The Progressive Response

The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF)—a "Think Tank Without Walls." A joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies, FPIF is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner by advancing citizen movements and agendas." We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining our network, please consider visiting the FPIF website at http://www.fpif.org/.

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Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)

Table of Contents

I. Updates and Out-Takes

A NEW AGENDA TO COMBAT GLOBAL TERRORISM

WHAT BIN LADEN AND GLOBAL WARMING HAVE IN COMMON
By Robert M. Cutler

NEW FPIF POLICY ANALYSIS

II. Outside the U.S.

THIRD WORLD IN GLOBAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT
By Patrick Bond

III. Letters and Comments

DURBAN: GLIMPSE OF A CHANGING WORLD

LET'S FIGHT BACK

LET'S ASK OURSELVES

OFFENDED BY ZUNES

U.S. HELPS PROPAGATE TERRORISM

MODERATION FOR MUSLIMS IN TURKEY

I. Updates and Out-takes

A NEW AGENDA TO COMBAT GLOBAL TERRORISM

(Editor's Note: Immediately following the September 11 attacks, the FPIF staff and network of experts mobilized to provide policymakers, the media, the advocacy community, and our readers with relevant policy analysis. We have established an online clearinghouse at www.fpif.org/justice, that is tracking citizen response to the declared war on global terrorism. We have also formulated a policy agenda with pragmatic policy recommendations and guiding principles to counter terrorism that will give the U.S. a greater sense of national and individual security. Excerpted below, the policy document--which includes detailed recommendations on prevention, strengthening international systems to respond to such crimes, protecting civil liberties, and addressing root causes--is available at: http://www.fpif.org/justice/tobedone.html. It is a living document in the sense that we will revise and update it as necessary.)

Everything changed on September 11, and the United States will never be the same. This conventional wisdom has become a mantra, repeated over and over again by the media and now echoing throughout America. As the dead are memorialized and the dust settles, the U.S. public, for the most part, has gradually assumed its former routines. Undoubtedly, however, the concept of U.S. national security has undergone a dramatic transformation.

For the first time in recent memory, Americans have begun to think of national security in terms of ensuring their individual safety and protecting the American homeland. Suddenly, foreign policy and military policy are not just about the U.S. role in global affairs but about the security of Americans themselves. In an instant, foreign policy became no longer about distant lands and their peoples but about U.S. families, homes, communities, and workplaces. Defense policy was redefined as defending America and Americans rather than as force projection. Moreover, there is a new consensus emerging which holds that international cooperation and multilateralism constitute the only viable approach to preventing and combating terrorism. In other words, America knows it cannot do it alone.

There exists no universally accepted definition of terrorism. The Bush administration's proposed anti-terrorist legislation defines terrorism too broadly and risks conflating political protest with terrorism. Rather, terrorism should be defined as a form of violence that kills or maims civilians and creates an atmosphere of fear and alarm beyond the immediate human and physical damage that such acts may cause. While acts of terrorism are politically motivated, political grievances do not justify terrorism. All acts of terrorism are crimes and terrorists alone retain the responsibility for their actions. If a state of war existed, many would also be judged as violations of the rules of war.

According to the FBI and other agencies that monitor terrorism, the number of terrorist incidents declined in the 1990s compared to the 1980s, but the lethality of such incidents increased, leading to a greater number of deaths from fewer events. This highlights a concern noted in a recent General Accounting Office (GAO) report, that "the federal government lacks a national strategy to guide resource investment for combating terrorism." Unfortunately, the Bush administration has continued the emphasis of previous administrations on military and police responses to terrorism. A different strategy would focus upon and strengthen the civilian public sectors and the international cooperation that are 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.

