I sit down to write these thoughts largely in response to two e-mails I received a few days after the September 11 tragedy. One was from a former student, who is so sickened by this “event” (I am having a hard time even finding a single word to refer to what happened) that she is re-thinking her plans to pursue a career in international relations. Another is from a colleague I met in Spain during my research trip last summer and his wife. It was a beautiful message of love, sympathy, understanding (Spain has dealt with ongoing terror attacks from the Basque separatist group ETA for years) and support, both from them and on behalf of their country. These messages, and others, have asked me what I think and how I feel about the terrorist attacks on the US.

Where even to begin? As I told my students in the introductory international studies class on September 12, we have, unfortunately, witnessed history in the making. I do not think it is an understatement to say that the United States, and the world, will never be quite the same again. This attack and its aftermath will redefine the international system and how we look at it. However, we can only guess at how these changes will play out. As with the sudden collapse of communism at the beginning of the 1990s, the experts did not predict this massive attack on US soil. Perhaps even more so than in the fall of the Berlin Wall, we should have seen this coming. Or not this, precisely (the skill, sophistication, and organization of the attacks in New York and Washington is still incomprehensible), but certainly attacks on US territory. Indeed, counterterrorism experts in and outside of the US government planned for scenarios including attacks using chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. A group associated with the Council on Foreign Relations recently put out a detailed study of terrorist threats, and recommended that money be diverted from the National Missile Defense project toward dealing with what they saw as more pressing threats. All undergraduate international relations textbooks discuss terrorism as a growing concern for decision-makers in the post-Cold War era. I say these words every semester, and the class discusses them. But apparently we (citizens and policymakers) did not take these statements and studies seriously enough.

Many commentators have said over the last week and a half that Americans have lost their innocence. We have indeed been innocent in thinking that the size, status, geographic location, and nature of democracy in the US would protect us. But something that concerns me is that this innocence is born largely of ignorance, not just of goodwill resulting from living in a free society. With too few exceptions, people in the US have very little knowledge of, or interest in, what goes on in the rest of the world. There is evidence of this ignorance everywhere (especially in the land-locked Midwest), from the local news broadcasters who cannot pronounce the names of major foreign cities or leaders to the sorry state of foreign language instruction at the primary and secondary school levels.

Fully understanding the complexity of the situation surrounding the terror attacks is almost impossible, even for those who are trained in international affairs. For those who know nothing about the rest of the world, I’m afraid that the tendency has been to try to simplify things into fairly easy, black-and-white “truths:” we were attacked by crazy Islamic fundamentalists led by one man; people at the CIA should have been paying more attention; we now need to go after Osama bin Laden and the states that support him; we are united, proud and strong, so we can somehow “fix” this mess. Others simply ask: Since we are a good people and a good country, how could someone hate us enough to do this?

There is a certain amount of truth to each of these statements and questions, but taking them alone obscures many issues that we desperately need to understand in order to deal with this complex situation. We need to be asking a great many questions. What are other states’ and peoples’ perceptions of the US? What has US foreign policy been in the past and what is it presently? More specifically, what is it about the way the US conducts its business in the world that makes others resentful and angry? What are the intricacies of the Middle East peace process and what has the US role (or lack thereof) been in that process? What motivates terrorists to act? What terrorist threats are most imminent? What other threats are characteristic of the post-Cold War era? How do the intelligence and security communities in the US and in other states need to be revamped in order to do a better job anticipating and protecting against this type of threat? What security measures are most appropriate to these threats? Aside from (and perhaps more important than) military security, what actions should be taken (or not taken) by the US and other states in the international system that might alleviate these threats?

Living in the world’s only remaining superpower tends to give people the illusion that what other states and peoples want does not really matter. We don’t need to learn a foreign language, since everyone else speaks English. We don’t need to understand other cultures, because ours is pervasive everywhere. We are big and tough and fair, so other countries better do what we want them to; it must be the right thing, since we want it. If others don’t want to follow our lead, we rally round the flag and call them enemies. We don’t understand or care what US foreign policy is.  When we go to the polls, foreign policy is not an issue we consider in casting our vote.

But saying that international affairs and US policy in the rest of the world do not affect us couldn’t be further from the truth. This was certainly true prior to September 11, but it should be painfully obvious to all Americans now. We have an obligation to ourselves and the rest of the world to take an interest in, and try to understand the complexities of the international system. Looking for black-and-white explanations or solutions is not sufficient. We (and by we I mean both citizens and policymakers) need to try very hard to get our minds around the complexities of the world. And this will take a lot of work.

