Superpower

An Unconventional Super Power

Friday, February 16, 2007

Western civilization judges the super power status of nation-states using a sliding scale that peers into a country’s economic, military and institutional power. The United States is clearly a super power with an economic, military and institutional strength that is unmatched in the international community. No other country in the world can confront global problems like the United States can because the US has the resources and the political will not to be an isolationist country. In the last century, the global community enjoyed the fact that the United States was not an isolationist country. The United States saved Europe twice last century in two world wars because we were either snapped out of isolationism or in combination with moral courage stood up to fight in those wars and dismantle totalitarianism. Remarkably however, the global community now wants the United States to become an isolationist country again when dealing with fundamentalist Islam in the War on Terrorism. Diplomacy over direct military engagement is about to be pushed as the silver bullet in dealing with the spread of militant fundamentalist Islam and radical Islam’s desire to establish a global caliphate (global Sharia Law according to the Koran).

Diplomatic efforts will fail as they have failed with Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito and others.

The United States, and the west, faces an enemy in fundamentalist Islam that has figured out how to attack western nation-states to dismantle democracies. This is how fundamentalist Islam is accomplishing its totalitarian expansion:

Fundamentalist Islamic militant and terrorist forces have a transnational method of documentation support so that Jihadists can travel around the world to join revolutionary terrorist cells in attacking western targets. For example, the war in Iraq has seen terrorists and other Jihadists travel from Europe, Northern and Central Africa, Central Asia and as far away as East Asia to the battlefield to fight American soldiers. This would not occur without documentation support from hostile nation-states.

Once in the theatre of operations, Jihadists are given directions to link up with other Jihadist groups inside Iraq and given financial instruments to make it to the theatre of war successfully.

The Jihadists that arrive successfully in Iraq are then given material support to wage war against US military forces. Weapons of war from Syria, Iran and European nation-states is delivered to the terrorist and Jihadi forces so those forces can begin insurgent operations against the United States military and the Iraqi democratically-elected government in Baghdad.

As the Jihadist and terrorists engage and destroy US military vehicles and personnel with improvised explosive devices and direct attacks, the operations are filmed by propaganda cells within the Jihadist cell and then sent to Islamic media centers for preparation so that extensive propaganda films can be manufactured and placed on the internet. These digitized films are then downloaded by other insurgent and terrorist Jihadi cells for “lessons-learned” taskings and field preparations in other insurgent battlefield areas. The Jihadists then have a very powerful psychological warfare construct to engage the west, as powerful as their military insurgencies have become.

The Jihadists and terrorists, regardless of origin, are trained to operate without uniforms so that a cultural gap in enemy identification exists in the west. Western media apparatuses will claim that civilians are being killed because no uniforms of enemy combatants can be seen. Other special interest groups claim that the human rights of terrorists and Jihadists are being violated because of the very lack of identification of these individuals as combatant military forces. This activity empowers fundamentalist Islam because the terrorists can then operate within civilian environments and choose their targets from within that environment, whereas combatant forces are easily recognized and engaged and destroyed by the military forces of the United States. The terrorists then are an unflagged military army with a high degree of capability which is supported by western media and other special interest groups hostile to the United States.

All of these activities are cornerstones to the fundamentalist remaking of the global order. Unflagged radical Islamic military forces are an extremely dangerous threat to global stability and western democracies as a whole.

Western countries, including political wings in the United States, want the US military to withdraw from Iraq. If that should occur, the Jihadists will declare victory over the United States as the lone super power and then the unflagged Islamic fundamentalist army will proceed to re-equip and relocate to other areas of the world for new military objectives in their war to remake the global order. Islamic fundamentalist states such as Iran will become emboldened and oil could very well be used as an economic weapon to trap the United States at home and make it too costly to deploy military forces in the future. A withdrawal from Iraq will also make it very difficult for the American people to approve a redeployment of military forces around the world should they be needed to respond to other crises as it emerges. Nothing however would convince these unflagged military forces that are under the direction of hostile nation-states to stop attacking democracies around the world. On the contrary, a withdrawal from Iraq would have the opposite effect, for the modern democracy then would be viewed as weak and unable to defend itself from any level of external aggression.

