The Limits of Change

COMMENT & ANALYSIS:

The limits of change: The US should be
wary of transforming its policy towards the Middle East in the
wake of Tuesday''s attack, argues Joseph Nye

Pearl Harbor was a transformative event in American history. The closely
fought political battle between isolationists and internationalists was
swept aside by the Japanese attack. The lesson that the US had to be
involved in international affairs was seared into the American collective
memory. Isolationism ceased to be credible.

Commentators have been quick to draw parallels between that
apocalyptic day in 1941 and this week''s attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon. Many say this, too, will prove to be
transformative. The number of casualties is likely to be significantly higher
than the 2,500 deaths suffered at Pearl Harbor and at least an order of
magnitude greater than the hundreds of deaths that have characterised
the worst terrorist incidents of recent decades.

But in spite of the scale of Tuesday''s attacks - and the deep-felt pain
and anger that they have caused - Americans should hope that some
changes are not as transformative as those that followed Pearl Harbor.
What might these changes look like? We should hope for substantial
changes in defence and intelligence policies but only modest changes in
foreign policy and mixed changes on the domestic front.

US defence policy has focused on projecting force abroad and the ability
to prevail in conflicts far from US shores. Stationing troops in Europe, Asia
and the Gulf helps to shape the environment and assure a stable balance
of power in critical regions. Our forces have been structured and sized to
prevail in important regional conflicts. But as a recent commission on
national security chaired by the former senators Gary Hart and Warren
Rudman pointed out, this important function is no longer sufficient to
protect the American homeland. Nor would ballistic missile defence do the
trick.

The Hart and Rudman commission recommended the establishment of a
new organisation that would focus on domestic defence, improved use of
human intelligence agents and better co-ordination of defence,
intelligence and law enforcement agencies. They also suggested that the
National Guard be reconfigured and refocused on the mission of domestic
defence.

In foreign policy, it would be a mistake for Americans to think that they
could buy protection by drawing back from overseas commitments. The
US economy and popular culture have global effects that would continue
to arouse hostility in some fundamentalists even if the US government
were to eschew an active foreign policy. Drawing back from the Middle
East, for example, would not make the US less vulnerable to terrorist
attacks. On the contrary, this week''s events suggest that the US should
be more proactive in pressing forward with the Middle East peace process.

At the same time, America''s vulnerabilities also suggest that unilateralist
approaches are ill-suited to meet the challenge of issues that cut across
national boundaries, whether they be climate change or terrorism. The US
is going to have to learn to co-operate better with other countries behind
their borders and within those of the US. This means not only thinking in
terms of hard coercive power but also paying more attention to "soft",
attractive power that makes others want to follow the US''s lead.
Unilateralist policies that squander the US''s soft power will make it harder
to elicit the type of co-operation that will be increasingly necessary.

On the domestic front, the US has to improve organisations and security
procedures. In civil aviation, for example, implementing the necessary
security precautions will make airports even less friendly places with more
tedious delays. Approach routes to airports may also have to be altered
for security reasons and aircraft cockpits will have to become more
securely isolated during flights. At the same time, however, the US has to
realise that open societies are always vulnerable and that there is a
trade-off between security and other values in our society. Perfect
security is found in graveyards and some prisons but no one wants to be
there.

When people are scared for their lives, they do not always react well.
Even liberal presidents have taken harsh measures. Abraham Lincoln
suspended habeus corpus at the beginning of the American civil war; and
Franklin D. Roosevelt allowed Japanese-Americans to be removed from
their homes and placed in internment camps in the second world war. The
one transformation that should not result from this week''s events is such
a serious sacrifice of our civil liberties. It is one thing to suffer long lines
and delays at airports; it is quite another to condone the ethnic screening
of passengers or arbitrary searches without warrant or probable cause.

Thus far, with the exception of some intemperate congressional speeches
and a few public expressions of hostility to some ethnic groups, Americans
have responded well to the horrors of the September 11 attacks. It is
important for the president and other leaders to continue to shape a
response that stays within reasonable boundaries in the trade-off
between liberty and security.

A failure to do so would be to sacrifice our most central values. That
would be the ultimate damage the terrorists could inflict on a demo-
cracy.

The writer is dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
University