Panel 3: Reconfiguring the War on Terror

 

Ms. Kori Schake of the State Department pointed out that many of the transatlantic differences between the U.S. and Europe stem from political culture. And she also acknowledged that much of the agenda of the war on terror is in doubt. Are we at war with terrorism, or with a specific terrorist group? How should this war on terror be conceptualized? The truth is, according to Ms. Schake, is that if it is a war then terrorism will involve more than law enforcement. In some cases, military affairs are necessary. We are most worried about ungoverned spaces, and for some threats emanating from them military force is an essential piece. In our eyes, then dealing with terrorism, is linked to state-building, local capacity, development and public affairs? But if the solution is, as we often here, is so obvious, why is the U.S. struggling to do it?   Because the U.S. has a government which is designed to have division of powers, to prevent abuse and tyranny, which makes policy execution and interagency cooperation is difficult. This won’t change when the next president comes into office. European countries will also be asked to contribute more, including to Afghanistan, and they need to confront the fact that there is still a big constituency inside the United States that wonders if Europe is a winnable constituency for the United States. 

Baronness Pauline Neville-Jones concurred with the previous speakers, and noted that it is still true that the machinery of government is not yet fully equipped to deal with the threat. But within our concept of national security, there is a growing convergence across Europe that we need to focus on internal or domestic threats of terrorism.  Though the threat of terrorism is perhaps not the most serious global risk, it is the most urgent and the one most likely to bring a government down. In Britain, Neville-Jones pointed out that policymakers do not talk in the language of the war on terror any longer. However, they do take the view that jihadism, while it is incapable of being defeated, is at very least capable of being disrupted. Terrorism is a tactic and attempts to deal with it can be handled in a way which does not lend support to your ideological opponents. If you treat it as some kind of terrorist conspiracy, you are left with one choice: you can apply the law fairly and rigorously. Yet you begin to abridge rights like freedom of speech and assembly, you run the risk of giving away the laws that make you a democracy. On the issue of radicalization, however, Neville-Jones suggested that this is something that the U.S. with its tradition of integration and multiculturalism has a lot to teach Europe. The UK does not think enough about nation-building, and our policies have multiculturalism have perversely increased the tendency towards separation. So we have a great deal to do is in social welfare for our own alienated communities, which is a long range task involving many policy instruments and national will.

 

Ashton Carter pointed out that the next American president is going to find himself or herself with tough choices, particularly over the allocation of scarce resources. The U.S. national security budget will probably level off, and the supplemental funding for defence could also disappear. Our entitlements and health care costs are also rising, so in purely budgetary terms the U.S. is going to have to make hard choices.  There are basically five strategic choices for U.S. defense, each of which has budgetary implications. First, we can concentrate on stability operations like what we saw in the Balkans and in Afghanistan. Second, we can concentrate on irregular war, such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Third, we can concentrate on counter-terrorism, which also has budgetary implications as well. This is deadly serious: with every passing year, the destructive power is falling into the hands of smaller and smaller groups of people, which in a world of interconnectedness is only more and more serious. Third, we can concentrate on China. No one knows how China will evolve, as this requires an estimate not of immediate Chinese ambitions but of the intentions of future Chinese leaders. But this requires investment in high-end military technology. Finally, we can concentrate on nuclear weapons, yet controlling proliferation also has its own budgetary implications. These are at least five vectors for our defense, and choices among them will determine whether we can maintain our pre-eminence.