Targeting Terrorism
Forget
Europe. How About These Allies?
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
Sunday, April 11, 2004; Page B05
Washington Post Outlook Section
Terrorists buy a national election in Spain for the price of 10
backpack bombs and remove a "crucial" pillar of the Western coalition in
Iraq. Predictably, op-ed columnists and talking heads raise the cry for
the Bush administration to "save the Western alliance." This is a
knee-jerk response that reflects historical habit more than strategic
logic.
Clinging to the Western alliance isn't the way to win the global war on
terrorism. In fact, it's a backward-looking approach that's certain to
doom our efforts in this conflict. Combating transnational terrorism in
the era of globalization will be a decades-long task, and anything that
long and complex requires a genuinely grand strategy, something this
country has lacked since the end of the Cold War.
Grand strategy is about figuring out what kind of global future is
worth creating, understanding which states have the incentive to build
that future, and concluding the bargains necessary to keep them on board
for the duration. The Bush administration has declared its intention to
"transform" the Middle East, but beyond merely stating that goal and
offering regimes there a "to-do" list for democracy, it remains unclear
what constitutes the finish line in this global war on terrorism. Defining
happy endings is important, because it can help America understand who its
true allies in this great historical struggle should be -- not
globalization's old core of Europe but its new pillars in Asia and
elsewhere.
During the Cold War, the United States was able to enlist the long-term
support of Western Europe because those nations felt most under the gun
from the Soviet bloc's military threat. All they had to do was to peer
behind the Iron Curtain to envision the future they wanted at all costs to
avoid.
Europe today faces no such threat. All the Islamic terrorists demand is
that Europe remain on the sidelines while they wage "holy war" against
American "imperialism" in the Persian Gulf. Al Qaeda wants to drive the
West out of the Middle East so that it can drive the Middle East out of
the modern world. Osama bin Laden has seen our future and prefers Islam's
past, and many in Old Europe are willing to agree to his offer of
civilizational apartheid, preferring to concentrate on inwardly perfecting
the European Union, where they have their hands full merely integrating
the former East Bloc states. And if Turkey remains "too different" for
that club, you can imagine how any effort to connect Iraq to the West
seems like a bridge too far.
Instead of focusing on what it will take to keep Old Europe enlisted in
the effort to transform the Middle East, what the United States really
needs to concentrate on is developing an entirely new alliance with such
emerging powers as China, India and Russia. We can bend over backward
trying to keep Spain's 1,300 soldiers in Iraq, or we can figure out what
it will take to get these emerging pillars of globalization to contribute
far bigger numbers to the effort.
It might seem counterintuitive to enlist nations wanting in the
democracy department to promote it in the Middle East. But democracy is a
long-term goal at best, when what the region needs right now are states
willing to export security in the form of peacekeepers. That is true not
just for the Middle East, but everywhere else that we'll be fighting
terrorism in this global war.
Globalization's steady advance across the planet marks the battle lines
in the war on terrorism. Show me regions deeply embedded in the global
economy or moving rapidly toward its rule-bound embrace, and I will show
you all the states that should logically be counted among our strongest
allies. That "functioning core" of globalization includes North America,
much of South America, the European Union, Russia, Japan and Asia's
emerging economies (most notably China and India), Australia and New
Zealand, and South Africa -- representing more than 4 billion people in a
global population of 6.4 billion. Are all of these states democratic
today? Hardly. But connecting up to the global economy is how you grow a
middle class, and that's the main ingredient needed for a stable democracy
over the long haul.
Conversely, show me the regions most disconnected from the global
economy, and I will show you those regimes that should be overwhelmingly
targeted for reform or, yes, even periodic violent dismantling. These
countries lie chiefly within the Caribbean Rim, Africa, the Balkans, the
Caucasus, the Middle East, Central Asia and Southeast Asia. A wide swath
of the world, to be sure, but that's hardly a "global" war.
Terrorism thrives where globalization has yet to
extend itself in any meaningful way, because countries that lack
widespread economic interactions with the outside world (beyond just
pumping oil) are either failed states or brutally repressive regimes, both
of which generate desperate young men seeking political change through
violence. You want to dry up global terror? Make globalization truly
global.
