Forget Europe. How About These Allies?
Terrorists buy a national election in Spain for the price of 10 backpack bombs and remove a "crucial" pillar of the Western coalition in Iraq. Predictably, op-ed columnists and talking heads raise the cry for the Bush administration to "save the Western alliance." This is a knee-jerk response that reflects historical habit more than strategic logic.</br></br>Clinging to the Western alliance isn't the way to win the global war on terrorism. In fact, it's a backward-looking approach that's certain to doom our efforts in this conflict. Combating transnational terrorism in the era of globalization will be a decades-long task, and anything that long and complex requires a genuinely grand strategy, something this country has lacked since the end of the Cold War.</br></br>Grand strategy is about figuring out what kind of global future is worth creating, understanding which states have the incentive to build that future, and concluding the bargains necessary to keep them on board for the duration. The Bush administration has declared its intention to "transform" the Middle East, but beyond merely stating that goal and offering regimes there a "to-do" list for democracy, it remains unclear what constitutes the finish line in this global war on terrorism. Defining happy endings is important, because it can help America understand who its true allies in this great historical struggle should be -- not globalization's old core of Europe but its new pillars in Asia and elsewhere.</br></br>During the Cold War, the United States was able to enlist the long-term support of Western Europe because those nations felt most under the gun from the Soviet bloc's military threat. All they had to do was to peer behind the Iron Curtain to envision the future they wanted at all costs to avoid.</br></br>Europe today faces no such threat. All the Islamic terrorists demand is that Europe remain on the sidelines while they wage "holy war" against American "imperialism" in the Persian Gulf. Al Qaeda wants to drive the West out of the Middle East so that it can drive the Middle East out of the modern world. Osama bin Laden has seen our future and prefers Islam's past, and many in Old Europe are willing to agree to his offer of civilizational apartheid, preferring to concentrate on inwardly perfecting the European Union, where they have their hands full merely integrating the former East Bloc states. And if Turkey remains "too different" for that club, you can imagine how any effort to connect Iraq to the West seems like a bridge too far.