TIRMAN AUDIT

M A S S A C H U S E T T S I N S T I T U T E O F T E C H N O L O G Y M A S S A C H U S E T T S I N S T I T U T E O F T E C H N O L O G YApril 200606-06M I T C E N T E R F O R I N T E R N A T I O N A L S T U D I E Sof the Conventional WisdomThe Audit of The War on Terror and the Conventional Cold War: They’re Not the SameWisdomIn this series of essays, MIT’s Center John Tirmanfor International Studies tours the MIT Center for International Studieshorizon of conventional wisdoms that animate U.S. foreign policy, and put them to the test of data and history. By subjecting particularly well-accepted ince the autumn of 2001, following the shocking attacks of ideas to close scrutiny, our aim is SSeptember 11th, President Bush and his advisers have repeat-to re-engage policy and opinion leaders on topics that are too easily passing edly likened the war against terrorism to the confrontation with such scrutiny. We hope that this will lead to further debate and inquiries, Nazi Germany in the Second World War and the long struggle with with a result we can all agree on: Soviet communism in the Cold War. But the current anti-terrorist better foreign policies that lead to a more peaceful and prosperous world. campaign and the related war in Iraq are significantly different from Authors in this series are available to the press and policy community. those earlier contests. Where resemblances occur, they are not com-Contact: Amy Tarr (atarr@mit.edu, forting to our ...

M A S S A C H U S E T T S I N S T I T U T E O F T E C H N O L O G Y M A S S A C H U S E T T S I N S T I T U T E O F T E C H N O L O G YApril 200606-06M I T C E N T E R F O R I N T E R N A T I O N A L S T U D I E Sof the Conventional WisdomThe Audit of The War on Terror and the Conventional Cold War: They’re Not the SameWisdomIn this series of essays, MIT’s Center John Tirmanfor International Studies tours the MIT Center for International Studieshorizon of conventional wisdoms that animate U.S. foreign policy, and put them to the test of data and history. By subjecting particularly well-accepted ince the autumn of 2001, following the shocking attacks of ideas to close scrutiny, our aim is SSeptember 11th, President Bush and his advisers have repeat-to re-engage policy and opinion leaders on topics that are too easily passing edly likened the war against terrorism to the confrontation with such scrutiny. We hope that this will lead to further debate and inquiries, Nazi Germany in the Second World War and the long struggle with with a result we can all agree on: Soviet communism in the Cold War. But the current anti-terrorist better foreign policies that lead to a more peaceful and prosperous world. campaign and the related war in Iraq are significantly different from Authors in this series are available to the press and policy community. those earlier contests. Where resemblances occur, they are not com-Contact: Amy Tarr (atarr@mit.edu, forting to our political values. And the comparative lessons that the 617.253.1965).U.S. Government is proffering are not the ones that are relevant to dealing with terrorism.Mr. Bush signaled these comparisons in his speech before Congress nine days after the attacks, when he said the terrorists “follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.” The analogy, particularly to the Cold War, has been repeated many times since by the president, the vice president, and their lieutenants. After the London bombing in the summer of 2005, two top aides wrote, “At its root, the struggle is an ideological contest, a war of ideas that engages all of us, public servant and private citizen, regardless of nationality. We have waged such wars before, and we know Center for International Studies 1how to win them.” Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyBuilding E38-200292 Main Street The “war of ideas” theme remains prominent, as is the division of the world into those Cambridge, MA 02139 who are “with us or with the terrorists,” as the president put it. The threat from al Qaeda and other jihadists, and the American response, are understood primarily in T: 617.253.8093F: 617.253.9330 military terms. As the 2006 National Security Strategy states, “We will disrupt and cis-info@mit.edu destroy terrorist organizations by: direct and continuous action using all the elements web.mit.edu/cis/ of national and international power. . . ; defending the United States, the American web.mit.edu/cis/acw.html continued on page 21people, and our interests at home and abroad by identifying and destroying the threat before it reaches our borders. . . ; denying further sponsorship, support, and sanctuary to terrorists 2by convincing or compelling states,” etc. These frames—freedom v. oppression, the world divided, the necessity of readiness to use overwhelming military force—are directly bor-rowed from Cold War thinking. But are the perception of the threat and the construction of the response appropriate? Lessons of the Cold WarThe Cold War was a great power contest that had many dimensions. There was a “war of ideas,” and there were military confrontations. But there were also proxy wars, vast alli-ances, and institutions for managing the conflict—indeed, it was a highly formalized affair, with mechanisms, treaties, ambassadors, and so on specifically dedicated to defusing poten-tial conflict. It was, most important, an inter-state competition. The states could and did speak with each other, negotiate with each other, trade with each other, sustain cultural and educational exchanges, and