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Edited on Fri Apr-14-06 05:13 PM by npincus
http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_04_10/cover.htmlAlthough the administration’s strategy is logical on its own terms, the assumptions on which it is based are dubious. First, the administration conflates two different threats: the threat from terrorist groups and the threat from rogue states. Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda do present a novel set of challenges strategically. Precisely because these groups are shadowy, non-state actors, it is hard to deter them. As is often said, unlike states, rogue or otherwise, terrorist groups have no return address to which retaliation can be directed. On the other hand, the threat of retaliation effectively deters states for several reasons. For one thing, in contrast to terrorist organizations, if a state attacks the U.S., Washington knows where to aim a retaliatory strike. Moreover, states can be deterred because, unlike terrorists, they have a lot to lose: if their actions prompt the U.S. to hit back, a state will suffer devastating damage to its economy, huge loss of life among its citizens, and regime survival will be jeopardized. To put it simply, although there is considerable strategic rationale for pre-empting terrorist threats, there is very little justification for attacking states pre-emptively or preventively.
The very notion that undeterrable rogue states exist is the second questionable assumption on which the administration’s strategy is based. In an important article in the Winter 2004/2005 issue of International Security, Francis Gavin points out that the post-9/11 era is not the only time that American policymakers have believed that the U.S. faced a lethal threat from a rogue state. During the 1950s and early 1960s, for example, the People’s Republic of China was perceived by Washington in very much the same way as the U.S. perceived Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or, currently, Iran. Under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party imposed harsh repression and killed millions of Chinese citizens, and Beijing—which had entered the Korean War in 1950, menaced Taiwan, gone to war with India in 1962, and seemingly was poised to intervene in Vietnam—was viewed as an aggressor. For Washington, Mao’s China was the epitome of a rogue state, and during the Johnson administration, the United States seriously considered launching a preventive war to destroy China’s embryonic nuclear program.
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