In these times Augustine's mordant comment on the Roman Empire comes to mind. He wrote, 'Without justice, states are robber bands.' His line seems pertinent as we read of the human consequences of Australian asylum seeker policy and the continuing revelations of electronic snooping.
Augustine's comparison of states to robber bands is usually taken to be merely dismissive. That does not do justice to his thought. It is best taken as descriptive, pointing to the reality and dynamic of states which act in an ethics free zone. He is concerned to strip away the self-congratulatory rhetoric of empire from the reality of a Rome concerned purely with asking how to achieve desired goals uncontrolled by respect for human dignity. If we appreciate how robber bands work we can better understand what states do.
Such robber bands as the mafia or perhaps the triads, work pretty effectively within their narrow limits. They are effective at reaching their financial and organisational goals and generally moderate the violence used in achieving these goals to the minimum considered necessary. They can also survive for long periods since they are able to ensure silence and to win enough popular support by rewarding their friends and by opposing the central government. And they have a deserved name for carrying through what they propose.
So the mere fact that governments have no commitment to ethical principles in their pursuit of security or to preventing people from enjoying protection from persecution does not ensure that they will decline and fall. They may grow in esteem among the people and the commentariat, as happened in the Roman Empire.
But robber bands have always faced two challenges. The first is the desire that comes with success that their leaders should be respected as human beings and not simply as effective robbers. For their legitimacy they need people to respect them for those human values that they themselves regard as sentimental nonsense in their work. Without it the people whose tacit acquiescence they need will shrink from them.
The control of communications and willingness to use coercive power may allow this to be achieved. Godfathers can be seen as cuddly. And ordinary citizens saw even Stalin as the benevolent father of the people who was ignorant of the atrocities done in his name.
The second, and greater, challenge to robber bands follows when people pursue practical goals without justice. The absence of an overarching ethical compass leads them to act efficiently in ways that are well designed to achieve the desired small goals, but which conflict with the robber band's broader interests. A local capo will take out the mayor who is impeding his profitable work without realising he is related to the provincial leader on whose protection the organisation relies. The goal small achieved turns out to be an own goal.
This is also a risk for governments that act without respect for justice or an overarching ethical framework. In Australia, for example, the names and details of asylum seekers were briefly published on the Immigration Department website, and attention drawn to the list by a Minister angry at the impression of ineptitude this gave.
It is easy to see how it could happen. When ethical principles are irrelevant to achieving goals, officers of the department might well fail to reflect that publication of these details might lead to the death of asylum seekers when deported to the nations that persecuted them. Indeed, even if they did realise it, they might have argued that the goal of deterring would-be asylum seekers would be better achieved if they realised that their names would be made known to their persecutors.
But whether the publication occurred through the simple neglect of ethical reflection or by calculation of advantage, it shows the way unprincipled action can hurt the broader interests of government.
The Snowden revelations in the United States teach the same lesson. A government agency set out to protect national security by collecting private communications without concern for ethical or legal boundaries. But its single minded focus on the goal with no respect for confidentiality led it to allow a subcontractor access to confidential information. He published it, so ensuring that by its unprincipled actions the government agencies damaged the security they tried to protect.
Augustine would not have been surprised by this. He knew that ethical reflection is about teasing out human dignity, and that the proper business of governments is to serve and not to trample on that dignity. When they don't we are all the poorer.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.
Robber silhouette from Shutterstock