Last fall, Praeger Security International - a new online, but proprietary, venture aiming to become a kind of central clearing house for international security research - commissioned (and peer-reviewed) a piece from me on al-Qaeda and Muslim public opinion. I was worried that it might be completely ignored, since PSI is brand new, password protected, and an untraditional (electronic, not dead tree) outlet for this kind of article. But I thought it was worth doing anyway, since it lays out a research agenda which will hopefully pay off in a number of other articles. In a sense this is a gamble on the proposition that some kind of online publishing is the future, and that it can still reach a sizable audience via Abu Aardvark, Google, and so forth. We'll see.
With PSI's permission, I'm going to post excerpts from Al-Qaeda's Constructivist Turn here; here's a rough html link to the full text and here's a PDF version. Hopefully the excerpts will be suggestive enough to generate interest, and not too academic to drive ordinary readers away. The essay lays out a research agenda, meaning that it's a starting point, not a conclusion. Comments are very welcome.
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Since the loss of its Afghan base in the winter of 2001, al-Qaeda has undergone a “constructivist turn,” employing not only violence but also a dizzying array of persuasive rhetoric and public spectacle toward the end of strategic social construction. Failure to appreciate al-Qaeda’s fundamentally constructivist orientation has led to a range of misconceptions about its strategy and its fortunes, as well as about the success and failure of the “war on terror.” Al-Qaeda’s grand strategy seeks to promote an Islamic identity, define the interests of all Muslims as necessarily in confrontation with the West, and shape the normative environment in which Muslim politics are contested. This entails heightening the salience of religion in all aspects of political life, and to “frame” world politics as a clash of civilizations in which radical Islamists such as themselves stand on an equal footing with the great powers of the state system. Al-Qaeda’s constructivism derives both from structural factors—absence of a territorial base, a globalized field of contention shaped by new media and information technologies—and Islamist ideas themselves. It uses new media technologies to deliver and shape a narrative and a worldview in which al-Qaeda’s definition of the world—of its meaning, the stakes of conflict, and the identity of the competitors—becomes more widely diffused and shared. For individual al-Qaeda members and suicide attackers, who have fully internalized the norms and identity of the jihad, the act of terror may be an expressive one, a literal act of devotional faith—even if that “moral act” is instrumentally exploited by the organization’s leadership.
American foreign policy has witnessed a similarly constructivist turn, as the “war of ideas” has been placed at the center of what the Pentagon’s 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review describes as a “long war struggle against Islamist terrorism…against global terrorist organizations that exploit Islam to achieve radical political aims.” But the theoretical foundations of such a war of ideas have always been alarmingly thin, particularly for International Relations theories that have traditionally downplayed the importance of ideas, norms, or public discourse. Any war of ideas necessarily takes place on a distinctively constructivist terrain, with questions of persuasion, framing, norm formation, socialization, and discourse taking priority over questions of material power, economic rationality, or formal international institutions. The United States and its allies are trying to create a norm against terror, whereas al-Qaeda and its allies are trying to establish a moral frame that not only justifies but also that makes mandatory violent jihad. As they pursue mirror strategies of normative transformation, “al-Qaeda and the American army are two sides in one war using both weapons of war and weapons of propaganda and psychology.”5 This article lays out a constructivist research agenda to grapple with al-Qaeda’s grand strategy as well as the potential responses.
