Saturday, September 15, 2001 The New American Strategy

I have been grieving and distressed since Tuesday, as has each and every American. We as a nation have felt the gamut of emotions. From President Bush leading our nation to the youngest child who only begins to comprehend what has happened, we have had feelings of sorrow, anguish, rage, futility, revenge, and all sorts of other emotions coursing through us. I have thought and prayed on this. To begin to deal with these feelings in a more logical manner I have taken to the keyboard to try to envision what the future should be.

To start we must look at the end. What will be the end of this all? Where do we go and what will life be like when we return to what will be the normal state of life in America and world at large?

Will we have to live in a military-police state to ensure our security? The answer to that is most certainly no. To protect every venue of public life is an impossible task. Yes, we can clamp down on airports to make they very tight. But even if we could provide airtight security at airports, what then? Large train stations like Grand Central in New York or Union Station in Washington might be targets for terror. The Super Bowl game might be a target. Disneyland or Disneyworld are potential targets. Our schools might be targets. Or it might be the Eiffel Tower, the British Parliament, the Hague, or some other globally well-known place. Terror knows no bounds.

The answer is not an across the board increase to security in every facet of American life. In fact, the long-term answer is to return to our somewhat lax and laid back form of security that is indicative of our freedom and confidence as a nation that we are beacon of democracy for all others to yearn for an emulate. To return to this style of life should obviously our goal.

In order to reach this goal, what must we do as a country? We must do as we see President Bush and Secretary of State Powell are doing- build global consensus and support for the eradication of major terrorist networks.

This is a new world order. The days of world war as we knew in the 20th century are gone for the foreseeable future. The demise of the Soviet Union and opening of Russia was the end of the 20th century style of global wars of expansionist societies. Wars of a nationalistic nature may continue at regional levels like in the Balkans, but the global threat of war does not exist as we knew it. But global threats still exist.

The current situation with the growing globalization of national economies should prevent expansionism and help breed vary degrees of freedom and hope in repressionistic countries. While democracy may never be fully globalized, the interaction of economies in North and South America, Europe, Asia and the rest of the world will aid in preventing the growth of large-scale repression and maintain a sense of order and cooperation that will prevent global war in the 20th century model. But the threat of terror and lunatic fringes now emerge as the threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The goal of the new world order should be to eradicate this threat.

What will this entail? It will entail a new style of cooperation. It will entail a new style of agreement between countries. It will entail a new style of military operations. It will entail a new styles of intelligence collection. It is sad that acts like we just experienced had to be the wake up call to recognize that strategic defense systems should not be for ballistic missiles as planned but for the elimination of major terrorist networks. But it was a wake up call that must be heeded and acted upon.

No longer can the world community accept harboring terror. National borders do not exist when countries allow terrorist groups to wage their form of warfare. Countries must band together to combat and eliminate major terrorist networks. We may not be able to get them all, but we must try to eliminate the biggest and work our way down.

How do we do this? Military style actions are needed, but not on a grand scale as we have known in the world wars and maybe not even on the scale of what we did in Desert Storm. Strikes against storage and training facilities are needed, but these are not major targets and may not be the most important part of attacking terror. We do need to target and attack countries that refuse to stop harboring terror and can use the threat of attack to get them to cease and desist.

But it also has to go further than that. The military must begin counter terror operations as a day to day mission. Integration of military operations with police and federal authorities must also be a mission for our military. The ability to communicate and jointly operate with these types of organizations on our soil and possibly in some overseas is needed. Increasing the size and scope of operation for units like the Navy Seals and Army Rangers also needs to occur. In fact, creating a multi-national version of these types of military organizations is also needed, whether it be under NATO or similar command structure for other theaters of operations.

Economic support for terror must be cut off. Swiss and other world banks protect Mr. Bin Laden's money. Whatever the source and harbors of his and other terror groups funds and resources, they must be cut off. The Swiss, Saudis and whomever else have access to their money must cut it off and stop the resources from going to the terrorist groups. You are either for us or against us. Little in life is black and white, but this is.

