The Ethics of State Security

Abstract

The current conflict between the jihadi extremists and the liberal democratic nations of the west has brought into sharp focus just how much the modern state relies on its intelligence services to defend against terrorist attacks. This was highlighted with the attacks in the U.S. on September 11th, 2001 and in the UK on the 7th of July 2005 and the ensuing intense public scrutiny of the intelligence services and their perceived failings. In a realist world, the state, the institution which stands between civilization and ‘the state of nature’, in which life is ‘brutal and short’, must always have the right to protect its interests through both ethical and unethical means. To not do what is possible would be in itself unethical. There are many practices a state may employ to protect its interests which on an individual level would be deemed unethical to the common man. But to adhere to the ethical boundaries of the everyday would border on the obscene. But equally, to allow unfettered abuse of this right to transgress the moral bounds of mortal man would simply be a descent into Hobbes’ ‘state of nature’. The state must be allowed to operate beyond the ethical restrictions of the everyday, but a flexible framework of checks and balances drawn from Just War theory must be used to protect against a return to what Hobbes called ‘the natural condition of mankind.'