Response 1 DB1 (75 words)

The reading this week presented interesting views from the three different perspectives. The first being Ronald Steel, who is a professor at the University of Southern California, wrote that the attack on 9/11 was “’a war in which the weak turned the guns of the strong against them…showing…that in the end there may be no such thing as a universal civilization of which we all too easily assume we are the rightful leaders.’ Steel interprets the attacks by Al Qaeda as weak actors rebelling against strong actors, with the weak actors rejecting the notion that the strong ones can dictate what is right and therefore universally valid in international affairs” (Nau, 2017, 16). This is an example of the realist perspective. Two days after Steel’s comment, Journalist Caryle Murphy wrote, “September 11, 2001, was a result not of the weak striking back against the strong but of unresolved diplomatic disputes, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that created unfairness and grievances between the feuding parties” (Nau, 2017, 17). This was an example of the liberal perspective. Finally, a year later, “Jim Hoagland, a columnist for the Washington Post, suggested…that the problem was one of nondemocratic governments in the Middle East” (Nau, 2017, 18). The final example is that of an identity perspective.