FIGHTING TERROR IN THE NATIONAL INSECURITY STATE

Abstract: In the United States, all the responses to the attack of September 11, 2001, are taking place within the confines of the prevailing political and cultural pattern, which is best understood as a "national insecurity state" (NIS). The NIS is founded on two assumptions: there is a mortal threat to the very existence of our nation, and our own policies play no role in generating the threat. Since we are powerless to affect the threat, we must treat it as a permanent fact. This leads to a self-defeating effort to control the threat through an ever-mounting spiral of violence. The article briefly sketches the emergence of the NIS during the cold war. Since the new war against terrorism is modeled on the cold war, it replicates the NIS pattern and intensifies its hold on U.S. political and cultural life. The nonviolence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., offers an alternative to the NIS.

Every war needs a good story. No one will go out to kill or tokilled or be killed without a persuasive story to explain why the bloodshed and sacrifice are necessary. The story need not be true, of course. War stories are rarely more than half-true; in storytelling as in war, truth is the first casualty. The story simply has to be satisfying. Why one story satisfies, while others do not, is the question at the heart of every war.

On September 11, 2001, most Americans wanted to hearand in the days following that tragedy, U.S. public culture was filled with the story of World War II. Pearl Harbor had come again, it was said almost universally, and the fight was on. In this corner: the waving flags, the crowds singing "America the Beautiful," the heroic young people vowing to go when ordered. In that corner: the sneer of bin Ladin on every newsstand, the gas masks and antidote kits, the universal lament: "I no longer feel safe in my own homeland." Only Muslims were surprised when George W. Bush declared a new crusade to rid the world of the evildoers.

Nine days later, inIn his major address to Congress and the nation, on September 20, Bush narrated the official story of the war on terrorism. Although he spoke of "a new kind of war," it looked a lot like World War II: Al Qaeda’sAl-Qaeda’s "goal is remaking the world and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere.¼ They follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism¼ Freedom itself is under attack.¼ This is civilization's fight." The evil was easy to explain: "Americans are asking ‘Why do they hate us?’ They hate our freedoms." Bush offered no evidence to back up this explanation for the attack. Nor did he offer evidence that Osama bin Laden, the apparent target of America’s terrible swift sword, was behind the attack. The Afghan Taliban government repeatedly offered to yield up Osama bin Laden if evidence of his guilt were forthcoming. But Bush spurned all these offers with the dismissive comment that no evidence was needed, because "we know he is guilty."

But it hardly mattered, since few Americans wereThe absence of evidence was scarcely discussed within the U.S. Few Americans seemed to be looking for evidence. It seemedApparently it was taken as self-evident that, now as in the past, civilization and freedom are beset by enemies, and that Osama bin Laden was now chief among the enemies.

Bin Laden had his own story to tell. Just hours after the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan, he was telling it on the Arab television network, Al-Jazeera. In this story, Al-Qaeda had no interest in imposing its religion or values on Western nations. It simply wanted those nations to stop imposing themselves on Muslim lands. Above all, it wanted three specific changes in U.S. policy: remove U.S. If anyone cares to know why they hate us, evidence is easy enough to find. Osama bin Laden, for one, has been telling the U.S. for years why he hates us. He hates U.S. policies that dominate and oppress Muslims. Above all, he hates U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, Islam’s holiest land. Secondarily, he hatestroops from Saudi Arabia; end U.S. bombing and sanctions in Iraq, and (recently, at least)Iraq; and (a new emphasis for bin Laden) end U.S. support for Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. But all this has no place in the official story.

In bin Laden’s story, all Americans and all Jews were to blame for these oppressive policies, and any kind of violence aimed to force the changes was laudable. And, of course, he himself was not responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Bin Laden’s story had few adherents in the U.S. But some of his words found a place in the third story vying for attention: the peace movement’s story. This story’s innumerable variants all agreed on some main points. They categorically condemned the violence bin Laden approved (and those who stopped to think about it also condemned his anti-semitism). But they withheld judgment on his In the peace movement’s alternative story, bin Laden’s words matter. There is no excuse for the murder of thousands, that story goes. The murderers must be condemned. Still, their complaints have some validity. Unless we listen to those complaints, more deaths are likely. If we simply strike back, without reconsidering the policies that caused the problem, we only insure thatpersonal guilt until forensic evidence was produced. More importantly, they all acknowledged that his specific complaints had some validity. They were not unreasonable demands. At least they deserved debate in the U.S. And the peace movement story stressed that, unless those complaints received urgent attention, more innocents, including many Americans, will die.

would surely die. Violence would only beget more violence.

TwoWithin days of the terrorist attack, then, two very different stories had crystallized, both of which Americans could plausibly use to interpret the terrible events. The peace movement story offered reasons for the attack (though it never suggested that those reasons could justify or excuse such a murderous act). It offered the possibility that the U.S. could act to remove, or at least mitigate, the conditions that promote anti-U.S. attacks. It opened up space for a broad national policy debate. It asked whether more American lives should be risked so that the U.S. could do things like keeping troops in Saudi Arabia and continuing sanctions against Iraq.

The official story asked for no reasons, and no evidence for its explanation of the attack. It closed off the possibility of national debate. It assumed that the U.S. was powerless to remove or even mitigate the conditions that put U.S. lives at risk.

The Bush administration had a powerful interest in seeing its official story prevail. That story was essential to build public support for its war on terrorism. It will be decades before historians can begin to say why the administration undertook such a wide-ranging war; other options were surely available. Even when all the secret documents are declassified, no two historians reading the documents are likely to agree on the story they tell. So the "real" motives for the war on terrorism remain a moot question. The only certainty is that, for whatever reason, the administration was determined to wage what the president once called a "crusade" against states alleged to support terrorism.

In a crusade, there can be no moral ambiguity. The crusading force must be perceived as morally spotless and its opponent as pure evil. A public debate on U.S. policy would raise questions about the righteousness of U.S. motives. It could easily raise questions about the administration's own motives for going to war. So it was vital that the public view the enemy as totalitarians, bent on destroying the American way of life out of irrational, inexplicable, implacable evil¾ just like the Nazis of World War II.

In the weeks that followed September 11, the Bush administration easily achieved this urgent goal. On October 8, well-known commentator Cokie Roberts told her NPR audience that there might be dissenting voices in the U.S., but "none that mattered." Although dissenters took umbrage, opinion polls tended to confirm that they were a rather small minority. Why did the official story¾ based on are available. One offers evidence. The other asks for none, because it needs none. Why is the official story, based on no evidence, so much more popular?no evidence and seeking none; offering no hope for removing the causes of the threat¾ succeed so well? That question holds a key to understanding the first war of the 21^st century.

Some of the reasons are obvious. The official story puts no responsibility on the U.S. It assumes the U.S. is wholly innocent. So it asks for no self-criticism, much less any change in policies. Moreover, since the official story invokes no facts to support its claim, it can not be falsified, or even disputed. So it puts America’s righteousness beyond dispute. The world is divided clearly between absolute good and absolute evil. And that requires an inhuman enemy, driven to world conquest out of irrational, inexplicable, implacable evil¾ just like the Nazis ofevil, just as in World War II. If this was Pearl Harbor, Bush would be FDR, demanding unconditional surrender, waging apocalyptic war to purify the world.

The appeal of that story is easy enough to understand.

