Transnational Actors in War and Peace

Militants, Activists, and Corporations in World Politics

David Malet, Miriam J. Anderson, David Malet, Miriam J. Anderson

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781626164420
• eBook ISBN: 9781626164444
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Transnational Actors in War and Peace provides a comparative examination of a range of transnational actors who have been key to the conduct of war and peace promotion, and of how they interact with states and each other. It explores the identities, organization, strategies and influence of transnational actors involved in contentious politics, armed conflict, and peacemaking.

While the study of transnational politics has been a rapidly growing field, to date, the disparate actors have not been analyzed alongside each other, making it difficult to develop a common theoretical framework or determine their influence on international security. This book brings together a diverse set of scholars focused on a range of transnational actors, such as: foreign fighters, terrorists, private military security companies, religious groups, diasporas, NGOs, and women’s peace groups. Malet and Anderson provide the standard for future study of transnational actors in this work intended for those interested in security studies, international relations, conflict resolution, and global governance.

1

Knights of Columbus Catholic Recreation Clubs in Great Britain, 1917–19

LUKE FLANAGAN

This chapter analyzes the work of the Knights of Columbus, an international fraternal Roman Catholic order, during the First World War. Its focus is the order’s establishment of Catholic recreation clubs in Great Britain in the latter stages of the conflict. It argues that the Knights of Columbus was an early example of a transnational organization seeking to influence state policies, one that remained constrained by the nationalist exigencies of a period of major interstate war and by the communication technologies of the era. Accordingly, national governments wanted to limit the Knights’ activities because the respective states wished to control their war efforts, including welfare services. Furthermore, the political opportunity structure meant that the founders of the Knights of Columbus, Irish diasporans, were predisposed to use the organization as a vehicle to integrate into American society rather than to foster transnational relationships. While the order had expanded into Canada in the late nineteenth century, the overarching Knights’ leadership was reluctant to occupy a transnational space, wishing instead to portray the order as patriotic.

The Knights’ leadership, based in the United States, was wedded to the characterization of the order as an American organization. While it did not discourage the Canadian Knights from administering a welfare program, the leadership did not actively support one either, at least until the entry of the United States into the war in 1917. The crux of the Knights’ dilemma was the preservation of its American identity. When the order expanded to Canada, it acquired new identities and different loyalties. Canadian loyalties were grounded in both state and empire. The benefit of this context for the Canadian Knights was the ability to form partnerships with like-minded organizations in Britain. However, as this chapter demonstrates, transnational coordination proved more difficult between the American and Canadian Knights. The result was that the Knights’ war effort was fragmented into two separate welfare programs—American and Canadian.

From a broader conceptual standpoint, the Knights showed complex transnationalism, defined by David Malet and Miriam J. Anderson in the introduction to this volume as “the increasing number, scope, interactions, and influence of transnational actors on diplomatic and governance processes where states have invited as participants, been forced to respond to, or have become reliant upon the expertise of transnational actors and where transnational actors increasingly interact directly with each other.” In this case, the state became reliant on religious actors to deliver recreation and welfare services to soldiers stationed abroad. While the state provided some funds and a national framework of authorization and/or recognition, the Knights provided the operational vision for the services in Europe. However, as shown in the latter portion of the chapter, although the contemporary Knights displayed an increasingly transnational character over time, the order continued to be constrained by its history as an American organization.

Origins and Organizational Structure

The Knights of Columbus was established in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1882 by Fr. Michael J. McGivney, assistant pastor of St. Mary’s Church. The organization was founded upon three guiding principles: charity, unity, and fraternity.¹ The Knights was the product of second-generation members of the Irish diaspora who still experienced prejudice toward their ethnicity and religion. As Christopher Kauffman has noted, Irish immigrants to the United States had been caricatured as “rowdy drunks.” The Knights of Columbus, in name and practice, attempted to reverse this image by developing a reputation of respectability.² The term “knights” conveyed a commitment to struggle against nativism and anti-Catholicism as “Catholic gentlemen,” while “Columbus” was designed to tap into the sentimental attachment to Christopher Columbus as the discoverer of America. The Columbus name was seen as being central to its raison d’être. It sought to display pride in America’s Catholic heritage and claim the “discovery of America as a Catholic event.”³ The Knights was thus a vehicle for the Irish minority to profess its loyalty to the state and reinforce its integration into both American and Canadian society.⁴

