| DRAFT: 10.14.01 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Global Terrorism:Searching for Appropriate Responses
"Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe".
September 11, 2001 will be remembered as a defining moment in world history. On that dark day, it became apparent that the world's single superpower, historically protected by two vast oceans, is no longer immune from the new weapons of terror. On that day, terrorism became a global phenomenon and problem. As the weapon of choice of the weak against the strong in a worldwide struggle, on that day, terrorism proved to be deadly to open and vulnerable societies. This essay briefly offers (1) a diagnosis of the new world disorder, (2) a prognosis of what will probably happen if the current terrorist threats continue, and (3) a possible course of treatment for the manifest and latent violence of our times. Manifest violence clearly refers to all kinds of direct physical violence exercised by state or non-state actors. Latent violence refers to the routinized and institutionalized repressive factors that produce a resentful, angry, and violence-prone society. Latent violence is being institutionalized by the growing gaps between the rich and poor within and among nations that globalization has generated in recent decades. The annual UN Human Development Reports (1990-present) have systematically documented the gaps and their impact on the increasing antagonism between the symbolic North and South. The root cause of violence may be found in the alienation, dualism, and antagonism generated by systemic marginalization of vast segments of the world population. However, every major tragedy in world history has presented an opportunity for reflecting and reconstructing a more just and peaceful world order. The Chinese character for danger also stands for opportunity. Historical leaps often result from major human tragedies. We often learn through our pains and sufferings. The League of Nations resulted from World War I. United Nations emerged out of World War II. This time, global terrorism has proved to be a scourge of humanity. Its victims have paid a high price. For their blood not to be in vain, the world must learn to come together. We must establish a more democratic and just global governance. We must pledge to a new rule of international law. No nation, large or small, should be exempted from the rule of international law. What Is the New World Disorder? Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, pundits have been groping for a new catch phrase to identify the main features of the post-Cold War era. End of History (Fukuyama 1992), Clash of Civilizations (Huntington 1996), the Coming Chaos (Kaplan 1995), and Globalization (Lechner & Boli 2000) have been obvious candidates. Each of these competing truth claims catch an aspect of the phenomenon but distort others. None of the terms seems to fit the new reality of a global war of terrorism and counter-terrorism that seems to lie ahead of the world. Fukuyama has argued that with the demise of Soviet Union and entry of China into the world markets, liberal capitalism has finally triumphed for all times. The rest of history, he has surmised, will be spent on the boring details of building the institutional details of capitalism worldwide. Huntington has been less optimistically predicting a clash of civilizations, notably between the West and the rest. Robert Kaplan (1995) has ominously predicted a coming chaos in the post-Cold War era. There is also a growing literature on how globalization and fragmentation are ripping the world apart (Dicken 1998; Mittleman 2000; Falk 1999; Camilleri, Malhotra, & Tehranian 2000; Higgott & Payne 2000; Hardt & Negri 2000). There is no catch phrase to grasp the tragedy and complexity of a vulnerable and fragile world against acts of terror by determined and suicidal groups and individuals. Since both state and non-state actors are acting with willful planning in this deadly enterprise, we may call our own troubled times an era of " Death by Design". The 20th century provided notable historical precedence for this kind of genocide (Rummel 1994). If the world fails to rise up to the challenges of global terrorism, this era may come to be known unhappily as the Age of Terror. There is clearly no panacea for the current rise of terrorism. However, an accurate diagnosis of the problem is necessary for any appropriate response. The problem seems to have three linked features. First, we have witnessed mounting terrorist acts in the past four decades carried out both by state and non-state actors, of which the nuclear terror by the nuclear powers is a prime example. Second, we are witnessing the rise of a new global system characterized by growing gaps among and within nations. Third, we now live in a global fishbowl in which Hollywood extravaganzas as well as starving children in Africa are displayed for all to see on their television screens. The envy and hatred generated by global communication seems to have outpaced the affection for and understanding of "the other". The role of the mass media in this process cannot be underestimated (Tehranian 1999). By dramatizing, dichotomizing, and demonizing "the generalized other" in the "world news", the mass media have added another powerful dimension to global conflicts. It is useful to make distinctions among varieties of terrorism in order to deal with them. The well-known adage that one man's "terrorist" is another man's "freedom fighter" clearly refers to this reality. First, we have revolutionary terrorism such as that practiced by the opposition groups in many of the national liberation movements. Examples may include Algerian or Egyptian terrorism against secular intellectuals and governments leaders, Palestinian terrorism against Israeli targets, Tamil terrorism in Sri Lanka, Moro terrorism in the Philippines, etc. Such terrorism can be politically organized or lone acts such as those of Timothy McVeigh's attack on the Federal Building in Oklahoma or the Unibomber's terrorist attacks on individual scientists. The Unibomber's Manifesto and McVeigh's defense demonstrated that both terrorists had grievances against the U. S. government and society that they felt could not be redressed except through acts of terror. Second, global terrorism seems to aim at shocking the world into recognition of certain worldwide political grievances and agendas, e.g. the September 11, 2001 attack on New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania as well as a series of terrorist acts against U. S. targets in Lebanon, Kenya, and Yemen. This is clearly a new phenomenon responding to the forces of globalization led by a Washington consensus. The September 11th terrorist attacks have dramatized three significant changes in international relations.
