Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers, The (20 page)

The world knows of the Avengers, the New Avengers, and even Avengers Academy. Yet everything about the Secret Avengers is kept from the general public: the roster, the capabilities, the missions, and the very existence of the team. In battle, the team takes extra precautions to make sure that evidence of their presence isn’t left behind.
¹⁵
There are several reasons for this, such as preventing foes from understanding the capabilities used against them or knowing that they are even being pursued by the Secret Avengers. But does this really require such an intensive and highly protected level of secrecy?

According to the Avengers Charter the team is a “sanctioned peace-keeping force by . . . the United Nations,” having authority to perform operations, activities, and actions in “all countries belonging or affiliated with the United Nations.” This sanction has varied over their comics history, but it stands to reason that the Avengers must subscribe to the highest level of transparency among UN member states to continue to enjoy this privileged status. Within this context, it doesn’t appear that the Secret Avengers are doing anything untoward. Almost every society accepts the need to keep some secrecy regarding capabilities and plans to defend against threats. In democracies, decisions like these necessarily move Hawkeye’s arrow a smidge closer to the consequentialist end, but are often accompanied by public debate about what should and shouldn’t be secret and what is acceptable behavior by organizations that deal in secrets.

In other words, democracies usually create something that the Secret Avengers don’t have: oversight. Mechanisms are instituted to ensure that Hawkeye’s arrow doesn’t slide any farther down the line without a deliberate and acknowledged assessment of risks, including security threats as well as risks to the country’s values. The Secret Avengers may be conducting their business in a fashion that is admirable and acceptable to the general world population. But the fact that they have zero accountability and oversight means that when—not if—their existence is made public, there will likely be a negative impact to the reputation of the entire Avengers enterprise. Questions will start to emerge: What else are they keeping a secret? Are they using secrets to cover up their mistakes? And does their secrecy really protect our interests?

Being Wikileaked On

Things get interesting when an impostor posing as U.S. Agent steals and releases vast amounts of intelligence that the Secret Avengers and others were using to develop leads and plans in response to threats across the globe. The leaked intelligence shows that the Secret Avengers were soliciting information from a wide variety of nefarious characters about the activities and plans of criminals, terrorists, and supervillains. As Steve Rogers himself put it, “Some did it for the right reasons, some did it to evade imprisonment, some just did it for profit.”
¹⁶

The fake U.S. Agent justifies his actions based on the lack of oversight and accountability on the part of all the Avengers teams, not just the Secret Avengers. Arguing that the stolen information and the unsavory characters who provided it are proof of Avenger misdeeds, he calls for transparency and oversight. So were the Avengers wrong to leverage information given willingly, although secretly, by those they would normally fight?

True, the Avengers fight criminals and supervillains. But as the charter states, the trial and punishment of wrongdoers is left to governments, with the Avengers only assisting in the imprisonment if conventional capabilities aren’t sufficient. There is nothing to say that the Avengers cannot interact with the villains in other ways. After all, some villains have been rehabilitated by becoming Avengers, such as Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, and Hawkeye.
¹⁷
And the charter does lay out that the Avengers will share information with law enforcement groups such as S.H.I.E.L.D. and the New York Police Department, as well as have security clearances granted by the US government, which we can safely assume enables them to interact with the US intelligence community.

Furthermore, the law enforcement and intelligence communities deal with unsavory characters (such as “snitches” and worse—politicians) as part of their daily activities. Law enforcement needs confidential informants, criminals or sketchy characters who are willing to talk to the police in secret about underworld activity. And the intelligence community needs individuals willing to betray their countrymen and comrades by providing secrets to another state. The ethical arrow does move toward consequentialism, of course, but this is widely judged to be acceptable and necessary, provided there is oversight and some high-level degree of transparency—both of which the Secret Avengers lack. If sentiment ever turns against them, they will be in trouble.

“This Is the Kind of Thing That is Going to Bite Us in the Butt”
¹⁸

For the Avengers, adhering to the standards set by the founding members and the expectations of the people they protect can be difficult. Sometimes rules need to be broken to make sure the primary mission—protecting the human race—is accomplished. Within the much more narrow scope of secrets and lies, the standards can be even more difficult. There is the very real possibility that through their actions the Avengers may destroy what makes them the premier superhero organization of the Marvel Universe and keeps them admired by the world at large. And even when they may be working within the acceptable norms and rules, the mere perception that they’re not can be just as dangerous.

This tension serves as a significant warning to those of us in the real world who are confronted by decisions that tempt us to compromise our values in favor of consequentialism. A reputation for honesty and integrity that is earned over a lifetime of heroism can be destroyed with a single decision—so make sure you have a good reason for it. (And that’s no secret.)

