THE WAR ON WHAT?
The White House and the debate about whom to fight next.
by NICHOLAS LEMANN
The New Yorker
Issue of 2002-09-16
newyorker.com
<<...Over the summer, foreign-policy elder statesmen like Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, and Zbigniew Brzezinski got a lot of attention for publicly expressing realist doubts about the prospective American invasion of Iraq, and Vice-President Cheney responded with a speech making the case for war, but the broader realist argument about the war on terror has been absent from the national discussion. I went to see some of the leading realists recently, with the idea of giving their opinions a public airing. The people I interviewed are well-known figures in international relations, professors at major universities—John Mearsheimer, of the University of Chicago; Stephen Van Evera and Barry Posen, of M.I.T.; and Stephen Walt, of Harvard—but they reported that they haven't been seriously in touch with anybody in government over the past year. Evidently, their point of view isn't being considered in Washington.
The consensus among the realists is that the United States should have declared war on Al Qaeda, not on terrorism. If it had, then all foreign-policy projects would be evaluated on the basis of how well they served the worldwide struggle against Al Qaeda. The realists are minimalists. They often say things like "do less" and "reduce the American footprint." Using the September 11th attacks as the occasion to remake America's role in the world is exactly what they don't want. They revere tough-minded diplomacy and suspect military adventurism—another of their favorite formulations is that it's better to display the velvet glove than the mailed fist. In the nineteen-nineties, they opposed United States military involvement in the Balkans, and today they oppose the idea of invading Iraq and of seeking "regime change" in other countries. The hawks believe that anti-Americanism springs from pure irrational hatred and can best be dealt with through shows of force; the realists believe anti-Americanism varies with the extent of visible, bellicose American behavior, and that is why they want to reduce the footprint.
"I think the Al Qaeda threat is very serious," Stephen Van Evera told me. We were a long, long way from the corridors of power—sitting on a park bench in Lexington, Massachusetts. "We used to believe there was no such thing as Al Qaeda"—a terrorist organization capable of inflicting mass casualties. "They're very skillful. They combine high patience and training capacity and motivation. I was very shocked by 9/11. We're in a struggle to the death with these people. They'd bring in nuclear weapons here, if they could. I think this could be the highest threat to our national security ever: a non-deterrable enemy that may acquire weapons of mass destruction."
He went on, "Defining it as a broad war on terror was a tremendous mistake. It should have been a war on Al Qaeda. Don't take your eye off the ball. Subordinate every other policy to it, including the policies toward Russia, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Iraq. Instead, the Administration defined it as a broad war on terror, including groups that have never taken a swing at the United States and never will. It leads to a loss of focus. Al Qaeda escapes through the cracks. And you make enemies of the people you need against Al Qaeda. There are large risks in a war against Iraq. There could be a lengthy, televised public slaughter of Muslims by Americans. A wide imperial rampage through the Middle East—what do you do after you win? We're not out of Bosnia and Kosovo yet, and Iraq is much bigger. It's a huge occupation and reconstruction. We aren't good at this."...>>
<<...The realists are right when they say that Bush's talk and his actions have been out of synch. The President and his people may be praying that their sabre rattling will bring about a coup or a revolution in Iraq that will obviate the need for an invasion. That Bush so far has said more than he's done doesn't necessarily mean, however, that the really consequential decisions following from September 11th still lie before him. It's important to Bush to be a man of his word—that's the essence of his non-Clintonism. He has rhetorically committed the Presidency to a series of ideas that in turn commit the United States to a course of action. It seems as if the big decisions have already been made...>> |