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In March 2005, al-Quds al-Arabi reported that Sayf al-Adel, a
leading al-Qaeda strategist, had distributed to jihadist Internet
forums an outline of the organization’s strategy to 2020. Adel argued
that the attack of 9/11 had succeeded in its primary goal of enticing
the United States into direct interventions in the Arab region. Only
America’s entrance into the region in force—especially the occupation
of Iraq—would allow al-Qaeda to achieve its goal: to awaken the Islamic
umma and “create a direct confrontation between Americans and
Arabs/Muslims at the popular level.” In this second stage, al-Qaeda has
ceased to be an organization in the literal sense but has become “an
idea moving across geographic boundaries carried by satellite
television.”6
The strategy now, as Faisal Devji suggests, was to impose definitions
of reality that would in turn constitute very different forms of
identity and modes of action: “By enclosing the battle of state
interests within a war of religion, the jihad is staking a claim to the
definition of that world of global relations in which it operates.”7
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At one level, al-Qaeda’s “constructivist turn” represents a rational adjustment to structural changes: the rise of satellite television and the Internet (Lynch 2006), the global, transnational nature of the perceived field of contention (Tarrow 2005), and the constricted material environment shaped by aggressive Western and Arab state counterterrorism operations. It also responds to organizational changes imposed by the increased American and global pressures that deprived al-Qaeda of a territorial base and that complicated its free movement across borders. The constructivist turn cannot be reduced to structural changes, however: not every actor would have responded in the same way to the structural pressures and opportunities. Bin Laden, Zawahiri, and other theoreticians of the jihad have developed a unique political practice that resonate with a constructivist understanding of the international system.9
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Al-Qaeda’s constructivist strategy follows the logic of what Sikkink and Finnemore called “strategic social construction” at the level of the Islamic umma and at the level of individual consciousness. Strategy is aimed less at achieving specific immediate results than at reshaping the taken for granted terms of reference in Arab and Muslim societies. From this vantage point, the overthrow of Arab regimes or attacks against Western targets are the wrong metric for evaluating the strategy’s success or failure. Instead, the metrics should be found in public discourse and the acceptance of narratives, arguments, and the credibility of various parties. As Jason Burke puts it, “al-Qaeda makes sense to many more people today than it did ten years ago. A previously fairly restricted discourse which is full of hate, prejudice and myth…is spreading.”64
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Power: Al-Qaeda’s theory of power is perhaps its most distinctively constructivist concept.40 In contrast to rationalists (whether Realist or liberals) who locate power within material capacities of various kinds, al-Qaeda’s understanding of power highlights the autonomous role of identity, ideas, and rhetoric. Faith, not simply material capabilities, plays a decisive role in al-Qaeda’s concept of political power. Like Emmaneul Adler, al-Qaeda understands that “the imposition of meanings on the material world is one of the ultimate forms of power.”41 Like Christian Reus-Smit, al-Qaeda sees political power as “deeply embedded in webs of social exchange and mutual constitution.”42 Like the constructivist authors in a recent special issue of Millennium, al-Qaeda refuses a sharp distinction between “hard” and “soft” power with the latter in a supporting role; instead, it sees ideational and material power as intimately connected and mutually constitutive.43
Al-Qaeda’s theorists cast faith both as the ultimate source of power and as a key battlefield between the West and Islam. Zawahiri has argued that “the strongest weapon which the mujahideen enjoy—after the help and granting of success by God—is popular support from the Muslim masses in Iraq, and the surrounding Muslim countries.” This makes the battle for public opinion, and the battle over the definition of Islam, absolutely central to power relations: both an independent and a dependent variable, mutually constitutive in the truest constructivist sense. As Kepel put it, “bin Laden’s counter-offensive recognized that, under the right circumstances, rhetoric and satellite propaganda can be on equal footing with unmanned bombers and cruise-missiles.”44
This is not to say that al-Qaeda scorns the conventional dimensions of power politics. Terrorism is seen as a way of evening the imbalance of power between Islam and the West. As bin Laden put it shortly after 9/11: “So as they kill us, without a doubt we have to kill them, until we obtain a balance of terror. This is the first time, in recent years, that the balance of terror evened out between the Muslims and the Americans; previously, the Americans did to us whatever they pleased, and the victim wasn’t even allowed to complain.”45 Al-Qaeda goes to great efforts to raise money, and invests heavily in the recruitment and training of personnel. Its training videos and the Encyclopedia of Jihad show a frank, clear eyed concern for military techniques, scientific knowledge, and the like. There is little reason to believe that al-Qaeda would forego the opportunity to acquire weapons of mass destruction, or a territorial base, or even conventional military forces should such an occasion arise.
