|
If it were possible to quantify all the causal factors, the predatory economic and political activities of the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East over the past 100 years might well account for 90% of the causes of terrorist attacks against them, including 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7. These predatory activities have infuriated successive generations of indigenous populations throughout the Middle East by preventing them from acquiring political and civil rights, or fully exercising their right to develop sustainable livelihoods and grassroots economies. A quantitative analysis, were one possible, might well also show that the remaining 10% of the causes of terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its allies can be attributed to the adoption by radical Islamists of an Islamic veneer to voice and legitimize their grievances against the U.S. and its allies, justify the use of force against "soft targets" to terrorize their enemies, raise money and recruit operatives. Military retaliation by the U.S. government and its allies for recent terrorist attacks has proven to be a counterproductive failure by swelling the ranks of terrorist networks, increasing terrorist attacks around the world, and causing the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians. Terrorist attacks against the West will continue, spread and increase in frequency around the world until global civil society intervenes to establish and deploy nonaligned multilateral forces comprised of nongovernmental organizations and nation-states committed to human rights. Only these forces are capable of brokering permanent ceasefires in terrorist conflicts, administering emergency humanitarian assistance, and providing long-term policing and technical support that empowers indigenous peoples to acquire and exercise political and civil rights, and develop sustainable livelihoods and grassroots economies. The Third Force Network is designed to assist global civil society constituents, activists and nongovernmental organizations leverage the Internet and its 900,000,000 users to mobilize their political forces to develop, fund and deploy these multilateral forces wherever they are needed.
A Rude Awakening 1. Global shifts in public awareness after 9/11 Dramatic shifts in public understanding occurred after the attacks on the World Trade Centers in New York on September 11, 2001. The first came with the general public's realization that the attacks were part of a long-standing armed conflict between two major groups that had been underway for more than a decade. They discovered that one of these groups is a non-state transnational network known as al Qaeda, and the other is a U.S.-led group of Western and Middle Eastern nation-states. While many people were aware that sporadic attacks had been launched abroad against unarmed citizens and U.S. diplomatic and military forces, it was not until the attacks of 9/11 took place on the U.S. mainland that the public began to realize that all of the attacks were part of a deeply-rooted global conflict between the U.S.-led group and the transnational network, whose seeds had been sown during the first half of the 20th century. Although the U.S. government had started to take retaliatory military actions abroad against the transnational network in the late 1990's, most people had never heard the name "al Qaeda" until after the attacks of 9/11 when U.S. President Bush accused it of having perpetrated the attacks. Despite the fact that U.S. government agencies had received numerous warnings that al Qaeda operatives were planning to attack U.S. mainland targets, this information was not shared with the general public before the attacks of 9/11, nor was it used to develop plans to foil or respond to these specific attacks if they occurred. A second shift in public understanding, equally dramatic, came with popular realization that this unprecedented global conflict would inevitably trap unarmed civilians in a crossfire of attacks and counterattacks in densely-populated areas, launched by the transnational network and the military forces of their own governments against network suspects. Military conflicts would no longer be conducted by traditional armed forces in well-demarcated war zones across visible enemy lines. Instead, in the post 9/11 world, they would be fought by clandestine operatives and guerilla warriors from both the U.S.-led group and the transnational network launching surprise attacks against each other that would hit civilians and suspected enemy combatants alike. In the years immediately following 9/11, warnings of attacks and actual attacks became commonplace, causing mounting civilian casualties throughout the world. The Bush administration declared a global "war on terrorism" and began large-scale military operations in Afghanistan to uproot terrorist groups operating in that region. It also invaded and occupied Iraq, an invasion that United Nations Secretary General Kofi Anan declared illegal according to international law. U.S. use of unmanned aircraft equipped with explosives increased its global footprint by enabling it to attack and kill suspects deep inside other countries' borders. Al Qaeda rapidly scaled up its forces and showed that its operatives and sympathizers, like those who carried out terrorist attacks in Madrid, Spain in March, 2004, are capable of carrying out surprize attacks against military and civilian targets in a broad range of countries around the world. Given the shift to new technologies of war accessible to small groups, including nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction that can be launched by lone individuals, the steady stream of warnings and attacks served as a grim reminder that citizens can no longer rely on their own governments to keep them out of harm's way, either at home or abroad. By the middle of the decade, the U.S. "war on terrorism" had spread around the world causing tens of thousands of casualties that far exceeded 9/11 casualties. (Note: The terms "terrorism" and "terrorist" are used in this paper to refer to acts and perpetrators of acts that are designed to influence, intimidate or coerce others, and/or obtain military and psychological advantages over adversaries. These acts include intimidation, threats of physical attacks and attacks themselves that injure or kill civilians and combatants, and/or create fear, civil disorder, chaos or a climate of opinion that induces changes in conduct. Such acts can include suicide-bombing and plane hijacking by attackers who die with their victims, torture, conventional military force and the use of weapons of mass destruction.) 2. Diverging opinions about the root causes of terrorism, and how to stop it As these new realizations dawned on vulnerable civilian populations around the world, many people began raising fundamental questions about the long-standing terrorist conflict in which the two groups were engaged. By 2004, a striking chasm had emerged in world public opinion that divided the world into two lopsided camps regarding the root causes of the attacks of 9/11, and the effectiveness of the military strategy being pursued by the U.S.-led group to prevent future attacks. According to public opinion polls described below that were conducted immediately after the attacks, the members of the smaller camp believe that the attacks were caused by a "small, radical group". More than half of the U.S. adult population belong in this smaller camp. The members of the larger of the two camps believe that the attacks of 9/11 were caused by adverse economic and political conditions in the Middle East. This camp consists primarily of non-U.S. residents and world leaders, and less than half of the American public. The members of this larger camp of world opinion view the economic and foreign policies of the U.S. as factors contributing to these adverse conditions. They also believe that the use of force by the U.S.-led group is proving to be counterproductive in eliminating leaders and operatives belonging to the transnational network. 3. Mission of the Third Force Network The Third Force Network is designed to provide the members of this larger camp of world public opinion an effective alternative to the use of force to stop violence and terrorism. It will enable them to become part of the global civil society movement, and join civil society constituents, activists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and their allies around the world to prevent future terrorist attacks and retaliatory attacks like those of 9/11 in New York, 3/11 in Madrid amd 7/7 in London, and those launched by the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan and Iraq, by eradicating the root causes of individual and collective violence and terrorism.(1) The Network is also designed to help them replace unilateral forces deployed in the U.S. "war against terrorism", which violate international law, with nonaligned multilateral forces that respect international law. These forces will be comprised of nation-states, transnational NGOs and their allies who are committed to protecting human rights and human security rather than national security, and resolving conflicts nonviolently. Through the Network's Grassroots Hotline, NGO Emergency Requests Helpline, Livelihood Lifeline, and Third Force Network Bank described below, the Network will help NGOs raise money to finance their participation in nonaligned multinational forces that can broker and enforce cease-fires and peace accords. These multinational operations will eradicate the economic and political causes of terrorism by helping indigenous peoples build sustainable livelihoods and grassroots economies that generate and retain wealth at the local level, and engender democratic decision-making.
The Third Force Network will address global power shifts that have created deepening conflicts among the major forces that shape human affairs and international relations, placing civilians in harm's way on a scale unprecedented in human history. Two of these forces, the nation-state and the market economy, grew up along side emerging civil society and the ordinary people who comprise it, and the nongovernmental organizations who work on their behalf outside of government and the marketplace. Within the past 100 years, however, these two forces have begun to dominate civil society in many countries around the world to such an extent that they have dramatically increased global poverty, insecurity, violence, warfare and terrorism.(See the seminal analysis of this global economic and political power shift by Robert W. Cox, "Globalization, Multilateralism, and Democracy").(1) Civil society is commonly understood to comprise individuals and groups favoring the use of reason over force to resolve differences, and the rule of democratically-formulated laws to govern human affairs and protect human rights. Formulating and enforcing laws is viewed in this context to be the province of popularly-elected representatives who are voted into office through free and fair elections. Organizationally, civil society is understood to comprise millions of voluntary organizations that work on its behalf, meeting needs that are not met by government or the marketplace, and solving problems that government and the marketplace have neglected, failed to solve, or created in the first place. As the Secretary General of Civicus, Kumi Naidoo, has pointed out, civil society includes a broad array of heterogeneous civic institutions that go well beyond community-based organizations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and individual civil society constituents who are active in the public sphere to protect and promote the interests of civil society. (2) These institutions include trade unions, foundations, affinity groups such as gender-based and religious groups, and social movements and networks. Of increasing importance is the growing number of transnational NGOs that now number in the tens of thousands, whose vital work is cross-national in scope. As discussed below, they not only provide a wealth of direct services to civil society constituents, but play an increasingly pivotal role in influencing the formulation, implementation and enforcement of policies that protect human economic, political and social security within and across borders. As Keck and Sinkkink have pointed out in a pioneering study, these transnational NGOs band together and form alliances with a variety of partners in the public and private sectors. Such alliances enable these organizations to pick and choose from the full range of political influence strategies and tactics those needed to build consensus within and across borders and continents. This flexibility enables them to attain transnational objectives that often overcome the initial objections of particular nation-states and inter-governmental organizations, in what Keck and Sinkkink refer to as a "boomerange effect". (3) (See Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, 1998). Because of the growing political influence of these transnational organizations, they are increasingly referred to as a political movement, a global civil society movement, even though they do not have or need a centralized governing structure, as discussed below. The Third Force Network is designed to promote the transformation of the global civil society movement into a politically-powerful third force capable of defending the interests of civil society against nation-states and market forces that jeopardize them. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the U.S.-declared "war on terrorism" are a case in point. Historically and chronologically, in Western Europe and North America, the political struggles and economic productivity of the individuals who were part of emerging civil society created the governmental and economic institutions belonging to the first and second forces that now prevail around the world. Civil society emerged after the feudal era in Western Europe as common people gained ascendancy over feudal lords, and gradually began separating the secular realm from the control of organized religions. They delegated their sovereign power to governmental officials they elected so that these officials could make and execute laws in their name. Their labor created the second force, the market economy, by producing goods, services and wealth that in turn led to the establishment of economic and financial institutions through which enterprises could be financed and transactions could be carried out locally, regionally and transnationally. By the opening of the 21st century, however, the first and second forces appear to have turned the tables on civil society and the individuals from whom they originally derived their power and influence. In many countries that were once considered democracies, first and second force institutions now exert a determining, unaccountable and often adverse influence over the lives and livelihoods of the countries' citizens. In many countries that do not have robust civil societies, democracies, sustainable economies or needed livelihoods, first and second force influences are interfering with their development. While these power shifts appear to be the result of inherent and inexorable generic processes that foster first and second force dominance, equally powerful generic forces make it inevitable that civil society will eventually reassert itself and become the dominant force. After all, the rights of the citizenry, and the earning power and productive capacity of working people, are the original sources of the political and financial power that first and second force institutions and actors have accumulated to attain their 21st century dominance. Moreover, the number of working people and civil society constituents all over the world drawfs the number of first and second force actors. If the political power of the citizenry is severely curtailed, they will mobilize their political resources to outmaneuver and oust their oppressors. If their buying power is severely diminished and they cannot buy the products and services offered by second force institutions and actors, these institutions and actors will go bankrupt. 21st century terrorist conflicts will further fuel the resurgence of civil society as people realize that their own governments cannot protect them even through the use of overwhelming military force and the killing and detention of large numbers of suspected terrorists abroad. These conflicts and casualties, which have claimed the lives of more than 100,000 innocent civilians in Iraq alone, are forcing civil society constituents to realize that they must act through their own nongovernmental organizations to protect themselves from the crossfires in which terrorist networks and their own governments and economic institutions have trapped them. They are also realizing that their best strategy for stoping these conflicts is to join, support, fund and help shape the priorities of NGOs who can take initiatives with others to create nonaligned multilateral forces that can define and implement their own mandates with those who need their help. For only these forces can intervene to negotiate and enforce cease-fires in terrorist conflicts, and provide long-term policing to enforce international laws that protect human rights and security. These citizens and civil society constituents will support NGOs that can operate on the ground to stop violent conflicts by providing emergency relief and livelihood support to destitute populations and combatants willing to lay down their arms. They will finance organizations that know how to facilitate local efforts to create self-reliant, democractic communities and sustainable indigenous economies and livelihoods that can eventually be integrated into national, regional and global economies through non-predatory economic development and fair trade practices. In short, civil society constituents and transnational NGOs will put civil society in charge of human affairs.
