Masters of Illusion American Leadership in the Media Age Phần 6 pot

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Meanwhile, and equally important, the American government is going
to have to decide how to respond to China’s growing arsenal of ballistic
missiles. In the 1960s, when Presidents Kennedy and Johnson faced such a
decision, the Soviet Union’s ballistic missiles were a unique and unprece-
dented threat to the United States. Even today, only Russian missiles present
a similar threat. China, however, may soon acquire a similar strategic nuclear
capability, and we are going to have to decide what to do about it.
Most of us thought the risk of global nuclear war had disappeared with the
end of the Cold War. Of course, we recognized the risk of nuclear terrorism,
but we thought that global nuclear war could never happen because the
United States is, and seems likely to remain, the world’s only conventional
military superpower. Will we confront more Able Archers in the future? Will
other American presidents be confronted with nuclear brinksmanship over
Ta iwan, or the collateral risks of nuclear exchange stemming from hostilities
among other nuclear states? Unfortunately, the answer most likely is “yes.”
The reality is that the end of the Cold War has not ended the risk of nuclear
war, and that what was at one time a snake with one head is now a hydra-
headed monster. We had planned at first for a general reduction in the risk
of nuclear war, but this hasn’t happened and we are now attempting to rely
on the old methods of balance of forces and mutual assured destruction.
But there is no possible balance among the many nations now building
nuclear strength, and there is no formula like MAD on which we can rely
to avoid war – though our leaders may wish to try. In today’s situation, we
can only strive unceasingly to eliminate nuclear weapons, while trying to
protect ourselves if arms control falls apart.
Both courses involve significant and considerable risk. We could find
ourselves eliminating our own nuclear arsenals on the promise that others
will do the same, when in fact our potential adversaries have deceived us.

Deception about arms reduction happened on a large scale before World
War II, and could happen again. Further, governments could disarm, while
terrorists do not. The risks do not make a persuasive argument against arms
control efforts, but do constitute reasons to conducting them very carefully.
This illustrates exactly why we need to dominate every inch of space – so
that our satellites can see both underground and evaluate enemy satellites’
technical capabilities. The quickest way to shut a country down is to destroy
its satellites! China is most likely developing a strategy to do this. Destroying
enemy satellites would be a good preemptive tactic, where one is required.
We must recognize that nuclear arms remain attractive to many govern-
ments in today’s world. They are often cheaper than conventional forces to
acquire and maintain. For states that aspire to be major powers – especially
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The Next Big Wars 257
Russia and China – nuclear weapons are available, affordable, and credible
counters to American power.
18
They are not likely to give them up. Hence,
there are significant limitations on what may be achieved by disarmament
in the nuclear arena.
Defense against nuclear attack has its risks as well. We may be unable to
build an effective defense, and may delude ourselves into a false security.
This could lead us into aggressive behavior that could bring on war. These
risks again are no argument against efforts to build a missile defense, but
constitute an argument to be very careful about being sure that it will work.
We return to this topic when we discuss the important role of national
missile defense in ensuring the Strategic Independence of the United States
in Chapter 14.
THE DYNAMICS OF WORLD DISORDER

Suddenlyand without warning, inthe pastdecades, growth inEurope, Russia
and Japan began to decelerate, all converging asymptotically toward zero.
China alone marched to its own drummer. For a time these recuperating
states continued to close the gap, but by the nineties the tide turned, with
America pulling ahead of Europe, Russia and Japan, despite their widely
vaunted liberalizations. For proponents of convergence this was merely the
pause that refreshed. Time however hasn’t validated the surmise.
Masters of Illusion need to be resolute on this point because contem-
porary patterns of reconfiguring global wealth and power are promoting
both high- and low-intensity conflicts by shifting perceptions of capabili-
ties, vulnerabilities, national interest, rights, prerogatives, and redressable
grievances. China’s rapid economic, technological and military moderniza-
tions challenge established relations in Asia, including vital American inter-
ests in Japan, Taiwan and the sea-lanes of the Pacific. It is easy to see how
Beijing’s leaders might conclude with the passing years that Japan could be
intimidated and enticed into surrendering its claims to the Senkoku Islands
and surrounding petroleum rich seabeds. Similar tactics could be applied
in other seabed territorial disputes off the coast of Indonesia, and America
could be cowed into accepting an invasion of Taiwan. The reactions of Japan,
Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, and the United States however might not fol-
low Beijing’s script, and could heighten tensions. China’s rivals in the Asia
Pacific region could dig in their heels, enhancing their offensive and defen-
sive capabilities, forming economic and military anti-Chinese alliances, and
engaging in brinksmanship. The struggle for shrinking petroleum supplies
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258 Vor texes of Danger
could be particularly combustible, as it was in the years preceding the Second
Worl d War II.
China’s ascendance and Japan’s relative decline don’t necessitate Amer-

ican embroilment in an Asian Pacific cold or hot war, but they do raise
risks that won’t be countervailed by balloting and globalized markets. The
turbulence caused by the reconfiguration of global wealth and power given
systemic realities are likely to outweigh latent forces of enlightened demo-
cratic free enterprise.
America also could be reluctantly drawn into territorial tussles between
China and Russia. Regardless of the positive tone of recent Sino-Soviet
relations, as China discovers its new found powers it could lay claim to vast
tracks of Siberia and the Russian Far East which were under its sway during
the Yuan dynasty. These lands have enormous natural resource reserves,
and are only sparsely populated. The Kremlin has powerful nuclear forces
targetedon the Sino-Russian border, buttheir effectiveness isbeing degraded
by illegal Chinese settlement someclaim abetted by complicitRussianborder
guards selling forged citizenship papers. It has been alleged that there already
are millions of Chinese “Russian” immigrants in Siberia and Primoriya,
and that the situation will worsen as Russia’s population diminishes from
143 million today to 80 million in 2050, as Soviet era residents return to
Moscow andSaint Petersburg, and moreof the 120 million Chinese along the
Sino-Russian border infiltrate. Moreover, this demographic asymmetry is
exacerbated by gapping disparities in GDPs and living standards. Although
Japan, China’s other regional rival will remain a great economic power
during the next half century, Russia won’t. Starting from a humble level
in 1989, per capita Chinese GDP will soon eclipse Russia’s, and its GDP
could surpass it by a factor of twenty by 2050, allowing Beijing to modernize
its armed forces beyond Russia’s means, and to build a credible nuclear
deterrent that will reduce the credibility of Moscow’s border defense. The
Kremlin is aware of the problem, and is in denial, continuing to perceive
itself as the superior power in command, hoping that China will be self-
restrained.
Russia’s unfavorable position in the reconfiguration of global wealth and

