A
Nonviolent Response to Sept 11
By
Ralph
Summy
Nonviolence
Commission of the International Peace Research
Association
September 6, 2002
Darkness cannot drive out darkness
Only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate;
Only love can do that.
Hate multiplies violence,
And toughness multiplies toughness
In a descending spiral of destruction...
The chain reaction of evil-
Hate begetting hate,
Wars producing more wars-
Must be broken,
Or we shall be plunged into
The darkness of annihilation.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
What happened on Sept 11 to the American people, and
especially to New Yorkers and their foreign visitors, was
a crime of ineffable proportions. No moral code or
religious teaching, including the prescripts of the
Qur'an and the traditions of the Prophet (the Hadith),
allows for the wanton slaughter of innocent people. Such
acts of terror rightly deserve universal condemnation,
whether committed deliberately and directly as happened
in America, or perpetrated indirectly through means known
to be causing death and terror disproportionate to a just
end - for example, what has happened in the case of the
economic sanctions against Iraq. One act of terror, as
the above words of Martin Luther King, Jr. remind us,
does not justify the retaliation of another act of
terror. Not only is such a response immoral but it does
not make good political sense. In the words of UN
Secretary General Koffi Annan, 'Cool reason and judgement
are more necessary now than ever' (SBS, 26 Oct 2001).
It has become a cliche to declare that a new type of
security threat confronts the United States and other
western powers, and that the world will never be the same
again. Dramatic as it is, like all cliches, this
sentiment contains some elements of truth worth
exploring. Since the citizenry of the US and other
nation-states, including Australia, are very likely to
find themselves targets of future terrorist attacks, it
is important that they open up a wide discussion of what
might constitute an intelligent response.
The question presented to the United States (and the
rest of the world) is how to respond without committing
more terror and exacerbating the problem. The US
Administration has been right to demand of its critics
how they would have reacted differently. To only denounce
the US response may help to shed light on the problem but
it provides little in the way of an enlightened solution.
For valid criticism to gain substantive meaning it needs
to be followed up with a proposal for an alternative
course of action.
Thus within a framework of criticism and counter
proposal, this article attempts to explore a nonviolent
strategy that offers a more humane and arguably more
successful outcome than the action hitherto taken by
President George W. Bush and his aides and followed by
satraps like Australia's John Howard. After pointing out
the mistakes compounded by US policymakers, the article
suggests how a short term and long term strategy might
have been woven together and successfully implemented to
counter the threat of terrorism and usher in the prospect
of security for everyone. But before critically analysing
the Bush response and prescribing an alternative
strategy, some background observations, overlooked or
buried in media reports, are presented that may help to
put this highly charged subject in sharper focus.
Some factors arising out of
the Sept 11 and anthrax attacks
The factors for consideration centre on the
asymmetrical relationship that exists between the
nation-state (the dominant political actor of the past
350 years) and its newly acquired non-state opponent
(that challenges it at its most purposeful level - the
ability to guarantee the safety of its citizens).
- A new type of threat. While the nation-state
has previously had to face numerous revolutionary
challenges from within and revolutionary armies from
without, it has never had to cope with a foreign force -
operating inside but organised outside its territory -
whose aim is punitively directed at terrorising its
citizenry and destabilising the government without
seeking to replace its right to rule within the
territory. The implications of this unique type of enemy
(well-funded, technologically skilled, organisationally
decentralised, geographically dispersed and elusive,
zealously dedicated, prepared for martyrdom, and
potentially armed with weapons of mass destruction) mean
that conventional military and undercover operations may
be highly inappropriate. Effective new modes of strategic
thinking to deal with the immediate security risk and to
remove the deep-rooted sources of the conflict may need
to be explored. Responding with heavy armour and
extremely high-tech weaponry suggests the analogy of
blasting a disease-bearing mosquito with a 16 inch shell.
Not only does the shell fail to solve the mosquito
problem - as breeding becomes more prolific - but the
unfortunate choice of weaponry backfires, wreaking death
and havoc on the attacker's own people.
- Asymmetry of political power. The West's
great strength and affluence turns into weakness (as in
the martial art of jiu-jitsu). Nuclear power
plants, multi-storied buildings, shopping malls, and
institutional icons like the Pentagon and the Washington
Monument, present easy and vulnerable stationary targets
in contrast to the shadowy swiftness, surprise and
indestructibility with which the terrorist can strike. To
protect its vulnerable targets the West may not only have
to introduce security procedures that inconvenience
citizens, but also - if it is not careful - resort to
measures that undermine the very liberal heritage it is
attempting to defend. The Patriots Act in the US, in
conjunction with some of the Attorney General's actions,
can be seen as first steps down this slippery slope.
Hence what the al-Qa'ida terrorists want to do - destroy
the power of Western modernism that resides in its
democratic norms - may ironically be assisted by the
West's excessive zeal without the terrorists firing
another shot.
- Imperialist on the receiving end. For the
first time since the 16th century, when European powers
commenced their imperialist conquest of the non-European
world, a group in the name of the exploited has been able
to strike back with devastating effect on the exploiter's
homeland. Previously all fighting had been conducted on
the soil of imperialism's and neo-imperialism's victims.
