[IP] Observations On The War By Harvey Sicherman from Foreign Policy Research Institute
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Subject: **SPAM** Observations On The War By Harvey Sicherman
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OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR
by Harvey Sicherman
March 12, 2004
Harvey Sicherman, Ph.D., is President of the Foreign Policy
Research Institute. A former aide to three U.S. secretaries
of state, he is co-editor, with John Lehman, of "America the
Vulnerable" (FPRI, 2002).
OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR
by Harvey Sicherman
The War on Terrorism is now two-and-a-half years old. As
the candidates prepare for the 2004 Presidential election,
the fog of partisanship will soon obscure much of what has
been done, and not done. That in mind, a few observations
may be made about the military, intelligence, diplomatic,
and homeland security aspects of the struggle.
MILITARY: THE "NEW-OLD" WAR
Recent changes in military technology, on ample view in both
Afghanistan and Iraq, seem to have a very clear implication:
less can be more. Fewer forces, acting through combined air
and ground units, more accurate and lethal, can equal or
exceed the firepower previously available only in much
larger units. We should be wary of drawing too neat a
conclusion, however, given Afghan and Iraqi deficiencies in
training, air power, and equipment. Still, it is safe to
say that the American "new way of war" dominates most of the
"conflict spectrum."
Most, but not all. Three divisions were enough to defeat
Saddam just as the rented infantry of the Northern Front,
joined to Special Forces and airpower, broke the Taliban.
But neither sufficed to harness the military victory to the
political objectives which, in both countries, demanded a
security available only through a full military occupation.
New technology notwithstanding, sometimes there can be no
substitute for "boots on the ground" to succeed. And the
outcome reflected an old American problem, the perils of the
endgame, when the military strategy does not entirely
support the post-war political objectives. Thus the
lessons: more firepower for fewer forces to defeat the
enemy; more forces with different skills to secure the
victory once the enemy is defeated. The Pentagon has
acknowledged this obliquely by boosting its end strengths
30,000 beyond those authorized in order to ease the strain
on both regular forces and the Reserves -- both much
stressed by shortages, especially in the "post combat,"
political reconstruction skills. Clearly, the United State
must adapt its military to "nation-building" if the war on
terrorism is to leave in its wake decent government instead
of a new chaos.
INTELLIGENCE: WHAT IS KNOWN AND WHAT IS NOT KNOWN
Both Prime Minister Blair and President Bush have lost some
public confidence in their leadership because of
intelligence controversies. Blair was cleared of the
"sexing up" charge but not before considerable damage was
done. Bush has now undergone a similar trial following the
Kay Report that the CIA had erred about Saddam's WMD
stockpiles. Alongside the error, however, stand these
correct judgments: Saddam wanted such weapons; he retained
a residual capability to make them, more so in biological
and chemical than nuclear; and he had already obtained a new
missile system to deliver them.
These conclusions should be put in the perspective of the
"Saddam watch" over the past two decades. Saddam had been
seriously underestimated before 1991 on his nuclear efforts,
and before 1995 on his biological program, when his
defecting son-in-law spilled the goods. More recently, he
seems to have been seriously overestimated on his residual
weapons stocks.
This record does not inspire much confidence in the accuracy
of either the intelligence agencies or the international
inspectors. Bush's description of Saddam as a "grave and
gathering danger" reflected the consensus of the record
already available to his predecessor who, in 1999, used it
to justify a brief bombing campaign when the U.N. inspectors
were forced to leave. The only thing standing between
Saddam and a fuller rearmament was the increasingly shaky
international sanctions regime already widely violated and
denounced for impoverishing Iraq's citizens. The issue
therefore is not whether the President lied or exaggerated
the intelligence; he did not. The question should be
whether the CIA's longstanding lack of human sources of
intelligence --a point Kay emphasized -- made a difference
to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate of "high
confidence" that Iraq had WMD.
An intelligence agency that errs is not necessarily inept or
corrupted by politics. Sergei Khrushchev relates that at
the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, his father, Premier
Nikita Khrushchev, revealed that the United States had
grossly overestimated Soviet ICBMs. "We have nothing to
hide," Khrushchev said, "We have nothing. And we must hide
it." (Sheldon M. Stern, "Averting the Final Failure,"
Stanford University Press, 2003, pp. 28-29). This hardly
meant that Kennedy's CIA was incompetent, only that the
Soviets had successfully concealed the truth for awhile.
That the U.K., French, German (and Israeli) intelligence
joined the U.N. inspectors in concluding that Saddam had
WMDs in larger stocks than discovered may mean simply that
he had less and disposed of it, or was running a bluff that
he himself may not have realized given the lies
characterizing the regime.
Nonetheless, it must be dismaying to learn that the CIA is
still struggling with the lack of "people on the ground."
