For Immediate ReleaseSeptember 24, 2001
Contact: Alisa Giardinelli610.690.5717 [email protected]www.swarthmore.edu/Home/News
Getting Bin Laden Is Not the Target, Says Swarthmore College Political Scientist Adds Bush's Goal Requires New Nation-State Governance
Making the destruction of Osama bin Laden and his network the symbol of victory trivializes and misunderstands the duration and depth of the terrorist threat, says a Swarthmore College political scientist. "At best, that's a minor, first part of what must be done," says Raymond F. Hopkins, a professor of political science. "It's easy to simplify the enemy as a few people who need to be crushed. Fortunately, the President's speech Thursday night tried to avoid such simplistic thoughts."
However, by saying that "terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism," Hopkins says Bush ignored how terrorism is tied to many religious traditions. "Terrorist tactics have become so dangerous because of the vulnerability of our modern, cooperative world," he says. "For America to see our sole danger as arising from Middle East extremism would be a horrific mistake. People world-wide will remain vulnerable to terrorism long after military retaliation unless we create institutions to strengthen international justice."
By focusing on military action in Afghanistan, Hopkins says U.S. policy decisions are wrongly directed by military, not legal doctrine. "Given our long task, this is a mistake," he says. "I would assign the task of finding and defeating 'every terrorist group of global reach,' as Bush proclaimed it, to the attorney generals of the world, not the U.S. joint chiefs. I would tell the CIA and Defense Department to cooperate fully in stopping criminals, of course, but the initiative to end terrorism has to be shaped by the doctrines of law."
Hopkins admits this effort will take the cooperation of many countries. "Changing the way the world works is the only sure way to expose and stop terrorism," he says, "especially if we want to preserve the freedoms we espouse and prevent further backlash against America and its military."
According to Hopkins, this process is already under way as evidenced by the changing definition of 'nation-state.' "The assumption that countries are there because it's conventional to think so is being reexamined," Hopkins says. "It isn't easy to think in these terms, but we have to make a more sophisticated distinction between states we respect, states we suspect, and states we think don't exist. Bush correctly distinquished the Taliban regime from Afghani people."
Hopkins says this reexamination leads to a more "behavioral definition" of the long-established concept of the nation-state. "A state is a term that captures the essence of a people's capacity to govern themselves and deal with others as a legal entity," he says. "Where the entity is more fictitious than real, and where 'rulers' are tribal and predatory, we shouldn't dignify organizations by treating them like a state."
As a result, Hopkins says populations in these areas, "such as Kosovo, Sierra Leone, the Congo, and before long, Afghanistan," require special governance. "We should acknowledge how state failures are turning parts of the world into protectorates -- areas where an international agency works to build a sustainable government," he says. "The aim is not to reinvent colonialism, but to establish an alternative to letting internal struggles and hatreds seep into global terrorism. That's the kind of model we need to think about."
An authority on world food security, Hopkins has written on global policy issues since the 1970s. He has also worked for the State Department and other U.S. and U.N. agencies. A member of the Swarthmore faculty since 1967, Hopkins has held visiting posts in Asia, Africa and Europe, as well as at Princeton, Penn, Stanford, Columbia and Harvard. He currently holds the title of Richter Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore.
Located near Philadelphia, Swarthmore is a highly selective liberal arts college with an enrollment of 1,450. Swarthmore is consistently ranked among the top liberal arts colleges in the country.
-30-
RSS