This being the case, it is not too surprising that the
Less Developed Countries (LDCs), while having, for the
most part, reservations about the means employed on
September 11, have shown some ambivalence when it comes
to supporting a counter campaign. A number of Muslims,
notably in Pakistan and throughout the Middle East, have
not concealed their delight that the West is having a
small measure of its own violence brought home. The daily
terror and insecurity endured for centuries by an
impoverished majority living on imperialism's periphery
is now being felt in the metropole of the affluent. This
may mean that unless the West is prepared to acknowledge
and rectify the suffering it has perpetrated, it will
never again enjoy immunity from the threat of retaliatory
violence.
- Immortal vs mortal. The new threat to Western
societies and their putative allies comes not from
ordinary mortals dedicated to the preservation of life
and the joy of living. It comes from desperate men (and a
few women) who have adopted a fundamentalist creed to
explain their plight and the need to confront Western
modernism, reified most sharply in America's support for
Israel. They see themselves in the vanguard of a holy
defensive war (jihad) to preserve Islamic culture
and its traditions (and in the case of the Palestinians,
their land) against the incursions of the infidel. In
conducting suicide attacks against infidels they expect
to be rewarded with martyrdom and the blessing of the
Almighty. Their personal death is perceived as the
victory of the immortal entering into the next world with
its infinite rewards. Taking on the immortal attributes
of gods or demi-gods, the terrorists attain in the minds
of their followers and themselves the heroic stature of
Greek gods like those portrayed in Homer's The
Iliad and Odyssey - creatures divinely
ordained to rise above their mere mortal adversaries. How
does a worldly mortal cope with this kind of
other-worldly fanatic for whom there is no death? An
over-reaction that wipes out the innocent along with the
guilty and undermines civil liberties in the name of
security, can only reward a crazed enemy with more
recruits destined for paradise.
General
critique
The US Government's reaction of unilaterally declaring
war against Osama bin Laden, his al-Qa'ida network and
any nation-state abetting terrorism, while understandable
on one level as a knee-jerk catharsis for releasing
pent-up national pain and anger, is on sober reflection
little more than an expression of base and barbaric
vengeance rooted in a national glorification of the macho
tough guy. Clint Eastwood, the cowboy, moves to the
centre stage of American foreign policy 'to hunt the
villains down', to 'cough him (Osama bin Laden) up', to
'smoke'em out' 'dead or alive'. Tragically, engaging in
acts of violent retribution by the 'goodies' against the
'baddies' - metamorphosing the Hollywood cowboy onto the
big screen of world politics - is going to do little to
enhance the civilised reputation of a nation with
pretensions to greatness. Nor is it going to achieve the
stated goal of defeating terrorism.
Notwithstanding the obvious futility of countering
"bad-guy" terror with "good-guy" terror, an American
tradition is being upheld that resonates with the
American public (at least in the initial stage). The
history of white America abounds with incidents of
unbridled violence against proclaimed evil doers
(Hofstadter & Wallace, 1971). Thus the puerile cowboy
behaviour of a simpleton President taps into a
well-defined tradition of messianic zeal. When combined
with the myths of invincibility, manifest destiny,
innocence, and moral superiority that permeate American
culture (Commager, 1972; Summy, 1973), a heady brew of
rallying around the flag is relatively easy to mobilise.
Fanatical patriotism is often the initial reaction.
However, for the long haul Americans have another, more
sober and noble, tradition on which they can draw and
which the rest of the world can help nourish - one that
articulates nonviolence, decency and compassion for 'the
other' (Lynd, 1966; True, 1995; Paige, 2002).
Unfortunately, many months after the September 11th
tragedy, there is not even a glimmer of sagacity
emanating from the White House and only the embryo of a
massive peace movement has thus far emerged to
effectively challenge its assumptions and actions.
[1] Rational assessment has yet to replace
mindless patriotism. Indeed, the war of 'infinite
justice' has been extended to threats against an 'axis of
evil' - first confined to three countries, but
subsequently doubled to six (New York Times, 2002,
7 May). What prevails is the same biblical 'eye for eye,
tooth for tooth' mentality (Leviticus, chap. 24, ver. 20)
that continues to define the Israeli/Palestinian
conflict. One would think political leaders who resort
repeatedly to acts of terror would see the strategic
sterility of their thinking - how crass and
self-defeating it is in the long run. The US leadership
is well aware of the dead-end nature of the spiralling
violence cum terror in the Middle East. Yet
while it cautions the Israelis and condemns the
Palestinians for their short-sightedness, it fails to see
the mote in its own eye.
The administration continues to go out of its way to
stoke the fires of hatred in the American people. Its
imagery, as already noted, appeals to ingrained values. A
cynical observer might say that this was done for reasons
of crude political expediency. My own assessment is that
the situation is grimmer than that, for while the
administration has certainly reaped immediate domestic
political benefits, the real tragedy is that the
policymakers sincerely believe in what they are doing.
These are the 'true believers' who subscribe uncritically
to the doctrine that successful policymaking comes from a
position of military strength, and, more significantly,
from a willingness to use it long before exhausting all
the available nonviolent options. They take pride in a
military whose slogan reads, 'Persuasive in peace,
Invincible in war.' It is as if these two conditions
merge into one.
Therefore, depicting the aftermath of September 11 in
terms of good versus evil, with righteous America
embarking on a 'crusade' to effect 'infinite justice',
was not some opportunistic exercise but a frightening
indication of the quality of intellectual perspicacity
and moral sensitivity - or lack thereof - that prevails
at the highest echelon of the most lethal state in the
history of humankind.
