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The war on terror's neglected
battlefield
By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING -
A year ago, in the wake of the September 11 attacks in
the United States, I wrote that the forthcoming war
against terrorism had to be two-tiered (see Palestine: The cornered have
cause,
September 13, 2001). First, the US had to smash the
terrorist groups, seek out their safe havens, fill up
the geopolitical black holes where they trained their
militants and planned their actions. And second, the US
had to weed out the ideological root of modern Islamist
militancy - the cause of the Palestinians.
In
other words, both the stick and the carrot were needed
or, in old-fashioned Maoist terminology, there needed to
be both a battle of arms and a battle of words, to
minimize, isolate and beat the true enemy and bring on
board the indecisive and the fence-sitters.
In
the one year since then, the United States has toppled
the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, has at least
temporarily dispersed al-Qaeda, and is about to wage war
against Iraq, another possible threat in the Middle
East. But very little progress has been achieved on the
Palestinian problem. Meanwhile, there is hardly any
proof that sympathy for al-Qaeda is waning in the
Islamic world, and Europe and Japan, for more than 50
years the United States' staunchest allies, are growing
skeptical about what they openly call US unilateralism.
In other words, whereas the war in the field has
been fought and won, the other war, the political one of
isolating the true enemies and winning over the
fence-sitters, has not been won, and arguably has not
been fought at all.
In a forthcoming study to be
published in the next issue of the Italian journal
Limes, Fabio Mini, the three-star general who is chief
of staff at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) AfSouth (Allied Forces Southern Europe),
describes the growing political isolation of US forces
in their fight against terrorism. No doubt in the back
of his mind there are many cases where political
isolation becomes the decisive factor in a war. The US
should be the last to forget this point.
On
January 30, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched the
famous Tet offensive. Militarily it was a disaster for
Hanoi: after a brief success the Northern troops were
defeated and completely routed by the United States.
However, politically it was an immense success for the
North and a turning point for the whole war. It brought
the US public to the realization that it was not
interested in fighting that war, no matter what the
outcome. In a way Washington fought the Tet offensive
only on the military field, while Hanoi fought it
on the military and political fields, and
actually capitalized on its military defeat to change
the hearts and minds of its enemies, the Americans.
It is an old Chinese theory that one of the best
military stratagems is to win the minds and hearts of
the enemy, and that when this is done, victory is
certain. Hanoi did that, and the US did not fully
realize it at the time.
In political terms the
United States should have worked much harder on using
the Tet offensive to argue that Hanoi was treacherous,
that it didn't want peace. But the US also should have
realized that in a political battle, free-market
corruption loses out to a staunch puritan communist
ethic if coupled with the fact that an authoritarian
regime protects the privileges of the few against the
bitter poverty of the many.
The middle class,
the backbone of the US, European and Japanese societies,
was the greatest soldier in the Cold War. It was the
myth and values of the middle class that brought down
even the minds of Soviet leaders, who in the end didn't
themselves believe in communism (see Stephen Kotkin,
Armageddon Averted, Oxford University Press,
2001), and it is now the greatest guarantee against
terrorism. In other words, the US won the hearts and
minds of the Soviet leaders, who then surrendered their
empire to the West without waging a war that could have
brought about a very different outcome, as Kotkin shows.
Against this background, we can't help noticing
the failures in the political war against terrorism. Not
only are the fence-sitters not siding with the United
States, but staunch US supporters such as Europe and
Japan have become uncomfortable with many US
initiatives. The US is driven by domestic opinion that
wants quick revenge for the September 11 attacks. But
the growing division between the US and its allies is
every bit as serious as the division in US domestic
public opinion during the Vietnam War.
The Cold
War was won also thanks to General George C Marshall's
strategy to involve from the start Western Europe and
Japan. In cold economic and military terms the US then
held more than 50 percent of global gross domestic
product and could well do without the support of Japan
or Germany, both then bombed-out ground zeroes. Marshall
enlisted these two former enemies for long-term
political reasons, in order not to leave potentially
dangerous neutral countries to fall into the hands of
the next enemy, the USSR.
However, these
countries, which fought side by side with the United
States in the Cold War and played an important political
role in the first Gulf War, now feel brushed off, and
some in the US administration of President George W Bush
feel it is too much trouble to bother about these
restive and hair-splitting allies. This is all the more
important as the anti-terrorist war is cutting little
ice in the Islamic world.
In Egypt, where many
terrorists were born and brought up, there is little
middle class to speak of, and the society is polarized
between haves and have nots, where the have nots are
inspired and tormented by the plight of their brothers
the Palestinians. The bond between Egypt and the
Palestinian cause is very strong, as Yasser Arafat was
possibly born in Egypt and certainly took his first
political steps there.
On both fronts, the fate
of the Palestinians and that of poor Egyptians, the war
on terrorism has registered little success. And whereas
many efforts have been made with Israel, there is no US
initiative to speak of in Egypt.
And then there
is Saudi Arabia.
Next: War on Iraq: Costs and consequences
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