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Beichman – The Politics of Vengeance and American Foreign Policy

Arnold Beichman
"The Politics of Vengeance and American Foreign Policy"

The Philadelphia Society
40th! Anniversary Gala
Chicago, Illinois May 2, 2004


I


A decade ago Samuel Huntington wrote:

“It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in the new world
will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions
among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural…The
clash of civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

His words have been reified by Islamic terrorist events before and after 9/11,
Istanbul, Bali, Moscow, Kenya, Casablanca, the latest being Madrid 3/11. Thus
the theme of this panel, “Foreign Policy: The Next Forty Years” necessarily
includes a new actor on the world scene for whom the concept of “Foreign
Policy” has no meaning and yet an actor who influences–not determines–the
foreign policies of the leading nation-states, an actor who cannot be appeased
because his objective is total annihilation of the enemy and himself at the same
time. As Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammad, put it from his home in England "It is
foolish to fight people who want death; that is what they are looking for."
(New York Times, April 26, 2004).

Today when we try to foresee foreign policy issues for the next forty years it
is with the realization that we are living in an era which was best described
under far different circumstances by Otto Von Bismarck in words that are even
truer today than they were in 1890. I quote the Iron Chancellor:

"We live in a wondrous time in which the strong is weak because of his
moral scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity."

(Webster’s New Collegiate defines “scruple” as an ethical consideration or
principle that inhibits action.)

Foreign policy in Bismarckís good old days was based on nation-states
negotiating with each other or confronting each other on the field of battle and
in all cases there was a foreseeable end to hostilities. The armies were
professional or conscript and when the battle was over everybody still standing
went home after the inevitable rectification of borders, as the phrase went.
Whatever the casus belli, it was not a clash of civilizations.

Today there are no borders to be rectified because as far as the al Qaeda and
its free lance terrorists are concerned there are no national borders, anymore
than there are nation-states. There is no foreseeable end to hostilities because
the war being waged against the West is not by nation-states against each other
but by an enemy who, speaking in the name of Islam, has declared war on our
civilization.

That civilization is represented today by eight countries, the G8: Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States
with the European Union also represented. The 30th G8 summit, hosted by the
U.S., will open their 2-day meeting at Sea Island, Georgia June 8.

II

The terrorist network, which I call the Bombintern, produces dramatic,
sanguinary results. It has established three very important facts: first, its
threats are credible; second, it can project its destructive power where it
pleases, in North America, Asia, Africa, Europe east and west, into the
heartland of the worldís super-power and third, negotiation, as is customary
among nation-states, is impossible since there is no single entity with whom one
can negotiate or who can speak for the Bombintern or ensure treaty performance .

President Bushís 1992 report to Congress titled, “National Security Strategy
of the United States” told us that in the past our enemies “needed great
armies and great industrial capabilities to endanger America.” That is no
longer true because, says the Bush report, “shadowy networks of individuals
can bring great chaos and suffering to our shores for less than it costs to
purchase a single tank.”

Despite the Bombinternís successes, the fundamental political character of its
targets do not change. They may temporarily change a countryís foreign policy,
as seen most recently in post 3/11 Spain, but Spain is still a democracy.
Despite years of IRA terrorism against Britain, it still remains a democracy.
Despite 9/11, the U.S. remains a democracy. The democratic ethos is unaffected.

Thus one can argue that even if the Bombintern is still functioning forty years
hence as I believe it may well be, the United States will still be the leading
power in NATO allied with Western Europe, as well as Russia and an emerging
China, no longer Marxist but probably still Leninist. For the one thing we have
learned in the past decade of Islamist terrorism is that the Bombintern can
terrorize a population but it cannot prevent the population from going about its
daily tasks as it has from time immemorial. There will still be autonomous
terrorist pods, but police actions will limit their activities. And even so, one
suicidal terrorist will always get through.

III

The next forty years will see a greater emphasis and concern by
the United States on three phenomena. The first will be on controlling the
raising and transfer of funds across the terrorist network. Lord Robertson,
former head of NATO, recently described how “easy it was to have $500,000
wired from a bank in Dubai for anonymous use in automatic teller machines in
Florida and Maine [and] how difficult it has been, even with the backing of UN
resolutions and 150 nations, to find out who raised or sent those dollars.”

