Rendition: the beast and the Man

Joint Force Quarterly, Jan, 2008 by Kevin M. Cieply

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Tortured, incarcerated, and exiled, Niccolo Machiavelli swore never again to allow a throne to perish under the hand of aggression for want of action--bold, insidious action if need be. Left with nothing, Machiavelli concluded that a virtuous life, while overtly necessary, may lead to one's demise if not balanced with shrewd action. Wiser from his experience with defeat and imprisonment, he composed a book that captured the lessons he had learned, providing the necessary knowledge for effective leadership of the state. The Prince (1) is one of the most famous and perhaps infamous books on politics ever written. In it, Machiavelli comes to his most well-known conclusion: the ends justify the means. (2)

Over four centuries later, in 1985, another political thinker, George Kennan, took time to reflect on his experiences and shared his lessons learned concerning ethics in foreign relations. Kennan, father of the containment theory against the Soviet Union, countered Machiavelli, albeit not directly, with the following ethical observations:

Excessive secrecy, duplicity and clandestine skullduggery are simply not our dish--not only because we are incapable of keeping a secret anyway (our commercial media of communication see to that), but, more importantly, because such operations conflict with our own traditional standards and compromise our diplomacy in other areas.... One may say that to deny ourselves this species of capability is to accept a serious limitation on our ability to contend with forces now directed against us. Perhaps; but if so, it is a limitation with which we shall have to live. (3)

Like Machiavelli, Kennan wrote these words as he reflected on significant life experiences. (4) For him, the way a nation conducts its business not only tells the world much about what that nation stands for but also produces the best geostrategic outcomes when it conducts its business openly, fairly, and humanely.

Rendition is the practice of capture and transfer of an individual from one nation to another for the purposes of subjecting the individual to interrogation without following normal processes of extradition or removal. (5) It is a secret process during which people suddenly disappear from public view for long periods, affording them no opportunity to object to the capture or transfer or to seek third-party review to evaluate the capturing government's claims of fair play. Essentially, it provides no transparency or due process, and leaves little room for public evaluation. In the past, we have criticized other countries for exercising means exhibiting similar characteristics.

For those reasons, it is the type of practice that Kennan, later in his life, would reject with the quip "simply not our dish." And, as Kennan so prophetically wrote, its secrecy was ineluctably undermined by our democratic system, (6) bringing forth a plethora of scrutiny, (7) complicating our relations with the European Union and the Council of Europe, (8) and diminishing our credibility as a world leader in human rights and a nation committed to the rule of law. (9)

But some aspects of rendition that would have concerned Kennan may be necessary in the Machiavellian sense. After all, Machiavelli advised, "You must know that there are two kinds of combat: one with laws, the other with force. The first is proper to man, the second to beasts; but because the first is often not enough, one must have recourse to the second. Therefore, it is necessary for a prince to know well how to use the beast and the man." (10)

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Is rendition simply recourse to the beast at a necessary time? Or is it a practice that is inevitably inconsistent with the notions of morality, rule of law, and human rights? In short, is rendition a practice reluctantly allowed by the philosophy of Machiavelli but inalterably opposed by the idealism of Kennan, or a contemporary practice necessitated by circumstances that transcend traditional ethical theories?

One need not conceive of a hypothetical terrorist scenario to address this question. Let us look at the events surrounding the rendition of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM). To do so, we must first go back further in time to Abu Zubaydah. As President George W. Bush explained in his September 6, 2006, speech, Zubaydah "was a senior terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden." (11) He was captured in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11 and questioned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He was initially uncooperative:

We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking. As his questioning proceeded, it became clear that he had received training on how to resist interrogation. And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures.... But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary. (12)

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Eventually Zubaydah "provided information to help stop a terrorist attack being planned from inside the United States, an attack about which we had no previous information." (13) He also identified KSM as the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and identified "one of KSM's accomplices in the 9/11 attacks, a terrorist named Ramzi bin al-Shibh. The information Zubaydah provided helped lead to the capture of bin al-Shibh. And together, these two terrorists provided information that helped in the execution of the operation that captured [KSM]." (14) News reports stated that KSM was captured in a suburb of Islamabad, Pakistan, on March 1, 2003. He was immediately rendered out of the country to an undisclosed location. (15)