NOTES

1.
Mighty Avengers
#24 (June 2009), reprinted in
Mighty Avengers Vol. 5: Earth’s Mightiest
(2009).

2.
For more on the Dark Avengers, see the chapter by Robert Powell titled “The Self-Corruption of Osborn: A Cautionary Tale” and the chapter by Sarah Donovan and Nick Richardson titled “Shining the Light on the Dark Avengers” in this volume.

3.
Where Hawkeye’s arrow may seem to go astray is
rule utilitarianism
, which recommends that people follow rules that are designed to produce the best consequences on the average. This is often put forward as simpler to follow, based as it is on established rules of thumb (“do not lie”), compared to
act utilitarianism
(the “normal” kind), which requires new considerations each time an ethical dilemma comes up (“will lying this time be okay?”). A problem with rule utilitarianism, however, is that it seems counterproductive to follow a rule even when you determine it won’t produce good consequences—and since this is always possible, act utilitarianism would always be required anyway.

4.
Captain America and the Secret Avengers
#1 (May 2011).

5.
Civil War
(2007), collecting the seven-issue
Civil War
miniseries (2006–2007).

6.
Civil War #6
(December 2006).

7.
New Avengers
, vol. 1, #28 (May 2007), reprinted in
New Avengers Vol. 6: Revolution
(2007).

8.
See Michael Walzer,
Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations
, 4th ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 251–254.

9.
Ibid., 260.

10.
World War Hulk #4
(November 2007), reprinted in
World War Hulk
(2008).

11.
New Avengers
, vol. 1, #54 (August 2009), reprinted in
New Avengers Vol. 11: Search for the Sorcerer Supreme
(2009).

12.
For a text of the Avengers Charter, see
http://marvel.wikia.com/Avengers_Charter
.

13.
Avengers
, vol. 4, #1 (July 2010), reprinted in
Avengers
by Brian Michael Bendis Vol. 1
(2011).

14.
Secret Avengers #1
(July 2010), reprinted in
Secret Avengers Vol. 1: Mission to Mars
(2011).

15.
Secret Avengers #8
(February 2011), reprinted in
Secret Avengers Vol. 2: Eyes of the Dragon
(2011).

16.
Secret Avengers #
12.1 (June 2011), reprinted in
Fear Itself: Secret Avengers
(2012).

17.
For more on the Avengers and rehabilitation, see the chapter by Andrew Terjesen titled “Cap’s Kooky Quartet: Is Rehabilitation Possible?” in this volume.

18.
Spider-Man, in
New Avengers
, vol. 1, #52 (June 2009), reprinted in
New Avengers Vol. 11: Search for the Sorcerer Supreme.

Chapter 12

THE AVENGERS AND S.H.I.E.L.D.: THE PROBLEM WITH PROACTIVE SUPERHEROICS

Arno Bogaerts

The last decade has been one of the most eventful and tumultuous periods in Marvel history. Among other things, the Avengers disassembled and reassembled into several splinter teams, the mutant population was decimated, a major civil war split the superhero community in two, a severely pissed-off Hulk warred against the world, the alien shape-shifting Skrulls staged a secret invasion, and Norman Osborn initiated a dark reign along with a secret cabal of supervillains. Through all these events, two major organizations in the Marvel Universe played important roles: the Avengers, Earth’s primary and arguably most visible team of superheroes, and S.H.I.E.L.D., the international espionage, law enforcement, counterterrorist, and global peacekeeping agency.

As Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, the Avengers face threats no single superhero can withstand. They essentially react to and deflect the dangers posed by intergalactic and time-traveling conquerors, supervillain breakouts, and interplanetary wars. S.H.I.E.L.D., on the other hand, maintains a much more proactive approach toward tackling global terrorism, conducting international espionage, and easing political tensions. While S.H.I.E.L.D. has always maintained close ties to Marvel’s superhero community, in recent years it has become much harder to define what exactly sets them apart, with both Iron Man and Captain America in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. at different times. In this chapter, then, we’ll explore the dangerous slippery slope that can occur when superheroes use their powers and influence in a proactive manner.

The Ultimates, the Avengers, and Nick Fury’s S.H.I.E.L.D.

