Next Small War

[Jedburgh]

A related op-ed in today's NYT by Richard Haass entitled "is there a Doctrine in the house?" is worth reading. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/08/op...html?th&emc=th

Interestingly enough, the op-ed you linked essentially talks to the same issues that Stephen Biddle did in his paper published at SSI back in April: American Grand Strategy After 9/11: An Assessment

It is hard to escape the paradox: Iraq, a classic war of choice, has constrained the administration's choices in its second term. Choices are further constrained by tax cuts, extravagant spending and the absence of a policy to reduce American dependency on imported oil. The result is that the United States is moving - haltingly and reluctantly, but inexorably - toward a more pragmatic and multilateral foreign policy appropriate to the era in which we live.

...whereas the costs of strategic ambiguity were relatively modest for the first 2 years of the War on Terror, the campaign in Iraq is now rapidly increasing the financial, human, and strategic opportunity costs of leaving basic choices unmade. Perhaps the most important of these ambiguities concerns our end-state goal for countering terrorism: should we insist on reducing this threat to a level as close to eradication as we can manage, or should we tolerate greater terrorist violence as a quasi-permanent condition?