(2) destroy or defeat other terrorist organizations of global reach, including the nexus of their regional and national analogs;
(3) delegitimize and ultimately eradicate the phenomenon of terrorism;
(4) transform Iraq into a prosperous, stable democracy; and,
(5) transform the Middle East into a region of participatory self-government and economic opportunity.
Vague and Overly Broad Strategy
LID: How likely is it that we'll be able to achieve this list of goals, which, as it stands, seems pretty sweeping?
JR: My sense is that most of the GWOT's declared objectives are unrealistic and condemn the United States to a hopeless quest for absolute security. As such, the GWOT's goals are also politically, fiscally, and militarily unsustainable.
LID: Can you elaborate on what you mean by a “hopeless quest” for absolute security? Evidently you think that winning the kind of war we've set ourselves up for is beyond the realm of possibility.
JR: Sound strategy mandates threat discrimination and reasonable harmonization of ends and means. The GWOT falls short on both counts. Indeed, it may be misleading to cast the GWOT as a war; the military's role in the GWOT is still a work in progress, and the military's “comfort level” with it is in any event problematic. Moreover, to the extent that the GWOT is directed at the phenomenon of terrorism, as opposed to flesh-and-blood terrorist organizations, it sets itself up for strategic failure. Terrorism is a recourse of the politically desperate and militarily helpless, and, as such, it is hardly going to disappear. The challenge of grasping the nature and parameters of the GWOT is certainly not eased by the absence of a commonly accepted definition of terrorism or by the depiction of the GWOT as a Manichaean struggle between good and evil, “us” versus “them.”
Additionally, the nature and parameters of the GWOT remain frustratingly unclear. The administration has postulated a multiplicity of enemies, including rogue states, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators, terrorist organizations, and terrorism itself. It has also, at least for the purposes of mobilizing and sustaining domestic political support for the war on Iraq and other potential preventive military actions, conflated them as a general, undifferentiated threat. In so doing, the administration has arguably subordinated strategic clarity to the moral clarity it seeks in foreign policy, and may have set us on a path of open-ended and unnecessary conflict with states and non-state entities that pose no direct or imminent threat to the United States.
LID: Indeed. You've raised a number of interesting points here, and maybe we can discuss them separately in some detail. Your last point is rather shocking in its breadth.
JR: Yes, threat conflation makes the GWOT a war on an “enemy” of staggering multiplicity: in terms of numbers of entities (dozens of terrorist organizations and terrorist states); types (non-state entities, states, and failed states); and geographic loci (al-Qaeda alone is believed to have cells in 60 countries). The global war on terrorism is moreover not only a war against practitioners of terrorism but also against the phenomenon of terrorism itself. The goal is the elimination of both terrorists and the method of violence they employ. National Strategy for Combating Terrorism speaks of the imperative “to eradicate terrorism” and states that “Defeating terrorism is our nation's primary and immediate priority. It is 'our calling,' as President Bush has said.”1 Indeed.
We must use the full influence of the United States to delegitimize terrorism and make clear that all acts of terrorism will be viewed in the same light as slavery, piracy, or genocide: behavior that no responsible government can condone or support and all must oppose. In short, with our friends and allies, we aim to establish a new international norm regarding terrorism requiring non-support, non-tolerance, and active opposition to all terrorists.2
This objective essentially places the United States at war with all terrorist organizations, including those that have no beef with the United States. As such, this objective is both unattainable and strategically unwise. It is unattainable because of the sheer number and variety of terrorist organizations. It is strategically unwise because it creates unnecessary enemies at a time when the United States has more than enough to go around. As strategist Stephen Van Evera observes of the administration's response to the 9/11 attacks:
Defining it as a broad war on terrorism was a tremendous mistake. It should have been a war on al-Qaeda. Don't take your eye off the ball. Subordinate every other policy to it, including the policies toward Russia, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Iraq. Instead, the administration defined it as a broad war on terror, including groups that have never taken a swing at the United States and never will. It leads to a loss of focus …. And you make enemies of the people you need against al-Qaeda.3
The GWOT Isn't a “War” in the Traditional Sense
LID: You mentioned also that the military's role in the GWOT is a “work in progress.” With such a state of flux, does it even make sense for the GWOT to be a “war” on terror? Is it proper to speak of it in this way, if even the military is not sure yet of what its role is?
JR: By traditional standards of what constitutes a war, the GWOT, like the drug war, insofar as it encompasses the military's participation, qualifies as a “military operation other than war,” or MOOTW (to employ an officially discarded but very useful term.) To be sure, the GWOT has so far encompassed two major military campaigns, in Afghanistan and Iraq, but those campaigns were part of a much broader grand strategy and struggle that has mobilized all elements of national power as well as the services of many other countries. The proper analogy here may be the cold war, a much larger and longer contest than the occasional hot wars – e.g., the Korean and Vietnam conflicts – that were waged on its behalf.
LID: But rather than refer to the military's participation in the response to terrorism as a military operation other than war, we seem committed in fact to making it into one.
