To Guard an Era: American Purpose after Iraq
By Philip Gold
Proceedings, September 2005
Today, three sets of human beings confront one another: those who embrace the 21st Century and its opportunities (below: top); those who want out-jihadi, political extremists, violent racial or ethnic separatists, leftover Marxists, and traditional tyrants (below: bottom); and the three billion who live on $2 a day and suffer from overpopulation, starvation. . . and despair (below: middle).
Words matter. So does their lack. Four years after 9/11, we still haven't discovered the words to tell us what kind of struggle we're in. GWOT, the global war on terror? Not hardly. Terror is a tactic, a strategy. This is no more about terror than World War II was about Blitzkrieg or Kamikazes. The battle against Islamo-fascism? No such thing: a crude, misleading analogy at best. World War III or IV? Too vague to tell us much.
The Bush administration's apparent replacement for GWOT is GSAVE: the global struggle against violent extremism? Better, but still neither precise nor inclusive enough. Nor do we seem to have to words for what we wish to accomplish. Hard Wilsonianism. Democracy dominos. A thousand other sound bites, jargonizations, shards of rhetoric, vague invocations of high-sounding clichés, talking points. Nothing quite fits. And the American people, spun to stupefaction, and, for the present, content neither to support nor oppose with much ardor, know it.
Nearly 60 years ago, in his Foreign Affairs "X" article, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," George Kennan gave us the words to understand the Cold War challenge and the proper response—containment. Today, professors, policy pogues, pundits, and even occasional politicians speak of the "Kennan Prize"—the nonexistent yet highly coveted award that will go to the man or woman who does for now what Kennan did for then.
This—please pardon the chutzpah—is my bid for the Kennan Prize: the entry of a former Marine who spent much of the 90s urging serious transformation and homeland defense; who predicted an imminent attack in the summer of 2001; who supported the Afghan campaign and the Bush Doctrine. . . and who opposed the Iraq venture from spring 2002 as, at best, a costly diversion. Iraq may or may not be another Vietnam. Sometimes it seems more like another Gallipoli, a campaign that might have paid off wondrously, had it worked. It didn't work. Perhaps it could not have worked. In either case, what matters now is to speak to each other, in words of reason and respect, about what to do next. For the age now upon us, I believe, has ushered in the greatest crisis of human history. And unless and until we understand it, we cannot prevail, and may not survive. When the future of the planet is involved, words matter.
Situation
The Age of the Wars of Ideology is over. The Age of the Wars of the Ways has begun.
The Wars of Ideology lasted over two hundred years, from the American Revolution to the fall of the Soviet Union. Like the Wars of Religion before them, they were about many things; labels always limit, and eras are never exact. Still, the Wars of Ideology centered on two great collective issues. What is the proper form of political organization? And what is the proper form of economic organization? These questions have been answered. Some form of political democracy with extensive civil rights, coupled with some form of market economy and welfare state, does more good for more people than anything else yet devised. So clear was this verdict that Francis Fukuyama could posit "the end of history." The big questions had been answered. All that was left was to maintain the system and extend its benefits to the five or so billion people who hadn't quite gotten there yet. And we were all, Dr. Fukuyama suggested, going to be very bored.
But if the big collective questions have been solved, not everybody has gotten the word. Ideology still matters. So does religion. So does the rest of the human capacity for furor, vice, and folly. But the mix is different now, more subtle and more complex. I suggest that we have entered an era that might be called, at least provisionally, the Wars of the Ways. Across the planet and its increasingly irrelevant national boundaries, three sets of human beings are involved.
- Those nations, peoples, regions, groups, and movements who partake of the 21st century, its freedoms and diversities and possibilities: those whose ways are those of prosperity, tolerance, and humane aspiration.
- Those who want out of the 21st century: jihadi , political extremists, violent racial and ethnic separatists, terrorists of other ilk (animal rights, ecological, etc.), male supremacists, leftover Marxist and traditional tyrants, and the gurus and gauleiters of philosophies and movements yet to be espoused—those whose ways would bring upon us new Dark Ages of hate, intolerance, oppression, and worse.
- Those who can't get into the 21st century: the three billion of us who live on under two a day, amid conditions of overpopulation, disease, and starvation, havoc, degradation, despair; most of the women of this planet; youth with no sense of opportunity and place—in sum, all those who may choose to live by the motto, "When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose."
The Wars of the Ways will pit those who partake, or desire to partake, of the 21st century, against those who want out, who will deliberately and cynically ally with those who can't get in, who will deliberately and cynically accept their help.
Exaggeration? Today, depending on the criteria used, between 60 and 100 wars curse this planet, to say nothing of what most of the world's governments routinely do to their own people. They're all related, and more. When we read of Saudis and Africans fighting us in Iraq; when we learn of links between jihadi and Central American drug cartels or hear of recruitment in American prisons; when bombs go off in London or Bali; when you factor in China; when you follow the money and the weapons; when the latest African genocide refuses to go away simply because we ignore it—it's all intertwined.
Now Add Three Other Factors
First, maybe half the world's 200 nations including dozens that fall into the categories "failed" and "failing" states, have borders that don't make ethnic, economic, political, or ecological sense. These offer those who want out of the 21st century, those who (to borrow from Milton) would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven, all the hell they can handle.
Second, the global revolution of rising expectations, fueled by everything from the Internet to pirated "Baywatch" videos, means that the poor and oppressed grow ever more restive. Some thrill to our Declaration of Independence. Others covet our porn. Many want the good things without understanding how to make or protect them. Weapons of mass destruction are available.
And finally, the virtual certainty that the next few decades will bring serious, perhaps catastrophic climate change, new diseases and pandemics, and an ever more costly competition for resources, especially oil and water. Human struggles will play out amid accelerating environmental havoc, and few will heed that old Klingon proverb: "Only a fool fights in a burning house." Welcome to the Wars of the Ways.
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