The interaction of weak states and deadly new weapons could give birth to a tragic century
John Gray Friday September 28, 2001 The Guardian
It could have been incomparably worse. The instruments used on September 11 were pen-knives and passenger planes - and a willingness to die. The result was carnage on a scale that no similar atrocity comes close to matching. But what would have been the roll call of the dead if the suicide warriors had been equipped with new weapons of mass destruction, such as the designer poisons made possible by advances in genetic engineering?
We have not yet begun to grasp what it means to live in a world where millions of people can be killed by a handful of fanatics armed with the contents of a test-tube. Partly this is because we have a reluctance to confront insoluble problems - and that's what this is beginning to look like. The spread of new weapons of mass destruction is a result of two forces, one of them unstoppable, the other very strong. The unstoppable force is the diffusion of scientific knowledge. The information needed to make biological weapons is practically free. Much of it can be found on the internet, and it can't be stopped from spreading further. As science advances, the techniques involved in making new weapons tend to become simpler, safer - and cheaper. This is a process with no obvious end point.
The other force is the new weakness of the state. Over the past 20 years or so in many parts of the world, power has leaked away from governments, and passed into the hands of a ragbag of ethnic and religious militias, political organisations and criminal gangs. The Taliban regime is only one example of a much more widespread trend. In differing degrees, much of Russia and Africa and parts of Europe (such as Albania and most of former Yugoslavia) suffer from the same condition. A large portion of humankind lives no longer under the government of modern states - however repressive - but in something approaching anarchy. Reversing this trend is not impossible, but it is likely to take generations.
The fragmentation of state power in much of the world makes controlling new technologies of mass destruction dauntingly difficult. In the past, the main aim of anti-proliferation policy was to prevent nuclear capability being acquired by ever more states. The effort had more success than many feared, with at least one state (South Africa) giving up a nuclear capability, and others abandoning programmes to develop it. Even so, the number of states with nuclear weapons has slowly increased. The danger of proliferation remains, but there is a larger and more intractable problem - that weapons of mass destruction will be acquired by groups which no state can control. That is the clear danger - the likelihood even - highlighted by the events of September 11.
The reality we face is a semi-anarchical world in which unimaginably destructive weapons are becoming more widely available. If we are to have any prospect of coping with this situation, we will have to revise some deeply ingrained habits of thought. It is futile to imagine, as some liberals fondly do, that working to eradicate the causes of war is an adequate response. Many are rooted in long-standing conflicts over religion and territory. Such conflicts could well become more severe in years to come, if - as is increasingly the case in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia - they become entangled with struggles over shrinking natural resources. Moreover, some enmities cannot be placated. Fundamentalist hostility to the United States does not come from resentment against its flaws. It is a hatred of what America is at its best - a society dedicated to pluralism and liberty. Liberals who fail to grasp this fact are denying the fundamentalist warriors who struck New York and Washington the only credit they deserve, as avowed enemies of liberal values.
Whole debates - such as that between the missionaries for globalisation and their anti-capitalist opponents - have suddenly become largely irrelevant. Some policies that are widely supported across the political spectrum need to be urgently reconsidered. Take the "war on drugs". In terms of its effects on public health and law and order, criminalising drug use has been a disaster. In the context of the threats we are now facing, it is almost insane. Freezing terrorist funds is easier said than done. Many of the groups involved in terrorism, including the Taliban, which recently rescinded a ban on opium growing it had imposed last year under western pressure, get a sizable part of their funds from the drug trade. Legalising it would deal an immediate and serious blow to terrorism throughout the world. Yet it remains off the political agenda in the US and Britain.
The problems we face in a world of deadly new weapons and weak states may not be fully soluble. The interaction of growing scientific knowledge with intractable human conflicts may be giving birth to a tragic century - not unlike the one that has so recently ended. The best we can hope for may be to stave off disaster. If we succeed in doing that, perhaps those who were killed on September 11 will not have died in vain.
. John Gray is professor of European thought at the LSE.