Imperial headaches: managing unruly regions in an age of globalization.

Hudson, Michael C.

It has been four years since the Iranian president, Mohammed Khatami, proposed a "dialogue between civilizations," but it seems much longer. Indeed, in the year since September 11, the global mood has darkened, and the decade of the 1990s now appears to have been the calm before the storm. As by far the most powerful actor in what President Bush the elder once described as a bright "new world order," the United States, having been brutally attacked in its very centers of power, is reacting with a mixture of fear, anger and hubris to a world suddenly dangerous, and to an ill-defined enemy capable of penetrating the strongest military power the world has ever known.

Ghastly though they were, the attacks of September 11, 2001, offered an opportunity for the United States to reach out to a sympathetic world in order to address in common the causes of transnational terrorism. A cooperative approach, informed by dialogue, might have been fashioned and institutionalized. Unfortunately, this opportunity was missed, and dialogue was substituted with monologue. An American administration, although divided within itself, appears to have lurched toward the radical right, driven by a self-righteous sense of victimhood, and prepared to employ its far-reaching military capabilities unilaterally to fight a war without borders against an enemy who is said to be almost everywhere (in 80 countries, according to the administration) and yet whose leadership remains elusive.

Until it was revived by neoconservative publicists, the term "empire" seemed quaint and anachronistic, redolent of ancient Rome and the now-defunct empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But today the notion of empire is debated in the journals and think-tanks of Washington and New York. But since September 11, the advocates of "soft power," as a means for the United States to exercise a kind of loose and benevolent authority in a globalized world, appear to have given way to hawkish ideologues who not only believe in the necessity of force--unilateral if necessary--but who also naively suppose that force alone will not only eradicate global terrorism but create stable liberal democracies and thriving market economies in unruly regions like the Middle East that appear to be the source of the "evil" that has so sorely afflicted us.

THE WAR ON TERRORISM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

The attacks of September 11 galvanized the administration of George W. Bush into trying to formulate a "doctrine" to understand and confront the apparently dangerous post-Cold War world. Influenced by neoconservative perspectives, it sought a strategy whereby the American "empire" could "order" a world in which transnational adversaries were able to attack the very heartland of the United States and strike devastating blows to its most cherished symbols of its global economic and military power. But for all its surface unity, the administration has been deeply divided on how to achieve this goal. A relatively benign blueprint has been articulated by what Michael Hirsh (1) calls "the moderate multilateralists." This camp is represented by Colin Powell, the State Department and a coterie of Republican conservative internationalists such as Brent Scowcroft and James Baker, who were associated with the regime of Bush the elder. Their relatively "soft" approach has been articulated by the director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, Richard Haass, who delivered an address in April 2002 in which he proposed that the "post-post-Cold War period" presented new transnational challenges, as well as traditional ones, for which older strategies of conventional defense, containment and deterrence were no longer sufficient. He proposed a doctrine of "integration":

 In the twenty-first century the principal aim of American foreign policy is
 to integrate other countries and organizations into arrangements that will
 sustain a world consistent with U.S. interests and values, and thereby
 promote peace, prosperity and justice as widely as possible. Integration of
 new partners into our efforts will help us deal with traditional challenges
 of maintaining peace in divided regions as well as with the transnational
 threats such as international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of
 mass destruction. It will also help bring into the globalized world those
 who have previously been left out. In this era, our fate is intertwined
 with the fate of others, so our success must be shared success.

While arguing that "hard-headed multilateralism"--working with others in various kinds of coalitions--would be essential, he also insisted "... that we can and will act alone when necessary. Our right to self-defense is unquestioned." The task, then, appeared to be to persuade and if necessary compel (either in coalition with others or unilaterally) others to adhere to American-defined principles of international order, development and justice. Haass also observed that "we have seen an evolution in how the international community views sovereignty. Simply put, sovereignty does not grant governments a blank check to do whatever they like within their own borders.... Countries affected by states that abet, support or harbor international terrorists, or are incapable of controlling terrorists operating from their territory, have the right to take action to protect their citizens." While Haass did not comment on whether the U.S. government would accept external interventions in its own internal affairs, he did seem to be laying the groundwork for a military doctrine of preemption--but in a relatively palatable way. Most of the countries currently identified by the Bush administration as possible targets for American intervention are in the Middle East.

