The Torturer's Dilemma: Analyzing the Logic of Torture for Information

The most famous examples of the use of these techniques, to the Western mind, come from the
Soviet show trials during Stalin's great purge and from torture inflicted on American POWs during the
Korean War by the People's Liberation Army. While Rejali makes clear that these clean techniques
were far from the norm in the USSR and PRC, their use in these instances is instructive. In both cases
the Communist states were interested in confessions that did not appear to have stemmed from torture:
the 'Trotskyites' and 'counter-revolutionaries,' because so many of them were high level Bolsheviks
with strong claims towards political legitimacy, had to be seen to be convicted on their own confession
in a more-or-less open court; similarly, the seemingly spontaneous denunciations of American 'war
crimes' were crucial for Maoist propaganda. Western observers, at a loss to explain these
denunciations, assumed that the Communists had perfected the art of brain-washing. Had they known
their history better, they might have realized that these techniques had been used in the great witch-
hunts, as well as by French and US troops in Viet Nam, by American soldiers during the Philippine
Insurrection, and by the UK, French and US military against their own soldiers. (Rejali, 2008)
Torture was not used in all circumstances, however. Its use was primarily restricted to those
considered outside or beyond the polity: African Americans in the United States, colonial subjects in
the various European empires, and political dissidents in Communist states. Secondly, torture for
information tended to be used in precisely those circumstances where the state would be least able to
make use of its investigative powers. The search for conspirators against socialism, whether real or
imaginary, depended heavily on denunciations under torture since there was often little evidence in an
individuals actions that would incriminate them – such is the nature of 'conspiracy.' The use of torture
by American police forces in Chicago and other major cities in the 1920s, and among native police of
the British Raj in India took place in the context of officers who had little regard for empirical
gathering of evidence, and who faced organized criminal activities, or who simply lacked the desire to
substitute the hard work of investigation for the quick work of “rubbing pepper dust in some poor
devil's eyes.” (Rejali, p. 456) Torture in Viet Nam, Algeria, the Philippines, Palestine and other
colonies took place in the context of minority rule over a potentially hostile native majority, who could
not be counted on to offer up information on their own accord. The use of torture against slaves in the
American South in order to discover potential insurrections fits this pattern precisely. Lastly, torture
(and other forms of coercive interrogation) tend to be used in systems that valorize confessions over
other forms of proof, such as in present-day Japan. (Rejali, pp. 51-5) That torture is used so often as a
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