It explains little, however, because the Bush administration's flirtation with Armageddon wasturned out to be surprisingly brief, however. By the time Bush pronounced the official story in his major address, his administration was already backing away from the World War II analogy. " This isn't Pearl Harbor," National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice said flatly. "It's different in a lot of ways." 9/19 Above all, it’s different because, as the president admitted quite openly, this war is "a task that does not end." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explained that we "surely will not" eliminate terrorism "completely from the face of the Earth.¼ You can't stop [terrorists] from doing things that are unpleasant to their neighbors or their neighboring countries." Vice-President Dick Cheney agreed: "No matter how good we are, no matter how aggressively we pursue this, we're likely to be subject to that.…There's not going to be an end date when we're going to say, `’There, it's all over with.’'' 9/16

The World War II story is about fighting an isolated evil, eliminating it, and returning home to live happily ever after. It requires total victory and the unconditional surrender of the enemy. Clearly, this was no longer the operative story. Its apocalypticThere would be no final battle, no "greatest generation" born again. Apocalyptic rhetoric and imagery remained. But they took on new meaning because, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged, the new war "undoubtedly will prove to be a lot more like a cold war than a hot war.''

The American public, by and large, accepted this change without blinking an eye. So the power of the official story does not lie merely in its echoes of World War II. There is something about the cold war story that makes it just as satisfying as the "good war" story¾ or even more satisfying.

Indeed the dramatic shift in official story was so seamless that It was scarcely remarked at the time. So the power of the official story did not lie merely in its echoes of World War II. How, in the United States of America, could a war story that did not promise to vanquish evil be so successful? Don’t Americans

Certainly the cold war, as much as World War II, offered the clarity of absolute moral dualism. Since the end of the cold war, many commentators have bemoaned the loss of a single paradigm that could unify U.S. foreign policy and the U.S. public. When Bush’s speechwriters had him say, "We have found our mission and our moment," they were surely hoping to unite the nation again behind a seemingly clear but open-ended, ongoing mission. No doubt they were also thinking of Harry Truman announcing the cold war, in his Truman Doctrine speech of 1947. They hoped to depict Bush not only as the new FDR, but also as the new Truman: a president widely perceived as weak, overcoming that perception by launching a multi-decade crusade to save global freedom from an insidious international threat.

This is the kind of war Bush’s advisors know best: dividing the whole world into friends and enemies of freedom, with no neutrals allowed, because (in Bush’s words) "we know that God is not neutral"’; supporting police states as "friends of freedom"’; expanding federal powers and military budgets; restricting civil liberties; pursuing demons, abroad and at home, over decades. Once again, the enemy is personified by demonizing individual leaders. Just as Stalin gave way to Mao, Ho, and Castro, so bin Ladin will give way to as-yet-unknown others. And once again, as in the era of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the price of unity is still suspicion of our neighbors (upwards of eight million of whom are Muslim).

Yet despite all this vigilance, national leaders admit that they shall never be able to declare total victory. Asked how we would know when we had won, Rumsfeld replied, "When the American people feel safe." But how can we know when we are safe? Who will decide what counts as safety? The government can declare "victory" at any time. But a terrorist network can go underground for years, then surface one day inside the Capitol or the Statue of Liberty. As the president admitted quite openly, it is "a task that does not end"¾ not because the enemy is so persistent, but simply because permanent victory is ruled out from the beginning. The patriotic flags, placards, and songs are whipping us into another long, twilight struggle (as John F. Kennedy called the cold war), with a shadowy enemy and no victory in sight.

This was the dilemma at the heart of the cold war story. The U.S. could no longer hope to fight an isolated evil, eliminate it, and return home to live happily ever after. The same nuclear sword that could eliminate the enemy was already in the enemy’s hand. Even in "limited" wars, the nation had to accept stalemate, not unconditional victory, as the best possible outcome. The Korean war taught this lesson. It also taught Harry Truman the political perils of settling for stalemate in a nation expecting unconditional surrender. As the war dragged on, Truman’s approval ratings steadily declined.always demand total victory in war? The answer buried deep in our national history is yes . . . and no.

It may seem surprising to find Americans embracing a war story that is not in the apocalyptic mode. The story of a "chosen people," obliterating the heathens to fulfill a divine mission, has been told so often it has become a cliché. Like most clichés, this one does hold a strong grain of truth. The dominant cultural discourse has always depicted "America" as a unique project, spreading out in space and time toward the horizon of perfection. This image is rooted in the religious claim that God had brought His people to the New World to fulfill His eschatological plan. Anything blocking the path of that plan was by definition evil and deserved to be destroyed. Violence was thus the product of a confident hope for a better future.

But the religious soil from which the U.S. grew also held seeds of doubt. During the colonial era, public discourse was overwhelmingly shaped by Calvinists. Some moved far from Calvin’s strict piety in the direction of an enlightened Deism. But their understanding of national life was still largely under the shadow of Calvinist political thought. They had inherited the task that Calvin assigned to the "saints": separating themselves from sinners and organizing politically to move the world toward perfect virtue. They had also inherited Calvin’s profound doubt about the possibility of perfect virtue in this world. If no one could ever be certain that he or she was saved, how could anyone be certain that the whole world would soon be saved? This was the paradox at the heart of Calvinist politics: the saints would have to plunge into the sinful disorder of the world in order to transcend sin and disorder; their understanding of life required them to be both confident and apprehensive, both secure and insecure.

Whole shelves are filled with books detailing the many movements in U.S. history—demographic, social, economic, political, and technological—driven by a confident, assertive desire to reshape the world for the better. Yet nearly every significant development has also been explained by public uncertainty and anxiety. This is perhaps most true of wars. A common view holds, for example, that the Revolutionary War was triggered by widespread fear of a conspiracy of powerful selfish "interests." The unselfish, who practiced civic virtue, had to be everywhere on their guard and ready to fight to preserve their freedom. Freedom, in the colonists’ discourse, was fragile, always threatened, and easily extinguished: "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." U.S. entry into all wars has been explained by a similar appeal to some form of anxiety. Peace movements too, from the American Peace Society of 1815 to the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, have been explained as a response to insecurity.

When historians invoke anxiety as a motive cause, they typically speak of anxiety about rapid change. War, peace, and so many other things have been understood as efforts to gain control over change, to impose the certainty of order upon processes that threatened to spin out of control (or so it seemed at the time). Historians may debate endlessly about whether particular changes were truly chaotic and threatening, whether the efforts to bring order were more beneficial than harmful. But there is a growing consensus that the fear of change, whether justified or not, has been a main motive force throughout U.S. history. The picture that emerges, then, is of a society caught between quite opposite attitudes: a confident embrace of change and an insecure resistance to change.

Since colonial times, public discourse has tried to resolve the Calvinist paradox in a typically Calvinist way, through the biblical pattern of prophetic eschatology. The Lord would plunge the chosen people into chaotic confrontation with His enemies, but only to purify them. The enemy’s evil would be God’s tool for redeeming His people. Americans could feel sure that they were indeed God’s chosen people precisely because they felt victimized by evil.

Often the evil was seen in apocalyptic terms. John F. Wilson has described the typical American pattern: "A resolution is repeatedly believed to be at hand to that one special evil which, when overcome, will permit a long-anticipated and presumably static era to be ushered in." (Public Religion in American Culture, 106) Wilson also notes the resulting paradox: the most intensely dynamic change is embraced as a route to the cessation of all change. Americans have often expected the final confrontation with that one special evil to be violent. What Richard Slotkin has called "regeneration through violence" gave redemptive meaning to times of violent conflict. But within that pattern it could be hard to imagine redemption without violence. Since the violence was initiated by God’s people in their quest for redemption, it could not cast doubt on Americans’ conviction of their innocence and purity. These were the heirs of the Calvinist saints; all their actions were, by their own definition, morally good.