power also may prove destabilizing along its western and southern borders.
The Kremlin’s addiction to economic-favoritism and martial police state
authoritarianism is a constant source of friction with America and the EU.
Both not only periodically chide Russia for its tsarist-like vices, but com-
pete for influence in the former Soviet Republics known as the near abroad,
including Central Asia, the Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and Azerbaijan. The
EU has talked about discussing Ukrainian membership, and America the
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The Next Big Wars 259
possibility of the near abroad joining NATO.Moscow has responded byalter-
natively declaring its version of the Monroe doctrine for the near abroad,
and acknowledging these states’ autonomy, while harboring ambitions for
their formal reincorporation into the Russian Federation, superceding the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) political, economic and mili-
tary alliance. The stakes from the Kremlin’s viewpoint are high. Central Asia
has enormous reserves of petroleum and natural gas, while the Ukraine
provides important access to the Black Sea. Both are also geostrategic assets.
Defection from Moscow’s orbit could bring China, Turkey, and NATO to its
southern and western flanks, as has already occurred in the Baltics, and in
the Ukrainian case thwart ambitions for projecting forces into the Middle
East, if and when the oil sheikdoms collapse, precipitating a great power
free for all. Russia’s economic and military weakness compels Moscow to
bide its time until the full spectrum military modernization program com-
mencing in 2006 comes up to speed in 2010. Putin chose to turn the other
cheek at Vladimir Yushchenko’s EU leaning antics November-December
2004, but hasn’t accepted Ukrainian defection. As Russia reemerges as
a military superpower 2010–2050, the Kremlin is apt to be more tena-
cious, creating the possibility of a war no one wants, but like World War I
could happen.

What Our Leaders Should Do
The threats we face are not commensurate with each other. One sort of
threat is to the lives of thousands or tens of thousands of our citizens;
another is to the lives of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of
us. They are both terrible, but they are not of equal size. This is a horrible
calculus. The moralist in us wishes to say that the death of one person is
as important as the death of many. But this is an illusion itself. It confuses
our sense of proportion and our decisions. It leads to thinking in which
we are prepared to sacrifice millions of people to save a few. In the current
situation, it causes us to focus our attention on the risk of terrorist attacks
while ignoring the risk of nuclear exchanges. Terrorist attacks would kill
thousands; nuclear exchanges would kill tens or hundreds of millions. The
worst conceivable terrorist attack would be a small fraction of the horror
of a nuclear exchange. Islamic fundamentalism threatens us with terrorist
attacks; Russia with nuclear exchange, and China is racing to be able to do
the same. To allow ourselves to neglect the danger of great power nuclear
war in preference for a focus on terrorism is one of the most serious errors
into which we could fall.
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260 Vor texes of Danger
Effective leadership of America in these times requires that this crucial
sense of priorities and proportion not be lost. A war with another great
power is the most significant danger we face and it must not be placed on a
back burner because of a much less significant threat now.
In no way does this attempt to clarify our priorities mean that we should
ignore the smaller threats now to focus on the larger. It means instead that
we must not lose sight of greater dangers as we focus on eliminating smaller
ones. We must undertake a strong response to terrorism and do all we can
to stamp it out. But we must not take our eye off the bigger threats that

lie just beyond the horizon, despite the fact that we have become unwisely
complacent about them.
Ye t, ask our leadership today what is the most important threat which
Americans face, and they will almost uniformly reply, terrorist attack. This
sudden confusion of proportion, and thus priorities, and the lack of good
judgment that results, is a great danger to us.
The developments among the great powers are an unprecedented chal-
lenge to American presidential leadership. The current administration is
able to draft a coherent shift of our national defense strategy; and it
is able to take decisive action, as in Iraq. These are major strengths.
Butitseems unable to explain to the American people convincingly the
necessity for its new doctrine and its course of action; it has allowed
domestic affairs to get completely out of control, diverting national atten-
tion and energy away foreign affairs just when it is most needed;
19
it’s
unable to generate sufficient confidence in its ability to lead the nation
in these times; and it’s allowing itself to be drawn into damaging and
unnecessary controversies with our erstwhile allies. In effect, the end
of the Cold War is now permitting the allies of that conflict to sepa-
rate and regroup; and we in America, the leader of the coalition that
was successful in the cold war, are unable to glimpse the world beyond
the old coalitions. To our disadvantage, European leadership has seized
upon America as a useful rival around which European solidarity can be
built.
American defense analysis is surprisingly unsophisticated about the
threats we face, possibly because a focus on military capabilities of poten-
tial adversaries is too narrow a focus – economic capabilities now and
in the future and geopolitical objectives are crucial to longer-term threat
assessments. “Who might future threats be? [Defense Department] ana-

lysts predicted they would include warlords, tribal chiefs, drug traffickers,
international criminal cartels, terrorists, and cyber-bandits ”
20
General
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The Next Big Wars 261
Kennedy headed the analysts studying future threats for the Defense Depart-
ment during the early 1990s.
Ye t this is not the best way to view the future. It stresses not the challenge,
but its form, especially as it diverges from the sort of military preparations
we’vemade. Implicit in this formulation, which has great currency outside
as well as inside the military, is the presumption for a military response
(that is, defense means military defense), and whereas if challenged this way
on the matter, even military planners will acknowledge that presuming a
military response is too narrow, yet this is how Americans tend to look at
the future.
American leaders must learn to look over the horizon, to see the dangers
possibly facing us, and suggest how they can be addressed now.
JohnMearsheimeris aperceptive Americanwriter whopresents himselfas
arealistabout international affairs,and though he is critical ofwhat he sees as
his countrymen’s aversion to realism (preferring he says their optimism and
moralism), he still reassures Americans that “Behind closed doors, however,
the elites who make national security policy speak mostly the language of
power, not that of principle, and the United States acts in the international
system according to the dictates of realist logic.”
21
Unfortunately, he’s too
optimistic. The thinking of Americans – politicians and bureaucrats alike –
who make national security policy is blurred by wishful thinking. During

the Cold War, they were badly confused about Soviet economic and military
capabilities; they were confused about the full extent of the terrorist threat
before 9/11, and in both instances actually faked intelligence data to support
their presuppositions, examples of which are provided later. America needs
unfiltered realism, not wishful thinking. Our people are mature enough
for truth in how we look at the world and honesty from our government
about it. Furthermore, presidents today risk a mixed success at best by acting
militarily without the full support of Americans. We face serious challenges
in the world not based exclusively on economic deprivation, but rooted in
different cultures, religions, and the ongoing human rivalry for power and
dominance.
Our leaders should provide us with a cold logic of defense, grounded
in a geopolitical orientation but without the cynicism of Old World power
politics. The perspective of our leaders should be American and their intent
should be to defend America and to pursue American interests, but in an
enlightened fashion, with due regard to the interests of others in the world.
We examine how to meet these requirements in the different threats that
face us in the chapters that follow.
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An American defense policy that follows from the considerations set
forward in this chapter would involve:
r
Recognition that “elbowing” among the great powers makes deep and
continuing engagement a poor peg on which to hang our foreign policy.
This is especially true with regard to the European Union.
r
The demotion of peaceful engagement from a major element of our
defense strategy to a less important role requires us to upgrade military

preparedness.
r
This means first and foremost that we should pursue Strategic Indepen-
dence with respect to all threats.
r
We should restructureour nationalmissile defense initiative to meetlarge-
scale threats from major powers, and upgrade our defense against tactical
missiles.
r
Resources being spent on Iraqi democratization should be transferred to
these other purposes.
r
Counterterrorism shouldbe fundedfor the rest ofthis decade, butfunding
should be reduced thereafter.
r
The American public must be informed about the continuing need for a
robust defense.
r
We should inform the world that our policies can be adjusted, if others
become more cooperative. This involves directly a challenge to our
president to master the illusions of our public culture which insist
that the world is already becoming more like us and safer of its own
volition.
CHAPTER 11: KEY POINTS
American opinion leaders have been lulled into complacency by an unwar-
ranted faith in international harmony,and fail to see thatthe world is becom-
ing unstable.
Contrary to a vision of peace and prosperity, the world is once again
drifting back toward sharp economic and political rivalries and the danger
of thermonuclear war.