Notes
The Emergence of Two Camps 4. Polarized worldviews The post-9/11 emergence of two sharply divided camps of world public opinion, with the largest located outside the U.S., was preceded by sharp divisions in the views of world leaders. One year after the attacks of 9/11, Roman Catholic Pope John Paul II expressed the views of the larger camp of world public opinion when he asserted that the roots of terrorism grow out of scandalous conditions of injustice, oppression and marginalization that afflict large parts of the world.(1) He warned that the world cannot disregard the underlying causes that lead young people to such despair that they fall prey to violence, hatred and a desire for revenge at any cost. In contrast, U.S. President Bush expressed a divergent point of view that dismissed economic and political conditions as root causes. In a November, 2002 interview for Radio Free Europe, he specifically rejected poverty as the sole or even a main cause of terrorism. He asserted that "terrorists" are a "group of fanatics" and "killers" who hate America because of the country's love of freedom. He acknowledged that they use poverty as a tool for recruitment, but he insisted that poverty does not cause killers to exist. He said he hoped people do not confuse the mentality of the terrorist leaders with economic plight, because these leaders live comfortably, and some of them are actually "rich".(2) Public opinion polls conducted in the years immediately following the attacks of 9/11 show that public opinion became sharply divided along the lines of these two diverging points of view expressed by Pope John Paul and President Bush. The members of the first, smaller camp of U.S. residents hold the same views as the U.S. president and his administration. They, too, believe that the U.S.-declared "war on terrorism" was provoked by "a small, radical group". And they also support the use of military force by the U.S., including unilateral pre-emptive strikes, to eliminate the leaders, operatives and supporters of the transnational network.(3) In contrast, the members of the larger, second camp, which consists primarily of non-U.S. residents and approximately 40% of U.S. residents, believe that the underlying roots of the conflict are adverse economic and political conditions. As discussed below, they also believe that the attacks of 9/11 are the result of U.S policies abroad that failed to alleviate these conditions, or made them worse.(4)
Notes 5. Popular doubts about U.S. motives in declaring a "war on terrorism" In addition to these negative views regarding the impact of U.S. economic and foreign policies on non-Western developing nations, surveys show that non-U.S. residents are also doubtful of the reasons the Bush administration gives for fighting its "war on terrorism". Many believe the administration has exaggerated the threat posed by the conflict between the U.S.-led group and the al Qaeda network in order to justify its pursuit of other objectives. These include increasing its influence around the world and invading Iraq in order to gain control of its oil.(1) Majorities in 7 out of 9 countries surveyed believe that controlling Middle East oil supplies was an important motivation behind U.S. occupation of Iraq. In more recent polls, the members of the second camp, the larger of the two, express the view that the use of force by the U.S. and its allies is proving to be ineffective, and share the opinions of intelligence experts who think it is exacerbating and spreading the conflict. By pre-emptively invading a sovereign country, causing tens of thousands of civilian casualties, and detaining and abusing thousands of civilians suspected of being combatants, many of whom are Muslims, they believe U.S. use of force is inflaming Muslim passions, and helping al Qaeda attract new sympathizers and recruit new operatives. In addition, U.S. actions are believed to have weakened collective security and isolated the U.S. from its traditional allies, with the exception of the United Kingdom. Non-U.S. residents surveyed who believe that U.S. policies have made the world more dangerous also believe that their own governments should undertake defensive actions to guard against possible U.S. incursions into their countries and regions.(2) They think their own governments should take measures to develop defensive regional alliances independently of the U.S. By mid 2005, these preferences were increasingly reflected in policies establishing and strengthening regional alliances designed to outflank and exclude the U.S. (See Tom Engelhardt, "Winners and Losers: Moving Out of the Superpower Orbit " 3 May 2005 (3); and Associated Press, "At Brazil summit, a challenge to U.S. influence: Arab and S. Americans seek greater benefits from globalization", 10 May 2005. )
Notes 6. Rich versus poor: the U.S. role in sowing the seeds of terrorism In contrast to the Bush administration'espoused view that terrorism is caused by a small group of fanatics that can be rooted out by military force, 3 out of 5 non-U.S. residents who were asked if U.S. policies are considered by many or most ordinary people to be "a major cause" of the 9/11 attacks agreed that they are considered a major cause. In contrast, only 1 in 5 U.S. residents surveyed said many or most people consider U.S. policies a major cause, revealing a growing chasm between the U.S. and the rest of the world. More pointedly, non-U.S. residents expressed the view that the U.S. bears some responsibility for the gap between rich and poor, and that the world's wealthiest country does too little to assist those who have the least. Although non-U.S. residents think U.S. policies are a major cause of the attacks of 9/11 and that the U.S. should do more to help the poor abroad, it is striking to note that many Americans attach less importance than they did before 9/11 to U.S. support of efforts to raise living standards abroad, alleviate world hunger, prevent infectious diseases, or curb global warming. This change is most noticeable among American youth. In surveys conducted after 9/11, only a third of Americans under age 30 give top priority to alleviating world hunger, compared with 54% who did so before 9/11. These diverging views may be attributable to the post-9/11 realization by many Americans that the U.S. mainland is vulnerable to future attacks, and their belief that the country must invest its resources in military strategies for preventing such attacks rather than sending these resources abroad as foreign aid. Unfortunately, this line of reasoning deflects attention from the role that adverse economic conditions might have played in motivating the 9/11 attacks, or the role that ameliorating these conditions might play in preventing future attacks. In addition, conventional American views about the causes of poverty, and the central role that Americans believe individual efforts and responsibility play in getting ahead, may help explain this discrepancy between the views of non-U.S. residents U.S. residents regarding the root causes of the attacks of 9/11, and what should be done to prevent future attacks. When it comes to helping those in need, Americans are generally more individualistic and less compassionate than their counterparts abroad, according to surveys conducted since 9/11. Among nearly 50 nations surveyed, many more Americans than non-Americans think that being successful is within their control, and that most people who fail in life have themselves to blame rather than society. And although most Americans surveyed are in favor of a social "safety net", they are less strongly committed to government taking care of citizens who cannot take care of themselves than people of other countries.(1) These beliefs reflect core ideological values of American conservatism.(2) In addition, this divergence between the views of non-U.S. residents and U.S. residents may well be due to the tendency many Americans have to overestimate the amount of foreign aid the U.S. provides, and to underestimate the resentment that people living abroad feel about growing inequalities and poverty in the developing world, American standards of living and consumption, as well as the increasing concentration of wealth in American hands.(3) For example, when asked how much the U.S. gives in foreign aid, American respondents tend to put the figure at 10%, 15% and even 25% of U.S. Gross National Product (GNP). Since the U.S. gives less than 1% of its GNP, but U.S. officials stress that U.S. aid in absolute numbers is higher than that of any other single country or even groups of countries, these respondents appear to be confused by what these numbers and comparisons actually mean. This confusion ill-equips many Americans to understand the sources and gravity of the growing antipathy that is being directed towards them, and to envisage ways to prevent the hostility from erupting into preventable armed conflicts. (See Jeffrey Sachs, "The US Fight Against the Fight Against Poverty", 13 September 2005.)(4) The facts of the matter are that people in poor countries see little help coming from the most advanced industrialized countries, most of whom differ little from the U.S. in that they contribute less than 1 percent of their GNP to foreign aid. But even within this group, the U.S. ranks among the lowest of the low. With respect to the share of national resources devoted to development aid for poor countries in the years leading up to 9/11, the U.S. ranked the lowest of all 21 countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), compared to the efforts of other OECD donor countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan. (5) In addition, U.S. corporations, investors, financial institutions and international banks such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which receive a significant portion of their funding from the U.S. public via the U.S. Treasury, are the primary engines and beneficiaries of free market globalization.(6) More pointedly, Civicus Secretary General Kumi Naidoo argues that the World Bank should own up more honestly to the fact that the "neo-liberal Washington Consensus", whose policies underlie this lop-sided distribution of benefits, has been thoroughly discredited.(7) It should come up with workable alternatives in light of the fact that economic globalisation, is exacerbating global inequality:
"Its 'rules' - to the extent we can call them that - appear to be driven by the rich at the expense of the poor. The relentless lauding of so-called 'free trade' in fact masks a set of double standards that protect certain markets in wealthy countries and deny poor and developing countries the chance to benefit from the most promising segments of their own economies." While the capital and know-how provided by institutions like the World Bank have brought improved living standards and economic opportunities to many regions of the world, they have also lowered these standards and opportunities elsewhere through practices that destroy as many livelihoods as they create, and in some cases, more than they create. In tandem with the growing concentration of extraordinary wealth in U.S. hands, poverty has increased around the world. None of the poverty-reduction programs that have been created to pick up the pieces have proved successful.(8) As a result, recent surveys and research show that the U.S. has become a bitterly-resented "market-dominant minority" in the global economy. It is deeply estranged from major non-Caucasian ethnic groups around the world whose members believe the U.S. has extracted more than its fair share of world resources and wealth, according to Yale University law professor Amy Chua in World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (2003).(9) Less than 5% of the population of the world owns 60% of its wealth, leaving half the world's population to live on less than a few dollars a day. It should be noted that severe disparities are also reflected in the distribution of wealth within the U.S., the world's richest country where 35 million people live in poverty out of a total population of 295 million. Minimum wages have been held so low by the political and economic forces that hold sway over U.S. Congressional representatives that typical full-time employees at Wal-Mart, America's largest corporation, earn only $17,000 a year. This sum is too little to cover food, shelter and health insurance.(10) As political analyst Kevin Phillips and political economist Gar Alperovitz have pointed out, the political power of U.S. economic forces has become so great that the U.S. is now considered by many to be a "plutocracy", a society governed by the wealthiest.(11) Alperovitz's research shows that the real income of working people has remained virtually unchanged since 1973, while the compensation of the ten most highly paid CEOs jumped to an average of $154 million in 2000 from $3.5 million in 1981. He cites the observation of economist Lester Thurow that never before has such a rapid increase in inequality been recorded in any country except those undergoing revolutions or military defeats. Not only is income highly concentrated in the U.S., with the top 1% of the U.S. population of nearly 300 million earning as much as the bottom 100 million, but the richest 1% of American households now own half of all wealth, in terms of ownership of stock, securities, trust equity and business equity. Clearly, the same economic and political forces are at work inside and outside the U.S., creating similar patterns of inequities and gaps in income and concentration of wealth. It is these disparities, Chua reports, that have led many people throughout the world to hate the U.S. and rejoice in the attacks of 9/11 even while deploring the loss of innocent lives. They sympathasize with the perpetrators of the attacks of 9/11, not because they subscribe to their espoused religious views, but because the attackers have taken a stand against an unjust power. While many Americans are becoming aware of these dynamics and perspectives, only a minority of the population as a whole appears to understand them well enough to broaden their views beyond the Bush administration's version of the causes of the attacks of 9/11, or to consider whether nonviolent alternatives focused on economic development strategies that reduce economic, political and social inequalities and conflicts might be more effective in stopping terrorism than the use of military force. A number of reports and critics, including the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee in 2002, have concluded that Western financial and economic institutions, like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and Western-controlled multinationals, must transfer the wealth-generating capacity of American entrepreneurialism and free market capitalism to economic development models and initiatives that meet the livelihood needs of working people throughout the world, particularly in economically fragile and conflict-prone regions.(12) They have urged these institutions to develop new policies and programs that harness Western business acumen and capital to the economies of developing nations so that indigenous entrepreneurs and working people can build the sustainable businesses, livelihoods and grassroots economies that are so desperately needed. However, as Robert Cox has pointed out, over the past 30 years, nation-state governments, the first force in human affairs, have been eclipsed by the second force, the institutions of the market economy, as its ideologues have gained the ascendancy and created a virtually unregulated, privatized, domestic and global market-driven economy.(13) The state, which was once the guardian of the interests of civil society in general, and those of the vulnerable in particular, has been co-opted into the role of using its political leverage to enforce corporate policies and contracts, and protect the free market economy from any interferences in its quest for untrammeled profit-taking. Cox's analysis is seconded by Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, who points out in The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (2000), that these Western-based "second force" interests have yet to put the needs of developing countries on a par with their own.(14) They have yet to help indigenous populations participate on a large scale in the free market system on free and fair terms that enable them to retain an equitable share of the wealth they help to create. Instead, U.S. economic and foreign policies and U.S. taxpayer-supported financial institutions have presided over the downward slide into insolvency of nearly 100 countries that have accepted Western loans and investments. These are often used to pay for huge infrastructure projects that Western firms are skilled at building but the countries' developing economies can ill afford and do not immediately need. In some cases, these projects do more to help Western businesses establish themselves and become profitable than they do to help indigenous businesses flourish. Too often these projects help Western businesses put indigenous enterprises out of business and destroy locally-created livelihoods, while leaving the country to foot the bill for developing the infrastructure these Western businesses use to outmaneuver their local competition. As a result, the receiving countries become debtor nations obliged to transfer out of their countries billions of dollars annually to their lenders and investors in the West.(15) Their creditors, eager to make sure they receive these payments, typically impose "structural adjustments" and external controls over the countries' public and private sectors to make sure the funds are available.(16) These "adjustments" force the governments of debtor nations to drastically curtail spending on vital "safety net" services such as health care and food and shelter for the poor, leaving next to nothing for education and vocational training to prepare their work force.(17) When indigenous opposition to these controls and adverse economic conditions becomes too forceful, it is often met with armed repression, which in turn sparks more violence and armed conflict. All too often these countries become fertile recruiting grounds for extremist movements and terrorist networks. Curiously, many of the developing countries that are the richest in the natural resources extracted by Western enterprises are also those that suffer the highest rates of poverty, corruption and conflict.(18) For example, oil-rich Middle Eastern countries closely allied with the U.S. tend to fit this pattern. The ruling monarchies of countries like Saudi Arabia and their U.S. trading partners, for instance, have benefitted handsomely from Middle East oil reserves, but the indigenous populations that spawned the al Qaeda network have suffered from severe economic deprivation and political repression for decades. Instead of allowing dissident groups to form political associations to protest these conditions legitimately through democratic channels, autocratic rulers chose instead to execute or imprison dissenters without fair trials. As a result, indigenous forces working to build civil society, defend human rights and promote democratic processes faced severe obstacles, while economic opportunities were monopolized by the ruling elite whose members grew rich on oil revenues. As former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich pointed out recently, U.S. financial interests and government officials virtually ignored the economic and political problems that were piling up in the region over the past 50 years while they were creating lucrative trading alliances with Middle Eastern countries that enabled them to fuel the American economy with the region's vast oil reserves.(19) Not only did Western governments support oppressive regimes in order to obtain oil, but they also created and installed such regimes. In 2000, for example, U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright acknowledged that the U.S. government played a key role in a 1953 coup d'etat inside a Middle East country, Iran, against its democratically-elected leader who had nationalized the oil industry. (20) Iran's newly-elected prime minister, Mossadegh, had nationalized the industry in order to obtain what he considered a fairer share of the oil revenues that British and American oil interests were taking out of the country.(19) After the U.S.-backed, CIA-led coup, the autocratic Shah of Iran was installed in power. He permitted British oil interests to retain more than 50% control of Iran's oil industry, of which U.S. oil interests got approximately 40%. (As discussed below, after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, the U.S. established a Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) that proceeded to privatize all state-owned industries, including the oil industry. The CPA dismissed all of the government's 500,000 employees who ran these industries and served in Iraq's military and police forces. There is widespread agreement among intelligence analysts that these jobless individuals are the core of Iraq's present insurgency, which is working with al Qaeda and related terrorist operatives who have infiltrated the country.) The Shah ruled for more than 20 years without modernizing the country's economy or government to increase living standards and introduce democratic processes. In 1979, he was ousted by an indigenous anti-American uprising led by militant Islamic clerics and their followers. They seized the U.S. embassy and boldly took U.S. citizens hostage in an unprecedented demonstration of pent up anti-American outrage. According to Middle East scholars, the U.S. government's interference in Iraq's internal affairs has had a boomerang effect on U.S. political and economic interests in the area. It transformed Iran into an incubator of militant, anti-Western Islamic fundamentalist sentiment throughout the region, a role that many believe it continues to play even in 2005, forty-five years after the initial American-backed coup d'etat. When Albright acknowledged the U.S. role in the coup, she admitted that it obstructed Iran's political development and provoked great resentment towards America. Although few Americans are aware of these historical antecedents of contemporary anti-American sentiment, they appear to part and parcel of the complex motivations driving successive generations of insurgent Muslim groups throughout the Middle East that ultimately gave birth to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. (21) When seen through the lens of this paper's framework of analysis, these antecedents and their repercussions serve as a prime example of what can happen when the first and second forces, the state and the free market system, are in the control of actors who put their interests before those of the people and the emerging civil society they should be serving, obstructing the development of sustainable livelihoods and inalienable political rights in the process. The seeds of 21st century Middle East terrorist networks were sown by the economic and political interventions of the U.S. and its Western allies throughout the region. As discussed below, these preceded and triggered the rise of politically-aggressive religious fundamentalists seeking to expel Westerners from the region and topple oppressive Middle East governments so as to replace them with theocratic regimes led by Islamic caliphs. As discussed below, U.S. actions in Iran were part of a pattern and sequence repeated elsewhere in the Middle East, which set the stage for the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in New York in 2001, and 3/11 in Madrid in 2003.