JR: American political discourse over the past several decades has embraced “war” as a metaphor for dealing with all kinds of “enemies,” domestic and foreign. One cannot, it seems, be serious about dealing with this or that problem short of making “war” on it. Political administrations accordingly have declared “war” on poverty, illiteracy, crime, drugs – and now terrorism. Even political campaign headquarters have “war rooms,” and “war” is a term used increasingly to describe bitter partisan disputes on Capitol Hill. “War” is perhaps the most over-used metaphor in America.
LID: And making the response to terror into a “war” is to succumb, at least to some extent, to this tendency towards hyperbole?
JR: Well, traditionally war has involved military operations between states or between a state and an insurgent enemy for ultimate control of that state. In both cases the primary medium for war has been combat between fielded military forces, be they regular (state) or irregular (non-state) forces. Yet terrorist organizations do not field military forces as such and, in the case of al-Qaeda and its associated partners, are trans-state organizations that are pursuing non-territorial ends. As such, and given their secretive, cellular, dispersed, and decentralized “order of battle,” they are not subject to conventional military destruction. Indeed, the key to their defeat lies in the realms of intelligence and police work, with military forces playing an important but nonetheless supporting role.
LID: So thinking about a “war” on terrorism in the traditional way makes about as much sense as imaging a “war” on obesity to be a war in the traditional sense, as one commentator, Elizabeth Wilmshurst of the U.K., pointed out.
JR: These “wars” on terrorism and drugs are not really wars as most Americans, including the professional military, have come to understand the meaning of the term since the United States became a world power.
LID: Essentially because terrorism is a method of warfare, and not a nation or group of people that we can declare war on, right?
JR: Yes, the chief problem with any attempt to eradicate the phenomenon of terrorism is that te
rrorism is not a proper noun. Like guerrilla warfare, it is a method of violence, a way of waging war. How do you defeat a technique, as opposed to a flesh-and-blood enemy? You can kill terrorists, infiltrate their organizations, shut down their sources of cash, wipe out their training bases, and attack their state sponsors, but how do you attack a method? A generic war on terrorism “fails to make the distinction between the differing objectives of those who practice terrorism and the context surrounding its use,” observes Robert Worley. “Failing to make the necessary distinctions invites a single, homogenous policy and strategy.”1Again, one is reminded of the lack of threat discrimination that prompted U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War.
LID: Not to mention that there's no real measure of success in the GWOT.
JR: Right. The ultimate measure of success will be diminished incidence and scope of terrorist attacks – i.e., non-occurring events. From an analytical standpoint this is an unsatisfactory measure of success. As in the case of gauging the success of deterrence, which also rests on non-events, there is no way to prove a cause and effect relationship. Moreover, even manifestly disruptive counterterrorist operations can have self-defeating unintended consequences.
“Terrorism” Is Substantially Undefined
LID: Another problem is the lack of a clear definition of “terrorism,” is it not?
JR: Sound strategy requires, of course, a clear definition of the enemy. The GWOT, however, is a war on something whose definition is mired in a semantic swamp. Even inside the U.S. Government, different departments and agencies use different definitions reflecting different professional perspectives on the subject.2 A 1988 study counted 109 definitions of terrorism that covered a total of 22 different definitional elements.1 Terrorism expert Walter Laqueur also has counted over 100 definitions and concludes that the “only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence.”2 Yet terrorism is hardly the only enterprise involving violence and the threat of violence. So does war, coercive diplomacy, and barroom brawls. At any rate, the current U.S. national security strategy defines terrorism as simply “premeditated, politically motivated violence against innocents.”3
LID: Which begs the question of who is “innocent” and by what standards innocence is determined, and by whom.
JR: Yes. For instance, the U.S. firebombing of Japanese cities in 1945 certainly terrified their inhabitants, many of whom were women and children who had nothing to do with Japan's war effort.
LID: And which also raises the question about whether, according to the popularly accepted notion of “terrorism,” a state can ever be guilty of a terrorist act, or if it's always – by definition – the “disenfranchised” individuals who are the terrorists.
JR: The Defense Department officially defines terrorism as the “calculated use of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.”4 The U.S. National Strategy for Combating Terrorism places similar emphasis on terrorism as a non-state phenomenon directed against the state and society; terrorism is “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents.”5 The problem with both these definitions is that they exclude state terrorism, which since the French Revolution has claimed far more victims – in the tens of millions – than terrorism perpetrated by non-state actors. The lethality of the likes of al-Qaeda, the Tamil Tigers, and Sendero Luminoso pales before the governmental terrorism of Stalinist Russia, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, etc. Moreover, by excluding state terrorism, these definitions give states facing violent internal challenges – even challenges based on legitimate grievances – the benefit of the moral doubt, and in so doing invite such states to label their internal challenges “terrorism” and to employ whatever means they deem necessary, including the terrorism of counterterrorist operations of the kind practiced by the French in Algeria and the Russians in Chechnya.
LID: All of which means that, more or less, whoever is in the definitional “driver's seat” makes sure, in deciding who is and who isn't a terrorist, that terrorism is defined in a way that makes the terrorists somebody other than “us.”
