not have adequate expertise over.^[19] The piece also made the case that courts use the ATS to send moral messages, a role that the courts should not be playing in other nations. In the majority opinion of Jesner v. Arab Bank, Kennedy affirms this position by stating that “the political branches, not the Judiciary, have the responsibility and institutional capacity to weigh foreign-policy concerns.”^[20]

The third anti-ATS argument that gained popularity claimed that the precedent set by the ATS could encourage cases against American officials and actors.^[21] Post 9/11, Bush was concerned about the potential use of the ATS as a way to challenge anti-terrorism programs and other international initiatives. This argument was further supported in both the Kiobel and Jesner decisions. In Jesner, Justice Kennedy, speaking for the majority, made the argument from Kiobel that if the Court continues to let the ATS be used as a way to prosecute foreign corporations, then other nations might start applying their laws in a similar way and attack American businesses.^[22]

In conclusion, scholars argue that the human rights movement, pro-international law political branches, and negative reactions to globalization in the 1990s led to the revival and the widening of the ATS. In the late 1990s, as more and more ATS cases were brought against powerful actors, arguments against the modern interpretation of the ATS gained popularity. Scholars, political leaders, and corporations claimed that continuing to use the ATS to prosecute corporations could have devastating effects on the economy. The anti-ATS crowd of the late 1990s also argued that the modern interpretation of the ATS was an overstep of judicial power and might encourage other countries to use customary international law to prosecute American corporations.

It is evident from these arguments that there is a disparity between the depth of research on the factors that widened the ATS versus the factors that narrowed it. The literature on the factors that widened the ATS is fairly conclusive, but because the ATS was limited recently, there is not much research on the exact factors that contributed to the limiting of the ATS. Most of the research on the narrowing of the ATS was published before the Kiobel decision in 2013 and focuses on narratives from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Therefore, the literature is highly speculative: few papers explore how much the arguments of the late 1990s and early 2000s actually contributed to the narrowing of the ATS, if at all.

An Analysis of the Narrowing of the ATS

This paper will attempt to fill gaps in the existing research by addressing the political factors that contributed to the recent narrowing of the ATS. To determine which narratives and actors were influential, I will examine the two most recent Supreme Court cases that limited the ATS: Kiobel and Jesner. This paper will look to newspaper articles, recent scholarship, amicus briefs, and the language of the decisions themselves to analyze the political pressures that were most influential during these cases.

Petitioners filed Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Company in the Second Circuit Court in 2010. The petitioners were a group of Nigerians living in the United States who claimed that a number of corporations, including the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, “aided and abetted the Nigerian Government in committing violations of the law of nations in Nigeria.”^[23] The Second Circuit Court dismissed the complaint on the grounds that the law of nations does not apply to corporations.^[24] In 2011, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, but decided to ignore the corporation question and instead considered if ATS cases should be able to recognize actions committed outside of the United States.^[25] In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that the ATS cannot be applied extraterritorially. Because of the decision in Kiobel, a case must now touch the United States with “sufficient force” to be considered under the ATS. ^[26]

In Jesner v. Arab Bank, petitioners asserted that the Arab Bank, a Jordanian financial institution with a branch in New York, helped facilitate and fund terrorist attacks committed abroad.^[27] Between 2004 and 2010, plaintiffs filed five ATS lawsuits against the Arab Bank in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.^[28] These cases were all dismissed and subsequently appealed. In 2017, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case with the intention of re-examining the original Kiobel question: does the law of nations apply to corporations?^[29] In 2018, the Supreme Court concluded that foreign corporations cannot be sued under the ATS.^[30] What could have influenced these decisions?

The Rise of a Pro-Business Court

Perhaps the most tangible factor that influenced the narrowing of the ATS has been the shifting makeup of the Supreme Court. Scholars have argued that the appointment of two conservative judges (Justice Roberts in 2005 and Justice Alito in 2006) and the departure of Justice O’Connor shifted the Court politically to the right.^[31] In 2009, the decisions of the Roberts Court were conservative 65 percent of the time, the highest rate of conservative decisions since 1953.^[32] This is especially shocking when compared to the decisions made under the preceding Rehnquist Court, which issued liberal decisions more than 70 percent of the time.^[33]

Not only is the Roberts Court more conservative, but the voices that the Court is listening to are also ideologically on the right. In 2013 (the same year as Kiobel), a study that looked at the political leanings of amicus briefs concluded that, between the years 2009 and 2012, the majority of amicus briefs were conservative.^[34] Roberts’ formalist interpretation of the role each branch should play in foreign relations is one of the conservative features of the Roberts Court. Justice Roberts believes that it is the job of Congress and the president to develop policy, and is wary of enabling the Supreme Court to interpret United States law in a way that could have foreign policy implications.^[35] This formalist position is the same position that Bradley and Goldsmith held in their influential 1997 article (previously cited) that argued against the ATS.

The Roberts Court is not merely more conservative than the Courts that came before it, it is also more pro-business. The decisions the Roberts Court has made regarding businesses and corporations are what make this Court “truly distinctive.”^[36] A study published in the Minnesota Law Review in 2013 (again, the same year as Kiobel) looked at all of the Supreme Court’s decisions related to businesses from 1946 to 2011, and concluded that the Roberts Court is the most business friendly Court since World War II.^[37] The study also found that five of the most business friendly justices since 1946 have served on the Roberts Court.^[38] Arthur R. Miller, a law professor at New York University, told The New York Times that, thanks to the Roberts Court, businesses are less afraid than ever of being held legally accountable for their actions.^[39]

The reason for the pro-business shift has been contested, but one possible explanation is that the Roberts Court was merely reflecting the pro-business leanings of the Bush administration in its early years. Epstein, Landes, and Posner claim that courts often agree with the opinions of the Solicitor General, and the Solicitor General at the start of the Roberts Court was in favor of the Bush administration’s pro-business policies.^[40] However, this argument falls flat in light of the Solicitor General’s opinion during Kiobel. The Court ruled on Kiobel during Barack Obama’s presidency, and the Solicitor General at this time originally supported Kiobel’s claim.^[41] Even though the Obama administration and Solicitor General later reversed their opinion, it does not seem like the Court was influenced by the Solicitor General’s initial support of Kiobel. A more plausible explanation may be that the Bush administration appointed Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, and Bush likely chose justices who agreed with his business policies.

The pro-business leanings of the Court are evident in both the language and the rulings of the Kiobel and Jesner cases. For example, in the majority opinion of Jesner, Justice Kennedy expresses concern that allowing suits against corporations under the ATS might discourage American corporations from investing abroad.^[42] By narrowing the ATS, these cases solidified Professor Miller’s claim: because of the pro-business rulings of the court, businesses are less afraid than ever of being held accountable.

A Rejection of Universality

In Kiobel, the justices declared that in order for an ATS case to be legitimate, the case must touch and concern the United States with “sufficient force.”^[43] In other words, the mere presence of a corporation on United States soil does not suffice; the actions committed by the corporation must strongly concern the United States. The Kiobel decision was based on a rejection of extraterritoriality, an argument that was not introduced until oral arguments. Initially, the central question of the case focused on whether corporations can be held accountable under the ATS. The introduction of the extraterritoriality argument shocked the legal academy.^[44]

Scholars have argued that the Court’s rejection of extraterritoriality in Kiobel was really a rejection of universality and the idea that nations can use the principle of universal jurisdiction to prosecute human rights abuses in foreign nations. The plaintiffs in Kiobel argued that universal jurisdiction can be assumed for ATS causes of action, but recent debates have demonstrated that international acceptance of universal jurisdiction may be reversing.^[45] Near the end of the 20^th century, universal jurisdiction was legitimized as a way to fight against the practice of impunity, and by the end of the 1990s, many nations had “enthusiastically embraced” the principle of universal jurisdiction.^[46] However, the same countries that once embraced universal jurisdiction now seem to be rejecting it. In 2014, Spain — once the poster child of universal jurisdiction — passed a measure that essentially eliminated its ability to hear universal jurisdiction cases.^[47] In 2011, the United Nations started an inquiry into “the scope and application of the principle of universal jurisdiction”^[48] and concluded that member states expressed differing opinions on the scope of universal jurisdiction. A year later, General Assembly delegates from Africa and Spain criticized universal jurisdiction and claimed that there was no general understanding of the doctrine.^[49] In light of these developments, the Kiobel decision seems like a part of a broader international dismissal of universal jurisdiction.^[50]

In the United States, the rejection of universality can be partly attributed to a backlash in the late 1990s against universal jurisdiction. Scholars credit the previously mentioned 1997 Bradley and Goldsmith article with inspiring a backlash against the idea of universality.^[51] Bradley and Goldsmith encouraged the United States to reject the modern interpretation that customary international law can be used in the federal courts of the United States. After the Bradley and Goldsmith article, other influential voices challenged the rise of universality in the early 2000s. For example, in 2001, Henry Kissinger published an article that claimed that universal jurisdiction set a dangerous precedent in international law.^[52] Kissinger claimed that universal jurisdiction could place justice in the hands of tyrannical judges and worried that universal jurisdiction could become a political tool to pursue political enemies. The argument could be made that the ATS is exactly the political tool that Kissinger feared: human rights activists have used the ATS in order to pursue political enemies (corporations).

The retreat from universality can also be examined within the context of a shifting world order. Over the last few decades, the global role of the United States has waned. Rising powers such as China and Russia have challenged a United States centric global order. With the rise of powerful sovereign states, the United States has to be increasingly aware of stepping on the toes of unpredictable foreign actors.^[53] In the face of this less stable world order, the United States has lost its desire and ability to champion human rights abroad.^[54] The decision in Kiobel reflects the justices’ awareness of the “perception of changes in America’s role, power, and authority in the world,”^[55] and can be interpreted as part of a larger detraction from policies that intrude on other countries’ sovereignty.

The Fear of Foreign Entanglements

A final argument that helped narrow the ATS during Kiobel and Jesner was the concern that the ATS was causing foreign entanglements and forcing the judiciary to make decisions about international relations. This was also an argument present in the late 1990s. Bradley and Goldsmith claimed that the ATS forced the Supreme Court to make foreign policy decisions, a role that the federal political branches have the constitutional authority to play.^[56] Former president George W. Bush also pursued this argument, and claimed that the executive branch has the right to define the substance of international law and opposed judiciary involvement in foreign affairs.^[57]

In the years leading up to and surrounding Kiobel and Jesner, concerns that the ATS could lead the judiciary to create political entanglements abroad intensified. Between 2002 and 2012, an ATS suit was filed against corporations involved with the South African apartheid regime.^[58] This suit sparked anti-ATS sentiment in South Africa, and in 2004 the South African government filed a statement of interest urging the dismissal of the case. South Africa argued that the case interfered with its own post-apartheid reconstruction process and worried that the case could curb economic investments.^[59] The reaction of the South African government was clearly an influence on the Court in the years leading up to Jesner. In 2018, Justice Stephen Breyer published an op-ed in The Atlantic that touched on the issue. He focused on the difficulty of considering ATS cases when the target foreign nations place do not approve of the suit. Justice Breyer used the South African case as an example and asked that “when interpreting the Alien Tort Statute, to what extent should American courts follow the views of South Africa?”^[60]At the time, no one could answer.    Fears about foreign entanglements were fully realized during Jesner, when the case began to create diplomatic tensions with the Kingdom of Jordan. In an amicus brief, the United States argued that the Jesner case had “caused significant diplomatic tension” with Jordan.^[61] The United States brief went on to claim that Jordan is a key partner in the fight against terrorism, “especially in the global campaign to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.”^[62] The Kingdom of Jordan (in an amicus brief) also emphasized concern over the diplomatic tensions that could arise from allowing Jesner to proceed. “By exposing Arab Bank to massive liability, this suit thus threatens to destabilize Jordan’s economy and undermine its cooperation with the United States.”^[63] Jordan also claimed that the litigation was a “grave affront” to its sovereignty.^[64]

Jordan’s sharp reaction was proven to be highly influential. During oral arguments, Justice Roberts expressed concern about the diplomatic effects that would be created by continuing to allow these kinds of ATS cases: “I’m wondering if extending it to corporate liability is, in fact, going to have the. . . problematic result of increasing our entanglements, as it obviously has here with respect to the government of Jordan.”^[65] Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy focused on the diplomatic tensions that had already arisen because of the case and repeatedly quoted the United States’ and the Kingdom of Jordan’s amicus briefs. Ultimately, Justice Kennedy concluded that the courts are not suited to deal with the diplomatic issues caused by the prosecution of foreign corporations.^[66] Kennedy invoked the separation of powers argument that was first popularized in the late 1990s to rule that “the political branches, not the Judiciary, have the responsibility and institutional capacity to weigh foreign-policy concerns.”^[67]

The ATS within a Global Context

The narrowing of the Alien Tort Statute has arrived at a puzzling moment. According to the Spiral Model of Human Rights Change, a decentralized system of criminal accountability has emerged since the early 2000s. This was followed by a new norm claiming that it is the responsibility of the international community to intervene if rulers are unwilling or unable to protect their citizens from human rights violations.^[68] Risse and Ropp claim that this norm has extended to the business community, and that there is an emerging international trend of corporate social responsibility.^[69] The Spiral Model considers how human rights norms are internalized within states, and identifies different types of socialization processes that work together to pressure non-compliant states to accept human rights norms. A state’s transition from a commitment to compliance with human rights norms involves many pressures “from below” and “from above.”^[70]

Applying the Spiral Model to the United States has proven challenging in the past. In the early 2000s, during the Bush administration, the United States experienced backsliding in its acceptance of human rights norms. Before 9/11, the United States had made commitments not to torture, a commitment that had been ratified and implemented in “strong domestic statutes.”^[72] After 9/11, the United States backed off on these promises and the Bush administration argued that its commitments could and should be reversed in the face of security threats.

The recent narrowing of the ATS may be another example of the United States backing off  on human rights commitments. From the 1970s until the late 1990s, the ATS was accepted as a way to prosecute human rights abusers. Following foreign pressure and diplomatic concerns, the United States reversed its course. The Kiobel and Jesner decisions suggest that, in the words of the Spiral Model, the United States is not yet complying with emerging norms of international accountability.

Conclusion

From 1980 until the late 1990s, the ATS was celebrated by human rights activists, lawyers, and scholars as a way to prosecute human rights abuses abroad. However, since the late 1990s, there have been robust efforts to curb the modern use of the ATS, and two recent ATS cases, Kiobel in 2013 and Jesner in 2018, have succeeded in reducing the scope of the ATS. Scholars generally agree on the factors that led to the widening of the ATS in the early 1980s, but there is little research on what caused the recent narrowing of the ATS. As such, this paper has attempted to fill in the holes in the research by examining the political factors that may have influenced the narrowing of the ATS during Kiobel and Jesner.

By examining newspaper articles that were published during Kiobel and Jesner, statements by the actors involved, and recent scholarship, I conclude that three of the factors that helped narrow the ATS were the rise of a pro-business Supreme Court, a rejection of universality, and the fear of foreign entanglements. The findings in this paper contribute to the existing research in three ways. First, this paper examines how certain anti-ATS arguments from the 1990s ultimately influenced the narrowing of the statute during Kiobel and Jesner. Second, this paper contributes to the slim amount of research on the political factors that existed during Kiobel and Jesner. Third, this paper analyses Kiobel and Jesner through the Spiral Model of Human Rights Change to posit that the Supreme Court of the United States has not accepted changing global norms of accountability.

If, as this paper suggests, the widening and narrowing of the ATS means that the Supreme Court has not moved from the commitment phase to the compliance phase of protecting human rights, it is likely that activists will now have to look beyond the ATS for ways to enforce this new norm of responsibility.

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Risse, Thomas and Stephen C. Ropp, “Introduction and overview” Chapter. In The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance, 3-25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Sacharoff, Ariadne K. “Multinationals in Host Countries: Can They Be Held Liable under the Alien Tort Claims Act for Human Rights Violations.” Brooklyn Journal of International Law 23, no. 3 (1998): 927-964, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/bjil 23&i=935

Sikkink, Kathryn. “The United States and torture: does the spiral model work?” Chapter. In The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance, 145-163. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Sixty-Fifth Session: The Scope and Application of the Principle of Universal Jurisdiction (Agenda Item 86), GEN. ASSEMBLY UNITED NATIONS, http://www.un.org/en/ga/sixth/65/ ScopeAppUniJuri.shtml 

Stephens, Beth. “The Curious History of the Alien Tort Statute.” Notre Dame Law Review 89, no. 4 (March 2014): 1467-1544 https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol89/iss4/1/

U.N. GAOR, 66th Sess., 12th mtg. at 2, U.N. Doc. A/C.6/66/SR.12 (Oct. 12, 2011).

Zur, Yossi, Yossi Mendellevich, and Ron Kehrmann. “ “Arab Bank and terrorism: Corporate accountability gone awry.” The Jerusalem Post, October 13, 2017, https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Arab-bank-and-terrorism-Corporate-accountability-gone-awry

Endnotes

^[1] Yossi Zur, Yossi Mendellevich, and Ron Kehrmann, “Arab Bank and terrorism: Corporate accountability gone awry.” The Jerusalem Post, October 13, 2017, https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Arab-bank-and-terrorism-Corporate-accountability-gone-awry-507296

^[2] Thomas H. Lee, “The Safe-Conduct Theory of the Alien Tort Statute” Columbia Law Review 106, no. 4 (May 2006): 900, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4099470

^[3] Beth Stephens, “The Curious History of the Alien Tort Statute,” Notre Dame Law Review 89, no. 4 (March 2014): 1468, https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol89/iss4/1/

^[4] Ariadne K. Sacharoff, “Multinationals in Host Countries: Can They Be Held Liable under the Alien Tort Claims Act for Human Rights Violations,” Brooklyn Journal of International Law 23, no. 3 (1998): 939, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/bjil23&i=935

^[5] Beth Stephens, “The Curious History of the Alien Tort Statute,” Notre Dame Law Review 89, no. 4 (March 2014): 1478, https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol89/iss4/1/

^[6] Thomas H. Lee, “The Three Lives of the Alien Tort Statute: The Evolving Role of the Judiciary in U.S. Foreign Relations,” Notre Dame Law Review 89, no. 4 (March 2014): 1647, https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1553&context=faculty_scholarship

^[7] Deitelhoff, Nicole, and Klaus Dieter Wolf. “Business and Human Rights.” Chapter. In The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 222.

^[8] Jonathan Drimmer, “Resurrection Ecology and the Evolution of the Corporate Alien Tort Movement,” Georgetown Journal of International Law 43, no. 4 (2012): 991-992.

^[9] Beth Stephens, “The Curious History of the Alien Tort Statute,” Notre Dame Law Review 89, no. 4 (March 2014): 1511-1512, https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol89/iss4/1/

^[10] Beth Stephens, “The Curious History of the Alien Tort Statute,” Notre Dame Law Review 89, no. 4 (March 2014): 1513, https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol89/iss4/1/

^[11] Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Nicholas K. Mitrokostas, “International Implications of the Alien Tort Statute,” St. Thomas Law Review 16, no. 4 (Summer 2004): 607-608, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/stlr16&i=621

^[12] Ibid, 609.

^[13] Ibid, 620.

^[14] Ibid, 618.

^[15] Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC, No. 16-499, 584 U.S. (2018) at 24.

^[16] Curtis A. Bradley and Jack L. Goldsmith, “Customary International Law as Federal Common Law: A Critique of the Modern Position,” Harvard Law Review 110, no. 4 (February 1997): 858.

^[17] Ibid.

^[18] Ibid, 871.

^[19] “Policing Human Rights,” The Washington Post, August 14, 2003, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/08/14/policing-human-rights/542a31d9-4d7c-4462-87e7-cfbd01c38b0e/

^[20] Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC, No. 16-499, 584 U.S. (2018) at 25.

^[21] Beth Stephens, “The Curious History of the Alien Tort Statute,” Notre Dame Law Review 89, no. 4 (March 2014): 1511-1512, https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol89/iss4/1/

^[22] Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC, No. 16-499, 584 U.S. (2018) at 24.

^[23] Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 569 U.S. 108 (2013) at 1.

^[24] Ibid, 3.

^[25] Ibid, 3.

^[26] Ibid, 14.

^[27] Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC, No. 16-499, 584 U.S. (2018) at 1.

^[28] Ibid, 3.

^[29] Ibid, 2.

^[30] Ibid, 1.

^[31] Robert Citron, “Seven Ways of Looking at Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum and the Supreme Court Under Chief Justice John Roberts,” Verdict, July 3, 2013, https://verdict.justia.com/2013/07/03/seven-ways-of-looking-at-kiobel

^[32] Adam Liptak, “Court Under Roberts Is Most Conservative in Decades,” The New York Times, July 24, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/us/25roberts.html?pagewanted=all&module=inline

^[33] Ibid.

^[34] Adam Chandler, “Cert.-stage amicus “all stars”: Where are they now?” SCOTUSblog, April 4, 2013, https://www.scotusblog.com/2013/04/cert-stage-amicus-all-stars-where-are-they-now/

^[35]  Robert Citron, “Seven Ways of Looking at Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum and the Supreme Court Under Chief Justice John Roberts,” Verdict, July 3, 2013, https://verdict.justia.com/2013/07/03/seven-ways-of-looking-at-kiobel

^[36] Adam Liptak, “Corporations Find a Friend in the Supreme Court,” The New York Times, May 4, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/business/pro-business-decisions-are-defining-this-supreme-court.html

^[37] Lee Epstein, William M. Landes, and Richard A. Posner, “How Business Fares in the Supreme Court,” Minnesota Law Review 97 (April 2013): 1431-1472, https://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/EpsteinLanderPosner_MLR.pdf

^[38] Ibid, 1471.

^[39]  Adam Liptak, “Corporations Find a Friend in the Supreme Court,” The New York Times, May 4, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/business/pro-business-decisions-are-defining-this-supreme-court.html

^[40] Lee Epstein, William M. Landes, and Richard A. Posner, “How Business Fares in the Supreme Court,” Minnesota Law Review 97 (April 2013): 1432, https://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/EpsteinLanderPosner_MLR.pdf

^[41] Emily Bazelon, “Torture Inc,” Slate, October 1, 2012, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/10/the-supreme-court-considers-whether-the-united-states-can-be-the-court-of-last-resort-for-aliens-who-have-suffered-human-rights-abuses-abroad.html

^[42] Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC, No. 16-499, 584 U.S. (2018) at 24.

^[43] Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 569 U.S. 108 (2013) at 14.

^[44] Eugene Kontorovich, “Kiobel Surprise: Unexpected by Scholars but Consistent With International Trends,” Notre Dame Law Review 89, no. 4 (March 2014): 1672, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2353226

^[45] Ibid, 1685.

^[46] Ibid, 1682.

^[47] Eugene Kontorovich, “Kiobel redux: Universal jurisdiction gets ever less universal,” The Washington Post, February 13, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/02/13/kiobel-redux-universal-jurisdiction-gets-ever-less-universal/

^[48] U.N. GAOR, 66th Sess., 12th mtg. at 2, U.N. Doc. A/C.6/66/SR.12 (Oct. 12, 2011).

^[49] Sixty-Fifth Session: The Scope and Application of the Principle of Universal Jurisdiction (Agenda Item 86), GEN. ASSEMBLY UNITED NATIONS, http://www.un.org/en/ga/sixth/65/ ScopeAppUniJuri.shtml

^[50]  Eugene Kontorovich, “Kiobel Surprise: Unexpected by Scholars but Consistent With International Trends,” Notre Dame Law Review 89, no. 4 (March 2014): 1682, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2353226

^[51]  Ibid, 1680.

^[52] Henry A. Kissinger, “The Pitfalls of Universal Jurisdiction,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2001, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2001-07-01/pitfalls-universal-jurisdiction

^[53] Kenneth Anderson, “Symposium: After “universality” – Emphasizing territory and nationality in a world of increasingly competitive sovereign powers,” SCOTUSblog, July 25, 2017, https://www.scotusblog.com/2017/07/symposium-universality-emphasizing-territory-nationality-world-increasingly-competitive-sovereign-powers/

^[54] Thomas H. Lee, “The Three Lives of the Alien Tort Statute: The Evolving Role of the Judiciary in U.S. Foreign Relations,” Notre Dame Law Review 89, no. 4 (March 2014): 1648, https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1553&context=faculty_scholarship

^[55] Kenneth Anderson, “Symposium: After “universality” – Emphasizing territory and nationality in a world of increasingly competitive sovereign powers,” SCOTUSblog, July 25, 2017, https://www.scotusblog.com/2017/07/symposium-universality-emphasizing-territory-nationality-world-increasingly-competitive-sovereign-powers/

^[56] Curtis A. Bradley and Jack L. Goldsmith, “Customary International Law as Federal Common Law: A Critique of the Modern Position,” Harvard Law Review 110, no. 4 (February 1997): 858.

^[57] Beth Stephens, “The Curious History of the Alien Tort Statute,” Notre Dame Law Review 89, no. 4 (March 2014): 1501-1502, https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol89/iss4/1/

^[58] “Apartheid reparations lawsuits (re So. Africa),” Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/apartheid-reparations-lawsuits-re-so-africa

^[59] John Bellinger, “Enforcing Human Rights in U.S. Courts and Abroad: The Alien Tort Statute and Other Approaches,” The 2008 Jonathan I. Charney Lecture in International Law, Vanderbilt Law School, Nashville, TN, April 11, 2008

^[60] Stephen Breyer, “America’s Courts Can’t Ignore the World,” The Atlantic, October 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/stephen-breyer-supreme-court-world/568360/

^[61] Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 30.

^[62] Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 31.

^[63] Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as Amicus Curiae 3.

^[64] Ibid.

^[65] Transcript of Oral Argument at 7, Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC, No. 16-499, 584 U.S. (2018).

^[66] Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC, No. 16-499, 584 U.S. (2018) at 26, 27.

^[67] Ibid, 25.

^[68] Thomas Risse and Stephen C. Ropp, “Introduction and overview” Chapter. In The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 3.

^[69] Ibid, 4.

^[70] Ibid, 10.

^[71] Thomas Risse and Stephen C. Ropp, “Introduction and overview” Chapter. In The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 8.

^[72] Kathryn Sikkink, “The United States and torture: does the spiral model work?” Chapter. In The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 162.

In October 1962, the Soviet Union began to install long-range, nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba – an unprecedented expansion of Soviet reach.[1] President Kennedy, seeking a firm yet measured response, decided shortly thereafter to impose a naval blockade on the region, demanding a swift withdrawal of Soviet forces.[2] With neither country willing to capitulate to the other, tensions mounted, pushing both parties to the brink of internecine nuclear warfare, an inadmissible outcome facilitating a consequent joint de-escalation effort.[3] This international game of chicken is formalized in game theory as “brinkmanship:” a strategy whereby two opposing parties continuously heighten the stakes of conflict in order to gain the upper hand while pre-empting potentially calamitous outcomes – or as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles explained in 1956, “the ability to get to the verge without getting into the war.”[4],[5] Around half a century after the Missile Scare of 1962, the Trump Administration is employing an analogous tactic of brinkmanship to the war against climate change, establishing a Presidential Committee on Climate Security to “keep challenging the Pentagon . . . until it gets an answer it likes,” withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, and otherwise gutting Obama-era climate policies in an obstinate game of climatic gambling – delaying concrete action until the need for de-escalation (or in this case, decarbonization) can simply no longer be ignored.[6] However, this approach is fundamentally flawed.

Though environmental crises have often proven effective in bringing to light the adverse impacts of – and catalyzing subsequent action on – anthropogenic climate change, such crises were typically of a highly visible nature: the Santa Barbara oil-spill of 1969 led to the first Earth-Day protests, and the pesticide epidemic of the 1960s contributed to the establishment of the EPA.[7],[8]  In contrast, climate change is a somewhat less obvious phenomenon than oil in oceans or pesticides in produce, and it is often difficult for a mainstream audience to internalize the implications of a warming climate as spelled out in academic publications employing complex scientific techniques. Moreover, the climate changes in a non-linear fashion – e.g. warming global conditions facilitate permafrost thawing, which may contribute to an abrupt, widespread release of CO2 into the atmosphere – meaning that environmental harm can increase at a sudden and exponential rate after certain thresholds are exceeded.[9] In other words, these elements of non-linearity and (in)visibility obscure the true magnitude of climate crises and problematize the application of brinkmanship tactics to climate policy, as it is difficult to “get to the verge” if the cliff cannot be seen and objects are, in reality, much closer than they appear.

