From an interview in Spiegel. Full version here:
“SPIEGEL: Dr. Brzezinski, President Bush compares the dangers of terrorism with the dangers of the Cold War. He has even spoken repeatedly of a “nation at war” and will only accept “complete victory.” Is he right or is he using exaggerated rhetoric?
Brzezinski: He is fundamentally wrong. Whether that is deliberate demagoguery or simply historical ignorance, I do not know. For four years I was responsible for coordinating the U.S. response in the event of a nuclear attack. And I can assure you that a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union on a comprehensive scale would have killed 160 to 180 million people within 24 hours.
No terrorist threat is comparable to that in the foreseeable future. Moreover, terrorism is essentially a technique of killing people and not the enemy as such. If one wages war on an invisible, unidentifiable phantom, one gets into a state of mind that virtually promotes dangerous exaggerations and distortions of reality.
SPIEGEL: What are these distortions?
Brzezinski: After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States was energetic and determined, and during the 40 years of the Cold War it was patient and deliberate. In neither case did any U.S. president intentionally preach fear as the major message to the people – on the contrary.
With his very loose formulations, the president is now creating a climate of fear that is destructive for American morale and distorting of American policy.
SPIEGEL: Is fear, as at the thought of a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists, not something very natural?
Brzezinski: Certainly, such a notion is not entirely unrealistic, but on the other hand we are not confronted with the Soviet nuclear weapons arsenal. I do not wish to minimize the danger of a single or even multiple terrorist acts, but their scale is simply not comparable.
SPIEGEL: Yet sometimes the discussions, in the United States but also in Europe, create the impression that radical Islam has taken the place of the former Soviet Union and that some form of Cold War is continuing.
Brzezinski: Radical Islam is such an anonymous phenomenon that has arisen in some countries and not in others. It has to be taken seriously, but it is still only a regional danger most prevalent in the Middle East and somewhat east of the Middle East. And even in those regions, Islamic fundamentalists are not in the majority.
SPIEGEL: Fear-mongering is therefore not a valid response?
Brzezinski: We have to formulate a policy for this region which helps us to mobilize our potential friends. Only if we cooperate with them can we contain and eventually eliminate this phenomenon. It is a paradox: During the Cold War, our policy was directed at uniting our friends and dividing our enemies. Unfortunately our tactics today, including occasional Islamphobic language, have the tendency of unifying our enemies and alienating our friends.
SPIEGEL: So it is exaggerated rhetoric which ensures that Osama bin Laden is elevated to the level of a Mao or Stalin?
Brzezinski: Correct. And that is of course a distortion of reality – notwithstanding the fact that bin Laden is a killer. He is a criminal and should be presented as such, and not intentionally elevated into a globally significant leader of a transnational, quasi-religious movement.
SPIEGEL: Has there been any progress at all in the fight against terrorism for the past five years?
Brzezinski: Yes and no. Knock on wood. So far, there has been no repetition of a terrorist attack in the United States, and that – as was the case with the recent plot in London – is probably partly due to preventive measures we have taken.
Also, there is a growing realization among the modern elites in the Moslem world that Islamic terrorism is a threat to them as well – but it is a slow process. Moreover, this process has been handicapped, as with our invasion of Iraq, which has galvanized a lot of hostility in the Islamic world towards the United States. Our insensitive and ambiguous posture in the Israel-Palestinian conflict is also a very important reason for the hostility towards us. All this helps terrorism.
SPIEGEL: Is complete victory, as demanded by the president, actually possible?
Brzezinski: That depends on your definition of victory. If we act intelligently and form the necessary coalitions, the appeal of terrorism may diminish and limit its capacity to find sympathizers or even would-be martyrs. Then it will probably gradually fade away. If, however, we envision victory as the equivalent of a Hitler shooting himself in the bunker, that will not happen. This is precisely why the whole analogy with the war is so misleading. It is not helpful for making the public understand that we are dealing with a long-term problem in a very volatile region, the solution of which depends on mobilizing moderate forces and isolating fanatics.”
4 Comments »
Dear Mr. Brzezinski,
You are right that terrorism does not right now pose the existential threat to the U.S. that the Soviet Union did, but then again neither did Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany.
Nation state actors such as Iran have little in common with a global terrorist franchise like Al Qaida or a terrorist group-cum-political party-cum-social services provider like Hamas or Hizbullah. But they do have ONE thing in common. Radical Islam.
And, as Labor MK and former Mossad Director Danny Yatom pointed out to me when I was in Jerusalem last week, the borders between Shia and Sunni Islam are thinning. Hizbullah and Hamas used to wage holy war against each other and now we have evidence of an alliance between them.
