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October
18, 2001
Hearts and Minds:
Avoiding a New
Cold War
by Rahul Mahajan and Robert
Jensen
This is a different kind of war. That much of
what we are being told, at least, is true. And because of that,
a different kind of analysis is required.
The single most common question antiwar
activists are confronted with is, "What's your solution?"
Although many elements of a sensible
solution have been offered, the antiwar movement has reached
no general consensus on the fundamentals.
In the past, activists who critiqued
and/or resisted unjust U.S. foreign policy and militarism faced
three main scenarios in which U.S. actions were blatantly unjust
and the raw exercise of U.S. power was obviously wrong:
- U.S. attempts to overthrow democratically
elected governments, such as Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954,
and Chile in 1973.
- U.S. wars against national liberation
movements, such as Vietnam in the 1960s, or against attempts
to consolidate national liberation, such as Nicaragua throughout
the 1980s.
- U.S. wars in response to clearly illegal
acts, but where the U.S. short-circuited negotiations and used
indiscriminate, gratuitous violence that killed huge numbers
of civilians (directly and indirectly), such as in the Gulf
War in 1991.
In all those cases, there was no threat
to the people of the United States, even though many of the
interventions were carried out in the context of the Cold War
project of making people afraid of threats-that-might-come.
The solutions were simple -- in the first two cases, no intervention
by the United States, and in the third, diplomacy and negotiations
within the framework of international law while keeping the
United States from unilateral military action.
But this war was sparked by attacks on
U.S. soil, and people feel threatened and afraid, for understandable
reasons.
In a climate of fear, it doesn't matter
to many that the military strategy being pursued by the United
States is immoral (the civilian death toll from bombing and
starvation resulting from the attack will no doubt reach into
the tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands without immediate
action) and ineffective (it will most likely breed more terrorism,
not end it). Americans are confronted with a genuine threat
and want to feel safe again.
As a result, proposals offered by some
in the antiwar movement have been difficult for the public to
take seriously. It is clear that pacifism is of interest to
virtually no one in the United States. That is not said out of
disrespect for principled pacifists who consistently reject
violence, but simply to point out that any political argument
that sounds like "turn the other cheek" will be ignored.
It is also hard to imagine how it would have an impact on the
kind of people who committed the crime against humanity on Sept.
11.
The only public display of pacifism that
would be meaningful now would be for pacifists to put their
bodies on the line, to put themselves somewhere between the
weapons of their government and the innocent victims in Afghanistan.
Short of that, statements evoking pacifism will be worse than
ineffective; they will paint all the antiwar movement as out
of touch with reality.
Also inadequate are calls for terrorism
to be treated solely as a police matter in which law enforcement
agencies pursue the perpetrators and bring them to justice through
courts, domestic or international. That is clearly central to
the task but is insufficient and unrealistic; the problem of
terrorist networks is a combined political and criminal matter
and requires a combined solution.
So, what should those who see the futility
of the current military strategy be calling for?
First, we must support the call made
by UN-affiliated and private aid agencies for an immediate bombing
halt to allow a resumption of the serious food distribution
efforts needed to avoid a catastrophe.
There will need to be a transitional
government, which should be -- as has been suggested for the
past decade -- ethnically broad-based with a commitment to allowing
international aid and basic human rights. It must, however,
be under UN auspices, with the United States playing a minimal
role because of its history of "covert" action in
the region. It should also be one that does not sell off Afghanistan's
natural resources and desirable location for pipelines on the
cheap to multinational corporations.
While all that goes forward, the United
States should do what is most obviously within its power to
do to lower the risk of further terrorist attacks: Begin to
change U.S. foreign policy in a way that could win over the
people of the Islamic world by acknowledging that many of their
grievances -- such as the sanctions on Iraq, the presence of
U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, Israel's occupation of and aggression
against Palestine -- are legitimate and must be addressed.
This shouldn't be confused with "giving
in to the terrorists" or "negotiating with bin Laden."