Furthermore, climate crises are different than missile crises as the latter can be resolved with few residual ramifications: missiles can be dismantled, blockades can be dismissed, and diplomacy can be restored. However, climate crises strain the environment in adverse and enduring ways. For instance, the chlorofluorocarbon crisis of the 1970s resulted in a nearly irreversible void in the ozone layer,^[10] and the recent increase in the incidence of weather extremes have resulted in the destruction of millions of habitats, eliminated carbon sinks, and contributed to consistently elevated levels of greenhouse gas emissions.^[11] As Naomi Oreskes summarizes in Merchants of Doubt, “Climate change is happening. It’s under way, and it’s not reversible.”[12] This element of permanence – of lasting effects – renders climate change a difficult issue to push to the brink, as it may not be feasible to walk back from the edge.

To tackle climate change with the frame of brinkmanship is to recklessly assume an enormous amount of risk: as Michael Klare writes in The Nation, rising global temperatures are “expected to diminish crop yields . . . adding to the desperation of farmers and very likely resulting in widespread ethnic strife and population displacement” and “as food and water supplies dwindle and governments come under ever-increasing pressure to meet the vital needs of their populations, disputes over critical resources are likely to become more heated and violent.”[13] Developments of this nature – Alfred McCoy predicts in “What Does it Take to Destroy a World Order” – are poised to destabilize communities on a national scale, which could further cause “the international cooperation that lay at the heart of Washington’s world order for the past 90 years [to] simply wither.”[14] However, the assumption of these risks is wholly unnecessary and avoidable. At a recent global security conference in Munich, top European and United Nations officials expressed concern over climate change’s role as a “threat multiplier” that could exacerbate geopolitical conflicts abroad – one of many indications that there exists tangible support for proactive, rather than reactive, coordinated global climate action.[15] Moreover, the 26 corporations comprising the U.S. Climate Action Partnership’s 2007-2010 lobbying effort for a federal cap and trade system, and the 58 senior military leaders citing climate change as a significant threat to national security in a recent open letter, suggests similar sentiments of support amongst both the public and private sectors.[16]

Still, mainstream politics eschews the realities of climate change, kicking the can down the road and in some instances, dismissing outright the prevailing scientific consensus of a warming climate. However, pushing the Earth to the brink of its planetary boundaries – holding out for absolute consensus (a virtual impossibility in science) or the manifestation of regular, worsening environmental crises – is negligence on an unfathomable scale and a dangerous game of brinkmanship that could well backfire.

Bibliography

Gilbert, Emily. “The militarization of climate change.” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 11.1 (2012): 1-14.

Keller, Jared. “The White House Will Keep Challenging the Pentagon on the Threat of Climate Change Until It Gets an Answer It Likes,” Task & Purpose, February 20, 2019. https://taskandpurpose.com/trump-climate-change-national-security-panel.

Klare, Michael. “How Rising Temperatures Increase the Likelihood of Nuclear War,” The Nation (January 13, 2020), https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nuclear-defense-climate-change/.

Kozloff, Max. “American painting during the Cold War.” Artforum 11.9 (1973): 43-54.

Lewis, Jack. “The birth of EPA.” EPA J. 11 (1985): 6.

Lobel, Nathan. “Unraveling the U.S. Climate Action Plan: Explaining Corporate Participation in a Pro-Regulatory Advocacy Coalition,” Senior Essay, Yale Department of Political Science, December 9, 2016.

McCoy, Alfred. “What Does It Take to Destroy a World Order,” Salon (March 3, 2019), https://www.salon.com/2019/03/03/what-does-it-take-to-destroy-a-world-order_partner/

McNeill, John Robert, and Peter Engelke. The Great Acceleration. Harvard University Press, 2016.

Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2011.

Paul Newman et al, “2018 Ozone Hole is a Reminder of what Almost was,” NASA: November 2, 2018. https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13103.

Powell, Robert. “Nuclear brinkmanship with two-sided incomplete information.” American Political Science Review82.1 (1988): 155-178.

Rial, José A., et al. “Nonlinearities, feedbacks and critical thresholds within the Earth’s climate system.” Climatic change65.1-2 (2004): 11-38.

Weldes, Jutta. Constructing national interests: The United States and the Cuban missile crisis. University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

Wheeling, Kate and Max Ufberg, “‘The Ocean is Boiling:’ The Complete Oral History of the Santa Barbara Oil Spill,” Pacific Standard, November 7, 2018. https://psmag.com/news/the-ocean-is-boiling-the-complete-oral-history-of-the-1969-santa-barbara-oil-spill.

Endnotes

[1] Weldes, Jutta. Constructing national interests: The United States and the Cuban missile crisis. University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

[2] Weldes, 1999.

[3] Weldes, 1999.

[4] Powell, Robert. “Nuclear brinkmanship with two-sided incomplete information.” American Political Science Review 82.1 (1988): 155-178.

[5] Kozloff, Max. “American painting during the Cold War.” Artforum 11.9 (1973): 43-54.

[6] Jared Keller, “The White House Will Keep Challenging the Pentagon on the Threat of Climate Change Until It Gets an Answer It Likes,” Task & Purpose, February 20, 2019. https://taskandpurpose.com/trump-climate-change-national-security-panel

[7] Wheeling, Kate and Max Ufberg, “‘The Ocean is Boiling:’ The Complete Oral History of the Santa Barbara Oil Spill,” Pacific Standard, November 7, 2018. https://psmag.com/news/the-ocean-is-boiling-the-complete-oral-history-of-the-1969-santa-barbara-oil-spill.

[8] Lewis, Jack. “The birth of EPA.” EPA J. 11 (1985): 6.

[9] Rial, José A., et al. “Nonlinearities, feedbacks and critical thresholds within the Earth’s climate system.” Climatic change 65.1-2 (2004): 11-38.

[10] Paul Newman et al, “2018 Ozone Hole is a Reminder of what Almost was,” NASA: November 2, 2018. https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13103

[11] McNeill, John Robert, and Peter Engelke. The Great Acceleration. Harvard University Press, 2016.

[12] Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2011.

[13] Michael Klare, “How Rising Temperatures Increase the Likelihood of Nuclear War,” The Nation (January 13, 2020), https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nuclear-defense-climate-change/.

[14] Alfred W. McCoy, “What Does It Take to Destroy a World Order,” Salon (March 3, 2019), https://www.salon.com/2019/03/03/what-does-it-take-to-destroy-a-world-order_partner/

[15] Gilbert, Emily. “The militarization of climate change.” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 11.1 (2012): 1-14.

[16] Nathan Lobel, “Unraveling the U.S. Climate Action Plan: Explaining Corporate Participation in a Pro-Regulatory Advocacy Coalition,” Senior Essay, Yale Department of Political Science, December 9, 2016.

Introduction

Russian attempts to interfere in Western politics are well-documented. But, despite the similarities in policy, Chinese attempts at interference usually go unheralded. Six months had passed since the incarceration of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig (both of whom are Canadian diplomats) for allegations of espionage; however, their detainment is widely believed to be a form of retaliation against Canada for arresting Meng Wanzhou, the Chief Financial Officer of Huawei, at the United States’ request. Later, in March 2019, citizens in Hong Kong protested their government’s attempts to pass a bill that, if ratified, would mandate that Hong Kong extradite defendants suspected of offences against the Chinese state. This bill would threaten Hong Kong’s sovereignty. In both instances, China’s attempts at extradition and to have their nationals released raises serious concerns about whether China is imperiling western security and sovereignty. If foreign policymakers conclude that China constitutes a threat to western security they must then question what the best method is to mitigate such a threat: concede to China’s demands, or isolate China?

In this paper, I will use the case study of the 2019 Hong Kong protests to analyze China’s behaviour towards its neighbors. Then, by analyzing China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Chinese actions against Canada, I will demonstrate how China’s behaviour against Hong Kong reflects its conduct even towards states that do not border China—and why should the world be concerned. Finally, I will present a blueprint that showcases the administrative structure of a revived Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, whose mission is to expand fiscal prosperity and preserve the sovereignty of states on the Asian-Pacific corridor.

Unpleasing Echoes of Neighborly Tyranny: The Case of Hong Kong

Since the handover of Hong Kong to China from Britain in 1997, tensions worsened between Hong Kong and China throughout the 21^st century as China made neocolonial advances in attempts to erode Hong Kong’s sovereignty. Under the one country, two systems constitutional principle, China is solely limited to handling the diplomatic relations and defence of Hong Kong, while Hong Kong is responsible for its own economy and domestic affairs. However, China has made numerous attempts to gain more leverage over Hong Kong; the Chinese interpretation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law is the universal interpretation of the law that no one else can question. In essence, Hong Kong is becoming the Xiongnú over which the Han (China) could gain leverage; after all, China’s actions are part of its goal to realize the Chinese dream of weida fuxing, or great rejuvenation (Xiaoming 2015).

To realize the China Dream we must keep to the Chinese way

To realize the China Dream we must advance the Chinese spirit

To realize the China Dream we must consolidate Chinese power (Kerr 2015, 2)

While this is “the greatest dream of the Chinese people in modern times” , it is a nightmare for Hong Kong because realizing the dream would come at the expense of Hong Kong’s sovereignty. This section will demonstrate how China’s unilateral pursuit of weida fuxing would undermine the sovereignty of its neighbours and would therefore contravene its own ethical principle of mutually respecting another state’s sovereign responsibilities. I will employ Edward Luttwak’s (2012) concepts of the “echoes” (Luttwak 2012, 30) of the former Chinese tributary system, or in simpler terms, the application of ancient Tianxia practices in a modern-day context.

The principles of the ancient Chinese tributary system greatly influence the conduct of Chinese foreign policymakers today. Among those principles, is “the striving to reward visitors with memorable gifts, as if to ensure their eagerness to visit again.” (Luttwak 2012, 30). We cannot analyze this sentence at its face value. Intrinsically, it means that when China provides states benefits (memorable gifts) of having bilateral relations with China, states would be encouraged to deepen their bilateral relations with China (the visit again part). I would even argue that states may ask for more benefits from China. Another tributary system principle to which Chinese foreign policymakers is ensuring that China would project a caring, benevolent image” (Luttwak 2012, 33) towards the country with which it fosters diplomatic relations. However, note the double irony here: first, China is the state with a malevolent political reputation with disregard for human rights and Hong Kong is the state with a clean political reputation. Second, no state with which China maintains bilateral relations would benefit both politically and economically; no state would, if they realized this beforehand, want to pursue further relations with China (or not to visit again, using Luttwak’s terms).

China’s recent infrastructure projects in Hong Kong, which encompass rail connections connecting Hong Kong and Guangzhou and investments in residential developments, are all part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The major benefit of these infrastructure projects (or in this case, the “memorable gift”) is that it will bolster economic development in Hong Kong and consequently further integrate the latter into China. However, Hong Kong residents, the people who must pay for these projects, are in oblivion to China’s bieyouyongxin or ulterior intent (Liff and Ikenberry 2014, 68) Moreover, China utilizes their Tao Guang Yang Hui or “hide brightness, nourish obscurity” (Zhu 2013, 125) method to conceal their bieyouyongxin. I argue that China’s foreign policy is based on a new principle of “nourish brightness, nourish obscurity” or “keep both a low and high profile”. China persistently promotes the benefits of the infrastructure projects (its nourishment of brightness) but maintains its silence on the drawbacks they could have on society (its nourishment of obscurity). Knowing this, we could identify China’s bieyouyongxin, or evil ulterior intent: ensnare Hong Kong into a debt trap and make it refinance its debt for years; in the process, erode Hong Kong’s sovereignty through gaining control over parts of its economy. 

Furthermore, China’s communist government tries to gradually gain leverage over Hong Kong through forcing the latter’s people to assimilate into Chinese culture. ; after all, China utilizes indoctrination, a tool of its barbarian handling. “the Xiongnú were to be persuaded to accept the authoritarian Confucian value system and the collectivistic behavioral norms of the Han” so the latter can “undermine the entire political culture of the Xiongnú and make them psychologically dependent…on the imperial radiance.” (Luttwak 2012, 27). China believes itself to be in the best position to “set social and moral criteria for assessing fair, humanitarian governance and proper social relations.” (Wang, Lee and Zhou 2011); if states meet these criteria, they will have a just, stable society. Moreover, the Chinese believe that they have a superior role model of morality and politics that the international community must universally adopt. Hence why China strives to have a hexie shije, or harmonious world(Zhu 2013, 120) that reflects the cultural, political image of China; China does so through eroding other states’ sovereignties. Western states though, view Chinese infringement upon others’ sovereignties as immoral acts; I argue that China is adopting its own version of Niebuhrian beliefs, which theorize that it is justified to do evil if the intent is to promote morality (Niebuhr 1996). We can thus argue that to determine the level of a superpower’s hegemony in the Asia-Pacific, we must see how many Asian states adopt a superpower’s politics, definition of morality, vision of society, and concept of justice. 

China reserves the right to make a correct interpretation of the Basic Law; it is the latter right that serves as prima facie evidence of China’s erosion of Hong Kong’s sovereignty for the latter’s lawmakers cannot ratify laws that promote justice. China’s right to do so would impede Hong Kong from providing fundamental freedoms, like universal suffrage; this worries China since “[local] patriots ruling Hong Kong” would promote Hong Kong’s secession from China (Hung-Yee 2016, 194). Political candidates striving to become the Chief Executive of Hong Kong are subject to screening by China’s nominating committee for the purposes of not appointing anyone who is a Chinese political dissident. Finally, in 2019, the once proposed extradition bill in Hong Kong tried to extradite fugitives to China from its territories outside its mainland for criminal offences. Legal critics say that this bill is unnecessary and could subject defendants to China’s unjust criminal justice system. Human rights activists fear that the bill would allow for the arbitrary detainment of peaceful activists (LSHK 2019). Moreover, it would also endanger the security of citizens who are nationals of western superpowers, which could ignite another diplomatic dispute between China and the West. The extradition treaty between the United States and Hong Kong could be repealed if Hong Kong ratifies this bill, which would endanger American navy personnel, businessmen and civilians for extrajudicial arrest without proper due process (Meick 2019). Given the large American military presence in Southeast Asia, it would not be surprising for the United States to relocate their naval ports and businesses elsewhere to keep Americans from arbitrary detention in China.

The overall level of Chinese influence over Hong Kong’s political system and judiciary demonstrates how China is placing Hong Kong under its sphere of influence so that it may one day gain total political leverage over it. The people of Hong Kong reject China’s quanmian guanzhi quan or “plenary power to govern” (Hung-Yee 2016, 195) for it lets China impose its governance and concepts of justice by appointing pro-Beijing politicians and mandating a Chinese interpretation of the Basic Law. China’s efforts to breach other states’ sovereignty would be counterproductive to China’s pursuit of promoting morality, which would tarnish its international image and discourage the world from pursuing further diplomacy with China.

It is important to note that China uses intimidation tactics to silence its peaceful dissidents both in China and abroad. Upon learning of the Hong Kong Police Force allegedly clashing with protesters at Hong Kong’s Airport, the Chinese government declared the protests as acts of “terrorism” (Hale, Kuo and Graham-Harrison 2019) and deployed its troops to Shenzhen. I would argue China did so to prepare for deployment into Hong Kong so China can use ferocious, fatal force to end the protests and finally annex Hong Kong. The deployment of China’s army undermines their objective of heping fazhan for it would further anger the protesters and may lead to a Sino-British military confrontation. After all, any serious breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, under which the freedoms of Hong Kong people are protected, may provoke Britain to deploy its forces so that they could enforce its provisions on behalf of the Hong Kong people After all, Hong Kong is a former British colony and 300,000 Britons still dwell there; therefore, it is in the best interest of the United Kingdom to protect its people there.

Dangerously Blind to China’s Threat: Lessons from Hong Kong

Sometimes, it is the friend who make the foe. When western states invested in China as part of China’s yin jin lai  or “bringing in” (Zhu 2013, 121) fiscal policy, China became a global economic superpower that threatened the prosperity of the western economy. I believe many of us are in oblivion to China’s threat for it adopts a “liberal approach that focuses on soft power combined with the traditional, realist approach that focuses on hard power.” (Zhu 2013, 122). To put it succinctly, China pursues heping fazhan (Zhu 2013, 123), or peaceful development, but does so with an evil bieyouyongxin. China’s behaviour towards Hong Kong is an excellent example of this, in that China appoints its Chief Executive and invests in the city (heping fazhan) until China could later infringe upon its sovereignty (the evil bieyouyongxin). The treatment of Hong Kong reflects China’s behaviour on the international stage. Both the Belt and Road initiative and its interference in Canadian life constitute strong prima facie evidence of China’s attempts to expand its relative power. Here, I will analyze the case studies to demonstrate how China’s pursuit of global hegemony would contradict the foreign policy principles the Chinese set which consequently would undermine its objectives of achieving true global heping fazhan.

Tightening Their International Influence: China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Like the residents of Hong Kong who were oblivious to the drawbacks of China’s infrastructure projects, the world is oblivious to the drawbacks of China’s Belt and Road initiative. The main objective of the Belt and Road Initiative is to possess “a community of common destiny” where Chinese communism is utilized to integrate the economies of developing Eurasian and African states. However, Pakistan, Burma and Malaysia, for instance, never reaped the fiscal benefits the Belt and Road Initiative promised (Funaiole and Hillman 2018); those states must still pay the price of these infrastructure projects and their interest rates for years. This is a sign of China’s utilization of debt-trap diplomacy, when investor states (i.e. China) demand large concessions from investee states should the investee state be unable to repay the investor state’s investment (Parker and Chefitz 2018). From what I can observe, the major concession that China demands from its investee states is a partial relinquishment of their economic sovereignty while synchronously “skewing President Xi’s signature foreign policy [or China’s common destiny] vision.” (Hillman 2018, 4). The vision that China possesses is becoming the main global economic, political hegemon the world must depend on for other countries’ survival. China’s According to Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamad, “there is a new version of Colonialism happening” (Mohamad 2018) that China is engaging in.

Another goal of the Belt and Road Initiative is to resist American power in Asia, especially in the Spratly Islands. To describe the policy, Medeiros (2009) coined the term countercontainment. China believes the Spratly Islands rightfully belong to China because Chinese fishermen have used the islands since 200 BC, whereas other states believe China has control only over the islands’ reefs (Wortzel and Higham 1999, Shunji and Sakamoto 2015). As a means of defending its territorial claim, China deployed its navy with anti-missile systems and installed an airstrip there; Medeiros (2009) sees such deployment as non-confrontational advances. I disagree with Medeiros for such moves would provoke the United States to come at the defence of its Asian allies (Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam) if China attacked any of them, thus making its moves confrontational. However, I must agree that China is in a dilemma: either it chooses to combat states that threaten the success of its hegemonic objectives, or it must find alternative soft power means to expand its hegemony. “The opacity of Beijing’s intentions and programs” would give reason for other states to zhongguo weixie de chaozuo, or hype the China threat since China may imbalance the balance of power, therefore causing volatility in the Indo-Pacific (Liff and Ikenberry 2014, 68-72). China’s military moves are counterproductive to achieving international heping fazhan, for it would raise the risk of a maritime interstate conflict; after all, such conflict is inevitable for China must later challenge the United States’ military anyway (Mearsheimer 2010). Moreover, China never respects verdicts of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which recently ruled that it cannot claim its “historic rights” to resources in the nine-dash line of the islands (Philippines v. China 2016). China in this regard would not just undermine its achievement of heping fazhan, but it would also tarnish its reputation as a benevolent state. It is therefore “stupid for China to push itself to the center of international disputes,” (Zhu 2013) just as it is stupid for China to start them for Indo-Pacific and western states would pay a high cost of money as well as lives to resolve them.

Hypocrisy, Irony and Strategy (That Fails): The Canadian Case

It is important to recognize that China prefers to resolve international issues through bilateral means instead of multilateralism because it fears that western democratic superpowers would subject China to their control. Heping fazhan, or peaceful development, is a term China employs “to ease anxieties about China’s global expansion of trade and influence” (Zhu 2013, 7) Ironically however China’s foreign policy never promotes peaceful development; instead, it promotes instability in both politics and during an individual’s livelihood; this instability is evident in Canada. Here, I will demonstrate how China is treating Canada like the Xiongnú for the purposes of facilitating its own hegemonic advances in attempts to erode Canadian sovereignty.

Sun Tzu’s Art of War is among the most widely used texts by members of most militaries to learn tactical strategies that could help them successfully win battles during warfare. However, according to Luttwak (2012), some Chinese politicians in their government’s executive branch never understood Tzu’s ancient military strategies. Luttwak refers to these misunderstandings as “residues”.

 “The first detectable residue of the…Art of War mentality, or rather of the misapplication of intracultural norms to intercultural conflict, is the presumption of unlimited pragmatism in interstate relations.” (Luttwak 2012, 76). What Luttwak means with “unlimited pragmatism” is that China believes it could determine the future behavior of rational states and compel everyone, be they foreigners or Chinese citizens, to accept China’s rise to power. Some methods China uses to try to wield its power include pressuring the press and interfering in political elections; yet the execution of these methods is often unsuccessful. China’s attempts to project its power damages its bilateral relationships with states; especially when it tries to impose psychological control over other states’ citizens. “China wants the world to have positive feelings towards China and things Chinese. For China to achieve these goals, people (including the Chinese diaspora) must admire China to some degree.” (Manthorpe 2019, 195).

A freedom of conscience must come with a freedom of peace of mind. Journalists of all foreign Chinese-language press must act as “cheerleaders for the Chinese Communist Party” (Manthorpe 2019, 171); failure to do so would cause China to utter hollow but quasi-credible threats against them. In 2010, Tao Wang, a British Columbia NDTV reporter, published an article that criticized Chinese politics and sparked anger amongst Chinese politicians.

“[My] activity in Canada is a threat to China’s national security…’ He said I must stop all activities in Canada, which, in my understanding, is my reporting with NTDTV. He said if I don’t follow instruction, they will take [further] action on my company… ‘If you ever go public on this, you are — in Chinese words — seeking death.’” (Woo 2010, quoting Wang).

Then, eight years later, the Canada Wenzhou Friendship Society, a group connected to China’s Communist Party, attempted to bribe Chinese expatriates with $20 to elect Chinese candidates into political office (Manthorpe 2019). “WeChat” is a Chinese social media app through which the Chinese diaspora abroad received their monetary bribe from Beijing. 

In both examples listed above, China is in an endless pursuit of interfering in Canadian life for the purposes of advancing its hegemony. Its pressuring of journalists reporting for Sino-Canadian press violates their their rights to privacy, speech and conscience, which are Canadian civil liberties to which they are entitled. Fortunately, despite fears of losing either an individual’s life or democracy, China had failed in its attempts to interfere in Canadian public as well as political life. I believe China is under the delusion that its diaspora can be as emotionally subordinate to China’s political control as the people from the former Han regions of Qi, Qin, Zhao, Wei and Yan. After all, China is both autistic and arrogant, since it has a strong sense of “centrality and hierarchical superiority” (Luttwak 2012, 35) and is at the same time ineffective in understanding states’ behavior as well the emotions of their diaspora. Moreover, China’s moves would also contradict Chinese foreign policy principles that undermining their objective of achieving heping fazhan. Among those, is “mutual respect for sovereignty” (Zhu 2013, 5), which includes respecting a state’s sovereign duty to protect constitutional rights for the foreign diaspora who dwell there. Another Chinese foreign policy principle that China itself violates is “non-interference in each other’s internal affairs”, which includes not meddling in another foreign democracy through using bribery to elect politicians who would advance their interests there. Any attempts to do the opposite (which is what China is doing) would trigger political instability there, thus failing to achieve worldwide heping fazhan. 

Furthermore, according to Luttwak (2012), there exists another myth of the Art of War that China believes. That is the “tendency of Chinese officialdom to believe that long-unresolved disputes with foreign countries can be resolved by deliberately provoking crises, to force negotiations that will settle the dispute.” (Luttwak 2012, 78). I would add to Luttwak’s argument that even short-term disputes could trigger crisis with China, provided that they involve the maltreatment of its or nationals abroad Moreover, Liff and Ikenberry (2014) contend that China engages in jiji fangyu or “active self-defence” should states “affront…its sovereignty and territorial integrity” (67). I would add that China engages in a retaliatory form of political jiji fangyu if their citizens abroad suffer from what it believes to be their maltreatment (e.g. an unjust arrest) from foreign states. Such retaliatory political jiji fangyu could take the form of arbitrary detention for individuals from the state where Chinese nationals are maltreated and (in extreme cases) subjecting them to capital punishment.

In 2018, Canadian authorities in Vancouver, at the behest of the United States, arrested Meng Wanzhou, a Huawei executive, for having her company help Iran circumvent international economic sanctions. In response, China extrajudicially arrested two Canadian diplomats: Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig for allegations of espionage. Despite these charges, it is widely believed that their detainment stems not from espionage but is instead intended as retaliation for Wanzhou’s arrest (Manthorpe 2019). China is yet to present prima facie evidence that corroborates Canadian diplomats’ criminality. However, we must note that China’s judiciary acts as a representative of the communist state (Song 2007) for its judges administer justice that serves in the best interests of its political leaders. The maladministration of justice for the incarcerated Canadian diplomats would thus be a retaliatory form of China’s political jiji fangyu for China believes that the unjust detainment of Meng Wanzhou would constitute an attack against China. Again, China runs against its own foreign policy principles, which is “mutual respect for sovereignty” (Zhu 2013, 5); this includes respecting a state’s sovereign duty to comply with a bilateral extradition treaty. I argue that China’s arbitrary detention of the Canadian diplomats would somehow breach Canadian sovereignty, for China is using intimidating tactics to coerce to renege on the Canadian-American extradition treaty and release Wanzhou. After all, through coercion, China is attempting to override Canada’s legal authority so that China may set their nationals free, which would disrespect the mutual sovereignty of states’ independent judiciaries and thus exacerbate this Sino-Canadian diplomatic crisis.

Given my evaluation of Chinese foreign policy, I deduce that China can enjoy great rapprochements with other states if it ends its pursuit of a foreign policy of hypocrisy and instead starts practicing the morality it preaches. China must reassess its methods of diplomacy and move away from using ancient methods to conduct it. More importantly, China must know that diplomacy is not just about maintaining excellent relations with other states; it is also ensuring that each other’s nationals are treated with respect and dignity everywhere in the name of justice.

Solutions

Asia-Pacific Treaty Organization (APTO)

A 21^st Century Revival of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization

Charter of the Asian-Pacific Treaty Organization

Preamble to the Charter:

 We, the leaders of these precious Asian-Pacific signatory states, shall hold these facts to be unquestionably true. All individuals dwell under equality with irrevocable liberties, which encompass self-existence, happiness, and the pursuit of justice. We shall remain loyal to the United Nations and protect the values it forever upholds. We shall strive towards a common goal of promoting peace. We shall preserve each other’s cultural and democratic sovereignty while advancing each other’s national greatness. We shall deter instability and strengthen our cherished security. We shall be the United Nations of Asia-Pacific and no enemy shall divide this union. May the creators of our respective religions bless us all.

Section II: Articles of Order

1. The signatories must, in compliance with the Charter of the United Nations, to resolve all foreign disputes through nonviolent means. Such resolutions shall be made without the threat of blackmail and without imperiling the security of all other APTO members. They shall never make illegitimate military advances for their own unilateral gain.
2. All western signatories must invest in and expedite the fiscal development of Asian-Pacific signatories. In turn, all Asian-Pacific states must invest in jobs for the residents of the western signatories. If a non-signatory state commits an act of economic war against a signatory state, all nearby APTO members must come to the fiscal aid of their fellow signatory.
3. All signatories must advance help each other advance their militaries before any potential attack against a signatory by a non-signatory state occurs. Also, any state
4. Following two years of the charter’s ratification, all signatories must transition from non-renewable to renewable energy resources. Renewable energy sources must be used in all signatories as a means to strengthen environmental security.
5. Confidential emergency meetings shall be held if a signatory deems there exists a threat of an imminent attack against them by either a non-signatory state or non-state entity.
6. Public emergency meetings shall be held should natural calamities strike Asian-Pacific states
7. All signatories concur that any attack against any signatory shall constitute an attack against all signatories of this treaty. All must respond with military force in defense of the attacked signatory until the attacker is brought to justice and stability is restored in the Asia-Pacific area. The military moves of all signatories must be reported to the United Nations Security Council.
8. Any intervention conducted under the auspices of APTO shall not infringe on the cultural sovereignty of the state where forces will intervene. No APTO state, unless authorized by the United Nations Security Council, shall overthrow a head of state whose forces threaten the signatories.
9. What constitutes an attack is a strike on a signatory’s military assets anywhere in the world or areas where it is heavily populated by individuals in the signatory’s state.  
10. Three committees must exist to ensure signatories are complying with the articles of this charter. Two to three western delegates from various states must chair each committee for a calendar year. Delegates must then switch committees annually. These committees are:
    1. Committee on counterterrorism, anti-state warfare and extradition (CASEXT)
    2. Committee on anti-economic warfare (CAW)
    3. Committee on environmental protection (CEP)
11. Public referenda must be held in the respective signatories to ratify the articles of the charter. Each head of state in the signatory must inform all other signatories of the referenda results.
12. Every year, a summit must be held to discuss international security issues facing Asia-Pacific. Every four years, signatories may review the charter for the purposes of potentially amending it. Following five years, signatories may exit the organization after a public referendum vote.