The Agency has not overcome its infatuation with technical
means rather than human intelligence, including specialists
in Arabic, Persian, Pashto, and Urdu (the Joint
Congressional Committee established last year that U.S. spy
agencies had only 30% of the capacity needed in these
languages). Yet, before the investigatory commissions warn
once more about these deficiencies, including lack of
operatives, the Congress should recall its own history on
this score. The likely sources for CIA spies -- indeed the
spies themselves -- are not likely to be of spotless
character. Unless the agency is freed of fears that lawyers
and committee hearings will expose the seamy side as they
did in the 1970's, recruitment and sources will be scarce.
DIPLOMACY: REAPING THE BENEFITS
The United States is now reaping diplomatic benefits from
the Afghan and Iraqi operations. The so-called rogue states
are reappraising the risks they run in either sponsoring
terrorism or seeking WMD. Libya wants out of the risks;
Iran wants to reduce them; so does Syria. No doubt fears of
American action stimulated this new willingness to
negotiate. But fear will wear off, possibly sooner rather
than later, especially if it looks like a new President will
ease the pressure. Even so, all of the WMD-terrorist states
will try to negotiate some variation of the excruciatingly
difficult North Korean deal. They will offer to give up, or
freeze, weapons the United States does not like; in return,
they want Washington to assure their survival. The United
States may be asked to choose between the elimination of
weapons and "regime change."
This issue overhangs the political part of the war on
terrorism. The short-term objectives of preventing or
containing proliferation must somehow be accommodated to the
longer-term objective of ridding the world of dictatorships
dangerous to their own people and others.
The war on terrorism is also forcing decisions by American
allies with dubious records. President Bush's argument that
"you're either with us or against us" omitted important
governments that are simultaneously with us AND against us.
Two of these -- Saudi Arabia and Pakistan -- have now
decided that the previously tolerated Jihadists threaten
their survival. Should the Saudi princes and the Pakistani
general prevail over their enemies, their countries will
cease to be centers for the religious propaganda and
technological leakage that, together, offer such devastating
potential for terrorists.
Another set of much closer allies also changing course can
be found in Europe. Despite the heated quarrel at the U.N.
over Iraq, both France and, especially Germany, facilitated
the movement of coalition forces to the battlefield. This
was quite unlike earlier crises over the Middle East when,
for example, overflight rights were denied to the U.S. and
arms embargoes enforced, not to speak of the still
remembered 1956 Suez disaster. The Schroeder government, in
particular, wants out of any long-term quarrel with the
Americans. Berlin (and Paris) are trying to mend the rift
whether through NATO, the U.N., or the "Group of Seven"
industrialized nations (G-7). There are opportunities here,
too, for a reconciling American diplomacy. Together, the
allies must find a formula that moves the Middle East out of
its current violence and economic stagnation without harming
necessary U.S. allies in the process.
A STILL BITTER HARVEST
All plans to change the Middle East for the better will
necessarily involve a fresh effort to ease the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, the very same conflict that was
supposed to be the major beneficiary of the Iraq war. Thus
far, however, the harvest has been bitter. The June 2003
Aqaba Summit, where Bush embraced then-Palestinian Prime
Minister Abu Mazen as the alternative to Arafat, proved
premature. Palestinian security forces were still largely
in Arafat's hands, ultimately making it impossible to crack
down on terrorism. The President had moved too quickly;
Israeli Prime Minister Sharon then moved too slowly, helping
Abu Mazen only grudgingly. Ultimately, Abu Mazen proved
unable to act at all. Arafat quickly exploited these
blunders and by Fall had regained much of his authority.
This offered no way out. Both Israel and the United States
regarded the Palestinian leader as an incorrigible terrorist
unwilling or unable to act as partner for peace. But the
Israeli public, fed up with three years of terrorism and no
change in sight, suddenly seemed to lose patience with
Sharon's policy. The Prime Minister, already in political
trouble over scandal, detected a seismic political shift and
promptly took the initiative. Borrowing some Labour Party
ideas, the veteran former general declared that better
short-term security against suicide attacks and long-term
security against the Palestinian birthrate could be achieved
if Israel withdrew settlements and soldiers from much (or
all of) Gaza, and some from the West Bank, too. Meanwhile,
the construction of Israel's controversial barrier, some of
it lying beyond the pre-1967 War "green line," would be
rushed to completion. This new deal could only be executed
with U.S. support and some local Palestinian cooperation if
it was not to make Gaza a province of Hamas, the Islamic
terrorist group. Bush's vision of a democratic Palestinian
state at peace with Israel still seemed a mirage.
