The root causes of international terrorism can be summarized as follows:
1. After the Cold War, ideological conflicts gave way to ethnic and religious conflicts with cultural values as the dividing line. This kind of conflict is a hotbed of international terrorism;
2. The United States has become the only empire in the world, and its unilateralism policy has aroused the dissatisfaction and hatred of other countries in the world, especially the weak and underdeveloped countries;
3. The conflict between western cultural values and eastern cultural values is the catalyst of Islamic fundamentalism and international terrorism;
4. Globalization makes the economically underdeveloped Muslim countries poorer and poorer, and Islamic terrorism is a freak produced by the combination of the money accumulated by Arab countries by oil and poor Muslim countries with backward political culture;
5. America's pro-Israel Middle East policy has aroused anti-American and anti-Semitic feelings in Arab countries, which have been extremely reflected in fundamentalism;
6. In some Muslim countries, education is extremely underdeveloped, and most of the education for young people is provided free of charge by religious schools, which are the bases for instilling fundamentalism and jihad ideas and driving Muslim youth to follow religious fanaticism.
The United States ranks first in the world in both hard power and soft power, becoming the only superpower after the Cold War. As a superpower, the biggest strategic problem it faces is how to prevent all countries in the world from uniting against it. As Josef Joffe, editor of Time magazine in Germany, said, the United States is now very much like Germany in Bismarck after its reunification in 187 1. The strength of the United States is unprecedented, but no country can match it. The global defense expenditure is about 800 billion US dollars, and the defense expenditure of the United States accounts for 380 billion US dollars, which is more than the sum of 14 countries with the largest defense expenditure in the world. The United States far exceeds its allies in weapons technology, so it is prone to unilateralism.
In essence, the unilateralism of the United States in many aspects is driven by its global interests. In the eyes of the United States, global security is the security of the American empire. "The West is and will continue to try to maintain its dominant position and safeguard its own interests by defining its own interests as those of the' world community'." Unilateral diplomatic strategy can easily make the United States a target of public criticism. Unilateralism makes it offend or lose allies and friends. At the same time, its unilateralism in the Middle East has aroused widespread envy in the Arab world. According to a worldwide survey conducted by the International Herald Tribune and the Pew Research Center from 2001112 to13, 77% people outside the United States believe that the United States is unilateral in the war on terrorism. As far as the international fight against terrorism is concerned, the United States needs to establish the broadest and multi-level United front, which also requires the United States to practice multilateralism, pay more attention to consensus and pay more attention to the interests of other countries. The war on terrorism in the future will be an opportunity for China and the United States to improve relations.
Paul kennedy, a professor at Yale University, once thought that all empires in history were doomed due to excessive expansion. Excessive worry about one's own security and excessive military expenditure are the domestic factors leading to the demise of the empire. Daniel Warner, vice president of the Graduate School of International Relations, believes that the United States is now in line with paul kennedy's description of the signs of imperial decline. The excessive expansion of the United States is also manifested in the current war on terrorism. First of all, the United States will expand the target from the direct perpetrators to the countries covered by its "axis of evil" theory. Secondly, the goal of this war is infinite in time and space. This is a war without geographical boundaries and time norms. Daniel Warner believes that the Soviet Union has gone to ruin because of excessive expansion, and the United States is likely to follow suit.
The conflict between western cultural values and eastern cultural values is one of the reasons for Muslim terrorism. Needless to say, the value of western culture is formed in the development of modern human society. It has the characteristics of modernity. On the one hand, it is the product of the development of advanced productive forces, on the other hand, it has various drawbacks and defects of modernity.
For most eastern Muslim peoples with very backward economy, underdeveloped productivity and backward culture, the cultural values of western liberalism are tantamount to a scourge. They think that western culture is materialistic, corrupt, decadent and immoral, and try their best to resist the influence of western culture on Muslim lifestyle. In American society, the divorce rate is as high as 50% In the 1960s, the West, especially the United States, formed a wave of sexual liberation. The openness and tolerance of American society to sex is unacceptable to traditional conservative oriental culture. This has formed a sharp irreconcilable conflict with Islamic culture, which keeps sex secret. Will undoubtedly be regarded as heresy. Similarly, the rise of feminism after the 1970s had a great influence on Islamic culture. In traditional Islamic culture, women have no status. The situation of women under Taliban rule is an example. It is completely illegal for the United States to set off a wave of feminist rights. American individualism transcends eastern family values, and only 6% of grandparents live in grandchildren's families. This is also incredible in the traditional oriental culture that values family values. The uncontrolled industrial production of modern American capitalism has caused great damage to the global climate and the biochemical function of the atmosphere. The population of the United States accounts for only 5% of the world's population, but it emits 25% of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. People have doubts about the American way of life at the expense of nature. All this has undoubtedly alienated the United States from the Arab world in terms of cultural values and has become the cultural motive force for a few terrorists to carry out terrorist means. As samuel huntington said, "The end of the Cold War did not end the conflict, but produced a new identity based on culture and a new mode of conflict between different cultural groups (different civilizations on the broadest level)." "After the end of the Cold War, culture replaced ideology and became a magnet for attraction and exclusion."