Patriotism and loyalty to the state was, and remains, integral to the Knights’ doctrine. Writing in the Tablet, an international Catholic newspaper published in London since 1840, Shane Leslie describes the basis of the Knights’ ethos as such: “They support the Pope and the [American] Republic. Their charters are two. The one [that] was dispensed at the Declaration of Independence—the other is the Sermon on the Mount.”⁵ The patriotism of the Knights was formalized in 1900 with the establishment of the fourth degree of membership. The three initial degrees encompassed the principles of charity, unity, and fraternity. The addition of patriotism as the fourth degree aimed to demonstrate the mutual compatibility of religion and commitment to the nation-state. The Knights define patriotism as such: “Members of the Knights of Columbus, be they Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, Cubans, Filipinos, Poles, or Dominicans, are patriotic citizens. We are proud of our devotion to God and country, and believe in standing up for both. Whether it is in public or private, the Knights remind the world that Catholics support their nations and are amongst the greatest citizens.”⁶ The fourth degree came to be the highest level of seniority within the order, which demonstrated the importance of patriotism as the central pillar of “Columbianism.” As Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff notes in chapter 4, diasporans are often socialized into or strategically adopt the values of their country of residence, which enables them to more effectively influence the foreign policy of their state.

Operationally, the Knights of Columbus is a mutual-benefit society similar to the Freemasons or the Rotarians. It offers financial aid to members and their families through an insurance system. The insurance program was initiated to protect widows and orphans from financial ruin following the death of the main breadwinner.⁷ The organizational structure of the Knights is both transnational and domestic in makeup. It maintains its headquarters in New Haven with a supreme knight as leader of the Supreme Council, the order’s global governing body. The Supreme Council comprises seventy-five state councils, which govern the order at the subnational level—for example, US states or Canadian provinces. The constituents of the Supreme Council assume a similar role to shareholders: to select the executive governance of the order. The Supreme Council delegates elect the twenty-one-member Board of Directors to terms of three years.⁸ At the local level, the individual state councils are divided into districts. These districts comprise groupings of local councils. The local councils are described as the “basic unit of the Knights,” which carries out the work of the order at the community or parish levels.⁹

According to Kauffman, the organizational structure was intended to “reflect the democratic features of the American system of government.”¹⁰ The annually convened Supreme Council is envisaged as the legislative branch, while the Board of Directors is the executive. The state councils, districts, and local councils address matters of local concern in a way that reflects the principles of the order.¹¹ At the time of the First World War, the organizational structure was not dissimilar to its current form. The main difference was that the executive function of the Board of Directors was, until the 1950s, vested with a Supreme Committee of the Supreme Council.¹² The Knights’ hierarchy was reluctant to extend the order beyond the confines of the United States. Maurice Francis Egan and John B. Kennedy argued that the “Knights strictly applied, as a brake on their own development, Washington’s counsel to avoid entangling alliances.”¹³ The American Knights were concerned that their Canadian counterparts’ support for the war would call into question their loyalty to the United States at a time when the country remained officially neutral.

In 1897, the Knights of Columbus established its first chapter in Canada with the opening of the Montreal council. The Canadian branch, however, was not afforded a role in the executive governance of the order, although Canadian councils were given representation on the Supreme Council. Owing to Canada’s small representation—19,000 members out of a total of 350,000 at the time war was declared in 1914—the orientation of the Knights remained fundamentally American: “The executive board being practically American, and operating an American corporation, the country’s [i.e., the US] course in foreign relations was bound to be faithfully reflected in the Order’s activities.”¹⁴ The expansion into Canada created a tension between an evolving transnational character and a rigidly American organizational and operational structure. At the outset of the war, the American neutrality of the order prevented their Canadian counterparts from providing welfare services to Canadian soldiers:

No action could possibly be taken to benefit the troops of any side of the conflict while the United States remained a neutral observer. The Supreme Board had no objections to interpose against the action of Canadian Knights, either individually or collectively, in their capacity as Canadian citizens loyal to the British crown. In fact, everything they did for their country, whether on active or home service, was warmly applauded as an exhibition of the patriotism which is one of the first principles of Columbianism. But it was not until the United States had entered the war that the Supreme Board could give its consent and moral support to the war relief work inaugurated by the Canadian Knights.¹⁵

The staunch commitment to the American st...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Transnational Century
• 1 Knights of Columbus Catholic Recreation Clubs in Great Britain, 1917–19
• 2 Transnational Feminist Praxis in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in the Aftermath of the Second World War
• 3 Governing Conflict through Transnational Corporations: The Case of Conflict Minerals
• 4 Beyond the Conflict: Diasporas and Postconflict Government Reconstruction
• 5 Exiles and Political Islam: Contrasting Khomeini’s Religious Nationalism with bin Laden’s Violent Globalism
• 6 Foreign Fighters in the Syrian Civil War
• 7 Mercenaries Gone Legit: Private Security Professionals and Private Military Security Companies as Transnational Actors
• 8 Transnational Humanitarian Action and Regime Complexity: The Case of Syria
• 9 Women’s Advocacy Groups in Peace Negotiations
• 10 Containing Conflict: Authoritative Transnational Actors and the Management of Company-Community Conflict
• Conclusion: Complex Transnationalism
• Contributors
• Index