Professor Lei Guang

Professor Lei Guang

Remarks delivered by Farid Abdel-Nour on panel entitled “Can we Defeat Terrorism?” at the Hansen Institute for World Peace and Hostler Institute on World Affairs Lecture series at SDSU, on May 4, 2006.


East Asian States and the US War on Terrorism

For the United States, 9/11 attack represented an act of ‘war’ that justified a military response. After quickly defeating the Taliban gov’t in Afghanistan, the US military moved on and waged a war in Iraq in 2003 because President Bush believed Saddam Hussein was linked to Al Qaeda and possessed weapons of mass destruction. Neither has turned out to be true, but that has so far not changed this administration’s view on the need for a war on terrorism.  

So the war goes on. The US has been mobilizing on all fronts for the war—military, diplomatic, economic, organizational, and linguistic. While some law enforcement efforts continue at home and abroad, these efforts are subordinated to the anti-terrorism war, which involves military campaigns, pre-emptive strikes and unilateral action.

No doubt, the war on terrorism has produced much change in American politics. 9/11 and the war on terrorism has also been heralded as ushering in a new era of international politics, where non-conventional tactics, i.e. pre-emptive wars, have to be employed against non-traditional enemies who are not nation-states, who live a shadowy existence and are irredeemably evil.  It’s the era of secret prisons, wire-tapping of citizens and propaganda machines.

So if we live in this country, see things happening around us, and hear the rhetoric that comes out of Washington, we probably believe that indeed the world has entered a new era, that anti-terrorism is now the order of the day, and that it’s going to last a long, long time until we unilaterally declare total victory, a second coming of “mission accomplished.”

But, when we go outside of the US, things appear quite different. As Peter Katzenstein has pointed out “Although 9/11 significantly changed the US, the terrorist attacks did not change much of the world at large. The US sense of urgency to engage in what it regards a war of good against evil has not been widely shared abroad”

We have read a lot about the very public dispute between some of the European countries and the US regarding the war in Iraq, the nature of terrorism and the tactics that should be deployed in the fight against terrorism.  Here, I would like to comment on the responses by the governments in East Asia (primarily Japan, China, and the two Koreas).

I want to make two broad points: (1) one is that 9/11 has not fundamentally changed the way East Asian countries behave toward each other and in international politics…there is far more continuity between what they were up to before and after 9/11; (2) second point, the US war on terrorism has afforded new opportunities for these countries to pursue the same objectives they had before the crisis.

My talk today gives an overview of how East Asian states have responded to the “dangers” and “opportunities” presented by the US war on terrorism. To sum it all up, 9/11 and the US war on terrorism has not led to any fundamental changes in the behaviors of the East Asian states.  If anything, the war on terror has afforded new opportunities, For Japan, it’s the opportunity to break out of the straightjacket of its peace constitution; for China, it’s an opportunity to securing the US support for its domestic agenda and against Taiwan independence; For South Korea, it’s an opportunity to press ahead with North-South reconciliation. For North Korea, it’s time to take advantage of a distracted US to forge ahead with its nuclear programs to ensure the survival of the regime.