Posted on 03/25/2003 9:02:24 AM PST by Incorrigible
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
BY DAVID WOOD
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON -- Only days into an Iraq war that is proving more difficult than many expected, it now seems problematic that the United States can -- as President Bush envisions -- expand and reshape its stretched military forces to single-handedly manage the virulent security threats active around the globe. Published only last fall, the new U.S. national security strategy sidelines international institutions and cooperation in favor of a more muscular, unilateral global role for the American military.
But as the U.S.-led assault into Iraq is slowed by sandstorms and stiff Iraqi resistance, analysts see obstacles and contradictions:
While "there is no doubt about the outcome" of the war against Saddam Hussein, as allied force commander Gen. Tommy Franks said yesterday, it is the manner of the American victory that will be critical in the years ahead.
"This is not about Iraq, it's about us -- America struggling with how to use power to maintain its position in the world," said Robert H. Scales, a retired Army general, strategist and historian.
America's position is under direct challenge, and not only in Iraq.
Across the Korean demilitarized zone, U.S. combat troops face a hostile and unpredictable North Korean regime using the threat of nuclear weapons to elbow its way to recognition as a major international player. Two other new nuclear powers, Pakistan and India, are skirmishing again over Kashmir, while Iran is pursuing its own nuclear "Islamic bomb."
Apart from these immediate concerns are the long-term problems of proliferating mass terror weapons, bitter ethnic and religious conflicts from which rise disorder and terrorism, and new opportunities for the wildfire spread of disease and environmental havoc.
Against this backdrop, half the United States' aircraft carrier battle groups and six of the Army's 10 active-duty divisions -- one-third the personnel used in Desert Storm in 1991 -- are committed to the fight in Iraq. More may be needed for pacification and occupation duty there.
American forces also are deployed on land and at sea in northeast Asia, in combat operations in Afghanistan and on peacekeeping duties in the Balkans. U.S. Special Forces are engaged in counter-terrorist operations in Colombia, Yemen, the Philippines and elsewhere.
The new U.S. strategy, which the White House outlined in a white paper released in September, says the United States will build and keep unchallenged military superiority even over potential allies, and will use that power aggressively.
"New threats require new thinking," Bush declared in previewing the doctrine to West Point graduates in June. "In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act."
While the administration made a play for United Nations support for the war in Iraq, Bush made it clear all along that he would act even without the approval of the U.N. Security Council. And with such allies as France and Turkey expressing doubts or flat opposition to the war, he has left behind NATO as well.
Both institutions have shared the burdens of global security -- from direct military action to peacekeeping and stability operations, such as those today in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. What role they will be asked to play in the future is unclear, administration officials said.
The Bush administration also has firmly jettisoned the idea of ensuring security through international treaties and agreements among big-power states. Those "strategies and policies and institutions were built to deal with the conflicts of the 20th century," and are irrelevant to the "kind of threats we face now," Vice President Dick Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" March 16.
So the United States must act alone, Cheney said.
If that provokes protests, he added, it's because "the rest of the world hasn't really had to come to grips with that yet." Of critics who advocated a different approach to disarming Iraq, he said, "They don't have the capability to do anything about it anyway."
Along with other U.S. officials, Cheney had predicted in the fall that ousting Saddam would not be "that tough a fight."
Nevertheless, the U.S. attack on Iraq has caused an outcry.
The State Department, monitoring international media, summed up initial reaction as "predominantly negative. ... Many are skeptical that removing Saddam by dropping bombs will 'usher in a democracy' in the Middle East and fear new waves of terrorism lie ahead."
In Seoul, the pro-government South Korean newspaper Hankyoreh Shinmun declared last week that "with this war, the United States has abandoned its time-honored democratic values and moral authority." It warned that by associating with the United States, the government would "only undermine its basis for arguing for a peaceful resolution of the North Korea nuclear issue."
At its core, the new U.S. approach is about the use of raw military power.
"We are saying the only tools in our toolbox are those that look like B-2 bombers and aircraft carriers and Special Forces with night-vision goggles -- but these are not tools that are usable across a wide range of threats," said Daniel N. Nelson, a military and intelligence consultant and dean of arts and sciences at the University of New Haven.
Georgetown University professor of geopolitics G. John Ikenberry, writing in the journal Foreign Affairs, observed that the approach is "fraught with peril and likely to fail."
Get over it, says Ralph Peters, a retired Army officer, strategist and author: A big power must be feared, if not always respected.
"The largest arsenal is insufficient if your enemy does not believe you have the fortitude to use it," Peters says. "Enemies must know that the price of attacking us will be exorbitant, and that it will be extracted no matter the outcry."
Analysts agree, however, that the new strategy and the war in Iraq mark a historic turning point.
"The real issue here is not whether we conquer Iraq, but what comes after," said James Carafano, diplomatic historian at Georgetown University and a retired military officer.
"What is the international order going to be? How is the world going to be managed now?"
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The only people who should fear W's New World Order are despotic Islamic regimes, crazy Asian communists and socialist euroweenis who are comfortable with their lame status quo.
This is a setup for Hillary Clinton's ready answers.
This is what we get for operating unilaterally!! With Britain... and Australia... and Spain... and Poland... and Albania...
Hmm, somebody needs to tell the Brits, the Aussies, the Poles and the Danes, to name only some countries with forces in theatre, that they really aren't there. That of course doesn't include the Spanish, who have ships in the Gulf nor countries providing other sorts of diret or indirect support. These so called "journalists" just keep repeating the Big Lie!
Hmm, somebody needs to tell the Brits, the Aussies, the Poles and the Danes, to name only some countries with forces in theatre, that they really aren't there. That of course doesn't include the Spanish, who have ships in the Gulf nor countries providing other sorts of diret or indirect support. These so called "journalists" just keep repeating the Big Lie!
LOOK!!....
The French and their ilk tried to RUN OUT THE CLOCK!!!
If we had gone early January, there would be NO sandstorms!!!
The U.N. is irrelevant. We should VETO EVERY resolution for TWO Years to drive the stake in its heart!!
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