by Mitt Romney
In the mid-twentieth century, when Egyptian intellectual and Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb studied for a time in the United States, he returned home fully convinced that Americans were entirely materialistic, morally debauched, and lacking any true belief in God. I hate those Westerners and despise them! he exclaimed. All of them, without any exception. According to Qutb, secular Muslim leaders like Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat were infidels and near enemies, and they therefore had to be the first to be eliminated. Then the holy jihad would turn outward: The white man in Europe or America is our number one enemy. . . . Let us teach these children from the time their nails are soft that the white man is the enemy of humanity, and that they should destroy him at the first opportunity. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri were not breaking new ground; they have only espoused for modern listeners beliefs that are centuries old, and reminded them that it is holy to declare war on America and to ardently believe they will win.
This brief history of Islamist radicalism is widely accepted, but still it shocks many Americans who simply cannot conceive of such a religious ideology. Perhaps this explains in part why our national conversation about the threat from violent jihadists never seems to deal with the reality of their implacable hostility and enduring war against us.
Despite the weight and breadth of the jihadists’ passion for destroying America, it’s easy to dismiss them as a military threat; after all, they bring a slingshot to a battle we can wage with an Abrams tank and an F-16 fighter. But their strategy is asymmetric—they exploit our vulnerabilities and maximize their strengths. They can recruit and train from among the hundreds of millions of fundamentalist Muslims throughout the world. We don’t need to know their exact numbers. We do need to understand the scale of the threat. And it is large indeed.
So, too, is the support that is expressed at times by segments of mainstream Muslims for jihadist warfare. This passive or latent encouragement of radicalism is almost as alarming as active violent jihadism. Following the 2005 subway bombings in Great Britain, nearly a quarter of all British Muslims polled said they supported the attacks. And a year later, a Pew Global Attitudes survey found that one in seven Muslims in Western Europe believed that suicide bombings against civilian targets are sometimes justified in the defense of Islam. Of course, jihadists do not need large numbers to wage their warfare—they need recruit only a tiny number from among pockets of these populations for their cells. By now, attacks have taken place in a shockingly large number of countries around the world, including Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Lebanon, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Thailand, and, of course, the United States, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Jihadists may not have Abrams tanks, but that does not prevent them from executing fatal and devastating attacks.
The tactics of the various jihadist organizations take different shapes. Within Muslim countries, the priority is to gain adherents, particularly among those who can serve as fighters and suicide bombers. Sensational attacks in Western nations are designed in part to stir pride and passion, promoting recruitment at home. And the West’s retaliatory, sometimes disproportionate strikes, which tragically but inescapably take innocent human lives, are extensively filmed and repeatedly broadcast by Al Jazeera and other militant television networks throughout the Muslim world, fanning flames of revenge. This cycle is part of the strategy of the jihadists.
Additionally, unstable Muslim nations such as Pakistan and Somalia, and part-Muslim countries like Nigeria and Lebanon, become targets for takeover by the jihadists because they can provide both territory and financing. Islamists today control both Iran and Sudan, and Afghanistan was firmly in their grasp until we invaded in 2001. (Again, there are crucial differences between the Shia Islamists of Iran and the Sunni Islamists of Sudan and al Qaeda, just as there were enormous differences between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. It is important to understand these differences, but the fact that jihadism has two ideological sources does not in any way diminish the overall threat.)
The value of controlling Iran, for example, is enormous for the Khomeinist jihadists. The oil-rich nation funds and directs Hezbollah’s efforts to destabilize Lebanon, attack Israel, and plot terrorist acts across the globe. Iran funds Shia jihadists in Mesopotamia and Eastern Arabia but also Sunni jihadists such as Hamas in Gaza and Salafist jihadists in the Middle East and Africa. Iran funds and equips any Islamist radical willing to strike at the West. And Iran is a primary source of weapons and training for combatants that kill Americans and our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Iranian regime is not simply a threat to us. Any force that finances and orchestrates attacks and provides the bombs and bullets that actually kill American soldiers is our enemy. Much can be said about the diplomatic possibilities for convincing the Iranian regime to abandon this course, but we should not pretend for a moment that Iranian Khomeinists are not at war with the United States. The widespread public demonstrations following the 2009 Iranian elections made it clear that not all Iranians support the policies of the current regime. Given the ruthless suppression of these demonstrators and the show trials that followed, it is equally clear that the radical mullahs and their mouthpiece, Ahmadinejad, are not going to turn from violent jihadism.
Face-to-face military confrontations on fronts like Iraq and Afghanistan are also part of the plan, with jihadists convinced that despite our military superiority, they need only hang on and continue their insurgencies, and Americans and the West will eventually tire and retreat to go home defeated and demoralized, as did the Soviets. Wars like these boost recruitment of the young and adventurous, and when they are successful, they energize millions of the faithful. Even when they are defeated, they deftly transform their losses into at least a rhetorical form of victory. Following their defeats in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq, jihadist speeches boasted that the infidels have been crushed and had to use greater technology, which signifies their weakness.