But a year after September 11, it appears that a coalition of radical unilateralists led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has gained the president's ear in promoting urgently a stern, muscular, preemptive strategy. The latest iteration of it can be found in Cheney's speech of August 26, 2002, in which he categorically insists on the necessity of a U.S. military attack to destroy the Iraqi regime of President Saddam Hussein. These advocates of "hard" power are prepared to override the concerns of the moderate multilateralists, doubters in the U.S. Congress, allies in Europe and Japan, and friendly Arab governments. Former Congressman Lee Hamilton, quoted in the Boston Globe, feels that a U.S. attack on Iraq is now inevitable: the administration can hardly back down without losing face, and neoconservative writer William Kristol appears to agree. (2)

It is difficult enough to carry out such a self-imposed mandate, especially in its "hard" version, even in relatively calm issue areas. A former Reagan administration official, Chester Crocker, likened multiparty mediation in a complex world to "herding cats." American objections to the International Criminal Court and international efforts to curb global warming or promote sustainable development suggest to much of the world that America will play only by its own rules. Large sections of European opinion are deeply critical of what many call the current administration's arrogant unilateralism. But for a region larded with failed states, stagnant societies and evil elements (at least in Washington's perspective), it is far more daunting.

Is it possible to combine military policies of assertive preemption with diplomatic strategies of building and maintaining alliances? First, let us consider the military level. The novelty of the situation lies in the advent of post-modern, asymmetrical warfare: Westphalian states vs. transnational networks and the technological "equalizer weapon" of terrorism--low tech and inexpensive--which has scored significant successes against the United States and friendly governments in the Middle East. The accessibility of weapons of mass destruction adds yet another complicating factor. American military theorists, such as Ronfeldt and Arquilla, are proposing how to fight "netwars," using networks to fight networks. Perhaps the administration's fixation with Iraq is based on our ability to exploit our comparative advantage with high-tech conventional military power (especially air power) over a relatively weakened "conventional" state adversary, even if there is little evidence connecting that adversary with the unconventional netwar being waged against America at home and overseas.

Second, we need to consider the more difficult diplomatic dimension. The U.S. administration now claims that Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups now operate in as many as 80 countries, and it is reported that Washington is targeting for covert action worldwide terrorist organizations "well beyond" Al Qaeda, including, for example, Hizballah. (3) Manifestly, the cooperation of other governments and societal groups is necessary for the "War on Terrorism" to succeed. But how can the United States accomplish this in the most "dangerous" region of the Middle East, especially when some of its other policies are strongly opposed both by ruling elites and public opinion?

The political narrative of the twentieth century in the Middle East was defined by the struggle against imperialism and colonialism for independence, sovereignty and national development. As noted, scholars in the 1960s were recognizing that this "subordinate international system" actually displayed considerable autonomy vis-a-vis the superpowers. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, are we seeing a reversion to "provincial" status, under the aegis of an unchallenged singular superpower? I think not. And if not, then politics will still matter, and American diplomacy will face formidable challenges in trying to implement the new doctrine of "integration" in the Middle East. As a prominent British Middle East historian once observed, reflecting on Britain's experience, imperial rulers simply have to put up with being unpopular. But when does unpopularity begin to interfere with keeping the imperial pax? Clearly, the radical unilateralists in Washington have little patience or respect for the objections of others, whether they be traditional Arab governmental allies like Egypt, Jordan or Saudi Arabia, and even less for public opinion in Arab and Muslim societies.

Historically, successful empires owed their success to their ability to rule with peace and stability for long periods of time. They needed to do more than simply win wars. The Ottoman empire ruled much of this region for a very long time under a "Pax Islamica,"--a combination of religious authority and bureaucratic capacity. Britain dominated much of it with a "Pax Britannica,"--the moral authority of "Western civilization" combined with judicious colonial administration. In the twenty-first century, can the United States construct a "Pax Americana" through its instruments of military preemption and political-diplomatic "integration"? And, in particular, how can it "manage" the "unruly" regions of the Arabs and the Muslims? To try and answer these questions, we need to reflect on three of the unique features of the present era: globalization, Middle East regional ferment, and the nature of the American empire itself.