Section III: The Committees and Their Respective Functions

Section IV: APTO Extradition Policy and Procedure

1. APTO shall extradite accused people who may threaten the security of the respective signatories’ populaces. In this regard, CASEXT will have an extradition unit (EXTRU) whose members will be appointed by the delegates of CASEXT.
   1. Each member shall be led by a westerner and an Asian-Pacific general; both officials must act as a liaison between their team and CASEXT. 
   1. A maximum of one member from their respective Asian-Pacific military may join the extradition unit. Heads of signatory states must nominate such members.
2. Extraditable Offences

*international offenses that can be tried in the area of jurisdiction where the crime was committed.

However, the prosecutors must not seek the death penalty for international and domestic offenses.

• Intelligence Possession, Sharing and Reporting
  • CASEXT is mandated to keep an updated roster (AKA the no-fly list) that lists suspects who may pose a threat to Asian-Pacific security. All signatories must have a copy of this roster.  
  • It is incumbent on airlines (from a signatory or non-signatory state) that land and depart in signatory states to report, in confidence, about a suspect’s presence near their aircrafts.
  • Any attempt to block intelligence reporting shall be reported to CASEXT
• Incarceration Procedure
  • It is incumbent on both airlines and signatory states’ airports to block all suspects from flying.
  • Should the suspect be a national of a country serving on the United Nations Security Council, a confidential emergency meeting must be held without that country’s representative
  • With the authority of the United Nations Security Council and CASEXT’s generals, they may authorize an operation to incarcerate the suspect and strengthen Asian-Pacific security. No veto power by the P5 can be used in this regard.
  • Should the suspect be outside a signatory state, then, by virtue of authority vested in Article 42 of the United Nations Charter, EXTRU may infringe the sovereignty of the non-signatory state to incarcerate the suspect
  • If a non-signatory state thwarts the operation, EXTRU reserves the right to combat the non-signatory state’s forces in a proportionate fashion. All nearby signatory states’ militaries must be on standby for deployment in the event that EXTRU needs assistance in combat.
  • All extradition operations must not kill the suspect; if the suspect is believed to be in possession of arms, EXTRU must plan to use nonlethal means to subdue the suspect before the operation occurs. EXTRU can use, if attacked, lethal force against militaries defending the suspect.
• Extradition Hearing Guidelines
  • Seven days after the suspect’s arrest, CASEXT must hold an extradition hearing and ascertain if there is evidence that the suspect committed an offence
  • The suspect is entitled to have a legal team acting in his or her defense. The legal team, however, does not reserve the right to make a plea deal with CASEXT’s prosecutor.  
  • The presiding officers of the extradition hearing must comprise of an attorney appointed by APTO and the current chairpersons of CASEXT.
  • Verdicts must be reached in 72 hours. Should the hearing find that the suspect is culpable for the offense committed, then CASEXT must, in 48 hours, extradite the offender to the signatory requesting extradition or the international criminal court for further proceedings.
  • APTO must assign a signatory to detain the suspect before the extradition hearing.
• Extradition Waivers
  • If the suspect is mentally ill that they cannot stand trial or that due to their mental illness, they are not criminally responsible. However, to prevent reoffending, the signatory requesting extradition and state where suspect was arrested must pay for their mental institutionalization.
  • If the suspect is under the age of 12 (child status). However, like in 6.1, the signatory reques-ting extradition and the state where suspect was found must pay for their mental institutionalization and the counseling of parents. In lieu of pressing charges for child negligence as well as the crime committed, both the parents and child are inhibited from entering the signatory state where the crime was committed for at least 10 years. 
  • Should there exist evidence that the extradition request is politically motivated, then CASEXT must immediately release the suspect and consider such request as null and void. 
  • If the charge incurred by the signatory state carries a death penalty, then extradition must be waived. A formal agreement must be made to find alternative sentences for the suspect should the state requesting extradition demand the suspect be tried there.
  • If CASEXT’s prosecution fails to corroborate the culpability of the suspect. 

Application to Meng Wanzhou’s Case: if this organization were to exist, Meng Wanzhou’s case would have been handled in a more expedient, strategic fashion. The United States would have filed an extradition request to CASEXT instead of Canada. The airline’s crew that flew to Vancouver would have blocked her from boarding the plane. It would have then been the duty of the crew to contact the authorities of CASEXT and report that she tried to board their flight. The United Nations Security Council would hold an emergency meeting without China inside it for the purposes of avoiding conflict of interest with the suspect. CASEXT’s EXTRU, would, at the discretion of the United Nations Security Council president, have flown to China and detain Wanzhou there. Should China have tried to block them from detaining her, then CASEXT would have the rights to utilize military means to successfully conduct the operation. Once the suspect was detained, she would have been detained at another signatory state until her extradition hearings started. If she was found guilty at the extradition hearings, she would go to the United States for further criminal proceedings.

Section V: The Economic Replenishment and Sovereignty Restoration Mechanism

This mechanism is intended to fiscally bail out Asian-Pacific countries whose sovereignty is threatened by their prolonged financial indebtedness to China. Western states would have an interest to bail out Asian-Pacific states to isolate China and enjoy economic prosperity with them through orderly trade. Any other economic crisis an Asian-Pacific state suffers from that is not caused by China’s conduction of debt-trap diplomacy is ineligible for APTO’s bailout.

*Countries with no European or American colonial ties, but are prone to China’s debt-trap diplomacy

I sorted out these countries based on their former American or European colonial ties. However, we must consider that a single western state cannot fiscally bail out an Asian-Pacific state alone. I therefore grouped them into pairs; as you can see, these countries are their closest neighbors in terms of geographical proximity. They neither need to share a land border (i.e. Australia and New Zealand) nor do they need to be state entities (i.e. European Union and United Kingdom).

Applications with China:

Laos is among the most prone states to suffer from the politico-economic consequences of the Belt and Road Initiative (Hurley, Morris and Portelance 2018); Laos owes China $12.6 billion, which is almost the entire Laotian GDP (IMF 2017). Among the controversial Chinese investments in Laos is the railway on the Mekong River. Although China will compensate Laos for 70% of the project, Laos must pay for the remaining 30%. The 30% remainder will be covered by a loan from the China Exim Bank, with a 2.3% interest rate. As Laotian debt to China increases, so too will the Chinese influence there; in Ton Pheung, the Chinese yuan is used as a payment means while Laotians there speak Mandarin (O. Ward 2018). When China expropriated Laotian land for the Laos-China railway, which displaced Laotians, China never reimbursed them for such move. 

On Sovereignty Restoration: Hong Kong and Taiwan are at high risk of losing their semi-sovereignty to China. Any secession declaration from either state will constitute an act of war according to China.  

1. Firstly, we must halt the construction of the Kunming-Vientiane railway in Laos. In doing so, we must compensate for either what had been constructed or to demolish the railway. We must then

***this is assuming that Exim Bank made a one-time loan payment of $615M. H.

Then, we must look at the GDPs of Laos’ neighboring states: Thailand and Vietnam.

Thailand GDP: $455,200,000,000 Vietnam GDP:$233,900,000,000

Of course, it would not make any fiscal sense for two developing states to pay this much, for such expenditure would consume much of their GDP. So, we must resort to seeking the monetary aid of two members from the Western economic bloc. In this case, it would be the European Union because of Laos’ former colonial ties to France.

Because the European Union has a higher GDP than the United Kingdom, it will help cover the Laotian bailout cost of Vietnam, who has a lower GDP than Thailand. The United Kingdom will help cover the Laotian bailout cost of Thailand, since it has a higher GDP than Vietnam.

My plan is generally this: states with the higher GDP, be they western or Asian-pacific, will pay more to bail out Laos. The bailout plan I put forward intends to expel China from Laos (at least financially) so Laos’ economy can preserve its sovereignty. However, we must be proactive, for this fiscal banishment could possibly trigger a fiscal retaliatory response from China. Potential responses may include the imposition of tariffs on western products or the prohibition of western food imports to China.

27% of British exports to China are its automobiles that are worth $5,416,659,000 American or £4,500,000,000 pounds (M. Ward 2017). Meanwhile, the European Union exports automobiles worth €22,400,000,000 or $25,337,782,400 American (ACEA 2019). If China banned automobile sales from both the United Kingdom and European Union because they bailed out Laos from Chinese debt, then both would lose $30,754,441,400 American in the forthcoming fiscal year. In total: $21 billion American dollars of Chinese investment to Europe would be at stake (Obe and Hollinger 2018).

For western states, the International Monetary Fund should only provide up to $5,999,999,999.99 worth of replenishment loans due to the monetary loss from the suspension of Chinese trade. This certainly applies to the United Kingdom, who must qualify for $5,416,659,000 in replenishment loans. Once the United Kingdom makes $10,833,318,000 in automobile sales, it must repay half that amount before the next fiscal year. Any delay is subject to a 1.75% monthly interest rate. The European Union, however, must be ineligible for replenishment funds, since it has an extremely high GDP and the IMF could reserve those funds for other destitute states. Plus, the profits lost by the European Union from the Chinese market would not instantly send it into an economic crisis.

The International Monetary Fund, however, should recommend that both the European Union as well as the United Kingdom export their automobiles to Vietnam and The Philippines. After all, the latter states import $5.7 billion of cars per annum (Workman 2017). Thus, any kind of intervention by the International Monetary Fund (be it replenishment funds or recommendations) would be necessary to prevent international fiscal volatility.   

• Once the European Union and the United Kingdom pay China to leave Laos, we must mobilize the displaced Laotians back to Ton Pheung. Laos to request assistance from the French navy^[2] to facilitate this mobilization. Upon the Laotians’ return, members of the French navy must guard the district of Ton Pheung and interdict any Chinese national from entering there. Such guarding is needed to ensure Laotians could resettle in their community without Chinese interference. 

Next, the French Navy must organize an operation to incarcerate the operatives of the Blue Shield Casino. This group is notorious for child prostitution; human, wildlife and drug trafficking; and child prostitution (Master and Wongcha-um 2018). After the arrest of the operatives, Hong Kong must work in concert with other APTO forces to conduct more operations to dismantle the transnational criminal organization: Zhao Wei, under which Blue Shield Casino is affiliated. The most important operation in this regard would be the incarceration of Zhao Wei and Guiquin Su. Sovereignty may be infringed upon APTO states should the circumstances warrant it.

We must then reverse the environmental damage caused by the construction of Vientiane-Boten Railway. In this regard, Laos must exit from China’s Special Economic Zone and enter it into an international economic environmental zone (IEEZ). Laos, along with the help of western APTO states, must detoxify the Mekong River from the runoff waste caused by the railway. APTO also must order Laos to ban plastics used and further expand the National Protected Areas to protect species whose existence were once threatened by the railway construction (Robichaud, et al. 2001). Any failure of the Laotian government to enforce these environmental policies within a reasonable period of time would be subject to sanction, which could include APTO divesting its investment for Laotian economic development. Moreover, all other APTO states must ensure fair, clean commerce occurs in the Laotian IEEZ; they must also respect Laotian cultural & political sovereignty.

• Finally, we must address the endangered political sovereignty of Laos as well as Hong Kong. As Chinese economic leverage grows in Laos, there is a significant chance that China could gain political leverage over Laos. In light of this possibility, members of APTO must allocate their military and fiscal resources to ensure the security of both the voting processes as well as the voters themselves. Any states that are suspected of conspiring to interfere in the referenda voting processes cannot have their nationals enter the voting APTO state. In this regard, all ground and air transportation towards the voting states must be suspended for a week before the referenda. Moreover, other APTO states cannot interfere in the voting processes to serve their own unilateral interests.

If Hong Kong and Taiwan, for instance, decide to hold a referendum to decide on whether they should secede from China, then APTO’s western bloc must prepare for all possible voting interference. APTO’s western bloc must therefore equip the voting states with updated voting systems and have their intelligence agencies help defend them against foreign cyberattacks. Following the counting of the results, ballot scrutineers should publicly audit the voting processes and results to ensure votes were properly counted (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2018). This public audit must be done with the presence of two neutral proctors to ensure spoiled ballots are not counted and the privacy of voters is upheld.

Members of the APTO western bloc must use their defense resources to protect the voting integrity of the referenda. All states must agree to maintain their presence near the referenda states for seven days before and after the respective referenda. The same agreement applies a week before and after the secession (if people voted for it) of the voting state. There must be a minimal deployment of ground troops from each respective western state to guard voting sites. However, there must be a maximum presence of ground troops on the Hong Kong-China border. Nearby Asian-Pacific and western navy fleet must patrol the waters from the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea. Any state that encroaches on the seceding states’ sovereignty post-referenda will be stricken by APTO forces.

Bibliography

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[1] Note: the lists on international and domestic offences are non-exhaustive.

[2] France has an interest in Laos, since 200,000 of the 1.6 million French citizens dwell there (Nicholson 2017)

Written By: Sarah Lu, Columbia University

A series of unresolved fragments, we come together as a contingent whole. We gain social recognition as a racial collective in the face of this communal loss… It is the naming of these losses that transforms difference into a politicized identity.

David Eng and Shinhee Han,
Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation:
On the Social and Psychic Life of Asian Americans

Introduction

2018 was a pivotal year for Asian Americans. We saw the unparalleled success of the highest-grossing romantic comedy film Crazy Rich Asians, the first film of its kind in Hollywood to feature an all-Asian cast. We followed the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard affirmative action lawsuit, wherein a number of Asian American plaintiffs sued Harvard University for “racially discriminating” against Asian Americans in the admission process. We watched prominent Olympians from snowboarder Chloe Kim to figure skating champion Mirai Nagasu take home medals on the world stage and stun audiences in Pyeongchang. Andy Kim became the first Korean-American elected to Congress in nearly 20 years, and Hasan Minhaj became the first Indian-American to host a weekly comedy show. But these so-called accomplishments brought forth complicated questions of fragmentation and loss within the Asian American community. What did it mean that a film glorifying Asia’s economic rise opened up new avenues of being seen, shifting entire narratives of identity and difference? What did it mean that Asian Americans sided with Ed Blum, a legal advocate who wanted affirmative action gone – someone who once advocated for Abigail Fisher, a woman who claimed racial discrimination in the admissions process because she was white? What did it mean for us people to self-identify as Asian Americans, in a country that had always found it more convenient to identify what it meant to be Asian American for us?

Since 2018, Asian American political identity has shifted to the forefront of America’s national discourse, and Asian American political participation has become an increasingly salient topic. Currently, Asian Americans comprise of 5.6% of the American population, an ethno-racial group that includes 20 million people of various ethnicities and backgrounds.^[1] The economic and political growth of Asia in the last decade or so has resulted in fundamental demographic changes, with the Asian American population growing by 75% from 2000 to 2015—the highest growth rate of any racial or ethnic group in America.^[2] Many Asian Americans are highly concentrated at the higher and lower ends of the spectrum in regards to socioeconomic class, with large percentages of specific Asian American subgroups (such as those of East Asian descent) owning more homes, having higher median incomes, and holding more bachelor’s degrees than the average American.

However, the Asian American experience is not monolithic, and perceptions of Asian Americans as the “model minority” while remaining the “perpetual foreigner” remain influential. First defined more than half a century ago, the model minority myth is often used to refer  refers to minority groups that are perceived as particularly successful. Asian Americans are often defined as the model minority because they are seen as more successful across academic, economic, and cultural domains.^[3]  In contrast, the perpetual foreigner stereotype casts Asian Americans as inherently foreign and therefore not genuinely American, regardless of their academic, economic, and cultural successes.^[4] David Eng and Shinhee Han, amongst other Asian American academics, designate the model minority as a primarily harmful stereotype, “[delineating] Asian Americans as academically successful and rarely well-rounded.” Asian Americans “must therefore submit to [this] model of economic rather than political and cultural legitimization,”^[5]  because the alternative is being perceived as the foreign, the unassimilated, and the other. In choosing to conform with the model minority stereotype, Asian Americans are often doing so because they become “attached” to its seemingly admirable qualities, much preferred over the seemingly despicable qualities of a perpetual foreigner.^[6]

The heightened importance of Asian geopolitics in American foreign affairs has exhibited a profound impact on Asian Americans, as well as on the dispersal and movement of Asian Americans across the world broadly known as the Asian diaspora. From President Obama’s “pivot to Asia” to the Trump administration’s trade war with China, we have seen a significant shift in U.S.-East Asia relations over the past decade. The fear of Chinese hegemony in the region has forced the U.S. to confront questions of polarity and waning U.S. influence in Asia, and recent disputes over the South China Sea and North Korea have become key concerns for American policymakers.

While most Asian immigrants arrived in the United States after the 1970s, the politics and ideology of the early Cold War had already begun to shape American perceptions of Asian Americans. Forces prior to this era had already begun to shape American perceptions of Asian Americans, and the politics and ideology of the early Cold War were incredibly influential in this respect. The United States’ strong geopolitical interest in Asia has undoubtedly been characterized and influenced by Cold War forces over the decades, and its effects are still seen on Asian Americans today. Although there exists a considerable amount of scholarship regarding the effects of foreign policy on domestic politics in relation to African Americans, the Civil Rights movement, and decolonization movements in the “Third World,” it is also important to conceptualize how Asian Americans fit into this era of racial upheaval and social change. By understanding the role of Asian Americans in the processes of racialization that took place in the middle of the 20th century, we are offered much more insight as to why Asian Americans occupy their current political identity in relation to other minority identities. We can often trace such relative characterizations and subjective constructions of Asian Americans to the impact of the early Cold War on domestic American society.

The victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 and America’s entry into the Korean War in 1950 in the early Cold War would affect foreign policy decisions and perceptions towards Asia in the years to come, not only in the minds of policymakers, but also within the domestic racial politics of the United States. While mainland Asia and Asian America remain separate entities shaped by different political imaginations and experiences, this paper will specifically investigate the various Cold War forces that came to influence Asian American diasporic communities in regards to foreign policy. How did America’s involvement in Asia during the early Cold War, as well as the expansion of public and cultural diplomacy to promote a liberal, post-war democratic order, contribute to the formation and politicization of Asian American communities? Furthermore, how did Cold War ideology, such as conceptions of American democracy in contrast to illegitimate Soviet communism, shape Asian America as a racial construct in American society?

By contextualizing the history of Asian America from World War II to the late 60s, I aim to define several turning points for Asian American political identity formation in the context of Cold War foreign affairs, including the 1950 McCarran Internal Security Act, the Chinese Confession Program, and national responses to the Hukbalahap Rebellion in the Philippines. I will also address the broader trajectory of Washington’s “Asia First” policy and policymakers’ expanding focus on public and cultural diplomacy in the post-war world, especially with regard to U.S. involvement in Asia at the time. Ultimately, I hope to trace the early Cold War origins of the two dominant, often conflicting myths that Asian Americans are still forced to confront.

While the myth of the model minority suggests the economic rise and seamless integration of Asian Americans into mainstream white society, the myth of the perpetual foreigner continues to distinguish Asian Americans as foreign visitors and adversaries, remaining forever on the borders of what it means to be “American.”

The expansion of public and cultural diplomacy in the creation of the American postwar order expanded notions of citizenship to include Asian Americans within the ideals of a democratic, multiracial society. However, American perceptions of the communist threat were shaped by Washington’s geopolitical interests and involvements in Asia, in addition to policies that targeted Asian Americans as un-American subversives, painted Asian Americans as unassimilable foreigners that were inevitably tied to their unfamiliar homelands. Such racist policies, when implemented against an American vision for racial “integration,” contributed to the paradox of Asian American identity. They also allowed for the relative positioning of Asian Americans in relation to African Americans during the Civil Rights movement, wherein Asian Americans were perceived as “not white” but also “not black”— a perception that remains relevant today, even in light of the changes that Asian American political identity has faced over time.

Background and Historical Context

Over a century ago, Asian Americans made up a small percentage of the American population. The exclusionist policies of the late 19th and 20th centuries reinforced beliefs of the failure of Asian immigrants to assimilate to American society, despite the contribution of Asian immigrants to historical developments such as the transcontinental railroad and the California Gold Rush.

The U.S. enacted several policies that made Asian immigrants, unlike their German, Italian, or Irish counterparts, ineligible for citizenship by naturalization, had setting quotas as low as 200 for anyone hailing from Asia. Asian America was more or less a smattering of immigrants who had come to America seeking work, seen by many Americans as a burden seeking to infiltrate American borders, more commonly known as the “yellow peril.” The immigrants who stayed or brought families over from their homelands in Asia were mostly illegal, often operating by bringing “paper children” who claimed that they were related to Asian Americans living in the United States. It was not until the 1940s that Congress relaxed successive laws that permitted admission and naturalization of immigrants from Asian countries, beginning with Chinese nationals in 1943, and eventually including Filipino, Korean, and Japanese nationals by 1952. The subsequent decade would provide more avenues for Asian Americans to immigrate to the United States legally with the passing of the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act. From the 1950s to the 1990s, the Asian American population would increase by six times its original size, though this paper will not explore the impact of the Vietnam War and the Indochina Wars on the formation of Asian American communities in the United States.

Current scholarship suggests that the early Cold War, as well as World War II, were crucial in establishing a sense of Asian American citizenship and identity. According to Christina Klein, the legal reforms towards Asian Americans in the 1950s represented the “double meaning of integration in the postwar period,”^[7]  wherein the inclusion of Asian and African Americans was essential to the international project of integrating the decolonizing nations into a capitalist, free-world order. Ellen Wu, whose work focuses on the historical origins of the model minority myth, also emphasizes the motivations behind the federal government’s actions to legitimate the place of racial minorities within the early Cold War: “Racial discrimination in the United States was drawing negative attention from both domestic and international critics, and it stained the image of American democracy at a time when U.S. officials hoped to win the hearts and minds of people around the world.”^[8]  Scholars point to the centrality of World War II and how it shifted American perceptions of the Chinese and Japanese due to alliances during the war, which would consequently shape how both Chinese and Japanese American populations were integrated as American citizens. Thus, the concept of citizenship on conditional grounds, or the idea that deserving Asian Americans would have to “earn” their citizenship,^[9] defined many of the changes impacting Asian American communities in the 1950s and 60s.

Japanese internment during World War II particularly enforced the racialization of Asian Americans, perpetuating yet another paradox under the guise of democracy and freedom. As previously mentioned, shifting perceptions of the  Chinese and Japanese, mostly due to alliances during the war, also indicated a shift in policies towards Chinese and Japanese American populations during and after the war, despite many of them having no political connection to mainland China or Japan themselves. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942, President Roosevelt instituted wide-ranging Japanese internment policies under Executive Order 9066, outlining three primary directives: curfew, exclusion, and internment. Despite the United States preaching liberal democratic values in contrast to Nazi authoritarianism, Supreme Court decisions such as Hirabayashi v. U.S. (1943) and Korematsu v. U.S. (1946) upheld the constitutionality of race-based interment in times of “national emergency.”^[10] These legal interpretations of national security and race also enforced the perception of Asian Americans as automatic extensions of their ancestral homelands, even though many of the Japanese-Americans affected were Nisei, or second-generation Japanese-Americans whose grandparents had immigrated to the United States before they were even born.

In Hirabayashi v. U.S., the Court deemed that the application of curfews against members of an entire ethnic group was constitutional. The plaintiff, Gordon Hirabayashi, was born in Seattle to a Christian family and was a student attending the University of Washington at the time. In Korematsu v. U.S., the Court emphasized the “military necessity” for the incarceration of Japanese-Americans, despite the deliberate suppression of evidence from the FBI which found that Japanese-Americans posed no real security threat.^[11] Like Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu was born in Oakland to Japanese parents who immigrated to the US in 1905 and barely had any political connection to Japan aside from ethnic heritage itself. “My father was not a complicated man,” Karen Korematsu remarked, “he had learned about the Constitution in high school. He thought he had civil rights as an American citizen.”^[12]

The treatment of Japanese-Americans as Japanese subversives was unsurprising, considering American attitudes towards Japanese-Americans and Chinese-Americans at the time of the war. Japanese-Americans were conceptualized as enemy aliens, enduring “mass removal, internment, and the effective nullification of their citizenship, and a coercive dispersal.”^[13] In a pictorial for Life magazine from 1941 titled “How to Tell Japs from the Chinese,” the author juxtaposes two facial portraits of a Chinese person and a Japanese person, one above the other. The Chinese portrait is of the Minister of Economic Affairs for the Chinese national government, captioned “Chinese public servant,” whereas the Japanese portrait is of Prime Minister Admiral Tojo, frowning, with the caption “Japanese Warrior.” The pictorial included labels of essentialist physical descriptions that sought to differentiate the Chinese from the Japanese, such as “never has rosy cheeks” as opposed to “sometimes has rosy cheeks.” The main purpose was to help Americans tell whether their neighbors were Chinese or Japanese, distinguishing them based on the wartime dichotomy of ally versus foe, again despite many Asian Americans having little political connection to their ancestral homeland.

At the same time, Chinese-Americans received different treatment as a result of their real and presumed ties to Beijing, a wartime ally. Chinese inclusion, therefore, became a prominent national policy goal. The Magnuson Act repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943, which had previously prohibited the immigration of all Chinese laborers when it was signed into law in 1882. For China, the repeal of Chinese exclusion was a success, as it had also been a foreign policy goal for the two Chinese governments for more than half a century.^[14] In her work on migration as diplomacy, Meredith Oyen emphasizes the symbolic nature of the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion laws, with the most popular arguments in favor of repeal centered on the idea that doing so would aid the war effort. The Magnuson Act passed through Congress mostly on the grounds that it would keep the nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-Shek committed to the war against Japan. Furthermore, the U.S. would use successive changes in migration policy to placate Nationalist China when it couldn’t fulfill other promises.^[15] The policies created a foundation for the formation of Asian American political identity, serving not as a method of racial integration and assimilation, but rather as a means for the U.S. and both Chinas to pursue diplomatic goals and negotiation.

The treatment of Chinese- and Japanese-Americans during wartime also prompted public responses to policies such as Chinese Exclusion. In 1942, Charles Spinks, a specialist on East Asian relations, published an article calling to repeal Chinese Exclusion. He pointed out that the U.S. fighting side by side with China to destroy fascism and build a new world order of freedom, justice, and equality was contradictory to the US not treating Chinese people with the “justice and equality they deserve.”^[16] Furthermore, some media outlets even outlandishly claimed that there was a correlation between Japanese protests against Asian exclusion and the cooling of U.S.-Japanese relations until Pearl Harbor – a mostly baseless argument that sought to connect Japanese ethnic heritage to broader themes of American foreign policy.^[17] Other cultural portrayals and depictions of Chinese inclusion included casting Chinese-Americans as American, highlighting the “American-ness” of urban Chinatowns and typical Chinese families.^[18] In 1943, Sun Yat Sen’s third wife and esteemed diplomat Soong Ching Ling went on a national tour in the U.S., signaling that China shared principles of democracy with the United States and was willing to collaborate with the United States to uphold democratic values. World War II was therefore pivotal in changing the cultural and political attitudes towards Asian Americans at the beginning of the Cold War.

Asian American communities were also highly engaged in various forms of postwar activism, with Chinese veterans demanding fairer treatment especially in terms of immigration. Their activism eventually paved the way for the 1945 War Brides Act. Wu attests that United States’ emphasis on national unity in diversity during the war meant that Chinese-Americans could claim a stake, welcoming chances to perform “inclusion” on the public stage.^[19] The War Brides Act allowed Chinese American veterans to bring wives into the U.S. as non-quota immigrants. This was followed by the Chinese Alien Wives of American Citizens Act, which allowed Chinese American citizens, regardless of veteran status, to bring spouses to the United States. The result was the reunification of thousands of Chinese families and the influx of Chinese women into mostly male-dominated Chinatowns.

