By Daniele Archibugi
The fall of the Berlin Wall was a symbolic event that raised hopes
for a more united world, founded on the values of international legality
and democracy. The idea was put forward that, at last, human rights
would be respected planet-wide and that violent conflict would gradually
disappear. In just over a decade, many such hopes have been swept away
by Realpolitik. In the same decade, we have witnessed the birth of a new
generation of civil wars, the resumption of traditional-type wars
between states and the birth of humanitarian interventionism under the
banner of self-interested charity.
Yet we must not forget that the 1990s also happened to be the years
in which the fear of nuclear war was set aside and millions of people –
in eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia – gained or regained
the right to choose their governments though elections. They were the
years in which Nelson Mandela and Václav Havel left prison to take the
helm of their respective countries. They were also the years in which
international organisations – the United Nations first and foremost –
tried to stop being mere paper pushers vis-á-vis the resolutions of the
summits of the superpowers. History does not allow for algebraic sums,
and no one today can say whether the advantages outweighed the
disadvantages or vice versa.
As a symbol of an historical turnaround, the destruction of the Twin
Towers is comparable to the collapse of the Berlin Wall. In the last
three months, newspapers have effectively been the spirit of the world,
using every word in the dictionary to describe the event. The attack was
an historic event not only in terms of the magnitude of the damage
inflicted; after all, recent history has, alas, accustomed us to even
worse tragedies. In 1994, for example, half a million people were killed
in just a few weeks in Rwanda, yet nothing changed in international
politics. In 1995, 8,000 people were killed in a single day in
Srebrenica alone, but the effects of the tragedy were only felt at
regional level. No, the terrorist attacks in America have changed the
course of the world because, for the first time ever, the hegemonic
power has been hit – and because the attack was an absolutely gratuitous
one. No conflict was in progress between the United States and the
forces which the attackers claimed to defend. Though the long-term
effects are still uncertain, the principal political task of our present
era is to prevent the destruction of the Towers from dulling that
splendid dawn – the hope that democracy and legality can assert
themselves in states and among states.
What is Terrorism?
Terrorism is the use of terror by organised groups to achieve given
objectives. Often such objectives are non-political. Terrorism stands
out from other forms of political violence because it strikes
indiscriminately. A given act may achieve its aim even more effectively
if the victims are not actually associated with the terrorists’
objectives.
One of the basic characteristics of terrorism is that it achieves its
aims not only and often not so much through direct action as through
the sense of panic provoked by that action, which causes an entire
community to change its behaviour. The execution is only one part of the
effect; no less important is the threat thereof. When the community in
question begins to live with terrorism that is when the terrorists
achieve their main aim. They have, at last, become active political
players.
If we apply this definition to the terrorist attacks of September 11
2001, we can see how the criminals have indeed achieved their aims. The
use of elements of everyday life (airliners and now even correspondence)
and the destruction of buildings which, however symbolic, were used for
commercial purposes served the purpose to make all western people feel
unsafe. To achieve this aim the attackers had no qualms about killing
individuals of many different nationalities and religions – and even
kill themselves. The indirect consequences their act has generated for
the United States and the rest of the world are much greater than the
direct ones. A new war is now in progress, together with an economic
crisis and uncertainty as to our everyday safety that will accompany us
for years to come. According to the evil criminal logic of the
terrorist, these were precisely the aims they wanted to achieve and the
spectacular way in which the event unfolded was functional to that end.
Yet terrorism isn’t only the action of isolated groups. States also
act in a terrorist manner when they resort to the indiscriminate use of
violence. A war waged against civilians is thus an act of terrorism. In
the Nineties, the terrorism of states – democratic states included –
increased along with great hopes for democratisation. We expect
tyrannical regimes to use dictatorial means and resort to extermination,
and in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Indonesia, Nigeria and many other
places, the liberal West culpably looked on as tyrannical regimes
perpetrated genocide. But liberal democracies were not the perpetuators
of these acts.