Five major trends are driving the world toward the brink:
1. Nuclear proliferation;
2. Economic success and economic failure for different nations;
3. Distress of those nations falling behind economically;
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4. Powerseeking by all nations, especially those with the fastest growing
economies; and
5. Increasing nonnuclear conflict.
The West has won an ideological struggle, but not the economic and geo-
political contests, which continue. Ideology was merely a weapon in the
other struggles, so all that has really happened is that our adversaries have
been partially, and temporarily, disarmed in one aspect of the conflict.
Our leaders often dismiss such concerns. Their advisors demand to know
the causal sequence which links the reconfiguration of global wealth and
power – which they recognize – with nuclear risk before treating the dangers
seriously. There is such a sequence, and this book describes it.
1. Russia is rearming and by hook or crook the United States will be
transformed into an adversary. The Russian threat will peak in 2010
to 2020.
2. China is currently enlarging its nuclear missile capability with the
intent of targeting the entire United States. It is building economic
strength, developing superior space capabilities and modernizing its
entire military establishment. The Chinese threat will peak in 2020 to
2030.
3. The current U.S. military dominance is certain to be challenged in the
next decade. Russia will regain superpower status in weaponry by 2010
and China by 2020.
4. Each adversary will have a different strategy. The Russians on mass

force; the Chinese on economic growth supplemented by growing
missile capability and space dominance.
5. For forty years, we have relied on Mutual Assured Destruction to pre-
vent nuclear war. Yet during this time, the world has several times
stumbled to the brink of nuclear war. Furthermore, the logic of MAD
requires us to either strengthen our adversaries to parity with us or
to wait uncertainly in a risky situation until they on their own reach
parity. Either course seems fraught with danger.
6. Because MAD is no longer viable in a world of many nuclear powers,
the United States should pursue a policy of Strategic Independence.
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twelve
The Middle East
THE CRESCENT OF FIRE
When the World Trade Center was attacked, the threats potentially posed
by Russia and China were subordinated to the more immediate terrorist
menace, even though the contours of the danger were obscure. Terrorism
isn’t an end in itself. It is a means to ends like victory or retribution, and can
take many forms from sabotage to mass annihilation.
1
Moreover,whereas
terrorism, like crime and war, involves unlawful coercion, it occupies a
middle ground in international jurisprudence between them.
2
States are
permitted to suppress terrorism more vigorously than crime, but cannot
act with the impunity permissible under a formal declaration of war.
3
In

this sense, war on terrorism is an acknowledgment that terror should be
combated with counterterrorist methods, and a warning that America will
escalate beyond this boundary to full-scale state to state war if necessary.
The dimensions of the terrorist threat are correspondingly elastic. At one
end of the spectrum, demented individuals could bring about the “end of
days” with weapons of mass destruction for no rational purpose,
4
but this
is a remote possibility. At the other extreme, these same individuals like
Hamas could seize the reins of state, transforming themselves from outlaws
like Yasser Arafat into statesmen subject to standard rules of international
engagement. And, of course, terrorism could persist somewhere in the mid-
dle, circumscribed but deadly. All perils deserve attention. It is in America’s
interest to deter and contain. But the expected benefits don’t warrant unlim-
ited expense. No amount of effort can preclude doomsday, and like the Cold
Waritisunwise to spend prodigally on defense, as the Soviets ruefully
discovered. Terror that cannot get beyond sabotage doesn’t threaten Amer-
ica’s survival, and terrorists who seize national power become vulnerable to
conventional counterstrikes.
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The Middle East 265
We’reinconflict with a militant branch of Islam that uses terrorism as a
major tactic;
5
so our government has defined us as at war with terrorism. But
we have also been at war with governments who aide the terrorists, and we
have used military force to overthrow governments that had not themselves
attacked us, but who were in league with terrorists who either had attacked

us (Afghanistan) or were sympathizers and allies of those who had attacked
us (Iraq). In late 2005, President Bush apparently changed our enemy from
the tactic of terrorism to people who seek to create a radical Islamic empire
from Spain to Indonesia.
Dangerous and heartbreaking as is this conflict, it must be kept in per-
spective. Terrorists do not threaten the existence of our country – not the
way a major conflict with a nuclear-armed rival threatens our country. So
we must be sure that what we do in the war on terrorism does not endan-
ger other important concerns of our country. Yet already we have stretched
ourselves in Iraq, trying to fashion a new future for the country in the mold
of western capitalist democracy.
Our public culture results in dramatic reversals of political stance. Thus,
many of those who most strongly opposed our entry into Iraq now oppose
our exit. They argue that since we are there, we’ve assumed a responsibility
for it. Hence, if we leave Iraq, even if our initial objectives have been met,
then we’d lose the moral high ground, which they consider crucial. In this
view, it’s not enough for us to defend America. We must do more.
It is worth asking “Why?” We got into our current involvement in the
Middle East because of the attack on the World Trade Center. It’s quite
astretch to move from the attempt to defend our country by eliminating
hostile regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan – in order to deny refuge to terrorists
and prevent weapons of mass destruction from falling into our adversaries
hands – to bringing Western style democracy to the Middle East. Asserting
that only if there is democracy will we be safe from terrorist attack doesn’t
lessen the stretch. Initially, we sought a regime change and a guarantee
there were no weapons of mass destruction. We changed the regime and we
discovered no weapons of mass destruction. Why should we now remain in
Iraq? Shouldn’t we go, having fulfilled our stated obligations? Shouldn’t we
let the Iraqis run their own country? If it becomes a terrorist center, we will
have to respond to that – we’ve intervened in Iraq twice and we can do it

again, if necessary. As for the broader context of the Iraqi war, we can retain
bases in the area from which to protect ourselves from militants, Syrians
and Iranians.
“For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the
expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East, and we achieved
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266 Vor texes of Danger
neither,” Secretary of State Rice declared at theAmerican University inCairo.
“Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic
aspirations of all people.”
6
Stability was never a proper goal of policy. It reeks of preservation of the
status quo for its own sake. Stability is fine when it comes naturally, but our
national security must beprotectedwhether or notthereis stability.We could
have achieved our own security had we but kept reasonable diligence about
our defense from airline hijackings (hardly a new terrorist tactic even in
2001). But we did not; so now we are involved to a greater degree than before
in the turmoil ofthe Middle East. We sought toavoidmilitary involvementin
Iraq, but Saddam Hussein continually violated the armistice that had ended
the first Gulf War, the food for oil program, and obstructed inspections for
weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, we offered him a peaceful solution up
to the bitter end, but he refused, presumably because he expected his friends
in the Security Council of the United Nations to prevent American military
action against him.
We were not able to impose stability on the Middle East no matter how
hard we try, since that is in the hands of those who live there; and we will
probably be unable to impose democracy. Both stability and democracy for
others are simply the wishes of our public culture. Both are illusions in the
context of the Middle East today. They are not proper goals for an objective

