Defense Experts Worldwide Offer Advice

As Americans calculate how to vent their wrath over last week’s terror, defense strategists around the world are offering time-tested advice for going after the perpetrators and deterring security broadsides in the future: Stop. Look. Listen.

Stop and make sure the targets to be destroyed are both appropriate and reachable with minimal “collateral damage,” the killing of innocent civilians that would incense the Islamic world.

Look for allies to show the breadth and depth of the world’s condemnation of fanatic murder, especially in unlikely places such as Russia, Libya and Iran.

And listen to the reasoned voices that--amid blood lust infused by personal loss, shaken security and wounded pride--call on Americans to take a soulful examination of how their values have come to provoke hatred.

With the thunder of U.S. retaliation already approaching, many security analysts agree on which options would be most effective. Sea-launched cruise missiles could take out terrorist training camps identified by satellite surveillance. Precision airstrikes on remote hide-outs could run the prime suspects to ground. With the help of sympathetic local forces, such as Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, elite commando units could swoop down on the plotters and their Taliban hosts in a limited ground action, as long as those back home understand there will be losses.

“They will go for cosmetic strikes to start with,” predicted Charles Heyman, editor of Jane’s World Armies. But he cautioned that ground deployments needed to seek and destroy the masterminds of fundamentalist terror require a three- to five-year troop commitment.

The prospect of a quagmire, with neither victory nor retreat as an option, has evoked comparisons with Vietnam, the disastrous British and Soviet efforts to conquer Afghanistan and the United States’ declared war on drugs. Scaled-back expectations are the experts’ marching orders.

“I am very skeptical when people say they will end terrorism,” said Brian Jenkins, a senior advisor at Rand Corp. and a counter-terrorism expert with 30 years’ experience. “That is not realistic. It is going to demand unwavering resolve, creativity, cold, calm courage.”

Even describing the U.S. mission as a war is taunting disaster, warned Taylor Seybolt, conflict strategist at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

“For one thing, it legitimizes American military attacks on other governments, when the attacks came from nongovernmental forces,” he said. “Even more problematic is that calling this a war implies that victory is possible.”

That said, he described a carefully planned and focused military strike as justified. “You can’t respond to something this horrific by trying to talk to the perpetrators or treat terrorism as it has always been treated, as a police problem. The idea of resuming political assassinations should be considered.”

James Philips, research fellow and terrorism expert at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, says the United States should try to overthrow the Taliban regime, not just capture Saudi exile and suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.

“We should mount a broad international effort on a number of fronts--law enforcement, intelligence, internal security,” Philips said. “But most importantly, we should go after the head of the snake, and that is Bin Laden in Afghanistan.”

Philip Wilcox, a former chief of the State Department’s counter-terrorism bureau, urged the Bush administration to tailor military action to avoid the appearance of an anti-Arab or anti-Islam conflict.

Others are less wedded to restraint or an interfaith coalition.

“The United States should deploy ground troops in numerous short commando raids,” advised Gerald Steinberg, head of the Conflict Resolution Center at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv. “This can be in Afghanistan or wherever necessary.”

Most important, say analysts such as Joachim Giessman at Hamburg’s Institute for Peace Studies and Security Policy, is that the United States know with 100% certainty whom it is striking at and that the firepower takes out the problem.

“Osama bin Laden is a name heard so often. But it would be a disaster if all energy is concentrated against one man when the threat is so much broader,” Giessman warned.

Patient, methodical police and intelligence work is needed to identify the culprits, he said, recalling that it took two decades for Germany to quell its Red Army Faction extremists.

“An intervention is essential if the American people are to regain their self-confidence and sense of security,” said Huseyin Bagci, a professor of international relations at Turkey’s Middle East Technical University. He disagreed with analysts forecasting doom in any ground invasion of Afghanistan, noting that U.S. forces are far better equipped than were the Soviets during their failed 10-year effort and that the Kabul leadership is ever more fragmented.

French Defense Minister Alain Richard has insisted that a long-term strategy must accompany any short-term military action. French officials are particularly concerned about destabilizing Pakistan, which has nuclear capability and a tense conflict with neighboring India.

“You try diplomacy first, but as the past few days have shown, the Taliban has not responded to Pakistan’s overtures,” said Masashi Nishihara, president of Japan’s National Defense Academy.

Once diplomacy has been exhausted, military force should be applied, he said. “I don’t think you can send troops in, so you’ll use Diego Garcia bases in the Indian Ocean, bring the ships in close to shore and fire cruise missiles, then maybe airstrikes.”

Any assault on the refuges given to terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11 airliner attacks in New York and on the Pentagon and the crash in Pennsylvania would have to be waged with the assistance of local forces, analysts insisted. The Northern Alliance, which has fought the Taliban since the militant Islamic group seized power in 1996, could provide vital military and political intelligence, forward staging areas and ground troops familiar with the formidable terrain.

Otherwise, strategists repeatedly warned, the United States could face another debacle such as the failed rescue of U.S. hostages in Iran in 1980 or the cruise missile strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 in retaliation for bombings blamed on Bin Laden of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In the latter, local intelligence could have led to greater precision in choosing targets.

“The U.S. must avoid any course of action which will be as unpopular as that of the terrorists,” said former South African President Nelson Mandela, urging careful identification of any targets before punitive strikes.

Italy, counseling patience, believes it is essential to build a broad anti-terror coalition, including states such as Libya and Iran, before striking back, said Andrea Nativi, a security specialist with Italian Defense Magazine. “Maybe there are some people [there] we can talk to,” he suggested. “The United States should use more carrots and fewer sticks.”

While grieving Americans are tempted to lash out, analysts advised addressing the “Why us?” question.

“In so many ways, we’ve tried to be progressive in our intercultural emphasis. . . . But we’ve done it with an enormous dose of conceited hubris, believing that everybody is really like us in every way, in sharing our values, in valuing human life,” said David Harris, former strategic planning chief for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service.

The West faces a ruthless corps of holy warriors, he noted. “And where is the deterrence value when people think they are on the express train to paradise?”

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Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux in Rome; Henry Chu in Beijing; Norman Kempster in Washington; Mark Magnier in Tokyo; Marjorie Miller in London; Richard C. Paddock in Jakarta, Indonesia; Sebastian Rotella in Paris; Ann M. Simmons in Johannesburg, South Africa; James F. Smith in Montreal and Tracy Wilkinson in Jerusalem, and special correspondent Amberin Zaman in Istanbul, Turkey.