COMMENTARY
Toward
a secure America in a secure world By
John Gershman
(Posted with permission from Foreign
Policy in Focus) I. Executive
summary The Bush administration's "war on
terrorism" reflects a major failure of leadership and
makes Americans more vulnerable rather than more secure.
The administration has chosen a path to combat terrorism
that has weakened multilateral institutions and
squandered international goodwill. Not only has
President George W Bush failed to support effective
reconstruction in Afghanistan, but his war and
occupation in Iraq have made the US more vulnerable and
have opened a new front and a recruiting tool for
terrorists while diverting resources from essential
homeland security efforts. In short, Washington's
approach to homeland security fails to address key
vulnerabilities, undermines civil liberties, and
misallocates resources.
The administration has
taken some successful steps to counter terrorism, such
as improved airline and border security, a partial
crackdown on terrorist financing, improved international
cooperation in sharing intelligence, the arrest of
several high-level al-Qaeda figures, and the disruption
of a number of planned attacks. But these successes are
overwhelmed by policy choices that have made US citizens
more rather than less vulnerable. The Bush White House
has undermined the very values it claims to be defending
at home and abroad - democracy and human rights; both
Washington's credibility and its efforts to combat
terrorism are hampered when it aids repressive regimes.
Furthermore, the administration has weakened the
international legal framework essential to creating a
global effort to counter terrorism, and it has failed to
address the political contexts - failed states and
repressive regimes - that enable and facilitate
terrorism.
Six factors explain the failure of
the Bush administration's approach: A.
Overemphasis on military responses: The Bush
administration has used everyone's legitimate concerns
about terrorism to justify a massive increase in
military spending that has little or nothing to do with
combating terrorism. According to the Center for Defense
Information, only about one-third of the increase in the
FY2003 Pentagon budget over pre-September 11 budgets
funds programs and activities closely related to
homeland security or counterterrorism operations. In
addition, by enshrining preventive war in the national
security strategy both as a general policy doctrine and
for countering terrorism in particular, the
administration has further reduced everyone's security.
B. Failure in intelligence
sharing: The White House has failed to develop
better mechanisms to share critical information both
among intelligence agencies and between federal and
local agencies. The recently created Terrorist Threat
Intelligence Center is unaccountable to Congress and
fails to place the coordination of intelligence
gathering in the hands of those who must act on the
findings.
C. Undermining democracy and
civil liberties: The Bush administration has
undermined democracy at home through increased
government secrecy. On the civil liberties front, the
Patriot Act imposes guilt by association on immigrants,
expands the government's authority to conduct criminal
searches and wiretaps, and undermines fundamental
freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights - none of
which have proved necessary or effective in tracking
down terrorists.
D. Undermining homeland
security: Bush's approach to homeland security
has two key flaws. First, his administration has been
far too laissez-faire in its approach to ensuring the
security of the 85% of the nation's critical
infrastructure owned or controlled by the private
sector. Second, it has failed to meet the basic needs of
emergency responders, has underfunded key national
agencies like the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Customs
and Border Protection, and has created new unfunded
mandates for local governments, forcing them to transfer
scarce funds from social services and public safety to
homeland security tasks.
E. Weakening
international institutions: The Bush
administration has been hostile to a whole set of
multilateral institutions that are central to enhancing
international law and security, from the International
Criminal Court to nearly all multilateral arms control
and disarmament efforts, including the Biological and
Chemical Weapons Conventions, the ABM Treaty, and the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
F. Failure
to attack root causes: The Bush White House has
failed to address the root causes of international
terrorism and the social and political contexts in which
such terrorism thrives, including repressive regimes,
failed states, and the way in which poverty and
inequality can create conditions of support for
terrorist acts. Addressing the basic causes and
conditions that facilitate terrorism in no way implies
appeasement. Rather, it reflects both a pragmatic
commitment to diffuse terrorism's political roots and a
normative commitment to respect the values the United
States preaches. Yet, heedless to the time bomb of
widening global wealth disparity, the Bush
administration has taken advantage of the crisis
surrounding the September 11 terrorist attacks to
justify its pursuit of an expanded trade and investment
liberalization agenda. This agenda fails to address the
central challenges of reducing poverty and inequality
and of promoting sustainable growth in developing
countries.
