“Prior to 9/11, most Americans viewed war as an abnormal condition. Today, war is the new normalcy, a reality tacitly accepted by just about everyone,” said Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations and history at Boston University. Bacevich spoke at a panel discussion titled “Strategies of Peace after the War on Terror.”

The discussion, held in the Hesburgh Center for International Studies, also featured Robin Wright, a journalist and foreign policy analyst, and Waleed El-Ansary, University Chair of Islamic Studies at Xavier University.

“Peace has become something of a dirty word in Washington foreign policy circles,” Bacevich continued.  “Among people who are presumably in the know, there no longer exists any plausible plan for how peace might be secured.”

Bacevich pointed to another difference in American foreign policy expectations in the decade since 9/11. He asserted that the belief that the United States had the ability to win any war is discredited.  America’s recent conflicts, in his opinion, have not only proven protracted and costly, but also have produced ambiguous outcomes.

According to Bacevich, many obstacles inhibit a peaceful resolution to the War on Terror. These include America’s pressing economic problems and its inability to see the link between acute economic distress and fundamentally flawed security policy.

“Many Americans continue to pretend that domestic concerns and international security do not overlap,” Bacevich said.  “We have become an overstretched country that is hard-pressed to pay its bills.”

Bacevich cites national security personnel’s commitment to maintaining the status quo, and the inability of leaders to even imagine an alternative to habits of “American global leadership” as other obstacles.

Wright claimed that diminishing the military presence of the United States in the Middle East would do much to promote peace in the region.  He described the “Arab Spring” as “an epic convulsion that is probably the most important turning point of the twenty-first century.”

According to Wright, “The young of the region today want laptops, not rifles.”  In regard to American involvement in the region, Wright said, “We have to let [the Arab people] make their own mistakes so they see [the reestablishment of their governments] as a credible and legitimate process, and they see it as theirs.”

El-Ansary agreed that American military involvement in the region is detrimental to establishing peace, and points out that the Western understanding of how Islam affects the conflict is equally detrimental. El-Ansary argued, “The hard power of military might is no longer sufficient to influence events as in the past.  America needs to also seek soft power solutions such as diplomacy.”

“To truly integrate hard and soft power for meaningful results going forward means that religion has to be understood as forming a central part in the solution of forming peace making and not just understood in terms of conflict,” said El-Ansary. “If we don’t recognize the role of religion, it leads to strategies that are short term and actually lead to counter productive efforts that increase religion’s role in conflict.”

As an example of a smart combination of soft and hard power, El-Ansary pointed to the policy introduced in 2008 instructing military personnel to stop using the word “jihadists” to describe terrorists.  El-Ansary stated that calling extremists “jihadists” validates the terrorists’ struggle and portrays the war as against Islam.

According to El-Ansary, the most effective way for the United States to promote peace is to reserve their use of military hard power while navigating cautiously the cultural differences between the Middle East and the West.

Finally, Bacevich pointed out that, as of the tenth anniversary of September 11, many students at Notre Dame have lived nearly half their lives with their country at war, rendering war “the new normalcy.”

Derek Defensor is a sophomore with a great name.  Contact him at ddefenso@nd.edu.