Three UC Davis faculty members tackled the strategic, cultural and economic implications of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks for America in a noontime lecture last week.
The presentation, hosted by the Institute of Governmental Affairs and the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, opened a series this quarter on the events leading to, and following from, the Sept. 11 attacks.
The United States, in its fight against the terrorists, faces a far more complicated situation than it ever has in war before, explained political science associate professor Emily Goldman, who kicked off the first lecture.
She described the country’s current enemies as a shadowy network with intense followers and no fixed assets – determined in their mission and hard to track.
"We’ve never gone to war against a network," she said. "We’re not sure how to go about disabling it."
In this war, Goldman said, the United States must also do more than display military might against its aggressors. It must also maintain the friendship of moderate Middle Eastern countries and preserve the faith of Americans – who don’t like long, drawn-out wars or casualties – in its military mission, she said.
The events of Sept. 11, said John Hall, sociology professor and director of the Center for History, Society and Culture, were "abhorrent to civilized life," so much so that Americans are having difficulty not only understanding what happened but also how the country should proceed.
"Whatever the aims of the terrorists, they have succeeded in altering social life, political agendas and economic realities – in the U.S. and the Middle East," he said.
Drawing on his study of the religious culture of war, Hall described America as having made the jump from "ordinary time" to "apocalyptic time" when, though we might not have reached Armageddon, history has been seriously altered by human forces.
Our world, Hall said, has been "shot through with chips of Messianic time," such as when the image of a clear, bright morning of Sept. 11 was punctured with images of terror at the World Trade Center.
The global situation that created the context for terrorists’ actions will be much debated, but one thing is clear, Hall said.
"The absence of democratic institutions and the movement toward social justice that comes with them create favorable conditions for an apocalyptic reading of history," he said.
In wrapping up the discussion, Steven Sheffrin, dean of social sciences, focused on a very practical aspect of the Sept. 11 fall-out: the impact it had on the American economy.
And the answer, he said, is it won’t have effect in the long term. The stock market had begun to slide sharply in August, and consumer confidence began to slide as well with the general economic slowdown the United States was facing.
After Sept. 11, Sheffrin said, "the stock market fell, but it is difficult to see any dramatic break in the data," suggesting an even more precipitous decline, he said.
The market kept on its sharp downturn for several weeks following Sept. 11 but has recently bounced back to pre-terrorist attack level, Sheffrin said.
With the still poor high-tech economy, investments will come back slowly, he added. He noted, though, that the economic prospects of the country are not, bad. Sheffrin predicted positive growth in the economy by the first or second quarter of 2002.