The shooting on the night of July 22 in the German city of Munich has left at least 10 people dead and many more wounded. Although the motive behind the incident is still pending further investigation, as for whether the shooter represented Islamic extremism or merely a native, extreme xenophobia, the mass shooting is enough to shatter people's confidence in Germany, a country proud to have a first-class intelligence agency and the most strict security measures across Europe.

The Western countries' social governance has long been known to extremism and terrorism, whose attackers often cover up their acts against humanity using human rights, liberty and humanism. This means that the Western constitutional system built to ensure rights and limit power now faces unprecedented challenges. If no way out is found, a shift to the right of the Western politics is almost inevitable.

The current antiterrorism practices of the Western governments are characterized by four fundamental dilemmas.

First, the limited government power cannot adequately respond to the security risks from the global migration of people. Germany impressed the world with its acceptance of refugees, but the European governments, including that of Germany, may be unable to distinguish true refugees with those who conceal ulterior motives. Refugees with IS affiliations entered Germany without difficulty, and this could be an argument that only humanitarian care alone cannot pull together a country, especially when the devil has learnt to manipulate people's love.

Second, the control of online information is insufficient in containing the spread of extremism, so that the unconnected antisocial extremists may unite themselves through the Internet and henceforth breed terrorist acts.

A bigger security risk for all governments is the "lone wolf" attacks resulting either from religious extremism or local racism. What's common in these attacks is that they almost cannot be prevented; they are like those of ahysterical psychopath and social media and the Internet are their breeding beds.

The Western countries champion freedom of thought and freedom of speech, which poses a huge legal obstacle for security agencies to survey citizens' online activities, and this in turn, would severely jeopardize public safety. Therefore, today's people must make a difficult choice between this so-called freedom or better safety, between more powerful law enforcement officers or more dangerous neighborhoods. Before this question is clarified, the security situation in Western society can hardly improve overall.

Third, limited security resources are unable to sustain the surging antiterrorism missions. German intelligence departments and police are first-class; it's just because of their brilliance and hard work that Germany was kept safe until recently. A dilemma for security agencies is that the public seldom knows about their success but condemns them once imperfections occur in their work.

The sudden influx of immigrants became a big problem for Germany's security system by overloading it. Of the possible two solutions, the first is to substantially raise the security departments' clearance and equip them with necessary law enforcement resources, but this could easily lead to the political criticism of it being a police state. The second is to launch what is called national counterterrorism to ease the pressure from the inadequacy of law enforcement resources. In so doing, the country calls every individual citizen to be on the lookout for possible terror threats. But once again, this solution can hardly be promoted due to racism implications.

Fourth, the Western rule of law is in asymmetry with antiterrorism warfare. Rule of law may possibly tie up people's hands in the face of the most savage assailants. Often, people may wish to say this is the price of civilization. But when civilization becomes self-destructive, barbarity may better represent a collective eagerness for life.

For Europe, the biggest problem is that it has been protected by the United States for too long, long enough to lose its own self-protection capabilities. For example, when Norwegian mass killer Breivik enjoys a holiday-style imprisonment and charges the prison of violating his human rights, civilization is no more than the flesh before a blade.

When a civilization becomes an obstacle for social progress and even a danger for survival, people will finally make a painful but necessary choice.

When Charlie Hebdo was under attack, French people marched in the street hand in hand. When Paris was under attack, French people once again marched in the street hand in hand. But when Nice was under attack, people no longer did the same thing.

If marching in the street doesn't do anything except herald more tragedies, and if safety is the price to pay for liberty, democracy and human rights, then people might take the more barbarian however more practical choice. Supporting the surging right-wing in Europe is such a choice.

Yin Chu is an associate professor at the University of International Relations.

The article was translated by Chen Boyuan. Its original version was published in Chinese.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

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