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Paul Kennedy: The genie is out of the bottle

Sunday 16 September 2001 00:00 BST
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At 8.45am on Tuesday, 11 September 2001 America entered the 21st century. The millennial celebrations in Times Square were mere ephemeral acts. The devastation of the World Trade Centre, only a few miles to the south, was an epic, transforming event. Twenty months ago the American public could rejoice in their nation's good fortune, geographical location and material resources, technological prowess and sheer military clout, all of which combined to make the United States the most powerful and influential nation the world had known since Imperial Rome. The Soviet Union had collapsed, and its Russian successor was slowly imploding. The Japanese "challenge" had evaporated. The world was embracing American-style capitalism, the internet, MTV, and the expectations of Wall Street. The 21st century, one rose-tinted book had confidently asserted even a decade earlier, "will be American".

Five days ago, that confidence evaporated amid the smoke plumes that arose from the damaged Pentagon and the collapsed World Trade towers. It is hardly likely to return in the near future, if ever. No sooner had the news networks screened the clip of the second aircraft diving into the South Building than Americans began to think of Pearl Harbor, an earlier surprise attack upon this nation that shook it out of its complacency and sense of innocence and security. But the Pearl Harbor analogy is useful only to be held up in contrast to what happened earlier this week. Although Americans 60 years ago were shocked to their knees, the response to that sneak attack was both obvious and feasible. The military aircraft of another sovereign state, Japan, had struck the military aircraft and warships of America. In response, the United States launched a primarily military campaign on land, sea and air to defeat its recognisable enemy. Since the American GDP at that time was about 10 times that of Japan's, the eventual outcome of this unequal conflict could be foreseen. Unconditional victory was achieved.

And this, of course, is what American citizens expect will happen in response to Tuesday's terrorist attacks. Shops and private houses have put up placards saying "Mr President, Bomb Them NOW!". But it is precisely here that the Pearl Harbor analogy peters out. This time around America has not been struck by another state's military aircraft but by its own, hijacked civilian planes – with devilish symbolism, planes that belonged to American Airlines and United Airlines, the two largest and best-known US carriers. The attacks were perpetrated by incredibly well-organised terrorists who exploited America's strengths – its technology, its open society, its easily accessible airlines, even its television networks – to strike fear and sow confusion. And this enemy is shady, decentralised, not easily identifiable and certainly not very easy to destroy. Defeating Japan was like shooting an elephant; defeating the terrorists who inflicted these wounds upon America will be like stomping on jellyfish.

The impudence and irony of the attack can escape no one. Just a few weeks ago, I did some recalculations of US "power" today, as measured by the standard social science criteria, and the overwhelming impression that emerged was of how far this nation stood above all possible contenders as the global hegemo. True, America contains only 4.5 per cent of the world's population, but sheer numbers of human beings are rarely a good indicator of comparative heft. By comparison, it possesses approximately 29-30 per cent of world product, a percentage that has increased in recent years because of the paralysis of Russia's economy and the languishing of Japan's. Even more remarkable is the size of the American military pre-eminence. Last year, 36 per cent of the world's military spending was done by the Pentagon; in fact, the US defence budget was equal to the defence budgets of the next nine largest military spenders, a statistic that (so far as I can judge) has never before existed in all of history. Comparative technological and education/science indicators further increased America's lead; its share of world internet traffic is around 40 per cent, its share of Nobel prizewinners (1975-2000) is around 70 per cent. Putting these measures of comparative national power together presents an awesome amalgam. Truly, America is our modern-day Colossus, bestriding the world with its aircraft carriers, communications systems, giant corporations, and heavy cultural impress.

