How to Define Success in the War on Terror
My column on "How to Define Success in the War on Terror" is available online here in the Seattle Times (free registration may be required).
How to define success in the war on terror
By James J. Na
Special to The Times
"What is success?"
So asked a senior federal law-enforcement official at a recent meeting I attended in Washington, D.C. The context was the war on terrorism.
This was not a rhetorical question. The official was mulling over how to measure success in the counter-terror war. He seemed uncertain and appeared to be seeking an answer for himself.
What he did know, however, was that whatever success may be in such a war, domestic law enforcement — by itself, in any case — was not enough.
One significant difficulty is that the culture of law enforcement does not lend itself neatly to dealing with strategic-intelligence issues. Long having been rewarded for "cracking" individual cases and presenting glossy press conferences, law enforcement has been confounded by a murky environment in which to "catch them in the act" is not only extraordinarily difficult, but can also represent a fatally late failure.
To deter terrorists from launching attacks is better than catching them in the act, but as the official asked, "How do we know whether what we do has a deterrence effect?" In other words, how do we know if our homeland-security measures actually deterred attacks — for there have been none since 9/11 — or have the terrorists merely been waiting and preparing for the "right moment" to strike again?
In the absence of hard, measurable data, the official considered the effects of our protective efforts to be marginal at best — psychologically reassuring to the public at large, perhaps, but not particularly central to the core issue of combating terrorists.
So preemption has been offered as the more-effective solution. Since passive, defensive measures alone cannot possibly protect against every single terrorist attack, taking the fight to the terrorists before they can carry out their plans has become more attractive and acceptable.
But even preemption has limits. Preemption can take a long time, requires considerable military-economic resources and is often politically very divisive both inside and outside the United States. Even when the right conditions are met, we cannot pursue every terrorist cell, sanctuary and state sponsor without exhausting our vast, but ultimately limited, resources. Whereas homeland security offers a short-term measure, preemption serves, at best, as a medium-term response to terrorism.
What then is the long-term answer? What is success?
The first thing we must keep in mind is that this war is not about fighting terrorism. Terrorism, as many others have pointed out, is merely a method of warfare, albeit an abhorrent one. Nor are fighting and killing terrorists adequate in the long run. Even if we kill every single terrorist alive today, so long as the original motivation that led to terrorism persists, there will be more terrorist violence in the future.
The fundamental issue, then, is one of ideology. When Francis Fukuyama wrote "The End of History and the Last Man," he proclaimed the victory of democratic capitalism over totalitarianism such as fascism and communism. Considering the emergence of many regional-tribal wars and 9/11 since then, many think Fukuyama was wrong.
As economist Richard Rahn pointed out, "Fukuyama was not wrong. He was premature." The problem of extremist Islamic terrorism is the problem of the broader Middle East, the failure to establish a prevailing pluralistic ideology.
Before the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the two dominant governing ideologies in the Middle East were corrupt monarchism (Saudi Arabia and Iran) and repressive, socialist dictatorships (Iraq and Syria). Given the absence of any attractive ideology in the region, the appeal of religious purism harnessed to extremism turned out to be irresistible to the many disaffected, including those from privileged backgrounds.
Thus, success — or failure — in this war will not depend on whether we can conduct better passenger searches or kill terrorist bands. It will depend on whether we can help to establish a competing ideology — of democratic capitalism with Islamic characteristics — in the Middle East. That is why the upcoming January elections in Iraq are so singularly important.
If we are able to help Iraqis — situated in the heart of the Middle East and bordering six major Islamic societies — to establish a synthesis of Western democratic capitalism and Islamic traditions, such an ideology will prove to be even more irresistible than religious purism-turned-extremist.
On the other hand, if we are unsuccessful in this endeavor or recoil from it, we will have to live with a continuing cycle of intrusive homeland-security measures and costly preemptive conflicts — a war without an end.
How to define success in the war on terror
By James J. Na
Special to The Times
"What is success?"
So asked a senior federal law-enforcement official at a recent meeting I attended in Washington, D.C. The context was the war on terrorism.
This was not a rhetorical question. The official was mulling over how to measure success in the counter-terror war. He seemed uncertain and appeared to be seeking an answer for himself.
What he did know, however, was that whatever success may be in such a war, domestic law enforcement — by itself, in any case — was not enough.