The 'rogue state' that endangers us all - including
the victimised - turns out in the end to be the American
colossus itself. The recently self-proclaimed Bush
doctrine gives the US the exclusive right in its 'war
against terrorism' to unilaterally take pre-emptive
action anywhere in the world with whatever means are
necessary. A classified Pentagon report, provided to
Congress in January 2002, disclosed that the President
has ordered the preparation of plans for nuclear attacks
on at least seven countries and the building of smaller
nuclear weapons for use on the battlefield. Three
contingencies are cited that justify the US taking these
steps: (1) the selected targets are capable of
withstanding non-atomic attacks; (2) retaliation is
needed because the enemy has launched a nuclear, chemical
or biological attack in a critical area; and (3) surprise
military developments have arisen ("US lists," 2002).
While it may be difficult to be humble when one is so
powerful, other colossi have preceded America. And
history records their inevitable decline and fall.
Nothing exists to suggest that America will somehow
escape a similar fate. The myth of American
'exceptionalism' - that a nation was conceived that
transcends history (McKay, 1994, pp. 42-46; Shannon,
1982) - is exactly that...a myth (Bell, 1975). Indeed,
the Americans are doing their best at the moment to
accelerate the demise of their global empire. They are
alienating themselves from much of the world, not only
the impoverished of the so-called 'Third World' but the
disenchanted of the 'First World' who reject a simplistic
binary definition of world politics, and the US right to
define the parameters. If the leadership persists in its
willingness to act alone against an 'axis of evil', it
will soon discover the shock lesson that a colossus also
needs an axis of its own.
The US rulers are failing to observe a cardinal
political maxim: No empire can long survive - not even
one that is militarily and economically the most powerful
the world has ever seen - if the people whom it dominates
and exploits refuse to remain compliant and servile.
While there are factors that sometimes militate against
people exercising their intrinsic collective power, the
basic principle can be postulated that the American
empire theoretically depends more on the rest of the
world than the world on it. Thus for pragmatic reasons
alone, its leaders can ill afford to ignore the interests
and sensibilities of the outside world. For the President
to position himself as world CEO and expound the doctrine
'if you are not with us, you are with the terrorists,'
destines the nation for more humiliation, the shock of
political impotence, and ultimately defeat.
Specific criticisms
Point no. 1: A strategy that fights terror with
greater terror (the UN reports that more innocent Afghans
have died from American bombing than Americans on
September 11) is not going to gain the high moral ground.
Nor is it going to create a more secure world. As one of
the latest songs of the rap group Spearhead proclaims:
'You can bomb the world to pieces, but you can't bomb it
into peace.'
Point no. 2 follows on: Bombing a wide section
of people in order to wipe out a select band of outlaws
who are scattered throughout the general population,
plays directly into the hands of the terrorists. Indeed,
what America's leaders have done is exactly the best
response that bin Laden could have hoped for. They have
taken his bait. By arrogantly and unilaterally (except
for consulting Britain) exercising their military and
political power, they have brought to the surface some of
the structural violence that previously had been
concealed. The family closet has now been opened,
exposing skeletons of brutal violence. In the process the
terrorists' potential supporters, the dispossessed, begin
to clearly see the nature of the colossus that has been
suppressing them - its ignorance, egotism and cruelty,
and how these qualities can be transformed into
vulnerability when confronted by a consciously united
opposition.
Point no. 3 is another corollary: The
unilateral over-reaction of the US giant has created a
no-lose situation for bin Laden, Taliban leader Mullah
Mohammad Omar, and the al-Qa'ida network. If they elude
their "Great Satan" and survive, they have foiled the
greatest war machine of all time. If they are captured or
killed, they triumph through martyrdom. In either case
they have become symbols for the mobilisation of more
suicide terrorists.
Point no. 4: The arrogance of unilateralism
deprives the surviving superpower of support from its
potential allies. If it wants to eradicate terrorism,
then it must engage in extensive coalition-building of
partners that it treats with respect and equality. Armed
police support is helpful, but arguably most beneficial
is the extensive sharing of intelligence and cooperation
in opening up the banking system. The US must gain the
collaboration of countries that empathise with the pain
it has suffered but stop short of endorsing the
self-righteousness and egocentricism associated with its
outbursts of hubris. The blind hatred and unbridled
desire for vengeance may be explainable but it lacks
justification to those outside the immediate experience
who are more attuned to complexity and subtlety than
drawn to the reductionism of a black/white dichotomy.
Simple-mindedness, when mixed with hubris, has been the
undoing of many political figures long before the younger
Bush stepped into the spotlight.
His administration needs to retreat from the long
litany of unilateralist messages it has been delivering
ever since it gained office - for instance, its rejection
of the Kyoto climatic treaty, its willingness to violate
the biological treaty, its decision to 'unsign' former
President Clinton's signing of the 1998 Treaty of Rome
establishing a permanent International Criminal Court,
its determination to dispense with the 1972 ABM Treaty in
order to proceed with an anti-missile defence system, its
request of Congress to put the nation on a war footing by
increasing the defence budget 12%, its support for heavy
domestic farm subsidies in contravention of its own call
for international free trade and in violation of the
World Trade Organisation's founding principles - all
reflections of a bullying posture doomed to haunt the
nation in its long-term need for durable and dependable
allies.
