A Flawed Strategy for the "War on Terror"

[SteveMetz]

The news is abuzz this week with assessments that al Qaeda's influence and power have returned to pre 9/11 levels. I'm sure the Bush administration will explain this as it does its Iraq strategy: everything is on track, but it just takes time.

Maybe that's true. But an alternative explanation is that the administration's strategy is fatally flawed. There are two primary reasons for this. First, when the enemy is motivated primarily by U.S. penetration into the Islamic world, increasing the amount of U.S. penetration into the Islamic world is not exactly the best way to calm them down. But because the administration has based its strategy on the assumption that Islamic extremists aren't really motivated by what they say motivates them but instead by something we made up and ascribed to them ("they hate freedom"), it can't grapple with the idea that its actions are the exact wrong thing to do.

Second, while the administration is right that the foundation of the threat we face is the ideology which generates extremists, it has come up with a strategy that focuses on killing or capturing extremists rather than undercutting the hostile ideology. America's primary "partners" in the conflict--Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan--tolerate and even support the ideology which gives rise to violent extremists. Our strategy tolerates this. It is a fatal flaw

[Ski]

Good point, but I'd also bring up that these countries are also not democracies, and that's a contradiction in the strategy as well. If the GWOT is about "democracy" that is.

We've seen what happens with a real democracy in Palestine. Hamas now is the ruling party. I'd say that all three of the countries you mention would have decent percentages of radical Islamic political parties entrenching themselves if any of these countries were to actually become a democracy.

Second, while the administration is right that the foundation of the threat we face is the ideology which generates extremists, it has come up with a strategy that focuses on killing or capturing extremists rather than undercutting the hostile ideology. America's primary "partners" in the conflict--Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan--tolerate and even support the ideology which gives rise to violent extremists. Our strategy tolerates this. It is a fatal flaw

[SteveMetz]

Good point, but I'd also bring up that these countries are also not democracies, and that's a contradiction in the strategy as well. If the GWOT is about "democracy" that is.

We've seen what happens with a real democracy in Palestine. Hamas now is the ruling party. I'd say that all three of the countries you mention would have decent percentages of radical Islamic political parties entrenching themselves if any of these countries were to actually become a democracy.

Our strategy is based on the assumption that democracies will be liberal democracies. Policymakers need to read Fareed Zakaria so they can grapple with the notion of illiberal democracies.

I still contend, though, that we should be defining our relationship with other states more on whether they oppose or support the ideology of Islamic extremism rather than whether they torture AQ suspects for us.

[FascistLibertarian]

Well if you live in Iraq or the occupied ter's why would u care if your a demo?
Thats great you voted but you have no job, the power and water dont work, and people want to kill you and your family.
Demo's will only work when the legit state can give services and protection for people.
Otherwise of course u would turn to Hamas and hezbollah.
Talk to some people from Leb about who gets things done and provides for them.......
If the leb state doesnt and hez does who are you going to support?

[tequila]

Steve, could you clarify how the Egyptian state supports Islamist extremism? You could make an argument for Saudi, sure, and maybe Musharraf and the Pakistani state at certain times, especially in Afghanistan, but I have a hard time figuring how the Egyptians do so.

[SteveMetz]

Steve, could you clarify how the Egyptian state supports Islamist extremism? You could make an argument for Saudi, sure, and maybe Musharraf and the Pakistani state at certain times, especially in Afghanistan, but I have a hard time figuring how the Egyptians do so.

The Egyptian state press and most of the clerics spew an endless stream of hate toward the United States. Mubarak seems to take the approach of the Sauds--so long as the hate is directed against the United States, it isn't pointed at me. This environment helps Egyptians conclude that attacking the United States is OK.

[marct]

That's a good point, FL, and it brings up one really important issue, loosely paraphrased as - "what is a nation state that you are mindful of it"?

Modern nation states are just one form of social organization, and a pretty recent one at that. The idea that a "government" should "give services and protection for people" is also quite new, and derives out of the concept of western feudal obligation. "Services and protection" are, when you get right down to it, nothing more than a set of mutual obligations and responsibilities, and these can appear in any number of different forms.

When Steve noted that

Our strategy is based on the assumption that democracies will be liberal democracies.

there is also another implicit assumption that the organizations involved will only be nation states which, to my mind, is a fatal flaw.

Marc

[SteveMetz]

there is also another implicit assumption that the organizations involved will only be nation states which, to my mind, is a fatal flaw.

Marc

Agree. I kind of played with that idea in my Rethinking Insurgency monograph. During the prep seminars for Unified Quest over the winter, I was struck by the idea that in our conceptualization of counterinsurgency, the "end state" is that a government is in full control of its territory and has no challengers as a provider of security. Given what I see in the world, that is swimming against the tide of history which seems to be moving toward less effective national governments, not more.

That said, I have yet to come up with an alternative. Should we be able to form alliances with militias? Can we form alliances with and declare war on PMCs?