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Defense
As A Moral Project In the United States, the issue of security and defense has never before loomed so large in the national conscience and in policy making. It is a sobering time for serious reflection. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attack, I made a series of comments (BBS at oycf.org), where I argued that the people and government of this country have paid too much attention to the technological side of defense but neglected its moral dimension. I wrote: The American worship of technology has made the nation suffer, time and again. The country never learns the lesson that defense is also a moral project. When you engender enough hatred, for good or bad reason, the human will can overwhelm any modern weapon and penetrate any defense system. Americans easily forget the Vietnam lesson. Or they never learned… Being strong alone is not strong enough. Until the U.S. becomes a respectful world leader, it will never be a safe place. It appears that policy makers in Washington have come one step closer to attend to such a voice this time. Thanks to politicians like Colin Powell, the administration has moved from the irresponsible rhetoric like "end the terrorist states" (5 of them no less) to careful coalition building as part of a relatively measured response. The head of state takes pains to reiterate that the current military campaign is aimed at terrorists, not the Muslim people. Nevertheless, this welcomed shift of attitude does not make the call for moral defense less relevant. Indeed, only in retrospect will future historians be able to assess how many innocent people will be killed by the current American war against "terrorism," how much American actions will alienate populations abroad, and how much animosity will be brought back to the American population, among whom my daughter is a citizen, to bear. In this forum offered by the Perspectives editors, I would like to elaborate a bit more on my previous remarks. Since the call for America's self-examination of its foreign policy has now become a recognizable voice of dissent, the deeper question is not whether, but how to build a defense with a moral dimension. I would like to motivate my discussion with this astute question (Junling Ma, BBS at oycf.org): While I believe that America needs to understand the different perspectives of other people, I am not sure whether anyone or effect can influence the behavior of extremists or religious fundamentalists (including those behind the attack), who will always take actions that are not rational. Is it possible to eradicate the root of extremist, especially among people of different religion, culture and ideology? For
academics and the people in the street alike, the search for
answers to this question is a daunting task. I believe the
starting point may lie in understanding the mechanisms that
create the "extremists" as they are. If we define terrorism as violent action against non-military targets for a political purpose, can we call the U.S. army a terrorist organization for its historic record and its current action in Afghanistan? Some may add to the definition that terrorism is violence that is not sanctioned by the state. But do we not hear the now familiar concept of "terrorist state" in describing the Taliban or Iraqi regime? Others may contend that terrorism is violence conducted not by the military but by unconventional means. But does a population who is not strong enough to confront their enemy militarily have any other option? Guerrilla warfare comes to mind, like those conducted by Chinese in the anti-Japanese war and Vietnamese in the Vietnam War. Are guerrilla forces terrorists? When the "terrorists" consciously sacrifice their own lives, we call them extremists who are by definition "not rational." Do we, then, call Yang Gensi (who ignited a bomb when surrounded by US solders) and Huang Jiguang (who blocked a firing machine gun with his body) in the Korean War two extremists? (Note: in this discussion of the definition I have borrowed ideas from Michael Kinsley's op-ed column published in the Washington Post, October 2001). Violence for a political purpose, military or not, is conducted by ordinary people who are otherwise as "rational" as you and me. They may be devoted Muslims, Chinese high school-student-turned Red Guards, or U.S. soldiers. The key is not that they are innate extremists or that they are poisoned by certain fundamentalist ideologies. The key lies in the political process that creates a category of human beings called "enemy." We do not eat human meat because we see others as the same kind. We do not kill our fellow human beings until they are dehumanized as "traitors," "class enemies," or "infidels." It is in the dehumanizing process of this kind that politicians like bin Laden turn "American citizens" into a killable category. He has many historical company such as Hitler, Stalin, and, (may I add,) Mao. He also has many more contemporaries--will I offend anyone if I mention those who dehumanized civilians in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Syria, in Yugoslavia, or in Sudan as killable targets of "collateral damage?" The real extremists, if we use this term at all, are those politicians who promote the process that create certain categories of human beings as legitimate targets. The hijackers and the suicide bombers, as misguided and criminal as they are, are first and foremost victims of the process. Mass base of terrorist leadership In fairness, the politicians do not accomplish the job alone. They have their followers. The promotion of hatred, or the creation of killable categories of human beings, often involves a large segment of population. Peace may not be contingent upon whether we can "eradicate the roots" of these political entrepreneurs. They will be out there in all seasons, whether for consolidating absolute power in a dictatorship, or for improving approval ratings in a democracy. The key lies in controlling the political conditions according to which the mass base of a terrorist leadership expands and contracts. While we have yet to know whether the recent wave of terrorist action by Islamic fundamentalists is an outcome of the conflict of cultural values, or of the conflict of geo-political interests, or both, we cannot deny the fact that the way in which the United States has used military force abroad has helped generate unprecedented scale of