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Aerospace
Power Journal - Spring 2002
Maj Paul J. Bellaire Jr., PhD, USAF*
*Major Bellaire is the program manager for space sciences at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in Arlington, Virginia.
COLD WARRIORS everywhere, rejoice! What you have yearned for since the fall of the Soviet Union has returned with a vengeance. Today we again face the old conundrum of “us” versus “them.” Adapting a passage from the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “A specter is haunting Europe- the specter of Terrorism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: President and King, Blair and Bush, French Radicals and German police-spies.” This time, not only Europe but also global civilization is threatened.
On the one hand, there exist Westernized, secular governments run by the rule of law (no matter how corrupt and inefficient), while on the other hand, there exist theocratic, fundamentalist regimes that follow the infallible Word of God (no matter how bizarre the interpretation). The two systems are mutually hostile. Conflict is inevitable.
In each camp, one finds a wide spectrum of political behaviors and deviations from orthodoxy. China still struggles with the rule of law but abhors insurrection and religious fanaticism. It is clearly an example of a secularized system. Iraq has suppressed Islam but has perverted it for fanatical purposes, utterly unfettered by the rule of law. Although it is not a Muslim theocracy, Iraq has no government at all by Western standards- merely thuggery.
Multinational coalitions dominate each camp. Although nominally unaligned nations exist outside these two ideologies, the vast majority of these recalcitrant states could never join the “other side.” The choice for them lies between internationalism and isolation. Their national interests and goals are too well aligned with one or the other camp to sustain delinquency for long. The pressures on these fence-sitting states to toe the party line are just beginning, and neutrality will not be a viable option. China will eventually join “us,” and Iraq will join “them.”
In the very near future, US involvement in the Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union will become the linchpin of a truly “New World Order.” These growing alliances represent a tectonic shift in American geopolitics that we have not yet fully grasped. Many of these states have untapped oil reserves as well as clear advantages of geography relevant to our new war against terrorism. We will not be leaving the area anytime soon.
Russia has sanctioned US involvement in the region and is eager to cooperate with the West. Why? The Russian Federation today has between 10 and 20 million Muslim citizens. Accurate numbers are difficult to obtain since many practice their faith surreptitiously or shun official counting. Even before the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow experts understood that the Muslim South represented the country’s “soft underbelly” and a grave threat to its national security. The weak independent states that now exist in the former Soviet South are vulnerable to Muslim insurgency (indeed, Tajikistan endured religious civil wars throughout the 1990s).1 An unstable Afghanistan has been the bane of czars and general secretaries of the Soviet Union for over a century, and xenophobia is a Russian trademark.
The United States realizes that the Russians possess neither the resources nor the strong institutions required for the task at hand. For their part, the Russians wish to focus on regenerating their economic, political, and military power. They have also made the astute judgment that the southern “Islamic problem” presently lies beyond their capabilities to resolve (just as it lies beyond any single nation’s ability, including that of the “last superpower”). So they are throwing their lot with the West and forming a united front that clearly serves their national interests. The Russians now understand that the enemy is not the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on the Western Front but Islamic fundamentalism on their southern borders. An entirely new foreign policy must be constructed to accommodate this political reality.2 The United States and Russia have come to the realization that sustained collaboration in Central Asia will be necessary in order to solve the problem.
We must not underestimate this Russian policy shift. It will lead to stronger integration with NATO over the next few years and possibly to full NATO membership. This, in turn, will imply modification of US policies within NATO at large. In particular, the presence of Russian influence within NATO will substantially alter the alliance’s stance toward Turkey. Since the two nations are historical enemies, a Russian-Turkish antagonism within NATO will pose at least as much of a challenge to the alliance as the ongoing Greek-Turkish face-off. The stress of maintaining these two separate feuds will likely lead to unanticipated political change within Turkey, which will certainly affect the Turkish-Iranian competition over Azerbaijan. We must also note that the Central Asian states are predominantly of ethnic Turkish stock (although Tajikistan has Persian affinities). Russia wishes to moderate Turkey’s attempts at pan-Turkish nationalism and limit the Turks’ influence in the region. NATO will probably acquiesce to these modest goals lest we lose Russia’s cooperation in the New World Order. NATO cannot forget that Turkey is becoming the strongest ally Israel has in the region, which complicates the strategic complexion of the Middle East even further.3
As Russia moves inexorably closer to NATO and the West, China’s leaders will become increasingly anxious. The presence of the United States in the Central Asian states will seem a direct challenge to growing Chinese markets and political influence in the region. It may also create the impression of military encirclement. Viewing an arc stretching from Japan and Korea in the northeast, to Mongolia and Russia in the north, to the Central Asian states in the west, and on toward the Indian subcontinent, the Chinese will see themselves surrounded by US allies, client states, or proxies. The obvious conclusion derived by the Chinese Politburo will be that the United States and Russia are bringing a military cordon to their doorstep. Who could blame them if they saw this as “hegemonic”?
Given Russia’s objections (until recently) to the Baltic States joining NATO, imagine the protests of Chinese Communist leaders when an unforeseen US-Russia-NATO coalition arises on their western borders! Our rapprochement, albeit fitful, with India and Pakistan will only exacerbate their fears. China, seeing itself surrounded, will divert precious resources to its northern and western borders, not previously a cause for concern. One need only hark back to the Hainan Island incident to recall how seriously the Chinese take perceived threats to their sovereignty. President Bush’s assertion that China is our “strategic competitor” will be writ large.
