Author: Thomas E. Ricks
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: October 24, 2001
URL: http://www.indian-express.com/ie20011024/op1.html
The fear among military strategists
in the US is America's war in Afghanistan could spill over to its neighbourhood,
including India
As the US military begins combat
ground operations in Afghanistan, some Pentagon officials are concerned
about where the conflict ultimately will lead, and whether tactical military
gains in Afghanistan could lead to bigger strategic problems for the US
and its allies. The concerns run from the possibility the military campaign
could destabilise neighbouring Pakistan to the prospect that it could spark
a much broader war involving several nations in the region and beyond.
The officials warn the war will require enormous sacrifices and could prompt
additional attacks on the US.
With a tight lid clamped down at
the Pentagon on the release of information about the war, most concerns
are being expressed in private. But in the next circle of the defence establishment,
among people who consult frequently with the top levels of the military,
the misgivings come through loud and clear.''You can go and kill every
one of their terrorists and hang bin Laden in front of the White House
and you still haven't solved the problem - and you've probably created
hundreds of new terrorists,'' said Col.(rtd) Richard Dunn, a former chief
of the Army's internal think tank. ''So you could win tactically, and lose
strategically.''
The experts' worries begin with
Pakistan, whose government has sided with the US but whose population appears
to be generally sympathetic to the Taliban. Of dozens of experts contacted
for this article, each expressed concern about the stability of Pakistan.
Most worried that the war could undermine the country's president, Pervez
Musharraf. ''We've asked a lot'' of Pakistan, conceded one official. But,
he added, ''we are going to ask more of them.'' He declined to say what
such additional requests would be, but military planners said Pakistan
will be used as a staging ground for additional Special Operations raids
like the one launched into southern Afghanistan with more than 100 Army
Rangers.
The US government shares those concerns
about Pakistan, said another administration official, and is taking steps
to compensate for the destabilising effects of the new US military presence
there. ''If we wipe out al Qaeda in Afghanistan and turn Pakistan over
to some other version of the Taliban, that's a net loss, there's no question,''
the official said. ''But that's an argument for succeeding in Pakistan,
not an argument for giving up.''
Specifically, he said the US would
seek to improve military-to-military relationships - especially with younger
Pakistani officers who have had little contact with the US - and also would
seek to provide more economic aid and de-emphasise nonproliferation as
an issue. Finally, this official said, not doing anything at all to counter
terrorism in the region would be the most destabilising course the US could
take.
The prospect of Pakistan being taken
over by Islamic extremists is especially worrisome because it possesses
nuclear weapons. The betting among military strategists is that India,
another nuclear power, would not stand idly by, if it appeared that the
Pakistani nuclear arsenal were about to fall into the hands of extremists.
A preemptive action by India to destroy Pakistan's nuclear stockpile could
provoke a new war on the subcontinent. The US military has conducted more
than 25 war games involving a confrontation between a nuclear-armed India
and Pakistan, and each has resulted in nuclear war, said retired Air Force
Col. Sam Gardiner, an expert on strategic games.
Having both the US and India fighting
Muslims would play into the hands of bin Laden, warned Mackubin Owens,
a strategist at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. ''He could point
out once again that this is the new crusade,'' Owens said.
The next step that worries experts
is the regional effect of turmoil in Pakistan. If its government fell,
the experts fear, other Muslim governments friendly to the US, such as
Saudi Arabia and Egypt, might follow suit. ''The ultimate nightmare is
a pan-Islamic regime that possesses both oil and nuclear weapons,'' said
Harlan Ullman, a defence analyst at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies.
Ullman argued that the arrival of
US troops in Pakistan to fight the anti-terrorism war in Afghanistan could
inadvertently help bin Laden achieve his goal of sparking an anti-American
revolt in the country. Andrew Bacevich, a professor of international relations
at Boston University, said it is possible ''that we are sliding toward
a summer-of-1914 sequence of events'' - when a cascading series of incidents
spun out of control and led to World War I. Eliot Cohen, a professor of
strategy at Johns Hopkins University, agreed. ''We could find ourselves
engaged in a whole range of conflicts, from events you can't anticipate
now,'' he said.
Both Bacevich and Cohen are former
colleagues of the leading strategic thinker at the Pentagon, Deputy Defence
Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who previously was dean of the School of Advanced
International Studies at Johns Hopkins.
Wolfowitz is said to be the leading
advocate within the administration of attacking Iraq as part of an anti-terror
campaign. President Bush has threatened to take the campaign to countries
the US accuses of supporting terrorism, but the administration lately has
avoided discussing what targets might come after Afghanistan, and whether
Iraq might be next.
At the same time, the administration
has made it clear it expects the war to extend well beyond Afghanistan.
''We will do whatever it takes to defeat terror abroad, wherever it grows
or wherever it hides,'' Bush said in California on Wednesday.
The Air Force already is starting
to identify possible targets for air strikes after the Afghanistan campaign,
said one person familiar with the thinking of the leadership. ''We've got
targets after this,'' he said. He hinted that Iraq is next, in light of
the recent spate of anthrax attacks by mail in the US. US law enforcement
officials, however, have said they have no conclusive evidence.
Talking too specifically about what
comes after Afghanistan could reduce support for the US-led campaign and
even destabilise Pakistan, one veteran diplomat warned, noting that many
Muslim countries backing Washington have said the war should be limited
to the Taliban and to bin Laden's network. If the Pentagon isn't more careful,
he said, ''you blow Pakistan sky high, and the mullahs will take over the
missiles.''
If the US ends up fighting an entire
generation of radical Islamic terrorists, predicted Richard Kohn, a military
historian at the University of North Carolina, ''we'll end up in a perpetual
war''. Americans could find themselves living like Israelis and Palestinians
do, putting up with ''oppressive security everywhere'' and limits on personal
freedoms that change the tone of everyday life, he said.
Not all the strategists are gloomy.
''At the end of a twisting tunnel, there are some enormous opportunities,''
agreed Robin Raphel, a former State Department official for South Asian
affairs. Others argue that the US diplomatic offensive is reaping rewards
around the globe. Pakistan has an opportunity to suppress destabilising
Islamic extremists, Iran is sending friendly signals, and even Libya is
reaching out, they say.
Overall, said a former Pentagon
official, the terrorist attacks have forced the administration to deal
realistically with the world. ''All those other problems were there already,
but we weren't thinking about them well,'' he said. ''I thought we were
going into a tailspin of isolationism, and we've pulled out of that.''
(LA Times-Washington Post)
