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World War IV

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D. Spencer Hines

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Jun 29, 2002, 3:55:45 PM6/29/02

This _tour d'horizon_ by Elliot Cohen has held up very well from last
November:

"WHAT'S IN A NAME

World War IV
Let's call this conflict what it is.

BY ELIOT A. COHEN
Tuesday, November 20, 2001 12:01 a.m. EST

Political people often dislike calling things by their names. Truth,
particularly in wartime, is so unpleasant that we drape it in a veil of
evasions, and the right naming of things is far from a simple task.

Take the matter of this war. It is most assuredly something other than
the "Afghan War," as the press sometimes calls it. After all, the biggest
engagement took place on American soil, and the administration promises to
wage the conflict globally, and not, primarily, against Afghans.

The "9/11 War," perhaps? But the war began well before Sept. 11, and its
casualties include, at the very least, the dead and wounded in our
embassies in Africa, on the USS Cole and, possibly, in Somalia and the
Khobar Towers. "Osama bin Laden's War"? There are precedents for this in
history (King Philip's War, Pontiac's War, or even The War of Jenkins'
Ear), but the war did not begin with bin Laden and will not end with his
death, which may come sooner than anyone had anticipated -- including, one
hopes, the man himself.

A less palatable but more accurate name is World War IV. The Cold War was
World War III, which reminds us that not all global conflicts entail the
movement of multimillion-man armies, or conventional front lines on a map.
The analogy with the Cold War does, however, suggest some key features of
that conflict: that it is, in fact, global; that it will involve a mixture
of violent and nonviolent efforts; that it will require mobilization of
skill, expertise and resources, if not of vast numbers of soldiers; that
it may go on for a long time; and that it has ideological roots.

Americans still tiptoe around this last fact. The enemy in this war is
not "terrorism"--a distilled essence of evil, conducted by the real-world
equivalents of J. K. Rowling's Lord Voldemort, Tolkien's Sauron or C. S.
Lewis's White Witch -- but militant Islam.

The enemy has an ideology, and an hour spent surfing the Web will give the
average citizen at least the kind of insights that he might have found
during World Wars II and III by reading "Mein Kampf" or the writings of
Lenin, Stalin or Mao. Those insights, of course, eluded those in the West
who preferred -- understandably, but dangerously -- to define the problem
as something more manageable, such as German resentment about the
Versailles Treaty, an exaggerated form of Russian national interest, or
peasant resentment of landlords taken a bit too far.

In the reported words of one survivor of the Holocaust, when asked what
lesson he had taken from his experience of the 1940s, "If someone tells
you that he intends to kill you, believe him."

Al Qaeda and its many affiliates consist of Muslim fanatics. They will,
no doubt, find almost as many enemies among moderate Muslims as among
infidels, and show them, if anything, less mercy. One hopes for a wave of
revulsion among Muslims who abhor this rendition of their faith,
understand the calamities of all-out war waged to erect a theocratic
dystopia, and will fight these movements with no less vigor, and no more
reservations, than do Christians, Jews, Hindus and, for that matter,
atheists.

Afghanistan constitutes just one front in World War IV, and the battles
there just one campaign. The U.S. is within range of gaining two
important objectives there: smashing al Qaeda (including the elimination
of its leadership), and teaching the lesson that governments that shelter
such organizations will themselves perish. But what next? Three ideas
come to mind.

First, if one front in this war is the contest for free and moderate
governance in the Muslim world, the U.S. should throw its weight behind
pro-Western and anticlerical forces there.

The immediate choice lies before the U.S. government in regard to Iran.

We can either make tactical accommodations with the regime there in return
for modest (or illusory) sharing of intelligence, reduced support for some
terrorist groups and the like, or do everything in our power to support a
civil society that loathes the mullahs and yearns to overturn their rule.
It will be wise, moral and unpopular (among some of our allies) to choose
the latter course. The overthrow of the first theocratic revolutionary
Muslim state and its replacement by a moderate or secular government,
however, would be no less important a victory in this war than the
annihilation of bin Laden.

Second, the U.S. should continue to target regimes that sponsor terrorism.

Iraq is the obvious candidate, having not only helped al Qaeda, but
attacked Americans directly (including an assassination attempt against
the first President Bush) and developed weapons of mass destruction.

Again, American allies will flinch, and the military may shake its head at
the prospect of revisiting the aborted Gulf War victory, but the costs of
failing to do so, and the opportunities for success, make it good sense.

The Iraqi military is weak, and the consequences of finishing off
America's archenemy in the Arab world would reinforce the awe so badly
damaged by a decade of cruise missiles flung at empty buildings.

