Is a war against terrorism winnable?

THE EDITOR, Sir:

THE HORRIFIC suicidal attacks that scorched-earthed the icons of America's psychic landscape have jump-started the twenty-first century. Like no other event of recent memory, it assertively divides History into distinctive binary existential experiences: Security and Insecurity. And while the floodgates of condolences and the furore of retribution mix unevenly among the emotions of many, the world has the unpleasant task of determining where to go from here.

Indeed, we do not want peace without justice. The corollary, however, is that neither do we desire justice without peace. George W. Bush is on a path to galvanise a global coalition in the pursuit of a war on terrorism. My concern is simply whether or not such a war is winnable: In essence, can it bring both justice and peace?

There are many who argue that the world has categorically shifted into a new paradigm, moving away from the bi-polar tensions inherent to the Cold War period of superpower rivalry with its conflicts played out in the various satellite states. We are now seeing the strands coming together of what has been called unconventional warfare, urban warfare, guerrilla warfare and the titles go on.

The constant thread is that these types of engagements are what political analysts call asymmetric warfare ­ the modern day version of David and Goliath where militarily USA is a Goliath but the terrorist Davids are able to strike, albeit temporarily, destabilising blows.

There are two questions that rise to the fore: First, are we witnessing asymmetric warfare (a paradigm shift in states-confrontation) and second, if so, is it a sustainable form of engagement?

We must realise that the freedoms enshrined by the American fathers in the Constitution ensure that the society is one that is open and free. The quintessential example of republican democracy, the United States, is, in a way probably not hitherto experienced, living out the stark contradictions inherent in its practice of the democratic society. These tensions have both domestic and international dimensions.

Domestically, its citizens enjoy freedoms of speech, movement and association. These very freedoms that enable the individual pursuit of happiness can also be perverted to frustrate and hijack that pursuit ­ by individuals who, while enjoying those freedoms practically, deny them philosophically. This is why the kamikaze hijackings are so disturbing: They unveil the soft underbelly of the democratic project while egregiously rending the trust native to participation in this social contract.

The other contradiction becomes evident when we investigate US foreign policy. The cessation of Cold War tensions and the debate as to whether US should not adopt a less interventionist approach, in its role as world police, for a more isolationist one, did not resolve the fact that peoples and states across the hemispheres have, as one recent editorial put it, chafe[d] at the weight of US power. For a country that embraces the democratic philosophy, America has not consistently practised this philosophy in the global political arena with respect to its relations to certain states. For ultimately, the embrace of the democratic philosophy must respect the rights of peoples and the states they form to pursue the path of self-determination.

It must consequently respect the sovereignty of states that institute policies that do not find approval in the American specification of democratic ideals since neither political nor economic imperialism has any place in the so-called family of nations. As captured by Kwame Nkrumah in his comments during the struggle towards independence for his beloved Gold Coast (now Ghana) from England, such states prefer that they win freedom and mismanage their affairs rather than have their affairs managed for them by their colonial masters.

Talk about paradigm shift and asymmetric warfare mask the underlying reality that America has practised a type of democracy whose domestic and foreign policy dimensions have been drifting apart, with dangerous repercussions. If talk about paradigm shift and asymmetric warfare can be dismissed, then what about the war on terrorism: Can it be won?

Conflicts

Samuel Huntington, in his controversial article of the last decade, The Clash of Civilisations, argued that the conflicts that will draw states into war will be driven by ideological differences and will be fuelled by the tensions between Islamic and Christian civilisations. Although drawing a lot of flak for his thesis, one could say that Huntington was prescient, in this case anyway. Francis Fukuyama, in his equally if not moreso contentious text, The End of History, powerfully argues that economic and political liberalism (or, liberal democracy) resolves the Hegelian dialectic and its popular Marxist interpretation: The Master-Slave (or, class) conflict; and thus offers the world a triumphalist view of liberal democracy as the end of the dialectic, i.e., the end of History.

The truth is that where capitalism has gone and prospered, liberal democracy has invariably followed suit. Although Huntington and Fukuyama may differ re the intensity and outcome of the confrontation between East and West, one thing they do agree on: The struggle is ultimately ideological. The war on terrorism, sadly, is a misguided one. It cannot be won, not because USA does not have superior military arsenal, or the strength of conviction and stamina to pursue victory. It is lost before it has even begun because it will be waged along the axis of military differences. We can burn men's bodies, but the ideas that burn in their hearts are not easily quenched.

The children are asking: Why? There is, of course, no ultimate legitimation of the evil attack on America. And that's not my purpose here. But we cannot hide our heads in the sands of our geopolitical shores and assume a convenient Manichean world where everything Western is good and everything Eastern is bad. The management of power is a wieldy task and the hegemony of the United States can be intoxicatingly heady. America must pursue greater soundness in the management of its international power. Probably then we will not only have peace, but justice as well.

I am, etc.,

RYAN ONEAL

PHILLIP PALMER

roppalmer@hotmail.com

71 Penwood Road

Kingston 11

Via Go-Jamaica

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