topic by
John Calvin
8/12/2002 (21:05) |
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One might thus view Dick Armey's recent objections as 'diversionary', calming for the 'Nervous Grannys', 'churchy old women' and 'girly types' who can't stand the thought of real men and other homo warrior types really standing up for America!
The Iraq Obsession
Summary
Opposition to a U.S. attack on Iraq is increasingly being voiced
internationally and within Washington. Despite the divisions it
is causing, the Bush administration is not abandoning its
strategy because it sees a successful campaign against Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein as a prime way to shatter the psychological
advantage within the Islamist movement and demonstrate U.S.
power.
Analysis
The diplomatic and political walls began to close in on the Bush
administration's Iraq policy last week. First, German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder very publicly announced something Berlin had
been saying privately for years: The German government wants no
part in any invasion of Iraq. Then Republican House majority
leader Dick Armey said he saw little justification for an
operation against Iraq.
Schroeder's stance may be mainly a political ploy aimed at
Germany's Sept. 22 elections: He currently is trailing
conservative challenger Edmund Stoiber, who has taken a more pro-
U.S. military stance. But Washington must still take the
opposition to an Iraq campaign within the German government and
populace seriously. Germany is a key staging area for U.S.
forces. Pre-positioned equipment and forces are based there that
undoubtedly would be necessary in the event of an attack.
Depending on the opposition, U.S. bases in Germany might not be
available for use.
Armey's statement also indicates that, in addition to the
expected opposition from liberals, Bush could face the same from
his own political base. At this point it seems there are very few
outside of the Bush administration itself who want an Iraq
invasion, with the possible exceptions of the British government
and Israel.
Since the Bush administration has a strong national security
team, it is reasonable to assume that its strategy is not
formulated frivolously nor adhered to mechanically. Therefore,
the question of the week is why the White House remains obsessed
with Iraq when the issue is tearing apart its international
alliance as well as its domestic political base.
As always there are multiple reasons, the top one being that as
the United States has pressed in globally on al Qaeda, it has
realized that the problem it faces is not the actual network per
se. The administration has concluded that there is a broad and
deep anti-Americanism that permeates the Islamic world. This is
due both to U.S. support for Israel and the U.S. presence in
Saudi Arabia in particular and in the Islamic world in general.
However, the Bush administration does not believe that shifting
positions on either of these issues would defuse this anti-
American sentiment. On Israel, the administration has concluded
that the Palestinians are not interested in an independent state
except as a springboard for further militant attacks. In its
view, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has done everything
possible to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state while
seeking to shift the responsibility to the Israelis.
Were a Palestinian state to be created under current
circumstances, the result would be ongoing operations against
Israel within its 1948 boundaries. Even if a Palestinian
government wanted accommodation with Israel, a substantial
faction of the Palestinians would refuse compromise and continue
attacks. Israel would inevitably respond, and the status quo of
chaos would quickly be restored. Moreover, the administration
believes it is detecting increasing collaboration between al
Qaeda and Palestinian groups.
The hostility toward an American presence in Saudi Arabia is a
deeper issue. In many ways, the modern emergence of the Arab and
Islamic world was a European contrivance and convenience. Regimes
from North Africa to the Arabian Peninsula to the Indian
subcontinent to the South China Sea were as much expressions of
European imperialism as of local nationalism. Iraq's 1990
invasion of Kuwait created two contradictory tendencies.
First, the Arab world reacted violently to Iraq's absorption of
another Arab country. However, after the war, attention
throughout the region -- particularly in Saudi Arabia -- focused
on the re-emergence of a foreign, imperial presence in the Arab
world. The United States was not seen as the savior of Kuwait but
as the despoiler of the Saudi heartland.
From Washington's point of view, the problem of al Qaeda has
become the problem of U.S. relations with the Islamic world in
general and with al Qaeda in particular. The Bush people also see
this as unsolvable. The creation of a Palestinian state simply
will be the preface for the next generation of the war.
Repudiation of Israel might satisfy some -- while destabilizing
Jordan and Egypt -- but it still would not solve the core
problem, which is the desire to expel the United States from the
region.
That leaves abandoning the region altogether, which is seen as
impossible. First, there is oil. Although the development of
Russian oil reserves is underway, the fact is that Persian Gulf
oil is a foundation of the Western economic system, and
abandoning direct and indirect (through client regimes) access to
that oil would be unacceptable.
Second, al Qaeda's dream is the creation of an integrated Islamic
world in confrontation with the non-Islamic world. This is a
distant threat, but were the United States to leave the region,
it would not be unthinkable. That itself makes withdrawal
unthinkable.
The al Qaeda problem cannot be confined simply to al Qaeda or
even to allied groups. It is a problem of a massive movement in
the Islamic world that must be contained and controlled.
Placating this movement is impossible. The manner in which the
movement has evolved makes finding a stable modus vivendi
impossible.
What may be possible is reshaping the movement, which would mean
changing the psychological structure of the Islamic world. Five
events have shaped that psychology:
1. The 1973 oil embargo
2. The survival of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
3. The defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan
4. The perceived defeat of the United States in Somalia
5. Sept. 11, 2001
Each of these events served to reverse an Islamic sense of
impotence. From 1973 until Sept. 11, the Islamic world has been
undergoing a dual process. On the one side, there has been a
growing sense of the ability of the Islamic and Arab worlds to
resist Western power. On the other side, there has been an
ongoing sense of victimization, a sense predating the United
States by centuries.
The center of gravity of Washington's problem is psychological.
There is no certain military or covert means to destroy al Qaeda
or any of its murky allied organizations. They can be harassed,
they can be disrupted, but there is no clear and certain way to
destroy them. There may, however, be a way to undermine their
psychological foundations, by reversing what radical Islamists
portray as the inherent inevitability of their cause. Sacrifice
toward victory is the ground of their movement. Therefore, if the
sense of manifest destiny can be destroyed, then the foundations
of the movement can be disrupted.
Hence Iraq. Hussein is one of the pillars of the psychology
aspect because his ability to survive American power in 1991, and
live to see the day that former President George Bush fell from
office, is emblematic of the ability of Arabs and Muslims to
resist and overcome American power.
It is essential for the Bush administration to reverse that sense
of manifest destiny. The destruction of the Iraqi regime will
demonstrate two things. First, that American power is
overwhelming and irresistible. Second, that the United States is
as patient, as persevering and much more powerful than the
Islamist movement
Moreover, an attack on Iraq, unlike the destruction of al Qaeda
and militant Islam, can be achieved. Wars with nation-states
possessing large military forces are something that the United
States does very well. Destroying a highly dispersed global
network is something that nobody does very well. The United
States cannot afford an atmosphere of ongoing stalemate.
Whatever the strategic virtues of an attack on Iraq, it
psychologically would break the stalemate. It would set the stage
for changing the psychological configuration in the Islamic world
and imbuing the movement with a sense of failure and
hopelessness, undermining its ability to operate.
This is why the Bush administration is obsessed with an attack on
Iraq. Its reasoning is not easily explainable in conventional
terms, which is why the plan generates intense opposition from
those who cannot see its benefit but can see the risks. The
opposition to such an attack is not frivolous. All warfare has a
psychological component, but this elevates the psychology
radically. Moreover, the psychological consequences are never
predictable. Who knows how the Islamists will react in the end?
Nevertheless, this is the best explanation for the Iraq
obsession. It is about psychology and long-term relationships and
not about immediate impacts. It is designed to weaken al Qaeda's
soul, not to cripple its operational capability. If you see al
Qaeda as fundamentally a psychological response, the strategy
might just work.
stratfor.com
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