The Post-American World: Release 2.0 Read Online Free PDF Page A

internal Iranian power struggle among clerics and nonclerics—leads to hair-raising but absurd predictions, like Bernard Lewis’s confident claim that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad planned to mark an auspicious date on the Islamic calendar (August 22, 2006) by ending the world . (Yes, he actually wrote that.)
    The ideological watchdogs have spent so much time with the documents of jihad that they have lost sight of actual Muslim societies. Were they to step back, they would see a frustration with the fundamentalists, a desire for modernity (with some dignity and cultural pride for sure), and a search for practical solutions—not a mass quest for immortality through death. When Muslims travel, they flock by the millions to see the razzle-dazzle of Dubai, not the seminaries of Iran. The minority that wants jihad is real, but it operates within societies where such activities are increasingly unpopular and irrelevant.
    In the West, the effects of terrorism have diminished with each additional attack. After September 11, global financial markets collapsed and did not return to September 10 levels for two months. After the Madrid bombings in 2004, the Spanish market took a month to recover. After the London bombings in July 2005, British stocks were back to prebombing levels in twenty-four hours. The broader economic picture is similar. After 9/11, the United States lost hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity. The next large attack, the Bali nightclub bombing in 2002, had a similarly dramatic effect on the Indonesian economy, with tourism vanishing and trade and investment drying up for months. A year later, after another Indonesian bombing, this time at the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, the market dropped only briefly, and the Indonesian economy suffered little damage. Bombings in Morocco and Turkey in 2003 had similarly small effects. The 2004 bombings in Spain and 2005 bombings in Britain did nothing to undermine growth.
    Of course, things would be different if a major terrorist organization were to acquire significant weapons of mass destruction. A nuclear attack could result in mass panic and a broader breakdown. But such weapons are harder to get than many think, and a more sustained effort from Washington could make it nearly impossible to acquire them in any quantity. Biological terror may seem most worrying because of the ease of acquiring biological agents, but dispersing them effectively is difficult and may lack the dramatic results terrorists crave. And none of this is to suggest that anti-terror activities are unnecessary, but rather that careful, calibrated, intelligent policies are likely to be quite successful.
    In some unspoken way, people have recognized that the best counterterrorism policy is resilience. Terrorism is unusual in that it is a military tactic defined by the response of the onlooker. If we are not terrorized, then it doesn’t work. And, from New York and London to Mumbai and Jakarta, people are learning this fact through experience and getting on with life even amid the uncertainty. The most likely scenario—a series of backpack or truck bombings in the United States—would be a shock, but in a couple of weeks its effects would fade and the long-term consequences would likely be minimal. In vast, vigorous, and complex societies—the American economy is now $14 trillion—problems in a few places do not easily spill over. Modern civilization may be stronger than we suspect.
    The challenges from rogue states are also real, but we should consider them in context. The GDP of Iran is 1/43 that of the United States, its military spending 1/72 that of the Pentagon. * If this is 1938, as many conservatives argue, then Iran is Romania, not Germany. North Korea is even more bankrupt and dysfunctional. Its chief threat—the one that keeps the Chinese government awake at night—is that it will implode, flooding the region with refugees. That’s power? These countries can cause