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The Aftermath of September 11 - Empire? - Global Policy Forum The Aftermath of September 11
By René Passet
Attac
August 28, 2002
We can’t eradicate terrorism unless we remedy the problems of poverty and humiliation which are its breeding ground. Despite the shock waves of September 11th, the international institutions and governments continue to ignore the deep contradictions of the global system.
The battle against the criminal economy, money-laundering and tax havens can’t coexist with the interests of the mighty.
"Bin Laden, dead or alive!" Does it really matter?
By linking the success of their intervention to his capture, the American leaders took the risk of seeing the whole thing fail, and yet the outcome of land combat was obvious. However, the crushing of an obscurantist and reactionary regime and the demolishing of training camps for fanatics hungry for exploits that would enable them to deserve those 70 virgins waiting for them in heaven is quite something. But is that all? It is now time to stand back a little and assess the situation.
You only really win a war once you manage to get rid of the very factors that led to it. We know for a fact that terrorism finds its seedbed in the poverty and humiliation of the deprived of this world. It is financed by the criminal economy, money-laundering and tax havens that we keep on fighting against. It also feeds on another type of terrorism that does not justify it, but which we must be aware of and which must also be eradicated. There are Iraqi children dying from economic sanctions inflicted on their country; farmers and workers from Africa and Latin America guilty of protecting their meager means of subsistence, slaughtered by private militias and the armed forces of dictatorial countries put in place and supported by our great democracies: "Millions of dead in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Panama, countries led by terrorists, dictators, genocide perpetrators that the American government supported, financed and armed" (1). This is official terrorism, directly exerted by the system and therefore tolerated as such, honorable since it is the mighty who impose it and the weak who are suffer it.
It is only when we put an end to all this that we will actually defeat terrorism. Are we heading that way?
All of a sudden, governments and international institutions seemed to yield to the facts. As an unintentional compliment to their opponents, the G7, the American government and the European Commission suddenly decreed the opposite of what they had advocated the day before.
"They are all Keynesian now" stressed the Financial Times, October 5th. Even companies were soliciting state intervention as long as they would be its first beneficiaries. Insurance companies were eloquently pleading the existence of a type of risk which would have to be covered by governments themselves. European countries were allowing themselves some flexibility with the enforcement of the stability pact. The US government was setting up an economy-boosting policy worth 120 billion dollars, including 15 billion dollars in favor of airline companies. You can call it Keynesianism, but it‚s well targeted. Despite Democrats‚ efforts, these sums of money didn‚t prevent the loss of 100 000 jobs after September 11th, neither did it help the unemployed or people on minimum wages : economy-boosting by increasing the supply would lower the costs, it was claimed, whereas the increasing demand might cause inflation, which is damaging to the value of real incomes.
The fight against dirty money is limited to the freezing of subsidiaries related to the financing of terrorism.
The G20 finance ministers, who met on November 16th, adopted a plan aiming to "forbid terrorists and their accomplices the access to or use of our financial systems and put an end to the abusive use of informal bank networks". The very existence of these networks, far from being denounced, is implicitly legitimized since only the "abusive use" is condemned. Banks are told to reveal and freeze suspicious accounts or have their activity on the American markets banned. This is all very well, but the real issue is the very existence of tax havens, off-shore areas and money-laundering mechanisms. We have to attack criminal money at its source. We know what should be done: impose transparency of transactions by withdrawing bank secrecy, ensure international public controls on funds passing in transit through clearing houses. Révélations, by Ernest Backes and Denis Robert, shows that these clearing houses are a mandatory transit place for almost all international movements of capital. We should also refuse any legal recognition of companies based in lawless zones as well as transactions occurring there. We know all this, but we don‚t do a thing about it. It is true that many perfectly legitimate companies, notably transnational ones, appreciate these lawless zones for their fiscal advantages and the opportunities for exploiting the labour force, which makes them competitive. Not a thing is done against Saudi Arabia, the epitome of obscurantism and the main financing center of terrorist activities, but also an essential oil power.
The fight against world poverty is limited to the reward of the blessed, converted at the last minute. There might be "more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine people who need no repentance" (St Luke 15:7). The solicitude toward the reformed person won‚t ensure happiness for the ninety-nine other people who are forgotten. Pakistan has been rewarded for its support with a remission of their debt, but the cancellation of the debt has not been suggested by any authority. Plans for structural adjustment are still rigorously enforced: in Argentina for instance, although it is on the edge of bankruptcy. An increase in international public aid, essential to the development of the most disadvantaged countries has not yet been considered at all, the exception being Pakistan that was given a 6 billion dollar contribution.
Everywhere, the tendency is to reduce liberties instead of undermining the power of finance. Denying the necessity of certain restrictions of freedom in times of insecurity would be demagogic. Worries are increasing in Europe and in the US about the nature and the extent of controls, the type of acts likely to come under anti-terrorism measures, or possibilities of abusive prolongations of provisional detentions. Forty American congressmen ˆ not all of them Democrats ˆ are denouncing the creation of special martial courts decided upon a presidential decree "that would allow secret arrests, secret charges, secret trials and even secret executions" (2). The "heartrending reviews" don't breach the threshold of established interests that should really be brought into question, and the system goes on rolling down its lethal slope. Despite its weapons, the western world is losing the very war that absolutely needed to be won: the war against the roots of terror and violence.
