WILL SECURITY EVER BE STEPPED DOWN?
The placing of concrete blocks around the Houses of Parliament 'is not in response to a specific threat' according to Whitehall officials and the Metropolitan Police. If so, this measure shows the extent to which the authorities are now caught between a rock and a hard place in maintaining alertness, but not alarm, amongst the public for the war on terror. On the one hand, our vulnerabilities and the need for vigilance have consistently been flagged up over the last 20 months, on the other, as the Prime Minister reminded us all in his Lord Mayor's banquet speech last November, actions 'on the basis of a general warning' could lead us to 'doing [the terrorists'] job for them'.
The problem is, that irrespective of the Prime Minister's or the Security Service's measured assessments of how to respond against terror threats, there will always be other individuals and institutions who consider it their role, and indeed their responsibility, to err further on the side of caution. This 'precautionary' outlook is not something that can be shaped by policy or diktat. It reflects a wider public mood that has become increasingly pessimistic, blame-and-risk-averse over the last decade. Reversing this cultural tide will take more than 'specific intelligence' or good intentions.
Sadly, many of the technically oriented solutions, such as concrete blocks and greater surveillance, being promoted as part of the war on terror, may only serve to make things worse in the long run. This is because, whilst resilience may, to a limited extent, be a function of technology, it is above all a function of attitude. Our already fractured and disaggregated society suffers above all else from a lack of common purpose, collective ambition and social vision. Technical restraints imposed for the purpose of security will only further foment people's suspicions of one another. It could also drive the disaffected into the hands of those who seem to offer some form of active engagement with the world and an alternative meaning to life beyond being alert.
In such circumstances, it is hard to see how the rising cordon of security, at Westminster, at Heathrow or anywhere else will ever be reversed. Under what circumstances would a government ever step down its coloured warning system from amber to green? To do so would be to risk opprobrium subsequent to some future terrorist attack, which, we are continually told, is a matter not of if, but when. Accordingly, amber is the new green and the whole enterprise gets cranked up a gear, except that people's state of alertness will gradually wane and the real battle that needs to be won, the campaign against mistrust and cynicism at home, remains to be engaged.
Bill Durodié, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Defence Studies, King's College London
Bill is organizing the conference 'Communicating the War on Terror', 5/6 June 2003 at the Royal Institution, London. For details see http://www.terrorismresearch.net
WHAT JUST HAPPENED HERE?
The United Nations' Security Council decision to lift sanctions and endorse the occupation of Iraq by American and British troops draws a close to a period of unprecedented dissension between the Great Powers.
Amongst radical critics, these events are evidence of the domination of US imperialism. The clashes between the great powers of an economically driven rivalry over resources - principally oil - and a re-division of the world's markets. For these commentators, Lenin's theory of imperialism is the handbook to understand the present-day conflict.
However, the widespread criticism of the US - in both European and Arab capitals - is evidence of the failure of American hegemony, not its success. And, far from arising directly from economic motivations, the divisions on the Security Council are evidence of the failure of the political process both at domestic and international levels.
The current stage in US foreign policy opened with a loosening of ties by an incoming administration that felt that America was losing control of international institutions, such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto agreement. President Bush became a hate-figure for anti-capitalist protestors, and, quietly, for European ministers. Surprise, and ultimately arbitrary, attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 forced America to re-engage with the world. But now the US adopted a more strident tone - a War against Terror - that ultimately signaled its weaker position.
For the most part, the campaign against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan succeeded in rallying the 'community' of nations behind the American government. But when US policy makers turned to Iraq, the cracks in the alliance opened up. The challenge to the US on the Security Council made by France, Germany and Russia was unprecedented, and a sign that the US writ no longer held. For the first time the Cold War's Euro-American North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was paralysed by divisions.
With the Great Powers of the West split, a far greater degree of arbitrariness entered into the conduct of international relations, especially in the ties between the two main poles of the Western World, America and Germany and there hinterlands in South America and Eastern Europe. In the diplomatic battle being waged on the Security Council, Western leaders sought to undermine their rivals by agitating amongst each other's lesser allies. Mexico and Chile refused to back the US, while most of the East European candidate members of the EU signed a pro-US policy, drawing an open and violent rebuff from Jacques Chirac.
Rushing to explain these divisions, most commentators, including many of the actors, have pointed to competing economic interests, which for the most are insubstantial. Rather it is the changed political conditions, principally the declining authority of Western elites that is creating the divisions between them. As governing classes struggle with the problem of reengaging their publics, they are willing to jeopardize the international cooperation that has marked much of the last twenty years.
For the United States bellicose criticisms of European allies and Arab states lends a sense of direction to a government that is otherwise all at sea. The War Against Terror is an attempt by the US to marshal the world behind American interests, and one that has not succeeded. In Europe, what looks like a rising tide of anti-Americanism is really a more incoherent wave of anti-political sentiment, which simply fixes on the most outspoken politician of the moment.
All European governments faced similar popular hostility to American war plans, but not too much should be read into the different ways that they responded. On the face of it, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to face the crowds down indicates the undemocratic pull of the Atlantic alliance, while President Chirac's 'Non', suggests competing oil interests in the region.
Actually, the subjective inclinations of these actors are much more important in present-day conditions than economic interests. In other times, Blair might have been expected to go with the flow of popular opinion, but his political analysts had already drawn the conclusion that this was a strategy whose gains were rapidly dwindling. Rather, he took the popular sentiment as an opportunity to steer events, the better to enhance his control of his party and the political process. That Chirac chose to play to the gallery only represents two contrasting tactics in the struggle to reconnect with a hostile public.
The Turkish government's failure to deliver its parliamentary support for the 'Coalition of the Willing' is an illustration of the way that the declining political resources of elites are more important drivers of events than economic interests. In terms of its debt obligations, Turkey's decision makes little financial sense. Turkey's traditional political class lost its grip after years of acting as a punch-bag for unpopular policies. Figures like Thatcherite economic minister Turgut Ozal and Social Democratic veteran Bulent Ecevit are no longer around to sell American policy to the Turks. The fledgling 'Islamist' government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan simply does not have the resources to promote US interests.
In their different ways, all the national elites tried to reconnect with the public, at the expense of international cooperation. But ultimately the connections are fleeting, lacking institutional form or roots. That means that international consensus will continue to be tested by the decline of national political processes.
-- James Heartfield