America needs a new agenda for combating terrorism--one that integrates the use of force within an international legal and policy framework that enables holding terrorists accountable for their crimes and facilitates the prevention of terrorism in the first place. Below, we outline a four-part framework for a new national security policy that counters terrorism and propagates justice by:

• Preventing and mitigating the effects of terrorist violence.
• Strengthening the national and international legal system to insure that those responsible for planning, financing, directly supporting, and engaging in terrorist violence are held accountable. When necessary, the use of military force may need to be used to advance the rule of law within a multilateral and international legal framework.
• Defending and promoting basic civil liberties and rights at home while working to insure that individuals and groups are neither made into scapegoats nor become the victims of hate crimes. Abroad, the policy must insure that U.S. efforts at combating terrorism do not increase violations of internationally recognized human rights and that, in all cases, innocent civilians are not harmed in the pursuit of terrorists.
• Attacking the root causes of terrorism by addressing the socioeconomic and political conditions that enable terrorism (in whatever form and for whatever ends) to appear to be a viable strategy for pursuing political objectives.

Our Challenge Is to Change

The sobering reality of terrorism is that it constitutes a threat to individual, national, and international security that can never be completely eliminated. Despite our best efforts, there will always been ideologues, fanatics, and alienated groups that may resort to terrorism to express their frustration and make their political point. No single strategy of this four-part framework is an adequate response to terrorism. Only by joining all four strategies--defending and promoting civil rights, pursuing prevention and preparedness, strengthening the international framework for multilateral action, and addressing roots causes--will the U.S. government be able to tell the American people that it is doing all that it can to prevent future terrorist attacks.

Combating terrorism should not become a crusade that trumps all other policy concerns. Our commitment to environmental protection, human rights, democratic political transitions, economic development, poverty alleviation, disarmament, and gender equality--to name a few of the stated U.S. policy goals--must remain strong. But neither can counter-terrorism just be added to these policy imperatives. The challenge is to construct a counterterrorism policy that demonstrates America's new commitment to protecting Americans and U.S. national security while asserting our new 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.

If that is our response, then September 11 will indeed have changed America and the world.

(This four-part policy framework for a new counterterrorism policy represents the views of the FPIF directors but does not necessarily reflect the views of the FPIF Advisory Committee or of the board members of FPIF's two sponsoring organizations, the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). John Gershman,<john@irc-online.org>, who is codirector of the Global Affairs Program of the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) and Asia-Pacific editor of Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org, directed this effort to formulate an effective and just response to global terrorism.)

WHAT BIN LADEN AND GLOBAL WARMING HAVE IN COMMON
By Robert M. Cutler

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary, available in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0109warming.html.)

Toward the end of President Bush's September 24 statement about freezing terrorists' assets, one finds the overlooked but no less remarkable assertion that the U.S. is "working closely with the United Nations, the EU and through the G-7/G-8 structure to limit the ability of terrorist organizations to take advantage of the international financial systems." Still more remarkably, he declared, "The United States has signed, but not yet ratified, two international conventions, one of which is designed to set international standards for freezing financial assets. I'll be asking members of the U.S. Senate to approve the UN convention on suppression of terrorist financing and a related convention on terrorist bombings and to work with me on implementing the legislation."

In the days following the bombing, Bush qualified the battle with terrorism as "war," but after several foreign ministries in Europe noted that the term "war" had a rather different connotation in the Old World, he was led to clarify what he meant. The Europeans had said that if what he meant was an intensive mobilization of efforts behind a wide scope of activities across the whole range of operations, then this was correct and called for. Despite a continuing emphasis on the emplacement of military instruments, awaiting a judgment as to their proper employment, it appears that this is in fact what Bush meant. He has found an issue, and there is no pretending it is not a vital issue, on which no foreign power will dare to disagree.

Global warming is an example of an environmental issue that is perhaps not as obviously vital to national interests as terrorism, but which--like terrorism--has the potential to affect the entire world and not just the United States. Yet such issues are more difficult to address. There is no easily defined (human) enemy against which to mobilize. A more radical shift of thinking in the administration is required to embrace this sort of issue, but nothing can be ruled out. After all, Richard Nixon went to Beijing and Ronald Reagan became a good friend of the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