But in other situations throughout the 1990s, democratic states – the
United States in particular – were active in international terrorism:
Panama, the Persian Gulf, the Balkans are some of the examples. In all
these cases, military force was used, mowing down civilian victims,
people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the acts America was
attempting to combat. The ‘indirect’ component – the establishing of the
predominance of the West, meaning the United States – played a more
important role than the direct one. The entire Third World has
metabolised the tough lesson: namely, that anyone who enters into
conflict with the United States risks being bombed.
These new interventions – all rigorously subsequent to the fall of
the Berlin Wall – are often tinted by humanitarian motivations. But they
will be remembered in the black book of military history rather than in
the pink book of humanitarian altruism. They are characterised by a new
quantitative fact: that is, the victims of conflict are all on one side
only, that of the ‘humanity’ that was supposed to be receiving help.
Western losses in these wars have either been zero or comparable in
number to the casualties in a car crash.
In so far as they are based on internal constitutional systems in
which the use of violence is allowed only if it is legitimate and apt,
democratic states ought to be prepared not to use terror as an
instrument of political struggle. Only those states that have extirpated
the recourse to armed force internally deserve to be called democratic.
So why do they ignore the values and principles that inspire their
domestic constitutions beyond their frontiers?
Today heads of state and public opinion are joining together in a
just condemnation of terrorism. But how many have pretended not to see
the terrorism of western democracies? The terrorism we suffer from
others is perceived as being entirely different from the terrorism we
cause others to suffer. For westerners, the Twin Towers were a familiar,
much-loved landmark. They were part of our daily lives, whereas the
valleys of Iraq, Serbia and Afghanistan – to cite three places that have
experienced the effect of western bombing – are not part of our
everyday experience. We have never seen them reproduced in postcards,
and to find out where they are we have to look them up in the atlas. The
victims of bombing are unknown to us, just as unknown to us are the
millions of refugees who occasionally set out on their travels in sole
pursuit of survival and suffering the worst hardships imaginable as a
result.
By no means do I wish to argue that the motivations of the criminals
who have destroyed the Twin Towers and those of the politicians who have
decided to intervene in the Persian Gulf, the former Yugoslavia or
Afghanistan can be grouped together. We know too well that in the
Persian Gulf, a sovereign state was annexed by another sovereign state;
in Kosovo, a genocide was being perpetrated; and, in Afghanistan, an
instigator of massacres and his accomplices were being harboured. The
Twin Towers, on the other hand, were populated simply by people
peaceably going about their work.
But aren’t the reactions of western democracies inappropriate? Are
they effectively designed to achieve a purpose? I believe that anybody
with a bit of common sense knows that the use of violence is not only
exaggerated but, above all, aimed at the wrong target, hence
terroristic.
We are now seeing carpet-bombing in which the victims are mostly
civilian. In this case too, the so-called ‘collateral’ effects would
appear to be as important as the direct ones. Millions of Afghan
civilians are now flocking to the border with Pakistan in search of
survival, and there is a serious risk of yet another humanitarian
catastrophe. The political and civilian arrangement of Afghanistan is
more uncertain than ever; grinding poverty is likely to continue in a
situation in which the only thing of which there has been no shortage
since the Soviet invasion are rifles, bombs and land mines. In short,
the risk is that Afghanistan is going to inherit the sad destiny of
countries such as Iraq, Somalia and Iran, which, after being targets of
the West, were abandoned to their enduring problems: namely,
bloodthirsty dictators, wars between armed bands, religious fanaticism
and above all, poverty, poverty and yet more poverty.
Is War Effective Against Terrorism?
The most surprising thing about the attacks on Afghanistan that began
on October 7, 2001 is the lack of any link with the events of September
11. We take for granted that, supported by his criminal organization,
Osama bin Laden instigated the attacks. But it is just as evident that
it will not be possible to strike the terrorists by air attacks, and
probably not by land actions either. The US military even admits that
the chances of capturing bin Laden (‘dead or alive’, true to the
tradition of westerns) are slim.
