For over 15 years I have studied and traveled extensively to Peru, a country besieged by terrorism. When the violence began, the first thing Peruvians learned was how vulnerable they were. No security force can patrol all the bridges, airports, government buildings, power lines, and other potential targets. Terrorism is a problem that can't be solved by taking nail files from airline passengers.
The next thing Peruvians discovered was the importance of intelligence. Indiscriminate violence is a non-solution. One General said he would not hesitate to kill 60 people to eliminate just one terrorist. The consequence of this cruel arithmetic was the disappearance of thousands of people and the dislocation of millions. Sympathy for the terrorists swelled. Later, the military learned to work with local communities to organize their self-protection. As sympathy turned against the terrorists, defections occurred, and information surfaced that enabled the government to disband terrorist cells.
Military intelligence does not have to be an oxymoron, as George Bernard Shaw once remarked, but it is always a double-edged sword. The final thing Peruvians learned was that corruption and abuse of power follow with relentless inevitability whenever government - especially the security apparatus - is given extraordinary powers without accountability. The intelligence service that defeated terrorism in Peru was itself disbanded last year after exposes of gunrunning, drug trafficking, and bribing members of Congress. As Lord Acton put it: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
In the pell-mell rush to strip away restraints on the CIA, US political leaders are forgetting Acton's dictum - and the Agency's recent history. The war on terrorism is being fought in the name of freedom and democracy, but terrorism may be a lessor threat to freedom and democracy than how we respond to it. Never is the threat greater than when the public, justifiably afraid, willingly exchanges its rights and liberties - privacy, freedom from state surveillance, the right to information, freedom to travel without internal passports, the right of civilian oversight of security agencies - for protection. Is there an alternative?
We can surround ourselves with gates and guards, wall off the outside world, horde the virtues of "peace, order, and good government," and watch in splendid isolation while the rest of the world suffers tyranny, misery, and insecurity. Our "global village" will become a global Apartheid. Or, we can create a global civil society. The lesson from Peru is that both terrorism and state violence are best restrained by strong civic and community life. Let's apply the lesson globally.
The war on terrorism requires the cooperation of those close - and potentially sympathetic - to the terrorists. Anti-Americanism is rife among these communities, and US aggression will only make it worse. The US can play global cop, with a record of hitting the wrong targets. But what we really need is a global town hall (convened through the UN) and a global judiciary. The latter exists: we have an International Criminal Court, which the United States has still not joined because of fears of being held accountable for its own acts of terrorism. All forms of terrorism should be punished as a crime against humanity, and the case should be made in the legal traditions of all supporting states, including Islamic law. Potential Muslim allies will be lost if we respond to Bin Laden's holy war with a crusade of our own, but many can be won over by an appeal to the common cause of justice and security based on the rule of law and human rights.
Muslims (and Africans, Asians and Latin Americans), along with North Americans and Europeans, must cooperate to achieve a common defense against terrorism, whether sponsored by weak states or the world's most powerful nations. This common ground will not endure unless the growing inequality between rich and poor nations is reversed. The average Pakistani has to work 65 years to make what the average person in the US makes in one year. Inequality is not just about income. It is also about the clash between the vitality of a cosmopolitan global monoculture and the rapid extinction of entire languages, customary ways, local societies and even ecosystems.
The obscenity of global inequality contrasts with a terrible aspect of human equality: as the 17th Century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it, "the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest." Updating Hobbes for the 21st Century, 19 fanatics with box cutters can destroy 6,000 innocent lives and wipe out a trillion dollars in market capitalization. We live in a world where international travel is routine, borders permeable, major cities mirror planetary ethnic diversity, and electronic communications convey images around the planet in seconds. Surely, then, it is in our enlightened self-interest to improve the lives of those suffering the most abject misery. Not because we're generous, but because we must share our prosperity or forfeit freedom.
Maxwell A. Cameron is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia and a Research Associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.