Another area needing change to help eliminate major terrorist groups is in our intelligence arena. During the Cold War our intelligence gathering capabilities became more and more technically robust at the expense of traditional intelligence gathering. Some choice intelligence is always available from human sources as we have seen over the years and still often saw throughout the Cold War. This type of intelligence collection needs to be expanded. We need to infiltrate terror and terror-related organizations worldwide. Expansion of covert, human intelligence activities will be paramount to fight a hidden terrorist enemy. The costs of our high-tech toys far out shadows the cost of a few hundred or even several thousands of people invading terrorist groups from the inside. And our allies abroad need to be part of this human intelligence equation. They, too, must train people to do this and coordinate activities along with us.

The expansion of alliances needs to occur. NATO is functional in a post-Cold War environment. Creation of similar organizations around the globe needs to happen with the US at the helm. Resurrecting the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) or a similar group for Asian cooperation is needed as are the creation of a South Atlantic organization with our neighbors in Central and South America, a Sub-Saharan Africa organization and a Middle Eastern and Western Asia organization. The elimination of terror, drug trafficking, piracy and other international problems can come under their charters.

Lastly, we need to come to grips with why terrorist groups exist. We need to change our moral structure as a country. Our founding fathers built us a democracy, yet we fought a horrible Civil War because all men were not free in our democracy. We had suffragettes fight for equal rights for women. We had a civil rights movement that hopefully completed what our Civil War began: to gain equal rights for minorities. Yet as a nation we deal with countries daily that do not remotely approach our democratic ideals. After two and a quarter centuries of the American experiment we must no longer cooperate with countries that refuse to democratize and open their societies to rule for an by the people. We have propped up shahs, routinely cooperate with puppet states, and smile and shake hands with dictators. We do not hold our allies to the same standards that we hold ourselves.

As America emerged as a world power we had to exist in this environment because there were common global enemies that were nations or groups of nations of equal stature. Now we sit as the single remaining superpower. We can wait until we diminish into the background of a global system that may eventually emerge to swallow us. Or perhaps we can wait until we allow another power to emerge to rally against. But rather than sit back why not move forward? Why not become the beacon of democracy and spread the gospel of freedom? We and our democratic allies should restructure our economies and get out of bed with Saudi Arabia and other countries where there are not free elections. That will require us to also get out of bed with the oil barons and come up with a credible energy policy since oil is the predominant resource that we rely on from the non-free world. But it would also eliminate most of the reasons why terrorist groups hate us. The fact that we support governments that do not represent the peoples of their countries is probably the single reason that people like Mr. Bin Laden exist. Sultans, emirates, shahs and dictators need to be outside our circle of friends, allies and trading partners. We need to coerce them into developing self-rule in order to remain on our side. In so doing the crazies that gravitate to terror groups will have less reason to. There will always be crazies but their growth will diminish if there is no cause.

This will be the riskiest and most difficult part of the new American Strategy. But it is the most vital one. If we are going to talk the talk then we must also walk the walk. Turning our heads to ignore repressive governments must end. The Cold War helped foster that attitude but it is over. We must move on to globally sell democracy. And who better to lead that but the most creative, rich, and democratic state on earth? The sole remaining superpower. The leader of the free world must now become the leader of the world's freedom movement. Yes, we have suffered a grave blow. But America is still here. America still moves ahead. Buildings and glass are replaceable. Yes, 5,000 irreplaceable lives were lost. But we must act so that they did not die in vain. America will win the war against terrorism. Their deaths will be justified as America rids the world of terror. We have paid a terrible price. We will pay more in the future as Americans will certainly die fighting for what we believe in. But we pay because we believe. We believe that freedom is more important than us. Americans have and will continue to die to protect what is dearest to us- our freedom. Let us hope we minimize the numbers that must give the ultimate sacrifice. But that sacrifice must be made as we risk our lives to protect our way of life.

God bless America, the land we all love. Let us stand beside the President and help him guide America through these troubled times. From coast to coast we stand united. God bless America, the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Steve Jones Commander, United States Navy (Retired)