mitchelln

Sometimes the simple truth is that it is bastards ordering and doing acts of violence, though the motivations may differ – it is individuals who are creating and carrying out these policies of human rights violations that include rape, torture, taking hostages, and mass killings. Neil J. Mitchells Agents of Atrocity attempt to shift the mainstream focus on the features derived from the environment of these conflicts to that of the conscience weighted choice of a principals decision-making show more and the carrying out of this by their agents. The readability of this text is quite refreshing in Mitchell’s pointient style of argument “human rights violations are policy.” (p17). To many times academic studies are bogged down with language that waters down the importance of the issue at hand.
In academic literature or studies on human rights there seems to be a tendency to steer the focus to the less characteristically complex structures such as TNCs, States, and NGOs, these very impersonal forces. This analysis of conflicts leads us to miss out on the actual perpetrators of these crimes, and through Agents of Atrocity, Mitchell tries to identify this deficit and bring back the individual to the study of human rights. His starting point of this study is that one needs to take those responsible for these atrocities, with his assumption that basis for human rights abuses are based on the policy choices of a small group of elites. He does this through outlining three predominate motivations behind this type of violence by leaders ether for the “getting and holding power” or “by the logic of his dogmatic belief system.” (p1) The third motivation though seemingly ignored by most scholars, as it brings about difficult to prove internal processes of the individual- that though the principal creates a policy, it is the agents that do the killing, which makes ones postulate that there might be the “selfish gratification and enjoyment of those who actually do the atrocities.” (p5)
This study of three various motivating factors of this principal-agents in civil war situations is balanced through of course the analysis of three civil wars. In all these cases they do share the fact that they have resulted with threats to the regime, but differ in the outcomes. The outcomes, Mitchell will argue are due to the motivating factors of the principal-agents relationship. The first civil war, the Israel-Palestine conflict where he goes back just over 50 years to analyses the Israeli elites from Ben-Gurion to Sharon decisions over their behaviour towards the Palestinian territory. He characterizes this a Machiavellian style pursuit of power, where the security forces created more serious but not necessarily extensive atrocities and to show how the principals utilise these forces or agents to carry out a certain agenda. The Machiavellian connection is derived from the fact that it was a “rational use of violence and atrocity to protect power requires leaders to assess the threat and the costs of violence.” (p94) It is the continuous cycle of sending forces into Palestinian camps such as Deir Yassin, that shows the strategy of deriving rewards, based of agents actions.
This is followed by what Mitchell characterizes as “one of the forgotten holocausts of modern history,” (p97) the Russian Civil War, lead by Vladimir Lenin. This event shows that the ideology of the principal and his unregulated agents create has created the worst possible outcome. His example in the text for this is based on the Inquisitor of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov character. The streets of Russia flowed with the blood of the millions killed (totaling in 10 million); no group was an exception to the consequences of Lenin’s intolerant ideology and his agents of repression. Mitchells lists keys victims as the “kulaks, the White Guard, the bourgeoisie, the clergy, the Mensheviks, the Socialist Revolutionaries, prostitutes, the families of the Red Army officers, the anarchists, and the sailors of Kronhstadt.” (p114) Differing from the Israel-Palestine conflict in that through out the entirety of this event Lenin was in command. It was Lenin’s orders for mass terror, giving a ‘carte blanche’ to the agents that carried this out. Agents carried out collective sorting of victims, with the shooting, torture, raping, and taking hostage by the thousands. It was Lenin that laid out the plan for Stalin to take further toll on the Russian people, because of this Mitchell describes Stalin as “an unadventurous bastard.” (p131)
The English Civil war could be said to be Mitchells light at the end of the tunnel, showing that civil war doesn’t mean a complete lack of self-control. The English civil war is an example of a principal, Oliver Cromwell, and his attentive selection and control of agent that helped limit the violence. Cromwell’s rejection of the “Borgia Option” with his opponents is where Mitchell tries to show a certain discipline to his leadership. Cromwell is described to have had a unique commitment to tolerance and control for a man of his time, which aided in suppressing levels of violence committed by the army. Though this option did not have much precedence during the 17th century, Mitchell wants to show that its not necessarily external pressure (human rights organizations, international institutions) that creates low-levels of violence, but it can be the self-restraint that created a control of his agents. Though what it would seem is that there where not exactly the abundance of ‘external pressures’ during Cromwell’s time as there are in the 21st century.
To side with as statement Mitchell, it is crucial to “reduce the odds of bastards being bastards” (p189). This is why to one attempt at understanding that acts of violence such as what has been seen occurring presently is selfish, but still rational decisions by an actual individual. Someone is saying that to stop whatever we assume this threat to be we must perform these atrocious crimes. When we factor in these motivations for the personalities of these crimes, which he goes on further to explain, it would actually seem less impulsive and lessen the chances of being caught off guard. show less