RESPONSE TO TERRORISM AND REPORT FROM EUROPE

by Ronald J. Glossop

I. Introduction.

A. Despite the announced topic for today, "Report from Europe," I think that it would we

very inappropriate for me not to say at least something about the terrorist attack on the

World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon near Washington last Tuesday.

B. Consequently, I will address the terrorism issue first and then discuss Europe.

II. What does the terrorist attack mean?

A. President Bush: We are "at war" against terrorism and terrorists.

1. War is group against group using violence to determine which group prevails.

2. The President puts this in terms of "the civilized world" against the terrorists, but the

terrorists are likely to view it as a struggle for power between a relatively small group of

knowledgeable, morally committed Muslims and a relatively small group of powerful, rich

and not very religious Western political and financial leaders.

3. The President wants to unite the all national governments and the economically

powerful of the world against a threat to their control from relatively powerless people who

refuse to accept the "new world order" dominated by Western values as individual freedom

of expression, universal and equal rights for all, democratic political institutions, and a

global capitalistic (free-market) economic system.

4. The terrorists want to establish a Muslim regime, especially in Arab countries, based on

their particular fundamentalistic interpretation of the Koran. The United States is their main

enemy, but other important targets are the Muslim regimes which cooperate with the

United States such as those in Saudia Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan.

5. The we-are-at-war viewpoint tends to take attention off the actions of individuals and

smaller groups and to direct it mainly to governments and larger groups. Thus from this

point of view it is not just Osama bin Ladin who is to be regarded as the enemy or even his

group but rather terrorism generally.

6. Since the country and culture are being attacked, we are expected to be their defenders.

We are expected to support leaders of the country and culture into which we happen to

have been born. But in fact we can choose instead to be members of the developing global

community and consider what is happening from that viewpoint.

B. Advocates of global community see this terrorist attack an indication that the rapidly

developing world needs a better way of dealing with group conflicts, namely, that we must

enforce the no-violence law against individual violators rather than groups. Conducting war

must be replaced by police action and judicial procedures. There is a vast difference

between engaging in war against "the enemy" (who is to be conquered or destroyed) and

supporting law-enforcement officials going after individual suspected criminals (who are to

be arrested, tried in a court, and then punished on the basis of the verdict).

1. An important way of preventing violent acts against a whole group of people is to make

sure that the individuals in that group who commit violence are punished as individuals for

their acts.

2. Within our national societies we seek to eliminate the resort to violence as a way of

working out group conflicts by focusing on the actions of the individuals who use violence

or encourage the use of violence.

3. In the global society we have just begun to focus on punishing individuals who commit

violence rather than trying to punish the whole group (though we have been trying to

punish the whole country of Iraq). Two good examples of this new focus are the ad hoc

War Crimes Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda which have been

established by the U.N. Security Council.

4. An even more important example of this strategy of focusing on individuals who violate

the laws is the ongoing effort (still opposed by some members of the U.S. Congress) to

create a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC). Such a permanent court would

have a deterrent effect which the ad hoc tribunals do not have.

5. Of course, such a court would at least theoretically have the capability of calling

Americans into court for trial, and that disturbs some people. They believe that Americans

should be tried only in American courts (though in fact Americans can be and already have

been tried for crimes committed in other countries).

6. The ticklish point is that even leaders of countries could be hauled before the ICC. But

that is exactly what must be the case if individuals such as Saddam Hussein are going to be

deterred.

7. If we are going to shift from a we-are-at-war viewpoint to a

let's-focus-on-individual-criminals viewpoint at the global level, we need to have not only

the proposed ICC but other courts for individuals in other areas. For example, we need

courts to enforce laws against individuals who make and/or possess nuclear or who violate

international laws to protect the environment.

C. But the issue is not only one of enforcing laws against individual violators. The global

community must also go on to address the issue of how the laws are made.

1. Within countries we regard laws as legitimate only if they have been enacted by

law-makers elected to their positions by the people being ruled. It is only governments

which rule with the consent of the governed which can claim the right to punish individuals

who violate their laws.

2. In the global community, international laws are made by treaties ratified by the national

governments, but they apply only to those countries whose governments have ratified the

treaties. Many national governments do not rest on the consent of the governed.

Furthermore there is no police force to arrest the individuals accused of violating the laws

and except in the special cases mentioned there are no courts to determine guilt or

innocence or what is an appropriate penalty.

3. The ad hoc Criminal Tribunals and the projected International Criminal Court have

jurisdiction over only 3 kinds of crimes: (1) war crimes, (2) genocide, and (3) crimes

against humanity. The definition of these crimes is based on international treaties and past

rulings by international courts.

4. As we develop a more effective way of enforcing international law against individual

violators, the issue of how the laws are created is going to come in for more attention. If

we want to have legitimate law for the global community, we will need to create some kind

of world parliament which reflects the consent of the governed. We need a law-making

process where all citizens of the global community have a chance to be represented, not

just those in certain parts of the world who have large economic resources or political

power within national governments.

5. Whether we like it or not, we must face the issue of the economic disparity, a disparity

which is much greater on the global level than within our country. In his message to almost

1700 Esperantists gathered in Zagreb at the end of July, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi

Annan noted that in a world where technology is connecting people all over the world over

half of humanity has never made or received a telephone call.

