US strategy condemns it to failure
theaustralian.news.com.au
14apr04
THE recent uprisings prove not just that the Iraq project was more difficult than George W. Bush realised but that the US's global strategy against terrorism should be reassessed.
The starting point is the realist critique of Bush's policy put before and after the fall of Baghdad by various critics, George H.W. Bush's former chief adviser Brent Scowcroft, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their persuasive case against the war (Foreign Policy, January-February 2003) and Owen Harries in his recent Boyer lectures.
The prewar realist argument was that Bush exaggerated the threat from Saddam Hussein, that creating a pro-Western democracy in Iraq was a daunting call and that military action to remove Saddam could prejudice the war on terrorism.
Bush must get the best outcome he can from this point – that demands fortitude and more international support. But the supreme message from Iraq is its proof of the limits to US power. Bush underestimated the task in Iraq and, as his military said from the start, more troops were needed. Before the war, Harvard's Michael Ignatieff said the question "is not whether America is too powerful but whether it is powerful enough".
It is time to answer Ignatieff's question: the US is not powerful enough to fight and win the war on terrorism as defined by Bush's 2002 National Security Strategy. A modification of US war aims is essential for America's own interest. This demands a deconstruction of the threat arising from September 11.
What is the threat to the US? Bush said on September 14, 2001, that the US would "rid the world of evil". The NSS says the US "is fighting a war against terrorism of global reach" but "the enemy is not a single political regime or person or religion or ideology. The enemy is terrorism."
The NSS says no distinction would be made between terrorists and those nations that harboured them. It said rogue states (naming Iraq, Iran and North Korea) were potentially prepared to use any WMD capacity, which meant deterrence was ineffective. Therefore, the US must act pre-emptively to stop its enemies from striking first.
This represents a conflation of threat where moral clarity substitutes for strategic clarity. It puts the US into a situation of open-ended, virtually unlimited conflict with all terrorists and several states.
The most recent realist critique of Bush's policy comes from Jeffrey Record, of the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, in Bounding the Global War on Terrorism (December 2003).
Record summarises Bush's war aims: destroying al-Qa'ida; defeating any terrorist group of global reach; ultimately eradicating terrorism as a phenomenon; transforming Iraq into a stable democracy; changing the Middle East status quo to a region of self-government and opportunity; and halting, by force if necessary, WMD proliferation to hostile states. He says these aims, in total, are "unrealistic and condemn the US to a hopeless quest for absolute security. As such, the global war on terrorism's goals are also politically, fiscally and militarily unsustainable."
He calls for a "deconflation" of the threat. This means deconstructing the merger of the US war against nuclear profilerators with its war on terrorism. It also means separating the real threat from the moral position.
There are several propositions at the heart of Record's analysis. First, the US is wrong to lump together terrorist organisations and rogue states. They are different in character and different as threats. Al-Qa'ida is an undeterrable transnational movement at war with the US. But states "are subject to effective deterrence and therefore do not warrant status as potential objects of preventative war and its associated costs and risks". North Korea is a (so far) deterrable (and destroyable) state.
Record says that al-Qa'ida would have used a nuclear weapon on September 11 if it had such a weapon. But no rogue state has used weapons of mass destruction against an adversary capable of inflicting extensive retaliatory damage. The past behaviour of Saddam and North Korea is best explained in terms of successful deterrence. Pre-emption is a better option, at less risk against terrorists such as al-Qa'ida with no assets to protect than against a state.
Second, the war should be re-focused on al-Qa'ida, its allies and homeland security. This remains the core threat. Not rogue states, not other terrorist groups. The Iraq intervention has been a detour. Opponents of the Iraq war, such as former national security advisers Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, said the war of choice against Iraq weakened the war of necessity against al-Qa'ida.
Third, accept the logic of deterrence. This means US policy must shift from preventing rogue state WMD acquisition to preventing rogue state use of WMDs. This is unpalatable yet realistic. Record argues that a declared US policy of preventative war encourages WMD proliferation, since rogue states want this capacity to deter the US. Witness Iran and North Korea.
Fourth, seek rogue state regime change by methods short of war. Even when regimes can be destroyed quickly, such as Iraq, the costs and risks in creating a new regime are immense. US policy has probably incorporated this position since overthrowing the regimes in Iran or North Korea is not feasible. Remember, Iraq was done because it was the weakest.
Finally, in opposing the Middle East status quo, the US should be prepared to settle for stability rather than democracy. The former is the best outcome but the violence involved may dictate settling for second best.
Record wants a better definition of war aims so US forces know what they are trying to do. He says the US may be able to defeat al-Qa'ida, but it cannot achieve the war aims as presently defined by Bush.
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