The lesson to be learned is not just that we need the rest of the world because we are inextricably entangled with it (whether by "entangling alliances" or not) and not just that the rest of the world needs us--which they do (because of the clout and leadership potential that the U.S. provides). Rather, the U.S. needs the rest of the world to need us; and, moreover, they need us to need them need us. Only after a reciprocal recognition of our mutual entanglement can we act together with them, and they with us. Only on this basis can we achieve the objectives that benefit us all--the U.S. no less than any other. Indeed, that is a precise description of the dynamic that took form after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Concerning international environmental policy, the small move that is needed--no less great for its smallness--is to extend the logic of antiterrorist cooperation to nontraditional security issues. In principle, this may not be as difficult as it may seem. The terrorist threat and the threat of global warming share a surprising number of qualities. To mention only three, both are omnipresent, mainly visible in their effects, and impossible to eliminate only by monitoring state borders. In both a sociological and an ironic sense, the threats of international terrorism and global climate change are "post-modern" fraternal twins.

(Robert M. Cutler <rmc@alum.mit.edu> <http://www.robertcutler.org/> is Research Fellow, Institute of European and Russian Studies, Carleton University, Canada. He is a U.S.-born American citizen.)

NEW FPIF POLICY ANALYSIS

How the War Against Terrorism Could Escalate
By Michael T. Klare

Self-Determination Conflict Profile: Uzbekistan
By Jim Lobe

Cozying up to Karimov
By Robert Cutler

Bin Laden and Mandela: Yesterday's Freedom Fighters, Today's Terrorist?
By William Martin

Ratifying Global Toxics Treaties: The U.S. Must Provide Leadership
By Kristin S. Schafer

II. Outside the U.S.

(Editor's Note: FPIF has a new component called "Outside the U.S.," which aims to bring non-U.S. voices into the U.S. policy debate and to foster dialogue between Northern and Southern actors in global affairs issues. Please visit our Outside the U.S. page for other non-U.S. perspectives on global affairs and for information about submissions at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/index.html. The South-North page is at http://www.fpif.org/southnorth/index.html.)

THIRD WORLD IN GLOBAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT
By Patrick Bond

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Discussion Paper, "Strategy and Self-Activity in the Global Justice Movement," sponsored by our South-North Dialogue project, online at http://www.fpif.org/southnorth/index.html. The entire paper can be found at: http://www.fpif.org/papers/gjm.html.)

If the Global Justice Movements have transcended futile and unsatisfying reforms in Washington/Geneva, are African and other third world progressive activists necessarily left behind, "marginalized" from globalization, or are they instead near or at the cutting edge of the process?

In fact, diverse social forces, North and South, East and West, are feeding into international and local demonstrations with increasing militancy, and with comparable values, norms, and discourses. There are even parallel strategies and tactics emerging. The January 2001 World Social Summit in Porto Alegre, Brazil began an important process of sketching alternative visions for genuinely sustainable development, far-reaching human empowerment, and serious eco-stewardship. One thing that the Global Justice Movements can claim as a unifying force, is a familiar set of enemies.

Whether located in obscure third world cities or the centers of global commerce, the struggles of the Global Justice Movements increasingly intersect because they focus on virtually identical opponents: the agencies and representatives of neoliberal capitalism--global, regional, national, and local. If there is, therefore, a genuine movement of Global Justice Movements afoot, and if that movement aims not to further exacerbate uneven global development, it is reasonable to posit the need for a greater recognition of and influence by varied third world grassroots organizations--community-based groups, trade unions, cooperatives and mutual aid systems, traditional and ethnic-based organizations, church networks, women's and youth clubs, environmental groups, and many others.

What, then, can be said about current role of these organizations, their potential for participating in local and global alliances, their relations with their own states and ruling parties? What opportunities are emerging for the parallel heightening of consciousness, politicization, and democratization that will flow, South-North and North-South, through the greater involvement of African grassroots activists and strategists in particular?

Most importantly, many of the key third world grassroots organizations have a common experience, facing not only an anonymous force-field of international capital flows and policies shaped by persistent "advice" from Washington, but also concrete institutions responsible for the most direct source of austerity: the IMF, World Bank, and World Trade Organization.

