Südosteuropa , 50. Jg., 10-12/2001

Jänos Szabö*

After September 11: Challenges and Trends of Response in Domestic and International Institutions

Comparative Analysis of the Counter-Terrorism Measures Taken by Advanced

"If the commoner falling in love with his own market achievements leaves the guarantees of his own security far behind he will have to return for them sooner or later." (Emerson)

Some general political science relevance of the September 11 shock The September 11 terrorist attacks - as it read in the western press - took secret services, law enforcement agencies and armies aback. It was proved that the Western World grew indolent - at least from military and security policy aspects. Security policy did not respond in time to the terrorist threat and the institutions of defense, not so much in the field of theory and strategy than in practice, in­ credibly fell behind in the adaptation to the new hierarchy of security challenges. Four years ago, when Hungary was getting prepared for its NATO accession, one of the most important elements of the persuasion campaign was the claim that the Alliance was not preparing for a new war, but secures the defense of the member states against the new challenges of security policy primarily against ter­ rorism. For the citizens, however, September 11 indicated that although the gen­ eral defense strategy of the alliance is correct the substantial changes are consid­ erably burdened by the inertia of practice. While terrorist threat, migration, or­ ganized crime, development and management of low-intensity local conflicts are growing into fashionable topics the practice is dominated by forces and means (shaped for the possible conflicts in the previous bipolar world order) and this also refers to the levels of the actual organizational elements, resource distribution and interest enforcement activity too. The rearrangement of forces and resources in accordance with the new prior­ ity of threats is slower than necessary. Since the cessation of the bipolar world structure the efficiency of defense policy decision-making and execution mecha­ nism and the new harmony between defense budgets and military-industrial inter­ ests have been criticized the most vehemently this time. Out of all the players perhaps it was the military that responded the best of all to the changes, by