But realistic grand strategy likewise demands that we be clear about
which of our "allies" not only support globalization's advance but can
also handle the clash of civilizations it will trigger. The Bush
administration's "big bang" strategy in the Middle East started with
removing Saddam Hussein from power, but it will pick up speed only after
the United States and its allies successfully reconnect Iraqi society to
the world outside. That ambitious effort naturally attracts regional
Islamic jihadists committed to fighting "American imperialism," which,
absent allies with staying power, our occupation would soon come to
resemble.
So who's going to stay with us through the tough times ahead? Here's a
hint: If 10 well-placed bombs can flip a country's national election, that
country probably isn't cut out for the job of waging a global war on
terrorism.
A country also probably isn't cut out for the job if its society is
generations past remembering what religious fervor feels like, if its
military hasn't suffered significant (or any) combat losses since World
War II, and if its government hasn't been accused of significant human
rights violations in recent memory. Messy wars require allies who don't
mind getting dirty.
Last year , India almost sent 17,000 peacekeeping troops to Iraq.
Imagine what a different coalition we'd have there today if we had been
able to close that strategic deal. What would it have taken on our part?
Probably a much closer security relationship with New Delhi at Pakistan's
expense. But since Pakistan is home to many al Qaeda forces still eluding
capture, the United States chooses to designate this desperately failed
state its new "major non-NATO ally," while rising economic powerhouse
India remains -- what? Chopped liver?
An international occupation force in Iraq that included the vigorous
participation of the Chinese, the Indians and the Russians would speak to
a global future worth creating, not just some transatlantic partnership
overtaken by events. Let me give you three crucial reasons why.
First, new core powers are the most willing to wage war to protect the
global economy because they have the most to lose by its collapse. Old
Europe would still have itself to rely on; North America constitutes an
economic universe all its own. But China, India and Russia desperately
need access to the global economy, because each is making up for a lot of
past disconnectedness.
Second, such new core powers show a real passion for doing what it
takes to further globalization's advance. Note the emergence of the
so-called Group of 20-plus in the current Doha Round of World Trade
Organization negotiations. These new core powers (e.g., India, China,
Mexico, Brazil, South Korea) are aggressively working to conclude new
trade bargains between globalization's old core powers (the United States,
Europe, Japan) and those regions currently sitting outside the global
economy, noses pressed to the glass.
Third, primarily because their rapidly growing economies are the most
dependent on future access to the energy resources in the Middle East, the
new core states of developing Asia will clearly be most interested in
making sure that the Middle East does not fall into the sort of extreme
disconnectedness desired by the bin Ladens of that region.
When the United States enlists the active support of a China, India or
Russia, it gains military partners who won't run at the first sight of
blood, argue incessantly over the constitutional rights of "enemy
combatants" or see their governments collapse every time the terrorists
land a lucky strike back home.
Yes, we will occasionally have to hold our noses over China's human
rights record, Vladimir Putin's rough manipulation of the Russian media or
New Delhi's tendency to look the other way on certain forms of internal
sectarian violence. But favoring order over justice makes sense at this
point in history, at least when it comes to picking strategic partners.
Anyway, these states are rapidly integrating with the global economy,
inevitably generating the middle class that creates pressure for greater
political freedom far faster than any externally imposed sanctions can
produce it.
Such support will clearly have costs. But we won't know what they are
until we make a serious effort to find out what these nations would need
from an alliance. One thing is certain: Like our oldest European allies,
these governments would want a clear sense of where the United States
thinks it is going in this global conflict.
The Middle East will continue to serve as the world's wellspring of
terrorism until it fully participates in the global economy, and that
means moving beyond just the oil trade that keeps elites rich and the
masses marginalized. With the hydrogen economy looming on the strategic
horizon, the alternative is clear: condemning roughly a billion Muslims to
a life of disconnectedness that benefits only the dictators of the region.
The grand strategy of connecting the disconnected means you cannot simply
throw up firewalls between your "good life" and all that "chaos" over
there, as many Europeans and not just a few Americans might prefer.
The United States would find far more realistic partners in China,
India and Russia, because none of those states is foolish enough to
believe that its future strategic security can be bought by distancing
itself from the Middle East's chronic conflicts. Until Washington
effectively enlists globalization's new core powers in the war on
terrorism, our historic reliance on Old Europe will remain our Achilles'
heel, easily exploited by an al Qaeda whose strategic vision currently
exceeds our own.
Author's e-mail:
tom@thomaspmbarnett.com
Thomas Barnett served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from
2001 to 2003 and is the author of "The
Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century," to be
published this month by G.P. Putnam's Sons. |