ASSESSING THE GLOBALIZATION FACTOR

Globalization has emerged as a conceptual anchor for our understanding of the post-Cold War world; the Arabs have now coined the term "al-awlama" to designate it. The concept refers to "increasing levels of interdependence over vast distances," along economic, cultural, environmental and political dimensions. (4) There is persuasive quantitative evidence for the robustness of this trend over the decade of the 1990s, although the very recent indications suggest a retreat, owing to the world economic slowdown and the attacks of September 11, 2001. (5) In the economic and environmental realms, the "global village" metaphor suggests both a generalized interdependence--and a subjective awareness of it--that at once links economic and societal actors in a region such as the Middle East to larger global communities, and also reduces the decisional latitude of sovereign governmental authorities in the face of international "regimes," which in turn are influenced by "Empire." In the cultural and political realms, the popular distinction between Barber's "Jihad vs. McWorld" (6) actually masks, as Bamyah (7) has pointed out, a peculiar symbiosis between "traditionalist" establishments like the Saudi state and the instruments of modern technology: tradition is an instrument for achieving modernity. Similarly, it has been noted by Jon Anderson (8) that pan-Islamist organizations have seized upon globalizing technologies like the Internet to advance (or should we say restore?) a mythical traditionalist order.

But globalization can be a divisive as well as integrative force, and this seems especially the case in the Middle East. On the governmental level, certain heads of state may be more "at home" in the cosmopolitan environment of major world capitals than they are in their own. Computerized intelligence sharing among Arab interior ministries (after September 11, probably interconnected to a greater degree than ever with their American and other Western counterparts) illustrates lateral globalized integration on the level of governmental and security agencies. Yet many of these Middle Eastern leaders and the "ruling circles" around them, globally "wired" as they are, are perhaps more isolated from their people than they ever were. And while there may be a parallel lateral pattern of linkages from organizations in Middle Eastern civil society with "global civil society," the evidence of growing vertical participatory linkages with their own governments, while there, is not particularly robust.

The term "digital divide" captures the likely growing distance between elites and masses inside established states, and it also appears to be widening, relatively, between regions such as Africa and the Middle East on the one hand and the United States and the industrialized, high-tech societies on the other. If it is tree that the "masses" in the Middle East are being increasingly left behind in global economic and social development, one might expect the level of discontent will be exploitable by some remarkably high-tech militant networks. An additional source of tension derives from the unevenness of globalization across the lower classes in the Middle East. They may be falling behind, but they can also see that they are falling behind: satellite TV is everywhere but Interact connections are not, nor are opportunities to partake in the global economy.

How has globalization affected the balance of political-military power in the world, and how does this balance affect the Middle East? In their provocative attempt to present a paradigm for grappling with this question, Hardt and Negri contend that, yes, there is a new "empire," but no, it is not (just) the United States government. (9) We cannot understand the empire of today's post-Cold War, post-industrial world based on our knowledge of the classical empires of the modern period. Everybody knew what the British empire was and the particular place from which it was governed; its power could be assessed in traditional terms--size and capacity of armed forces, budgetary capacity, and the like. Today's empire, they insist, is "decentered":

 Empire is formed not on the basis of force itself but on the basis of the
 capacity to present force as being in the service of right and peace. All
 interventions of the imperial armies are solicited by one or more of the
 parties involved in an already existing conflict. Empire is not born of its
 own will but rather is called into being and constituted on the basis of
 its ability to resolve conflicts.... The first task of Empire, then, is to
 enlarge the realm of the consensuses that support its own power. (10)

There is much of value in an approach that helps us understand the pervasiveness and subtlety of contemporary "imperial" power in a globalized world. Certainly students of Middle East politics will note the way some antagonists in local conflicts like the Arab-Israeli struggle plead for American intervention; no gunboats are necessary. But old-fashioned political scientists may be forgiven if they find a certain coyness in the way Hardt and Negri dance around the overwhelming reality of an all-too-centered new American empire. As Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth (11) recently have observed, America dominates the world by virtually any measure of military, economic and technological power-proportionally far more than any previous empires. As such, "the United States is the country in the best position to take advantage of globalization," (12) attracting disproportionate shares of high-tech manpower and direct foreign investment. For better or worse, America is the center of today's globalizing world.

But key U.S. leaders do not seem to appreciate the other side of globalization-that cooperation is now more important than unilateralism. The global situation that we must analyze today, and the place of the Middle East in it, is not only different from but more complex than the bipolar world that we used to study. When Middle Eastern countries were pieces on a chessboard manipulated by two contending players, the picture was simpler, and perhaps the region was stabler than it will be under the imperfect hegemony of the United States. But whether our contemporary "empire" can engineer global consensus in support of its power and prerogatives seems highly debatable, at least on the basis of its post-September 11 policies.