Prof. Dr. Jänos Szabö, Director, Office for Strategic and Defense Studies, Budapest After September 11: Challenges and Trends of Response 503 working out the NATO Modernization Program and the new strategy draft, but due to the specified counteractions the practice is characterized by slow-motion processes. Under the influence of terrorist acts the situation is noticeably chang­ ing and the transformation must be accelerating in all probability: thus the Ameri­ can missile defense umbrella was replaced by ways of defense that can be used in operations incomparable with traditional or nuclear warfare. Now the responsibility of politicians and decision-makers both for absence of early warning information on the potential terrorist attacks and for the fact that neither the armed forces nor the law-enforcement agencies were at their best is increasingly scrutinized in public. However, the responsibility of political and governmental decision-makers is not limitless; the most important tasks of the past decades were the modernization, stabilization, and operation of western-type civilian control. This allows the armed forces to ensure the defense and security of the people of a country without posing a threat to society or turning into an in­ dependent power center. In Hungary this control is exercised by the constituents every four years directly and between two elections by defense politicians and media guarantee the control. Until September 11 the frequently asked questions were: What do armed forces spend their budget on? Is it necessary to spend so very much on the armed forces? There were extreme opinions (even in Hungary) questioning the necessity of maintaining armed forces at all. Since September 11 the importance of state providing security, including armed forces and law en­ forcement agencies, has significantly increased. Ambitions to professionalism came into prominence which is well illustrated by the fact that in the marketable-regarded security services like airport security and baggage control were retaken by federal agencies almost immediately after the terrorist attacks. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon also mark the end of an idyllic combination of security, welfare growth and post-modern constitution­ ality as the right to liberty achieved in western societies are forced to compromise and a part of them have to be temporarily suspended. As there are no "standard operational procedures" for the new conflict situation, at the beginning tightening the existing though liberal regulations was the only way of improving the sense of security receiving high priority at an incredibly high speed. This could be experi­ enced in the United States right at the airports where the rather formal inquiries were replaced by extreme security measures. It was allowed to shoot down civil planes if they were to be used for terrorist acts and the citizens did not protest as these measures significantly increased their sense of security. The rules of tapping telephones and surveillance were also eased and this measure did not trigger off a huge wave of protest either. Holding in respect to the sensitivity human rights this liberalization was adopted only for four years which clearly indicates that the de­ cision-makers are fully aware of the unprecedented infringement of liberties. September 11 is a tremendous trial of the multicultural global western world order. There is much at stake: will the community of the developed industrial de­ mocracies box itself up or will it preserve its openness by transforming its defense policy and security policy system in order to guarantee its citizens' security. It 504 Jänos Szabö would be premature to answer which version gets the upper end but it should be hoped for the latter. If the near future were shaped in accordance with the more favorable scenario it would not be necessary to worry about a significant and long-term limitation of liberties as society has its own defense mechanisms and human rights organizations and other NGO's will definitely send their warnings which can hardly be ignored by any decision-maker. More than a decade ago, when the breakup of bipolarity generated huge de­ bates among experts of conflict theory it became clear for everyone that what had begun was nothing less than a historic experiment with the disintegration of a large-scale destructive global conflict (Nuclear World War) into many minor con­ flicts in order to manage and resolve them separately. Meanwhile it became clear that these conflicts are not under total control either as they tend to slip out of our hands and live their own lives. Moreover, new conflicts emerged that had not been taken into account before. As for military activities the general ideas were that, especially in the time of mass armies, they were phenomena focused on an exceptional period of time (a war) thus in peacetime it remains latent that is concentrating mainly on prepara­ tion and readiness. By today, however, it has turned out that if the objective is the stabilization of the peace of the world or at least that of Europe - or the peace of post-industrial developed democracies, to be even more exact - these military ac­ tivities should be permanent and omnipresent in order to secure this peace. That is military capabilities active only in exceptional, emergency situations were re­ placed by another, a day-to-day type of very diffuse military activities remaking and exceeding national frameworks. This is the change of paradigm that results from the studying of conflicts and the demand for crisis management making up an inseparable part of the new paradigms in itself. It can be stated that a complete change of the defense structure is in progress and the September 11 shock had a decisive influence of the entire system of institutions. Within it functions, institu­ tionalized roles are changing moving towards fundamentally new threat priorities. Alas, these organizational structures still have an excessive inertia and an intol­ erably high level of potential moment of inertia. In short: it is still impossible to respond to the challenges of a changing world, as required by the dynamically changing security necessities. In this field a shift of the adaptive military structures towards multiplicity can be seen. In regions where peace should be preserved or maintained peacekeeping operations will dominate and classic armed combat capabilities should remain "on standby" in a way. In other regions of the world where peace should not only be kept but also enforced in low-intensity (or not so very low-intensity) combat op­ erations classical military forces should be involved in the processes at a level ac­ cording to the requirements of the particular tactical-strategic indications. In ac­ cordance with this, modem and post-modem societies are always forced to face the task of a permanent modification of the distribution of resources in their defense budget. It is still not clear whether the modification of defense resources will be executed on the basis of the relatively simple public opinion approach or the very complex political approach or the also fairly sophisticated professional After September 11: Challenges and Trends of Response 505 requirements. The problem is not easy to solve. In the decision-making process the intentions or articulated requirements of the military should pass through the filter of logocracy, and bureaucracy and only then a deci­ sion can be made. The decisions then have to be tested in practice and the feed­ back of the results should involve every factor in the process (political and mili­ tary decision-makers) in order to allow them to "see what they have done". It is easy to see that never in history did political decision-makers need such a great demand for an imminent feedback on the result of their decisions as nowadays; as this is the only guarantee that the above mentioned inertia could be reduced in or­ der for defense structures to meet real security requirements. Defense issues also need a new approach when the character of the related social support is analyzed. Social activity towards security-security issues is manifested at various levels. It is manifested in publicity in the result of public opinion surveys in the citizens’ willingness to sacrifice and the level of particular social groups and institutions to participate in this structure of defense tasks. It should be seen that in the era of the multitude of small-scale security problems the political, professional and financial burdens of defense policy have grown enormously. Since September 11 it has become irrevocably proven that the 21st century defense system should be built on systems with an unprecedented integration involving an interconnected structure of diplomacy, domestic policy, defense policy, law enforcement agencies, disaster relief, border guards and border policing, penal authorities, customs services, secret services, and civil defense.

The September 11 shock: challenges and trends of response The 11th September events in the United States are a fairly horrible piece of a se­ ries of events called "the plague of the long peace" by Shakespeare half a millen­ nium ago. The measure and quality of the events are still widely discussed worldwide. The basic question is: does/should the shock experienced by the mod­ em and post-modem world after September 11 mark a qualitative change, a para­ digmatic change, in security policy processes? Currently there are only a few de­ tails making up the trends in the changes, which means the complete and detailed picture is still to be produced. This job requires a certain perspective both in time and space, and a theoretical abstraction allowing a complete reconstruction. But the magnitude and scope of the problem is forcefully urging to describe those trends that are carried inside the new processes and provide arguments not only for answering the original question but also serve as a starting point for the deci­ sion-makers.

