Brave New World
- Brave New World
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The phrase most frequently encountered these days in newspapers, on television, radio, and the Internet is “new world.” Unlike the world-creation described in the Book of Genesis where the Lord was said to have created the wor1d in six days and to have been so exhausted by his labors that he rested on the seventh; and unlike the uncertainty surrounding the exact date of that achievement we are assured for a fact that our new world came into being on September 11, 2001 at exactly 8:22 AM. This virtually unanimous declaration about the newness of the world follows only months after the turn into the third millennium when the celebrants were convinced that that date marked a new era, one different from what had gone before. But if that new world was a cause for celebration and welcoming, the latest new world seems shrouded in uncertainty and, above all, fear. The contrasting worlds seem all the more striking when we recall that as “the first new nation” our beginnings took place not in “a” new world but in “the” New World. Is it that we Americans once blessed as the children of the new have now been cursed by it?
Perhaps then either we have been too quick to accept the epithet “new” for our nation or not quick enough. In the recent past our leaders have declared “war” on all manner of foes: on poverty, on drugs, on the educational system, etc. Such usages were little more than bluster in the face of intractable problems. Undeniably there is much that is novel and frightening about life after the horrors of September 11 but, and equally important, it is to claim that before then our life as a political society contained certain troubling tendencies which, far from being short-circuited by the murderous attacks are feeding off them. What we have to consider is not terrorism by itself — in fact I shall suggest that we have to reject that as a dangerous construction — but terrorism in the context of certain developments that preceded it. Declaring a world as new is not only a way of calling attention to what is novel and distinctive but a distraction from some unresolved problems. One of the problems might be framed by this question: what is the nature of citizenship in superpower democracy in the era of a globalized economy? That question is unavoidable in the present circumstances. The nation has declared war and war is traditionally viewed as the supreme test of the citizen’s obligations and loyalty. At the same time this is a uniquely global war or at least declared to be such by a superpower that claims to be a democracy.
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Our latest New World is not a discovery by explorers or the act of a benevolent creator intent on designing a habitat suitable for mankind. It is a world brought into being by an act of terrorism that was immediately christened “war.” So ours is a new world of war; and those who have named it war have been quick and insistent to say that the war may continue indefinitely, a promise or threat that no American political president has felt inclined to utter about any of our earlier military ventures, especially in the aftermath of our undeclared war in Vietnam. Terrorism that mutates into war is a phenomenon produced by a combination of corporate globalization in tandem with a superpower state. Or, stated differently, corporate globalization and superpower dictate the terms of understanding war. “We intend,” Secretary Rumsfeld declared, “to oppose [terrorism] wherever it is.” The President spelled out the implications on October 7: “Today we focus on Afghanistan. But the battle is broader. Every nation has a choice to make. In this conflict there is no neutral ground.” Any nation, the President concluded, that continues to “sponsor outlaws and killers of innocents [sic],” does so “at their own peril.”
Although the nation’s leaders have repeatedly attempted to define the sense in which this is a different kind of war, it is surely no different in two crucial respects: first, innocent civilians are being murdered (i...