We will only eradicate terrorism once we change the soil in which it grows.
The clash between the microbe and the elephant.
The solution can‚t be merely military: how many won wars have been followed by lost peaces? In fact, is it the war that has been won on the ground or is it only the head-on clash between two unequal powers? It is a clash between the microbe and the elephant. But against the elephant, the microbe has a strategy with two assets that it always keeps in its possession: (A) invisibility: While America’s obsession is to set up a nuclear shield in order to be protected permanently from weapons of mass destruction, a few fanatics are secretly preparing themselves, and armed only with stanley knives, they manage to pass all security checks. The most sophisticated observation techniques ˆ even by satellites ˆ have their limits. (B) the ability to scatter: Bin Laden, Mullah Omar as well as 2000 fighters have apparently vanished into thin air.
Knowing this doesn't mean being happy about it. The destruction of their bases and the freezing of their sources of funding have undoubtedly considerably reduced their ability to do damage at the global level. However, Noam Chomsky (3) evokes the likelihood of a well-known theory called "leaderless resistance", which would consist of small independent groups, where everyone would know each other, and therefore hard to infiltrate. The groups would be unaware of one another and would have great freedom of initiative. Bio-terrorism for its part fits this image of scattering within the same group we want to hit. A situation like this requires, like the American president is calling for, the cooperation of all nations regarding information and permanent tracking of criminal organizations in each country. This won‚t be enough: as long as the deep causes of terrorism are not eradicated, each head cut off, just like the Lernean Hydra, will become two. As for the microbe’s strategy, we have to counter it with an antibiotic that would create a hostile environment in which it couldn’t grow Priorities have to be stressed: first of all, the first emergency is to fight global poverty with ways that would have immediate effects. We have to loosen the knot strangling the poorest nations by debt cancellation, the suppression of structural adjustment plans that force countries undergoing them to sacrifice the genuine basis of their development to mere short-term budget balancing; we have to let them breathe by reinforcing international public aid; decrease competitive pressure by proclaiming peoples‚ right to fulfill their fundamental needs by themselves; dealing directly with the mechanisms of dirty money laundering and not only with the financing networks of terrorism, of which the development is a result and not a cause. Last but not least, there also need to be long-term institutional reforms that we already mentioned.
The aftermath of September 11th showed that it was possible, if we really want it, for countries to cooperate and create at the international level political controls of the economic forces which need to be contained. But do we really want this?
The highly sensitive contradictions of the global system
A short time after the tragedy, some people thought the world was changing course. The German sociologist, Ulrich Beck, evoked a "global economy Chernobyl: they buried the benefits of nuclear energy over there like we are burying the promises of salvation through neo-liberalism over here" (4). An editorial in Les Echos claimed that "the US became aware of their duty in the establishment of a new global order. The necessity of a global type of governing is acknowledged" (5). Barely a month and a half after the events, on November 23rd, in Geneva, during the agreement regarding the Conference on biological weapons, the US, alone against 143 countries, refused once again the reinforcement of controls: "the protocol is dead", their representative declared. He harshly criticized a few nations accused of breaking the agreement and left without deigning to listen to their response. What a strange view on international cooperation.
The OECD is already scolding countries such as France that have taken liberties over the required rigour on budget balancing; the European Commission annual report calls for the respect of the imperatives of the stability pact. The WTO, in Doha, is getting back to its traditional ways, as if nothing had happened. On December 5th, restrictive accounting logic led the 24 IMF administrators to refuse to release any funds for Argentina, bled dry, until Argentina‚s budget deficit is cleared. The military victories, which intoxicate feeble souls, and the passing of time both mean that initial resolutions are quickly forgotten. The green light given to Sharon‚s government in the midst of a confrontation in the Middle East leads us to believe more and more in the virtues of the use of force for solving problems. What a stubborn position: force leads to hatred, which feeds terrorism generation after generation.
Yet, even if the system refuses to be challenged, in reality everything has changed. The shift in the crisis before September 11th is getting clearer; the US now know they are not invulnerable, visible signs of the system’s contradictions are multiplying: the explosion of a high-risk factory in Toulouse, the tragedy in the St. Gothard tunnel between Switzerland and Italy, another plane crash in a neighborhood of NYC on November 12th. None of this comes from outside, but is a result of internal logic that prefers the profitability of investments over spending money on security. We just have to hope that the pressures of reality will gradually impose changes we are still refusing to make today, otherwise, the same causes having the same effects, new tragedies will occur. The question is: when, where, and how?
We are already noticing, in many places, the protests of sacked workers leading to violent actions: they threaten to spill toxic chemicals into the environment, a workshop is set on fire, and they threaten to blow up a factory. May the mighty of this world, so able to "sow the wind‰ be careful of "reaping the whirlwind" (6), may they get us ready for it if they persevere in refusing to get to the bottom of the real problems.
1 Arundhaty Roy, «Ben Laden, secret de famille de l’Amérique», Le Monde, 10/14-15/2001
2 Le Monde, 11/29/2001
3 Noam Chomsky, « La nueva guerra contra el terror », Le Monde Diplomatique, Spanish edition, november 2001
4 Ulrich Beck, « La Fin du Néolibéralisme », Le Monde, 11/10/2001
5 Erik Israelevitch, Les Echos
6 Hosea, 8 :7
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