American foreign policy.
Democracy has become America’s party line, supported by Republican
and Democrat alike. It finds strong support in the public culture, but is very
dangerous because it reflects wishful thinking and not objectivity about
the world. We are trying to export American mores to other countries.
Forexample, we have required that thirty percent of the seats in the new
Iraqi parliament must go to women. This contributes to making our faux
democracy the laughing stock of the Middle East and hardens negative
attitudes to us. Rather than master the illusions of the public culture, we
seem to have political leaders who are fully self-deluded.
It isn’t terror itself that should command full attention, but the possibil-
ity that terror in specific contexts could spark conflict in vortices of global
instability. The war on terrorism as defined at this point by the Adminis-
tration includes Basques, Irish, Peruvians, and Om Shin Rikyo in Japan,
7
but they are peripheral to American security. The primary target is the
Islamic “Crescent of Fire,” a geographical region connecting fifty countries
with at least a 40 percent Muslim presence, containing 1.3 billion people.
8
The flames are fanned by the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the great game of
petro-politics,
9
but the enmity runs deeper, rooted in history,
10
culture,
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The Middle East 267
tribalism, and religion, frequently exacerbated by state oppression and fail-
ure. Despite oil wealth and substantial foreign assistance, the incendiary

potential of the crescent of fire has intensified during the last decade, and
seems destined to worsen due to sectarian struggle, fanaticism, the increas-
ing lethality of conventional ordnance and proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction.
11
Ummah
The Islamic fundamentalist dream of a pan-Muslim theocracy spanning the
Crescent of Fire (which is based in significant part on an utopian reading
of the first caliphate) is called “Ummah.”
12
Advocates contend that it is
the Muslim world’s manifest destiny to reconstitute a transnational Islamic
theopolitical order, tolerant ofminorities, butfreeof westerncontamination.
Like Bolshevik communism it rhetorically aspires to be just, prosperous and
magnificent, but allows itself to employ “emergency” methods, including
waging jihad (holy war) to “liquidate” infidels as “vragy naroda” (enemies
of the true faith).
13
The details of this messianic musing, like Marx’s idyll
of communist bliss, are sophomoric and can be safely disregarded.
14
The
possibility of cobbling a transnational theocratic empire akin to a fifties-type
communist bloc sustained by guns and oil however is a more disturbing
prospect. Although, it probably would suffer from the antidemocratic, and
antifree enterprise shortcomings of its secular predecessor, the Crescent of
Fire could imperil peace. The likelihood that the Ummah movement will
metamorphosize into a superpower bloc may seem slight, but is thinkable.
Communism too was rife with intense internal rivalries, and riddled with
inefficiencies. Nonetheless, the Soviet Union, and China, following their

own idiosyncratic interpretations of Marxist scripture were able to mount a
credible threat when first Russia and then China acquired nuclear weapons.
With Pakistan already nuclearized, and Iran on the cusp,
15
it doesn’t require
fevered imagination to appreciate the destabilizing possibilities of Ummah.
Muslim Terrorism and Autocracy
Imperial Ummah however isn’t an immediate threat. A fragmented Cres-
cent of Fire battered by the crosswinds of Muslin terrorism, rival autocra-
cies, and sectarianism is now more incendiary than a united Islamic fun-
damentalist caliphate.
16
Muslim culture across the globe during the past
sixty years hasn’t transitioned to western democratic free enterprise.
17
It
sometimes displays a veneer of balloting, and traditional markets abound,
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Ta ble 12.1. GDP in the Judea/Palestine Region 1950–2002 (million 1990
international Geary-Khamis dollars)
Israel Muslim
West Bank
and Gaza Lebanon Jordan Syria Egypt
1950 3,623 32,917 965 3,313 933 8,418 19,288
1960 9,986 48,106 1,534 4,274 1,977 13,704 26,617
1970 23,520 76,854 2,044 6,950 3,600 22,155 42,105
1980 41,053 169,620 3,732 10,879 9,689 57,097 88,223
1990 58,511 239,586 7,222 6,099 12,371 70,894 143,000

2000 94,408 376,472 16,153 12,198 20,288 121,988 205,845
2002 92,155 399,659 10,338 12,753 21,732 130,046 224,790
Growth
1950–02 6.4 4.9 4.7 2.6 6.2 5.4 4.8
Source: Angus Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics, OECD, Paris, 2003,
Ta ble 5b, pp. 176–7; Table 6b, p. 211.
but sovereignty is mostly autocratic, relying on Arabic/Ottoman style tradi-
tional economic organization without a social contract for the equitable
distribution of income and wealth and without a rule of contract law
to permit entrepreneurship. Corruption is endemic; income and wealth
are inegalitarian; and society unjust despite injunctions in the Koran
against such a situation. Therefore it isn’t surprising that technological
innovation, global integration, and economic growth have been deficient
in the Islamic world, despite the potential benefits of vast petro wealth
and the possibilities of economic catch up. Per capita income has lagged
the global average since 1950, and is especially poor in comparison with
China and India.
18
Performance in some countries has been horrendous.
Chad’s per capita GDP is the same as the West’s in 1 A.D.,
19
whereas
living standards in 2002 were lower than in 1973 in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
20
Similar declines for the subperiods
1980–2002 and 1985–2002 were recorded in Lebanon, and Israel’s Pales-
tinian territories (West Bank and Gaza).
21
However, the economic perfor-

mance of an important sector of the Muslim world, that which excludes
African states other than those bordering the Mediterranean, has been good
enough to permit the Ummah to continue to exert influence in world
affairs. Its GDP in 2001 was more than 60 percent of China’s, and more
than a third larger than India’s
22
(Table 12.3). Despite notable ups and
downs for individual states, GDP growth has been a respectable 4.7 per-
cent per annum 1950–2002, if one believes the numbers. But, per capita
GDP is unimpressive (Table 12.4). It was 20 percent below China’s in 2001,
and is much worse with the inclusion of Africa’s Muslim communities.
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Ta ble 12.2. GDP per Capita in Judea/Palestine Region 1950–2002
Year Israel Muslim
West Bank
and Gaza Lebanon Jordan Syria Egypt
1950 2,817 1,672 949 2,429 1,663 2,409 910
1960 4,663 2,023 1,378 2,393 2,330 3,023 991
1970 8,101 2,417 1,980 2,917 2,395 3,540 1,254
1980 10,948 3,865 2,744 3,526 4,480 6,508 2,069
1990 12,968 3,552 3,806 1,938 3,792 5,701 2,522
2000 16,159 4,599 5,124 3,409 4,059 7,481 2,920
2001 15,756 4,395 3,953 3,430 4,055 7,547 2,992
2002 15,284 4,251 3,050 3,468 4,095 7,580 –
Growth
1950–02 3.3 1.8 2.3 0.7 1.7 2.2 2.4
Note: Figures for Israel’s Muslim neighbors are unweighted averages. Also, the Muslim
composite for 2002 extrapolates the Egyptian growth rate in 2001 to 2002.

