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Issue 12: October - November 2001

September 16

Uniting to end the scourge of terrorism

On Sept. 11, global terrorism struck the U.S. homeland and the headquarters of globalization. Hyper-terrorism laid bare the vulnerability of hyper-power. The targets were the symbols of economic vitality and the citadel of freedom.

The split-screen TV images -- the World Trade Center alongside the Pentagon, with rolling news headlines along the bottom of the screen -- were a metaphor for the split in history: the age of innocence before, and the world of postmodern terror after.

In their innocence, the Americans had embraced the illusion of security behind the impregnable lines of a continental defense. To be sure, the United States had suffered acts of terror, but they were not a daily fear, an everyday reality, a way of life. Last Tuesday was one of the worst days ever in terms of casualties suffered by Americans, in peace or in war.

The fight against terrorism is a war with no frontiers, against enemies that know no borders and have no scruples. Like the two world wars, this is neither a war from which America can stay disengaged nor one that can be won without full U.S. engagement.

President George W. Bush has declared that the U.S. will make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor them. Washington, however, must not make a distinction between "our" terrorists and "theirs," condoning or tolerating one lot while isolating and battling another. Security from the fear of terrorism is truly indivisible. How many of today's radical extremists, embracing terror against a host of countries, were trained, armed and financed by the West as "freedom fighters" against a former enemy of yesterday?

In the common war against fundamentalist terrorism, past enemies are today's natural allies. The concert of democracies must cooperate politically and coordinate responses with one another's law-enforcement and military forces. They must forge alliances, if necessary, to work around the institutionalized reluctance of global organizations to make effective and timely responses to real threats instead of posturing over imaginary grievances.

Black Tuesday's attacks also shatter the illusion of casualty-free battles. Washington can no longer shirk from the global war on terrorism for fear of putting its soldiers' lives at risk.

At the national level, U.S. security experts will examine closely the procedural and organizational flaws that allowed four planes to be hijacked and the intelligence failures that enabled the scheme to be carried out without detection. Other security measures will also be put in place. But in the end, there is no absolute security against suicide terrorists with unlimited imagination, daring and inhumanity.

Americans must also ask why they have so many enemies, why they are the object of so much hatred. Is it the price they have to pay for being the world's most successful, powerful and wealthy nation? Or can some of this hate be assuaged by policies tempered more toward the dispensing of justice? Fanaticism feeds on grievance, and grievance is nurtured by feelings of injustice. Terror is the weapon of choice of those who harbor the sense of having been wronged but are too weak to do anything about it through conventional means.

That is why terrorism cannot be contained by expensive space-based shields against missile attacks. Modern military forces and security policies should be configured for threats rooted in the new security agenda.

If isolationism is not an option in today's interdependent world, unilateralism cannot be the strategy of choice either. Just as America is a nation of laws that find expression in institutions, so Americans should work to construct a world of laws functioning through international institutions. That's why the concert of democracies to combat terrorism cannot be a closed circle but must embrace all those willing to join in the fight against threats to civilized nations.

Americans should now reflect on their own propensity toward moral ambivalence about the efforts of legitimate governments to maintain security vs. the attempts at violence by armed sectarian groups trained and financed by international networks.

The end of complacency about terrorism in the American heartland should encourage Washington to view parallel wars elsewhere against terrorism through the prism of fellow governments facing agonizing policy choices on how best to ensure the safety of citizens, rather than through the eyes of single-issue nongovernmental organizations not anchored to policy decisions.

Some governments have been at the receiving end of moral and political judgments about their robust response to violent threats posed to their authority and order from armed dissidents. Those governments are entitled to and should now expect a more mature understanding -- an understanding forged in the crucible of shared suffering.

This does not give any government a license to kill. To defeat the terrorists, it is absolutely critical that the symbolism of America -- not just the home of the free and the land of the brave, but the bastion of liberty, freedom, equality between citizens and rulers, democracy and respect for law -- be kept alive.

This is a shared vision. That is why we were all the symbolic target of the attacks and why we must join forces with the Americans to rid our succeeding generations of the scourge of terrorism. Not blinded by hatred and a lust for revenge, but ennobled by the vision of a just order and empowered by the majesty of law.

