Rebuilding, 2001/09/12:12:33
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Imperialism is not the only way. I wrote yesterday that terrorism breeds imperialism, and gave a few examples from the past--the Jugurthine war is another example from Roman history. Historically, this has been true. It's also been true historically that imperialism breeds terrorism, as the Numidians would probably be quick to point out, had not violence solved them. But we have powers available to us today that weren't available yesterday or the day before. While I'm always suspicious of technological fixes, I think there's a major strategic role for technology in the aftermath of the yesterday's killings. America is already an imperial power--American influence is projected outside its borders by means of military force every day. Most of us are thankful for this, most of the time. America does a lot of dirty work for countries like Canada, and I hope at times like this our gratitude and support are fully apparent. Despite this wide-spread American influence, both military and commercial, only a few places see fit to attack America routinely. We all get annoyed with American wrong-headedness at times, but most of us know that Americans are remarkably decent, are generally willing to listen, and are sometimes even willing to bow to the will of international institutions such as trade arbitration panels and the world court. Canadians and Britons and Germans and even the French get along (more or less) with Americans because our interests are basically aligned--there is a general if imperfect recognition that freedom of trade, speech and action are Good Things, and the rule of law is the best thing of all. There are parts of the world where this general agreement does not exist: Indonesia, for instance. But there are no Indonesian or Timorese terrorists attacking the United States or other Western powers, because the West has had relatively little involvement one way or another in the atrocities there. There's a reason for that: Indonesia has small strategic significance. The Middle East, on the other hand, is about as strategically significant as you get--as significant as Egypt was to Rome as the main source of supply of a scarce commodity that wasn't produced in sufficient quantity at home. If it weren't for our addiction to oil, the Middle East would shrink to an insignificant dot on the map, mostly desert, full of people who will stay dirt poor until they decide to invest in things like education for women (education and equal rights for women is the single most effective way of raising the standard of living in less developed countries.) So an appropriate long-term strategic response to terrorism from the Middle East is to make a commitment to eliminate our dependency on petroleum without reducing our standard of living. I don't see any reason this can't be done in ten or twenty years, with sufficient will. We know it'll have to be done eventually--why not now, when we have plenty of time and the best motivations in the world for doing so? A second response is to rebuild the WTC, but not as a structure of steel and glass. Why reproduce a monument to the last century's technology? The WTC for the 21st century should be a vast, broad-band communications infrastructure that would allow the people who work "there" to be present only virtually. This has several advantages: the existing site is left clear for a monument to the dead. The new WTC no longer has a central location for maniacs to attack. And America's dependency on petroleum goes down by the cost of 50,000 commuters. There are other, shorter-term strategic responses, which I believe should include a pro-active multi-national legal/military campaign against all known major terrorist training centers and organizations, regardless of their involvement in this particular attack. Carrying out such a campaign will require a substantial investment in human intelligence gathering to ensure that the kind of massive intelligence failure that permitted yesterday's attacks to happen has a small chance of recurring. |