Notes 7. Psycho-social correlates of individual and collective violence and terrorism Chapter 8 below will analyze in more detail the ways in which religion and religious devotees, groups and institutions were increasingly used throughout the later half of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st by groups and individuals in both camps, on the U.S. side and on the al Qaeda side, to attain political and economic ends. This commingling of politics and religion in both the U.S. and the Middle East hardened the resolve of all the parties, intensified their mutual animosity, and escalated their confrontation. In advance of that discussion, however, it is important to note that the analysis will not condone or justify the horrendous violence that has been wreaked on unarmed civilians by non-state terrorists through suicide missions, beheadings, mutilations, and other forms of torture. Nor will it seek to lessen the resolve of those who are tracking down terrorists to bring them to justice, since they are truly a threat not only to civil society but to the survival of mankind. At the same time, clinical research into the generic psycho-social correlates of individual and collective violence and terrorism does throw light on mechanisms that induce individuals and groups to engage in violent acts. In addition, and most importantly, it also throws light on preventive and remedial measures that might prevent such violence. The findings of a pioneering figure in this field, Harvard University Medical School psychiatrist James Gilligan, are based on decades of clinical investigations and treatments of individuals who are murderers and/or criminally insane. These investigations and treatments enabled him to identify root causes not only of mass murders in the U.S. but politically-motivated mass murders carried out by suicide bombers in organizations like al Qaeda and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). In fact, he found a striking similarity in the motivations for violence on the part of individuals and political mass murderers like Hitler and Osama bin Laden. Significantly, his conclusions point to generic causes of both types of mass murder which can be eradicated nonviolently, once the public understands these causes and decides to support the implementation of the appropriate remedies. The common denominators of individual and collective violence and terrorism identified by Gilligan include the following:
What sets the stage for the psychological propensity of certain individuals and groups to engage in violence are their feelings and perceptions that they have been unfairly treated and shamed socially and economically. Translated to social, economic and political structures in particular societies, the stage is set for individual and collective violence in economically distressed areas that do not provide poor, humiliated and enraged individuals and groups with opportunities to improve their social and economic economically, and organize legitimately to seek redress of their grievances peacefully, through democratic processes. When nonviolent channels are perceived to be closed, terrorism appears to be the sole remaining option. The significance of Gilligan's findings, in the context of the terrorist conflict between the U.S.-led group and the al Qaeda group, is that they show how adverse economic and political conditions can have negative psychological and social consequences on groups that suffer from them. These conditions create feelings of shame and humiliation in the minds of group members who cannot escape destitute economic conditions, and who feel powerless to change their social and political status in relation to other more powerful groups whom they hold responsible for the conditions they cannot change. These social, economic and political influences create in these groups the psychological propensity to engage in individual and collective violence. Gilligan found "overwhelming statistical evidence" in three dozen studies that show a highly significant correlation between economic inequity, on the one hand, and individual and collective violence, on the other hand. In fact, the single most powerful predictor of the murder rate throughout the world, according to Gilligan's findings, is the size of the gap between the rich and the poor. For example, the U.S., which has the greatest gap between rich and poor of all developed countries, also has a murder rate 10 times higher than that of Western European countries for the past 50 years. Western Europe and Japan, which have the lowest gap between rich and poor among developed countries, have murder rates that are one tenth of the U.S. rate. This correlation of violence with wealth inequity within nation-states is also reflected in the rates of collective violence between nation-states. Gilligan cites a United Nations study which found that wars were much more common among poor countries than richer countries. Poverty lends itself to collective violence when one state attacks another state because it perceives that there are no other channels open to it for resolving the problems created by its poverty. Similarly, these findings help to explain why a transnational group like al Qaeda, whose founders came from many states throughout the Middle East, and also shared common ties to Islam, came to attack not only their own repressive governments, but their governments' most powerful ally, the U.S. To the extent that al Qaeda's founders felt they did not have non-violent channels within their home countries that they could effectively use to attain their objectives, and because they shared common bonds to the region's religion, Islam, their movement was led to adopt a transnational strategy based on collective violence and the espousal of goals couched in Islamic metaphors. As an illustration of this thesis, Gilligan also cites Osama bin Laden's public statements after 9/11 decrying 80 years of Muslim humiliation and disgrace by oppressive governments and Western colonial powers. Gilligan believes they reflect a collective feeling of inferiority vis-a-vis ruling monarchies and their Western backers that had arisen among Muslims throughout the Middle East. Despite the fact that groups like al Qaeda and the PLO can commit desperate, regressive and pathological acts, Gilligan asserts that their grievances and propensity to engage in collective violence can be addressed more effectively by nonviolent means than by the use of military force. Foremost among them is the creation of more equitable economic systems, and more participatory democratic political systems. Gilligan claims that these reforms will be far more effective in preventing individual and collective violence than all the arms and armaments in the world, and all the prisons systems and punishments in the world.
Notes 8. Historical and religious dimensions of the conflict between the U.S.-led group and the al Qaeda network Instead of religious factors, Gilligan's findings demonstrate that collective violence and terrorist acts are correlated with psychological predispositions that are created by social, economic and political inequities and injustices. The findings also indicate that these predispositions can be changed by reducing the inequities and injustices that divide hostile groups. Yet most Americans in the smaller, first camp of public opinion described above, who are unaware of the historical antecedents of the terrorist attacks and subscribe to the Bush administration's views of terrorists and their motivations, believe that these terrorists are so unjustifiedly fanatical in their hatred for the U.S. that they can only be stopped by overwhelming military force. Since it is these Americans whose political support has given the administration carte blanche to conduct its 'war on terrorism" with maximum military force, the historical record bears reviewing. For it may prove helpful to those with open minds who are willing to reformulate their views and consider alternative courses of action, such as those that redress grievances resulting from U.S. and Western interference in the Middle East for the better part of the last century. A brief synopsis of that record must begin with the colonial era, during which European governments extended and demarcated their spheres of interest throughout the region by creating new states where none had previously existed, arbitrarily drawing formal boundaries and establishing new regimes and their own hand-picked rulers. While most of these regimes functioned in a secular way in developing their external trading relationships with foreign powers, many of these regimes were so closely aligned with Islamic institutions and Islamic laws regulating conduct in the social sphere that they also functioned as quasi-theocracies. Throughout the 20th century, Islamic "Sharia" law was the the "law of the land" in spheres that had become secularized in Western nation-states in which established religions had long been "dis-established" by emerging civil society and the proliferation of competing religious denominations. These Middle Eastern quasi-theocracies were so powerful that they thwarted indigenous populations in their efforts to expand human rights, political rights and popular sovereignty. As time passed, the failure of these artificially-created regimes to provide their subjects livelihoods and political rights to express their grievances sparked the creation of insurgent groups and movements throughout the Middle East, which opposed these regimes and their Western backers. These movements were known as "jihads", the Arabic word for "struggle".(1) In the absence of legitimate political channels for expressing their views, dissidents couched their grievances in Islamic metaphors and religious principles, and claimed to speak on behalf of aggrieved Muslims throughout the Middle East. These radicals appealed to their more moderate fellow Muslims for moral and material support, and recruited followers from radical Muslim milieus and schools that welcomed them. The al Qaeda movement grew out of these movements, which were nurtured in fundamentalist Islamic centers in Egypt and Saudia Arabia, one of the most oppressive of these regimes. The extreme Wahhabi school of Islam took root in Saudi Arabia, and provided a home for the most vehement opponents of these regimes. Osama bin Laden is one of them. Although the usually unspoken view that terrorism is an outgrowth of Islam became fairly widespread after 9/11, most scholars and analysts reject it. For example, Harvard University researcher Jessica Stern traveled extensively abroad to interview dozens of terrorists for her book, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (2003). She found that religiously-expressed violence and conflicts are most likely to occur in Middle Eastern countries whose regimes have a history of political repression and fail to provide basic "safety net" services.(2) University of Pennsylvania scholar James Furth's historical analysis of the causes of these conflicts converges with Stern's.(3) He too found that it is poverty and oppression rather than religion that are the original causes of the conflicts that terrorists express in religious language. The primary causal factors lie in their governments' failures to modernize their countries' economic and political systems so as to provide their impoverished populations opportunities to improve their economic, social and political status. It is true that Osama bin Laden's pronouncements make repeated religious references and that al Qaeda relies heavily on suicide attackers who are devout Muslims. In addition, the pronouncements of radical Muslim groups like al Qaeda often contain references to their intention to establish an Islamic caliphate to rule the Middle East. Moreover, it is also true that Islam is interpreted in many areas to justify the use of coercive and even brutal methods to obtain the fealty and obedience of its followers, and silence its adversaries. However, over and above the personal devotion of its leaders and followers, al Qaeda's proclaimed association with Islam and use of retrograde religious metaphors and compliance mechanisms, is also likely to be due to the absence of nonviolent channels that they perceive could be effective in reversing adverse economic and political conditions from which Muslims suffer. Moreover, given the fact that al Qaeda is not a nation-state, it does not have access to a national treasury to finance its operations. Nor does it have national armed forces from which to recruit its foot soldiers. Its leaders' exploitation of enraged Muslims to serve as suicide attackers is therefore less likely to derive from the network's espoused religiosity than from a lack of alternative means of recruitment. Such religiously-based practices appear to be born of weakness rather than strength. Support for this assertion is provided by Stern and others, who have pointed out that suicide-bombers are recruited from the thousands of enraged young people who have witnessed first-hand or know people who have witnessed Western forces injure, maim and kill relatives and close friends. It is their first-hand experience with Western brutality that prompts their recruitment into terrorist organizations that convince them to perpetrate suicide attacks. As Indian activist Arundhati Roy has suggested, terrorists may well be using brutal and cruel methods to force Westerners out of areas they wish to control because they have no other ways and means to fight adversaries who have opted to use overwhelming military force against them. (4) (See Arundhati Roy, An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire, 2004.) These historical facts and interpretations make it difficult