Hypothesis one: the changes triggered off by September 11 and initiated, inte­ grated and largely modulated by this shock were practically built on existing trends, were manifested from them and can be evaluated only on the basis of these actual ongoing processes. The most general framework and category of these processes is globalization and the magnitude of the outcome of processes is 506 Jänos Szabö similar, as the quality of globalization is at stake now. What depends on the response to international terrorism, as one of the most outrageous developments of anti-globalization processes, is the extent of global­ ization in human civilization. Therefore the question is whether the original mul­ ticultural globalization timetable can be maintained without putting the security perception of our modem/post-modem world at serious risk. Another alternative is that the impact of terrorism reverses these processes depriving them of the val­ ues of the modem world allowing only the creation of a segmental fundamentally hierarchic, controlled on the basis of economic and military power, and separated by internal frontiers, divided - therefore self-contradictory - globalization. The existence of globalization is unquestionable. Its quality, however, is at stake.

Hypothesis two: the changes accelerate the globalization itself increasing its con­ frontation potential too. They accelerate trends strengthening the accomplishment of globalization but simultaneously accelerate other trends too, opposing, revers­ ing, and destructing the process. Meanwhile these effects also accelerate the dy­ namics of the international system of institutions affected the most by globaliza­ tion processes. The most important substantial question of this dynamic is the di­ rection of the changes in the values and the level and technique of involvement of countries and regions in the international network of institutions.

Hypothesis three: within the processes of accelerating globalization the signifi­ cance of security as a generative value will increase and the importance of the category will rise in the not directly security-related institutes; moreover, it will have a more central role in decision-making processes than presumed. Security will have a much stronger impact on decision-making calculations than expected by the previous optimistic considerations. At the level of personal perception this is neither more nor less than the sad fact that the post-modem commoner falling in love with economic prosperity is forced to realize that he left the guarantees of his own security far behind and has to return for them and structure them into an influence.

Hypothesis four: at the level of nations governments and politicians have been in a characteristic and controversial situation since the September 11 events: on the one hand their citizens need security, which means that both politics and govern­ ments are pressed to produce credible achievements and efficient security guar­ antees for the citizens. Consequently, these can only be the national and interna­ tional institutionalization of protection rightfully expected and required by citi­ zens. On the other hand, however, politics should reveal mistakes committed pre­ viously, the causes of functional disorders in certain structures, particular interests - omnipresent in political and governmental institutions - should be examined self-critically and must be stated that certain previous security decisions took the solidified power relations much more seriously than the dynamically changing real security aspects (e.g. the rearrangement of the order of factors constituting a After September 11: Challenges and Trends of Response 507 threat to security). According to the theory that is, - moreover to the majority of declarations too - "creeping terrorism" was apparent but politics did not respond to that with a real reconstruction of the institutions and the genuine structural changes did not appear in practice. Military organizations, weapons systems, training indexes, information and communication systems, and the dimensions of military budgets were not transformed in accordance with the challenges. While expert workshops have to reformulate development strategies, politi­ cians and operators of concrete processes should allow military organizations to pursue theoretical and political objectives in a more flexible, radical, dynamic, and, necessarily, self-critical way. Today the four or five years of inertia of mili­ tary organizations, which is typical even for the most modem countries too, is an unbearably long period of time for getting structures adapted to the recognized necessities that is usually placed on the desk of the politicians and decision-mak­ ers by the theoretical research in time.

Hypothesis five: both the elements of the international security system and the national security policies should recover their disturbed identity with a very seri­ ous, thorough, and consistent theoretical clarification. In the institutional segment of the international security system the regulating law and order should be re­ vised. The regulations and frameworks of concluding, operation, and building defense coalitions should be reconsidered and alliances should be re-interpreted. The tasks of international organizations should be redefined, of course, on the ba­ sis of interests articulated at the national level. Within this issue, the key question for Hungary is the possible scenario of the changes in NATO. As for the interna­ tional systems in the framework of the redefinition of alliances the question of NATO's further enlargement needs clarification. Russia is an especially sensitive factor in the possible scenarios. The trends whereby NATO is gradually calming down and growing into a trans-Atlantic negotiation fomm while the joint forces of the EU will provide the military power for Europe will redefine the functions of international organizations. The division of labor between international organizations should be provided with a new basis and should be restructured in accordance with new guiding prin­ ciples and in this respect the UN legal authorization forms and frameworks of humanitarian aid services, reconstmction and development programs of the EU, the measures taken against tax havens and money laundering should be coordi­ nated. It is extremely important to reconsider the frameworks of peacekeeping missions as their feature is being restructured parallel with the decreasing military factor and the growing importance of the civilian-military and civilian compo­ nents. This restructuring is all the more interesting as though the significance of classic military elements is decreasing, due to their organizations the post-modern governments can manage these substantially altered tasks with the use of military organizations only. Among the ways of response of international law it is ex­ tremely important to reconsider the content of sanctions against states and to ex­ amine the possible practical opportunities and their embedding into the behavior of the anti-terrorist coalition. 508 Jänos Szabö