But ultimately al-Qaeda’s understandings of power focus more on the autonomous power of faith and identity than on strictly material concerns. Its political thought and practice has been shaped by the absence of such conventional material resources; and second, even it acquired such material resources, it would still have a distinctively Islamist understanding of the power of ideas and faith. Bin Laden put it like this: “God almighty said: ‘The believers fight for God’s cause, while those who reject faith fight for an unjust cause. Fight the allies of Satan: Satan’s strategies are truly weak.’ Second, we remind you that victory comes only with God. All we need to do is prepare and motivate for the jihad.”46
Bin Laden claims not only that power ultimately derives from closeness to God but also that the West is aware of this and is targeting true Islam in response. American- and European-led reform initiatives, whether in education curricula or in the fostering of civil society, are seen as attempts to sever Muslims from their true source of power—faith. As bin Laden argued, “The West today is doing its utmost to tarnish jihad and kill anyone seeking jihad. The West is supported in this endeavor by hypocrites. This is because they all know that jihad is the effective power to foil all their conspiracies.” 47 Western ideas such as democracy or nationalism aim at the “paralysis of the powers of our umma through other means, like the deceptive idea of democracy.”48 Bin Laden cast Western policy as clearly aimed at eradicating Muslim identity, and therefore power: “The Americans’ intentions have also become clear in their statements about the need to change the beliefs, curricula, and morals of Muslims in order to become more tolerant, as they put it. In clearer terms, it is a religious-economic war. They want the believers to desist from worshipping God so that they can enslave them, occupy their countries, and loot their wealth.”49
What the Muslim umma needed was not more material power, but rather the will to use it. If the Muslim world could unite, with its oil wealth and human resources, it would have all the material capabilities it needed: “Today, by the grace of God, our umma possesses enormous powers, sufficient to rescue Palestine and the rest of the Muslim lands. However these powers have been fettered and we must work to release them. For our umma has been promised victory. If it has been delayed, that is only because of our sins and our failure to help God.”50 The real obstacle was ideational, not material: the failure of Muslims to realize their true identity and act upon it. Public support, and individual faith, is a key component of power: “in the absence of this popular support, the Islamic mujahed movement would be crushed in the shadows, far from the masses who are distracted and fearful, and the struggle between the jihadist elite and the arrogant authorities would be confined to prison dungeons far from the public and the light of day. This is precisely what the secular, apostate forces that are controlling our countries are striving for.”51
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Identity: Al-Qaeda is trying to bring forward the Muslim component of identity in order to restructure political reality. Bin Laden and Zawahiri’s rhetoric is replete with appeals to Muslims to awaken, to embrace their true identity and to act accordingly. Terrorism, and the ideational struggle that follows, is in large part aimed at awakening the Muslim identity of Arabs and Muslims. Zawahiri wrote that “the masses must become convinced that this battle, while it is taking place, involves every Muslim.”58 Bin Laden similarly framed the issue in terms of identities transcending the nation-state: “I say that the battle isn’t between the al-Qaeda organization and the global crusaders. Rather, the battle is between Muslims—the people of Islam—and the global Crusaders.”59
There is nothing obvious or natural about the Islamist identity proclaimed by al-Qaeda. To take this as the evocation of a deep, essentialist identity is to grant bin Laden victory in the single most important stage of constructing social reality. In fact, this appeal to identity is a radical act, demanding that actors from an enormous range of social and cultural settings both renounce their current identities and embrace a new one. Muslims around the world have long juggled multiple claims on their identity. Al-Qaeda, like other Islamists, advances a claim on identity which is radically detached from the very concept of the state, one in which every individual is directly and personally linked to a global umma of believers. Just because Islamists declare the existence of a global Islamic umma—in which Islamic identity is the central and dominant aspect of every Muslim’s identity—does not make it so. Al-Qaeda’s rhetoric about a global Islamic identity aims at driving a self-fulfilling prophecy, constructing a collective identity rather than simply reflecting it.
This decades-long project to “Islamize” society from the bottom up is what gives resonance to al-Qaeda’s discourse. Movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood differ profoundly with al-Qaeda on strategy, on doctrine, and on core normative beliefs. Moderates and radicals disagree intensely about political issues, about the value of democracy, about the legitimacy of violence, about the legitimacy of takfir, about the meaning of jihad, and so on. But where they agree is on the common project of constructing an Islamic identity that transcends all other aspects of personal and political identity.
Moderate and social Islamists have prepared the ground for al-Qaeda’s invocation of Muslim identity through a long, patient project of reshaping personal identity.60 Arab and Muslim worldviews have been patiently reworked through persuasion, socialization, and internalization of ideas about the way the world works. Al-Qaeda is rather peripheral to this ongoing project of constructing a global Islamic identity.61 As Peter Mandaville describes it, “Al-Qaida is not the only game in town in terms of the transnational forces competing for Muslim hearts and minds.” Al-Qaeda is trying to cash in on someone else’s project—and, in the case of Zawahiri, a project he himself rejected.62
This appropriation of a well-developed Islamist project creates vulnerabilities as well as strengths for al-Qaeda. Few constructivists would now argue that a particular set of political interests necessarily follows from a given political or civilizational identity. The contestation of the interests that follow from any collective identity is a key site of political struggle, as those within a collective identity fought over definitions of shared interests.63 This means that al-Qaeda must engage in public arguments with other Islamists and other Arab political forces over the definition of interests, rather than simply presume its leadership. When moderate and radical views converge on the latter’s narrative—as they did over Israel during the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, or over the American invasion of Iraq in 2003—al-Qaeda can command far greater power than it could hope to muster for its own project. But this leaves al-Qaeda particularly vulnerable to those moderate Islamist figures who challenge its positions.
