The Semantics of the GWOT
I've been thinking this for quite a while, and looks like Gordon has been too. The essential problem with the Global War on Terror (GWOT) is that it is not actually a war. 'War' implies some kind of competition for territory and resources; even the Cold War was stretching the point, being as it was an economic and ideological conflict fought for real only by proxy.
The thing is that, once you have got into the 'war' mindset, your approach to the situation is defined by it. Military commanders throughout the world are obsessed with retaining a warfighting capability - MBTs, carrier groups and suchlike that project power over national borders. But the situation we are facing now is not about national borders. Terrorists simply cannot be fought with conventional military forces. Even guerilla armies can't be beaten this way - look at Vietnam.
What the US needs to do is acknowledge that there are two ways to defeat terrorism - through both hard power and soft power. The hard power part is about eliminating those terrorists who are an immediate threat, either through small tactically-inserted special forces teams working overseas or via intelligence and policing within home territory. Wading in with tanks and Apache helicopter gunships will simply create alienation and more terrorists, something the Israelis too have yet to cotton on to. The soft power part is about tackling the warped ideologies that fuel terrorism, which in turn are inspired by disenfranchisment and economic or social deprivation.
It's the classic speak-softly-big-stick argument, but I see little evidence that force structures and governmental foreign policy apparatus are being adapted to meet the moderm world. With the military brass - not to mention the defence industry and the trade union lobbies - eager to obtain and supply hugely-expensive power projection platforms, the real need is overlooked. Yes, of course retain a warfighting capability - but realise that a small nation such as the UK is unable to fight a real war larger than a Falklands/Sierra Leone scale without US assistance. Hold on to what we need to stay militarily viable, but spend the rest on restructuring the surveillance, intelligence and development side of the equation - all of which the military could still turn its hand to and prove its usefulness.
Language and terrorism | Don't mention the GWOT | Economist.com
To speak of a “global war on terror” is over-simple. Shortened to the acronym GWOT, it conflated the military campaign against al-Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors in Afghanistan in 2001 with the war two years later to overthrow Saddam Hussein, an old foe who almost certainly had nothing to do with September 11th. That Iraq is a magnet for al-Qaeda is the result of the invasion of Iraq, not its cause. GWOT also implies, wrongly, that there exists a military solution to a problem that for a few countries (eg, Afghanistan) requires a co-ordinated nation-building effort but for most demands patient police and intelligence work. “War” should be the exception, not the focus of the effort against terrorists.