Muslim fundamentalism is a fanatical religious impulse, which mainly points at the United States. It refers to its Judaism-Christianity tradition. Whether the United States likes it or not, the terrorism launched by fundamentalism against the United States has a strong religious motive of anti-Christianity and anti-Semitism. For example, when the Imam of a mosque in Hamburg preached to "9. 1 1" terrorist Atta and others, he said that "the throats of Christians and Jews should be split." Broadly speaking, the west is facing a different civilization-Islamic civilization, while Islamic civilization is facing an incomparably powerful and expanding western civilization, especially American civilization. In the process of globalization, these two civilizations are inevitably in a more acute conflict. This conflict has given Islamic civilization a deep sense of crisis. One result of the conflict is that some Islamic societies are more self-enclosed and afraid of modernization. One powerful, one weak, one advanced and one backward determines that Islamic fundamentalism can only resort to covert terrorism.
Globalization has marginalized some Muslim countries and separated individuals from the past, but turned to poverty and fell to the bottom of the social and economic ladder. Overpopulation and unbalanced consumption of wealth and resources make many poor people in the world unable to enjoy the benefits brought by modernization. In fact, only when all people can enjoy the fruits of human civilization and the beautiful life brought by human creation, otherwise no country's people and a country will truly prosper and truly enjoy security. True globalization should be pluralistic, global, democratic and equal. Under the framework of global democracy, all unique national cultures, big or small, have the right to exist and develop. Globalization means interdependence and mutual need. Only this kind of thinking is conducive to the common survival of mankind.
The opposition between the United States and bin Laden reflects the conflict between the rich and the poor in the world. When people and culture are too embarrassed, driven by strange beliefs, extreme ideas may appear. The roots of extremist organizations such as Al Qaeda can be found in abandoned and forgotten people all over the world: ethnic division and people being deprived of public rights. In the modern urbanization movement, millions of people in developing countries have moved from rural areas to cities, becoming urban poor and living at the bottom of society. From 10 in 2000 to 10 in 2006, the number of refugees caused by war in the world reached1490,000, an increase of 400,000 over 2000. The number of refugees still detained in our country is 22 million. The number of Afghan and Palestinian refugees reached 4 million respectively, accounting for more than half of the world's war refugees. Islamic fundamentalism grew up in this poor and backward land. According to a survey conducted by the International Herald Tribune and the Pew Research Center, 52% of non-Americans believe that American policies have widened the gap between the rich and the poor in the world, which is the main factor for these countries to oppose the United States. As far as the social foundation of terrorism is concerned, the wealth gap is one of the causes of terrorism.
However, among western scholars, some people think that international terrorism has nothing to do with poverty. For example, Alan Krueger, an economist at Princeton University, believes that there is no direct connection between terror and poverty. After investigating 129 militants who died in Saeki in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he found that their economic level exceeded the poverty line, and they all had secondary or higher education. He also found that it is not the poor and uneducated groups in Palestine who particularly hate Israel; Most Israeli settlers who attack Palestine are rich.
A survey of 350 terrorists reported from 1966 to 1976 belonging to 18 terrorist organization shows that two thirds of them have received higher education. 1980, an Egyptian social scientist visited Islamic extremists in prison and found that they were all educated and belonged to the rising class in society. In his book National Interest, Daniel Pipes showed that most radicals in the Middle East came from middle-class families.
This is one side of the problem. There is another side to the problem. Even though Hezbollah activists are educated, most of their education is received in religious colleges, which is equivalent to terrorist training camps. For example, in Pakistan, poor children attend Madras School, which provides free accommodation and books. It is these schools that have trained Taliban and jihadists.
According to the World Bank's investigation on the world conflicts after 1960, the economy has developed, the population pressure has decreased, children over 10 can go to school, the economy is diversified, and the possibility of civil war has decreased. Bin Laden survived in Afghanistan because the chaotic and incompetent authorities provided him with great freedom. In this regard, terror is related to poverty.
