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During the Cold War, when the world was divided between
the communists and the West, and the development of
our foreign policies was based on this elementary divide.
Because the United States was engaged in a war between
right and wrong, there was no leeway for interpretations
that delved into why certain populations chose the communist
ideology over the Western ideology.
Since the West interpreted communism as dangerous and
wrong regardless of the motivation behind the ideology,
our policy toward communist-leaning movements was one
of forced submission or attempted extinction. Because
the war was waged on an ideological level, those waving
the communist banner were communism, and therefore could
not be analyzed separately from the greater evil that
was the Soviet Union. The indigenous nature of the commi-nationalist
movements from South America to the Far East was smothered
by the overbearing analysis of communism as a parent
producing offspring.
This blunt approach to the international system allowed
successive administrations, and the West as a whole,
to ignore the intricacies with which the communist movement
propagated itself as well as absolve itself of any wrongdoing
as colonial powers.
We ignored the underlying reasons why the Soviet Union,
with its anti-Western ideology, served as the beacon
of hope for populations throughout the underdeveloped
world. If we looked past our ethnocentric definition
of the West as the protector of the “free world,
” we would have seen that Western growth and expansion
correlated into oppression in the countries we controlled.
However, the recognition of this tacit fact would have
tainted our justification for offensive foreign policies
in these countries in the post-colonial era.
By creating an enemy of evil proportions the United
States and its Western allies were able to mask the
more basic reasons for the revolts we quelled, the coups
we instigated and the wars we waged during the Cold
War era: the continued desire for influence in countries
we saw as important to our national interests. In order
to justify offensive U.S. policies, policymakers had
to disregarded the gray area where communism became
synonymous with nationalism.
Now enter 2004. An international war against evil is
being fought, although this time it is a hot war, in
which terrorists are attacking civilians and the West
is attacking the terrorists and Saddam Hussein. Once
again it is an ideological struggle, but where communism
had no religion, Islamic extremism uses religion to
promote its mission. The primary entity we fight is
amoebic in form, and spread globally, whereas we knew
where the leader of the Soviet Union sat to make phone
calls. There is no diplomacy or hope of rational discussion
with the leaders of the international terrorist movement,
because unlike the leaders of the Soviet Union, they
have nothing to lose.
The context of the international war is different on
many levels, but one thing remains the same: Oppressed
populations are latching on to the Islamic fundamentalist
movement as their new beacon of hope. And once again,
the United States is overlooking this phenomenon as
we physically press our agendas globally and ally ourselves
with oppressive governments to bolster our position
both on the strategic military level and the economic
level. President Bush’s rhetorical emphasis of
democracy in the Middle East draws from the same language
used by presidents from Kennedy to Reagan to justify
the deployment of troops and covert military action
without obvious defensive motives.
As we use democracy as our reason for intervention,
we do not use it as our means of intervention. In Iraq
we are fighting a guerrilla insurgency that waves the
religious flag while preaching the tenets of political
freedom. We cannot afford to focus on the ideological
structure of the conflict while ignoring the ladder.
As the United States continues to use force against
the “Islamic extremist” guerrillas, we threaten
the possibility of leaving an Iraqi government in place
that will withstand a coup. It’s a very telling
sign that if asked now who would lead the coup, it would
be hard to know whether to say Sunnis or Shiites.
As the insurgency grows, it is evident that more is
at play than terrorist attempts at destabilization.
Having the United States as a promoter of democracy
in Iraq is probably a lost cause, and it might have
been a lost cause as soon as we started in toward Baghdad
as the invader. But the lessons of the Cold War still
might be able to help policymakers reverse the quagmire.
The recent bombings in Uzbekistan reveal the far-reaching
influence of the alliance between people from oppressed
societies and the central force fighting the West —
currently Islamic extremists. The Uzbekistan government
has a long history of repressing religious and political
freedoms; however, Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov
was quick to blame the bombings on outside terrorist
organizations. Just as in the Cold War, the reality
is many times these stronger external forces find domestic
groups willing to participate out of hatred for their
government and their societal position.
If the people in control continue to blame any political
uprising on whatever ideology currently is branded “evil,”
there will be no hope of attacking the source of this
growing international conflict. At some point, decision-makers
will have to confront the reality that the West and
its allies are seen as “evil” in the context
of the Islamic extremists’ lives. They will have
to understand the point of view of the enemy to find
novel approaches in dealing with Islamic extremism,
because without a front line like Berlin or Korea, the
conflict shows no end as the West tries to destabilize
the terrorist networks and the terrorists try to destabilize
the West.
The differences between the new international conflict
and the Cold War make it imperative that the U.S. government
learn from the similarities to set long-term goals toward
quelling the international uprising.
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