September 2002

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

The War on Terror: Who's Ahead

Walden Bello is executive director of Focus on the Global South, a research, analysis, and advocacy program of the Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute in Bangkok, Thailand; and professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines.

On the military front, things are not looking so well for the world's sole remaining superpower in the middle of 2002.

Overextended?

Over eight months after the launching of the global war against terror, it has become increasingly clear that the US was caught in a relentlessly expanding conflict from which there is no easy withdrawal. Trying to keep up the momentum of its war against terror after it declared "victory" in Afghanistan in early January, the US sent troops to the Philippines that same month to help hunt down members of the Abu Sayyaf bandit group that it alleged had ties with Osama bin Laden's Al- Qaeda network.

The Philippines, an ex-colony, seemed to be a convenient choice as a site for expanding the war against terror as Washington debated from January to March 2002 a far more important question: whether or not to take out Saddam Hussein. But just as the faction favoring an invasion of Iraq appeared to have gained the upper hand, the brutal Israeli sweep into the West Bank threw a spanner on US calculations, which had rested on the assumption of political support from the pro-US Arab states.

Meanwhile, months after Washington's designating the Philippines a "second front," some 60 to 80 Abu Sayyaf bandits continued to elude 6000 Filipino troops coached by 160 US advisers on the small island of Basilan, despite the Philippine government's claim that it had killed the Abu Sayyaf leader Abu Sabaya shortly after a botched rescue mission that resulted in the deaths of two of the hostages.

Moreover, the realities of the Afghanistan campaign that filtered out after the ouster of the Taliban punctured the triumphalist mood that had reigned a few months earlier. The idea that this campaign vindicated a new strategy of warfighting based on the employment of massive precision-guided airpower with little commitment of ground troops is now less persuasive. Thousands of civilians apparently died owing to less-than-precise bombing, and scores of people allied to the United States were targeted and killed by US forces acting on bad intelligence. Relying on Afghan mercenaries to do the fighting on the ground for the US is now acknowledged by some in the Pentagon to have resulted in Osama bin Laden's escape from Afghanistan'sTora Bora mountains. And when US troops did engage in close-quarters fighting with the Taliban/Al-Qaeda forces during "Operation Anaconda," which took place in the Shah-i-kot area near Pakistan in early March, they were bloodied by an enemy that was supposed to be on the run.

Though by mid-2002 it has not achieved its prime objective of capturing bin Laden or dismantling the Al-Qaeda network--which was, in classic guerrilla fashion, retreating to its rear base along the border area of Pakistan--Washington still thinks it has the strategic initiative. It seems to be the case, however, that it has launched itself into a multi-front war of attrition where it cannot consolidate victory on any front.

The momentum has also been lost on the political front. As the military campaign lessened in intensity in Afghanistan, the United Nations was brought in to broker a political settlement that would usher in representative democracy while the European Union was dragged in to police the peace via a British-led armed contingent. It has become clear, however, that the centralized authority that was forged by the Taliban has given way to the return of warlord hegemony in different parts of the country, and the role of the security force is increasingly to keep the ex-partners in the Northern Alliance from cutting each other's throats. When the much vaunted Loya Jirga elections to produce a representative assembly ended up as a battle for spoils among warlords in early June 2002, "quagmire" became a word that was more and more frequently used in the US press to describe the Afghan situation.

As Afghanistan slides into anarchy, Pakistan's strongman Gen. Musharraf is being destabilized and delegitimized by American pressure to take sides in the war against terror. The prestige of Islamic fundamentalists among the population is probably greater in mid-2002 than before September 11, 2001. Saudi Arabia is seething with discontent, and Washington faces the unpleasant prospect of having to serve ultimately as a police force between an increasingly isolated Saudi elite and a restive youthful population that regards bin Laden as a hero.

Washington's tilt towards Israel has not helped in shoring up the legitimacy of its Arab allies, including Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, among their peoples. Israel is the great spoiler of the US effort to manage the Middle East, and it can get away with it because it can rely on its massive support in the US Congress to blunt pressure from the US executive, as the brazen Israeli moves to destroy the Palestinian Authority in defiance of calls from Washington to end its military incursions into the West Bank demonstrated. With Washington's embrace of Israel's policy of forcing out Yasser Arafat as the head of the Palestinian people in late June 2002, the alliance that conservative Arab governments maintain with Washington has become extremely difficult to justify to the Arab masses.