A new framework A
different approach would not fight a "war on terrorism".
Rather, it would treat terrorism as an ongoing threat
that needs to be tackled through a strong, coordinated
strategy focused on strengthening civilian public
sectors and enhancing the international cooperation
necessary to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks.
Although the military has a clear role to play, it is a
supporting actor in the fight against terrorism and
Washington must restructure the military in ways that
enhance its capacities to respond to the threat posed by
international terrorism. The safety challenge of
terrorism exposes the weakness of Washington’s
conventional ideas of national security and the folly of
traditional responses - typically military - to threats
against US citizens.
America needs a new agenda
for combating terrorism, one that secures citizens
against attacks and that situates the use of force
within an international legal and policy framework. This
agenda must bring international terrorists to justice,
debilitate their capacity to wage terrorism, and
undermine the political credibility of terrorist
networks by addressing related political grievances and
injustices. Below, we outline a four-part framework for
a new agenda to counter terrorism.
A.
Strengthen homeland security: To do this, the
emphasis needs to be on preventing terrorist attacks and
mitigating the effects of terrorist violence. Specific
initiatives should:
Improve intelligence gathering and oversight:
The coordination of intelligence gathering related
to domestic security should be based within the
Department of Homeland Security, since this is the
agency responsible for acting on the information. The
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - current home of the
Terrorist Threat Intelligence Center - has proven unable
to coordinate well with other intelligence agencies. The
key issue facing the improvement of domestic
counterterrorism intelligence capabilities does not
involve a choice of organizational form (ie, boosting
the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's)
capabilities or creating a new domestic intelligence
body) but rather an effort to reinstate civil liberties
and reinforce judicial and congressional oversight of
intelligence operations.
Strengthen
Border Security: Adequately fund key border
security programs and agencies such as the Container
Security Initiative, the Coast Guard, and the Bureau of
Customs and Border Protection.
Protect critical infrastructure: It is
essential that government step up security for critical
infrastructure, especially regarding:
Nuclear power plants: Spent reactor
fuel pools at US commercial nuclear power plants
represent potentially the most consequential
vulnerability to terrorist attacks. The most important
step that can be taken to significantly reduce this
vulnerability is to learn from several European
nations that have placed all spent fuel older than
five years into thick-walled, dry storage modes.
The chemical industry: The Department of
Homeland Security needs to establish and enforce
minimum requirements for the improvement of security
and the reduction of potential hazards at chemical
plants and other industrial facilities that store
large quantities of hazardous materials. Food
and agriculture safety: There is a need for a
comprehensive national plan both to defend against the
intentional introduction of biological agents in an
act of terror and to create a network of laboratories
to coordinate the detection of bioterror agents in the
event of an attack. Information technology:
There are numerous serious proposals to better secure
information technology in virtually all of the
nation's critical infrastructure, from the
air-traffic-control system to aircraft themselves,
from the electric-power grid to financial and banking
systems, and from the Internet to communication
systems. Support emergency responders: In
addition to improving emergency preparedness plans,
the administration needs to provide training,
equipment, and increased support to all levels of
government to strengthen emergency response
capabilities by fire, police, and rescue departments
as well as public health systems, all of which will be
frontline emergency responders in case of a terrorist
attack.
Prevent terrorists from obtaining weapons: To
prevent terrorists from obtaining conventional or other
weapons of mass destruction, specific initiatives
should:
Strengthen international
conventions: There is a need to fortify the
conventions for the control, non-proliferation and
elimination of weapons of mass destruction and their
delivery systems. End the National Missile
Defense Program (also known as "Star Wars"): The
September 11 attacks highlight how imminent security
threats are posed not from missiles but from other
types of delivery systems. Combined with concerns
about the destabilizing effects of the missile defense
system and the false promise of security it offers,
the United States should end efforts to build a
National Missile Defense system and redirect those
monies toward arms control and disarmament efforts.
Control weapons in Russia: There is a need for
increased funding for the Defense Threat Reduction
Agency and other efforts to monitor and control weapons
material in Russia and the former Soviet Union.
