Old Strategies Shaken to Core

In 1998, after terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Clinton administration considered staging a commando raid against the presumed mastermind, Osama bin Laden, former U.S. officials and defense scholars now say.

But the idea was abandoned because of the risk of casualties and the military’s hesitance to commit U.S. troops to the campaign against terrorism.

“Instead, we chose to shoot off a few missiles [at Bin Laden] in the hope that he wouldn’t change location--but, of course, he did,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a defense expert at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

That sort of thinking may be about to change.

Last week’s attacks inside the United States seem likely to have a profound, long-term impact on U.S. defense and foreign policies. The events may have shaken some of the fundamental assumptions that have held sway for a decade or longer.

“Like Pearl Harbor, like the Soviet subversion of Czechoslovakia in 1948, what this event will do is to break the paradigm and to change the way we deal with issues,” said Richard Solomon, director of the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Among the policies suddenly up for reevaluation are the following, according to defense and foreign policy experts:

* The “no-casualties” approach to the use of military force.

During the 1990s, from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Kosovo, from Iraq to Afghanistan, U.S. leaders grew increasingly reluctant to put troops into situations where some of them might be killed. Policymakers worried the public might not support casualties that occurred in distant locations whose importance seemed remote to ordinary Americans.

Those political dynamics no longer apply. Terrorism suddenly has claimed hundreds and perhaps thousands of lives, and the threat to ordinary Americans is as clear as the rubble in downtown Manhattan.

* The Bush administration’s high priority on development of a missile defense shield.

It is far too soon to say what will happen to the administration’s missile defense proposal. Within hours of Tuesday’s catastrophes, critics of the initiative began arguing that the real threats to the United States don’t come from missiles. Supporters countered that terrorists who hijack planes today might use missiles next time.

No matter how that debate plays out, the administration will likely be required to give less attention to missile defense. The Bush administration’s energies will be consumed with counter-terrorism and military retaliation. Missile defense could become almost an afterthought.

* America’s diplomatic relationships.

The Bush administration has already put new emphasis on the importance of allies. Analysts say that in the coming months, U.S. ties with a range of countries--notably Russia, China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia--are likely to change to take account of the administration’s new preoccupation with combating terrorism.

“There is going to be a whole set of trade-offs,” said James Steinberg, President Bill Clinton’s deputy national security director and now at the Brookings Institution. “How much are we prepared to adjust our other policies in the interests of counter-terrorism?”

For instance, Steinberg asked, would the United States relax its insistence that Pakistan become more democratic?

“Or take China--what might we do with China in order to get their help in putting pressure on Pakistan?” he asked.

China, which has had a long-standing military and strategic relationship with Pakistan, is intensely opposed to the Bush administration’s missile defense program.

That sets up a rough trade-off, one the Bush administration would not like to make: The U.S. could back away from missile defense and gain help from China and Pakistan in a campaign against terrorism.

There were signs that in the hours after Tuesday’s attacks, Chinese officials began trying to calculate how it might affect the Bush administration’s missile defense program. James Mulvenon, a China expert at the Santa Monica think tank Rand Corp., said he received a phone call at home from a Chinese diplomat who asked about the possible impact on the future of missile defense.

“China will now drop about five or six notches on [America’s] threat board,” Mulvenon said last week.

Experts predict that for the first time in a decade, the United States will carry out military operations that rely as much on ground combat forces as on missiles and other long-distance high-tech weaponry. In war, said Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University, the calculus of zero casualties does not apply.

Defense experts say a new campaign against terrorism would not greatly change the U.S. military deployment around the world.

“In the long run, this doesn’t change the likelihood of having to fight any particular country, like North Korea or China,” said O’Hanlon, of Brookings Institution. “It could raise the possibility of a war against Iraq, if Iraq is found to have some complicity.”

O’Hanlon predicted that the U.S. defense budget would gradually increase--and that Congress might work out compromises permitting both missile defense and new efforts to protect the American homeland against terrorism.

“The Republicans will get their missile defenses and the Democrats will get their homeland defense priorities,” he said. “The climate will be very hawkish.”

Several other experts agreed.

“There will be more money for counter-terrorism, more money for homeland defense and more money for missile defense,” Mulvenon said.

Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Tuesday’s attacks will affect “every aspect of the way the government does business.”

“There are 17 departments and agencies dealing with homeland defense, and every one of those is going to have to have its programs reexamined.

“Sure, we had been working on these issues for about 10 years,” he said. “Now, it’s a reality.”

The greatest impact of the attacks is likely to be a psychological one: It has galvanized the American public in a way that is certain to strengthen the country’s foreign policy.

“In the days after Pearl Harbor, the only guy who really understood its impact was Adm. [Isoroku] Yamamoto,” said Solomon. “Yamamoto’s the one who said: ‘Now we’ve aroused the Americans, and there will be hell to pay.’ ”

Yamamoto commanded the Japanese navy during the Dec. 7, 1941. Immediately afterward, he wrote in his diary: “I feel we have awakened a sleeping giant.”