After witnessing the Chinese American victory in repealing Chinese exclusion, various communities of Asian ancestry sought to lobby for similar rights, yet Japanese and Korean migrants remained ineligible for citizenship and immigration until long after Chinese inclusion. The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), a key organization for advancing Japanese-American rights, began a campaign to gain naturalization rights for Japanese immigrants whose children had served in World War II. The War Brides Act was eventually revised to include Japanese wives of American citizens, resulting in over 45,000 Japanese wives and 6,000 Chinese women coming to the U.S. after the war.^[20] Moreover, lobbyists from the JACL such as Mike Masaoka would often utilize the politics of post-war inclusion and “Asia First” to his advantage, collaborating with “internationalist” Republicans whose party had just won the 1946 elections.

The consequences of World War II for Chinese- and Japanese-Americans sketched out a familiar trajectory for how Asian American political identity would develop in the decades to follow. As demonstrated by the federal government’s actions in response to Japan and China’s involvement in the war, the lines between Asian America and Asia became increasingly blurred, contributing to seemingly paradoxical perceptions of Asian Americans as both the ally and the foe. Considering that persons of Japanese and Chinese descent consisted of a majority of the Asian American population at the time, such perceptions of Asian Americans would prove crucial in the formation of Asian American communities in the years to come, shaping policies that often conflated the interests of Asian Americans and Asian populations overseas. The foreign affairs of the United States, namely America’s participation in World War II, had a powerful impact on the domestic racial environment at the time. Foreign affairs and domestic racial politics would become more intertwined, with Asian Americans becoming crucial in the American project of conveying the U.S. as a multiracial liberal democracy in the new post-war order.

Public & Cultural Diplomacy in Post-War America

The United States’ interest in maintaining the post-war order also contributed to the expansion of public and cultural diplomacy. The heightened importance of public and cultural diplomacy, as evidenced by America’s responses to global perceptions of domestic racial oppression against African Americans, meant that Asian Americans would play a significantly outsized role in portraying America as an enlightened multicultural democracy. In his work on public diplomacy, Jason Parker suggests that both the U.S. and the Soviet Union sought to “win hearts and minds” during the early Cold War, and that media influence was a significant means of ensuring the allegiance of the public to either superpower.^[21] Soviet propaganda’s influence on racial relations in the U.S., as well as the subsequent policies implemented by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, underscored the importance of foreign affairs on domestic public opinion.. This became a reciprocal relationship in which domestic race policy became a means of political signaling in the conduct of foreign affairs.

Soviet propaganda on the racial relations of the U.S. often contributed to the global perception of America as losing the Cold War and the failure of the American political order, especially the failures of American racism in contrast to the image that the U.S. presented to the rest of the world. Soviets often “disseminated stories on rampant racism in US society that proved US democracy ‘an empty fraud’ and in so doing, replaced the WW2 propaganda of Germany and Japan that sought to accomplish the same.”^[22] Japanese propaganda during World War II, for example, were directed against America’s anti-Chinese laws, attempting to appeal to Asians by emphasizing the flaws in American racial legislation.^[23] Soviets utilized a similar logic of post-racialism, depicting the Soviet Union as a truly egalitarian communist utopia in contrast to the tense racial  environment of the United States, with some instances of propaganda even predating World War II.

Soviets attempted to undermine American depictions of a liberal, multiracial society, signifying the importance of racial politics in Cold War diplomacy during the 1950s. In a poster created in 1932 by one of the Soviet Union’s most famous propagandists, a menacing statue of liberty stands above nine African American men in chains.^[24] The words “Freedom to the Prisoners of Scottsboro” are plastered at the top of the poster, appearing next to a wooden gallows with several nooses attached. The poster was referring to the nine black teenagers who were falsely accused and convicted of raping two white women in Scottsboro. Similarly, another poster from 1948 is a diptych of a black and white image of an African American man bound by ropes, gazing upward at the statue of liberty in the background, alongside a red-stained depiction of men and women of various races and ethnic clothing standing together.^[25] The poster is captioned “Under Capitalism vs. Under Socialism”, with the black man tied by ropes associated with the woes of American capitalism.

As the 1950s and 60s brought a wave of decolonization and independence movements amongst the “Third World,” the USSR, just like the U.S., also wanted to promote the appeal of an egalitarian communist society to those who had long criticized the impact of Western imperialism and dominance. It worked, to a certain extent—at the same time, waves of Africans were immigrating to the USSR from former colonies, many of which included students participating in state-led opportunities to study at Soviet universities.^[26] In attempts to expand their influence to the Third World, the Soviets continued to condemn instances of racism in the United States. When federal troops intervened in Little Rock after schools refused to desegregate, communist youth newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda ran a story with photographs of Little Rock, sensationally titling the article “Troops Advance Against Children!”^[27] Another state-sponsored newspaper, Investia, also covered the incident and called “so-called American democracy” a mere facade. As Mary Dudziak emphasizes in Cold War Civil Rights, the Russian objective was to disrupt U.S. international relations and undermine U.S. power in the world, thereby undermining the appeal of U.S. democracy to those living in other countries.

Consequently, the U.S. sought to address the issue of civil rights much earlier than when the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum through impact litigation in the 1950s. Immediately following World War II, President Truman established the President’s Committee on Civil Rights through Executive Order 9808 on December 5th, 1946, seeking to explain why it was essential to ensure civil rights for all in the post-war period. Not only did the Committee point to the rise of a new world conflict drawn amongst the lines of both economic ideology and race, it directly emphasized that American racism compromised the national security of the United States.^[28] This was one of the ways that race became increasingly intertwined with  national security at the beginning of the Cold War, and it would become even more interconnected in the 1950s.

Many of Truman’s initiatives indicated a willingness to take civil rights seriously in the context of foreign policy and national security. In Truman’s speech to Congress on February 2, 1948, a year after the Committee was created, he spoke of freedom and equality under the law, as well as the protection of civil rights. To do so, he proposed the establishment of a Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice, a permanent commission on Civil Rights reporting to the President, and a Committee on Civil Rights in Congress. The equality in naturalization for immigrants and the evacuation claims of Japanese-Americans from the era of interment formed two significant policy recommendations and goals in his speech, even though the Asian American population was comparatively smaller at the time. In regards to the Magnuson Act, he stated, “I urge the Congress to remove the remaining racial or nationality barriers which stand in the way of citizenship for some residents of our country.” ^[29] He also defended the evacuation claims of Japanese-Americans, many of whom wanted reparations for the losses they suffered after being forced to abandon their homes and businesses to evacuate to internment camps. “During the last war more than one hundred thousand Japanese-Americans were evacuated from their homes in the Pacific states solely because of their racial origin…The Congress has before it legislation establishing a procedure by which claims based upon these losses can be promptly considered and settled.” ^[30]

Five months later in July 1948, Truman signed a bill in response to his request to deal with the evacuation claims of Japanese-Americans, authorizing the settlement of property loss claims by Japanese-Americans who were forcibly removed. As the Soviet Union promoted a communist utopia, America also sought to promote their own image of racial harmony—an image that began by “righting the wrongs” of the past, such as dealing with the consequences of Chinese Exclusion and Japanese internment. There was also federal intervention on behalf of civil rights as early as 1948 in Shelley v. Kraemer, where the federal government’s brief supporting the dismantling of racial restrictions in housing relied on the State Department’s view that the U.S. had been “embarrassed” in diplomacy due to racial discrimination at home.^[31] The violation of basic liberties for racial minorities in the U.S. was therefore tied to matters of national security; Truman’s adherence to such a paradigm would later be underscored by his veto of the McCarran Internal Security Act, which had passed through Congress to limit the political power of potential Communist subversives. In the next section, this paper will explore the impact of the McCarran Internal Security Act on Asian American communities.

The outbreak of the Chinese Revolution in 1949 and the Korean War in 1950 also caused a shift in the way domestic policy was tied to national security: the threat of communism appeared greater than ever, and the preeminent strategy at the time was to emphasize the importance of the U.S. and the rest of the free world in combating the communist threat of “Red Colonialism.” Only now, it was not just limited to Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries. As a result of the Chinese Communist Party’s victory in 1949 and its alliance with North Korea and the Soviets in the Korean War, the rest of Asia was just as susceptible to the “domino theory:” one country’s “fall” to communism would cause other countries to follow its lead, much like a set of dominoes. Following the United States’ entry into the Korean War, the Truman Administration committed to a “Campaign of Truth” that sought to portray America in a positive light by “coherently and aggressively pressing the American case, and improving American standing, in foreign eyes.” ^[32]

When President Eisenhower came into power, he also established components of a “New Look” national security policy that focused on undermining Soviet influence on non-aligned countries. In his analysis of public diplomacy, Parker suggests, “American analysts found that profound political and psychological changes that were the result of anti-colonial nationalism, racial awakening, and economic underdevelopment would greatly affect the US ability to achieve Western objectives.”^[33] Preaching western liberal values in theory were not enough to offset anti-colonialist sentiments and race-based movements in the Third World. Such a realization would lead to the creation of agencies such as the United States Information Agency (USIA) in 1953. Under the Jackson and Rockefeller Committees, the USIA formulated “country plans” on-site, tailoring information that drew on the theme of free world unity to be disseminated in countries with strong nationalist movements such as Guatemala.^[34] Eisenhower was so determined to present this vision to the world because from the administration’s point of view, transnational racial sensitivities were so strong that even dominant forces like the U.S. could not neutralize communism’s abilities to absorb them. In 1957, U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge wrote to President Eisenhower about the riots in Little Rock, stating the following: “Here at the United Nations I can see clearly the harm that the riots in Little Rock are doing to our foreign relations…more than two-thirds of the world is non-white and the reactions of the representatives of these people is easy to see.”^[35]

The domestic racial politics in postwar America played an important role in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy. The racial tensions and demands of African Americans that arose at home could no longer be ignored, and the U.S. government scrambled to reconcile what they wanted the rest of the world to see, and what the world was actually seeing. The rise of public and cultural diplomacy meant that American soft power could now be consolidated in new ways–such methods eventually became essential to the relative positioning of Asian Americans in the wake of America’s geopolitical subsequent involvement in Asia, and during the height of the Civil Rights movement.

The McCarran Internal Security Act

Truman’s “loss” of Nationalist China, as well as China’s entry into the Korean War, instilled fears of Asian Americans at home. The logic that justified Japanese internment during World War II had returned: policies that restricted the civil liberties of those who looked like the enemy were perfectly warranted so long as it was in the interest of national security. As Bruce Cumings stresses, China’s entry into the Korean War cast Asians as an “enemy race” that sought to destabilize the global political order.^[36] Asians, including Asian Americans, were perceived as enemies who were part of a global communist mission seeking to destroy the American way of life. Popular portrayals of American involvement in Asia such as a 1962 film titled The Manchurian Candidate emphasize how pervasive this logic was even nine years after the war ended. In the film, a platoon of U.S. soldiers become brainwashed by evil Korean communists, becoming part of an international communist conspiracy to undermine the U.S. government.

In 1949, the federal government’s conviction of eleven Communist Party members for teaching or advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government established a precedent for imprisoning both citizens and non-citizens for their political beliefs. This was followed by the 1950 Emergency Detention Act, which gave the U.S. Attorney General the authority to establish concentration camps for anyone who might be deemed a domestic threat in a national emergency. Like Japanese-Americans who were interned during World War II, the Asian Americans who were commonly perceived as behind enemy lines often had no connection to their ancestral homeland. Many were first- or second-generation immigrants for which America was their only home and culture. Regardless, widespread anger and fear over China’s loss prompted the United States to implement policies that upheld the ability of the U.S. government to punish citizens for their political beliefs, many of which were based on assumptions from American encounters with the Asian enemy abroad.

One of the first major pieces of legislation that responded to fears of the Communist threat at home was the McCarran Internal Security Act, which passed on September 23rd, 1950.

The Act was established by Democratic Senator Pat McCarran, who was a supporter of Joseph McCarthy. McCarran was  firmly convinced that immigrants were bringing communism to the United States. The Act required communist organizations to register with the U.S. Attorney General and established the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB), which prompted the investigation of those suspected of subversive activities or promoting totalitarian dictatorship. Citizens that were suspected or found in violation of the act could lose citizenship for up to five years or be detained; the Act also authorized state detention of persons suspected of espionage or sabotage in the event of an invasion, war or insurrection.^[37]

The McCarran Act normalized and legitimized prejudices towards Asian Americans, despite the post-World War II characterization of some, but not all, Asian Americans as wartime allies. Ellen Wu states:

Almost overnight the prevailing images of Chinese in the American public eye had metamorphosed from friendly (if weak) Pacific allies to formidable, threatening foes. Businesses reported losses as nervous clientele began canceling orders. Individuals became targets of verbal harassment and physical assaults, as was the case of one unfortunate Texan who was shot when mistaken for  a ‘Communist.’^[38]

Public hysteria and fears amongst policymakers would force Chinese-American communities to react. Unsurprisingly, Chinese-Americans were already extremely wary of U.S. policy after China’s entry into the Korean War, especially after witnessing the effects of Japanese internment. Although the actual numbers of communists in Chinese-American communities were tiny, Chinese-American fears also led many Chinatown elites to support Chiang Kai-Shek. Many pro-Chiang Chinese elites ended up working with the FBI to suppress any expression of support for the new communist regime—the Trading with the Enemy Act, for example, prevented currency transfers to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), including remittances to family.^[39] The actions of Chinese-American and other Asian American communities to collaborate with the government did not necessarily quell fears amongst decision-makers, however; the United States’ intervention in Asia exaggerated an “Us vs. Them” mentality that remained ingrained in the American consciousness.

Despite passing in Congress, the McCarran Act was vetoed by Truman. True to his concerns of America’s perception in international politics, he justified his veto with the potential negative consequences of the legislation on the conduct of foreign affairs, emphasizing how the passing of the Act would help communists in their attempt to undermine American freedom. In a speech on September 22, 1950, Truman stated, “But in actual operation the bill would have results exactly the opposite of those intended…It would help the Communist propagandists throughout the world who are trying to undermine freedom by discrediting as hypocrisy the efforts of the United States on behalf of freedom.”^[40] The suggestion that the U.S. could not betray its tradition of freedom of expression because it would help communists undermine American liberties attested to the importance of promoting the American commitment to freedom and democracy, at least in the eyes of the public.

The Filipino Uprising and the Hukbalahap Rebellion

The United States’ domestic response to the CCP victory and the Korean War propelled Asian Americans to the forefront of concerns regarding national security and the conduct of foreign affairs. In a region of Asia south of the equator, another popular uprising was also starting to brew. The Hukbalahap (Huk) Movement, which had initially begun as an anti-Japanese guerrilla force during World War II, merged with the Communist Party in the Philippines in 1950. Partially a response to the internal distributions of wealth—inequalities which U.S. policies had done little to curb when the Philippines was a U.S. colony—the Huk movement mainly targeted wealthy Filipinos who collaborated with the Japanese during the war.^[41] Eventually, the Huks seized numerous large estates in central Luzon and established a regional government, collected taxes, and even administered their own laws.

After the Philippines gained independence in 1946, the Huk movement started to gain more momentum and eventually led to a popular uprising. The containment doctrine, as well as previously established fears of a communist takeover in Asia, allowed the U.S. to suppress the uprising, working together with the Philippine establishment to curb the rebellion. Many members of the Huk Rebellion called for the removal of American military bases, which the U.S. viewed as a “direct geopolitical threat.”^[42] As a result, Truman authorized large shipments of military supplies to the Manila government under Ramon Magsaysay, which would prove effective in suppressing the rebellion. The U.S. also spent special military advisors to the Philippines to develop counterinsurgency tactics that would later be used in the Vietnam and Indochina Wars.^[43] Perceptions of the Filipino threat were highly connected to the loss of China and the view that China was attempting to expand its influence in the Asiatic region. In John Foster Dulles’ address of Secretary in 1957, he states:

[The Chinese Communist Party] retains power not by will of the Chinese people, but by massive, forcible repression. It fought the United Nations in Korea, it supported the Communist war in Indochina; it took Tibet by force. It fomented the Communist Huk rebellion in the Philippines and the Communists’ insurrection in Malaya. It does not disguise its expansionist ambitions. It is bitterly hateful of the United States, which it considers a principal obstacle in the way of its path of conquest.^[44]

These perceptions of threat also resulted in political consequences for Filipino-Americans. As demonstrated by the McCarran Internal Security Act, the United States was both willing and able to persecute individuals on the basis of their political beliefs, and policies towards Filipino-American communities were no different. Along with prior beliefs that established Asians as the enemy, the United States began to perceive transnational networks linking Filipino leaders and Filipino-American activists as a major threat, pursuing domestic policies that specifically targeted Filipino-Americans. These policies included the aggressive persecution of Filipino labor leaders and the monitoring of Filipino activists. An activist named Carlos Bulosan, a high profile Filipino-American writer who chronicled the Filipino-American experience from the 1930s to the 1950s, was an avid supporter of the Huks and attempted to mobilize support for them amongst American leftists.^[45] As a result, he was blacklisted and surveilled by the FBI.

The U.S. government also targeted Filipino members of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU), who were known for their daunting critiques on white supremacy and anti-imperialist views. Filipinos and other Asian Americans had dominated the workforce in Alaskan canneries since the 1900s, comprising a majority of the ILWU. They distributed materials that served to educate Asian American communities on the failures of the American political system to truly promote a multiracial society, including a pamphlet entitled “The McCarran Act: 57 varieties of union harassment: a digest and analysis of the Internal security act of 1950.” According to the University of Washington Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, “the unionization of workers in the Alaska canneries and the fields of western Washington gave Filipinos an important tool to fight for better wages and working conditions and also for civil rights.”^[46] The ability of activists such as ILWU members to point out the civil rights violations of the U.S. government, however, also meant that they contradicted the image of the multiracial democracy that the United States wanted to depict to audiences abroad. “Liberals of the time envisioned Asian inclusion as adaptation to white, middle-class norms and behaviors…Asians would need to ‘earn’ legitimation as fellow citizens by performing in ways deemed acceptable by the state and other powerful actors,” Madeleine Hsu and Ellen Wu said. “This meant that only those who were sufficiently patriotic, anti-communist, heteronormative, and upstanding could pass muster.”^[47] Filipino-American members of the ILWU certainly did not fit the bill. As a result of their activism and the United States’ geopolitical entrenchment in Asia, members of the ILWU were investigated by federal authorities for alleged communist sympathies, and hundreds were arrested or arbitrarily deported for their subversive political beliefs.

The United States’ domestic response to the Huk Rebellion, while certainly not as broad in scope as the McCarran Act, stoked underlying racialized fears about Asian Americans solidified the means of threat perception that had provided much of the justification for the McCarran Act. The emphasis on the transnational nature of the Asian communist threat would shape policies regarding Asian immigration and the political identity of Asian Americans in the years to come. It would also contribute to the continued fears of an ideological takeover, with decision-makers such as Dulles viewing Asian countries as both particularly vulnerable to and seeking to exert communist influence.

Chinese Confession Program

The perception of a transnational Asian threat profoundly impacted Chinese-American communities. In 1955, U.S. consul in Hong Kong Everett F. Drumwright, issued a report warning that communist China was making use of “massive fraud and deception to infiltrate agents into the US undercover as immigrants,” providing a rationale for FBI and INS raids into Chinatowns across the country.^[48] Chinatowns were flooded with public notices, street fliers, and warnings of potential spies and subversives that only exacerbated the underlying fear of the McCarran Act. More importantly, the Drumright Report also called for federal investigations and subpoenas of Chinese-American populations in order to investigate Chinese immigration fraud, which had become a prevalent issue at the time. In 1950, at least 25% of the Chinese-American population was undocumented, and most were in the U.S. as a result of fraud and surreptitious entry.^[49] Most of the undocumented population consisted of “paper sons:” people who had immigrated to the U.S. during the first half of the 20th century by posing as sons of naturalized Chinese-American immigrants. Due to this system of paper immigration, the discovery of one fraudulent claim could implicate about 30 other individuals.

Ending paper immigration, however, was not as easy as government officials envisioned. Even if white officials regarded Asian Americans as potentially disloyal because of their ancestry and supposed connection to enemies in Asia, authorities could no longer make publicly make such claims.^[50] This also meant that Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) could no longer operate in the same way they had before. The national embarrassment of the U.S. government failing to address civil rights was too prominent, and the issue was one that both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations sought to address. At the time, President Eisenhower was also dealing with the delicate situation of the Quemoy-Matsu crisis, a military conflict between China and the ROC which had exacerbated tensions between the United States and China. Moreover, many Chinese-Americans across the country were extremely frustrated, and multiple communities on the west coast had started to become more affiliated with liberal politicians. Chinese activists and leaders like Chinese-Americans Citizens Alliance (CACA) President Henry Lem forced the government to respond to concerns of Chinese activists who emphasized that Chinese exclusion was the cause of Chinese illegal immigration. The subpoenas and investigations by the Department of Justice, as prompted by the Drumright report, had to be replaced with something slightly more accommodating, so long as it did not appear like the government was pandering to those who were perceived as intimately connected with communist conspirators in Asia.

After blanket subpoenas were thrown out in March 1956, the Chinese Confession Program officially started in 1956. The program was set up to prevent communists from entering the U.S. fraudulently and requested that Chinese-Americans with paper citizenship come forward in exchange for “amnesty.” While they were offered immunity from prosecution, they were still subject to deportation, and the program was more of an administrative adjustment for confessors as opposed to an actual method of integration. As Cindy I-fen Cheng argues, the government relied on the Chinese Confession Program to “reinstate illegal immigrants back into the alien/citizen dichotomy.”^[51] Rather than integrating undocumented Asian immigrants as  American citizens, it placed the responsibility on Asian Americans themselves to claim their own legality as American citizens. Many Chinese-Americans ended up outing close friends and relatives in exchange for immunity from the lack of persecution. It was also likely the best deal that Chinese-Americans could have received at the time in the midst of the anti-communist hysteria that had swept up the United States.^[52]

At least 11,336 Chinese-Americans entered the Chinese Confession Program, implicating another 19,124 people and subsequently closing off 5,800 slots for citizenship.^[53] The main problem underlying the Chinese Confession Program was that it utilized a method of selective enforcement. The INS could choose whom they wanted to deport, and the U.S. government’s prior focus on stripping those with “subversive” political beliefs of their citizenship and liberties meant that those perceived as political radicals would be more subject to deportation, even when the actual number of leftists in Chinese-American communities was minuscule.^[54] Secondly, the program was unreliable. It was often difficult to verify the claims of paper citizens because the documentation was not there in the first place. Mae Ngai stresses that authorities found paper immigration to be nearly impossible to eliminate, as it rested on documentation that was created by the State. “Just as oral testimony and interrogation helped create that body of evidence, ‘confession’ became the only method of proving its fraudulent character.”^[55] In other words, confessions were almost just as unreliable as the testimonies of the Asian immigrants who claimed to be paper sons.

After decades of facing racism and discrimination from the state, Chinese confessions were also not necessarily predicated on any sense of trust between Chinese communities and the government. Most Chinese-Americans were skeptical of the government’s ability to help them, and rightly so, since they had lived under the shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese internment, and the recent McCarran Act. While the program resulted in the arrest of New York illegal immigration racket kingpin Sing Kee, it also led to the arrest of individuals like Maurice Chuck, a radical San Francisco journalist who was trapped by the confession and courtroom testimony of his own (real) father. Chuck was convicted, stripped of his paper citizenship, and sent to prison; although his father’s confession had exposed him, Chuck shared a hotel with his father during the trial, who wept every night.^[56] Cases like Chuck’s demonstrate that the Chinese Confession Program did not necessarily accomplish its goal of disrupting transnational networks of communist subversives. Rather, it generated widespread confusion and discord amongst Chinese American communities, operating on Chinese-Americans’ fears of potential persecution.

Prioritizing the elimination of paper immigration contributed to the perception that Chinese-Americans were “unscrupulous, devious, and immoral.”^[57] Aside from the presumption that all persons of Chinese descent in America were illegal immigrants, the dichotomy of “Good China” (the ROC) versus “Bad China” (the PRC) also forced Chinese-Americans to pick sides in policies that sought to restrict their civil liberties. It encouraged prominent community leaders to emphasize transnational strategies as a response to the American perception of Asian Americans as holding a deeper connection to Asia than they might have. Before the Chinese Confession Program, Chinatown organizations such as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) coordinated with the INS and the FBI to suppress left-wing, pro-PRC opponents through programs of domestic surveillance, repression, and deportation.^[58] Yet, when CCBA-NY relied on ROC officials to protest against the initial Drumright probe in 1956, the KMT government proved unable to help—according to one CCBA-NY member, the KMT government was “so weak and corrupt it makes one sigh.”^[59]  When the members were unable to produce tangible results for Chinese-Americans, many Chinese-Americans also lost faith in the ROC’s ability to protect Chinese-American rights, and a transnational political identity was abandoned in favor of a more local one.

Asia First and the Cultural Narratives of Race

While Asian Americans faced racially targeted policies at home, Republicans had already begun to develop an “Asia First” policy stance in an attempt to separate themselves from the Democratic presidency of Truman. The Asia First policy outlook brought a new dimension to Asian American identity at the time and was integral in enhancing the role that Asian Americans played in national politics. Although policies like the McCarran Act targeted Asian American populations, the sense that the United States was responsible for China’s post-war destiny under Asia First conveyed that Asian Americans had a real stake in national decisions regarding foreign affairs.

Aside from China’s alliance with the U.S. in the Pacific War and U.S. support for the KMT government, there were other early indications of a policy tilt towards Asia. Before Truman was elected, a document named “The Manchurian Manifesto” was published in 1946 that protested the Soviets’ expanding influence in Manchuria and largely blamed the U.S. for what happened to China at Yalta.^[60] In 1947, the U.S. wanted to reconstruct Japan’s pre-war economic machine as a foil to possibly revolutionary China, and Japan was perceived as playing a large role in bridging the markets of Southeast Asia and the U.S. market.^[61] The adoption of China as a signature foreign policy issue from the Chinese Revolution onwards was accompanied by skeptical leaders who were wary of troops getting further involved in European affairs. Many also blamed Truman for the “loss of China” after the victory of the CCP. A pro-Chiang position that funneled more funding into Asia was therefore a partisan approach to the perceived weakness of the Democrats in dealing with policy issues concerning Asia.

One of the largest proponents of Asia First was GOP Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio.

Taft, along with other House Republicans, criticized Truman harshly on his policies towards China leading up to the 1948 election. The rigid dichotomy of Communist and Non-Communist–wherein Mao was Communist and Chiang was not–meant that the U.S. automatically had to support Chiang. Truman’s weak support for Chiang and his nationalist government was, therefore, a main point of contention. “I believe very strongly that the Far East is ultimately even more important to our future peace and safety than is Europe. We should at least be as much concerned about the advance of Communism to the shores of the Pacific…as we are to its possible advance to the shores of the Atlantic,”^[62] stated Taft in a speech to the Economic Club of Detroit.

After the CCP’s victory in 1950, the establishment of the PRC entrenched further impressions that America was losing the Cold War. The idea that the United States should serve as China’s protector magnified how much of a loss China appeared to be, and the question of “Who lost China?” haunted the Truman administration in the years to come. In her work on American conservatism in regards to China policy, Joyce Mao emphasizes that the downfall of a free China “easily compounded perceptions of the free world rapidly disintegrating, which in turn led to a belated appreciation of Free China as a bulwark against the spread of communism and an assumption that the American Pacific Rim was in danger.”^[63] It also didn’t take long for Republicans to utilize the loss of China to their advantage, transforming China into a partisan issue. In his 1951 book titled A Foreign Policy for Americans, Taft portrayed Asia as American foreign policy’s Achilles Heel. He argued that prioritizing Asia was a matter of basic fairness: why shouldn’t the U.S. grant Asian allies the same amount of attention and support as they had given to European ones? To support his argument, Taft frequently cited what happened in China during the late 1940s as the best examples of liberal foreign policy failures—from Roosevelt conceding too much at Yalta to Truman abandoning the KMT, it was clear where Taft and other Republicans stood in relation to Democrats on the issue of Asia.