Point No. 5: Gaining the support of the
leadership in Muslim states poses a dilemma for both the
Muslim rulers and the US government. If the rulers of
states with large Muslim majorities whole-heartedly
endorse the Bush anti-terrorism campaign, their action
may disaffect large sections of their population and
destabilise or even bring down their governments; on the
other hand, if they demonstrate non-cooperation, it is
likely to evoke a hostile reaction from the US that would
endanger their regime. They may be unrewarded or punished
economically, ignored in world economic fora,
diplomatically ostracised, and/or they may be relegated
to the pariah status of belonging to the 'axis of evil.'
The case of the relatively liberal Iranian government
stands out in this respect. The assertion 'you're either
with us or against us' leaves little room for the subtle
manoeuvring of Muslim states to protect their genuine
political interests.
However, the dilemma of the Muslim regime does not end
there, because many see themselves as having a vested
interest in suppressing terrorism. Their adoption of
Western life styles has made them prime targets of the
fundamentalists. Their problems are further compounded
due to the mounting Israeli/Palestinian crisis. Some sort
of response is required, yet it is difficult to placate
both the Americans and the aroused militants within one's
own borders. In all probability it is the Malaysian Prime
Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who is most favourably placed
to endorse the Bush approach to eradicating terrorism.
Defining terrorism as any armed attack on civilians,
Mahathir insists that 'Muslims everywhere must condemn
terrorism once it is clearly defined' (Quoted in
Sheridan, 2002, p. 15). He can voice such a stand, which
promises to reap rich rewards from the US, only because
extreme fundamentalism is relatively dormant within
Malaysia. Most Muslim politicians do not enjoy the same
luxury - a limitation the US needs to fully appreciate
before alienating beyond rectification the leadership in
critical countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
At the same time the US should refrain from
indiscriminately handing out largesse to regimes, simply
because they cooperate in the 'war against terrorism'.
Their definition of terrorism may extend to any form of
dissent raised against their regime, as is happening in
Uzbekistan. [2] In this unfortunate country
brutal suppression and torture are meted out to anyone
daring to voice a criticism of the government's actions.
Yet the US (and the rest of the world) choose to ignore
Uzbekistan's gross violations of human rights, ostensibly
because its airfields and supply bases are needed for the
conduct of the war in Afghanistan. Moreover, the regime's
harsh treatment of its Islamic fundamentalists is easily
overlooked as a necessary tactic in the greater war
against terrorism. (Unreported, 2002).
Short Term Response of
Nonviolence
To develop a coalition that will endure and have
substance, it must be built on a firm foundation that is
both nonviolent in rhetoric and in action. On the
negative side of the rhetorical, it does not
unilaterally proclaim a declaration of war against
terrorism; it does not even seek a joint
declaration of war from the rest of the world. Legally
war can only be declared by one putative state or concert
of states against another putative state or concert of
states. An individual or group without credible
pretensions to statehood cannot be a party to war.
Instead, it engages in violent conflict which is usually
regarded by the state against which it is directed as an
act of criminality. This, in effect, is what happened to
the United States; it was the victim of a most vile
crime, and to dignify it with a declaration of war is
tantamount to bestowing the credibility of state
legitimacy upon the criminals. [3]
There is only one course of politically prudent action
to pursue: acknowledge the deed as the worse crime
ever committed in the US, and then aggregate all one's
resources to rally the support of the international
community in tracking down the suspect or suspects until
they are legally apprehended. This entails collecting
evidence (or intelligence to put it in the vernacular of
the state), and since the crime has international
dimensions, working within the framework of international
law and its recognised procedures. Due to the special
nature of this crime and the extent to which
international cooperation is required, the police action
in capturing and rounding-up the suspects should be
conducted through the United Nations. In short, a law
enforcement issue with national security implications
should be addressed through international
institutions.
To initiate the process the first diplomatic step
should be to enlist the concrete (in contrast to the
rhetorical) support of the world community. To act as a
uni-polar power, declaring a war in which 'you are either
with us or against us' and then embarking on a military
operation, may serve as a cathartic outlet for national
frustration, but it will not gain many allies, even in a
highly worthy cause. And a fundamental objective must be
to secure universal or at least widespread backing for
the police action.
The Dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government,
Joseph Nye, stresses the point that America cannot go it
alone against terrorism; nor can it act as an economic
hegemon or control the growing transnational relations of
non-governmental bodies. 'Any retreat,' he notes, 'to a
traditional focus on unipolarity, hegemony, sovereignty
and unilateralism will fail to produce the right
outcomes' (2002a, p. 4). The problem with terrorism is
that it operates outside the conventional sphere of
military power. To put it in Nye's words:
(T)he metaphor of war should not blind us to the fact
that suppressing terrorism will take years of patient,
unspectacular civilian co-operation with other countries.
The military success in Afghanistan dealt with the
easiest part of the problem, and al-Qu'aida retains cells
in some 50 countries. Rather than proving the
unilateralists' point, the partial nature of the success
in Afghanistan illustrates the continuing need for
cooperation (2002b, p. 24).
Author Salmon Rushdie argues along the same lines. He
is reported to have warned the US that now 'is not the
time to go it alone.' Its unilateral military response
breeds anti-Americanism, especially amongst Arabs and
Muslims who in the face of Western dominance are
experiencing a great sense of impotence (Kelly,
2002).
Hence the first parts of a nonviolence strategy are to
see September 11 as a criminal act (not calling for a
declaration of war) and from there to commence the
process of coalition-building to capture the criminals
and bring them to justice. The collection of shared
evidence that points toward certain suspects should be
brought before the UN and disclosed to the entire world.
