New War?

I. Introduction to "New War?" Theme

Teachers may want to have the students read this introduction before they read the selected essays on "New War?" to provide a basic understanding of the concepts included therein.
In his first major address to the nation after the events of September 11th, President George Bush declared war on terrorism and those who support it. He said that this would be a new type of war, unlike any that the United States had fought in the past.
Authors of the essays in this section ask the question whether this engagement really is a new type of war, and if so, what are the new characteristics of this war. They investigate multiple causes of this transformation: advances in military technology, changes brought about by the post-Cold War era, impacts of US domestic politics, and new types of engagement required to fight terrorists.
As background for exploring these questions, it is useful to define the characteristics of "conventional warfare" as it was known throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Conventional warfare required the direct engagement on land, sea, and/or air of two or more military forces. Conventional wars were either between nation-states or were civil wars between the established government of a nation-state and dissident group(s) within that country.

1. Technologies and the New War
Technology is one of the major contributing factors to the shift in the way that wars are waged today. For armed networks around the world, like Al Qaeda, improved information and communications technology offer the means for these groups to organize across borders or from different corners of the world. And it is based on these global communication systems that they can raise money through illegal trading in drugs, illegal immigrants, illicit remittances from members of the networks throughout the world, etc. It is also through information technology and the global media that these networks can gain strategic information about countries like the United States that was not so accessible in years past.
It is not only armed networks that use information technology to their advantage. Governments throughout the world use technology for intelligence purposes. For example, satellites can be used to determine the location of enemy camps, criminal bank accounts can be monitored, and developments in other countries can be observed through news media there. Likewise, as will be discussed further in the essays, leaders use communications media to influence populations' views of events, and movies and television programs can add legitimacy to particular political positions.
Some experts also consider that advanced nation-states, which are dependent on technology for everyday life, are especially vulnerable to having their own technology used against them. In the new age of "virtual war," hackers could attempt attacks on anything that relies on information technology to function -- from water supplies to banking systems - potentially wreaking havoc in a given country. The question remains whether terrorist networks possess the high level of expertise necessary to commit these acts.
Advanced countries, especially the United States have used technology to improve their defense systems. The development of "smart weapons" means that forces can exact tremendous damage on their opponents with only minimal loss of their personnel because they use advanced technology to avoid direct engagement. This type of high-tech warfare was first demonstrated in the Persian Gulf War fought by the US in 1991 and was fine-tuned in the US engagement in the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo in the mid- to late-1990s. And by all accounts, smart weapons were militarily very effective in Afghanistan, the first phase of President Bush's declared war against global terrorism.
The great reduction in the potential for US casualties by using smart weapons has significantly affected public opinion about US military engagement, and has minimized domestic opposition. Now the US can more easily use force - or the threat of force - internationally.
However, the use of smart weapons raises important ethical questions. The Geneva Conventions (i.e., a group of four treaties, or written contracts, adopted in 1949 which govern all nation-states' treatment of members of the military, civilians and prisoners in times of war) call for the protection of civilian non-combatants. In conventional warfare where two armed forces are directly engaged, the ethics of warfare recognize that soldiers will kill soldiers but condemns harming civilians. This principle brings the use of smart bombs into question, since even with their increasing accuracy, smart weapons targeted by distant combatants and dropped from high-altitude aircraft occasionally miss their mark and kill or injure civilian non-combatants, or may cause "collateral damage" (i.e., killing or injuring civilians and/or damaging civilian objects) even when they directly hit their target.

2. Political Realities and the New War

Both global and domestic politics in the post-Cold War era shape the type of wars that are now being fought and are likely to be fought in the coming decades.
In terms of international politics, the convergence of the easing of bi-polar tension at the end of the Cold War with the expansion of globalization has greatly reduced the likelihood of a major nuclear confrontation or a war that would engage most of the major nations of the world. However, at the same time, there has been a surge in informal and privatized armed forces causing considerable instability in various countries and regions of the world. While their objectives range from conflict to conflict, it is increasingly apparent that these groups rely on international funding/trade and global crime networks to survive.
Domestically, the past decades have witnessed a growing ambivalence on the part of the US policy makers and the US public regarding the US's role in global politics. While there is a bi-partisan agreement by the majority of the US public, according to public opinion polls, in support of active US engagement in the global economy, no such consensus exists regarding US engagement in global politics. Indeed, several scholars and commentators have noted an isolationist tendency in the US. On the military front, this has surfaced in the reluctance of the US, as the sole superpower, to become militarily involved in conflicts in other areas of the world except in cases where US national interests are clearly and directly affected. However, as discussed above, the development of technologically sophisticated weapons that inflict fewer casualties and place many fewer US combatants at risk has increased the willingness of the US public to become militarily engaged in foreign conflicts.