Yet apocalyptic eschatology subtly linked good and evil. Every vision of a final utopia required equally vivid visions of the ultimate horror that was the prelude to utopia. Moments of the greatest anxiety could thus become harbingers of hope. But even moments of the greatest hope had to elicit a shadow of anxiety. There was no way to express optimism without expressing despair, no way to talk about security without voicing fears of insecurity.

U.S. public discourse remained precariously balanced between security and insecurity until the Great Depression of the 1930s. During that decade, the fearful discourse began to eclipse the hopeful. By the mid-‘30s there was widespread doubt whether liberal democratic capitalism, and thus the U.S. itself, would survive. Not since 1815 had there been such serious concern for national survival. By the decade’s end, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s stirring rhetoric had reshaped that anxiety into a growing fear of fascism. The fundamental issue was now "national security" (a relatively new term at the time).

But his resistance to fascism was intertwined with his conviction that U.S. prosperity depended on reviving the global trading system, which was threatened by German, Italian, and Japanese autarchy. As William Appleman Williams has observed: "American recovery and prosperity were made dependent upon the acceptance of American policies by the rest of the world. By externalizing good, so also was evil externalized…the American outlook defined as a danger any nation (or group) that challenged or limited such expansion" of American-style liberal democratic capitalism. (Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 173) Since Roosevelt was convinced that the U.S. would depend forever on global trade, he was implying that the nation’s welfare would always be precarious, always at the mercy of externalized evil. This new situation was legitimated by a curious assumption of powerlessness. Since the U.S. was, by definition, an innocent, it could not entertain the possibility that its own policies might evoke the opponents’ threat. So there was nothing it could do to prevent threat from arising. It could only prepare to defend itself.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor insured that FDR’s discursive vision would triumph. His call for "unconditional surrender" gave the war powerful apocalyptic overtones, which he tried to dampen. He offered no vision of redemption to offset apocalyptic anxieties. Both his temperament and his political shrewdness told him to offer protection from harm, not progress to perfection, as the goal of war. The lesson he really taught the nation was that even protection could be only relative in an era of globalization. So World War II wrought only a superficial veneer of optimism, which masked, and perhaps even heightened, what Auden called "The Age of Anxiety." Historian William Graebner found the 1940s pervaded by doubt about the possibility of meaningful change: "The core notion of a ‘march of time’—consistent, dependable, linear progress—seemed increasingly unrealistic, even deeply flawed." The result, he argued, was a "new and oddly static view of U.S. history. … Barriers seemed to be everywhere and change seemed impossible." (1991: 2, 49, 65) But the barriers were oddly reassuring. The new view prevailed because, after two decades of depression and war, change seemed so threatening.

This was the context in which the cold war emerged. During the cold war, the fearful side of U.S. culture eclipsed the hopeful. From the day Hiroshima was bombed, U.S. pundits warned that some day the fearful new weapon could be turned against us. Apocalyptic fear seemed more appropriate than ever. Now World War II was imagined as a crusade to wipe out all evil. Perhaps this story became so popular because, in the cold war, there could be no hope for regeneration through apocalyptic violence. The Korean war taught the nation to accept stalemate, not unconditional victory, as the best possible outcome. There would be no dynamic thrust into the enemy’s heartland. There would be only stability: two sides so evenly balanced that neither could move against the other.

Dwight Eisenhower avoided Truman’s fate by a simple rhetorical maneuver. He called stalemate victory. The U.S. had won in Korea, he announced,At the war’s end, President Eisenhower proclaimed that the U.S. had indeed won both peace and victory because it had stopped communist aggression. Victory now meant not conquering the enemy, but merely stopping the enemy from conquering us, not promoting but preventing change. The new national goal was stability, a code word for temporary control over a situation full of dangers that might erupt again at any time. SoYet Eisenhower warned the nation that the struggle would continue, for all practical purposes, forever; the best to hope for was to contain the enemy, and thus contain our insecurity.

forever. Not only was the cold war enemy forever. It was everywhere. For Truman and Eisenhower, containment depended on U.S. control of events in every corner of the globe. But they soon learned that the task was hopeless. Time after time, measures to reduce risk in one place increased risk somewhere else. So the national security state only perpetuated the prevailing state of nationalAs H. W. Brands rightly concludes, Eisenhower and his advisors "were forced to the conclusion that national security no longer existed. The best they could hope for was a policy that would minimize national insecurity." ("The Age of Vulnerability," 964) Victory, like peace, meant staving off disaster forever by managing an endless array of apocalyptic dangers. The Eisenhower administration sought only a precarious stability attained by a policy that can best be called apocalypse management. Stability became not merely the path to, but the substance of, both victory and peace. Yet stability was only a code word for relative control over a situation that still harbored dangers, which might erupt again at any time. The bland optimism of the 1950s masked a hopeless sense of permanent peril.

Not only was the cold war enemy forever. It was everywhere. For Truman and Eisenhower, containment depended on U.S. control of events in every corner of the globe. But they soon learned that the task was hopeless. Time after time, measures to reduce risk in one place increased risk somewhere else. So the national security state only perpetuated the prevailing state of national insecurity, which the nation felt powerless to end. The U.S. had become a national insecurity state.

Lyndon Johnson suffered most grievously from the new rules of the insecurity state. Renouncing victory in Vietnam from the beginning, he had no way to justify the massive loss of life. He could promise nothing more than staving off disaster, and even that promise was doubtful. He paid the price. So did the nation. The frustrations of Vietnam reinforced the sense of helplessness and permanent peril. The same frustrations also spawned a radical and genuinely hopeful vision of change. But that vision was so threatening to so many that it nearly tore the nation apart. A plummeting sense of unity and security raised more fears of uncontrollable change.

Those fears have haunted much of American public culture ever since.

In the 1980s they helped to fuel a triumphant Reaganism, which dashed much of the hope left from the ‘60s. Reagan, like his cold war predecessors and post-cold war successors, promised nothing more than a government powerful and skillful enough to manage apocalyptic threats forever. In fact, whether by secret From its first days, the war on terrorism fit the cold war mold. Not only is the enemy a permanent fact of life, but every step toward security opens up new risks of insecurity. U.S. policymakers must aid Pakistan to gain its support, perhaps by tolerating Pakistan’s nuclear buildup. But this alienates India. So they promise to support India’s "anti-terrorism" campaign in Kashmir, which alienates Pakistan. As a price for its support, Russia demands U.S. acquiescence in repressing the Chechen rebellion. This fuels anti-U.S. sentiment in volatile, yet vital, areas like Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan. Arab states will cooperate only if pressure is put on Israel. Does any U.S. administration risk angering Israel?

In the national insecurity state, stability depends on global control. So the inevitable failure to gain full control will become further evidence of eternal instability, hence eternal peril. When allies are alienated by U.S. policies and refuse to cooperate fully in the war, that will become further evidence that the world is indeed a dangerous place, demanding more strenuous efforts at control. When U.S. actions provoke violent counter-actions, that will be seen, not as the inevitable give-and-take of war, but as further evidence of implacable hatred, not of what we do, but of what we are. Within the framework of the national insecurity state, the only available response is to proclaim anew our innocence and redouble efforts at stability and security, which means imposing greater control. Thus the spiral of violence grows higher. Every possible outcome of U.S. policies will end up confirming the premise of permanent insecurity.