As you know, terrorists operating in Europe are not poor disgruntled Third World expatriates, but well educated and affluent natives of the welfare states there.
If you go to a modernizing Muslim country like Morocco, you will see teenage girls in low waist jeans and long hair, others in traditional hijab. But you will also see a few who seem like exiles from Saudi Arabia, all covered in black except for tiny openings for their eyes, and sometimes even black gloves. As disgusted locals will point out with a hint of rage, these new garments have nothing to do with Moroccan tradition or history.
What do all these things tell us?
There is a new kind of Islam, which can only be described as Radical Islam, or maybe Fascist Islam if you want to sound neo-con. It’s not Shia, it’s not Sunni. It’s totalitarian. It is to Islam what Leninism was to Marxism.
Totalitarian ideologies must be likened to a virus, which infects populations, and while totalitarianism in the past has preferred to infect nation states and act in their guise, Islamic totalitarianism isn’t fundamentally different to Nazi or Soviet totalitarianism. Nazi Germany was neither a nation nor a state. Once the Soviet Union could no longer invade European countries with tanks, they did with ideology, crafting slogans such as “Besser rot als tot” or PR stunts such as the Stockholm Appeal.
What does this mean?
Sure, I don’t like the expression “War on Terror.” But I do agree with the underlying neo-con idea that Radical Islam is a totalitarian ideology. And unfortunately, when that ideology involves strapping bombs to children and making them board buses while you’re holding the detonator, you can’t really fight it with books. When looking at a country like Iran, it is hard to differentiate between the very pragmatic, realist, political moves of a normal nation state, and the crazy, ideological impulses of totalitarianism.
As de Gaulle was fond of pointing out, Stalin behaved the way Peter the Great would have in annexing countries like Poland and Ukraine. But Peter the Great didn’t put on trials where defendants loudly proclaimed, often believing it, offenses they didn’t commit. Both aspects are there, the mundane and the unbelievable.
Totalitarianism is an attack on human nature itself. It already poses an existential threat to Israel (a former Oslo negotiator in Tel Aviv: “When someone says he wants to kill you, believe him.”) It poses a very grave threat to Europe, which cannot integrate its swelling Muslim populations and has weak states. The U.S. has been more resilient to totalitarianism in the past, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll last in the future.
I guess after this rant, my point is:
Number one, and this is perhaps the best and only lesson that can be learned from the 20th century: appeasement does not work against fanatics.
I was having breakfast with Italian diplomats, who said to me: “The worst case scenario would be strikes against Iran.” To my mind, Khamenei’s finger on the nuke button would be worse. And by starting the negotiation with ideas such as the former, we’re ensuring the latter.
Appeasement does not work against fanatics. Western policymakers need to recite this mantra five times a day while facing towards Munich.
2. Iran isn’t a South Africa-style dictatorship trying to extend its regime’s life through nuclear blackmail. Or rather, it’s not just that. We need to offer it a good economic incentive package that would bring it back into the community of nations (and hopefully, through the redeeming power of trade, undermine its liberticidal regime). But if they refuse, we must hammer its military infrastructure to death with Tomahawks.
3. The distinction between Shiah and Sunni, and between groups within those two umbrella denominations, is only relevant as it is relevant on the ground. When Hamas and Hizbullah view each other as allies, the distinction must be overruled by the distinction between Radical Islam and civilization.
4. The US does need to lead a global counter-insurgency campaign. They need to learn from Israelis how they became so good at the targeted killing of terrorists, and to do worldwide what the Israelis do in Gaza and the West Bank.
5. We do need to work on developing the Third World, if only because it’s morally right, but we mustn’t fool ourselves into believing that will solve the problem. Terrorism sometimes benefits from poverty, but as Europe shows, it is neither caused by, nor dependent on it. Mr. Fukuyama is right, right, ten thousand times right in saying that the Western world must become as good at providing social services to the poor in Third World countries as it has been in enforcing the lowering of trade barriers.
6. We do, still, need to believe in building democracies. If there is an antidote other than force to totalitarianism, it is democracy. Again, Mr. Fukuyama is right in pointing out that democracy isn’t merely a ballot box. It takes the rule of law. It takes a middle class. But then again, if the U.S. had put enough troops on the ground to ensure that rule of law, if they’d placated tribal sentiments through greater federalism, who knows what Iraq’s democracy would look like now? Sure, Mubarak being replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood right now would be a Bad Thing, but Egypt’s economy developing enough that the middle classes will demand (and with a nudge from the West, get) democracy.
In short, we need to figure out a new global policy in dealing with the world’s problem. A carrot and stick policy. The carrot being social and democratic policies that make the West more palatable to developing countries, while not fooling ourselves that solving world poverty will solve terrorism. The stick being the worldwide targeted killing of terrorists and their backers, and strikes against states that harbor them.
