Kennan and Al Qaeda

Remember Al Qaeda?  In his article “Long Wars and Long Telegrams: Containing Al Qaeda," which is forthcoming in the British journal International Affairs, Australian historian and Kings College scholar Patrick Porter applies Kennan-esque realism to the campaign against jihadi terrorism. Porter argues that Al Qaeda is showing signs of being a self-defeating adversary, beset by internal pathologies and increasingly unpopular in the very societies it seeks to mobilize against the West. In his view, a patient, containment-like approach that encourages these divisions and avoids self-inflicted wounds provides a better blueprint for the counter-terrorism effort than the ill-conceived excesses adopted by the Bush administration. I’ll post a link when it’s available online, but here’s the money quote:

"A containment strategy places a ceiling on the threat while awaiting its eventual internal collapse. Against this, it allows more time to jihadists, possibly on a generational timescale, for further atrocities. But a hyperactive strategy of ‘rollback’ risks the more likely outcomes of financial haemorrhage, the erosion of constitutional liberties and the inflaming of other world crises. Consider this in blunt policy terms. An Al-Qaeda at large, trying full-time to stay alive, pursued by an ever-growing set of enemies, even with the remote chance that it inflicts a terrible blow, is less dangerous than wars with Iran or Pakistan, an emptied treasury or a shredded constitution. Trading off time and conceding longevity to the enemy for the sake of lowering the war’s costs is worth it. This is because Al-Qaeda’s capacity to hurt America is less than America’s capacity to hurt itself.  The ‘war on terror’ is a war declared on a tactical method rather than an identifiable group, for cosmic rather than achievable goals, with little grasp of ends, ways and means or weighing of vital versus peripheral interests.”

For my immediate post-9/11 thoughts on this same subject, take a look at this admittedly dated piece. I got some things wrong (i.e., I was too ambitious about Afghanistan, too willing to coddle governments in places like Pakistan, and too confident that the U.S. would act smartly), but the Bush administration mostly did the exact opposite of what I suggested and we all know how that turned out.