Kruger believes that for economic reasons, the poor are most likely to have the motivation to commit ordinary crimes, while the educated are most likely to engage in terrorism because they have complex ideas and form political passion. However, in order to reduce this political passion against the United States, reduce social injustice in Muslim countries, and promote local governments to be more open-minded, just and democratic, it is still crucial. The United States should pay more attention to the well-being of people in Islamic countries. All these are still directly or indirectly related to poverty reduction. Therefore, in order to reduce international terrorism, it is still necessary to provide assistance to poor Muslim countries.
America's support for Israel in the Middle East is the main reason why Arabs hate America. Arabs hate America not from today. This hatred has a long history and is deeply rooted, especially after the United States implemented the anti-terrorism strategy, Israel hitchhiked and launched its war on terrorism against Palestinians. This policy of exchanging violence for violence has intensified anti-American and anti-Semitic feelings in the Arab world. For example, according to the Tribune Herald, American support for Israel's military operations in the occupied territories triggered a wave of boycotts of American goods throughout the Arab world. Organizations calling for boycotting American goods through the Internet and SMS are mostly non-governmental organizations, such as student groups. Call on people on the internet to boycott McDonald's, Starbucks and Microsoft in particular. According to the survey data of International Herald Tribune and Pew Research Center, most people outside the United States believe that Islamic fundamentalism is a response to American Israeli policy. Up to 95% of Middle Eastern people think so.
At the same time, the change of American Jews' attitude towards Bush also illustrates this problem from another side. In the 2000 general election, 80% of Jewish voters voted for Gore, leaning towards the Democratic Party. However, after 17 months, American Jewish organizations turned to support Bush. As Howard Cole, chairman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said, this was because of "Bush's deep sympathy for Israel".
Israel's occupation of Palestinian land is the source of humiliation and humiliation for Palestinians and even the whole Arab world. It can be said that if there is no reconciliation between Palestine and Israel, if there is no way for the two sides to coexist peacefully, and if Israel does not retreat to the border before June 4, 1967, then the anti-Israel sentiment and the hatred for the United States derived from this sentiment will continue, and international terrorism will not disappear. Islamic fundamentalism has become a combination of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. They call Israelis and Americans "pagans", which shows that they are worried that the holy places in Saudi Arabia will be desecrated by American soldiers and pagans. As Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the planners of the "9. 1 1" incident, confessed in his self-defense, their goal was to "destroy the United States".
In some Muslim countries, politics and religion are integrated. Arabs live in the unity of politics and religion and are controlled by religious elites. They cannot tolerate the spirit of freedom and different ideas and people. Lack of knowledge and freedom has become a chronic disease in the Arab world. Such a closed-door cultural environment is a hotbed of religious fundamentalism and the best environment for cultivating the road to mourning the martyrs. Jessica Stern of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government believes that terrorist leaders use religion as a means to mobilize their parishioners and express their political and economic demands through special religious language. Their purpose is to make followers carry out a "holy war" in spirit. They use religion to spread their anti-American and anti-Semitic ideas and encourage followers to pursue higher religious goals through violence. Terrorists desperately follow their ideas, some out of spiritual and emotional needs, some because of extreme poverty and economic needs. They believe that although they are unhappy in this world, they will be reborn in the "next world" after the explosion. The yearning for a better life in the "next world" is the highest spiritual sustenance and motivation of these terrorists. Generally speaking, these people are poor and hopeless in this world. They grew up in a violent environment and were insulted and hurt in society. Mental trauma and humiliating life are the spiritual reasons that drive them to terrorism and violence. Terrorists often act in the name of God, fearing the spread of secular humanism, feminism and western values centered on individual freedom in the world, believing that this is the expansion of pagan forces and will endanger their fundamental beliefs. The reason that drives terrorists to carry out jihad lies in their sense of helplessness, their insults to society and life, their anxiety and their despair for the future. Death became the ultimate goal they pursued and worshipped in jihad. This is why in some transnational surveys, people with terrorist beliefs are more dissatisfied with their own government than with the United States.
Islamic fundamentalism and international terrorism have their political, religious, economic and cultural reasons. Therefore, there should also be political means to deal with terrorism. Because terrorism has no national boundaries, it comes and goes without a trace, and it is deeply hidden. When it is mixed with ordinary people, political skills are more important. Shirley Williams, a member of the British House of Lords, believes that after the "9. 1 1" incident, some people expect President Bush to declare it a crime against humanity, thus uniting all mankind in a war within the framework of civilization, rather than a war between civilizations. However, President Bush declared that terrorism is an act of war, so the war on terrorism has become a war between countries. The war on terrorism should be two-handed, and relying solely on military means will prove to be a costly disaster. If the United States expands its target to Iraq, it will arouse Arab youth's anti-American sentiment and political passion for terrorism.