Beyond these certainties lies the possibility of another Vietnam. The potential enemy nations have all learned the lesson of Vietnam. If attacked, their populace would take to the hills, or the urban skyscrapers, and wage guerilla war. U.S. strategists would be strongly tempted to erase the line between enemy soldiers and civilians. The Bush administration took a first step in this direction when design, lucky accident, or some combination of the two, he and the first President Bush ended the cold war with "victory." The Bush administration, and all those who applaud the new war, may be eager to embark on another cold war because they believe that the U.S. won the anticommunist cold war. Although it was a painful process, they may argue, persistent dedication to a goal paid off in the end. The current President Bush, like his father, may also hope that another war will "put Vietnam behind us."

But the demise of the communist bloc did not make Americans feel more secure. On the contrary, in the early 1990s, a chorus of elite voices insisted that the U.S. was less secure, because now the enemy could be anyone, anywhere. This was more an a priori judgment than an empirical observation. As Williams noted, for a half-century elite voices had defined as a danger any nation or group that challenged or limited the expansion of liberal democratic corporate capitalism. But cold war discourse assumed that there would always be such challenges, and that they would always have to be vigilantly contained. As the sole remaining superpower, the U.S. would have to see itself threatened, by definition; that was what it meant to be the sole superpower. it claimed the right to attack not only terrorists, but whole states. From the first, this claim met great skepticism outside the U.S. Even within this country, there is widespread awareness that most civilians everywhere oppose terrorism. There is a widespread demand to have only terrorists, not innocent civilians, attacked.

The greatest pitfall awaiting the U.S. government is not enemy civilians dead, of course. It is American soldiers dead, maimed, and missing in action. Domestic public support for the war could fade rapidly once the body bags and paraplegics start coming home. A nation pursuing the World War II fantasy may not easily tolerate the limitations and frustrations of an ongoing cold war. The fantasy is all the more fragile because so few really believe it. A war begun to unite the nation could easily tear it apart. The next time Bush goes home to Texas, he should visit the final resting place of Lyndon Johnson and ponder deeply. It is LBJ’s ghost that is waiting in the wings.

The Bush administration, and all those who applaud the new war, may be blind to the pitfalls of a cold war presidency, because they believe that the U.S. won the cold war. Although it was a painful process, they can argue, persistent dedication to a goal paid off in the end. Now that the former communist bloc is securely in the grip of global democratic capitalism, the lands from Algeria to Afghanistan are the last contested area. Isn’t it time to finish the job and secure the triumph of the American way? The audacious goal of genuine global control seems so nearly within reach.

But the demise of the communist bloc did not make Americans feel more secure. On the contrary, a chorus of elite voices insisted that it made us less secure, because now the enemy could be anyone, anywhere. Moreover, the war on terrorism is a direct legacy of the cold war. Al-Qaeda and similar Muslim groupsThe attack of September 11 seemed to confirm that assumption.

The irony is obvious. It was the cold war that created the groups from which the attackers allegedly came. They were enabled, perhaps even created, by the CIA. The grievances that brought them together were virtually all fallout from the U.S. cold war effort to keep Soviet influence out of the Middle East. The U.S. role as the sole remaining superpower virtually insured that it would become the target of global attacks.

Just as the outcome of World War I sowed the seeds of World War II, and the outcome of World War II the seeds of the cold war, so the outcome of the cold war sowed the seeds of the war on terrorism. And this newest war is already, quite visibly, sowing the seeds of insecurity to come.latest war. It may be most useful to view the whole period from the early cold war years1930s through the present war as a single historical era: the era of the national insecurity state. Throughout that era,era. One pattern appears most clearly throughout that whole era: U.S. policy decisions made in the name of national security consistently breedend up breeding a greater sense of vulnerability, frustration, and insecurity.

None of the wars of the twentieth century brought the U.S. genuine national security. For half-a-century or more, the United States has pursued national security as its highest priority. But all the energy and resources expended have only served to maintain the public sense of insecurity. The U.S. has become a full-fledged national insecurity state.

The national insecurity state (NIS) is not primarily a matter of feeling. It generates anxiety and other emotional responses. But the emotions are not, themselves, the essence of the insecurity. National insecurity, like national security, is fundamentally a shared judgment about the nation’s situation; it is a collective attitude or point of view. It is not so much inside individuals as in the public sphere they share, the things they say and do with each other. It is a pattern of culture. Like any pattern of culture, national insecurity is based on, embodied in, and propagated by public behavior and, even more, by public discourse. Behaviors have little shared meaning until we talk about them. It is, above all, what we say and hear said that generates a state of national insecurity.

It is not hard to see why. Four decades of cold war enshrinedIn the NIS, two fundamental principles at the heart of our public life:premises go without saying: there is a mortal threat to the very existence of our nation (and probably of civilization itself), and our own policies play no role in generating the threat. The belief structure of the national insecurity stateA complex pattern of shared discourse flows logically from these premises. If ourthe nation bears no responsibility, then we areit is powerless to eradicate the threat. If others threaten us through no fault of our own, the NIS asks, what can we do? There is no hope for a truly better world, nor even for ending the danger by mutual compromise with "the other side." The threat is effectively eternal. The best to hope for is to hold the threat forever at bay.

Yet the sense of powerlessness is oddly satisfying, because it preserves thea conviction of innocence: if ourour policies are so ineffectual, the troubles of the world can hardly be ourour fault. And the vision of an endless status quo is equally satisfying, because it promises to prevent historical change. If peril is permanent,When peril seems permanent and the state is always defending itself, the world islooks like an endless reservoir of potential enemies. Any fundamental change in the status quo portendsseems to portend only catastrophe. Reconsidering one’s own policies and conciliating differences must be ruled out, for both run the risk of meaningful change.

The only path to security, it seems, is toremaining path to security is to maintain stability and prevent change by imposing control over others. Since nations are now interwoven in a global network of relationships, security means imposing control around the world. Control need not be military. It can even be done through negotiations, as long as they are aimed at enhancing control. When others see efforts at control When those others fight back, the national insecurity stateas a form of violence, they inevitably fight back. Convinced that its policies have no effect on its opponents, the NIS protests its innocence: we act only in self-defense; we want only stability. The state sees no reason to re-evaluate its policies; that would risk the change it seeks, above all, to avoid. Soa benign stability. With no reason to look for alternative approaches, it can only meet violence with more violence. Of course, the

inevitable frustration isblamed on the enemy, reinforcing the sense of peril and the demand for absolute control through violence.

The goal of total control is self-defeating; each step toward security becomes a source of, and is taken as proof of, continuing insecurity. This makes the logic of the insecurity state viciously circular.self-defeating, and not only because of this spiral of violence. Shoring up control in one place inevitably means losing it somewhere else. Each step toward stability evokes fearful images of instability. Chaos seems to be perpetually growing, which naturally reinforces the desire for absolute control. Each apparent failure of control is seen as a harbinger of greater chaos, requiring redoubled efforts at more efficient control. Of course, the inevitable frustration is blamed on the enemy, reinforcing the sense of peril and the demand for absolute control through violence.

The NIS finds no way out of this spiral, because it seeks none. It assumes from the outset that the spiral can never end, that its quest for true security is in vain. So it has no reason to look for alternative policies, and certainly not nonviolent ones. Its only option is to strive in vain for perfect stability through perfect control. Every act of violence toward this goal becomes another symbolic vehicle to confirm the truth of the state’s premises.