Perceptions of Asian Americans also influenced the conduct of Asia First, especially those that continued to conceive Asian Americans as transnationally linked to the political ideologies of communist countries in Asia. During the Chinese Confession Program, community Republicans often fought against Chinese American activism that sought to frame immigration subpoenas from the Department of Justice as a racial issue instead of a transnational one.^[64] Liberal Democrats such as former California Assemblyman Phil Burton, while campaigning for a State Assembly seat to unseat a 24-year old Republican incumbent, tapped into his liberal  network to help defend the Chinese-American community during the initial DoJ probes.^[65] Several congressional representatives in California responded and questioned the probes directly, earning the support of many Chinese-Americans. After witnessing the targeted impact of racialized responses to the war in Asia, Asian Americans were also quite aware of the fact that government officials often viewed them in conjunction with Asian populations overseas. Republicans such as Rollins MacFayden, a white American Legion member, urged Chinese conservatives to form branches of the California Republican Assembly, assuming that “the primary interest of the “Orientals” [with] whom he organized was Asia policy.”^[66]

The attempts to conflate the interests of Asian American communities with national interests in Asia policy contributed to the perceived foreignness of Asian Americans, reinforcing stereotypes of the perpetual foreigner. Simultaneously, Asia First also transformed Asian American identity by accentuating its role in both national and local politics, paving the way for strategic public and cultural diplomacy that further underscored the role of Asian Americans in foreign affairs. The U.S. government’s fear that ethnic Chinese and Asians in America were susceptible to political seduction by communist China and other Asian communist countries did not only manifest in the form of targeted racial policies like the Chinese Confession Program. As part of the project to promote U.S. democracy at home and abroad, the U.S. government also made it a priority to include semi-assimilated Chinese-Americans in Cold War narratives of race to demonstrate the superiority of America’s “multiracial” and liberal democracy. As Hsu and Wu emphasize, Asian Americans’ “links to Asia were remade into assets amidst the geopolitics of World War II and the Cold War.”^[67]

Such attempts to include Asian Americans in the dominant narrative and eventual goal of racial integration was often reflective of shifting, conflicting attitudes and policies towards Asian Americans. The impact of films and books was particularly prominent in perpetuating a sense of “dual identity” amongst Asian Americans that merged both American and “Asian” elements that never presented as fully American. Prominent authors such as Jade Snow Wong, Pardee Lowe, and C.Y. Lee dominated the Asian American cultural zeitgeist, and Christina Klein underscores how essential their cultural depictions of the Asian American identity were to the goal of “driving the reformulation of American national identity as a pluralistic nation of immigrants.”^[68] This again emphasizes the importance of domestic racial politics in the conduct of Cold War foreign affairs, with policy stances such as Asia First providing even more momentum for the heightened representation of Asian Americans both culturally and politically. The rising political prominence of Asian Americans was incredibly significant in the context of the actual Asian American population at the time: from the 1940s to the 1950s, the Asian American remained relatively constant, consisting of approximately only 0.2% of the American population.^[69] This percentage is less than 3.5% of the Asian American population today.

Stories of Asians popularized in books and films often focused on individualized assimilation and the ethnic qualities of Asian individuals, spotlighting various elements of Asian culture as a nod to American multiculturalism. Take the 1956 film Sayonara, a drama about an interracial romance in the Cold War era between American Air Force flier named Ace and Japanese performer Hana-Ogi. Set against an anachronistic backdrop of scenes from exoticized Japan, Ace falls in love with Hana-Ogi on his deployment during the Korean War. The couple remains in love, but Ace cannot marry Hana-Ogi under U.S. law, and Hana-Ogi is sent back to Tokyo. Another romance in the film between one of Ace’s colleagues and his Japanese lover end in a double suicide, prompting Ace to realize his true love for Hana-Ogi. At the end of the film, Ace is told that laws were being passed in the United States to allow interracial marriage, upon which he rushes to find Hana-Ogi in Tokyo, eventually pleading Hana-Ogi to marry him. Consider that Sayonara was released two years before the landmark case Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision that struck down barriers to interracial marriage across all states. On one hand, Robert Lee notes that the movie highlighted the “anti-communist necessity of ‘ethnic liberalism’ that presents Hana-Ogi as a model of ethnic assimilation.”^[70] On the other hand, the film hinged on emphasizing the differences between the two protagonists, suggesting that interracial marriages and interracial families—particularly those between white men and Asian women—presented a solution to the problem of racial discrimination in the United States.

In the 1961 film Flower Drum Song, dual-identity characters such as Mei Li possessed political value precisely because their non-American parts connected America to the rest of the world. Originally a novel, the film version focuses on eldest son Wang Ta’s romantic choices between two women: American born, completely assimilated Linda Low, or recent Chinese immigrant Mei Li. Throughout the film, Linda Low and Mei Li are juxtaposed with each other, with Mei Li portrayed as the epitome of traditional “Asian” femininity as opposed to Linda’s American sensibilities. Linda, like other cultural conceptions of a typical American woman, dresses in American clothing and talks about which men she wants to date. In contrast, Mei Li wears the Hollywood version of a traditional Chinese dress, sings with a notable accent, and bows often, presenting with a modest and shy demeanor. Although the protagonist Wang Ta starts out in love with Linda, he ends up marrying Mei Li. Thus, there is a clear process of privileging Mei Li, a character that highlights Asian foreign-ness and cultural difference, as opposed to Linda, who epitomizes assimilation and integration into American society.^[71] In both Sayonara and Flower Drum Song, the ethnicities and cultures of Asian individuals are fetishized in a way that ignores the historic racial dynamics and lived experiences of Asians in the United States, presenting Asian Americans in an ahistorical vacuum. Individualized notions of “assimilation” but not full integration underscored that overcoming racial discrimination could be done through the hard work and determination of individuals instead of dismantling systemic wrongs. Such depictions also further solidified any notions of Asian Americans as permanent foreigners, or as literary critic Frank Chin describes, “racialized aliens forever identified with countries they may never have seen.”^[72]

Aside from their roles in films, Asian Americans also played a prominent role in America’s conduct of public diplomacy. Other than agencies such as USIA that sought to disseminate American propaganda to the Third World, Washington also sent Asian Americans such as Jade Snow Wong on a 45-stop speaking tour through Asia in 1952, and Congressman Dalip Saund on a similar tour in 1957. Wong, a Chinese American author of popular autobiography Fifth Chinese Daughter, was the first Chinese American sent overseas by the State Department, receiving varied welcomes as she stopped in countries like Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaya, Thailand, Burma, India, and Pakistan. Saund was the first Asian American elected representative in Congress, and like Wong, stopped in many of the same countries as an official representative of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.^[73]

Wong, for the most part, spoke about the United States and the possibilities it offered for Chinese-Americans. As Klein reiterates, “Wong understood her ‘dual heritage’ as a political asset for the nation, one that allowed her to internationalize the role of cultural mediator that she had constructed in her autobiography.”^[74] Not only did Wong defend America from charges of racism and discrimination, but she also shifted the blame for the effects of discrimination to Asian Americans themselves. Similarly, Saund understood his duties as operating on two levels: one was to study mutual security between Asia and the United States, and the second was to “present [him]self as a living example of American democracy in practice.”^[75]  The latter was reiterated over and over again on his tour, with Saund telling attendees at a luncheon in Bombay (Mumbai) that any claims of prejudice against Indian-Americans or people of Indian descent were untrue. The logic of prioritizing individual faults over systemic wrongs would come to define the very crux of the model minority myth: as long as one exemplified certain traits of hard work and discipline, they could overcome racism in American society.

Even though State Department officials considered Wong and Saund’s tours a triumph for Cold War diplomacy, they made the same mistake that many of their colleagues at home did—they overemphasized a sense of transnational Asian identity and conflated the Asian American experience with a generalized and monolithic pan-Asian one. Hendrik Van Oss, a foreign officer at the time, reiterated, “Miss Wong’s life demonstrates the success that Asians can achieve in America…her speech and outlook clearly showed that she is accepted as an American, and this in itself was powerful counteraction to the reports of racial discrimination which have received wide publicity here.”^[76] Even though Wong received some warm welcomes on her tour, many audiences were more critical, questioning her authenticity as a “true Chinese” person. It turned out that overseas Asian audiences did not have experiences as monolithic as State officials thought, and Chinese identity did not necessarily unite all persons of Asian descent. In Malaya, for example, one man confronted Wong, asking her if she was really implying that there was no racial prejudice in the United States at all. Being the diplomat that she was, Wong responded with how Asian Americans create a happy life for themselves in the United States regardless of prejudice and discrimination.

At home, the government actively emphasized the successes of select groups of East and South Asians to emphasize the rising status of Asian Americans in U.S. society. Notable firsts like Judge John F. Aiso in 1953 (the first Japanese-American judge) and Judge Delbert Wong in 1959 (the first Chinese-American judge) were often used as signaling by the state.^[77] At the time, California Governor Edmund G. Brown had asked Judge Wong to fly to Sacramento as part of a planned conference, and mainstream media like the U.S. News and World Report, Newsweek, and the New York Times ran stories that featured the successes of Asian Americans like Wong and Aiso to discredit the claims of Black civil rights leaders.^[78] The American government continued to actively recognize and promote racialized minorities as part of the post-World War II, Cold War order, and elected officials and news organizations were often aware of how elevating the status of Asian Americans could work to establish the credibility of U.S. democracy.

The 1960s and the Relative Positioning of Asian Americans

The experiences of Asian Americans in the 1950s, as well as the policies and cultural depictions that represented the fraught paradoxes of America’s claims to a multiracial democracy, significantly influenced the political identity of Asian Americans in the 1960s. Although perceptions of foreign-ness and Asians as the enemy never truly escaped the American consciousness, “Asia First” and the heightened role that Asian Americans played in foreign affairs would elevate Asian Americans to a position they had never previously occupied in the racial structures of the United States. Even though this paper does not explore the implications of the United States’ geopolitical involvement in Asia during the 1960s on Asian Americans, I argue that the legacy left by policymakers and government officials from the 1950s were extremely remarkable in transforming the relative status of Asian Americans in the 60s.

The status of Asian Americans in American society in relation to African Americans is still a hotly debated topic today. Amy Chua, author of infamous autobiography Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, also published a book named The Triple Package in 2014, seeking to explain why certain groups in America did better than others. The book mostly attributed common measures of success such as socioeconomic class to specific cultural traits that were more present amongst ethno-racial groups such the Chinese, the Jewish, and Nigerians. Many critics opposed the book on the account that it ignored institutional and systemic barriers—a fair criticism, especially since “less successful” groups such as African Americans and Hispanic Americans have faced different sets of institutional obstacles that Asian Americans have since the 1960s. Chua’s logic was similar to that of the 60s, wherein popular attitudes conceptualized how inherent ethnic characteristics such as hard work and individual uplift could contribute to the vision of a racially harmonious society that defined Cold War politics. This subsequently emphasized a society where the state played a neutral role in race.

Asian Americans, especially those of East Asian descent, were bolstered by the model minority relative to African Americans. Images of Asian American uplift were shown in contrast to the supposed “criminality” of African Americans in the civil rights movement, even while African Americans were portrayed similarly in national concerns regarding the treatment of racial minorities within America’s borders. In an amicus brief by the Department of Justice on Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Attorney General explicitly urged that “The existence of discrimination against minority groups in the U.S. has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills, and it raises doubts even among friendly nations as to the intensity of our devotion to the democratic faith.”^[79] This indicated that the U.S. government saw the value in furthering the economic, social, and political status of African Americans in American society, mainly because it would help boost their reputation abroad. At a certain point, however, the U.S. began to see more value in promoting images of Asian American upward mobility and integration. Asian Americans were therefore much more advantaged by public opinion and institutional changes during the 1960s, and one primary reason for this was the emergence of the model minority myth.

The model minority myth perpetuated that Asian Americans had inherent cultural values that helped them succeed despite racial discrimination. In a 1966 New York Times article titled “Success Story, Japanese-American Style,” sociologist William Peterson claimed that Japanese-Americans succeeded relative to “problem minorities” such as African Americans and Hispanic Americans because they held “Tokugawa” values like diligence, frugality, and achievement orientation.^[80] Similar to the conceptions of transnationalism upheld in the 1950s, those of Japanese descent were automatically linked with the “alien” culture of Japan, even when Japanese-Americans consisted almost entirely of native-born U.S. citizens in 1965 (Japanese immigration had been barred between 1924 and 1965, when the Hart-Celler Immigration Act was enacted). Six months prior to the publication of the article, the Watts neighborhood riots had occurred in LA, where six days of rioting had incurred over $60 million in property damage as a result of a violent altercation between a crowd of African Americans and the police. ^[81] In the same year, a U.S. World and News Report article remarked that Asian Americans “faced more prejudice than Negroes today” due to Japanese internment, and most Americans seemed to forget Japanese internment was and still technically is constitutional—the original Korematsu decision has yet to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

As Robert Lee highlights in The Cold War Origins of the Model Minority Myth, the elevation of Asian American status to the position of model minority had less to do with the actual success of Asian Americans than to the perceived failure of African Americans to assimilate to a white majority culture.^[82] One reason for this was due to how Asians were placed at the forefront of narratives of assimilation in the 1950s. The two-fold utility of the model minority myth included sending a message to the Third World that the U.S. was a liberal democratic state with upward mobility for people of color, and sending a message to African Americans that non-compliance would be punished.^[83] This was more or less demonstrated by the subsequent conflict in the Johnson Administration in responding to black demands for racial equality. While Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s Report on the Black Family underscored the dysfunctional nature of black families, President Johnson’s speech at Howard University articulated a vision of social reform to combat poverty.

Following the publication of Peterson’s article and the longer trajectory of Asian American political identity that had taken shape in the 1950s, Congress passed the Hart-Celler Immigration Act in 1965. The act abolished the national origins (race-based) quota system established in 1924 and instead adopted a hemisphere quota system that was based on world population distribution—quotas for Asian nations jumped from 100 to 20,000 immigrants a year. In the same year, the Chinese Confession Program ended, since the ability of Chinese immigrants to become naturalized made the paper-son strategy unnecessary,^[84] and between 1971 and 1980, approximately 1.6 million Asian immigrants arrived on American soil, eclipsing the Asian American census population in 1950 by over 1.2 million. Between 1981 and 1990, 2.8 million more Asian immigrants arrived. The immediate effect of the Hart-Celler Act was an increase in Korean and Indian immigration, as well as a considerable increase in the number of Vietnamese and Southeast Asian immigrants who were affected by the Indochina Wars in the 1970s. Overall, the percentage of Asians in America increased from 0.2% in 1950 to 1.5% at the end of 1980.^[85]

The logic of the model minority myth was even present in policies towards immigration and diplomacy. The U.S. employed strict screening techniques to recruit only the best immigrants from Asia to integrate into American life, and the ROC would also use screening techniques to ensure that emigrants would support their government against communist opposition and change.^[86] The Hart-Celler Act cemented preferences for educated and skilled Asian workers, and employers assumed great powers in providing workers routes to immigration and permanent status,^[87] resulting in the subsequent “brain drain” of highly educated and skilled individuals from countries such as China, Korea, and India. The preference for educated and skilled Asian immigrants would also further reinforce the model minority myth.

Popular perceptions casting Asian Americans as alien subversives did not disappear. The dominant narratives of race and citizenship that had been so salient during times of war persisted in the 1960s, resulting in a relative positioning of Asian Americans as sometimes “like whites,” but definitely “not-black.”^[88] According to Claire Jean Kim’s theory of racial triangulation, the relative positioning of Asian Americans in relation to whites and African Americans occurred via two processes, both of which were extremely significant in determining the trajectory of Asian American political identity during the early Cold War.

Under Kim’s theory of racial triangulation, there is first the process of “relative valorization,” wherein Asian Americans are valorized relative to African Americans. This process was especially emphasized by the political value of Asian Americans in relation to “Asia First,” popular images of Asian American uplift and mobility, and cultural depictions of African Americans as comparatively more criminal in their fight for civil rights. The second process is that of civic ostracism, where whites constructed Asian Americans as immutably foreign and unassimilable with whites–often on cultural and racial grounds, in order to ostracize them from political participation. This was exemplified by the wartime perceptions of the Asian enemy, racially targeted policies towards Asian Americans such as the McCarran Act, as well as the cultural and political emphasis on differentiating Asian Americans from fully assimilable immigrants. Both these processes were amplified and enforced by the American mission of promoting the ideals of a multiracial democracy, as well as the United States’ geopolitical interests in Asia as a result of World War II, the Chinese Revolution, and the Korean War. The political and ideological forces of the early Cold War, therefore, played a significant role in perpetuating perceptions of Asian Americans as both loyal Americans and alien subversives, allowing many of the institutions and mores which enforced mechanisms of white supremacy and racism to remain in place despite the consistent, repeated demands of African Americans.

Conclusion

In 2017, NPR writer Kat Chow published an article that identified the model minority myth as being used as a “racial wedge” between Asian Americans and African Americans.^[89] In response to a New York Magazine article praising Asian Americans as an exemplar in how to overcome discrimination, Chow underscores how the “perceived collective successes” of Asian Americans are a worn-out trope, and how these successes are often used to minimize the role that racism plays in the struggles of other minority groups. Such characterizations of tensions between Asian Americans and African Americans are a testament to the extent to which the relative positioning of Asian Americans as not white, but not black, has influenced American racial politics.

In addition to the racial triangulation of Asian Americans, this paper examines shifts in immigration and domestic policy, broader U.S. foreign policy goals, and certain facets of public opinion and community activism, in relation to their impact on Asian American communities in the United States. By emphasizing major turning points in Asian American history such as the 1950 McCarran Act or the policy shift towards “Asia First” in the context of maintaining a post-WWII, Cold War order, we can recognize the importance of U.S. foreign policy in Asia and its impact on the domestic racial environment. This environment was often situated against the broader American vision for a democratic, multiracial society, as well as the expansion of public and cultural diplomacy. The changing perceptions of Asian Americans during the early Cold War in the 1950s provided essential momentum for the development of the model minority myth and the perpetual foreigner myth in the decades to follow, contributing extensively to the relative positioning of Asian Americans in the context of other racial minorities. By investigating the early Cold War origins of these myths, I do not intend to identify a single source of causation for the changes that have affected Asian American communities, nor do I wish to debunk the empirical successes of Asian American immigrants and communities. My paper also does not focus on the politics of Third World solidarity and cross-racial perceptions during the Civil Rights movement, as I am mainly interested in showcasing the effects of foreign policy on domestic racial politics. Asian Americans’ sociological perceptions of African Americans may have also impeded strides for cross-racial activism, which is a subject that requires further scholarship. The history of racial progress and the positioning of Asian Americans within American society has been influenced by a variety of complex factors that are beyond the scope of this paper.

Yet, the model minority and perpetual foreigner myths – two myths that were repeatedly perpetuated and reinforced during the early Cold War – continue to have implications on Asian Americans today. While Asian Americans as a whole have a higher median income than most Americans, the income gap amongst Asian Americans is the largest out of all racial groups, with subgroups such as Hmong-Americans and Cambodian-Americans having much lower incomes than Chinese-, South Asian-, and Korean-Americans. The characterization of Asian Americans as monolithic and unassimilable under the two tropes of the model minority and perpetual foreigner is dangerous and harmful. Popular perceptions of Asian Americans often paint us with a brush stroke as able to overcome racial prejudices through hard work and success, leading to discriminatory expectations and unequal treatment. Simultaneously, the myth of the perpetual foreigner reinforces common perceptions of Asian Americans as inherently foreign, regardless of what culture they may have grown up or surrounded themselves with. The popularization of such racial constructions reflects the lasting legacies of the Cold War and its often all-encompassing influence on domestic politics.

^[1]  Gustavo Lopez, Neil G. Ruiz, and Eileen Patteen, “Key facts about Asian Americans, a diverse and growing population” Pew Research Center (Sep 8 2017), http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/08/key-facts-aboutasian-americans/

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] “The Model Minority Myth” in Asian Americans in the Law, Vol. 5, Issue 1 (Nov/Dec 2018), 2018, https://thepractice.law.harvard.edu/article/the-model-minority-myth/

^[4] Stacey J. Lee et. al,”The model minority and the perpetual foreigner: Stereotypes of Asian Americans” in Asian American Psychology: Current perspectives (New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2009), 69-84

^[5] David Eng and Shinhee Han, “Racial Melancholia” in Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation (Duke University Press, 2018), 46-47

^[6] Ibid.

^[7] Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961 (University of California Press, March 2003)

^[8] Ellen Wu, ““America’s Chinese”: Anti-Communism, Citizenship, and Cultural Diplomacy during the Cold War” in Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 77, No.3 (University of California Press: August 2008), 391-422

^[9] Madeleine Hsu and Ellen Wu, “”Smoke and Mirrors”: Conditional Inclusion, Model Minorities, and the Pre-1965 Dismantling of Asian Exclusion” in Journal of American Ethnic History, Vol. 34, No. 4 (University of Illinois Press: Summer 2015), 43-65

^[10] Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)

^[11] Ibid.

^[12] Avi Selk, “FDR issued an executive order sending Japanese Americans to internment camps — 75 years ago” in The Washington Post (Washington DC, Feb 9 2017)

^[13] Ellen Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 43

^[14] Robert G. Lee, “The Cold War Origins of the Model Minority Myth,” in Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), 149

^[15] Meredith Oyen, The Diplomacy of Migration: Transnational Lives and the Making of U. S. -Chinese Relations in the Cold War (Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2015), 5

^[16] Xiaohua Ma, “The Sino-American Alliance During World War II and the Lifting of the Chinese Exclusion Acts” in American Studies International, Vol. 38, No.2 (Mid America American Studies Association: June 2000)

^[17] Oyen, The Diplomacy of Migration: Transnational Lives and the Making of U. S. -Chinese Relations in the Cold War

^[18] Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority, 56

^[19] Ibid., 56

^[20] Charlotte Brooks, Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015)

^[21] Jason C. Parker, Hearts, Minds, Voices: US Cold War Public Diplomacy and the Formation of the Third World (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016)

^[22] Cheng, Citizens of Asian America – Democracy and Race During the Cold War, 2

^[23] Ma, “The Sino-American Alliance During World War II and the Lifting of the Chinese Exclusion Acts”

^[24] Steve Rose, “Racial harmony in a Marxist utopia: how the Soviet Union capitalised on US discrimination” in The Guardian (Jan 24 2016), https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2016/jan/24/racial-harmony-in-amarxist-utopia-how-the-soviet-union-capitalised-on-us-discrimination-in-pictures

^[25] Ibid.

^[26] Olga Chudinovskikh and Mikhail Denisenko, “Russia: A Migration System with Soviet Roots” (Migration Policy Institute, 2017), https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/russia-migration-system-soviet-roots

^[27] Julia Ioffe, “The History of Russian Involvement in America’s Race Wars” (The Atlantic, 2017), https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/russia-facebook-race/542796/

^[28] Cheng, Citizens of Asian America – Democracy and Race During the Cold War (New York: New York University Press, 2013)

^[29] Harry S. Truman, “Special Message to the Congress on Civil Rights” (Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, 1948)

^[30] Ibid.

^[31] Lee, “The Cold War Origins of the Model Minority Myth,” in Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture, 157

^[32] Parker, Hearts, Minds, Voices: US Cold War Public Diplomacy and the Formation of the Third World, 42

^[33] Ibid, 66.

^[34] Ibid.

^[35] Dr. Cary Fraser, “Crossing the Color Line in Little Rock: The Eisenhower Administration and the Dilemma of Race for U.S. Foreign Policy”, Diplomatic History 24 no.2 (2000)

^[36] Bruce Cumings, “American Orientalism at War in Korea and the United States: A Hegemony of Racism, Repression, and Amnesia” in Orientalism and War, ed. Tarak Barkawi and Ketih Stanski (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013)

^[37] Ellen Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority

^[38] Ibid., 111

^[39] Lee, “The Cold War Origins of the Model Minority Myth,” in Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture, 152

^[40] Harry S. Truman, “Veto of the Internal Security Bill” (Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, 1950)

^[41] Rick Baldoz, “Asian Americans During The Cold War” in Finding a Path Forward: Asian American Pacific Islander National Historic Landmarks Theme Study, ed. Franklin Odo (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Publishing Office), 227

^[42] Benedict J. Kerkvliet, The Huk rebellion: a study of peasant revolt in the Philippines (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977)

^[43] Rick Baldoz, “Asian Americans During The Cold War”, 227

^[44] John Foster Dulles, “Address by the Secretary of State, San Francisco, June 28, 1957” in FOREIGN

RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1955–1957, CHINA, VOLUME III (Washington, DC.:Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State)

^[45] Rick Baldoz, “Asian Americans During The Cold War”, 227

^[46] “Filipino Cannery Unionism Across Three Generations 1930s-1980s” in Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project (Seattle: University of Washington, n.d.), http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/Cannery_intro.htm

^[47] Hsu and Wu,”Smoke and Mirrors”: Conditional Inclusion, Model Minorities, and the Pre-1965 Dismantling of Asian Exclusion, 55

^[48] Lee, “The Cold War Origins of the Model Minority Myth,” 153

^[49] Mae Ngai, “Legacies of Exclusion: Illegal Chinese Immigration during the Cold War Years” in Journal of American Ethnic History Vol. 18, No. 1 (University of Illinois Press, 1998)

^[50] Brooks, Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years, 158

^[51] Cheng, Citizens of Asian America – Democracy and Race During the Cold War, 187

^[52] Brooks, Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years, 178-179

^[53] Cheng, Citizens of Asian America – Democracy and Race During the Cold War, 187

^[54] Brooks, Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years, 177

^[55] Mae Ngai, “Legacies of Exclusion: Illegal Chinese Immigration during the Cold War Years” in Journal of American Ethnic History Vol. 18, No. 1 (University of Illinois Press, 1998), 7

^[56] Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882 (Hill and Wang, 2005)

^[57] Ngai, “Legacies of Exclusion: Illegal Chinese Immigration during the Cold War Years”, 6

^[58] Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority, 397

^[59] Brooks, Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years, 174

^[60] Joyce Mao, “Up from Isolationism” in Asia First: China and the Making of Modern American Conservatism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015)

^[61] Lee, “The Cold War Origins of the Model Minority Myth,” 156

^[62] Robert A. Taft, ed. Clarence E. Wunderlin, The papers of Robert A. Taft (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1997-2006)

^[63] Joyce Mao, “Up from Isolationism”, 23

^[64] Brooks, Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years, 165

^[65] Ibid.

^[66] Ibid.

^[67] Hsu and Wu, ““Smoke and Mirrors”: Conditional Inclusion, Model Minorities, and the Pre-1965 Dismantling of Asian Exclusion,” 54

^[68] Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961

^[69] “Table C-7. Asian and Pacific Islander, for the United States, Regions, Divisions, and States: 1940 and 1950”, US Census, https://web.archive.org/web/20141008181816/http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056/ta bC-07.pdf (September 13, 2002)

^[70] Lee, “The Cold War Origins of the Model Minority Myth,” 162

^[71] Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961

^[72] Ibid, 240.

^[73] Hsu and Wu, “Smoke and Mirrors”: Conditional Inclusion, Model Minorities, and the Pre-1965 Dismantling of Asian Exclusion”, 54

^[74] Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961, 240

^[75] Hsu and Wu, “Smoke and Mirrors”: Conditional Inclusion, Model Minorities, and the Pre-1965 Dismantling of Asian Exclusion”, 54

^[76] Ellen Wu, ““America’s Chinese”: Anti-Communism, Citizenship, and Cultural Diplomacy during the Cold War” in Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 77, No.3 (University of California Press: August 2008), 391-422

^[77] Cheng, Citizens of Asian America – Democracy and Race During the Cold War, 111

^[78] Ibid, 114.

^[79] Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Brown v. Board of Education in International Context” (Washington DC: Supreme Court of the United States), https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/speeches/viewspeech/sp_10-25-04

^[80] William Peterson, “Success Story, Japanese-American Style” in New York Times (New York: January 9, 1966), https://www.nytimes.com/1966/01/09/archives/success-story-japaneseamerican-style-success-storyjapaneseamerican.html

^[81] “Civil Rights Digital Library: Watts Riots” (University of Georgia – Digital Library of Georgia, 2013), http://crdl.usg.edu/events/watts_riots/?Welcome

^[82] Lee, “The Cold War Origins of the Model Minority Myth”, 145

^[83] Ibid.

