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DEBATING A POSITION ON WAR AND TERRORISM: 

Notes on Theories of the War on Terrorism  

(1) The official view, standard among U. S. politicians and in the media and therefore a kind of “default” theory: This war is an entirely new phenomenon in history, to be understood purely as the U. S. government response to the September 11 attacks considered as an act of war against the U. S..  The war is justified as punishment for September 11 and as prevention of future attacks on U. S. targets by military destruction of terrorist networks like Al Qaeda (and potentially about thirty others on the State Department list) wherever they exist.  This theory depends on an understanding of terrorism as an act of war rather than a crime, and on a selective, partial and shifting definition of the term “terrorism.”  The military action is to be unlimited in time until all such networks have been destroyed militarily, and unlimited in space, including possible military intervention in all countries where terrorist networks exist.  The military objectives may expand beyond the terrorist organizations themselves to all states, organizations, or individuals who support, protect, or encourage them.  The military actions will be carried out unilaterally by the U. S. government if necessary, but preferably by an alliance of anti-terrorist governments under de facto U. S. leadership (and, wherever possible, by local proxy forces with U.S. military trainers and advisers).  This theory implies or outright asserts that no U. S. foreign policy or economic objectives other than ending terrorism play any role in the war in Afghanistan or its possible extensions into Iraq, the Philippines, Georgia, Yemen, Somalia, Palestine/Israel, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Iran, or Colombia.  This theory strongly implies that it simply expresses natural justice (the right of self-defense) and political common sense (sovereign states act to protect their interests), and therefore should command the overwhelming support of patriotic U. S. public opinion and indeed of people everywhere. It is essentially grounded in concepts of U. S. state sovereignty and the U. S. national interest, which it believes are to be upheld by all right-thinking U. S. citizens as a matter of course.  

(2) The clash of civilizations.  Based on the thinking of Samuel Huntington and others, this theory sees the U. S. war on terrorism as a stage in the epochal clash between a triumphant Western civilization and a humiliated but insurgent Islamic world full of ressentiment at modernity.  The official theory is careful not to take this anti-Islamic line, though one can sense its influence in the background; clearly the administration is concerned not to lose the Islamic state allies it already precariously has.  But we probably need to discuss this theory because of just such a tacit and background influence. 

(3) The liberal, internationalist, pacifist theory that the “war on terrorism” is a profound error, a dangerous regression to nationalist militarism, that the September 11 attacks and the existence of terrorist networks must be met not by military destruction of terrorist networks (particularly not by unilateral U. S. military action), but by legal, diplomatic and political measures, carried out through international bodies like the UN and the World Court, bringing terrorists to justice for their criminal acts.  It further holds that civil or human rights must not be suspended in the course of prosecuting terrorist crimes.   This theory defines the September 11 and other terrorist attacks as crimes rather than acts of war; it opposes military action; it opposes unilateral U. S. action.  It is grounded in the theory--strong in the founding of the League of Nations and the United Nations after two world wars--that war itself should be abolished.  It would rely on non-violent means--legal, diplomatic, economic, political--to end terrorism, regarding military action like that of the Bush administration as fundamentally wrong in itself as well as counter-productive because leading to a cycle of violent retaliation and escalation.  It envisions working towards a world at peace by choosing non-violent solutions carried out through increasingly effective international institutions, such as the new International Criminal Court.  This theory is perhaps the leading alternative view to U. S. official militarism, but it has barely been explored in practice during the “war on terrorism,” having been pre-empted on the ground by unilateral U. S. military action (supported by most other states, most strongly by the U. K.).  The political weakness of this theory at the moment has to be counterbalanced by its moral and philosophical strengths, which come out of the historical experience of two world wars, the Cold War,  and the endless wars, mostly in developing countries, since the end of the Cold War.  It is a theory that challenges war itself and does not make an exception for this war; indeed, it denies the possibility of a just war because of the nature of war itself.  It pins its hopes on the revulsion at war which historical experience and the existence of weapons of mass destruction have produced, as a powerful inducement to abolish war and find other methods of resolving disputes and redressing grievances.  It calls attention, even under the impact of an event like September 11, to the dangers of reverting to old militarist habits and responding in kind even to something as monstrous as the attacks on the World Trade Center. To adopt this theory would entail not only ending U. S. and allied military action against terrorism, but embarking on vigorous non-violent measures to end terrorism--which have scarcely been discussed. Its internationalist aspect is especially noteworthy: implicit in it is a move away from the nation-state itself as the ground of politics, even while the UN is merely a grouping of nation-states.  It implicitly opposes nationalism itself as an ideology in principle superseded.  The pacifism and the internationalism of this theory of the war on terrorism as a dangerous regression to nationalism and militarism often rest on classical liberalism: there is little attention to how economic forces in a capitalist world system drive politics. 

 (4) The anti-imperialist theory that the war on terrorism has become the latest pretext for a classic U. S. imperialist military intervention in the Middle East and West Asia for quite different reasons, mostly the traditional ones of (a) accessing and controlling the region’s oil and gas reserves (in the Caspian region as well as the Middle East); (b) building strategic alliances and U. S. influence in the region to counter and gain advantage over rival capitalist states like Russia, Europe, China, and Japan; and (c) gaining or enhancing U. S. control of local states like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran, and in particular of ending the radical Islamist challenge for control of the oil rentier-states.  This theory calls attention to the official theory of the war which uses the single factor of terrorism to occlude the history of U. S. (and other imperialist) interventions in the region and  avowed U. S. economic interests in its oil. The anti-imperialist theory  regards the Al Qaeda network as a capitalist group aiming at control of oil wealth through taking state power in Saudi Arabia and the region generally, a group trying to accumulate military and ideological strength through terrorist attacks on the U. S., not for their own sake or to establish a purer form of Islam, but as a path to their real ends, running the oil rentier-states for their own interests.  Radical Islamism, while it undoubtedly has a life of its own as all ideologies do, is from this point of view an ideology in the service of yet another variety of state and private capitalism. From that point of view, Al Qaeda (and the Taliban) are not to be taken at their own evaluation as religious zealots or, as in the U. S. official view, mere terrorists; their real threat to U. S. imperialism is as the spearhead of a new group of local capitalists vying for power in the region and deeply hostile to the U. S. hegemony there.  It also follows from the anti-imperialist theory that this is not a war in which labor should take sides; it is a war between two very asymmetrical groups of capitalists, the U. S. hegemon and a small but dynamic local challenger.  Classic anti-imperialist theory of such conflicts calls for the defeat of both sides by workers as a class, an international class, and far-off as such a movement might seem now, this theory argues that it is the only strategy that is worth workers’ while to undertake, the only one with a chance of advancing our class interests against capital.  Soldiers should not fight such a war, workers should not produce materiel for such a war, and politically workers should organize a broad antiwar movement, roughly along the lines of “No Blood for Oil” and mobilizing against the war on workers at home: austerity in labor contracts and government budgets, repression of immigrant populations, and broadening of government surveillance and detention powers.  This is a minority viewpoint, but perhaps globalization has now made it easier for us to see its trenchancy.

Preamble to Discussion Questions from the International Committee:  

Disclaimer:  The PSC has collected, presented and linked materials and writings on these issues to promote discussion and debate.  The PSC has not endorsed any of the views expressed in these writings, materials or links.  They are posted for the purpose of promoting dialog and discussion in the spirit of the the PSC Delegate Assembly March 21 Resolution (Be it Resolved that during the next two months the PSC conduct an education and discussion process on the issue, both at the chapter level and University-wide, in preparation for formulating union policy.)

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