But what have the Afghani people got to do with all this? How far are
the victims of the bombing responsible for the terrorist attacks? No
direct logistic involvement emerges. The people guilty of the suicide
attacks were trained in flying schools in Florida. Luckily, nobody
thinks it is necessary to bomb Florida! So why bomb Afghanistan? Only to
demonstrate that the United States are capable of a military response?
As a punitive instrument, the military action in progress is thus
ineffective. So will it be effective in preventing future attacks? The
answer is sure to be negative. True, the United States has achieved a
brilliant diplomatic success by involving previously hostile
governments. People in the United States’ black books, such as Fidel
Castro, Qadafi and Arafat, have condemned the terrorist attacks in no
uncertain terms and even declared themselves favourable to reprisals
against Afghanistan. To receive the support of governments is not,
however, to convince peoples. It is disturbing to see masses of
semi-literate outcasts singing the praises of bin Laden. Not even Adolf
Hitler managed to win so much mass sympathy outside of Germany and
Austria. The beginning of the war has added credit to bin Laden’s
project whereby the war in progress is a war between the Islamic world
and the United States. What should have been made clear is that the
conflict was between a small band of criminal terrorists and the
civilised world. How many of the people who, out of ignorance, are today
extolling a terrorist are going to turn into terrorists themselves
tomorrow?
Risk and terror have become global. Today there are thousands of
people who are observing chemical substances, germs, aqueducts, airports
and nuclear power plants with the sole aim of seeing how to manipulate
and hit them to cause harm to the West. If we think that it is possible
to keep millions of people under the sword of Damocles of air bombing,
we have got things wrong. The terrorists of September 11 have
demonstrated that they hold in contempt not only the life of others but
also their own. These terrorists elude rational logic; they are a
problem for our security because they have psychiatric problems.
It is certainly surprising that the American press itself, so
patriotic at this moment in time, on October 7th published front page
photographs of President Bush and bin Laden opposite one another. The
image the press wants to accredit is the one already proclaimed by Bush:
a new chapter in the eternal battle between good and evil, a sort of
Hollywood-style clash between the good guy and the bad guy. The US press
still fails to realise just how deeply offensive it is for America to
equalise the image of a constitutionally elected president and that of a
criminal. Bin Laden has thus achieved the communicational effect that
he wanted, accrediting himself as Adversary Number One of the President
of the United States.
Like others in the past, the broad coalition created today to crush
the terrorists is not without a cost. Saddam Hussein was armed to
contain Iran, bin Laden and the Taleban to stave off the Soviet
invasion, the theocracy of Saudi Arabia to fight Saddam Hussein. Today
it is the new nuclear power of Pakistan which is enjoying the
indiscriminate support of the West. History ought to have taught that,
in the long term, the values of liberalism and democracy cannot be
defended with the equation ‘the enemies of my enemies are my friends’.
Sooner or later Golems rebel, return to their imprinting and become more
frightening than the enemies they were supposed to annihilate.
The Cosmopolitan Perspective
In moments of crisis, it is not sufficient to oppose. It is also
necessary to make concrete proposals to weaken terrorism. Which is what
the cosmopolitan perspective puts forward.
Recognition of the value of individual life.
The cosmopolitan perspective sets out from the assumption that it is
necessary to give equal value to human life, irrespective of whether an
individual belongs to ‘our’ or to ‘another’ political and social
community. Though this is an abstract assertion, it has been affirmed in
many aspects of human life. We find it aberrant, for example, for an
individual to be killed in a poor country because his organs are
necessary to prolong the life of a westerner. Yet this simple ethical
principle is ignored when wars begin: in this case, the main objective
is to minimise the losses on one side, without bothering to consider
whether to achieve that objective it is necessary to multiply losses on
the other. Hence the first cosmopolitan precept seeks to equalise the
value of our lives with the value of the lives of others.