Nick Fury is a World War II veteran, a former CIA agent, and a superspy. As his prominent role as director of S.H.I.E.L.D., he served as the de facto liaison between the United States, the United Nations, and the superhero community. In fact, in the Ultimate Marvel continuity—a darker and more realistic reimagining of the mainstream Marvel Universe—Fury’s commanding presence can be felt in nearly every published story. There, S.H.I.E.L.D. was responsible for bringing the Avengers (or as they’re known, the “Ultimates”) together in the first place. The team was initially founded in
The Ultimates
as a paramilitary superhero defense initiative answerable to Fury (looking suspiciously like actor Samuel L. Jackson) and, by extension, the US government.
¹

Both
The Ultimates
and its sequel
The Ultimates 2
give us a darker look at what would happen if patriotic super-soldiers, armored billionaires, Asgardian thunder gods, gamma-fueled giants, and size-changing scientists suddenly popped up in post-9/11 America. After Captain America rescues several American hostages in the Middle East, controversy quickly breaks out over the world’s new favorite superhero team. Should the American government and S.H.I.E.L.D. use superhumans—or as they are rather ominously called here, “Persons of Mass Destruction”—in foreign affairs?
²
After several conflicts within the team, the remaining Ultimates are used preemptively to “cripple a nation” in the Middle East, completely obliterating its nuclear weapons stockpile.
³
This sets off a major international backlash, after which we learn that the enemies of the United States have formed their own superhuman team, the Liberators, which retaliates by mounting a vicious attack on Washington, D.C., crippling both the Ultimates and S.H.I.E.L.D. While the Ultimates eventually win the day, the Liberators’ attack on the US capital stands as a good example of the massive retaliation the use of superheroes in preemptive strikes almost always brings.
⁴

In the mainstream Marvel Universe, too, Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. often use superheroes in proactive missions. For example, in
Secret War
, Fury and the Black Widow (both a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and an Avenger) discover that Lucia von Bardas, acting prime minister of Latveria, is supplying lesser-known supervillains and terrorists with advanced technology.
⁵
Determined to strike at von Bardas before she can mount a terrorist attack on American soil (and send a message to anybody with similar thoughts), Fury embarks on an unauthorized mission to overthrow the Latverian government. To get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible, he puts together a surgical strike team, including Avengers Captain America, Black Widow, Luke Cage, Spider-Man, and Wolverine (without being totally honest with them, I might add). They succeed in bringing down von Bardas (along with most of Castle Doom), but exactly one year later, von Bardas retaliates by launching a massive supervillain attack on New York City. While Luke Cage is sent to the hospital after being attacked in his home, the other superheroes, along with the Fantastic Four, barely manage to eliminate the threat and save New York City. Afterward Fury, having lost the respect of almost the entire superhero community, is forced to retreat underground and is replaced as director of S.H.I.E.L.D. by Maria Hill.

Dire consequences such as these seem inevitable when superheroes are proactive. But Nick Fury, for all his close relationships with the superhero community (and his own supernaturally prolonged life), is not a superhero. In his directorial position and as a self-proclaimed “wartime general,” he’s forced to see the bigger picture.
⁶
To get his job done and save lives, he doesn’t mind performing questionable or downright dirty deeds in the name of the greater good—and if that means the unethical use of superheroes, then so be it.

Red and Gold Helicarriers?

This may be fine for Nick Fury, but whenever superheroes are forced to deal with issues like real-world politics, red tape, preemptive strikes, or any other proactive use of their powers, things tend to get tricky. Take Tony Stark, for example, and his travails over the last several years of Marvel events, all of which demonstrate Tony’s patented take-charge, proactive stance toward . . . well, everything.

Let’s start with the Civil War: the superhero community was split in two over the Superhuman Registration Act, which forced individuals with superpowers to surrender their identities to the US government and become official state agents (under S.H.I.E.L.D.).
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Stark initially opposed the idea but eventually made a pragmatic decision to spearhead the movement after passage of the law became inevitable. He led the pro-registration forces against his former ally and friend Captain America, who saw the law as a violation of basic civil liberties. After a long and bloody conflict that ended with Cap’s surrender and incarceration (and eventually murder), Iron Man was given the proverbial keys to the Helicarrier—and he used them to start a training program for young (and registered) heroes, put a registered superhero team in every state (the Fifty State Initiative), and, together with Fantastic Four leader Reed Richards and fellow founding Avenger Hank Pym, implement several of their “100 ideas that could change the world.”
⁸

