[From NYT] Space rangers

It`s only a month into the Bush administration and I`m already tired of listening to its foreign policy. Because it seems to be focused on only one idea, which, so far, doesn`t work — building a "Star Wars" missile shield — against an enemy that, so far, doesn`t exist.

While a day doesn`t go by without the Bush team`s reiterating its plan to build this sci-fi missile shield, the C.I.A. director, George Tenet, has been highlighting some of the more immediate threats to America — to which we have no policy responses.

Mr. Tenet laid out his views most succinctly in Senate testimony last week, entitled "Worldwide Threats to National Security," and they could be summarized as follows. We are increasingly threatened today by a combustible combination of two new forces: the failure of many nations to master modernity — particularly in the Middle East — which is producing a lot of unemployed and angry young people in those countries, combined with the spread of new information technologies, which are super-empowering these angry people in ways that not only threaten the stability of the states they live in but also enable them, as individuals, to threaten America. they don`t need a missile to hit us; they can fire a nuclear mortar from a rowboat off Manhattan.

"As I reflect on the threats to American national security," the C.I.A. director told the Senate, "what strikes me most forcefully is the accelerating pace of change in so many arenas that affect our national security . . . new communications technology that enables the efforts of terrorists and narco-traffickers as surely as it aids law enforcement and intelligence, rapid global population growth that will create new strains in parts of the world least able to cope, the weakening internal bonds in a number of states whose cohesion can no longer be taken for granted, [and] the accelerating growth in missile capabilities in so many parts of the world."

Maybe the best way to understand this new threat environment is to first go see the movie "Thirteen Days," about the Cuban missile crisis, and then reflect on last year`s "Love Bug" computer virus, which, after it was unleashed on the world by two Filipino techies, melted down roughly 10 million computers and $10 billion in data on 7 continents in 24 hours. The Cuban missile crisis was to the cold- war system what the "Love Bug" virus is to today`s globalization system — it was the event that illustrated our most dangerous vulnerability. The Cuban missile crisis illustrated the dangers of a world divided between two nuclear-armed superpowers — both of which were in charge. And the Love Bug virus illustrated the dangers of a world connected — in which no one is in charge. The cold- war era was a two-player game with rational actors. The Love Bug era is a multi-player game with many angry, non-rational actors.

A missile shield, if it can work, may be necessary to protect us in this new world, but it`s hardly sufficient. The only way to even begin to manage this new world is by focusing on precisely the area of foreign policy that the Bush team has the most contempt for: nation-building — helping others restructure their economies and put in place decent, non-corrupt government.

Listen to Mr. Tenet on the Arab world: While everyone is focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said, "Population pressures, growing public access to information and the limited prospects for economic development will have a profound impact on the future of the Middle East. In many places in the Arab world, average citizens are becoming increasingly restive and getting louder. Through access to the Internet and other communication, a restive public is increasingly capable of taking action without any identifiable leadership or organizational structure."

Our ability to promote nation- building is limited and should be approached with great humility. But that doesn`t mean we have nothing to offer or can`t galvanize others. We will be affected by failed states with super-empowered angry people a lot sooner than we`re going to face a rogue missile from North Korea. Mr. Bush is speaking about foreign policy this week. This is a good time for him to demonstrate that while he has his father`s foreign policy advisers, he doesn`t have his father`s foreign policy, because he certainly doesn`t have his father`s world.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/13/opinion/13FRIE.html)