WEAK STATES AND EMERGING NON-STATE ACTORS

In the Arab political landscape of the post-World War II period, almost up to the present time, the state steadily emerged as the dominant entity. It grew dramatically in terms of size, revenues and coercive capacity. It also enjoyed, early on, a certain legitimacy derived from the successful struggle against Western imperialism in its various forms. One group of states embarked on a nationalist-reformist project, led mainly by military officers and a professional, reform-minded middle class. The authoritarian-populist regimes in these states framed the public priorities in terms of economic development (through import-substitution-industrialization), egalitarianism (through land reform and emasculation of the very wealthy), and mobilization to unify the Arab nation, redress the nakba (catastrophe) of Palestine, and prevent Western neo-imperialist designs on the Arab region. For them the Soviet Union became a balancer against Western encroachment and, to some extent, a model for political and economic development. Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Iraq and North and South Yemen pursued this course in their various ways.

A second group, while passively accepting much of the nationalist project, including the leading role of the state, featured regimes with an avowedly "traditional" and "patriarchal" character. These included Saudi Arabia, the other small Arabian states, Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco. Unlike the "nationalists," these regimes celebrated their Islamic authenticity rather than relegating it a lower priority. Many were rentier-states--major oil exporters in which vast revenues accrued directly to the state or the dynastic regimes. Their well-to-do classes were coopted rather than suppressed and were harnessed to non-"socialist" development plans. Their external orientation favored the West as a bulwark against the challenges posed by the transnational ideological appeal of the "progressive" states. Both groups of states, however, practiced, in varying degrees, a monolithic populist mobilization strategy. Political liberalization, let alone pluralistic democracy, was not on the agenda. The state led, framing the public agenda; society followed, deferentially and passively.

The post-colonial Arab state and state system came to occupy a subordinate position in the post-World War II, bipolar superpower-dominated global order. As pan-Arabism waned, following the defeat of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1967 war with Israel, some Middle East specialists observed what they believed to be a "maturing" of the Arab state system: individual states were becoming more autonomous, self-contained, self-interested, Weberian and Westphalian. The states of the region were behaving as structural-realist international-relations theory would have them behave: as rational, self-help units, pragmatically sensitive to the global distribution of power. From the perspective of the two rival superpowers, the Middle East was a region of contestation in which each constructed client blocs that came to mimic their patrons in what Middle East scholar Malcolm Kerr (13) called "the Arab cold war."

The global and regional terrain began to shift in the 1980s. States that seemed dominant over their societies began to falter, unable to continue to deliver on the socioeconomic promises that had tacitly fostered political passivity. Decades of considerable economic growth came to an end with the collapse of oil prices in the mid-1980s. The oil-rich rentier regimes experienced huge revenue declines. The nationalist-progressive ideological formulas of regimes began to fade. And the bipolar global order came to an end with the eclipse and demise of the Soviet Union, leaving the United States the hegemon of an increasingly integrated global economy and financial system informed by an ascendant ideology of economic and political liberalism. International financial institutions, heavily influenced by the United States, came to intervene in the most sensitive of domestic policy issues in countries around the world, including most of those in the Islamic and Arab worlds.

Westphalian sovereignty as a practical matter was being undermined everywhere. In the military sphere, where only the United States possessed a global reach, "humanitarian interventions" (even failed ones) served notice on dictators that "the international community" might intrude militarily against regimes whose internal policies egregiously violated international standards. In the Middle East the balance of power was also affected, as the tense stability of the Cold War-constrained regional system gave way to a certain multipolarity marked initially by the hollow ascendancy of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council states in the Arab subsystem. But this gave way to the system-challenging instability generated by the Iranian revolution, the rise of radical political Islam, the two wars in the Gulf and the collapse of the Arab-Israeli "peace process."

Across the Arab world, then, states began to weaken. The persistent authoritarianism of their regimes has come to indicate the hollowness of their entire political order. At the same time, societies began to display greater vitality than before, with associations and NGOs emerging during the 1980s to articulate alternative agendas and priorities, although rarely to participate in the policy-making process. Political scientists observed the new trend and produced a number of studies depicting the growth of what Norton (14) described as more "vibrant" political studies, while also subjecting the once all-powerful, stable "mukhabarat (national security police) state" to revisionist interpretations--of which perhaps the most cogent was Nazih Ayubi's book, Over-Stating the Arab State. (15) But it was far from clear where the new societal energy would lead. While a stratum of intellectuals and business leaders sought to advance projects of political liberalization and democratization, it did not appear to be garnering a broad popular constituency. The far more rooted societal tendency belonged to the Islamists.

