As national leaders plan a response to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., members of the Duke community continued campus discussion about potential actions at a forum Monday night.
The nature of international terrorism and how best to respond to the attacks dominated the forum, which included four panelists. The professors discussed issues ranging from national security to international law. About 100 people attended the event at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy, the first of four planned discussions.
Robert Keohane, James B. Duke professor of political science, said the United States should precede any response by securing backing from other countries to single out suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan, the country thought to support him. "The United States should build a very broad coalition against a very narrow target," he said. "It's important that this struggle not be seen as the West against the Arab states."
Keohane said the United Nations would be the preferred arena for building such a coalition and added that the organization would likely support the use of force in fighting terrorism. He cited two recent U.N. resolutions, one calling on nations to fight terrorism, and another rebuking Afghanistan's ruling Taliban for training terrorists.
But those resolutions do not necessarily justify military retaliation, said John French, associate professor of history." Afghanistan seems to be the most target-impoverished country in the world," he said. "The idea of what we're going to target is very unclear to me."
French urged the U.S. government to not rush into a military response and try other means before considering the war moral.
Keohane stressed United States' right to defend itself, noting that domestic political circumstances have helped moderate the situation.
"We're very fortunate to have a hawkish administration in power, because the far right is giving the administration a lot of time to decide what it wants to do," Keohane said. "Imagine how the right, including those in Congress, would react if Al Gore was in power and, 13 days after the terrorist attacks, the administration had done nothing but talk."
Any response by the current administration must also be coupled with preparation for and prevention of more attacks, said Bruce Jentleson, director of the Sanford Institute and one-time advisor to former vice president Gore. He stressed the need to focus more on emergency rescue, public health protections for biological weapons and stricter border enforcement.
"[Anti-terrorism] needs to stop being a stepchild in how we spend our $300 billion defense budget," Jentleson said. "It is not a matter of vengeance but a matter of purpose."
Each panelist seemed to favor treating the attacks as some form of criminal action, in addition to or instead of treating them as military assaults. Madeline Morris, professor of law and director of the Duke-Geneva Institute for Transnational Law, said this approach may have several problems. Not only would the United States first have to obtain custody of the suspects, but it would also have to find a suitable court to try them.
If Afghanistan were to refuse to hand over bin Laden, the Taliban could satisfy international law by trying the suspected terrorist itself, Morris said. That option would be moot, she added, if Afghanistan were involved in the acts.
Morris suggested that other nations may reject the United States as a trial location because of bias in the court system. In that case, a third-party court may be established, but even that may have its drawbacks. "There could be an ad hoc court established to hold a trial, but the U.S. might understandably have reservations about convening such a court. These attacks very much had a direct effect on U.S. foreign policy," she said.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.