# Posted 11:25 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE ROOT CAUSES OF TERRORISM: Some on the left denounce Peter Beiart as a traitor. If so, it's hard to tell from his relentless denunciation of the Bush administration in his recent book, and especially in Chapter 5, entitled "Reagan's Children".

Beinart advances two fundamental propositions about why Bush, Cheney & Co. are conceptually incapable of fighting the war on terror as it should be done. The first is that they are heirs to the dangerous conservative tradition of willingly blinding oneself to America's ethical failures and hypocrisy. The second is that Bush, Cheney & Co. are in deep denial about the economic causes of jihadism.

Beinart writes that:

Salafist terrorists may not all be poor, yet salafism feeds on economic despair. It takes deepest root where states cannot offer their citizens opporunity or hope. (p.118)

Beinart immediately recongizes that this formulation is problematic, since it is very hard to explain why Saudi Arabia is the spiritual homeland of Al Qaeda. If economics were the root cause of terrorism, the 9/11 hijackers and Bin Laden himself should've been Pakistani.

To resolve this dilemma, Beinart introduces a second principle to modify his first:

Economic despair doesn't just stem from absolute depriviation; it stems from the gap between expectations and reality. And nowhere is that gap greater than in Saudi Arabia, where per capita income has dropped by more than half since the 1980s. (p.119)

First of all, I think Beinart's description of the data is very wrong. Second of all, his argument has some very important conceptual flaws.

With regard to the data, it's very easy to find. The remarkably easy use to IMF website lets you produce customized charts with time series data going back around 30 years. In the early 1980s, Saudi per capita income skyrocketed along with the price of oil, hitting almost $19,000 in 1981. Then oil prices collapsed, forcing Saudi income below $7,000 per capita for the latter half of the 1980s. Saudi income then gradually recovered to $11,000 by 2004, before skyrocketing once again as a result of the recent oil crisis. For 2007, the IMF estimates Saudi income at $16,612.

In light of this data, Beinart's hypothesis makes no sense at all. Saudi income may have fallen from its artificial high in the early 1980s, but was increasing at a respectable rate for the entire decade before 9/11. Where are the disappointed expecations that supposedly drive terorrism?

Saudi does have a number of serious economic problems, including unemployment, but if an economy like the Saudis' is what causes terorrism, than there should be a dozen more Arab states generating even greater terorism.

Of course, aggregate economic statistics never tell the whole story. What about the background of individuals such as Osama bin Laden and Mohammad Atta, the former a multimillionaire and the latter with a degree from a German university? If disappointment is the problem, why are the most successful individuals becoming the terrorists (a pattern also observed in the West Bank and Gaza)?

In theory, one could add a third principle to Beinart's argument, namely that successful elites embittered by the suffering of their countrymen are more likely to lash out with violence. But adding one principle after another is just a convenient way of overlooking the simple and compelling argument that violent Islamic extremism is the direct cause of terror. Beinart accurately quotes George Bush as saying about Al Qaeda that "These aren't a bunch of poor people that are desperate in their attempt. These are cold, calculating killers." That's an oversimplification, but Bush's argument makes a lot more sense than Beinart's.

But let's assume for the sake of argument that fighting poverty and disappointment is no less integral to the war on terror than hunting down terrorists. What should America do about it? Beinart's answer is that we need a new Marshall Plan. According to Beinart, the great merit of the Marshall Plan, beyond its incredible magnitude, is that it respected the autonomy of those in need of help. According to a study by the Council on Foreign Relations, aid recipients want the same today:

Asked what they wanted from the United States, the people interviewed [by the study] requested almost exactly what the Marshall Plan once provided: generosity without hubris, economic and educational development guided by local knowledge, not American fiat. "Dear President Bush," said one Jakarta woman, whom the study said spoke for many: "Please help us with our economy, but let our manage our country!" (p.123)

Actually, that is exactly the wrong idea. Beinart is presumably familiar with the recent history of the IMF and the World Bank, which have increasingly conditioned their help on effective governance because it is impossible to separate economics from politics. Corrupt governments waste the aid they are given. The advice of the Indonesian woman is especially ironic, since Indonesia and many of its neighbors suffered terribly when their corruption-riddled and unregulated economies melted down in 1997. In fact, the East Asian crisis of 1997 is one of the most important reasons that the IMF and the World Bank, as well as other development programs -- such as Bush's Millenium Challenge Program -- put so much stress on good governance.

Indonesia is relevant for another reason as well. Along with its neighbors, it has prospered to a remarkable extent not because of economic aid, but because of its consistent support for export-oriented free-market capitalism. The history of development aid also tends to show that this is not something that can be forced very easily on an unwilling government. But without reforms, anything more than humanitarian aid is pointless. In short, helping someone with their economy is no different than managing their country, unless they already have the same ideas as we do about economic policy.

This principle was no less true in 1947 than it was today. Fortunately, many of the European nations who benefited from the Marshall Plan had relatively similar ideas to our own about economic policy, although conflicts were still frequent. But the United States did impose its political will on Europe in a way that Beinart would have to condemn as being characterized by American hubris and American fiat. For example, the US often conditioned its aid on the exclusion of Communist parties from Western European governments, even if they had legitimate won enough seats in the legislature to merit inclusion. In short, the Marshall Plan was not the fantasy that today's multilateralists wish it were.

And this is a good point to end on, since I am going to reserve for my next post an evaluation of Beinart's argument that conservatives have blinded themselves to America's hsitory of moral shortcomings. As I pointed out yesterday, Robert Kagan's new book is built around an appreciation of precisely those shortcomings. In contrast, Beinart is the one who seems unable to reckon with what the Marshall Plan really was.

To be continued... (5) opinions -- Add your opinion