Healthy Skepticism Library item: 500

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Publication type: news

Bremmer I.
To fight terrorism 'drug', US needs a demand-side strategy
The Australian 2004 Aug 23

Full text:

The war in Vietnam was the first war the US lost, but it’s not the only one. Drug abuse in the US today is worse than when then president George Bush declared “war on drugs” in 1989 and appointed William Bennett as the drug czar.

Bill Bennett, meet President George W. Bush, who intends to appoint a “terror czar” to lead his war on terror. If US policymakers fail to apply the wisdom that can be gained from a sober analysis of Washington’s strategic failures in the war on drugs, the next US defeat will come in the war on terror.
The real blueprint for victory in the war on terror comes from the Cold War. Then, drawing on the insights of strategists like George Kennan, US policymakers used not just military, but political, economic and cultural means to contain the spread of Soviet communism until the inherent contradictions of that system caught up with it and the USSR broke apart.

The Cold War was won because the US and its allies were able to offer the people of the Soviet bloc attractive ideological, political and cultural alternatives to communism.

In this respect, George W. Bush got it dead wrong when he rejected the use of the Cold War doctrines of deterrence and containment in the war on terror. In a speech at West Point in June 2002, he argued instead that the US must take the battle to the enemy.

The US should take the battle to the enemy – but with all of its weapons, not just missiles and tanks.

The US has lost the war on drugs because the strategic architects of the conflict focused their resources on attacking the suppliers of narcotics, while virtually ignoring the US demand.

Lawmakers aimed at the cartels that smuggle narcotics, the peasants who grow coca and the street dealers who sell drugs – as if they were armies to be defeated on the battlefield – while failing to provide adequate resources and innovative education, treatment and rehabilitation for the millions of addicts at home.

Of the $US40 billion ($57billion) spent on the drug war in the past two decades, almost 75 per cent has gone on efforts to catch and punish drug dealers and users.

But for every incinerated Columbian coca crop and incarcerated cocaine dealer, suppliers cultivate new production in Bolivia and find new street vendors.

Why? Because there will always be supply to meet demand. In fact, demand creates its own supply. It is precisely on this principle that the US risks losing the war on terror.

There is a demand for terrorism in parts of the Muslim world. The under-educated, unemployed, angry young Muslim is willing and able to pay with his labour for an outlet for his anger and a sense of pride and purpose.

This man has no stake in the success of his society. He has no hope of lawfully changing his fate. If one al-Qa’ida fighter is captured or killed, this young Muslim will find another ready to enlist him.

Following the horror of September 11, 2001, the US’s drive to strike back spectacularly was natural. War with the Taliban over al-Qa’ida’s haven in Afghanistan was inevitable.

But it will take more than a regime change in Afghanistan and then Iraq to drain the swamp that supplies the terror for which there is growing demand. Just as the drug dealer will find a new corner to peddle his product, the Osama bin Ladens behind terrorism will move from Sudan to Afghanistan to Pakistan.

A full US commitment to rebuild and stabilise Afghanistan would have required patience, fortitude and the long-term commitment of many resources. But the Bush administration decided to leave that battle unfinished in an effort to win what it believed was an easy supply-side victory – regime change in Iraq.

But to its credit, Washington has not entirely ignored the would-be supporters of terrorism – the demand side of the war.

It has announced substantial increases in foreign aid to a number of frontline states, including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq; a Millennium Challenge Account has been established that will tie clear, concrete and objective reform criteria to US development aid; and the US-funded al-Hurra satellite television network has begun beaming pro-democracy programs in Arabic to Middle Eastern youth.

But startlingly inept diplomacy, a dangerously incomplete military effort in Afghanistan and the billions of dollars and hundreds of lives already lost in Iraq to bring down a monstrous leader contribute little to the wider war on terrorism.

In fact, they work to undermine it, especially as resources targeting the suppliers of terror continue to far outstrip those that could counter terrorism’s demand.

Only effective political institutions that provide citizens with basic security, health, education and welfare can diminish the increasing demand for acts of nihilistic violence.

Only a strategy as comprehensive as that with which the West pursued victory in the Cold War can bring victory over loose networks of militants dedicated to producing violent anarchy.

The war on terror demands that the US succeed in undermining the attractiveness of militant Islam by demonstrating that the West can provide better solutions to pressing issues, from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to political and economic reform in the developing world.

If Washington continues to follow the logic of the war on drugs – pursuing strikes against the bad guys at the expense of a strategy with which the US skillfully wields all its weapons – victory will look as far away a generation from now as it does today.