The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 which shocked the world will fundamentally change the behavior of the US toward other countries. On a global scale, they will give rise to fighting between the hunter and the hunted, and will inevitably affect the geopolitics of the Muslim world, which spans Europe, Asia, and Africa.
In the past, whenever the US has suffered a terrorist attack, its basic response has been to adopt a "legal strategy" -- defining an attack as a criminal act, then punishing the criminal in keeping with the rule of law and due legal process. In 1998, following the bombings of US embassy compounds in Kenya and Tanzania, the Clinton administration responded by continuing this strategy.
This sort of approach, how-ever, has two serious flaws. First, collecting evidence inevitably takes time, which makes people impatient and prompts the media and politicians to attack the president as "weak." Second, by its nature, this strategy fails to grasp reality, assuming that it is "enough" to punish criminals in accordance with the law. It all but rules out the more severe act of declaring war.
In speeches given after Sept. 11, President George W. Bush used the word "war" to describe the attack, the first time it had been used in such a context. He further declared that, apart from the terrorists who perpetrated the attack, any nation supporting or harboring them would likewise be viewed as enemies of the US.
Later, the wording used and viewpoint expressed by Secretary of State Colin Powell echoed those of Bush. This means that the US will respond to the incident according to the rules of warfare, rather than those of law. This raises some serious questions. If it is discovered, for example, that traditionally suspect countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Sudan were involved in the attacks in terms of either supporting or harboring the terrorists, will the US declare war on them?
Once such a war is launched, there simply cannot be a "vic-tory" in the traditional sense.
The key question therefore isn't whether the US will launch a war with at least one of the nations thought to be responsible for the attack, but rather, how it should go about launching such a war.
One option would be a typical cruise missile attack or aerial bombing. This was the method used by the Clinton administration in 1998 toward Sudan and Afghanistan. But aside from venting anger, the objectives of these attacks were very unclear. And in the end, air strikes are incapable of forcing an opponent to surrender. It is therefore necessary to consider option two: a ground invasion.
With a ground invasion, however, the costs would be high, the risks huge and there would be no guarantee of victory -- and no guarantee that the culprits would be eliminated. In a nutshell, air strikes would be incompetent, while a ground invasion would be an over-commitment.
In the end, therefore, the US has only one option: the counter-terrorism approach adopted by Israel following the tragic 1972 Munich Olympic Games.
During the Games, Israeli athletes were massacred by a Palestinian terrorist group. The Israeli authorities knew that more than one Arab country supported the terrorist group and that it couldn't launch a war against all of these countries. Moreover, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were among those sheltering the terrorists. Israel simply was not in a position to declare war against them.
The Israelis launched a counterattack known as the "Battle of Europe," a secret war in which Israel systematically and comprehensively wiped out the Palestinian terror group responsible for the massacre. This wasn't an open military conflict between nations, but rather a series of hunt-downs and sabotage operations reminiscent of a James Bond thriller.
Operating according to the rules of war, Israel was not bound by the usual legal restrictions. Employing intelligence units, and secret troops, it waged deadly assaults, unfettered by geographical restrictions. By assassinating core members and leaders, Israel completely annihilated the group's operational capability.
The Sept. 11 attacks are likely to prompt the US to adopt the Israeli tactics -- the use of which will cost the US dearly, but will help the Bush administration avoid the trap of being labeled weak on terrorism or being accused of being over-zealous. These tactics will also produce results.
Given the US' superpower capabilities and intent, its secret war will not be confined to any specific area or region, but will instead be an out-and-out "global battle." Although unintended, Israel will become the greatest beneficiary of this huge shift in US tactics.
In the future, the US will no longer be able to demand privately that Israel restrain itself after suffering terrorist attacks, thus dispelling the greatest source of external pressure on the Sharon government. Even if the US wants to initiate a "global battle," it will need to greatly rely on Israeli cooperation.
As for Palestinian chief Yasser Arafat -- who once nearly succeeded in splitting the US and Israel -- his political blueprint for the "general's final battle" was destroyed in an instant, making the road ahead for him even more difficult.
The situation, not only for Arafat but for the leaders of all Arab countries, is now increasingly perilous. They must understand that the US has been justifiably provoked this time, and that in reality, they can't go against Washington on the issue of anti-terrorist operations. At the same time they must expect that, as the US carries out acts of retribution, anti-US sentiment will continue to swell among their peoples. Pulled by these two opposing forces, political discord in the Arab world will surely increase.
This perhaps is the real objective of the group that launched the Sept. 11 attacks. With the collapse of the twin towers, they have opened the political road on which the Arab world will be split into two camps.
In the divided Islamic world, the terrorist camp is relatively small and weak, but it now has the opportunity to win the political hearts and minds of the Muslim world. This will bring it one step closer to securing a decisive role in political developments in the Islamic world.
Chang Hsi-mo is an assistant professor at the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies at National Sun Yat-sen University.
Translated by Scudder Smith
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