The administration of US President George W. Bush's re-characterization of its "global war on terror" as the "long war" will be seen by critics as an admission that the US has started something it cannot finish. But from the Pentagon's perspective, the change reflects a significant upgrading of the "generational" threat posed by worldwide Islamist militancy which it believes to have been seriously underestimated.
The reassessment, contained in the US Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review presented to Congress earlier this month, presages a new US drive to rally international allies for an ongoing conflict unlimited by time and space.
That presents a problematic political, financial and military prospect for many European NATO members including the UK, as well as Middle Eastern governments.
According to the review, a "large-scale, potentially long duration, irregular warfare campaign including counter-insurgency and security, stability, transition and reconstruction operations" is necessary and unavoidable. Gone is the talk of swift victories that preceded the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This will be a war of attrition, it says, fought on many fronts.
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld suggested at the weekend that western democracies must acknowledge they were locked in a life or death struggle comparable to those against fascism and communism.
"The enemy have designed and distributed a map where national borders are erased and replaced by a global extremist Islamic empire," he said.
Rumsfeld denied the Iraq invasion had proved a catalyst for terrorist recruiting -- but said al-Qaeda and its allies wanted to use Iraq as a central front in the longer struggle.
"A war has been declared on all of our nations [whose] futures depend on determination and unity," he said. "As during the cold war, the struggle ahead promises to be a long war," he said.
The Pentagon review proposes a series of measures to equip the US and its allies for the long haul, built around a whopping overall 2007 defense budget request of more than US$550 billion.
They include increased numbers of special forces and unmanned spy aircraft or drones, expanded psychological warfare and civil affairs units (for winning "hearts and minds,") and more sea-borne, conventionally armed long-range missiles. Countries such as Iran will note plans for covert teams to "detect, locate and render safe" nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Addressing the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London yesterday, Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of US Central Command covering the Middle East, said winning the "long war" would necessitate increased "security assistance, intelligence-sharing and advice" for allies.
"Regional nations must participate and lead the fight," he said.
A revived, enlarged international coalition would enable the US to "re-posture" its Middle East ground forces once stability in Iraq and Afghanistan was achieved, he said. Ground forces that remained would be quickly deployable elsewhere; and their area of operations would grow to include old and new theaters in south-east Asia and east and north Africa.
Just as important, Kimmitt said, was enhancement of the coalition's ability to forge long-term diplomatic and law enforcement networks to counter the "astonishing" use by al-Qaeda and its allies of "physical and virtual domains" such as the Internet.
"The fundamental forces at play in the long war should not be underestimated," he said. "An extremist ideology seeks to go back to the era of theocratic dictatorship, repression and intolerance" while employing the latest technology to do so. The movement's aim was to end western influence in the Muslim world and overthrow "apostate" Middle Eastern regimes, he said, and it would not hesitate to use weapons of mass destruction.
The "long war" doctrine, which formalizes Bush's earlier division of the world into good guys and evil-doers, is likely to prove highly controversial as its wider implications unfold.
Washington will be accused of scaremongering and exacerbating the clash of cultures.
In the US itself, the human and moral cost of the post-Sept. 11 wars is already under critical scrutiny, from soldiers' families to the former US president Jimmy Carter.
Kimmitt admitted the biggest battle could be at home: "It will require strong leadership to continue to make the case to the people that this war is necessary and must be prosecuted for perhaps another generation."
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