And yet this Colossus is also extremely vulnerable to weapons that are far different from Yamamoto's aircraft-carriers and Hitler's panzer divisions. It has an Achilles heel that is, to a great extent, of its own making. Its cultural and commercial superiority, and the relentless drumbeat of its free-market doctrines, have been seen as a threat to many religious and class groups, especially in traditional societies. Its powerful corporations are viewed by America's critics as having an undue and powerful influence, say, in blocking international agreements on climate control, in forcing changes upon restricted markets, in overawing weak Third World governments. Its strong support of Israel – to an extent that would have astonished, say, Eisenhower – gives it enemies across the Muslim world. Its invention of the internet, and its prominent role in creating 24-hour trading markets, makes it immensely wealthy, but also incredibly vulnerable to sabotage. Its liberal immigration policies (compared to Europe) and the openness of its universities to foreign students means that it contains a vast melting pot of individuals from all over the world, some of whom may be suborned for terrorist acts.

This contradiction between the appearance of unchallenged American might abroad and the reality of grappling with the "new" threat of terrorism at home was perhaps nowhere better captured last week than by reports that three US carrier task groups were headed into the waters off the East Coast. Such a group of powerful modern warships represents the most overpowering sign of America's global reach, thousands of miles from their home bases; these are the forces that cruise off the Taiwan Strait, or patrol the lower reaches of the Persian Gulf. No other navy's forces can take them on. But this week they scurried home, though their mission was unclear.

This brings us, then, to the critical question of whether America's (and, the West's) armed forces are ready for the possible security threats of the new century. For the past 10 to 20 years, a growing number of experts in international affairs and military relations have suggested that the Pentagon has been too focused on Second World War/Cold War stereotypes of fighting, and reluctant to take seriously alternative views of both the sources of conflict and the changed nature of struggles. Battle tanks and carrier task forces are not much help against population pressures, illegal mass migrations, environmental disasters, malnutrition and human-rights abuses – conditions we have seen so often in Africa, the Balkans, Haiti and the Middle East, and in which young recruits for suicide-bombing and other terrorist acts can be found. Moreover, the US's multibillion-dollar large weapons platforms are also not much use in the battle against international crime and/or drug cartels. Finally, they are of only moderate utility in combating the acts of terrorism that we witnessed on Tuesday. No one doubts that Osama bin Laden and fellows will be pursued, and that smart bombs will be sent into hillsides and caves. But the terrorist organisations have a loose cell-like structure and no real headquarters, successors will emerge to lead those cells, and more youths are waiting to join in the fight.

Given the severity of Tuesday's catastrophes and the desire of all Americans to show solidarity, no one has yet been impolite enough to ask the President or the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, to explain how spending $80bn on a shield against incoming ballistic missiles could have defended the World Trade Centre. But the time for such questions will come.

Worse still, if the terrorist world rejoices at the deaths of thousands of Americans, why should we imagine that crashing an aircraft is the worst blow that ruthless and well-organised villainy can deliver? How far away are we from atrocities such as setting off a small atom bomb in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, or spreading anthrax through the San Francisco subway system? That pleasant, kindly, Norman Rockwell age of the 1930s, when Americans felt safe and good about themselves, was shaken at Pearl Harbor. On Tuesday it was blown to bits, with the two skyscrapers.

This is not what Americans like to hear. This sounds too pessimistic, too defeatist. The calls on all sides are for swift, retributive action, and they are natural enough given the horrors we have suffered. The American culture celebrates quick and decisive blows, clear-cut victories, and lots of freedoms: freedom from government, freedom from taxes, freedom from international governance, freedom to drive big gas-guzzling cars and to demand cheap petrol, freedom to walk on and off an aircraft with lots of hand-baggage, freedom to be safe and secure from external troubles. The weariness and the wariness that characterise the inhabitants of Belfast or Jerusalem or Kashmir is something most Americans have not experienced and which I suspect they are psychologically unprepared to handle.

All of this leaves the political leaders of this vast, complex democracy with a problem which, so far at least, they have not honestly addressed. They have not said that the old military and strategic verities are no more. They have not said that this new foe can probably hurt Americans much more than Americans can hurt them. They have not cautioned that America's traditional home liberties may never be the same again. They have not said that, on Tuesday, 11 September, the United States got a glimpse of what the 21st century may hold for all of us, and that the way ahead may be tougher and rockier than the collapse of buildings in Wall Street and a glancing blow to the Pentagon.

Paul Kennedy is professor of history at Yale, and the author of 'The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers' and 'Preparing for the 21st Century'

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