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A Constructivist Research Agenda
What follows for theory or for practice from describing al-Qaeda’s strategy as constructivist? This concluding section lays out a constructivist research agenda, highlighting points of convergence with recent constructivist theory and suggesting paths for theoretical and empirical research.
Political thought: Constructivists generally argue that ideas matter in a far richer sense than usually embraced by rationalist theories. This places a greater burden on the constructivist to understand Islamist political thought and political discourse on its own terms. ......
Rationality and modes of action: Constructivists have made important advances in exploring different conceptions of rationality: strategic, normative and communicative; instrumental and expressive.78 How do such theories help account for al-Qaeda’s mode of action? Can al-Qaeda’s actions be described effectively through these models, or can it help constructivists formulate new categories of social action? Analysts working outside the constructivist tradition have struggled to make sense of al-Qaeda’s rationality. Benjamin and Simon wrote in 2002 that “what appears to be senseless violence actually made a great deal of sense to the terrorists and their sympathizers, for whom this mass killing was an act of redemption” and that al-Qaeda’s actions did “reflect a strategy with intelligible goals and methods,” but that ultimately al-Qaeda lived “in a world where cause and effect lose all meaning.”79 Faisal Devji similarly questions whether an instrumental rationality guides al-Qaeda: “for an instrumental politics of this sort to be possible, after all, some proportion between its causes and effects is required, whereas the global consequences of jihad have outstripped its local causes, and so have exceeded its intentions, to take on a life of their own well beyond the politics of control.”80 Many others have countered with rational reconstructions of al-Qaeda’s strategy, on the part of the central leadership if not individual suicide terrorists. A constructivist research agenda could both explain al-Qaeda’s logic of action and use this understanding to enrich existing theoretical accounts.
Strategic social construction: This article has argued that strategic social construction—actions oriented toward shaping the background beliefs and norms of international politics—is at the core of al-Qaeda’s strategy. As a “norm entrepreneur,” bin Laden is attempting to convince a critical mass of Arabs and Muslims to embrace a new identity and its attendant norms, interests, and strategies. The ultimate goal is the background assumptions of political life, the underlying narrative and identities that give meaning to every day political events and that establish the context for strategic bargaining and moral argumentation alike.81 But such a normative context is never fixed permanently, and is open to challenge and reinterpretation through ongoing framing struggles. As national publics responded to local terror attacks with revulsion, for example, shifting the frame from “Islam against the West” to “extremists perverting true Islam” dramatically changes the normative-political equation. Constructivism should have policy-relevant advice for those trying to construct a norm against terror, as well as for those trying to frustrate attempts to construct a normative environment receptive to terrorism (that its insights should equally be useful to the other side is a normatively uncomfortable reality).
Cultural contexts: What is the relationship between the patient restructuring of society from below pursued by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda’s constructivist strategy? Even where moderate Islamists actively oppose al-Qaeda’s terrorist methods or its political goals, their decades of efforts have clearly shaped the normative and political environment. The Muslim Brotherhood, Arab regimes, and the United States are each in their own way promoting antijihadist forces in the media and beyond. The field of Islam is therefore crowded with actors embodying different political theories, different strategies, and different priorities. A constructivist research agenda should theorize this entire field, exploring their interrelations, conflicts, and synergies—both to shed light on Islamism today and for comparative insights into similarly crowded transnational fields of contention. As Richard Price put it, “Cultural contexts are not simply found but are made through the politics of activism.”82 Sikkink and Finnemore argue that “Norms do not appear out of thin air; they are actively built by agents having strong notions about appropriate or desirable behavior in their community.”83 This cultural context, Rodger Payne argues, “almost certainly matters more than the content or framing of specific messages.”84 In this case, the agents are not so much al-Qaeda as they are Islamist activists working to Islamize society over a long period. Constructivist research should explore the relationship between these two very different strategies of normative action: the Muslim Brotherhood’s slow, patient, process of norm-building from below and al-Qaeda’s dramatic, violent galvanization from above. Beyond the Islamic world, what does this relationship say for more general theories of normative change and social action? This also should have policy relevance. For instance, if it is the case that external pressure on identity triggers defensiveness, and strengthens al-Qaeda’s case that the West targets Muslim identity, should the United States avoid directly targeting “Islam” as the problem in order to avoid triggering defensive identity discourses?