THE THREE NEGATIVES
Meanwhile, in Iraq itself the Americans were also
discovering the pitfalls between democratic rhetoric and
less than democratic reality. The Shiite Grand Ayatollah
Sistani, heretofore not distinguished for his interest in
political philosophy, demanded direct elections to a new
Iraqi government in opposition to Washington's plan for
self-selecting caucuses. The embarrassed American occupiers
retreated under cover of the U.N. to allow a postponement of
this transparent attempt to put Iraq at the behest of a
Shiite majority.
The reality is that the new Iraq can only be built on three
fundamental negatives. (1) the Shiites and Kurds do not
want Sunni rule; (2) the Kurds and Sunnis do not want Shiite
rule; and (3) the Sunnis and Shiites do not want an
independent Kurdistan. Any constitution that reflects these
"red lines" will have grudging acceptance. Anything else
will threaten civil strife, a point that seems to have
registered with Sistani himself in the argument over the
interim Iraqi Basic Law. The longer-term will then depend
upon sharing the oil wealth and an army determined to
preserve the agreed upon constitution as the only antidote
to disastrous civil war. Until then coalition forces will
have to provide the backbone. Not an easy formula but a
workable one.
REMOBILIZING THE HOME FRONT
In America, homeland defense is the necessary partner to a
forward deployed war against the terrorists. Indeed, the
more effective the United States and its allies become in
places like Afghanistan or Iraq, the more attractive "soft
targets" may become in the United States. A large action
that seriously disrupts the United States, especially its
economy, tells the world that the terrorists are still in
business notwithstanding all of the Bush Administration's
efforts.
Nothing on this scale has happened since 9/11, although the
accidental blackout of 2003 illustrated that essential U.S.
infrastructure remains highly vulnerable. The public does
not know how many attempts have been frustrated, making an
overall evaluation of the homeland defense effort very
difficult. We do know, however, that a year after the
Department of Homeland Defense was established, the JRIES
Program (Joint Regional Information Exchange System) for
sharing intelligence at local, state, and national levels
has just been adopted; that many holes remain in the
immigration procedures; and that the legalities of the war
on terrorism are receiving their first tests in the courts.
Progress, such as it is, seems very slow.
To this incomplete picture we must add another feature.
Homeland security in the United States is determined more by
state, local, and private entities than the Federal
government. Electricity, power plants, chemical factories,
mines, railroads, supply chains, communications, etc. are
owned, run, or regulated by those entities. But few of them
can evaluate threats or gauge when and how to spend their
money on meeting them. Thus, homeland defense for many has
become an extra ambulance or better training for "first
responders" to an incident rather than a defense against an
incident in the first place.
Moreover, two-and-a-half years after the event, the war
itself has not led to significant change in American
domestic life save perhaps for airport security procedures
and security checks on certain public or private sites. The
American people have had little mobilization to match past
national emergencies and almost no outlet for patriotic
energies.
Certainly, the war against terrorism is a different kind of
struggle, one that does not require "a nation in arms" to
pursue successfully. "Act normal but keep your eyes open"
would seem good advice -- yet it does not go far enough.
For the war to succeed abroad, there must be arrangements on
the homefront to protect vital facilities; education about
the struggle; and a sustained effort to stay alert. Some
new balance must be found between peacetime liberties and
wartime restrictions.
The American people are on the edge of understanding, as
they did in 1951, that this conflict, like the Cold War,
will be protracted. Costs, burdens, and sacrifices are here
to stay. It will be an immense disservice if the election
campaign leaves the impression in America and abroad that
the war on terrorism is a short-term affair that can be
quickly concluded. Many things can soon go wrong. The
United States could suffer another attack at home on the
scale of the Madrid massacre or larger. American
reinforcements patrolling the Iraqi borders could clash with
Syrian and Iranian infiltrators. The Saudi government might
be crippled by a terrorist strike. All of this or any of it
might try an American public misled by expectations of swift
victory. Woe to the politician thought to be concealing the
costs and duration of the war.
CONCLUSION
After September 11, 2001, the obvious question was whether
the United States had the skill and persistence to defeat
the terrorists, even if it meant taking on the states that
helped or harbored them. The answer must be "yes" in the
most egregious cases: both al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and
Saddam's Iraq were poster examples of violent action and
violent ambition. But in the wake of those campaigns the
job remains incomplete. Four areas demand movement: (1)
reform of the military and intelligence to prosecute the
war; (2) exploitation of U.S. military victories to win
lasting change from the WMD states while reconciling allies;
(3) stimulating beneficial political and economic change in
the Middle East; and (4) creating at home a private-public
partnership that protects vital facilities while a legal
balance is established that protects security and liberty.
These are big and lasting demands on the American people and
their leadership. The War on Terrorism, like the Cold War,
will test America's capacity to persist until victory.
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