Author: Thomas E. Ricks, Washington
Post Staff Writer
Publication: Washington Post
Date: October 21, 2001
Some Fear Regional Destabilization,
Retribution Against U.S.
As the U.S. 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 United
States and its allies.
The concerns run from the possibility
the military campaign could destabilize neighboring 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 United States.
The Afghan war "seems to be a short-term,
possibly shortsighted strategy," said one general who is not directly involved
in the anti-terrorism campaign. "Our actions so far show only short-term
thinking."
With a tight lid clamped down at
the Pentagon on the release of information about the war, most concerns
like this officer's are being expressed in private. But in the next circle
of the defense 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 [Osama] 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 retired Col. Richard Dunn, a former chief
of the Army's internal think tank. "So you could win tactically, and lose
strategically."
The Bush administration has hinted
at such apprehensions, with senior officials warning in recent weeks that
the anti-terrorism war will be long and hard. But the White House has yet
to spell out what some of the costs and consequences of the war might be,
both overseas and at home.
"I think it is up to the administration
to make it clear that the costs of this war will be heavy, and the war
will feel almost endless, but that not doing it means the end of the way
we live," said Williamson Murray, a retired Ohio University specialist
in strategy and 20th century military history.
The experts' worries begin with
Pakistan, whose government has sided with the United States in the anti-terrorism
war but whose predominantly Muslim population appears to be generally sympathetic
to the Taliban, the Islamic extremist movement ruling most of Afghanistan.
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, a general who took power in
a 1999 coup.
"We've asked a lot" of Pakistan,
conceded one administration 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 U.S. Army Rangers.
The U.S. government shares those
concerns about Pakistan, said another administration official, and is taking
steps to compensate for the destabilizing effects of the new U.S. 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 United
States would seek to improve military-to-military relationships -- especially
with younger Pakistani officers who have had little contact with the United
States -- and also would seek to provide more economic aid and de-emphasize
nonproliferation as an issue.
Finally, this official said, not
doing anything at all to counter terrorism in the region would be the most
destabilizing course the United States 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 U.S. 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 United States 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 United States,
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 defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies.
Ullman argued that the arrival of
U.S. 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 international 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 Defense
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 United States 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. "This nation
will defeat terror wherever we find it across the globe."
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 that service's 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 United States.
"Where do you think this anthrax is coming from?"
U.S. law enforcement officials,
however, have said they have no conclusive evidence about the source of
the anthrax used in the attacks.
Talking too specifically about what
comes after Afghanistan could reduce support for the U.S.-led campaign
and even destabilize 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 al Qaeda terrorist network. If the Pentagon
isn't more careful, he said, "you blow Pakistan sky high, and the mullahs
will take over the missiles."
Even if none of those fears about
the fates of foreign countries are realized, the new war could impose a
high cost on American society, some experts said.
If the United States 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.
Added one defense expert, "I think
the chance of a biological attack against the U.S. in the next year is
extremely high, and of a nuclear attack maybe 5 percent."
Not all the strategic thinkers are
gloomy. How the world has changed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
on the United States presents more opportunities than challenges, one Pentagon
official argued.
"At the end of a twisting tunnel,
there are some enormous opportunities," agreed Robin Raphel, a former State
Department official for South Asian affairs. These begin with Afghanistan,
she said, where there is a chance to end a decade-old civil war and raise
a significant amount of international aid for reconstruction.
Likewise, other experts argue that
the U.S. diplomatic offensive is reaping rewards around the globe. Pakistan
has an opportunity to suppress destabilizing Islamic extremists, Iran is
sending friendly signals to the United States, and even Libya is reaching
out, they say. U.S.-Russian relations also appear to have improved.
Overall, said a former Pentagon
official, the terrorist attacks have forced the administration to deal
realistically with the world. "All those other problems [in Pakistan and
elsewhere] 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."
At any rate, said retired Marine
Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, fretting about strategic downsides may be useless
because the alternative is worse. "If you do nothing, you also destabilize,"
he said. And if the United States hadn't responded in a powerful and effective
manner, he added, it would have had to endure terrorist attacks indefinitely.
"So we're making the best of a bad situation."