One significant difficulty is that the culture of law enforcement does not lend itself neatly to dealing with strategic-intelligence issues. Long having been rewarded for "cracking" individual cases and presenting glossy press conferences, law enforcement has been confounded by a murky environment in which to "catch them in the act" is not only extraordinarily difficult, but can also represent a fatally late failure.
To deter terrorists from launching attacks is better than catching them in the act, but as the official asked, "How do we know whether what we do has a deterrence effect?" In other words, how do we know if our homeland-security measures actually deterred attacks — for there have been none since 9/11 — or have the terrorists merely been waiting and preparing for the "right moment" to strike again?
In the absence of hard, measurable data, the official considered the effects of our protective efforts to be marginal at best — psychologically reassuring to the public at large, perhaps, but not particularly central to the core issue of combating terrorists.
So preemption has been offered as the more-effective solution. Since passive, defensive measures alone cannot possibly protect against every single terrorist attack, taking the fight to the terrorists before they can carry out their plans has become more attractive and acceptable.
But even preemption has limits. Preemption can take a long time, requires considerable military-economic resources and is often politically very divisive both inside and outside the United States. Even when the right conditions are met, we cannot pursue every terrorist cell, sanctuary and state sponsor without exhausting our vast, but ultimately limited, resources. Whereas homeland security offers a short-term measure, preemption serves, at best, as a medium-term response to terrorism.
What then is the long-term answer? What is success?
The first thing we must keep in mind is that this war is not about fighting terrorism. Terrorism, as many others have pointed out, is merely a method of warfare, albeit an abhorrent one. Nor are fighting and killing terrorists adequate in the long run. Even if we kill every single terrorist alive today, so long as the original motivation that led to terrorism persists, there will be more terrorist violence in the future.
The fundamental issue, then, is one of ideology. When Francis Fukuyama wrote "The End of History and the Last Man," he proclaimed the victory of democratic capitalism over totalitarianism such as fascism and communism. Considering the emergence of many regional-tribal wars and 9/11 since then, many think Fukuyama was wrong.
As economist Richard Rahn pointed out, "Fukuyama was not wrong. He was premature." The problem of extremist Islamic terrorism is the problem of the broader Middle East, the failure to establish a prevailing pluralistic ideology.
Before the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the two dominant governing ideologies in the Middle East were corrupt monarchism (Saudi Arabia and Iran) and repressive, socialist dictatorships (Iraq and Syria). Given the absence of any attractive ideology in the region, the appeal of religious purism harnessed to extremism turned out to be irresistible to the many disaffected, including those from privileged backgrounds.
Thus, success — or failure — in this war will not depend on whether we can conduct better passenger searches or kill terrorist bands. It will depend on whether we can help to establish a competing ideology — of democratic capitalism with Islamic characteristics — in the Middle East. That is why the upcoming January elections in Iraq are so singularly important.
If we are able to help Iraqis — situated in the heart of the Middle East and bordering six major Islamic societies — to establish a synthesis of Western democratic capitalism and Islamic traditions, such an ideology will prove to be even more irresistible than religious purism-turned-extremist.
On the other hand, if we are unsuccessful in this endeavor or recoil from it, we will have to live with a continuing cycle of intrusive homeland-security measures and costly preemptive conflicts — a war without an end.
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While it is impossible to disagree with the desirability of democratizing Islam, it is nearly utopian to define success in the war on terror this way. It is the functional equivalent of declaring war without end. In the sixteenth century, all sides in the religious wars--including the Turks--defined victory as bringing the enemy to submission in the "true faith." Never happened. Probably won't here, either.
Some wars do go on for a long time, often decades; but none of them continue indefinitely. One side eventually prevails, or, more commonly, conflict subsides in bloody stalemate.
Rather than setting our goal so high there is only a tiny chance of obtaining it, why not focus on inflicting the kinds of damage the enemy would consider unendurable? Do we know what this would be? Do they know what it would be?
Bin Laden says he is fighting to expel the U.S. from the Middle East. How is that working for him? Does he wonder whether his strategy is counter-productive, just as we wonder whether we have embraced the Tar Baby in Iraq? Is this a negotiable issue for him (or us)?
I don't know the answers to these questions, but I would like to see more people attempting to do so.