On the global level, as leader of a new world order, the United States during the 1990s struggled to define its role, whether as "umpire," during the Clinton administration, or perhaps as "empire," where the administration of George W. Bush seemed to be leaning during its first year in office. Owing to America's overarching presence in the Middle East, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, by virtue of its oil connection and its support for Israel, the direction of American policy could not but have a major impact both on states and societies. But by the same token, developments in the region could not be ignored for long in Washington, especially were they to spill over into the United States itself. Against this backdrop of weakening states, societal ferment and the new global order, the twin developments of transnational information technologies and political networking in the Arab world have the potential to accelerate sociopolitical change, contestation and uncertainty.

NETWORKS AND POLITICAL ISLAM

A crucial structural feature of the new global and regional environment is the emergence of informal, transnational networks as an agent for change--and a challenge to American unipolarity. In today's Information Age, says Castells, "Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies, and the diffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of production, experience, power, and culture." (16) He continues:

 A network is a set of interconnected nodes. A node is the point at which a
 curve intersects itself. What a node is, concretely speaking, depends on
 the kind of concrete networks of which we speak.... Networks are open
 structures, able to expand without limits, integrating new nodes as long as
 they are able to communicate within the network, namely as long as they
 share the same communication codes (for example, values or performance
 goals). (17)

Inherent in the network structure or, more precisely, the network experience, is the potential for the production, consumption and investment of social capital. In a definitive article, Coleman (1988, 2000) states that social capital is defined by its function, that it is productive (allowing "the achievement of certain ends that in its absence would not be possible"), and that "unlike other forms of capital, social capital inheres in the structure of relations between actors and among actors...." (18) He offers examples of culturally bound-networked--communities, such as the wholesale diamond market or the Cairo bazaar, in which a sense of community engenders trust and thus promotes collectively productive action. The informal hawala money-transfer networks, now famous as part of the "money trail" thought to support Al Qaeda, would constitute a similar example. Social capital and networking are not confined to modern societies with formal rules and institutions: They also operate in less sophisticated societies, providing channels for cash transactions when formal institutions do not work.

This brings us to the contemporary Arab world. Arab society has always been permeated with networks functioning in a variety of areas. In his valuable comparative study of informal networks in Egypt, Iran and Lebanon, Denoeux argues that such networks can promote either political stability or instability. They can absorb the dysfunctional social atomization and personal anomie that might otherwise cause disruptions in fast-modernizing societies with repressive governments. But, by the same token, these social dislocations can lead to the formation of networks based on alternatives to the official vision of society and thus come to challenge the political order. Where is the tipping-point from one to the other?

The development of the Arab state in the post-colonial period, as noted above, took an authoritarian turn almost everywhere. While socioeconomic development began to establish the infrastructure that might support a vibrant civil society, insecure regimes, avaricious elites, ideological demands and international influences converged to create a mukhabarat state suspicious of societal autonomy, pluralism and alternative agendas. Consequently, political parties (other than the regime-sponsored single parties) were weak, elections (when they occurred) were usually rubber-stamp affairs, and interest groups, labor unions and the like came under constant government surveillance and interference. The mass media too, with certain significant exceptions, were coopted into helping frame the regimes' political agenda. In addition, the rule of law was too feeble to protect civil and political space, and the bureaucracies of state-driven economies were known for opaqueness, inefficiency and corruption. Significant opposition, even if it professed to be loyal to the system, was forced to be clandestine to some degree, or at least very low-profile. Is it surprising, then, that such alternative currents as could survive adopted network structures (formal and informal) and cultures?

Islamist networks seem to have been particularly successful. A survey of formal Islamist political networks like the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and less formal or even clandestine movements such as the Egyptian gamaat, the Shia networks of Lebanon, Iran and Iraq, the Palestinian Islamist groups, similar organizations in North Africa, and even the notorious Al Qaeda suggests that they can advance their agendas in at least four ways. First, with respect to the symbolic agenda, one does not have to go so far as some authors and claim that the whole discourse of contemporary Arab politics has become Islamicized to observe that the array of programs and projects encapsulated by the slogan "Islam is the solution" resonates deeply with individuals mired in the tensions and contradictions of contemporary Arab societies. Moreover, the pervasiveness of these symbols, especially when associated with longstanding nationalist concerns, extends throughout society and not simply among members. Thus, an Islamist network like Al Qaeda swims in a nutritious societal "sea." This is why it is incorrect to designate Al Qaeda a cult, and why--despite its commission of morally atrocious acts--it enjoys at least passive support across social strata and also transnationally.

