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| Terror Networks |
| Why Al Qaeda Is Losing the War on Terror |
| 2009-08-09 |
| Because the Middle East is catching up to — and connecting with — the rest of the world. And no matter how much peace Osama bin Laden's No. 2 tries to offer Barack Obama, there is no stopping globalization's power over extremism. By Thomas P.M. Barnett On Monday, the latest video surfaced from Osama bin Laden's longtime deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, featuring his usual sermon on the state of the radical Islamic struggle against the United States. The gist: Al Qaeda is winning hands-down, natch. Trouble is, it's not. The message wouldn't have attracted any more media attention than his thirty-or-so similar videos from the past three-and-a-half years except, of course, for his affirmation that a truce with President Obama is still on the table: If America is willing to "concede" radical Islam's "victory" throughout the greater Middle East by withdrawing all of its troops, then Al Qaeda will stop targeting Americans. Some offer. And in making it, al-Zawahiri accuses Obama, upon whom he conferred the title of "house negro" soon after his election win, of being nothing more than "the new face of the same old crimes" — namely, "a relationship with [Islamic lands] based on suppression." But that's just putting a familiar face on Al Qaeda's deeper fears: America certainly does its best to suppress radical Islam, but that's not what scares al-Zawahiri and bin Laden — having to integrate with the rest of the world does. Career opportunities and a better life, after all, means fewer young people driven to extremism. And that's exactly what's happening: Radical Islam has overplayed its hand again, creating popular resentment escalating to political backlash. We're the ones winning this struggle across the board, and not only should Obama ignore the offer of a truce as we press forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan (it would only allow Asia to step in for the oil money) — he should make explicitly clear to Al Qaeda that we'll never acquiesce to their desire for civilizational apartheid between the West and the Arab world, even as isolationists and defeatists on our side would just as soon erect a fence around the whole Islamic world to let them fight it out amongst themselves. Why? Because the penetrating embrace of globalization is doing the truly profound damage to Al Qaeda, and we are globalization's bodyguard. The flow of proliferating networks that offer ideas and conversations and products and expressions of individualistic ambition — especially with regard to women — offer radical Islamic groups no hope of gaining permanent political control. As if al-Zawahiri's smoke-blowing video — as close to an admission of strategic failure as we're likely to get out of Al Qaeda for the foreseeable future — wasn't enough, poll after poll confirms the trend: Al Qaeda's appeal — along with violent extremism in general — is waning across the Islamic world while America's has been significantly improved by Barack Obama's election and subsequent efforts at civilizational dialogue (which clearly has Al Qaeda's leadership worried, as evidenced by the amount of time al-Zawahiri spent in this last video attempting to diminish it). As Thomas Friedman pointed out recently, radical Islam's only successes as of late have involved stoking sectarian and ethnic feuds — hardly the calling card of a successful international ideological movement. The Middle East currently suffers from a destabilizing youth bulge around people between the ages of 15 and 30. In two decades time, the region's demographic center of gravity will have shifted upward commensurately, meaning the Middle East will hit "middle age." What do we know from this shift in other parts of the world? That criminal behavior wanes, meaning bin Laden and Al Qaeda do not have time on their side. That's not to diminish the economic challenge, because as that youth bulge ages out into its natural earning years, roughly 100 million new jobs will need to be created in the greater Middle East by 2030. If those jobs aren't there, then we're looking at a double whammy: all those unemployed thirty- and fortysomethings plus their disappointed kids, who will form another, smaller (but not inconsequential) youth bulge in the 2020s. In America's persistent struggle against violent extremism triggered by globalization's advance, there will always be the temptation to return to history's sidelines, much like we did after World War I. But our now decades-long success in creating and defending and expanding an international liberal trade order (now known as globalization) has created this larger, unpalatable reality: The United States is no longer in control of this process and thus cannot "turn off" its resulting challenges. Globalization is not some elite conspiracy hatched in Manhattan or Davos; it's now largely fueled by the ravenous demand for a decent lifestyle by an emerging — and huge — global middle class located overwhelmingly beyond our shores. That world-spanning force demands the Islamic world's progressive integration into globalization's vast universe. And when it comes to that fundamental reformatting process, resistance — be it radical Islam's or isolationist America's — is futile. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #11 Right or wrong, the gentleman is willing to be published in a liberal magazine claiming that we're winning and Al Qaeda is losing... even if he waited until George W. Bush would not be given credit for the win. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-08-09 23:28 |
| #10 I don't really care about how tough he is on Al Qaeda if he's not paying attention to the third world (and more frequently, second and first world) elites playing "Let's You And Him Fight While I Stand Here And Watch You Bleeding and Tut-Tut About Your Cruelty." |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-08-09 16:00 |