Posted by
Tom Rekdal |
12/1/05 16:14
I agree that it is very optimistic to measure the success of the War on Terror by the democratization of the Middle East. I'd go so far as to say that it's naive to think that terrorism will ever disappear as the Bush administration has suggested.
It is difficult enough to defeat an idea like communism (even with the fall of the Soviet Union, communism lives on in forms less confrontational to the US), but I think it is impossible to rid the world of a political tactic.
But an inability to defeat terrorism does not mean defeat. I think the goal of the United States should be not just to promote a competing ideology, but to attempt to alleviate the conditions that cause people to decide that joining a terrorist group is their only means of fulfilling themselves. As in any social structure, people of the Arab world seek acceptance and purpose. If a legitimate institution can't provide that, they will turn to whatever institution can.
Unfortunately, we're not dealing with a government. If we were, we could easily destroy the infrastructure that poses such a threat to us. Instead, we’re dealing with an idea, a tactic that assumes the form of a loose, wide-spread organization. In this case, seeking to inflict insufferable damage will only serve to escalate the situation. Since we don't know where the enemy is, we strike blindly and unintentionally destroy legitimate infrastructure in the process. That only creates more directionless men and women, increasingly disillusioned, increasingly susceptible to the promises and propaganda uttered by terrorist groups.
I doubt Bin Laden will ever relent in his quest to remove Western military influence from the Middle East. The best we can do is continue to search for him and continue to promote alternatives to terrorism while giving potential suicide bombers a good reason to die of old age instead of dying for hope. Perhaps THIS is the preemption we should be discussing at the highest levels.
Posted by
Observer |
13/1/05 22:43
Observer posts a thoughtful comment, but I believe he or she is wrong for the opposite reason that James Na is wrong.
Someone who wants to slit my throat for the greater glory of God has not reached this conculsion because he has been unable to locate a local Boys Club to give meaning to his life. That remark is too flip, of course. What I mean is that religious passion is not amenable to the kinds of social therapy that we are used to in the West. A jobs progam, even if we could devise one, is not going to do the trick.
It does not follow from this, however, that Jihadists are simply beyond rational calculation and will continue the war no matter what the cost to themselves and their society. If that were true we would all still be fighting the Crusades. At some point, the futility of the struggle dawns on even the most committed. But that point only arrives after a considerable amount of bloodshed.
This is a depressing thought, but I do not think we can avoid a very nasty war unless we can make it clear that we are prepared to fight just as ruthlessly as our enemies, even to the point of nuclear strikes if necessary. I have heard it said that if someone smuggles a nuclear device into one of our cities and detonates it we will just have to wring our hands in anguish because it will have no "return address." Baloney! We should make it abundantly clear, right now, that a nuclear strike will receive a nuclear response; and, if we cannot locate the "return address," we shall simply have to go through our rollodex until we incinerate the right people.
It makes me sick to think in terms of Mutually Assured Destruction once again, but that is where I think we are.
Posted by
Tom Rekdal |
14/1/05 11:25
I am not ready to concede to a violent solution. But peace in the Middle East will not be on our terms or on Bin Laden's. It lies in the hands of the political and social structure we allow to develop over the next few years.
By setting up social structure, I don't mean it in the Western sense, where we'd have psychiatrists and after school programs. But one must realize that jihadists aren’t born with the revolutionary fire in their bellies. They are mainly recruited at a time in their lives where they are especially susceptible to rage and violence. There’s a good reason so many Palestinian suicide bombers are teenagers.
In order to establish this preventative structure, we must allow Iraq's new government to grow to suit the needs and desires of the Iraqi people, not the desires of the West. If that means allowing Iraq to become a semi-democratic theocracy with lukewarm relations to the United States, than so be it.
We have to make the conflict in the Middle East a political dispute between recognized states rather than a religious crusade against Western society. In that case, differences in ideology can be disputed personally in international forums where the only consequences are heated words and profanities. Bin Laden knows that the minute he shows his face publicly for any purpose, he will be shot or carted away to the nearest military prison. Consequently, his role in this dispute is one-dimensional; Bin Laden will always represent violent action toward the United States.
