Domestic politics and the war on terror - State of the Nation - Brief Article

DESPITE THE HORROR and the trauma of the event, it is too early to mark Sept. 11, 2001, as the beginning of a new era, an equivalent of Dec. 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor changed the way Americans looked at themselves and the world. They were thrust into world leadership, whether they wanted it or not. Isolationism, with its nostalgic longing for simpler times marked by main streets and small towns, was relegated to the margins of U.S. politics, where it still languishes. World War II not only drove a stake into the heart of isolationism, it gave government a broader legitimacy and allowed liberalism to flourish in the decades that followed.

In the wake of Sept. 11, Bill Moyers in The Nation and Jeff Faux in The American Prospect argue that the new mood of national solidarity will spawn another era of government activism and liberal reform. Liberals who have been waiting for just such a period since the days of the Great Society may find Moyers and Faux's judgment premature and more likely erroneous. The defeat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan has not required the mobilization of our country and our military on a scale comparable to World War II, Korea, or Vietnam.

If the Afghan operation is a model for the future, new military operations against terrorism may not require any such effort. As Michael Barone put it U.S. News & World Report, "This war seems likely to require the things postindustrial America is good at. It requires high-technology weapons and information technology. It requires relatively small, highly trained, readily adaptable military units. It requires an openness and ability to deal with people who are different from us. Victory in World War II built confidence in big government and the other big units of industrial America, confidence that lasted another two decades until big government performed poorly in Vietnam. Success in the war against terrorism should build confidence in our supple, creative, small-unit postindustrial America--not in big government."

It is too simple to conclude that, if people turn to government in one emergency, they will do so to solve all problems. Asking government to protect our borders, destroy terrorist cells at home and aboard, immunize us from biological weapons threats, and create a reasonable defense from nuclear missiles does mean that Americans will develop new enthusiasm for government. Providing the common defense is a task only for the Federal government and, in the face of a dedicated enemy, it is an imperative one.

Nonetheless, the war against terrorism will consume substantial resources to strengthen border patrols, increase intelligence capacity, develop a ballistic missile defense, and modernize a high-tech military. With deficits now replacing surpluses, there will be less money for new social programs. As a result of the surpluses in the later part of the Clinton years, liberals have convinced themselves that they are the party of fiscal responsibility. Keeping such a position will make it difficult for them to support more funding for the war against terrorism and new social programs as well as a balanced budget. The only way that can be done, save an economic boom, would be by raising taxes. If the economic recovery is a sluggish one or is a long time in coming (two distinct possibilities), raising taxes on any income group, even the rich, makes no economic sense. Even in good times, raising taxes is bad politics.

At the same time, one cannot conclude that the new political atmosphere will be a boon to conservatives. War dampens the public appetite for reform. As we have seen with past wars, they leave a country more eager for stability than change. Such a mood can weaken conservatives who are in many respects reformers. A war against terrorism with its expected fiscal demands and new Federal controls will make it more difficult for reducing (or flattening) income tax rates, privatizing Social Security, and devolving more power back to the states. The urgency of the antiterrorist campaign has strengthened Federal police powers and weakened civil liberties. Libertarian conservatives such as Rep. Bob Barr (R.-Ga.), who harbor a deep distrust of the FBI and the CIA, have already spoken out against the efforts of Attorney General John Ashcroft to crack down on those suspected of terrorist activities.

The war in Afghanistan was brief and remarkably successful, silencing the critics on the right and the left. The next steps could put the Bush Administration in the middle of conservative crossfire. Barring another incident on the scale of the Sept. 11 attacks or even close to it, the neoisolationists/libertarians wing could raise objections to continual military involvement in such countries as Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya, suspected of close terrorist connections. On the other hand, the globalists/neoconservatives may chafe at any reluctance of the Bush Administration to take on Saddam Hussein and begin a major military campaign against Iraq.