3. New War and Global Terrorism
As will be expanded upon in the selected essays, neither global terrorism nor the declared war on terrorism fits the norms of conventional warfare, as described above. Global terrorism is executed by small, secretive, and often invisible networks of individuals who are not identified with a particular nation-state. While these "non-state actors" (i.e., those entities that are not official arms of recognized nation-states or governments) networks often have defined political objectives, they are not directly associated with the traditional type of national objectives. For example, the Al Qaeda network does not seek to take over a particular nation or government, nor does it target the military defeat of a particular government of a nation. Moreover, its armed units are not organized into traditional armies and do not engage their enemy with conventional strategies and tactics.
Thus, the new war on global terrorism by necessity will differ from conventional warfare. Because the enemy is not a nation-state, victory cannot be achieved by defeating an opposing government, even when it may be deemed necessary - as in the case of Afghanistan - to defeat a regime that collaborates with terrorists. While a combination of high-tech weaponry and strong support for internal forces opposing the Taliban led to the defeat of that regime, it is questionable that the same military strategy can be used effectively to destroy the capability of Al Qaeda and other networks. Alternative technologies and strategies will need to be employed if global terrorism is to be defeated.

Terrorism and Democratic Virtues

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I. Introduction to "Terrorism and Democratic Virtues"

Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

In the days and weeks following September 11, both the executive and legislative branches proposed various national security measures aimed at reducing the risk of future attacks on the US at home and abroad. While there was general support among the American public for improved protections against further attack, various proponents of civil and human rights have voiced concern that too many rights and freedoms might be limited in the name of national security. In this section, we explore various aspects of these government responses to September 11.

Democracy, liberties and rights - some definitions

Directly translated from Greek, democracy means 'rule by the people.' In modern democracies, citizens retain the ultimate political authority, although routine decision-making is often delegated to representatives at the federal and state levels. Many leading social scientists have recognized that there is tension between democracy and liberty, since the majority in a given country could vote to limit the liberties and rights of the minority in that country. It is because the drafters of the United States Constitution recognized this potential problem that they provided safeguards against such abuses of power by the majority, including provisions for the protection of inalienable individual rights, and the division of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Still, history shows that this system is not foolproof. For example, the rights of African Americans were limited, particularly in the Southern states of the United States until 1954.
Civil rights and civil liberties in the United States are founded on the principles contained in the Bill of Rights. These principles protect citizens from unwarranted interference by the government or other individuals at the same time that they identify the government's role in providing equal protection under law to all citizens regardless of race, religion, sex, or other characteristics unrelated to the worth of the individual. Many of the constitutional amendments protect civil liberties, including freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention; freedom of speech; freedom of lawful assembly; and freedom of association and movement. Other amendments define a government role in ensuring fair and equal treatment under the law, including the right to a fair trial; the right not to incriminate oneself in a legal proceeding; and the right to equal access to public facilities (e.g., schools, public housing and polling places).
Human rights echo many of the principles upheld by civil rights in the United States, although these two terms cannot be used interchangeably. A very basic definition for human rights is "those basic standards without which people cannot live in dignity". Rights for all members of the human family were first articulated in 1948 in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The 30 articles of the Declaration together form a comprehensive statement covering economic, social, cultural, political, and civil rights. The document is both universal (it applies to all people everywhere) and indivisible (all rights are equally important to the full realization of one's humanity). These rights are more comprehensive in scope than those articulated in the US Constitution, which generally address only civil and political rights, with little attention to the other economic, social and cultural rights included on the international human rights agenda.

The United States' history of limited rights in times of crisis
The United States government has denied the rights and freedoms of certain populations in the face of a perceived threat at different times in its history. The Alien and Sedition Acts, adopted in 1789 during the administration of President John Adams, came at a time of controversy over the U.S. role in the conflict between England and France immediately after the French Revolution. These acts defined criticism of the president as "sedition" (i.e., inciting rebellion) and provided for extra-judicial deporting of legal resident aliens if the administration considered them to be a security threat. During this period, several newspapers were closed, and "threatening" non-citizens were forced to leave the country.
During the Civil War, on several occasions President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus (designed to ensure that people who have been imprisoned have not been unlawfully arrested) without Congressional approval. He also closed newspapers that he considered to be seditious.
During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson urged Congress to adopt the Espionage Act, under which his administration sent more than 1000 people to jail for speaking out against the war and the military draft. Some, like socialists Eugene Debs and Rose Stokes, were imprisoned for as long as 10 years. After the war, attacks on dissidents intensified due to a rising fear that radicals might be inspired by the Russian Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Six thousand people in the U.S. were seized during the "Palmer Raids" of 1918-1921 (named after Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer), many of them aliens who had fewer rights than citizens.
During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt approved the detention of more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent, more than two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens.
The Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the "Smith Act") was the first statute since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to make advocacy of ideas a federal crime. During the Cold War era, this Act was used to imprison people believed to be leaders of the Communist Party. Moreover, Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin attacked many civil servants, writers and artists working in Hollywood and elsewhere, journalists, and others for their supposed activities in the Communist Party during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Many were "blacklisted" so they could not find work.
During the Vietnam War, anti-war activists (and some civil rights activists) were subjected to considerable surveillance and secret "dirty tricks" conducted under the FBI's domestic COINTELPRO (counter intelligence programs). During recent decades, the previous excessive curtailments of rights of critics of wartime have been largely repudiated.