JR: I'd certainly say that the contemporary language on terrorism, perhaps inadvertently, has become, as Conor Gearty puts it, “the rhetorical servant of the established order, whatever and however heinous its own activities are.” Because the administration has cast terrorism and terrorists as always the evilest of evils, what the terrorist does
is always wrong [and] what the counter-terrorist has to do to defeat them is therefore invariably, necessarily right. The nature of the [established] regime, the kind of action that is possible against it, the moral situation in which violence occurs – none of these complicating elements matters a jot against the contemporary power of the terrorist label.1
Thus Palestinian terrorism is condemned, while Ariel Sharon is hailed as a man of peace. Richard Falk observes that:
“Terrorism” as a word and concept became associated in U.S. and Israeli discourse with anti-state forms of violence that were so criminal that any method of enforcement and retaliation was viewed as acceptable, and not subject to criticism. By so appropriating the meaning of this inflammatory term in such a self-serving manner, terrorism became detached from its primary historical association dating back to the French Revolution. In that formative setting, the state's own political violence against its citizens, violence calculated to induce widespread fear and achieve political goals, was labeled as terrorism.2
One Man's Terrorist Is Another Man's Freedom Fighter
LID: That's very insightful. Why do you think there's this “definitional mire” that surrounds the notion of “terrorism”?
JR: It stems in large measure from differing perspectives on the moral relationship between objectives sought and means employed. It is easy for the politically satisfied and militarily powerful to pronounce all terrorism evil regardless of circumstance, but, like it or not, those at the other end of the spectrum are bound to see things differently. Condemning all terrorism as unconditionally evil strips it of political context and ignores its inherent attraction to the militarily helpless. This is not to condone terrorism; it is simply to recognize that it can reflect rational policy choice.
LID: This is reminiscent of the recent report from the Defense Science Board's Task Force on Strategic Communications, which criticized the communications strategy that we employ in support of the GWOT. They said that Muslims don't “hate our freedom,” but rather they “hate our policies.” Which would seem to us to imply, as a conclusion, that even those who employ terrorism aren't freedom-hating lunatics but rather desperate political militants who are acting – if with regrettable methods – towards rational ends.
JR: Look, terrorism – like guerrilla warfare – is a form of irregular war-fare,1 or “small war” so defined by C. E. Callwell in his classic 1896 work, Small Wars, Their Principles and Practice, as “all campaigns other than those where both sides consist of regular troops.”2 As such, terrorism, like guerrilla warfare, is a weapon of the weak against a “regular” (i.e., conventional) enemy that cannot be defeated on his own terms or quickly. Absent any prospect of a political solution, what options other than irregular warfare, including terrorism (often a companion of guerrilla warfare), are available to the politically desperate and militarily helpless?
LID: Not many. Are you suggesting that terrorism might even be justified under certain circumstances?
JR: Let me answer your question with a question. Was Jewish terrorism against British rule in Palestine, such as the 1946 Irgun bombing attack (led by future Nobel Peace Prize Winner Menachem Begin) on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem (killing 93, including 17 Jews),3 justified as a means of securing an independent Jewish state? Laqueur responds to the question in these terms: “Terrorism may be the only feasible means of overthrowi
ng a cruel dictatorship, the last resort of free men and women facing intolerable persecution.”1
LID: Then terrorism isn't “wrong” in all cases?
JR: I'm not saying that. As you know, most governments in the world today regard terrorism as illegitimate. But what I am saying is that morally black and white choices are scarce in a gray world. One man's terrorist can in fact be another's patriot. “Is an armed Kurd a freedom fighter in Iraq but a terrorist in Turkey?” asks Tony Judt. “Were al-Qaeda volunteers terrorists when they joined the U.S.-financed war [against the Soviets] in Afghanistan?”2
The Unvarnished Truth of the Administration's Approach
LID: Let's get back to Iraq for a moment. Aside from the numerous problems with the GWOT itself, as you've indicated, there is still the question of how the war in Iraq ended up being a part of it, when you've indicated that it wasn't a necessary war but rather one of choice, and a distraction at that. You said that “regime change” is one of the tools in the GWOT “tool kit.” What's the thinking behind this?
JR: The administration believes that a politically transformed Iraq and Middle East is a GWOT imperative because it believes that the fundamental source of Islamist terrorism, including that of 9/11, is the persistence in the region of politically repressive regimes incapable of delivering economic modernity. For the administration, the political status quo in the Middle East is no longer acceptable because it produced the Islamist extremism that produced 9/11. This is why Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz declared in late July 2003 that “the battle to win the peace in Iraq now is the central battle in the war against terrorism,”3 and why National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice argues that “a transformed Iraq can become a key element in a very different Middle East in which the ideologies of hate will not flourish.”4 The President himself endorsed this objective before the war, in his February 26, 2003, speech before the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute. “A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region by bringing hope and progress to the lives of millions …. A new [democratic] regime in Iraq could serve as a dramatic example of freedom for other nations in the region.” The President went on to cite the success of the United States in transforming defeated postwar Germany and Japan into democratic states, noting that, at the time, “many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values.”1 For the administration, the connection between tyranny and terrorism, and between “freedom” and the absence of terrorism, is clear. In his September 7, 2003, televised address to the nation, the President stated:
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