Source: Angus Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics, OECD, Paris, 2003,
Ta ble 5c, pp. 186–7, Table 6c, p. 219.
Ta ble 12.3. GDP of the Crescent of Fire 1950–2002 (billion 1990 international
Geary-Khamis dollars)
Year
West
Asia Indonesia Bangladesh Pakistan Algeria Egypt Morocco Total
1950 103 66 25 25 12 19 14 264
1960 186 97 30 33 23 27 17 413
1970 390 139 42 63 31 42 26 733
1980 716 276 48 99 59 88 44 1,330
1990 874 451 70 182 74 143 64 1,858
2000 1,252 676 114 272 87 206 80 2,687
2001 1,249 698 119 282 89 215 85 2,737
2002 1,297 721 124 292 91 225 90 2,840
Growth
1950–02 5.0 4.7 3.1 4.8 4.0 4.8 3.6 4.7
Note: The 15 West Asia nations are Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait Lebanon, Oman, Qatar,
Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, UAE, Yemen, WestBank and Gaza. Also theIndonesian, Bangladesh,
Pakistan, Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco figures for 2002 are estimated from the 2001 growth rate.
Source: Angus Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics, OECD, Paris, 2003, Table 5b,
pp. 174–5, 177; Table 6b, pp. 210–13.
Nonetheless, per capita GDP growth was an adequate 2 percent per annum
1950–2002. This is well below potential, and inferior to the performance
of some developing regions, but should be enough to keep it from losing
ground to the EU and Japan.
23
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Ta ble 12.4. GDP per Capita in the Crescent of Fire 1950–2002 (1990 international
Geary-Khamis dollars)
Year
West
Asia Indonesia Bangladesh Pakistan Algeria Egypt Morocco Total
1950 1,776 840 540 643 1,365 910 1,455 1,076
1960 2,492 1,019 544 647 2,088 991 1,329 1,301
1970 3,998 1,194 629 952 2,249 1,254 1,616 1,699
1980 5,397 1,870 548 1,161 3,143 2,069 2,272 2,351
1990 4,856 2,516 640 1,597 2,918 2,522 2,596 2,521
2000 5,706 3,203 873 1,920 2,792 2,920 2,658 2,867
2001 5,580 3,256 897 1,947 2,813 9,292 2,782 2,895
2002 5,664 3,310 922 1,974 2,834 3,066 2,912 2,955
Growth
1950–02 2.3 2.7 1.0 2.2 1.4 2.4 1.4 2.0
Note: West Asia covers Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, Syria, Turkey, UAE, Yemen, West Bank, and Gaza. The 2002 estimates for Indonesia,
Bangladesh, Pakistan, Algeria, Egypt and Morocco have been extrapolated from 2001.
Source: Angus Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics, OECD, Paris, 2003, Table 5c,
pp. 184–5, 187; Table 6c pp. 218–21.
These failures compounded by political repression, intrigue, and viru-
lent anti-western sentiment make the Crescent of Fire explosive. Muslim
nations like Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Soma-
lia, Ethiopia, Yemen,and Pakistan wagewars ofconquest andplunder against
each other directly, or indirectly via proxies, under the banner of high prin-
ciple. Domestic opponents plot coup d’etats in Algeria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia,
and Indonesia, resorting to insurrection, pitched battles, guerrilla war and
terrorism. And often groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Fatah conduct ter-
rorist attacks against Israel and Russia (regarding Chechnya) not just to
harm enemies, but to muster support for internecine struggles at home. All

is fair in love, terror, putsches, and war. Treachery is ubiquitous.
THE CAUSES OF TERRORISM
We point here to an attempt to rebuild Iraq in America’s image as an example
of overreach that we are unlikely to be able to accomplish. But it also is not
likely to eliminate terrorism, even were we successful in changing Iraq. The
reason for this lies in the deep causality of terrorism.
The basic point is that people can violently oppose America, and do it by
terrorism, with other motivations than poverty. In fact, America has never
been brought to war by an adversary driven by poverty and deprivation.
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By nationalism, by ambition, by contempt for us, yes – but by desperation
caused by deprivation, no. Not Germany, not Japan, not the Southerners
who fought against the Union in our Civil War, not Spain, not Vietnam,
not North Korea, not China (in the Korean War). There is no reason to
think that our adversaries in the war on terror are any different, and many
reasons to think they are like our other adversaries – well-to-do but our
adversaries.
Well-to-do people canoppose America and asthey and their sympathizers
become richer, they can do it more effectively. It’s a great illusion to think
that opposition to us grows only in the soil of deprivation and oppression –
such a conviction is a form of arrogance that lies at the heart of wishful
thinking. The arrogance lies in the notion that if people anywhere were well
off, they’d admire and support what we are and what we do. This simply
isn’t the case now, never has been, and won’t be in the future.
Whywould some people make themselves our adversaries even if they
themselves were well off? They might oppose our values, or what they believe
to be ourvalues. America iscomplex –there isa traditional side toour culture
and a side dedicated to destroying what is traditional. Here, for example, is

ayoung American writing about the positive changes he sees in American
life since the counterculture began in the 1960s.
“ [T]he 60s rid us of certain aesthetic and stylistic inhibitions. Ladies
will never again be required to wear white gloves. The notion of ‘Sunday
best’ clothes becomes more antiquated every year. The conventions of rock
‘n’roll, rap, and even country music now permit profanity, and they forever
will.” This he believes is all to the good – thus there are people actively trying
to achieve these things, and glorying in them.
24
Thus, whether it’s modesty or manners, there’s a strong force in American
culture trying to undermine it, and people abroad who support the old
verities are likely to find themselves antagonists of America.
America has allies and supporters in other nations in the world; their
opponents are natural adversaries of America. The most dramatic such
example today is America’s support for Israel against a host of those who
are ill-wishers to the Jewish state.
However, rich might be another country, it could find itself envying and
seeking to rival America’s global might. The most dramatic examples today
involve Russia and China; in the future the most dramatic example may be
a united Europe.
In the case of terrorism directed today at America, each of these factors
plays a key role – cultural antipathy, America’s support for enemies, and
envy of American power. What role does poverty play?
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What is the connection between terrorism and poverty? This is an impor-
tant question because a particularly strong variant of wishful thinking holds
that the terrorist threat to America is caused by economic deprivation and
can best be answered by economic improvements.

