Nov. 19, 2002

EDITORIAL
Shoot-outs and Posses: Terrorism, Saddam Hussein, and America’s Global Leadership

Examining Foreign Policy and Exploring What the US Is Missing

By Gordon Adams

The administration’s new national security policy document focuses on the war on terrorism and the confrontation with Saddam Hussein. This twin focus of national policy calls to mind an analogy from Western movies.

In the typical western, one mode of confrontation with the “bad guys” is the “shoot out” — the sheriff strides alone down the middle of a dusty Main Street and takes down the bad guy by himself. There is something heroic about this solution. By ending the life of the bad guy, it seems to achieve justice. The alternative model of confrontation in the cinematic distortion of America’s history is when “good men and true” are deputized by the sheriff, and ride together as a posse to enforce justice.

One cannot stand aside in the face of the bad guy, but there is a choice between going it alone and rounding up the posse. By riding together, the leader can build a long-term consensus about what justice means to the community.

The national security strategy of the Bush Administration is a shoot-out approach. Its premise is that the “bad guys” — terrorists and Saddam — are the most important problem and the first priority of American security strategy is to confront them globally. To defend the United States from these threats, it says, “we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively.”

The problem with the anti-terrorist, anti-Saddam shoot-out strategy, however real its choice of targets, is that it is distorting our long-term national security priorities and alienating the members of a potential international posse that we will need in order to meet our longer term national security needs. Just when a unipolar world and America’s unprecedented power provide a unique opportunity for leadership in addressing fundamental international problems, we are wasting the asset, alienating friends and allies, and ignoring long-term trends that are likely to increase international instability in the future.

The terrorist threat is manifestly real, so real, in fact, that virtually all of American national security planning — intelligence targets, force planning, diplomacy, international economic policy — has been torqued to face it. Terrorism, however, is a tactic, not an “-ism”; an international coalition against terrorism cannot replace the Soviet Union as a unifying principle for national security policy in the early 21st century.

An anti-terror coalition cannot address the broad agenda of international problems and risks diverting US attention, leaving these problems untended. Moreover, confronting the terrorists in a “shoot-out” mode has left many of our allies outside the effort: despite the first invocation of Article V of the NATO treaty in the alliance’s history, the alliance as an institutional posse has played no role.

Attacking and removing the government of Iraq has been added to the nation’s national security goals because that government, it is argued, sponsors terrorism and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction that pose a direct threat to regional stability and even to the United States itself. Shooting it out with the loathsome Saddam Hussein, however, compounds the problem for overall policy. The weight of the Iraqi threat in the overall concerns of US national security policy is not clear. The military threat Iraq poses is also not clear and the United States has substantial military, diplomatic, and economic superiority in the region, overwhelming any capacity Saddam might develop. It is not clear that overthrowing the Iraqi regime will deter others from seeking weapons of mass destruction, as the North Korean case demonstrates, and the consequences for regional stability and long-term US relations with the Arab world is potentially destabilizing.

The targets of the new strategy are taking our mind off the bigger security agenda and the shoot-out approach is slowly eroding our capacity to lead in confronting those longer-term problems. The alternative, especially for Saddam, is patient leadership — rounding up the posse. Rather than browbeat our allies into a UN resolution everybody can interpret their own way, leadership requires taking the time and making the effort to acquire assent and support for a long-term strategy that holds his feet to the fire, with group force as the ultimate recourse. That may mean a delay in a military strike. And it may mean enforced inspections, disarmament the old fashioned way, through mutual agreement backed up by the threat of force. It means accepting the reality that the posse has to agree that the objective requires the actions proposed, including inspectors, sanctions and confrontations.

What are we missing, thanks to the shoot-out strategy?;

• The long-term support of our European allies for solving international problems. As we sweep aside NATO and international agreements they value, they sign up, reluctantly, for the American crusade. It gets harder to enlist the Europeans in the posse, however. When the sheriff keeps going it alone, the potential members of the posse begin to wonder if another form of law enforcement — another sheriff — might be needed.

• A strategy for stability in Asia: Do we go for a shoot out in North Korea, despite Japanese and South Korean reluctance? The Chinese wonder about the precedent in the Middle East for future policy toward China.

• Stability in the Middle East: the shoot out with Saddam, hands off on the Palestinian intifada and the Israeli reaction, and increased US troops in the region all make a Middle East peace settlement more difficult and could prove destabilizing. We may hold some posse members in the near term but be alone down the road.

• Seeing the risks inherent in worrisome new commitments: the shoot-out strategy is creating new “friends” in Central Asia, with unstable politics or repressive dictatorships. The consequences for future terrorism and long-term American involvement could be significant.

• A long-term strategy on proliferation: the shoot out may make it harder to strengthen international regimes to halt proliferation and frighten others into acquiring such weapons to redress the power imbalance.

• A strategy to deal with the downside of globalization: the gap between the haves and the have-nots is growing, not shrinking, and the have-nots in the “arc of crisis” from the Middle East to Asia are breeding more terrorists and unhappiness. Although the administration’s new strategy announces a dramatic increase in foreign economic assistance, it describes no strategy for how those resources would address global inequality.

• A focused approach to long-term problems: Shrinking fresh water resources, environmental destruction, infectious diseases, the international trade in narcotics, spreading international crime, or violations of human rights all require posses and resources. They are getting scant attention (bar a reallocation of aid resources to fight HIV/AIDS); coalition building is not happening.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the continuing threat in Iraq demonstrated the need for broader global engagement and coalition-building. A posse is badly needed, which means integrating United States diplomacy, economic assistance, financial strength, intelligence, public diplomacy, as well as our substantial military strength. Only by rounding up the posse can we ensure the global economy benefits all; expand the reach of democracy and market growth, guarantee security and stability in key regions, fight international crime and narcotics, truly restrain the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, halt environmental decline and infectious diseases, and, stem global terrorism. The shoot out is standing in the way of such leadership.

Gordon Adams is director of Security Policy Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs. He was associate director for national security and international affairs at the Office of Management and Budget from 1993–97.

 

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