The next step is to have an international tribunal set up
to deal with any suspects charged by the UN; and it is
before this tribunal that appeals for extradition can be
lodged, compelling countries that are harbouring the
suspects to turn them over to the special terrorism
tribunal for a fair trial. Failure of a country to comply
for whatever reason would effect a UN police action not
only to apprehend the criminals but to bring to justice
anyone acting in the role of an accessory, including
governmental leaders.
Admittedly, achieving the unity for such a strategy
will not be easy. There are many constituencies that
either openly or silently applaud what happened to the
US. This has already been noted in a preceding passage.
Unfortunately, the course of action that has been taken
has given impetus to the growth of these constituencies.
While the Taliban has been deposed, its heirs and the
dispossessed of the world are building up pressures of
greater anger that are likely to be released in future
attacks on American cities resulting in casualties, not
in thousands but in hundreds of thousands, perhaps even
in millions. This is the scenario layed out at a recent
security forum at Harvard (Kelly, 2002) and later
confirmed by Vice-President Dick Cheney on a US Sunday
talk-show (Eccleston, 2002). Therefore, everything
possible should be done to lessen the cultivating of so
much hatred.
When the UN police force captures accused suspects
(some persons will be killed, including the police, as
happens in domestic police raids), the accused will be
handed over for prosecution before the previously
designated International Court of Justice. None of this
will be easy, and critics can no doubt raise numerous
objections. Nonetheless, in response it can be said that
the alternative, which we are currently witnessing,
augurs a far worse prospect.
Another criticism - in this case one which the
nonviolent purist might raise - is that the use of
violent police work does not constitute a nonviolent
action. To this I can only respond that while generically
they may be correct, in order to maintain a peaceful
world (like a peaceful nation) criminals (who lamentably
do exist) must be brought to justice, and sometimes
violence becomes the instrument of last resort. The
violent action, however, is always undertaken with the
proviso that it is confined to defence when physically
attacked or clearly threatened with a menacing attack.
Thus only when the suspect violently resists arrest can
there be a physical transgression of the nonviolent
ethic. Otherwise the exercise is conducted nonviolently
in deed, as well as in spirit, at all times.
In conjunction with the forging of a nonviolent
strategy featuring police and court actions whose
effectiveness depends on the creation of a wide
coalition, there are paradoxically some unilateral
actions that the US should be encouraged to initiate.
They all take the form of restraints. The US should cut
back on its military subsidies for Israel until that
state returns the occupied territories and no longer
enforces its aggression with terror against the
Palestinians. The US can support Israel's legitimate
security concerns by acting as its ultimate
guarantor.
Still in the Middle East, the US should withdraw its
military forces based in Saudi Arabia. They do not
stabilise the region. They even pose a threat to the
House of Saud which could suddenly disintegrate from
internal protests, as so often happens to highly armed
authoritarian regimes - to wit, the shah of Iran,
President Marcos of the Philippines, President Milosevic
of Serbia, and the communist governments in Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union (all of which primarily
succumbed to the power of nonviolence). There are also
cutbacks to be made to the US military budget, to
existing stockpiles of weapons and to the development of
new high tech instruments of warfare. A special emphasis
should be placed on controlling, with a view to
abolishing, the very profitable trade in armaments.
However, as Paul Rogers argues:
None of the major arms exporting countries has
seriously addressed...the conversion of defence
industries to civil production. Until this begins to get
under way, efforts to erect ethical foreign policies
towards arms sales will have little effect (2000, p.
121).
If a strategy of US armament restraint, combined with
the initiation of an international law enforcement agency
to capture terrorist suspects for questioning and then
arraigning them for possible prosecution, still seems
highly untenable (given the prevailing paradigm of
preserving national sovereignty at all costs), certainly
there can be no objection to trying the following
minimalist, first step, proposed by Majid Tehranian, head
of the TODA Institute for Global Peace and Policy
Research. He suggests:
At this historical juncture, what the world needs is
not another state-centered alliance to promote particular
national or regional interests. What the world
desperately needs now is a transnational civil-society
movement for global peace and democracy vis-a-vis the
polarized world politics of state and non-state
terrorism. To address the current crisis, world political
and moral leaders should get together. To name only a
few, such leaders may include Kofi Anan, Nelson Mandela,
Mary Robinson, Vaclav Havel, Abdul Rahman Wahid, Mohammad
Khatami, Desmond Tutu, Daisaku Ikeda, Hans Kung, Mikhail
Gorbachev, Jose Ramos-Horta, Aung Sun Suu Kyi, Dalai
Lama, Jody Williams, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Joseph
Rotblat, Elie Wiesel, and Oscar Aria (mostly Nobel Peace
Laureates). Unless such leaders can propose alternative
voices and policies to the shrill voices on the extreme
right or the left, the world will have no moral and
political center on which to rely (Tehranian, 2002).
Despite the fact that the Bush administration is most
unlikely to change freely the basics of its strategy, the
Tehranian proposal has much to offer as an initial step
for putting the world back on a sane track. The group of
highly respected persons he has nominated would command
the international attention to open up an earnest debate.
Afterwards, the short-to-medium nonviolent strategy set
out above, if accepted by such a conclave, would enjoy
the credibility to represent a truly viable alternative
for an international movement to adopt.