Third, messianic terrorism seems to be motivated by religious beliefs. Examples might include the 1993 Waco confrontation in Texas, the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack in Tokyo subways, and the 1997 Heaven's Gate collective suicide in Los Angeles. Such attacks on self and others are often in anticipation of the end of an unjust and corrupt world and transition to another unseen but more harmonious universe. Last but not least, state terrorism is the kind routinely exercised by some regimes against their own innocent civilian population or the "enemy." The Holocaust in Germany, the Armenian massacre in Turkey, Iraq's chemical attack on the Kurds, and Israel's military reprisals in Lebanon and the West Bank provide well-known historical examples. Terrorism is essentially the weapon of the weak. When it is exercised by states, it betrays a high degree of political paranoia by the state authorities vis-à-vis their actual or potential "enemies". The serial terror of opposition intellectuals in Iran during the 1990s demonstrates this kind of state paranoia and terror. However, because of the proliferation of small arms, biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, terrorism is becoming the weapon of choice by a variety of states, groups, and individuals. It is not going to go away because the social, economic, and political conditions that breed terrorism continue to be powerfully at work. "The weapons of choice," Llewellyn D. Howell (2001) asserts, "have become back-pack bombs, computer and biological viruses, and chemicals. Military units are no longer divisions and battalions, but teams of two or ten. Terrorism is the next highest stage of war." At the same time, we are witnessing the rise of a new global system characterized by growing gaps among and within nations. The United Nations Human Development Report (HDR) of 1996 tells us of the alarming growing gaps between rich and poor. Two sets of statistics punctuate the new world polarities: "The poorest 20% of the world's people saw their share of global income decline from 2.3% to 1.4% in the past 30 years. Meanwhile, the share of the richest 20% rose from 70% to 85%. That doubled the ratio of the shares of the richest and the poorest from 30:1 to 61:1." In conformity with this picture, the HDR of 1998 (p. 37) shows the world's current spending priorities as follows:
True, poverty and injustice have been with us throughout history. But we now live in a global fishbowl in which the poor are exposed to the extravagant way of life of the rich through global media. Traditional poverty was made perhaps tolerable by the traditional systems that legitimated it and provided some measure of mutual obligation. Modernized poverty in the new urban and rural environments, exposed to global communication and contact with an affluent and ostentatious world, tends to be humiliating and infuriating. Global communication has outpaced global dialogue on global issues. The envy and hatred generated by global communication seems to have outpaced the international understanding that it could foster. In the 1990s, Western powers dramatically demonstrated that they could destroy their adversaries in Iraq and Yugoslavia with high tech weapons without much damage to themselves. One of the lessons of that experience has been a more determined focus by the less powerful not only on nuclear weapons (witness India and Pakistan) but also on other weapons of mass destruction (WMD), namely biological and chemical weapons. WMDs have become the cheapest possible response to the high tech and information-intensive technology of warfare. Another lesson is the choice of terrorism as the weapon of the weaker states and groups. The enemy in the New York and Washington attacks was not a territorial state. It was the fringe elements of a much larger global resentment against the way the world is being run. We have clearly entered into a new form of politics and warfare. There is also a broader set of circumstances leading to terrorism that must be understood. In the post-Cold War era, North-South conflicts have substantially taken the place of East-West conflicts. Since globalization is marginalizing significant sectors of the world population both within and among and nations, North and South must be understood symbolically rather than literally. Most of the world's rich and poor countries are situated, respectively, in the Northern and Southern cones of the globe. But every country also has its own symbolic North and South, typified by the elites and the marginalized social classes. The social psychological dialectics that globalization is creating are the breeding ground for extremist politics of identity. Against the commodity fetishism of globalization, identity fetishism has become the ideological vehicle of the marginalized groups. Benjamin Barber (1995) has called it "Jihad vs. MacWorld". Against the market fundamentalism of neo-liberalism, religious and ethnic fundamentalism is the new battle cry (Tehranian 1983a & b). Against post-modern cosmopolitanism of the centers, pre-modern kinship and tribal loyalties are the cultural orientation of the peripheries. Since the advanced industrial world is powerful but highly vulnerable to sabotage and surprise, the new weapon of shock terrorism is deadly and effective. In future, it may include other weapons of mass destruction. The types of weapons that could possibly be deployed