^[84] Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882, 158

^[85] “Table C-7. Asian and Pacific Islander, for the United States, Regions, Divisions, and States: 1940 and 1950”, US Census

^[86] Oyen, The Diplomacy of Migration: Transnational Lives and the Making of U.S.-Chinese Relations in the Cold War

^[87] Hsu, Madeline Y. Hsu, “Asian Americans and the Cold War” (Oxford Research Encyclopedia, May 2015), http://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-44#acrefore-9780199329175-e-44-div1-4

^[88] Claire Jean Kim, “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans” in Politics and Society (SAGE Social Science Collections, 1999)

^[89] Kat Chow, “’Model Minority’ Myth Again Used As A Racial Wedge Between Asians And Blacks” in NPR (April 19, 2017), https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/04/19/524571669/model-minority-myth-again-used-as-aracial-wedge-between-asians-and-blacks

Written by: James Boehme, Tufts University

Summary Introduction

Vast quantities of International Relations scholarship published over the past several decades have sought to explain the infamous “rise of China” as a modern great power. Naturally, many scholars have framed their analysis within a broader narrative examining great power conflict between China and the United States of America. However, in the midst of this lively debate over the future of global great power conflict, it is easy to lose sight of the equally significant scholarly dialogue concerning how other (South) East Asian states can, have, and should respond to China’s expanding regional hegemony. In this essay, I highlight some critical explanations as to how traditionally weaker (South) East Asian states can best promote their national interests vis-à-vis an expanding China. More specifically, I focus my analysis on strategies that these smaller states can adopt to defend their claims to sovereignty over maritime features contested by China. Though I exclusively consider maritime conflicts in the South China Sea (SCS), my findings can be applied more generally to any East Asian state engaged in maritime disputes with China.

Research Question

Why were Vietnamese attempts to contest Chinese maritime claims in the 2014 HYSY 981 incident successful, whereas Philippine attempts to contest Chinese claims in the 2012 Scarborough Shoal standoff were unsuccessful?

Methodology

In this paper I offer several complementary hypotheses which might answer my research question stated above. I test these hypotheses by conducting qualitative case studies of the HYSY 981 dispute of 2014 and the Scarborough Shoal incident of 2012. Within each case study, I draw from primary (in the form of contemporary news reports, government press releases, and official communiqués) and secondary (in the form of scholarly books chapters, journal articles, and case studies) evidence in my analysis.

Roadmap

The remainder of this paper is broken up into several sections. In the first section, I review the relevant scholarly literature surrounding resolve signaling, reputation, and maritime disputes in the South China Sea. In this section I also summarize the hypotheses which I later test, explaining the variables and causal mechanisms corresponding to each hypothesis. In the second section, I test each of my hypotheses and offer my empirical findings. I conclude by summarizing my research. Ultimately, I find that—in order to successfully coerce China in maritime sovereignty disputes—smaller states in the SCS must 1) signal resolve to escalate grey-zone physical pressure against China and 2) credibly demonstrate resolve and capacity to mobilize multilateral diplomatic pressure (especially involving the U.S. and ASEAN) against China.

Theoretical Section

Literature Review

Though I do not necessarily consider myself a strict adherent to any sub discipline of the realist school of international relations scholarship, this paper primarily builds upon several ideas associated with the realist school. In particular, I base my analysis on Thomas Schelling’s assertion that “issues are decided not by who can bring the most force to bear in a locality, or on a particular issue, but by who is eventually willing to bring more force to bear or able to make it appear that more is forthcoming”.^[1] Moreover, I argue that balance of resolve theories do not only apply to kinetic conflicts between equal powers, but also in grey-zone territorial disputes between states with vastly different military capabilities. I also draw from scholarship concerning coercion. Specifically, I center my analysis around what Daniel Byman and Matthew C. Waxman refer to as “denial” coercive strategies, exploring how these strategies may best be emulated by conventionally weak states against much more powerful adversaries.^[2]

 I hypothesize that, whereas Vietnam consistently signaled escalatory resolve in the HYSY 981 incident, the Philippines failed to reliably signal similar escalatory resolve in the Scarborough Shoal dispute of 2012. Likewise, whereas China perceived that continuing to press its case in the HYSY dispute would provoke unbearable retaliation from Vietnam, it did not perceive that the Philippines was willing and/or able to incur similar costs. In response to the credible threat from Vietnam and the lack thereof from the Philippines, Beijing decided to cede limited effective control of disputed maritime territory to Vietnam but not to the Philippines. I break down this hypothesis into two observable sub-hypotheses, focusing on two prominent foci of resolve signaling.

In the first hypothesis—based on Shelling’s writings on the balance of resolve—I posit that Vietnam successfully compelled China because it credibly signaled resolve to escalate its naval presence near the Chinese rig and to directly damage Chinese physical assets.^[3] Likewise, I conceive that the Philippines did not compel China because it did not effectively signal that it was willing and able to increase its naval presence at the Shoal or to damage Chinese physical assets. The dependent variable in this hypothesis is the extent to which China abandoned control over disputed maritime features. The independent variable is the consistency with and methods by which Vietnam and the Philippines signaled naval escalatory resolve to China. The causal mechanism is the extent to which, by signaling escalatory resolve, Vietnam and the Philippines threatened to levy unbearable costs against Chinese naval assets. I generalize this hypothesis as the following:

H1: China will make limited concessions to SCS littoral states which credibly signal willingness to physically escalate their maritime sovereignty disputes with China.

In the second hypothesis, I presuppose that Vietnam successfully compelled China because it effectively signaled that it could credibly internationalize the HYSY 981 dispute, mobilizing international pressure against China. Conversely, I assume that the Philippines did not successfully compel China because it did not signal that it could credibly internationalize the Scarborough Shoal dispute. As with the first hypothesis, the dependent variable here is the extent to which China abandoned control over disputed maritime features. The independent variable is the consistency with which Vietnam and the Philippines threatened to internationalize the dispute and subsequently acted upon those threats. [JB1] The intervening variable is the extent to which international actors signaled commitment to Vietnam and the Philippines in response to their outreach efforts. This hypothesis operates under two discrete (yet complementary) causal mechanisms. The first causal mechanism builds upon Zhang Ketian, Li Mingjiang, Steve Chan, and others’ general assertion that China is a “cautious bully”—positing that, by internationalizing the dispute, Vietnam and the Philippines threatened diplomatic costs associated with geopolitical backlash against China.^[4] In response to the threat of sufficient geopolitical backlash, China will make limited concessions on sovereignty to preserve regional stability.^[5] The second causal mechanism draws on theories of external balancing and alliance signaling—implying that, by producing defense commitments or other statements of material support from powerful external actors, Vietnam and the Philippines threatened increased physical costs (potentially associated with kinetic force) against China.^[6] If Vietnam, the Philippines, and their allies can credibly threaten sufficient physical costs, China will make limited concessions to avoid excessive suffering. I generalize this hypothesis as the following:

H2: China will make limited concessions to SCS littoral states which credibly signal willingness and capability to invoke support from external actors in bilateral disputes with China.

I find that the Scarborough Shoal and HYSY 981 cases confirm both hypotheses. In fact, successful escalatory resolve signaling by small states (as described in the first hypothesis) appears to be contingent on one such state’s ability to reliably signal willingness to internationalize a dispute with a larger state (in this case China), and that small state’s ability to form broad, clear coalitions of support comprised of stronger state actors. As such, my analysis confirms that theories of external balancing apply to maritime disputes characterized singularly by grey-zone coercion.

Hypothesis Testing

This section is broken up into subsections corresponding to each hypothesis. Each subsection is broken up into sub-subsections corresponding to each case study.

Hypothesis 1: Signaling Naval Resolve  

H1: China will make limited concessions to SCS littoral states which credibly signal willingness to physically escalate their maritime sovereignty disputes with China.

Case Study: Scarborough Shoal      

The Sino-Philippine standoff over the Scarborough Shoal began on the morning of April 8, 2012, when a Philippine Navy reconnaissance aircraft reported that eight Chinese fishing boats were occupying the waters within the Scarborough Shoal.^[7] Already, Chinese and Philippine authorities offered conflicting accounts of the situation—while Chinese officials stated that these ships had temporarily taken shelter in the Shoal due to inclement weather, the Philippine National Coast Watch System had reportedly been monitoring the Chinese fishing vessels for weeks. In response to the Chinese presence in Philippine-claimed waters, the Philippine Navy directed its largest warship—the decommissioned US Coast Guard cutter BRP Gregorio del Pilar—to investigate the Chinese vessels stationed in the Shoal. Upon arriving at the Shoal on April 10, the BRP Gregorio del Pilar confirmed that eight Chinese vessels were present, and a Philippine boarding party reportedly found illegally collected marine wildlife aboard a Chinese ship. Before Philippine sailors could arrest the Chinese fishermen, two China Marine Surveillance ships—the CMS 75 and CMS 84—arrived and prevented the Philippine warship from entering the Shoal and apprehending the fishermen. The Chinese ships hailed their Philippine counterpart and demanded that the cutter withdraw from the Chinese-claimed shoal and the surrounding water. The crew of the BRP Gregorio del Pilar refused to leave, contending that the Chinese fishermen had been illegally operating within the Philippine EEZ. Later that day, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III ordered a coast guard ship to replace the BRP Gregorio del Pilar—which was a Philippine Navy vessel—[JB2] , effectively downgrading the Philippine presence at the Shoal. This decision to de-escalate seems to have been a calculated effort by Aquino and Philippine strategists to defuse the situation by reciprocating Beijing’s grey-zone strategy. Though China continued to pursue grey-zone strategies, it did not de-escalate its presence at the Shoal. On April 11, Beijing sent its most advanced fishery patrol ship to reinforce Chinese naval presence at the Shoal. Additionally, an unarmed Chinese Marine Surveillance aircraft patrolled the Shoal while initial talks occurred in Manila. Both sides continued to claim exclusive sovereignty, and talks reached an impasse. ^[8] China continued to respond to Philippine demilitarization by increasing its naval presence. On April 12, Manila replaced the BRP Gregorio del Pilar with the BRP Pampanga[AY3] [JB4] . Whereas the former was the country’s most advanced warship, the latter was merely a coast guard search and rescue vessel. As such, Manila de-escalated by downgrading its naval presence at the Shoal. In contrast, Beijing deployed the FLEC 303, a Fisheries Law Enforcement Command patrol ship with a deck-mounted gun.^[9]

Even during the earliest [JB5] days of the dispute, the Philippines inconsistently signaled escalatory resolve. By immediately sending the BRP Gregorio del Pilar to apprehend Chinese fishermen, the Aquino administration implied that it was willing and able to deploy the armed forces to defend Philippine control of the Shoal. This move signaled high levels of escalatory resolve since, as Zhang and De Castro point, Beijing and Manila had previously addressed issues arising from competing claims to the Shoal through diplomatic channels.^[10] As such, by applying military pressure to address an issue previously resolved through nonmilitary means, the Aquino administration signaled to Beijing that some unidentified force had made Manila more committed to preserving Philippine control of the Shoal. However, the Philippines almost immediately undermined its perceived resolve by voluntarily replacing its navy warship stationed at the Shoal with a single lightly armed coast guard vessel. By demilitarizing in the face of nonspecific Chinese threats and without concrete Chinese concessions, Manila indicated it lacked both the political will to maintain high levels of escalation in the Shoal and the diplomatic resolve to demand Chinese concessions in return for Philippine de-escalation. This pattern would continue throughout the dispute.

The period between April 13 and April 22 saw slight variation in the number of Chinese vessels and virtually no net increase in the Philippine presence at the Shoal.^[11] Though it did not increase its civilian naval presence at the Shoal, the Philippines held its annual “Balikatan” joint military maneuvers with the United States.^[12] Though these joint exercises could have been portrayed as a show of Philippine-U.S. unity in the standoff, a spokesperson for the Philippine military explicitly denied that these drills were related to the ongoing dispute.^[13] Furthermore, the scope of these drills seems to have been limited to “humanitarian assistance [and] disaster aid”.^[14] As such, the Balikatan joint exercises did not signal significant escalatory resolve by the Philippines.

On April 23, the Philippines made its most significant misstep to date [JB6] when, in response to a—seemingly good-faith—decision by Beijing to withdraw all but one vessel from the Shoal, it unilaterally escalated the dispute by sending an additional unarmed fisheries ship to the Shoal.^[15] Though Philippine officials accused their Chinese counterparts of lying—citing intelligence purporting that “at least seven Chinese vessels remained in the vicinity of the contested shoal”—Green et. al. highlight that Manila’s decision to escalate may have been based on simple assumptions of Chinese trickery.^[16] Regardless of the reasoning behind it, Manila’s decision to respond to Chinese de-escalation by unilaterally escalating yet again signaled inconsistent escalatory resolve by Philippine leaders. Furthermore, this episode suggested that the Aquino administration would not reliably respond in expected manners to Chinese threats and concessions.

Between April 23 and June 4, Beijing pursued a markedly more escalatory naval strategy at the Shoal. In addition to increasing the number of Chinese coast guard ships at the Shoal by a net total of seven, Beijing increasingly introduced more heavily armed vessels throughout this period.^[17] The most striking provocation by China came on the morning of April 28, when the Chinese FLEC 310 directly charged at the Philippine BRP EDSA II as it attempted to relieve the BRP Pampanga. The FLEC 310 swerved away before colliding with the BRP EDSA II, but Beijing had clearly signaled escalatory resolve in this incident.^[18] [JB7] By contrast, President Aquino explicitly ordered the Philippine naval forces to refrain from escalating in response to Chinese provocation during this period.^[19] In addition to this explicit signal that Manila was unwilling to physically escalate at the Shoal, the fact that the Aquino administration did not send additional vessels to contest the increasing Chinese naval presence at the Shoal after April 23 demonstrates that leaders in Manila adhered to this non-escalation directive.^[20]

On June 4, both parties reached an agreement to mutually withdraw government vessels from inside the Shoal. In exchange for this withdrawal, President Aquino promised to not internationalize the dispute further. On the surface, this development signaled hope for a mutually beneficial negotiated settlement. However, Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario critically undermined Manila’s ability to issue coercive threats when he unilaterally ordered the Philippine ships to withdraw before their Chinese counterparts. By ordering Philippine ships to withdraw before Chinese vessels rather than at the same time, Secretary del Rosario signaled that Manila was willing to make wholesale concessions without holding Beijing accountable to its own concessions. As a result, this unilateral withdrawal of Philippine government boats signaled that the balance of resolve overwhelmingly favored China. This decision would have [JB8] disastrous consequences for the Philippines’ ability to assert its sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal. On June 15, two remaining Philippine government vessels withdrew from the Shoal entirely as part of a U.S.-negotiated settlement between China and the Philippines. Unexpectedly, the Chinese government ships did not reciprocate, instead remaining at the Shoal. Though Washington and Manila both claimed that Beijing had agreed to simultaneously withdraw its own coast guard vessels, Chinese officials maintained that there had been no such commitment.^[21] Regardless of the terms of the settlement, the Philippine withdrawal represented an unequivocal victory for China, as it alone now controlled the Shoal. Moreover, Manila once again proved it could not reliably demonstrate coordinated escalatory resolve in the dispute. As it had on June 4, the Aquino administration revealed that it was willing to make dramatic concessions without definitively securing and monitoring comparable Chinese concessions.

After the astounding diplomatic failure it experienced in mid-June, the Philippines could no longer make credible threats against China. On June 21-22 Philippine officials repeatedly threatened to redeploy coast guard ships to the Shoal, but these threats produced significant concessions from Beijing.^[22]

Though Manila maintained vessels at the Shoal throughout most of the dispute, it did not reliably signal that it was willing to escalate its nonmilitary naval presence in order to inflict increasing costs against China for its continued presence in the Shoal[JB9] . Moreover, the Philippines lost de-facto control of the Shoal after it unilaterally withdrew—a move which completely compromised its ability to signal escalatory resolve. As such, the Scarborough Shoal case confirms this first hypothesis.

Case Study: HYSY 981 Oil Rig

On May 2, 2014, Vietnam dispatched six Vietnam Coast Guard and Fisheries Resources Surveillance vessels to disrupt the operations of the HYSY 981 oil rig, to which China responded by sending a total of forty China Coast Guard, government ministry, civilian fishing and transportation, and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) ships to protect the rig.^[23] In stark contrast to the lack of physical conflict that characterized the Scarborough Shoal dispute, Vietnamese and Chinese vessels immediately rammed into one another, signaling that both parties were willing to impose physical costs on one another in the  HYSY 981 dispute.^[24] In response to these initial skirmishes, both China and Vietnam increased their respective naval presences in the region over the five-day period of May 3through May 7. Chinese and Vietnamese naval forces continued to deliberately ram[JB10]  opposing craft, and, in one instance, Chinese sailors found Vietnamese frogmen as close as 5 meters away from Chinese government ships.^[25]

During the first days of the HYSY 981 dispute, Vietnam signaled conventional escalatory resolve by deploying coast guard and government vessels to physically harass the Chinese oil rig. By ramming vessels into Chinese ships surrounding the rig, Vietnamese forces disrupted the rig’s oil procurement activities, thus denying the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) lucrative material value. In response to Vietnam’s increased presence in the region, China increased its own naval presence to prevent further disruption. As such, as part of a broader strategy of grey-zone denial, Vietnam raised the material and organizational costs incurred on China for maintaining its HYSY 981 rig in contested waters by damaging Chinese naval units and by forcing Beijing to increase its naval presence in the region.^[26]

On May 10, Vietnamese officials reported that China had expanded its defensive perimeter around the HYSY 981 oil rig to between ten and fifteen nautical miles. On May 12, Chinese vessels harassed Vietnamese ships by firing water cannons and ramming Vietnamese vessels with much larger Chinese craft. Despite these attacks, Coast Guard officials asserted that Vietnam would maintain its presence in the region.^[27] On May 14 China drastically increased its naval presence in the region, deploying two Yuzhao class amphibious transport docks armed with five guns and eight surface-to-air missiles [JB11] capable of carrying up to eight hundred troops and twenty armored vehicles.^[28] On May 16, the Chinese Foreign Ministry claimed that—despite China’s attempts to menace Hanoi into submission—as many as sixty Vietnamese vessels remained stationed near the oil rig. Moreover, Beijing suggested that these ships had been responsible for approximately five hundred collisions with Chinese vessels since May 2.^[29] Conversely, Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh suggested that as many as one hundred Chinese naval craft remained near the oil rig and continued to harass Vietnamese commercial vessels.^[30] On May 22, the Vietnam Fisheries Resources Surveillance Force deployed its HP-926 ship to surveil the rig. Vietnamese reporters noted that Chinese forces had formed three concentric rings around the rig. The innermost ring consisted of two frigates. The second ring included People’s Liberation Army Navy ships. The outermost ring was made up of military surveillance, marine police, and fisheries surveillance vessels. Vietnamese and Chinese naval formations continued to come into conflict.^[31] On May 25 the Vietnamese Fisheries Resources Surveillance Department reported that China had moved the HYSY 981 oil rig 100 yards north of its original location. However, Chinese ships reportedly continued to harass Vietnamese fishing boats, even sinking one vessel on May 26.^[32] Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Qin Gang contradicted this account, instead arguing that the Vietnamese ship capsized after intentionally ramming into the HYSY 981 oil rig.^[33]

Throughout May, Vietnam continued to signal conventional escalatory resolve by steadily deploying more nonmilitary vessels to harass the HYSY 981 rig. By continuing to interfere with rig maintenance, Vietnam imposed additional costs on China. Most notably, they forced Beijing to deploy two combat-ready Yuzhao-class transport decks and adopt a three-ringed rig defense formation.^[34] The cost in this grey-zone arms race is clear: W[JB12] hereas Vietnam could consistently impede rig operations with a modest non-weaponized naval presence, China had to finance a more advanced asset defense operation. The cost of mobilizing two large transport decks, in addition to hundreds of PLAN and coast guard vessels arounda large, semi-immobile defensive objective is exponentially greater than mobilizing a loosely organized hit-and-run force of fewer than one hundred nonmilitary ships. As such, as the conflict continued, Vietnam leveraged increasingly steep costs against China and signaled that it was resolved to impose further costs by more aggressively harassing the Chinese rig. 

On May 27, Chinese tugboats moved the HYSY 981 rig 23 miles northeast, albeit still within contested waters. The Chinese MFA claimed this move marked the second phase of the project, which would last from May 27 to August 15.^[35] The Vietnamese Coast Guard reported that approximately one hundred and twenty Chinese vessels of varying classifications were stationed near the newly positioned rig.^[36]

Months of conflict came to a resolution on July 15 when China National Petroleum Corp. announced that the HYSY 981 drilling project had reached its conclusion.^[37] Finished a month ahead of schedule, Chinese authorities relocated the oil rig [JB13] near China’s Hainan Island. At this point the rig left Vietnamese-claimed waters, resolving the short-term dispute.^[38] By removing the HYSY 981 oil rig from waters claimed by Vietnam, China implicitly conceded limited maritime territory to Vietnam. However, Chinese officials still publicly asserted Chinese sovereignty over the Paracel Island region.^[39] Moreover, in 2016 the HYSY 981 rig returned to waters subject to overlapping Chinese and Vietnamese territorial claims.^[40] Though China in effect ceded limited maritime territory to Vietnam after the 2014 HYSY 981 dispute, this limited concession did not resolve the long-term disagreements over naval sovereignty.

Since the beginning of the dispute, Vietnam consistently signaled that it was willing to send an increasing number of nonmilitary vessels to intimidate the Chinese ships protecting the oil rig stationed in contested waters. Moreover, leaders in Hanoi repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to direct Vietnamese ships to physically harass Chinese vessels working on the rig. As a result, Vietnam forced China to dramatically increase the number of ships it deployed to protect the oil rig, making it increasingly costly for Beijing to remain in the contested waters. Therefore, Vietnamese and Chinese actions confirm this first hypothesis, since Vietnam effectively coerced China into withdrawing the rig by demonstrating resolve to physically escalate the dispute.

Hypothesis 2: Signaling Internationalization Resolve

H2: China will make limited concessions to SCS littoral states which credibly signal willingness and capability to invoke support from external actors in bilateral disputes with China.

Case Study: Scarborough Shoal

On April 17, Manila officially announced that it would pursue international arbitration to determine which party had legitimate claim to the Scarborough Shoal according to UNCLOS guidelines.^[41] In response, Beijing denounced the move, rejecting arbitration as an attempt to internationalize the dispute. Likewise, Chinese officials accused the Philippine government of needlessly escalating the dispute, reiterating that both parties had agreed to settle the matter strictly through bilateral negotiations.^[42] This exchange signaled the start of a new strategy by the Philippines to undermine Chinese resolve by internationalizing the dispute, threatening a unified international response against China. Beijing responded effectively to Philippine threats to internationalize the dispute, adopting a “divide and conquer” strategy.  On April 19, Chinese officials offered Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra several significant economic cooperation agreements. In exchange, she issued several highly complimentary public statements lauding China’s role in fostering economic growth, political stability, and shared prosperity within Southeast Asia. In a similarly amicable move, China released twenty-one Vietnamese fishermen who had been detained since March.^[43] Clearly recognizing that ASEAN unity with the Philippines against China would severely undermine the international legitimacy of Chinese maritime claims, Beijing undermined ASEAN unity by intensifying bilateral cooperation with individual members.^[44]  Despite pressures from Beijing to not internationalize the Scarborough Shoal issue, the Aquino administration reaffirmed its commitment to bring the dispute to international arbitration unilaterally. In response, China again cautioned against international arbitration, warning that it planned to increase its naval presence at the Shoal.^[45]

On April 22, Secretary del Rosario publicly urged ASEAN to take a proactive stance against China in the Scarborough Shoal dispute.^[46] In a move which arguably further escalated the dispute, a U.S. lieutenant-general vaguely commented that the U.S. would “get involved” in the dispute to aid the Philippines, albeit without a clear indication as to what sort of aid the US would provide.^[47]

On April 23, the Chinese embassy announced that Beijing had withdrawn the CMS 84 and the FLEC 310, leaving only the CMS 71 at the Shoal. Government officials and Chinese state media explicitly indicated that the move was an attempt to signal China’s commitment to de-escalation and peaceful negotiation.^[48] This decision by China to unilaterally downsize its naval presence after the Philippines attempted to internationalize the dispute suggests that Chinese defense strategists actively feared that international intervention, particularly by the U.S., would severely weaken China’s coercive leverage over the Philippines. In this instance, Manila effectively produced Chinese diplomatic concessions by taking initial steps to internationalize the Scarborough Shoal dispute.

A 2+2 meeting on April 30 produced U.S. commitments to its Philippine treaty ally. As part of its commitment to establish a “‘minimum credible defense posture’” with Manila, Washington offered its partner intelligence assistance, $30 million in foreign military financing, additional equipment transfer, and more frequent U.S.-Philippine military exercises. However, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton neither clearly indicated that the Mutual Defense Treaty ensured that the US would directly intervene in the maritime dispute, nor explicitly stated that the US would endorse the Philippines’ arbitration bid.^[49][JB14]  Although Beijing lauded US neutrality on the sovereignty dispute, it criticized US interference in the Southeast Asian security disputes.^[50]

On May 13, the USS North Carolina—an American attack submarine—arrived at the Philippines’ Subic Bay for a routine port call. Though Washington might have intended to signal its commitment to defend its Philippine ally, Manila’s assertion that the arrival of the USS North Carolina was entirely unrelated to the dispute undermined this notion. The American submarine departed on May 19.^[51] 

Perhaps responding [JB15] to the overwhelming Chinese naval presence, Secretary del Rosario appealed to the UN General Assembly on May 24, calling for international mediation of the Scarborough dispute.  Though it is unclear if this call for multilateralism directly produced international support for the Aquino administration, it appears Manila calculated that it [JB16] could exert some pressure on Beijing by internationalizing the Scarborough dispute.

