The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are an assault not only on the United States but on civilization itself. No set of grievances, no matter how deep-seated, can serve to justify these terrible crimes.
The task ahead is to build an international coalition against terrorism. This can only be accomplished by diplomacy. President George W. Bush has reached out to foreign lead- ers and his call for cooperation has been answered. NATO has invoked Article 5 which states that an armed attack against one member is an attack against all. President Vladimir Putin placed Russia alongside the United States in the war against terrorism. Even the fifty-seven-member Arab League expressed sympathy.
The problem is that until now the Bush administration has done everything it could to signal its disregard for a stable world order by spurning treaties and making national missile defense the centerpiece of our security policy. This phantom defense, which experts believe would cost between $150 and $300 billion, is manifestly useless against terrorism. At a moment when the United States needs whole- hearted international cooperation, Star Wars symbolizes the unilateral action which defeats such cooperation. The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington have ensured a new context for the congressional debate and prospects for this program’s defeat are improving.
The United States and its major allies must not only destroy terrorist networks. We must take away the oxygen which inspires young people to believe that suicide missions are a passport to heaven. This means working closely with moderate Arab states by addressing the legitimate grievances of communities from which terrorists are drawn. With two-thirds of the Arab population under thirty years of age and with most Arab economies in decline, the Middle East will soon become ungovernable unless the region is stabilized. An end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the creation of an independent Palestine will not put an end to terrorism, but it is an indispensable start.
The collapse of the Soviet empire deprived the United States of the lodestar that gave coherence and shape to our foreign policy. Since then, in the words of political scientist Michael Mandelbaum, “American foreign policy has the shape of a doughnut—of peripheral interests but nothing at the center.” And there are challenges we have largely ignored: Common action to save our global environment; an international commitment to curb exploding population growth; multilateral agreement to control and reduce to a minimum nuclear arsenals; an end to the “silent genocide” of third-world famine and plague; a ban on exporting arms to third-world countries; and a commitment to promote economic opportunity in the poorer nations by investing in programs of education, health, and sustainable development.
It is ironic that a terrorist attack against the United States has imposed a multilateral agenda on an administration that has flaunted its unilateralism. It is hard to imagine a more uncomfortable fit. If the Bush administration is to gain the cooperation of the rest of the world, it must create a new international climate. An end to threats to abrogate the anti- ballistic missile treaty, and a new look at the Comprehensive Test Ban, the International Criminal Court, small-arms and germ-warfare agreements would be a good place to start. Our defense against terrorism will only work if we regard the September 11 attack as a signal to begin to work with other nations, not apart from them.
