Prelude to a new world order?

Something has changed indubitably after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington last September 11. I had the feeling of desolation as on a death in the family. It is not a particular idea or a particular emotion but an experience as if in a trance. Like a death in the family, you wake up the morning after, unable to define or situate oneself because of something missing, of something once taken for granted and part of one’s everyday life that is gone, never to return.

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But what happened was more than a death in the family. Multiply that sorrow a thousand times and it becomes a biblical event. That is what happened. The world changed. The question is: what of the world changed? A way of seeing, for one. For us, Filipinos New York or Washington, far-away lands thousands of miles away became too close to ignore. Suddenly, skyscrapers that symbolized the solidity of American wealth and power were as fragile and as vulnerable as cardboard huts that line our slums. I realized then that the illusion of wealth elsewhere that we merely dream about paradoxically gives us part of our security. America, a settled world as a place that had seemed impregnable was no more. It was as if the notion of New York’s skyscrapers being destroyed in a the flick of an eye also cancelled a symbol of aspiration. The television images of men and women wounded or dying in skyscrapers destroyed the dream. We were now one big, insecure world.

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Would September 11 and the morning after, bring about the new world order that had long been predicted by political gurus? Was Professor Samuel Huntington’s "Clash of Civilizations" a self-fulfilling prophecy not so much about the clash itself as it would be a prelude that would bring about the new world order? It may be uncanny but it was the first President George W. Bush who talked about a new world order after the Iraqi war. That was in January 1991 in his State of the Union address. "The military response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was meant to be a bold statement of international purpose. What is at stake is more than one small country," he said. "It is a big idea. A new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law. Such is a world worthy of our struggle, and worthy of our children’s future."

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The central issue, the senior President Bush said then, is the long-held promise of a new world order," a promise which maintains that brutality will go unrewarded and aggression will meet collective resistance." There are some who would disagree with this new one world order. But in the face of the September 11 events, it does seem that we are being led precisely to that. To its critics, the problem of this new one world order is the corollary that any nation who becomes part of it, just as America would be, would include a readiness to submit to it. Who leads? That is when the problems begin.

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Not long after the senior Bush speech, the cover story of the The Economist on June 28, 1991 entitled The World Order Changeth" said: There should, however, be no illusion that a global police force run by a global democracy is feasible. Those who have carried the winning ideas to the top of the mountain, and now wish to spread them will not allow this process to be vetoed by the semi-converted or by plain toughs…

And if that sounds painless, it is not. The mountaintop is thick with those who would rather not see trade that is liberal, aid that is too principled, or arms control that is too self denying. And America needs to remember that a willingness to involve others is not enough to make a collective world order work. There must also be readiness to submit to it. If America really wants such an order, it will have to be ready to take its complaints to the GATT, finance the multilateral aid agencies, submit itself to the International Court, bow to some system of monitoring of arms exports, and make a habit of consulting the UN. But do Americans want the government of the United States to defer to the United Nations?

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There seems little doubt that with the speech of President George W.Bush (fils) Jr he means war. His demands to the Taliban government to deliver all the leaders of Al Qaeda,- secure Americans, journalists, international aid workers, etc. close all training camps are not only non-negotiable, they are also non-deliverable. On the other hand, he asks for the support not only of the American people but also from the rest of the world. "An attack on one, is an attack on all" may be a call for unity but it could also lead to a new framework of relations between nations around the world to protect civilization. On the surface and on a short term, a war may be divisive but the aftermath of such a confrontation by the US-led anti-terrorist coalition against terrorist individuals and states that harbor them, could evolve into a more cohesive structure not unlike a world government.

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That is of course a long way off. But considering that Professor Samuel Huntington’s book evolved from an article written in the summer of 1993, the development of the idea of a "new one world order" after the September 11 tragedy will be with us before we realize it. This is not to disagree or to criticize such a world order but to make Filipinos more aware and conscious of a political perspective that is taking hold in countries (especially the United States) that have the capability to bring it about. If we must be part of it, we have to be ready for it. This could be the political version of the globalization of trade under the WTO.

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More humility is required. In a new world order, we would all be better off with the cultivation of the virtue of humility. That virtue or its absence may have cost the tragedy and so many lives. I am talking about the little known fact that Filipinos working with the NBI had decoded and deciphered the hard drives found in the Manila apartment of New York bomber Ramzi Youssef sometime in January 1995. Information on projects funded by Osama Bin Laden in the Philippines was found in these drives.

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Project Bojinka foreshadowed New York and Washington terrorist attacks. According to the information, the first plan was to assassinate Pope John Paul II who was then scheduled to visit the Philippines. The second was Project Bojinka, which called for the hijacking of US bound commercial airliners from the Philippines, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Hongkong and Singapore and then crash them into key structures in the United States. The World Trade Center, the White House, the Pentagon, the Transamerica Tower, and the Sears Tower were among the buildings that had been identified in the plans that Filipinos had decoded. Indeed, the hijacking of a Tokyo bound Philippine Airlines flight, aborted by Philippine security personnel was a kind of dry-run.

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Flying lessons in the Philippines. The decoded computer hard disks revealed plans for the first bombing of the World Trade Center in February 1993. The evidence was used to convict Youssef, Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan for the WTC bombing. "Obviously, the original Project Bojinka was modified to give it more significant impact on the USA" .By hijacking planes that originated from within the United States instead of Asia, they made sure that AMERICANS would be killed in the hijacking instead of Asians, which obviously would elicit a stronger reaction from the Americans. And transcontinental flights (East Coast to West Coast) would have more fuel for most of the targets which were on the East Coast.Abdul Hakim Murad admitted that they had been taking flying lessons in the Philippines for Project Bojinka." STAR sources said.

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New set of terrorists. After Yousef and Murad were caught and convicted, a new set of terrorists were trained in the United States (Venice, Florida) for the modified Bojinka. They are afraid that the September 11 airplane crashed would embolden Commander Robot and Commander Sabaya.

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Filipinos’ work was not taken seriously. I can understand why the Filipinos who had worked with the NBI should be peeved that the United States agencies to which the deciphered hard disks were given did not take their work seriously. They must have thought that any deciphering made by nationals from a third-world country could be ignored. "I would have thought that intelligence operatives would have analyzed all the evidence and worked out various scenarios that could have included the modified Bojinka plan. If they had done so, the US would have been prepared for this attack." The STAR source added.

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My e-mail is: [email protected] or [email protected].