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The War on Terror...
A Game?
Dr. Chuck Ormsby
09/01/06

An Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on August 15th, entitled “What Year is it? 1938? 1972? Or 1914?” by Ross Douthat (an associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly), compared the models used by various foreign policy camps when debating the best strategy for pursuing our War On Terror.

Douthat contrasts the position taken by various factions in the foreign policy debates by comparing each faction’s analysis of our current situation to a different historical period during the last century.

Six “points in time” are refer-enced to illustrate six different foreign policy pre-scriptions:

1942: “… we stand in Iraq today where the U.S. stood shortly after Pearl Harbor: bogged down against a fascist enemy and duty-bound to carry on the fight to victory. To the 1942ist, Iraq is Europe and the Pacific rolled into one, Saddam and Zarqawi are the Hitlers and Tojos of our era, suicide-bombers are the equivalent of kamikazes — and George Bush is Churchill, or maybe Truman.” Adherents include George Bush, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Joe Lieberman.

1938: Those who believe that “Iran’s march toward nuclear power is the equivalent of Hitler’s 1930s brinkmanship. While most ’38ists still support the decision to invade Iraq, they increasingly see that struggle as the prelude to a broader regional conflict, and worry that we’re engaged in Munich-esque appeasement.” Prominent adherents include Bill Kristol and Newt Gingrich. Douthat continued, “If you hear someone compare Ahmadinejad to Hitler, demand a pre-emptive strike on Iran, or suggest that the Hezbollah-Israel battle is a necessary overture to a larger confrontation, you’re listening to a 1938ist.”

1948: Those “who share the ’42ist and ’38ist view of the war on terror as a major generational challenge, but insist that we should think about it in terms of Cold War-style containment and multilateralism, not Iraq-style pre-emption.” Adherents: A motley crew of liberals and “chastened” neocons.

1972: This perspective “holds that George Bush is Nixon, Iraq is Vietnam, and that any attack on Iran or Syria would be equivalent to bombing Cambodia.” Adherents include Michael Moore, John Kerry, and the editors of the Nation.

1919: “The old-guard faction (of conservatives) that damns its own party’s leaders as sellouts to the other side.

For ’19ists, Mr. Bush is Woodrow Wilson, a feckless idealist bent on sacrificing U.S. interests and global stability on the altar of messianic liberalism. Adherents include Pat Buchanan, William F. Buckley and George Will.

And, finally, 1914: This policy perspective is posited by Mr. Douthat at the conclusion of his article.  Specifically, he suggests that we “are poised on the edge of an abyss that nobody saw coming.”

History provides invaluable lessons and is the experience we must depend on, along with reason and logic, to make strategy decisions in the face of threats by our adversaries. It is likely that you found yourself more sympathetic to one — or possibly two — of the perspectives listed above, and less swayed by the others.

For the most part, readers probably preferred the historical period that was suggested as supporting their favorite strategy. If you favored containment and negotiation, you probably thought that the 1948 “Cold War” model was best. If you favored our current Iraq policy, the analogy to 1942 probably filled your bill.

Unfortunately, none of the historical analogies cited here combines all the basic ingredients of the current foreign policy challenge. That is not to say they do not provide important lessons and insights. They do. But we must recognize that a change in a single key circumstance can lead to radical changes in the strategy we should choose.

Consider two chess games. The positions of the chess pieces in both games are identical except for a single chess piece whose position on one board is altered. While in some cases that changed location is irrelevant to strategy; in other cases it can lead to the need for a radically different strategy.

So what factors in the current conflict, either alone or in combination, could substantially impact our preferred strategy? While the list is probably endless, I will list four of the more important factors for consideration:

1. Terrorism is the primary instrument of threat, not conventional warfare.

2. The threat and initial attacks are not carried out by governments, but are primarily carried out through stateless entities (e.g., al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas, Ansar Al-Islam, Abu Sayyaf, or Islamic Jihad).

3. The terrorist organizations are surreptitiously funded and armed by sympathetic governments – many of whom have excess cash derived from oil, which they have in abundance.

4. Some of these sympathetic governments are on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons - weapons they are desperately pursuing.

These critical factors are not merely circumstantial or accidental. They are that way by design. Here is why:

Ø Our adversaries cannot match us in conventional warfare. They have learned from history that asymmetrical warfare tends to level the playing field. Ounces of explosive can bring down an airline and cause enormous economic harm far in excess of the cost of the operation or of the proximate damage.

Ø The apparent guilty parties must not be established governments, because governments can be quickly dealt with. The attackers know they must be stateless entities without substantial fixed assets subject to attack.

Ø To the extent that substantial funding and sophisticated arms are required (e.g., the assets Hezbollah used to confront Israel), they must come from established governments because only governments can amass the needed monetary resources or procure the high-tech armaments.

