The National Interest
Thanksgiving 2001

What War Means

by Dimitri K. Simes

 

. . . The big, the powerful and the wealthy are always resented to some extent, and America’s essential defense of its interests—including support for Israel and for moderate Arab states—could not but cause some hostility. But it is also clear that the propensity of the first truly post-Cold War U.S. administration for global social work—whether through diplomatic pressure, sanctions or occasional cruise missile attacks—contributed to a worldwide backlash. The Clinton Administration explained growing anti-Americanism with a new theory: some hidebound foreigners resent America regardless of what it does, because it is the most powerful nation committed to liberal democracy and free markets. This self-serving approach to the problem of anti-Americanism allowed the administration to portray its efforts at nation-building and its intervention in other states’ internal political disputes as relatively cost-free; the United States would have to shoulder only the modest expenses of the operations themselves, not the burdens of their larger consequences.

Though this theory was eventually elevated to the status of conventional wisdom among much of the country’s foreign policy elite, it is demonstrably false. The entire history of terrorism contradicts the notion that abstract issues of political philosophy are, by themselves, sufficient to trigger violent attacks. This has certainly not been the case in Israel, where there is a clear connection between terrorism and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Nor has it been the case with respect to terrorist attacks in India, Sri Lanka, Russia, Spain or the United Kingdom, where particular ethnic or religious groups seek independence or even union with a neighboring country. Terrorism in Colombia and the Philippines has been a product of rebel groups with very specific agendas, as has terrorism by Islamist extremists in Algeria and Uzbekistan. The foiled plot to hijack a French airliner and use it to destroy the Eiffel Tower was connected to France’s relationship with the Algerian government and the latter’s war on domestic Islamist extremists. America’s own experience with Middle East terrorism in the 1980s was triggered by Palestinian anger at the United States for its strong support of Israel and similar anger among Lebanese Shi‘a and their Iranian and Syrian sponsors over the U.S. role in Lebanon’s civil war.

Why should Al-Qaeda be any different? Al-Qaeda may have originated in the Wahhabi branch of radical Islam—which rejects Western civilization—but it has not attacked targets in the Western world at random. Nor has it concentrated its efforts against the most secular and permissive Western nations, which are in Europe, not North America.

On the contrary, bin Laden’s terrorist network has been obsessively focused on the United States. The reason is that specific U.S. policies are unacceptable to Al-Qaeda and threaten its perceived core interests and beliefs. First, bin Laden is clearly outraged at the American military presence in Saudi Arabia, the site of Islam’s most holy sites. Second, and in practical terms perhaps most important, he deeply resents American support for moderate Arab regimes, some of which, such as Egypt and Jordan, have cracked down on fellow radical Islamists. Finally, bin Laden opposes America’s role in the Arab-Israeli dispute. While this final issue may be low on his list of priorities, and appears to be a relatively recent addition to the list, there is no question that television images of wounded and dead Palestinians enrage radical Muslims and inspire many to fight the United States.

This is not to say that the United States has been wrong to protect Kuwait, to establish military bases in Saudi Arabia, to support regional leaders such as Egypt’s Anwar el-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, or to support Israel, which is both the only true democracy in the region and a key ally. But we should not pretend that there are no consequences to the determined pursuit of U.S. national interests. The notion that particular U.S. policies and actions could have painful consequences may contradict America’s post-Cold War triumphalism, but no law of history says that good deeds go unpunished. . . .