to embrace the view held by a majority of Americans and the Bush administration that the conflict that surfaced on 9/11 is confined to a "small radical group" that is driven only by its hatred of American freedom. Many decades before the attacks of 9/11 took the American people by surprise, Middle Eastern jihadists had created an underground network throughout the region to fight their own regimes and their Western backers as well. The al Qaeda network under the leadership of Osama bin Laden and his associates and mentors became one of their offshoots. The loosely-organized al Qaeda group had publicly expressed its anti-Western grievances well before the attacks of 9/11, all focused on the cessation of Western interference in the Middle East. It had also publicly identified the specific targets of its jihad, namely, governments of Middle East nation-states created by Western colonial powers that they considered repressive - including the Jewish state of Israel established in the region by these same powers in 1948, with the support of the United States. As the U.S. increased its support for Israel, and became its staunchest ally, the jihadist's hostility toward the U.S. intensified. It was magnified even further by the furor created within its ranks by U.S. conduct in the Soviet-Afghan War. It has been reported that Osama bin Laden was particularly exercised by the United States' precipitous withdrawl from Afghanistan after the Soviets had been repelled. During the war, which lasted from 1979 to 1988, the U.S. had actively recruited, trained and equipped Muslims, including bin Laden, to fight against the Soviet invaders, only to abandon them in a prostrate wartorn Afghanistan after the Soviet forces were defeated. These self-serving actions convinced Bin Laden that the U.S. acted only in its own interests. They prompted him to move quickly to exploit the power vacuum that had been created in Afghanistan by the U.S. departure, in order to usher in the repressive Taliban regime and set up a training camp there for al Qaeda operatives from around the world. When viewed against this historical backdrop, the attacks of 9/11, although unjustifiable on any grounds whatsoever, cannot be viewed as an isolated act of belligerency against the U.S. devoid of articulated grievances or warnings. Despite the fact that al Qaeda expressed and continues to express its economic and political grievances and demands in Islamic metaphors, its primary objections and objectives are economic and political in nature, rather than religious. While its founder's religious fervor is unmistakable, beneath his movement's proclaimed association with Islam lies a strategy to legitimize and support a political struggle to improve adverse economic and political conditions affecting Muslims throughout the region by means of an alternative governmental regime. Evidence to support this interpretation that the 9/11 attackers are descendants of an early 20th century pan-Arab jihad formed to protest Western interference in the Middle East are contained in Osama bin Laden's 2002 "Letter to the American People".(5) In it, he explains why al Qaeda is fighting and opposing Americans. He writes that its actions are in response to the Americans who attacked "us" more than 80 years ago by helping and supporting the British in giving Palestine to the Jews, and occupying it militarily, while expulsing, oppressing and killing its indigenous occupants. In the same letter, he complains that the American people "steal" Middle East wealth and oil at paltry prices because of their international influence and military force, acts that he calls the "biggest theft" ever witnessed by mankind. Bin Laden bluntly asserts his fundamental premise, which is that because he believes his people were attacked first, they have the right to attack back to "destroy the villages and towns" of those who destroyed their villages and towns. More ominously, he states his belief that they are entitled to destroy the economy of those whom they believe have stolen their wealth, and to kill the civilians living in the countries of those whom they believe have killed their civilians. In addition, he criticizes U.S. military occupation and "seige" of "our sanctities" in the Middle East and pillage of "our treasures", objecting particularly to the stationing of U.S. troops in Islamic holy lands in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War. It is this bone of contention that appears to spark the strongest expression of objections to U.S. actions in the Middle East. Bin Laden's letter concludes with a list of demands that include U.S. cessation of its support of Israel and "corrupt" leaders in Middle Eastern countries, as well as cessation of its interference in Middle Eastern politics and education. In what appears to be an overture to ending the conflict through negotiations, he calls on Americans to "deal with us" on the basis of mutual interests and benefits rather than on policies that he asserts are based on theft and occupation. While the rationale behind al Qaeda's resort to violence and suicidal attackers may be open to debate, its drive to mobilize Muslim support around the world appears to be bearing fruit. Post-9/11 surveys show that despite the fact that the Muslim community as a whole objects to al Qaeda's resort to violence, a growing segment of the commmunity is becoming more sympathetic to its struggle. Surveys show that its members are deeply offended by U.S. military actions that kill, injure, detain and abuse Muslims. In fact, disapproval of U.S. actions has led increasing numbers of Muslims to regard the U.S. "war on terrorism" as a direct attack on Islam. This belief appears to have several sources, and bears directly on the religious affiliations and political alliances among the protagonists who are confronting each other in current Middle East conflicts, namely the U.S., Israel, Middle East regimes like Saudi Arabia, and non-state networks like al Qaeda. It also points to the increasing role of religiously-oriented electoral blocs and special interest groups in American politics over the last 30 years, and in the Bush administration's electoral base that brought it to power in 2000. As recent analyses show, with the exception of the original rationale for establishing the state of Israel in the Middle East, it is becoming increasingly apparent that political and economic interests have been the driving forces on all sides. They have expanded their power bases by deliberate and successful efforts to co-opt supporters and allies by appealing to their religious affiliations. According to a recent, well-researched BBC documentary, "The Power of Nightmares", key figures in the U.S. and in the Middle East who were associated with "jihadist" groups devised political strategies many decades ago designed to co-opt large population groups in their countries into religiously-based political movements that would lead to radical change.(6) In the U.S. these efforts were driven by neo-conservatives and financial interests. In Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, they were dirven by insurgent Muslim groups. While the "neocons" succeeded in the U.S., the insurgents failed to take over any regimes in the Middle East. These failures forced them to remain underground, and exacerbated their sense of outrage at their treatment by foreigners and their own regimes. These failures and outrage also prompted them to develop increasingly violent cells, groupings and movements that over time became more directly connected to loosely-organized networks that eventually evolved into the al Qaeda network that perpetrated the attacks of 9/11. By wedding religious convictions and monotheisms to long-term political and economic strategies, these long-standing protagonists have created an intractable conflict in the Middle East whose roots are of such complexity that few understand them, but which has become a conflict of such intensity that it now threatens the survival of mankind. The key reason for this dismal prospect is that the U.S. government is now dominated by a single party that appears poised to remain in power for the foreseeable future. It serves the interests of the Evangelical Christian groups that comprise its core electoral constituency, the wealthy, and the neoconservatives and their allies. These allies include a coterie of special interest groups that profit from U.S. foreign policies and warfare abroad that provide them defense contracts and access to natural resources such as oil. Seen in this light, it is these domestic U.S. political and economic dynamics coupled with their co-optation of religious power blocs and a century of Western interference in the Middle East that have led to the current conflagration in region, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Insurgent Muslim groups have been gathering their forces for decades to demand U.S. withdrawal from Muslim lands and cessation of support for corrupt Middle East regimes and Israel, only to have their demands ignored. The attacks of 9/11 brought them to U.S. shores. The U.S., without giving a moment's notice to their long-standing, publicly-proclaimed grievances, retaliated with the full force of the U.S. military in both Afghanistan and in Iraq, only to find that it could not secure either region even with massive military force and more than 100,0000 casualties by 2005. In the process, U.S. actions and conduct in detaining and abusing Muslim prisoners convinced even moderate Muslims around the world that it is attacking their religion, setting the stage for an interminable global conflict. Concretely, the U.S. provided them ample reason to come to this conclusion. First among them is the presence of U.S. forces in the three Middle Eastern regions considered most holy by Muslims--the Arabian Peninsula, Jerusalem and Iraq. Not only do these forces contain a large contingent of Christians deployed from a nation that is overwhelmingly Christian, but its president, George Bush, a Christian, publicly invoked his Christian faith in explaining his decision to order the U.S. invasion of Iraq. (7) Moreover, many Muslims have become aware of the fact that fundamentalist Christians occupy key positions in the Bush administration, and comprise a core political constituency of the Republican Party, which it has systematically courted for the past 30 years to obtain its electoral votes.(8) (Richard Viguerie and David Franke describe the political strategies, direct marketing techniques and media that Republicans used to win over the "Christian right" in their 2004 book, America's Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power.) Having made the inference that the U.S. is attacking their religion, post-9/11 surveys show that many Muslims have also adopted the view that suicide attacks against Americans to defend Islam can be justified in certain circumstances. In all likelihood, it is the same respondents who have come to hold favorable views of Osama bin Laden, according to survey results that show he is favorably regarded by respondents in such widely-disparate regions of the world as Pakistan, where 65% view him favorably, Jordan, where 55% have favorable views, and Morocco, where 45% view him favorably.(9) If judged by these views and surveys, U.S. actions in conducting its global "war on terrorism" and sustained military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq with tens of thousands of Muslim casualties, is inciting such severe religiously-based animosity towards the U.S. among Muslims that increasing numbers of them approve of conducting terrorist acts against the U.S. and its allies, including politically-inspired mass murder via suicide-bombings. While U.S. use of military force is proclaimed in many official quarters to have prevented further attacks on the U.S. mainland after 9/11, dissenting views argue that it has actually increased such attacks abroad rather than decreased them, and increased rather than decreased the number of terrorists in Muslim nations. Analysts claim that this increase is of such proportions that al Qaeda's rapid growth around the world can be characterized as a spontaneous "metastasis", similar to the metastasis of cancerous tisses that can spread unchecked throughout a human body. More ominously, according to recent investigations by Jessica Stern, these new terrorist cells appear to be operating autonomously of any "command-and-control" center, linked to the al Qaeda nucleus only by a shared anti-U.S. ideology rather than by a disciplined organizational structure.(10) Exactly how and why terrorist influence is expanding so rapidly has been explained by a senior CIA intelligence expert who was employed by the CIA until late 2004. Michael Scheuer in his book, Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terrorism (2004), argues that the U.S. is failing to win its "war on terrorism" because of its ignorance of the historical roots of the conflict, and its excessive use of force resulting in the killing of thousands of innocent civilians.(11) Whenever the U.S. or its allies in the Middle East respond with excessive force that injures or kills innocent Muslims, or shames and humiliates Muslims, as was the case at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, these actions help terrorists recruit suicide-bombers among young people who have been eye-witnesses to atrocities committed by Americans against people like themselves. Continual television broadcasts and rebroadcasts of videotypes of these atrocities throughout the Middle East, like the pictures of a female U.S. soldier abusing a male Muslim prisoner at Abu Graib, inflame Muslim hatred for the U.S., and help al Qaeda recruit new supporters and suicide-bombers.