Despite some previous short-term gains throughout the dispute, internationalization—once Manila’s most potent coercive strategy—failed when, at the mid-July ASEAN summit, only Vietnam voiced support for a Philippine-backed initiative to denounce Chinese actions in the SCS. More embarrassingly, disagreements over whether to criticize China led Cambodia—the summit’s host—to refuse to issue a joint communiqué for the first time in ASEAN history.^[52] 

Throughout the Scarborough Shoal standoff, the Aquino administration consistently signaled that it was resolved to 1) secure a clear U.S. commitment to militarily aid the Philippines in the event of a kinetic conflict at the Shoal and 2) amass regional support for its pledge to bring the maritime dispute to international arbitration. As such, the available evidence disconfirms this hypothesis’s assumption that the Philippines inconsistently signaled its resolve to internationalize the Scarborough dispute. Despite Manila’s consistent resolve to internationalize the dispute—which produced short-term victories for the Philippines—its threats to internationalize the dispute did not ultimately produce Chinese concessions in the long term. The eventual ineffectiveness of Manila’s [JB17] internationalization strategy can be directly attributed to the consistent lack of U.S. and ASEAN commitment to the Philippines. Though the U.S. provided assistance to Manila in the form of monetary and logistical aid, U.S. officials repeatedly refused to indicate that the U.S. would deploy kinetic force to help its Philippine treaty ally assert control over the Shoal. Moreover, China effectively employed a “salami strategy” in which it cultivated diplomatic ties with ASEAN states, compromising the Philippines’ ability to mobilize a unified ASEAN bloc against Beijing.^[53] As such, though the Aquino administration clearly indicated resolve to internationalize the dispute, it could not credibly threaten diplomatic and material costs against China as a part of this strategy. In this respect the Scarborough Shoal dispute partially supports this hypothesis insofar as the “cautious bully” and external balancing causal mechanisms both require that a smaller state be able to credibly threaten costs against China by producing clear commitments from external state actors.^[54]

Case Study: HYSY 981 Dispute

In contrast to the Scarborough Shoal case, the international community rallied around Vietnam in the HYSY 981 dispute—even without significant initial prompting by Hanoi. On May 6, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State [JB18] for East Asia voiced concern about the HYSY 981 conflict, urging both China and Vietnam to show restraint. In addition, he warned the two states against generating economic and regional instability for short-term gains.^[55] That same day, the spokesperson of the U.S. Department of State described Chinese involvement in the HYSY 981 affair as “provocative and unhelpful.”^[56]

 Other regional actors in the SCS also began to interject in the debate over the HYSY 981 rig. On May 7, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Singapore urged all sides to show restraint and peacefully abide by established international law.^[57] That same day, a Vietnamese MFA official raised the possibility of bringing the HYSY 981 case to international arbitration, noting that no peaceful methods of resolving the dispute had been taken off the table.^[58] This comment suggests that the Vietnamese MFA had confidence that international law favored the Vietnamese position in the HYSY 981 conflict and, potentially more importantly, that Vietnamese officials perceived that the international community would largely support a Vietnamese attempt to internationalize the dispute. In later press briefings, spokesperson for the Vietnamese MFA Le Hai Binh informed reporters that on May 7 Vietnamese officials at the UN had circulated a note asking fellow member states to oppose Chinese involvement in the HYSY 981 affair.^[59] This action further suggests that Vietnamese officials believed the Vietnamese case in the HYSY 981 dispute would resonate with foreign governments, or else they would not have circulated the note. This confidence persisted through May 8, when Vietnamese officials promised to bring up the HYSY 981 issue at the next ASEAN summit in Myanmar.^[60] However, Philippine diplomats cast uncertainty on ASEAN’s willingness to intervene in the conflicts, suggesting that some states would oppose issuing a separate statement on the conflict between Vietnam and China.^[61] This statement reflects that, despite Vietnam’s confidence, many ASEAN states prioritized close ties with China and would avoid threatening those ties by making multilateral statements opposing Chinese action in the SCS. In contrast with some ASEAN states, the Japanese government proved more willing to side with Vietnam in the dispute. On May 9, Japanese Foreign Minister Kishida Fumio characterized the heightened tensions as the result of a series of provocative unilateral Chinese action in the South China Sea.^[62] European governments were initially more hesitant to take sides on the issue. On May 8, a spokesperson for the European Union High Representative issued a statement condemning both sides for their unilateral action and urging the Chinese and Vietnamese governments to exercise restraint and abide by the rule of law. Hugo Swire, minister of state for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom, later issued a statement agreeing with the EU position, adding that the UK had discussed the conflict with Chinese officials.^[63]

The United States continued to support Vietnam throughout the conflict. On May 8, Daniel Russel, assistant secretary for the U.S. Embassy and Consulate in Vietnam, stressed U.S.-Vietnam cooperation in the region, implying that the U.S. would support Vietnamese attempts to bring the conflict to international arbitration. However, Russel refused to explicitly endorse either Vietnamese or Chinese claims to sovereignty in the region, instead recognizing that both parties held competing claims in the region and encouraging them to resolve disputes through peaceful channels. Moreover, Russel explicitly ruled out deploying U.S. vessels to monitor and police the region, again urging that the matter be resolved peacefully.^[64]

The most significant development thus far [JB19] came on May 10, when ASEAN ministers released a joint statement voicing serious concerns about the HYSY 981 dispute. Though the joint statement did not articulate explicit support for either China or Vietnam, it warned both states against undermining peaceful relations in the region and encouraged all participants in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) to work efficiently towards the completion of a Code of Conduct in the SCS (COC).^[65] Despite the rather neutral tone of the statement itself, its issuance represented a dramatic policy shift among important regional actors which had previously been unwilling to comment on the issue. Individual statements from ASEAN state officials revealed a growing base of support for Vietnam. After the summit, Philippine President Aquino highlighted his active involvement in securing a joint communiqué, stating that he had emphasized China’s tumultuous relationship with the Philippines. Aquino portrayed his strategy of highlighting a history of Chinese provocation as somewhat successful, claiming that one ASEAN leader described recent Chinese action as “’dangerous brinksmanship’”. Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono issued a similarly accusatory statement, warning the Chinese government against “’gunboat diplomacy’”. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and Singapore Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam issued more measured statements, arguing that ASEAN’s legitimacy as a force for conflict resolution depended on its ability to respond in a unified manner to the incident. Myanmar took the most pro-China stance of all attendees, emphasizing China and Myanmar’s history of friendship.^[66] Though the ASEAN communiqué made no direct reference to Chinese fault for the HYSY 981 conflict—a point reflective of many member states’ reluctance to alienate China—the fact that ASEAN ministers issued a joint statement on the conflict reveals that member states increasingly recognized China as a threat to regional stability since the 2012 Scarborough Shoal standoff. Furthermore, ASEAN’s willingness to issue a joint statement on the HYSY 981 dispute runs in stark contrast to its unwillingness to do so for the Scarborough Shoal dispute. As such, increased ASEAN unity in the HYSY 981 case threatened heightened diplomatic costs for Chinese belligerence. For its part, China dismissed the communiqué, arguing that the disagreement did not involve ASEAN and warning Vietnam against using the HYSY 981 dispute to undermine the relationship between China and ASEAN.^[67]

In addition to physically policing contested waters, Vietnam asserted its naval sovereignty vis-à-vis China by seeking international consensus against Chinese belligerence in the SCS. Vietnam directly appealed to the states it perceived as more sympathetic to its position—most notably the U.S. and the Philippines—to build a sense of burgeoning international consensus against China. As more states aligned with Vietnam—as seen in the ASEAN communique case—the more legitimacy this Vietnamese coalition gained as a means of balancing against Chinese naval hegemony.^[68] By threatening to take the dispute to international arbitration, Vietnam hinted that it could mobilize international support to incur political costs on China if it continued to contest Vietnamese sovereignty in the Paracel Islands region. If international arbitration were to rule in favor of Vietnam, Chinese maritime claims as indicated by the nine-dash-line would lose a certain amount of legitimacy within the international system. This threat only grew more credible as more states aligned with Vietnam.

As the dispute over the HYSY 981 oil rig intensified, more states voiced support for Vietnam. In separate May 13 meetings with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Singapore Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry explicitly voiced his frustration with China’s role in the conflict. This was the clearest pro-Vietnamese comment a U.S. official had made up to that point, indicating the U.S.’s increasing willingness to spar with China.^[69] In response, the Chinese foreign ministry accused the U.S. of emboldening countries to pursue provocative claims to sovereignty in the SCS.^[70] On May 14, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade circulated a press release voicing support for ASEAN’s May 10 joint communiqué, though the Department refused to weigh in on the validity of either claim to sovereignty.^[71] On May 15, Hanoi again threatened to seek international arbitration to resolve the dispute, reflecting a broader strategy to amass international opposition to Chinese actions in the SCS.^[72]

After several days of violent exchanges between China and Vietnam, the international community grew increasing vocal in support of Vietnam. Between May 21 and May 22, The Philippines, the U.S., and Japan all condemned China and expressed explicit support for Vietnam. In addition, the United States and Japan both indicated they would provide material support to the Vietnamese Coast Guard.^[73] By forming a unified coalition against China, Vietnam increased the political cost incurred on China for its continued presence in Vietnamese-claimed waters.^[74] Moreover, the material support which Japan and the U.S. offered to provide to the Vietnamese coast guard would further increase the costs incurred by China, since it would have to increase its naval presence to defend against newly emboldened Vietnamese forces.^[75] By the time the rig withdrew on July 15, the material costs Vietnam—backed by the U.S., Japan, and other regional actors—threatened against China made further rig operation materially nonviable.

Much like the Philippines in the Scarborough Shoal case, Vietnam consistently signaled its resolve to internationalize the dispute by forming an informal anti-Chinese bloc within the regional security community. Unlike the Philippines, however, Vietnam benefitted from clear international commitment, as seen in the material aid offered by the U.S. and Japan, and ASEAN’s issuance of a joint statement on the HYSY 981 dispute. As such, whereas the Philippines failed to internationalize the dispute because it only secured vague commitments from the U.S., Vietnam successfully internationalized the dispute because it formed an informal coalition of states both sympathetic to the Vietnamese cause and willing to provide material support to said cause. This coalition allowed Vietnam to threaten prohibitive diplomatic and material costs against China for operating the oil rig in Vietnamese-claimed waters. By contrast, the Philippines could not leverage substantial costs against China because it lacked a broad coalition of states willing to augment its meager diplomatic and material clout. As such, the HYSY 981 case confirms the second hypothesis.

Conclusion

When considered together, the Scarborough Shoal standoff of 2012 and the HYSY 981 dispute of 2014 generally confirm that 1) China will make limited concessions to SCS littoral states which credibly signal willingness to physically escalate their maritime sovereignty disputes with China and 2) China will make limited concessions to SCS littoral states which credibly signal willingness and capability to invoke support from external actors in bilateral disputes with China. Moreover, my findings largely indicate that China is a “cautious bully” that can be coerced by consistently belligerent smaller states backed by a coalition of more powerful tertiary state actors.^[76] As such, my findings reiterate calls by Fravel and others for SCS littoral states to pursue external balancing as a method of asserting naval sovereignty vis-à-vis China.^[77] 

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[1] Thomas C. Schelling, “THE MANIPULATION OF RISK,” in Arms and Influence (Yale University Press, 1966), 94, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vm52s.6.

[2] Daniel Byman and Matthew C. Waxman, “Coercive Mechanisms,” in The Dynamics of Coercion: American Foreign Policy and the Limits of Military Might, RAND Studies in Policy Analysis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 48–86.

[3] Schelling, “THE MANIPULATION OF RISK.,” 92-125.

[4] Ketian Zhang, “Cautious Bully: Reputation, Resolve, and Beijing’s Use of Coercion in the South China Sea,” International Security 44, no. 1 (July 1, 2019): 117–59, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00354.; Mingjiang Li, “China Debates the South China Sea Dispute,” in The South China Sea Dispute, ed. Ian Storey and Cheng-Yi Lin (ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, 2016), 47–73, https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/1853213.; Steve Chan, “Embedding China’s Maritime Disputes in Generic IR Research,” in China’s Troubled Waters (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cabridge University Press, 2016), 1–37.

[5] It should be noted that neither Zhang nor Li (or any of the other authors I have consulted) indicate that China’s willingness to back down against international pressure is absolute. Though they do not provide an exhaustive set of conditions in which China will (and will not) make limited concessions in sovereignty disputes, both scholars indicate that China will stand up to international pressure in some situations.

[6] Renato Cruz De Castro, “The Risk of Applying Realpolitik in Resolving the South China Sea Dispute: Implications on Regional Security*,” Pacific Focus 27, no. 2 (2012): 262–89, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1976-5118.2012.01084.x.; M. Taylor Fravel, “Chapter 11: Things Fall Apart: Maritime Disputes and China’s Regional Diplomacy,” in China’s Challenges, ed. Jacques deLisle and Avery Goldstein (Philadelphia: DE GRUYTER, 2015), https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812291766-011.; Stephen M. Walt, “Balancing and Bandwagoning,” in The Origins of Alliance, ed. Robert Jervis and Robert J. Art, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 1-35, : https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt32b5fc.9.

[7] Renato De Castro, “The Philippines Confronts China in the South China Sea: Power Politics vs. Liberalism-Legalism,” Asian Perspective; Seoul 39, no. 1 (March 2015): 71–100.; Michael Green et al., “CASE 3: SCARBOROUGH SHOAL STANDOFF (2012),” in COUNTERING COERCION IN MARITIME ASIA: THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF GRAY ZONE DETERRENCE (Washington, DC: Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2017), 95–123.; Andrea Chloe Wong, “The Philippines ’ Policy and Perspectives: A Shifting Strategic Strategy toward China,” in China and Southeast Asia in the Xi Jinping Era, ed. Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim and Frank Cibulka (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc, 2019), 171–91.; media reports and others.

[8] Willard Cheng, “China to PH: Stop Illegal Acts, Leave Scarborough,” ABS-CBN News, April 11, 2012, https://news.abs-cbn.com/nation/04/11/12/china-ph-stop-illegal-acts-leave-scarborough.; Tessa Jamandre, “China Sends Reinforcement in Standoff with PH Navy,” Yahoo! News, April 11, 2012, https://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/the-inbox/china-sends-reinforcement-standoff-ph-navy-021443120.html.; Green et al., “SCARBOROUGH SHOAL,” 100-102.; De Castro, “The Philippines Confronts China in the South China Sea,” 82-84.; “Philippine Warship ‘in stand-off’ with Chinese Vessels,” BBC News, April 11, 2012, sec. Asia, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-17673426.

[9] Green et al., “SCARBOROUGH SHOAL,” 102.

[10] Zhang, “Cautious Bully,” 145.; De Castro, “The Philippines Confronts China in the South China Sea,” 82-84.; Andrea Wong refutes this point, arguing that the Philippines regularly deployed military vessels during nonmilitary policing operations simply due to its lack of coast guard and surveillance ships. Though this may be true to a certain extent, Chinese statements criticizing the deployment of the warship in this case suggest that Beijing perceived some heightened level of resolve from Manila. For Wong’s argument in greater detail, see Wong, “Policy and Perspective,” 178.

[11] It should be noted that Philippine ships never outnumbered Chinese ships between April 13 and April 22. For a more detailed breakdown of which vessels occupied the Shoal throughout this period, refer to: Green et al., “SCARBOROUGH SHOAL,” 103-107.; De Castro, “The Philippines Confronts China in the South China Sea,” 84-85.

[12] Mike Meares, “Balikatan 2012 Officially Opens,” U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific, April 16, 2012, https://www.marforpac.marines.mil/News/News-Article-Display/Article/530537/balikatan-2012-officially-opens/.

[13] “US and Philippines Begin South China Sea Drills,” BBC News, April 16, 2012, sec. Asia, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-17724429.

[14] Meares, “Balikatan.”

[15] “China De-Escalates Situation in Huangyan Island by Withdrawing Two Vessels – People’s Daily Online,” english.people.cn, April 23, 2012, http://en.people.cn/90883/7796638.html.; D. J. Yap, “7 Chinese Ships Still in Scarborough Area, Says Military Commander,” Inquirer.Net, April 24, 2012, https://globalnation.inquirer.net/34545/7-chinese-ships-still-in-scarborough-area-says-military-commander.; Green et al., “SCARBOROUGH SHOAL,” 107-108.

[16] Yap, “7 Chinese Ships.”; Green et al., “SCARBOROUGH SHOAL,” 108.

[17] Michael Green et al., “Counter-Coercion Series: Scarborough Shoal Standoff,” Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, May 22, 2017, https://amti.csis.org/counter-co-scarborough-standoff/.

[18] Jerry Esplanada, “PH to ‘Stand Ground’ in Scarborough Shoal,” Global News, accessed December 27, 2019, https://globalnation.inquirer.net/35253/ph-to-%e2%80%98stand-ground%e2%80%99-in-scarborough-shoal.

[19] “Philippines Plays down Chinese Military Threat,” Angence France-Presse, April 29, 2012, https://www.rappler.com/nation/4511-philippines-plays-down-chinese-military-threat.

[20] Green et al., “Counter-Coercion Series.”

[21] Wong, “Policy and Perspective,” 178.; De Castro, “The Philippines Confronts China in the South China Sea,” 91.; Green et al., “SCARBOROUGH SHOAL,” 117-119.

[22] “PHL Defense Chief: Redeploy Ships to Panatag, Keep China’s Claim in Check,” GMA News Online, June 21, 2012, https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/262736/news/nation/phl-defense-chief-redeploy-ships-to-panatag-keep-china-s-claim-in-check/.;

[23] Green et al., “OIL RIG STANDOFF,” (208-209).

[24] “China Requires Vietnam to Stop Any Form of Disruptions of Chinese Company’s Operations.” People’s Daily Online, May 9, 2014. http://en.people.cn/90883/8621898.html.; “International Press Conference on May 7th.” MLNews. Bộ Ngoại Giao Việt Nam, May 4, 2017. http://www.mofa.gov.vn/en/ns140508040804.

[25]“China Requires Vietnam to Stop Any Form of Disruptions of Chinese Company’s Operations.”

[26] Byman and Waxman, “Coercive Mechanisms,” 78-82.

[27] “Chinese Vessels Keep Firing Water at Vietnamese Ships in Vietnam’s Seas,” Tuoi Tre News, May 13, 2014, http://b1.tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20140513/chinese-vessels-keep-firing-water-at-vietnamese-ships-in-vietnams-seas/14054.html.; “Marine Forces Pledge Continued Resistance,” vietnamnews.vn, May 13, 2014, http://vietnamnews.vn/politics-laws/254767/marine-forces-pledge-continued-resistance.html.

[28] “Two Chinese Transport Vessels Equipped with Anti Air Missiles Detected,” Vietnam Investment Review – VIR, May 15, 2014, https://www.vir.com.vn/two-chinese-transport-vessels-equipped-with-anti-air-missiles-detected-27612.html.

[29] “China Once Again Urges Vietnam to Immediately Stop Disruptions of Chinese Company’s Operation,” Global Times, May 17, 2014, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/860759.shtml.

[30] “Vietnam Demands Reply from China over Illegal Oil Rig,” Tuoi Tre News, May 16, 2014, http://b1.tuoitrenews.vn/news/politics/20140516/vietnam-demands-reply-from-china-over-illegal-oil-rig/12887.html.

[31] “Days of Witnessing China’s Aggressive Games in East Vietnam Sea,” Tuoi Tre News, May 22, 2014, http://b1.tuoitrenews.vn/news/features/20140522/days-of-witnessing-china’s-aggressive-games-in-east-vietnam-sea/10667.html.

[32] “Chinese Ship Rams, Sinks Vietnamese Fishing Boat in Vietnam’s Waters,” Tuoi Tre News, May 26, 2014, http://b1.tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20140526/chinese-ship-rams-sinks-vietnamese-fishing-boat-in-vietnam’s-waters/8937.html.

[33] Gang Qin, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Qin Gang’s Regular Press Conference on May 27, 2014, May 27, 2014, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/t1160118.shtml.

[34] “Two Chinese Transport Vessels Equipped with Anti Air Missiles Detected.”; “Days of Witnessing China’s Aggressive Games in East Vietnam Sea.”

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[53] De Castro, “The Risk of Applying Realpolitik in Resolving the South China Sea Dispute,” 273.

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[77] Fravel, “Chapter 11,” 204-226.

By: Mayson Glenne Obrien, University of Texas

Our planet is warming at an alarming rate, due largely to human actions, such as burning fossil fuels and repurposing large areas of land for agricultural use, which contribute to environmental degradation. Scientists confirm that over the next century we will see many changes to our world that will pose distinct threats to our societies and way of life. Melting ice caps will cause ocean levels to rise, flooding coastal areas which house a huge proportion of the world’s population. Some islands will be completely submerged, leaving their inhabitants without land. This will cause a mass dislocation on a global scale (Williams 2008). These expansive consequences ensure that the ramifications of climate change are not simply environmental, but political as well.

Some argue that due to the severe threats presented by climate change, we must make radical changes to our political systems in order to ensure that our efforts to mitigate these threats are effective (Beeson 2010). Authoritarian environmentalism offers a radical alternative policy framework. .. Authoritarian environmentalism (henceforth AE) is a form of environmental policy which requires that governments retain control over all environmental policy decisions and that the implementation of these policies is top-down and non-participatory. Some argue that more democratic governments, not solely authoritarian governments, can utilize AE policies (Han 2015). This claim merits analysis. Authoritarianism and democracy have long been considered fundamentally at odds with each other. This idea dates back to Churchill’s campaign against fascism in Europe. This long held perception makes it difficult to think of authoritarian policy as being compatible  with democratic governance. This paper will question the philosophical compatibility of an authoritarian policy framework with democracy as a regime type. If those who believe we need a new, much stronger policy framework to mitigate the effects of climate change are correct, assessing the viability of AE in a democracy  serves as the first step to confronting the climate crisis.

This paper critically assesses the AE policy framework in practice as well as in the philosophies of political legitimacy which justify both authoritarian and democratic authority. After clarifying the argument for authoritarian environmentalism as a policy framework (section I), I analyze the argument that AE can be implemented in democracies (section II). I then reject the notion that AE can be successful in a democracy on the grounds that successful implementation requires authoritarianism proper (section III). Additionally, I call upon political philosophy literature to raise a theoretical contrast between the justification of authoritarian and democratic authority (section IV). These considerations show that AE cannot be successfully implemented in a democracy.

Section I: Argument for authoritarian environmentalism

Proponents of environmental authoritarianism argue that properly responding to the overwhelming magnitude and intensity of the current climate crisis  will require a similarly overwhelming policy response.. If our response is not strong enough, we will not be able to mitigate environmental threats to our well-being and survival which may result in the onset of a global dislocation of people (Williams 2008). Environmental authoritarianism offers centralized government control over policy decisions, allowing the government to streamline policy implementation. This system envisions a centralized government with a small group of decision-makers  who create non-participatory policies (Gilley 2012).  The severe consequences which await us if our response to environmental degradation proves too weak, has led many AE scholars to argue that  governments must employ compulsory environmental policies (Gilley 2012, Beeson 2010).

A major benefit of a centralized and non-participatory approach to environmental policy is that tensions between individual liberties and environmental concerns can be eased through government mandates, which limit some rights. Liberties granted to individuals in a democracy can, at times, be at odds with environmental concerns.. Consider an individual who chooses to use fertilizer on their own land: this action is protected under the individual’s rights in democratic states.  However, the contamination of groundwater caused by nitrates from agricultural fertilizers is of serious environmental concern. When the concentration of nitrates in ground water passes a certain threshold, it can be harmful to human health. (Sebilio et al 2013). In this situation the right for an individual to utilize their land however they see fit is at odds with environmental concerns. AE might  limit this right by banning certain environmentally adverse actions even when they occur on private property, thereby easing this tension.

Proponents argue that “good authoritarianism”, which takes away some liberties and restricts unsustainable behavior, is the most effective way to prevent environmental degradation (Beeson 2010, 289). Authoritarian environmentalism supposedly removes the tension between individual interests and environmental concerns by requiring participation in all environmental policy. There is no need to worry that, in practice, individual interests will conflict with environmental concerns and therefore one does not need to worry about transforming the interests or values of individuals (Han 2016, 4).  Transforming values requires the upending of cultural perspectives, a take that takes decades if not centuries. . Proponents of environmental authoritarianism argue that we cannot afford to spend time transforming values in light of the consequences of delayed action.

Section II: Authoritarian environmentalism and democracy

Heejin Han, an AE scholar, proposes that South Korea provides an example of a democracy implementing AE policies. President Lee of South Korea was elected in 2008 on a narrative of pragmatic, economic progress. After taking office, Lee implemented a project called the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project (FMRRP). This project involved building dams and weirs, small river dams, on four rivers as well as constructing parks and bike paths along the river banks. It was undertaken under Lee’s environmental agenda, the Green New Deal Program, and classified as an environmental policy by Han. Despite some pushback from environmental NGOs and citizens, the project was completed in two years, sidestepping some laws and regulations. Han argues that the implementation of the FMRRP was an example of AE policy because the administration maintained concentrated control over the policy making process by excluding NGOs and restricting civil liberties (Han 2015). From this example, Han concludes that AE policies do not require authoritarianism proper, and that there is no “predisposed relationship” between environmental policy type and regime type (Han 2015, 824).

While some features of the FMRRP might resemble AE policy, this single example does not yield the conclusion that South Korea’s environmental policy was authoritarian. It is significant that the FMRRP is the only example Han points to in order to draw his conclusion that AE policy was at work in South Korea. Han fails to provide any other examples in which South Korea, or any other democracy has implemented top-down, non-participatory environmental policies. This greatly weakens his argument. It is likely that Han misrepresents the FMRRP as an environmental policy when it may have been something else. Han fails to address the potential criticism that FMRRP is not part of an environmental policy, but rather a government economic endeavor that does not require non-participatory implementation.

Han argues that more than a hundred households lost their farmland in order that FMRRP could be implemented. However, Song and Lynch argue that the project was in the best economic interests of the locals who voted him into office (Song and Lynch 2018). Han does not explicitly argue how yielding farmland to the project was a restriction of the civil liberties of local people. Neither does he describe how this transaction of land occurred. If the land was paid rather than forcibly taken, the policy may not have infringed upon locals’ rights. Without a clear restriction of civil liberties, it is difficult to interpret the FMRRP as an AE policy rather than simply a government initiative that did not require public participation. In order to classify something as AE policy, it must meet the criteria of being non-participatory and taking away personal liberties, such as land rights, to restrict unsustainable behavior. It is necessary to further question the argument that democracies can implement AE policies and analyze the theoretical compatibility of democracy and authoritarian policies.

Section III: Authoritarian environmentalism requires authoritarianism proper

In practice, AE requires a level of “structures of state dominion” which create strong deference to the state (Gilley 2012, 293). These structures create deference to the state by disincentivizing individuals from defecting from regime policies and making it difficult to do so. Deference to the state causes individuals in a country to look to the government to solve issues rather than depending on an external force such as non-governmental organizations or companies. Strong deference to the state also signals that individuals are accustomed to non-participatory policy. Therefore, even if the public disagrees with certain policies, there are strong incentives to comply and strong disincentives to dissent. The lack of dissent contributes to the quick implementation of AE policies

The most important structure of state dominion is the presence of non-competitive elections or no elections at all (Diamond 2002). When individuals do not participate in choosing a leader, they will likely have low expectations of participating in every area of government. Censoring information available to the public, and cutting off coordination goods, public goods that enable political opposition, are also structures of state dominion which hinder individuals and groups from mobilizing to challenge the regime (De Mesquita and Downs 2005). Both the lack of competitive elections and cutting off of coordination goods ensures the survival of a regime without consent or participation of the people being governed. These mechanisms create strong deference to the state by discouraging public participation and normalizing government control over all aspects of public life. These structures of state dominion are typical of authoritarian regimes and generally regarded as hallmarks of authoritarianism (Gilley 2012).

Where structures of state dominion and deference to the state are weak, AE will not work as a policy framework. Non-authoritarian regimes are distinguished by more competitive elections and by the ability of individuals to access information and speak out against the government (Diamond 2002). Because of this, individuals in non-authoritarian regimes have weak deference to the state. Individuals look not only to the state to solve issues, but non-governmental organizations, companies, and other individuals. This makes it less likely that individuals will accept non-participatory policies. Because the acceptance and implementation of non-participatory policy is essential to AE, this policy framework is a non-viable option in a non-authoritarian regime. 

One might argue that as environmental issues continue to loom larger in the minds of the public, even individuals in societies with weak structures of state dominion might begin to look to the state to solve environmental problems, making non-participatory policies more likely. However, non-authoritarian regimes often have strong democratic institutions which prevent authoritarianism. These institutions include elections, check and balance systems, and a standing military (De Mesquita and Downs 2005, Schmitter and Karl 1991). Institutions like these directly prevent the rise of structures of state dominion which are essential to AE. It is therefore unlikely that states with democratic institutions will be able to implement authoritarian environmentalism policies because the democratic institutions will prevent non-participatory policies from taking hold.

Furthermore, environmental policy’s aim to preserve the world around us has negative effects on society. These effects are not always equally distributed throughout society. Many scholars have noted that environmental issues often have the largest adverse effects on individuals of low socioeconomic class and minorities (Martinez-Alier 2014). This has given rise to terms such as environmentalism of the poor and environmental racism. Thus, environmental issues are also issues of distribution; meaning, environmental issues are also social justice issues. Therefore, any policy that aims to mitigate environmental issues also affects social justice issues and the distribution of resources. If AE policies are then implemented, the authoritarian mechanisms necessary for these policies will have an influence over social justice issues as well as environmental ones. This widening of authoritarian policy into spheres beyond merely environmental issues shows that any AE policy necessitates authoritarianism proper. Authoritarian influence cannot be contained to environmental policy only.

Others might argue that environmental issues are not all necessarily social justice issues. A polluted river in an uninhabited town, for example, is absolutely an environmental issue. However, no one lives in the town and it is not affecting anyone. Therefore it cannot be an issue of distribution or a social justice issue. My reply to this is that if the environmental issue of the river is going to be addressed, someone must bear the cost of restoring the river to a clean state. The question of who is responsible for paying to clean the river is an issue of distribution. So, even if an environmental issue is not directly impacting people, any environmental policy attempting to solve it will have to address social justice issues concerning the distribution of cost and responsibility.

Without mechanisms to create strong deference to the state, AE cannot be properly implemented, so AE in practice requires the mechanisms of authoritarianism proper. Additionally, because of the extension of environmental issues into the social sphere, the implementation of AE elicits a spread of authoritarianism beyond the environmental sphere. Due to the fact that authoritarianism cannot be contained to environmental policy only, and that these policies require structures of state dominion, AE requires authoritarianism proper.