The NIS may speak of its hope for a secure future, in order to legitimate its efforts. But those words, too, reinforce the basic conviction of continuing danger: hope for security, like the whole structure of the NIS, makes sense only if the state sees itself beset by enemies. Why are we always fighting? Because we always have enemies. How do we know we always have enemies? Because we are always fighting. And knowing that we have enemies, how can we afford to stop fighting? In the insecurity state, theredrop our guard? Even temporary successes serve primarily to reinforce the conviction of unending danger; even moments of the greatest hope elicit a dark shadow of anxiety. There is no way to talk about security without voicing fears of insecurity, no way to express optimism without expressing despair. On every front, the itNIS is a self-fulfilling prophecy; aprophecy. It is self-confirming and self-perpetuating spiral of violence; a trap that seems to offerself-perpetuating. It is a trap that allows no way out.

It is not surprising, then, that the pattern of insecurity crystallized during the cold war survived that war. The "experts" insisted that now we were less secure. September 11 proved them indisputably right. Now they offer an official story that pretends to see an end to insecurity, but actually promises the endless insecurity of another cold war. And the policies based on that story virtuallycold war has survived that war. The "reds" may be gone, but apocalypse management and its goal of stability remain. We take it for granted that enemies will always face us across some physical or cultural border, threatening disaster. We assume that any significant change might trigger that disaster. The most our guarantee that the promise will be fulfilled.

But that is just what most Americans expect, in any event. Caged inside the logic of the insecurity state, they can see no other possibility. So the official story hardly seems to be one option among many. Its premises and conclusions seem so necessary, so inevitable, that no other story can be imagined. For huge numbers of Americans, the peace movement’s alternative story is not mistaken. It is simply incomprehensible, like a foreign language, for it assumes that we can take steps to address the very sources of insecurity. That denies the most basic foundations of the prevailing public discourse. Quite naturally, then, the majority embraces the only story it can understand. The story is persuasive because the alternative seems to be having no story at all. leaders promise is to preserve stability by managing every crisis and threat, to prevent change from overwhelming us. If they seem to deliver on that promise of stability, we count them successful and ourselves lucky.

Now we are offered an official story of the war on terrorism, which pretends to see an end to insecurity, but actually promises the endless insecurity of another cold war. And the policies based on that story virtually guarantee that the promise will be fulfilled.

But that is just what most Americans expect, in any event. Caged inside the logic of the insecurity state, they can see no other possibility. So the official story hardly seems to be one option among many. Its premises and conclusions seem so necessary, so inevitable, that no other story can be imagined. For huge numbers of Americans, the peace movement’s alternative story is not mistaken. It is simply incomprehensible, like a foreign language, for it assumes that we can take steps to diminish the sources of insecurity. That denies the most basic foundations of the prevailing public discourse. Quite naturally, then, the majority embraces the only story it can understand.

The public readily accepted the change from World War II to cold war as the paradigm, because so few seriously believe the language of eschatological crusade and so many believe the language of an endless quest for stability. The official story prevails by default; it is persuasive because the alternative seems to be having no story at all. Yet that is only half its power. The other half comes from the paradoxical consolation it provides as we look back to what happened here at home, on September 11, 2001, when four hijacked planes crashed headlong into the national insecurity state.

The attack of September 11 did not create a pervasive sense of insecurity. Rather, the insecurity that was already pervasive shapedcreated the dominant interpretation of and response to the attacks.

the attack. The universal talk of Pearl Harbor shows this, too. It is hardly The first response was the nearly universal cry: "Pearl Harbor." But "this was not Pearl Harbor," as National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice recognized. There isrelevant, except in the vaguest sense. As Condoleeza Rice said quite bluntly, "This isn't Pearl Harbor. " There is no rivalry between great nation states involved. No foreign nation hashad attacked the U.S. No long-standing diplomatic and economic maneuvering had preceded the attack of September 11, 2001. Why, then, did it so quickly evoke the imagery of December 7, 1941? The Pearl Harbor analogy symbolized fear of destruction, not a promise of redemption. The only common thread was not a hope for redemption, but only a the conviction that the nation’s very existence was threatened.

In 2001, that judgment iswas debatable, to say the least. Assuming that the attack was indeed the work ofa Muslim splinter group, such groups havegroups, those groups had been trying to attack U.S. interests for a quarter-century or more. One massive act of destruction, as horrendous as it was, hardly constitutesconstituted evidence oftheir overwhelming power. Nor iswas there any real evidence for President Bush’s charge that these groups aim to impose their "radical beliefs on people everywhere¼ and end a way of life." Yet evidence is irrelevant in the national insecurity state.NIS. The fear comes first, before any evidence that it is warranted. The tragedy of the national insecurity state is that it is a self-confirming, and thus inescapable, circle: How do we know that our existence iswe are threatened? Because it iswe are so obviously threatened! QED.

This circular argument seemsseemed to be confirmed by the ubiquitous expressions of fear thathave filled the mass media since September 11. They are certainly sincere. Yet it has becomebeginning on September 11, 2001. It became an almost obligatory to say,platitude: "Life will never be the same because now, for the first time, we feel vulnerable." Most who say this can still remember, if they care to, the long cold war years of living on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Many are old enough to recall the Cuban missile crisis. Even more can remember the Reagan administration’s serious plans to fight a nuclear war. Are we really more vulnerable now, or only vulnerable in a different way? Are we really less secure than the days when one push of the button could trigger a thousand September 11’s?11^ths? True, the September 11 attack was actual rather than merely potential. Yet the scale of the potential attack we feared for so long was so much greater than the actual attack. Why should so many say that the actual attack marked a quantum leap in national anxiety?

The notoriously poor historical memory of Americans is only part of the answer. A larger part is the need to contain this new eruption of disorder within a familiar meaning structure. The study of human culture shows, over and over, that anxiety can be held in check, if not banished, by the way people talk about it. Security and insecurity are never objective facts. People can feelrelatively secure amidst the most extraordinarydisruption and anxiety,disruption, as long as they havefamiliar words that put the disruption into some larger, dependable, enduring order. The lifeline of security is a language that affirms the enduring truth of the prevailing discourse and worldview. one’s worldview.

Today, the discourse of the national insecurity state is the nation’sNIS is our most familiar structure. If we cannot banish the sources of peril, we can find security only by expressing, and thus containing, them within the structured confines of our shared language. How natural, then, to reaffirm the fundamental truth of that discourse,the NIS, especially when its truth seemsseemed to be so empirically proven. Certainly, there is a very real danger of more attacks on U.S. soil. But the magnitude of the dangerThere is obviously a peril. But its magnitude is measured by cultural needs rather than empirical considerations. In the insecurity state,NIS, universal cries of alarm, massive preparations for future attack, and protestations that life is fundamentally changed all show how little has really changed. They serve to confirm thea basic premise thatof the NIS: danger is eternal and unavoidable.

TheIts nameof the danger changes from time to time; for now, its name is "terrorism." But the underlying reality remains the same. In the face of a massive shock to our cultural assumptions, that promise of continuity is immenselyAnd that is paradoxically reassuring. This is the paradox that keeps so many millions trapped in the insecurity state. In order to feel culturally and psychologically secure, one must feelphysically and politically insecure.

Thus the problem¾ the fear of terrorist attack¾ becomes the solution. TheSo the film of the towersplanes bursting into flame over Manhattan is shown over and over again. The sheriffs stockpilinggas masks and anthrax vaccine and training for chemical attack are interviewed over and over again. "Experts"The "experts" explain "the psychology of the terrorist" to us over and over again. All of this has a ritualisticritual-like quality, and for good itreason. It serves much the same function as every ritual. It acts out the basic worldview of the insecurity state, confirmingour worldview, to confirm that it endures in the face of a massive challenge.

