Wanted: Global Politics (Page 2)

Tolerant politics cannot survive in conditions of violence--this is the point of the new wars. Military action may be needed to provide not national security but individual security. In old-fashioned wars, the aim of military action was to take territory and to destroy the enemy, defined not as individuals or networks but as entire states and military machines. Thus military action typically maximized enemy casualties and minimized its own casualties. This new type of military action is more like policing; it must involve minimizing casualties on all sides even at the risk of its own casualties. Moreover, to be legitimate, such action must take place within the framework of international law. Both jus ad bellum, the goal of war, and jus in bello, the methods of war, need scrupulously to respect both the laws of war and human rights law.

It's this new kind of war that characterizes the twenty-first-century globalized world; indeed, some aspects of these wars have already been experienced in the United States itself--for example, in the Oklahoma City bombing. But until now, America has assumed that it is more or less immune and that wars happen elsewhere. In effect, the United States has acted as though it were the last nation-state, in which the priorities are domestic politics and what happens elsewhere doesn't matter. It has been able to maintain the myth, so important to the American psyche, that there are still wars on the model of World War II, in which virtuous states triumph over evil states, and the United States can act as leader of the virtuous states at a distance. National missile defense is part of this myth; it would allow the United States to bomb evil states at a distance, safe in the knowledge that its territory is protected.

The events of September 11 exposed the vulnerability of the United States and, to that extent, may have prevented the immediate knee-jerk reaction of misdirected airstrikes, which Clinton undertook after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. This time, the situation was much more serious, and the US administration apparently needed time to think through its response. The emphasis, we are told, is on targeted strikes, and the aim is to capture Osama bin Laden and restore legitimate political authority in Afghanistan. Great stress has been placed on America's multilateral approach and the forging of a global coalition, as well as on the fact that this is a war against terrorism and not Islam. So does this imply a conversion to a global political approach?

As yet, it is difficult to judge. The diplomacy and the military action have not so far been undertaken within an international institutional framework. It is not yet clear whether the airstrikes will be followed up with sufficient ground troops to provide security through such means as safe havens. Although the politicians insist that the strikes are not directed against civilians, the problem is not just "collateral damage" but the psychological trauma of daily bombing; whatever the rhetoric, it is hard for ordinary Afghans to believe that airstrikes are not directed against them. The first strikes against Afghanistan seem to have handed bin Laden a propaganda victory. His picture appears beside Bush's on the backdrop to news broadcasts. He is becoming America's enemy and the hero of all those who believe, mainly as a result of their leaders' propaganda, that America is responsible for their desperate plight. There is talk of extending the strikes to Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. Moreover, Bush's polarizing language, demanding that everyone is either "with us or with the terrorists," leaves no room for antiterrorist critics of the United States. Is there a serious plan, consistent with international law, to contain the terrorist network? Or have the military strikes been undertaken in response to American public opinion, a desperate attempt to show that something is being done? Did the four weeks' respite occur because of restraint and reflection, or rather because time was needed to assemble military forces and identify targets? If what is happening is a classic cold war-type approach, devised in order to respond to domestic political imperatives, then there is a real risk of a dangerous global "new war."

The danger is not just the escalation of violence. The campaign is going to be long and sustained, we are told, more like the cold war than World War II. And therein lies a grim prospect. The United States still seems to be thinking in terms of a world of states led by America, not a genuine new form of multilateralism. In the new war against terrorism, America is still putting the emphasis on military action and on alliances with states. It is becoming a new hot and cold war of America and its allies against fundamentalist Islam. The new global coalition is in some ways reminiscent of American support for military dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s, under the guise of hunting down Communists and Marxists. States that are ready to support the United States are part of the alliance, no matter what their domestic behavior. Russia is in, despite its war crimes against Chechens; Pakistan, so recently an outcast because of its military coup and development of nuclear weapons, is a good guy again. And then there are Saudi Arabia, Israel and Uzbekistan, to name the most notorious. I am told by human rights groups in the Caucasus that Russia is threatening Georgia for harboring terrorists (among the Chechen refugees) and that human rights activists in Azerbaijan are being dubbed terrorists. There has to be a global coalition, of course, but it should be linked to the UN and be responsive to the concerns of democrats and civic activists in the countries involved.

So-called antiglobalization protests were just beginning to be taken seriously before September 11, but now we are at risk of shutting down the global conversation that began after the end of the cold war. We do live in a globalized world, and the frustrations in repressive societies cannot any longer be confined to particular territories. Those frustrations will not always be expressed as democratic demands, as was the case in Latin America. They will be expressed in the language of extremes and in the acts of nihilism that characterize the new wars. The current approach might work for a few years by pouring money into repressive states and by killing known terrorists. But if the United States continues to act as a nation-state, wielding its military might to satisfy public demands for quick responses to acts of nihilism, the danger is that we will see a "new war" on a global scale--a sort of global Israel/Palestine conflict with no equivalent to the international community to put pressure on the warring parties.

In his Labour Party conference speech, British Prime Minister Tony Blair talked about the need for global justice, for creating peace in the new wars and social justice. If this is more than rhetoric, then it requires discussion about how these goals are to be achieved. Such an effort must engage all levels of society all over the world. Global politics is not just desirable in itself; it is the only way we can even begin to tackle the new "new war."

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