Moral arguments: Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink offer three pathways for the development of norms: instrumental adaptation and strategic bargaining, moral consciousness raising, and institutionalization and habituation.85 Of these, moral consciousness raising may be the pivotal stage in al-Qaeda’s strategy. Although it may seem odd to talk about al-Qaeda as a “moral” actor, it clearly views itself as such and is actively engaged in both appealing to Muslim morality and constructing new moral norms for Muslims. Al-Qaeda employs a distinctly moral rhetoric, equating faith and virtue with a specific political course of action. This moral argument directly competes with Western moral argumentation, challenging its alleged double-standards and hypocrisy; in a video aired on al-Jazeera in January 2006, for example, Zawahiri pointedly referred to revelations about American use of white phosphorous in Iraq and secret prisons around the world for interrogating suspected terrorists in order to deflate American moral arguments. These moral arguments have been called “normative power politics,” where “states seek, through rhetoric and diplomacy, to publicly delegitimize weapons that are perceived to give the adversary a power advantage.”86 The definition of norms of appropriateness involves public argument, inflected by power but not reducible to it. Constructivism should offer a guide to the politics of moral argument at this level, and its relationship with strategic outcomes.87
Cascades and tipping points: Sikkink and Finnemore describe the life cycle of a norm as “norm emergence,” “norm cascade leading to broad acceptance,” and then finally “internalization.” 9/11 and subsequent terror attacks could be seen as attempt to trigger such a norm cascade. What can constructivism contribute to understanding the prospects for such a norm cascade in the Islamic world? What does the experience of the “war of ideas” since 9/11 tell us about existing theories of norm cascades? One important rationalist argument, for instance, is that people often form their opinions based on their perception of the prevailing distribution of opinion. Should the distribution of public arguments change (more pro-American voices in the media, more pro-Islamist voices in the media), individuals will reorient their own publicly expressed views in response. The introduction of voices into the public sphere could thus in principle set off a “cascade” leading to a sudden and dramatic reversal of seemingly entrenched views. This cascade logic has been an important, if untheorized, element of American public diplomacy efforts. The creation of Arabic-language radio and television stations, along with Bush’s pro-democracy rhetoric and the violent shock of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, was meant to insert pro-American voices and perspectives into an Arab media environment presumably dominated by anti-American views. Such rationalist views generally tend to underestimate the role of identity and preexisting narratives, however. A constructivist research agenda should explore both theoretically and empirically this logic of normative cascades.
Socialization and identity: Jeffrey Checkel defines socialization as the point at which “an agent switches from following a logic of consequences to a logic of appropriateness.”88 Rather than calculate whether or not terrorism would be instrumentally useful, it would simply be rejected as morally wrong (if the antiterrorist norm had been consolidated) or accepted as an appropriate way to act in the world as it currently exists (had al-Qaeda’s frame been consolidated). As Tannenwald argues, where this takes place “one should expect to see identity and self-interest defined in ways that increasingly take the taboo for granted. That is, the process of norm creation does not simply change the incentives for behavior (the rationalist view); it transforms the identity and interests of the actors themselves (the constructivist view).” A recent special issue of International Organization dealt with questions of socialization and persuasion in various institutional contexts (primarily Europe): What insights might be useful for evaluating the prospects of success for al-Qaeda, other Islamists, or Westernizers?
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This essay has argued that al-Qaeda has taken a constructivist turn, with its grand strategy aimed ultimately at “strategic social construction.” But, as argued earlier, al-Qaeda is only one actor in a very crowded field of contention. The recent controversy over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed illustrates the extent to which unforeseen events can suddenly radicalize the political atmosphere. Although al-Qaeda itself should not be credited with triggering the cartoons crisis, the unfolding of events has followed its constructivist strategy to the letter. Both Western and Arab media have largely framed the conflict around a “clash of civilizations” motif, greatly strengthening al-Qaeda’s agenda of defining Muslim identity around such monolithic and mutually exclusive identities. By striking on a deeply symbolic front, the crisis heightens the salience of the kinds of ideas and emotions most conducive to driving ordinary Arabs and Muslims into a more radical narrative of conflict and confrontation. The availability of these frames, and their resonance, suggests that al-Qaeda has considerable success over the last half decade in reshaping the narratives, identities, and taken-for-granteds of Arab and Muslim political life. The violence of some of the responses—even in the face of calls by figures such as Qaradawi for “rational” rage rather than violence—shows the difficulty that moderate Islamists can have in controlling the dynamics set in motion by their Islamizing project. A constructivist research agenda should be well placed to analyze not only al-Qaeda’s strategy but also this broader cultural context and its long-term political implications.
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