How, then, do the Global Justice Movements respond to those from the Post-WashCon and Third World Nationalist camps, who insist upon the expansion, not contraction, of the Bretton Woods and similar institutions? "Without the international financial institutions, things would be even worse for poor countries," claimed South African finance minister Trevor Manuel at the Prague debate in late September 2000. This is, indeed, the core argument Manuel--then the chairperson of the IMF/WB Board of Governors--and many third world leaders resort to: access to capital markets is impossible for poor African countries, hence the Bank and IMF are crucial sources of hard-currency financing.

There are many technical responses to such an assertion that should be mentioned at least in passing. The main argument is that by restructuring international financial architecture in the interests of the world's majority, there would be no need for Bank/IMF loans (which even for impoverished countries when provided at a "soft" rate of less than 1%, are extremely expensive when currencies crash, and when hard currency is required to repay the lender). Instead of hard-currency loans, an ideal-type, alternative development finance strategy at global and national scales would have the following elements:

• third world debt should be completely canceled once and for all;
• capital controls should be permitted, to allow states to adopt pro-poor policies without fear of a run by the rich;
• local basic developmental needs with no foreign inputs should only be paid for with local currency (not on the basis of loans denominated in dollars, yen, or marks);
• development loans should carry subsidized interest rates as needed (even if that "distorts" local and global financial markets);
• to the extent that redistributive North-South funding flows can be established--drawn, for example, from financial speculation taxes or strings-free Overseas Development Assistance--they should occur on a grant (not loan) basis;
• finance agency economists are not allowed to whimsically impose neoliberal conditionality; and
• trade finance should be freely available from export credit agencies to support vital imports and for progressive input-requirements (instead of just for inappropriate megaprojects and luxury good imports).

(Patrick Bond <pbond@wn.apc.org> is an associate professor at the University of the Witwatersrand Graduate School of Public and Development Management, and a research associate of the Alternative Information and Development Centre.)

Other Recent Discussion Papers:

Bonn and Genoa: A Tale of Two Cities and Two Movements
By Tom Athanasiou and Paul Baer

Global Economic Governance: Strategic Crossroads
By Tom Barry

Addressing the Demand Dimensions of Small Arms Abuse: Problems and Opportunities
By Alejandro Bendaña

III. Letters and Comments

DURBAN: GLIMPSE OF A CHANGING WORLD

September 11 changed the context of all conversations about race, class, and oppressed peoples. My wife and I were returning from South Africa, where we attended the United Nations NGO Forum against Racism, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance. As we landed at JFK in New York, we passed through customs and waited to board our Delta flight to Boston. Then came the announcement: "An airplane has struck the World Trade Center." We looked across the runway to see a vast, dark cloud of smoke. As the unspeakable drama unfolded on TV and Radio, thought of sharing the energy and excitement of Durban went up in smoke too.

As Americans, we will need time to grieve. Many prayers are being offered for calm and reason. Americans don't like to be exposed or feel vulnerable. We, who are white in America, take pride in our security and safety even as inner-city neighborhoods face daily violence and terror. Terror lashed out on a scale too grand to ever be fully comprehended. We would do well to remember that its roots are embedded in intolerance, racism, and oppression.

In Durban, the United Nations put together a consensus document on the Middle East without the presence of the United States. The delegates recognized that the historical suffering of the Jews and the Holocaust must not obscure the historical injustices being perpetrated against the Palestinians. The denial of civil rights anywhere can move us from hope to chaos. The World Conference brought almost every group of oppressed peoples on earth together so their pain could be heard. An Op-Ed political cartoon in the Cape Town Times pictured Bush with earplugs before a TV expressing the voices of the oppressed. The caption read: "Our great nation is willing to defend the right to free speech around the world--BUT I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO IT."

When there is no voice, no seat at the table, no hope, the seeds are planted that give growth to terrorists. In our war against terrorism we must listen and give voice to the cries and pain of the oppressed and those denied justice and hope. Any offense against terrorism must work to eliminate hatred, xenophobia, and intolerance because these are the breeding grounds for violence and monstrous acts of complete disrespect for human life. Inconvenient as it is, Americans must listen and respond to global cries for justice as attentively as we would in a family dispute. Compromise and reconciliation must be the end result, as any family knows, if it is ever to restore joy, peace, and happiness.

