As the only species without serious natural competitors, humans are their own remaining rivals. While almost all animal species are programmed with an inhibition against killing their own kind to protect them from extinction, humans can afford such losses. Wars like the one in Vietnam (1955–1975) impressively demonstrated the efficiency of a demographic buffer, as high war losses there were more than offset by an even higher birth rate; the population grew by 70% during this period. Under highly civilized conditions with low birth rates, however, no demographic buffer exists. Western civilization and its core principle of individual freedom are existentially threatened in today's environment of asymmetric warfare, where demography is increasingly used as a weapon.
Since the advent of civilization and higher population densities, the intensity of conflicts, particularly over territory, has escalated significantly. The ruthless willingness of autocratic rulers to sacrifice ordinary members of society in wars for their personal power interests has contributed substantially to this. Because uncontrolled power grows until limits are set upon it, the means and tools of power undergo constant evolution.
This dangerous trend continued after World War II. In 1965, in the midst of the Vietnam War, the RAND Corporation presented a comprehensive scientific study showing that most of the opposing Viet Cong rebels were not fighting the Americans out of communist conviction, but because they experienced the promised liberation of their homeland as a brutal hostile conquest—as patriots.
The report made clear that the strategy of carpet bombing, torture interrogations, the spraying of toxic defoliants, and the use of napalm drove suffering people straight into the arms of the rebels, making the war unwinnable. Yet General Westmoreland, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and President Johnson proved resistant to insight. While the trio ensured that the report was placed under the highest level of secrecy, they suggested to the public in the following years that the war could be brought to a victorious end by increasing military efforts.
Area bombings were expanded, neighboring Laos and Cambodia were drawn in, and the use of napalm and Agent Orange continued. Of the approximately 2.5 million dead in this war, the majority were lost after the 1965 RAND report and were thus attributable to the irresponsibility of senior military and political figures who closed themselves off to a clearly presented better insight. The huge winner of this protracted war was the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC); yet the media failed to inform the public about this expanding danger, even though President Eisenhower had urgently warned against it in January 1961.
Uncontrolled power grows. This rule was confirmed by the CIA in 1967 when—also following the concealed RAND report—it established a network of interrogation centers in Vietnam under the name Phoenix Program, in which torture was systematized. Under public pressure, the CIA later backtracked, but the anti-humanitarian interrogation methods were merely relocated geographically and removed from the American legal system. Secret prisons (Black Sites) set up around the world in cooperative countries such as Lithuania, Romania, and Thailand served this purpose.
By persistently continuing practices that were as cruel as they were ineffective and damaging to the reputation of the democratic West, intelligence agencies "freed" themselves from their position as democratically integrated elements of the constitutional republic of the United States. Their own secret finances (officially non-declarable slush funds combining state funds and private inflows) make the security apparatus an independent state within a state. If it is additionally granted the power mechanism of operational secrecy, abuse for the systematic refusal of accountability is preordained. In the financial realm, this shielding enables an expansive trillion-dollar entanglement of the security apparatus with defense contractors and the financial world. Connections also exist to the politics of the democratic constitutional state through revolving-door effects, which do not facilitate much-needed democratic control, but rather grant access to commercial interests using war as a source of profit.
This economic entanglement, combined with simultaneous shielding against sanctions and individual prosecution, allowed for catastrophic human or psychological failures at least since the Vietnam War and parallel interventions in Latin America, as documented in numerous writings by Noam Chomsky, among others.
The resource-devouring autocratic state within a state, which merely promises security, stabilizes itself through its internal selection mechanisms. The strict hierarchy enforces submissive and compliant behavior in lower positions starting as early as recruit training.
It is individuals at the leadership level whose character profiles shape the operational methods of the entire apparatus. In these positions, however, an egocentric, detached, and often ruthless character type has prevailed—the exact opposite of personalities who could authentically represent and defend a free society. This profile is not an accidental outcome, but a historical rule—a repetition of what a lack of democratic control has produced in principalities and kingdoms for thousands of years.
