The Battle Against Terrorism: A Battle for Stomachs, Hearts, and Minds
March 2002
Daniel Wagner explains why the fight against
terrorism needs to start with putting food in starving people's stomachs in
the developing world and creating a more open, less hostile, political environment.
by Daniel
Wagner*
AIG
It is now commonly believed that a root cause of the terrorism that has been
unleashed against the United States is the "Clash of the Civilizations," a term
first used by Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington in a Foreign Affairs article by the same title
and a subsequent book by the same name. The Clash of the Civilizations reflects
Mr. Huntington's thesis that the economic rise of East Asia in the 1980s and
1990s, coupled with a population explosion in Muslim countries over the same
period, has changed the nature of the global political system. The predominance
of Western ideals over the rest of the world in the modern period has been challenged,
leaving a "clash" between the fundamental tenets of Islam and the West.
Central to Mr. Huntington's thesis is his belief that the growth of Islam
is a manifestation of anti-Westernism and a rejection of the West's direct and
indirect dominance over the political, economic, and social systems of the world,
leading to an inevitable conflict between the peoples of the West and Islamic
nations. In his words:
During the coming decades, Asian economic growth will have deeply destabilizing
effects on the Western-dominated established international order, with the development
of China, if it continues, producing a massive shift in power among civilizations.
In addition, India could move into rapid economic development and emerge as
a major contender for influence in world affairs. Meanwhile, Muslim population
growth will be a destabilizing force for both Muslim societies and their neighbors.
The large numbers of young people with a secondary education will continue to
power the Islamic Resurgence and promote Muslim militancy, militarism, and migration.
As a result, the early years of the twenty-first century are likely to see an
ongoing resurgence of non-Western power and culture, and a clash of the peoples
of non-Western civilizations with the West and with each other. [Huntington,
Samuel, The Clash of the Civilizations and the
Remaking of the World Order, Simon & Schuster, 1996, p. 121.]
Mr. Huntington's analysis provides an important piece of the puzzle when
deciphering the source of the rabid hatred of the West (especially the United
States) among a large group of people in the world. I would submit that "the
Clash" is also fed by the sense of disenfranchisement felt not only by some
Muslims, but by a huge swathe of the world's population who have not benefited
from globalization, but have actually become even more marginalized economically
by it.
The West's battle against terrorism is therefore not merely a battle against
poverty as a root cause of anti-Westernism, but a battle to win the hearts and
minds of billions of people at the bottom of the economic heap who have very
little to lose and everything to gain by opposing the West.
Haves versus Have Nots
That the globalization process, while further enriching the world's most
prosperous nations, appears to have contributed to the further marginalization
of at least one-third of the world's people is not widely acknowledged. Many
in the developing world believe that the integration of many of the world's
countries into the "global" economy has at best been an uneven process in terms
of trade and investment flows, and at worst a perpetuation of a system that
distributes assets and advantages in a biased fashion, favoring the wealthiest,
most-developed countries while leaving the poorest and least-developed countries
further and further behind.
By and large it appears that the developing countries that have benefited
most from globalization are those that also attract the most trade and investment,
and have the largest economies and populations. China, India, and Brazil are
good examples. At the same time, two billion people in the developing world
live in countries that have become increasingly less integrated into the world
economy. In Africa, for example, trade has diminished in volume in relation
to national incomes, poverty has risen, and economic growth has been stagnant
over the past 2 decades. In short, globalization has not been truly global.
Much of the world has simply failed to participate in the process.
The gaps in resources, personal and national incomes, infrastructure, and
technical skills between globalized economies and those on the fringes are already
extremely wide and will soon widen. Narrowing this gap will be a great challenge
to all. Perhaps the greatest (and most vocal) opponent of globalization has
been Malaysia's Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohammed. He has come to be considered
the voice of the developing world on this subject. In a speech given at the
World Economic Development Congress in Kuala Lumpur on June 27, 2001, Prime
Minister Mohammed provided these staggering statistics: the top 20 percent of
wealth in developed countries is 85 times greater than the bottom 20 percent
in developing countries, and that the asset wealth of the richest 200 people
in the world is equal to the wealth of 40 percent of all of humanity.
When people who have difficulty feeding themselves or their families hear
these statistics, it must make them very angry. The sense of hopelessness and
powerlessness that follows must be considered a primary source of fuel for the
anti-Western extremist groups that proliferate today. As the gap between the
haves and have nots grows wider in the era of globalization, the number of people
likely to find the rhetoric being spewed by the anti-Western extremist groups
increasingly appealing will grow. If the West thinks it has a problem on its
hands now, just wait 10 years.
The Muslim Equation
As daunting as spreading the benefits of globalization more equitably around
the world is the challenge of how to encourage the Muslim world to have a friendlier
orientation toward the United States and the West. There is great unanimity
in the Islamic world's response to the events of September 11. Consider the
following statistics: A recent U.S. intelligence report obtained from a Saudi
intelligence survey found that 95 percent of educated Saudis, aged 25 to 41,
support Osama Bin Laden's cause. These are educated Saudis. And 70 percent of
babies born in Kano, Nigeria, since September 11 have been named "Osama."
On a hopeful note, Mohammed Hussain Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Hezbollah,
one of the most visible extremist organizations that has violently opposed the
United States and Israel for the past 25 years, said that the September 11 attacks
were not compatible with Shariah Law because they killed innocent civilians
in a distant land, not in an Islamic country where the victims could be construed
as aggressors. That someone such as Mohammed Hussain Fadlallah would openly
say this is truly surprising and gives cause for hope that the tide of Muslim
opinion supporting Osama Bin Laden might some day be reversed.
