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Jurassic Park in
Washington
By Ehsan Ahrari
The former president of South Africa, Nelson
Mandela, condemning the seemingly impending US attack on
Iraq, stated that President George W Bush is listening
to "dinosaurs" like Vice President Dick Cheney who do
not want Bush "to belong to the modern age".
"Dinosaurian thinking" would be an apt phrase to
describe the method of the Cold Warriors in the Bush
administration and their unvarnished unilateral approach
to determining whether the United States should leave
the job of fighting terrorism unfinished and go after
the Iraqi dictator. The success of a potential US
military operation against Iraq is unquestionable.
Prospects for peace and stability thereafter, however,
are quite dim if the Bush administration ignores the
need for multilateral support for invading Iraq, and
fails to think through its aftermath.
Mandela is spot on when it comes to
describing the role of dinosaurs in the Bush
administration. Only they are responsible for taking the
attention away from America's war on terrorism in
Afghanistan and, instead, for their heightened, indeed
voluble, insistence on toppling Saddam Hussein from
power.
The debate over ousting Saddam is getting
so bitter that Adam Garfinkle, editor of the
conservative magazine The National Interest, lamented,
"We have witnessed in recent weeks an eruption of
antagonism - some of it uncharacteristically personal -
between what is generally called the camp of
neo-conservatives and the camp of conservative realists. Accusations of appeasement
and 'irresponsibility' have been flying, the subject
closest to hand being policy toward Iraq." Garfinkle
describes the supporters of a Reaganite approach to foreign
policy as neo-conservatives, and those supporting
former president George H W Bush as realists. Fine though
that distinction may be, Mandela's condemnation of
neo-conservatives and hawks alike cuts to the chase by
labeling them all dinosaurs.
Examining America's
foreign policy from a realistic perspective, it makes
sense to go after the terrorists and finish the job of
eradicating terrorism worldwide. It is interesting to
note, however, that even among realists, there is a
group that disagrees with the proposition of wiping out
all terrorism, since it becomes a goal at once too
abstract and ambitious. That disagreement
notwithstanding, the eradication of terrorism has many
dimensions: political, economic, diplomatic and
military. But that multidimensionality is remarkably
absent in the United States' pursuit of its global war
on terrorism. Instead, the emphasis - some say
overemphasis - is on the use of military power in
Afghanistan.
That emphasis, as well as the
unabated penchant for unilateralism, as Michael Hirsch,
writing in Foreign Affairs, points out, "has less to do
with Bush's 'cowboy' mindset or US exceptionalism than
with the sheer inequality of hard power between the
United States and the rest of the world". Those
inequalities may also be responsible for the United
States' palpably half-hearted approach to nation
building in Afghanistan: "Superpowers don't do windows"
(ie, they don't bother with the mundane
housekeeping tasks of the world)
is the arrogant snarl one frequently hears from
Washington.
Consequently, if the recent reports
that are filtering from Afghanistan are correct, that
country seems to have initiated its march toward the
"bad old days". Two assassinations of current government
officials and the recent attempt on President Hamid
Karzai's life have proven it beyond any doubt. The
warlords are back with a vengeance, the opium trade is
thriving, and there is no law and order outside of
Kabul, since the International Security Assistance Force
cannot be deployed in larger areas without jeopardizing
the lives of those peacekeepers. More to the point, the
United States is not interested in stationing its own
forces for that purpose. At the same time, the Bush
administration is edging toward opening up a new front
in Iraq. The dinosaurs in Washington are adamant; they
are having a field day.
What is incredible about the growing
power of the dinosaurs in Washington is that,
with their insistence on attacking Iraq, the United States is
facing the danger of losing its focus. During the Cold
War years, there was a definite purpose and
an attendant focus - defeating global communism through
the multidimensional policies of the use
of military power, economic assistance and
diplomatic engagement. The United States built international institutions and
regimes to create the post-World War II global order. There
were several ups and downs, but the policy
of first containing communism, then defeating it, was
pursued with an unprecedented focus and resolve. From the end of
the Cold War until the September 11
terrorist attacks, America's foreign policy was adrift and in search of a
focused purpose. The terrorist attacks provided the United
States that large and focused objective of eradicating, or
at least decisively defeating, global terrorism. There
was widespread support for it. Even Russia and China
were taking a lead from the United States.
After
the spectacular success of Operation Enduring Freedom,
there ensued a series of questionable military judgments
that cumulatively resulted in the protracted struggle
against terrorist groups in Afghanistan who were on the
run but still quite determined to strike back whenever
possible. But even those judgments can be corrected and
the terrorists can still be defeated, given the awesome
nature of America's military power.
However,
now any decision to attack Iraq will put the war on
terrorism on hold for all intents and purposes, claims
to the contrary by the Bush dinosaurs notwithstanding.
The global support for that war did not transfer to
long-standing political campaign support for an attack
on Iraq. Most European and almost all Middle Eastern
countries, as well as Russia and China, are opposed to
such an attack even after Bush's UN speech of September
12. It is interesting to note that a well-known hawk,
Robert Kagan, is dismissive of European criticism and
lack of support as "principled multilateralism" of the
"weak". He argues that even America's multilateralism is
based on pragmatism and is "not a principled commitment
to multilateral action as the cornerstone of world
order". Those who oppose military action against Iraq
may be criticized for high-minded principled
multilateralism once the Bush administration makes a
compelling case for it. Even then, military actions are
always seen as measures of last resort in the arcane
world of diplomacy, as opposed to the measures of first
resort that the dinosaurs have been advocating. But that
may only be an aside.
The issue of whether
to attack Iraq at the expense of remaining focused
on defeating global terrorism is much more than just
some alleged abstract European commitment to
principled multilateralism. Even if that were true,
principled multilateralism was pursued by the United
States throughout the course of Cold War years, for it
best suited the larger US purpose. Its current abandonment
is not because it no longer suits US global interests,
but because the refracted thinking of the influential
dinosaurs in the current government is so narrowly
defining America's larger interests.
Strategic
choices for the United States have to be examined by
using hardheaded analysis of what is at stake.
Multilateralism may be somewhat of a constraining option
for the lone superpower, but it has served America's
purpose very consistently in the past. There is no
compelling reason to abandon it now merely because the
dinosaurs are so bent on the eliminating Saddam at the
expense of losing America's global war on terrorism.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is a Norfolk,
Virginia, US-based strategic analyst.
(©2002
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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