by terrorists in the future are too horrible to contemplate. Where Are We Headed? The new world disorder seems to be taking us into a fragmented and dualistic global system. A new trichotomous world system is emerging consisting of new configurations of First, Second, and Third Worlds. This division of the world, however, does not correspond to what used to be known as capitalist, communist, and non-aligned worlds. Nor the division neatly corresponds to the spatial borders among the territorial states. Within each state, globalization forces are dividing localities, regions, and groups into separate communities linked to or de-linked from the global economic, political, social, and communication networks (Castells 1996-2000; Mittleman 2000). Globalization is privileging the modern and postmodern technocracies of each state while marginalizing the traditional tribal, rural, semi-urban, and semi-literate population. In the new Informatic Empire, the status of an individual is largely determined by whether or not he or she is logged into the global networks of state, corporate, academic, or criminal organizations (Hardt & Negri 2000, Castells 1996-2000, Tehranian 1999). At the risk of over-simplification, Table 1 attempts to capture the main features of the three worlds with respect to their geographies, economies, polities, military, society, culture and communication, as well as organization and identity. The table should be read as a heuristic device to view the fundamental discontinuities among the three worlds leading to social, political, cultural, and sometimes military conflicts. In reality, there are interlocking and transitional stages disproving any such discrete typologies. The bin Laden Al-Qadeh organization, for instance, employs modern technologies and skills on behalf of premodern objectives. But the Islamic revolts in Iran, Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, and Indonesia may be considered as the antagonism of the premodern against its own modernizing elites allied to the postmodern forces of globalization. But this revolt is not limited to the Islamic world. We have witnessed the rise of Hindu nationalism in India against a traditionally secular and democratic state. In recent decades, we also have witnessed the rise of religious politics in the United States against its secular tradition of separation of church and state. The weapons of fundamentalist movements can be electoral politics as in Algeria's election won by the Islamic parties and Jordan's parliamentary politics. But when that is denied them, violence and terrorism take over. No country is immune from the new cultural politics (Tehranian 1993). In Europe, we have witnessed the rise of skinheads against immigrants. In the United States, we have seen the 1965 racial riots in Watts, Los Angeles, and the attacks by the so-called "pro-life" groups against "pro-choice" doctors and maternity clinics. What the four types of terrorism have in common is their aim to paralyze "the enemy" into submission by indiscriminate violence against "guilty and innocent", "civilian and soldier". What they often achieve is a mobilization of public opinion against terrorism's indiscriminate violence. But terrorism also can polarize societies and foster security or police states infringing upon civil liberties. What Is to Be Done? In the war against global terrorism, three distinctly different strategic options present themselves. These include US Unilateralism, NATO multilateralism, and UN Multilateralism. U. S. Unilateralism. Since the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the United State has taken a primarily unilateralist approach to world affairs. As the world's single superpower, the U. S. has been rather reluctant to support a number of multilateral treaties and institutions. These include the U. S. refusal to pay its dues to the United Nations during the 1990s, to join the International Criminal Court, to sign the 1997 Landmine Ban Treaty, to continue its commitment to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Friends as well as foes of the United States have been critical of the U. S. unilateral policies (The Economist, September 22, 2001, 12). But in the Islamic world, there are also special grievances against the U. S. for its lopsided support of Israel, economic sanctions against Islamic countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Syria), and massive military presence in the Persian Gulf. Most Islamic states are situated somewhere between premodern and modernizing worlds. They are thus at odds with the norms and values of a postmodern world. Fear of a Western cultural "invasion" has often turned a cultural clash into a political crusade. The current war of terrorism is thus a complex web of class, nationalist, and religious antagonism gone amok. National and religious concepts are invoked as an ideological call to action. Osama bin Laden's videotape shown on CNN in September 2001 frames his struggle in terms of an Islamic crusade against the West. The description of bin Laden's video by Richard Bulliet (reported in a Gulf2000 Internet exchange) is telling:
In his initial response to the terrorist act of September 11, President Bush also employed the metaphor of a "crusade against the evil-doers". Fortunately aware of the counter-productive religious connotations of this term in the Islamic world, the U. S. Department of State soon withdrew the comments. Nevertheless, many American commentators have resorted to high rhetoric to encourage U. S. unilateralist responses focused on quick military fixes against American "enemies". For instance, Charles Krauthammer (2001a) wrote on September 12, "The 'long peace' is over. This is not crime. This is war. Secretary of State Colin Powell's first reaction to the day of infamy was to pledge to 'bring those responsible to justice.' This is exactly wrong." He further advised (Krauthammer 2001b), "Capturing Osama Bin Laden isn't enough. We also have to target the Taliban, then Syria, and finally Iran and Iraq." Fortunately, however, there are also many voices of sanity in the United States. NATO Multilateralist. By invoking Article 5 of the treaty, the NATO alliance gave notice that a collective response to global terrorism will be forthcoming. The article considers an invasion against one member as an invasion against all. A NATO multilateralist response to some kinds of terrorism is appropriate in self-defense, but it is inappropriate to the challenge of global terrorism. Unless this is coordinated with a UN multilateralist response, NATO's actions can project an image of a war between the Western and Islamic worlds or worse yet, between the world's haves and have-nots. UN Multilateralism. Notwithstanding militarist admonitions, the response to terrorism cannot be divorced from its underlying causes. In its new phase, terrorism's causes and consequences appear to be global in scope. The approach must be commensurately global. Despite its shortcomings, the United Nations system continues to provide us with a useful institution under which a carefully devised strategy of war on violence, terrorism, and poverty can be fought. The United Nations counter-terrorism and peacekeeping forces must be reinforced in their capacity and their reach must be increased. We need a standing UN peacekeeping force that is fully equipped with the arts of war as well as peacebuilding. Such a force must be under the authority of the UN Secretary-General and the Security Council to create neutral zones between warring states (e. g. Pakistan and India), to monitor cease fires and human rights violations (as in the Palestine-Israel conflict), and to supervise national referendums and participation in reconstruction (as in the postwar Afghanistan). That is necessary but not sufficient. The world community under the UN auspices must demonstrate that it cares for the fate of some 2 billion people in the world today living on $2 a day (Henderson 2001). UN member-states should commit themselves to a war on world poverty and injustice by tangible means. A certain portion of national defense budgets, say 10 percent, should be allocated to the United Nations peacekeeping and poverty eradication programs. The world cannot afford to continue living one-fifth rich, two-fifths in abject poverty, and another two-fifth struggling for a decent life. Focusing on Afghanistan In the current crisis, the world has focused on the Taliban and Osama bin Laden as the villains. It is alleged that bin Laden's global network of terrorism has wrought several previous terrorist attacks as well as the September 11th massacre in New York and Washington. The Taliban government has declared that it would not extradite bin Laden for a trial. As a result, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates have withdrawn their recognition while Pakistan has recalled its diplomats from the Taliban regime. More generally, the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban also clearly resulted in a regime of unspeakable terror against women and minorities and Afghanistan's historical heritage of cultural diversity and tolerance. We live in a world in which national sovereignty is frequently invoked in defense of indefensible violations of basic human rights. In a globalizing world, however, national sovereignty should no longer be considered a legitimate protection of regimes engaged in genocide or terrorism. However, in the case of Afghanistan, it must be remembered that it had a relatively tolerant society and government before it became the sacrificial lamb in the Soviet-American Cold War struggles. The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan initiated a war of resistance led by the Mujahedin, and supported by American weapons, Saudi Arabian dollars, and Pakistani leadership. The 1989 defeat and withdrawal of the Soviet Union resulted in a civil war among the various factions of the Mujahedin turning a beautiful and proud country into rubble. The countries that have intentionally or unintentionally brought the most fanatical elements to power in Afghanistan now have a moral and political obligation to end the suffering of the Afghan people. Pragmatically speaking, the war on terrorism in Afghanistan cannot succeed without a reconstruction of that country. The Russian, American, Saudi Arabian, Pakistani, and United Arab Emirate governments bear the highest moral and political responsibility in this enterprise. Under the authority of the United Nations peacekeeping forces, they should participate in a massive reconstruction of Afghanistan after the Taliban are driven from power. By their sponsorship of global terrorism and violation of basic human rights, particularly against women and minorities, they have totally lost their legitimacy in the eyes of Afghans and the international community. A message issued by the