Will Hutton
This is not a good moment for liberalism. The charge list is long. It is the appeasers' doctrine, the creed that inhibits the comprehensive response to a heinous deed. It feeds the moral relativism that sustains the pernicious argument that in some way America deserved the horrors of 11 September. It refuses to distinguish good from evil. Liberalism be damned.
The opposite is true. The weeks since 11 September have seen unprecedented agreement about the necessity to eliminate global terrorism, using whatever military force is necessary. That is not at issue. The debate rather is how far this war should go, how it should be prosecuted and what international framework is needed to ensure a lasting victory. Washington's conservative hawks are ratcheting up the price for their support, branding 'liberals' as part of the problem. If liberalism did automatically lead to the views ascribed to it the criticism would be justified. It does not. Hard liberalism offers the best route to success, and hard liberals must stand up for their case as aggressively as their critics.
I use the term hard liberalism deliberately. This is not the doctrine that believes in always turning the other cheek and giving ground. It is unrelenting in its pursuit of the progressive ideals of justice, equity and liberty. Liberalism properly understood, an insistence on universal values that apply to all societies, is the philosophy under which we can be both aggressive and just. It will allow us to win hearts and minds in the Islamic world. We need voices across the EU, the US and beyond who will come together and fight for our fundamental principles.
Although the US has admirably set about building a multilateral coalition to launch the campaign against terrorism, and avoided any self-defeating immediate act of retaliation, George Bush is under siege from the ascendant conservative right. Last week's open letter from 41 conservative foreign policy experts, including Richard Perle, chairman of the Defence Policy Board, defines the argument. They want to build on Bush's commitment in his speech to Congress that 'our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda but will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated'.
This, say the 41, as a minimum should include Hizbollah, retaliation against Syria and Iran if they refuse to cut their ties, and military invasion of Iraq. Others call for unilateral attacks on terrorist cells in Sudan, Libya, Iran and Egypt. The US must keep the capacity to act unilaterally, hence the announcement last week that while it might ask individual Nato states for assistance, the US would, in effect, retain its unilateral capacity to act within what is evidently only nominally a multilateral pact.
Enter hard liberalism. This action must be kept multilateral. American lost lives are not superior to British lost lives or those of any other country. If Britain is the object of a terrorist attack, it is an imperative that we respond aggressively, but within Nato. The successful prosecution of this war demands the active supply of the most precious commodity of all - intelligence. We need not just sullen collaboration from Arab states fearful that they may be engulfed by popular revolt, but their proactive engagement. That, in turn, requires our actions are seen to be legitimate.
This is where the International Criminal Court (ICC) comes into play. American conservatives decry it as the ultimate expression of soft liberalism. They could not be more wrong. The chink in the West's case across the Islamic world is that it is pursuing Western justice. What the court represents is an internationally agreed conception of humanitarian law, and a universal condemnation of crimes against humanity, which 11 September undoubtedly constitutes. Every state suspected of harbouring terrorist cells with global ambitions should be told that Nato will act to turn over terrorists to the ICC. Every EU state should immediately ratify the court and the US, even it hesitates to ratify, should at least accept its legitimacy.
We also have to promise economic and social justice. Life expectancy in Afghanistan is 40 years; 75 per cent of Afghans have no access to safe water or basic health care. Extreme poverty does not automatically generate terrorism, but it is a precondition. Alleviation of the refugee crisis and provision of food is estimated to cost $584 million in the next six months; reconstruction along Marshall Aid lines will cost 20 times that. The West must make the explicit promise that this is part of the settlement.
But more than that, hard liberalism has to confront what conservatives will not. The emergence of global capitalism has certainly offered a few newly industrialising countries the opportunity for rapid economic development, but it is also associated with inequality. Private capital does not flow automatically in a free market to poor Islamic countries; instead, they are shunned. Their internal structures and culture may militate against economic success, but the consequences rebound on us.
US official aid flows have halved in the last 15 years and at $29 per head are the lowest in the OECD by a huge margin. The sense of injustice that feeds the anti-globalisation movement inflames poverty-stricken Islam. We need a better response than lecturing them that globalisation is good for them if only they knew it. We need to be seen to be making genuine sacrifices to alleviate poverty. Hard liberals must stand behind the defence of liberty at home. The surveillance of emails, mobile phone calls, bank accounts and the launch of ID cards compromise the principles on which our civilisation stands.
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