B. Strengthen international and national
legal systems: An effective response to
terrorism requires bolstering the national and
international legal infrastructure necessary to identify
and prosecute the individuals and organizations that
facilitate, finance, perpetrate, and profit from
terrorism. Specific initiatives should expand
international police cooperation, adopt the Princeton
Principles on Universal Jurisdiction for prosecutions of
crimes against humanity, strengthen the institutions of
international law by supporting the creation of a
specialized tribunal for judging international
terrorists and provide technical assistance to countries
to implement all the recommendations of the Financial
Action Task Force with respect to money laundering and
terrorist financing.
In those instances where
military force is necessary to combat nonstate actors
like al-Qaeda, working through international
institutions is justified on both normative and
pragmatic grounds. The use of force should require
specific authorization from the United Nations Security
Council that includes specific goals and a time line,
and military operations would preferably be under UN
control. In any event, the exercise of such force should
adhere to international humanitarian law and the
principles of the "just war" tradition.
C.
Defend and promote democracy at home and abroad:
Antiterrorist efforts should not sacrifice the
very values that Americans are trying to defend.
Washington must listen closely to the mounting concerns
of civil libertarians and constitutional rights groups
who caution that the new counterterrorism campaign may
lead to a garrison state that undermines all that
America stands for while doing little to protect
citizens against unconventional threats. The US Patriot
Act is perhaps the greatest threat to civil liberties in
the country today, and we applaud the numerous states,
cities, towns and counties that have passed resolutions
demanding that local law enforcement not implement the
provisions of those regulations that infringe on basic
rights.
In forging international coalitions
against terrorism, the administration should strengthen
restrictions on the provision of military aid, weapons,
and training to regimes that systematically violate
human rights. Proactively, the White House and Congress
should more rigorously condition such programs on
adherence to internationally recognized human rights
standards. In addition, the United States should support
efforts to strengthen international legal and human
rights norms, conventions, and organizations and should
evaluate its own foreign policies in light of those
norms.
D. Attack root causes:
Combating terrorism requires looking beyond any
one terrorist event - horrific as it may be - to address
the broader socioeconomic, political and military
contexts from which international terrorism emerges.
Because terrorism is a particular kind of violent act
aimed at achieving a political objective, a preventive
strategy must address its political roots.
US
policy must recognize a distinction between
international terrorism in general and the specific
threat posed by al-Qaeda and other extremist Islamist
movements, so as not to be perceived as waging a war on
Islam. The 9-11 Commission Report, for example, is
careful to make such a distinction. This requires that
US policymakers learn to distinguish between
illegitimate demands and legitimate demands pursued
through illegitimate means. The anti-democratic and
jihadist character of al-Qaeda's ideology suggests that
even if the United States were to pursue the kinds of
alternative policies outlined here, Americans would
still be the target of attacks by committed members of
al-Qaeda and similar groups. Addressing root causes is
one way of insuring that terrorist group efforts to
mobilize support meet as inhospitable a social, economic
and political climate as possible.
The success
of these policies will only be fully realized when there
are no more breeding grounds for terrorist politics.
These political contexts include: repressive political
regimes, which spawn terrorism; failed and failing
states, which can provide terrorists with arenas for
operations; poverty and inequality, which can enhance
support for terrorist acts and provide a source of
recruits, even though poverty itself does not cause
terrorism; and efforts by the United States to
institutionalize its positions of global dominance,
including through alliances with repressive regimes.
Specific initiatives
Strengthen and democratize international bodies for
effective global governance. By proclaiming global
dominance as its overarching strategic objective, the
United States has made itself a target. Bush's pursuit
of the preventive war doctrine as the foundation of such
dominance - embodied in the invasion and occupation of
Iraq - can be used to justify the argument that the
current "war on terrorism" is in fact a war on Islam.
And Washington's current foreign policy has further
reinforced the beliefs of those who argue that the
United States is an imperial power intent on holding
itself above the law. In addition to strengthening the
UN and other multilateral institutions, the United
States must reconfigure its approach to security. We
suggest a dual focus: on the cooperative arrangements
necessary to insure our protection in an era of
international terrorist networks with global reach, and
on deterrence against possible threats from state
antagonists. Such efforts require a vibrant network of
global, regional and bilateral alliances whereby the
security of the world strengthens the security of
America.
End support for repressive regimes. The United
States must, in both word and deed, make a clean break
with its history of support for repressive regimes
throughout the world. Such a move would entail curbing
military aid, expanding human rights and democracy, and
reducing the dependence of the United States and its
allies on oil imports from repressive regimes.
