America's Secret War: Inside the hidden worldwide struggle

America's Secret War : Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between the United States and Its Enemies
by George Friedman
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Editorial Reviews
From Booklist

Friedman is right when he says that his book may be "vigorously attacked." His (quite reasonable) portrayal of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden as "skilled and dedicated men" is sure to anger readers looking for easy characterizations. But there is nothing easy about the post-September 11, 2001, world. Any study of the period immediately following the terrorist attacks inevitably raises more questions than it answers. What did the U.S. intelligence community know, and when did they know it? Was there sufficient advance knowledge to permit the U.S. government to defend itself against the attacks? Was President Bush misleading the world when he launched his search for weapons of mass destruction? And how, exactly, has Osama bin Laden managed to escape? Friedman answers what he can, suggests explanations for things that are murky, and gives us fistfuls of new ideas to consider. This isn't the definitive book on the subject, but it delivers a clearer, deeper, and subtler understanding of the post-9/11 world than we will ever get from listening to the cacophony of talking heads on television.

David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

The latest chapter in the 'Great Game', October 29, 2004
Reviewer: J. Dretler (Tucson, AZ USA)

In "America's Secret War", George Friedman, the chairman of Stratfor, a private intelligence and information service, guides us through the intricacies of the origins and consequences of what he calls the `Fourth Global War'.

He starts by comparing the war to a game of chess where, to the unknowledgeable, there are many possible opening moves, but to the initiated there are only a few. This is a book of current events and recent history. It is, by design, more informative than inspirational. Friedman has an opinion, not always expressed in his Stratfor reports, but it is not obvious. He claims, in the foreword that he is trying to be cold and objective, rather than passionate, and while he is successful in maintaining objectivity, his passion or intensity comes through.

He challenges conventional wisdom with his allegations that Desert Storm was not about Iraq, but about Iran and her challenge to Saudi Arabia over who will be the leader of the Moslem world. In the West, he says the war was seen as a perfect example of modern statecraft with proper objectives and an exit strategy'. It had something for everyone. It appealed to three different groups, and to each within their own geopolitical constructs. For the `cold-warrior' perception of global politics the war was the proper defense of a Cold-War ally. For those who have a more Kissingerian realpolitik interpretation of the world saw the war as the proper containment of Iraq and of Saddam in balance of power terms.

Finally the `End of History' post-modernists viewed the war as an expression of the multi-lateral `new world' working together against a rogue state. All of these views combined to make this a popular war in the West. Friedman says that what was not appreciated in this view was that the perception in the Moslem world was wholly different. In his opinion, the Islamic world saw this intervention as anti-Islamic rather than anti-Saddam and by supporting this use of `infidel' troops to pursue war against other Moslems the Saudis pushed the anti-Saudi fundamentalist factions over-the-top. These factions recruited disaffected, newly trained, mujahedin empowered by their successful pursuit of the anti-Soviet Afghan war to create the anti-western Al Qaeda organization.

Al Qaeda is a working intelligence organization that pursues the goals of toppling the current Islamic regimes that they see as illegitimate, creating an uprising in the Moslem world and reestablishing the Caliphate. Friedman says that in spite of the errors we have made in the war, Al Qaeda has still failed to meet any of these objectives.

According to Friedman, in the Clinton administration foreign policy was more about doing good things to help deserving people, than about pursuing America's national interests. As the worlds only superpower, war was now optional, to be pursued or declined at our option, since no enemy had the power, it was assumed, to force us into war. The attack on 9/11 showed otherwise.

Although the earlier attacks; in 1993 on the World Trade Center, and on the US Embassy and Marine Barracks in Beirut, the Kobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole in Yemen were mostly declined by the Clinton Administration, the audience for the attacks was not the US, but the Moslem world. By failing to respond the US showed weakness and impotence while highlighting Al Qaeda's effectiveness. These attacks vanquished the hopelessness and powerless feeling in the `Arab street' and helped to create the current resurgence of aggressive militant Islam.