Second, as Wickham has observed in her study of Islamists in Egypt, the network itself produces the social-capital rewards for membership in addition to the instrumental agendas being put forth. (19) Codes of dress and deportment are among the social cues and pressures that attract and consolidate commitment to the cause. During the repressive periods in the regimes of Anwar Sadat and Husni Mubarak, the Islamists migrated into the subaltern and protected spaces in Egyptian society to find sanctuary and launch new initiatives to participate in High Politics. Third, Islamist networks appear to be able to parasitically attach themselves to preexisting social and cultural networks. Al Qaeda, as noted above, may ride the hawala financial networks. Some say it free-rides on Arabian honey-trading or other business networks.

Islamist networks appear to originate in the "old school ties" of schools and universities. The Taliban founders may have been alumni of the Deobandi seminary. The Shia network organizers of Amal, Hizballah and the Daawa form lasting bonds in the seminaries of Qom and Najaf. The Egyptian networkers may have first crossed paths at Al-Azhar University. American Muslim extremists networked in the storefront mosques of Jersey City and Brooklyn. Non-Islamist opposition networks also perhaps "piggy-back." The late Hanna Batatu's meticulous work on the Iraqi communists and the Syrian Baathists reveals their sectarian and regional interconnections. (20) The founders of the Syrian Social National party and the Arab Nationalists Movement perhaps utilized alumni and student networks of the American University of Beirut as a platform for their own transnational political projects.

Finally, a case can be made that the Internet and satellite television networks may vastly extend the global reach of transnational Islamist (and non-Islamist) networks. Whether it is Shaykh Qaradawi's call-in program on Al-Jazeera or the substantial communities constructed electronically around the Islam On Line Internet portal, these communities in cyberspace, as Jon Anderson has described them, may constitute an enormous recruitment pool for future exploitation by the dedicated political networks. (21) This, then, is the complex--perhaps volatile-regional political environment that the American empire faces.

AMERICAN UNILATERALISM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

By all the traditional measures of power, the United States today stands astride the globe. As Brooks and Wohlforth observe, there is no counterbalancing power or bloc that can compel Washington not to do what it wishes in the international arena. (22) The Bush administration is dominated by a neoconservative hawkish tendency that is comfortable with the burdens of empire and which insists that great power must be exercised to be effective. Neoconservatives are Manichaean in conceptualizing "good" and "evil" international actors. They call for summary punishment of the evildoers; toward our traditional allies in Europe and Japan, they are impatient, if not downright contemptuous. Multilateral ventures are, to be sure, desirable--viz. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's strategy for building floating coalitions in the War on Terrorism--but unilateralism is never to be ruled out when core American interests are at stake. Opposing the neoconservatives are the liberal internationalists, who argue that, in time, arrogance and unilateralism will prove costly (even if not fatally so) to the United States. (Critics from the left like Noam Chomsky and Edward Said appear to be almost completely marginalized, as are traditional conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Nicholas von Hoffman.) Within the administration this outlook is most closely identified with Secretary Powell and other key State Department officials; Haass's attempt to articulate a "doctrine" of integration exemplifies this "softer" approach. But it appears that the softliners been eclipsed by the hawkish officials in the Pentagon, the vice president's office, and the Congress, aided and abetted by a jingoistic chorus from the neoconservative journals, op-ed pages and the cable news channels.

An odd and dismaying feature of the U.S. debate is how strident and one-sided it has become, at least up to now. On the domestic front, a whiff of McCarthyism emanates from the attorney-general and law-enforcement agencies; Muslim-American and Arab-American communities feel targeted. Early and commendable administration efforts to reassure the public that Washington was not making war against Islam have not been vigorously reiterated. On the legal and constitutional front, civil liberties are being challenged in the cases of suspects or "persons of interest" to the Justice Department, and the Executive Branch has seized the occasion of "war" to arrogate to itself the fight to initiate war against Iraq, without regard for the Congress. In Congress, the Democratic party opposition is, for the most part, extremely timid in challenging Bush administration hardliners.

As a result, until recently there has been relatively little serious discussion of the costs of a campaign against Iraq or of the War on Terrorism in general. Skeptical academic Middle East specialists are regularly derided as being in the pay of Saudi Arabia, of failing to appreciate the "evil" nature of political Islam, and of overestimating the importance of hostile public opinion in the region. Suggestions that Israeli policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians is one of the sources of anti-American feeling and terrorism are sometimes reviled as apologies for terrorism and for suicide bombings in particular. And, in truth, the political authoritarianism, socioeconomic problems and some of the cultural-religious practices in the Arab and Muslim worlds create in the minds of many Americans the image of hopeless, unruly places which may, indeed, be amenable only to military force.

