MORE THAN two weeks since the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, and still not a shot fired in retaliation by American forces anywhere in the world. No immediate prospect of retaliation, either: “I think that it can’t be stressed enough that everyone who’s waiting for military action… needs to re-think this thing,” said US deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz last Wednesday.
So at least we know that the United States is not going to walk blindly into the trap the terrorists set for it.What the terrorists hoped for was huge, indiscriminate US air strikes against any Muslim country suspected of harbouring the Islamic fundamentalist groups or groups that planned the attacks.
With luck, these strikes would kill tens of thousands of innocent Muslim civilians — and Muslim outrage at this atrocity would then fuel fundamentalist revolutions that would overthrow pro-Western regimes throughout the Arab world and beyond.It’s not really likely that even massive US air strikes on suspected terrorist targets would have produced the kind of fundamentalist revolutions throughout the Muslim world that the terrorists dreamt of, let alone the apocalyptic war in which the now united Muslims would finally overthrow the domination of the West.
But that was their programme, or at least their dream, and past performance did give them some reason to hope that the US would at least lash out promptly with cruise missiles and the like. It has not happened.Instead, Washington is playing a much longer and more cautious strategy, building a worldwide coalition against terrorism.
Meanwhile it carefully avoids any action that might alienate Muslim opinion from this coalition, for it badly wants the Muslim countries in. But the final goal is probably still a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan, apparently the terrorists’ major base. And that means a war.Some time will elapse before this invasion is ready, but what will happen when it comes? Amidst all the unknowns, there are some questions that we can answer with a fair degree of confidence.
Could this trigger a world war? No, because the whole structure of rival great-power alliances that led to world wars dissolved a decade ago. All the world’s big industrialised countries and all its nuclear weapons powers, including Russia, China, India and Pakistan, will be on the same side in the coming clash.
Will nuclear weapons be used? No. See above.
Will there be more terrorist attacks? Quite possibly, for it’s unlikely that the terrorists used up all their ‘sleepers’ in one go. If they don’t get sent into action now, the next point where they might is the date that American forces attack Afghanistan. And they would be very unlikely to use commercial aircraft again: their style would be to look for another surprise approach.
Would they use chemical or biological weapons? The planners of the attack on the World Trade Centre towers would use any weapon that came to hand, but there is no evidence that they have such weapons.
Will the US and its allies bring back the draft? No, because invading Afghanistan wouldn’t require extra manpower. The combat phase of the operation would probably be over before people recruited now could emerge as trained soldiers — ten to twelve months – and no government wants to inflame public opinion by raising the question of conscription anyway. In today’s world, it is a dead issue.
Have they got the right target? The US government insists that Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants are the right targets, though it has produced nothing in public that would stand up in a court of law. It is probably being honest in its judgment, but that doesn’t mean its information is complete. We may never know the full details of who planned and financed the terrorist attacks, but Bin Laden very probably was involved.
Was Iraq involved too? Saddam Hussein would gladly do the United States any harm he can, but there is no public evidence linking him to the terrorists. That doesn’t mean that no links existed — but the US, with its plate full just organising the invasion of Afghanistan, wouldn’t want to open another can of worms at the same time.
Would invading Afghanistan stop terrorism? Of course not. Fighting terrorism is like fighting crime: you may bring the statistics down, but you never eliminate it. But attacking Afghanistan might punish some of those involved in the recent attacks on the US, and it would certainly make a lot of Americans feel better.
When will the shooting start? Probably not for quite a while, because the coalition must be constructed first and military equipment must be moved half way around the world. Think at least weeks, maybe months. It was more than six months from Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iraq in 1990 to the beginning of ‘Desert Storm in 1991.
Does all this make sense? As much sense as you can reasonably ask for in a world full of human beings. Emotions drive, and rationality tries to moderate. Sometimes it succeeds.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