Notes 9. Stalemate The historical record analyzed above indicates that a multi-faceted stalemate has emerged among the protagonists in the U.S.-declared "war on terrorism". Although the original causes of the stalemate are adverse economic and political conditions caused by Western interference in the Middle East and retrograde Middle East regimes they created and support, these causes have become intertwined with religious animosities fomented by political forces on all sides seeking to use them to gain political and economic advantages. Their deliberate political machinations have pitted against each other the followers of all three of the "desert born" religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism which emerged in the region thousands of years ago. The end result is that the al Qaeda terrorist network and its allies and sympathizers have gained support and strength around the world, and now pose a more formidable threat in 2005 than in 2001 when they attacked the U.S homeland. Not only do post-9/11 Muslim survey respondents express the view that suicide attacks are justified against Americans, but they have embraced al Qaeda's view that they are also justified against Israelis, attesting to the opposition that has emerged in the Middle East and in many parts of the world to both the U.S. and its ally, Israel. A 73% majority of opinion leaders surveyed around the world believe the U.S. has shown too much support for Israel, in contrast to just 35% of U.S. leaders who hold this view. 76% of these non-U.S. leaders believe that terrorism would be reduced if the U.S. induced Israel to establish a Palestinian state. Here, in contrast to other points of disagreement, 67% of their counterparts in the U.S. agree with them that terrorism would diminish if the U.S. pressured Israel to establish such a state. However, most Americans surveyed do not advocate any weakening of U.S. support of Israel. Nor does the U.S. administration show any signs of considering other strategies for stopping terrorism than the use of military force, despite growing evidence that these strategies are actually spreading the conflict. U.S. President Bush and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden continue escalating their use of force and high-flown "never-say-die" rhetoric, even in the face of serious and continuing setbacks on both sides, and worldwide condemnations of their actions. The primary victims of their policies are innocent, unarmed and virtually indefensible civilians, most of whom do not share either leaders' professed religiosity. Most civilians prefer greater secularization of public life, as opposed to the increased commingling of religion and politics evident in both leaders' pronouncements. While few 21st century individuals can imagine laying exclusive claims to large tracts of land on behalf of religious groups to which they belong, such claims have moved to the center of the conflicts in which the U.S., Israel, and al Qaeda are embroiled in the Middle East. While the underlying economic and political conditions that triggered the formation of the non-state protagonist, al Qaeda, can be corrected by political and educational reforms, and effective reconstruction programs that build flourishing indigenous economies, the religious overlayers of the conflict have led the protagonists to adopt positions that appear to be so intransigeant as to be irremediable in terms of their willingness to open negotiations for ceasefires or peace accords on their own initiative. The "war on terrorism" serves the interests of the political and economic forces within the U.S. that brought the Bush administration to power, just as it serves the interest of al Qaeda to have just cause to recruit more supporters, sympathizers, operatives and suicide attackers around the world. Even though a majority of people around the world do not support the positions of current U.S. and al Qaeda leaders, the latter benefit from the support of so many millions of followers holding passionate and unequivocal views that even if both leaders were replaced, it is likely that their followers would continue the conflict. Both sides have the resources they need to persevere, but neither appears capable of vanquishing the other. Since both have vowed to destroy the other, neither can withdraw from the conflict. The ability of the al Qaeda network to continue attacking U.S. assets and interests abroad three years after the U.S. declared a "war on terrorism" has emboldened many Muslims and non-Muslims to subscribe to its anti-Western ideology, and join its ranks as sympathizers and supporters. They sympathize with al Qaeda not because they approve of its tactics but because they support its opposition to the U.S., and U.S. economic and foreign policies. Just as al Qaeda, and the jihad that spawned it, arose from economic and political grievances directed towards the U.S. and its allies, al Qaeda is now being joined by Muslims and anti-U.S. groups and individuals around the world who also harbor economic and political grievances against the U.S. They oppose its lop-sided share of the world's wealth, the manner in which its wealth has been acquired through unregulated, globalized free markets, practices, and its stinginess in contributing foreign aid to countries and peoples in need. Despite the religious garb in which al Qaeda and its allies clothe their economic and political grievances, its anti-Western ideology is providing an increasingly diversified tent under which anti-U.S. groups throughout the world are finding common cause. On the American side, while a majority of Americans disapprove of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war, and its proven dishonesty in contriving reasons to justify its invasion in the first plan, most Americans embrace the Bush administration's view that the U.S. has no choice but to continue its reliance on using overwhelming force abroad to forestall future terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Ignorant of the historical record and of the negotiable demands that al Qaeda has put forward, they also believe that al Qaeda is an enemy that is driven by such incomprehensible and irrational hatred that it cannot be reasoned with, and can only be stopped by military force. These views are unlikely to change unless the American people open a societal dialogue to candidly debate the proven connections among very complex historical events that took place last century in Middle Eastern regions that few Americans know very much about. (See Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, Time to talk to Al Qaeda? Boston Globe, 14 September 2005.).(1) Such an unlikely debate would have to focus on a broad spectrum of economic and political perspectives about the root causes of terrorism that may appear obvious to people living outside the U.S., but fall well outside the purview of most Americans. The reasons such a debate is not on the horizon are numerous. With respect to economic causes, the American public is proud of the free enterprise system and the opportunities it provides. Few Americans are interested in looking beyond the positive contributions of American capitalism to identify negative effects, such as exacerbating the growing gap between rich and poor at home and abroad, and the concentration of wealth in an increasingly smaller percentage of the world's population, most of whom enjoy the protections of the American flag. Per the insights of analysts Kevin Phillips and Gar Alperovitz described above, most Americans are unaware of the enormous transfers of wealth that have taken place inside and outside the U.S. Nor are they aware of the manner in which U.S.-controlled corporations, banks, special interest groups and lobbyists have "rigged" the game via legislation, policies enforced by the U.S. government, and business practices at home and abroad that enable them to end up holding all the wealth. Most importantly, the majority of Americans are unfamiliar with the political history of the Middle East, or U.S. policies, alliances and actions in the region. They see themselves and their country in the positive light of the heroic role the U.S. played in liberating Europe from Nazi Germany, and have little understanding of the complex relationships that gave rise to the anti-Western insurgencies in Middle East countries that sparked the rise of the al Qaeda movement. What preoccupies them are the murderous attacks of 9/11 and the threat of future attacks on the U.S. mainland, growing terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the continuing violence in the conflict between the PLO and Israel. It is this stalemate that directs attention on alternative solutions and global civil society. While the majority of Americans belonging to the "first camp" of world public opinion, the smaller of the two camps described above, may be wedded to a military solution to terrorism, the people who belong to the far larger "second camp"are likely to take action to implement nonviolent alternatives,if given concrete opportunities to do so. While it may be difficult for some insular Americans to connect the dots among the consequences of U.S. economic and foreign policies in the Middle East and elsewhere, adverse economic and political conditions in the region, and the anti-Western jihadic movement that arose to combat these adverse conditions and the nation-states they held responsible for the conditions, surveys of world public opinion show that people living outside the U.S. grasp these connections rather easily. They are also more readily able to perceive the counterproductive consequences of U.S. use of overwhelming force in Muslim countries. While Americans have come to rely on U.S. military strength and superiority in the past, people living outside the U.S. more easily acknowledge the new dangers that modern biological, chemical and nuclear weapons pose to the survival of mankind, if they are used by either of the two protagonist groups engaged in the "war on terrorism". Taking nonviolent action to redress the adverse economic and political conditions to which the al Qaeda group is objecting seems a far smaller price to pay than running the risk of annihilation now posed by the escalating use of force by both sides in this global conflict. In stark contrast to the stalemate described above, the global civil society movement and its nation-state allies committed to human rights and security are far better positioned to extricate civilians from the crossfire of this conflict than the U.S.-led group and the nation-states that presided over the defining events that led up to the conflict. Above all, the movement's organizational members possess the impartiality, flexibility, grassroots know-how and global reach that are needed to prevent terrorism from spreading any further by building sustainable livelihoods and grassroots economies, and democratic communities. By impartially interceding to improve the economic and political conditions that are fueling the growth of terrorist networks and cells, they can prevent them from acquiring new sympathizers, supporters and recruits. As the current situation in Iraq is demonstrating, terrorists have developed strategies, tactics and weaponry that can prevent the translation of U.S. military force deployed in hostile Muslim regions into secure territorial control, or decisive political and economic reforms. While military force can remove rulers and regimes, its use by the U.S. in densely-populated areas causes so many civilian casualties and abuses that anti-U.S. resentment and resistance on the part of the local populace provides fertile ground for terrorists to gain footholds from which they can deny the U.S. the fruits of its military victories. What is needed is the intervention of impartial, nongovernmental, civilian-based conflict mediators, peacekeepers and economic reconstruction specialists, with track records of accomplishments demonstrating their capacity to build sustainable livelihoods and grassroots economies in self-governing communities. The chapters that follow outline the steps by which the members of the largest of the two camps of world opinion described above can become part of the global civil society movement and join civil society constituents, activists and their allies to create nonaligned multinational forces that can stop terrorism by eradicating its economic and political roots. of terrorism. By negotiating cease-fires in terrorist conflicts, providing emergency humanitarian assistance, enforcing international laws that protect human rights and security, restoring basic services and building sustainable grassroots economies in war-torn regions, they will be able to stop the spread of insurgencies by rejuvenating indigenous economies and bringing them into the global economy through "globalization from below". By creating locally-owned, community-based and community-supported businesses that generate local jobs and capital, they will be able to offer alternatives to potential terrorist recruits that enable them to earn a living and support their families instead of joining suicide squads. These same strategies will ultimately close the global gap between rich and poor by more equitably distributing wealth, ownership and decision-making opportunities in a manner that empowers previously disenfranchised populations to participate in democratic processes at all levels of society, in both the public and private spheres. How these options can be exercised is the subject of the chapters that follow. Note: (1) Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, Time to talk to Al Qaeda? Boston Globe, 14 September 2005. Building a Third Force 10. The nation-state system in the crossfire: Human security versus national security Although social critics have long warned that the greatest threat to world peace is the gap between rich and poor, most nation-states have traditionally sought to assure their national security by working with domestic economic interests and institutions to create economic systems that would accumulate more wealth and generate more government tax revenues than their neighbors and rival states. Even though inequities in wealth and income have long been known to produce conflict between the "haves' and the "have-nots', both within countries and between countries, this knowledge has typically had little effect on the drive by a minority to accumulate far greater wealth than the majority. When conflicts arose, or aggressive leaders started wars with their neighbors, the nations that were economically and militarily stronger knew they could easily subdue nations that were weaker. Doubts about this conventional wisdom have been raised by the advent of global, non-state terrorist networks like al Qaeda, and their success in using suicide attackers to kill civilians in densely populated areas at will with impunity. Defense experts outside the Bush administration are adamant in their insistence that an invading force like that of the U.S. in Iraq has never been able to defeat a broad-based insurgency, no matter how superior its forces. One of them is the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Jessica T. Mathews.