outrage among the Muslim populations. For example, in 1998, after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the United States struck back at targets linked to bin Laden, including a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. The Clinton administration suspected that the plant made chemical weapons, but when challenged, it could not produce credible evidence. Anti-American demonstrations erupted across the Arab world. Marchers carried giant photographs of bin Laden, who was hailed as a popular hero. It is not impossible that this event helped radicalize some of the September 11 hijackers. Two American professors of international relations wrote recently: Some Americans may conclude from watching the thousands who have turned out to shout "Death to America" in protests across the Muslim world that all Islamic fundamentalists already hate us so much that we couldn't provoke them further no matter what we did. This would be a tragic miscalculation. While it is true that there are millions who hold strong anti-American sentiments, so far only a tiny number of them have become suicide terrorists... If American military action appears to confirm the worst accusations of American arrogance, we will help extremists recruit a new generation of willing terrorists, far larger than the last (Robert A. Pape and Chaim Kaufmann, New York Times, A27, October 4, 2001). Indeed, in the same day when the US military began to bomb Afghanistan, bin Laden appeared in a widely broadcasted videotape making remarks that were uncannily parallel to those of the U.S. president's. Mirroring Bush's division of the world into those who stood with America in rejecting terrorism and those who stood against her, bin Laden divided people into the "faithfuls" who side with him, and those who oppose him, the "infidels." How do the young people in the Arab world see bin Laden's image? A college student in Cairo has been reported as saying: "the way he talks, his tone and his quiet voice, his vocabulary, and his logic--it is so charismatic… he is so convincing. This was the first time I've seen him on TV and I felt sure he is not a terrorist. I felt his aim is to protect Islam, nothing more." Another student summed up the feeling of his fellow citizens: "he has become a symbol now of challenge to the West (New York Times, B6, October 9, 2001)." The impact of US foreign policy There are two ways for the U.S. to conduct itself internationally. One is to attend to others' perspectives and hence to search for equal partnership. The other is to build up its military might, by virtue of its economic and technological prowess, in pursuing the position as the sole superpower. While the past and current administrations usually combine the two, the new Bush administration has greatly biased toward the latter approach. Vivid examples of U.S. arrogance include the initial reaction to the reconnaissance plane dispute with China when Bush asserted that the plane landed in Hainan Island was "American territory" that should not be "violated," and his jingoistic remarks immediately following the recent terrorist attack. The administration's obsession with the Missile Defense System clearly represents its hegemonic concept of world order and its defense strategy that relies on technology alone. Bush has decided to terminate unilaterally the nuclear treaty, which has been the cornerstone of disarmament and peace during the Cold War. The philosophy behind this decision is that after the Soviet Union collapsed, there is no country that can match the nuclear strength of the U.S., and that therefore there is no need to maintain the nuclear balance through mutual inspection and constraint that had been critical in preventing an unfettered arms race. In fact, the White House has removed its sanction against India that was put in place for India's development of nuclear weapon, and has also remarked that it does not worry about whether China will increase its nuclear arsenal. Gone is the signature concept of "engagement" in the Clinton administration that repeatedly brought Israeli and Palestinian state chiefs together to shake hands. The current administration is taking a hands-off approach regarding the escalation of violence in the Middle East as it remains as Israel's foremost financial benefactor. Elsewhere the new administration has decreased its peacemaking effort in Ireland, halted its promotion of talks between the two Koreas, and continued to inflict great devastation on Iraq by bombing and sanction in the name of overthrowing Saddam Hussein (in fact, one who knows first thing about politics knows that a weakened nation presents a fertile ground for dictatorship). In his TV appearance, bin Laden cited the plight of Iraqi and Palestinian people in recent years as part of his indictment against the U.S.. There is an element of truth in his argument, at least from the perspective of people in the Islamic world. It is reported that for many times last year, Al Jazeera, a CNN-like news network that broadcasts in Arabic, played the video of a young Palestinian boy and his father, cowering on the side of a building moments before the boy was killed by Israeli troops. In contrast, the bombing in Iraq has ceased to be news for the American public for a long time, although more and more civilian targets and civilian lives have been destroyed. Toward a world government In short, I contend that the origin of the U.S.'s vulnerability to terrorist attacks is partly attributable to its foreign policy orientation that overly relies on strength but neglects moral appeal. It is a dead end to take world justice in the hands of one single country, no matter how strong it is. If we liken the world to a village, the peace that results from a single family's domination is a precarious one. Violent uprisings spawned by the other families, through unusual means, will be a recurrent reality. Genuine peace will not come until a legal system and a democratic government, based not on force but consent, are established. This may be an unrealistic dream at this time of history-as I remarked previously, we still live in a barbaric age. But it is a dream shared by many, including Albert Einstein, who was one of United Nations' advocates. Before the dream comes true, the strongest family must be careful not to rely on force alone, for the sake of its own defense and security. (The author is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Stanford University.) |