It is neither. It is a practical strategy that demonstrates
that a powerful nation can choose to correct policies that were
rooted in a desire to extend its dominance over a region and
its resources and are now not only unjust but untenable. It
is a sign of strength, and it is the right thing to do.
Some have argued against any change in
U.S. foreign policy in the near term. International law expert
Richard Falk wrote in The Nation, "Whatever the global
role of the United States--and it is certainly responsible for
much global suffering and injustice, giving rise to widespread
resentment that at its inner core fuels the terrorist impulse--it
cannot be addressed so long as this movement of global terrorism
is at large and prepared to carry on with its demonic work."
In fact, the opposite is true: Now is
precisely the time to address these long-term issues.
Here we can actually take a page from
"liberal" counterinsurgency experts who saw that the
best way to defeat movements of national liberation was to win
the hearts and minds of people rather than try to defeat them
militarily. In those situations, as in this one, military force
simply drives more people into resistance. Measures designed
to ease the pressure toward insurgency, such as land reform
then and changing U.S. Middle East policy now, are far more
likely to be effective. The alternative in Vietnam was a wholesale
attempt to destroy civilian society -- "draining the swamp"
in Donald Rumsfeld's phrase. The alternative now would be unending
global war.
In the past, such strategies were part
of a foreign policy "debate" in which the end goal
of U.S. economic domination of Third World countries was shared
by all parties, and so they were entirely illegitimate. Now,
it is different -- these terrorists are not the voice of the
dispossessed and they are not a national liberation movement.
Their vision for their own societies is grotesque.
But they do share something with the
wider populace of their countries.
There is tremendous justified anger in
the Islamic world at U.S. foreign policy. For the vast majority
of the populace, it has not translated to anger at the United
States as a nation or at Americans as a people. For groups like
al-Qaeda, it has. Their aims and methods are rejected by that
majority, but the shared anger at U.S. domination provides these
terror networks their only cover. A strategy to successfully
"root out" those networks must isolate them from the
populace by eliminating what they hold in common. It is necessary
to get the cooperation not just of governments of Islamic nations
but of their people as well. The only way is to remove their
sources of grievance.
These changes in policy must be preliminary
to a larger change. The United States must drop its posture
of the unilateralist, interventionist superpower. In lieu of
its current policy of invoking the rule of law and the international
community when convenient and ignoring them when it wishes,
it must demonstrate a genuine commitment to being bound by that
law and the will of the international community in matters of
war and peace.
Many have said of the Afghans, and perhaps
by extension of many other deprived peoples, "Feed them
and you'll win them over." This attitude dehumanizes those
people. Nobody will accept bombs with one hand and food with
the other. Nor will anyone feel gratitude over food doled out
by an arrogant superpower that insists on a constant double
standard in international relations and makes peremptory demands
of other nations on a regular basis. To win the support of Afghans
and others for the long term, which will be necessary to substantially
reduce the danger of terrorism, the United States must treat
other peoples with dignity and respect. We must recognize we
are simply one nation among many.
This strategy will not win over bin Laden
or other committed terrorists to our side; that's not the objective.
Instead, we have to win over the people.
The choice we face as a nation is similar
to that faced at the end of World War II. The capitalist West,
the Communist world, and many of the colonies had united to
defeat fascism. That could have been the basis of building an
equitable world order, with the United States helping to equalize
levels of wealth and consumption around the world. Had that
path been taken, the world would be a far safer place today,
for Americans and others.
Instead, U.S. leaders chose the path
of the Cold War, which was not so much an attempt to contain
Soviet-style communism as it was to destroy any example of independent
development in the Third World, to extend and entrench our economic
superiority. That effort harmed democracy in our country and
in others, killed millions, and has led in the end to the creation
new and terrifying threats to all our safety.
Government officials are already speaking
as if we are fighting a new Cold War, with President Bush calling
the war on Afghanistan "the first battle of the war of
the 21st century."
We cannot let history repeat itself.
Rahul Mahajan
serves on the National Board of Peace Action. Robert Jensen
is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas. Both
are members of the Nowar
Collective. They can be reached at rahul@tao.ca
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