Forexample, a reporter for the Washington Post writes, “ terrorism
the seeds of that problem were planted in the soil of despair, isolation and
zealotry.”
25
In such a view, terrorists are people whom despair and isolation have led
to zealotry. But there is little evidence for this. Instead, an increasing body
of evidence and analysis shows that those who point to poverty as a cause
of terrorism are mistaken, at least to the extent that poverty usually exists
without giving birth to terrorism, and terrorism sometimes exists without
poverty and deprivation (for example, America’s Unabomber, who was a
graduate of Harvard College). Yet people who take this point of view often
have an admirable motive. They wish to eliminate poverty since it is an
evil in the world, and if they can only interest others in their objective by
insisting that addressing poverty will also reduce terrorism, then they’ll use
that method of getting support. This isn’t the most reputable approach, but
neither is it the worst thing that happens in our world, and at least the goal
is admirable.
This analysis is a sophisticated way of blaming Americans for the attacks
on the United States – again blaming the victims for their victimization. Amy
Chua of Yale argues that Americans are hated abroad because we’re rich (in
her words, we’re a “market dominant minority”), and therefore the disad-
vantaged attack us.
26
So it turns out that terror is rooted in understandable
resentment – not ethnic hatred (or if it is, we’re fueling that by our insis-
tence on democracy), not lust for power or wealth, but just resentment. She
thus attempts to transfer envy to the level of geopolitical activism. Although
envy plays its role, it won’t carry this much weight as a cause of global
conflict.
We must be careful not to be misled into a response to terrorism that is

wholly economic and ameliorative.
What have we learned about terrorism and its causes in recent years?
r
Te rrorists are rarely the completely deprived, but instead are usually
well-educated people. “Mass and indiscriminate murder is the crime of
educated people ”They believe they have the right to decide for others
what is important and to impose it on them; they are convinced that their
ends justify their means.
27
Te rrorists are not, in their own minds and to
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outside observers, irrational. “ Someone whose rational insights pro-
duce apparently irrational behavior doesn’t fit the usual psychiatric
categories. Rather than being irrational, he takes ideas more seriously
than most. He suffers from an excess of reason.”
28
r
Anyconnection between poverty and terrorism “is at best indirect, com-
plicated and probably quite weak.”
29
r
Povertyisusually a pretext, not a cause, of mass murder. “Don’t fall for
the hypothesis that poverty is the cause of mass murder. It is just a pretext
used by people with other agendas. If poverty were eliminated, then the
same people would find another pretext. As logical as the poverty-
breeds terrorism argument may seem, study after study shows that suicide
attackers and their supporters are rarely ignorant or impoverished. Nor
are they crazed, cowardly, apathetic or asocial.”

30
The causes of terrorism lie as much or more in a political culture of
violence and fanaticism as in poverty.
31
r
Research dating backdecades and updated frequently shows that most ter-
rorists do not come from backgrounds of deprivation. For example, only
some 13 percent of Palestinian suicide bombers are from impoverished
families.
32
r
Rather, poverty seems to become an excuse for efforts to take political
power; it is seen as a way to rally the masses and a justification for direct
and violent action. Poverty is not a cause of violence or terrorism, it is
rationale for it; and absent poverty, the impulse of terrorists trying to
gain political power would simply seek another justification. Terror is a
weapon – sometimes used by the weak (as by Arab militants); sometimes
used by the strong (as by Hitler at the height of Nazi Germany’s power
and Stalin always). It is a weapon of choice, and employed in different
ways. It is neither the result of poverty; nor is it the peculiar weapon of
the desperate instead of the strong.
Finally, in the indirect connection between poverty and terrorism, the nexus
lies in comparative poverty, not absolute deprivation. The Middle East is not
one of the poorest regions of the globe. But it has some of the world’s greatest
extremes of wealth and poverty. Oil wealth in the Middle East has greatly
increased the difference between haves and have-nots, enormously increas-
ing social tensions. This is the cauldron from which hatred and terrorism
bubble, not from the differences between the United States and the Islamic
countries, and it is in the bubbling of this cauldron that we are now caught.
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The problem, from the point of view of wishful thinking and its prescrip-
tions for economic development as a cure for terrorism, is that economic
progress in these countries will first acerbate the differences within, not
decrease them, and so progress will make things worse. Wishful thinking is
again shown to be an illusion.
“The poor in Muslim states may be the popular base of terrorist support,
but they have neither the money nor the votes (who votes doesn’t count,
who counts them does, in Stalin’s words) the privileged do. Ultimately,
Islamic terrorism, just as its Marxist or secessionist version in the West and
Latin America was, is a matter of power – who has it and how to get it –
not of poverty. Accepting this as a fundamental aspect of terrorism does
not suggest any immediate solutions, but can direct further study toward
better explanations of terrorism and theories with some potential predictive
value.”
33
A sea of poverty and disappointment is necessary for middle class rev-
olutionaries to get any foothold. They can exist in Germany or the United
States, but only at the margin and with little or no chance of success. If they
are, as Michael Radu says, concerned primarily about power, they are com-
pletely marginal in Germany and the United States, for example, because
there is no likely context in which they can achieve power. But in the Arab
world, for example, the context is there (as it was in Russia at the time of the
Bolshevik coup d’
´
etat) and so they are a real threat because they could gain
power. A terrorist group in a context in which they could achieve power is a
very different thing than a terrorist group in a context in which they cannot
achieve power, and little is gained by talking about “terrorism,” which is

only a method.
Examples are offered continually by secular dictatorships in the region,
including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. The governments never cease to
repress middle-class revolutionaries looking for a foothold among the poor.
For instance, inMay2005, some forty studentsat Tishreen University inSyria
were arrested and tortured by Syrian police because of their involvement
in Islamic fundamentalist movements. “Syria’s emergency laws, adopted
some 40 years ago as a national security measure” wrote a reporter for
The Chronicle of Higher Education,anAmerican publication, “forbid the
formation of any group without explicit government approval. Thus, merely
forming an illegal student group, let alone an Islamist one, is grounds for
arrest in Syria.”
34
Syria also conducts an equally brutal campaign against its
better established political rivals. In Lebanon, a car bomb killed anti-Syrian
political leader George Hawi, just weeks after the similar murder of anti-
Syrian journalist Samir Kassir. There is little doubt about the instigators of
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the murders.
35
The murder of political leaders of an opposition is an old
Communist and fascist tactic and is very effective.
It is possible that the attachment of Osama bin Laden and other middle-
class radical leaders to Islamic fundamentalism is no deeper than necessary
to mobilize warriors against their chosen enemies. We must always keep in
mind that their most direct enemies are other Muslims, in particular those
governing Saudi Arabia. “The fight against the enemy nearest to you has
precedence over the fight against the enemy farther away,” said Muhammad