Third, the U.S. must mobilize in earnest. The Afghan achievement is
remarkable -- within two months to have radically altered the balance of
power there, to have effectively destroyed the Taliban state and smashed
part of the al Qaeda -- is testimony to what the American military and
intelligence communities can do when turned on to a problem.

But the Taliban were not the hardest case, and the airplanes dropping
bombs on the enemy in Kunduz and Kandahar are in some cases older than
their pilots, and suffering for lack of spare parts.

The combination of precision weapons, Special Operations forces, and
sophisticated intelligence-gathering systems indicates the beginning of a
desperately needed "transformation" of the American military. But this
will require something more than the $20 billion a year in defense
spending increases over the budget now in the offing.

Similarly, the creation of a homeland security office without real powers,
the reluctance of the government to open comprehensive, formal inquiries
into the disaster of Sept. 11, and the absence of big, imaginative
programs -- mass scholarships for public health programs, for example, or,
more ambitious yet, a really substantial program of scientific research to
emancipate the West from dependence upon Persian Gulf oil -- tell us that
Washington is somewhere between a war footing and business as usual.

It is, of course, early yet, and many of the signs -- from the B-52s
pounding Taliban front lines to CIA teams scouring the Afghan hills, from
enhanced spending on vaccines and the Centers for Disease Control to the
creation of military tribunals for foreign terrorists -- indicate that the
government is truly serious.

But much remains to be done, beginning with acknowledging the scope of the
task, and acting accordingly. Yet if after the Afghan campaign ends, the
government lapses into a covert war of intelligence-gathering, arrests,
and the odd explosion in a terrorist training camp, it will be a sign that
it would rather avoid calling things by their true name.

Mr. Cohen is professor of strategic studies at the Nitze School of
Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University."

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he
didn't exist."

Roger 'Verbal' Kint [Kevin Spacey] in "The Usual Suspects" [1995].

All replies to the newsgroup please. Thank you kindly.

All original material contained herein is copyright and property of the
author. It may be quoted only in discussions on this forum and with an
attribution to the author, unless permission is otherwise expressly given,
in writing.
----------

D. Spencer Hines

Lux et Veritas et Libertas

Vires et Honor.

Julian Richards

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Jun 30, 2002, 4:43:21 AM6/30/02

The flaw in your argument i the idea of backing all "anticlerical"
forces in Muslim countries such as Iran is the misconception that what
the general populations of those (and al other) countries is that they
want to be just like America. Certainly they should renounce terrorism
and clean up their human rights records but they are Muslims and will
wish to retain a certain amount of orthodoxy.

I belive that the EU has the right approach to Iran that it is better
to ue the carrot than the stick and that there is a strong enough
reformist grouping within the estabishment to bring about change. Iraq
is a different case and requires a different approach.

The problems between the West and Islam centre around the Holy Land.
If this is resolved then much of the animosity will evaporate.
However, telling Muslims who should be their leader and who should not
is counterproductive (I remember Reagan trying this in a UK election).

How this could be achieved, I don't know but it must be some sort of
peaceful agreement that is as inclusive as possible but backed by as
much political muscle as the West and other Islamic countries can
bring to bear.

Julian Richards

"My son has asked for a pair of Nike trainers. He's ten years old, he should make his own"

"I bought a CD of whale music. Imagine my disappointment when I got home to discover that it was actual a cover version by a tribute band of dolphins"

John Kane

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Jul 3, 2002, 5:47:40 AM7/3/02

"D. Spencer Hines" wrote:

> This _tour d'horizon_ by Elliot Cohen has held up very well from last
> November:
>
> "WHAT'S IN A NAME
>
> World War IV
> Let's call this conflict what it is.
>
> BY ELIOT A. COHEN
> Tuesday, November 20, 2001 12:01 a.m. EST
>

clip much garbage

>
>
> But much remains to be done, beginning with acknowledging the scope of the
> task, and acting accordingly. Yet if after the Afghan campaign ends, the
> government lapses into a covert war of intelligence-gathering, arrests,
> and the odd explosion in a terrorist training camp, it will be a sign that
> it would rather avoid calling things by their true name.
>
> Mr. Cohen is professor of strategic studies at the Nitze School of
> Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University."
>

Which tends to make the rest of the world very nervous. If an American
analyst can think this then we are in deep trouble.

--
John Kane
The Rideau Lakes, Ontario Canada

jasa website

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Jun 11, 2021, 7:46:47 PM6/11/21

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