Note to readers: I intend to respond to most, if not all, of the comments that I receive in a seperate post after I have completed this series.
So, we are now able to continue our discussion with a somewhat philosophical understanding of 2 of the 3 major assumptions underlying the Bush Administration's post-Afghan strategy.
Proliferation
Assumption three we can label "the ticking bomb." It is in the United States' urgent, vital national interests to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, especially as they pertain to terrorist organizations. This is the position of the Bush Administration. It is mine as well. (If it isn't yours, I suggest you turn on the TV and review some of the 9/11 footage, but try to imagine it 50 to a 100 times worse. If that doesn't work, realize this: if one nuke goes off in an American city, you can kiss all of your civil liberties good-bye.)
My Assumptions
1. States are important but this war is not a state to state contest. It is a state versus non-state movement (Radical Islam) contest and must be fought that way.
2. This war will be fought in a multitude of ways--conventional, unconventional, covert and overt--but like all wars, in order to win the United States must consummate its military victories with a lasting political settlement.
3. There exists and urgent and overwhelming necessity to prevent weapons of mass destruction from spreading and/or falling into the wrong hands. (This is our policy, as it should be.)
Groping For Policy
In my view, the Bush Administration's first assumption, outflanking Al-Qaeda by making an example out of Iraq, will not finish the job.
Invading Iraq and destroying its WMD capacity may be necessary, under the rubric of assumption two, but it should be a small part of a much larger political effort that the Bush Administration has shown no willingness to engage in. Actions speak louder than words, and the Bush Administration's unwillingness to confront the Saudis seriously undercuts the entire "War on Terror" effort. Until Wahhabism is faced down in Saudi Arabia, this war will not end.
The promotion of democratic values is central to this effort. Promoting such values is vastly different than imposing them. The Reagan Administration never imposed democracy on any nation, yet did more to expand it than any president in recent memory. It encouraged native democratic dissidents, ceased supporting many of "our thugs", and courageously challenged those without democratic freedoms in the high rhetorical style we all know so well. The Philippines and South Korea are two good examples of the first and second categories, the Soviet Union is an example of the third.
Reagan never invaded to impose regime change. The Bush administration would be wise to support a similar policy vis-a-vis hostile and allied Middle-East regimes alike. We should be supporting Khatami and people like Saad Eddin Ibrahim, like we did Aquino and Sakharov.
Not only will regime change and nation building not work, they both have the disastrous potential to backfire. We should not engage in a new round of colonialism or benevolent hegemony or whatever the rhetorical name the neocons are giving to empire these days. (I know you guys on the Right are going to flame me for using the "E" word. Read this, before you do. And show me the intellectual dignity of NOT using the word Marx or Marxist.)
Finally, we must address the very serious and urgent issue of proliferation. As I said earlier, invading Iraq and destroying its WMD capacity may be necessary, but it should be a small part of a much larger political effort.
Graham Allison and Andrei Kokoshin have an excellent essay in the most recent National Interest that many of the following ideas have been taken from. (I encourage everyone to read it.)
There are 40,000 nuclear weapons in existence. The means and materials to make another 60,000 are in "storage." Most of these materials are to be found in the possession of the American and Russian militaries. There exist ample materials in civilian settings as well: 345 research reactors in 58 countries contain a combined 20 metric tons of weapons grade material.
The United States has "exported" 749 kilograms of plutonium and 26.6 metric tons of HEU (highly-enriched uranium) to 39 countries for decades under the auspices of the "Atoms for Peace" program.
Just this past February the U.S. National Intelligence council informed Congress that "undetected smuggling has occurred, although we do not know the extent of such thefts."
"Two-thirds of Russia's nuclear material," states a recent Energy Department report, "remains inadequately secured." The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, responsible for securing, and destroying most of the Ukrainian and Kazakh nuclear material in the 1990s, recently had its funding cut by the Bush Administration. The few media sources that reported this sad development claimed the rationale behind this action was that top-administration officials "have little trust in Russia."
Clearly this is the easiest and cheapest way to reduce the threat of nuclear armed terrorists. So why a cut in funding?
Before I turn to some concrete proposals I would like to summarize.
I believe the Bush Administration is doing some things right. But there is much, much more that it should be doing that it isn't. There is no desire, much less discussion, to pursue functional and effective multilateral efforts. Efforts that would most likely have salutary effects on "The War on Terror." It is incumbent upon us to create a framework for "The War on Terror" that makes our allies willing participants, much like the "framework" we created after WWII. But this requires sacrifices on our part and the Bush Administration has hitherto shown no willingness to sacrifice anything. The Bush Administration has eschewed all possible attempts to bring allies on board and avoids either the confrontation with the epicenter of "terror" (Saudi Arabia) that is necessary or a realistic reappraisal of its policies. All the while it feeds the American public a steady diet of empty multilateral and moral rhetoric.
Donald Rumsfeld has been quoted as saying, "the worst thing you can do is allow a coalition to determine what your mission is." I would submit that the worst thing you can do is alienate your allies. And that is exactly what we have done.
To be continued . . .
Posted by Sean-Paul @ 12/03/2002 08:45 PM
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Comments:
Excellent. Just one nit:
"Reagan never invaded to impose regime change."
Grenada.
Posted by: Andrew Hagen on December 4, 2002 12:14 AM
I would have thought AIPAC and its offshoots a rather significant coalition.
Great post, Sean!
Posted by: Lisa English on December 4, 2002 04:46 PM
I think you are off base in a number of ways.
No one said that Iraq would finish the job so why do you say it won't you are just stating the obvious, exactly what the administration says.
You are assuming a lot is not going on just because it is not public. A lot is going on and it will never be public, can never be public.
On one hand you say that we have not tried to bring allies on board and on the other you want us to squeeze our allies the Saudi's. Yes I know that as allies they suck but they are if only for their self interest.
That is part of what taking Iraq out will do. Iraq is the start of a lot. It will show we are serious, it will take Saddam off the stage, it will lessen pressure on Israel, it will up pressure on Iran and Saudi arabia.
We could be going faster but then we would really have no alliesm as it is we have a lot. Not all are obvious but there are a lot of countries that are helping but do not want it known that they are.
More important than Iraq is Iran but we can't go after them directly. When the mullahs in Iran are kicked out of powerm that will be significant. Not the end, maybe not the begining of the end but surely the end of the beginning.