Abd al-Salam Faraj, tried and hanged in connection with the 1981 assassina-
tion of Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt. “ In all Muslim countries the enemy has
the reins of power,” he continued. “The enemy is the present rulers.” And
bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri is reported to have said, “Victory
for the Islamic movements cannot be attained unless these movements
possess an Islamic base in the heart of the Arab region,” a clear statement
of geopolitical objectives.
36
Islamic radicalism undergirds the movement as
communist ideology undergirded the foreign policy of the USSR. Osama
bin Laden, like the leaders of the Soviet Union, may or may not have believed
in their own demagoguery, but the movement itself was powerful.
In August 1996, Osama bin Laden published a fatwa, though technically
he is not a cleric, he may have had no authority to do so, but the document is
certainly a statement of hostility (if not a declaration of war, as he represents
no state), entitled “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the
Land of the Two Holy Places.” (Osama bin Laden, first published in Al Quds
Al Arabi,aLondon-based newspaper, in August 1996; obtained from the
PBS News Hour We b site.) It is 24 pages long. We quote a significant excerpt
that we believe to be representative from it here because it demonstrates the
focus of our adversaries; and because so few Americans have read it. It is not
a denunciation of Christianity or Judaism. It is not a polemic against the
American way of life. It is something much more nationalistic in nature.
Praise be to Allah, we seek His help and ask for his pardon. It should not be hidden
from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice
imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent
that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the
enemies. The people of Islam awakened and realized that they are the main target
for the aggression of the Zionist-Crusaders alliance. All false claims and propaganda
about “Human Rights” were hammered down and exposed by the massacres that took

place against the Muslims in every part of the world.
The latest and the greatest of these aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the
death of the Prophet (ALLAH’S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is the
occupation of the land of the two Holy Places – the foundation of the house of Islam,
the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka’ba,
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the Qiblah of all Muslims – by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies.
(Webemoan this iniquitous crusaders movement under the leadership of the USA;
whofears that the scholars and callers of Islam, will instigate the Ummah of Islam
against its’ enemies. We,myself and my group, have suffered some of this injustice
ourselves; we have been prevented from addressing the Muslims. We have been pursued
in Pakistan, Sudan and Afghanistan, hence this long absence on my part. But by the
Grace of Allah, a safe base is now available in the high Hindukush mountains. From
here, today we begin the work, talking and discussing the ways of correcting what had
happened to the Islamic world in general, and the Land of the two Holy Places in
particular. We wish to study the means that we could follow to return the situation to
its normal path.
The inability of the [Saudi] regime to protect the country, and allowing the
enemyofthe Ummah – the American crusader forces – to occupy the land for the
longest of years. The crusader forces became the main cause of our disastrous condition,
particularly in the economical aspect of it due to the unjustified heavy spending on
these forces. As a result of the policy imposed on the country, especially in the field of
oil industry where production is restricted or expanded and prices are fixed to suit the
American economy ignoring the economy of the country. Expensive deals were imposed
on the country to purchase arms. People asking what is the justification for the very
existence of the regime then? the regime refused to listen to the people accusing them
of being ridiculous and imbecile. The matter got worse as previous wrong doings were
followed by mischief’s of greater magnitudes. All of this taking place in the land of the

twoHoly Places! It is no longer possible to be quiet. It is not acceptable to give a blind
eyetothis matter. The financial and the economical situation of the country and
the frightening future in the view of the enormous amount of debts and interest owed
by the government; this is at the time when the wealth of the Ummah being wasted to
satisfy personal desires of certain individuals!! while imposing more custom duties and
taxes on the nation.
The miserable situation of the social services and infra-structure especially the
water service and supply,the basic requirement of life. The state of the ill-trained and
ill-prepared army and the impotence of its commander in chief despite the incredible
amount of money that has been spent on the army. The gulf war clearly exposed the
situation. Therefore every one agreed that the situation can not be rectified unless
the root of the problem is tackled. Hence it is essential to hit the main enemy who divided
the Ummah into small and little countries and pushed it, for the last few decades, into
a state of confusion. The Zionist-Crusader alliance moves quickly to contain and abort
any “corrective movement” appearing in the Islamic countries. Different means and
methods are used to achieve their target. If there are more than one duty to be carried
out, then the most important one should receive priority. Clearly after Belief (Imaan)
there is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land.
The Mujahideen, your brothers and sons, requesting that you support them in every
possible way by supplying them with the necessary information, materials and arms.
Security men are especially asked to cover up for the Mujahideen and to assist them
as much as possible against the occupying enemy; and to spread rumors, fear and
discouragement among the members of the enemy forces
Isay to youWilliam (Cohen, Defense Secretary of theUnited States) that:Theseyouths
love death as you love life. They inherit dignity, pride, courage, generosity, truthfulness
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and sacrifice from father to father. They are most delivering and steadfast at war.
They inherit these values from their ancestors (even from the time of the Jaheliyyah,

before Islam). Our youths believe in paradise after death. Those youths. . have
no intention except to enter paradise by killing you. Those youths are different from
your soldiers. Your problem will be how to convince your troops to fight, while our
problem will be how to restrain our youths to wait for their turn in fighting and in
operations.
Irejected all the critics, who chose the wrong way; I rejected those who enjoy
fireplaces in clubs discussing eternally;I rejected those, who inspire being lost, think
they are at the goal;I respect those who carried on not asking or bothering about the
difficulties. The wallsofoppression and humiliationcannot bedemolished except in a
rainof bullets. The freeman does notsurrender leadershipto infidels andsinners. Our
Lord, guide this Ummah, and make the right conditions (by which) the people of your
obedience will be in dignity and the people of disobedience in humiliation, and by which
the good deeds are enjoined and the bad deeds are forebode.
There is not much in this document about denying to Americans our way
of life. For a document that is supposedly a religious manifesto, there is a
surprising amount about the finances of the Kingdomof Saudi Arabia. There
is a great deal of a rather nationalist concern – overcast with pan-Arabic and
religious rhetoric – about the alleged occupation of a home country (Saudi
Arabia) by foreign troops (America’s) and an allegedly corrupt regime (the
Saudi monarchy) that permits this. There is, that is, much about power and
wealth and about the government of a particular nation.
37
And there is much
threat and bluster.
Rather like the Cold War, there is the sense of a battle between nations
(or the self-anointed leaders of nations) played out in part in an ideological
or religious context in which the emotions of all sides can be more easily
aroused, even if the ideological or religious concerns are not at the root of
the controversies. That is to say, the Cold War was not about Communism,
and the War on Terror is not about Islam, except insofar as leaders of each

