AS AMERICAN POLITICIANS point fingers and question one another’s qualifications for leading a war on terror, as Europeans and Americans hurl mutual recriminations about the war in Iraq, the terrorists have been acting. Radical Islamists have struck Spain, forcing a change of government there. They have attacked the citizens of many of the countries supporting American efforts to create a democratic Iraq. They have seized French hostages to force France to rescind one of its laws. And they have killed more than 500 Russians in a week and a half, demanding Russia’s recognition of the secession of Chechnya. There should be no doubt on either side of the Atlantic that the Western world is engaged in a deadly war, or that attacks on one are attacks on all. Neither should there be any doubt that only the sort of forceful and aggressive response the Bush administration has launched has any hope of success in this conflict.
The Russian people have been battered by a series of attacks that are nearing the scale and horror of September 11–half of the 330 known dead in the Beslan outrage were schoolchildren, who were starved and deprived of water for more than two days before being killed. And the Russians have noticed that America has not suffered another terrorist attack since 9/11. As a Russian policeman observed dourly after the tragedy, according to the New York Times, “In the United States, after September 11, there were not any more attacks. Here they have not done anything. We get kicked from all sides.”
Russian president Vladimir Putin has more or less acknowledged that his strategy of focusing on the political aspects of the Chechnya problem has failed and his country is once again at war. He implicitly praised the U.S. response to 9/11 under Bush’s leadership, noting, “Events in other countries prove that terrorists meet the most effective rebuff where they confront not only the power of the state, but also an organized and united civil society.” He seemed to recognize, finally, that Russia’s previous anti-American truculence may have been misplaced: “We have to admit that we failed to recognize the complexity and danger of the processes going on in our country and the world as a whole.” Russia has paid a hideous price for these failures.
The horrible attacks on Russia are attacks on us, too. Russia is a young, not entirely stable state whose growing democracy is in constant danger. Attacks of the magnitude we have just witnessed are likely to lead to further erosion both of stability and of democracy. They may also goad the Russians into retaliation that exceeds acceptable bounds if Putin lashes out against the Chechens in the heat of his emotions and fears. Such excessive retaliation can, in turn, help fill the ranks of radical Islamist organizations. Just as the Russians must recognize that their differences with us are trivial compared with the joint dangers we face, we must recognize that their fight against terrorists is indivisible from our own.
Even the French have had to see that their efforts to distance themselves from America’s policies in the Middle East have not brought the hoped-for result. The seizure of French hostages and Zarqawi’s declaration of war on France in response to the French ban on Muslim headscarves in public schools emphasize the fact that opposition to American policies is not enough to secure safety in this ideological war. Whatever the wisdom of the headscarf law, the world must know that the radical Islamists are not simply responding to attacks on Muslims in the Middle East. They believe they have the right to censor and oppose by vicious violence even peaceful measures that the democratic states of the West adopt in their own lands. The French were wise to refuse to rescind their law in response to such a threat, and they were fortunate this time to have defused the crisis without loss of life. They may not be so fortunate the next time.
Above all, these recent events should remind Americans and Europeans both that radical Islamist attacks do not result purely and simply from American aggression. Even states like Russia and France that have categorically opposed U.S. actions in the Middle East have become targets and victims because of their own policies. Attempts to deflect the terrorists have not worked. Political engagement has not worked. Diplomacy has not worked. So far, the only thing that has worked has been aggressive efforts to root out and destroy terrorist organizations in Afghanistan and Iraq and aggressive measures to secure our homeland. Americans should be cautious in congratulating themselves, for another attack can come tomorrow and our defenses will never be 100 percent complete. Nor can we claim to have adopted the best possible approaches to our wars and diplomacy over the past few years.
But the events of recent weeks have shown clearly that the simplistic approaches and criticisms coming from the Kerry camp are far less likely to succeed than the more complex and sophisticated strategy the Bush administration has pursued. The right program is not, as Kerry says, to “internationalize” the coalition in Iraq, to be cautious and defensive in the use of our power, to ensure that we move in lock step with other states that, quite wrongly, do not feel themselves as threatened as we do. The right strategy is to attack the terrorists where they live and train, to pressure their sponsors to stop supporting them, to build up our defenses at home and abroad, and to be willing to fight to prevent attacks on our homeland. This is the essence of the Bush strategy in the war on terror, supported by the president’s single-minded determination to protect Americans’ security. It is the only strategy, as events have shown, that has any hope of success.
Frederick W. Kagan is a military historian and the coauthor of While America Sleeps.
