Text 5 Who's To Blame?

By Ted Hopf

Department of political sciences, Ohio State University

I cried for a long time, looking at the collapsing towers, thinking of the horrible experiences for all the innocent victims. But as I cried, I became increasingly angry, and not angry at the terrorists, but rather at the root cause of their actions. How did it come to pass that the U.S. could become so hated that anyone would be an enthusiastic participant in such mass murder?

Well, the answer is to be found in American policy itself in the world, its unilateral arrogance, its Cold War depredations in the Third World, its continuing support for Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, and its continuing unipolar hubris.

So far, political discussions in the U.S. and the sympathizing world in general have been tactical: How to stop a terrorist, once he has decided on killing thousands of people, from succeeding in realizing his preferences. This is the consensual U.S. approach, I've gleaned from Russian broadcasts of Bush, Rice, Powell, Weldon, Kissinger, etc.

But isn't it time to realize that THERE IS NO DEFENSE against people who hate the U.S. so much? I don't care how many b/trillions we spend on it, it ain't going to work.

Isn't it time, instead of building defenses against someone who has already grown to hate the U.S., that we should change our foreign policies that evoke such feelings? Isn't this at all a signal for some self-reflection, rather than merely Other-de-monization and self-righteous retribution? Do any of us really think that U.S. policy itself isn't at all to blame for this?

Fifty years of Cold War interventions, coups, military dictatorships, election frauds, 20 million deaths in the Third World from 1946 to 1991, every single one of them connected, either most direclty (Vietnam) or indirectly (Afghanistan), to American competition with the USSR in other lands. Do we really believe that these 50 years of violence have not bred any justifiable hatred for the U.S.? Is the U.S. really just an innocent victim who can only think of revenge? The Cold War has been over for ten years; thank God, or Gorbachev, for that. And what has the U.S. done during this decade of unrivalled supremacy? Has it tried to create a more just world order? Has it even thought strategically about collective hegemony? Has it tried to induce China to share in global governance? Has it built any new global institutions? No, instead, it has just fueled the fires of resentment against American lawlessness abroad. Over these ten years, the U.S. has broken international law repeatedly, while demanding that others obey it, and that others need to be punished if they do break it. Why should the U.S. expect cooperation from other states in controlling terrorism when the U.S. itself demonstrates ZERO adherence to international agreements whenever it feels that is expedient?

Do you remember the bully in your school? People could piss in his thermos in retaliation, or put a tack on his chair. He was hurt, and his response was Bush's response, beat up some available suspect, but of course never knowing who did it And why didn't he know? Because enough of the rest of the class hated him, so that he could get no cooperation in finding the culprits. So, he would lash out, just as Bush, and apparently the entire U.S.-public, is itching to do, indiscriminately beating some people up. Which of course misses the target and only creates more enemies. The bully only learns belatedly", that it is his own behavior that must change if he is to avoid drinking piss every once, in awhile.

How could U.S. behavior change, immediately? As a first step, various modest proposals might be implemented based on the idea that fighting terrorism is far more efficient and effective if you reduce the probability that people will have preferences for terrorism in advance; rather than wasting trillions on defending yourself against terrorist acts only AFTER the preferences have already hardened.

Such, policy changes will dramatically reduce the probability of terrorism without the expenditure of one extra defense dollar on illusory counter-terrorist hardware or intelligence. And since there is no defense anyway, it will be all to the good.

They will also multiply the number of ALLIES (remember these?) the U.S. has in the world in combating terrorism more generally, now that the U.S. itself has submitted to some kind of collective great power will in the Middle East, and has shown, in a most dramatic fashion, its willingness to pay a very high price (in relations with Israel) to bring its own policies much more closely in line with what all the rest of the world, including Europe, has been wishing for in the Middle East for decades.

It could be argued that many people hate the U.S. for reasons other than the Middle East I'd agree, but virtually all the groups I can think of, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Iran to Pakistan, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, etc. Palestinian cause as the single most important crime the U.S. continues to commit in the world. It would seem its resolution would go to the very heart of the problem, at least as it's understood today.

Finally, I believe that all right-thinking individuals could agree on one important point The more authority America has the longer American hegemony in the world will last — authority which is earned through legitimacy. The latter can only be gained in the eyes of others, not through unilateral declarations of might and righteousness. So, while it sounds; I`m sure, anti-American of me to list its many crimes, in fact the strategy I offer is fated to perpetuate American predominance in the world far longer than its alternatives.