Additional steps would include: (1) Withholding military
aid and opposing weapons sales to countries that
systematically violate basic human rights, and (2)
Increasing support for human rights and democracy in
North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast
Asia, Colombia and elsewhere through bilateral and
multilateral initiatives.
Deal with failed states. The Afghanistan situation,
and the broader reality that weak and failing states can
provide enabling conditions for the operations of
terrorist networks, has highlighted the need for
increasing the UN's capacity to engage in peace
enforcement, peacekeeping, and other "nation-building"
activities.
Reorient US policy in the Middle East and Central
Asia. A broader US policy along the lines of respecting
basic human rights and democratic freedoms in the Middle
East and elsewhere could still contribute to easing -
though not eradicating - the conditions associated with
terrorism. Such efforts would involve eliminating
weapons of mass destruction and addressing the political
grievances behind continuing unrest in the region. This
includes opposing the bigotry embodied in both
al-Qaeda's and other extremist groups' opposition to
Israel's existence. The United States should continue
its strategic and moral commitment to Israeli
sovereignty, but there is a distinction between Israel's
right to exist and support for the occupation in the
West Bank and Gaza. Washington's tacit approval of the
occupation plays a major role in fueling anti-American
extremism, sentiments that al-Qaeda has
opportunistically used to its own advantage. Specific
initiatives should:
End US financial and military backing for
the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza;
Advocate Palestinian self-determination and a
negotiated settlement as outlined in U.N. Security
Council resolutions; promote efforts to create a zone
free from weapons of mass destruction in the Middle
East; strengthen the multilateral forces involved in
Afghanistan to provide the security necessary for
reconstruction and development; and set an immediate
timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq
and channel support primarily through the United
Nations to promote reconstruction and development.
Address poverty and inequality. An expansion of
broad-based development can, under certain conditions,
weaken local support for terrorist activities and
discourage terrorist recruits. Since approval of some
organizations engaged in terrorist acts is due in part
to the social services and financial incentives that
those organizations provide, an expansion of economic
opportunities can decrease direct participation in those
organizations or dampen enthusiasm for their activities.
Development policies that weaken states' capacities to
insure access to, or provision of, basic services can
create conditions in which terrorist groups can more
easily mobilize support. At the global level, the Bush
administration should end its promotion of trade and
investment agreements that reinforce the discredited
policies of the Washington Consensus. Instead, the
United States should reorient discussions at bilateral,
regional, and global economic organizations and meetings
toward creating a multilateral framework more conducive
to the development of poor countries. Washington should
also reduce the debt owed to it by developing countries,
champion debt reduction efforts at the international
financial institutions, and seek an end to structural
adjustment lending by the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund.
Promote clean energy. The United States should
pursue an energy policy at home and abroad that
emphasizes conservation, energy efficiency, and
renewables and that makes itself and its allies less
reliant on imported oil supplies.
Changing
course No single component of this framework is
an adequate response to terrorism. Only by joining all
four strategies - pursuing prevention and preparedness,
strengthening the international framework for
multilateral action, defending and promoting civil
rights, and addressing root causes - will the US
government be able to truthfully tell the American
people that it is doing all that it can to prevent
future terrorist attacks. Our proposed security strategy
would be more effective at making the US a safer place
for all its citizens. It would also have the added
advantages of improving the nation's quality of life by
improving public safety, health care and air quality.
The 9-11 Commission has accomplished a great
deal by placing this debate at the forefront of policy
debates. But its recommendations focus somewhat narrowly
on intelligence operations and congressional oversight
without addressing the broader foreign policy, military
and homeland security issues that are equally important
to constructing an effective response to terrorism. Its
contribution, while important, remains inadequate to
forging the comprehensive strategy necessary to
effectively combat terrorism.
The challenge is
to construct a national security policy that
demonstrates America's new commitment to protecting US
citizens by incorporating effective counterterror
measures into the national security strategy. At the
same time, American citizens must demand and US foreign
policy must assert a renewed commitment to constructing
an international framework of peace, justice and
security that locks terrorists out in the cold - with no
home, no supporters, no money and no rallying cry. With
that response, the events of September 11, 2001, will
indeed have changed America and the world.