We must remove the Bin Laden versus the West fight from the world theater if there is going to be any peaceful resolution in the Middle East. The US and the European Union must work with Arab states to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Once the two governments come to an agreement and Israel withdraws its troops from Palestinian areas, lives will settle down and radical groups like Hamas will begin to lose support. Having settled that dispute, the West can reduce its role in the Middle East at large, taking the fire out of Bin Laden’s confrontational rhetoric.
To close, I don’t believe that Bin Laden currently has access to nuclear arms. If he did, he would have made it public as political leverage. This does not mean he is not seeking to acquire these weapons or develop them himself. Bin Laden will never submit to the West because he does not flinch at the loss of life. He sees such violence and our response to it as fuel for his propaganda and a tool for recruitment. We can kill all the terrorists we want, we can kill all the high-level operatives of Bin Laden’s organization, but as long as we allow the flow of recruits to continue and replace the ones we dispose of, we are losing the War on Terror. If we submit to using fear and brinksmanship as tactics, we add to the War on Terror. How can we wage war on a tactic we would so readily use ourselves?
Posted by
Observer |
14/1/05 12:47
I do not think it is utopian to think that we can help to establish a "democratic capitalism with Islamic characteristics" in Iraq.
Rather, we are here trying to deal with the oft-misused term "root cause" rather than symptoms.
In dealing with a small, decentralized foe utilizing terrorism as its preferred method, I think it is futile to engage in "let's see who can inflict more bodycount damage" contest. Why? Because we will lose just surely as we did in Vietnam.
Smaller, committed groups tend to have more moral cohesion than a large nation-state. It is far easier to inflict a morale-crushing bodycount (however small in both absolute and relative terms) to a nation-state than it is to a group of committed fighters of any kind, terrorist or no.
Which is part of the reason why the father of "transformation," Martin van Creveld wrote that in a long war between the strong and the weak, the weak always wins.
Now, when I write "democratic capitalism with Islamic characteristics" I am not referring to Western style parliamentary system. To be frank about it, any kind of reasonable pluralistic system that allows representation of interests of various tribal, ethnic and religious groups that resolves conflict in a non-violent manner is sufficient.
"If that means allowing Iraq to become a semi-democratic theocracy with lukewarm relations to the United States, than so be it."
It is possible even the above condition may be sufficient.
"I think the goal of the United States should be not just to promote a competing ideology, but to attempt to alleviate the conditions that cause people to decide that joining a terrorist group is their only means of fulfilling themselves."
Such conditions themselves are symptoms not the cause. Political and economic repression causes such symptoms. When all you know are corrupt monarchism and brutal socialist dictatorships, and what passes for religious purism and renewal come by, what's your choice?
That is why if we can help to estabish a competing ideology, it WILL be embraced by many, if not all, Iraqis as it has been everywhere where such an infusion took place (Taiwan, S. Korea, parts of Latin America and even in a couple of the Gulf states, not to mention Europe and America of course). Heck, look at Kurdistan, it is probably the most "democratic capitalist" part of Iraq, all with Islamic characteristics of course. The encouraging thing, of course, about the Shia part and for Iraq at large (for Shia are the largest) is that most Shia religious leaders, having seen the corruption of Iranian revolution, support political process as the most legitimate way to exercise power.
The best antidoe to religious fanaticism (seeking death as a way to afterlife paradise) is to given people a sense that they have some control, some say over their present destiny.
Posted by
James J. Na |
14/1/05 16:10
I find it mildly amusing that both James Na and Observer, each in his own way, feels qualified not only to analyse the Islamist psyche, but to propose remedies for exactly what ails 'em as well. Mr. Na offers the attractions of democratic capitalism as a relief from their sense of political and economic oppression. Observer proposes a kindler gentler American policy toward the Palestinians, which, when manifest, will take the sting out of Bin Laden's rhetoric.
Needless to say, I am rather skeptical about all of this, and certainly not willing to predicate American defense policy on such assumptions. I prefer to take my enemies as I find them and prepare for battle.
If we are clever enough to see the futility of an endless cycle of violence, so are they. If we are heartsick at the death of our countrymen, so are they.
They have offered us the Bluff of the Ruthless. I say let's call it, but be ready for peace when they are.
Well written article, James. I only wish it were true.
Posted by
Tom Rekdal |
14/1/05 19:05
I don't purport to understand "Islamic psyche" whatever that may be. What I do understand is the psyche of those who are living under oppressive, unattractive forms of government -- from personal experience.