The more difficult part will come later -- in eradicating the infrastructure of international terrorism, on one hand, and addressing the structural grievances that feed the causes of terrorism, on the other. Americans should reflect on why their concentration of power has caused unease outside "Fortress America."

For the record, it should be noted that by historical standards the behavior of the U.S. as a great power has been the most benign, bar none. What other great power has a better record of dealing with smaller states, especially smaller neighbors? It would be interesting to know, for example, how many Mexicans would have exchanged their geography for that of Poland over the last two centuries. That said, it is still fair to say that concerns have grown that the U.S. has become isolationist, unilateralist, exceptionalist and triumphalist.

Isolationism means disengagement from the rest of the world community, retreating to within one's own secure borders and territory. An isolationist U.S. president would not travel abroad and would not send delegates abroad to protect and promote American points of view. The U.S. was essentially isolationist until the 20th century, uninterested in the world beyond the Americas.

Unilateralism refers to a country's acting entirely on its own, based on national interests, preferences and values. Views of other countries might have a bearing on the action chosen but do not determine it. The decision by the Bush administration to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol is an example.

Internationalism is the opposite of isolationism. It is possible to act as an internationalist and a unilateralist simultaneously -- if, for example, the U.S. decides on its own to take action in Grenada, Haiti, Nicaragua or Iran.

Exceptionalism is the belief that the U.S. is uniquely blessed, endowed and selfless in international engagement and, therefore, should not be held accountable to standards set for other nations. Exceptionalism may underpin both unilateral and multilateral behavior. An example of the latter is the idea that the U.S. has the right to be on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, since the commission was the brainchild of Eleanor Roosevelt and the U.S. is the champion promoter of human rights around the world. An example of exceptionalism underpinning unilateralist behavior is U.S. bombing of alleged terrorist training bases in Afghanistan in retaliation for terrorist attacks on U.S. targets in other countries.

Triumphalism is exultation in national victories and superiority. It is predicated on the belief that the U.S. political and economic model (political values, human rights, rule of law, limited government, the presidential version of representative democracy and the market economy) is, a priori, the best in the world and should be adopted by everyone else.

Because of a sustaining belief that it is a virtuous power, the U.S. is averse to domesticating international values and norms with respect to greenhouse gas emissions, the death penalty, land mines or the pursuit of universal justice. Because of structural power attributes, the U.S., instead, internalizes many of the benefits and externalizes many of the costs of globalization.

U.S. global dominance of military might, economic dynamism and information technology makes it the world's supreme power. The U.S. military budget is greater than that of all other NATO members combined, accounting for 63 percent of NATO's total budget. Washington also enjoys a unique confluence of advantages for institutionalizing its preferences:

• The ability to overwhelm the negotiating capacities of smaller countries because of the sheer size, depth and range of the U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy.
• Hegemony in major multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
• Collective-action dominance of the Group of Seven nations and NATO.
• A much greater scientific-technical depth of knowledge, which is especially useful when negotiations involve complex questions of contested science -- as in the subject of global warming.
• Superior ability to leverage information and knowledge in pursuing narrow commercial and strategic interests.
• Greater capacity to leverage legal resources, enabling the U.S. to field a formidable team of technically skilled legal specialists in any branch of law.
• Advantages of wealth, enabling the U.S. to exact pre-emptive compliance by threatening to deny others access to its vast market (it is rich enough to bribe those poor enough to be bribable).
• Immeasurable capacity to deploy national assets such as intelligence to monitor compliance by others.
• The fact that it is home to most of the internationally influential media and nongovernment organization conglomerates.

Other countries fret that the post-Cold War era rapidly turned into a unipolar moment and that fitful U.S. arrogance has turned into habitual exceptionalism and triumphalism. Supreme power is viewed as having encouraged the U.S. to set the rules of globalization: choosing some parts (trade liberalization) while rejecting others (globalized decision-making), lecturing others on the rule of law while refusing to accept international criminal jurisdiction, promoting pluralism and diversity when the world is concerned about the concentration of multimedia power in the U.S., etc.

The same country that was founded in opposition to tyranny, that institutionalized this opposition by creating a form of government based on separation of powers and that went on to acquire the most concentrated power ever in world affairs now has difficulty comprehending why others worry about the tyranny of total power. Yet, in today's interconnected world, however, total power is not enough to guarantee invulnerability to overseas-based threats.

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