III. That observation will provide a transition to the second part of my talk for today, a

report from Europe based on my three and a half weeks there attending Esperanto

conferences in Croatia and visiting Esperanto friends in Italy and France.

A. Perhaps I should take just a moment to explain what Esperanto is for those who may

not be acquainted with it. Esperanto is a designed language created by Ludwig Lazerus

Zamenhof, a Jewish Polish eye-doctor in the 1880s. The formal publication of the project

occurred in 1887, just two years after the invention of the gasoline-powered car. There

have been many efforts to develop a designed language for international communication

(most of them after Zamenhof's project), but Esperanto alone has developed a community

of users of the language. At first most of the activity involved use of the written language

in correspondence and in the publication of books and magazines, but use of the spoken

language has increased as long-distance travel has become more common. There are now

maybe 300 families that use Esperanto as the main language in the home. I stayed with

such a family in Tromso, Norway last May where the husband was originally from France

and the wife originally from Russia.

B. No language is easy to learn, but as a totally phonetic, completely rule-guided, designed

language based on Latin and other European languages, Esperanto can be learned about 4

times faster than French or Spanish and 10 times faster than Chinese. It has a system of

rule-guided prefixes and suffixes which makes it possible to increase your vocabulary very

rapidly. It also serves as a great introduction to foreign language study for children.

C. From the beginning, the aim of the language was to support peace by allowing different

national and ethnic groups to communicate with each other rather than fight. Since 1905

the Esperantists have each year (except when prevented by the world wars) had an

international meeting called the Universala Kongreso (Universal Congress). The attendance

is usually between 1,000 and 2500 from 40-50 countries, so the congress this year in

Zagreb was very average.

D. Esperanto is more than a language. It has generated a community of globally-minded

persons who are very committed to helping one another, something like a church or lodge.

For example, when I was in Bologna, Italy, I had to catch a train at 4:00 in the morning as

I started my trip to France. Gianfranco Tomba, my Esperanto friend there, insisted on

taking me to the train station in his car even though I could readily have walked from the

hotel less than a mile away. That was after he and another Esperantist had escorted me

around Bologna and Florence during the previous two days. The Esperanto community

consists of about two million persons world wide. Each year there is a Jarlibro (Yearbook)

that gives us names, addresses, phone numbers, and so on, of contact persons in almost

every major city in the world.

E. One of the most unexpected experiences I had occurred in Paris where I had to change

trains. As we were getting ready to leave the station, a Chinese woman came into the train

accompanied by an older Frenchmen. I noticed that they were speaking in Esperanto.

Without knowing that I was an Esperantist she sat just across from me in the train. I had a

chance to talk with her in Esperanto for about a half hour before she had to get off the

train.

IV. For an American Europe represents both the old and the new.

A. Physical structures, usually of stone, often are over 500 years old. The castles and

churches make the Middle Ages and Renaissance seem not that long ago. At special events

children and teen-agers do folk dances that date back at least a hundred years. Nationalism

and devotion to the old national cultures are alive and well.

B. At the same time, it is evident that big changes are occurring. A new currency, the

Euro, is coming at the beginning of the year, and even now prices must be given in Euros

as well as the national currency. The old art work and buildings are there, but the markets

are full of the latest consumer goods, even in Croatia. The architecture of the old churches

is phenomenal, but they are visited much more by tourists than by worshippers. The old

Churches are much like museums. Government-paid clergy have created a situation where

there is little motivation to attract believers to services, and the state-sponsored

non-religious educational system has undermined traditional religious beliefs.

C. The movement toward a European union is going forward but will meet much

resistance, especially outside of the big cities. Germany is pushing hard for a truly

integrated Europe like the U.S. while France and England are more protective of their

national-sovereignty. Many ethnic minority groups are very supportive of the European

Union as a way of restraining their national governments. An open issue is where the

boundaries of Europe will be. The farther east, the better for the Germans, as the British

and French become more peripheral and the Germans become an even more dominant

force in the Union.

D. Europe is getting Americanized. McDonald's is everywhere. American music and films

and television are dominant. Esperanto would be a great solution for the language problem

in Europe, but in fact English is being supported by all the national governments. European

Esperantists complain that the influence of English is making it very difficult to get students

to study any other language, even though English is much more difficult to learn.

E. Americans are regarded as arrogant and brash, unsophisticated, and overly prudish but

also as effective problem-solvers, reliable both individually and collectively, and

superficially friendly. There is gratitude to Americans for their help in both World Wars

and in the Cold War. The recent terrorism has generated much pro-American and

anti-Arab sentiment.

F. Not many people take religion seriously. American puritanical views on sexual morality

are mocked. (Why all that concern about Clinton and Monica?) The churches serve mainly

as places for rituals like baptism, weddings, and funerals, and they are losing even some of

that market. Some U.S.-style evangelicals, Mormons, and other religious groups are

gaining some adherents but are not having much of a general impact on the society.

G. Europe has moved away from the old Christian culture led by the nobility to a new

democratic Europe which lacks any firm philosophical/ideological foundation. Europeans

seem unenthusiastically resigned to following the lead of the United States. In the field of

religion they seem ripe for UU-style churches based on free thinking, progressive social

views, and tolerance for diversity, but for the most part they're not there.