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The
Return of The State The September 11th terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon have left many feeling stumped. But unlike the buildings that came crashing down, the power and presence of the state have, however, remained intact, in some aspects even structurally reinforced. The measures taken by the United States are especially salient. One week after the attacks, the Bush administration tasked ex-Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge to deal with "homeland security" under a centralized office, a responsibility hitherto divided among more than forty different law enforcement agencies. The initiative did not stop there. To head off an impending recession spawned by the attacks, the administration came up with a US$ 15 billion financial package to save the ailing aviation industry. While considered by some aviation analysts as a mere drop in the bucket, the importance of this initiative went beyond dollars and cents. To begin with, President Bush has always been against financial "bail-outs" traditionally viewed by conservatives in his Republican party as a dirty word for state-sponsored patronage. Yet, Bush has crossed the Rubicon to do just that. The plan was meant to minimize the impact. Indeed, the economic implications on the aviation sector have been huge to say the least, as 100,000 American airline workers have since been retrenched in two weeks with more to follow. Nor are these developments restricted to the United States, the immediate victim, alone. As insurers put a US$ 50 million ceiling on any airplane, airlines have had to seek their respective government help to serve as the under-writer of the last resort; without which the flights would have to be grounded due to lack of liability coverage. In Asia, although Cathay Pacific Airways and Dragonair have struck a deal with a US-based private insurance company for war-risk coverage, this has been an exception rather than the rule. For
good measure, the Singapore government has pledged to back
Singapore Airlines to reduce its fiduciary exposure. The move
is immensely significant as it has brought down the insurance
cost of the national carrier thus slashing its overall cost
outlays. The If the state is back, it has certainly come back by public and various industries' collective demand. It is estimated that Wall Street firms lost up to US$1 billion in revenue during the four-day suspension of the markets. Top seven firms like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, lost trading revenue and commission of up to US$250 million per day. The world's airlines lost sales and incurred expenses totaling US$10 billion because of the disruption to air travel. Insurance claims from the terrorist attack could top US$20 billion by one moderate estimate. American International Group said its losses might reach US$500 million. Stock markets plunged across Asia the day after the attack, wiping around US$200 billion off the value of benchmarks stocks in Japan, Hong Kong, Korea and Australia. They are still reeling. In the annals of terrorism, the attacks have effectively laid claim to causing the biggest ripple effect. In this sense, the return of the strong state is a creature of circumstance, one occasioned by the aftermath of the attacks. As people and industries feel increasingly unsafe, they have sought to compensate for their sense of vulnerability by asking the state to do more, both in the security and economic realm. In a democracy, these effects are twofold. To begin with, due to how democratic politics are driven---through collective pressures and social expectations----what the people demand is obviously what the people will generally get. Given the death toll and economic fall-outs, which is not confined to citizens of the United States alone, countries whose nationals perished in the attacks have accordingly sued for due reprisals. Predictably, the result is the return of a vengeful state; one where military options are exercised for strategic as well as political reasons combined. Thus even a distant country such as Australia, where more than sixty of its citizens have died at the World Trade Center, have supported the use of military actions. And, they are participating in the war in Afghanistan too. Other than rooting out terrorism, the ancillary goal is to quench the public's thirst for old-fashioned retaliation. Secondly, due to the very suddenness of the attacks, the United States and the rest of the world have evidently been caught flatfooted. While scores of analysts have spoken about how life and air travel will now change forever, what they all allude to is the return of a vigilant state. By vigilance, one does not mean a state forever afraid of its own shadow but one more aware of the implications and weaknesses of an open-society as never before. Among others, one will see state becoming ever more sensitive to the need to have stringent laws that may go against the gist of basic civil liberties. In the counter terrorism bill approved by the Congress, the attorney general has sweeping powers to detain suspected terrorists, a prerogative hitherto absent to the office. While the goal is to put terrorist suspects to book before they spring another murderous spree, the extent to which such powers were conferred suggests a wavering of liberal conviction in no small degree. In a way the state has indeed returned. But it is also fair to say that it has never left the scene in the first place, notwithstanding the Thacherite and Reaganite revolutions of the 1980s to reduce the role of the state in the market place. Indeed, according to Dani Rodrick of Harvard University, the public expenditure of OECD members has been progressively increasing since 1965. State has always been there to provide public goods, such as strong defense and a secure economic environment. But it is obvious that the former is now considered grossly insufficient. State, therefore, is once again expected to do more----not less---in matters verging on national security. Come what may, there is definitely a cost to pay for a stronger state. It may, for example, become more intrusive in future. But given the insidious nature of terrorism, the use of intrusive investigative methods is almost inevitable as the authorities are already struggling to cope with far flung terrorist networks. Invariably, the only way in which the scourge of terrorism can be dealt with is increasing a state's military and intelligence capabilities, enhancing its level of banking reserves for emergency purposes, and also enlarging its diplomatic profile to counter terrorism globally. These are options that only a strong state can perform. Only when a state is sufficiently strong and viable, both within and without its operating environment, will it then be able to check the malignant growth of terrorism, not just within one country, but throughout the world. In Asia, a weak state such as Indonesia will also invite possible rebuke from the United States if it fails to clamp down on religious extremist groups such as Laskar Jihad and Islamic Defenders Front, both of which are militant groups with anti-US bend. Therefore, while a state must be strong internally, it must also hope that others are just as vigilant in combating terrorism: a problem made more salient by the growing Anthrax scare. For, terrorism is not a problem that can be faced alone but rather in concert with like-minded states who are opposed to it. (The author is a Malaysian columnist. He is a Ph.D. candidate in International Relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and is also an Asian Public Intellectual fellow of The Nippon Foundation in Tokyo, Japan. He was formerly a senior correspondent of The Straits Times Spore based in Boston. The author can be reached at: kphar01@eudoramail.com.) |