Hypothesis six: the increase in the importance of factors and organizations inter­ ested in non-proliferation is very important. They should be provided with more concrete tasks. The proliferation of armaments and the so-called "rogue nations" possessing highly powerful weapons of mass destruction generate a threat that must develop the most determined international concentration of forces. The frameworks of international political deals should also be reconsidered in order to provide a chance for settling interstate conflicts even among the conflict- stricken processes and phenomena of globalization. Within the international legal instruments the means regulating the detection, registration, diagnosis, publicizing, and sanctioning, phenomena, organizations, activities important from the point of view of terrorism became of special impor­ tance. Long-reaching changes have been generated mainly in the field of the sanctions. Here should be mentioned the sanctions of harboring terrorists and their financial support, closing down terrorist training camps and other facilities, re-regulation of their extradition, arrest warrant, and legal accountability. Simi­ larly important are the processes triggered in the field of revising the legal back­ ground of the arms embargo, diplomatic activity, air traffic regulations, bank ac­ count freezing and disclosure by banks, international licensing revision, interna­ tional aid activity, shaping international anti-terrorist alliances, international in­ telligence relations and information transfer, sanction control, etc.

Hypothesis seven: in the process of the expansion of globalization security points may at least temporarily be in opposition to values of liberty and the search for compromise here may become a necessity of the future processes. The rear­ rangement of the power relations in the world drives obviously towards multi­ polarization but in modem and post-modem societies the threats to democracy should be reduced to the minimum. In the case of anti-terrorist measures it is im­ portant that they should not cut back civil and human rights and still be as effi­ cient as possible on the other side of the front line and carry out the most "ra­ tional" destmction in areas where military actions are required against the (re)sources and capacities of terrorism.

Hypothesis eight: the tasks of the national and national security factors, the na­ tional organizations and the related theoretical discussions are in close connection with the practical security policy categories. In the field of changing security per­ ceptions e.g. the geographical extension of security is losing ground to the secu­ rity of regional and national aspects and also to the non-military - economic, fi­ nancial, legislative, and diplomatic - elements thus these should be incorporated into adequate documents. The values of a world order becoming increasingly multi-polar have deficien­ cies primarily in the hierarchy-free management of cultural, civil, and religious differences. The creation of these values and the related cultivation reflexes within civil societies in media and public thinking will perhaps be a multigenera- tional task. After September 11: Challenges and Trends of Response 509

Hypothesis nine: as for secret services their cooperation should be of integrative character and the human factor should be an increased priority in their capabili­ ties. There is an increased demand for undercover agents and the rise of data analysis requires the recruitment of personnel with abilities similar to those of the fanatic enemy but with higher qualifications. This fact entails new tasks for secret services. They are forced to find new ways and methods of information gathering, operative work, control, and of communication with suspicious characters. In connection with secret services it is clear that they need a higher percentage from the redistributed budget than before. In general it can be stated that defense budg­ ets are rising but it is also true that the more precisely aimed redistribution com­ prises a high-inertia subsystem in itself thus it is lagging everywhere far behind the requirements. Nowadays it is an economic policy commonplace in that the political management of the economic generating role of defense budget is still more powerful than the calculation of its role affecting concrete security capabili­ ties and capacities.

Hypothesis ten: in the field of research and development in defense industry pri­ mary changes can be observed in the internal structure of the requirements to the industry. A significant increase can be forecast in orders for control systems, sen­ sors, analyzing systems, electronic systems in general, and new high-tech intelli­ gence systems. At the same time modem research and development thinking is encouraged by the recognition of the fact that in modem-age terrorist actions all types of re­ use of the most traditional means and tools can be taken into consideration among high-technology relations. It is also a fact that for terrorists the most lucrative so­ lution is if they try to combine the vulnerability of modem civilization with their own weapons and instmments of destruction.

Hypothesis eleven: as for the security perception of the population and the struc­ ture of a united support from the people redoubled publicity (media) efforts seem to be necessary for creating systems responding to the sound sense of threat to so­ ciety and preventing artificial panic-raising. This means the balance between the values of security and democracy should be preserved and the information should be considered as reliable by the citizens, the media should not play the role of a factor amplifying history but serve the societal self-control without harming na­ tional security aspects. That is, no information should be leaked from operative agencies damaging the efficiency of these security organizations.

Summary: the national and international components of gradually developing se­ curity integration may perhaps create a newly re-coded security system with new organizational structure and new values which will be a part of globalization processes too. In this respect it can be described as stages of globalization of modem and post-modem that hopefully, may be able to accelerate and prevent both the globalization of terrorism and the terrorization of globalization.