The Importance of Apolitical Security and Law Enforcement Services

Paul R. Pillar

Domestic Politics, United States

Many of the essential underpinnings of the liberal democracies that Americans enjoy go underappreciated by Americans themselves.  Among the most essential of these are law enforcement and security services that are genuinely apolitical.  They perform necessary functions in service of the entire nation’s interest in safety and order, without being used to promote the narrower interests of parties, movements, or leaders.  They constitute one of the biggest differences between the American political system—to the extent to which it is functioning properly—and politics in many more authoritarian countries where security services are used to sustain the power of incumbent rulers.  In Russia today, for example, the Federal Security Service or FSB, whose formal functions include such tasks as internal and border security and counterterrorism, has been—as The Economist describes it in a recent profile of Russia—“emerging as the main mechanism for exercising power” as Vladimir Putin’s rule is becoming increasingly personal.

The lack of appreciation among Americans for such differences takes two forms.  One consists of simply taking this blessing of liberty, like many other such blessings, for granted.  The other is insufficient care by those who are in position to compromise the apolitical character of a service and don’t realize, or simply don’t care, how fragile that character can be and how easily it can be lost.

It can be lost at three levels.  One involves top political leaders corrupting a service for their own purposes, which is part of what is going on in Russia with Putin’s use of the FSB.  Another level is that of a service head making his service a state within a state and using it to exercise wider power.  To stick with Russian comparisons, it was fear of this that led the post-Stalin collective leadership of the USSR to get rid of secret police head Lavrenti Beria.  A third level involves the rank and file of a service, along with the culture and ethical code that defines the service.