Second, Europeís fundamental problem, as Niall Ferguson has written, is
senescence. The fifteen European Union countries will have to contend with the
exponential growth of the Muslim population in Western Europe while their own
citizens age. By 2025, it is predicted the Muslim population in France alone
will approach one-quarter. The minaret will compete with the Cross. If this
population cohort begins to vote as a solid bloc then not only Western Europe
but the United States will have to contend with a new power center in the heart
of the continent, one which will even threaten Russia with its still unsettled
Chechnya problem.

Third, the U.S. will concentrate even greater efforts to prevent proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction even if that emphasis means infuriating so-called
allies like France and Pakistan and enemies like North Korea.

A quarter century ago there arose with Soviet support an alliance of
dictatorships which I called the Radical Entente. It comprised Syria, Iran,
Iraq, Libya and North Korea. Their cold war politics was containable by American
foreign policy because it was still a world of nation states and civilian
populations were not held hostage. Even at the height of Cold War crises the
1949 Berlin blockade, the 1956 Hungarian uprising, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis
one could still board an airplane without being searched or having to remove
oneís shoes. People went about their business because civilians were exempt
from random attack. The politics of vengeance had not yet made its appearance.

However dangerous the Soviet Union appeared to Western societies, civilian
populations were not at risk. A plane might be hijacked to Cuba but it was a
momentary distraction which affected airline schedules but rarely endangered
airline passengers. It was generally the act of a loner nothing like the
catastrophic 9/11 conspiracy.

Americans could ignore such events because there weren’t many Lockerbie
tragedies. There was a nation-state, Libya, behind Lockerbie and American
foreign policy could punish the perpetrator and did. But American foreign policy
has no way of dealing with al Qaeda terrorism because there is no nation-state
involved. Since the defeat of the Taliban and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein,
the Bombintern is without a headquarters and its members usually operate within
a nation-state, which while hostile to their terrorist ambitions, still affords
them the constitutional protection of civil liberties.

IV

The foreign policy machine is unsuited to combating non-state
terrorism. What it can provide and will provide in coming decades is everything
from cooperation with allies to putting pressure on states which are doing
little or nothing to prevent the Bombintern from functioning on their soil. But
even with all the cooperation in the world, as I said earlier, one will always
get through.

For American foreign policy the problem will be a decadent Europe which is well
described by Niall Ferguson:
“European politics is dominated by a kind of dance of death as politicians and
voters try desperately and vainly to prop up the moribund welfare states of the
post-Second World War era, but above all to prop up what remains of their
traditional cultures.”
The European Union, the EU, is coming into being at a time when the economies of
the two major members of the European Union, Germany and France, are in serious
difficulties. Over the last decade, unemployment in the EU has been double what
it has been in the United States. It may even come to this: a Marshall Plan for
the 21st century to rescue the declining economies of continental Europe.

To conclude:

In the years ahead American foreign policy will have concerns over the
Islamization of Western Europe, principally in France. This Islamization will
affect the quality and preparedness of our NATO alliance.

The Israeli-Arab issue will remain an insoluble problem, insoluble because there
is no single political entity in the Arab world which can speak and negotiate
for the Palestinians. Hamas, for example, has made it quite clear it will not
accept any agreements or negotiations with Israel except an agreement which ends
Israel as a nation-state.

One area that may become a problem for American foreign policy is Russia and its
“managed democracy,” as President Putin calls it. Russia has no genuine rule
of law. Under Putin the secret police have staged a terrific comeback. Since
1994, nine members of the country’s Parliament, and 130 journalists have been
murdered at the latest count. Arrests have been few and far between.
Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction will remain a live issue not only
for us but also for China and South Korea as they consider the problem of
nuclear weaponry in the hands of North Korea. Iran is another matter but I think
Iranís theocrats will think twice before they begin to act on nuclear threats
blared from minarets.

Perhaps the real end-of-the-world problem we face was expressed metaphorically
in a novel by a little known European writer, Italo Zvevo, in 1925:

"When all the poison gases (of the war) are exhausted, a man, made like all
other men of flesh and blood, will, in the quiet of a room, invent an explosive
of such potency that all the explosives in existence will seem like harmless
toys beside it. And another man, made in his image and in the image of all the
rest, but a little weaker than them, will steal that explosive and crawl to the
center of the earth with it, and place it just where he calculates it would have
the maximum effect. There will be a tremendous explosion, but none will hear it
and the earth will return to its nebulous state and go wandering thru the sky,
free at last from parasites and disease."

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