WASHINGTON -- America's frustrations in its war on terrorism are likely to deepen as the international political structure upon which the war rests weakens.
A blow to that structure came last Wednesday with the assassination by Palestinians of a departing Israeli cabinet minister committed to the expulsion of Palestinians from all the territories. A ferocious Israeli retaliation was expected. The notion that the United States could put the Palestinian conflict on ice while pursuing its own war was wholly unrealistic. American war tactics and strategy have been facing increased criticism. Even conservative and pro-U.S. newspapers such as London's popular Daily Mail are asking what can be accomplished by bombing "a backward and ignorant people" whose actual responsibility for what happened on Sept. 11 is slight.
The pro-American Süddeutsche Zeiting in Germany asks, "Where is the political offensive?" La Repubblica in Italy accuses the United States of searching for political solutions through force and technology, and of believing that it "can eradicate terrorism and fanaticism by inflicting fire and bloodshed on a distant country."
Such criticism was predictable for at least as long as the military campaign was conducted only from the air. Many people are uneasy about "asymmetric war" against an already ruined and impoverished state.
Yet the American strategy is clear. What is missing is an articulated and achievable long-term political objective.
The aim in Afghanistan is to unseat the Taliban government and replace it with a grand coalition of Afghanistan's major forces, including the ethic Pashtuns of the south, perhaps former Talibans among them, and the ethnically diverse members of the Northern Alliance. But none of these groups shows much interest in collaboration.
The Taliban must be ousted first, and there is as yet no evidence that bombing will make them collapse or produce Osama bin Laden. He and his international brigades are thought to be more concentrated and powerful now than the Taliban themselves.
Meanwhile, the fragile structure upon which the Afghanistan intervention relies is getting weaker. In Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf's own position is fragile. His army is divided on the issue of supporting the United States against an Afghan Taliban government that the Pakistani services themselves created.
India has taken advantage of the situation by pressing its conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir. Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to defuse the situation during his visit last week, but under the current conditions it cannot be defused. It is as difficult a problem as Palestine, and with India and Pakistan both nuclear powers it may be even more dangerous.
The risks are, first, that events in Israel and Palestine will destroy what is left (if anything, indeed, is left) of the Middle Eastern truce, at a moment when the Egyptian public is restless about Egypt's pro-American position. There is also the danger that popular unrest will deepen in Pakistan, or even that a military coup might be attempted. The Saudi monarchy's position could come under even more pressure than now. Anti-American protests in Indonesia are widening. All of this jeopardizes the anti-terrorism alliance.
This is why time and results are important in Afghanistan.
The crucial question is: What does America really want? Would Washington be content with a new and moderate Afghan government and Mr. bin Laden's head presented on a platter?
President George W. Bush has repeatedly talked about the war in language that says it is not simply against identifiable terrorists, but against "evil" and disorder.
There is a notorious debate going on between the U.S. State Department, which is skeptical about wars, and some leaders within the Defense Department and the neoconservative intellectual community who want to attack Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and possibly other rogue states.
At a recent meeting in Washington I heard an otherwise thoughtful member of the university policy community explain that a new era had begun. The United States and its allies would need to go on from Afghanistan to dismantle the other rogue states, giving them new governments - and then take over the failed and failing states, where poverty and disorder create fanaticism and anti-Americanism.
The academic was talking about a war that the United States could never win.
Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Copyright © 2001 the International Herald Tribune
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