| #9 Free Radical - uh, ok, whatever. My dismissal of Barnett's stuff stands - he's a lightweight who can't go two sentences without uttering something ridiculous. As just one jaw-dropping example see his hallucinogenic claim above that Bambi's bizarre outreach effort has borne fruit of any consequence (based on the astonishingly naive and ignorant assumption that the umma or the Arab world likes us or doesn't like us depending on the thinnest of atmospherics, not on action and reality). Where was Barnett when Bush couldn't be found outside a mosque in the first several months after 9/11, or when the WH wasn't the site of some outreach meeting - often as not including some slimy terror-symp outfits that the staff didn't vet properly? Sorry, Barnett's the poster child for the sub-mediocrity that reigns in the Beltway. As I said, the cretinization of the public square. He's hardly the worst case, but he's in the middle of the pack. |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2009-08-09 14:46 |
| #8 Don't worry. Now that Bambi's in charge, they can always make a comeback. |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2009-08-09 13:35 |
| #7 Verlaine, I follow Dr. Barnett's writing semi-closely. In his defense, his articles (especially the esquire ones) are focused on medium and long term grand strategy. His article here should be seen as such. He has argued that not only must AlQ and it's imitators must be defeated ("squished, hunted, defeated, defunded") but that the US must have special dispensation for doing so (describing the US as not the world's policeman, but as globalization's 'Dirty Harry.') I also think he would approve strongly of your description of globalization ("market dynamics (cost-efficiency) applied to larger and larger factor markets (labor and capital) thanks to modern transportation, communications, and more open trade structures.") His point is that AlQ wants to put an end to these dynamics in favor of its fever-dream of a caliphate holding the world hostage via energy while it destroys Israel. But time (not just the US) is against them. |
| Posted by: Free Radical 2009-08-09 12:52 |
| #6 > Career opportunities and a better life, after all, means fewer young people driven to extremism. Just Not True Poverty doesn't cause terrorism, Islam does. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2009-08-09 12:33 |
| #5 The idea that AQ is just one of the tools of Jihad---and a least important one at that, just doesn't seem to penetrate. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2009-08-09 10:46 |
| #4 AQ is doomed because it has been squished, hunted, defeated, defunded. Add in humiliated in the 'Battle of Iraq' which they declared to be key and abjectly failed. Big horse and all that social behavior in their culture. What's more is that AQ was just one of many such organizations which was focused upon the removal of tyrannical regimes throughout the Muslim world. They not only took down a number of those organizations with them as we cut them all off from the financial system, creating animosity from other quarters, it gave George Bush and others the ability to show right in the heart of their region the ability to institute an alternative to removal of tyrants, thus taking away their ownership of 'change and hope' with the Caliphate alternative. They're no longer 'the way'. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-08-09 08:11 |
| #3 Gosh this guy is insufferably trite, glib, and wrong. AQ is doomed because it has been squished, hunted, defeated, defunded. The fundamentals were always tipped against AQ - and this "movement" is not just a simple by-product of globalization, but a result of several cultural and religious trends that have produced extremism and violence many many times before in completely different eras. And globalization is not fueled by newish middle classes somewhere - it is simple market dynamics (cost-efficiency) applied to larger and larger factor markets (labor and capital) thanks to modern transportation, communications, and more open trade structures. The middle class demands elsewhere are just the result of these larger and more efficient markets creating more purchasing power in "new" places. Effect, not cause. I was about to lump this lightweight with Friedman when I noticed that he quotes the great writer. Sheesh. And it gets worse - the bumbling and pointless marketing by the catastrophe of an empty suit president has in fact increased the appeal of the US! AQ was not devastated by defeat, an enemy on relentless offense, and its consequent inability to score any "wins". No. It was a few embarrassing speeches, which had no impact on the target audience, that somehow has weakened this international criminal group. The cretinization of the public square in the US, esp. as concerns political-military affairs and foreign policy, continues to amaze. Every time this Barnett guy puts pen to paper or opens his mouth, he makes a fool of himself. What passes for conventional wisdom in the Beltway would earn humiliating and derisive deconstruction in a decent undergraduate course. Sadly, it doesn't surprise me that Barnett could actually be paid by the Pentagon for his insights. It's astonishing, depressing, sickening, ridiculous - but not surprising. He'd be just the sort of shallow doofus to appeal to the "no military solutions to military problems" set. |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2009-08-09 03:29 |
| #2 Unfortunately, globalization isn't always a win-win situation. While a better lifestyle and "middle class" accessories beckon for the middle east, India, and China, the prospects for many in the United States and Europe look bleak. My parents and grandparents enjoyed more opportunities and a better lifestyle than I'm likely to ever achieve. And in places like Africa or South America, for most folks things don't exactly look rosy in the near future either. But at least Coca-cola and Pepsi can expand their markets into Vanuatu and Tonga - YAY! I'm more in favor of a Star-Trek style "prime directive". Just because you have warp drive doesn't mean you're obligated to share it with every alien race you encounter. A better plan is to just observe and don't meddle. Let the barbarians be barbaric to each other, and eventually find their own way forward when they're good and ready. And if they become a threat, just nuke 'em from orbit. |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2009-08-09 03:01 |
| #1 It is true. And to end Saddam told the worlds moslems that no, you may not have global conquest. |
| Posted by: newc 2009-08-09 00:36 |