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his speech to a joint session of Congress September 20, President
George W. Bush laid out his objective for the war against terrorism,
saying "from this day forward, any nation that continues to
harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States
as a hostile regime." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
has been even more explicit, saying four days earlier, "that
the best defense against terrorism is an offense. That is to say,
taking the battle to the terrorist organizations and particularly
to the countries across this globe that have for a period of years
been tolerating, facilitating, financing and making possible the
activities of those terrorists."
On October
7, the United States opened the military campaign against Osama
bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network in Afghanistan, and the Taliban
movement which has sheltered it. This war may be waged with new
weapons and tactics, but it marks a philosophical rebirth of the
kind of war the United States fought in the wake of Pearl Harbor.
This is to be a real war with the goal of remaking the world geopolitical
map. And the Bush administration was already thinking in these terms
before the suicide air strikes on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
As a result
of the strategic analysis that Secretary Rumsfeld has been conducting
since taking office, a new paradigm of "winning decisively"
had taken shape. The new Quadrennial Defense Review defines "decisively
defeating an adversary" as "the ability to occupy territory
or set the conditions for a regime change if so directed."
The senior defense official who conducted the first QDR briefing
October 1 was more blunt, speaking of how "to decisively defeat
an adversary" meant "marching to capitals and overthrowing
the regime."
Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had laid out the historical precedent for
this concept at an August 16 briefing, saying "we want to have
a major war capability to impose whatever terms — 'win decisively,'
I guess is the terminology. It was called 'unconditional surrender'
in World War II."
President Franklin
Roosevelt spoke of "unconditional surrender" as "the
destruction of the philosophies in those countries which are based
on conquest and the subjugation of other people." This meant
the removal of the Axis regimes and their replacement with democratic
governments. It would have been unthinkable to stop at the German
border after the liberation of France, leaving Adolph Hitler in
Berlin.
Mussolini was
executed by Italian partisans after the fall of Rome; Hitler committed
suicide in his Berlin bunker. Emperor Hirohito was spared, but General
Tojo was hanged. Denazification programs, war-crimes trials, purges
of collaborators, and the writing of new constitutions cemented
democratic governments which then joined the United States as allies.
Western Europe settled into the longest period of peace in its history.
While the U.S.
has attempted to impose political change in several small-scale
settings (Grenada, Panama, Haiti), it has not done so in any major
war since 1945. It tried to unite Korea in 1950, but was unwilling
to further escalate the war after China intervened.
In Vietnam,
while Hanoi sent an army south to overthrow the Saigon regime; the
U.S. only sent bombers north to coerce Hanoi — an asymmetry
in objectives that led to disaster. The war only ended when one
side was able to impose fundamental political change on the other.
In the Gulf
War, the U.S. stopped after liberating Kuwait. Saddam Hussein was
left untouched in Baghdad to foment new plots, including a probable
role in the attacks of September 11. Indeed, the failure to remove
Saddam a decade ago, when U.S. troops were on his doorstep, can
be considered the motive for Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to make "decisive
war" the core of future doctrine.
This renewal
of strategic thinking indicates a rejection of the "limited
war" concept that has generated so much frustration since Korea.
In limited wars, adversaries are to be persuaded to change their
ways. They are not be presented with mortal threats that would risk
escalation and a hardening of their position. This is the view still
in vogue at the State Department, which has not undergone the kind
of intellectual transformation that has been instituted at the Pentagon.
But what if
adversaries are already hard cases, determined to stay their course?
What if they cannot be deterred? Then, they must be eliminated if
real peace is to be established and maintained.
Promulgation
of such a strategy would send a strong signal to any regime that
was pondering a challenge to American interests. The risk would
no longer be that the challenge might be repulsed, but within the
antebellum status quo. The risk would be that the regime itself
could be destroyed. Those who decided on aggression could personally
pay the ultimate price. It is hoped that even the nastiest regimes
will purge their lands of anti-American terrorists to avoid such
a fate.
The test of
whether "decisive warfare" emerges as new American doctrine,
and thus a credible threat to future adversaries, is what happens
in Afghanistan. The U.S. ultimatum to Kabul was a demand for unconditional
surrender. Not only was the Taliban ordered to turn over all terrorist
leaders (not just Osama bin Laden), but to allow American inspectors
into the country to confirm al Qaeda's camps have been destroyed.
This is similar to the demand made on Iraq for inspection of Saddam's
weapons of mass destruction — a demand President Bill Clinton
let drop. The Iraqi experience shows how difficult it is to enforce
such demands against a hostile regime which still controls the local
environment. To get the kind of assurances and verification the
U.S. has demanded will require a new, cooperative regime be installed
in Kabul.
Imposing such
a change of regime requires troops on the ground. It remains to
be seen if the Northern Alliance is strong enough to wrest power
from the Taliban with American support limited to airpower, special-operations
units, arms, and other supplies. If the Northern Alliance falters,
Washington will have to decide whether to introduce American troops
to bolster its offensive, or settle for the "limited war"
objective of reprisals and punishment in hopes that the Taliban
will have learned its lesson.
If "decisive
warfare" survives its current test, it will require a high
priority be given to the development of missile defenses to remain
viable for future conflicts. Of the seven states identified by the
State Department as sponsors of terrorism, five (Iran, Iraq, Syria,
Libya, and North Korea) have ballistic-missile programs. The acquisition
of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction by rogue states
is seen as an attempt to guarantee regime survival by providing
a "death ride" deterrent against a "decisive"
thrust towards the capital by superior American conventional forces.
Removing that threat and assuring the vulnerability of hostile regimes
to overthrow by the projection of U.S. power is crucial to Rumsfeld's
new thinking and to America's continued role as world leader.
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