I have several major concerns at the moment regarding policy. I hope that the current US administration understands fully that any response that results in significant “collateral damage,” i.e. death of innocent Muslims, will rally even more people to the anti-American cause. If this happens, we will be less, not more safe. I hope that every effort will be made to gain other states as allies in a broad coalition working together in a variety of actions (not just military), e.g. shutting down terrorist financial networks. I hope that the US and its allies will consider the more fundamental, underlying factors contributing to terrorism (e.g. poverty, persecution, oppression, grievances created by past superpower policy) in their longer-term policy actions. I hope that the current administration, and those that follow it, will realize that unilateralism in the post-Cold War era is generally a counterproductive behavior. Neither can we afford to be isolationist. I hope that the current admirable spirit of bipartisanship will carry over to an intelligent, informed, non-political consideration of issues such as the US intelligence community and the viability and usefulness of National Missile Defense. I hope that decision-makers and citizens who tend to criticize government and advocate less of it realize that in this case, the free-market, non-government-intervention approach did not protect us. Airline security as practiced by the private sector failed. Now we are turning to the federal government for a bailout of the airlines, to take over airport security, to wage a “war” on our behalf, to keep a better watch on citizens of other states who enter the US, etc. I also hope that people realize, as one of my students said in my normative IR theory class, that there are some important trade-offs between being safe and being free. I hope that we (again, both citizens and policymakers) will be able to draw an acceptable line between these two important values.

For what it’s worth, that’s my thumbnail analysis of the situation thus far. As most commentaries, it probably does not do much good, and is likely to change over the weeks and months to follow. Moreover, analysis is only part of the story. I don’t think that any of us can separate how we feel emotionally from how we think academically about this tragedy. As does everyone else, I alternate between a state of incredible sadness, anger, and fear on the one hand, and numbness on the other. Part of me still does not believe that this act of great evil has occurred, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Even if they were not constantly replayed on TV screens, I could still conjure up the images of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center towers, the towers collapsing, the desperate searches amongst the fire, smoke and twisted metal. But in many ways these events are beyond the scope of the mind to grasp. I find myself thinking what it must have been like for the people in those hijacked airplanes, or the ones trapped on the upper floors of the towers or in the Pentagon immediately after the planes hit their targets. And all the individual stories of lost loved ones is almost more than I can bear. I watched excerpts from a funeral service this morning on CBS Sunday Morning, and cried as though it were someone I knew.

I want, as does everyone else, to somehow get back to “normal.” But normal has forever changed. And for me, work is not an opportunity to get my mind off this tragedy; work involves trying to help my students get their minds around this in the ways I have recommended above, which, quite honestly, is a responsibility that I do not feel up to on some days. The one thing that gives me hope, though, is the reaction of my students; those in both sections of my introductory class, in my theory class, and all the International Studies majors and others not in my classes who have talked to me about this. I am so very proud of them, because in the midst of the anguish, fear, and desperation that they feel, they are truly trying to understand the complexities of the situation, and have expressed many well-thought-out insights. And this gets me back, finally, to answering my former student who is discouraged about a career in international relations.

To her I would say that I am also sickened and shaken by this tragedy, and I do not envy anyone who is currently a decision-maker. However, we desperately need people just like her in positions of authority during times like this, and always. This is a cliché, but I firmly believe that it is true. The more people with good minds and caring hearts that we have in positions of power, the better our chances of survival (at a minimum), or more hopefully, of improving the world. And speaking as a person whose job (and passion) lies in trying to understand the world and then convey that knowledge to others, I can’t imagine anything that I would rather do, regardless of how daunting that task seems at the moment. I would have preferred, of course, not to have witnessed the events of September 11 in my lifetime. But there is no place I would rather have been on that day than where I was; in the International Studies office at Bradley surrounded by these wonderful young people, filled with incredible sadness, shock and fear, but also with intellectual curiosity and a desire to somehow make things better.

Last Wednesday, in place of the quiz I was planning to give the intro classes, I asked them to write down their thoughts on several issues: what they think the US response will be, what they think it should be, etc. I also asked them how their lives have changed since September 11. I will include below one answer that I got in response to this question, which fills me with admiration for these students and provides me with reassurance that I am carrying out a worthwhile task in teaching them, as well as a glimmer of hope for our future.

“My life is very changed. I have a heightened sense of anxiety about international dealings. I’m thinking about my future more and in different ways. Even more so, I want to get the best education I can possibly get so that I can truly make a difference in this world.”

Jeanie J. Bukowski
Assistant Professor, International Studies
Bradley University