the like, for decades. While the causes of the end of the Cold War remain a contentious topic, there is much to suggest that these dense networks, institutions, global norms, rational discourse, and civil society advocacy had enormously powerful effects in lowering tensions and opening oppor-3tunities to conclude the rivalry. The military competition was essentially a stalemate. Up to the end, American hardliners warned of Soviet nuclear superiority, for example, or their numerical advantages in the European theater. And the major proxy war—Vietnam—was a colossal failure for the United States. The Cold War was ended by engagement, rather than “destroying the threat,” and that is a powerful lesson. But because of the highly formal and state-centric nature of the con-frontation, one has to ask if there is any relevance to the “twilight struggle” with Soviet communism. One could say, parenthetically, that the Second World War was also fundamentally dif-ferent from the current antiterrorism campaign. Like the Cold War, it was state-centric, and militarily colossal in scale. It required massive mobilization and shared sacrifice. With the end of the conflict, there was dedication to rebuilding the vanquished countries and empowering multilateral institutions. The contrast with today could not be sharper.At home, the Cold War also reverberated through governance, politics, and society. The creation of a new national security state in the late 1940s was fraught with symbolism as well as concrete changes in politics. A new “red scare,” internal surveillance, and other anti-com-

munist tropes filled America for many years. Democratic socialism was tarnished as a politi-John Tirman is executive director cal alternative. Groups opposing the nuclear arms race or military interventions were targeted of MIT’s Center for International and scorned. Government secrecy grew; science and other such endeavors were affected. Studies, and is coauthor and coeditor Internal conspiracies of any significance were never, or rarely, discovered, yet the impact of of Terror, Insurgencies, and States fear—or the political utilization of fear—had immense and deleterious consequences for (Penn Press, forthcoming).4 democratic values in the United States and in many countries allied with the West. A Different WarThe threat from al Qaeda and similar groups is wholly different from the menace of the Soviet Union. The latter, despite chronic weaknesses, had thousands of nuclear weapons, citation enormous conventional forces, and many allies. Al Qaeda is nothing like a state. Its ideology John Tirman. “The War on is largely a cry against alleged Western mistreatment, rather than a successor system rooted Terror and the Cold War: They’re in European philosophy (as was communism and fascism). Since the spectacular attacks of Not the Same.” MIT Center for 9/11, al Qaeda has provoked little actual violence in the West. The London and Madrid International Studies Audit of the bombings, small in scale, were the work of local, self-styled malcontents. Conventional Wisdom, 06-06 (April 2006). Law enforcement and intelligence operations by the United States and many other countries have likely had some useful effect in diminishing the number of potential or actual al Qaeda members and operations, although a very small number of plots have come to light, and none in the United States. The war in Afghanistan, while notably unsuccessful in arrest-2of the Conventional WisdomAuditing Osama bin Laden, has surely disrupted his operations and Rethinking Terrorismdeprived him of a friendly central government. These kinds of Al Qaeda is neither Nazi Germany nor Soviet Russia. It is a tiny counter-terrorism activities have been successful, perhaps, but revanchist network that is dangerous in limited ways. This is not to they bear little resemblance to strategies of the Cold War. say it cannot wreak havoc; if, in an unlikely case, it acquired nuclear or biological weapons, it could obviously be very destructive. Also, What does bear a striking resemblance is the war in Iraq. Like its non-statehood protects it from the deterrence value of the U.S. Vietnam, it has been pursued to teach lessons and demonstrate nuclear arsenal—another important, if chilling, difference from the resolve. Like Vietnam, it began with popular support that sud- U.S.-USSR standoff, and one that should earn more attention in denly eroded as rationales built on false premises dissolved. Like resources and focus from the White House. Yet to raise the jihadists Vietnam, the high toll in casualties and insecurity threatens the to the status of a global “totalitarian” threat is foolish and counter-entire region’s future, even as the intervention was promoted in productive. And, as we have already seen, it has fearfully led the terms of protecting or promoting stability and democracy. Like American people to support an extremely costly invasion of Iraq and Vietnam, the war in Iraq is increasingly a distraction from other a stronger state at home that is undermining democratic values. security priorities and opportunities, is corrosive of alliances, and is economically costly. And, like Vietnam, it is creating new Perhaps most destructively, the war on terrorism worsens some of enemies. the factors that contribute to Muslim wariness of the West. Israeli hardliners were extolled as a model for dealing with terrorism, and the Another regrettable similarity with the Cold War is the effect on American refusal to recognize Hamas’s electoral victory in