Durban gave us a glimpse of our changing world. In a world free of racism, xenophobia, and intolerance, white America is put in its proper minority context. As the developing world progresses, other super-powers will emerge--the U.S., itself, is evolving into a Nation of Color--and this will dramatically alter our perceptions and understandings of our world. Now, more than ever, we must embrace our differences and overcome fear with love and understanding. Now, more than ever, we must unite to end racism, xenophobia, and intolerance. It is the best weapon to use in the war against terrorism. The only real security is for the United States to become a friend to all the world's people.

- Rev. William M. Briggs <WBriggs507@aol.com>

LET'S FIGHT BACK

Why are we so afraid to defend ourselves as a nation? At least, the men who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor were trained to fight battles. But the men, women, and children at the WTC, who have not all been counted yet, had no idea they were going to die like that. It wasn't a pleasant, kind act that took place there. IT WAS INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM! How long are we going to put up with this kind of self-centered evil before we stamp it out? ENOUGH WITH THIS ANTI-WAR MIND-SET! We have been seriously injured as a nation and I am tired of it, aren't you? I'm ready to fight back.

- William F. Hall <wilfhall@earthlink.net>

LET'S ASK OURSELVES

Americans must ask themselves: Is it fair for the U.S. to illegally mine harbors? Is it fair for the U.S. to fund the overthrow of democratically elected governments? Is it fair for the U.S. to fund and supply death squads? Is it fair for the U.S. to sell guns for hostages? Is it fair for the U.S. to engage in all sorts of unspeakable, "black bag" atrocities around the world? Is it fair for the U.S. to lead world in exporting the engines of death and destruction to poor nations?

Many Americans meet the answers of the long history of U.S. atrocities done in their name with astonishment. However, ignorance of this woeful record is no excuse. It is time for America and her citizens to grow up and behave in a manner worthy of respect and honor from other nations. War and violence are obsolete in the 21st century. It would be helpful if our leaders were apprised of this fact.

- Franklin L. Johnson <starhelix@aol.com>

OFFENDED BY ZUNES

I take offense with Prof. Zunes' comments that Israel practiced a policy of ethnic cleansing when it forcibly expelled Palestinians during the 1948 war, a war that the Arabs started. Israel should recognize the Palestinians' right to a state, but the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948--which was wrong--coincided with the expulsion of similar numbers of Jews from Arab countries. I rarely, if ever, hear about those actions being ones of ethnic cleansing. Why?

- Steven Friedman <steveverna@msn.com>

U.S. HELPS PROPAGATE TERRORISM

"How the War Against Terrorism Could Escalate," http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0109war.html though realistic to some extent, overlooks the impact of any sort of attacks on the countries harboring or used to harbor terrorism (e.g. Sudan). How much do the U.S. and allies' intelligence really know about the actual population of the supporters of leaders of and groups tagged as "terrorists"? The number of supporters and how they are armed and their hideouts are unknown! They shall definitely retaliate in one way or another against easy targets, like the regimes joining hands with the U.S. and its coalition. This shall definitely create a worldwide chaos and disarray that will be hard to contain.

Furthermore, the U.S. is joining hands with regimes that have contributed positively to the propagation of terrorists and fanatical populaces (for example, NIF regime of Sudan and Pakistan). As such, the U.S. is losing the sympathy of the populations oppressed by these regimes.

- Abubakr Sidahmed <sidahmed@emirates.net.ae>

MODERATION FOR MUSLIMS IN TURKEY

Re: Turkey: Arms and Human Rights. http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol4/v4n16turk.html
With Turkey there is a real opportunity for the world to make a peaceful foreign policy atmosphere. But in Turkey we are under enormous pressure from the militiamen. If you are a moderate Muslim in Turkey, it is impossible for you to live in tranquility because the foreign policy of Turkey is directly determined by the militiamen. And unfortunately it becomes pro-Russian and pro-Chinese. Turkey immediately must become a moderate Islam country. Its people are already moderate, but the state is nearly Jacobinist. We the moderate Muslims in Turkey need the help of Western countries to promote our way of life.

- Serkan Seman <serkansemen@hotmail.com>

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