Long Term Response of
Nonviolence
A long term strategy must be directed, to the fullest
extent possible, at the root causes of the terrorism. By
removing the causes, it vitiates the constituency from
which Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qu'aida forces, as well
as other terrorist groups, recruit members into the
network. The potential new members constitute the upper
and middle classes in the Arab and Muslim world and the
declasse of the Third World. The former are
attracted to Islamic fundamentalism because they see it
as an antidote to the crass materialism and secularism
associated with Western modernism. The evil of the 'Great
Satan' has been diffused throughout the world. It
threatens to destroy a rich historic culture and
specifically to deprive them of their sense of identity.
The 'Great Satan's work is most flagitiously exhibited in
the expulsion of the Palestinians from their Homeland.
Therefore any country that sides with the Jews and
Americans becomes an immediate target of Islamic
terrorism. As bin Laden trumpeted on a recent video
clip:
The war is between us and the Jews. Any
country that steps into the same trench as the Jews
has only herself to blame....I wish I would go to
jihad and die (Gadher & Eccleston, 2002, p. 5).
The US administration may be reluctant to grasp the
implication of such fanatical hubris, but it points to a
truth they need to acknowledge. That same truth was
expressed - but without the same insolence and enmity -
by a Saudi prince when he presented Mayor Giuliani of New
York City with a cheque for over one million US dollars
to help relieve the suffering that followed the September
11 attack. While the two men gazed out over the rubble
where once the Twin Towers stood, the prince added
(perhaps not judiciously but sincerely) that he hoped the
US would soon come to have a more even-handed approach to
the Palestinian question. The remark so enraged Mayor
Giuliani that he publicly rejected the donation on the
spot. Not only was his reaction, in my opinion, an
extremely rude and most ungracious response to what was
intended to be a genuine expression of sympathy, but it
indicates the long way the American elite have to go
before they come to appreciate that other people have
different perspectives from which some Americans, if they
showed some tolerance, might be able to learn
something.
The second category of new recruits for terrorism -
the two billion victims of globalisation living on $2 a
day or less (Henderson, 2001) - share the same economic
fate as the Palestinians. In addition, some share the
religious affinity. The world's dispossessed constitute a
force that not only can be tapped into for an unlimited
supply of suicidal bombers but those that do not become
terrorists, for whatever reason, represent a sizeable
body of sympathisers and sideline spectators ready to
offer moral and logistical support. If the UN
member-states, on the other hand, were able to come
together and seriously commit themselves to ending world
poverty, the dispossessed could conceivably even become a
positive force in the struggle against terrorism.
Metaphorically, the head or terrorist leadership would be
severed from its body, the world's poor.
Far greater crimes against humanity are committed
EVERY DAY than what occurred on that ONE DAY of September
11, but the principal culprits, the elites of America and
Europe, go virtually unchallenged. Yet they put in place
policies that lead to the deaths from malnutrition of
40,000 babies every day in the Third World (Barash, 1991,
p. 528). The gap between rich and poor is growing every
year, and with it comes the destruction of peoples lives,
their land, and their culture. Most of this violence
falls upon those living in the LDCs. For the West to
reverse the human dysfunctionality of globalisation and
focus on the human needs of all the world's people, a
nonviolent movement of massive global proportions will
have to come from the grassroots. Re-structuring of the
global system will not self-generate from the
transnational corporations (TNCs). Nor is it likely that
governments will be in the forefront of radical
change.
The first actions will probably depend on the
concerned people in the affluent nations because they
have the human and material resources necessary to ignite
such a movement. But eventually it will have to be
activated throughout the world, and the leadership
ultimately emanate from the victims. What the nonviolent
activists of the First World can do is pressure their
governments to skew their budgets away from excessive
military outlays and the granting of tax benefits and
outright subsidies to the privileged class. From the
savings obtained in this manner a national tithe could be
allocated for UN peacekeeping and peacebuilding
operations. The latter would, among other things,
concentrate on the eradication of poverty, developing
programs that are planned and controlled by the poor
themselves. Besides the role of providing monies and
technical assistance for sustainable development, the
First World can greatly assist the Third to become
self-sufficient by genuinely opening up free trade around
the globe, a policy long advocated by the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) (Chomsky,
1999; Adams, 1993; Coote, 1992; Watkins, 1998).
All of this is far removed from what the US leadership
is currently thinking. Indeed, as Jan Oberg commented
about the president's State of the Union address in
January, not a word was mentioned,
that the US is willing to help alleviate
world poverty, AIDS, and health and sanitation
problems for the world's underprivileged. Expressions
such as "basic human needs", "global development",
"global environment problems" are not mentioned
once....There is no mention of the economic power
concentration in Multinational Corporations (MNCs), or
of the military-industrial complex which President
Eisenhower once upon a time had the courage to mention
as a problem. Finally, the word democracy is absent
(2002).
In order to remove the conditions that breed success
for terrorism, the nonviolent movement needs to galvanise
its efforts behind NGOs already committed to overcoming
poverty and repression. It should support groups whose
aim is to remove the divide that sees one-fifth of the
world's population living in wealth and material
splendour (surpassing the opulence of any Eastern
potentate of old) while two-fifths of the world are
submerged in abject poverty and another two-fifths are
struggling desperately to barely maintain a decent life
above the poverty line (Hurrell & Woods, 1999;
Gorringe, 1999; George, 1999).
The type of program that the nonviolent movement wants
to support is that recently launched by OXFAM
International to make trade fair to all nations.