(1) In an editorial in the Washington Post, Match Iraq Policy to Reality, Mathews argues that U.S. use of military force in Iraq has not only created its current insurgency, but that history has taught us that there can be no military solution to politically-inspired violence by local insurgents against foreigners. She cites the lessons learned by the French in Algeria and the British in Northern Ireland, as well as the lessons the Russians are now learning in Chechnya, and the Israelis are learning in the West Bank. Undeterred by these warnings, mounting casualties and billions of dollars in expenditures, the U.S. government under the Bush administration perseveres in its unsuccessful efforts to use military force to secure Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor has it been successful in securing its own borders, issuing constant warnings that U.S. citizens must prepare for future attacks that are certain to occur. Given intelligence estimates that there are at least 60,000 al Qaeda operatives and freelance recruits deployed around the world, plus untold numbers of supporters and sympathizers, there appears to be common agreement that there will be future attacks in the U.S. and abroad. The only question is when and where. The primary responsibility of a sovereign state has traditionally been that of protecting citizens by securing its borders and those of states over which it is seeking to establish influence. In light of the fact that the Bush administration has acknowledged its inability to discharge these obligations, it might be expected to pursue other options than the use of military force, such as opening cease-fire negotiations and peace talks with representatives of al Qaeda and insurgent forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. When a nation that has chosen to go to war and invade another country is unable to secure the territory, and finds that it cannot generate enough revenues through taxation to meet the costs of that war - and has to to borrow money from other nations to cover its deficits - it might br expected to quickly cease hostilities. Yet the Bush administration does not appear to have considered these options, to the dismay of the second camp of world opinion, its own citizens who are members of this camp and oppose the war, and of course the unarmed civilians around the world who are caught in the crossfire. This puzzling behavior is worth examining in the larger context of the crisis confronting the nation-state system, and the power shifts that have occurred among the first, second and third forces over the past 50 years. Although the majority of nation-states have recognized that the best way to defend themselves is through collective security, the world's sole remaining "superpower", the U.S., has decided that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 warrant unilateral pre-emptive strikes against any nation that it suspects of hostile intent and the capabilities to carry it out. It will be argued below that this is because the first and second forces in the U.S. have become so intertwined, and the second force, the market economy, has gained such a dominant position in the American political system, that it can now pursue without restraint its global economic agenda. This agenda can be advanced through war as profitably as it can be in peace, even if the interests of civil society, the rule of law, and painstakingly developed doctrines and practices of collectively security are severely compromised in the process. (See Naomi Klein, "The Rise of Disaster Capitalism", 2005.(2) While this agenda now faces insignificant opposition either inside or outside the U.S., primarily because of the ability of the second force to use economic power to buy political influence, its assaults against the very foundations of civil society itself are so severe that it is creating a 21st century global backlash against itself. This backlash will ultimately roll back its power and transform civil society into a third force powerful enough to subordinate the second and first forces to its control. For this backlash is prompting civil society constituents, activists, NGOs and their allies to rally together to create a common global front to protect themselves against the second force, a long-term battle that they will ultimately win. Here are the reasons why. In the light of the massive changes that have occurred in the past 50 years, thoughtful observers and analysts have concluded that national borders have become so permeable that they have lost much of their traditional significance. Modern telecommunications and travel have enabled such a free flow of ideas and information, and scientific and technological discoveries, that opportunities to learn and invent new ways of doing things can be created anywhere. People have migrated from their places of birth to all corners of the world, creating cultural diasporas and human networks that span the globe. Businesses operate on a global scale, flooding markets with exotic goods and services. On the downside, diseases and environmental hazards can cross borders at the blink of an eye. So can the ingredients of weapons of mass destruction. Aggrieved groups can smuggle weapons across borders and get them into the hands of those who would use them. What these changes mean in military terms is that conventional military defenses that once focussed on defending or attacking national borders and relied on well-demarcated battlelines, are a thing of the past. "National security" can no longer be attained by fortifying one's geographical frontiers or by attacking enemies behind their frontiers. In the case of non-state terrorist networks like al Qaeda and its growing diaspora of recruits, supporters and sympathizers, the capacity to conduct surprize attacks that claim hundreds and thousands of lives is here to stay. While the U.S. could deem al Qaeda's threats and attacks prior to 9/11 has neglible, its attacks of 9/11 proved that it is a formidable adversary that can inflict unacceptable damage, an adversary that can not be vanquished even by the overwhelming military force of the nation's sole remaining superpower. What these new realities mean is that all conflicts must be resolved nonviolently, and their generic causes - like economic injustices and adverse economic and political conditions, must be eliminated. Since economic, political and social inequities that create inter-group animosities are the primary causes of conflicts, elimination of these inequities must be the first order of business of any sovereign nation that wishes to discharge its obligation to protect its citizens and defend its frontiers. Human security must come before national security. A nation that creates or tolerates human insecurity, of whatever origin, will not be able to protect its citizens and frontiers from attacks by those motivated by human insecurity and the animosity, rage and hatred that grows out of one group's oppression by other groups. The European Union has led the way in showing how this new focus shifts attention from national security to the human security of all peoples - especially those who find themselves in desperate economic straits. (An analysis of this focus on human security is provided by recent work of the European Union in its document A Human Security Doctrine for Europe, formulated under the auspices of the European Union High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana Barcelona,15 September 2004.) (3). To understand why the U.S. government under the Bush administration has not only ignored the need for this refocusing but contributed to the 21st century backlash that is sparking it, it is necessary to review "regime changes" that have been occurring inside the U.S. political and economic system for the past 35 years. While the changes are the result of generic processes that can derail any democracy - processes that can ultimately be overcome by politically-mobilized civil society, in the U.S. they have been taken to an extreme. They have mushroomed the power of the first and second forces while dwarfing the power of civil society. They have enabled conservative economic and political forces not only to obtain the lion's share of wealth and income, but to divide the U.S. voting public into warring camps focussed on artificially contrived, retrograde issues that had been resolved decades ago in both the U.S. and other post-industrialized Western nation-states. The current manifestation of these regime changes in the U.S. can be seen in the divisive issues that are now roiling U.S. politics, in areas like the relationship between church and state, and the role of government in protecting civil society and the well-being of its citizens through programs like social security and Medicaid. While these changes and issues were brought to the fore by many transforming events, one of the major causes was recently pinpointed by the legendary American economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who flatly stated that the U.S. government is now being run by U.S. corporations. (4) (One striking example of his thesis is that the U.S. is the only major industrialized country in the Western world that does not have a goverment regulated, universally available, affordable health insurance system, and there are no plans before the U.S. Congress to develop one. This is because corporations who provide private insurance plans to those individuals and businesses that can afford to purchase them oppose the creation of such a system, because it would compete with them. In addition, the U.S. is the only industrialized country in the Western world whose government does not protect all its citizens against financial ruin and bankruptcy as a result of catastrophic illness. Recent changes in U.S. bankruptcy laws entitle American health care providers to force clients bankrupted by medical costs to pay their medical bills for the rest of their lives even after they have legally been determined to be bankrupt. (See David Swanson, "Debt Slavery: What The Bankruptcy Bill Could Do To You, 2005.) (5) Ordinary working people can now be forced into impoverished circumstances for the rest of their lives by enormously profitable, government-backed economic interests in the healthcare industry whose pursuit of gain is undiminished by moral concern for those whose financial health has been destroyed by illness. These mean-spirited laws place the second-force dominated U.S. government in a class by itself, since all other Western industrialized countries protect their citizens from the financial consequences of catastrophic illness. This same mean-spiritedness would be reflected in the policies and practices employed by the second force in its economic and financial relationships with developing countries.) As a result of the second force's pivotal influence in the U.S. federal government under the Bush administration, it also exercises a pivotal influence over the U.S. federal government's foreign policy - and foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This influence is so strong that the administration appears to be undaunted by the fact that these wars are bankrupting the federal treasury, increasing worldwide anti-U.S. animosity and strengthening terrorist forces. While non-U.S. residents around the world are recoiling in horror when confronted with evidence that U.S. forces have laid waste to a whole city in Iraq, Falluja, and videos showing U.S. forces taunting and torturing Muslim prisoners, the U.S. public, its courts and elected representatives are arguing about whether a clinically brain-dead individual should be kept alive artificially, whether the world was created by a deity or evolved according to laws of nature and which individuals should be allowed to marry each other. Chronologically, these relationships were created by a complex, well-orchestrated power shift inside the U.S. that was designed and executed by a small group of neoconservatives. They wedded an electoral base of Evangelical Christians to the Republican Party, which was dominated by wealthy economic and financial interests whose numbers and appeal were far too limited to win elections in the political climate of the 1960's. As this political alignment increased its electoral strength and gained influence over judicial, legislative and executive enactments, they transformed American capitalism from a constructive system to a predatory system, from one that created wealth and developed sustainable lifelihoods and grassroots economies that raised average standards of living to one that compromised them - both inside and outside the U.S. According to recent books and studies, as well as the BBC documentary cited earlier, the neoconservatives set about "reforming" an America torn by race and social class conflict in the 1960's into a country whose citizens would be politically united by a common moral and global purpose - that of believing that America was the sole force for good in the world. (6) This theme would echo ever more loudly until it reached a new crescendo with the election of George W. Bush in 2000 and his crusade against the "axis of evil" which his administration launched early in his first term in office. In the context of the Cold War, America's unique and vital mission would be to defeat one particular source of evil in the world - namely, the evil represented by the Soviet Union, an atheist and communist regime. At the core of the neoconservatives' agenda to mobilize the American people into a potent neoconservative political force was the political use of religion. They would create a common front with the religious right, which had previously stayed out of politics, by building on their grievances (like opposition to abortion rights) and amplifying them through opposition to domestic and foreign "enemies" that included not only atheists and communists but "liberals", "socialists" and "tax-and-spend Democrats". Using the classic tactics of political leaders throughout history who have gained influence and control over others by championing and pitting one group against another, the neoconservatives deliberately started the moral and religious "culture wars" four decades ago that now dominate 21st century American politics. (See Richard Viguerie's and David Franke's book cited earlier, America's Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power, 2004.) (7) By creating a "Christian Coalition" and using these "hot buttons" issues, the neoconservative economic and financial interests that formed the core of the Republican Party in the 60's would be able to develop an electoral base sufficiently large to enable them to take control of U.S. politics on the basis of divisive religious, social and political issues that ostensibly had nothing to do with the underlying economic and political issues that were their driving concerns. Twenty years later, the neoconservative project would prove so successful that it would play a key role in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and open the doors of the White House to an influx of neoconservatives whose ideologies would