"Long War" is the Pentagon's latest
template to fight the "war on terror". The
importance of this concept will be signified by
the fact that it will be capitalized in all future
official military documents, a la "Cold
War". The expectation is that eventually it will
catch on the same way as "war on terror", which
was in the process of
being replaced by another
phrase, "war against extremism". However, that
phrase was not catchy enough. The expectation is
that "Long War" will be.
US Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld used "Long War" in 2001,
but few defense strategists could have imagined
then that it would eventually emerge as a broad
template for fighting global terrorism. During one
of his congressional testimonies in 2001, Rumsfeld
said the conflict in Afghanistan would be a "long
and hard" war. By 2004, General John Abizaid, the
current commander of the US Central Command, was
frequently using that phrase to underscore the
long-term challenge that al-Qaeda posed to the
United States.
In the early months of
2005, it was becoming clear that the
administration of President George W Bush was
getting increasingly dissatisfied with the use of
"GWOT", as some identified the "global war on
terrorism", since Islamist propagandists argued
that it was in reality just a euphemism for
America's war against Islam. Last September
General Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, used "Long War" in his parting
press conference.
"Long War" holds
considerable promise of being catchy and martial
in tone and and a sound propaganda tool. The
"warriors" (not a pejorative phrase) of the
Pentagon would also be able to use it compactly in
their daily briefings to make their case.
Consequently, even before releasing its
Quadrennial Defense Review 2005, the Pentagon has
initiated its public campaign of popularizing the
concept.
The Long War is an intricate
concept. No one should dismiss it as just one more
mindless phrase-making exercise in the
jargon-laden world of the Pentagon. A lot of
thinking seems to have been done before deciding
to underscore it. There also appears to be an
elaborate coordination between the Pentagon and
the newly created office of the director of
national intelligence (DNI). In his maiden
appearance before the Senate Intelligence
Committee as DNI, John Negroponte identified
terrorism as "the pre-eminent threat" to the US,
both domestically and abroad, and the
globalization of technology as a reason underlying
the spread of weapons of mass destruction. (No one
then missed the significance of the ongoing
conflict between Iran and the US on the issue.)
In emphasizing the Long War, the US is
developing its thinking along the same path that
formulated the intricate concept of the Cold War.
Considering that the US won that war, a powerful
driving force underlying the Long War is that an
elaborate and enduring strategy - which also
contains a repertoire of political-military
operations and tactics - would result in another
victory.
Given the highly plan-oriented
world of the US military, resources have to be
allocated for several years in a row. For that
reason alone, a military-oriented anchor had to be
found to make a case for future military
campaigns. During the Cold War years, there was
that mammoth Soviet Union, which was depicted as a
supposedly indefatigable and unrelenting enemy.
However, when it imploded in 1991 - largely as a
result of its acute internal contradictions and as
a result of the severely misplaced planning that
emphasized expenditures to build military power at
the expense of economic power - no other enemy of
a colossal proportion took its place. (China is
being envisaged now in that capacity in
Washington. However, realistically speaking, the
military capabilities of that rising power are no
match for the awesome conventional and nuclear
prowess of the US.)
Then came the
terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001.
Al-Qaeda was responsible for it; however, it was
no match in its military power and killing
capacity to what the former Soviet Union could do.
In principle, the US could wipe out wherever
al-Qaeda exists or from where it operates within a
matters of days. But the human cost ("collateral
damage", to use the military jargon) would be
massive and is not deemed worth the price. In the
meantime, thanks to the US invasion of Iraq,
al-Qaeda became less of a threat as an
organization, but appeared hard to defeat (not
quite indefatigable a la the Soviet Union)
as a movement within a short span of time. Soon,
the US came to a conclusion that it is really
faced with an enduring war, which will last for
many years, even after the eradication of al-Qaeda
as an organization.
There is an uncanny
similarity between the treatment of communism as a
movement that drove the US military preparedness
of the Cold War years and the current thinking
related to the Long War. Communism was treated as
a global conspiracy. At first, the thinking among
US strategic thinkers was that it was also
monolithic. However, when the Sino-Soviet
ideological conflict exploded into the border wars
of the early 1970s, that "monolithic" depiction
was quickly abandoned. The theoretical
underpinnings of the Long War are based on
defeating global jihad. It is not being viewed as
monolithic. But there is a growing awareness that
it is highly interconnected, from Iraq and
Afghanistan to Indonesia and from Kyrgyzstan to
Morocco, thereby requiring an elaborate strategy
like the ones related to the Cold War.
In
a synchronized endeavor, the US intelligence
agencies (the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security
Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, and
even the Federal Bureau of Investigation) are
preparing themselves to understand the intricacies
related to global jihad. They stress whenever
possible the long-term threats that global jihadis
pose to the US, and are coordinating their actions
and linking intelligence with the departments of
Defense and Homeland Security, as well as the
security agencies of America's allies.
What are the operational and tactical
modalities of waging the Long War in the next few
years? The US military will not ignore future
"conventional" enemies. It will maintain its
capabilities to fight two simultaneous major wars,
but will also focus on "unconventional" threats.
In terms of military preparedness, the
Special Forces will be given high emphasis. In
fact, small rapid-response teams - fully equipped
with a variety of high-tech gizmos and drones -
will be used, more now than in the past, to kill
or capture "high-value" targets. The emphasis here
is to enhance the element of uncertainty in the
hearts and minds of the terrorists that has been
their source of strength.
Two important
operational and tactical features of the military
preparedness are fighting counter-insurgencies and
conducting stabilization operations. In this
emphasis, the US military is tacitly admitting its
failure to deal with the Iraqi and Afghan
insurgencies. In addition, its failure to conduct
stability operations (another euphemism for
nation-building) is generally regarded as one of
the developments that resulted in the chaos that
emanated from the quick collapse of the Saddam
Hussein regime in April 2003. That chaos is
generally regarded as one of the reasons for the
escalated popularity of the Iraqi insurgency among
the Sunni Iraqis.
Thus an important
feature of the Long War is to develop long-term
post-conflict stability operations. It might also
be viewed as the military's way of saying that the
Bush administration might also be planning for
further regime changes in the coming months
(beware Iran and Syria).
In the final
analysis, one may argue that the notion of Long
War is not entirely new. Its critics are already
questioning the validity and the rationality of
comparing Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler or Josef
Stalin, Mao Zedong or Vladimir Lenin. Undoubtedly,
bin Laden does not have the kind of military
forces that were at the disposal of those
historical tyrants.
However, he is armed
with an idea - that of global jihad - which, even
if it may not turn out to be as powerful as the
communist framework of taking over the world -
still holds ominous potentials in that direction,
at least in the thinking of current US civil and
military leadership. If they were to be proved
wrong, the military preparedness related to the
Long War would not hurt America's strategic
interests. However, if they are right, it might
turn out to be a viable blueprint of military
preparedness.
Ehsan Ahrari is a
CEO of Strategic Paradigms, an Alexandria,
Virginia-based defense consultancy. He can be
reached ateahrari@cox.netorstratparadigms@yahoo.com.
His columns appear regularly in Asia Times
Online. His website: www.ehsanahrari.com.
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