Afghan scholars of the Center for Research on Afghan Problems proposes a most sensible solution to the civil war in that country. "At this sensitive moment, we urge all Afghan citizens to renounce shortsighted, ethnic, religious, or political prejudices in order to unite under the banner of unity, independence, and progress of Afghanistan. We can create a national movement for the rescue of our country from current miserable conditions. In this fashion, Afghans can pay their human, religious, and national debt to their own suffering people. For this purpose, we propose the formation of a National Assembly (loye jirge) under the auspices of the United Nations and the leadership of an Afghan figure with national and international reputation. The National Assembly can then formulate a new Afghan Constitution guaranteeing the independence and territorial integrity of the country as well as equality before law, democracy, and civil liberties for the citizens. The Constitution should be then put to a general referendum in Afghanistan so that the new government resulting from it can enjoy legitimacy." Conclusion No one can claim that with the eradication of world poverty and injustice, fanaticism and terrorism will come to an end. Timothy McVeigh, the Unibomber, and Osama bin Laden were not poverty-stricken terrorists. None of them suffered from material poverty, though for reasons perhaps beyond understanding, they exhibited acute spiritual poverty. When terrorism is the result of a deliberate and organized political act targeting innocent civilian population, as in the case of September 11th attacks, it cannot be considered a lone act of insanity as in the case of the Unibomber. In revolutionary and global terrorism, there are breeding grounds that need to be understood and combated. This essay has argued that political terrorism must be fought on several fronts, against its criminal perpetrators as well as the social, economic, and political circumstances that breed and sustain them. Since terrorism has become a global phenomenon in a globalizing world, the most effective strategy in combating it is a multilateral approach through the United Nations. The September 11th tragedy has hopefully shocked the world out of its complacency. The world needs to recognize the need for going beyond the nation-state system to build global, democratic institutions for world governance and security. References
Barber, Benjamin. 1995. MacWorld vs. Jihad. New York: Random House. Camilleri, Joseph A., Kamal Malhotra & Majid Tehranian 2000. Reimagining the Future: Toward Democratic Governance. Bundoora: The Department of Politics, La Trobe University. Castells, Manuel 1996-2000. The Information Society: Economy, Society, and Culture, Vols. 1-3. Oxford: Blackwell's Publishers. Dicken, Peter 1998. Global Shift: Transforming the World Global Economy, 3rd. Ed. New York: The Gilford Press. Falk, Richard 1999. Predatory Globalization: A critique. London: Polity Press. Fukuyama, Francis 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press. Henderson, Hazel 2001. "Mr. Bush's Win-Win Option", op-ed on the Internet, September 14, 2001.. Hardt, Michael & Michael & Antonio Negri, Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Hardt, Michael & Michael & Antonio NegriHiggott, Richard & Higgott, Richard & Anthony Payne 2000. The New Political Economy of Globalization, 2 vols. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. Howell, Llewellyn D. 2001. "Terrorism: The 21st-Century War," USA Today, March 2001, p. 29. Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster. Kaplan, Robert D. 1995. The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War. New York: Vintage. Krauthammer, Charles 2001b. "Our Goal: Overthrow Regimes", The Honolulu Advertiser, September 12, 2001a, p. A22. Krauthammer, Charles 2001b. "Congress should declare war", The Honolulu Advertiser, September 28, 2001, p. A16. Lechner, Frank J. & John Boli 2000. The Globalization Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Mittleman, James 2000. The Globalization Syndrome: Transformation and Resistance. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ronfedt, David and John Arquilla 2001. Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy. Los Angeles: Rand Corporation, 2001. Rummel, Rudolph J. 1994. Death by Government. New Brunswick: Transactions Publishers. Tehranian, Majid 1992a. "Fundamentalisms, Education, and the Media: An Introduction," Fundamentalism and Society, ed. by Martin Marty and Scott Appleby. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Tehranian, Majid. 1992b. "Islamic Fundamentalism in Iran and the Discourse of Development," Fundamentalism and Society, ed. by Martin Marty and Scott Appleby. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Tehranian, Majid 1999. Global Communication and World Politics: Domination, Development, Discourse. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Tehranian, Majid. 1992c. "Islamic Fundamentalism in Iran and the Discourse of Development," Fundamentalism and Society, ed. by Martin Marty and Scott Appleby. Chicago: Chicago University Press. United Nations Development Program (UNDP) 1990-present. Human Development Report. New York: Oxford University Press, annual reviews since 1990. Home | Bio | CV | Peace Proposals | Op-ed Articles | Review Articles | Journal Articles | Books | Poetry | E-mail | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||