Yale Bulletin and Calendar

December 13, 1999-January 17, 2000

Volume 28, Number 16

Gary Hart warns of impending
attack on U.S. mainland

Sometime in the next 25 years, the United States will be attacked, most likely by a small group of foreign terrorists using weapons of mass destruction, predicted former Colorado Senator Gary Hart in a speech at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies on Dec. 6.

The attack, he warned, could result in the loss of many American lives on their own soil and would be the first foreign attack of the U.S. homeland since the War of 1812, Hart said in his talk, the annual Coca-Cola World Fund at Yale Lecture.

This likelihood of a foreign attack is the consensus of a group he cochairs, the U.S. National Security Commission for the 21st Century, whose members were appointed by Secretary of Defense William Cohen to make recommendations on national security in the new millennium. The commission warned of such an attack in a recent government report.

In his lecture, titled "The Search for a New Definition of Security in a New Fragmented Century," Hart said that the danger of an attack on the U.S. homeland is one of a number of future threats to stability the world faces.

The United States, he urged, must lead a global initiative aimed at developing multinational agencies to regulate international commerce and ensure global peace. If it fails to take these measures, Hart said, the world may witness the re-emergence of neo-feudalism, a despotic form of rule akin to that common in the 17th century.

The increasingly global economy and revolutionary advances in technology, particularly information technology, have resulted in the "erosion" of the "nation-state" -- or the "shattering" of artificial national boundaries, Hart said. In Europe, for example, once divisive nations now share a unified currency and rely on such coalitions as the European Union and NATO for their economic and political security, he noted.

The "vacuum" created by the disintegration of the nation-state leaves the world in a precarious situation that demands a new infrastructure, Hart stated. In addition to the formation of an international coalition to regulate all aspects of the international financial market, Hart proposed the creation of a permanent multinational peace-making force that would be "rapidly deployed, highly maneuverable and specially trained in quick intervention and conflict suppression."

While he acknowledged that these new measures conflict with current concepts of national sovereignty, Hart pointed to the United Nations, NATO and the International Monetary Fund, which were created to deal with political and economic realities during the Cold War, as evidence of the important roles that longstanding global coalitions can play. However, those organizations, he said, are not sufficient to deal with current global realities.

"[They] were created to deal with the Cold War world, but that world is gone," Hart said.

An international peace-making force will be essential in the 21st century because the United States will be "increasingly reluctant to intervene unilaterally, as it did in Somalia or Haiti," Hart said. Likewise, the United States will not always be able to form international ad hoc coalitions, such as the one that dealt with the crisis in Kosovo, nor will it always have enough advance time to do so, Hart said.

To achieve stricter control of global financial markets, Hart proposed creating an international regulatory authority that would oversee trade, tariffs, finance and banks, and serve as a watchdog for "abuses, riggings, monopolies -- in short, human greed," he said. This new union would be in addition to the World Trade Organization, which cannot "stand there alone."

Under Hart's proposed new international infrastructure, the role of national governments would be to defend their own borders, ensure domestic prosperity, and raise and distribute revenues to meet local needs in the areas of education, health, safety, transportation and the environment.

The national government would also "establish and enforce standards for all social undertakings with sufficient guarantees that no student, no elderly person or worker is less well off than their fellow citizens throughout the nation," Hart proposed. "It would also ensure citizens of the great republic have equality of access to its protections and benefits."

An essential ingredient of this new framework, said Hart, would be "the notion of civic virtue," part of Thomas Jefferson's model for the new republic, which calls for all citizens to participate in the public life and in public affairs.

"The great danger in the now relentless corrosion of [national] power is the re-emergence of the neo-feudal era in which loyalties and allegiances are commanded by powerful individuals and private interests. ... It is this danger that causes me to urge you the reconsideration -- indeed the resurrection -- of the classic Republican ideal, a modern, radically democratic republic that restores the common good, the common wealth, and most of all, the deep and real sense of civic virtue," Hart told his audience.

This new form of governance, he added, would put "the political initiative back in the hands of citizens, where it belongs."

Hart acknowledged during his speech that creating this new world order would require a major shift in Americans' way of thinking.

"We are so used to the concept of the nation-state that we can't think differently," he said. "We must begin to think differently."

At no other time in history have so many profound changes taken place simultaneously, he noted.

"The national disintegration has unleashed tribalism, nationalism and the resurrection of ancient hatreds ...." Hart said. "We are at this very moment stepping across the threshold of history."

-- By Susan Gonzalez

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

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Interior Secretary will push to expand U.S. parks

Finding sheds new light on the alphabet's origins

Squash courts refurbished with alumnus' gift

Sons' gift establishes visiting professorship

Mandelbrot is appointed Sterling Professor

Former YSN dean is new master of Silliman College

McCain vows to reform government, military as president

Gary Hart warns of impending attack on U.S. mainland

Exhibit features children's books by Connecticut authors

Art Gallery exhibit explores mysterious prints

Students' new creation protects children from loaded handguns

Former tennis star wins prestigious Silver Anniversary Award

Former Bulldog urges Bears to enjoy life off playing field

Film expert's book tells of 'Scrooges' past and present

Architects in training tackle Shanghai project in China Studio

Nathan Jacobson, noted for work in abstract algebra, dies

Sheffield Fellow to discuss 'Internet Learning'

Community invited to help build labyrinth

Study questions who is choosing oophorectomy option

Grant from HHMI will support graduate education in sciences

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