The War On Terror Goes Global by Fareed Zakaria

September 13,2o01 U.S. Edition

The War On Terror Goes Global
America alone cannot triumph in the fight against terrorism. It needs the help of freedom-loving nations everywhere. This is their struggle, too.
By Fareed Zakaria

Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, will indeed be a "date which will live in infamy," as Franklin Roosevelt said almost 60 years ago, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But the analogy ends there. Last Tuesday's events are even more gruesome and tragic than what happened on Dec. 7, 1941. At Pearl Harbor about 2,300 American soldiers and sailors died. We can only guess at the numbers who have been crushed, burned and buried alive in New York and Washington. But it is safe to say that we have just witnessed the largest loss of American life in a single day since Antietam, the worst day of the American Civil War, when 23,000 were killed or wounded. And the dead in 1862 and 1941 were soldiers and sailors. Last Tuesday they were ordinary men and women, sitting down to begin a day's work.

Pearl Harbor was actually a clarifying event. Roosevelt's associates recall that he seemed utterly calm afterward. He knew it meant that at long last America's ambivalence about World War II was over. The country would mobilize, and fight, and--eventually--win. His ally Winston Churchill recalled that the night after Pearl Harbor, he "slept the sleep of the saved and thankful."

After Dec. 7, 1941, America knew what to do, how to do it and whom to do it to. Executing the task was an enormous challenge, but the strategy was clear enough: fight a war against an enemy. Today we are in a war, all right, but the enemy is unclear, the terrain is uncharted and the methods are horrifically unconventional.

A better analogy for the disorientation in this country is with the Tet Offensive, the moment in 1968 when the United States finally realized that it was in for a long, difficult war in Vietnam against a determined foe. Even worse, try as hard as it could, America found that none of the old ways of war seemed to work. That mixture of anger, confusion and bewilderment is what Americans are feeling today. But the analogy must stop there. This is not a war we can afford to lose.

And we do not have to. Tuesday's terrorist attacks could become a clarifying event if George W. Bush and his team can give it meaning. The president will have to begin a process of rallying the American people around a new and uncertain struggle. He needs to speak often and eloquently. He has just become a wartime president. He also faces the task of rallying much of the world to his cause. This is not a war that the United States can win alone. The unilateralism of the early months of this presidency must give way to deep, sustained alliances.

As massive as this attack was, it could have been worse. Consider one simple fact: in the past seven years more fissile material (the critical ingredient in making a nuclear bomb) has been stolen from the former Soviet Union than the United States produced in three years of the Manhattan Project.

If the task at hand sounds impossible, it isn't. Having watched such a carefully coordinated act of terror, it might be difficult to believe that international terrorists are vulnerable. But they are. Mostly they are a ragtag bunch of disorganized thugs. The few that are big, well financed and organized, like Osama bin Laden, usually leave trails. A terrorist needs money, banks, telecommunications, transport facilities and local assistance. He needs other organizations, even governments, around the world. That makes for more leaks, leads and--most important--targets.

So how do we respond to this new threat? First, we stop fighting the last war. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the bulk of America's national-security efforts have gone toward deterring Russia from invading Poland, North Korea from moving south, China from attacking Taiwan and Saddam Hussein from going back into Kuwait. We've spent $60 billion researching a missile shield against intercontinental ballistic missiles. Now, these are all important tasks. But the single greatest threat we face as a nation is that of terrorism--low tech, high intelligence--both at home and abroad. We have bolted the upstairs windows while leaving the front door unlocked.

Second, we must organize for success. There are specific and serious holes in our current setup. We do not, for example, have a single place in government where all information relating to terrorism is gathered. But what produces much of the deadlock is the two competing ways of handling terrorism. The first is law enforcement--which emphasizes reaction to an event, uses information that is legally and voluntarily obtained and is governed by restrictions and rules of American law toward private citizens. (Think FBI.) The second method is national security--pre-emptive action, aggressive tactics, a looser standard for evidence. (Think CIA and Defense Department.) We need to use both approaches, but the constraints of law enforcement need to yield to the imperatives of national security.

One of the reactions in Washington to what has happened last Tuesday will be to throw money at the problem. Good. Counterterrorism efforts are woefully underfunded. But the right place to beef up is not the Pentagon; it's the CIA and the FBI. More than anything, the government needs better information about the people and organizations planning terrorism. Some of this information can come through satellites and wiretapping, but most of it will have to come from the oldest method in the book--human intelligence.

We need, for example, to shore up an important weapon in our arsenal--covert operations. They remain the best way to penetrate a terrorist organization, foil a plot or pre-empt an attack on the United States.

Of course, the great test for America will be to take these extraordinary measures in a way that does not trample on American democracy. We would truly lose our purpose in this struggle if, in fighting it, we lost our core values.

But, as the late Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson said, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. There are times when freedom has to be defended by more than fine words and phrases.

Over the past decade America has had a surprisingly easy time as the global superpower. Those protesting against it have had concerns that, in the shadow of Tuesday's attack, seem almost postmodern. Frenchmen worried about their culture; Yuppies about the environment; consumers about genetically modified foods. But beneath all this froth there is a real threat to the free world, one that is old-fashioned, fundamental and raw. It is the opposition of those who hate America not for what it does, but for what it is.

Osama bin Laden well understood something that we all needed to be reminded of. The world of globalization is not simply a neutral fact of life. It is the outcome of policies and values that the United States and the Western democracies have adopted over decades, even centuries. And these policies are not merely about making money or playing with new technologies. The West has created a world in which individuals are free to choose how they would like to live their lives--how they work, travel, trade, worship, organize, speak and think. These freedoms are utterly revolutionary in the history of the world.

They are also deeply threatening to the world view of men like Osama bin Laden.

I believe that Americans will surprise the world in their willingness to fight this battle. The caricature of Americans--too soft, too rich, too happy--has time and again been contradicted by history. Hitler made that wager about decadent Americans and Britons and lost. So did Stalin. So did Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic.

But while America will be tested in the months ahead, so will the rest of the globe. Around the world people have been happy with the fruits of globalization in the 1990s: the peace and prosperity it produces, the ease of trade and travel, the goods and services, the information and entertainment it generates.

They watch the movies, listen to the music, read the magazines, vacation in America and try to send their children to college here. But none of this requires them to actively support the United States or affirm its values. They can denounce America by day and consume its bounties by night.

But all these countries--in Europe and Asia and Latin America--must recognize that the world they have gotten used to will not survive if America collapses. The United States is the pivot that makes today's globalization go round. If other countries believe in individual liberty, in free enterprise and free trade, in religious freedom, in democracy, then they are eating the fruits of the American order. And this order can be truly secure only when all those who benefit from it stand in its defense. Freedom-loving people everywhere cannot watch this struggle as if it were a horror movie, wondering how it will end.

This is your struggle, too.