The dominant response to the tragedy in the U.S. also confirms thatconfirmed the other basic premise: our own policies play no role in evoking the danger. There has been copious talk about measures that might fend off terrorism. But policymaking circles and the mainstream media have scarcely begun to consider alternative courses for U.S. policy. In his major address after the attack, Bush asked, ``Why do they hate us?'' His answer said nothing about what the United States has done and might do differently. It spoke only of what the United States is, of fundamental values that can not be changed. The message was obviously that the U.S. has contributed nothing to the underlying causes of the problem and so is powerless to affect those causes.

This message takes ritual form inmessage, too, was acted out in ritual form, through the many prayer meetings, civic gatherings, charity drives, and the Bush administration’s humanitarian gestures for starving Afghans. All enactand charity drives that demonstrated the essential goodness of Americans. (Just a few weeks after the attack, the Bush administration reinforced the message with a humanitarian effort to feed starving Afghans.) Even the most benign and laudable responses to the tragedy¾ the national pride in heroic rescue efforts, the outpouring of generous contributions, the genuine concern for the welfare of Muslim- and Arab-Americans¾ are seized and twisted in the overpowering cultural grasp of the national insecurity state.NIS. As symbols of innocence, all reinforce the basic assumption that the U.S. iswe are powerless to affect the sources of our continuing insecurity.

Bush has often statedIn his major address, Bush went on to state the logical corollary of innocence.innocence: if our policies are not relevant to the problem, there is nothing to negotiate. In other (unstated) words, the U.S. will not contemplate policy changes that might lead to any fundamental change in political or economic power relationships. Therefore the only remaining course is to heighten the nation’s guard and use force to control the behavior of would-be attackers.

Much of the response to the tragedy reinforcesserved to reinforce these interlocked assumptions of powerlessness and innocence. TheAgain, the cries of alarm and defensive preparations createwere crucial. They created the impression that the nation iswas circling the wagons and hunkering down for a long siege, because there iswas nothing else to do. The ubiquitous American flag becomesbecame a symbol, not of abolishing evil, but of banding together to withstand the assault of evil forever. Yet there is almost a palpable eagerness to feel vulnerable. The new sense of national unity comes less from a common commitment to victory than from a common conviction of victimization.

There was an undertone of apocalyptic hope Powerful vestiges of the crusading spirit do remain. There is still a longing for unconditionalin all this, no doubt. The old meanings of the national symbols had not totally disappeared. There was hope for unity and goodness in domestic life. There was hope for triumph over the foreign foe. The constant allusions to Pearl Harbor, FDR, and World War II express these longings. More importantly, they create the illusion that genuine security is still possible. It is disconcerting to live amidst insecurity and even more disconcerting to acknowledge it openly. So thestory of the "good war" is evoked endlessly, because it would be so reassuring to be able to wage another "good war." But the gestures of apocalyptic hope haveBut the gestures of hope had a peculiarly forced, artificial quality, as if the public iswas trying to draw the last vestiges of living marrow out of an increasingly dead husk. The Pearl Harbor analogy and constant allusions to World War II still appeal so strongly precisely because they deny the hegemony of the NIS paradigm. It is disconcerting to live in the NIS and even more disconcerting to acknowledge openly the national condition. It is quite natural that the public would rush to revive the patina of hope for a final crusade, the story that "the greatest generation" created to mask the all-too-harsh reality of their war.

The symbols, rituals, and mantras of the redeemer nation serve a very different role when public culture no longer really believes in the redemption. The problem is defined in apocalyptic terms. But no apocalyptic solution is available, nor even suggested.use of force became the focal point of the public discourse, the place at which symbolic hope for redemption meets symbolic fear of catastrophe. In an earlier time, it would have generated a genuine crusade to wipe out the evil. But in the NIS, symbols of apocalyptic war have a different meaning too. The mutually reinforcing effect of hope and anxiety is broken. Talk of hope for security still elicits powerful images of the peril we hope to be secure from. But talk of peril is simply talk of peril, not a the process no longer works effectively the other way. Talk of peril is simply talk of peril, not the prelude to hope.

prelude to hope. There are no safe homes we can return to, for we must assume that the enemy, in one form or another, will always be at our gates.

Political leaders and pundits offer only an endless horizon of unflagging efforts to maintain relative stability. In an inherently unstable world, made less stable by a superpower pursuing control, this is indeed "a task that does not end." All that once symbolized hope for the Kingdom of God on earth (whether in religious or secular form) now locks us into a future of inconclusive struggle and mounting anxiety. And the more we are convinced that insecurity is perpetual, the more we will resist fundamental change.

That, of course, is the ultimate point. The prospect of another long, twilight struggle returns our culture to the certitude of simplistic absolutes. It erases the uncertainties of the ‘90s. It reassures us that nothing has really changed and nothing need ever change. It offers the best reason to go on resisting change. All of the preparations for and acts of war, all the warnings of and protections against future attacks, all the patriotic singing and flag-waving, all the gestures of hope that things will be better in the future, indeed all the dominant cultural responses to the attacks¾ all are now representations of the overriding conviction that security is still an impossible dream, that the future will not be fundamentally different from the present.

In a society so fearful of change, where constant change provokes widespread despair, the conviction of unchanging insecurity engenders a strange kind of confidence. Millions now look ahead with more hope precisely because they can now believe that there is nothing really new to hope for. They cling to the insecurity that justifies their resistance to change. They take comfort in knowing that the explosions of September 11, which we are told changed everything, could not shake the foundations of the national insecurity state. The official story of the war on terrorism gives them that perverse comfort.

For years to come, we shall live in the shadow of the tragic deaths of September 11, 2001. As long as the official story prevails, death will be piled upon death, and suffering upon suffering. The national insecurity state affords no prospect beyond death and suffering. So this war pushes us further into the shadow of the most tragic death of all: the death of hope for a better, a more peaceful, a genuinely secure future.

The problem is defined in apocalyptic terms: terrorists want to "end a way of life," in President Bush’s words; "This is civilization's fight." But no apocalyptic solution is available, nor even suggested. We are offered only an endless horizon of apocalypse management. Maintaining relative stability in an inherently unstable world is indeed "a task that does not end." So our public discourse of war assumes that danger, too, does not end. The ceaseless parade of war words and images confirm this premise. They point not to an end, but to an endless continuation, of danger. Although we may claim that our national security state is designed to stave off insecurity, the true (albeit unrecognized) function of the national security state is to perpetuate the prevailing insecurity. And the more we are convinced of our insecurity, the more we will resist fundamental change.

The trappings of Armageddon take on a very different meaning when they no longer point the way to the final triumph over evil. The mantras and symbols and rituals of the redeemer nation serve a very different role when our public culture no longer really believes in the redemption. The symbols of danger and expressions of anxiety take on a very different meaning, too. All of the preparations for and acts of war, all the warnings of and mobilization against future attacks, all the patriotic singing and flag-waving, all the gestures of hope that things will be better in the future¾ all now become cultural representations of the overriding conviction that, in fact, the future will not be fundamentally different from the present. The war is fought and celebrated not to escape from, but to preserve, the NIS. All that once symbolized hope for the Kingdom of God on earth (whether in religious or secular form) only locks us into a future of inconclusive struggle and mounting anxiety. The entire panoply of cultural responses to the attack points to the same inescapable conclusion: there will be no genuine security, no fundamental change.