Indeed, the Afghan fiasco and Israeli intransigence, it can be argued, have combined to make Washington's strategic situation in the Middle East worse rather than better. Nor have there been any political or military gains in Southeast Asia, with Indonesia maintaining its distance from Washington and the US buildup in the Philippines turning out to be an open-ended commitment, like Vietnam. Indeed, post-September 11, political Islam appears to have made significant gains among the Muslim populations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines.

The introduction of US forces into Georgia and some of the Central Asian republics--the so-called "Stans"--may, on the surface, seem to be a strategic plus, especially when one takes into consideration the energy reserves of the area. However, with the failure to achieve decisive military or political victory on any front, Washington's Central Asian deployments are actually stretching US power, with little real strategic gain.

Not surprisingly, voices have emerged in Washington that now question if the US has the troops and resources to engage in a multi-front war of attrition. Interestingly, influential elements at the Pentagon appear to be among the reluctant ones. An invasion of Iraq, they feel, even if it does oust Saddam Hussein, will merely exacerbate the dilemma of overextension, since once one goes into Iraq, there is, as in Afghanistan, no easy extrication from the massive political mess that this will create. Paul Kennedy had a colorful phrase for Washington's emerging dilemma: "imperial overstretch."

One is tempted to say, in fact, that there is a historical parallel to the US' indiscriminate creation of new fronts against terror, and that was the Japanese rampage through the Southeast Asia and the Pacific in the first six months of 1942. Large swathes of territory were gained, but at the price of overextending Japanese imperial power. By creating so many fronts, Japan ended up unable to concentrate its forces and attention on the few really strategic sectors.

Liberal democracy loses

By mid-2002, there are no clear winners so far in the so-called war against terror. But there are clear losers. The Taliban is one. The other big loser is liberal democracy in the United States. Not even the Cold War was presented in such totalistic terms as the "War against Terror." Laws and executive orders restricting the rights to privacy and free movement have been passed with a speed and in a manner that would have turned Joe McCarthy green with envy. The United States was scarcely three months into the war when legislation had already been passed and executive orders signed that established secret military tribunals to try non-US citizens; imposed guilt by association on immigrants; launched a massive effort to track down 8000 young Muslim men; authorized the Attorney General to indefinitely lock up aliens on mere suspicion; expanded the use of wiretaps and secret searches; allowed the use of secret evidence in immigration proceedings that aliens cannot confront or rebut; gave the Justice Department the authority to overrule immigration judges; destroyed the secrecy of the client-lawyer relationship by allowing the government to listen in; and institutionalized racial and ethnic profiling.

Americans have often prided themselves on having a political system whose role is to maximize and protect individual liberty along the lines propounded by John Locke and Thomas Jefferson. That Lockean-Jeffersonian tradition was severely eroded in the months following September 11, as the Republicans launched a drive to stampede the American people into granting government vast new powers over the individual in the name of guaranteeing order and security. Instead of moving to the future, America's limited democracy was regressing in its inspiration from the late 17th century Locke to the early 17th century Hobbes, whose masterwork Leviathan held that citizens owe unconditional loyalty to a state that guarantees the security of their life and limb.

The extent to which efforts to curtail traditional formal liberties were threatened was illustrated during a memorable Senate hearing when Attorney General John Ashcroft said that critics of the Bush administration's security measures were fear-mongers "who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty [and] aid terrorists." The fact that liberal, Democrat senators against whom these remarks were directed dared not respond shows how skillfully the conservatives had used the anti-terrorist struggle to win what they regarded to be the real war at home, which is the war against liberals and progressives. It is only recently that the opposition Democrats have moved to speak against curtailment of civil liberties, and rather timidly at that.

Already in crisis before September 11, American liberal democracy has been plunged into a deeper crisis of credibility by the post-September 11 moves of the ruling Republican Right. Though many liberals and progressives are still straitjacketed by the popularity of the anti-terrorist campaign, it is likely that as it becomes evident that the main intent of this campaign is to manage domestic dissent and drive a domestic counterrevolution, the "cultural civil war" between liberals and conservatives will become less and less civil.

In sum, it is questionable that on balance, the US is in a stronger position after launching the war against terror. It is overextended on the military front while internally the sources of strength of its political tradition are drying up. This combination of overstretch externally and decay internally is not an unfamiliar combination. It is the same fatal mix that brought down imperial Rome.

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