Can the War on Terror Be Won?

How to Fight the Right War

Philip H. Gordon

From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2007

Summary:  It can, but only if U.S. officials start to think clearly about what success in the war on terror would actually look like. Victory will come only when Washington succeeds in discrediting the terrorists' ideology and undermining their support. These achievements, in turn, will require accepting that the terrorist threat can never be eradicated completely and that acting as though it can will only make it worse.

PHILIP H. GORDON is Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution. His latest book is Winning the Right War: The Path to Security for America and the World (Times Books, 2007), from which this essay is drawn.

This sort of victory in the war on terror may not come for quite a long time. On the calendar of the Cold War, which began in 1947, the sixth anniversary of 9/11 puts us in 1953 -- decades before its denouement and with plenty of setbacks, tragedies, mistakes, and risks still ahead.

The point of imagining the end of the war on terror is not to suggest that it is imminent but to keep the right goals in mind -- so that leaders can adopt the policies most likely to achieve those goals. If they fall prey to the illusion that this is World War III -- and that it can be won like a traditional war -- they risk perpetuating the conflict. Even if Americans were somehow prepared, as in World War II, to mobilize 16 million troops, reinstate the draft, spend 40 percent of GDP on defense, and invade and occupy several major countries, such an effort would likely end up creating more terrorists and fueling the hatred that sustains them. It would unify the United States' enemies, squander its resources, and undermine the values that are a central tool in the struggle. Certainly, the U.S. experience in Iraq suggests the perils of trying to win the war on terror through the application of brute military force.

If, on the other hand, Americans accept that victory in the war on terror will come only when the ideology they are fighting loses support and when potential adherents see viable alternatives to it, then the United States would have to adopt a very different course. It would not overreact to threats but instead would demonstrate confidence in its values and its society -- and the determination to preserve both. It would act decisively to reestablish its moral authority and the appeal of its society, which have been so badly damaged in recent years. It would strengthen its defenses against the terrorist threat while also realizing that a policy designed to prevent any conceivable attack will do more damage than a policy of defiantly refusing to allow terrorists to change its way of life. It would expand its efforts to promote education and political and economic change in the Middle East, which in the long run will help that region overcome the despair and humiliation that fuel the terrorist threat. It would launch a major program to wean itself from imported oil, freeing it from the dependence that constrains its foreign policy and obliging oil-dependent Arab autocracies to diversify their economies, more evenly distribute their wealth, and create jobs for their citizens. It would seek to end the large U.S. combat presence in Iraq, which has become more of a recruiting device for al Qaeda than a useful tool in the war on terror. It would stop pretending that the conflict between Israel and its neighbors has nothing to do with the problem of terrorism and launch a diplomatic offensive designed to bring an end to a conflict that is a key source of the resentment that motivates many terrorists. It would take seriously the views of its potential allies, recognize their legitimate interests, and seek to win their support and cooperation in confronting the common threat.

If the United States did all that, Americans would have good reason to be confident that in the long run they will prevail. Ultimately, extremist Islamism is not an ideology likely to win enduring support. Terrorism is not a strategy with which Muslims will forever want to be associated, and eventually it will create a backlash within Muslim societies. With time and experience -- and if the United States and its allies make the right choices -- Muslims themselves will turn against the extremists in their midst. Somewhere in the Muslim world, at some point possibly sooner than many realize, new Lech Walesas, Václav Havels, and Andrei Sakharovs will emerge to reclaim their people's future from those who have hijacked it. They will seek to put their civilization on a path toward restoring the glory of its greatest era -- when the Muslim world was a multicultural zone of tolerance and intellectual, artistic, and scientific achievement. The agents of change might come from above, like Gorbachev, who used his position at the top of the Soviet hierarchy to transform the Soviet Union and end the Cold War. Or they might rise up from below, like the protesters in 1989 in Budapest, Gdansk, and Leipzig, who stood up against tyranny and reclaimed their future. If the United States is strong, smart, and patient, they will come. And they, not the West, will transform their world -- and ours.