If the cultural responses to the September 11 attack tended to reinforce the NIS, it is hardly surprising that the public would quickly embrace the idea of another cold war, for that is the way an NIS faces its troubles. The conflict is expected to go on indefinitely. At home, we shelter behind the strongest shield we can build, while abroad we impose as much control as we can. This may occasionally involve attacking a single nation, aiming for unconditional victory. But it relies more on covert operations, diplomatic and economic pressure, and sheer intimidation. The U.S. will not tolerate neutrality. But it will welcome help from any state. And all who aid the war effort will be called "free." To support "freedom," the U.S. will support (or create) police states like Somoza’s Nicaragua or the Shah’s Iran. Conservatives will expand federal powers and increase military budgets, perhaps enormously. All public spending will be guided and legitimated by the war. These are precisely the qualities that George W. Bush ascribed to the war on terrorism. This is the kind of war that Bush’s advisors, all veterans of the cold war, know best.

Since the end of the cold war, many commentators have bemoaned the loss of a single paradigm that could unify U.S. world efforts and the U.S. public. When Bush’s speechwriters had him say, "We have found our mission and our moment," they were surely hoping to unite the nation in a seemingly clear but open-ended, ongoing mission. No doubt they were also thinking of Harry Truman announcing the cold war, in his Truman Doctrine speech of 1947. They hoped to depict Bush not only as the new FDR, but also as the new Truman: a president widely perceived as weak, overcoming that perception by launching a multi-decade crusade to save global freedom from an insidious international threat.

As Michael Sherry has shown, "war" has become the only metaphor that can rally the American public to common action. Four decades of cold war militarized every aspect of U.S. life, leaving us "in the shadow of war." The same pattern has been repeated over and over. The danger is portrayed in apocalyptic terms, as a shadowy global network aiming to (in Bush’s words) "end a way of life." The enemy is personified by demonizing individuals; just as Stalin gave way to Mao, Ho, and Castro, so bin Ladin will give way to as-yet-unknown others. However, as in the era of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the price of unity is still suspicion of our neighbors (upwards of eight million of whom are Muslim).

Despite all this vigilance, national leaders admit that they shall never be able to declare total victory. No one in the Bush administration or beyond could say what unconditional victory would mean, nor over whom we would be victorious. Immediately after September 11, the administration was quickly consumed with internal quarreling over war aims. But news accounts clearly implied that all hands agreed on one point: terrorism would merely be brought under control, contained at an acceptable level. The patriotic flags, placards, and songs are whipping us into another long, twilight struggle (as John F. Kennedy called the cold war), with a shadowy enemy and no victory in sight. As the president admitted, the war on terrorism would have to be "a task that does not end"¾ not because of the enemy’s persistence, but simply because permanent victory is ruled out from the beginning.

Why go to war, if we know in advance we can never decisively triumph? Rumsfeld explained that victory now has a new meaning: "We can continue to live in a world with powerful weapons and with people who are willing to use those powerful weapons¼ and that will be a victory," as long as "the American people and our interests and friends and allies and deployed forces can go about our business not in fear." But if terrorists are still around with powerful weapons how can we ever live "not in fear"? Who will decide when it is time to feel safe? The government can declare victory at any time. But a terrorist network can go underground for years, then surface one day inside the Capitol or the Statue of Liberty.

"Business" and "interests" may be the operative word here. A moment later, Rumsfeld continued: "The United States is linked with so many nations across the globe that we need to be able to engage in the kinds of things that Americans engage in." The president made it clear what Americans engage in: "The stakes of this fight are high: our lives, our way of life and our economic future." "We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don't conduct business or people don't shop. That's their intention." He also made clear how the U.S. is linked with other nations: "Terrorists want to turn the openness of the global economy against itself. We must not let them." "Out of the sorrow of September 11th, I see opportunity¼ to expand our ties of trade." According to Rumsfeld, terrorism is defeated when "you are satisfied that the American people are going to be able to live their lives in relative freedom and have the kinds of linkages with the rest of the world that we feel are so central to our well being." The best to hope for, it seems, is to keep terrorism contained sufficiently to afford "relative freedom," while preserving the "linkages" of international business in the global economy.

In other words, the goal is still stability. "These terrorist groups seek to destabilize entire nations and regions," Bush warned. "Terror unanswered can not only bring down buildings, it can threaten the stability of legitimate governments. And you know what? We're not going to allow it." Rumsfeld made the obvious linkage: "We live in a world that's a dangerous world, it's an untidy world, it's a big world. We have to engage in that world as free people because the linkages we have across this globe are so centrally a part of our lives¼ that we have no choice but to contribute to a more peaceful and stable world." 9/20 For Rumsfeld, at least, preserving stable economic linkages is the measure of victory. No one in the Bush administration has offered any alternative definition.

Without prejudging the administration's intentions, it surely can be said that Rumsfeld’s definition makes sense. Whether intentionally or not, this war, like the cold war, expands the project of global defense begun by Franklin D. Roosevelt. The administration wants a license to make war wherever it chooses, throughout the broad belt of predominantly Muslim lands from Afghanistan to Algeria. That is the one great region of the world where the power of Western culture and multinational corporate capitalism is not yet fully secure. Just two days after the attack, New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman explained quite candidly what he thought this war is about. He described a battle raging throughout the Muslim world between the modernizers, who accept the dominance of U.S. - style globalization, and the traditionalists who oppose it. The goal of this war, he suggested, is to break the power of the traditionalists forever. Neither Friedman nor other pillars of the establishment were quite so candid after the public war aims were scaled back. The public is not likely to support a war for neoliberalism.

Apparently, though, the public will support a war for stability. And some sort of stability, in some distant future, is all that the administration promises is. But stability is a code word for maintaining a status quo that still contains threatening others. So vigilance and containment, as well as periodic war, must be "a task that does not end."

Was that part of the conscious calculations of the administration, when it decided to call for a new war? There are surely reasons for government leaders to want enduring fear. In 1947, Truman heard Senator Arthur Vandenburg advise him to "scare hell out of the American people" if he wanted support for cold war policies. In 1953, Eisenhower initiated Operation Candor to heighten fear, so that the public would support its cold war efforts (and budgets). A frightened public is a more politically docile, more willing to grant the government powers it could attain in no other way. We shall not know for decades (if ever) whether Bush had similar motives in mind.

The cold war record does indicate that political leaders and other elites were, most often, genuinely afraid that the U.S. was threatened in one way or another (though they were not always candid with the public about the nature of their fears). There is no reason to doubt that Bush and his advisors are afraid, too, though it will be decades (if ever) before we know the true nature of their private fears.

But their confident and forceful insistence on war indicates that they may not see the one thing they should most fear: the political dangers of going to war. They seem to have forgotten how Truman, Johnson, and Carter all suffered political distress when they ran afoul of cold war complexities. Even Reagan had to dodge and back-pedal in a series of difficult maneuvers. And in the post-cold war era it was the current President Bush’s own father who ran into an unexpected political downfall. The one thing all these presidents had in common was their failure to deliver a convincing, World War II – style victory over the enemy. Sooner or later, the Bush administration may face the same problem.