A free society, by contrast, stabilizes itself through the work of solidary idealists who require fair opportunities for advancement based on actual performance and grant the same when in superior positions; in the autocratic internal structure of the current security apparatus, they stand no chance. The established character selection washes individuals to the top who possess the audacity to defend lies before the Senate, justify torture, and order illegal intrusions into internal US Senate computers to destroy evidence.
This autocratic apparatus shields its unconstitutional behavior through anachronistic special laws born out of emergency situations, namely the Espionage Act of 1917. Under it, whistleblowers such as Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden were treated like enemies of the state because they wanted to expose crimes and warn the nation. Merely working toward a legal indictment against such heroes of freedom speaks to an underdeveloped understanding of democracy, casting doubt on the fitness for office of the leaders concerned. Since the nation is the legitimate sovereign, its right to truthful information takes unquestionable priority, naturally including former secret but now concluded military operations. For far too long, alleged requirements of "national security" have served as a standard pretext for evading accountability for failures through persistently dragged-out secrecy.
In truth, the security apparatus owes gratitude to whistleblowers when they provide the tools for indispensable internal self-cleansing by exposing breaches of principle. Citizens and politicians also owe them thanks for crucial information withheld by the media and intelligence services.
Fortunately, many people sensed this, so that through their public commitment to these heroes of freedom, they were able to secure the release of Manning and Assange. However, this confrontation must lead to systemic criticism with the goal of reforming the security apparatus back into a reliable organ that respects humanitarian principles and the sovereignty of the democratic nation.
In effect, this means much more than a formal correction—namely, averting an existential danger: the increasingly independent state within a state is also increasingly driven by interests that contradict those of the nation-state. As the war in Ukraine among other things shows, independence can culminate in bitter hostility when empathetic-free, polarizing characters gain dominant influence.
The danger is further amplified by a hypocritical resistance to insight among those responsible in the security apparatus and in politics: decades of failure from Vietnam to Afghanistan, constantly sugarcoated by the media, is now entering the consciousness of a rapidly growing number of citizens and politicians. However, as the brutal treatment of socially irreplaceable whistleblowers shows, the militarist clique is neither capable of nor willing to identify the fundamental principle of freedom where it matters most. Occasionally, politicians allow a direct glimpse into the disingenuous psychology behind their stubborn, narcissistic resistance to insight. George W. Bush provided a classic example of this in 2022 when attempting to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, accidentally stating: "The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq... I mean, in Ukraine." Before quietly adding under audience laughter: "Iraq too."
The consequences of institutional dishonesty are devastating. Instead of learning from the counterproductivity of torture and brutal treatment of "liberated" civilians, the CIA hired psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen for $81 million to develop "enhanced interrogation" techniques. This was in reality a pseudoscientific cover for long-known torture methods such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and electric shocks. When Congress banned these practices following a scathing Senate report in 2014, the CIA simply outsourced the work to paid militias in Afghanistan (as reported by the New York Times in 2018), echoing older practices in Latin America and Iraq.
Today, the accumulated deficits of candid information are coming to light in asymmetric conflicts. The superpower USA, with a military budget 129 times higher than that of Iran, is unable to prevail against the Tehran regime. While the young United States under Thomas Jefferson permanently ended Barbary piracy (1801–1805, 1815), Houthi militants backed by Iran now block access to the Red Sea with impunity.
The surveillance systems constructed by the NSA and CIA also carry immense domestic risks. Under crisis conditions, emergency legislation like the Insurrection Act, combined with over 13,000 accumulated Executive Orders from past presidents, threatens to expand the power of intelligence agencies to dangerous dimensions. As these simultaneously suspend civil rights en masse, the population would be exposed to the arbitrary actions of an unreliable apparatus.
Restoring democratic authority over the security architecture requires, first, an immediate thinning out of emergency laws. The goal must be the best possible maintenance of democratic rule of law and thereby trust, especially in times of crisis, rather than the installation of emotionless chains of command.
Second, the security apparatus must be shielded from the influence of material self-interest in war and its protraction. Positively designed, such a reform means installing a promotion system that breaks the millennia-old autocratic selection rewarding narcissism and ruthlessness, guaranteeing advancement based on merit and integrity across all ranks. This is the path by which democracy can regain control over its security apparatus and safeguard freedom.