Duringthe Cold War era ? the four decades that followed World War Two ? there weretwo superpowers in the world, the United States and the Soviet Union, each withthe capacity to destroy the other. The prospect of nuclear devastation made itsavoidance the undisputed top priority for both Washington and Moscow.
JonathanStevenson wonders if that strategy will work in America's war on terror. Thestrategic analyst tackles that question in his new book, .
Stevensonsays the sudden end of the Cold War with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in1991 did not prepare strategists to deal with the new threats of the post-ColdWar era.
TheSoviet Union seemed so powerful and immovable that it was difficult for eventhe great strategists to imagine a world without the Cold War," he says."And the rise of non-state groups as strategic threats was sounanticipated that the strategists just didn't think in advance about how the militarystrategy would have to change in the post-Cold War world."
Stevenson,a professor of Strategic Studies at the Naval War College, explains that duringthe Cold War, the threat of mutual assured destruction kept the superpowers incheck. Certainly, he says, the theory still applies to Russia, new nuclearregimes like North Korea, potentially Iran, as well as between India andPakistan. But in his book, , he arguesthat nuclear deterrence does not extend in any obvious way to trans-nationalIslamist terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.
"Islamistterrorists, for instance, like al-Qaeda, don't pose any real nuclearthreat," he says. "So, holding the vast American military arsenal,even recruiting some conventional weapons, over al-Qaeda is a little likeholding a shotgun on a horse fly. It wouldn't discourage the bug from biting.So we need to establish an arsenal that includes a lot more so-called softpower than what we've been using so far."
Softpower includes diplomacy, intelligence and law enforcement. Deterrence,Stevenson adds, can be a soft power weapon. But it only works, he points out,if the adversary has something of value to be threatened. So he suggestsmilitant non-state groups should be encouraged to participate in non-violentstate activities? like politics.
"Someof those groups, and I'm thinking particularly about Hezbollah in Lebanon as agood example, developed political power and legitimacy through the non-violentparticipation in politics that they have become reluctant to relinquish throughviolence," he says. "Hezbollah may seem very threatening now, butthey are actually much less violently inclined than they were in 1980s,precisely because they have gotten a lot more political traction inLebanon."
Theother lesson America should draw from its Cold War experience, Stevenson says,is the organization of efficient think tanks that are able to assess andanalyze new threats.
"Organizationally,the great Cold War strategists were incubated by government-linked think tanks,especially the RAND Corporation, through which they became intimatelyacquainted with the strategic challenges the government faced but were allowedto think expansively about solving them outside the chaos of day to day policyexecution," he says.
Whilemany of those think tanks still exist, Stevenson says "they have beomeconstrained by their closeness to the Defense Department." He says it'stime to create a new think tank to deal with the new strategic problems andapproach them in a broader way.
Healso recommends that Washington focus its international efforts on those"soft power weapons" ? law enforcement, intelligence and diplomacy ?rather than on direct military action.
"Itwill involve cautiously, and I think probably fairly slowly, withdrawing fromIraq? a refocusing on Afghanistan in a way that stabilizes that country andmakes it harder for al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which are resurgent in the tribalareas of Pakistan, to get traction in central Asia again.
Stevensonalso recommends "re-immersing ourselves in conflict resolution, inparticular with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And he suggests focusing on "otherdiplomatic efforts [that] involve re-building and re-consolidating alliancesthat are important in keeping an eye on terrorist activity and doing so in away that doesn't antagonize Muslims more broadly."
Hewarns that the war on terror should not distract America from the othergeo-political developments that actually seem, in some ways, similar to ColdWar issues.