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How Democracies Draw the Line Between Protection and Control: An Interview with Aaron Spikol
Published by Keshav Arun on July 3rd, 2026
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Aaron Spikol
Aaron Spikol is a graduate of Stanford University, where he earned both his J.D. and Ph.D. He is a Knight-Hennessy Scholar and graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Because of his unique background in the U.S. Army and election security, we interviewed him for his experience with both the national security and democratic ideals aspect of this resolution.
How Does Security Balance with Liberty?
In countries like the United States, that have a robust culture of protecting our First Amendment rights, there has been much development of protecting these rights even in times of security. Yet still in defining moments of security crises in our history, there has been certain times when our liberties and rights have been infringed on to secure the nation.
In an interview, Aaron Spikol answered this question when he stated, "The wider question of, how has the United States political system learned to balance the civil liberties versus security, there has very much been a process of evolution and a series of precedents that partially are judicialized. So, we can think of famous cases where the court system builds precedent over time for what the executives allowed to do during an emergency, and we can think key high points like during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspends a lot of civil liberties, and during the Korean War, Truman tries to stop the steel mills.”
This is crucial because if the United States, the oldest continuous democracy, needed to suspend civil liberties then countries in Asia and Africa may definitely need to suspend liberties to even harbor democracy in the first place. If we refer to regions like Central Africa and the Sahel, there is widespread Ebola and Terrorism that may come in conflict with democracy. Organizations like Islamic State Sahel Province, and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, may cause some countries may need to first establish a country that has stability against existential threats like these, before having any type of democracy.
When asked on the context of Asian and African Democracies here's what Aaron said, "The consensus is that it helps to have institutional capacity first, there's different arguments about that. Francis Fukuyama, a prominent political scientist has made this argument publicly in a lot of different books and such, that it helps to have a functioning state that can meet people's basic needs. At that point you have a sufficient legitimacy that the state can credibly start to open up and have things."
Later in that interview he stated, "Ebola is an incredibly dangerous disease, I think it's perfectly always been the case, so it doesn't strike me if I found out that if a country in Africa had just locked down an entire village that had a severe Ebola outbreak, I would not immediately think civil liberties are dead in that country."
Who Chooses To Suspend Liberties During Crises?
When we asked Aaron who should be the one to choose which liberties should be infringed on during the crises, "Ideally the United States has a long tradition of political control of the military. The long standing reason that people tend to think if you leave the military in charge of deciding when there's an emergency or when there's a military need for martial law, the military is going to tend to have an incentive to find emergencies because they it increases their own power their ability to kind of exercise authority."
That leaves other government agencies to be the decision maker, but the problem with the elected officials making the decisions is perfectly described when Aaron stated, "The basic idea of democracy is that people in charge start performing poorly, we can talk about that, and exchange information about their poor performance, and then we can register our opinions based on our updated information by going to the polls."
Later he stated, "We tend to think there's a very direct incentive for people in office to try and cover up what might be malfeasance, whether they're stealing money, or just basic incompetence. So, there's a real concern that once you put the government in charge, you have reason to believe in advance that they have an incentive to cover up and prevent, what's being discussed. Then the whole point of having a democracy, which is the ability to replace your leaders is mooted."
Do We Need To Suspend Liberties, Ever?
In the context of this debate, there has been many arguments that it is better to prioritize security because we cannot respond to threats if we prioritize liberty. The problem with this argument is that many times throughout history, countries have been able to respond to existential crises, even under the bounds of civil liberties.
We asked Aaron this question, and he had said, "I think it is definitely possible. We are in the middle of a conflict with Iran right now. Still robustly debating that conflict, the President has not needed to censor speech, I don't think there's any need for him to do so. And that's certainly there's been a robust free press in the United States through almost all of its national security emergencies, even going all the way back to like the first in the 1790s, the quasi war in France."
He later stated, "Over Time, we found that these efforts are not that necessary, what the strength of a democratic, free and open society is that you maintain the ability to criticize and generate information about what the government's doing."
What it means to when we prioritize civil liberties, is that we do not infringe on it or suspend them, especially for security reasons. But if we understand that we can still have security under the bounds of civil liberties, then any argument that just shows security is important can immediately be disregarded.
What Happens If Liberty or Security is Lost?
But, it is also important to understand what will happen if we lose liberties. If people do not have the ability to protest, assemble, petition the government, then they will either allow an authoritarian government, or they will have to break the law.
This is illustrated in Aaron's response, where he said, "A lot of times it takes people who are willing to break laws. Sometimes you can think of examples like the Alien and Sedition Acts very early in US history. People continued to publicly criticize the government, even though that was made illegal. Same thing during World War One, some people just didn't comply. Ideally, as long as elections are still functioning, use that as a mechanism to try and build over time a more robust commitment to civil liberties that might have existed in the past, got restricted,and then changed."
Understanding the gravity of civil liberties, we must also understand what will happen if terror attacks take place. Like we mentioned earlier, the Sahel Region of Africa is densely populates with Jihadist terrorism. We can refer to Burkina Faso, a democratic country that had civil liberties in this region.
In 2021 it had the freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion, it was considered the most democratic period of its time, with free and fair elections throughout. Yet, in 2022 democracy had turned non-existent because of terror attacks in the country. This is crucial, because now we understand that both civil liberties and national security are needed for a democracy, and that to win this debate (Say you're on the side of prioritizing national security) you must show not only that security is important, but without it liberty cannot exist.