Sooner or later, it may also face the specter of another Vietnam. The potential enemy nations have all learned the lesson of Vietnam. If attacked, their populace would take to the hills, or the urban skyscrapers, and wage guerilla war. U.S. strategists would be strongly tempted to erase the line between enemy soldiers and civilians. The Bush administration took a first step in this direction when it claimed the right to attack not only terrorists, but whole states. From the first, this claim met great skepticism outside the U.S. Even within this country, there is widespread awareness that most civilians everywhere oppose terrorism. So there is a widespread demand to have only terrorists, not innocent civilians, be attacked. Eventually, the U.S. may wage a war that violates this demand on a massive scale. That sort of war could split U.S. public right down the middle.

The greatest pitfall awaiting the U.S. government is not enemy civilians dead, of course. It is American soldiers dead, maimed, and missing in action. Domestic public support for the war will fade rapidly once the body bags and paraplegics start coming home. A nation pursuing the World War II fantasy will not easily tolerate the limitations and frustrations of an ongoing cold war. The fantasy is all the more fragile because so few really believe it. A war begun to unite the nation could easily tear it apart. The next time Bush goes home to Texas, he should visit the final resting place of Lyndon Johnson and ponder deeply. It is LBJ’s ghost that is waiting in the wings.

The first war of the twenty-first century is bound to cement the U.S. more firmly into the NIS paradigm. The pattern is already evident. U.S. policymakers must aid Pakistan to gain its support, perhaps by tolerating Pakistan’s nuclear buildup. But this alienates India. So they promise to support India’s "anti-terrorism" campaign in Kashmir, which risks losing Pakistan as an ally. Arab states will cooperate only if pressure is put on Israel. But Israel remains the most powerful force in the Middle East (and a significant force on Capitol Hill). Does any U.S. administration risk angering Israel? As a price for its support, Russia demands U.S. acquiescence in repressing the Chechen rebellion. But this only fuels anti-U.S. sentiment in some Muslim quarters. The same scenario could easily be played out in Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan, and elsewhere. Every choice has its costs; every measure to reduce risk also increases risk.

Yet in the NIS, every uncontrollable risk becomes further evidence of eternal instability, hence eternal peril. When some hoped-for allies become alienated by U.S. policies and refuse to cooperate fully in the war, that will become further "evidence" that the world is indeed a dangerous place, demanding more strenuous efforts at control. When U.S. actions provoke counter-actions by violent others, that will be seen, not as the inevitable give-and-take of war, but as further "evidence" of an implacable conspiracy that hates, not our specific policies, but our way of life. But blaming others for every setback only roots us more firmly in our national insecurity. Indeed, every possible outcome of U.S. policies will end up confirming the premise of permanent insecurity. Within the framework of the NIS, the only available response is to proclaim anew our innocence and redouble efforts at stability and security, which means imposing greater control. The inevitable result is greater instability, leaving both policy and culture more firmly rooted in the premise of permanent insecurity.

The twin towers are gone, but the NIS still stands. Indeed, it stands stronger and taller precisely because the towers are gone. There seems to be no escape from the self-perpetuating spiral of violence. What, then, is to be done? How shall we find sources of hope in a society that systematically shuts every door to hope?

A first step is to take a small step outside the society, at least in our imaginations, by denaturalizing it: seeing it as a set of discursive practices and cultural constructions, rather than a taken-for-granted, "realistic" set of facts. That is the principal benefit of describing the United States as a national insecurity state. Simply naming the NIS and analyzing it as a discrete system weakens the grip of the system just a bit. It gives us the space to begin to think about alternatives. Historical perspective tells us that the U.S. was not always an NIS, so it need not always be so in the future. The NIS arises from a complex chain of human decisions. Human decisions can also dissolve that pattern and create a different one.

In the U.S., we need not go so far away to find an alternative. Every January, we close our public institutions for a whole day to honor an American who questioned the foundations of the NIS and articulated an alternative in memorable, eloquent words. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, so many times, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. All life is interrelated. " These words capture the essential difference between the violence he deplored and the nonviolence he preached. The essence of violence, as King saw, is not the act of physically striking another. The essence of violence is not even trying to coerce and control another. Before the effort to coerce and control can begin, one must first see oneself standing apart, fundamentally separate from the other. Only those who fondly imagine that they stand apart from the network will pursue the vain fantasy of innocence and control. History indicates that, all too often, they will pursue that fantasy with some kind of violence, and that violence is likely to be self-defeating. That is the fundamental mistake at the heart of all violence. Taken to its extreme, it leads to apocalyptic dualism and, eventually, to the NIS.

King argued, not as religious dictum but as empirical fact, that we are not passive victims of history, nor can we be isolated from the dynamics of history. We are always already embedded in a global network of relationships. We can not control what happens within that network. But we always influence what happens within that network. That is precisely why, whatever happens, we must admit that we can never bear full responsibility. Yet, at the same time, we must admit that we always bear some responsibility. As King understood, the criminal is tied to the victim. The United States is tied to Afghanistan and all predominantly Muslim states. President Bush is tied to Osama bin Laden. In the long struggle for peace there are no winners and losers. Either everyone wins or we all lose.

King’s message certainly faces an uphill battle in the United States of the early 21^st century. It is very difficult for Americans to understand, in any era. The U.S. was born out of Calvinism and the Enlightenment project, both of which are too individualistic to grasp such an organic view of human relations. The long-standing U.S. assumption of purity and innocence makes it even harder to assume that we are always already complicit in the historical chain of events. In recent years his message, like so much else that is good and right, it has been swallowed up, distorted, and obscured by the cultural imperium of the NIS.

Moreover, King’s words call for a radical change that is very hard to contemplate, precisely because fear and change have been linked in our public culture for so long. It is perhaps natural, when there is such cultural confusion and anxiety, to retreat to familiar patterns. The cultural pattern of the NIS reinforces that understandable reaction. It is not likely that nonviolence will become the dominant cultural pattern of the U.S. any time soon. The magnitude of the change would be simply too radical, and thus too threatening.

Yet the revival of patriotism may take us a surprising step in that direction. As King pointed to a future beyond the NIS, his rhetoric also reached back to the time before the NIS, when insecurity was counterbalanced by expectations of national and global redemption. He understood that such biblical language still resonates in our public square. It recalls that earlier time, when it brought genuine hope for a different and better future. In his short life, King tried to breathe new life into these moribund words. He preached that the United States does have a special role to play in God's plan, by spreading the ideals of freedom and democracy.

But he virtually equated the U.S. mission and ideals with his religious vision of the beloved community, where people treat each other as equals because all understand that they are interdependent. There are no hierarchies and no oppression. Diversity flourishes because the distinctive potentials of every individual are fully valued. Everyone recognizes that "I can never be what I ought to be until you become what you ought to be." So greatness is measured by service to others, not by self-seeking. People strive to give each other freedom, not control. In the beloved community, nations follow the same values as individuals. They recognize that each benefits most if it shows "an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole," even to those who resort to violence.

As we grope for a new sense of what it means to be a proud American, in light of the attack of September 11, 2001, King’s vision of patriotism may take on deeper meaning. The sense of interconnectedness and responsibility at the heart of nonviolence may become more widespread. It has not been too popular to suggest that the victim nation was part of the same historical chain as the attackers. Yet the idea has been voiced in many quarters and has slowly inched its way into the mainstream discourse.

Abandoning the fantasy of controlling history means, among other things, accepting the unpredictability of history. The effects of that terrible day will continue to ripple through the years. There is no way to say how far, or in what direction, those ripples will reach. No possibility should be foreclosed. To deny that the unlikely can happen¾ to view events as predictable, and thus controllable¾ is to give yet another victory to the National Insecurity State. Dare we imagine that the memorial built on the site of the World Trade Center may include a tablet inscribed with the words of Dr. Martin Luther King?