The jihadists’ history with America justifies their confidence that we will abandon the fight. In 1983, jihadists attacked U.S. marines in Lebanon—and we withdrew. Then again in 1993, jihadists attacked U.S. marines in Somalia—and we withdrew. Next, jihadists placed bombs in the World Trade Center, but they were arrested and tried as if they were street criminals, not a real and present threat. Then the jihadists blew up an American facility in Saudi Arabia, without any reprisal. In 1998, al Qaeda blew up two U.S. embassies, killing hundreds of civilians, yet once again our response was temporary and pitifully ineffective—we launched missiles but failed to hit a single relevant target. In 2000, jihadists audaciously attacked the USS Cole, killing seventeen American sailors, but once more, we did nothing. Throughout these years, America also refused to carefully consider the dangerous implications of jihadist involvement in wars in Algeria, Bosnia, and Chechnya. With all this history as a backdrop for their lectures to the young, jihadists have become quite confident in the knowledge that, time and again, we have underestimated their threat, their capacity to kill, and their steadfast resolve. This is the lesson they pass on to young radicals in the making. Only in recent years has American resolve in Iraq and Afghanistan provided a counterexample of Western fortitude in the face of jihadist attacks.
Much has been written about the jihadists’ use of asymmetrical warfare to offset our battlefield superiority. A former military officer related to me the result of an American war-games exercise in which a simulation of a U.S. navy task force in the Persian Gulf faced a terrorist team of small boats and planes. The enterprising team successfully defeated the navy group with a surprise attack. The lesson of this exercise applies in many theaters and across many different weapons platforms. Asymmetrical warfare does not aim for a single, decisive engagement of forces, the sort of central battle that has defined so much of Western military history. It aims to wound and enrage, then debilitate and demoralize.
Make no mistake: the jih
adists have identified our vulnerabilities. They surely paid careful attention, in fact, when one heavily armed man and a boy, operating out of a single automobile, so terrified Washington, D.C., that the regional economy ground to a virtual standstill for days. (In that instance, in fact, convicted assassin John Allen Muhammad may well have been responding to a call to arms issued in an al Qaeda video.) Nor could the jihadists have overlooked the fact that most of the Eastern seaboard and Midwest went dark for an extended period following a single but catastrophic malfunction in our aging electrical grid. And what a lesson the subprime mortgage crisis has taught them: our economy is so fragile, interconnected, and opaque that a serious disruption in our nation’s capital market can spawn a worldwide economic crisis.
Yet if that’s the case, why haven’t we suffered a major terrorist attack in the United States since September 11, 2001? In part, because we have prevented them: By the time of this writing, we had uncovered and averted plots involving local jihadists in Oregon, New York, Miami, Dallas, North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia. British security prevented an effort to place bombs on multiple commercial aircraft on their way from London to the United States, and convicted the plotters in September 2009, though the occasion attracted little comment in the United States. Ironically, this series of counterterrorism successes has produced a prolonged period of uneasy calm at home which may well be responsible for our growing complacency.
Our increased security precautions and expanded intelligence networks may have delayed the decision to launch a major attack, or lengthened and complicated its planning. However, in the view of some people inside and outside our intelligence community, bin Laden will attempt to attack the United States again in a massive, potentially devastating way.
A future bin Laden attack on America could include the use of weapons of mass destruction. He has publicly claimed that acquiring nuclear weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. Following the 2001 attacks, he boasted that he would soon have access to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, and he promised that he wouldn’t hesitate to use every weapon at his disposal—without exception—to defeat the infidels. The Iranian regime, the jihadists’ prime sponsor, is on track to build nuclear weapons of its own, and—most chillingly—al Qaeda has proclaimed that it has been granted a fatwa, a legal sanction handed down by radical Muslim clerics, to kill four million Americans, half of whom may be children.
The American mind simply cannot conceive that bin Laden and his henchmen would carry out such butchery. Does he not understand the inevitable scale of our retaliation? Yet in a society that lauds martyrdom, that lives for rewards in the afterlife, and in which mothers celebrate the nobility of their suicide-bomber sons, there is little fear of retribution. If retribution were to occur, it would be Allah’s will, and the glorious dead would watch the advance of jihad from their mansions in heaven. Dr. Phares predicts, Should a cataclysmic weapon fall into the jihadists’ hands, its use is more than just possible; it is almost a certainty. The Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation, and Terrorism, established by Congress as a successor to the 9-11 Commission, unanimously concluded that it was probable that terrorists would succeed in attacking a Western city with a weapon of mass destruction within five years.
The pursuit of military power by China, Russia, and the jihadists is advancing, not retreating. Among the four contestants for world leadership, only the United States and the West are reducing their financial commitment to national defense. Given the consequences of falling behind, continued complacency could prove calamitous. We must strengthen the safeguards to our security, even as we face broad domestic challenges. And we must prioritize those sources of power that will be the most effective in providing an enduring defense.