Friedman compares this war to WWII. Although the traditional idea of war with a competing nation-state is diluted by the non-local or pan-Islamic nature of the Al Qaeda Islamo-fascism, it is still a war. The current conflict has many similarities to the ideological wars of national liberation against Marxism-Leninism, but the historical comparison and precedents in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 are, to him, obvious. The legalistic interpretation that war is simply crime, and the perpetrators of war, criminals is, to Friedman at least with historical perspective, nonsense. He posits that this view would have led FDR on December 7, 1941, to declare that we would hunt down the Japanese pilots who participated in the attack and subject them to judicial proceedings to determine their proportionate guilt and subsequent punishment. This is, as he maintains, absurd. It was, however, the position supported by the Clinton administration in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the current view of Harold Koh, dean of the Yale Law School among others.

This view helped to justify the separation between the US Justice Department and the US intelligence gathering organizations In the US, the FBI is a police organization entrusted with the prosecution of crime. Intelligence organizations are involved in the collection of information in anticipation of and to prevent future action. According to Friedman, these functions are not compatible and many of our intelligence failures are the result of this misalignment of resources.

In Friedman's opinion, the only response for a nation who has received a surprise attack is to quickly go on the offensive. Political considerations are, at that time, more important than military ones and more modest goals are to be eschewed in favor of more robust ones even if less than ideal conditions are present for this action. This view resulted in the attack on Afghanistan that caught Al Qaeda and the Taliban by surprise since they didn't think we could respond quickly with more than limited air attacks.

This show of force was also necessary to gain the allegiance or at least the attention of the various Afghan warlords whom we had largely abandoned after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and who had now made accommodation with or had direct ties to the Taliban. Although the Afghan campaign worked well and has resulted in the installation of Hamid Karzai as Afghan President, who is now a US ally rather than a Pakistani surrogate, it has not been so great a defeat for Al Qaeda that they lost standing or credibility in the Islamic world. To do this, and to further erase our image of weakness, we needed a greater show of force and determination. This had to be the invasion of Iraq.

The need for invasion was not unrelated to nuclear proliferation. We were worried about the control of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program as well as those in Iran and Iraq. While the State Department favored supporting centralized state control in Pakistan and Iran, they were opposed by the Defense Department which said that nuclear weapons or facilities in control of governments in whom we had no confidence was an intolerable situation. Defense said that 9/11 had created a situation where compromise was unacceptable and a military response was necessary. State was focused on the limits of our capability, Defense was focused on the threat, Defense won.

Friedman says our putative allies were torn. They understood that the US had to wage war on Al Qaeda and they were willing to help us track down Al Qaeda operatives. They were not willing, however, to help us invade Iraq and thereby (at least in their minds) shift the global balance of power. They opposed the Iraq invasion for the same reason we wanted it: it would make the US the preeminent power in the Middle East. That, combined with our control of the seas, would give us a global empire that was not in the interests of the so-called `Great Powers'. These nations feared that with Saudi Arabia and Iran surrounded, America would have more influence on oil production denying Russia the oil pricing advantage she currently enjoyed.

France had been pursuing an essentially anti-American foreign policy since WWII seeing America as a threat to her national interests and her attempts to dominate Europe through her collaboration with a psychologically subordinate and submissive Germany. Friedman says that France thought 2003 was the perfect time to create a unified European foreign policy under guidance from Paris and Berlin with the help of Moscow. What they underestimated was the historical collective memory of Eastern Europe who remembered past treatment by Moscow, Paris, and Berlin and welcomed Rumsfeld's categorization of `New Europe'. The result was an increased influence in Europe for the US and embarrassment for France that some may call a victory for the Bush Administration.

Friedman ends the book with a scorecard of gains and failures. He regards the lack of understanding of how completely Iran had built political and administrative control in the Shiite community and through the efforts of Ahmed Chalibi as major failures, as well as the underestimation of the depth and quality of planning in Saddam's guerrilla war.

On the success side, he says there has been no `toppling of regimes', no rising of the `Arab street', and virtually all Islamic regimes have increased their support for anti-Al Qaeda activity and are using their own intelligence services to achieve US anti-terrorist goals.

The war has also succeeded in the Machiavellian objective of making the US hated and feared in the Arab world instead of hated and held in contempt, which Friedman calls a positive. In summation he says that the American people understand and can endure war, it is the American elite that project their own timidity and self-doubts onto the national character. He says that this is indeed a war, and probably a war `to the finish'.

Friedman's book adds some specific new information along with focus and clarity to the continuing debate. It also reads easily and with Steven Coll's "Ghost Wars" provides a continuous detailed history of the latest chapter in the conduct of the `Great Game'.