For the same reason why many post-colonial East Asians turned to revolutionary Marxism (the only other alternatives they knew being colonial opporession, Japanese imperialism and corrupt warlordism-gangsterism), I think that many in the Arab world have turned to religious purism-turned-extremism.
Just as we helped several East Asian countries develop democratic capitalism with Asian (or Confucian) characteristics (they are now making LCDs, not suicide bombers), I think we can help Arabs develop a synthesis of local ethno-religious culture and some type of pluralitic system with property rights.
It is really neither utopian nor fantastical. We just need to reach a tipping point where a majority of the local population can see another alternative.
Posted by
James J. Na |
15/1/05 11:23
James, as I have begun each comment before, I too would regard the growth of pluralist institutions in the Islamic world as an immense gain, and something American policy should support. I hope for the one and approve of the latter.
But if you do not see the promotion of democracy through military force as utopian, then we just have wildly different understandings of the term.
For me the war against Islamic terrorism ends when they stop attacking us. If that can be brought about through the emergence of a more democratic Middle East, so much the better. But that is not my condition for the termination of hostilites, as I gather it is for you.
Posted by
Tom Rekdal |
15/1/05 14:49
Mr. Rekdal:
"But if you do not see the promotion of democracy through military force as utopian, then we just have wildly different understandings of the term."
We are not "promoting democracy through military force." We are providing security and going after terrorist cells with military force. What we are doing is providing protection until the Iraqis can take over (which they are increasingly doing) and setting up a reasonably pluralistic government.
While expectations always run wild in the US to the tune of being straw man ("Western-style democracy" et al.), I think expectations are so low in the Middle East that even what appears mild will be considered a significant achievement.
"For me the war against Islamic terrorism ends when they stop attacking us. If that can be brought about through the emergence of a more democratic Middle East, so much the better. But that is not my condition for the termination of hostilites, as I gather it is for you."
Ah, but what will lead to them "stop attacking us"? The paradigm of state-to-state relations (or warfare for that matter) is obsolete, at least in the context of this war. The terrorists will not quit until annihilated. But there is a limit to what we can do militarily to annihilate them.
The right method in the long run, I think, is to help set up a countervailing ideology. Undermine the motivation and deny them new recruits and funding.
Posted by
James J. Na |
17/1/05 12:12
Shortly after the Second World War, flushed with our successes in the occupations of Germany and Japan, a number of American political scientists began to argue for an aggressive foreign policy designed to promote what they euphemistically called "artificial revolutions" in the service of democratic ends. (For a good example, see John D. Montgomery, "Forced to be Free: The Artificial Revolution in Germany and Japan" [Chicago, 1957]). For all the reasons you might imagine, this view died out in the academy and the policy community in the wake of our disastrous experience in Vietnam.
A somewhat milder, and more ambiguous, version of this view has re-emerged among a number of so-called "Neo-Conservative" writers of late. None of them, to my knowledge, has called for American armed forces to sweep over the benighted peoples of the Middle East to "liberate" them in the same way that Napoleon's armies "liberated" the principalities of 19th century Europe. Instead, they argue merely that if American forces happen to be somewhere, such as Iraq, for some other valid purpose, they ought to be used to promote democratic tendencies. Why not? The effort will serve our security goals, if successful, and be consistent with our values, even if it is not.
So far, so good. This argument seems to me entirely unexceptionable; and if that is all you are claiming I do not think there is a significant difference between us. But, as you know, critics of the Neo-Conservatives accuse them of darker purposes. They contend that the Bush Administration has been hijacked by those who wanted to invade Iraq, not because of any objective security threat, but merely because they thought it presented more favorable opportunities for democratic re-modeling than elsewhere.
When you talk about forming an alternative ideology for the Middle East and defining success in the war on terror in terms of the emergence of political institutions that will remove the incentive for radicalism, it seems to me that you lean toward the utopian end of an otherwise reasonable argument.
How this war will actually end, I do not know. If I had to guess, I would predict mutual exhaustion after a very, very long war of attrition. That is why I am not anxious to make it any longer by adding an ideological dimension to our side of the struggle.
Posted by
Tom Rekdal |
17/1/05 16:49