After Stark took charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. and a reconstituted Mighty Avengers team, it was revealed that he, alongside several other heroes in a proactive and clandestine group known as the Illuminati, had banished Dr. Bruce Banner (the Hulk) into space to prevent more destructive gamma-fueled rampages.
⁹
The Hulk’s ship landed on a savage planet named Sakaar, but eventually the Hulk found his way back to Earth, along with his new gladiatorial friends, where the ensuing battle devastated New York City.
¹⁰
Finally, the imperialistic, shape-shifting alien race known as the Skrulls unleashed a full-scale invasion of Earth. This was made possible in no small part by the Illuminati’s botched proactive mission of years before, during which Skrulls learned enough to abduct and impersonate many well-known heroes without detection (including Avengers Hank Pym and Spider-Woman).
¹¹
Furthermore, because Tony networked all the technology used by S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Fifty State Initiative to his own Stark tech, the Skrulls were able to completely cripple all of Earth’s defenses in one fell swoop.
¹²

Although the Skrull Armada was eventually driven back by the heroes (though not until after the death of the Wasp, another founding Avenger), Tony was blamed for everything and became the “World’s Most Wanted” fugitive. S.H.I.E.L.D. was transformed into H.A.M.M.E.R. and placed under the command of the psychotic former Green Goblin, Norman Osborn, after he took the kill shot on the Skrull Queen. Osborn was elevated to the status of public hero, and in the position of top cop he plunged the Marvel Universe into a “Dark Reign” that forced nearly all the former Avengers underground. Osborn created his own Avengers team, with supervillains assuming the mantles of heroes like Ms. Marvel and Hawkeye, while Osborn branded himself as the Iron Patriot and wore a spare Iron Man armor decorated with Captain America’s flag motif.
¹³

I Didn’t Mean It, Honest

Through all of this, Tony Stark showed himself to be the most pragmatic and proactive hero in the Marvel Universe, taking charge when no one else would and then suffering the consequences, including the scorn and resentment of his fellow heroes as well as the broader public (and much of the comics fan base). Yet as a futurist inventor, CEO of a billion-dollar company, and even former secretary of defense, it’s hard for him not to look at the bigger picture—just like Nick Fury. So does Tony really deserve the blame for the causal chain of events that started with his well-intended (if overreaching) actions during these last several years of cataclysmic Marvel crossover events?

Whenever a person performs an action, both intended and unintended consequences (or side effects) may occur. So philosophers ask: which of these effects is the actor responsible for? One answer is presented in the
doctrine of double effect
, which originated in the writings of the philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) and was elaborated upon by modern philosophers like Philippa Foot (1920–2010) and G. E. M. Anscombe (1919–2001). Simply put, the doctrine of double effect states that it is sometimes morally permissible to promote a good end even if—unintentionally but foreseeably—serious harm will result from it. It is not, however, permissible to cause the same harm intentionally.
¹⁴

Consider killing in self-defense as an example of the doctrine of double effect. If a person—let’s call him Nick, for no reason at all—is being attacked with murderous intent by someone—oh, say, Baron von Strucker—it is okay for Nick to defend himself against the Baron with lethal force (if necessary). In such a case, Nick would be protecting his own life—the good end—and the death of von Strucker would be the foreseen but unintended consequence of Nick’s promotion of that end. On the other hand, if Nick discovered that the Baron is plotting to kill him, it would be morally wrong for him to kill the Baron first, since that would be the intended action itself (and there are many other ways to thwart von Strucker’s plans and save Nick’s life). In both scenarios the consequence—one dead Baron—is the same, yet only the first act, killing in self-defense, is morally permissible, because it is an unintentional side effect of the ethical act of self-preservation.
¹⁵

The doctrine of double effect makes an important distinction between consequences that are intended and those that are merely foreseen (but not intended). Still, the line between them is not always clear, nor is it always clear how to “know” whether a side effect was truly unintentional. Another thorny issue is the matter of determining just how many bad consequences we will tolerate in the pursuit of good ends before we say “enough.” For the doctrine of double effect to be accepted and work effectively, there has to be proportionality between bad effects (the means) and good effects (the ends). Assuming neither Fury nor Stark intended any harmful consequences of their actions, the remaining issue is whether the good ends they were pursuing were enough to justify the negative results of their actions. With Tony, especially, this question divided much of the Marvel Universe during the period described above.

What if the doctrine of double effect does not endorse Tony’s actions? Does this imply that he’s responsible for the negative outcome of the recent Marvel events? We don’t have time here to launch an in-depth discussion of causation and responsibility. Suffice it to say that even the great futurist Tony Stark couldn’t accurately predict the massive consequences his actions would have on the Marvel Universe. Note also that many other people’s actions were involved, and the farther down the “chain of causation” we get from Tony’s actions, the less responsibility we can pin on him.
¹⁶

This Changes Everything (Until It Changes Back)

As Simon Williams (Wonder Man) points out to Captain America, on the subject of putting the Avengers back together as a global peacekeeping force,