Iran’s nuclear program would move along and the Persian state would acquire a nuclear weapon that it would use as an umbrella of aggression over Europe and the entire Middle East and Northern Africa. An unflagged radical Islamic military force that is highly-equipped by hostile nation-states and roaming around the world to attack democracies is frightening, but such a force supported by an Islamic nuclear umbrella would be another animal entirely. Fresh off its victory over the west, terrorist and insurgent forces currently operating in Iraq could destabilize and conquer across Europe, the Balkans, the Caucuses, Chechnya and even into other areas of Russia itself.

President Putin of Russia can sense that the United States is nearing a diplomatic resolution to the Iraq war. The American people have clearly voted against the war, and the political wings that the American people voted for have been daily demonstrating an unwillingness to continue the war. It is anticipated that Russia would make such an opinion because they do not want to fight two Islamic fronts instead of the one they are fighting in Chechnya right now. For Russia to support the US position of war would require the United States Congress to support the war. Absent that, the Russians are not going to inflame the Persians and that appears to be why the Russians have been helping Iran with its nuclear program and other objectives. The United States on the other hand faces the difficult task of not only fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but trying to figure out the security situation involving Iran. World opinion then will emerge as the United States makes a decision one way or the other over its war policy in Iraq. The Russians have given their opinion, as has China and India. China and India rely heavily on oil exported from Iran, so those countries are interested in resolving the Iraq conflict as well.

President Putin however did make an error when he claimed that the United States is driving Middle Eastern countries and others to acquire nuclear weapons. That is untrue and a falsehood. The nuclear proliferation problem emerged from Pakistan in the 1990s, long before the September 11^th, 2001, terrorist attacks. A Pakistani nuclear scientist known as AQ Kahn gave nuclear technology to both Iran and North Korea. The North Korean government ordered the detonation of a nuclear test device in October, 2006. Iran is attempting to finalize its nuclear program at this writing to test its own nuclear weapon. The blaming then of the United States for nuclear proliferation is a falsehood.

The world then is bracing for what the United States plans to do about Iraq. If the United States leaves Iraq without securing the democratically-elected government, you can expect countries like China, India, Russia and many in Europe to seek terms from Iran and the massive unflagged Jihadist movement that is functioning like an unconventional army in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the US leaves Iraq without victory, the US Congress then will accept terms from fundamentalist Islam. What those terms will be is anyone’s guess, but it is anticipated it will include the creation of Sharia Law in every western country to some degree which will probably start at the Islamic community and then branch out to destroy western institutions and governments over a period of decades, and the liquidation of the State of Israel. Other terms will likely include the complete removal of US military forces from Islamic countries. Those are the terms that fundamentalist Islam seeks from the west and those terms have been made non-negotiable by Jihadist leadership cells as directed by Osama Bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri. In political defeat from war there are terms and this is not Vietnam. The United States is not losing this war militarily, as the US did not lose the Vietnam War militarily. This war is a test of wills and the unflagged Jihadist military forces supported by hostile nation-states know that the greatest weakness of democracies engaged in war to defend from aggression is time.

The following are some of the critical events that are pushing the United States into defeat in the War on Terrorism:

Immunity from conscription: US populations have been erroneously convinced that the United States does not have the legal right and the will to conscript citizens of draft age to fight wars to defend the United States. Hostile nation-states rightfully view that as a strategic weakness when conflicts are spread out over time. Soldiers that volunteer for the US military in peacetime should not have to carry the full brunt of the war all by themselves during wartime. A volunteer military force cannot sustain a lengthy war when an unconventional army is degrading it with hostile military applications over time. Since the American people are adverse to conscription because of Marxist psyop activity on American universities and the media during the Vietnam War (part of the Cold War where Communist influence was always operating against US interests), this has paralyzed the US government from adequately applying the correct amount of military personnel to fight the War on Terrorism. Jihadist leadership cells then simply had to degrade the existing force, knowing that replacement of equipment and personnel would be strongly resisted by special interest groups and political wings in the United States. Conscription should be reinstated because it is a higher politic and non-negotiable by the citizen. Without conscription, time is the Jihadists most effective weapon and those nefarious forces have used this fact to their strategic advantage.