Methods of conflict.
Terrorism cannot be fought with terrorism. Western democracies and the
United States ought to demonstrate as of today that they are made of
better stuff than bin Laden and his accomplices. Which is why they
should refuse to sow innocent victims, if they are not directly
connected with the aim of preventing the insurgence of further losses.
Democratic participation.
Today, partly on account of the war, democratic countries are more
vulnerable and more exposed to risk. But democracies possess a
fundamental weapon of defence against terrorist attacks; that weapon is
participation. If the examples of Basque and Irish terrorism have taught
us anything at all, it is that it is impossible to overcome armed
factions as long as they can count on the support of a sizeable portion
of the population. Yet at the moment in which that support wanes, it
becomes impossible for the terrorists to act. To contain terrorism,
Spain and the United Kingdom have, respectively, avoided presenting the
conflicts as being between the ‘Spanish’ and the ‘Basques’, or between
the ‘English’ and the ‘Irish’. They have showed public opinion that a
limited group of people was sowing terror and wreaking havoc to the
detriment of the great majority of the population. What would have
happened if, instead of working through the police and the magistrature,
Spain or Great Britain, had – maybe with the use of intelligent devices
– bombed the neighbourhoods in which the terrorists ‘presumably’ live?
Whenever indiscriminate means have been used – in so-called ‘dirty’ wars
– the consensus for terrorists has always risen. Today there are no
sizeable groups in western countries prepared to support bin Laden and
his organisation. But to identify and neutralise the groups that do
exist, it is necessary to aim at participation.
The intelligence revolution.
Since the drums began to roll, any reflection on the total failure of
the world’s most efficient intelligence agencies – the CIA and the FBI –
has begun to lull. The two agencies have proved totally incapable of
defending their citizens, arguably because they wrongly see their job as
being to defend the ‘national interest’ as opposed to the interest of
citizens. Following the terrorist attacks, these agencies will have more
funding and more power, which means that the freedom of American
citizens (and of many other countries in the world) will not only be
limited by the threat of terrorism, but also by the control that these
powers will exercise over their (and our) lives. Are we really sure that
this control is designed to protect us? The CIA and the FBI ought to be
dismantled and reconstructed on foundations radically different from
those of the past. In a democratic perspective, intelligence works if it
is seen as control by citizens, not as control over citizens.
Financial controls.
The most effective way of striking terrorism is to strike the financing
that fuels it. There is only one link between the terrorists of
September 11 and bin Laden, and that is the financial link. It is
certainly amazing that a criminal known for years as the instigator of
different terrorist attacks has, until September 11th, enjoyed the
greatest liberty to transfer the capital needed to plan new massacres.
How come we have been unable to strike not bin Laden as a person but at
least his money? The reason is to be sought in the very essence of
capitalism, which is refractory to control over finance. Yet finance has
always been technically controllable, in so far as every transaction
has to be recorded and codified. Is it vain to hope that, in the
aftermath of September 11, flows of capital will be subjected to
controls designed to demonstrate the origin and destination of funding?
Controls of this kind would serve not only against terrorism, but also
against all criminality, arms and drugs traffic included.
From the law of arms to the arms of law.
All those such as bin Laden and his accomplices who have sullied
themselves with crimes against humanity ought to be judged by
international tribunals before the relatives of the victims. Trials of
this kind would strip them of their aura as inspired martyrs with which
they hope to gain the support of people in the prey of desperation.
