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12 Turbulence and Terrorism Reframing or Readjusting the Model? James N. Rosenau Widespread is the understanding that the terrorism of September 11, 2001, constituted a system perturbation (SP) so profound as to initiate transformations of local, domestic, and international life wherein long-standing structures everywhere have given way to new patterns, orientations, and practices. As one analyst put it, “few veteran foreign policy watchers can remember when a single event has had so instant and so profound an effect on the entire dynamic of world politics” (Schmemann, 2001: B3). Such observations are pervaded with assumptions and insights that may or may not be accurate, but their accuracy must await the passage of time to determine whether in fact the SP surfaced new patterns that will be enduring configurations rather than momentary blips in the thrust of long-run tendencies at every level of community . Patience in this regard is not easily achieved. Even distinguished historians who are professionally committed to being wary of immediate events as signifiers of historical breakpoints have not hesitated to presume that the terrorist attack gave rise to irreversible changes.1 Still others acknowledge that the 9/11 attacks posed enormous challenges while at the same time stress that they did not change anything (Halliday, 2002). Yet there are good reasons to be impatient. Whether the 9/11 attacks were system transforming or merely part of a historic pattern,2 an initial effort to comprehend their larger meanings and potential cannot be justifiably postponed . At the very least there is a need to explore whether the way in which officials and publics in various parts of the world think about security, military and otherwise, as an aspect of world affairs is now substantially different from what it was prior to September 11. Such foci seem especially compelling because of the United States’s insistence that the world has been caught up in a war on terrorism rather than being faced with horrendous crimes best met through police actions. 221 A qualification is in order here: while alterations in the ways officials and publics think about change is a form of change, such assessments may not give rise to the changes they presume to be necessary. Analysts may perceive 9/11 as having created new circumstances that call for corresponding policy shifts— as one observer put it, “Security . . . has a new meaning, for which little in our history and even less in our planning has prepared us” (Gaddis, 2001: 10)—but some officials who make policy may not share such understandings. Indeed, certain kinds of change, especially those that require altered conduct on the part of large, bureaucratic organizations, may encounter habitual responses that are of long duration and thus resistant to transformation irrespective of the perceived need for change. Bureaucratic practices, for example, can be so rooted in inertia that the need for change never moves beyond perception to implementation. There is already persuasive evidence that deeply entrenched patterns are hindering the adaptation of needed alterations in American military structures, strategies, and tactics (Keller, 2002). In short, the concepts of change and transformation are elusive. No single formulation of them has ever enjoyed widespread usage. Analysts tend to take for granted that change is readily distinguishable from continuity, even though they may differ greatly on whether new patterns have surfaced and how long they must endure to qualify as fundamental and permanent change. The phrase “new patterns” is the key to a meaningful understanding of any potential transformation. Systemic patterns are empirical; they can be observed, and whether they occur abruptly or slowly evolve, observers can reasonably conclude that differences between the patterns at times 1 and 2 constitute change. Viewed in this way, the aftermath of 9/11 offers a quintessential opportunity to perfect techniques for assessing the nature of systemic patterns and their vulnerability to alteration. It compels us to clarify what we mean by transformation and how we know change when we see it. For analysts wedded to an underlying theory of world politics, as I am, the possibility of a new, post-9/11 world poses another troublesome and elusive conceptual challenge, that of whether their theories need to be abandoned or whether they need to be modified to remain viable. It is not an easy question to ponder. Whatever their conception of systemic coherence and transformation , analysts are rarely so persuaded by new developments that they abandon their long-standing theoretical perspectives. The inclination to see what one wants to see...

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