Failure to know the enemy: It is simply unthinkable that tens of thousands of highly-trained insurgent and terrorist forces could descend upon Iraq without any claim of outside hostile nation-state support. The media and special interest groups weighed in heavily on this debate and shaped public opinion away from the truth—a truth that forces fighting the United States are unflagged but are acting as an unconventional military force which is supplied and financed by hostile nation-states. Instead of taking more direct measures against these hostile nation-states, diplomatic activity has attempted to shield the behavior of those states, almost granting them immunity to deploy and lead unconventional armies against the west and western democracies.

Failure of ally states to contribute to the War on Terrorism: The inadequate support by ally states to help the United States in the War on Terrorism is unconscionable and yet this behavior is celebrated in the western media and also celebrated by special interest groups. This means that many western democracies have declared neutrality in the War on Terrorism and this is going to lead to greater global conflict down the road. The United States and Great Britain have been fighting the War on Terrorism virtually alone in many ways, and contributions by a lot of ally states has been marginal at best, to no support at worst. Jihadist leadership cells see this as a great weakness that they will exploit in the coming years.

American political considerations: Political wings in the United States have attempted to explain this war as a war not against America, but one started by one political wing without approval of others. Radical Islamic forces world-wide view this as a major weakness and are planning for US retreat and surrender in the War on Terrorism. Since there are so many US politicians and policymakers that do not understand what fundamentalist Islam is or what it plans to do to the west in the future, increases in global conflict could reach levels not seen since World War Two. Again, this is not Vietnam. The Vietnamese did not follow the US military home because North Vietnam was a Stalinist nation-state system. Fundamentalist Islam is a form of theocratic-Trotskyism whose only purpose is to spread and create failed states in enemy nation-states. Time is against the west but the west is acting dovish in the face of its mortal enemy.

Fundamentalist Islam is transforming into an unconventional super power: Radical Islam may be transforming into an unconventional super power. Jihadist terrorist organizations now exist in almost all western nation-states and their support from hostile states and military capabilities give those organizations the power to destabilize any foreign state they inhabit and operate from. In Iraq and Afghanistan, fundamentalist Islamic military forces that are unflagged and operating against the United States and its allies are becoming very proficient in war-making and could use that knowledge against any western nation-state in the future. There are an estimated 50,000 highly-equipped and well-trained terrorist forces now operating against the United States in Iraq alone. The fact that these combatants are unflagged doesn’t matter—the Jihadists are an army and that army if left intact could be deployed anywhere in the world given the vast resources of the hostile nation-states that are supporting it. Since those enemies are suicidal and expert bomb-makers, there is no limit to the damage they could do to any democracy they target and they could liquidate western governments with ease using such tactics. If Iran or some other country were to arm them with nuclear weapons, they would use them without hesitation upon unsuspecting western population centers.

Fundamentalist Islam then is not only attempting to remake the global order, it is emerging as an unconventional super power. If the United States surrenders in Iraq and the War on Terrorism in general, the stability of western democracies will deteriorate exponentially. The War on Terrorism is the challenge of our times but western democracies are not taking the threat seriously enough to counter gains that are being made by radical Islam. If the United States is having difficulty fighting this war alone with Great Britain and other allies do not assist in defending western civilization, the coming decade will be one with vast expansions of conflict around the world and tremendous loss of life and property.

As this unfolds, western democracies that cannot deploy military forces in the War on Terrorism either due to false-immunity regarding conscription, lack of political will and fearfulness, or any other reason, can expect their domestic populations to be increasingly and more dangerously targeted by fundamentalist Islam as hostile states dictate terms. The terms that will be dictated to the United States and other western countries will grow exponentially over time until a final confrontation is put into play as occurred in World War One and World War Two, the exception being that this time hostile states will be armed with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and enemy combatants will operate from a suicidal pathology on the modern unconventional battlefield.

Christopher Farmer

MS, National Security

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