Kevin Sullivan

Cubbyhole Foreign Policy

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Blog posts

Ezra Klein on Barack Obama’s foreign policy vision:

The Egyptian Brotherhood isn’t a terrorist group. al Qaeda, a Sunni terrorist group, hates Iran and is rivals with Hezbollah, a Shi’ite extremist sect. This statement, in other words, made no sense. It was a war against Arabs, and maybe some Persians. not a limited conflict against al Qaeda. As Obama says, one of the clear distinctions between the Left’s approach to terrorism and the Right’s approach to terrorism is that the Left wants to limit the scope of the conflict, while the Right wants to expand it. So though it was only al Qaeda who attacked us on 9/11, Romney and Giuliani and McCain and plenty of their colleagues want to zoom out from al Qaeda to terrorism, and from terrorism to Islamic extremism. Rather than this being an effort to hunt down al Qaeda, it becomes a war to hunt down al Qaeda, destroy Hezbollah, eradicate Hamas, overthrow Saddam Hussein, change the regime in Tehran, crush the Muslim Brotherhood, and confront Syria, and whatever else Bill Kristol thought of while eating his Cheerios that week. It is an incredibly dangerous and incoherent approach. And it marks a genuine difference between Obama and McCain.

There’s a lot to appreciate in Senator Obama’s approach to the War on Terrorism.  He clearly understands that there are multiple threats–often operating in a very gray area of complicit networks–that need to be handled respectively.  Understanding the ideological, ethnic and religious distinctions between these organizations and states is indeed important, and it will help us to better leverage one against the other.  Understanding their petty differences and gripes could aid our efforts to target them in certain regions and isolate their access to weapons and resources.  It’s good policy. 

What Klein fails to appreciate is just how nuanced and interwoven these networks really are.  The idea that Sunni and Shia terrorists–in addition to their state sponsors–fit into these distinct cubbyholes reveals a serious misunderstanding of how these groups work.  The examples are countless, but Iran has a long record of bi-faithful terror support.  Hamas and PIJ are Sunni organizations, both of which were direct spin-offs from the Muslim Brotherhood.  Iran has not only dumped millions of dollars into these groups, but they have provided tactical support and training to them through their own asymmetric surrogate–Shia Hezbollah.  According to the Egyptians, the Islamic republic provided weapons to the Al Qaeda-linked Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya; a group dedicated to undermining and terrorizing the pro-Western government in Cairo.  These activities were allegedly coordinated by Iran and Sudan, a Sunni Arab regime with presumably few incentives to work with Shia Iran.  When the 9/11 Commission delved into the pre-attack activities of Al Qaeda, they found that Tehran was likely closer to the terrorist organization than initially believed.   

Etc.

Here’s my point: Terrorist organizations are complex and dynamic.  They share associations, overlapping memberships and often rely on the same sugar daddies.   But more importantly, they all stand on the shoulders of the groups that came before them.  They’re all bound by a sense that America’s global reach has a very visible apex, and if you press the West and expose its democratic vulnerabilities to casualties (Khomeini himself drew upon the lessons of Vietnam and how it could apply to America in the Middle East) you can repel them from Holy Land.  This is the war, and it transcends the simplistic dichotomies often highlighted between Shias and Sunnis; Persians and Arabs.  The Israelis understood this long before we got the message here in the U.S., because they have seen the ugly face of terror in all its pluralistic fervor.  Shrapnel, rockets and bombs don’t have a sect.  Sunnis and Shias alike have terrorized the Jewish state for decades.  Members of the American Left have the luxury of narrowing the “scope” of this conflict, because to them, the conflict is not existential.  One criminal and rouge group attacked America on September 11, 2001, and once we go get those bad guys in Afghanistan we can move on to more pressing concerns.

This is a terribly shortsighted way to look at terrorism.  If Neoconservatives broaden the conflict to the point of absurdity, Leftists in turn do their very best to whittle it into irrelevance.  Neither approach makes much sense.

Some exit thoughts: As I mentioned above, there are without question important distinctions to be made between terrorist organizations and their enablers.  However, would asymmetric warfare against the West be as popular a tactic around the globe today had Hezbollah and Iran not enjoyed their own triumphs in Lebanon?  Would Al Qaeda have pursued the “shell-state” model in Iraq had Yasser Arafat’s PLO not mastered the practice in Jordan and Lebanon?