Ironically, India and Pakistan will probably feel isolated and marginalized by US moves in Central Asia unless we provide constant reassurance. They could conclude that we are replacing them with more docile but better-positioned allies north of Afghanistan. In their view, the United States has never really considered them significant, either in the region or in the world community. Having endured years of US sanctions and neglect, and just when things were improving, they see us wooing more compliant allies elsewhere. At the very least, the Pakistanis and Indians will see our investments in Central Asia as draining US resources that they would have preferred to receive. In the current crisis, the arms-length stance we have taken vis-à-vis Pakistan, an ostensible ally, will be seen as an object lesson in this regard. From the subcontinent’s point of view, the United States may “talk the talk” but not “walk the walk.” Thus, nuclear saber rattling may become the method of choice for India and Pakistan to grab our attention. The United States must preempt this situation by using vigorous diplomacy and engaging with these two pivotal states. In particular, Pakistan is very fragile. Indeed, the current regime may not survive Afghan reconstruction.
Finally, China is not the only nation that may see a conspiracy of containment aimed its way. The Central Asian states share borders and ethnic groups with Iran. The Iranian mullahs, who already see US allies off Iran’s south and western shores, will also feel threatened by the Great Satan moving into their northern and eastern backyard. Iran is now at a critical point in its history- it must choose between secular rule of law or continued theocracy, and it must do so quickly. The internal forces of democracy, although growing stronger in Iran, have not yet defeated the entrenched religious elite in Tehran. The outcome of this struggle is incredibly important to the United States and its allies. If Iran falls back into fundamentalism, our war against terrorism will become vastly more expensive, time-consuming, and complex. The stability of any political and military structure we set up in the Central Asian states will always be threatened by Shiite rebellion if the mullahs win in Iran. If the war against terrorism is to succeed in our lifetimes, Iran must join the West. The United States would be well advised to engage Iran diplomatically and economically- and soon.
What are the implications for the US military? Clearly, “transformation” will be de rigueur. Today, we are too bloated, heavy, slow, and spread too thinly.4 We must form light, nimble, and quickly deployable all-terrain antiterrorism units with overwhelming firepower. We must devise smaller, stealthier, and more autonomous weapons and sensors. We must perfect nonlethal crowd control as well as “snatch and grab” techniques. We must miniaturize precision-guided munitions for smaller, “personalized” targets. We must acquire rapid-response airlift, sea lift, and space lift. We must also develop “launch on demand” and a piloted space plane for global reach.
Speed will become critical. Force projection from space will partially answer the “need for speed,” but this will require space control and weaponry on orbit. Therefore, we must revisit space treaties, increase research-and-technology investments across-the-board, and harness the combined brainpower of US academia, industry, and national labs more effectively and synergistically. We must also train greater numbers of US citizens, provide them with advanced degrees in engineering, mathematics, and the sciences, encourage them to enter government service, and pay them well. We cannot use foreign or immigrant alien talent to fill the highly technical but increasingly classified new jobs that will be created in the US civil service and uniformed military during the course of this new war.
We must strengthen and upgrade our global network for command and control, making it invulnerable to both cyber and physical attack. Surveillance and reconnaissance must attain higher temporal cadence, higher resolution, finer spatial coverage, and multispectral capability. Environmental monitoring of Earth and space must become more robust so that we can disguise our attacks within natural events and prevent our adversaries from doing the same to us. We must be able to mitigate nature’s disruptions so we can prosecute this new war under any environmental conditions- on land or at sea, in air or space.5 Consequently, we may need to revise prohibitions against manipulating the environment.
Airpower and space power, although critical to this nation’s success, will not be a panacea. True joint operations, as well as interservice and international compatibility, will become ever more important. Future US commanders can expect to work more frequently in concert with multinational forces. Our troops will require a certain degree of diplomatic know-how, cultural training, and geopolitical savvy. Our officers and enlisted personnel will have to learn obscure foreign languages and may take direction from (or at least trust information provided by) personnel from former Soviet states. For all of this to work, we must provide more effective education and training for our own troops, as must our allies for theirs. Old suspicions die hard, but now we must overcome them.
To combat terrorism adequately, the United States must have eyes and ears everywhere, at all times. We must exploit wireless technology and the Internet. Because of privacy concerns and constitutional protections, identification and discrimination of friend from foe become paramount, in cyberspace as well as physical space. Encoding and encryption must protect our communications, yet we must be able to crack all codes and intercept all messages useful to our enemies. The United States must become “their Big Brother” without becoming the same to its own citizens.
The West must find a way to end the production of eager martyrs for Islam by going after the hearts and minds of their youth as well as their educated elites. Obviously, the grinding poverty, illiteracy, oppressive government, and religious fanaticism found in much of the Muslim world must become our targets in this war.6 We will inevitably engage in disinformation, “dirty tricks,” psychological operations, and aggressive propaganda- from the mosques and foreign press to Cable News Network’s Headline News- in order to undermine our adversaries’ recruitment and retention. However, a “Marshall Plan” must follow, involving the construction of secular, civil societies for all Muslims in their homelands. Today, their disaffected youth have nothing to lose. We must give them and their parents hope for a better future.
Ultimately, we must be mindful of our own problems in recruitment and retention. Our national will is going to be sorely tested as mistakes are made, collateral damage occurs, casualties accrue, and campaigns go poorly. Our own population must be convinced of the necessity for continuing this struggle. We must also engage our hearts and minds- we will need total commitment. America must find and exercise its best leadership for the task ahead.
Arlington, Virginia
Notes
1. See Jed C. Snyder, ed., After Empire: The Emerging Geopolitics of Central Asia (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1995).
2. See Robert D. Kaplan, Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus (New York: Random House, 2000).
3. See William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East, 1st American ed. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998).
4. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, 30 September 2001, on-line, Internet, 7 January 2002, available from "http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/qdr2001.pdf" .
5. See Bob Preston, Plowshares and Power: The Military Use of Civil Space (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1994).
6. See Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Random House, 1995).
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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