Apocalypse Not Yet, But in Due Course

        I have been invited to contribute a short essay on the events of
September 11 to THE FUTURIST, a monthly publication of the World Future
Society.  My submission follows.

        Warren

W. Warren Wagar
Department of History
Binghamton University


*************************************************************************

        Since the indiscriminate air attacks on German and Japanese
civilians during the later years of the Second World War, the United
States has engaged in numberless campaigns to establish and maintain its
position as a world hegemon.  It has killed millions of people, destroyed
many cities, overthrown or helped to overthrow many regimes, and sponsored
or abetted terrorist activities throughout the world.

        Now, for the first time, it has been the target of effective
international terrorism on its own turf.  Nearly all the Americans and
foreign nationals who died in the attacks on September 11, 2001, were
innocent civilians.  It is appropriate to grieve for them.  But their
deaths, in and of themselves, do not signal the Apocalypse.  Rather, these
dead take their place alongside all the other victims of violence on our
planet in the long history of human fratricide, a history on whose pages
the United States, sometimes rightly, often wrongly, has written more than
its share during the past 60 years.

        Futurists do not know what the future holds.  They can only survey
the range of what Bertrand de Jouvenel aptly called the "futurible."
Three scenarios come to mind as futurible, given what we know of the
players involved, their capacities, and the pressures on them to respond.

        The first is a general war in the Middle East, in which the
United States, with the active assistance of Great Britain and certain
Muslim nations, attempts to seize control of Afghanistan and Iraq, replace
their governments, and in the process capture or kill Saddam Hussein,
Osama bin Laden, and their chief associates.  In a war of this kind, the
collaboration of countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and
Turkey would be crucial, not to mention Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and
Tajikistan, on Afghanistan's northern frontier, which the Taliban still
does not control.  Some operations would require the dropping of large
numbers of airborne troops into hostile and unfamiliar terrain.  The
chances of American and allied success in such a war are 50-50 at best.

        A second scenario leaves Iraq out of the picture at least for the
time being, but focuses exclusively on Afghanistan.  Again, military force
would be needed to dislodge the Taliban from power and attack Osama bin
Laden and his camps.  If successful, such operations might or might not
lead to a later attack on Iraq.  But the temptation to widen the war would
be great, given Baghdad's refusal to accept U.N. inspection of its weapons
facilities, repeated violations of the no-fly zones, and the catastrophic
suffering of Iraqi civilians because of international sanctions.

        In the third scenario, the United States and its allies would
confine their operations to surgical strikes in Afghanistan and elsewhere
against the bin Laden network and any other networks that threaten the
safety of Americans and their allies.  Much of this action would not take
the form of military attacks.  It would require close collaboration
between American operatives and those of other countries, such as Egypt,
where bin Laden enjoys powerful underground support.  The objective of
this more limited campaign would be to cripple terrorist networks, not to
interfere in the internal political life of any Muslim nation, even if
some of these nations directly or indirectly subsidize and protect these
networks.

        Some combination of the second and third scenarios is also
eminently futurible.  Whatever the United States and its allies do,
however, there is little chance that they can eliminate all terrorist
networks or prevent the formation of new ones.  As the experience of
Israel suggests, the struggle against terrorism is never-ending.  It
cannot be brought to a successful conclusion without removing its root
causes, which lie deep within the structure of the modern world system.

        In fact the long-term prospects are for widening conflict
between the rich and poor nations of the world, for widening conflict
among the poor nations themselves, and for increasing destabilization
worldwide.  A system that routinely rewards the few who are rich and
powerful at the expense of the many who are poor and weak--especially 
given the range of weapons and terrorist strategies available to the poor
and weak--is a system that cannot stand.  It is programmed for
self-destruction and its eventual collapse will be the principal event of
the 21st Century.