From Jonah Stuart Brundage: Should we forget 9/11?

Hello, my name is Jonah Stuart Brundage. I am a senior concentrator in International Relations, focusing on the track of Politics, Culture and Identity. This course greatly appeals to me in both its theoretical approach to international relations and its emphasis on the importance of history. I believe that in order to even begin to comprehend contemporary international relations, it is necessary to assume a historical viewpoint, excavating the originating moments in the development of modern IR theory and practice. Moreover, I believe that such cultural and ideational social phenomena as identity and difference, self and other—as emphasized by this course—are essential to explaining IR. Consequently, I am taking this course to further familiarize myself with a set of approaches to and readings on international relations that relate to my own theoretical interests within the discipline, but are nonetheless often shunned by mainstream IR.

September 11 was a horribly tragic moment in our nation’s history and we must continue to honor and mourn its victims. Nonetheless, our government’s symbolic usage of this event, as a justification for many foreign and domestic policies, is seriously detrimental to the interests of both the American people and global security. Thus, while we should not forget September 11, it is absolutely necessary to move beyond our often myopic fixation with it. In the first instance, our elevation of September 11 to an act of war, analogous to those committed by states, is certainly not the most effective means of combating terrorism. Terrorist networks, in their very nature, are fundamentally different from national states, and must be combated accordingly. And despite the current administration’s talk of a post-9/11 era (a problematic term, in itself) as necessitating a fundamentally new approach to foreign policy, this approach—from the use of the word “war” to the act of invading state sponsors of terrorism—remains locked in an anachronistic era of inter-state relations. It would probably be much more effective to treat terrorism within the framework of global law enforcement, requiring a pooling of resources on the part of states rather than the traditional state action of war. Moreover, our September 11 fixation not only inadequately combats the real threat of terrorism but furthers the possibility of additional threats to human society. The domestic response of our government, like its foreign policy counterpart, represents, in many respects, not a new paradigm for a globally integrated world but a reassertion of the coercive apparatus of the modern state.

Fortunately, we are indeed finally beginning to move beyond September 11, as the decreased media focus on this year’s anniversary seems to suggest. In order to further this process, however, we need to radically reconceptualize our understanding of national and global security. We need to view terrorism as just one of many possible threats facing both our country and humanity, and not necessarily the greatest threat either. In this respect, projects like the Global Security Matrix put us on the right track, inasmuch as they help us view and assess multiple threats simultaneously and urge us to move from a national to a global notion of security. Of course, we can also take concrete political action by electing leaders who will implement more sensible policies regarding the threat of terrorism. Nonetheless, although these actions may help us move beyond our current fixation on September 11, the general problem of our country’s response is, at least in part, the product of deeper structural problems—namely, the continued existence of the modern nation-state coupled with a fundamentally new global system. Although terrorism is merely one of many threats to human beings, it is a much greater threat to the state, for it undermines its very basis for existence—the monopoly on violence (hence the attempt by the United States to reassert that monopoly in both the international and domestic arenas). Although this logic may be somewhat overly deterministic, I do believe it signals that the only way to adequately approach terrorism is to move beyond the modern states system. Until this is the case, the phenomenon of the American response to September 11 will likely be recurring.

Posted by Matrix Admin on September 20, 2007 09:04 AM | Permalink

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