According to a report released by OXFAM in early April,
only one country, New Zealand, has fully opened its
markets to all products exported by the LDCs. The report
claims:
When developing countries export to rich
country markets, they face tariff barriers that are
four times higher than those encountered by rich
countries. Those barriers cost them $100 billion a
year - twice as much as they receive in aid (OXFAM,
2002, p. 5).
The World Trade Organisation is seen as a big part of
the problem because of its 'bias in favour of the
self-interest of rich countries and big corporations' (p.
6). If Africa, East Asia, South Asia and Latin America
were able to increase their share of world exports by a
mere one per cent, 128 million people would be lifted out
of poverty. A five per cent raise would decrease poverty
by almost a billion people. The biggest irony is that
while the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
are constantly pressuring the poor countries to open
their markets, the US, Canada, Japan and the EU are
either subsidising or imposing tariff barriers on their
agricultural and textile products that shut down their
markets to outside trade. OXFAM's remedy is to apply
pressure on First World governments to honour their free
trade principles. It also wants to create international
commodity institutions to promote diversification and end
oversupply in order to raise the price of
commodities.
Opening up trade is only one way that concerned NGOs
are campaigning to close the wealth/poverty divide. Many
are also calling for debt cancellation free of
conditions. Setting good governance and socially just
conditions for the LDCs to meet before receiving relief
is hardly justified when the creditor nations have
themselves for decades been restricting development
opportunities.
Among the threats LDCs constantly face is a sudden
economic downturn from speculation in the currency and
bond markets. Trading can reach as high as $1.5 trillion
dollars a day. To control the excesses of such short-term
speculation and provide funds that could be used to
reduce poverty and assist in development, the Tobin tax -
named after the late James Tobin, a Nobel Laureate - has
been proposed. It would be levied on each transaction. A
rate of one-quarter of one per cent it is estimated would
bring in revenues of well over US$100 billion annually
(Rogers, 2000, p. 122).
Other groups in the affluent countries to whom
nonviolent support can be rendered include labour unions
that are attempting to raise the appalling working
conditions and low wages paid in most of the LDCs. In
particular, efforts needs to be directed toward helping
the International Labor Office strengthen its programme
of protecting workers' rights and ending the wage slavery
of children.
Beyond its strategy of pressuring governments and
supporting NGOs engaged in reducing the gross
inequalities of wealth, the nonviolent movement should
focus its attention on directly educating the public in
both the First and Third Worlds about the full impact of
neoliberalism's structural violence. Through social
activism - such as recently occurred in Seattle, Quebec
City, Genoa and Melbourne - people not only inform
others. In the process they also reclaim their own rights
as citizens rather than as consumers. They begin a
redefinition of democracy as a global movement meeting
everyone's human needs, not a global market confined to
serving an elite's greed. But experimenting with new
possibilities and creating a people-oriented paradigm for
all demands that the old paradigm is first understood and
discarded. That task becomes one of overcoming the
corporate control of public opinion and bringing to light
the latent terrorism that has been going on for decades
against the poor.
It is information like the following that the movement
needs to make known and have discussed:
- US economic projection abroad, accompanied by
political and military strong-arm measures, led the
International Court of Justice to condemn 'the US for
"unlawful use of force" (against Nicaragua), ordering
Washington to cease its international terrorism,
violation of treaties, and illegal economic warfare, and
to pay substantial reparations' (Chomsky, 2000, p. 73).
Needless to say, the US refused to recognise the Court's
legitimacy, roundly denouncing it as a 'hostile forum.'
Indeed, in defiance the US reacted by accelerating its
campaign of terror.
- Since March 1960, the US has been engaged in a
covert and sometimes open attempt to overthrow the
government of Cuba and assassinate its president, but 'in
such a manner,' cites Chomsky, 'as to avoid any
appearance of US intervention' (2000, p. 80). Incredibly,
Washington now has the gall to refer to Cuba as part of
an 'axis of evil.'
- It is widely acknowledged today that the US
government, through the surreptitious initiatives of its
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the clandestine
operations of the CIA, was deeply involved in the 1973
bloody overthrow of Chile's democratically elected
socialist government of President Salvador Allende. What
is not so well known is that the day of this fateful
coup, which marked the beginning of the 17 year 'reign of
terror' of self-proclaimed President Augusto Pinochet,
was coincidentally the morning of September 11.
- Terrorism has long been an instrument for advancing
the 'national interest' as defined by America's ruling
class. While US laws provide severe penalties for the
crime of terrorism, 'one will find no wording that
exempts "the architects of power" from punishment for
their exercises of state terror, not to speak of their
monstrous clients....Suharto, Saddam Hussein, Mobutu,
Noriega, and others great and small' (Chomsky, 2000, p.
146).
- The death toll from the collapse of the Trade
Towers, the Pennsylvania plane crash and the strike on
the Pentagon is reported at around 3,000, a ghastly
tragedy by any reckoning. Yet, as already noted, it pales
into insignificance when compared to the number of poor
children that die every day from malnutrition and
preventative diseases related primarily to the economic
decisions of Western elites. These daily deaths, which
number about 13 times more than the September 11
fatalities, raise barely a murmur of objection in the
globally controlled media. Nor has the mass media seen
fit to publish some startling figures released by the
United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of
Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR). Its research, as Rosalie
Bertell conservatively extrapolates, indicates that
radiation traced to all nuclear activity between 1943 and
1990 has or will cause 9.6 million deaths and 20.9
million serious casualties. Putting this death toll
statistic in perspective, Dr. Bertell notes it comes to
more than 3,000 times the number of people who died on
September 11 (2002). The nuclear powers, of course, are
the wealthy nations. It is their rich and powerful elites
who have been able to commit such an ineffable crime of
terror against the vulnerable of the world with complete
impunity.