bear their full fruit in the election of George W. Bush in 2000. It gave the financial and economic interests that dominated the party the leverage they needed to begin dismantling the "New Deal" social programs, and the laws and regulations that protected the livelihoods and well-being of working Americans. It would enable them to prevent working Americans' real income from rising above 1960's standards, and create profit margins that would concentrate an extraordinary amount of wealth in their own hands. With these levers and capital, as Robert Cox explains, second force interests proceeded to transform capitalism into a predatory form whose sole aim is the accumulation of more wealth as quickly as possible, irrespective of the human or environmental costs. (8) While the original form of capitalism was to promote the development of viable, enduring enterprises that produce needed goods and services, and pay employees "living wages" that provide sustainable livelihoods covering basic needs, the goal of this new predatory form of capitalism is to extract the highest possible return on a capital investment in the shortest period of time. In many respects, this form of capitalism is a new business, unique and distinct from creating viable enterprises, indigenous economies, and sustainable livelihoods. As a result, most enterprises are controlled not by their founders, CEOs or public stockholders, but by their principal investors who occupy a key number of seats on their boards of directors that increases with every new round of financing. They watch vigilantly to protect their investments and move to take control of the enterprise if interest and principal payments on their investments are not made on time. These changes have made it commonplace for investors to force into bankruptcy and strip the assets of slow-growing but viable enterprises that could have become profitable in a 5-10 year time frame, but could not do so in the shorter time frame of 2-3 or 3-5 years that investors arbitrarily required to obtain optimum returns on their investments. In the developing world, these practices have obstructed the growth of indigenous enterprises and worked against the growth of profitable economies owned and controlled by indigenous entrepreneurs and workers. As in the U.S., it is typical for 90% or more of the working population to be employees rather than entrepreneurs or owners of the enterprises in which they work, and for government to be the largest employer in the country after corporations. By the 1980's, the "regime changes" driven by Republican neoconservatives began to enable second force interests and institutions to move in earnest to tighten their grip on foreign economies, just as they had on the U.S. economy - with equally devasting effects on livelihoods and the equitable distribution of income and wealth. Like Civicus Secretary General Kumi Naidoo cited above, Chalmers Johnson points out that the "neo-liberal Washington consensus" led the U.S. government to take aggressive action in instructing the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to collect as much money from defaulting debtor nations as could be squeezed out of them, from any and all sectors, including vital social programs providing education, health care and vocational training. (9) These policies transfer hundreds of millions of dollars out of struggling developing nations annually, obstructing the development of livelihoods and indigenous economies, and creating social unrest and even armed conflicts no less serious in their potential magnitude than those that led to the attacks of 9/11. What is most significant about these power shifts is the pre-eminance that the second force, the market economy, has attained over the first force, the governments of nation-states. As economist Peter Drucker observed several decades ago, the pre-eminent position of nation-state governments in the Western world, and popular control of these governments, began to be eroded in the 1960's as the neoconservative agenda was being implemented. Nation-states began to lose control of their ability to regulate global capital to protect the interests of their citizens as capital began flowing freely around the world via the unfettered marketplaces of the global economy. With this loss of regulatory control over investors, multinational corporations and capital came a shift of investment capital away from slower-growing enterprises to faster-growing enterprises from which investors could extract the highest rate of return in the shortest possible time. These practices, and their consequences, have brought forward a growing chorus of opposition. While the methods that opposition groups use to challenge the status quo are often unjustifiably and intolerably violent, as in the case of the attacks of 9/11, and the means they use do not justify the ends they seek to obtain, the challenges they are addressing against accumlating inequities in the distribution of economic and political power, wealth and opportunity, cannot be dismissed or ignored. More seriously, with respect to the protection of civil society, it does not appear that nation-states are in the position to rectify these consequences and excesses even if a majority of citizens favor such a shift. The underlying "regime changes" that occurred in the U.S. and the way the U.S. political system works, have catapulted the second force into the upper echelons of government decision-making. These changes make it doubtful whether even a majority of citizens could turn the Bush administration or its immediate successors away from the present course in its "war on terrorism", or force changes in the wealth gap and the practices that have led to it over the past 25 years. The state, the first force, no longer has the ability to regulate the financial institutions that control the global marketplace because, as some observers believe, the state appears to be more under the control of financial interests than financial interests are under the control of the state. In the U.S., for example, not only has the neoconservative strategy given the Republican Party the electoral base it needs to win the last two presidential elections, but studies like those conducted by Steven Hill and Sifray and Watzman show that special interest financial groups and institutions have gained a decisive influence over federal legislative, executive and judicial decision-making, by making decisively large campaign contributions to candidates of both parties. (See Steven Hill Fixing Elections (2002), and Sifray & Watzman, Do You Have a Politician in Your Pocket?2004) (10) (11). They and their well-funded lobbyists have used the elected officials they have put "in their pockets" to gain oversight of all aspects of governmental decision-making processes in all three branches of the federal government that affect their interests. The refusal of Congress to raise the minimum wage to a "living wage" and pass universal health care insurance, while it passes legislation that drastically reduces Medicaid funding and subjects citizens to "debt slavery" to medical creditors for their entire lives, provides compelling examples of the manner in which the second force has take over the first force to the detriment of the needs and interests of civil society. More evidence of this role reversal between the first and second forces is provided by statistics showing that the Republican Party receives a far greater share of its overall contributions from financial interests than do the Democrats. Further fuel has been provided by gerrymandering. According to Steven Hill, the two parties have been working together and separately for many decades to re-draw U.S. electoral district lines for the express purpose of transforming electoral districts into single party districts dominated by electoral majorities of either of the two parties. As a result, the U.S. is now divided into two single-party regions, according to Hill, and few of the two parties' candidates and incumbents are ever challenged in the districts they control. The Democrats control most of the electoral districts in the states on the east and west coasts of the country, and the Republicans control most of the disticts in the "heartland" between the coasts. This single party dominance has stifled opposing views, and contributed to the ideological polarization of the country along party lines. When this re-drawing of electoral district boundaries is combined with the U.S. "winner-take-all" electoral system, the result is that only the party in power in a given electoral district can get its candidates nominated and elected. Few insurgent parties or candidates have any chance of getting nominated, or winning contested primaries, or raising enough money to run winning campaigns. As a result, U.S. democracy has increasingly been "hollowed out" and divorced from genuine popular control. Instead, those who have not been incorporated into the Republican Party's religious electoral base are finding themselves trapped in an artificially-contrived, evenly-divided electorate whose members have little choice but to espouse the increasingly uncompromising views of the party that dominates their electoral districts. With special interest money flowing into the pockets of the candidates of the two major parties, voters vote to ratify the candidate choices of the party that is dominant in their electoral district, and the special interests that fund the party and the candidate. Not too surprisingly, the voting patterns of the candidates who are elected in such districts typically reflect the preferences of the parties who nominated them, and the special interests that funded their campaigns. In summary, the "regime changes" that have occurred inside the U.S. political system as a result of the neoconservative "regime change" and the ascendancy of the second force over the first force, have so seriously eroded popular control that many observers believe the U.S. is no longer a democracy but a plutocracy, a government controlled by and for the wealthy. These changes have not only put the U.S. in a crossfire with non-state terrorist networks but the entire nation-state system as well. Pivotal economic and political power shifts inside the U.S. have caused equally pivotal shifts outside the U.S., which have in turn created such adverse economic and political conditions in whole regions of the world like the Middle East that they have contributed directly to the creation of terrorist networks capable of perpetrating attacks like those of 9/11. So powerful are these forces that even though the majority of opinion outside the U.S. believes that U.S. foreign policies are to blame for the attacks of 9/11, and that post-9/11 U.S. doctrines of unilateral pre-emptive strikes are proving counter-productive, the Bush administration appears to be unaffected and undeterred. Despite growing threats to human security inside and outside the U.S., the administration continues to adhere to the neoconservative global strategy that it unfurled when it first took office. Despite U.S. failure to secure either Afghanistan or Iraq, and mounting civilian casualties, the financial and economic interests in the Bush administration appear to have vested interests in continuing U.S. military actions in its "war on terrorism" despite their costs. They are working to transform the peacetime economy the U.S. had prior to 9/11 into a wartime economy, so that they can continue their military operations abroad for the foreseeable future. Proof of the presence of these interests can be found in the administration's close ties to private contractors who have received no-bid contracts to carry out core military operations at home and abroad. The work of U.S. vice president Cheney's former firm, Halliburton, is a case in point, a firm that has continued to maintain Cheney on its payroll to receive "deferred compensation" at the same time that he is on the payroll of the U.S. government to receive compensation for his services as vice president. As will be seen below, U.S. policies in Iraq have been designed to privatize Iraq's state-owned businesses by selling off 100% ownership in them to the top foreign bidders, in clear violation of international laws governing the conduct of foreign powers who invade and occupy sovereign countries. The U.S. has paid millions of dollars to politicians of Iraqi origin, like Ahmed Chalabi who now heads Iraq's oil ministry, to work with U.S. forces in establishing a post-invasion Iraqi government that agrees to sell off Iraqi businesses to foreigners and open up Iraqi oil reserves to exploitation by foreign companies. These revelations are coming to light at the same time that recent investigative research is demonstrating that the Bush administration had already decided to invade Iraq well before the attacks of September, 2001. Its 2003 claims alleging Iraq had close ties to terrorist organizations and possessed weapons of mass destruction, which were later proved to be false, were knowingly contrived to obtain Congressional approval for the attack. To implement the Bush administration's neoconservative strategy for transforming the Middle East economically and politically, massive amounts of resources and taxpayer dollars in the U.S. are now being shifted from the civilian sector to the war effort. These shifts are likely to result in a substantial deterioration of living standards in the U.S. and abroad, and exacerbate the adverse economic and political conditions in regions prone to violence that originally sparked the terrorist attacks of 9/11. To the extent that a majority of the American people continue to elect officials who support the Bush administration's domestic and foreign policies, the conditions that sparked terrorism abroad are likely to worsen and spread. The Bush administration's conception of "national security" is likely to prevail over that of countries who see the protection of "human security" as the best strategy for protecting national security, and simultaneously eradicating the adverse economic and political conditions that spawn terrorism. In the light of these foreign policy goals and precedents, the Bush administration's intransigeance in defending U.S. "national security" while jeopardizing the "human security" of civil society constituents everywhere will fuel the global backlash that is now emerging against U.S. It will crystalize growing worldwide opposition to U.S. use of its overwhelming economic and military power to win conflicts in the Middle East, whose seeds the U.S. has been sowing for nearly a century since it intervened in the region on the side of Western powers seeking to carve out and protect spheres of influence, and obtain favorable trading advantages for natural resources like oil at the expense of indigenous populations. That global backlash will prompt increasing numbers of civil society constituents, activists, NGOs and their allies to realize that they must create a third force in world affairs that can challenge the power of the world's sole remaining superpower, and the first and second forces that now threaten human security throughout the world.
Notes
|