1 - 2002

Church and Globalisation

"The Globalising of Civil War"

Structural causes of the terror attacks in New York in September

An interview with Ernst-Otto Czempiel

Transnational terror is the dark side of a nascent world society. Western attempts to create a military defence against it are bound to fail. Instead, development policies which address the inequalities in the global economic and political order are called for, argues Ernst-Otto Czempiel, a leading German peace researcher.

HerderKorrespondenz: Professor Czempiel, the interpretations of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington outdid themselves in using superlatives... Do these attacks really represent such a profound historical turning-point?

Czempiel:To me, we are seeing in the events of 11 September changes in politics, society and the economy which have been going on for a long time, since the middle of the last century... We can recognise these changes in the emancipation of societies within nations, the enormous increase in prosperity in the Euro-Atlantic societies, the transformation of the industrial into the communications society, and globalisation in the sense of the lightning-quick spread of Western transnational corporations throughout the world. In addition, all societies have become more democratic. I like to use the concept of the "world society" to describe these changes. In this world society, however, the transnational corporations are not the only autonomous active elements. This world has changed so much that a new way of conducting a civil war has also become possible.

HK:Is international terrorism simply an unfortunate side effect of this world society’s coming into being?

Czempiel:Yes, along with the drugs trade and international crime... An appropriate metaphor would be the image of a civil war which is becoming globalised, in which the 11th of September could be considered the first action. It was the first time a group in the society has directly attacked the superpower which is the USA... Here is where we see evidence of the world society: in a civil war or partisan war, non-governmental forces challenge the power of the state or an occupying power. In this case, terrorist groups are confronting the USA as a world power...

HK:Are we being threatened here with war between the Western world and the Islamic world?

Czempiel:The dominant conflict in the future will certainly not be a conflict between religions. There is consensus among political scientists that religion has never been the causative factor of violent conflict. But religions have always been used as instruments by violent political power-seeking groups, from the Crusades up to the present-day Balkan conflicts. A man like bin Laden, or the religious leaders in Iran, may claim that their dispute with the supreme powers of the USA and the West European industrial nations represents Islam against Christianity as the religion of the colonial powers. But that is just as much nonsense as saying the Northern Ireland conflict is between Catholicism and Protestantism. What we see in the attacks on 11 September is the current conflict between the rulers of this world and those under their rule, between the oppressed and their oppressors, between the poor and the rich who do nothing to fight poverty, or who even profit from it. The non-Muslim world also rises up against "American imperialism", in China for instance.

HK:To what extent is it true to picture it as a conflict between the "civilised" and the "uncivilised" world?

Czempiel:"Civilisation" is an epithet which the West has claimed unjustly. This is not about civilisation against barbarism, but rather of the domination of the non-industrialised world by the highly industrialised world...

HK:The "Coalition Against Terrorism" which the USA has been putting together in recent weeks represents an entirely new crew working together - Russia, China, India, Iran and some Arab states are suddenly all in the same boat. Do we have here a model for the future, for a new form of cooperation within the community of nations? Might it develop into a new world order?

Czempiel:It will certainly not develop into a coalition which will design a new world order. This Coalition Against Terrorism is a temporary alliance, a goal-oriented pact among governments which are afraid of terrorism, justifiably or not. The Arab states are precisely the ones in which terror is directed at their own governments, and the clash between Islamists and moderate Islam is first of all one within the Arab world.

HK:What will the future relationship of the European community to the USA look like, and can the EU play its own role in America’s Coalition Against Terrorism?

Czempiel:The European Union would certainly be in a position to set its own directions and to put others straight. The West has committed itself to respond to the terrorist threat by political, economic and military means. Up to now it has been using primarily military means. This was to be expected, but is nevertheless one-sided. Terrorism cannot be successfully combatted with modern military might. It is only because we have so many traditional instruments of violence on hand that these are being used to fight terrorism. However, this cannot succeed in really getting to the terrorists. At the same time it is continually creating new areas where new terrorists can arise. However, it is the EU which could and should see to it that the relationship among military, economic and political means is brought into balance again... To look for bin Laden, and to chase him, the right thing to do is to use special forces. The Secretary of the Interior and the secret services should work together to find all the cells of his terrorist network, arrest them and bring them to trial, if they have already committed crimes. Certainly bombs should not be dropped everywhere where there are cells of this terrorist network. The former head of the CIA, Robert Gates, once said that terrorism cannot be conquered, it can only be dried out. The sources which nourish it have to be stopped up.

HK:But is it that easy to identify these sources?

Czempiel:We have known for a long time where the sources are, and by now even the public is aware of them. To begin with, there are unresolved political conflicts. If the Near East conflict had been resolved in 2000 with Clinton’s initiative at Camp David, the 11th of September would certainly not have happened. The conflict with Iraq, too, must finally be brought to a solution. For ten years that country has been strangled by sanctions, and for three years it has been bombed... This is precisely the soil which nourishes readiness for violent counter-attacks. But please do not misunderstand me here: sources are not the same as causes. There is no necessary causality between the context and the act. The Near East conflict is not the cause of terrorism, nor is the American hegemony in the world or the unequal distribution of wealth. But there is a coherence with the context. The political conflicts we have mentioned are sources from which terrorism is nourished and regenerated.

HK:In the search for reasons for the rise of international terrorism, and in analysing future conflict scenarios, the shadow side of globalisation is being mentioned more and more frequently... Could development aid be an alternative to military action?

Czempiel:In view of the new scenarios which threaten us, development aid must be seen as a security policy; development aid and foreign aid must acquire an entirely new significance for us. Development aid can do a lot more for our security, these days, than the Bundeswehr (German army) can... Not least among the things we need to change, however, is our general political attitude in the West, our attitude of being the masters. The former German Foreign Minister, Genscher, recently called for us to think of everyone, even the small countries, as our equals and include them in the international political decision-making processes... This also means that the increasing unilateralism in the USA, with the European Union gladly following in its wake, has to be transformed back into multilateralism. The most important and all-encompassing way to state this is with two letters: UN.

Ernst-Otto Czempiel is professor emeritus of political science and former director of the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, and has published widely on international relations. This interview was conducted by Alexander Foitzik in October 2001. It first appeared in the Catholic monthly Herder Korrespondenz, No. 11/2001 in November 2001; we publish an excerpt.