Ø Finally, the mass destruction needed to bring the Western democracies to their knees can only be delivered with nuclear weapons. Ultimate victory by our adversaries can only be accomplished if they can wield the ultimate uranium fist.

So there you have it. Our strategy must effectively counter this combination of circumstances – the post 9/11 circumstances, not the circumstances that prevailed in 1914, 1919, 1938, 1942, 1948, or 1972.  I’m an engineer by training and my background says we need to design a bridge to ford the present river, not a different river. We can use proven design rules, but we must ensure that they are applicable to all the present circumstances.

Which brings me to game theory. If you saw the movie “A Beautiful Mind,” you have been exposed to game theory, the forte of the movie’s subject, the Nobel Prize winning and brilliant Princeton-educated mathematician, John Forbes Nash, Jr.

The basic insight of game theory is that each participant in a game should make his next move in a manner that minimizes the worse outcome that his opponent can subsequently inflict. Said a different way, since your opponent will always try to arrange the outcome of the game to his maximum advantage (your maximum disadvantage), you should make the move that minimizes the possible disadvantage to which you could be subjected.

The “game we are playing” is not going to be over in a year or two. It will only end with the destruction of those governments who seek our destruction, or with major Western cities in smoldering radioactive ruins and our will to resist broken. Nothing less will end the struggle.

Without the backing of governments, terrorist organizations cannot win. They can kill a few thousand people occasionally and give the media a shot in the arm, but Western civilization will survive. Give them nuclear weapons and all bets are off.

Any strategy that seeks to minimize the maximum damage that can be foisted on us must, first and foremost, eliminate the threat of a nuclear attack by our enemies. Whether delivered by a terrorist or by a sympathetic government, this threat must be eliminated.

Imagine simultaneous nuclear blasts in several of our major cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, Miami … blasts that level the downtown areas of these cities. Imagine the twisted wreckage, vaporized bodies, the walking dead with burned flesh hanging from their limbs and retching from radiation sickness, hundreds of square miles of urban infrastructure burning with no fire suppression, polluted air and water, … if you need a reminder, just visit Web sites that detail the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Our economies, while normally resilient, would be severely impacted. Even life’s basics, such as food, water and medicine, will almost surely be in short supply. Financial records may be irretrievable. And you thought you had a brokerage account or a 401K account! Even if the stocks you owned still had value, which is questionable, there may be no record to substantiate your claim or a court that cares enough to hear it. Try writing a check or using your credit card with no clearing-houses to handle your transactions. I’ll bet you expect your lights to still go on when you flip a switch, or your freezer to freeze, or gas stations to have gasoline to dispense, or grocery stores with food to sell. How will you plan to stay warm in the winter? We are a spoiled people!

Politically, our will to resist will be challenged. We might strike out with nuclear weapons ourselves, but the damage will already have been done. We must avoid it in advance.

How do we do that? We must counter the very combination of circumstances previously listed. The key is to take a seemingly forgotten element of the Bush doctrine seriously — hold state sponsors of terrorism responsible — and couple this with a realization that we are at war. We are not in some political contest or minor skirmish, but in a war.

Currently, the war on terror is not that threatening, even if terrorists bring down a few dozen passenger planes. But, give our religious and fanatic terrorist adversaries nuclear weapons and the stakes are raised a thousand fold. We must win now – not put off the tough decisions to later. Later is too late.

We need to act on the Bush doctrine. Iran has clearly funded terrorist organizations. It is time to preemptively topple the Iranian government, remove all of the remnants of its nuclear program, take control of the Iranian oil fields, and operate the oil fields with profits going to private shareholders: the Iranian people (each citizen getting an equal share).

Don’t occupy the country … only the oil fields. Just put in a provisional government, with a basic bill of rights, and schedule elections. They can have a civil war if they want ... at least they’ll spend their time doing that and not developing nuclear weapons or funding terrorists in other countries. If the government that emerges is responsible, it can take over the oil fields.

If not, we can maintain control and suspend dividend payments to the “stockholders.” That will get their attention.

A similar strategy should have been used in Iraq. Give the people an incentive to act sensibly. If they don’t, they can live in hovels … it is their choice.

Simultaneously with our move into Iran (which would immediately relieve the terrorist threat in Iraq), we need to send a stern message to Syria and North Korea: “Change your ways or you’re next!”

Syria, isolated and on its own, would immediately see the wisdom of our suggestion.

North Korea may or may not respond. Either way, its better to “play the game” now, than when they have an arsenal of nuclear weapons on top of missiles that actually work.

This is a gutsy strategy ... but requires less than one hundredth the level of testosterone that will be needed when our adversaries have nuclear weapons. It is not too late … but it will be soon.  

Dr. Chuck Ormsby is a member of the North Andover School Committee. You can email Dr. Chuck at ccormsby@comcast.net

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The September, 2006 Edition of the Valley Patriot
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