Section IV: Philosophy of political legitimacy

Finally, we must consider how AE policies retain  legitimacy. This will impact which types of regimes might accept this policy framework as legitimate. Philosophers throughout history have written about political authority and what gives some ruling entity legitimacy. There are two ways of looking at authority: positively or normatively. Legitimate authority is a normative notion while de facto authority is a positive concept. A debate does exist as to whether there is truly a distinction between legitimate and de facto authority. This debate is at the heart of the justifications for democratic government and authoritarian government.

Hobbes does not see a distinction between de facto and legitimate political authority. He writes that the ability of any ruling entity to gain de facto authority, justifies the authority (Hobbes 1668). This is the foundation of the justification of authoritarian authority (including AE). Hobbes wrote that power should be centralized in one Sovereign. The job of the sovereign is to organize society and prevent it from disseminating into chaos. The method of attaining sovereignty was of no concern to Hobbes, merely that sovereignty was attained.

However, many philosophers have argued for a distinction between legitimate and de facto political authority. In contrast to Hobbes, many philosophers have posed the idea that an entity must satisfy “certain normatively important conditions” in order to be legitimate (Christiano 2013). Among those that have written on the normative notion of legitimate authority is John Locke. He posits that legitimate authority requires that a government or ruling entity attains and maintains consent of the people over which it claims its authority (Locke 1690). Some philosophers have challenged Locke’s thinking by proposing that it is not feasible for states to gain consent. They concede that maybe consent makes a political entity morally justifiable, but it shouldn’t be the standard for legitimacy (Christiano 2013).

Locke defends against this criticism, though, by positioning consent as a broad notion through his idea of tacit consent. This type of consent requires only that people are not actively unwilling to comply with a government’s rules (Christiano 2013). In this sense, consent is relatively easy to gain and non-consent can be seen readily through political dissent. Protests are a good example of political dissent. They express unwillingness of people to comply with their government. This does not mean that any state in which protests take place lacks legitimate authority, but rather the way a state responds to protests can highlight whether that state confers legitimacy through consent or through de facto authority.

Hong Kong provides an example of a place in which there is consistent unwillingness to consent with imposed authority. Protests have been ongoing in Hong Kong since 1997 when Beijing regained control over the territory formerly governed by British rule. Beijing has continually responded with crackdowns on protests, trying to suppress the demonstrations (Flowerdew and Jones 2016). In this case, Beijing maintains de facto authority over Hong Kong.. Beijing’s desire and ability to quash protests is the hallmark of its authoritarian government in that it restricts individuals’ right to speak out against the government.  

However, Locke’s notion of tacit consent implicitly assumes that political dissent is a feasible action for individuals who are actively unwilling to comply with a policy. This is not always the case. No policy will affect the public in an even manner. One group will inevitably disagree with a policy or adversely affected by it. Without coordination goods, however, public disagreement with a policy cannot develop into an organized protest. States with strong structures of state dominion that restrict these public goods rarely, if ever, face political dissent in the form of protests. When this is the case, these states prove authoritarian. Locke’s idea of tacit consent, without context, can make it seem as though a lack of protests in an authoritarian government signifies a general acceptance by the public. Rather, some individuals will have the desire to protest but lack the public goods to do so. Authoritarian governments do not gain tacit consent because there is no opportunity for dissent to be voiced.  

Because authoritarian governments cannot gain tacit consent while quashing the ability for political dissent, they must confer legitimacy for their policies through de facto means. AE policies, therefore, are justified by de facto legitimacy. Locke’s ideas of consent by those governed are central to democratic states. A policy justified not by consent, but by de facto legitimacy is not consistent with democratic ideals. Because elected officials make policies in a democracy, these policies must align with the state’s values or else policy-makers risk losing their positions. Therefore, AE policies cannot be successfully implemented in a democracy.

Conclusion

 I have analyzed authoritarian environmentalism (AE) as a policy framework and the argument that it can be implemented in a democratic state. The argument that AE can be implemented in a democracy is unconvincing. The claim that South Korea undertook AE policy under President Lee works under a narrow view which fails to take into account whether the South Korean government ever actually violated the rights of its citizens. In practice, the authoritarian mechanisms required for AE  build upon deeper notions of authoritarianism. Deference to the state must be strong in order for non-participatory policies to work. Environmental issues cannot be isolated from social justice issues because distribution is of great concern when proposing environmental reform. This requires that AE policies also influence social justice policies, leading to authoritarianism in all policy spheres.

The theoretical issue of how a government acquires legitimacy for its policies highlights major problems for the compatibility of democracy and AE policies. Because authoritarian regimes quash the ability to protest and dissent, it is impossible to measure or detect public disagreement. Without the ability for dissent to be heard, authoritarian policies cannot gain even a broad notion of consent. Therefore, AE policies rely on de facto rather than normative legitimacy. Policies without a normative legitimacy framework are not compatible with democratic states in which the public elects policy officials.

Due to both the theoretical and practical problems with AE being implemented in democracies, I have argued that it cannot be done successfully. Further, because of the necessary extension of authoritarianism into spheres beyond the environmental, AE requires authoritarianism proper. A state cannot be a democracy and exhibit authoritarianism proper simultaneously, so AE cannot be implemented in a democracy. Moving forward, if changes to policy truly must be made in the face of severe environmental threats, other environmental policy frameworks, which confer legitimacy through consent, should be considered if those policies are to be implemented in democracies.

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Winter Issue 2019

Written by: Majlinda Zhuniq, University of Pristina

Despite the fact that war in Kosovo has ended in 1999, the consequences of the loss of loved ones are still present and have huge impacts on psychological wellbeing of Kosovar people (Landsman, et al., 2008). The purpose of this study, is to examine the experiences of young adults who lost their fathers in the war. In semi-structured interviews, four young adults shared their life experience with us. Interviewees shared their biggest struggles, support systems, and coping mechanisms. The interviewees tended to focus on four major topics: 1) Support from family, 2) Support from friends, 3) Institutions, and a final topic which was the most sensitive 4) Pride as a regret. Corruption, a major problem in our country, was also highlighted as a problem affecting these people since the image of veterans has been highly misused in the last several years. 

INTRODUCTION

From the moment they are born and during their development, human beings are fully reliant on their parents or primary caregivers (Winston & Chicot, 2016). According to the authors children develop their social domain (emotive and cognitive) during this period and the family, as the first social group that they interact with, is the most important part. When talking about family Tasch, McLanhan and Scheinder (2013), mention that there has been a long tradition of sociological research about effects of divorce or/and father absence on social and emotional wellbeing of kids thorough their lives. Their work has documented a negative association between the absence of biological father and many aspects of offspring, social and psychological such as education, mental health and family relationships.             The importance of father figure has been known since, Lamb (1975), described the way it impacts girls’ and boys’ lives, starting from the role of the father in family, the care that they give as a supporter, as a husband to their mother and as a source of moral guidance for every member. The absence of father is related with the generation of feelings of abandonment and stress (Moynihan, Smeeding, & Rainwater, 2004). The authors mention that we should not be surprised, therefore, by the fact that father absence is related with high levels of  behavioral and psychological problems. According to Golbert and Carlson (2014), it is also known that most of researches report the fact that boys manifest more problems in psychological wellbeing than girls when missing a father figure. This might be explained by the fact that behavioral problems are emphasized by many researchers.

BACKGROUND

1993 marks the year when Kosovo Liberation Army was created as a result of the belief that full freedom of Kosovo could only be achieved with force (Ozerdem, 2003). Harsh living conditions, repression towards their language, culture and the continuous ethnic cleansing made Kosovar people reject Serbian rule straight from the beginning (Mulaj, 2008). According to Judah (2000), UCK (the Kosovo Liberation Army) was a marginalized and hidden organization since 1980s. The full removal of Kosovo autonomy from Serbian dictator Milosevic in 1989 would be a turning point for this organization. The war, which lasted from 1998 until 1999, resulted in the death of 10.000 people and forced approximately 800.000 to leave Kosovo. As mentioned by Corzado (2000), most of Kosovar people experienced a variety of traumas during these years. Many were separated from their families, taken to jail, abused or even murdered.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Developed first by John Bowlby in 1950s and 1960s, attachment theory is an extension of psychoanalytic theory (Peluso, & Kern, 2004). This theory explains how the bond between child and primary caregiver affects child’s development in the later stages of life. Ainsworth later experimentally defined three subgroups of attachment relationships whether it was a secure, avoidant or anxious-resistant relationship. In 1960 despite all this, Bowlby also recognized the psychological impact of loss in the development of children and started research in this direction, which led to an extension of Attachment Theory into Bereavement Theory (Holmes, 2014). This theory emphasizes various stages that arise from the separation of one of a child’s caregivers, starting with grief, yearning and anger. But there is another component explained, which is loss of one or both parents before reaching adulthood, where these stages cannot be fulfilled as expected (Levy, et al., 2011). According to the authors, since children were unable to resolve their sense of loss in the first place, their development continues with a prolonged sense of grief and various types of emotional problems. This will further lead to a higher prevalence of depression, anxiety and problems in school, and later in life less successful relationship with others (Bowlby, 1980).

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

According to Dikel and Goldbatt (2008), clinical observation and empirical evidence reveal that the consequences of traumatic events are not limited to people who are directly exposed to them. The trauma is carried to family and friends. When studying the effects on whose families of war veterans, Herzog, Everson and Whitword (2011), found a high level of problems related to stress and trauma, as well as a high level of PTSD. Another study with families of veterans in Portugal also suggested that their children specifically had higher symptoms of PTSD when they had lost a father in war (Pedras, & Pereiera, 2016).

On the other hand, Dekel and Goldbatt (2008) conducted a study in which they explored the generalized impact of war in veteran’s children in the United States. Results of this study reported no significant differences between the control and experimental group. Some children reported low self-esteem and had high levels of non-functionality. Furthermore, also a higher number of mothers and children showed a low degree of family cohesion and a non-communicative home environment which resulted in further problems and conflict between them. 

An essential element of healthy development for these young adults is support from, and a healthy relationship with their family (Hutchinson, Power, & Jackson, 2017). While missing one parent during their development, children tend to have other family members play a significant role in their lives. Studies show that when children lose parents, relations with grandparents can offer support for their wellbeing (Attar- Swatchrz, et al., 2009). Authors also mention that with involvement in their lives, grandparents offer emotional support and solution for different problems in those families (Mitchell, 2007).

Kosovar culture emphasizes a collective family to maximize social support (Agani, 2001). Therefore, this author notes that the disruption of that family structure by war could have heavy consequences beyond the end of war. Wenzel et al., (2009), used a self-reported questionnaire to show a particularly high incidence of mental disorders in Kosovo. PTSD was reported to be 23%, depression 43% with 44 % of those reporting that they suffered from emotional distress. These results also showed that the highest levels of distress were reported by those who experienced the murder or loss of family members, who were abused, did not have access to education, lived in rural places or directly experienced war.

CONTEXT AND AIM OF THE STUDY

Young Kosovar adults missing their father figures face a lot of other problems which have arisen recently in our society. The Republic of Kosovo passed law 04/ L-261 in 2014 for veterans and martyrs of war and their families, which contains 45 subsequences starting from having various services in public institutions free of charge, a monthly allowance, benefits in schools and assistance with accommodations. This law was reviewed again for improvements and revisions in some sections. But signing these laws created large amount of corruption and misuse. Many people falsely claim that they lost their parents in conflict in order to gain that privileged status (Blic Newspaper, 2016).

The Head of Veterans Organization (OVL), Guncati says that politicians and bureaucratic hierarchy are to be blamed for these abuses.  According to Guncati, this law should be changed and should start checking more professionally if those applying for benefits have legitimate claims. OVL also mentioned that this is damaging to the image of veterans, since, as a result of corruption, there is a constant indignity towards them.

So far there is not a single study about how all these factors contribute to psychological wellbeing of these adults in Kosovo. Psychological wellbeing consists of factors such as personal relations with others, autonomy, and the feeling of having a purpose (Ryff, 1989). According to Nelson (2010), social interactions can be both positive or negative contributors to wellbeing. As this author mentions, social interaction can include the pain of talking about negative topics, and the associated stigma from others. This aspect of socialization is also one of the focus points of this qualitative research. 

I believe that this research is a mostly accurate reflection of what many young people in Kosovo are going through today, and the factors contributing negatively and positively to their psychological wellbeing. Furthermore, I strongly believe that the results will be a starting point of reflection for our society and government about the way these people are treated. 

METHOD

The method used for selecting participants in this study was non-probable method, done using the snow ball effect. One subject gives the researcher the name of another subject, which gives name of a third one and so on (Atkinson, & Flint, 2001). This was highly effective since children of martyrs tend to know other people of this group and it was therefore easier to find them. According to Patton (2005), this method is used mostly when it is hard to find participants, as mentioned above. Participants were 4 young adults, two male and two females to control for the potential differences in mental health based on gender. Participants were all at the age of 20 to ensure they were born before the war begun. This relatively small number of participants was selected initially because this is a qualitative study, but also because a smaller number of interviews would give us more time to be confident that we have reached saturation, the point where participants do not give additional information anymore (Fusch, Patricia, and Lawrence 2015).

INTERVIEWS

Semi-structured interviews were used to gather data. This type of interviews is a known technique which is focused on specific topics but covers them in a conversational style. These interviews are used for gaining information in different and more complex topics but also are a more effective tool to get information about sensitive topics which cannot be gathered with questionnaires as mentioned by Bolger, Davis and Rafaeli (2003). Sometimes this method gives information that was not thought initially as a part of interview (Oxfam, 1012). As mentioned from Kajornboon (2005), one of the strongest points would be that the researcher can stimulate and get deeper in a topic which is being discussed by the interviewee. Another strong point is that semi-structured format gives space to ask participants the same questions at different times or vice-versa (Dearnley, 2005). These interviews gave participants space to talk about what they think and how they feel for different dimensions that were discussed.

PROCEDURE

After the selection phase there was a meeting to provide the interviewees more details about the process. Interviewees also saw the thematic guide to get a close up idea of what the interview will include since this was a sensitive topic. Interviews took place in the second meeting, they were conducted in the Albanian language and all of them were approximately 50 minutes. Participants were interviewed only once and we went through all the main points that had been planned. After the interview there was another meeting with all participants individually to go through the transcripts and confirm what was written.

ETHICS

During each phase of this study there was always caution when it comes to ethics. Participants were assured total confidentiality and protection of their identity. After they had been selected and had confirmed their participation, they have been told that they could leave anytime they wanted to or feel that they needed to. The whole process was carefully designed to avoid any physical or psychological damage to the participants. The last meeting was designed to review transcripts and confirm their statements. 

DATA ANALYSIS

For the purpose of this study we used a thematic approach, which is a statistical approach for analyzing qualitative data based on coding and classifying the data into common topics or themes (Lapdat, 2010). Therefore, in this research too, the content was read and re-read multiple times and the most common topics were found and grouped. The main focus was to identify factors that had a positive or negative contribution to the mental health of participants, as this was the purpose of this study. The thematic guide started with demographic questions, then education and career, then toward relation with friends and family, and finally relations with institutions. We used an open coding approach in which as mentioned from Ibrahim (2012), after  reading the data we make patterns and turn them and then themes into categories. In order to be free from bias, on this phase of this study coding was conducted from two people, myself and another student. We ultimately formed four categories, which represent the most important contributing factors to the psychological wellbeing of young adults who are children of veterans. These categories will be further addressed in the discussion section.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

After reading interviews and using our thematic coding, we come to the main point of this study: what are the factors that contribute to the mental health of young adults? We grouped the qualitative data collected in our interviews into two categories of positive contributors and one negative contributor, which was related to corruption and misuse of veterans’ family benefits. Positive contributors are: support from family and friends, including friends who are also children of veterans. The last category includes our discussion about sources of negative feelings and disappointments with how institutions have made their lives harder. Below are all the main categories which will each be discussed.

TOPIC 1: Support from family

All the interviews show that an important factor in overcoming hard times is family. For example, interviewee G.F shared a very close relationship with his grandfather: 

“My relation with my grandpa I could say was as close for me as one with a father. I do not know the feeling of having a father or what that relationship would look like, but I can say that grandpa gave me the love of a father which made me feel better for the fact that I do not have one but I can experience a similar emotion. He always tried to reflect that and he succeeded. For me, my grandfather was the strongest element in my life till the moment he died. Interviewee G.F. goes on to talk about the support from his extended family:

“Just like my mother’s family, my father’s family always helped us because he was a family member for them too, and this situation affected them emotionally. They always tried to make me happy and make the absence of my father less felt; most of the time they achieved it by always giving their support.

When talking about relationships with family, A.M. says that:

“Our relations are really good. As I mentioned, I was lucky that I had this family because if there would be a less supportive one it could have caused many difficulties in helping overcome difficulties of life. They made everything easier by always supporting me, especially morally.

When talking about the extended family, Q.K. says:

“We always had the support needed, our extended family members always looked after us and took care, financially and morally.”

K.A. highlights the importance of her mother by saying:

“Family always had its importance, but it was my mother who especially who pushed us to be the best versions of ourselves and gave us support to study and be someone in life so one day in future we could be independent individuals.”

A.M. says that her relationships with her close family and extended one is reported to had made it easier growing up without a father:

“I personally had only one or two close family members who had been close to my father and who are in step with what is going on now too. These people supported me a lot. I could open my heart to them and this helped me the most.”

Similarly, G.M also considers family support very important:

“No, I do not have problems with sleep, and I never used pills, so it didn’t come to that till depression. I think because I always had the support of my family which always were a shoulder for me with their kind words helped to overcome a lot of things.” 

TOPIC 2: Support from friends

Support from friends was also one of the major points the interviewees described. They said that it made it easier living without a parent and they found support during their journey. After analyzing all the interviews most of participants divided friendship into two major groups. First they described support from friends they grew up with and shared the same school or neighborhood. Interviewee A.M mentions that:

 “I was lucky that I had  really good friends. They stayed close to me always, and they  never made me feel different among them. I think I was really lucky since there might be people out there who do not feel the same in their friends’ company.”

Interviewee G.F also describes the importance of friendship during his hard times:
            “Friendship helped in so many aspects. They never let me feel alone. They were there with me even when I was sad. Because sometimes you really miss the person you lost and you feel the need of their presence. During these times friendship is really needed  and my friends really helped me..

Interviewee K.A, in addition to importance of friendship, also mentions difficulties as a consequence of gender:

“You can get through everything together with close people, and I was really lucky that I   always had the support of my friends especially since it was harder for me as a girl. I am always being told that I should be the best version of myself to make my father proud and I have a double responsibility on my shoulders as a girl and I need to protect  honor. 

Interviewee Q.K mentions: “A huge importance has also been gender and how people see you as a woman. You should always be more careful about everything, if I were a boy I think everything would be easier for me.”

TOPIC 2.1. Support from friends who are also children of veterans

Besides friends at school or those they grew up with, interviewers shared positive experiences with friends who lived throught the same thing they did. Interviewee A.M says: 

“I spend a lot of time with other children of veterans, because more or less we share the same story and we know where it hurts to each other and we always try to stay close to one another. We understand each other better.”

He goes on further:

 “Well, we have two kinds of friendships, the one which we made in school and the one which we met through the stories of our fathers. There were cases where I was really disappointed with some friends, but never the ones that shares the same story with me. The moment you realize it the most is when there are important dates, there you understand who stays close with us and who doesn’t. The friends that live with the same wound were always there for me.

Interviewee G.F shares similar experiences: 

“I also have a lot of friends with the same story as mine, I could count 20 of them or more actually. Their fathers also gave their lives for this country, and this connects us. We share a lot of similar opinions and beliefs, we understand each other better, we know what we talk about, and we never cross the line to the point that it would touch someone emotionally. Or, maybe this is all because they feel the same pain as I do. 

Interviewee Q.K goes further, reporting that this kind of friendship was part of her school environment as well:

“Well we were two girls whose parents were killed in war and that made us support each other more and maybe understand each other’s pain. Especially when there are important remembrance days when you remember everything you go through as a kid without father. Everything was hard but the fact that we were together made it a bit easier maybe.”

When talking about this topic during interviews, A.M shared his opinion that having someone similar was an important positive factor: 

“This really really helps you, because you would feel alone and different from other people. But I had this friendship, I cannot say for my good luck because the loss of a father can never be a good thing and maybe it would be better that we wouldn’t be in this group at all but despite all of this they make me feel really good.”

TOPIC 3: Governmental Institutions

While the above discussion is about factors that had a positive contribution in the wellbeing of the veterans’ kids, something that came up as a common negative influence among all the interviewees was the approach of governmental institutions towards this group of people. In one way or another, it seems to always have a negative correlation with their wellbeing. Interviewee G.F says:

“Kosovo does not have adequate leaders and therefore there are a lot of things happening which should not. It means the law is not respected as it should be and none of the promises given for our group since 2000 were realized. I am talking about the promises from year 2000 and on, like: support on education, household, financial help and everything else promised but never really fulfilled.”

Interviewee A.M. shared similar examples:

“There are several cases where we as a group are free from payments, such as in the 
hospital where we show a card we have. I should be proud that I am the son of a veteran, and if I pull out that card that shows that I am a son of a veteran and free from payments I should receive a bravo from the responsible person there, but instead I am considered as someone who needs social assistance and that’s it and they even tell us. ‘Really you again, you really have grown in number haven’t you.’ And this kills me every time.

K.A. reports the absence of support for education: 

“Government support is not enough as I mentioned earlier. We had hope that they will help, especially since we are the last generations of veterans because most of them are already grownups and independent individuals. And that support would be good for the country because we will eventually work for the good of this country so they should have had supported us.

 Q.K.  highlights the lack of financial support:

“To restate what has already been said before, it is insufficient if people have only that amount of money which I have been offered and did not cover most of the family expenses. As children of veterans, we have an amount of money that we receive but that is insufficient, and if a family is dependent only on that it would be a really huge problem because one cannot reach the end of month with that. We also dealt by ourselves with accommodation, since we had support from our extended family, but not many were lucky as we were. As for institutional financial assistance someone would end up on streets. Government also offered a small amount of apartments for families of veterans but we do not even know how they assigned them. For people like us, who did not get one, it was really difficult.”

All participants mentioned the fact that government provided uneven and insufficient support. The interviewee A.M. says:

“Institutions support you and maybe they cover minimal expenses but they are never enough so you could have your own place or home that would be really difficult. There have been cases where municipalities shared a number of apartments for families of veterans but not for all of them. The way they assigned these apartments was weird, because you got the apartment assigned but you did not legally own it you because the real owner was municipality and you were only a renter. Even in papers your name is only as a temporary person living there.”

As for Q.K., he states:

“I would like to talk about these apartments that they gave us because this procedure is not done the war it should have been. The apartments do not even have decent quality and we are not even the owners. I do not know what their game is, but the rent of these apartments goes to certain people who own them, after all we still do not get to be the owners.”

TOPIC 4: Pride as regret

One of the topics which was addressed by all the interviewees was the regret they had. The regret was expressed in different ways about the fact that appreciation for the loss of their father was really changing in our culture, especially in the last few years. They always reported that as a result of corruption and misuse the way people see veterans has really changed and this is affecting their lives. As A.M says:

“We, all the time have a feeling of anguish and we are in some ways pessimistic. We see the ingratitude and therefore we never give our best our 100%, we are reserved since as I mentioned the circumstances made us feel this way. This broke most of us, if you stop and think how we grew up with a missing father figure, and how society is responding toward us this way is heartbreaking.” 

A.M goes further, reporting events that create this feeling: 

“If you check TV and what happens in the Parliament of Kosovo in certain moments it makes you disgusted from what you are seeing and hearing and in some moments you are so broken and in anguish that you say nothing was worth it for even a second.”

This feeling was a source for regret also for interviewee G.F. where he explains:

“I could say that this is the worst feeling. Sometimes I question myself whether my father’s fight was worth it, and my answer is absolutely not. If my father would have been alive and would have known that the circumstances would come to this point, I am sure that he would have taken his close family (mother, father, wife and children) the day that war in Kosovo started and leave this country.”

The interviewee K.A. also expresses his unhappiness with the way all the values of war and her father have been lost.

“Gratitude is mostly gone. They forgot the values and we see a certain disappointment about one can forget so quickly, especially when most of people have family members lost to war and they forget that people die at war but do not deserve to be forgotten this way. They should at least have a kind of respect for children of veterans, but when you look even the ones that were comrades in war should know better than not to respect their friends or their blood.”

This feeling of regret expressed in different ways to all of interviewees was always associated with a strong feeling of pride, where A.M. says:

“Of course pain is really big and the absence can never be filled in any way by anybody else, but if you would ask me if I would like this to happen again I would agree because of my country and all of the things that it has gone through. If we rely on the behavior of people then nothing was worth it, not even coming here, not to mention fighting.”

Feeling proud for what their father did seems to be something that makes dealing with all the challenges that they face today easier, as interviewee K.A. says:

“Although we are so often disappointed and our motives and hopes are lost, we still somehow have a kind of love for our country. They fought to never die, just so we could be free today and follow a better path, and in the future people will look at me and say she did turn out to grow a fine lady despite the fact that she grew up without the love of father. Pride is the main pillar that gives me strength and only when I think about it I say to myself: okay you are daughter of a veteran and you should be stronger.”

These feelings were constantly accompanying all of them and it was something that kept being the main topic, where A.M. also adds:

“It is a relief for our pride because individuals can nowadays accomplish whatever they want, for example be a Vice President, but one can never be the child of a veteran and it is a special kind of privilege. This title is a fortune over all the fortunes, and this is what covers all the bad stuff happening around.”

Another part of expressing pride comes from the interviewee G.F. who points out:

“Besides the patriotism I do not feel anything else. I am very proud that I got the chance to be the son of a veteran and a hero. My father’s work and what he did for us and for all this country makes me feel stronger and makes missing him more bearable. It is true that you cannot escape the longing for him from time to time, but his activity made me leave behind so many things and not get caught in details and everything that is going on in this country nowadays.

CONCLUSION

After all the data presented above it is important to go through the main points of this research again. Starting as an explorative one, this study brought up important viewpoints from lived experience of young adults who are children of martyrs. Psychological wellbeing was the main topic which was brought up in every field, directly or not. So, what are the positive contributors in psychological wellbeing of these people, and what are the negative ones? Is there a gender difference?

Always having in mind that this is the very first study that treats this specific topic, the actual context and what is happening in Kosovo we conclude that support from family is the main factor that is contributing positively in martyrs’ children’s lives. As mentioned in the literature review, for many children raised in a home without a parent, the nature of familial relations and support from friends are really important elements that reduce dangerous factors during their development (Hutchinson, Power & Jackson 2017). Family once again, beside emotional also through financial support was the one who made their lives better and easier. One of participants also reported to have had really close relationship with his grandparent just as some studies presented from Attar and Swatchrz, (2009) said .

Interviewees also talk a lot about how friendship affected their lives as children without a parent. While on this topic, a special importance was given at support from friends who have been living the same thing and knew how it felt to be the child of a martyr. On the other hand we have institutions and their approach as a negative contributor with their lack of support and mistreatment. Parallel to this, something more powerful was always brought up, it was pride as a regret. Regret was for losing their father for the dream of an ideal country that would be free which nowadays treats these people without the respect they deserve, and pride for the heroes that their parents were. As for gender differences despite what Marks, Jung and Song (2007) mention that being raised without a father tends to lead to a higher depression symptoms and poorer wellbeing at boys, there was no difference in participants. The only difference mentioned from girls was that they have to be extra careful since they also had to deal with perceptions from others as a daughter of a martyr, which can be a topic for further research.

LIMITATION

Starting from the fact that this is the first research of its kind, the absence of previous reference points could be a huge disadvantage. Despite this, since this was a very sensitive and specific topic even when compared to international studies, there was not much said about since this study also treats the actual context in this country and the problems that have risen up in the last years, this problem is very specific. Another limitation can be considered the absence of declaration directly from responsible people from the Organization of Martyrs as a more credible resource of information than their statements to the local newspaper.

RECOMANDATIONS

This research can be a good starting point for further exploration of this topic since this is something that has not really been discussed in the last years. Furthermore, it can also be a source for further work that can be done from Ministry of Work and Social Wellbeing for an intervention which would explore more this learned helplessness toward negative perception of these young adults. In addition to that, as for further research about this topic, there can be ones that would specifically search for gender differences, missing a father and its implications for romantic relationships and influence of this in choosing a career since these were often mentioned during interviews. Always in mind that all of this work would be very useful and have an impact on society as the first steps toward bringing attention to the issue and making a change.

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