Asking the Experts

Anatoly HRYTSENKO, president, Oleksandr Razumkov Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political Research:

It is a great tragedy, a real showdown for both the United States and the rest of the world. There is a touch of fortuity and carelessness to what has happened, but it makes a certain amount of sense. The US has enough enemies; while maintaining and defending its interests in practically all regions of the globe, it has on more than one occasion resorted to force, and a some kind of response or another should have been expected. This terrible tragedy cannot pass without consequences, including on US policy, for the very concept of the fortress America was destroyed on September 11. The terrorists struck at revered symbols of US military and economic might. I think that preparing adequate and infallible retaliatory measures will be especially difficult, because the attack on America was waged most likely not by a country, but by a non-governmental organization, the actions of which are much more difficult to control. At the moment, it is very important for the US government not to respond rashly. A retaliatory attack on the wrong target could provoke a new wave of violence and terror. Apparently, no country, not even the strongest, can securely protect itself from such acts of terrorism. But the terrorists must not in any way be led to believe that they can bring the whole world to its knees. Lest this happen, we must look for better ways of cooperation among different countries at the level of their special services, even if some of these countries have conflicts of economic, political, and other interests. The issue of eliminating international terrorism should unite the entire civilized world: friends, allies, and opponents. Ukraine also has food for thought. We cannot rule out the possibility of acts of terrorism, say, if Russia dispatches units of the Black Sea Navy in the Crimea to take part in the Chechnya War. If this be the case, the Ukrainian government must take a perfectly clear and unequivocal stand. In addition, Ukraine must guarantee one hundred percent state control over arms supplies to other countries in order that no weapons reach potential hotbeds of armed conflicts (even if Ukraine would benefit economically).

Volodymyr MALYNKOVYCH, political analyst, director of the Ukrainian branch, International Institute for Humanitarian and Political Studies:

I think that the US tragedy is the most important event of the last fifty years. There is no doubt that it will have a strong impact on the world geopolitical situation. I am confident that what happened in the United States will have no adverse effect on Ukraine, because we have no globalization policy. In fact, the United States started the war of civilizations — I mean the Persian Gulf, Kosovo, and a lot more. We are even said to be living through an era of globalization the American way. What happened on September 11 could be regarded as a kind of response to that American globalization, but of course there is no way to justify this terrorist attack. There was no coincidence about how the terrorists chose their targets, symbols of US strength, rather than more dangerous ones like nuclear power plants. It is evidence that the terrorists are extremely dangerous and that now we have to think not of how to protect ourselves from the enemy, but of how to change the nature of the mutual relations among countries and strengthen cooperation in this respect.

Oleksiy PLOTNYKOV, Ph.D. in economics, research fellow at the Academy of Sciences Institute of World Economy and International Relations:

I don’t think that what happened in the United States can change the geopolitical situation in any way. The United States will retain its superpower status and its huge economic and political potential. What happened once again points out just how vulnerable our world is in the face of terrorism; it shows that the problem must be solved by all countries by means of concerted action, never separately. As for Ukraine, I think that our country cannot be chosen as a target for terrorist attack, because we do not conduct a policy similar to that of the United States, and tightening security these days is a temporary phenomenon.

Oleksandr SUSHKO, director, Ukrainian Center for Peace, Conversion, and Foreign Policy:

The catastrophe in the USA lifts the veil over one of the most pessimistic scenarios of the twenty-first century. This is the undeclared war of the new generation, a war that needs no materiel (where knives can be the only real weapons) and which cannot be dealt with using traditional security mechanisms. In this war, the key combatants can remain anonymous, and methods used prove more than barbarian. Its ideology is the new generation’s totalitarian idea, namely fundamentalism (and not necessarily Islamic) that for the past several decades has shown significant progress, on a par with democracy with its ideology of human rights and the open society. The new war is the result of the planet’s polarization, but not drawing the line between the golden billion and the rest, as believed by some observers. It divides the worlds of tolerance and of violence, and the boundary does not run along national borders or those of civilizations. It is within societies and cultures.

Aggression is concentrating within certain sociocultural and religious communities, it is encouraged by their leaders as a means of mobilizing the people. In this sense, the Palestinians jumping with joy at hearing about the US tragedy, as we watched on television, are a significant indicator.

The United States is the most convenient objective to vent collective hatred upon, because it plays the leader’s role. Without going into detail as precisely how well it plays the part, one must point out that the position of a superpower is far more vulnerable objectively, compared to those of the former world leaders at the pre-information age. Americans are falling prey to US-developed technologies originating from Microsoft and Boeing laboratories along with the Hollywood dream factories. Those behind the acts of terrorism are not only part of that golden billion, they rank among the world’s ten wealthiest people. So far there is nothing to counter their challenge.

What lies ahead is a severe hangover of disillusionment. The hardest thing about the lesson taught by the terrorists is that from now on anyone will feel free to resort to mass aggression against the civilian population of a sovereign country and expect to get away unrecognized and unpunished. There is no doubt about the decay of the political school of realism proposing to guarantee citizens’ safety by just stockpiling and modernizing armaments and strengthening one’s might. Security is a global phenomenon, containing problems that cannot be solved within the boundaries of a single state, even the world leader.

Serhiy TOLSTOV, director, Institute of Political Analysis and International Studies:

Every epoch begins before the people know it. As a rule, they are prompted to realize the fact by a certain significant occurrence. Precisely what has happened [in the United States]. The epoch marked by the final victory of the developed Western hegemony and mounting struggle within the Christian world for democratic progress appears to have exhausted its potential and is declining. Brzezinski was wrong and Huntington right (US political scientist, author of The Clash of Civilizations and the New World Order {1996}, in which he wrote that, while the twentieth century was marked by the confrontation of ideologies, the next century will witness a confrontation of civilizations — Ed.). The line has been drawn between the civilized Christian world and that where killing a stranger, an outsider, is not considered to be anything immoral or sinful; on the contrary it is praised as a way to prove that you are a real man. Under the Clinton administration, the West flirted with Islamic movements like Russia’s Chechens and Albanians in Kosovo. No more. The solidarity of Christian development will prevail over the differences and problems remaining unsolved because of the Cold War. Those passenger jets piloted by terrorists destroyed the very symbol of globalization. If we consider globalization as a phenomenon with a certain positive aspect, one must concentrate on the strengthening of solidarity of the Euro-Atlantic community and establishing forms of cooperation that will help the countries defeated in the Cold War make use of the technological, political, and other attainments of their stronger partners within the boundaries of that community.