A dodo of a national security policy

I USED TO BELIEVE in the theory of evolution, but these days I’m having my doubts.

Consider the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy, which has evolved not a jot during the last 2 1/2 years -- a time span that in politics is the rough equivalent of a geologic eon.

On Sept. 7, 2003, George W. Bush insisted, “Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness.” A few days later, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld picked up the line, and by the following year, it was an established administration mantra, hauled out each time anyone suggested that the war in Iraq has worsened the threat of terrorism. Vice President Dick Cheney seemed particularly attached to the phrase, offering it up in 2004 to audiences of high school kids and firefighters alike.

For much of 2005, the phrase seemed to be on the verge of extinction, driven there by dwindling public support for the administration’s manifestly delusional Iraq policies. But confounding evolutionary logic, it now seems to be enjoying a comeback, if only within the administration. Cheney has used it in several speeches this year, dusting it off most recently for an appearance Tuesday at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois.

The claim that “terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness” has a pleasing structural symmetry, which is presumably why administration speechwriters like it so much. But as a prescription for U.S. policy, the phrase ought to join the dodo and the woolly mammoth. It’s dangerously misleading, and if high-ranking members of the administration really believe it, they have no business setting U.S. national security policy.

Here’s the basic problem. In a sense, the “use of strength” does cause terrorist attacks. This is not an argument for weakness, but a simple statement of fact. The United States possesses the most powerful conventional military in the world, and no state or nonstate actor can go up against the U.S. in a traditional war and face anything other than crushing defeat. But as a direct result of our military strength, those who don’t like us (an ever-expanding group, thanks to the Bush administration) will employ the classic weapons of the weak: unconventional tactics such as guerrilla warfare, infrastructure sabotage, suicide bombings and terrorism.

Military analysts call it asymmetric warfare, or fourth generation warfare (4GW, in military jargon). And any military analyst worth his salt will tell you that as long as we remain a military superpower in the conventional sense, we can expect our adversaries to avoid direct military confrontations with us, which they will inevitably lose. Instead, they will turn to terrorism, attacks on civilians and similar “force multipliers.” That’s why we can’t “win” the war in Iraq through a traditional military “use of strength.”

This is realism, not defeatism. Our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are doing what they have been trained to do, and then some, but effectively combating insurgents, terrorists and suicide bombers requires skills and institutional capacities our military isn’t equipped to provide.

As Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon argue in their recent book, “The Next Attack,” the U.S. is losing the war on terror.

We’re losing because the cavemen in the Bush administration don’t understand the difference between strength and bellicosity, and they don’t understand that increased bellicosity will only compound the already grave threat of terrorism.

In Iraq today, we’re not fighting the terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them at home, as the president claims. In fact, the Iraq war is creating and inspiring a whole new cadre of terrorists. In Benjamin and Simon’s words, we have turned Iraq into a “country-sized [terrorist] training ground.”

An effective national security policy in the age of asymmetric warfare would bear little resemblance to the neolithic strategies we have seen from the administration over the last five years. To protect ourselves, we need a new generation of Americans who are capable of looking outward, as well as inward; we need leaders (and citizens) with the linguistic and cultural skills necessary to understand the perspectives of allies and adversaries alike.

Such skills are crucial to intelligence gathering and the detection of terrorist threats, but they also are crucial to forming sensible policies in the first place. Such sensible policies include consistent and nonpoliticized support for meaningful democratic reform and human rights, a revitalized global development and anti-poverty strategy, an energetic effort to rebuild damaged global institutions and alliances, and a commitment to restoring U.S. credibility on issues of rights and the rule of law.

How close to extinction do we need to get before the American electorate figures this out?