Current policies that have raised concern in the United States
Citing the increased threat of terrorism from actors inside and outside the United States, Congress enacted the USA PATRIOT Act ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism," originally termed the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001) on October 24, 2001. Civil liberties advocates have criticized numerous provisions of this bill as well as the lack of adequate debate before its adoption.
These critics are concerned by numerous provisions of the Act, which weaken rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The USA PATRIOT Act creates a new, very loosely-defined crime of "domestic terrorism," breaking down the distinction between foreign-intelligence and domestic criminal investigations - a distinction that has been maintained until now to protect against government intrusion into citizens' private lives. It allows secret searches and wiretapping of telephones for an investigation whose primary purpose is gathering intelligence for a criminal investigation of U.S. citizens and non-citizens without establishing probable cause that a crime has occurred. (For more information, see http://www.aclu.org/congress/archives.html#ns).
Most civil liberties advocates do not contest the notion that additional investigative methods may be needed to address extraordinary threats of terrorism. They are concerned about the broader and longer-term implications of reducing legal rights in response to acts of terrorism. Because of the extremely broad definition of "domestic terrorism," there is grave concern that the new law will be used not only against suspected foreign terrorists but also against people engaged in civil disobedience against the World Trade Organization and other international financial institutions, at the U.S. naval base in Vieques, Puerto Rico, or at clinics that perform abortions. They contend that the fight against international terrorism is being used as a way to "normalize" greater powers of surveillance, intelligence-gathering, and arrest.

Reduction of rights for immigrants
Following September 11, immigrants have suffered a dramatic decrease of rights. For example, one provision of the USA PATRIOT Act gave the government the authority to detain immigrants for repeatedly extended six-month periods. An Executive Order issued by Attorney General Ashcroft on the same day that the Act was passed equipped his department with the authority to keep immigrants in detention even if a federal immigration judge has already ordered the release of the individual for lack of evidence. Since September 11, more than 1180 Arab or Muslim men have been detained. As of the posting of this teaching resource, the Justice Department would not release the names of the detainees and would not reveal the number of people who have been detained. Many have been held without charge for months, without access to a lawyer. The vast majority of charges have been minor immigration violations, such as overstaying an expired visa. The Justice Department has sought to interview 5000 immigrant men aged 18-33 from the Middle East who entered the U.S. after January 1, 2000. Justice Department officials have argued that this does not constitute "racial profiling" because their definition is based on national origin, not ethnicity or religion.
Civil rights advocates voice concern that the founding principles of the United States are being jeopardized by these policies as minorities and immigrant groups are targeted by the government. Current US behavior that have raised concern abroad
While civil liberties advocates have focused on infringement of rights guaranteed to people in the United States by the Constitution, foreign policy commentators have raised concerns that the U.S. government is not promoting democracy and human rights in its foreign policy. For the last 25 years, the U.S. government has included advocacy of human rights and promotion of democracy in its foreign policy pronouncements. However, some of the countries that are members of the coalition for the war on terrorism have very poor human rights records. For example, the United States has made partnerships with Uzbekistan, where Muslims had been imprisoned for violation of religious laws, and Pakistan, where the leader has not been elected democratically, and there are regular accounts of serious human rights violations. (For more, see Human Rights Watch's report at http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/september11).
Many U.S. allies have begun to raise questions about the United States' dedication to international human rights. In January 2002, there was a rising chorus of concern about U.S. treatment of prisoners from the war in Afghanistan who were taken to the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They have not had access to lawyers and are held in wire cages, which are violations of international law.
The terrorist attacks of September 11 have heightened many Americans' awareness of the democratic principles that they value. At the same time, the war on terrorism has shifted the balance between civil liberties and security, putting some of those core values at risk. The challenge is to mount a domestic and international response to terrorism that is effective but that does not, in the long-run, compromise basic human rights in the U.S. or internationally.