Terrorism and Tourism

The attacks on Israeli-oriented hotels in Egypt reminds me of a comment in the first Western Civ textbook I used: about ten percent of the global economy is in the travel and tourism sectors. A great deal of that is in shipping and transportation, but tourism is a huge global market. Think about where you live, as REM said, and how often local elites have talked about the importance of your city or region being a"destination of choice" or having"world-class attractions." Here in Hawai'i, of course, we are very sensitive to tourism-related economic issues. The airplane grounding and dropoff in travel after 2001 was devastating here, and unemployment and economic activity is only now beginning to return to pre-attack levels. There is a proposal before the state legislature to reclassify attacks on tourists as"hate crimes" with the attendant increase in penalties.

The attack in Egypt is not just an attack on Israelis, but an attack on the Egyptian economy, which has suffered similar shocks before."One Egyptian hotel worker in Taba, asked about the future of tourism there, said: 'Oh, it's done, thank you.'" In a sense, it's an attack on the global economy, because it won't just cut into tourism to Egypt. Tourism in Israel generally has been a depressed sector for years because of terrorism: without a threat of terror, Israel/Palestine would be one of the greatest destinations of the world, instead of a place people go to with some trepidation.

This is not a new issue: Linda Colley argues that it is part of the price of empire, but I think the ubiquity of tourism as an economic engine makes it a deeper issue than that. An attack on a hotel is not just deadly and scary, but intended to be fundamentally damaging. It is not terribly different, in that regard, from attacks on oil pipelines or communications infrastructure, for what good is infrastructure if it is not being used? When the heart of the economy is in the service sector, attacks on service workers and businesses are not peripheral. When education is the foundation of a growing economy, as opposed to a resource extraction regime, attacks on educators and educational institutions are not peripheral.

It may seem alarmist to go this far, but attacks on tourism and education are tactics of long-term and total warfare. The degradation of the economy produced by fear not only produces economic trouble for the people involved, but shrinking tax revenues reduces the ability of governments to respond vigorously to threats, problems and new challenges.

Winston Churchill said"Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon." There was a time when Democrats fell into those first two categories, but think the prevailing opinion among the leadership (certainly Clinton and Kerry) is more in the third category. I think Republicans, by and large, consider the third category a good description, but there are many who would like to unhitch the wagon and let the horse run free. I would love to see this question come up in the debate today [oh, well] or next week. Because I think the problem is something both sides can agree on, but the responses would differ quite sharply.