- The number of gross injustices that the West commits
in the name of its citizens is almost endless - far, far
too many to catalogue in this article. Suffice it to say
the evidence of Western violence against the poor and
vulnerable in pursuit of narrow political and economic
interests is well recorded in countless books, films and
documents. It is not restricted solely to the writings of
assiduous researchers like Noam Chomsky and Rosalie
Bertell.
The challenge for nonviolent activists is to make this
information available to the general public and have it
take hold. Only when the world's consciousness reaches a
critical mass will the gravity of the problem be
transformed into effective mass action. Only then will
the enormous hidden terror that breeds the visible
suicide terror be contained or ended.
Acting on the measured reflection that a global
society more just and more free is possible - one that
will no longer nurture into adulthood suicide bombers in
the same way the world no longer socialises human beings
into becoming owners of chattel slaves - is a task
reserved for the grassroots. To wait for such a society
to be handed down by the privileged and powerful falls
into the realm of fantasy. It will have to be claimed and
struggled for nonviolently.
Conclusion
The alternative strategy adumbrated in this article
contains within itself the kind of world worth striving
for. It answers to life triumphing over death, rejecting
the Bush path of my righteous sword [4]
overpowering your evil terror. It seeks to address the
root causes of terror rather than limit its response to
suppressing the manifest symptoms. It aims to avoid the
pitfall of piling retributive justice upon retributive
justice. Down that path, as Martin Luther King so
eloquently proclaims in the passage leading into this
article, lies 'a descending spiral of destruction...the
chain reaction of evil...(which) must be broken, or we
shall be plunged into the darkness of annihilation.' With
weapons of ever increasing destruction available to an
ever increasing number of groups and individuals, failure
to heed King's warning can mean nothing less than the
eventual extinction of the human race.
Without, however, wanting to sound too apocalyptic, it
should be obvious that a strategy of compassion and
nonviolence applied with the judgement of good sense
offers the best prospects for the defeat of hate and its
manifestation of terrorism. The broad contours of such a
strategy have been attempted in this article. Now I
welcome your critical and constructive comments. I can be
reached by snail mail at School of Political Science and
International Studies, University of Queensland 4072, or
on email <r.summy@mailbox.uq.edu.au>
Endnotes
1. The demonstrations that greeted President Bush
during his visits to Rome, Berlin and Paris are
indicative of the genesis of a movement that may be
sustained. It is also significant of an undercurrent of
protest that Michael Moore's book, Stupid White
Men, should have topped the NY Times
non-fiction best sellers' list.
2. Uzbekistan was the only state besides Israel to
support the US rejection of a November 1996 General
Assembly resolution calling for an end to the American
embargo on Cuba. Thus the debt of turning a blind eye to
Uzbekistan atrocities goes back a number of years.
3. The word 'war' is often used in rhetorical
discourse such as in 'war on poverty' and 'war on crime',
but its usage in these cases does not conflict with a
legal definition that carries enormous political
significance. Thus when a sovereign state is challenged
for sovereign control within its borders, it demeans its
opponents with the epithet of 'rebel' or 'outlaw'.
4. The use of the metaphor 'righteous sword' does not
fall outside the American idiom. It is given full rein in
the stirring words of the ever popular Battle Hymn of
the Republic: 'Mine eyes have seen the glory of the
coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where
the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the
fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth
is marching on.' And it concludes with the call that 'As
He (Christ) died to make men holy, let us die to make men
free.' In the great battle of freedom God's sword is on
our side. But does this mean that the concept of 'His
terrible swift sword' is just another expression for a
Christian 'jihad'?
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About the
Author
Ralph Summy is retired. He lectured for many years at
the University of Queensland where he coordinated the
peace and conflict studies programme. The last three
years of his professional career were spent at the
University of Hawai'i as the Director of the Matsunaga
Institute for Peace. He now researches, writes, guest
lectures, coordinates the Nonviolence
Commission of the International Peace Research
Association, travels, plays tennis, and, most
importantly, continues to serve on the Editorial
Collective of Social Alternatives.
BLOW UPS TO CONSIDER
- To only denounce the US response may help to
shed light on the problem but it provides little in the
way of an enlightened solution.
An over-reaction that wipes out the innocent along
with the guilty and undermines civil liberties in the
name of security, can only reward a crazed enemy with
more recruits destined for paradise.
The puerile cowboy behaviour of a simpleton President
taps into a well-defined tradition of messianic zeal.
'You can bomb the world to pieces, but you can't bomb
it into peace.'
The unilateral over-reaction of the US giant has
created a no-lose situation for bin Laden, Taliban leader
Mullah Mohammad Omar, and the al-Qa'ida network.
The first parts of a nonviolence strategy are to see
September 11 as a criminal act (not calling for a
declaration of war) and from there to commence the
process of coalition-building to capture the criminals
and bring them to justice before an international
court.
A long term strategy must be directed...at the root
causes of the terrorism. By removing the causes, it
vitiates the constituency from which Osama bin Laden and
his Al-Qu'aida forces, as well as other terrorist groups,
recruit members into the network.
Copyright © 2002 TFF
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