Palestine American politics and democratic values. The creation of a new belies Washington’s talk about democratization. The anti-terrorist security state apparatus mirrors the initiatives begun in the late targeting of many Muslim organizations in the United States appears 1940s. Not only has military spending reached heights never seen discriminatory. The war in Iraq has been carried out callously with 5 regard to human security. The confrontation with Iran appears to be during the Cold War, but now the government has newly expanded a case of nuclear “orientalism.” Continued U.S. backing for repressive powers of surveillance, secret courts, targeted communities, and, Arab regimes remains a sore point with Arab democrats, and repres-most prominently, a new federal bureaucracy that institutional-sive regimes are being bolstered in Central and South Asia. izes the anti-terrorism campaign. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and special offices in the Justice Department, FBI, and elsewhere, buttressed by the USA Patriot Act and its successor, The nation needs to take stock of what has worked and not are now embedded in the political life of the state and society. As worked in the anti-terrorism initiatives of the last five years, they have been in previous red scares, immigrants are subjected to separating out (if possible) the fractious topic of Iraq and wanton 6particularly onerous attention. claims of success on other fronts. A body of empirical literature on other struggles against politically violent groups is growing, The federal government’s broad encroachment on civil liberties and and is informative. We can learn from such analysis, and guide its political use of fear are not rooted in a demonstrable domestic our national and international efforts accordingly. threat. Virtually none of the 300-plus indictments on “terror-ism related” activities since 9/11 have involved anything remotely But most of all, we should stop referring to the anti-terror resembling a domestically based plot against America, and the 9/11 effort as another epic episode of America’s triumphal battle Commission found no such thing, either. Despite this, according to against totalitarianism. The analogy is weak, and it is leading some analyses, fear of terrorism determined the outcome of the 2004 the country to support poor—even catastrophic—policies in 7 presidential election. The cultivation of fear by federal authorities the anti-terror effort. also built initial support for the war in Iraq—“we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” was one official’s memorable stratagem. article footnotes

1 Stephen J. Hadley and Frances Fragos Townsend, “What We Saw in London,” New While some of the most alarmist rhetoric and policy assertions York Times, July 23, 2005. Hadley is national security adviser and Townsend is home-land security adviser.have been diminished by the embarrassments of the Iraq war 2 http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss3.html.and the suddenly lower threat assessments since the 2004 elec-3 The weight of scholarship, in fact, suggests that these “soft power” factors were tion, much of the domestic security apparatus has been deeply more significant than military confrontation. See, for example, Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Cornell institutionalized. DHS is a $30 billion-plus agency. The USA University Press, 1999); Leon Sigal, Hang Separately: Cooperative Security Between the United States and Russia, 1985-1994 (Century Foundation Press, 2000); Daniel C. Patriot Act was renewed by Congress in 2006 despite a concerted Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism (Princeton University Press, 2001); and Raymond Garthoff, The Great effort by civil libertarians to block it. The debate on immigra-Transformation: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (Brookings tion pivots partly on the unsubstantiated threat of terrorists Institution, 1994). 4 See, for example, Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Johns entering from Mexico. The administration has stoutly defended Hopkins University Press, 1991); Robert J. Harris, “The Impact of the Cold War on Civil Liberties,” Journal of Politics (1956): 3-16; R. Griffith and A. Theoharis, eds., its domestic surveillance, retentions of suspected terrorists, and The Specter: Original Essays on the Cold War and the Origins of McCarthyism (New other extraordinary measures. Every sign points to a permanent Viewpoints, 1974). 5 Cindy Williams, “Weighing the Costs of Today’s Defense Strategy,” Boston Globe antiterrorism campaign within the United States that will consis-(March 21, 2006). tently cause friction with civil liberties and democratic process. 6 See David Cole, Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (The New Press, 2003), and John Tirman, ed., The Maze of Fear: Security & Migration After 9/11 (The New Press, 2004). This impact of the war on terror within the United States is 7 See the UPI report: Al Swanson, “Analysis: ‘Security’ Moms Decided Election,” Washington Times Web site, Nov. 15, 2004, based on analysis by the Institute for perhaps the strongest parallel to the Cold War, and equally Women’s Policy Research. unnecessary and futile.2 3M A S S A C H U S E T T S I N S T I T U T E O F T E C H N O L O G YApril 2006M I T C E N T E R F O R I N T E R N A T I O N A L S T U D I E Sof the Conventional WisdomThe War on Terror and the Cold War: They’re Not the SameJohn TirmanMIT Center for International StudiesMASSACHUSETTS