WEB NOTES

 American Jihad

(Originally published on March 18 in Copenhagen Daily)

Daniel N. Nelson

America is losing the war. It will win the battle.

The Greeks called this a Pyrrhic victory. Today we would call this a strategic blunder. Such a blunder is derived from power, hubris and ignorance – the components of unilateral globalism. 

The battle against Iraq will be short, decisive and irrelevant. Iraq is not the issue, and not a challenge. Many will die, but a US victory over a small state, impoverished people, and weak army in the Middle East is not a realistic question. Whether a military triumph will take days, weeks or months is a false debate, unless one happens to be an Iraqi civilian, someone in uniform on either side, or a lawful American taxpayer. Most friends of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney fall into none of these categories.

Dictators, evil and terrible weapons populate the globe. But our choice of this battle at this time and place vis-à-vis other imminent threats has never been explained in a straightforward, precise, decisive manner. Links to Al Q’aeda and the possession of weapons of mass destruction have been asserted countless times. Not until Secretary of State Colin Powell’s UN address, however, was anything akin to evidence presented. 

To those who know the world of intelligence gathering, however, Powell treated the UN Security Council to aged and tertiary information. Imagery was third-rate, human intelligence was questionable, and cited intercepts were not products of sophisticated techniques. When Osama bin Laden’s audio tape was revealed last week, the Bush Administration tried to portray it as evidence of his links to the pan-Arab Ba’athist regime in Baghdad. Anyone vaguely familiar with the region’s history, however, heard bin Laden’s language clearly – still condemning the ‘communist’ Saddam Hussein, while trying to generate added support for fundamentalists in a post-Saddam Iraq. 

If there is a case for war, it has not been made public. Neither has it been made in private. Intelligence analysts and State Department experts offer personal doubts, concerns and criticisms about the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz replication of National Security Council and intelligence gathering capabilities within the Pentagon. As one very senior CIA officer said to me, “Believe nothing that the Administration has said, and you’ll be close to the truth.” 

At the same time, international ‘support’ for the Bush Administration’s plans are manufactured. In the Azores hour-long summit last Sunday, George Bush was flanked by his only supporters within NATO. Aside from these few, Bulgaria may stand out as our most staunch ally. 

Simultaneous with Powell’s UN speech, the Vilnius 10 (NATO applicants and members-to-be from formerly communist Eastern Europe) issued a statement that referred to the Secretary’s ‘compelling evidence’ at the Security Council. This declaration, however, had been written days before by Bruce George and others known for their close ties to the Bush Administration and the US defense industry – not at the behest of the State Department but presumably with the green light from the Pentagon. The ‘Statement of the Vilnius Group’ was provided to ambassadors with a ‘take it or leave it’ order, and encouragement that ambassadors need not consult with their foreign ministries since time was short. 

So much for American understanding of sovereignty in new democracies. So much for genuine international support of the US position. The risks and global repercussions of hollow victories over evil regimes ruling small, poor countries – when indictments have not been publicly or unequivocally demonstrated – are evident and painful. 

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization will soon be brought into the ER without a pulse. NATO, already weakened by Bush Administration notions that coalitions of the willing can suffice in lieu of Alliance consensus, now lies fragmented – its disassociated parts spasmodically contracting and expanding, continuing to move long after the cortex has been severed. 

Donald Rumsfeld can disparagingly refer to an irrelevant “old Europe”. This Europe, however, includes the same France that, after 9/11, said (in a headline of the daily Le Monde) “we are all Americans”. And, this is the same Germany that has been our ally against Soviet communism since West Germany’s incorporation into NATO and housed American troops in the hundreds of thousands for decades. And, even in other European countries where governments have lined up behind the US, publics do not – including Great Britain. 

Shall we decapitate the Iraqi regime while we disembowel our most venerable and important alliance? Ought we lay waste to a weak Middle Eastern dictatorship while mocking the United Nations? Capturing some Scud missiles and killing the Republican Guard… can we call that victory while we provide cause for martyrdom to every young Islamic fundamentalist? Is it victory if, while decimating Iraq’s military and infrastructure, fissile material blatantly is manufactured in North Korea while ICBMs are readied? Should the clear peril to Americans from a resurgent Al Q’aeda and still-free Osama bin Laden be displaced as the focus of US assets by an isolated dictator in Baghdad? 

Were we to finish for George W. Bush a job that his father did not in 1991, but create a generation-long occupation and costly nation-building, may we proclaim victory?

An America able to win the larger war requires leadership that seeks rather than dismisses allies, and that assesses threats by their global reach and destructive capacities not their prior affronts to American hubris. Against terrorism, we have common cause with our allies. Against active and visible nuclear weapons programs in unstable militarized dictatorships, we can rely even upon many erstwhile competitors who share our concern. 

Unilateral globalists win battles but lose wars. They think wars can be won in a series of battles, tactically triumphant, strategically lost. They are fooled by their own power and hegemony, lulled into the belief that a jihad of identity can be defeated by a jihad of force. Their error may be ours to endure.

Daniel N. Nelson (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University) is Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of New Haven. Previously, he has served as senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC, senior foreign policy advisor for then-House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, and in the Arms Control & Disarmament Agency and US Department of Defense institutions. He is also editor-in-chief of the scholarly quarterly International Politics and senior consultant for Global Concepts, Inc.  
Email: dnelson@newhaven.edu or globconinc@yahoo.com