The Arab and Islamic regions are particularly weak vis-a-vis the United States, compared to most other parts of the world, and their governments are substantially dependent on American security, economic and technological capacity. Yet anyone who follows American politics, especially since September 11, cannot fail to observe Washington's fear, anger and frustration over this area. Official Washington identifies this region as the main location of the enemy in the War on Terrorism. The domestic dimension of this war focuses on the ethno-religious profiling of Arabs and Muslims; the foreign dimension focuses on "terrorist groups with global reach," most of which are seen to be primarily located in this region, notwithstanding their transregional presence in up to 80 countries. Two-thirds of the tripartite "axis of evil" are Middle Eastern. After Afghanistan, Iraq is now targeted as the next military battleground. Influential neoconservative voices cast Saudi Arabia as an enemy, not a friend. Along with Al Qaeda, a number of Arab "terrorist" organizations, including Hizballah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, are singled out by name by President Bush. Most significantly, the president appears to have accepted the Sharon government's conflation of its "war against Palestinian terrorism" with America's war against global terrorism. From Washington's imperial perspective, the anti-American hostility of public opinion and civil society in the Arab world counts for little; so there is no reason to return to diplomacy to settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict before launching the next military campaign, against Iraq, in the War on Terrorism. This neoconservative stance dovetails seamlessly with the pro-Israel agenda of the Israeli lobby in the United States and is reflected as well in the Republican party (which is now seriously challenging the Democrats for the Jewish vote) and in the fundamentalist Christian churches.

As the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks passes, it is appropriate to try to evaluate the administration's conduct of the War on Terrorism thus far. The neoconservatives wax triumphant. And, in fairness, they can point to the destruction of the Taliban, the weakening of Al Qaeda, limited accomplishments in rebuilding Afghanistan, the substantial intergovernmental intelligence and law-enforcement cooperation, and the shoring up of domestic defenses. Other observers are not so sanguine. Some military and security analysts, from a professional or centrist orientation, fault the Afghanistan campaign (O'Hanlon (23)), and both the concepualization and execution of the War on Terrorism (Byford (24)). The Al Qaeda leadership, by the administration's own admission, seems to have survived. And, as noted, the plan for a preemptive strike against Iraq lately has drawn serious criticism from Republican moderates and expert commentators (William A. Galston, (25) Brent Scowcroft (26)). Rare or faintly heard voices from the left, such as Immanuel Wallerstein, sharply dispute the dominant account and argue that September 11 marks a significant setback in America's world position, and depict a downward historical trajectory in which those who have been alienated by American arrogance will have the last word. He writes:

 But hawk interpretations are wrong and will only contribute to the United
 States' decline, transforming a gradual descent into a much more rapid and
 turbulent fall. Specifically, hawk approaches will fail for military,
 economic, and ideological reasons ... Yet the U.S. response amounts to
 little more than arrogant arm-twisting. Arrogance has its own negatives.
 Calling in chips means leaving fewer chips for next time, and surly
 acquiescence breeds increasing resentment. Over the last 200 years, the
 United States acquired a considerable amount of ideological credit. But
 these days, the United States is running through this credit even faster
 than it ran through its gold surplus in the 1960s. (27)

European critics are equally critical and apprehensive. Pierre Conesa and Olivier Lepick, in Le Monde Diplomatique, write:

 We are entering a period of great uncertainty. international security now
 depends on the unilateral stance of a superpower that has progressively
 shown a desire not to be bound by any international treaties or by
 international criminal law. This is evident from U.S. refusal to recognise
 the International Criminal Court and from its creation of special courts to
 try the members of the al-Qaida network. President Bush is playing
 international policeman, choosing his next targets, not from among the
 countries linked to terrorism, which would have been the logical
 progression from the Afghanistan offensive, but from among the
 proliferating countries. They pose a different threat. Despite the
 Russian-U.S. accord of 26 May on the number of nuclear warheads, we are
 seeing not the end of disarmament but a new world disorder. (28)

As for Arab evaluations, the words of Abd al-Bari Atwan, editor of Al-Quds al-Arabi, speak for themselves:

 President Bush is today calling for replacing Arafat. Tomorrow, he will
 send frigates and planes to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and on
 the day after tomorrow, he will point Israel at Syria and Lebanon to change
 the governing regimes there under the pretext of [their] supporting
 terrorism. On the day after that, he will accuse President Mubarak of
 violating the freedom of religious practice and accuse his press of being
 anti-Semitic and support a coup against him similar to the one that took
 place in Venezuela. The U.S. president will then choose the color of our
 clothes, what food we eat, and maybe even whom we can marry. Any objection
 to that means supporting terrorism and anti-Semitism. (29)

As noted at the beginning, the durability and success of past empires could be attributed not only to their military and bureaucratic capacities, but also to their ability to instill a sense of legitimacy. America today enjoys unprecedented military and economic power in the Middle East and around the globe; it even exerts a substantial cultural influence. But does America possess the moral authority to accomplish its self-proclaimed goals, in particular winning the War on Terrorism, in a region where the values of sovereignty, independence and dignity, though frayed, are still widely cherished? A little more dialogue and a little less monologue might help.

(1) Michael Hirsh, "Bush and the World," Foreign Affairs, Volume 81, Number 5, September/October 2002, pp. 18-43.

(2) John Donnelly and Susan Milligan, "Cheney Speech Seen Setting Path to War," Boston Globe, August 28, 2002.

(3) "Top American Official: Hezbollah the `A-Team of Terrorists,'" Ha'aretz, September 5, 2002.

(4) "Measuring Globalization," Foreign Policy, January/February 2002, p. 56.

(5) "Globalization's Last Hurrah?" Foreign Policy, January/February 2002.

(6) Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld (New York: Times Books, 1995).

(7) Mohammed A. Bamyah, The Ends of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 80-81.

(8) Jon W. Anderson, "The Internet and Islam's New Interpreters," New Media in the Muslim World, Dale F. Eickelman and Jon W. Anderson, eds. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999).

(9) Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

(10) Ibid., p. 15.

(11) Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, "American Primacy in Perspective," Foreign Affairs, Volume 81, Number 4, July/August 2002, pp. 20-33.

(12) Ibid., p. 22.

(13) Malcolm Kerr, The Arab Cold War: Gamal Abd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958-1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), Third Edition.

(14) Augustus Richard Norton, ed., Civil Society in the Middle East (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1995).

(15) Nazih Ayubi, Overstating the Arab State (London: Tauris, 1995).

(16) Manuel Castells, The Rise of Network Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, 2000), Second Edition, p. 410.

(17) Ibid., p. 411.

(18) James S. Coleman, "Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital," Social Capital: A Multifaceted Perspective, Partha Dasgupta and Ismail Serageldin, eds. (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2000), p. 16.

(19) Carrie Wickham, "Constructing Incentives for Opposition Activism: Islamist Outreach and Social Movement Theory," paper presented at the Middle East Studies Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, December 5, 1998.

(20) Hanna Batatu, The OM Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978); and idem, Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).

(21) Jon W. Anderson, "Cybarites, Knowledge Workers and New Creoles on the Information Superhighway," Anthropology Today, Volume 11, Number 4, August 1995, pp. 13-15.

(22) Brooks and Wolforth, op. cit.

(23) Michael E. O'Hanlon, "A Flawed Masterpiece," Foreign Affairs, Volume 81, Number 3, May/June 2002, pp. 47-63.

(24) Grenville Byford, "The Wrong War," Foreign Affairs, Volume 81, Number 4, July/August 2002, pp. 34-43.

(25) William A. Galston, "Why a First Strike Will Surely Backfire," The Washington Post, June 16, 2002.

(26) Brent Scowcroft, "Don't Attack Saddam Hussein," The Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2002.

(27) Immanuel Wallerstein, "The Eagle Has Crash-Landed," Foreign Policy, Volume 81, Number 4, July/August 2002, pp. 60-68.

(28) Pierre Conesa and Olivier Lepick, "The New World Disorder," Le Monde Diplomatique, English language edition, July 2002.

(29) Abd al-Bari Atwan, Al-Quds al-Arabi, June 26, 2002, quoted in "Views from Abroad," The Washington Post, June 30, 2002.

Michael C. Hudson

Dr Hudson is a professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. The following text is a revision of papers presented to the conference on "International Terrorism, the United States and the Arab World," University of Exeter, July 14-15, 2002, and the International Conference on "Continuing the Dialogue Between Civilizations--After September 11," University of Southern Denmark, Odense, August 30-September 1, 2002.