The IDC

“THE WEST LACKS CONFIDENCE IN ITS CAUSE;
VICTORY ITSELF HAS LOST ITS IMPORTANCE”
- Dr. Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum; Taube Distinguished
Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution
wrong judgment call bringing catastrophic results while non-action can
be equally catastrophic. The withdrawal from Somalia in the mid-1990’s
laid the groundwork for the Rwandan genocide; leaving bin Laden free to
operate in Afghanistan led to al-Qaeda’s growth in operational capacity.
Dr. Sergey Kurginyan, president of the International Public Foundation
Experimental Creative Center, Russian Federation, pointed to the problem
in terms of civilization being split regarding its willingness to recognize
the stakes of this war. “Half of civilization is fighting the barbarians and
the other half is playing games with them.” Within this post-modern view,
“barbarians are not enemies but can be used or even become partners.” Yet
there can be no victory over terror if barbarians are left to operate as part
of a solution.
Mike Smith, head of the Counter-Terrorism
Committee Executive Directorate (CTED)
of the United Nations, asserted that the UN
has a part to play in this fight
Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre
for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore, described the hostile and
rugged terrain along the Afghan-Pakistani (Af-Pak) border
Co-keynote Speaker Tzipi Livni, MK, chairperson of the
Kadima Party and chairperson of the Opposition, at the
conference’s opening ceremony
Other speakers illustrated the ramifications of the contrast in approaches.
A workshop panel held in memory of Prof. Ehud Sprinzak, founding
dean of the Lauder School at IDC, addressed the issue of “Terrorism and
Democracy - Do Our Values Protect Us or Threaten Us?” According to Dr.
Peter Berkowitz, Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow Hoover Institution,
Stanford University Washington Office, our thinking about justice and war
has not caught up with the technology and other innovations of the war
imposed by terror.
9th AnnuAl ict cOnference
Dr. Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum; Taube Distinguished
Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, offered reflections on the
changes in how the world regards warfare in this new age of terror, with
many guiding assumptions turned on their heads. In this post WWII
period, he noted, the West lacks confidence in its cause; victory itself has
lost its importance. Territory is no longer the objective of war, he said, but
has been replaced by the ideal of moral standing. He termed this approach
“war as social work,” chasing enemy fugitives such as Saddam or Milosevic
in order to rescue those countries from the injustices they had suffered
under their regimes. Not only are sieges rare, enemies are funded rather
than deprived, noting that all those who are pro-Israel are funding the
Palestinians. It is now the winner who pays reparations, not the loser, the
enemy thus losing its incentive to end its hostilities.
Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan, former IDF deputy chief of staff and former national
security adviser, used the example of Israel’s security fence as a case study
in the planning and implementation of counter-terrorism policy. One big
problem in democracies, he contended, is not the constraints of democracy,
Prof. Asa Kasher, Laura Schwarz-Kipp Chair in
Professional Ethics and Philosophy of Practice, Tel-
Aviv University
IDC Founder and President Prof. Uriel Reichman; and Dr. Boaz Ganor, founder
and executive director of ICT and deputy dean of IDC’s Lauder School of
Government, Diplomacy & Strategy
nor even decision making, but coalition maintenance. And when one must
maintain a coalition, the easiest path is to sit and take no action.
An additional way of not taking responsibility, Dayan continued, is to
appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court, which has ruled regarding the route of
parts of the fence although not against the legality of its existence. High
fences may or may not make good neighbors, but they keep some of our
citizens alive, he noted. While the fence does affect the lives and routines of
IS NO HUMAN RIGHT MORE BASIC, MORE IMPORTANT, OR MORE SACRED
IDC Winter 2010 >
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