AFFAIRS OF STATE -- Bombing Is Easy. Strategy Is Perilous
Thursday October 18, 1:01 pm Eastern Time
BusinessWeek Online
By Stan Crock
<<After two weeks of intensive bombing, the situation in Afghanistan so far looks remarkably similar to early Operation Desert Storm -- taking out the Taliban's air defenses has required about as much effort as defeating the vaunted Iraqi Republican Guards a decade ago. In a conventional fight, no one lasts long against the U.S. But where do we go from here in the campaign against terrorism? The battles are about to become far more challenging.
The Pentagon seems intent on stepping up the bombing, but the next step toward winning the war actually should be to stop the intensive air strikes and to concentrate on a far more strategic approach -- disrupting Taliban and al Qaeda operations. If the military brass thinks that bombing the Taliban into crying uncle will work, they're deluding themselves. The Nazis couldn't do it with the British. The U.S. couldn't do it in Hanoi.
And although today we remember the intensive bombing of Belgrade in 1999 as a military success, it was really the defection of Russia, which left Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic isolated, that persuaded him to agree to a settlement over Kosovo. So if air strikes didn't work in nations that had a lot to lose, why would they work in Afghanistan, where the war against the Soviets and later internal struggles have left little of value intact?
DUMPING A LOSER. The Taliban will most likely crumble from within as tribal chiefs aligned with the ruling regime defect. That process began even before the bombing, according to Teresita C. Schaffer, director of the South Asia Project at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. ``Once a government starts looking like a loser, its allies start looking for other friends,'' she says. ``That's been happening for the past four weeks.'' Defections of insiders with extensive knowledge of the Taliban, its operations, and its interaction with Osama bin Laden could aid greatly in finding the terrorist.
An end to the intensive air strikes will also help with task No. 2: winning the propaganda war. While the U.S. should keep bombing until the limited mission of disrupting operations is accomplished, a halt to the air strikes would reduce the potential for civilian casualties, which are propaganda windfalls for terrorists and their supporters -- and they don't need more help. Bin Laden's appearances on Al-Jezeera, the Qatar-based TV network, have helped boost his mystique in the Islamic world quite enough.
Putting top U.S. officials, such as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, on Al-Jezeera is a smart start, but more must be done. The U.S. needs to make its case directly to the Arab world that this isn't a war between Islam and the West, even though bin Laden so far is portraying it precisely as such. One problem is that American image-meisters understand how to sell soap to Kalamazoo, but not Kabul or Karachi. We need to figure out how to do that -- and fast [see BW Online, 10/17/01, ``How to Win Islam's Hearts and Minds''].
BIGGER PROBLEMS. Task No. 3, trying to avert a war between India and Pakistan, will be even more difficult. The Bush Administration started out with high hopes of building on a Clinton Administration initiative of forging even closer relations with India. But after Sept. 11, ties with Pakistan took on more importance because of Pakistan's knowledge of and links to Afghanistan. That has sorely irked India.
Secretary of State Colin Powell is visiting the Indian subcontinent, a region where nerves are raw, but Indian troop movements and firefights between the two sides suggest that peace on the subcontinent could well be yet another victim of September 11. Powell is trying valiantly to improve relations with both countries. The problem is that India and Pakistan see it as a zero-sum game -- every advance for one is a loss for the other -- while the U.S. sees relations through a much more geopolitical prism.
Strategic task No. 4 may be the most challenging of all. It has been the assumption for several Administrations, including Bush's, that exposure to Western values, such as free markets and democracy, will be contagious -- a good thing, because expansion of democracies will bring more stability. After all, a prosperous middle class usually has too much to lose to want war, the theory goes. The major exhibits for this notion are Taiwan, South Korea, and Chile.
MODIFYING ATTITUDES. But in the new world, after the events of September 11, will the lessons of the past still apply? It was middle-class Saudi Muslims living in the West who commandeered the aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. And it's Chinese students who have spent time in the West who spew anti-U.S. diatribes in Chinese Internet chat rooms.
The seemingly well-grounded assumption that the West can foster peace by spreading its values worldwide may have to be rethought. While the public in Islamic countries are hardly all suicide bombers, broad sympathy exists for bin Laden's anti-Western screeds. To governments friendly to U.S. interests but oppressive domestically, Washington usually suggests loosening the political reins. The lessons of history teach that oppressive regimes, like that of the Shah of Iran, spawn radical dissident movements.
On the other hand, in some Islamic countries, the introduction of Western values could be the fuel that propels radical dissidents into power. So will ``civil law'' reforms make matters better or worse? The answer is no longer clear. And if the answer is the latter, what should the new U.S. policy be?
MAJOR OVERHAUL. Powell and others in the Administration are acutely aware of the dilemma. ``One of the long-term things we have really got to do is think through really clearly how we are going to handle the issue of modernization in the Middle East, knowing it is likely to bring about instability rather than stability,'' says Geoffrey Kemp, a former Reagan Administration official now at the Nixon Center and close to many Bush advisers. ``At a time of dependence on fossil fuels, this calls for a major overhaul of our fundamental policy toward regimes and democratization and energy policy.''
The outcome of any such review is far from clear. But if the war on terrorism is going to be a long one, the strategic thinking also must be long-term. There's no turning back now. Washington must attend to these issues -- and it must get started soon.>>
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BTW, there's been almost 1700 posts on this thread since I've been away...I was only gone less than a week too...=) |