Today the United Nations ought to set up a special Tribunal with judges
from both the countries that are victims of terrorism and from Islamic
countries and try them, if necessary in their absence. They ought to
swiftly set up the International Criminal Court, the Treaty for which
was approved in Rome more than three years ago (despite the opposition
of the United States), and which is struggling to receive the necessary
ratifications from states. This is the opposite direction from Bush’s
strategy, which aims to generate ad hoc, and military, tribunals. The US
Vice President Dick Cheney declared that “Terrorists don’t deserve the
same guarantees and safeguards that would be used for an American
citizen going through the normal judicial process” (International Herald
Tribune, 16 November 2001, p, 5). This declaration shows that his legal
knowledge dates back to before the American Revolution of more than two
centuries ago: Tribunals will serve, first and foremost, to assess who
is and who is not a criminal or a terrorist.
Peace in Palestine.
The Palestinian question is by no means the only source of international
tension (the Kurd question is another that comes to mind). Yet the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the one which more than any other is
perceived as a clash between different cultures and civilisations. In
the hypothetical clash of civilisations (which is what bin Laden
proclaims and western ideologists irresponsibly theorise), the frontier
is situated in the Middle East. This is why today it is right for
Palestinians to aspire to a land of their own and hope for a decent
future, but it is also necessary to find an agreement that will allow
the two peoples to live and prosper together. It is certainly
paradoxical that such a small area of the world, home to fewer than nine
million people with one of the highest levels of culture in Asia, is
such a major source of international tension. How many economic
resources are Arab and western countries prepared to give today to
ensure the Palestinians a decent future? That today, after more than
half a century, the Palestinian question is still without a solution
demonstrates the incapacity of the so-called international community.
The United Nations.
If the UN is to be nothing more than a lackey to the United States, then
the whole institution is pointless and deserves to be dissolved. Its
function ought to be as a mediator between cultures precisely to prevent
the present crisis from turning into a clash between civilisations. The
actions of international politics designed to combat terrorism ought to
be carried out under the aegis of the UN precisely to reinforce the
idea that terrorism, more than a crime against states, is a crime
against individuals.
Europe and the United States
The idea of outside threat has always existed in the American
imagination, and a great many American films and novels imagine the
country being invaded, attacked or destroyed by external enemies. Yet
this is the first time since Independence that our American brothers
have experienced the effects of violence against civilians on their own
territory. Pearl Harbour was a military base, the war of secession was a
civil war, and World War I and World War II were fought outside their
continent. Recurring massacres caused by the folly of single individuals
have been of an incomparably lesser magnitude and, in any case, are a
problem of internal public order.
At first there was uncertainty on how to react and eventually the
spirit of reprisal prevailed. But at another tragic moment in world
history – the end of World War II – after liberating Europe from
fascism, the United States understood that they had to give of their all
if the values of liberalism and democracy were to assert themselves in
the old continent. To punish war criminals, they set up Tribunals. To
take away the social base of fascism, which had asserted itself partly
due to mass unemployment, they launched the Marshall Plan. Today Europe
wouldn’t be what it is without the decisive contribution of the United
States.
Europe has to pay back the favour both to defend its own interests,
but also to defend the interests of the United States. Instead of
acritically giving in to the threat of ‘either with us or against us’,
Europe has to rediscover the pride of guiding the world through a period
as difficult as the present one; not only by hunting down the
terrorists but also by promoting economic development plans in the Third
World to remove terrorism’s social base. If Europe committed itself to
developing the Third World with programs analogous to the Marshall Plan,
in half a century’s time the whole world – our American brothers first
and foremost – would surely be grateful to us.
The cosmopolitan perspective is deliberately ingenuous. Compared to
Realpolitik, with its military, financial and political means,
cosmopolitanism has no other power but the ideas it puts forward. But
where has the daily application of the precepts of Realpolitik led us?
Today the planet is on the point of exploding no longer on account of a
conflict among large, powerful, organised counterpoised blocs, as
happened during the Cold War, but only on account of a small band of
fanatics. Maybe people should realise that the moment has come to follow
different precepts, deliberately more ingenuous but not necessarily
less effective in the long term.
http://essays.ssrc.org/10yearsafter911/terrorism-and-cosmopolitanism/
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