side needed ideology or religion to rally supporters. It is the public culture
that makes the conflict seem to be about ideology or religion. To accept as
fact the illusions of the public culture about the basic cause of the conflict
is to lose objectivity about the contest and therefore – via wrong objectives,
wrong methods, wrong priorities, and wrong justifications – to become prey
to mistaken actions and missed opportunities.
THE CONTEST IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Americans had been attacked by Islamic terrorists several times before
September 11, 2001. For example, more than two hundred of our Marines
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had been killed in a bombing of their barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983.
38
In response, we chose not to declare war on terrorism, but to withdraw from
Lebanon, leaving itultimately incontrol ofSyria formore thantwenty years–
acontinuing haven for terrorists. About the American reaction to the Beirut
bombing Osama bin Laden remarked in an interview with John Miller of
ABC News on May 28, 1998, “We have seen in the last decade the decline of
the American government and the weakness of the American soldier, who
is unprepared to fight long wars. This was proven in Beirut when the
Marines fled after two explosions ”
39
It is sometimes argued that the beginning of the Islamists’ use of terror
bombing as a tactic against the West was the bombing of the U.S. Marine
barracks in Beirut in 1984. That bombing caused the American superpower
to withdraw from Lebanon in just six weeks or so, and is alleged to have
proved to Islamic radicals the value of terror bombing. Thus, the increasing
use of terrorism was the Reagan administration’s fault. However, terrorism
was a part of the Islamist response to the West in the nineteen century. It was

used throughout the war for Israeli independence. It use against Americans
can be dated to Beirut in 1984, but even had Reagan been more vigorous in
response, matters would likely not have unfolded very differently.
BinLaden’s comment is consistent with a radical Islamic interpretation
of recent history. According to this interpretation, Muslim fighters defeated
the stronger superpower – the Soviet Union – in Afghanistan, precipitating
its dissolution, and have now turned to what they apparently consider the
weaker superpower – America – and believe they will soon force its collapse.
In their view the United States is further away, less well armed, less ruthless,
more morally corrupt, socially degenerate, and therefore “politically and
militarily enfeebled.”
40
It seemed to bin Laden that there was a pattern in
the behavior of the United States. The terrorists attacked and we denounced
them and threatened retaliation and withdrew. We were all talk and no
action.
Ye t after the attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001, we
sprung onthem. Perhapsit wasbecause theattackhad beenon Americansoil;
perhaps it wasbecause so many liveshad been lost; perhaps itwas because the
victims were civilians not marines. Whatever thereason, America responded
very differently than it had eighteen years before.
We defined ourselves as at war. We need not have done this. We’d been
attacked before by the same group several times, and we hadn’t responded
by saying we were at war. We could have treated the terrorist attacks as
rather more a crime than an act of war – and we need not have chosen to
include foreign governments in our list of enemies – we could have restricted
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The Middle East 279
ourselves to the terrorists who are nongovernmental entities. But once the

World Trade Center had been destroyed, we chose to declare war and include
in our adversaries certain foreign governments. We thereby threw ourselves
into the middle of the Middle Eastern political cauldron.
The Islamic terrorists’ threat to us is not primarily religious in its
motivation; it is political. The motivation of suicide bombers is not pri-
marily religious either, except insofar as Islam promises paradise to those
who die in its behalf. When we define the conflict as one of cultures or
religions, we give it a depth it does not deserve, misidentify our enemies in
away that makes them far more numerous than they really are, and makes
the problem of countering them even more difficult than it is. Those “who
carefully parse the statements of Osama bin Laden find them completely
secular,” writes Louise Richardson of the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard. The
World Trade Center towers “were hit not as icons of blasphemy, but of arro-
gant power” (our power). Al-Queda is fighting to get the West out of the
Middle East and it is our involvement there in support of rich and repressive
regimes that is the cause of their actions toward us (the Palestinian cause
is not a real source of al-Queda’s animosity toward us). Suicide bombing,
the weapon of our adversaries that gets the most attention from the media,
is the result of “a desire for glory, coupled with strong group ties and
often more interest in the dying than the killing.”
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There is underway a
political battle for control of the Middle East, in which the prizes are the oil
of the Persian Gulf and the nuclear war capability of Pakistan.
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The contest
involves Islamic traditionalists who use terrorism as a weapon, established
governments that use police repression as a weapon, and outside powers
who covet the oil of the Middle East. “One could easily do a revisionist his-
tory of 9/11,” wrote Thomas Friedman, “and show how it was simply the

opening salvo in an attempted coup within Saudi Arabia – with the attack on
America meant only as a bank shot to undermine one of the main supports
of the Saudi ruling family.”
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PALESTINE
What is most striking about Friedman’s comment is that he labels this view,
which is almost certainly the accurate one, “revisionist” and therefore out-
side the mainstream. What then is the mainstream view? It is that terrorists
are attacking America because they hate our values and way of life, and
because of our support for Israel in its alleged repression of the Palestinian
people. For example, according to a British writer, the United States has been
stuck in a largely unchanging mess in the Mideast for four decades. He adds,
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280 Vor texes of Danger
“Yet all routes in the maze lead back to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The
perception of the Arab world – and, it should be said, of most Europeans –
is that America’s enduring support for Israel now amounts to a blank check
for a government led by Ariel Sharon that will never make an enduring
peace. Mr. Sharon builds settlements and walls in the occupied territories
that guarantee such an outcome is impossible. The most he can expect from
the White House is a mild rebuke.”
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However, the view that the Palestinian dispute is at the bottom of the
turmoil in the Middle East is mistaken. Quite the contrary. The dispute
over political control in the Islamic world is at the bottom of the Palestinian
conflict. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a sideshow to the greater conflict
in the Crescent of Fire. The clash of civilizations is one reason for the conflict
in the Crescent of Fire, if for no other reason that the differences between
American traditional values and Muslim values is exploited by demagogues

and intriguers.
The clash of civilizations is only menacing when there is a specific align-
ment of forces with opposing societies. Civilization is a conditioning factor,
not an enduring cause taken in isolation. At this historical junction, civi-
lization factors have been pushed to the forefront.
Akey element is the clash of moralities – with radical Islam representing
aradicalized Puritanism and the West an extreme cosmopolitanism rep-
resented by U.S. popular (not public) culture. Puritanism is patriarchical,
religious, moral; cosmopolitanism is egalitarian, tolerant, amoral. There
is a strong cosmopolitan element in Islam (the governing powers in most
Islamic states, especially Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Emirates are cos-
mopolitan): and there is a strong puritan element in the West (in America
there is the religious right and orthodox Judaism). But Puritanism is resur-
gent in Islam and cosmopolitanism dominates the United States and reaches
around the world via our popular culture with its glorification of sex, drugs,
pornography, relativism, and so on.
The Bush administration sees America as puritan (which is the admin-
istration’s political orientation), but America is really cosmopolitan. So the
administration fails to comprehend the puritan/cosmopolitan division in
the world.
The puritan/cosmopolitan divide is much older than the religious divide
(especially Christianity/Islam, which is only about fourteen hundred years
old). Abraham was puritan; the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians were
cosmopolitan. The Hebrews were puritan; the Phillistines were cosmopoli-
tan. The Persians were puritan; the Babylonians were cosmopolitan. The
Persians became cosmopolitan; the Greeks were puritan. The Greeks