And as for the “War on Terror” bombast and rhetoric, it may sound bad, but I don’t think the ideas underlining them are.
I’m very glad to see that some of the “big hitters” are now posting on this blog. I used to have it as my home page, but when posts were infrequent, I only checked periodically. If you can continue to have Drs. Brzezinski and Fukuyama posting their thoughts, I will be reading daily (and why not get Dr. Samuel Huntington as well?). Thanks
[...] via AI cont’d [...]
Pingback by Current World Affairs - CWA » Blog Archive » “Victory Would be a Fata Morgana” – September 20, 2006 @ 7:12 am
The problem of Islamic fundamentalism, which hurts the West via terrorism, is surely better compared to crime than warfare. We accept that crime is, to some extent, inescapable; wars we either win or lose. The only way in which terror is potentially much worse than crime is when there are nuclear weapons involved, because then the threat becomes something that roughly merits the tag ‘existential’. Terrorism is really something we have to learn to live with, as we live with a certain amount of crime, and nuclear terrorism will be the terrible thing that might just happen but probably won’t. In this sense, it is like the Cold War, in that there is a small but real chance of something awful happening, but the everyday reality is roughly normal.
As in the Cold War, the only real solution to the problem – as opposed to stoical acceptance – is the transformation of the source of the threat. That seemed impossible then, but it was realised when the USSR collapsed. Now, it requires the transformation of Islamic fundamentalism, which was one of the most compelling reasons to fight the Iraq war. However, we must accept that this venture has strayed from the (appealing) neoconservative script, and it is not about to transform the Middle East into something less conducive to fanaticism. And there is no other strategy for transformation on the table. Therefore, we must revert to stoicism.
Stoicism, however, means putting up with something we do not much like but feel unable to change; it means compromise, not inflexible strength and determination. This strategy is frequently dismissed as appeasement. The specter of Munich still haunts the West (Mr Blair summoned it to Parliament in his remarkable speech for the Iraq war vote; and it routinely visits discussions of Iran). The lesson is that you do not live with Hitlerian regimes, but endeavour to extinguish them before it is too late. However, there is a good deal to be said for appeasement, and the old Hitler analogy blinds us to its virtues.
Appeasement is certainly easier than preventitive war. It does not present a big bill for blood and treasure, at least in the short term – and when appeasement is advisable, the short term can be stretched out for a very long time. And it does not produce overstretch. After all, do we really want to be fighting Iran right now? And North Korea? The point is that confrontation is very difficult. Recall Condoleezza Rice’s observation: “If there is any lesson from history, it is that small powers with everything to lose are often more stubborn than big powers, for whom the conflict is merely one among many problems.” (Foreign Affairs, 2000) Her conclusion from this premise was two-fold: first, that the last, best line of defence is a strong deterrent, and second, that the problem regimes are on the wrong side of history, and are therefore better conceived as declining relics than booming challengers.
Furthermore, we should be careful of conflating regimes like Iran’s with Al-Qaeda, which seems to be much more an ideology now than an organisation, and which does not rely on any state for its power.
For advocates of an uncompromising attitude to Tehran (and Pyongyang), the military option is a massive assault, probably via cruise missiles and airstrikes, to break the regime’s military machine. It does not involve occupation and transformation of the target state, because that looks much too difficult and expensive. However, this option runs a great risk of producing the Israel-Hezbollah result: the battered but unbroken enemy emerges form the collateral damage to gleefully proclaim victory. It doesn’t matter that his strength is greatly eroded – he has stood up to the West and lived to tell Al-Jazeera the tale, and that is victory. Furthermore, it is a victory for the prestige of anti-Western Islamic fundamentalism – whereas a defeat would only be Iran’s. Bombing Iran can produce a failure in the war on terror, but it cannot be a triumph. Not fighting a war avoids this fate, at least.
In ‘The Clash of Civilisations’, Samuel Huntington quotes Shakespeare’s Brutus:
Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe.
The enemy increaseth every day;
We at the height, are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Brutus sounds rather like many of the forward-leaning hawks we have heard of late. Huntington has this to say to them: “This logic … produced Brutus’s defeat at Philippi, and the prudent course for the West is not to attempt to stop the shift in power but to learn to navigate the shallows, endure the miseries, moderate its ventures, and safeguard its culture.” That is a doctrine of stoicism in international affairs, and it is probably the wisest course. After all, the biggest difference between 1996, when Huntington published those words, and now, is only that the legions are no longer brimful, but struggling to recruit – because they are bogged down in the ’shallows and miseries’ of Iraq.
Comment by David Fowkes – September 25, 2006 @ 12:05 am
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