(Page 17 of 17) - Kant and Bentham on Publicity: Implications for Transparency and the Liberal Democratic Peace authored by Marquardt, James.

Marquardt, “Kant, Bentham, and International Relations”

“open covenants openly derived.” A champion of transparency as a mechanism of politi-
cal, economic, and social reform at home, Wilson came to Versailles in 1919 intent on
exerting America’s embryonic status as the world’s preeminent power to transform the
conduct of great power diplomacy and, thereby, end the scourge of war. Though his ef-
forts to institutionalize political transparency failed – as did most of the reform efforts
contained in the Fourteen Points – Wilson placed on the world stage the distinctly Ameri-
can idea of openness in the affairs of nations. Wilson also saw the cause of openness as
essential to America’s quest to remake the world in its own image and use its plentiful
power to establish for itself an undisputed leadership role in world affairs.

U.S. transparency policy during the Cold War years in its bilateral relationship

with the Soviet Union, its archrival for global primacy, also captures transparency’s rela-
tionship to power. In the administrations of Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower,
American foreign policy elites called on the Soviet Union to be more open and forthcom-
ing in its relations with the West and proposed mutual aerial observation flights as a first-
step toward reducing tensions and building trust between the two countries. Behind the
public diplomacy of Open Skies, the United States viewed greater transparency of the
U.S.S.R. as a tool to counter the Soviet challenge to American preponderance and trans-
form the Soviet system. After Gorbachev came to power, the United States revived Open
Skies as a test of the Soviet president’s political reform program and, borrowing from the
1950’s experience, as a mechanism to defeat the Soviet threat and transform the Soviet
system. Gorbachev’s embrace of transparency and his country’s signing of the Treaty on
Open Skies – along with the United States, many other European countries, and Canada –
and the Soviet Union’s commitment to military transparency as part of the Helsinki pro-
cess symbolized an important political and strategic victory of America’s strategy of pre-
ponderance.

Transparency in international relations has important similarities with Bentham’s

thinking about publicity. All are objects of the gaze. There is no room for trust – nothing
is taken for granted. Surveillance is meant to discipline behavior and improve social af-
fairs. Yet in some ways the two are different. For Bentham, the Panopticon is democrat-
ic, a system of circulating mistrust for society as a whole. In international relations,
transparency only has democratic pretensions.

America can be given credit for advancing the cause of transparency worldwide,

but like other countries is also trapped by it. The “eagle’s gaze” may have as its inspira-
tion the values of accountability and transparency that Americans associate with the func-
tioning of their democratic institutions, but at home and especially abroad transparency’s
relationship to power influences which actors are most subject to the gaze and which oth-
ers manage to evade it (if only some of the time). The eagle’s gaze is hardly omniscient
and resistance to it is to be expected. Furthermore, for the eagle’s gaze to enjoy legitima-
cy in the world’s eyes, the punishment meted out against recalcitrant countries should be
measured and evenhanded. The most crucial insight to be derived from this metaphor is
the commonly overlooked one: transparency and power are closely bound together such
that transparency is not only a form of American power but that the workings of power in
American foreign policy are at least somewhat obscured by the association America
makes between transparency and the common good of all peace-loving nations.