Still, those opposed to the United States in the Muslim world far outnumber
those who are sympathetic. In a recent Gallup poll of 10,000 residents of 9
Muslim countries, most respondents called the United States "ruthless and arrogant,"
with most describing themselves as "resentful" of the United States. Sixty-one
percent of the respondents said they did not believe Arabs carried out the attacks,
67 percent saw the attacks as morally justified, and 77 percent saw the U.S.
military action in Afghanistan as morally unjustified. Most respondents said
they thought that the U.S. was aggressive and biased against Islamic values.
They specifically cited a bias against Palestinians. [CNN Web Site, February
26, 2002.]
The poll came at a time when the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has reached
an appalling crescendo. In some respects, it is not surprising that the poll
would have revealed such responses, for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is
integral to the anger Muslims feel toward the United States. Fawaz Turki, a
columnist with the English language Saudi newspaper Arab News captured some of the frustration
Muslims feel toward the Israeli/Palestinian issue this way:
At this moment in history, we have become so dependent a people that
we expect our political destiny in Palestine to be determined for us by
capricious rulers in foreign capitals. Have we been left by the wayside
and become irrelevant in the global dialogue of cultures? [Washington
Post, February 2, 2002, p. A21.]
The sense of disenfranchisement felt by many Muslims makes it difficult to
imagine that much headway can be made by the West in encouraging a more positive
attitude toward the West. Feelings for the Palestinian cause run deep in the
Muslim world, but so does history. Only a mutually satisfactory solution will
end the perennial Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Many in the Muslim world follow the teachings of Mohammed Khaldun, a 14th
Century Muslim historian who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Islamic world.
He was renowned for his historiography, which is widely referenced in the Muslim
world today. Mohammed Khaldun saw solidarity (in the form of consciousness of
communal or blood ties) as the source of civilization. He believed that prosperity
leads to corruption and ultimately the abandonment of religion, which inevitably
results in self-destruction. He believed that all civilizations pass through
stages, beginning with youth and ending in senility, and that all civilizations
last no more than 200 years. Once its power has peaked, it begins an irreversible
decline. By this standard, the United States is due for a fall. Mohammed Khaldun's
followers might say that the September 11 attacks were a test of Western solidarity.
The Task Ahead
The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, tragic as they
were, could be considered a wake-up call. Without the kind of jolt they provided
to policymakers and ordinary citizens of the developed world, we might have
continued to remain oblivious to the increasingly serious threat presented by
Al Qaeda and other extremist groups. The attacks themselves may have provided
the pillar of solidarity among Western governments that Mohammed Khaldun's followers
may ultimately judge them by. The call has been heard, and governments, businesses,
and individuals are responding. The question is, how will they respond over
the long haul, and will it make a difference?
A Herculean effort awaits Western governments. It is believed that Al Qaeda
operatives now exist in at least 60 countries, not all of which are likely to
be cooperative in pursuing the group's members. U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation
Director Robert Mueller has said that Al Qaeda had obtained "Weapons of Mass
Destruction" and that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan enabled the United States
to stop Al Qaeda "in the nick of time." Although there is no proof yet that
Al Qaeda possessed nuclear weapons, Director Mueller believes that eventually
it would have obtained them. [Comments made to the American Chamber of Commerce
in Singapore on March 15, 2002.] The potential stakes for failing to crush Al
Qaeda are high.
Part of the answer rests with an increase in aid that developed countries
and international financial institutions give to developing countries. James
Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank Group, and others have called on developed
country governments to double current aid contributions to as much as $100 billion
over the coming years to programs aimed at alleviating global poverty. This
is clearly a step in the right direction, but it is going to take much more
than this to achieve the desired objective, and many developed country governments
have already expressed skepticism about this approach.
President George W. Bush has called for a 15 percent increase in bilateral
aid from the United States to poor nations, but this would be linked to their
governments' support for human rights. This offer is a move in the right direction
since the U.S. foreign aid budget has not grown in a decade and is at its lowest
level as a percentage of national gross domestic product (GDP) (a tenth of 1
percent) since 1945. Some of Europe's wealthiest and most influential countries
also don't devote much of their resources to foreign aid (with the United Kingdom
and France both at a third of 1 percent of their respective national GDPs, according
to The International Herald Tribune, March
16-17, 2002, p. 1, as taken from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development statistics.) If the United States were to devote a portion of its
planned increase in the defense budget to bilateral aid aimed at alleviating
poverty, few could argue that it would not be money well spent.
Other changes that could make a difference include:
- A sustained effort among governments in every corner of the globe to
share intelligence on extremist movements. There has been an historical
tendency not to do so. But the governments of Malaysia, Singapore, and the
Philippines have shown over the past 6 months that this is possible, with
quick and measurable results.
- As we have seen in the United States, immigration services need to be
overhauled. Many such services are more akin to processing tourists than
to identifying terrorists. Aggravating the situation is the fact that many
immigration services lack the proper infrastructure and personnel training
to do an adequate job. This, too, will require more money.
Conclusion
It is becoming apparent that the task at hand will require a sea change in
how developed country policymakers address issues such as terrorism, intelligence
sharing, and development. It will no longer be possible to craft national policy
on issues like poverty alleviation, job creation, and economic growth in the
developing world based on traditional measures of acceptability. Winning the
battle against terrorism will require truly revolutionary thinking about how
to put food in starving people's stomachs in the developing world, while creating
an environment that will invite people in the Muslim and developing worlds to
reconsider their position on Al Qaeda, the United States, Israel, and the West.
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