No Apology: The Case For American Greatness
4
Pathways of American Power
National power compels, convinces, or motivates other nations to act or to forbear from acting. While we generally associate national power with military strength, power can actually be derived from various sources.
China derives economic power from its large and rapidly growing market. The lure of access to their market as well as the growing global dependence on China for inexpensive manufactured goods has led nations like ours to effectively accede to China’s demands that Taiwan be given something less than full diplomatic status.
Power can be diplomatic, as was the case when Senator John McCain led the U.S. threat to remove Russia from the G-8 as a way to stem its growing authoritarianism.
Persuasion, popularity, and personal affinity can similarly be forms of power. In the months prior to the beginning of the Iraq War, former president George W. Bush’s cordial and influential relationships with a number of presidents and prime ministers surely helped expand the ranks of his coalition of the willing. Unlike so-called hard power, which flows from military might, these economic, diplomatic, and persuasive influences have traditionally been considered soft power.
Growing America’s Soft Power
America consistently underperforms its soft-power potential. Our economy is twice the size of our nearest two competitors, Japan and China, and it is 80 percent as large as the combined economies of the twenty-seven nations of the European Union. Yet time and again, we have not been able to effectively exercise that power to our advantage. For example, while China’s political stability in large measure depends on having free and unfettered access to our market, we have not been able to harness our soft power to deter China from its financial support of Sudan, nor to enlist its support in backing harsh sanctions against Iran.
Consider also our relationship with Colombia. It is a staunch ally, a democracy, a fellow combatant in the international war against drugs, and one of a shrinking number of Latin American nations that aggressively resist Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and his totalitarian aims for his own country and hegemonic ambitions for the continent. We also sell more goods to Colombia than it sells to us. Colombia is a crucial economic and military ally. Yet the president and Congress have refused to date to enter into a free-trade relationship with Colombia, bowing instead to the political clout of American organized labor and its shortsighted suspicion of free trade agreements. This diplomacy by special interest is a blow to Colombia’s pro-U.S. government and to our support among its people. So rather than employ our economic power to enhance our influence in the region, we have diminished it. In refusing to act, we actually strengthen Chávez, our announced enemy and a self-proclaimed partner of Russia and Iran.
(The day is coming when Chávez announces a peaceful nuclear program organized and supported by the mullahs in Iran. At that point, perhaps congressional Democrats will rethink their incredibly destructive treatment of our true friends in Colombia.)
This same pattern too often holds true in the use of our soft powers of persuasion and popular appeal—an arena in which America has substantial advantages. Our culture and brands are ubiquitous; our celebrities appear on billboards and magazine covers around the world. Students from nearly every foreign country are eager to attend our colleges and universities, which are ranked as the best in the world. Our technology in fields from software to health care is widely admired and sought. America’s consumer market is the world’s largest.
Our soft-power advantages should also be derived from our manifest generosity: Americans make up just 4.5 percent of the world’s population, yet we donate 12 percent of global foreign aid, an amount almost twice as much as any other country. We provide the most funds for humanitarian relief and global charities, and former president George W. Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is the largest international health initiative in history dedicated to fight a single disease. Pastors like Rick Warren lead churches like his to send thousands of Americans on mission trips around the world, bringing aid, comfort, and expertise to the most impoverished villages on the planet. American ships and soldiers are first to the scene of global disasters. In fact, whenever the world f
aces potentially insurmountable threats, military or otherwise, it turns to America.
Yet with all that we have done to help others, and with so much more that remains to be done, our popularity and persuasive sway are on the wane.
To some degree, of course, our flagging popular appeal is an inevitable result of our war on terror. And there is the predictable resentment engendered by our wealth and power, and even our generosity can arouse envy. But these do not excuse our ineffectiveness in promoting persuasive power. The appeal of liberty, the ability of free enterprise to lift people from poverty, and the demonstrated willingness of America to come to the aid of others could be far more compellingly employed in attracting other nations and peoples. The self-loathing of Western intellectuals should not hinder our sturdy defense of all that should make us the most admired and respected of nations. We must argue our case, leading others to eagerly join us in the cause of liberty and peace.
We often exercise diplomatic power well below its potential as well. As former UN ambassador John Bolton documents in persuasive detail in his book Surrender Is Not An Option, diplomats and State Department negotiators are often more motivated to secure an agreement—even those they know will become mere window dressing that will be ignored by the party across the table—than they are to push for actual, verifiable results favorable to America. When diplomatic success is measured by the agreements and documents we have produced rather than by behavior that has actually changed, we create a false sense of security that prevents us from recognizing and dealing with real threats. The multitude of North Korean agreements, celebrated by the scores of diplomats and politicians that secured them, harmed more than helped our national security. They had no appreciable impact on North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and they prevented us from taking action that would have made a difference. Diplomatic power means successfully changing outcomes, not piling up meaningless agreements. Using this metric, American diplomatic power over the past two decades has been only partially successful.